Glorious Loki

Last night's finale of Loki season 2 was really good. It was appropriately epic and, while I think it fell short of being truly satisfying, it was certainly better than the first season.

I watched it at 11pm after having been awake since 4am so I may have missed some details. But we find Loki, who, in the previous episode, had expressed his anxiety about losing his friends, steadily being forced to do everything himself.

There's a lot of nice dialogue about what it means to have the power and position of a god. "With great power comes great responsibility" is by no means a foreign concept in the superhero genre but, in recent years, Disney and other studios have so steadily beat the drum for everything coming down to teamwork, it was refreshing to see a story about how, no, sometimes it takes one visionary. Hopefully it's the right visionary.

Loki uses his time-slipping ability as he tries to correct for every little mistake leading to the destruction of the Loom that seemingly keeps the branching timelines in order. That fails because he and his cohorts had been operating on a false premise--the Loom doesn't keep the timelines in order, it was only designed to protect one timeline while setting the others up for pruning. So Loki realises he has to stop Sylvie from killing He Who Remains, the event at the end of season one that set up season 2.

Sylvie is eternally committed to killing He Who Remains, even if her rationale is a little vague. Loki confronts her about it in this episode and the dialogue sounds an awful lot like modern political discourse. Sylvie says we have to overthrow the old regime at all costs because it's corrupt, and Loki says, what good is that if it means everyone ends up dead? She has no answer for that but, like a lot of revolutionaries, she doesn't seem to have spared room in her mind for contemplating that. Someone, somewhere, will surely take care of it, and this time it turns out to be Loki.

I wish it'd been made a little clearer what Loki was doing at the end, but it's certainly an epic sequence in any case. He strides out into space, his costume transforming into one more befitting a god, and takes the dying timelines into himself. He takes a lonely throne at the centre of what becomes a tree of timelines, seemingly meant to be Yggdrasil, the world tree from Norse mythology.

As an arc for Loki in the MCU, going back to the first Thor movie and The Avengers, it makes sense. There's a lot of talk about Loki being selfish but he had a very specific kind of selfishness--he wanted the recognition and validation that Thor had. That's why he wanted to see himself as one with "glorious purpose". Well, he certainly attained that. That's the kind of thing that takes commitment. Unlike Sylvie, who, after causing all the trouble, was happy to slack off in a cosy McDonalds life, Loki never for a moment stopped trying to unravel the knot, never stopped trying to find a way to be the one who saves the whole damned universe. His commitment was so strong he didn't waver even when he realised he had to spend centuries studying to attain the acumen of Ouroboros.

So now he's basically become Atlas, the god whose job was to hold up the world. Aside from that one episode earlier in the season, he really doesn't come across as a god of mischief. But whatever, it's a good story.

Loki is available on Disney+.

Or a Couple Days

A couple of robbers and killers are on the loose with a pretty hostage and for some reason Nick Nolte's solution is to spring their old pal Eddie Murphy from prison. But 1982's 48 Hrs. is so good you don't much care that the premise doesn't make a lick of sense.

Nolte plays Jack, a tenacious movie cop and a bit of a racist, or anyway a guy comfortable slinging epithets at Murphy just to keep him in line. Murphy plays Reggie, a cool head in a crisis who wants to use this opportunity to get laid.

Director Walter Hill constructs some great action sequences. I particularly like a stand off early on featuring a young Jonathan Banks.

The cast also features two Twin Peaks stars in supporting roles, David Patrick Kelly and Chris Mulkey. Ric Waite's nighttime neons cinematography is great though it pairs a little oddly with James Horner's score. The songs by the BusBoys are a dated delight. What genre would you call them? Ragtime rock?

They also recorded "Cleanin' Up the Town" for the Ghostbusters soundtrack.

48 Hrs. is available on Paramount+.

A Time of Ghosts

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of watching the original Ghostbusters with the English club at the Japanese junior high school I currently work at. The kids seemed to enjoy it. The club has three boys and four girls, though yesterday we had only three of the girls and two of the boys. I was reminded again that Ghostbusters is one of those rare films that's effective for multiple kinds of audience because the girls could enjoy the dating comedy stuff between Peter and Dana and the boys could enjoy the ghostbusting. The two elements work together organically rather than feeling awkwardly forced into the same movie. And then there's all the stuff about college and business that only adults understand. As some of the kids squirmed in their seats for those scenes, I remembered how I didn't understand them when I was a kid.

