Movie #755: The Menu

The Menu is a horror-comedy starring Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Hong Chau, Nicholas Hoult, John Leguizamo, Aimee Carrero, Janet McTeer, Paul Adelstein, Richard Birney, Judith Light, Christina Brucato, Rob Yang, Arturo Castro, and Mark St. Cyr.

Twelve people, including our POV character Margot (Taylor-Joy) get tables at the highly exclusive Hawthorn restaurant, run by the acclaimed chef Julian Slowik (Fiennes). Margot couldn't really care less, but her date Tyler (Hoult) is a rabid foodie, and worships Slowik. The other folks at dinner all have their own reasons to be there. The Leibrands (Light and Birney) are regulars, Diaz (Leguizamo) is a movie star here with his assistant Felicity (Carrero), famed food critic Lillian Bloom (McTeer) is here with her editor Ted (Adelstein), and then there are three finance bros (Yang, Castro, St. Cyr). 

Right away, something is off. The restaurant's maitre d', Elsa (Chau), gives them a tour of the island (oh, right, this restaurant is on a goddamn island), shows them the tiny dorm where all the staff lives, and it's all super serious. And frankly, it's at about the point where she says "we all live here, we all work incredibly hard and long hours, no one gets burned out" that I think I'd have said "oh, shit. This is a cult. I'll swim home, thanks."

But we ain't seen nothing yet. The meal begins and it quickly becomes clear that Chef Slowik is building to something awful - each dish comes with a disturbing and highly personal monologue, but it all comes to a head when his sous chef (Alan Aalderks) introduces a dish and then shoots himself in the goddamn head. The rich regulars try to leave and Elsa has the staff lop off his ring finger, and that's when it really sinks in - you're all screwed. Everyone dies tonight. 

And everyone does, almost. It turns out that Tyler has known all about this arrangement but was just as taken as the rest of the cultists with Slowik, and came along knowing that he was going to die. More to the point, he hired Margot (an escort) when his girlfriend dumped him, rather than lose his table. Slowik, however, knows exactly what kind of man he is, humiliates him, and then has him hang himself in a closet. So much for being able to identify the taste of bergemot. 

Margot escapes only because she doesn't belong - she's a service worker but not a cultist, and she taps into the last dregs of Slowik's passion for cooking by having him make her a cheeseburger (and as a burger aficionado myself, goddamn that burger looked amazing). Everyone else becomes human s'mores.

So, I really like this movie and I was annoyed it didn't get Oscar noms - I personally feel that it should have gotten at least a Screenplay nod, and the moment when Margot asks Slowik to make her a cheeseburger and how Slowik's face lights up so very subtly is just chef's kiss, if you'll pardon the expression. Fiennes' performance is amazing, and we don't see much of the staff apart from Elsa, but what we do see nicely takes the usual militaristic form of high-end kitchens and nudges into cult territory. 

Actually, this movie does a really nice job of making all of the characters (except maybe Tyler) somewhat sympathetic. The finance bros are dicks, the movie star is a name-dropper and a phony, the old couple are quintessential rich trash, but at no point when horrible things are happening to them do you think "yeah, fuck these people, they deserve it." But at the same time, I go round and round about whether Slowik is a sympathetic character in any way, and I don't think he is...but his grievance is legit. People like Tyler do come into his world and poke at things, pretend they know shit, and then blather on without an iota of an idea of the work that goes into it. The high-end restaurant world does grind you down (hell, I've seen the same thing happen on a much smaller scale in RPGs; being creative is not enough, but all the extra shit you have to do burns the creativity right out). And all of that absolutely does not provide any justification for Slowik to terrorize, torture, and murder people. 

Meanwhile, Margot provides the only voice of realism in the movie. Everyone else is just so bought in to this world of "mouthfeel" and "pairing" and "food telling a story," and then there's Margot. It'd be tempting to say that she just wants a burger (and, like, to not die) but she actually wins by getting at the heart of the problem - it's not that Slowik lost his passion, it's that it was burned out. 

