Bursting from a psychedelic explosion of fractals and demons, the Mater Suspiria Vision EU/USA tour has kicked off. This pied group from thee experimentations of disco wyrdness played tour opener alongside Anika, Psychic Ills, Teeth of The Sea, Gnod and Magdalena Solsis this last month in Belgium. However due to illness Aura Suspiria was unable to perform, so veteran MSV collaborators, Agnes Pandy and Shazzula improvised as stand-ins.
What is super exciting to Bloglin readers is MSV is finally hitting the states in May to play SF and LA with How I quit Crack. 24th May 2013 San Francisco at 120 Minutes : Elbo Room and 25th May 2013 Los Angeles at Blk Rainbow : Complex with a special DJ set by Blk Rainbow.
MSV is often criticized for having too high output through their label Phantasma Disques. However, as there is such a big gaps in both net and irl cultures between artists doing this kind of work, who really cares right? If you are an avid MSV fan you are going to follow it regardless (and Mater has plenty). If you are a procurer of sounds for large projects you are going to hunt through it all if it fits the vibe the project seeks hmmm? Think catwalk choreographers and film production crews etc.
Keeping track of the label is worth it as Phantasma Disques delivers really incredible releases and pure art. This art is researched and has the blood of cult history running through its veins.
I’m really excited about the Carmen Incarnadine collaboration up for pre-order this summer (usa). Discoteca Droga is a picture disc vinyl with Carmen’s illustrative narration over an undulating MSV soundtrack. A psychedelic audio book; sounds a little Coil-esque?
Mishka will be premiering the trailer of the upcoming movie so watch this space. Check details of the tour including 27th April Dussledorf and 13th July Amsterdam shows here
Almost 40 years later, no one knows for sure what happened to the Lutz family inside the Amityville house. After spending a month there the family fled, claiming that they were attacked by demonic forces. The parents, George and Kathy Lutz, have since died. Did they make these claims in order to get rich and famous? Their surviving three children are the only eyewitnesses alive to what actually happened in that house at 112 Ocean Ave and although the two younger kids refuse to talk, eldest son Danny Lutz reveals all in the documentary My Amityville Horror. He was 10 when the events allegedly happened, and now, as a middle-aged adult, it’s clear that whatever went down has haunted him ever since.
Briefly, for those who haven’t seen the movies or read up on the events, in 1974 inside the house in Amityville, Long Island, an entire family was mass murdered – shot to death while they slept in their beds. How none of them heard the initial shots and fled, no one knows. A year later, the Lutz family moved into the house. Shortly thereafter, they began to encounter some heavy poltergeist shit. Infestations of flies in one room, levitating beds, voices, being shoved, ectoplasm in the boat house, a genuine smorgasbord of horrible shit. The family fled after a month and went public with their claims – sparking book deals, movies, and global press tours.
The documentary speaks with paranormal experts and journalists as it examines whether or not the Lutz’s claims are false. The focus of the film, however, is something much more powerful: the impact the events had on Danny Lutz’s life. As he recounts the events of 1975 one thing that becomes perfectly clear is that he’s 100 percent sincere. There’s no doubt in his mind that everything happened, no matter how much stubborn skepticism and criticism he’s met with. It’s also clear that I wouldn’t want to fuck with him. He looks like a more athletic Michael Chiklis and speaks in a no-nonsense, Long Island accent. He’s very confrontational, always on edge, and boiling over with pain and rage. When the director asks if he’s willing to take a lie-detector test, Danny looks like he’s going to take his head off.
More than any demon or poltergeist, what’s seems to be really haunting Danny is his stepfather, George Lutz. He hated the man with a deep, deep passion and oftentimes felt helpless as George absorbed the rest of the family into his twisted world. As he recounts his experiences he details the relationship he had with George, whose background in the Marines bled over into his “parenting” skills. He had to refer to him as “sir” and was often subjected to degrading military-style marching through the house. When he would ask about the satanic books George kept in the house, he was met with anger.
One thing I found interesting was that despite Danny’s powerful hatred for George, he totally backs up his claims. You’d think that as a rebellious teen he’d want to blow up his shitty stepfather’s spot and expose him for the charlatan he was. The fact that he to this day states that it all really happened despite hating George’s guts was curious to me. Experts in the film note that Danny took these strong feelings towards his hated stepfather and merged them with what allegedly happened during the haunting. They explain that this combination of memory and malice makes the events real in Danny’s mind, even as an adult.
