Wrote an essay on two of my favorite short stories from female authors for Women in Horror month. It’s been posted on the blog of Damien Walters Grintalis, a female horror author whose debut novel Ink is set to be released in December 2012. Thanks again to Damien for allowing me to ramble on her blog.

I’ve never read the novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Nor have I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or A Tale of Two Cities and Innsmouth, or Gone With the Deadites. I shouldn’t make assumptions about works I’ve never read, I know, but I’ve always been skeptical about the entertainment merit of stories that seem to randomly marry literary characters / historical figures with notable horror characters and tropes. But now we have the first international trailer for the Abe Lincoln vs. Bloodsuckers movie and it  looks like it might be reasonably fun. Observe…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34x6m-ahGIo

It helps that Abe Lincoln is already a nearly mythical figure in American history,  and his legend is appropriable for a “tall tale” type of story. There’s a reason why this story features Lincoln and not Warren G. Harding. Abe was a noted wrestler, axeman and Confederacy-breaker. He allegedly invented the chokeslam. Here’s a depiction of Lincoln casually manhandling another grown man. 

When you see him doing this with his bare hands and what appears to be minimal effort, it’s not too hard to accept the sight of him felling entire trees with a single swing of an axe. Actually, I’m concerned for the vampires he’s going to be hunting in this flick. Giving Abe Lincoln an axe to hunt vampires with is like letting Superman wield Mjolnir to fight Quakers. Still, I’m suddenly looking forward to this, as well as the possibility of other Great-American / Horror-Villain mash-ups, such as Benjamin Franklinstein, or Teddy Roosevelt: Cthulu Puncher, or Grover Cleveland: Jack the Ripper Be-er.

Disclaimer: This post is full of spoilers. Read on at your own risk.

The latest version of the Susan Hill novel The Woman in Black arrived in theaters a week ago and made a solid impression at the box office. By no means is it a great film, in fact it might be too generous to even call it “good,” but it’s a solid effort at Gothic, haunted house horror.

As a fan of the earlier, 1989 adaptation of the novel, I came into the movie with mixed expectations. I knew not to expect the restraint and maturity of the earlier film. Having never read the original novel (shame on me, I know) and without the benefit of having seen the (by all accounts excellent) stage play, I had no idea as to whether or not this newest film would be more or less faithful to Susan Hill’s original story. As such, all I could really hope for was that this new film would still elicit some competent chills, and on that front I wasn’t terribly disappointed. In some respects this newest adaption improves on its predecessor, though I still prefer the 1989 film overall for its sophistication.

For me, the first thing that stands out about the 2012 film is how much more pervasively “horrifying” it is compared to the 1989 version. From the interspersed, almost random scenes depicting a mysterious woman in white, to shot after shot after shot of creepy looking dolls (apparently, every toy doll in the early 20th century was made of 99% nightmare material), this movie spends every damn second of its run-time reminding you that you’re watching a horror movie. Everything that isn’t blanketed in shadows is bathed in cold, pallid hues that suck any sense of hope out of the proceedings. The setting is a bog-town that doesn’t merely look appropriately foggy and cold, but like it exists on some forsaken, shroud-filled corner of the Earth where ghosts are part of the natural habitat. This is a town where it would be weird if there wasn’t at least one haunted house nearby.

This isn’t an inherently bad thing, but again, the original film was more to my liking because it didn’t seem to be trying so damn hard. It had atmosphere to spare, yes, but it wasn’t drenching with dread. It didn’t look like it was filmed on location in purgatory. It’s like the difference between a pretty girl who’s wearing too much makeup, too much perfume and too little of everything else, and a girl a pretty girl who knows how not to overdo it. They can both be considered objectively attractive, but subjectively, the confidence of the latter is greatly preferable to the seeming desperation of the former. The 2012 film has its charms, certainly, but it also seems to be masking its insecurities behind a barrage of sensory distractions when it isn’t necessary.

