#They’re annoying bastards with sympathetic characterization and motivations | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nanakibh · 5 years

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This is driving me nuts. I gotta say something about this line.

This is a lie.

Demyx didn't know that they had hearts. This was a bluff. He saw an opportunity in something Sora said, and he pounced on it.

When he said this line, he was trying to trick Sora into empathizing with him so they wouldn’t have to fight. (Is he trying to conceal his power level? Your guess is as good as mine at the moment.) When that didn't work, he got annoyed and dropped the act. It's like he was willing to let Sora go if he agreed not to fight, but Sora ungratefully refused to accept his mercy, so Demyx decided to curb stomp him for his insolence. Legend.

By the way, while I'm here, I’ll point out some other Interesting tidbits of characterization now that we're taking him seriously.

He was never Roxas's friend. Demyx only put on a friendly act to trick him into doing his missions for him. He gets away with it because Roxas thinks he’s just lazy. I feel like I could read into his “traitor” line a few ways after KH3, but it at least goes to show that all of his “Uwuuu~ Roxas, come back to us~” stuff was a load of crap.

Any friendliness he showed to Xion was conditional. When he found out she was a replica, he seemed annoyed that he even bothered giving her his attention. I wrote this off for the longest time because it went against what I thought he was like. Surprise, he’s a bastard!

He was happy when the others were transferred to Castle Oblivion. He said it made the place quieter. When he found out that they died, he flippantly joked about it with Xigbar. People are dead and Demyx does not care.

I can only think of one character he seems genuinely friendly with... And it's Xigbar. He doesn't seem to have any ulterior motive with him. He just loves hovering around him For Some Reason. And he showed up to watch Xigbar fight Roxas in Olympus. That’s not weird.

So, like, what I'm saying is... This dude successfully fooled a good chunk of the KH fanbase into thinking he's something that he isn’t.

It’s probably because his actions don’t seem to serve a greater goal. If he isn't just lazy, why does he keep pushing his work off onto other people? What else could he be getting out of it?

Gratification.

Manipulating people is his hobby. (The sitar is huge and there to distract you.)

It's why he gets seriously angry when Sora refuses to buy his act. Being underestimated is what he wants, and he's used to getting what he wants. He takes pride in his ability to trick people.

He’s so good at it, he can basically spell it out right in front of Larxene’s face and she still won’t get it because she’s bought his act hook, line, and sinker. Her irritation validates him. He goes along with Vexen’s plan because it utilizes his talent. He can say, “I’m so off everyone’s radar” and-- ...No, that one was a little too on-the-nose. I think we all noticed it that time. The sheer level of confidence this man has... He can tell the truth (”I can be intimidating when I want to be”) and everyone will ignore it because they’re that far under his spell. Dare I say, he’s an even better actor than Xigbar, and he’s infinitely more committed to playing the part of the fool.

*picks up megaphone* HE'S THE MOM, AND IN A SHOCKING TWIST, I'M STARTING TO THINK HE WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE THE MOM. HE’S BEEN LIKE THIS FOREVER.

The more I think about this, the closer I get to the truth, I think. I hope. lol For a while, I thought that Demyx might have really believed he was as weak and stupid as the others say... But he seems too aware of what he’s doing for that to be the case. So even if he puts himself down, that’s part of the ploy. But... Maybe a part of him really DOES think he’s just a little idiot. That sounds like something Nomura would do. Horrible manipulative bastard? He’s sympathetic now.

The way he looks like a deer caught in the headlights when Xemnas tells them that they were part of the ancient keyblade legacy... Maybe MoM really is baby...

#kingdom hearts #kh3 #demyx #master of masters #theory #long post #text #if i'm wrong by some slim chance i will disintegrate #we bet the house like men

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iamcinema · 4 years

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IAC Reviews #011: Bloodstream (1985)

Let’s go back a few years close to when I made this blog, roughly 2013 or 2014.

Around this point, I was looking for some unique, weird, and obscure titles to share for the horror forums I was apart of and to make notes of to eventually add to my collection. If I was able to find names that had little to no available information on them, then I knew I was onto something special. This would often bring me to sites like TwistedAnger that sold copies and transfers of horror, exploitation, and mondo films to fill me in on elusive material that were often times obscure and never got an official release. This little search would bring me to find Bloodstream, and with the interesting cover art, I knew I had to find more about it - but much to my dismay, there was very little to be had or known about it.

