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Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (video game, 2023) and Nemesis, 1992 (Dir. Albert Pyun)--Spoilers

Nemesis, 1992 "See, Alex? You're not human. You're one of us." "Fuck you!" -Characters in the movie behaving in a thematically appropriate way

If you want to watch a movie that addresses the themes of cyberpsychosis much more effectively than this expansion pack, check out Albert Pyun's 1992 classic Nemesis. It's honestly everything anyone could want from Cyberpunk. Above is the best action scene of all time. Below is a supercut of some of the other best action scenes of all time, with one of the best jokes of all time thrown in for good measure, all from this one wonderful movie.

And here's a behind-the-scenes documentary, also fantastic. It's great when people involved in a production take sci-fi themes seriously and don't resent the audience and writers for having an interest in them.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

Where to even begin with this weirdness? Cyberpunk had a notoriously messy release. I've spent a good amount of time sticking up for the reworked version of the game that I spent my first 400 hours playing. I can no longer justify that. Phantom Liberty is a hot pile of crap.

Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty follow

We start off strong with an homage to Escape from New York and a President who actually seems like an interesting character. Then we meet Idris Elba and everything starts going to shit. I went for what seemed like a reasonable playthrough given what I knew about V from the many time I've beaten the game and seen him throw a tantrum if Johnny tries to keep control--it would, based on actions we see V take from the third person, seem like wanting Johnny out of his head is in character. It's part and parcel of getting the Relic removed. Like it or not, Johnny is a hallucinatory symptom of cyberpsychosis and not an unambiguously good guy.

So why did I feel, at the end of the game, like I was being punished for having this hallucination, this literal symptom of cyberpsychosis that has been killing me for the whole plot of the game, surgically removed?

Maybe I was being punished for betraying Songbird--but she didn't end up dead, and she did promise V a solution to the Relic problem. Alex's death in my playthrough could in some way be attributed to V, but it's honestly a stretch. In purely utilitarian terms, compatible with Johnny's and the President's and Reed's and Alex's own set of ideals--the ideology into which I chose to get interpolated as a spy--this is an acceptable loss. All other objectives were achieved, since the President was safe while Reed and So Mi survived.

Yeah, So Mi's life sucks. But V is a violent thug and one more wasted life rotting away in a cell somewhere honestly doesn't seem like something that would weigh too heavily on his/her conscience--without reinforcement in the form of ridiculous punishment that comes out of left field thematically.

At the end of what seemed to me like a "good" playthrough I found out that there was no New Game + mode, no reward for finishing the game, just a lame cutscene where I get pushed down the stairs by some 'borged-up nobodies after finding out that everyone I loved has decided I'm not important enough to include in their lives, despite numerous attempts to reach me while I was in a coma for 2 years. Every love interest has better things to do than catch up with you. It's shameful that there isn't Panam in this. Come to think of it, not sure if there's any Takemura, either, but I may just not have done his core storyline yet on my first playthrough.

Compelling characters and strong cast utterly wasted by an ending that says none of them care about you because you're not a 95% cyborg. If only someone had decided that this conflict between man and machine were worthy of being emphasized thematically in the expansion. I guess attacking MaxTac counts.

Just a lot of underbaked story ideas here. If you don't already love Cyberpunk 2077 then don't bother with it, probably. If you do love it, maybe don't buy it. The gameplay is wonky, too, with a lot of the rebalancing for 2.0 feeling like they just nerfed a bunch of skills and made a few systems more confusing.

Watch Nemesis instead.

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Shocking Dark, AKA Terminator 2, 1989 (Dir. Bruno Mattei)

Despite the title under which it was released overseas, this movie has nothing to do with James Cameron's classic exploitation film The Terminator. It has a lot to do, structurally, with Aliens. Not tonally or thematically, though--it's about a group of soldiers sent in to deal with a threat at an isolated location, but that's about as far as it goes. It's obvious that someone wanted to ride on the coattails of James Cameron's success, but when you realize that this was the model of the entire Italian film industry at the time ("Let's make a movie called "Star Wars 2" or something like that, Hollywood won't care and can't sue us anyway") it becomes less egregious. 4 stars because, despite its real schlock pedigree (it's a Fargasso/Mattei joint!) it never leans into its own weirdness enough.

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Think Big, 1989 (Dir. John Turteltaub)

In a world where Adam Sandler can make a movie like Jack & Jill and still be one of America's many sweethearts, it's a shame that actual twin performers David and Peter Paul never took off like they deserved to. This is far from a perfect film but it's miles above and ahead of numerous modern-day "comedies" that think being vulgar and insulting is a substitute for actually endearing characters and clever gags.

The Barbarian Brothers really deserve more credit as a comedy duo than they get. They have one tone but consistently nail it throughout their films. Claudia Christian--burdened with some of the worst jokes in the history of television on Babylon-5--gets to be genuinely funny and showcase her strengths as a comedic actor here. There is a scene late in the film, where the Barbarian Brothers and Claudia Christian are packed into the cab of a semi and chanting over a chickenbone, that is as funny as anything I've seen in modern comedy vehicles for stars like Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. Honestly an underappreciated gem.