In the latest version of the film, Arthur Kipps (played by Daniel Radcliffe) starts off with a dead wife (the aforementioned woman in white) whom he believes may be trying to communicate with him from beyond the grave.  We see next to nothing of his family life, save for a short scene early on where his son helps inform the audience that his dad is a sad sad man who misses the hell out of his wife. Radcliffe does what he can with such a limited, almost lifeless character, but there’s not a hell of a lot of room for creativity here. This is a forlorn figure who infects an already disconsolate story with a greater sense of despair and inevitability. He’s damn near a dead man walking; emotionally distant, preoccupied with spirits and the afterlife. In the 1989 film, Kipps is an ordinary man who happens into a horror story. He was given a chance to connect with the audience as a real person, a guy who is allowed to smile and quip; a guy who seems like he hasn’t lost his will to live. This makes it more frightening when the Woman in Black gets around to terrorizing him, because he’s a regular person you can relate to. In the 2012 film Kipps is more like some kind of human horror magnet. If you met him on the street you’d think, “I bet he hangs out in graveyards on his days off.”

In a way, however, this serves the story. It gives Kipps cause to revisit the blatantly haunted Eel Marsh house, home of the titular Woman in Black. The 1989 film didn’t really need to give Kipps a reason to stay, since nearly all of the supernatural happenings occurred over the course of one night, and the house is isolated on an island that can’t be reached when the tide rolls in. In the newest adaptation, which expands on the story to some benefit, Kipps spends a few nights in the house, even going back one final time to perform what amounts to an impromptu, amateur exorcism. If not for his demeanor and interest in “spiritualism,” you’d be able to make the same (often lazy) complaint / joke that people usually make in regard to haunted house movies: why not leave the house immediately and stay the hell away.

The new movie also expands the story in ways that slightly improve on the original film. The townspeople here are given legitimate cause to keep Arthur Kipps away from the house and be evasive about why they’re being so damn inhospitable to him. The townspeople in the original film are practically indifferent to the possibility that sightings of the Woman in Black usually lead to a child’s death. Indeed, in the original film, the Woman in Black is almost more of an harbinger of some forthcoming fatal accident. It’s implied that she is the catalyst for said accidents, but it’s unclear if she’s directly involved. In the 2012 version, she is blatantly malevolent, actually influencing the children of the town to commit suicide whenever she is seen by someone. She is also only ever seen on the grounds of her home or on the road that leads to it, so it makes sense for the locals to do what they can to keep anyone and everyone away from the old house.

This new film also gives the character of Sam Daily, one of very few people in town who is actually helpful to Kipps, a decent reason for assisting Kipps during his stay, instead of being one of the many folks trying to chase the young lawyer away. He has good cause, like most others, to believe that the Woman in Black is responsible for the suicides of local children, given that his own son drowned himself at her behest, but his wife (played in rather over-the-top fashion) is apparently possessed by his son’s “lost” spirit. Daily is in deliberate denial about the Woman in Black, because to accept her for what she is would mean accepting that his boy isn’t waiting for him in heaven, but trapped in town like the ghosts of all of the other children the Woman in Black has claimed. It’s the kind of grim, subtle terror the movie introduces, but doesn’t have any interest in exploring, unfortunately.

Because, although this isn’t a “Hollywood” production, strictly speaking, this is ultimately a Hollywood-style modern horror flick. It’s more interested in delivering a series of big scares and force-feeding the audience atmosphere instead of letting the terror patiently develop as the movie progresses. Again, not inherently a bad thing, and the movie actually delivers some wonderfully conceived moments of horror. While I’m a fan of patient, ethereal, psychological horror, I’m also a big fan of intense, unsubtle, visceral horror as well. I still think that loud scare chords are an overused tactic, but there’s something wonderful about well-executed, visually and audibly arresting moment of horror. The 1989 film’s signature moment comes when the Woman in Black visits Kipps in his bedroom while he’s in the midst of a fever dream. She comes charging into the scene so suddenly it looks like an editing mistake, and she’s unleashing a bizarre screech that sounds like a hoarse old woman is trying to imitate Godzilla’s roar. It’s much scarier than it sounds, I assure you.

The 2012 film has a call-back to that splendid moment during its climax, with the Woman in Black charging Kipps until her hate-filled face fills the entire screen. But the most brilliant and affecting moment in the film for me came when the mud-caked ghost / zombie of a child that drowned in the marsh crawls out of the disgusting muck of its cross-marked grave and comes toward the house it used to call home. Kipps witnesses this through the window of an upstairs bedroom, a cheap (but effective) “mirror scare” follows, and then he walks downstairs to find something is trying to open the front door. It’s reminiscent of the moment in “The Monkey’s Paw” when the unseen, dead and mangled son tries to come home as his mother has wished. It’s an excellent scene that earns the right to milk the horror for all it’s worth.

