By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 20 seconds ago

Right now, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is tearing through theaters like a one-man army. This film is the latest adaptation of an ancient Greek text about a soldier trying to find his way home after helping to win a costly battle. Specifically, Odysseus helped to bring the Trojan War to an end, which is ironic when you think about it. After all, the success of this fictional tale might have finally brought a real-world conflict to an end. Namely, the endless culture wars fought by the bravest keyboard warriors this side of 4chan.

For many months now, all of the usual suspects have been whinging about Nolan’s casting decisions. This included having Lupita Nyong’o play Helen of Troy and having Elliot Page play Sinon, a Greek warrior. At the prospect of (gasp!) a Black woman and a trans man playing Greek characters, haters began screeching that the film was woke garbage that would bomb at the box office. That is, of course, the conventional wisdom of the old adage: “go woke, go broke.” However, The Odyssey earned a whopping $264.1 million in its opening weekend, providing a lesson everyone should learn. The lesson? Repeat after me: the internet is not real life.

There Is No Normal

When I’m not dropping hot takes about movies and TV shows, I’m a professor at a humble state college. One of the life lessons I try to impart to all my students is that there is no normal; there is only what has been normalized around you. Are you in a room with nothing but flat-earthers? In that scenario, you’d be considered the crazy one. After a while, you might even start to believe what they are saying. This is just human nature … everyone wants to fit in rather than be an outcast. Eventually, it becomes easier to drink the Kool-Aid of wacky groupthink than to speak truth to a bunch of idiots.

What does this have to do with The Odyssey? Everything, really. Despite once clinging to the mantra “facts don’t care about your feelings,” the conservatives predicting that the movie would bomb didn’t have any real data to suggest that would happen; instead, they just had the rancid vibes of everyone in their preferred virtual spaces insisting that the film would flop. This is a practical example of the flat-earther example above. You can only hear the majority of people in your favorite online groups predict doom for so long before those predictions seem inevitable. Nobody wants to question the narrative because that’s the quickest way to get ostracized from the group.

The Internet Is Not Real Life

Now, the success of The Odyssey (it made over a quarter of a billion dollars in the first weekend!) has destroyed that narrative on its own. What has that done to the naysayers who predicted its doom? Some have retreated into conspiracy theories; millionaires must be buying out empty theaters! The movie is only successful because it pandered to woke elites! It’s only making money because of presales! The expensive IMAX tickets inflated the numbers! These are just a few conspiracies being peddled by intractable crazies who can’t comprehend The Odyssey being popular and successful. Their narrative has fallen apart, proving once and for all that the internet is not real life.

Regardless of its political leanings, every single online group you are part of has its own biases about countless topics. This includes what is or isn’t woke. But part of being a grownup is realizing that these groups’ opinions don’t reflect the wider culture anymore than your childhood friends’ opinions reflect the opinions of everyone in your hometown. If you and your buddies hate a new bar but it gets more crowded by the month, then most people clearly like it. And if the movie all of your online buddies have called woke garbage earns hundreds of millions in the first weekend, then it’s clearly both popular and successful.

The Culture War Is Over

Everyone votes with their dollars. If having a Black woman or a trans man portray a Greek character was a huge dealbreaker, mainstream audiences would have boycotted The Odyssey. If the average moviegoer actually cared about tweaking the lore of a 3,000-year-old poem, they’d have avoided the film. The fact that the movie is doing gangbusters at the box office is proof that most going to see it aren’t fretting over politics or culture war narratives. They just wanted to see a giant blockbuster filled with great actors; Christopher Nolan, whose every film has been successful, gave those audiences exactly what they wanted, and he’s being rewarded for it.

That’s how you can tell (and you may want to sit down for this) that the whole idea of a culture war is fake. Under capitalism, the predominant culture and cultural preferences are represented by what people pay for. The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t fail because it was woke; it failed because it was another low-effort film from a fading franchise. Obsession didn’t succeed because it was anti-woke; it succeeded because it had fresh ideas, killer performances, and a visionary director. In short, audiences just want a good film, and a movie’s box office is the most reliable barometer of mainstream audiences’ opinion on a major blockbuster film.

Freaks And Greeks

Given its own massive box office, The Odyssey is clearly a movie that appeals to mass audiences. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to like it or that it is necessarily a great film; after all, plenty of terrible movies are still insanely profitable. And you don’t have to approve of the casting, either. If boycotting this movie because of those two actors is that important to you, nobody’s going to drag you to go see it. But if you’re still hating and claiming this movie will bomb, you are officially the minority opinion on Christoper Nolan’s latest film, one that could easily earn over a billion dollars when all is said and done. 

Again, the takeaway here is that the internet isn’t real life. Did everyone in your scoldmaxxing online circles predict The Odyssey would fail? Now you know how much those predictions are worth. Were you utterly convinced that Elliot Page’s brief appearance in this film would destroy Nolan’s chances of success? Now you know how little the average person actually cares about these things. Fortunately, you can avoid these problems by putting the phone down, walking away from the computer, and going outside at least once a day. When you start talking to real people and not digital avatars, you might start caring less about what the internet has to say.

Regularly going outside is the best thing for anyone who has spent months liking countless posts about how The Odyssey would fail. If that’s you, then do us all a favor and touch some grass while you’re out there!

By Robert Scucci
| Published 31 seconds ago

Movies like Dr. Giggles aren’t meant to be taken seriously, and I’ll point out one tell you may not have noticed that drives this point home. The movie is called Dr. Giggles. Comedy slashers of the ’90s are something special because their self-awareness is what often drives the humor, and this film is no exception. From its over-the-top usage of one-liners to its clever kills carried out through the inappropriate use of various medical implements, Dr. Giggles is an absolute riot from start to finish that will have you busting a gut with laughter.