Bloodstream is 1985 low-budget slasher film directed by Michael J. Murphy, whom A Slash Above has dubbed the Ted V. Mikels of the UK, which is quite the comparison. Given that there was very little to go off of with this beyond the site’s review, I was left to scratch my head a bit as to whether or not I’d be able to find the film in its entirety beyond a few clips, which only made me hungerier for more after reading the synopsis.

Our story centers on Alistair Bailey, an up and coming filmmaker who is suddenly fired from a project he’s working on by a sleazy VHS distributor named William King. Instead of the film being scraped like he thought, he later finds out that King plans on distributing the film globally and it becomes a critical hit with the home video market. Rightfully pissed by this, Bailey seeks revenge and conspires to go on a killing spree with vengeful employee in a similar manner as the deaths in his movie - only this time, the effects will be real.

This got me pretty excited to check this out, and once the film got added to Youtube a few years ago, I was quick to jump at this. As a full disclosure, I did see and review this for UTA several years ago, but the details of my experience are on the hazy side. So, I won’t count this as a retrospective review this time around, but I’ll reflect on what I can if it’s as good or bad as I remember it being all those years ago.

Bloodstream in One Gif:

So, let’s dip our toes into this one.

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But first, a little backstory about the film and what I was able to find. Going off the premise and opening alone, this one has a certain kind of tone to it, dare I say very pointed and self-aware. According to Murphy, the film was his response to distribution companies and presumably bad business experiences he’s had. Unfortunately, the film failed to be picked up for distribution before falling into total obscurity. I’ll return to this again towards the end to help wrap things up. The budget is also very low as one could expect; roughly £400 in 1985, or £1,053.02 in February 2020 (I’m not to sure what that comes out to in USD or CAD). Given the limited budget, I’m a bit surprised with what they were able to accomplish, and for that I’ll give it that much.

As far as our characters go, they were quite forgettable and the first time around I couldn’t remember who was who or what purpose they served. So, coming back into things with a fresh slate was helpful. Aside from our two focuses being Alistair and William, we have a couple others that will become topics of interest.

We have Judy, an actress brought into the flock by William whom he’s having an affair with to help advance her career. We also have Greg, a former pornstar who was brought in like Judy was to work under William. There’s also the matter of William’s family; his brother Simon, a misogynistic sleaze who has a thing for power while also being held under financial ransom by William at the company, his wife Sally, and his daughter Lisa - both of which whose dreams of being in the industry are held under William. All of this becomes important later on, which is why I brought this up. There’s also another focal character that ties this all together, that being Nikki, William’s secretary who acts as a mole and accomplice to helping Alistair get his revenge by adding fuel to the fire with her own hidden motives and intentions.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

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As far as the story goes, it’s not all that bad, and in a way it reminds me of some tellings of Phantom of the Opera where our masked antihero seeks to get revenge on the Opera house owners who did him wrong by stealing credit for his work after being presumed dead. In a simialr fashion as the Phantom, there’s a lot of anger and malice behind the premeditated violence, and each of the murders was dragged out with a purpose in mind to send a message.

The plot moves along fast, as we’re immedately dropped into the action from the jump and the revenge scheme starts to take off within the 30 minute mark in a 73-minute film. However, it can feel like a log jam a bit with things being slowed down or padded out in the form of Alistair watching either his own movies or those from William’s distribution company. The quality of those films is pretty damn atrocious, playing on various horror film tropes and references like vampires, cannibalism, the occult, body horror, zombies, and Exorcist II: The Heretic - yeah, that happens. While it’s quite clear why these scenes are here in the first place, the run time could be shaved down to at least 65 minutes of these weren’t here.

From a technical standpoint, it’s not all that great and is overall uninteresting. The lighting is fairly poor, though I’ve seen worse. Some shots are overlit and others don’t seem to have enough, and while it doesn’t make it hard to see what’s going on, it adds to the overall cheapness. Speaking of which, the sets themselves aren’t all that remarkable either and it shows that they did their best to work with whatever they had with the budget since some of the locations feel like sound stages with black walls if it wasn’t places the crew likely had easier access to like their homes or a basic office space to rent out. There’s also a weird flickering problem where it will go from color to black and white briefly, which is a bit annoying as well.