It's a comedy, but it's very dark, and it's well-done black comedy (that is, not descending into extremism and goofy violence). And holy cats, it changes a great deal on a second viewing, particularly the dynamic between Tyler and Margot.

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium rare

Next up: Mister Roberts

Board Game: Robinson Cruose: Adventures on the Cursed Island

No monkey butlers, sadly.

The Game: Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island
The Publisher: Portal Games
Time: 2-3 hours
Players: Me, Michelle, Amanda

Game Play: Robinson Crusoe, despite the name, doesn't really have anything to do with the titular novel other than it concerns being stranded on an island. It's a cooperative survival board game, and holy shit there are a lot of moving parts. We start off choosing a scenario; the game book (which is the size of a decent-thickness magazine, as is common for such games) advises the first one, "Castaways," so that's the one we tried. In brief, we have 12 turns to build a roof, a palisade, and a woodpile that can be lit on fire should a ship happen by. Fail to do so, or if any character dies, we all lose. Easy-peasy.

Narrator: It was neither easy nor peasy

Game play progresses across six phases: Event (draw an event card, read it out, discover how you're screwed this turn, typically it takes resources away or limits your actions); Morale (if your Morale is positive, the First Player gets Determination tokens; if it's negative, them lose them); Production (gain resources based on what's available in your camp); Actions (a whole other thing); Weather (determine whether you lose resources to snow, rain, beasts, or all three); Night (eat or die). 

It legit took all three of us just to get the stuff out of the box and set up

It might seem from the above that the game is unforgiving. That ain't the half of it. The "Action Phase", which is really the meat of the game, is even more so. Check it out.

There are a number of actions to take: You can explore the island, uncovering new tiles and therefore new resources, places to move one's camp to, beasts to hunt, and scenario-related events. You can gather resources from tiles other than your camp. You can build stuff (which opens up into a whole other subset of stuff, because building Roof is different than building Weapons is different than making Items out of Inventions). You can hunt animals to get food and hides. You can hang out in camp and boost the Morale, or you can rest and heal. If you devote two action tokens to any of these tasks, you automatically succeed. If you just devote one, you roll three special dice, each of which controls a different aspect of the task: whether you get hurt in the process, whether you draw an Adventure card, and whether you actually succeed. 

Whew, is that it?

"Not remotely!"

Complications abound. Adventure cards typically give you the choice between discarding them, no harm, no foul, or taking an immediate benefit but shuffling them into the Event Deck, but when it comes back up it has a deleterious effect. If you have to pay a resource of any kind and you can't, you take a wound. Take too many wounds and your Morale goes down. Healing isn't especially hard, all things considered, but if you heal a wound and cross the "Morale barrier," it doesn't go back up. As such, it's possible to take a wound, lose Morale, heal a wound, and then take another wound and lose more Morale within one phase. Hunting is a good way to get resources, but you generally don't know what you're hunting until you commit and if the beast's strength is higher than the Weapon level, you might still kill it but it'll wreck your shit.

There's a lot going on, is my point

So anyway, we got to the 10th round and then died from snow.  

The terrifying blizzard

Opinions: In the excellent video game review series "Zero Punctuation," Yahztee Croshaw describes the "cockup cascade," a situation in games like Hitman where one mistake quickly compounds until it's easier just to reload a save. Robinson Crusoe is quite a lot of cockup cascading, and frankly I don't know how to avoid them yet because I've only played once. It is neither easy nor forgiving. There are a lot of rules that are important but that I didn't mention above.

But for all that, the game is fun. And, although there's a hell of a lot going on, the game board arranges the information such that you can find it and your eyes flow naturally over the board with the progression of the game. There are a few rules that aren't explained as well as they might be - the Build action in particular could have used more examples - but overall we didn't have difficulty playing the game except inasmuch as we couldn't make progress before a fucking hurricane came along and wrecked everything. 

Alas, poor carpenter

Keep? Yep!