During the scene where Rick Moranis is running from the gargoyle, the youngest member of the club said something really funny. When the doorman said, "There's a bear in his apartment," the kid said, "Kumajanai. Akuma." "That's not a bear. It's a devil." It hadn't occurred to me before how much bear, kuma, sounds like devil, Akuma, in Japanese, though they use different kanji.

And then this morning, I see that the trailer for the new Ghostbusters movie is up.

I like that they're trying something new. I guess New York freezing over is kind of creepy. I wish they'd moved away from the Spengler family angle and introduced new hire characters, to get back to the sense of the Ghostbusters being a struggling business. I suppose this movie may have a vibe like the animated series, hopefully like one of the better episodes.

I like Patton Oswalt but he's so omnipresent that he gives things kind of a generic quality now. I hope Paul Rudd isn't box office poison after Ant-Man. Anyway, I'l keep an open mind.

With a Pinch of Salt

Protect your precious salt, boys. That seems to be the message of "The Man Trap", the first episode of the first season of Star Trek from 1966. It's an odd way to start a show about space exploration, I think. Though it wasn't the first episode shot of the series.

"The Man Trap" sees the crew encountering a creature who poses as the man or woman of their desires--despite the title, it tries to trap Uhura, too--so that it can suck all the salt from their bodies, instantly killing them. I couldn't help thinking of Sterling Hayden in Doctor Strangelove and his anxieties about his bodily fluids being stolen.

The first part of the episode suggests a slightly different story, one closer to the episode's original concept. Kirk, Bones, and a random crewman land on a planet where an old professor lives alone with his wife. The wife, Nancy, happens to be an old flame of Doctor McCoy's. Different point of view shots show the woman has a different appearance to each man. McCoy sees her as young as he remembers her, Kirk sees an old woman, and the random crewman sees a girl he partied with on a pleasure planet.

Why would she do this if she were really trying to seduce them for their salt? It seems more designed to sew discord.

As the episode continues, and she gets aboard the Enterprise, her power just becomes a simple, straightforward transformation. I like how Kirk is the only one who wants to kill her while everyone else is concerned about the fact that she's the last of her species. But Kirk has a point, she is a serial killer. It's a little absurd how hard it is to get her some salt tablets, though.

Star Trek is available on Netflix and Paramount+.

X Sonnet #1787

In wire snares the hapless pheasants stopped.
A poacher's eye was veiled by brittle leaves.
Refreshment stales as bowls of milk are dropped.
Before the stifling breads the baby grieves.
'Tis teeth what make the smile keen and bright.
And never's time to grin but solemn wakes.
Afar on lonesome hill's a gloomy sight.
Yon band's a parcel 'prised of brazen rakes.
For after plunder, nights in lights can please.
No harbour safe would grant a captive grace.
A doctor's tools could break a crook's valise.
A dawn beyond the days could save a face.
Canals deprived of fish could lose their salt.
But something seeps beneath the jagged fault.

The Voice of the Battalion

Sometimes I'm surprised by the films that stick with me. But ever since I first saw 1960's Tunes of Glory, I've often found it coming to mind. Particularly Alec Guinness' character. I often find some line from him coming to mind as he maintains his bombast and high spirit in the face of John Mills' micromanaging. I suppose it may be in part due to the loops of wasteful bureaucracy built into Japanese English education that I often hear Guinness' Major Sinclair saying, "What the Hell."

So I watched it again. I tend to remember it more as a comedy though Wikipedia quite rightly calls it a "dark psychological drama". As amusing as Guinness is, his recurrent line, "Have ye no teeth? Then smile, laddie, even under King's regulations that's allowed," is slightly vicious, at least tenacious.

But he'd have to be, wouldn't he? To be a successful soldier in the field. That's something I forgot to mention when I was talking about The Punisher a few days ago. The soldiers that choose to wear his symbol often do so as a display of viciousness to the enemy. Arguably, to do any job successfully, to be passionate about it, is to show your desire to do the job goes above and beyond your adherence to the cold letter of the regulations.

