Director Patrick Rea and writer Michelle Davidson offer audiences a complex and deep narrative that only spans a little under ten minutes. In such a short time, director Patrick Rea is able to convey so many emotions by sheer body language alone. He films intricate moments involving human contact and gestures that often times manage to speak waves about these characters without suffering through clunky exposition.
Though released almost at the same time as “Pacific Rim,” co-author Mark Zicree’s hardcover compendium chronicling the creative works of director Guillermo Del Toro is anything but a cash in. It’s a wonderful treasure trove of amazing sketches, and incredible conceptual work, that not only explores the mind of Guillermo Del Toro, but pays tribute to one of the finest fantasy directors working today. Guillermo Del Toro has almost single handedly kept the fantasy genre alive with his dark neo-Gothic epic works, and “Cabinet of Curiosities” gives his fans that rare glimpse in to his mind and his life that they’ll be more than happy to read from beginning to end.
Though we may never get to see director Guillermo Del Toro’s vision of “At the Mountains of Madness,” that doesn’t mean “Pacific Rim” isn’t without its Lovecraftian influences. There’s the deep sea monsters, the beings from another dimension, giant tentacled beings, and the implications of something bigger to come. “Pacific Rim” is set in a world where kaiju are a natural phenomenon and the world is built around the constant threat of attacks from giant beasts that didn’t come from the sky, but instead the bottom of the sea through an inter dimensional rift.
Fear of the unknown is perhaps one of the greatest elements of horror. It’s one of the greatest tools we have in the arena of the genre, but it’s rarely ever used. And when it is, it’s squandered in a sea of over explanation and tedious exposition. It’s rare we’re ever given horror movies these days that rely on what we don’t see and don’t know.
With safety breeds complacency and unfortunately when we meet the survivors in “The Walking Dead” season four, not only have they built a world in the prison, but they’ve become complacent. Worse yet, Rick Grimes has now become complacent. Or so he’s told himself time and time again that the world outside has been somewhat dominated, thanks to their defeat of the Governor. They may have won the battle with the Governor, but the war has yet to end, and the group has yet to figure out what will happen if Phillip Blake returns in full force, prepared to slaughter the prison village.
Well if anything “Return III” doesn’t remake the first film as part II did. And it introduced us to the red haired goddess we know as Melinda Clarke. “Return III” is a goofy and kind of odd twist on the original film, but it packs in a pretty interesting romance, as well as staging the furnace scene from the first film again except with two people devastatingly in love.
Hey after “Return” ended, there was really nowhere left to go. The characters were dead, zombies were taking over the world, and the government nuked an entire city. And it’s heavily implied that the rain over head would carry the nasty zombification over in to another city and a whole new batch of zombies would come up to look for brain matter. Dan O’Bannon and co. really left “Return” with nowhere else to go as it sealed up the ending nice and tight. So what else for a studio to do when they want to sap more cash from a zombie film? Remake the first film! Sort of. That makes sense, I’m assuming. In some warped manner.