Good Morning Friends! I hope you all had a most excellent weekend. This weekend was more dedicated to watching films than to playing much in the way of games. I kept up my daily Tower of Fantasy and New World activity and spent quite a bit more time in Night City but the key activities centered around three movies that I had been looking forward to watching. As a result, most of this post is going to be me trying to give my best spoiler-free impressions of each.
Hellraiser (2022) – Hulu
I have to admit that going into this movie I was deeply confused as to what it actually was. I thought it was a series and I thought it was intended to be a reboot of the franchise. In truth, it is neither of these things. Instead of a series, we are treated to a full-length movie, and honestly one of the better ones so far in the Hellraiser franchise. Essentially for me, the first three films in the original series are pretty good, with the third one being more a matter of taste than the first two. While I enjoyed Hellraiser Bloodlines because it felt like it book ended the story, it is also a deeply subjective thing and most people think it was the beginning of the end. Everything that came after was released directly to home video and can largely be skipped unless you are a glutton for punishment… but it might be more enjoyable to ACTUALLY summon the Cenobites than to watch those films.
This Hulu Hellraiser does a great job of walking a very narrow path between being completely new and unique… while still largely being complimentary to everything that came before it. Nothing in the movie outright contradicts the things that we already knew, and more than anything just fleshes out and expands the universe. The new designs for Pinhead and the other Cenobites are exquisite, and I am extremely obsessed with the one that is apparently being referred to as the Weeper. Jamie Clayton does an excellent job of playing Pinhead and they seem way more like “Dark Angels” than the original designs. If you were a big fan of the original, and especially the extended lore that surrounded them… then I think you will probably enjoy yourself as well.
Werewolf by Night (2022) – Disney Plus
I’ve been looking forward to this movie for so long and more than anything… the Werewolf by Night character joining the MCU. I think we are likely setting ourselves up for maybe a Dark Avengers at some point in the future. I loved these comics as a kid because like I talked about on Friday… the movie Lost Boys and my desire to find the comics in that film… led me down a rabbit hole of diving into all of the Marvel horror comics. The film itself is this delightful noir affair that harkens back to the “Universal Monsters” series of black-and-white films. It also has some pretty great comedic moments and introduces another of my favorite characters the monster that is being hunted.
I am really hesitant to go into much more detail because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I have a feeling that everyone is going to love Ted.
Day Shift (2022) – Netflix
To be completely honest, after the first two… Day Shift is a bit of a drop in quality. That is not to say it is not an extremely enjoyable movie, but it just hits differently. The Day Shift is essentially a buddy cop meets modern vampire hunter story. The positive is you get to see Snoop and Jamie Foxx as vampire hunters. The negative is the vampires themselves are not terribly interesting. There are elements of the film that feel like they have been borrowed from simply better stories. Again I am not bashing the film because I enjoyed it quite a bit, just trying to temper your expectations. The big takeaway from this film is that I really want to see Snoop in a Western as a gunslinger-type character. Jamie Foxx is a talented enough actor that he can make even the most milquetoast story entertaining to watch. Had this movie come out in the 90s, we would have loved it because it feels like a product of that cinematic generation.
Other than that I am winding my way down toward the end of this Cyberpunk playthrough. I am stalling out the main story so I can spend more time in each of the neighborhoods knocking out side quests. there is a ton of content that I never saw in my first playthrough, in part because I was hooked on the main narrative path and wanted to see it through to the conclusion. Now that I know the story and several of the alternate endings… I can take my time and spend more time just engaging with the streets and what they have to offer. There are quests that I have not found yet that I remember fondly, but cannot remember what triggered them. Essentially questing away in Night City has been a delightful diversion while waiting on the New World patch drop coming up on the 18th.
I’d love to see a Midnight Sons series with Elsa, Jack, Ted, Blade, maybe the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider. Possibly have Strange show up since he usually ends up involved in that stuff. The Darkhold may be off the table for a while but there’s always the Montesi Formula.