The film never passes judgement on Danny nor does it propose a final solution to the reality of the haunting. I’m not sure what director Eric Walter’s original intentions were for the film, but instead of some revelatory expose on the Amityville Horror, the documentary is a heartbreaking, powerful examination of Danny – a man who has spent his entire life as “the Amityville kid.” In one of the most tragic parts of the film, Danny explains how he’s always known by different names – the names of the fictionalized versions of him in the films. It’s horrible that he’s had to “protect” the 10-year-old in him his whole life against the media and an unbelieving world. Whether you believe him or not, what the film makes clear is that something happened in that house in 1975, and it’s going to haunt Danny for the rest of his life.
Damn, this documentary Sirius really got me out here thinking that maybe aliens are real. Lil dudes that came from outer space in crazy ships, to make wild shadowy deals with the Illuminati. Right about now, I’m real heavy on my Fox Mulder shit.
Normally when we think about alien conspiracies, we think lil dudes came and the government just didn’t tell us. If you wanna get real far out, you assume they’re from the future. If you want to get real sexy, you argue they’re here to probe heads in the butt and jerk dudes off in their spaceships, because aliens use cum as currency. Obviously. Sirius presents the idea that aliens have visited Earth, but, the government covered it up so they could exploit alien technology. Dudes in this video are hard at work to figure out shit like antigravity, zero point energy, and room temperature superconductors; because aliens already did it, but now the Illuminati is keeping it from us. Fascinating. Basically, dudes are trying to tell us that if they’re successful we’ll have flying cars, the Illuminati will be defeated, and infinite energy will be a reality. If that’s not reason enough to give money to these goofy, crazy bastards I don’t know what is.
Oh man, I’ve been waiting for this one. Antiviral is the debut film from Brandon Cronenberg, son of the prolific body-horror pioneer David. For his first feature, Brandon has taken several of the elements his father is known for and delivered his own dark beast – with mixed results. Critics either loved it and saw the film as a passing of the metaphorical torch, while others just wrote it off as an uninspired facsimile of David’s work.
My opinion falls somewhere in the middle. I really liked the film and felt hypnotized the entire time, but the lack of emotion makes it feel as sterile as the medical facilities it depicts. I don’t think he was biting his father’s style though. Can’t a kid be inspired by his old man?
Antiviral is a dystopian tale about a tortured hero at odds with a celebrity obsessed culture. Syd March (played by the appropriately androgynous-looking Caleb Landry Jones) is a young scientist working at the Lucas Clinic – a facility where fans can be injected with viruses extracted directly from their favorite celebrities. Herpes, the flu, genital warts, whatever tickles your fancy. The hottest celeb of the moment is Hannah Geist (Sarah Gordon, who starred in David’s A Dangerous Method), a “perfect” blonde who it seems everyone and their mother is engrossed by.
Syd has a side gig selling viruses on the black market. He injects himself, extracts the virus at his secret home lab, then sells the goods to a local butcher. This butcher doesn’t sell roast beef though. He grows muscle tissue from celebrity cells and offers slabs of it for consumption. This “cell garden” is perfectly legal and the film is filled with great ideas like that, which are also frighteningly believable.
The trouble starts when Syd injects himself with a virus Hannah contracted while in China. Turns out it’s more terrible than usual and will probably kill him. After contraction, he vomits blood a lot and needs a cane to walk. In order to find a cure, he has to go deeper into the underground world of black market virus manipulation. The black market virus business isn’t all just rogue scientists in labs though, it’s way more shady than it sounds.
Part of Syd’s illegal virus game is some kind of copyright alteration using a visual interpretation of the “face” of the illness. I didn’t quite grasp that part, but it was still interesting and reflected the distrust of authority that surrounds the film. Brandon Cronenberg packed a ton of fantastic ideas in 100 minutes. Besides the aforementioned “cell garden”, there are also viruses for dogs extracted from celebrity pets, bizarre virtual whore houses, and “exclusive lines” of viruses. These touches help create the world of Antiviral and give the audience enough information to hypothesize about what the film doesn’t explain. There’s no escaping the film’s message though – that part’s obvious.
And the message is that celeb-obsession is unhealthy. It’s hammered into the audience again and again, but it feels more like intentionally extreme satire rather than ham-fisted storytelling. The way celebrity culture is depicted is hilarious, in fact. TV screens flash infrared crotch shots and Instagrammed topless photos – shit that we look at every day in our culture. There’s a great line Syd’s landlord says about how Hannah contracted her deadly virus: “She was in China looking at orphans.” Not helping or handing out food to, but “looking at orphans.” It’s the type of photo-op shit that happens all the time.