Deranged Doctor’s Revenge

Before we get to the blood and guts, I need to quickly establish the premise for Dr Giggles, but it won’t take long. The deranged son of a murderous doctor named Evan Rendell returns to his hometown to exact revenge against those who killed his father after being locked up in an insane asylum for 35 years. Dr. Evan Rendell Jr, or Dr. Giggles as he is more affectionately known, wants to finish his father’s work by cutting the hearts out of his soon-to-be victims.

Dr. Evan Rendell Senior cut out his victims’ hearts before his death so he could find a replacement heart that could help him resurrect his dead wife. Dr. Giggles, on the other hand, just wants to kill his victims for the love of the game. However, Jennifer Campbell (Holly Marie Combs) becomes a victim of interest because she’s wearing a heart monitor, indicating to the deranged doctor that she’s afflicted with an illness not unlike his deceased mother’s.

Punning Psychopath

The above rundown is basically all you need to know about Dr. Giggles, and for me to tell you why this movie is such an effective horror comedy. The titular doctor, portrayed by Larry Drake, is an unhinged psychopath who speaks almost exclusively in puns as if he were a doctor with a questionable bedside manner.

Belting out one-liners like “leave it in for at least a minute” after impaling one of his victim’s heads with a thermometer, and “if you think that’s bad, wait until you get my bill,” it goes without question that Drake thoroughly enjoyed himself while seemingly ad-libbing his way through his HMO-violating rampage.

Everybody Understands The Assignment

Dr. Giggles‘ premise is further elevated by the fact that every other character in this movie pretty much plays it straight. As far as victim behavior goes, you might as well be watching a serious slasher like Halloween, but they’re running from … this guy. Imagine running from a serial killer who you think is going to stab you to death only for him to violently pump your stomach because he thought you ate too much ice cream, and wanted to remind you to cut down on your sugar intake.

The tonal juxtaposition between a slash-happy sociopath and his slaughtered subjects makes for a great watch because the gore is offset by fearless levels of campiness. In other words, Dr Giggles is not a serious slasher, but it plays out like one, which only adds to its entertainment value.

If you want to see a feature length horror comedy that resembles something you’d see in an episode of Tales from the Crypt, then Dr. Giggles should be your next watch. Just make sure you’re up to date on your life insurance policy because you may die of laughter.

As of this writing, Dr. Giggles is streaming for free on Tubi, YouTube, Xumo Play, Pluto TV, Amazon Prime Video, and The Roku Channel.

By Jason Collins
| Published 2 days ago

Here’s an unpopular opinion: there haven’t been that many good horror movies in the past 20 years since the genre was reduced to action scenes combined with jump scares and loud audio mixes. They all follow the same formula and feature nebulous elements, such as demonic nuns or killer dolls (this statement excludes the Child’s Play franchise.) However, there have been a few movies that have been worth revisiting since their release, and Pandorum is definitely one of those movies.

Cannibals, INNNN SPACEEEEE!

Pandorum follows the story of the remnants of the human race who, following the depletion of Earth’s resources due to human overpopulation, board an interstellar ark, which embarks on a 123-year trip to colonize a different Earth-like planet. Its passengers are placed in hypersleep, and a rotating crew of techs and engineers wake up biennially to maintain the ship. However, not everything went according to plan, and sometime later, two members of the flight crew, Bower (Ben Foster) and Payton (Dennis Quaid), awakened.

The improper emergence from hypersleep leaves them with partial amnesia and Pandorum, a space-related disorder that causes psychosis when under stress. They also find the interstellar arc in a horrific condition; their journey still lasts, but the unstable nuclear reactor is causing power surges throughout the spaceship, which Bower sets out to find. But instead of a faulty reactor, he finds cannibalistic space mutants he now has to evade while attempting to reset the reactor and restore normal power to the ship.

A Psychological Thriller Wrapped In Sci-Fi Horror

As it turns out, the cannibalistic space mutants have been on board for quite some time, hunting several crew members who had been awake for some time as well; some of whom have also developed the Pandorum disorder. By the film’s end, several plot twists occur, keeping the viewers at the edge of their seats, as the horrifying facts about the ark, its inhabitants, and the mutants begin to reveal themselves, after which a fight for survival ensues.

We won’t spoil Pandorum for any of our readers, but we’ll state that the script, which is actually an amalgamation of two separate but similar works, is good, with a good introduction to the story. The screenplay is also masterfully done, while the whole narrative immerses the viewers in exploring the ship and its history along with the protagonists. The downside is that certain characters could have been developed better.

The special effects were impressive, but they weren’t enough to save Pandorum from a disappointing theatrical run. Despite a reported $33 million production budget, the film earned only about $20 million worldwide. We usually argue that the box office says a lot about a movie’s quality, but there are always exceptions. Pandorum is one of them. Its ambitious ideas and gripping premise deserved a much better reception, even if the execution doesn’t always live up to the script’s potential.

Despite its sci-fi setting, Pandorum is first and foremost a psychological survival horror film. It explores isolation, madness, memory, and identity while forcing its characters to confront the collapse of civilization into pure anarchy. It’s a tense, unsettling experience that uses its futuristic backdrop to amplify the horror rather than overshadow it.

Furthermore, its ending promised a sequel, which was most likely scrapped following the film’s poor performance at the box office. Those interested in watching Pandorum can stream the movie for free on Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, and Amazon Prime Video.