For this week I read Feed. It's one of my favorite books of the past few years and I wanted a chance to re-read it so I did. Feed takes place twenty years after the Rising, a time when an (un)deadly virus swept the nation and eventually the world, infecting every single person on the planet that, at any moment, could cause people to become zombies. The virus, originally meant to cure every disease and illness from cancer to the common cold, turned hostile and effectively unstoppable.
What's weird about Feed isn't that the world tries to get back to absolute normal while coexisting with the zombie hoards that live on the outskirts of their safe zones. It's that the hardly focuses on the zombies at all. The threat of spontaneous amplification (turning into a zombie) as well as the zombies that already exists are constantly mentioned and touched on throughout the novel, but more than that, Feed is about a brother/sister journalism team uncovering a global conspiracy done by the very forces that were put in place to keep the world safe.
I really really enjoyed everything about Feed and I'd recommend it anybody (which I have, on several occasions). The thought that a political scandal/conspiracy could still thrive and fester when there are zombies looming on the horizon just blows my mind. It's weird to think that a political/mystery/monster/horror novel could exist but it does, and it's done beautifully. I came for the zombies, I stayed for the unveiling of a scandal... With zombies.
The Cabin in the Woods was weird in the beginning and only really got weird for me at the very end. The opening begins with two scientists walking through a secret facility (assumably underground - because what's movie science without and underground facility?) discussing trivial things like having children and how strange their girlfriends are. It all seems pretty normal and nonsensical and then the title hits us in the face like a pet trying to wake you up in the morning:
Wow, okay, Cabin in the Woods, we see you.
I'm not going to spend too much time talking about how strange this movie was, because it was very weird. Besides the beginning, we're treated to what feels like a normal horror film (the group is stranded in an unknown place, there is a strange backwater character blatantly foreshadowing all the dangers the group is going to face and who they, of course, dismiss, and there was a sex scene where there probably shouldn't have been a sex scene).
But that's where all the normal things ended. In this film, we find out that weed ultimately saves the day, and the "fool" character is the only one able to do anything about the monster that attack them. There was all sorts of technology present that I'm sure we don't have (or maybe I'm just in the dark about these huge forcefields just chilling out in the middle of the woods somewhere which could be a definite possibility).
I think we enjoy watching/reading/absorbing weird media because it shocks us, it takes us out of our comfort zone. We are allowed to live in the "what if" moment for a while. What if the zombie apocalypse happened and the human race continued and adapted to it? What if giant monsters were real and we treated hunting them like we treat hunting deer or fishing? What if we had to routinely sacrifice five people to keep the "ancient ones" from destroying the world? It's compelling to us because we're able to imagine a world where real life doesn't necessarily have to apply.
Ground floor: death and early retirement
PS: Shout out to John Dies at the End for making the "Weird Movies and Recent Horror List". The film is excellent, the book is a wild ride of fantastic 'what the fuck'
0 comments:
Post a Comment