Character Creation: The Tribe: Humanity's Last Hope

Some games you start reading and go "ooh!" Some you start reading and go "eh." Some you start reading and then start desperately looking for a reason to exclude it from the project because you know doing a character with any degree of attention to the game, which is the whole goddamn point of this project, is going to eat more hours from your life than you'd really like to feed it and you were hoping to do this character before going out to a play today and it's a fucking PbtA game which means it should be quick but

The Game: The Tribe: Humanity's Last Hope
The Publisher: Unfortunate Worlds Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: None, and yet so much
Books Required: Just the one

Sorry, zoned out a moment there.

The Tribe: HLH reads a lot like a mid/late-90s World of Darkness game. Actually it reminds me in a lot of ways of Hunter: The Reckoning. Sure, the system isn't as explicitly designed to thumb its nose at the players as HtR's was, but just in terms of how the book is structured, how the game is presented, and the overall vibe of the world, it rings some bells.

So in brief, because something about this game should be, you're playing members of a cult formed by a guy named Jefferson Davis Mitchell who was a Viet Nam vet and was trained by MK Ultra and there are squid-aliens from another dimension infecting humanity and eating dogs oh and also I guess you can call on the power of the loa because Jefferson Davis Mitchell (whom I hasten to remind you is named Jefferson Davis) was raised in part by a Creole nanny? 

This. Game. Is. 450. Pages. Long.

And like, infuriatingly, there are bits of it that are compelling, but I'll get to that. Mostly I was wondering how the hell a PbtA game got bloated out that big (I mean, whatever else PbtA games are, they don't tend to have long bestiaries or combat chapters or equipment lists, which is where a lot of RPGs get their fat), but then I realized that what happened is that no darlings were ever killed ever in the creation of this game. Every idea that the author had is in here. There are too many moves (it's not as bad as Dead Scare, but few things are), too many playbooks, and way too much interstitial fiction. 

Not every PbtA game needs to be lean, of course, and my name is certainly on a lot of 400+ page books, but fuck me, this is just hard to read. And then there's shit like this:

Ableist verbiage aside, if you have no skill in layout (I can relate), you hire someone who does. If you can't afford that, then fine, but this "I'm bad at this lol" shit is annoying. The tone of the book is like this a lot, it's friendly and chatty but maybe a little too much so. 

Well, anyway, character creation works like this:

"Starting Situation" is a deceptively simple phrase. The truth of the matter is that setting up the Starting Situation is very much like Durance or tremulus, in that the group makes a bunch of decisions that lead to a combination of factors that kicks things off. And when I mentioned there are things about this game I find compelling, that's in large part what I was talking about - I really like that setup and I think it strikes a nice balance between giving the table pre-written scenarios and letting them design collaboratively. Of course, I'm not going to go through the whole processes m'self, so I'll pick one at random, and then pick a playbook, and go from there. 

The random roll gives me "Clique," which really should be called "Band", but whatever. Check it:

I'm not actually going to use the example presented because it's boring (and frankly too well fleshed out to be useful for my purposes), but just the write-up here gives me enough to go on. Next step, we pick a playbook and make a Tribal to fit into this setup. 14 playbooks (not counting advanced ones), that's...a lot. 

Well, anyway, the one that interests me is the Loner, the guy that has trouble letting go of life before joining the Cult Tribe. Yes, that means I'm effectively a POV character, but that's fine. So let's think about this guy; how'd he roped into not only the Tribe, but this band?

Let's say he's the keyboardist for the band, but he's mostly their manager. He knows a few chords and he practices so he's getting better, but his presence onstage is mostly superfluous. Really, he's good at scheduling (look, play what you know) and good at figuring out how long it's gonna take to get from one city to another. He books the gigs, keeps in touch with club managers and so forth, and manages the (very) occasional press contact. As such, he pretty much has to keep one foot in the non-cult world. His name is Nolan Leger, but in the Tribe he's called "Grid." 

(An aside: Everyone has jolly pirate nicknames. Nolan is called "Grid" because he talks about seeing the schedule in his head as a grid. It's not always a sexy story.) 