But then for someone like John Mills' Colonel Barrow, the regulations are everything. His reply when Sinclair tells him one man was the battalion's best heavy weight before a debilitating war wound is only to observe that the man shouldn't wear his hat cocked.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Barrow's zealous attention to the book is a very bad method of self-treatment for the lingering trauma from his experience as a war prisoner. His vulnerability becomes clear when Dennis Price cold-bloodedly manipulates him.

Somehow, I totally forgot about Dennis Price and Alec Guinness co-starring in the brilliant Kind Hearts and Coronets. But this is a very different kind of film, almost from another universe.

I noticed the film was restored by "The George Lucas Family Foundation". Again, the Star Wars purchase money is being well spent, What a gorgeous place this battalion calls home.

Tunes of Glory is available on The Criterion Channel. Here's my review from 2020.

Whose Rabbits are These?

A misfit teenage girl gets lost in the woods and finds herself in a strange relationship with a poacher in 1967's Mouchette. Director Robert Bresson's famous trademarks are on display, including non-professional actors and minimalism. His brilliant compositions and editing do a lot of work and the film comes off as an honest look at the strange permutations of chemistry between people.

Nadine Nortier plays Mouchette, a sullen girl who refuses to sing at choir practice and after school routinely sits in a ditch, throwing mud balls at the other girls.

The other girls are evidently so used to it, they barely take notice. Even when Mouchette manages to strike a girl's perfume bottle, the girls respond just by quietly walking away.

Mouchette lives with an abusive father, a bedridden mother, and an infant brother. She's often obliged to prepare milk for the child and feed it. Mouchette providing milk is a recurrent aspect of the plot that points to an irrepressible maternal quality in the otherwise fractious girl.

Meanwhile, a gamekeeper and a poacher find their long-standing feud has gotten to a new level as they've both fallen for an androgynous new barmaid.

One day, after school, Mouchette gets lost in the woods after losing her shoe and the poacher comes across her. He's in a state of apparent confusion but immediately tries to help her, not only out of natural concern but also because he suddenly needs an alibi.

That's all set-up. The heart of the film is the scene in the poacher's home. It's a fascinating scene in which the relationship between the poacher and Mouchette rapidly but very credibly changes from moment to moment. Each is in a state of particular confusion, each has natural qualities that suddenly and unexpectedly come to the fore (and I'm not talking only about sex).

After this scene is an interesting story about the aftermath but nothing else that reaches the height of that one moment. It doesn't need to, though

Mouchette is available on The Criterion Channel.

Punishment Complete

I watched the last episode of season 2 of The Punisher and, with that, I've now watched every episode of all the Marvel Netflix series. Punisher turned out to be one of the strongest series, though season two was vastly inferior to the first season in terms of writing and budget.

The second to last episode, "Collision Course", which aired on January 18, 2019, was written by Dario Scardapane (who'd written three other episodes). Scardapane was recently announced as the replacement showrunner for the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again after Kevin Feige discovered the episodes that had been shot were too terrible. So people were fired and Scardapane was resurrected from the glory days of Marvel Television and put in a more traditional television role.

So I was watching "Collision Course" with extra scrutiny and I'm happy to say I think it was competently written. There were several episodes in season two that depended on people doing stupid things out of character in order for the plot to move forward but "Collision Course" wasn't one of them. I think it's entirely possible Scardapane will be a good showrunner.

The Punisher did turn out to be good, cathartic fun in between some nice character moments. I'm a little amused by the controversy around the character. I read about how U.S. armed forces and police have adopted the Punisher's skull symbol and the people at Marvel have chosen to be horrified by each and every one of them. Which is their right, even if one U.S. military sniper was honoured with a statue emblazoned with the Punisher symbol on his chest plate.

What has Marvel done in response to the widespread use of their symbol? They changed the Punisher's symbol to one resembling a Japanese Oni in 2022. Of all the empty gestures.

I enjoyed the series that aired on Netflix (and is now on Disney+--how the world has changed). It's fun fantasising about a world where you can take out your grief and rage on purely evil people. But such diversions also remind me that real life isn't like that. If Marvel writers really wanted to teach people a lesson about the Punisher, they should've tried to write more complex stories, stories where the Punisher killed people whose guilt really was more subjective. Maybe they have done that, I haven't read much of the Punisher comics, but the TV series certainly didn't do it.