Everything is shot in blown-out white, giving the film a sterile feel. Unfortunately, the same goes for the performances. No one shows any kind of humanity or emotion. We’re not supposed to like Syd, but it would’ve benefited the film to make us care about him a bit. Especially by the end when he’s struggling for his life. But even without an emotional core to connect with, the final shot gave me chills.
Caleb Landry Jones is pretty damn perfect as Syd. He’s a thin and impossibly pale and he looks like he would carry viruses around in his coat pocket in real life. He growls his dialogue and as the virus deteriorates his body, he starts carrying himself like some kind of hunchbacked creature. I only remembered Caleb as the kid in Landry’s Christian rock band in Friday Night Lights, so seeing what he does as Syd is most impressive. It’s a chilling performance and I really hope this kid gets more worthy gigs in the future.
I hope the same for Brandon Cronenberg. Antiviral is filled with promise and despite its flaws, is a really, really good film. It’s got an excellent lead, cool sci-fi ideas, and is well-crafted. I couldn’t emotionally connect to anything about it though, which is the only thing preventing me from calling it a great film. On the other hand, hours after watching it I’m still thinking about it…shit, alright. I give up. It’s a great goddamn film. You win, B. Cronenberg!
I have an irrational fear of things crawling at me. Not just insects, but anything. A few years ago a roommate of mine exploited this and crawled at me full speed in the dark. I did this weird faint/trip thing and wound up breaking my right big toenail. It took about six months for the nail to turn completely black and fall off. That’s what I associate with shit crawling at me.
Lucky for me so much crawling goes down in Mama, the Guillermo Del Toro produced flick written and directed by newcomer Andrés Muschietti. Del Toro backed the film after he saw Muschietti’s short of the same name. That’s just one of the many reasons Del Toro is such a valuable individual in the film industry today: he uses his pull in the business to help hungry artists get a shot. That’s important nowadays when most studios don’t have the financial balls to take any chances.
It’s easy to see why the genre maven championed Mama. The film contains several of Del Toro’s recurring elements – most notably children in peril. Del Toro loves that shit. The children this time around are Lilly (younger) and Victoria (older) – two sisters who’ve spent five years alone in a cabin in the middle of the Virginia woods. They were brought there by their father, who fled with them after killing their mother. The girls are discovered by trackers who’ve been hired by their uncle Luke (Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Both girls hiss and crawl around awfully fast (way too fast for my taste). Lilly, who was barely a toddler when abandoned, keeps crying out for “Mama,” while Victoria hardly remembers how to speak.
After a shockingly short stint in rehab and a brief legal tussle, the girls are sent to live with Luke and his girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain). Chastain is a beast lately. For Mama she’s got her hair dyed black and cut short, with heavy mascara at all times. She looks like every Hot Topic patron’s wet dream. Luke does all the detective work and pushes for custody of the girls, while Annabel begrudgingly supports this major life change.
Once the girls move in though, Annabel becomes the protagonist and we follow her through her transformation from shitty mom to ride or die matriarch. When we first meet Annabel, she’s breathing a sigh of relief over a negative pregnancy test. Throughout the film she expresses her distaste for the girls – frequently referring to the situation as Luke’s “problem.” She’s more resentful than selfish. She had to leave her band and rock and roll lifestyle behind for Luke and the two little feral pip-squeaks.
The movie is about Annabel’s shaky maternal instincts duking it out with the titular apparition – who has some strong maternal faculties of her own. The beauty of monsters in Del Toro films is that they’re actual characters, not just boogie men used for jump scares (although there are plenty of musical-queued ones here). As the girls attempt to assimilate to suburban life, there’s a great side-plot going on in which the who and what Mama is gets revealed. You really feel sympathy for the floating, spidery ghoul too.
It’s a genuinely creepy film with lingering shadows and some really clever devices that make you laugh before you get creeped out. Muschietti’s definitely a competent director. He’s created an emotionally rich, accomplished film similar in vibe to Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone. It’s an ambitious film that feels old-fashioned, but doesn’t remain satisfied with modern horror conventions and crutches. Like Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Mama‘s ending is darkly bittersweet with only a hint of a silver lining. It’s the best god damn horror movie I’ve seen in theaters in a while.