For Look, I'll say "everyday casual." And then on to stats...do I make any decisions here? Oh, yeah, I get to add one to a stat. Boy, it'd be nice if that were in the chargen section or on the sheet. Anyway, I think I'll bump Smoke by one, and obviously Citizen. (There's two lines of stats and each line gets a free point to throw around.)

I get the Inside Job move, and then one more from the playbook list. I shall take...oh, Do-Right Man, obviously. As long as I act normal and not like a fucking cultist I can interact with Citizen and Authority NPCs like, well, a normal person. 

Pull is this game's Strings, and normally I wouldn't bother, but the Loner defines three people from "Up Top" (that is, in the real world without the squid-monsters) who are still influential, and since that's so important for this playbook I'd better do that. So OK:

Nina Leger (my sister) is still an awkward part of my life. Nina super doesn't get why Nolan is living like this and figures he might be in a cult or addicted or something.

Bill Utz is the person I failed. Bill was a local, used to do trivia night at the bar with Nolan and a couple other guys that barely knew each other. One night Nolan got caught up in some Tribal-related shit (it was violent, people got shot, Nolan doesn't like to talk about it) and fucking Bill, for no better reason than he wanted to help, got caught in the crossfire. He's still alive, but he's not doing well. And finally, that same night, Kendra Smith (waitress at the bar), was the one who uncovered the squid-people in the parking lot doing horrible squid-people shit. She's the reason he got into the Tribe, because if she hadn't been there, he wouldn't have followed. Each of these people have two Pull on Grid. Would it matter, given how mobile this band is? WHO CARES I'M DONE.

Pugmire: Attack of the Adorable Spider-Goats!

One of the challenges of running games for a bunch of softies is that it can be challenging to find unambiguous fights. Like, fighting predatory animals is hard, because the animals just want to survive, meaning once they realize they're taking on well-prepared and dangerous foes they're gonna skedaddle. A creature protecting its young will be fiercer, but then, like, there's baby animals, and what are you gonna do, kill the babies? Not my fuckin' table. 

This is even worse in Pugmire, because even other "people" are cats and dogs, and the one thing that consistently gets X-carded the fuck into oblivion at my table when I run horror games is "pets have plot immunity." (Side note: pets dying in horror has a long and rich tradition, so it does sometimes make me flex the ol' creative muscles to have to let dogs and cats escape unharmed, but I digress.) 

All of this to say, the bestiaries of Pugmire and its related books (Monarchies of Mau, Pirates of Pugmire, etc.) are very well written and full of evocative beasties, but the last thing I want to see at the beginning of a paragraph introducing a creature is "Friendly and playful..."

But we make it work. Here's last time.

The dogs made landfall on the coast between Waterdog Port and Port Matthew. They don't have enough fresh water to keep going to the next port town - they need to resupply. Fortunately, this is something the sailors of the Shivering Star are well prepared for. They leave the ship and split into teams, including four of the Pioneers: Petunia Pibble, Boomer Pitbull, Dire Newfoundland, and Gelert Sausagedog. (Peppa Papillon stays on board to help tend to the wounded, as her player was out.)

The dogs head inland, looking for food and water to bring back. The topography starts rocky near the beach, with hard, prickly grasses, but then gets softer and more verdant. They enter a forest, and find themselves walking between two good-sized streams - not really big enough to call rivers, but definitely big enough to have a bit of a current. 

Sausagedog notices a hollow near the bank of the river, and sees that it's full of...dried brush? Paler in color and different texture than the nearby foliage. He walks over to have a look, cautiously, and discovers that the mouth of the hollow is full of webbing. 

All of the dogs immediately brace - either a very large spider made that web or there are a shitload of little spiders around. But then they spot a goat wander out of the webbing. No, really, a little young-adult goat. "BAAA." 

It doesn't seem to be in distress or trapped in the webs, and doesn't seem afraid of the dogs. "Bait?" muses Dire. "FOOD!" exclaims Sausagedog. "Pet!" says Petunia. 

Boomer says nothing. He stands back, looking around, and spots another web-filled hollow some twenty yards up the path. 

