Esme W Vimes

I'm almost done with season one and should probably wait, but I have been captivated by this program in a way I was also drawn to Diablero which is also on Netflix and very sadly only ran for 2 seasons. Ever since my baptism by fire when I watched my first Korean film, OldBoy, I've developed this space in my brain where films and series so foreign to the American and British series, films, ideations and tropes, live. A niche where I can go back and puzzle away at them. If you've seen OldBoy and better still the Vengeance trilogy, it is so far outside the shorthand Americans have for American and European film making because we share much the same culture. When I'd watch Chinese and Hong Kong action films with my dad, I began to lose interest in American action films with their shakey camera cheats and brief fight sequences when compared with fight scenes choreographed by Jackie Chan or Yuen Wo-Ping. Horror, Fantasy, Action and all the places they open new opportunities to not only see new content, but we may need to do the work of learning the folklore and stories of cultures so we can fully enjoy the movies and series were more able to watch. The first Korean Series I watched on Netflix was Bad Guys, which I came to enjoy very much. I'm starting to pick up reoccurring themes in certain character types, the clown, the criminal that's really a good guy at heart, etc. So HellBound drew me in really fast, and it does take an emotional toll on me, watching this violence and trying to understand what's at play. This is based on a graphic novel or Manga, so it's meant to have a fantasy or supernatural story. And so far no one has fed me all the answers, as American series so often do. If you come to watch HellBound, come to it knowing that it's not the paint by numbers series or movie making we've gotten used to. It doesn't make sense right away - at least the supernatural elements don't. The people who use the situation to gain money, status and power, that part is familiar. If you watch the horror film, Audition, if you can get all the way through Audition, you won't have an American film experience you can liken it to. At least not back when it was released. The short film, Dumplings that you can see alone or in an anthology collection of 3 films cake 3 Extremes, which I recommend, was one I found especially creepy, and can't imagine getting an American version made anytime soon. All of this just to say, you should take the time to watch HellBound, but don't expect to just totally get everything immediately. Store it in your brain, in it's own little box so you can go back and puzzle at it some more.

Two hours of my life waiting for this mess of a movie to start making sense at ANY point. It's like they had 6 different people each write a script for this movie, then they threw all the pages up in the air, picked up 100 pages at random and said, ACTION! For those of us who LOVE good, intelligent horror movies, it is now IMPOSSIBLE to find a really great movie. We can't watch trailers. Either some studio will give away the entire premise of the movie so it is completely ruined, or, as in the case of THIS incoherent piece of trash, they some how lure in decent actors, and the trailer LOOKS good, because that is ALL that this movie has to give. 90 seconds cherry picked into a trailer. From now on I'm just going off reviews that I trust. I can't give Amazon and Netflix the benefit of the doubt because when I do, this is what I get. There are too many choices. 2 nights ago I finally watched Us. It will be a month of watching it obsessively and brushing up on some mythology before I'm even ready to THINK about trying how incredible that movie was. Last night, I watched Jack Goes Home. How can I compare these two horror movies in a clear and concise way. . . Imagine you were rich, or had a rich friend that invited you to the most incredible sumptuous 3 hour, 7 course meal that if God were on earth, that is where God would eat. Then, a couple days later when you're hungry again, someone brings you the remains of a couple bags of McDonalds that was sitting in a trash can all night after someone ate a few bites and decided that was more than enough. If you like eating garbage fast food over 24 hours old from the bottom of a garbage can, that someone else has chewed on, by ALL MEANS, watch Jack Goes Home.

Contains General Spoilers This is a survival movie. We watch a woman learn the world is ending. We watch her partner teach her what plants are safe and medicinal, what ones aren't. She learns to shoot a gun. We watch her learn more and go farther than she thought she was capable of. It's one of the things I love about 28 Days Later. Inevitably, the day comes when her partner doesn't make it back to the spot they've created for themselves. Then the day she's dreaded most, the day her baby shows signs of the illness. Our heroine is stronger than she knows, but she is also very stuck. She has nothing to go back to and no where to move on to. Her grief has her anchored to her spot and her routine. If she can't make herself move on, she will die. That battle is within her mind, but it's as deadly as the battle she fights the Creatures over. Only she can decide to live, and we have to watch and hope she chooses to fight before it's too late.