Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Horror of student loan debt

"The Red" is a horror short about... student loan debt.  

The heroine is haunted by all kinds of horror tropes in a few short minutes: wounds, mysterious bleeding, uncanny voices, crawling bugs, disturbing people, creepy phone calls, and oozing monsters.  Not to mention less Gothic and more microeconomic fears, like job stress, declined credit cards, dwindling finances, and stalking creditors.

 Eventually the heroine cracks under the strain and goes mad.

"You can't outrun it.  All you can do is face it.  And fight it."

How to use a touch of Gothic

The New Yorker quietly adds just a smidgen of Gothic to a technology essay:

The primary interface element of Now is what Google calls “cards,” which are modelled after real cards. They present a clean, trim canvas for information—one recalls the discussion of tasteful business-card design in the film “American Psycho.” 

"One recalls?"  Depends on the "one" in question, but Infocult always remembers.  "That's bone."

Here's the scene, as a refresher:

(via Bruce Sterling)

More scary short videos from Popcorn horror

We shared the fine short video "Click" a few days ago.  Now it's time to examine the other Gothic tidbits from the contest which "Click" won, Popcorn Horror.

Warning: all of these have scenes of extreme violence, pain, and death.  Very NSFW.

"Mortified" is a fun short-short, barely 2 minutes long and offering a fine grin:

"Twinkle Toes" is the most complex and ambitious story of the lot, a violent piece about revenge.  It plays games with your expectations.  For instance, don't be sure as to who owns that severed foot:

"Don't Move" is a very gory and always tense bit based around a shocking in media res setting.

 

"Blood Roulette" has an interesting twist to the Russian shooting game.

Visiting the Planet of the Vampires

Thoughts on rewatching Planet of the Vampires (1965), as part of Jim Groom's Festival of Mario Bava:

I always enjoy sf from countries other than the US and UK.  Here we get manic, lush Italian design and narrative drive.  The movie races from mood to mood, introspection to manic violence.  We can easily believe characters being possessed or driven mad.  The film shows off strange, energetically rounded hardware.  There are relishes awesome uniforms, as in this animated gif:

The links to Alien (1979) are many and more than I recalled.  The human ship looks like the Nostromo, and also like the downed, Gigerized alien vessel.  There's the tricky descent of the human landing craft into a world "that's all fog!"  Best of all is the space jockey scene:

As with Alien, the ship is a huge presence, a dark and sometimes antagonistic character.  Bava loves to trawl his camera behind computer banks and along many bulkheads.  Interior spaces are weirdly huge, often empty, spacing out characters and their machines in a stage-like way. This makes its inhabitation by mysterious monsters all the more threatening.

Then there are the vampires.  Ah, Infocult confession time: this movie scared the hell out of me when I was around 6 years old.  I feared for the stressed space travelers, but was terrified by the plastic sheeted vampires.  Their Richard Powers-like statues weirded me out, as did their metal traps and hungry wrath.  Or maybe they are zombies, spawned from the astronauts' friends (and family!) - creepy stuff for a young one.

The death toll advances rapidly, more like a war movie (Aliens) than a horror film (Alien).  Bodies pile up quickly, which helps set up the zombie/vampire plot.

Overall, it's glorious fun.

(poster from Absolute Elsewhere; jockey from Alien Explorations)

When data drives horror film, the demons will target

Interesting passage from this article about using data to hack up Hollywood screenplays:

“Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,” Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. “If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.”

One wonders what his dataset contains.

"Click", a fine piece of short, understated horror video

"Click" is a good example of how to establish horror without any gore whatsoever.  The plot is quite simple, concerning some kids exploring an abandoned building.  That building makes for a terrific setting, a vast, uninhabited ruin with its own... ah, but just click to the video.

Blood Games - Click from Popcorn Horror on Vimeo.

There's a horrible sense of inevitable doom in the last third - an impressive achievement for so short and spare a work.  Fine kid actors, too.

(via MetaFilter)

Siri, the horror movie

The terror of Siri, from the Rooster Teeth guys:

(thanks to Owain)

Goodnight... Moon.

Watch out for the woman whispering hush:


Previously on Infocult: Goodnight Dune.

(thanks to Andy Havens)

Baby vs zombie

"Cargo" (2013) is a very short zombie tale with an unusual focus: a father and baby during the zompocalypse. 

(via MetaFilter)

Movie about the scary internet: Disconnect

Cyberfear, the movie: Disconnect (2012) builds a multi-strand plot on the ways we fear the digital world.  There has not yet been an Infocult screening, so this post is based on Web responses to it.

Disconnect apparently follows the Crash (2004) model of using multiple plot strands which coincide by social issue synthesis.  Three or four narratives brood on the perils of texting, cyberbullying, identity theft, online porn, and more.  Digital devices wreck a bunch of lives, it seems.

Arianna Huffington celebrates the movie as a clarion call for us to throttle back our digital lives.

It's easy to get seduced by technology...

Disconnect shows how easy it is to allow technology to lure us into a somnambulist life, gradually being pulled away from a sense of who we are and what really matters.

Naturally there's a Turkle citation.

Huffington celebrates one of her staff member's withdrawal from mobile life.  Her whole business is involved, now:

Here at HuffPost, we are taking steps both editorially and personally to course-correct and help our community end our addiction to technology.

Addiction, sexuality, the threat of violence... the whole mix of cyberfear seems to be in play.  Monetizing haunted media is an old strategy.

(thanks to Ed Webb)