The goat approaches, and allows Petunia to pet it. "BAAA!" It scampers around curiously, and then a second one emerges from the hollow. The two goats bounce around each other and butt heads, playfully, and the dogs are entranced, though perplexed. 

Petunia casts Smell Magic, figuring these creatures have to be mystical in some way. They aren't, but she has time to notice something else before everything goes completely sideways. 

The goats are non-magical, but Petunia smells a faint odor of Unseen magic coming from the group of Pioneers. She doesn't have time to say anything, though, as the goats apparently notice it as well. The two goats give out a horrible cry, somewhere being a bleat and the sound of crackling chitin. Their torsos split open and multiple spider-like legs fold out of their bellies. Their horns blink - each horn opens multiple black spider-eyes. Pedipalps fold out of their mouths. Every trace of the playful little goats is gone, leaving nothing but monstrosities. 

Worse yet, a dozen more appear from the forest and the hollows, including one very large one - the Spider-Goat Matriarch! The goats spit webbing at the dogs, snaring Petunia and Dire. Dire, fortunately, is strong enough to tear himself free, and Petunia can cast spells without bothering. She flings a lighting bolt at the Matriarch, while Boomer grabs his maul and swings on the spiders. Sausagedog tries to find a way to duck into the shadows and make best use of his skills, but the spider-eyes are just too keen.

(Actually Sausagedog's player kept blowing the hide roll but succeeding on attack rolls, but the effect is much the same.)

Between Petunia's magic and Boomer's maul, the Matriarch is brought low, but the dogs are already hurting. The goats charge and ram their horns into the dogs, bite them with those fearsome fangs, or spit acid at them from a distance. They fight bravely - Petunia casts every spell she has, hurling lighting and magic missiles and color spray. Boomer rages, laying about with his maul and then dropping it and switching to an ax. Dire braves takes on three of the goats by himself, striking with his greatsword as they tear out chunks of his floof. Sausagedog chops into chitin with his ax, his usual acrobatic fighting style hampered by the close quarters and all the goddamn webbing.

But in the end, the dogs are overwhelmed. Dire is the first to fall, the spider-goats surrounding him, biting and covering him with webbing. Petunia is next, and although Sausagedog quickly comes to her aid, the goats continue their assault and both of them fall to a combination of goring and biting. Finally, Boomer, still raging, desperately trying to beat back the monsters, is overwhelmed. All of the dogs fall into terrified oblivion. 

The dogs wake up in Granny Sue's Roadhouse. They are all sitting at a table, frosty mugs of beer in front of them, people all around. They look around, confused, for a moment, and realize there's a cat at their table. 

They don't recognize the cat, and later they'll be hard-pressed to describe them. Boomer asks if this is the afterlife, and Sausagedog opines that if the afterlife is a pub, that would be amazing. But the cat says, no, they aren't dead. They're alive, but being wrapped up in spider-silk and hung from the walls of the spider-goats' layer for eventual consumption. 

Petunia, ever curious, asks why the goats attacked. The cat tells them that spider-goats are actually very docile and friendly creatures - many ships keep one or two aboard to give milk. The problem is that if they are injured, or they sense the Unseen, they fly into a monstrous rage and between the horrors that the characters fought. The Pioneers, unfortunately, had just battled a Storm-Caller. "So the Unseen they smelled was just residual," laments Petunia. 

Dire downs his beer. He's upset, and just wants to be alone, and possibly drunk. The beer tastes good, but he can't tell if there's any immediately intoxicant effect. 

The cat continues. The Pioneers can't die here, the cat says; they are meant to do important things in the Monarchies. But unfortunately, the cat's ability to help them is limited. They say that they'll keep an eye on them as they sleep, and make sure the sleep they get is deep and restful, rather than, you know, the painful and fitful sleep that they probably would have in their situation. Also, when Peppa falls asleep, they will visit her and inform them of the Pioneers' situation so that she can come help. Sadly, until she sleeps, the cat has no ability to contact her, so hopefully that happens soon. Until then, the cat recommends they go up into the room as the "Road House" and lie down, or stay and feast. The cat asks what they'd like to eat. "Pies," says Petunia, suddenly homesick. "I'd like some goat," growls Boomer. 

