Rochester, NY- The Park Avenue festival is a thing of beauty! It’s a time where we can all reflect and watch as a rather normal group of human beings completely devolve into nothing but sacks of flesh meat that only crave beer and pussy. As the park avenue festival delved later into the night the parties began to rise. One thing is for sure, the park ave festival knows how to keep things nice and white! Yet, that was almost interrupted by the ever evolving Puertorican festival! We had our people on the scene to see how the two worlds almost collided! We spoke with David Lyndon to get the full story!
” It was a real scary scene, me and my boys were just on our third beer pong game because that slut Stacy broke our homemade corn hole set after two gin and tonics, it’s alright though my boy Tom smashed that shit awhile back. Anyways, I was about to head into the house and then I saw this car go by and at first I for sure thought it was the american flag, but then I realized the american flag has more than one star! It was the puertorican flag! I mean what were they doing our neighborhood! Havent they ever seen West side story or world war 2 pictures? They were asking for trouble! Luckily, they ended up turning around because some local cops starting shooting at them, thank god for the police!”
David at that point took out a gun and started firing into the air screaming “Hail Donald trump, long live the never-ending reign of the white man.” To get a different perspective on this scene, we spoke with Miguel Rodriguez a local puertorican resident to see how he felt about the park ave festival.
“Park ave festival? Is that when white people walk around and pretend there happy because they bought some over priced “hand-made” adventure time scarf?”
Yup. That pretty much sums it up.
*Editors Note*
Miguel Rodriguez was quickly brought to justice by the RPD and three random black men and four random black women, all of them which we assure you, deserved to be shot and or arrested.
“There has been alot of talk about Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia, but I assure you, I have the best pneumonia of any politician. Mine is far more debilitating than hers has ever been. No one in the republican or democratic party can compete with my pneumonia. It’s so debilitating it would make your head spin. I should be dead right now, I swear.”
Said Donald Trump at a rally in Los Angeles, California addressing a recent press release that confirmed that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had a case of pneumonia.
The Donald referred to it as “classic liberal media bias” stating that
“I have been number one in the pneumonia game for years, but you don’t hear anyone talking about it, the coverage has been unfair.”
He then went on to blame China for the problem, as well as saying that he felt like there were “too many blacks in sports, it’s hard to tell which player is which.”
ROCHESTER, NY-Move over ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ and say hello to ‘BAC like Wambach.’ The surprise hit at this year’s Fringe Fest let’s you step into the driving shoes of hometown hero Abby Wambach.
“It seemed like a really dumb idea” said Clark Peterson the creator of the Fringe event. “I submitted the idea thinking it would get turned down, but it is true what they say, Fringe will accept anything.”
The Fringe show takes place Peterson’s Parents Basement around 11pm when they fall asleep. After drinking to the point you can’t feel your face, in honor of the amount of head-in goals Wambach scored in her career, you put on Virtual Reality goggles and try to drive down the same Portland streets Wambach did when she was arrested for DUI in April of 2016.
Tickets include a ride home from Peterson’s parents if you can wake them up politely.
Here in Rochester we only have so much time to enjoy ourselves during the day. Between work, drinking, and nodding off in the passing lane of 390, we don’t have a lot of time to really enjoy ourselves. But our kids? Those little shits are smiling 24-7.
Take your son, Brendan. I’ve seen that kid run up and down the block with his little gaggle of barely double digit friends without a care in the world. Water gun fights, playing pretend, lego battles, this kid’s got entertainment flying out of every part of him.
Plus, I know his birthday is coming up, so maybe consider throwing little ol’ me a bone and let me hang out at your kids birthday party.
Whoa! Hey whoa c’mon, here are 5 reasons why you really don’t have to call the police right now.
1: I am super lonely– I get why you thought it was a sexual thing, creepy guy next door, watches your kids a lot, but I’m not trying to plow any kids here. House arrest gets lonely and after a couple weeks of guilt racked thought you just need to get out. Plus the range on my ankle bracelet ends at the back of your yard, so-
2: Sara is still in a coma– Look, when I nodded off after smashing half a needle of the good stuff blasting down 390 how was I supposed to know that we would crash and my sweet Sara would fall into a coma? C’mon, I need a little pick me up.