Franck Khalfoun’s remake of the 1980 slasher classic Maniac got some stellar reviews following its festival run earlier this year. And now, to whet our bloody whistles, the studio has released the first six minutes of the film. If you’ve ever dreamed about seeing the world through Elijah Wood’s dreamy eyes, I hope you’re sitting down.
Elijah steps into the legendary shoes of the great Joe Spinell and takes on the role of Frank Zito – the disturbed mannequin maker with serious lady issues. I’m not sure how much, but a chunk of the film is shot in POV – including the six minutes above. The POV slasher cam is a classic approach featured in films ranging from Halloween to the satirical opening of De Palma’s Blow Out. I look forward to seeing how Khalfoun’s Maniac tackles the method.
No one can go toe-to-toe with Spinell, but the fact that Elijah is the physical polar opposite has me really excited for this remake.
I hope A$AP Rocky woke up on Christmas morning and found a copy of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal under the tree. You know that old black and white movie, where a knight meets Death and plays chess with dude while pondering the meaning of life. Yeah, that joint seems like it would be real conducive to Rocky’s mindstate, after seeing the general decor and mise en scene of the “Long Live ASAP” video. Real old world splendor tinged with that existentialism feel the kids are into these days.
Pretty sure living long with ASAP is an eternal party full of pretty bitches and 101 occult imagery. I’m not mad at that. Honestly, isn’t that the life all of us been trying to live anyway? Where you watch broads stick fight for fun and chill in modernist Victorian armchair/thrones.
Christmas-related horror films are always a good time. The concept of homicidal rampages during the season of love and giving makes these films gleefully absurd and instantly offensive. While it wasn’t the first of the holiday horror films, 1984′s Silent Night, Deadly Night is the most celebrated of the subgenre. After it’s release, the film was shunned by Gene Siskel on television and pretty much chased out of theaters.
The idea of a bloodthirsty Santa offended the shit out of plenty of people, but it’s also a really good and interesting movie. Unlike most slashers, Silent Night, Deadly Night follows our killer Billy from boyhood to young adult – through watching his parents killed by a man dressed as Santa to having Mother Superior force feed him sexual repression in an orphanage, we’re there for his entire origin story. When his boss forces him to dress as a department store Santa, the nativity knifing begins!
28 years later, director Steven Miller’s remake is in name only. Earlier this year Miller’s Aggression Scaleblew our faces off with its hyperviolent approach to kid vs. home intruders ala Home Alone. With Silent Night, he further proves he knows how to shoot creative, colorful violence and create some really tense set-pieces. The problem is that all the talent behind a camera can’t save a hollow movie.
Silent Night is set in a small town on Christmas Eve. The town is preparing for its annual Santa Parade, in which hundreds of folks dress as Santa march through downtown – making it the perfect camouflage for a killer Santa to do some work. A big problem right off the batis that we don’t know anything about the killer. Just that there’s an urban legend about some guy who dresses as Santa who travels from town to town and goes on murder sprees every Christmas. There doesn’t seem to be any thought behind his murders. He does give them gifts before he kills them, but that small plot point doesn’t pay off. He does seem to only kill people who are selfish (a whiny little brat) and involved in some illicit, racy stuff (a man cheating on his wife, a drug dealer, a softcore porno crew, etc.).
So maybe somehow this Santa knows who’s being naughty or nice, but it probably has more to do with slasher tropes than anything else. You fuck, you die. You bitch, you die. You run naked through a Christmas tree lot screaming your face off, you die. But while the original Silent Night dealt out killings based on Billy’s twisted, moral worldview that was pounded into him at the orphanage (making us sympathetic towards him at the same time), we don’t know anything about the killer in Miller’s film. Him going around slaying “bad” people has no depth to it other than it makes for some fun kills.
Malcolm McDowell plays the sheriff and boy howdy is he an idiot. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more inept fictional sheriff. Every single theory he comes up with turns out to be wrong and he never believes Aubrey (Jaime King), the only cop in town with a head on her shoulders. Santa’s got beef with Aubrey and when they finally have a showdown at the end, it’s revealed there’s a connection between the two characters. It’s not as complicated as you think, it’s more predictable than shocking. For the final showdown Santa busts out the homemade flamethrower, which I really liked.
While Silent Night is a remake in name and taxidermy death only, it’s sure to satisfy slasher fans. Miller’s got a great eye for violence and chases, of which there are plenty of here. It’s definitely worth a watch with your loved ones and plenty of spiked eggnog.
