Obviously, people deeply distrust social media tech companies, if horror movie
makers believe the public will accept a company that somewhat resembles Meta
kidnapping innocent people to produce a life-and-death dark web survival game. If
you are wondering, the evil corporate entity sounds more Meta than X, because
of all the references to their AI division. Regardless, their behavior is
unambiguously criminal, but apparently, they have been getting away with it for
quite a while in Cara Claymore & Jacki Payne’s Werewolf Game, which
releases today on VOD.
The
“Judge” will explain the rules to the distressed abductees, but viewers who
have played the parlor game “Mafia,” also known as “Werewolf,” already know how
it works. Two lucky “contestants” are designated werewolves. The rest are
villagers. During the night, the two wolves hunt the villagers. By day, the
sheep try to identify their hunters, before each fatal elimination vote, resulting
in a bullet to the back of the head.
Frankly,
nobody (including myself) would be particularly interested in Werewolf Game
were it not one of the final films starring the late, great horror legend Tony
Todd. It really is a nasty, brutish piece of work. Yet, the violence is
eclipsed by the impossibly bad decision-making. Perversely, the villagers
constantly vote to eliminate the least dangerous players, including the
homeless basket case, who could hardly get out of bed. Very little makes sense,
including placing Raymond, a former IT guy with the tech company, into the game.
Of
course, Todd has the perfect, malevolent voice for the Judge, but it is rather
a shame he must mask up for most of the film. Arguably, the best work comes
from Robert Picardo (Star Trek’s holographic doctor), who plays Bill, a
former police detective, who at least tries to apply a little deductive
reasoning.
In many ways, JFK was the “Nuclear President.” He was partly elected due to the
supposed “missile gap.” He also mentioned the potential of nuclear energy in
his “We choose to go to the moon” speech. That is exactly the day Dr. Ben Song
leaps to, finding himself in an experimental reactor about to have an accident
requiring a major government cover-up in “Leap, Die, Repeat,” tonight’s episode
of the new Quantum Leap, which airs tonight on NBC.
Initially,
Dr. Song feels like he is in his element, with science geeks like Dr. Edwin
Woolsey. However, his enthusiasm dampens when the entire place explodes. Ordinarily,
that would be that, but he and the Quantum Leap team are somewhat relieved to
discover he is actually in a time loop, but only somewhat. To save everyone and
leap on, he will have to figure out who sabotaged the facility.
“Leap, Die,
Repeat” is a clever way to break format without really breaking format. Instead
of simply riffing on Groundhog Day and other similar films, it offers a
fresh take on time-looping. However, this episode has a terrible sense of the
era’s history. Song and his holographic guide, Addison Augustine, roll their
eyes when Col. Parker tells him his job is to guard the facility against
Communists, but the Cuban Missile Crisis would happen just one month and four
days after JFK’s “Moon Speech,” so it was a totally valid concern. Also, the
janitor says he reads science fiction novels like Solaris, but Lem’s classic
Polish sf novel was not published in English until 1970 (secret plot twist,
maybe?).
MEAD is a lot like HAL 9000, but cuter and with a conscience. That is a
strange thing to say about a character who originated in underground comix, but
Kitchen Sink Press actually published a lot interesting titles (including Xenozoic
Tales and Will Eisner’s The Spirit). Regardless, his reluctance to
kill people is what forces him to turn renegade in J. Allen Williams’ MEAD,
which releases tomorrow on DVD/BluRay.
At
this point, it is just MEAD and Friz, his human operator/companion, at-large in
the universe. They had his creator Tam in common, but when they had to make a
break for it, the evil Admiral Gillette killed her during their escape attempt.
After that, Friz became a pirate, navigating the toy-looking starship MEAD is
paired to. However, they really need to find some dark matter to properly
power-up. Instead, they rescue Phoebe from the bounty hunters that came looking
for them.
AIs
like MEAD have the extraordinarily dangerous ability to create illusions in the
minds of the crews pursuing them. Inconveniently, Gillette has the prototype
helmet that counteracts MEAD’s illusions. However, his leadership skills under
combat conditions are rather lacking. Bellowing threats at people is not very
effective when they see a gigantic version of the beloved robot toy Timmy the
Wonderbot lumbering towards them, like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
If
MEAD had been released in its current version thirty years ago, it would
have been hailed as a game-changing integration of live-action with CGI
animation. Today, it is just sort of interesting looking. The story is just
okay too, even though it was adapted by Jan Strnad from his original story, “To
Meet the Faces You Meet,” which was published in the Kitchen Sink anthology Fever
Dreams.