3: I promise I won’t touch your kids– Please, please i just want to be near some fun. I wont look at them, I wont talk to them, hell, I can just hang out with all of the adults there! Just to talk and meet some of the neighbors and maybe make some friends.
4: Before you ask, Ill probably bring some heroin to your kids party– Absolutely, without a question of a doubt. It’s not a party until we break out the Brown Sugar amirite?
5: I could also bring your kid like, a gift or something– Look, I can’t physically leave my house to an extent. I have some ash trays and a Gideon Bible I stole from a hotel I could part with, but other than that I’m just bare bonesing it right now.
So? What do you say? I know your kids birthday was like a month ago, but wouldn’t he be stoked for another party? You ready to have a failing 38 year old give your kids, and the neighbor kids, hard lessons on life while dipping in and out of consciousness?
Please don’t. No put the phone down…ugh. Well its not a violation of parole to just ask now is it?!
So to recap a bit, we’re looking at two horror movies, Don’t Breathe and IT FOLLOWS, comparing them. All of the claims, are of course, my own opinion. If you have followup points to each part defending or attacking one or the other please PLEASE do it in the comment section.
Also be warned, SPOILERS ARE AHEAD
Now in this part, we aren’t so much looking at the separate film’s stories and setting as we are the genre scares and the monsters in each movie. How do they try to scare us?
PART 2-What Makes Good Horror and Better Monsters
In looking at horror movies today, it’s pretty easy to spot which beats exist to make you jump out of your seat (at least try to make you jump out of your seat). Leads up to jump scares, musical crescendos, eerie low frequencies, all designed to surprise you or make you feel uneasy. But there is an area that a lot of horror movies neglect, which is making sure that the situation is one that makes everyone feel fear.
It Follows and Don’t Breathe one similar horror theme within both of their respective stories. That theme is-
The monster knows where you are, but you don’t know where it is.
It Follows takes a pretty direct approach by having a monster that is following you to exactly where you are. Don’t Breathe places the characters in the house of a deranged blind man who can hear and feel where you are on his home turf.
I think Don’t Breathe’s situation gives it a much more tense feel. We are finding out about this house the same as the characters, and the deranged blind man knows it by heart, feel, sound, and smell. This helps the audience relate to the characters as they explore and act surprised when the deranged blind man catches them off guard. He knows the house better, and is able to use that to his advantage. All of this, coupled with a varied and chaotic soundtrack and jump scares that felt right–
Which, just for a moment, there is a good way to do jump scares. Are they usually cheap? Yes absolutely, which is why they rely on a buildup of tension to act as a release. There is a reason people usually go “aw here comes the jump scare” right before the jump scare, it’s a predictable end. What’s the good way to do jump scares? There is a scene where Alex, one of the robbers, is coming back into the house after getting freaked out. He is walking down a hallway slowly when the blind deranged guy comes wheeling from behind the corner and passes Alex, having not seen him.
There is no lead up to the scare itself, but we as the audience knew that the blind guy was walking around. We knew that Alex was entering the house. This wasn’t a fabricated buildup using non-diegetic (outside of the film’s world) music. There was very little music in fact. It was all made tense by context clues from scenes and shots before and cut together in a way that made the eventual crossing paths inevitable but we weren’t sure when or how. Thats how you can make a jump scare feel right. Present the information in a way that builds the tension for the audience as they engage in your movie trying to anticipate for something, but they aren’t quite sure why.
-But coupled with its chaotic soundtrack and its varied jumps and frights that felt just so good, brought a huge amount of natural tension to the film which carried all the way until its end. There was no break from the unease and anxiety, which helps make it an amazingly good experience, let alone a good horror film.
It Follows‘ monster basically just has the supernatural ability to find you. Which, when I first saw the trailers for it, I was super excited! It sounds like the groundwork for immediate tension: You are being hunted and it is going to find you. What do you do?