There are other very-strong moments in the film as well. A scene where the titular character slowly stalks toward a sleeping Kipps is staged so well it manages to be a standout despite it’s predictability (at that point in the movie, there’s zero chance she’s going to do him any actual harm or even manage to physically interact with him).

More subtly, the movie raises interesting, unsettling ideas about what it’s like to actually be a ghost, particularly the kind of ghost that the Woman in Black is. Full of hate, self-tormented, driven to suicide by madness and grief, unable to forgive or be at peace. Unable to think of anything but vengeance, even after the party that wronged you is long gone. Even before her death, the Woman in Black’s madness and suffering is chronicled in a series of letters that Kipps reads, wherein her penmanship degenerates from elegant to nearly-illegible scrawling as her madness grows. That has to be a miserable existence, to say nothing of the ghost children trapped on Earth along with her. The original film gives us a chronicle of the haunting from the perspective of the Woman in Black’s surviving sister (the original target of the spirit’s wrath), who recorded an audio diary on a Dictaphone before she died. Seeing both films gives me the luxury of enjoying both perspectives, and make me more eager to read the book and see what more there is to discover.

As I mentioned initially, I still prefer the original film version of The Woman in Black, but I’m not at all upset with this “remake.” While it doesn’t measure up to its predecessor, and certainly has its faults and missed opportunities, it also adds something to a story that is nuanced enough to warrant exploration. It’s like a piece of ghostlore that is enriched by every retelling.

In a blatant, shameless attempt to garner more hits, I’m  making a topical post referencing the recently released film The Last Exorcism. And so I present to you an entirely subjective list of 4 good (and 4 terrible) movies featuring exorcisms.

Exorcisms would seem to be a pretty popular topic in the horror genre, and yet it’s not explored  as frequently as other common horror tropes such as vampires, haunted houses or zombies. I think it’s a bit harder to make demonic possession fun or sexy–too many people take it quite seriously. I’ve never met anyone who believes in the walking dead, but I have met a couple of ardently religious folk who swear they know someone who was possessed and think any fictional “entertainment” employing the subject is appalling. The good news is that this means demons are still a long way off from becoming de-fanged and romanticized. You won’t be seeing “Team Pazuzu” t-shirts in Walmart anytime soon, I’d wager.

On to the lists…

I could easily overpopulate the entire “Terrible” list with Exorcist knock-offs from the 70′s and no-budget DTV flicks, but what’s the fun in that? At the same time, it would be remiss of me to completely ignore these movies, so we’ll kick off the list with…

4. Beyond the Door

A common complaint leveled at Hollywood in the 21st Century is that they’re constantly producing inferior remakes of great foreign flicks–often horror movies. But there was a time when foreign directors were the primary purveyors of hot, steamy cash-in remake action. And they often didn’t even bother with little details like “rights” and “permission” when making pseudo-sequels and Asylum studio style knock-offs. Beyond the Door was the movie that got sued by the creators of The Exorcist for jacking such signature signs of demonic possession as projectile vomiting and head-spinning. It’s about as bad as you’d expect it to be, but it’s also a 70′s Italian horror flick, so at least it has ridiculous audacity going for it.

3. Exorcist II

Warner Bros. did not decide to sue themselves for screwing up their own film property after releasing a sequel to The Exorcist in 1977. It would have been stupid, bizarre and self-defeating… kind of like the plot to Exorcist II: The Heretic. For this sequel the filmmakers decided that what a movie about demonic possession needs to spice it up are subplots about ESP, pseudo-science, collective consciousness and psychically telling swarms of locusts to stop devouring crops. The film’s aspirations are somewhere between laudable and laughable. It has some moments of visual flair but the story makes zero sense. Anti-sense, even. I’m tempted to go so far as to say the plot of this movie is a hate crime against sense itself.

