Movie - The Thing (2011)

Okay good morning again as I am still here and I hope you are too! So for whatever reason, I did not review this when I originally saw it a few months back and have since rewatched it two days ago (so it's fresh in the mind). To clarify for most people who think that this is a re-make of the 80's version, it is not. I think they knew better than to touch something some beautiful honestly. For those of you who have seen the 80's version, you know how amazing it is and how it really doesn't need to be remade at all. But anyway, this movie is not a re-make, but it is a prequel which answered a lot of unanswered questions from the other movie such as the who, what, where, when, and why.

**Spoilers?** Continue at your own risk! :)

The thing I like about this movie as it connects into the other one pretty perfectly. Some such examples of this are the axe that was found, the man who committed suicide in the chair, the two headed beast, and the helicopter chasing the dog.

In the beginning, Kate (a graduate student and scientist) is contracted to go to Antarctica to assist with uncovering and studying an alien life form and ship. Once she gets there, however, she learns she is in over her head. The alien comes back to life while the rest of the team is partying over their victory and starts by "eating" Henrik. Kate discovers later that the alien was trying to absorb him and clone itself into Henrik only it cannot absorb inorganic materials such as the metal placed in his arm when he broke it. The next day she discovers blood and fillings on the floor in the bathroom and signals the helicopter which is just about to leave to come back. Just as they're about to land, one of the passengers (Griggs) starts mutating into the alien and throws the plane into the ground.

When Kate confronts the team with her findings, nobody believes her until Juliette turns into the alien herself and tries to kill them. It is decided that the team will run blood tests to see who is an alien. The test is sabotaged when the lab is set on fire, making it impossible to run. Kate thinks of a temporary test by checking for fillings in everyone's mouths and separating them at flamethrower point (instead of gunpoint. Get it? Lol)

The pilot and passenger of the plane somehow make it back alive and are held in a locked cabin. When Lars goes to get them for the test, they have escaped. Thinking that they are the aliens, the rest of the group searches for them. During the panic, Edvard transforms into his alien self and attacks both Jonas and Adam. He morphs himself into Adam and create the two headed beast you see in the 80's film which I thought was a nice little addition there.

With most of the crew pretty much dead, Sam and Kate roast all of the beasts and try to escape. With a grenade they destroy the alien and part of the ship and then go to leave. It is here that Kate realizes that Sam is a copy and kills him, leaving on her own.

The movie closes with Lars getting on the helicopter to chase the dog which is where you lead into the other movie. It is never said what happened to Kate after she left. I think I'd like to see what happened there. Maybe lead into a third movie that occurs after the 80's one? That would be pretty cool to see. They really could have kept going with this one since it's so cool.

Overall? I liked the movie a lot, but not as much as the 80's one. This was a GREAT prequel though. Sometimes they do prequels or sequels and they are just godawful terrible, but this one I thought was great. I'm going to give this one a four.

Movie - Into The Storm (2014)

Good morning Pittsburgh! That's where I'm from in case any of you who actually read this are wondering. I have officially hit 1,500 views and I thank all of you loyal bloggin readers for your time and effort to come in here each day and read this blog. It's not often I get on here on a Sunday as I usually only do this on days that I work during my lunch so this here is a treat! Being that it was my third anniversary with my fiance, we decided to go see this promising looking film. I've always been a fan of natural disaster movies or just watching stormwatcher shows in general so I was excited to see a new tornado movie come out because we haven't really seen a good one come out since probably Twister in 1996. I'm happy to see Lori from the Walking Dead has returned to the living in a different role which I think she nailed.

Okay so let's get to into the meat of the movie. If you hate spoilers you should probably stop reading now. **Spoilers?**

The movie follows two groups of people who end up meeting in the middle at some point. The first group is a widowed father and his two sons who are in the process of filming time capsule pieces of people to bury during the graduation ceremony the next day. The second group is a team of storm chasers who are heading to the same town to try to catch a tornado on film. Rather than going to the graduation ceremony, Donnie (the older son) decides to help a girl he has a crush on (Kaitlyn) create a film for school (this is important later).

The movie takes this time to do some character developing showing you that one of the stormchasers (Allison) has been away from her daughter for 3 months and misses her terribly. It also shows you that the head of the stormchasers (Pete) will do anything to get the "perfect shot" and that he hasn't gotten any shots for about a year and has just been dumped from any further funding. The movie also shows that the father (Gary) is estranged a bit from his sons due to his divorce with his wife and ultimately leading up to her accident which caused her death.