The sound is probably it’s weakest point of everything else stacked against it, as some moments will be decently clear and others you’ll need to rewind it and try to figure out what was going on. I had to do this three times with finding Greg’s name, because I thought they were saying “Burke” for some reason. There’s also a fair amount of bad ADR going on, which is a bit laughable when it comes up. The sound quality in general just makes for a bad time with figuring out what’s going on, particularly in crowded areas where you have the background noise to deal with on top of it sounding like the actors are on the other side of the room when they’re in front of the camera. So, unless you have a good ear, you might be a tad bit lost, but it’s not on levels of Ax’Em bad.

On that note, how about the gore and deaths? While they aren’t perfect and are on the hammy side, I’ll at least give them some credit for having memorable death scenes and succeeding in what they could do for a microbudget. Some of them give me similar vibes to other slasher movies of the decade like Final Exam, Woodchipper Massacre, and Cannibal Campout, which I think helps me to enjoy them a bit more in a way. It tried, so I guess an A for effort is fair enough - especially with a particular implied off-screen death that’s quite brutal and Murphy apparently got a lot of e-mails and letters about it.

The acting is a fairly mixed bag as well, with it being mostly meh or average for the type of low budget flick where none of the actors went on to do anything else. When it comes to Judy, Greg, Simon, and the rest of William’s family, they aren’t there much to land a solid impact. So, when they get their own individual scenes where they’re on their own, there isn’t a whole lot to see to comment on about how well they hold up. They’re okay, nothing truly dreadful though. When it comes to Alistair, Nikki, and William though, that’s a different story.

While I found Alistair (and to an extent, Nikki) to be sympathetic, they didn’t do much to pull at my heart strings to get me totally revved up for the revenge sequences. The same can be said for William as well. Yeah, he’s a total sleazy, swindling bastard, but that’s about it. As a villain, he’s sort of forgettable. The writing itself is fine, which is surprising for this type of film, but the acting is stiff and doesn’t feel natural or right. I don’t know if any of the actors had prior experience given that they haven’t shown up in any other productions that I’m aware of or if a lot of the fault could be placed on poor direction. It’s a damn shame too since this could have been much better if one or both of those things could have been resolved. Plus, it could have been much darker too by pulling out all the stops since it already took plenty of risks with the aformentioned death scene and the social commentary it addressed. But we’re 35 years too late for that now.

To return to something I said at the start regarding Murphy’s intentions behind the film, much of this is heavily reflected in Alistair’s characterization where he brushes off the films produced by William’s company as “garbage”, and rambles about censorship, on-screen violence, and belittling distribution companies during the final showdown between him and William. Subtlety isn’t in this film’s dictionary, even more so towards the end where it raises the question about whether or not horror movies and the media contribute to real-life violence; much akin to other later films like Video Violence and Woodchipper Massacre. Yeah, it’s not an original concept at all and it’s been no stranger to us since the turn of the century or even for the time when the Satanic Panic and PMRC Senate case was going on, but it’s nonetheless fun to see how different artists handle the topic at hand.

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So, what are my thoughts on this one? Well, I’m torn.

Back when I reviewed this in 2015, I was rather harsh on it for how low the quality was and that the acting was subpar at best. It left so much to be desired, as it could have been much bigger if it was given better resources to shine. I’d like to think there’s some other timeline where this could have been the success that Murphy wanted it to be, rather than his least favorite film he’s directed and ultimately faded away into obscurity - fulfilling its own prophecy in a way to become Bloodstream decades later.

With that being said, I think my old rating of 3/10 was a bit much. It’s no gem or masterpiece in any way, which again, is the sad part. But, it’s also not a total disasterpiece. If all the pieces fell in the right spot, this would be an easy 7.5/10 for me at the very least. However, with the technical issues and wooden acting, I’d give this a 4.5/10 to be on the generous side. If a day ever comes where someone wanted to do a faithful remake of this to show what we could have had, that would make for a fun night. If you want to give it a watch some time, it’s up on Youtube and it makes for a decent popcorn flick.

Rating: 4.5/10

#bloodstream #film #horror #horror movie #horror movies #horror film #iac reviews #horror review #film review #uk horror #euro horror #slasher #80s horror #80's horror #1980s horror #1980's horror #low budget filmmaking #low budget horror #michael j murphy

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