2. Stigmata

Nobody likes a preachy ass movie, but a preachy movie preaching against someone else’s preachings disguised as a horror flick… that’s the kind of movie that especially deserved to be punched right in the credits. Stigmata, released in 1999, is ostensibly a religious thriller but reveals itself to be one of those movies with a “message.” A message borrowed from an apocryphal scripture, the Gospel of Thomas. The basic gist is that you don’t need to go to church to get closer to God. I’m not here to disparage any such argument or speak on defense of any churches, but I am going to say that if you’re going to make a “serious” movie about how the Catholic church might be a less-than-holy organization with a sordid past that is more than willing to allow innocent people to be harmed or even killed if it serves their own agenda… make and market that movie. Don’t give me a “horror” flick that is actually a plodding bit of unconvincing propaganda interspersed with moments of supernatural hi-jinks to keep audiences awake.

1. The Unborn

Fabulous fanservice poster. Terrible movie...

“Do you think it’s possible to be haunted by someone whose never even been born?” In the deceptively promising trailer for The Unborn, that one bit of quoted dialogue told me that despite a reasonably impressive supporting cast (Goldman, Idris Elba), an okay premise and an ostensibly good screenwriter in the director’s chair, this movie would ultimately drown in its own stupidity. Why would you offer a qualifying addendum to a situation most people would already believe is impossible? No, I don’t believe you can be haunted by someone. Whether or not they were born is pretty much irrelevant. You might as well ask if you think it’s possible to move objects with your mind even if you have a mild headache, or if it’s possible to run faster than the speed of sound even if your shoelaces are untied.

Sure enough the movie is up to its crown in stupidity, with stereotypically bad dialogue (“The door is open…” Yeah kid, we just saw the door opening, thanks for blatantly pointing out the symbolism), predictable jump scares and PG-13 level pseudo-gore (“Hey, this dog’s head is upside down! This lady just bloodlessly bent in half! This corpse is gooey and has big teeth! Please tell us we’re being creepy… please?”). But at least the climax provides a decent set up for a joke: So a priest and a rabbi are trying to perform an exorcism…

Honorable Mention: Repossessed – the current crop of spoof movies are flat out horrible, but at least they’re not 17 years late in satirizing their primary target.

4. Beetlejuice

Ya know, it’s a bit difficult finding really good movies that prominently feature exorcisms. Beetlejuice on the surface is a bit of a stretch. So the titular ghost claims to be a “bio-exorcist” who gets rid of the living. Does that really qualify?

Yes. Yes it does. But even if it didn’t, there is also the film’s climax where the new homeowners are essentially exorcising the ghosts played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis not only out of the house, but clean out of existence. What’s interesting about this is that both forms of “exorcism” are played for screwball laughs but, if it had been given the “serious horror” treatment, they would be absolutely horrifying. A specter who makes it his business to remove living people from the premises by any means necessary (imagine if a flick like The Others had introduced that angle)? An exorcism that completely destroys the soul? Within the context of a grimmer film this could be a source of abject terror.

But it’s Beetlejuice, so instead we got Michael Keaton dancing toward some sort of brothel full of female ghouls. Not that I’m complaining. The movie is hilarious.

3. [REC]

Hmmm… ummm… spoiler alert?

At the end of [REC] comes the revelation that the catalyst for all of the mayhem that has transpired is the apparently botched exorcism of a “possessed” little girl by a Vatican official . In a relatively clever twist on the subject matter, the “demonic possession” is actually the result of a virus which has spread to everyone else in the apartment building and turned them into ravenous “zombies.” The sequel (seriously people, there are spoilers about) shows that the “virus” is some sort of demonic, sentient organism and while the execution is a bit clumsy, the idea is intriguing. A second sequel and prequel promise to expand on the idea and more than likely ruin the hell out of it with some half-assed explanation of what’s going on shrouded by pseudo-scientific / pseudo-theological technobabble.

2. The Exorcist

I’ll readily admit, I’m probably getting cute here by not putting this at number one. Then again, I’m not really assigning much value to these “rankings” anyway. Besides, if I made The Exorcist the number one flick featuring exorcisms what could I write about it that hasn’t already been covered more than The Beatles? The Exorcist is the grandaddy of ‘em all, the Rose Bowl of supernatural horror flicks. So what other movie could I possibly have listed ahead of it?

1. Requiem

“Oh for the love of… really Compton? Really? You’re putting some foreign mocku-drama 99% of the people reading this haven’t heard of at the top of your list? You are such a hipster, elitist d-bag.”