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Arena, 1989 (Dir. Peter Manoogian)

This is one of those surprises that comes out of nowhere and delights you for a brief moment and then leaves a good impression, not overstaying its welcome and not underestimating its own capabilities. Plenty of high-quality sci-fi talent onscreen here (Armin Shimmerman, Claudia Christian, and Marc Alaimo would go on to star on Babylon-5 and Star Trek: DS9, respectively, and more recently 2 of them have been featured as voice actors in Starfield--a nearly 35-year pedigree of proven quality work), and lots of quality effects-work clearly happened behind the scenes. It looks like a simple ripoff of an old Star Trek TOS episode--and in many ways it is--but it's also a wonderful little piece of filmmaking from the glory days of practical effects.

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Astral, 2018 (Dir. Chris Mul)

Slow, boring, uninteresting execution of a tired premise.

This is one of those insufferable supernatural horror movies long exposition scenes do all of the narrative legwork. This works well if you're writing a philosophical dialogue, but when you're writing dialogue for a movie, it should be aided by some kind of--I dunno--visual aspect? There's practically no representation of the supernatural action in this movie. When characters discuss astral projection, none of them seem especially interested in it. We see things falling off of shelves while characters are lying in bed, but this action is never conveyed in a way that doesn't make the audience thing "Well, someone's just hiding in his room and moving things around to screw with his head."

Most people who stumble upon this (other than tiny babies, maybe) will already be familiar with sleep paralysis and astral projection as concepts or practices. They'll already know how they feel about the concept, i.e., whether they buy into it or not. Watching this film's characters act like it's a purely scientific concept that they and their professor are exploring as a new science or discipline is just painful.

Just don't waste your time.

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Astonishing Tales of Terror: Rocktopussy!, 2022 (Dir. Andrew Cymek)

This movie really shines if you watch it after another movie made by Brigitte Kingsley. Her skills as a filmmaker have really improved over time. Andrew Cymek has learned to write roles that play to her strengths. I'm not joking. This movie slaps. It slaps hard and fast, and it doesn't stop.

If you haven't seen any of her other movies, you'll be a little bit confused about how this thing got made. Rest assured, there is a tried and true production model behind it. This is an incredibly well-put-together project for what it is, which is a basically 100% independently financed Canadian action/horror schlockfest. The budget bleeds all over the screen in places--some of the visual effects are almost too good, to the point where some of the performances almost don't warrant them--but that's hard to complain about when they're not actually detracting from the movie in any way. If that's how the filmmakers chose to spend their money, instead of hiring C- or B-list talent, that's fine. Clearly, they were having fun, and that earns the movie a lot of points.

There are moments that don't make sense, like the scene where the protagonist appears to be stabbed through the abdomen by a tentacle before going on to win the movie as if that particular moment just never happened, but maybe I'll piece that moment together on rewatch. If you're looking for something different and don't mind watching an ego stroke itself onscreen, this is a fine way to spend a couple hours. Take notes, Neil Breen!

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2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus

At one point during this movie I remembered what was happening and something in me cracked. I just started laughing to myself. There was no joke or particular image in the film that elicited this response. I think it was just the lack of sleep combined with the ludicrous everything that is this thing.

Someone is credited as a director but it's hard to believe. Same for the editor. The actors were definitely in front of a camera, but they didn't sell the story at all. The writing is just awful. It's boring AND psychotic at the same time!

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1UP, 2022 (Dir. Kyle Newman)

What if you knew nothing about college admissions, administration, athletics, or students? What if you also knew nothing about video games, but a little bit about sports? Not details or anything, like whether or not a team typically has a coach or allocated funding from the organization behind it or dedicated practice time--just that things called sports exist and they're played by teams. Would you then go on to write a movie about a college e-sports team?

Most people wouldn't. I can only guess that this was a film school assignment gone horribly wrong. It really feels like a script never meant for production or something that someone at the studio pulled out of an "Only In Case Of Emergencies" box or something.

Aside from inane dialogue that will bore anyone already familiar with the popular game franchises that the film references, they prominently feature locations that were already used in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World--a much better nerd movie. Watch that instead.

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Terrifier 2

I really wish I had a community of creative people in my life as supportive and tasteless as the one that must exist behind the weirdos that made this movie. It must be nice to have people who will never, EVER tell you that your bit isn't funny and your costume isn't as creepy or original as you think it is. But test audiences responded more positively to Art the Clown than to other horror characters and premises that the producers tried out, so who cares what works and what doesn't? Independent cinema is supposed to be where dignity goes to die, right? RIGHT?

I assume there are supposed to be jokes in this movie. It definitely isn't scary or shocking enough to not be a series of jokes in someone's mind. Like the first Terrifier it's horribly mean-spirited and just seems to want to inflict pain on its characters, going so far as to re-introduce the poor woman who got tortured to the edge of death in the first movie and putting her through another round of disgustingly unjustifiable carnage. I felt like the movie was rubbing salt in my own metaphorical wounds.

