This Week in Pop, 9/27/2009

A few new movies this week, and you've already got my feelings on Pandorum, which appears to be the one to see this week. The runner-up is Surrogates, a movie with a cool premise that has a way to go before I can begin to reccommend it.

SURROGATES (2009)

On paper, Surrogates works. This only makes sense, as the movie is based on a graphic novel. But stories that work in comics don't usually work on film unless certain liberties are taken with the story. Only natural, its a different medium, with its own set of conventions and pacing.

While Surrogates swapped a few elements around from its comic predecessor, becoming more grounded, believable, and in many ways palatable, it also lost all of its imagination.

Stemming from the idea that prosthetic technology will one day become advanced enough to create a full robot controlled by human brainwaves, the movie supposes that our vanity and need for anonymity would cause people to hide themselves away from the real world, and forget what it was like to be truly human. Essentially, the whole world becomes an internet chatroom. In that world, there are all kinds of questions to be answered about the nature of individuality, the need for a fleshy physical body, or 'natural state', and about the possibility of stealing a person's identity in a much more complete manner.

Despite gasps by the general populace at the originality of this premise, its nothing new to the serious movie-goer or sci-fi buff. These very ideas were brought up in 1996's Ghost in the Shell anime where people use prosthetic bodies, and the greatest crime isn't murder, but identity theft, hacking peoples' cybernetic bodies to commit crime, or erasing the memories of those you've hacked. But hey, that was thirteen years ago, who cares if the premise has been done. Technology has evolved since then, and so have our perceptions of it. Surely, there's new concepts to explore in Surrogates, right?

Nope. Despite over a decade of technological development and creative think-time, there's almost no new ideas to be found here. How odd is it, in a world supposedly populated, publicly, by a population made of 98% synthetic people, to see those people carrying cell phones or using keypads and headsets, or looking through paper filing cabinets? Surely, those would be built right into the synthetic, right? I want to make a call, so my brain jacks into the nearest wi-fi unit and makes the call for me. I need to use the internet, ditto the wi-fi, and the cup info is projected over the vision of my computer eye-balls. My work files are available with a hard-wire jack port that loads into the back of my skull. Everything should be the speed of thought.

Not only is the production not this ballsy, its just not that thought out. 98% of the world's population carries out their job at any time using a synthetic. Yet the story would have me believe that all 7+ billion surrogates are controlled by a single computer in the hands of a single fat guy in the San Francisco Bay area? In the trailer, we see every surrogate on Earth collapse simultaneously. We're led to believe this results in no deaths or injuries as, 'its all just surrogates outside' right? Except all the planes in the air on the Earth are being piloted by surrogates. Every nuclear power plant is run entirely by surrogates. All those plane crashes and potential power plant meltdowns have to result in a death somewhere, right? A plane somewhere landed on a school, or a farmhouse, or something. Its just not well thought out.

Add to that some inexplicably bad acting (if the surrogates are supposed to talk like you, and be just like you, why do all the secondary characters talk like robots? I don't think those actors quite got the synopsis), plodding and dull action sequences, and the ridiculousness of Ving Rhames in a rasta wig, and you've got a movie that can only be described as disappointing. It was done better over a decade ago.

Bruce Willis, however, always a pleasure. Except, maybe, in Hudson Hawk.

The real tragedy this weekend is that so many decidedly average and forgettable movies have been taking the spotlight, while Paranormal Activity, being described over and over again as one of the scariest movies in forever, is on like 8 screens this weekend, after being held back by the studio for almost 2 years. 2 Years! Hollywood, do you just have something against releasing good movies? PA is getting nothing but positive reviews by people who pooped their pants at film festival screenings. Hunt down a showing, if you can.

While I'm waiting for that, I'm also stoked by House of the Devil, soon to be released by my new heroes Magnet Distribution. Somehow these guys keep finding great horror and foreign gems. Ong-Bak 2 is also theirs.

Anyway, thi

s one's by the same crew who did the fantastic The Signal (review soon on bthroughz.com), and its a tribute to 70's horror, this time. Check out that great retro poster. Another cool one popped up on BrutalasHell.com recently.

I managed to find the trailer for embed too, and I'll close this week's entry with that. Check it. Acting is a little off, but looks creepy, well put together and genuinely LOOKS like a film from the 70's, which was my favorite time for horror. Keep an eye on these guys.