Journeying back to Jigsaw's lair and Rapture
Looking back at some nostalgic favorites and a new one...
Oh, To Be Scream Queens
It feels like a fever dream, but before Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens for MTV, VH1 had a short-lived reality show with the same name. Scream Queens premiered in 2008 with unknown aspiring actresses competing to win a role in Saw IV for season 1 and in Saw 3D for season 2.
The format was like any other reality show competition. The hopefuls would participate in a series of weekly challenges. The best competitor of the week would be safe from elimination an earn the title of “Leading Lady.” While the worst performance would be “given the axe” and sent home. To help the competitors, Shawnee Smith — Amanda Young from the Saw franchise — acted as their mentor. At the end of each week, the three judges would evaluate their week’s performances before making their decision.
You can imagine that as a teenaged horror lover, that I would absolutely watch this and want to compete it in it!
Sadly, it only lasted those two seasons.
But thanks to some nostalgic YouTubers, you can watch all of the episodes (in parts, unfortunately) online.
A Case for The Saw Franchise
This is not a movie review or an omnibus of the Saw franchise. It’s more like an appreciation of these deeply, deeply flawed movies. They are not great, let me start with that. The only two good ones are Saw and Saw II, in my opinion. Tobin Bell, despite his “dead body” role in Saw and his untimely death in Saw III, is the best part of the franchise. His freaking voice! It’s so chilling and his delivery of his lines is impeccable. “Oh yes, there will be blood.” Shawnee Smith as Amanda was so great. The reverse bear trap scene where we first meet her is so harrowing, but her performance for the infamous needle pit scene in Saw II is my favorite. Not to mention that Smith was 4 months pregnant when she filmed that scene!
Regardless of one’s opinion of the torture porn/splatter film subgenre, the Saw franchise was a bit of a turning point in horror. They were incredible box office successes. I absolutely loved watching these gore-fests filled with body horror and more twists and turns than a Grey’s Anatomy episode. The traps became increasingly complex and ridiculous. By the end of this past era of the franchise there was like 100 different characters all connecting to each other, to the other movies. It was a whole lot. Incredibly extra! And you know what, I’ve watched all of the Saw movies.
To be honest, it’s probably because of those wild twists in the franchise’s storyline that just provide a great background noise while I’m doing work or wanting to not sit in silence.
One Good Scare — Hell House LLC (2015)
TW/CW: Clowns
If you read my last newsletter, you can probably tell that I’m in a found footage mockumentary rabbit hole. This is one of the subgeneres of horror that truly gets under my skin at times. Maybe it’s the “reality” of these “true stories” or the (often) lower budgets, but the scares tend to be incredibly effective for me.
Recently, I watched Hell House LLC and absolutely loved it. I had held off from watching it but kept seeing everyone rave about the first one. This movie truly shook me at times. I’m such a huge fan of haunted houses. You’re probably also aware of my yearly trip to Halloween Horror Nights. So with the movie taking place in one, I was not prepared for how much I would actually get scared. There’s not a lot of jump scares. But the use of camera angles that force you where to look, shadows in corners that may or may not be evil entities, and a simple story all make Hell House LLC one hell of a movie (pun very much intended).
Hell House LLC starts like any other found-footage mockumentary with an explanation of white text on a black background:
What you are about to see is a documentary on the mysterious events surrounding the 2009 Halloween haunted house tour tragedy.
From there and five years after the event, we get footage of a new documentary crew visiting the abandoned Abaddon Hotel where on opening night of Hell House, 15 staff and tour-goers were found dead. The doc crew interview multiple people from writers, local journalists who investigated the hotel after the incident, and even a tour-goer who barely escaped.
The most shocking and effective moment of the movie for me was the camera footage uploaded to YouTube from a tour-goer. In the video, we follow in the first-person perspective as the cameraman and a friend anticipate entering the house and do so after a few minutes in line. The tour goes fairly normal at first with just a few unusual moments. But shit really hits the fan before the pair get ready to walk down the concrete staircase leading to the hotel basement. Screams are heard. “Go! Go!” And the two friends start running. Making it out of an emergency exit, they head out to the lawn outside to see firetrucks and police cars near the front entrance.
The rest of the movie centers around the doc crew interviewing lone Hell House crew survivor, Sara Havel who not only agrees to the interview but provides the crew with the full, never-recovered footage that the crew was recording leading up to and on the night of.
As someone who regularly goes to haunted houses, the YouTube footage in particular chilled me. It could happen, right! It’s an intrusive thought that often pops up in my mind when I’m in dark, crowded places like those at HHN. Hell, it’s one that pops up when I’m at concerts because the footage from the Hell House incident feels eerily close to that recovered from the true-life tragic Station nightclub fire in 2003. Because of the world we live in, I’m often checking where the exits are at music venues, haunted houses, and even movie theaters.
One of the other terrifying aspects of Hell House LLC has to be those fucking clown mannequins. I’m not terribly scared of clowns but those fuckers are horrifying. A+ for them alone.
A Return to Rapture
There have been many video games in my life that I have absolutely loved for their visuals, storytelling, and gameplay. I count Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Prince of Persia trilogy, and F.E.A.R. among those favorites.
But none had blown me away before like BioShock. I was 13 when they game came out. I know that others have said it before, but it truly was a gamechanger. It was a turning point in gaming’s evolution. How could it not have been? I absolutely loved it from the start. It’s always a fun sign when a video game has you adjust the brightness to a very low visibility before it starts.
Heading into the bathosphere from the infamous lighthouse and hearing Andrew Ryan’s famed speech where he proclaims:
Instead, I choose something different. I choose the impossible. I choose…Rapture!
Then your first view of Rapture, an entire city underwater, as your bathosphere travels through the water to dock at the welcome center. From there, having many “firsts” and notable moments in-game. Encountering a Big Daddy for the first time. Choosing between rescuing or harvesting a Little Sister. Getting to use plasmids against those horrifying Splicers! And of course, who could forget: “Would you kindly?”
BioShock’s incredible environments were definitely one of the game’s biggest pros. You’re in an underwater city. A place that was supposed to be a utopia. But we all know that utopias are either never what they truly seem or quickly dissolve into dystopias. Navigating Rapture’s multiple buildings, each with their own purposes and aesthetic, surrounded by fortified glass that occasionally allowed you to see fish swim past or the lone Big Daddy making repairs. I can never forget how scary it was entering the Medical Pavilion for the first time.
If you’re like me and it’s been a while since you played the game, check out this video of the intro scene. If you’ve never played BioShock, let me be your Andrew Ryan and welcome you to the glory of Rapture…
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