Considering the upcoming Daredevil show was shaping up to be partly about cops inspired by the Punisher, maybe that was going to be the thing that did it. On the face of it, that sounds the wrong way to go about it. You don't persuade people by making strawman caricatures of them. The Amazon Prime series, The Boys, is based on a parody of The Punisher written by Garth Ennis, a former writer of Punisher comics. I don't know about the comic but, ironically, the Prime series presents an even more morally simplistic, polarised world, though it's far less enjoyable, at least for me. It is popular, though.

Anyway, now that I've seen all the Marvel Netflix shows, I may as well rank them. Instead of whole series, I think I'll go by season. That should make it a little more interesting.

1. Daredevil season one
2. Daredevil season three
3. Jessica Jones season one
4. Daredevil season two
5. Luke Cage season one
6. The Punisher season one
7. Luke Cage season two
8. The Punisher season two
9. Jessica Jones season three
10. Jessica Jones season two
11. The Defenders
12. Iron Fist season two
13. Iron Fist season one

X Sonnet #1786

Resources shrank to silly herbs and spice.
We built a dinner stack of salt and sage.
But peasants hid a sack of tasty rice.
With clouds of gin improvement comes with age.
Another ball is rolling pins through time.
A stolen car contained a cryptic note.
Where pies are baked, the dreams were sweet as rhyme.
Where sugar's sold, it's pastries win the vote.
A real McCoy was trading plums for bones.
Ferocious monsters crowd the logging road.
In darkness, riders cry in metal tones.
Another country caught the hidden code.
Siesta strikes the octopus and shrimp.
We know the inky ghost for print's a simp.

Do the Loki Motion with Me

Last night's Loki was the weakest of season two, being essentially filler. It also had one very weak point in the writing but, on the whole, I enjoyed it.

If I were superstitious, I'd say the episode was reading my mind. Sylvie ordered bourbons for herself and Loki at the same moment I was pouring myself some Wild Turkey. It also so happens I've been listening to The Velvet Underground a lot lately and last night had that lovely scene of Sylvie listening to "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" as everything dissolved around her.

I also just recently watched Escape from Alcatraz and it turns out KC's real life was as one of those real life escapees.

It was fun seeing everyone's lives, particularly OB's. Ke Huy Quan is a constant delight.

The weak part of the episode is that Loki had just convinced everyone the universe depended on their cooperation before Sylvie convinced him it was all in his head, Mobious had, I suspect, the audience's reaction when Loki told him about it, understandably upset that Loki had just told him his children's lives were at stake. Honestly, it made Loki seem dumb and weak willed and Sylvie seem dumb and brutish.

The episode ends with Loki taking control of his time slipping. It would be kind of interesting if that's a permanent power he has in all MCU media moving forward though I doubt it will be. Or, who knows, maybe that'll be a crucial part of Deadpool 3.

Loki is available on Disney+.

Skulls and Ivy

It's hard out there for a femme fatale. 1947's Ivy gives us her point of view, for once, as we follow the machinations and misadventures of Ivy Lexton in her attempts to secure a vast fortune via a road of besmitten beaux. The first half of the film is much better than the second as we find ourselves contemplating just what Ivy's capable of. The second half settles into dull, moralistic plot mechanics.

We meet Ivy (Joan Fontaine) on her visit to a fortune teller (Una O'Connor), a handy way to deliver a little exposition and to set a cloud of doom over her head. We learn that not only does she already have a husband, she's already having an affair. The fortune teller predicts wealth is coming her way but only if she can break up with her lover. But then, after Ivy leaves, the fortune teller predicts an even greater misfortune to come, so great she refrained from telling the wicked woman.

How wicked is she? She does seem reluctant to poison her husband when the time comes. She really doesn't seem to like seeing him suffer.

Meanwhile, breaking up with her lover, Roger (Patric Knowles), isn't so easy as the guy is really pushy, calling her constantly. And yet the heavy handed moralistic ending lets him off the hook, which kind of annoyed me.

This is one of those American movies set in England filled with English actors who are forced to speak with American accents. One exception is Herbert Marshall who plays Miles Rushworth, the wealthy gentleman who takes a shine to Ivy, despite his morals prohibiting him from making love to another man's wife. Marshall was established enough to sound as English as he damned well pleased (and was).

Ivy is too much of a temptation for him to resist, though. And sure it's credible; Fontaine is absolutely stunning in those Edwardian summertime getups.