Woah, woah, hipster? I just made a college football reference and quoted Keith Jackson a couple of paragraphs ago. Pretty sure that absolves me of any hipster accusations at least through the rest of the year.

Requiem is based on the same true events that inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Whereas Emily Rose played up the supernatural bits to make it ambiguous as to whether or not the possession was real, Requiem emphasizes the mental illness that the actual victim was probably suffering from. As the most–nay, only–realistic film on this list it provides the most unique approach to the topic, and its exorcism scenes manage to be unsettling without special effects. The possibility of a foreign, nigh-invulnerable force of super-nature taking over your body and mind is indeed disturbing, but in my view, not quite as scary as the reality that your mind can up and betray you to obsession and insanity.

Quick, somebody give me a top to spin so I can verify that this is reality!

Even though it’s likely a lie, much like Friday the 13th’s blatantly false “Final Chapter,” the new teaser trailer for SAW 3D declares that this is the “Final Saw.” I won’t link to the teaser because f*** this movie and all of its predecessors, save the first one which was half-decent. (Ordinarily I wouldn’t censor my profanity, but I refuse to waste the first f-bomb on my site on this magnificently stupid franchise).

Producer Oren Koules told USA Today,”It’s time to stop. We have told the story we wanted to tell.”

Did you? Did you really?

You and your colleagues one day decided you wanted to tell the story of a ridiculously inefficient serial killer who makes up for his pointless extravagance by having inexplicably unlimited funding and resources. A killer who can get away with killing multiple cops and feds amongst normal civilians using shit as elaborate and conspicuous as bombs and houses that crush people? All while he indulges in such vapid faux-moralizing it would even make John Doe from Se7en say, “Shut the hell up you pretentious prick!” That’s the story you wanted to tell? Are you sure?

And yet, I can think of no other reason for the series to conclude. I’ve lambasted the Saw series as being every imaginable sort of awful, and even a few unimaginable sorts, but I’ve never denied that it’s a brilliant formula for profit. Make your movie on the cheap, employ the easily renewable gimmick of killer traps and plot twists unhindered by any need to make sense within the context of your own universe, release during the Halloween period when people feel the need to experience something “scary” so they attend your movie like it’s a local haunted house attraction, then rake in the dough. If I had the means I’d definitely invest on such a surefire money-making scheme–as a silent partner, of course. I wouldn’t want my name within 500 sentences of the project. But it makes dough, and I can’t hate on it for that.

Last year was the first time a Saw flick didn’t dominate the Halloween season, courtesy of the release of Paranormal Activity. Say what you will about the latter film, but at least it derailed the herald of sub-competent horror story-telling that is the Saw franchise. If this is truly the death knell for the series, then I may owe a debt of gratitude to Paranormal Activity that I will not even be able to properly calculate, much less repay.

Then again, given how 3-D ticket sales tend to boost numbers even for movies that don’t perform all that well at the box office otherwise, and the fact that the creators are touting how much more violent and trap-laden this “last” installment is (“11 TRAPS! 6 Submissions to the MPAA to not get an NC-17 rating!” That might as well be part of the ad campaign…) I have an inkling that this “last” entry will only be a doorway to an eventual “new beginning.”

I recently finished Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley’s excellent hard-boiled mystery novel. Within the first third of the book there was a line that struck me like a solid swing of baseball bat to the abdomen. Mosley’s lead, World War II veteran Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, describes the fear that seized him during his introduction to combat.

“The first time I fought a German hand-to-hand I screamed for help the whole time I was killing him.”

As I made it through the rest of the novel, that line would to flash across my mind from time to time. There’s nothing aesthetically remarkable about the above line. It’s not meant to be poetic. It has no intention of showing off any metaphors or similes. But that one sentence captures the character’s experience with violence and presents a scene worthy of its own short story. Even with the novel done, questions born from reading that sentence persisted.

How did Easy find himself in the situation where he was fighting an enemy hand-to-hand? Where were his allies? Was he alone, in a building perhaps (the scene of Adam Goldberg fighting for his life in Saving Private Ryan comes to mind), or out in an open space surrounded by fellow soldiers all to busy fighting their own individual battles to hear or heed his cries for help? What was going through the German soldier’s mind as this black American soldier cried out during the attack? Was he able to understand anything that Easy was saying? Could he understand the meaning of the words without knowing the language, just by reading the panic in Easy’s eyes and soaking in the terror in his voice? Was the German soldier crying out for help as well, suffering a crisis of faith in the Nazi Übermensch concept he may not have believed in in the first place?