The cat gestures, and Granny Sue brings over a tray of meat pies and goat stew. When the Pioneers turn back, the cat is gone. They stay, eat, and drink, and Boomer muses that he's never been defeated in battle before, not like this. They talk about the potential nature of the afterlife - is it a pub? If Boomer dies, will he meet his ancestors? "So many Pibbles," says Petunia. "So many brave dogs," says Dire, still morose. 

Dire gets up and walks away into the pub, wanting to be alone. As he does, he smells something, something he can't quite identify - the scent is gone as soon as he notices it. But the sense memory is "DANGER". He puts it out of his mind, and sinks into the quiet of sleep.

Character Creation: Death Throes

Six days into October and no chargen for some spoopy game yet? I blame Baldur's Gate.

The Game: Death Throes
The Publisher: Ex Stasis Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with the system, plenty with the genre
Books Required: Just the one

Death Throes is a zombie apocalypse game, but instead of taking place in the post-apocalypse, as with Zombie World or Red Markets (or All Flesh Must Be Eaten, depending), it takes place as the zombie apocalypse is happening. And as I'm thinking about it, that's often where a lot of the real tension in a zombie scenario lives. Death Throes works on the same system as Trophy Dark, which I have but have not read yet, but it doesn't much matter because the game explains itself nicely. Actually, it's a pretty well written and easy to understand game, and I think it's going on the next one-shot menu. 

So let's make a character real quick! I need a scenario. There are seven in the book, so I think I shall roll a d6 and skip the one about the undead psychic aunt (it's a cool scenario but it's pretty specific). And a roll of 5 gives me...Necrotic Noir!

OK, so the basic idea here is that there's a cargo ship that's come into Atlantic City, supposedly carrying Nazi gold, but in fact character dead Nazi (best kind!) zombies (oh, no). So shades of Ghost Ship and perhaps Dead Snow, maybe? And also there's a big mobster component. 

Well, if this is noir, then I want a morally grey character, so who better than a cop? Detective Sigmund Hoff has been on the force since 1930. Now it's 17 years later (there's not a year specified, but based on the genre tropes let's assume late 1940s) and all he's got to show for it is a leg that aches like crazy when it's humid (he took a bullet in his leg in 1929, and it kept him out of WWII but he'd much rather have been shot killing Nazis than chasing bootleggers), alimony payments, a shitty pension, and a bar tab he'd rather not think about. Doesn't help that his family is of German extraction, so he's been hearing the same "Sigmund Freud" jokes for years...when his "brothers in blue" aren't painting swastikas on his hat brim. Bastards.

So, Notable Feature. First thing people notice about Detective Hoff? Probably the limp. Background - "burned out cop on the take." Role is about Hoff's position and contribution to the group of survivors. I think Hoff has been on this beat long enough that everyone knows him and either owes him or is owed by him, so what he brings to the group is "knows everyone." 

Skills: Just three things Hoff is good at. So we'll say "streetwise" and "pistols".

What's Hoff's unique Talent, though? I wish there were examples of these. In the example of play (which I wish were a little more robust) a player mentions his characters Talent as being able to hold his breath a really long time. You know what, let's say that Hoff's Talent is that he speaks and reads German. Seems a small thing, but in context it wouldn't be common and would come in handy.

Drive is why Hoff is determined to survive, but it's meant to be more specific than, say, Chill Drives. Let's say that Hoff wants to live to retire. 

Finally, Lost One. This is a person that Hoff is looking for or missing. Doesn't have to be a positive relationship, so let's say Hoff is looking for "Jimmy Grover, sleazy dockhand." Jimmy owes Hoff money from a baseball game they bet on, and Hoff's getting tired of excuses. 

I start with one Ruin and since I didn't take any more Talents, that's all I get. 

