Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Who Needs an Afterlife, Anyway?

image via The Examiner

This weekend marks lots of spooky celebration in the Western world. Pagans and Wiccans celebrate the Gaelic festival Samhain, marking the harvest and start of the darker half of the year. Hispanic cultures celebrate Día de los Muertos, a three day festival with roots in ancient Aztec religious beliefs. Christians celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day, honoring saints and remembering loved ones. Even secular Americans love to celebrate Halloween. It’s the time of year when lots of people are remembering the dead and pondering mortality. This got me thinking about the way the afterlife appears in our geeky media. Saika and I have already written posts about Heaven and Hell, respectively. Both of us note that each realm is usually twisted in some way (either corrupted or comically), or kind of boring. So do we really need to give our characters an afterlife?

Is Madotsuki in Limbo? A Review of Yume Nikki

Fanart by yunare

I’ve never been an avid gamer, but there’s one game that’s always had a special place in my heart: Yume Nikki. Though it’s meant to be psychological horror, it has an almost calming effect on me. The game itself isn’t very scary—rather, it’s just very bizarre—but there are events in Yume Nikki that have made me cringe. There are many theories about these events, as there is no narration given. I’ve read a great deal of them, yet there never seems to be one that I completely agree with. Is it possible that some of these theories are true, but for different reasons? I took the time to play through the game again and came up with my own conclusion: what if the world of Yume Nikki is Limbo?

Spoilers, a trigger warning for sexual assault, and a seizure warning for those with epilepsy after the jump.

Resident Evil: Retribution

Before I get into this, I just want to say I love the cover poster for this movie. “Evil Goes Global.” Right. Because it wasn’t global before or anything. Oh, wait… No…

I know this review is really late, considering that the movie’s been out for a few weeks now, and this isn’t out of laziness on my part. I honestly didn’t notice when it was first released, and I daresay that I could have spent the rest of my life not knowing what happened and missed out on nothing. But this movie has managed to present me with a valuable question.

It’s no secret that the Resident Evil movies suck. I think we all know that. Even if you like them, which I do, it doesn’t make them good movies. The amount of inconsistencies and badness just keep piling and piling on top of each other, until all you’re left with is a giant, convoluted mess, the plot of which your brain can barely keep up with. It is my personal belief that Paul W. S. Anderson knows this too, but we’re already five movies into the series, and it’s kind of too late to fix stuff now. As a result, I think Anderson just decided to make the movie as over the top as possible, so that at the very least it can be enjoyable.

So here’s my question: can I hate a movie for failing so hard when it clearly isn’t even trying?

Well, okay, yes, I can. I can totally hate it for wasting valuable money to go see it. But do I hate this movie?

Well… yes.

That doesn’t mean I won’t be buying it when it comes out, though.