The movie starts taking a turn at this point when the first tornado hits during the graduation ceremony which is outside. All of the students and faculty run inside and duck as the twister starts demolishing their school and parking lot. Everyone is safe after this, but it is now that Gary realizes that Donnie is not in the school. With his other son's help (Trey), he learns where Donnie is. While Gary is trying to reach Donnie over the phone, the signal cuts out and the entire structure he is inside with Kaitlyn collapses, trapping them. Water starts pouring in and they are now fighting for their lives to survive before they drown.

Gary leaves with Trey to find Donnie and after another tornado spins his car out of control, he evacuates the car only to find the stormchasers. After saving Allison's life, Gary and Trey are welcomed into the stormchaser's van to find his son (it happened to be the same direction they were going so it worked out). I personally thought the way he saved Allison was a little unbelievable, but it still kind of looked cool. Let's just say he must be REALLY strong. As they're moving on, twisters start hitting left and right, putting the whole group in grave danger. Once the van is tipped over, they seek refuge in a church until the tornados pass. During this time, two of the stormchasers get killed (Jacob and Lucas).

Allison takes Gary and Trey to where Donnie is and they fight to move the rubble enough to save both he and Kaitlyn. The storms at this point are absolutely insane and heading straight for the school where the whole town is held up. Once back at the school, they evacuate everyone to busses so that they can pretty much run for their lives away from the massive tornado. The last bus which includes all of the main characters gets blocked by a tree so they are forced to climb into a drain pipe for safety. Pete blocks the entrance of the drain pipe with his car only to sacrifice his own life to save everyone else as his car is pulled to the top of the funnel and then he is dropped to his death.

Everyone else survives if you were wondering, but the whole town is in shambles.

What did I think about this movie? Well... I loved it. The movie had me on the edge of my seat the entire viewing. I don't recall if I blinked at all to be honest haha. For real though, if you like natural disaster movies, seriously check this one out and I assure you that this one will not disappoint in any way possible. I give this one a whopping five out of five. Yes!!

Video Game - The Wolf Among Us (2013 PS3)

Alrighty I am back again today to review The Wolf Among Us which is a game I completed just yesterday. Recently Telltale Games has been getting a lot of attention due to their Walking Dead video game series which plays episodes of the game much like TV does and has multiple seasons of certain games. The company only has about three games out currently but are working on multiple other interesting games including Game of Thrones and Borderlands. Most of the gameplay in their games is decision based where you can end up with multiple outcomes based on the decisions you have made throughout the game. The game plays identically to the Walking Dead game for those of you who have played it, but just has a different story.

The Wolf Among Us is about all of the fable characters being driven from their mystical lands and into normal civilization. Due to their appearances, they must pay to be enchanted to look like mundies (the Harry Potter equivalent to Muggles or humans). While some fables are still living the high life, others are forced to trade their souls to the Crooked Man to make ends meet. The game is a murder mystery type of game where you work with clues to solve the murders of two prostitutes. You play as Bigby Wolf (a.k.a. Big Bad Wolfe) who is the sheriff of the fables. Together with Snow White, you try to solve the murder mysteries.

During my playthrough, I tried to make Bigby as nice as possible, however, you can also choose to be very savage and murder a lot of people yourself which I'd be willing to wager has a completely different ending once you've finished.

**SPOILER**
As you follow Bigby around, you uncover that the city head official Ichabod Crane is embezzeling money from the city to pay a hooker to dress up as snow white for his sick fantasy. You also find that because of Crane's ignorance of the town's needs and being preoccupied with other things, the town people have put their trust in the Crooked Man who has enslaved them into doing whatever her wants. When the two prostitutes disobeyed him, he had them killed. In the end, Bigby prevails by either killing the Crooked Man or bringing him to justice.

This game was great, but the only real issue I had was the confusing part at the end with Narissa. For those of you who have played all of the episodes of the game, what did you think that last part meant? Personally I think it was a hint that Narissa was really Faith as that was the comment Faith had made to Bigby when she had first met him. Does anyone else think this or have any other ideas on what that could have meant? That ending did leave room for a second season which I hope they do though they have not released any information regarding that as of yet.

I liked to see the fables going from being glamored to being their normal selves. Some of my favorite characters unglamored were The Jersey Devil and Bigby himself. This was a great game and a good play for those of you who are not terrific gamers or if you are looking for something easy to complete. It is possible to die, but it's not necessarily easy to do unless you're being careless.

I gave this one four out of five. Great game. Hope to see a second season down the line and also hope to see this one make it to disc rather than just being a download.

