Resident Evil

All week I have been thinking about this movie. Trying to find the hook. To find that little kernel that lets me dig in. That one thing in this work of art that I can latch onto.

The one thing that lets the words flow.

I considered the insanely perfect soundtrack. The relentless beat that keeps you strapped to the edge of your seat. I don’t know who these Holladay people are. All I know is that they somehow created something that you both notice and don’t simultaneously.

I considered Cregger’s directorial choices. The centering of the entire movie on isolating Austin Abrams. How it captured the feeling of playing a survival horror game in the dark by yourself at 2am. How it made the whole thing feel incredibly grounded at the same time.

I considered unpacking Austin Abrams acting choices. How he walked this tightrope the entire movie of competence and incompetence. How he surfaced and suppressed emotions in such realistic ways. He was at once a cypher you could map yourself onto and a character you could watch and emphasize with.

I considered all these things, and dismissed them. Other people are going to write about the direction, the music, and the acting. With far more expertise than I can bring to the table.

Instead, I want to examine the hospital.

Not the hospital during the denouement. The one in the beginning of the movie. Our introduction to the world. Our introduction to Bryan, Abrams character.

It is a subtle masterpiece of a scene. It delivers a shocking amount of information with zero exposition. It subconsciously sets us up for everything that is to come. It isn’t my favorite scene, but it might be the smartest scene.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I am going to warn you now. This will spoil a few things. Go see the movie already and come back. It’s so good.

The Hospital

The setup seems simple enough. The scene gives us the obvious stuff. Bryan’s relationships with his girlfriend. His bullshit job that sets up the whole quest angle of the movie. The weather conditions.

All the obvious things.

It also sets up that the world’s got a really messed up healthcare system. Doctors and nurses are overworked. People are suffering. A not unfamiliar situation for any of us.

However, it shows it to you openly. We see the chaos all around him. We see him at the center of a storm of suffering as he searches for someone to take his package.

In the process we see Bryan’s discomfort with blood. His frustration with the system. We build empathy and have our first chance to map ourselves onto him, like a character in a video game.

When the delivery is finally taken from him by the doctor who runs off without signing, we see he hates the situation he is in. Through his lens we see how fucked all of this is and how alone he is. How alone we are. That moment reinforces the entire isolating structure the movie will take.

It also foreshadows the institutional failures later in the movie. How a rescue isn’t a rescue. There is no calvary coming to save Bryan.

Taking the job for the extra cash despite a dangerous drive up the mountain establishes his risk tolerance. It also establishes his ability to think on his feet. His natural opportunism. His almost immediate problem solving about the signature with the nurse tells us he is clever.

In a very short period, we know who Bryan is and the fucked up world he is going to have to traverse. There is very little dialogue. No exposition. We know who he is and what he is capable intuitively. We are ready for what is to come.

It is a perfect opening to the movie.

Cregger and Abrams have jumped up the list of collaborators I want to see make more movies together after this. They clearly have a working chemistry that resulted in something special. Weapons has been on my list to see, and now it is at the top of the list.

I just hope they don’t get stuck making a sequel.

Weekly Roundup

Last fair of the year, a promise delivered, they just admit it, and a new outlaw.

My Work

Sunday I will be at the Last Call Art and Music Fest in Niles, Illinois. The event runs from 12-5pm and I will have a bunch of new prints and a bit of a different setup for my booth. I learned a lot from my last show, so applying it to this last show of the year.

If you want a preview of what I will have at the show, take a look at my shop. I have spent the last week or so updating my stock and listings.

Gaming

I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout 4 in my spare time lately. I’m a fan of the survival mode for games like that, but find the fun balance always goes out of wack at some point. They all have this hockey stick problem where you go from struggling to suddenly being a walking god. I just hit that moment, so I think it might be time to try Dune Awakening.

I enjoyed Conan Exiles as a single player survival game, though it also suffered from the hockey stick problem. I just want something that I can pick up for an hour, play for a bit of survival tension, then put down and go back to all the other things I have going on.

Technology

I am still reading this study that I came across yesterday, but so far it looks pretty well structured. The long and the short of it is that AI assisted development doesn’t appear to lead to productivity gains. The study covered some 700,000+ from 700+ firms over the period of January 2021 to March of 2026. I skipped ahead to look at the data breakdowns after reading the abstract and some very sound work.

Of course, none of this is surprising. The issue with software has never been writing code. The issue has always been creating useful software is a craft, which requires time, consideration, and a cycle of discovery through the process. The two things people who want everything to be a Tayloristic dystopian hellscape that buys them yachts despise. Link