Fish and Cherries Productions

Five Nights at Freddy’s. This game series has been sweeping the internet for the past year and earning a reputation as both a nightmare factory and a perfect laxative to those who play it. If you’re not into gaming, avoided the craze, or have been living under some kind of rock, let me explain the premise. The Five Nights at Freddy’s series casts you as a security guard working the night shift at a low quality children’s restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza (the internet refers to this type of establishment as Suck E. Cheese’s). Unfortunately, for some reason or another, the extremely creepy sideshow animatronics are out to kill you, so your goal is to monitor them on your security camera display to keep track of their locations, make sure that they don’t get into your decidedly unsecure security room, and survive until 6 AM… then do it for four more nights to increasing difficulty. The really amazing thing about these games is how different they are from other games. There’s no moving about the pizzeria or weapons to defend yourself with, just you inside the security room. What this does is deliver a great sense of claustrophobia and helplessness, making you raw to the scares of the stalking animatronics. The fact that it was able to deliver such an experience with a limited budget and crew, just like the first Paranormal Activity, makes it all the more impressive. So suffice to say, it’s a fun fright fest for those brave enough to try and survive the nights.

But is that all it is? A lot of YouTube personalities have certainly shown us the scares and even profited off of them, but several eagle-eyed players have noticed that there is a narrative in the background. Those who piece it together reveal a tale of sorrow, murder, and restless haunting, yet there are quite a few details that are left ambiguous enough to have devoted fans guessing and piecing together theories about the truth behind the terror. After watching Markiplier play through all three games (which you should all totally do because Markiplier is one sexy human being as well as an amusing one) and looking around the internet, I’ve come up with my own theory which I think holds up really well. Sit back, grab a slice of pizza, and let me tell you a terrifying tale.

The full story lies this way.

Divergent, on the whole, was okay. There was nothing truly bad in it, but that doesn’t mean it was all that good either. For one thing, a lot of the world felt underdeveloped and the characterization of the characters ranged from sparse to negligible, leaving us with jackasses who have no reason to be jackasses. The male lead in particular was quite cardboard and didn’t seem to have any chemistry with our female protagonist Triss, apart from when they were close and intimate. I’d even argue that a good chunk of the first half, in which Triss is trying to make it through the preliminary trials, felt unneeded and investment-free. Why should we want her to make it into this organization that resembles a fraternity in all the worst ways with a clearly corrupt leadership?

The movie really starts to shine in the final act where there were a lot more clever bits of the narrative, like dialogue and conflict resolution that I won’t give away. The resolution at the end in particular was well executed and, to its credit, was actually one of the things that I couldn’t see coming a mile away. So yeah, as far as young adult novel adaptations go, it’s passable. It’s not as good as The Hunger Games, but it’s certainly not as awful as The Mortal Instruments. Would I go see Insurgent? Yeah, but more out of curiosity and not because this movie made me a diehard fan.

Cinderella (2015) is a very easy film to turn one’s nose up at, but the end result is surprisingly pretty good. It’s not great, but sometimes you’ve just got to take what you can get. I’ve had a long-standing philosophy that if a remake has to be made, it should be of a bad movie so that there can be some actual improvement. This seems to justify this film’s existence quite nicely because if memory serves, the original Cinderella wasn’t that good. For the most part, the story’s a lot more fleshed out, giving us an insight into Ella’s early life, her relationship with her parents, actual motivation for Lady Tremain and her daughters, character for the prince and his entourage, and what motivates everyone to do what they do. The story’s a lot less shallow too; Ella isn’t going to the ball to meet the prince because he’s a prince, but a friend she met in the woods that she became quite taken with. The stepsisters are also great fun, as they have a good comedic dynamic when they work off of each other rather than being stock bullies like they were in the original.

However, I think when the movie has to adapt the fantastical and kiddie parts of the original, it falls a little flat. Helena Bonham Carter as the Fairy Godmother just doesn’t do it for me, feeling like she stepped out of a completely different movie. The stuff with the mice also felt very superfluous. I realize that they were a big part of the original, but it’s a real jarring shift when you go from the prince and his father talking about the future of the kingdom to the antics of CGI mice. By the way, those CGI mice were just creepy. Ella also felt a little too squeaky clean at times. I understand that she’s supposed to be a pillar of virtue in the midst of adversity, but the times where she was talking to animals and acting overly whimsical was just too much.

The film was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who gave us Thor and a previous Hamlet adaptation. His talent for gorgeous sets comes into full force here, as everything is extravagantly designed and adds to the fairy tale feel. Branagh’s influence also pulled in a lot of big British names to this production, all of them bringing their own bit of flair and class to the production (and while I don’t watch Downton Abbey, I’m sure a lot of fans will get a kick out of the two actors from the show essentially swapping societal classes for this). I’ve had a rather chilly relationship with Disney’s new trend of remaking old classics into live-action and this isn’t exactly going to set the world on fire, but I think it has a lot more reason to exist than Maleficent did (my heart’s hardened toward that one as of late). I don’t know if I’d see it again on my own, but I’d say it was worth the first watch.

Kingsman: The Secret Service was ridiculously good fun, with an emphasis on “ridiculous.” Everything is too over the top not to enjoy, from the incredibly stylized action to the visual stylistic choices of the effects and designs and ending at the ridiculous lisp that Samuel L. Jackson some how manages to pull off. I can honestly remember just about everything in the movie because it was so distinct. While watching it, I remember thinking that this looked like an amazing comic book movie, but then I saw in the credits that it was a comic book movie based on a piece by Mark Millar (a man that I have a contentious relationship with and will get to at a later date). In fact, the guy who directed this also directed Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class, two other comic book movies the embraced stylishness, going over the top, and just being fun in general (Well, maybe not so much Kick-Ass).

Going for an R-rating might turn some people off, but I think it works to the movie’s benefit because it opens the door for a lot of impressive and brutal fight scenes. But it doesn’t go towards grittiness like other films in the genre do and instead delivers some incredibly well choreographed fight scenes enhanced by great cinematography. One of the standout moments is an elaborate fight scene in a hate church that goes on for several minutes, but is done in no more than ten long take shots. There’s plenty of over-the-top violence in it, so it’s as galling as it is cathartic (the church is based on a certain other “religious” group that likes to picket funerals, so it’s hard not to feel some satisfaction). Judging on that, I can surmise that this movie is bound to offend some people’s sensibilities with the type of violence and occasional promiscuity it serves up. But when all is said and done, it’s a dick flick (opposite of chick flick) and as such, it’s bound to have some tropes that manipulate teenage testosterone. Honestly, though, it’s a lot smarter and less insulting than some of the other dick flicks out there. I’d rather watch our main hero get into an amazingly choreographed fight against the kickass villainess with the bladed prosthetic legs than cringe during a fight against a Decepticon displaying its robot testicles any day.

I’d love to gush about this longer, but then this will turn from a Reel Snippet into a full-on essay. I’ll just wrap up by saying that with smart, semi-subversive writing, a great parody sense for spoofing some classic James Bond tropes, and clever characters that I’d love to see more of in cinema today, Kingsman gets two huge blade-prosthetic thumbs up from me.