The next line, “His dead eyes stared at me a full five minutes before I let go of his throat,” almost seems redundant to me, but I recognize that this may just be on account of what I extrapolated from the preceding sentence. Not everyone reading the novel likely pictured Easy continuing to scream for help well after he had already killed his enemy; stabbing, punching, kicking and strangling a corpse.

I haven’t yet read the rest of the novels featuring Easy Rawlins. I don’t know if the conflict with the German soldier is referenced again or expanded upon. I do know that the image conjured by that single line is powerful enough to make me want for further explanation, but effective enough on its own to make me hope that it isn’t explored any further. I like to wonder about that other story, more perhaps than I would enjoy having its details revealed to me.

With the release of a teaser poster, The Last Exorcism has gone from being completely off my radar to squarely within my cross hairs.

As my boy over at The Brand New Cool points out, this poster is so creepy it almost makes watching the film pointless. Color me cynical or impressed, perhaps a bit of both, but some part of me thinks this is probably going to be the film’s signature moment of horror, or will at least be related to it.

I can’t exactly pinpoint what quite makes this poster so eerie. The girl bent backwards with the bloodstained dress is obviously a frightening image on its own, but any horror fan has seen much, much worse. Something about the starkness magnifies it beautifully, though. No excessive effects in play to distract from the central image. Washed out gray color scheme. It’s cold and distant and bold and startling all at once. I’m torn on whether or not the crucifix adds anything to the poster, or if it distracts, or if it’s harmless, but otherwise, this is damn near perfect.

I’m unfamiliar with the work of any direct contributors to the film. Eli Roth is apparently producing, but his level of involvement is unknown as yet. This might be awesome, or it might disappoint, but for the moment it certainly has wrested my attention. Well played, Last Exorcism.

EDIT: The trailer was released a few weeks back. Decided I might as well add it here instead of creating an entirely new post. The “mockumentary” approach is a bit of a turnoff, but I’m still willing to give it a chance to impress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN9hY16Yg9M

Okay, that’s obviously not all, but only because “outstanding” is not quite super enough of a superlative to describe God of War‘s first (and only?) installment on the PS3. Neither is “epic.” Oh no. God of War makes the word epic feel inadequate and unsure of itself. Epic was the coolest kid in school–star quarterback and star pupil–until God of War jumped a ramp on its motorcycle into the third floor of a burning building to save a group of children and emerged unscathed, leaving “epic” to hang its head and walk away knowing that scoring touchdowns and being on the honor roll can’t compete with that.

I’ve never really played a series that made “more of the same” feel so utterly captivating and intense. I mostly enjoyed Bioshock 2, but ultimately felt a bit let down by it given how much I loved the first game. The Final Fantasy series has just lost me, as the character models and indeterminate “vibe” of the latest games feels like redundancy wrapped in pretty, translucent packaging.

I think the sheer scale of God of War leaves you little recourse save to surrender to its majesty. The good gents at Penny Arcade! summed up the opening of God of War 2 perfectly…

God of War III begins with you fighting enemies while riding the back of a Titan as it scales Mount Olympus to combat the gods. Very soon you are doing battle with a Leviathan summoned by Poseidon (while still riding the Titan) before directly and brutally assaulting the sea god himself. I’m at a loss to find a proper hypothetical scenario to compare it to. It is equivalent to itself alone.

I hardly mean to say that God of War III is the “best game EVAH,” or even the best game I’ve played within the last twelve months. Uncharted 2 gave me similar levels of joy without any of the awkward events that inspire questions like “Did I really have to kill that gratuitously topless woman in Poseidon’s temple when using the dead body of an enemy would have worked just as well?” and “Are they really offering Kratos a chance to get naked with Aphrodite who is at the very least his great aunt?” Of course, when you consider the kind of craziness that occurred in actual stories from Greek mythology, the above moments are relatively tame. Neither here nor there, though. As a game, God of War III is clearly excellent. Beyond that, it is a successful experiment in interactive indulgence and grandiosity.

Restraint be damned. Damned and subsequently drawn, quartered, immolated and Kratos knows what else…