Hoff is in his late 40s. Balding gray hair, cigarette stains on his fingers, thin mustache, walks with a limp because his right knee hurts like a sonofabitch but he ain't using any damn cane, thanks. Wears a cheap suit, usually with a short-sleeve shirt and the jacket slung over his shoulder so everyone can see he's armed. (He's got a backup piece on his ankle, though, ssh.)

That'll do it! 

Movie #754: M3GAN

M3GAN is a horror movie starring Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieny, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Jen Van Epps, Stephane Garneau-Monten, Amy Usherwood, and Lori Dungey. 

8-year-old Cady (McGraw) loses her parents (Kira Josephson and Arlo Green) in a car accident, and goes to live with her aunt Gemma (Williams). Gemma, as it happens, is a toy designer working for Funki, but "toy designer" doesn't really sell it - she's a programmer, inventor, and goddamn genius because she invents actual AI and puts it in a toy, M3GAN (voiced by Davis, performed by Donald as well as puppeteers). M3GAN "pairs" with Cady, and distracts her from the horrific trauma of losing her parents. Unfortunately, she's a robot in a horror movie and obviously that means she's gonna kill some people.

Over the course of the movie, M3GAN goes from sweet and helpful to just outright scary, culminating in the final fight that borrows heavily from Aliens, Child's Play, and Terminator. In short, this movie could have been really derivative and dime-a-dozen...but here's why it's not.

First of all, M3GAN is fucking creepy from the jump. She's impressive, sure, but every single person who sees her immediately reacts by startling when the uncanny valley kicks in. After that, they're blown away by her conversational skills and mobility and so forth, and Cady learns to love her because, as her court-appointed therapist (Usherwood) points out, she's forming attachments to the doll instead of Gemma. So the tension starts already ramped up with M3GAN, and just gets worse as people recognize her as a threat but then their higher brains kick in and tell them "just a doll" before things go off the rails.

Second, there's some pretty strong commentary about technology beyond "it's bad", and at the risk of reading too much in, I think the larger message of the movie isn't so much "technology left unchecked is bad" so much as "you have to be a goddamn parent, not outsource the job." We see this Gemma, sure, but also with her parents (briefly) who argue right in front of her about her toys and screen time but don't turn around to actually engage with her. We also see it with the parent (Renee Lyons) of the unfortunate bully Brandon (Jack Cassidy), the one whose ear M3GAN rips off, who lets her son tell her to fuck off in public. And, of course, M3GAN herself, as Gemma gives me a way to experience the world and access to all of the facts about it, but no moral or ethical context (not ever the Three Laws, FFS). 

M3GAN is getting a sequel, and there's definitely fertile ground for it, but I don't know. It's pretty tight as-is, and it's interesting to me that it was originally planned as R-rated, but released PG-13 not because the producers pissed in the soup, but because while editing the movie the filmmakers realized that they didn't need to make it R to have the scares be effective. But then again again, AI/machine learning is, as Mugatu says, so hot right now.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Cairn: Monster Fish

Yesterday, we return to the world of Cairn. Here's last time.

It's summer in Cairn, and one glorious afternoon, Ratatosk Longberry is out scampering about in trees, as is his usual midday activity. He feels the leaves of the tree start to nudge him deeper into the forest, and never one to ignore tree-related weirdness, follows along. He winds up at the tree that Desayd the dryad lives in, and she emerges in a squirrel-sized avatar and greets him.

She tells him that she had another dream, similar to the last one. But in this one, she was crawling along on or in the ground and being pursued, again by something hungry. She felt cold, clammy hands on her before she woke up.

Ratatosk ponders this, and then scampers off to tell the others. He finds Snootabur Shadowbough on her porch, snoozing, and reports the dryad's dream. Snoot advises waiting until evening when the others are awake and meeting up at the Cider Mill Inn, and also invites Whisper Greendawn, the priestess of Cairn's Lodge of the Bright Ones, to join.