Ivy is available on The Criterion Channel.

Where Do Vampires Go?

In the lead up to Halloween, I've also been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel again. I'm nearing the end of season six of the former and season three of the latter. I always watch the two together if I do a rewatch as they seem two halves of a whole to me. Yesterday, I was surprised to see Honest Trailers had released a new video for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I'm not fond of Honest Trailers. I find one out of fifty of their jokes funny, most of them are just regurgitations of popular opinions without any real punchline. This video is a good example, ending by calling Buffy "Quippy". Which is surely ironic coming from a quippy YouTube channel. They've also edited together a lot of shots of guys pinning girls to the ground on the show, which is a cheap shot and makes no substantial comment on the show's sexual morals. He also calls the Hellmouth a "literal plot hole" because it provides Buffy with monsters to fight. That's kind of like calling the Enterprise a plot hole because it allows the characters on Star Trek to travel in space.

Of course, Honest Trailers must feel compelled to be palatable to those who approve of Joss Whedon's cancellation. Of all cancellations, Whedon's may be the most thorough since much of his fanbase now are people who lead the charges in cancel culture. He is, to borrow a term from the Honest Trailers video, condemned for being "mean".

He did make one public appearance recently, at the wedding of J. August Richards, who played Gunn on Angel.

From left to right is Richards, Whedon, Heather Horton (Whedon's wife), and Richards' new husband. Several other Angel cast members were present as apparently the group have remained tight despite any meanness on Whedon's part.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+ in most countries. Angel is on Disney+ but in fewer countries.

X Sonnet #1785

The moon was orange, attempting rosy gold.
The second floor contains a wooden box.
With lunar dimes, the bank is growing old.
The stars are only holes in giant socks.
The only squid at home was eating men.
For trust abused was dice to waiting gods.
As Job attests beyond official sin.
The clutching claw depends on weighted odds.
For spider skulls, the clouds of web unlink.
With candied time, the fates'll snack 'til late.
Colliding bears with trains'll seldom blink.
A jagged story's writ on luckless pate.
Returning cheers were muffled blank in sport.
Condemning sneers were surely bank at court.

"Outside Another Yellow Moon"

Happy Halloween now to those in countries still in my yesterday. Here in Japan, we had a nice lovely pumpkin moon for Halloween, though most of the pumpkins in Japan are small and green. I did see an American style pumpkin at the mall but it was around 2000 yen, or just under twenty dollars. I hope as Halloween becomes more popular in Japan, Halloween pumpkins will become less scarce and go down in price.

Last night, I just watched Bram Stoker's Dracula again, Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 adaptation. It was always a favourite, but for some reason it's one of the movies I keep coming back to in recent years. Maybe it's because it's just so damned pretty.

It's gotten to the point where I'm speaking dialogue with some of the characters like I'm singing along to a favourite song.

Even the weakest part of the film, Keanu Reeves, doesn't seem so weak anymore. At least now I can look at him and say, "Look how young John Wick is!"

I was talking to some students a few days ago about Keanu Reeves and they were surprised to learn the guy's in his 50s. He really has had a long, strange career, it seems mainly from being such a nice guy in real life, rather than acting ability. I would say he's shown himself to have great reflexes.

Remember how angry everyone got when Matthew Perry took a random dig at Keanu Reeves in his memoir? "Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?" Now Matthew Perry is suddenly dead, surely it's too tacky to joke that Reeves still walks among us.

It's funny how much Reeves looks like Gary Oldman's Dracula in this photo:

He may walk among us for centuries to come. Bram Stoker's Dracula will be on The Criterion Channel this November.

A Practical Head

Happy Halloween. Since I seem to be revisiting old favourites this Halloween season, I watched 1977's Eraserhead last night. I still love this movie, David Lynch's first film, but sometimes I wish I could find old Lynch movies as disturbing as people who hate Lynch do. It's like how I stopped having nightmares once I learned to enjoy them. But, boy, what a masterpiece of nightmares Eraserhead is.

When we watch a movie, a work of fiction, we're always at some level aware of the artificiality. That's why art needs help to push it into the emotional registers to give it the required visceral impact. That can be as simple as having a good musical score. It can also mean having a woman give birth to a slimy little dinosaur worm wrapped in gauze.