We get an actual "Final Girl" this time, which means that the trope they subverted in the last movie is out in full force this time, with hardly any subversion at all. I felt genuinely bad for the actors and characters who were stuck in this stupid movie with one of the least original horror icons of the last decade. Say what you will about the state of the Halloween franchise, but at least Michael Meyers doesn't try to bring back miming as an art form in the middle of his kills. The people behind this should just make straight-up pornography and its fans should stop acting like this is anything more than what it is.

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Terrifier

If you like gore with no plot to get in the way of it, and also enjoy watching horrible things happen to sympathetic characters, this is your kind of movie. Knowing that the people behind this were literally shopping around for a marketable slasher villain to serve as the backbone of a franchise, it's easy to see this as a shameless vanity project.

It's one thing to subvert tropes like the "final girl" and other audience expectations by killing off or brutalizing main characters or commit 1000% to a torture-porn bit, but it's another to laugh at the audience for cheering on a character or wanting someone to have a satisfying ending. We have at least 3 protagonists in the girls who get chopped up and disfigured by the creepy clown 🤡 but for the life of me I couldn't tell you anything about them other than that a clown tortured them to death. If a movie treats its characters with this much contempt just for wanting to escape a bad situation, it needs a compelling villain--and that's also where this trash fire falls short.

Art the Clown is not an interesting character. Evil clowns in general are not interesting characters. There is no Dr. Samuel Loomis in this franchise to keep the audience rooted in the stakes of a conflict between good and evil. There are no meaningful statements of any kind to be found anywhere in it or its sequel. Instead there's just a lot of gore and a lot of shouting and a lot of really, REALLY bad acting by various Italian-American men.

As an exercise in practical effects and make-up, it's pretty good! Solid soundtrack, too, but not innovative in any way. There is not even a hint of sympathy from the filmmakers for the characters in the movie. Don't waste your time.

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Black Easter (2021, Dir. Jim Carroll)

This movie is basically Primer meets Passion of the Christ--with disastrous results. It makes "D-Railed" look like "The Great Train Robbery."

It's offensive, incomprehensible, pretentious, and overly long. Any interesting ideas about the intersection of time travel and theology are thrown out the window in favor of logic copied from other, better movies (that execute the logic better) for apparently intended comedic effect.

It's not even amusing as a bad movie. It just sort of goes on and on and on without making any meaningful points about anything. I guess it's supposed to have heart and a message, but whatever that message is, it gets lost in the mess that is the "Jesus assassination via time travel" plot.

Go watch The Last Temptation of Christ or Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity if you don't want your time wasted.

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Scarecrows, 2017 (Dir. Stuart Stone)

For any cinematic group of teenage slasher victims to serve as protagonists and windows into the world of their characters, there must of necessity be a cinematic slasher villain to give them victim status. Ultimately, the question of the film's quality is decided by the relationship between victim and villain and the triggering Event that causes the slasher to snap into action against that particular group of victims. This transgression against transgressors makes horror movies tantalizing.

This relational Event can involve a historical connection between the two terms, like the Meyers house in Halloween which ties together Laurie Strode, Michael Meyers, and his other victims in the first Halloween film. It can be a heavily telegraphed psychological motivation, like Pamela or Jason Voorhees dishing out misguided retribution to anyone who resembles a libidinous camp counselor in Friday the 13th.

Or it can just be a farmer who turns trespassers into scarecrows, and he can just find a new group of people to turn into scarecrows. What did they do? Nothing special. A little bit of sex and trespassing. None of them are interesting characters. The hillbilly who kills them doesn't even seem that into it.

Scarecrows is simultaneously mean-spirited and disinterested in its own status as a slasher movie. I feel like it's important to tell audiences that none of the protagonists make it out alive at the end. It's more like Terrifier than anything, in that it seems to resent its protagonists for being protagonists. Also like Terrifier, the villain sucks and ends up winning just to spite the audience's expectations of closure. It's not an interesting choice or a twist or even a statement about fate in this case. It really seems like a movie that someone made because they wanted to go out in a cornfield with a couple of young women and get them to take their clothes off.

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Little Corey Gorey, 1993 (Dir. Bill Morroni)

This movie is a little engine of madness and violence that comes out of nowhere and leaves you wanting more. The dialogue recording sounds so raw, it has to have been a conscious choice. It's not just mindless, either--it clearly has a few things that it wants to say about youth and race relations, not bothering to boil them down to easily digestible after-school special feel-good nonsense, but instead letting characters and situations evolve organically out of themselves, unfolding in ways that really let the audience into the feverish headache that this abusive household is. Corey starts off sympathetic and by the end of the movie has become at least as monstrous as the wicked stepmother. The fact that this mess was shot on what may as well have been toilet paper didn't discourage the costume and set designers from doing a wonderful job with literally every aspect of the movie.

In many of my reviews I've complained about "mean-spirited" horror movies, so I want to be clear: This movie is incredibly mean-spirited. It also isn't a horror movie. It's a character study. The contempt that oozes from every frame for the portrayed world and its inhabitants feels more like a warning or a joke here than it does in a movie where attractive, talented performers are given almost nothing to wear and chased around by a man in a Spirit Halloween costume. This is the superior version of Halloween Ends.