One of the most intriguing artists hanging about in the online underground is ϟ†Nϟ. Of course he is very active at local level, in his hometown of Toronto too. Maybe you know him for his powerful sound forces, his gloomy dark videos or remixes, or perhaps you have seen his spellbinding visual art that is sometimes explicit, always arousing and very beautiful. You could imagine them hanging on a wall on set in a 2016 David Lynch movie. He did the artwork for Mishka’s Halloween mixtape ‘Grim Harvest’ and has the most gorgeous and rare aesthetic for the cover of his sell out Black Bvs Records, Murmur EP. Get a free download of that HERE.
Everyone knows/loves the CRIM3S and Crossover remixes he did. Recently ϟ†Nϟ played the Crystal Castles afterparty, opened for oOoOO and Gatekeeper. He also has dudes from The Occult Research Bureau wearing his sell out merch. He’s got that sexy black metal dark electronic look going on and like any good dark artist; he’s mysterious as all hell.
I thought it was about time I asked a few questions of this Canadian who (spiritually) follows Thelema (a philosophy or religion that was developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley ~ Wiki).
TWPS: You released the Murmur EP on Black Bvs Records earlier in 2012. The artwork is captivating and layers mirrored retro-femme imagery under what looks like sigils. What is the power of ‘murmur’ to you? Why use such images? What do the symbols mean?
ϟ†Nϟ: The symbol is the sigil for Duke Murmur from the Goetia. The images were from old pin up magazines. Most of those women are probably dead now. I am fascinated by the fact all beauty fades and eventually dies, even our solar system will one day die. Knowing this has deepened my appreciation for the beauty around me. All the art was designed using techniques from sacred geometry. Ancient religious icons were designed in a similar fashion. The underlining compositions are the same as structures found in nature, because of this it creates a calming, soothing effect which is somewhat entrancing.
TWPS: The word ‘Sin’ takes on varied meanings worldwide from the Christian view as a violation of god’s will to the Hindu view of creating bad karma. What does it mean to you? Why the name of your project?
ϟ†Nϟ: “The word of sin is restriction.” ~ Liber al vel Legis 1:41. After saying SINS so many times it has lost all its original meaning to me. The word is just some vowels and constants and I wished to give them a new context. When someone evolves on a spiritual level and is performing their True Will, they have no need for the state or church to define for them what is right and what is wrong.
TWPS: You reference religion in the title of the Cops and Christians track. What does this mean? Why Cops and why Christians?
ϟ†Nϟ: I fuckin’ hate Cops!!! And I really don’t like Christians too much either! They are the oppressors. Many world religions have a path were a person can reach for enlightenment. Whereas Christianity says “sit down and shut up, don’t do anything wrong or you’re going to hell for eternity”. Right wing Christianity is evil. Their message is not one of love and tolerance, but one of hate and condemnation. For example, these Baptist ministers with their signs saying “God Hates Fags”, many of my homies are gay, lesbian or some of the other miscellaneous things these people seem to hate. If anyone ever came near me with one of those signs I would probably break it over their face. SINS stands against all forms of oppression.
TWPS: Your CRIM3S/Holes remix was called ‘Church Burning’…?
ϟ†Nϟ: Similar to the answer before, except while working on the remix I was simultaneously watching footage on youtube of the Norwegian Church Burnings. I found the imagery of the flaming churches went really well with the remix and helped inspire me to tap into that primal place I need to be to make cold, bleak music.
TWPS: Aleister Crowley?
ϟ†Nϟ: I believe that A.C. did more for the spiritual evolution of mankind than anyone else in recent history.
TWPS: What are common rituals you undertake when creating a piece of work?
ϟ†Nϟ: Every day, I meditate for up to an hour, I perform Liber Resh, banish, invoke, align myself with the universe and with my True Will. I am an initiate into an order and I have intensive work that I need to do for that as well. My process is less about doing a particular ritual prior to creating and more a product of years of daily ritual work.
TWPS: You once described to me your live show visuals as dark and mildly satanic. What does ‘mildly satanic’ actually mean to you? What have been some public reactions to your live shows?
ϟ†Nϟ: I think SINS is better live. It is more immersive and there are the aspects of improvisation and the chaos of a live atmosphere. My friend SARIN helps me with my live shows. SARIN is an amazing video artist. Everything is synced to video and the video is dark but playful. Cops cruising each other in a gay bar, Mad Max, Nuns hanging themselves, The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers, Kenneth Anger, etc.
