Lipad, Pinas, Lipad! Let PH soar!
Still available for only P500 (regular edition) and P1000 (hardcover premium edition). Just message the Shonenbat and/or Bayan ng mga Dakila FB pages.
Post-pandemic superhero series created & written by yours truly with art by Mik Fajardo, F. Maria Regalado and Patrick Rawwrr Enrique.
I like the fact this isn't straight up horror.
At least not like the Blumhouse template that has become, for lack of better term, cookie cutter.
I dug it when that kind of horror first popped out. The Shallows. Get Out. Don't Breathe. The 2018 Halloween remake. Grim. Structured. Single or limited location. Siege and entrapment.
With heavy feeling in the jump scares and kill scenes and a crunchiness ot the violence (again for lack of better word) - often bathed in chiaroscuro.
2010s have developed what seems to be a formula that consistently delivers in whatever context. You can slot any situation, any story, any topic or metaconcern right in, and it will be a punchy and effective horror once all is said and done.
We saw that in a multitude of films from the 2010s to this very day. But here's a thing: it's a formula, a template, and it can get bland and boring and lazy after a while. And it did.
There's definitely a LOT of merit and value in that 2010s template. It is also a zeitgeist, an indicator of this rather unpleasant period in human history, so a movie's gotta channel it to make the horror movie of this decade, this era. At the very least recognizable to kids.
Hollywood movies this year that I liked have either moved along this trend and channeled its more righteous attributes (Sinners and its being in continuity with the incendiary and outspoken approach of Get Out and the other Jordan Peele films, while being entirely its own thing, and graphic novel pulpy to boot) or simply picked up where they left off in 2003 and hooking up to that energy again, while assimilating the gains of so-called 'elevated horror', by going with a more meditative, art house mindset (28 Years Later a.k.a. my favorite film of this year so far)
While this movie, Weapons, does have the Blumhouse traits (chiaroscuro, limited location, high concept, crunchy violence and grim dark heavy sense of unease), it plays a bit fast and loose with it in ways that are confident and assured that's not po faced all the time, with what appears to be a maniacally drunken love for cult horror and genre films and just basking in it.
And it lets in levity and humor in some of those jump scares and kill scenes. Admittedly, I was a bit bummed out at first, wishing I was seeing something more consistent like Sinners or the Korean horror movie, Exhuma, but as it struck towards its conclusion like a missile onto a genocidal power, its design became much clearer. There's a spontaneity in its approach that is very much appreciated, and it's cool to let in a bit of camp into the proceedings that nonetheless leads to a very cathartic, righteous moment. The one we need.
Which is to say this is less interested in setting up the post-2010 jump scares and the creeps that the current audience have come to expect, almost autopilot, and more in regurgitating a vast array of influences, getting through a high concept, and sharing the creative result. It's as if this movie is a byproduct of reading tons of Fangoria and Rue Morgue issues, not for the sake of referencing them but drawing its contents. Low brow and high brow. Cheap and big budget. Foreign and local. Post-millennial genre geekness that births this harrowing fairytale for our despicable times.
Part of me wishes it went more geopolitical re: the victimization of kids by fascist geriatrics, but we already have Iran and Superman for that. The other part wishes it was more of bizarre true crime.
But it's fine. It's all good.
There are weapons.