Unfortunately and even shockingly, nothing. The film was paced in such a way as the slow to a crawl at some points then bounce to kill-f*** levels of intensity at random points. It never really kept the threat of the monster going until it was right there. There is definitely an argument that for having a shock factor the random bouts of intensity could work, but not when you show the main protagonist the f***ing monster and tell them to watch out for it in the beginning of the movie. This means that the character should be a paranoid wreck throughout the film. SHE SAW THE F***ING THING COMING FOR HER, SHE KNOWS (dun dun dun) THAT IT’S FOLLOWING HER. And she does nothing but be moody at her friends, moody at the fact that there is a monster, and then scared when it eventually shows up.
Now as a counter to my own argument, It Follows could be much scarier when viewed as the traumatic experience of getting a disease like HIV or AIDS. That parallel of something lurking around waiting to kill you is a reality for a lot of people, and could have been generally terrifying, as well as a poignant look at the emotional effects of getting a deadly STD.
Except that doesn’t happen. It could have, and you could argue it, but that isn’t what happens. Instead we get 2 hours of nothing punctuated by predictable beats of shoot to thrill with an ending that see’s our characters shoot the monster in the head with a gun.
The film’s mood is barely ever there. It says it is supposed to be scary, and there is one really well done jump scare that got me to physically lift from my seat:
In almost exactly the same vein as the one from Don’t Breathe. The Antagonist just appears unexpectedly, which creates an amazing jump scare and rise in tension. But to keep the tension going, you need an antagonist that presents a constant and ever-present threat to the main characters.
Before I move on to monsters, here is a mini section called
SOUNDTRACKS and HORROR
Hey, you know what had a great horror soundtrack of minimalist ambient noises punctuated by a truly chilling orchestral score? Well it certainly wasn’t the movie with this John Carpenter wannabe noise music trash playing in it:
Okay to be fair I actually listen to a couple of songs from this soundtrack pretty regularly. It’s really good synth/electro music at points. But at certain points the score is so overbearing with its presence that it drowns out the actions of the movie and the only thing you can focus on is the music. That’s not good horror, that’s a music video. Never have your music take center stage unless you are doing it to make a point. During no part of IT FOLLOWS did i feel like they need more than just some ambient tension music. Something the audience can hear but not immediately respond to as “Hey, music!” because the movie should be holding their attention. Don’t Breathe not only had a better score, but the way they used it made it more in compliment to the visuals and story than just standalone noise that overtook the film itself.
BACK TO MONSTERS
Ohhhh goody-goody.
Many horror movies have monsters, or characters that have monstrous intentions. Don’t Breathe and IT FOLLOWS are no exceptions. I would argue that the best movie monsters are twisted versions of ourselves. The Thing had the aliens that could mimic you just about right and turn you into a monstrosity. Texas Chainsaw Massacre had Leatherface. Pontypool has a virus that spreads through language turning people into killers. And, well, all zombies.
Don’t Breathe has The Blind Man. Thats his character name, and I’m going to tell you why I’m glad. Every good movie monster has something human about them. Whether its the shape of a hand or a face that looks kind of like a person, we are able to put a little bit of humanity onto every monster, which makes it scarier in my opinion. The rest is this detached inhumanity that we can’t connect with. This detachment is what makes us, instinctually, feel fear. How did they do it in Don’t Breathe? The Blind Man’s eyes.
Now it should be said that blind people aren’t creepy, they are people with the misfortune of losing their sight by accident or by birth complications.
His story is that he is a veteran of the gulf war and had his eyesight taken by grenade splinters. y’know, shrapnel. After a series of events, his daughter was killed by a rich woman who was driving recklessly, and was denied justice but received a large settlement out of court to keep hush hush. He now lives alone, broken both by a war and by an unjust death.
So now I bet your like “Why the f*** are they robbing this poor dude? his life ain’t exactly been on the up and up!”
Now here is why I brought up the eyes and his name. We as people have an instinctual ability to spot changes on other people. Sometimes for the worst, but it developed to see deformities that could be harmful when we were hunter gatherers. More importantly, eyes help us connect with other people. Looking people in the eyes allows us to have a stronger connection with them. What happens when you look into The Blind Man’s Eyes? You cant connect. It removes you from being able to really connect with him because there is a physical blockage making him seem inhuman, but he is a person. His motivations make him a monster however, and his blindness prevents us from seeing him as a person, and adding severity to every act of violence and sadism he makes. Hence, he has no name. He is purely The Blind Man, less human, and more monster.
