Persephone's (Gothic) Insights

"We're not kids, anymore!" the voice-over exclaims. "What? Did you think we'd sit in my basement and play games for the rest of our lives?" Oh, they grow up so fast! Note: This is my first impression of the new trailer to season 3 of Stranger Things (2016). I may not have caught every single detail. Still, spoilers! Stranger Things season three is nigh, and one thing seems plain: the show, now more than ever, remains stuck in a time warp. The children age; the show does not. Its "past" is the sort envisioned by the likes of Carpenter, Henson, or Spielberg. Here, the action builds to a crescendo courtesy of Pete Townsend. Even as the world of these extraordinary children continues to change, the immortal lyrics of "Baba O'Reilly" (1971) provide a sense of wistful nostalgia. The actors themselves have all grown. Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, is taller, with a full head of hair. No longer the awkward, ball tween, she...

Can  Dragon Ball  be Gothic? As a scholar of the Gothic, that's exactly what I wondered when I sat down to watch  Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2019). In the movie, the death god Beerus literally takes a vacation. The Gothic mostly does, too, but let's take a closer look... The movie more or less starts with King Vegeta looking upon his infant son, Prince Vegeta. Incubating inside the royal saiyan maternity ward, the boy is small; his power levels are not. The king looks smug. "I look forward to watching you grow into a vicious king!" he boasts. King Vegeta and those under him work for King Cold, an even bigger tyrant. At the movie's start, Cold retires, putting his son in charge. Ever the  enfant terrible , Freiza belittles the saiyans for their poor technology. After killing a handful for seemingly no reason, he introduces the now-infamous scanners for the survivors to use. With more explanation than the original show ever bothered to provide,  DBS...

After watching the trailer for Team Cherry's  Silksong , as well as  a recent interview with the developers, themselves, I decided to do a response video  of my own. The video clocks in at over an hour. So I wanted to provide an abridged version for people to read, here. As a Gothic scholar, I wrote my thesis on two Metroidvania:  Metroid  (1986) and  Hollow Knight  (2017). I consider most Metroidvania to be Gothic. However, being a sequel can wildly effect a Gothic text's ability to horrify or terrify its audience. Ann Radcliffe chose to terrify hers; "Monk" Lewis chose to horrify his. These two devices generally work in tandem, and nearly any text will contain elements of either. Usually one is more predominant than the other, and this ratio can invert from sequel to sequel, author to author. Works from the same author can change, too. Ridley Scott has helped shape and reshape the  Alien  franchise as an ongoing narrative. In a dark, un...

"It's alright to be a cat person, you know?" Much like  Reservoir Dogs (1992),  Bullet Head  (2017) starts at the end of a heist. Dead behind the wheel, the driver crashes into a bulldozer. Stunned, but alive, the survivors climb free, carrying an iron safe full of cash—three desperate criminals fenced in a condemned lot with a giant, killer dog. If this sounds like the premise to a horror movie, it kind of is. However, this is a crime movie, the best of which are horrifying in spots: Mesrine (2008), A Gang Story (2011), Once Upon a Time in America (1984). Bullet Head , however, chooses to focus on dogs as much as people. This might sound weird on paper, but it works. The men hole up. Waiting for their relief, they tell each other stories ("It's not like we have a paucity of time."). Each brings a streetwise legitimacy to his role. I buy the act. Malkovich has done this kind of thing in his sleep since  The Killing Fields  (1984). Adrien Brody sports a...

Panos Cosmatos'  Mandy (2018) borrows from many films. It opens with a scrolling forest, but the camera soon nods upward, at a colorful planetscape. This reverses the opening shot in  Star Wars  (1977), when the camera falls from the sky to rest on Tatooine and her moons. Murky and rich, the music sets the tone. It's a tale of good versus evil, of a pastoral scene broken by violence and repaid in kind. Mandy is a fantasy tale of revenge that forces Cage into a largely mute role. The actor's somewhat constrained delivery assists the narrative versus hijacking it; the story is at once a fairy tale and a Western, with horror themes: an old gunslinger working a menial job must return to a life of violence after his wife is killed. To do so, he must also return to drinking and meeting with old, bellicose friends. His bloody quest is two-fold, the villain tucked away in a tower, guarded by parallel agents who swear fealty to no one and delight in mayhem. They cann...

David Bruckner's The Ritual (2017) is a movie about wrong-turns. Yes, it largely involves four men who get themselves increasingly lost while hiking in Sweden. This is undoubtedly a wrong-turn, but not the first. When four was five, two of the group, at the end of a guy's night out, decide to walk into a liquor store. There are misgivings: Luke is on a bender of sorts; the others want to go home to their wives and jobs. So Robert narrowly joins him inside, a go-between for Luke and the others, alienated by the former's incessant party antics... Disclaimer: Before you proceed, I wholly recommend watching the movie first!  Inside, the two men convene, their hushed debate cut short when they spot the cashier. Beaten supine, she gawks wordlessly at them. Robert freezes; Luke takes cover, hearing the assailants return. Enter two junkies, armed and belligerent. They spot Robert and corner him, demanding all he has. Refusal to hand over his wedding ring nets him two healthy bl...

Disclaimer: This review of the second season of the Netflix miniseries, Castlevania , contains many spoilers! One thing before I begin: Trevor Belmont's whip—called the Morning Star, but which I'll simply refer to as "explodey whip"—is quite possibly the coolest thing ever. More to the point, and what really matters, here, is that all three heroes—Sypha, Alucard and Trevor—were amazing in their own right. Each repeatedly does things per episode that had me sit upright and exclaim, "That was so cool!" And I'm usually pretty critical of recent animation, because so much of it nowadays fails to capture a certain weight. Here, that wasn't a problem. I was thoroughly wowed by the sheer visual heft. Better yet, the show feels faithful to the games, if you consider a loose adaptation faithful. Alucard's move set, the aforementioned "explodey whip" and Sypha's own magical repertoire all serve as nice visual nods to the attacks of the...