Video Game - Daylight (2014 PS4)

Gooood afternoon! Well it's afternoon at least where I am. I apologize for the lack of posting lately but I've been focusing most of my free time on watching YouTube videos rather than movies and catching up on some games since I have started about six of them at once. I'm sure all of you gamers out there know what that feels like; the neverending barrage of games.

I'm going to throw a random question out there for those of you who actually read this (fellow gamers and movie lovers). Why do we buy more games when we are trying so desperately to catch up on the ones we already have? Is this something all gamers do or am I just the only weird one?

As for time... well let's just say I've picked up a second job recently so gaming just doesn't happen as much as I wish it could. But enough about my personal life, I'm sure you have all come to this page to investigate how I felt about Daylight. For those of you who have played Outlast, we can go ahead and call this game the Outlast the Prequel or at least part of the series. Despite belief that they were made by the same company, they actually were not. Outlast (one of the first games I have played on my Playstation 4) was created by a company called Red Barrel which is comprised of a few developers from other teams banding together and to my knowledge this is the only game they have made so far. Do not quote me on that because I'm not 100% on that. Daylight is made by Zombie Studios who were also the developers of the Saw games.

Once again I'm kind of off topic here. Let's go ahead and jump into the story here. The story is pretty good for what it is, but I feel like it is a little incomplete. You start the game on the floor in an asylum with no background story or how you even got there which isn't that terrible, but I would have like some sort of intro rather than just throwing you in there. There are holes in the story throughout the game and even the ending doesn't really piece it fully together for me. So okay you start on the floor and all you have is a cell phone which luckily the power never dies on it and you don't have to constantly keep picking up batteries for it or worrying about switching to night vision which is really nice in comparison to Outlast. Nothing against Outlast, but it was hard to look around and appreciate the game when you were constantly in the darkness and on a time limit due to the sparce amount of batteries available for your camera. So you are following a woman you know nothing about (nice to see a female character for once in these first person games) as she goes through a mental hospital, jail, sewer, and then forest area. She picks up papers and photos along the way that explain terrible things that happened to the patients at the hospital while the whole time you have the voice of a doctor talking to you though I'm not sure where it is coming from. Are you on a call with him the whole time? Is there a secret walky talky you don't see? That is not explained at all. From what I can see of the phone, it does not appear that you are on a call so honestly she could just be imagining the voice for all I know.

The game only has one type of enemy which is pretty easy to avoid honestly and that would be the witches. Let me say this about the witches, they are amazing at jump scare tactics. Most of the time you don't know where they're going to be as you don't always hear them or get an indication that they are near except that sometimes your phone will start glitching or you'll hear a scream. I can't tell you how many times I turned around and crapped myself because there was a witch literally two inches from my face. To avoid being killed by the witches, all you have to do is stop looking at them and then you will not be hurt by them anymore. I just make my character turn around and walk backwards with my back toward the witch and usually they go away or just disappear which is nice because you don't get any weapons in the game except flares which destroy the witches. Like the batteries, however, flares and glow sticks are limited though you can easily find them everywhere. The glowsticks are fun and can be used to find more glow sticks, flares, and documents.

I kind of wish there was more to this game. It was really short and each area was a repeat of the last which is really what happened in Outlast though that game had more story and gruesome things that could happen to you. The ending was kind of a mystery and help me out if you understood it.

**SPOILER** - Yeah I should really start using these since I'm kind of terrible about spoiling things for you guys.

So the end I THINK has your character find a paper to realize she was a patient at the hospital who came back and is actually the witch who has been following you around. See what I mean about not making much sense? She finds the paper finding out she's a patient and that the doctor on the phone is actually your doctor. Then she leave the hospital and says something like "it was me" and they show a picture of her that I guess looks like the witches? Like I said, not really explaining much of what they meant by that.

Trophy wise this game is not that hard to get 100% on and can be completed in two play throughs which is nice. It's an easy game and can be run through within a couple of hours. Unfortunately the game doesn't have a platinum, but that's only because it's one of those Playstation Network short games. So the game is on the Playstation 4's Network right now for I think $14.99 so if you want a good survival horror game to play while a bunch of friends watch for some jumps and fun, I highly recommend it. Don't think that my ranting about the story and monotonism of the game means I don't like it. I'm personally a fan of both survival horror and short games (due to my scheduling conflicts) so I gave this one a four for being a really good play. So yeah go ahead and check it out. Let me know what you think or leave your Playstation gamer tag in the comments and we can compare some trophies sometime.

Oh and gamers...? Game on! :)


Stupid witches!!! Definitely scared me more times than I can count!!