So to combat this injustice he kidnapped the woman who killed his daughter and has chained her in the basement and impregnated her. This, coupled with the trauma of his time in the war, has made him a paranoid shut in intent on getting a new child and releasing the woman once she has given him one. Yup, 180 degree change on this home boy.
Actually one of the most f***ed parts of the movie is when he makes a point to explain that he didn’t rape her to impregnate her, and that he isn’t one of those filthy rapists. He then takes out a vial of frozen semen, heats it up, and sucks it into a f***ing turkey baster. This took him from bad guy to immediate f***ing psychopath.
The only argument I would have against The Blind Man was that he talked. It was like it was trying to make it so that we could see his reasoning for his actions, but it would have been much scarier if he just performed his actions in the same way without words. Just carrying out his awful, terrible deed like a machine, never once needing to justify himself.
IT FOLLOWS has a much more supernatural entity who, as I’ve described before, is a sexually transmitted demon thing that follows you and eventually kills you. It can disguise itself as anyone just to get closer to you, and not matter how far you run it will find you.
That is a super scary concept! You know what is the opposite of scary? This:
Walking at you at the speed of a molasses covered turd. In the movie, the monster transforms into a bunch of different forms. Here is a list of some of them, and go ahead and let me know if any of them sound like “can disguise as anyone to get close to you”:
An old lady in a high-school
The same old lady on a street corner
A beat up girl peeing herself in the main character’s kitchen
A really tall guy
A small child with holes for eyes
A dad I think?
And exactly NONE of these things were previously shown to indicate any kind of similarity to someone the main character knew. The ONLY TIME it was someone one of the characters knew, the monster disguised itself as the mom of one of the girl’s friends that she passed it on to. Thats also the only time we actually see it do anything.
If you are going to have a monster with those powers, f*** with our heads a little bit. Create an atmosphere of distrust leaving the audience just as confused as the main character. And for god sakes, who the f*** thought it was a good idea to have those as the forms of the monster?! The most immediately noticeable people are the monster, which not only kills any tension but is just f***ing lazy. Put a little love into your story and make it harder to spot the f***ing thing, that way the scares can be genuinely shocking as trust breaks down for the main character as she tries to piece together who is her friend, and who the monster is mimicking just to get closer to her.
IT FOLLOWS suffers from a very common problem with a lot of lazy horror movies, in that it never has any established constraints. The Entity from it follows starts out with a loose couple of monster rules: It going to follow you, it is going to take the shape of anyone, and it isn’t going to stop until you are dead. It then proceeds to take only a handful of forms during the movie (all of which stick out like a sore f***ing thumb), walk at the pace of a molasses covered snail, and it isn’t very good at killing people. The rules they do have are scary in a base way, but without putting care into how your monster uses these rules means you have to keep creating reasons for it to be scary and for the heroes to be threatened.
The Blind Man on the other hand is pretty well rounded. He never does any cliche teleporting that you often see movie murderers do, or at least it doesn’t feel like he does because It’s his goddamn house, he knows it better than the heroes. He feels like a threat because he is continuously threatening, being an army veteran and also crazy, and also he is really good at killing people. But he’s still a person, so they can’t just add or subtract abilities that he can do. He’s blind, so his advantages are his hearing, olfactory senses, military training, and home field familiarity. He becomes threatening because his advantages outweigh our heroes advantage of sight.
IT FOLLOWS’s monster suffered from the same laziness as it’s setting. With all the teasing promises of a thrill ride being replaced with wooden mood, acting, setting, and even atmosphere. The monster in It follows could have been scary, and there were even one or two parts of the movie where it was and could have continued to be, but instead it just fell straight flat without even being interesting.