Recently a young lady started freaking out after my set. I think she must have had a drug induced psychotic break, it literally looked like she was possessed, she was in an extremely agitated state of fear, was pulling at her face and it took two big cops to restrain her to stop her from hurting herself. I said to you something like “I hope my mildly satanic imagery didn’t set her off”, kind of as a joke. The footage is mildly satanic in the sense that it has a lot of occult imagery and it’s pretty dark. My idea is to create in the audience a sense of ‘Life is kinda fucked up, it can be ugly and tragic but it is also beautiful so I might as well just dance.’
TWPS: You once told me you had a leading figure in the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) and Thelema staying at your house and you were “nerding out” with him. What did you guys get up to?
ϟ†Nϟ: Yeah that was a great weekend. I helped organize a lecture with Dr. Shoemaker called ‘Initiation and the path of the return’. He is an electronic musician as well, so we played with my synths a bit and I picked his brain about the path that I am on. He was a student of Phyllis Seckler, who was a student of Jane Wolfe, who was a student of Aleister Crowley. It is amazing to have access to such a direct lineage to Crowley.
TWPS: The online underground music communities tend to thrive on fast and constant transition. Does this ever affect you as an artist?
ϟ†Nϟ: Having access to a constant stream of new information isn’t the solution, learning how to navigate that information and edit the good from the bad so as to effect positive change in your world is the real solution. I don’t think people understand that yet. This focus on fast and constant transition used to affect me in the sense that it annoyed me. I stopped talking to a lot of people in the industry because they would post things like “genre X is dead, you heard it here first people” I got super annoyed at these nerds thinking they can control the music industry from behind their little laptop screens – because they can’t.
I have been messing around with synths since I was a young teenager, and I have seen little change at all in the big picture of electronic music, except that it is now more popular than ever before. Styles come and go, technology changes the soundscape marginally, but in the end not much changes. I try to not stick to one genre very long when I DJ and I try to illustrate this with my Two Headed Snake mixes, they are constantly switching genres but mostly everything is electronic and everything fits together fine.
TWPS: What’s the next step for SINS? What can we see over 2013 from you?
ϟ†Nϟ: I am planning a big release on Pretty Pretty Records, which will be a vinyl release. Pretty Pretty is definitely a label to watch for in 2013. As well as working on some remixes for HUREN, Mauzoleum and Owl Vision. My new album is inspired heavily by Mad Max, 80s biker sluts, New Beat music, Norwegian Black Metal, fighting oppression and transcending my own personal struggles.
I have two live SINS shows coming up in Toronto. Dec 21st with the crew from Pretty Pretty, Tarantula X, Ell V Gore, Kontravoid at Bambi’s and New Years Eve with a party I help organize called Shit Fun, which is essentially a noisey dance party, at Double Double Land… And my mind is set on a tour soon, there are some legal issues with me crossing into the U.S. of A., but I am getting that sorted out. And of course SINS needs to tour Europe soon too.
If you want to get to know him eeeven betterrr and suss out what motivates him artistically (if u can) – stream/download a TWO HEADED SNAKE mix.
While we have reality shows in America about the fame satellites that orbit Kim Kardashian’s ass and over sugared redneck children, in the UK they’re using reality shows to do good. By “good”, I mean playing horrible practical jokes on people that could have irreversible psychological effects.
On “Apocalypse”, magician/mentalist Derren Brown, uses hypnotism, actors, hacking, and elaborate props to convince a random dude that the world is coming to an end, and is infested with zombies. If that isn’t one of the best concepts for a reality show since The Real World, I’ll watch every episode of The Bachelor. Brown claims the entire show is about teaching the subject about the value of life, as the kid they choose is worthless slacker. Supposedly, stripping him of everything he has and convincing him that the dead are walking the earth is going to help him not be a shit in normal life. In reality, the show is about exploiting this dudes fear for our collective enjoyment. I can get behind that idea wholeheartedly, because what reality TV is really great for, is schadenfreude.
Derren Brown’s Apocalypse isn’t available on US television yet, but a little bit of searching on Youtube will quickly allow you to find both episodes in full. Get on that before they get pulled down, or zombies destroy our infrastructure and the internet becomes a legend we tell our children about while we huddle around fires eating spam from the can.