That evening, the five of them - Ratatosk, Snootabur, Whisper, Rumdiggle Sunsong and Russelet Leatherwind - get some dinner and talk over the dreams. Whisper notes that dryads and other elemental spirits - ondines, gnomes, and suchlike - experience the world differently than the Awakened, and therefore have different relationships not only with the natural world, but the divine forces like the Bright Ones or the Primal Powers. She advises focusing one whatever details were the dream: the cold, clammy hands, the obvious hunger. Rummy notes that "hands" might be metaphorical, just something seizing or grabbing the dream, and that although snakes (like her pet Arthur) are not clammy, they're often perceived to be and might feel that way in a dream.

Russelet, ever the pragmatic one, calls up one of his guards and asks if anyone has seen anything weird of late. No one has, but Russ tells them to increase their patrols and be on guard. Better to be forewarned and all that.

The Knights decide they really need more data before they can really take action. Rummy sings, everyone makes merry, and Ratatosk, the only diurnal one, heads home. He's opening his front door when he hears a horrible whisper 'pon the wind: "I'm coming for you."

He gives out a yelp and runs back to the Inn to find the others. He tells Rummy what he heard, and she offers him a bed for the night, which he gratefully accepts. He considers, too, that while he doesn't know of a druid spell that allows casting words to the winds, a wizard or sorcerer (who use slightly different forms of magic) might. And wouldn't you know, the Knights have run afoul of someone who is a) a wizard, b) perpetually hungry and c) cold and clammy: Brock Westerwart, the bullfrog who masterminded the worm rustling scheme (and who very nearly ate Ratatosk!). They decide to discuss this in the afternoon when everyone's awake.

In the morning, Ratatosk wakes early and leaves quietly (you know, for him). But no sooner is he outside than a guard runs up and informs him that Mimsy Underroot, one of the teenaged troublemakers whom the Knights met during the whole "Marma" debacle, has just arrived at the coast after rowing all night. She needs to talk to the Knights; something is very wrong.

Ratatosk wakes the others and they all head to the longhouse, where Mimsy is sipping a cup of tea surrounded by concerned otters. She tells the Knights that she rowed out to visit her uncle Giggs Bogglesworth, who's still living in a shack down the coast. She got there yesterday, but smelled something unholy from the shack and saw something lash out - something that was decidedly not a mole. She isn't sure what, though, and moles don't have great eyesight. She rowed all the way back to Cairn for help.

The Knights immediately mount up and recruit a couple of otters to row them out to the shack. When they arrive, they spot something moving in the shack, but aren't sure what. They all sense the Unnatural, though - whatever it is, it's evil. Ratatosk casts a spell and calls up tangling grasses, but the thing inside bursts through the door and splorps right through the plants! It's a wave of filth, and makes straight for the characters. 

Snootabur and Russelet fire arrows at it, and it lashes out at Snoot, but she deftly dodges out of the way. Rummy turns into a bear and claws it, and Ratatosk dons a satchet with an alchemical powder to drive it back, but it isn't easy to corral. Ratatosk lights a torch, and Russelet uses the fire to light the fuses on his firework arrows. He sends one straight into the ooze, and it bursts and burns.

The Knights catch their breath and search the area. Whatever this thing is, it came from inside the shack. They note that there is no food of any kind inside, and there's no sign of Giggs, other than furrows in his table. It looks like he was pulled away from it forcibly. Russelet takes to the sky and spots tracks up on the ridge near the house, but they're not mole tracks, they're goblin. Ratatosk talks to some seagulls and learns that a "monster fish" ate Giggs. It opened its mouth from the water and lashed him with its tongue, and swallowed him like a pelican (which, Ratatosk notes, is about the scariest thing a gull could think of). 

The Knights send the otters back in one of the boats; it's getting dark and they want to track the goblins. They gather some food - bugs and stuff - that the goblins might like, and follow their tracks to a big goblin camp. They walk up with Rummy playing a calming song, and the goblins don't respond with hostility (mostly they're happy to have the snacks). They say that they saw Giggs get pulled into the water, but didn't see the creature that did it, just its big, shiny eyes.

The Knights decide they'll head back at first light. While they're not entirely sure, it's sounding more and more like Brock might be the creature they're looking for. If that's the case, he's only grown bigger...and hungrier.