Don’t Breathe had a dynamic villain who was equal parts terrifying but human, a dark mirror of what a sane person is. His slip into the darkness, although insane, seems all to possible for anyone now after getting details on his life. IT FOLLOWS has a lackluster demon who is only there because the plot said so and the music needed a monster to go to.
So a fun tidbit, one actor is in both of these films and dies in both of them. He is Daniel Zovatto, he plays Greg in ITFOLLOWS (who dies) and Money in Don’t Breathe (who dies). The characters themselves are polar opposites, which like, kudos to him, kid’s got range. I just thought it was kinda kooky how he’s played different characters in two horror movies set in Detroit.
Next, I’ll be talking about crafting an ending to a horror film in PART 3-Escape and Cliffhangers
Rochester,NY- David Chester has always enjoyed television. He remembers the days of cable TV and the endless possibility that it presented. Yet nothing could prepare David for the days of streaming television. David has conquered more than fifty seasons of popular TV shows within only a year span. He accomplished all of this without having to pay even one cent towards anything. That’s right, David Chester has not paid for his Netflix subscription. EVER. How did David do this exactly you ask? We spoke with him to get the full scoop.
” It all started when I moved in with my college roommate, he gave me his Netflix account information one time so I could watch some Futurama while I was baked. Ever since then he just forgot that he loaned me that information, now I can watch whatever I want, whenever I want and with whoever I want! I am not some poor soul who is trapped into $8.99 payments a month! No I am a king, I can afford the finest wines and the best food! All while another peasant of mine pays for my pleasure!”
We asked David if he was able to watch other streaming services such as Hulu, amazon prime or HBOGO for free as well. His response was this.
“There are other things to watch television on besides Netflix? F***!”
At this point David flew off into the air on his jet pack from clearly saving boatloads of money every month unlike us everyday assholes, who, you know. Pay for Netflix.
Rochester, NY- As we all know, the infamous “Fringe Festival” is approaching. It is a time where the art scene slowly takes over the city of Rochester and we consider things like the silent disco to be art. When did putting on headphones and walking around like an idiot become art? I mean seriously, when It did it become cool for people to listen to Michael Jackson on one channel and Elton John on the next one! In honor of Fringe Festival, Rochester officials have announced that they will be introducing a year round Cringe Festival! Here at the Inner Loop we have been fortunate enough to announce a few of the events at the cringe festival!
College Town “Ghost” Tour- The College town ghost tour will take 10-15 lucky people on a “spooky” tour of college town and check out all the abandoned buildings of once supposedly thriving business’s!! Scary stuff! The tour will end with a five-minute moment of silence for every business that thought they would last.
The Blindfolded Park ave-Monroe Ave 5k– Experience a 5k like you’ve never experienced before! During this 5k we will run through the beautiful streets of Park Avenue and right when were on the threshold of approaching Monroe Avenue we will throw on our city official blindfolds so we don’t have to experience the horror of poverty and homelessness! A fun time for the whole family!
The Inner Loop Charades– Now that the Inner loop has been filled with dirt, we can only imagine what the city is going to put in its place! Apartment Complexes? Pawn shops? Pawn shops in apartment complexes! Who knows! Come join this fun activity as we play a game of charades and act out what we think will fill the inner loop! We know its going to be great!
The Cracked Pavement Money Grab– Take your chance in as we throw two pounds of locally sourced honey on you and throw you in a tube of dollar bills! Every single dollar that sticks to your body will be used to fund construction work for all the badly damaged roads! We aim to raise at least fifty dollars!
These are just some of the fun activities you can hope to see at this upcoming years Cringe Festival! We are so excited to see all of you out there this year! Also, don’t forget if you live in Rochester, the Cringe Festival is always around! It will never go away!
Webster,NY- Jeremy Lyles has been a resident of Webster for over twenty years. Webster is a nice town to live in, raise your kids, drive by a McDonald’s twice on your way home. Yet, damn if it isn’t a town to find some fun in. Webster is a town where Stephen King would write a story about a man going crazy and killing cats or some shit. Jeremy was sick of going to Walmart with his kids and having them scuba dive through the five dollar bin to find die hard two, no matter how much fun that game was. Jeremy shared his thoughts with us on how hard fun is to find in Webster.
