I Sense a Pattern

So I finally saw The Machinist last weekend, since it kept coming up. I also rented Memento this weekend. I'd always meant to see it, and since Chris Nolan did such a good job with Batman Begins, I decided to go ahead and rent it. But while I was in the movie rental store today, I felt like watching a horror flick. And since Sluggy is doing a 28 Days Later parody (and, again, I'd always meant to see it), I decided to rent that in addition to Memento. The names on the box are actually the names of the people at the beginning of the movie that release the infection, then don't appear in the movie ever again. So imagine my surprise when I saw Scarecrow walking through the abandoned streets of London. And what's truly ironic about that is the reason I felt like seeing a horror movie is that I'm looking forward to seeing Red Eye in two weeks. I have to wonder - is my brain doing this to me on purpose? Will I start leaving myself post-its or tattooing my arms? It's freaky.

So, anyway, how about the movies? They were all good. 28 Days was best, followed by Memento, then The Machinist. Sluggy's parody is funnier than ever, now that I get most of the references. The Machinist and Memento both play with your mind very effectively. The two movies are actually amazingly alike. The protagonist in each movie suffers from an extreme condition (insomnia in the former, short-term memory loss in the latter) that are the result of a trauma in their life. I'm tempted to watch Memento backwards (DVDs make that relatively easy) just to see how well it flows (the movie tells the story backwards, by the way).

But while I consider Memento and The Machinist mystery-thrillers, 28 Days Later is pure horror. It starts out pretty standard, with the running away from "the infected" (they're not really zombies, because they're still alive, just very, very angry) and searching for a safe haven. But it starts to get more and more disturbing as time goes on. I'm frankly more frightened of the soldiers they run into than I am of the zombies. The Major needs a Section 8 right quick (I know it's England, but I don't know their term for it). I actually prefer the alternate ending. It's more along the lines of how I expected the movie to end. I understood what they were going for, but apparently most people didn't, so they went with the ending that was released to theaters. All in all, though, a well done genre film.