That's a good way to capture the anxieties of parenthood. More comforting narratives try to tell you that these normal events in life follow reassuring patterns. Lynch isn't making a movie about or for such conventions. Life is weird as fuck, there are always gross, brutal, and absurd surprises. That's what he gives us in Eraserhead, a true transmutation of experience into cinematic form.

I love the shots of Henry (Jack Nance) in bed with Mary (Charlotte Stewart). When he looks across the sheets at her, it seems like an alien landscape.

And there's that terrific sequence where she's struggling with her sheets like a straitjacket. It all captures the strangeness of having another human being in bed with you, with all the weirdness and discomfort that might entail.

You could say the movie's called Eraserhead because of the dream Henry has where his head is ground into erasers for little pencils. Or maybe it's because his identity as father of the Gauze Baby seems to erase his old self, as we see in shots where his head is replaced by that of the baby.

Or maybe it's because, finally, all things compel Henry to erase them.

Eraserhead is available on The Criterion Channel.

When All They Can Do is Pander

South Park seems to be one of the last things that's genuinely allowed to be satirical and, as such, they're starting to get a lot more buzz. Everyone looks to the trusted name to lead us out of the media haze of mass sycophancy. For Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that old '90s tradition of spitting in the eye of convention still seems to be profitable. A couple days ago, they released a new special, "Joining the Panderverse". I liked this one a lot better than their Corona virus special.

How do you talk about the rot of corporate wokeness in Disney and mass media without throwing in with an obsessively contrary faction? South Park wisely takes the route of satirising human behaviour instead of a presumption about the underlying morality of any faction.

In the show's mythology, Kathleen Kennedy has increasingly relied on a magical object called the "Pander Stone" to churn out movies of diminishing quality, driven mad by racist hate mail (nearly all of which turns out to have been written by Eric Cartman).

Meanwhile, Cartman's been replaced by a black woman who insists she's the real Eric Cartman, while the familiar little white boy has been transported to a universe where everyone's been replaced by black, Latina, and trans women (and, in Kenny's case, one Asian woman). White voice actress April Stewart voices all four alternate versions of the four children, which tells us where Stone and Parker stand on woke corporate policy. Yet, the boys are forced to admit the black woman version of Cartman is as deserving of the name when her selfish actions nearly destroy the universe.

I also really enjoyed the B plot about handymen becoming billionaires because no-one has practical skills anymore. That's a joke that sorely needed to be told.

South Park is available on Paramount+.

X Sonnet #1784

A shadow cloud attends the bard abroad.
With walking fast, a hearty cake's a meal.
Provisions plopped above the dripping sod.
Increasing eggs increased the leopard's deal.
You slam the hatch but rubber pirates bounce.
And where'd you get a cannon blank for shot?
The wisdom reels behind the double ounce.
But lo, the lion's mates are what we got.
Persistent stars have changed the case of cakes.
For floating light, the bar was shiny clean.
Another hour left and Sally bakes.
For smarter dreams, a simple brain was keen.
A team of seven playing rattles arrive.
To herald snakes the players duly strive.

Society Collects its Debts

I was up pretty late playing Skyrim last night and didn't think I had time for a movie. But I thought I'd just watch a little bit of 1962's Carnival of Souls before bed. That's the kind of bright idea I get sometimes. I ended up watching the whole thing. It is one of my favourite horror movies.

I suppose it may be because I identify with the main character so much. It's kind of the perfect introvert's movie. Mary (Candace Hilligoss) lives in a perpetual state of wanting to be alone and not wanting to be alone. She probably knows perfectly well she'll just be a big disappointment to the skeezy guy, John (Sidney Berger), who pesters her into going out with him. But she goes out with him anyway because it's better to be with someone human than to be with the weird demoniac stalker.

I really enjoy Hilligoss' performance. She's very pretty but with large, almost exaggerated features that communicate her feelings while her lines are mostly very simple. That famous shot of her in the car, her face reflected, and the demon guy suddenly appearing, gets me every time.

The terror the film holds for those of us who don't like to socialise is that one day we'll all be forced to join some weird, cackling club of phantasms in an abandoned carnival pavilion. There is a kind of logic to it. Everybody needs somebody sometimes. It's like a prophecy of doom for an introvert.

Carnival of Souls is available on The Criterion Channel.