“You know, it’s the same old routine day in and day out, I drive through Webster, fight off my suicidal thoughts, get home to the kids, fight off the suicidal thoughts some more and then go to bed. Not anymore, I refuse to live that life anymore. Tonight, even if it cost me my life, I swear I am finding something enjoyable to do in Webster. I refuse to spend another dollar at the AMC movie theater! I am paying fifteen dollars to just fall asleep on my couch! Webster has to have something to do that doesn’t involve thinking about suicide! I swear I’m going to find it! Maybe the kids and I could walk down the street since sidewalks are non-existent! Walking in traffic is fun, right guys?!?”
The Inner loop staff did some detective work of their own and tried to find something fun to do in the town of Webster. Here is a list of things we found somewhat enjoyable.
Peoples pain
Dead trees
More pain
Abbots
Dead people in Walmart
Abbots to cover up the pain
Rust
Sadly, The Inner Loop lost one of our own to suicide during this detective work. Sometimes trying to find fun has a very steep price.
Rochester, NY- Musicians come and go. In a time where any person can have an “album release party”, it’s very difficult to truly know who is a real artist and who is just some asshole who wont stop sending you Facebook event invites. We lost a real artist, a man who can never be replaced and for this I mourn deeply. Here are 5 signs that The artist formerly know as Prince is no longer with is.
1) Every skyscraper is still f***ing purple- Death is hard enough to deal with on your own. So every time I want to look at that gorgeous skyline and see those f***ing purple neon lights on the side of every building, REMINDING ME OF THE FACT I’LL NEVER SEE PRINCE PERFORM LIVE EVER AGAIN!
2)Little red corvette has been my ringtone for six months- IT IS THE GREATEST SONG EVER MADE AND TO WAKE UP TO IT LITERALLY MAKES MY SOUL CRY WITH PAIN.
3) I googled is prince dead still and it said yes- So apparently google is god now and can just tell me that prince is dead and is never coming back, no matter how many small goats I sacrifice and no MATTER HOW HARD I PRAY!
4) I bought a little red corvette and burned it- I may have read in this “witchcraft” book that if you destroy items in a fire that were somehow connected to the deceased, it could possibly call his soul back into this realm and we could capture it, forcing dead prince to make a new album!
5) He stopped returning my phone calls- Prince and I were on a first name basis and he totally took my calls and it wasn’t my mom I was calling asking me if I was off my meds. Prince and I were best friends and I know that the only reason he would never return my calls is because he was dead. Obviously.
Rochester, NY- The Park Avenue festival is a thing of beauty! It’s a time where we can all reflect and watch as a rather normal group of human beings completely devolve into nothing but sacks of flesh meat that only crave beer and pussy. As the park avenue festival delved later into the night the parties began to rise. One thing is for sure, the park ave festival knows how to keep things nice and white! Yet, that was almost interrupted by the ever evolving Puertorican festival! We had our people on the scene to see how the two worlds almost collided! We spoke with David Lyndon to get the full story!
” It was a real scary scene, me and my boys were just on our third beer pong game because that slut Stacy broke our homemade corn hole set after two gin and tonics, it’s alright though my boy Tom smashed that shit awhile back. Anyways, I was about to head into the house and then I saw this car go by and at first I for sure thought it was the american flag, but then I realized the american flag has more than one star! It was the puertorican flag! I mean what were they doing our neighborhood! Havent they ever seen West side story or world war 2 pictures? They were asking for trouble! Luckily, they ended up turning around because some local cops starting shooting at them, thank god for the police!”
David at that point took out a gun and started firing into the air screaming “Hail Donald trump, long live the never-ending reign of the white man.” To get a different perspective on this scene, we spoke with Miguel Rodriguez a local puertorican resident to see how he felt about the park ave festival.
“Park ave festival? Is that when white people walk around and pretend there happy because they bought some over priced “hand-made” adventure time scarf?”
Yup. That pretty much sums it up.
*Editors Note*
Miguel Rodriguez was quickly brought to justice by the RPD and three random black men and four random black women, all of them which we assure you, deserved to be shot and or arrested.
