BEFORE: I'm back from vacation, and ready to take on the last 8 horror-based (mostly) films in the Shocktober chain. Let's see, 8 days left, 8 films, I think I may have planned this month out correctly, as Anne Hathaway carries over from "The Witches".
But first, a brief run-down of our latest trip across the south - this was BBQ Crawl #3, we passed on a trip like this in 2019 so we could do a Casino Crawl in Vegas, and then of course the pandemic happened, so it's been FOUR years since our last BBQ-based adventure, and man, we were feeling it. I don't remember needing to take so many naps on our previous vacations - but we are four years older now, so it does sort of make sense.
Saturday, we arrived in Atlanta early to get a jump on things, but to get to the airport for a 6 am flight, that meant leaving the house at 3 am, which for me meant staying up all night. So once we got to our hotel, I slept for a while, and I spent the next few days trying to catch up on sleep. But after a nap we hit the Taste of Soul Festival across from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which turned out to just be a 2-block long street fair. BUT there was one BBQ stand, so I had ribs, which meant the event was not a total loss. Then we hit the World of Coca-Cola Museum, where we learned about the history of Coke, the secret formula of Coke, the advertising of Coke, and basically everything one might need to know about Coke. Then we hit the tasting room to sample Coca-Cola products from around the globe, most of them were terrible and made me proud to be an American. That night I ventured out on the streets of Atlanta looking for a hidden cheesecake shop in a mall called the Underground, only to find it had closed, but instead I stumbled upon some late-night activities there like a secret Masquerade Ball (think "Eyes Wide Shut" maybe), a hip-hop concert, and I'm not saying there was a Fight Club, because if there were, I couldn't talk about it. But there was a pizza stand, so I came back to the hotel with pizza.
Sunday meant a trip to Waffle House, which my wife loves, then we struck out north of Atlanta to find a giant antiques mall in Cumming, GA, which also had a BBQ restaurant inside it. Another nap, then we met a high-school friend of my wife's for dinner at a steakhouse in a mall west of the city. Monday, we just set out to have fun, we visited Skyline Park but it didn't open until 3 pm, and under it was Ponce Market, which was just a giant hipster food hall with a few expensive stores. OK, change of plans, I grabbed a tourist guide to "Secret Atlanta" and found a 3/4 scale replica of the White House in Decatur, so we drove off to see that and then came back for lunch at The Varsity, a famous college hang-out famous for its hot dogs. Then a bit of daydrinking at the HobNob Tavern in Atlantic Station, followed by a trip to Fox Bros. BBQ, where they serve deep-fried ribs with Alabama white sauce. If that's not enough to make you want to visit, then we maybe don't have much in common. All the BBQ was great but those ribs were just beyond.
Tuesday we hit another Waffle House (Georgia is the state with the most Waffle Houses, or is it Waffles House?) and set out for Columbia, S.C. famous for its mustard-based BBQ sauce. I learned that they actually serve all the BBQ sauces in South Carolina (no white sauce though) but since they're the only state that serves the mustard-based sauce, that's what they're known for. This is why we do the Crawl, to learn about each city's different techniques, it's almost like having different religions that mostly preach the same things, but there are still differences. Then on Wednesday we hit the South Carolina State Fair, where I ate a bacon cinnamon roll, a donut burger, a corn dog and a fried bologna sandwich. Yes, it sounds like a lot, but this was over the course of three or four hours and I was actually holding back (sort of...). We saw chainsaw carving, sand sculptures, all kinds of crafts and even pig racing at the fair.
Last Thursday was my birthday, and we spent it at another Waffle House, then driving to Raleigh, North Carolina, where my sister lives. The first night we just hung out at her house, got burgers for take-out and I had some beers. But come Friday, we were at the North Carolina State Fair, where I had a deep-fried cheeseburger, a pork chop sandwich, chicken & waffles on a stick and a deep-fried apple pie with cinnamon ice cream. Saw a dog and camel show, also an act called "Cast in Bronze" which was on "America's Got Talent" a few years ago, it's a guy playing the carillon, which is a series of bells held in a frame and played like a pipe organ, sort of. Then I finished off with some deep-fried Reese's Peanut Butter cups, wrapped in bacon and battered, covered with powdered sugar. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.
Saturday rolled around again, and after a diner breakfast we did a little shopping, since our hotel was right in the middle of a giant mall-like area. Then we visited a geek-based Halloween market with my sister and her family, before heading out for, of course, barbecue. North Carolina has its own spin on pork and brisket, mostly they use that thin vinegar-based sauce, but I'm all about trying out each city's BBQ religion and giving them all a chance. So one more giant platter with ribs, chopped pork, sliced brisket and BBQ dark chicken, plus potato salad, beans, biscuits and Hush Puppies. Then Sunday we just headed for the airport to return the rental car and catch our flight, but there was a problem with the plane, and Delta had to fly in another plane just to replace that plane, which added a few hours to our trip home, but in the end I'd rather not switch a flight just to get home faster, because then you never know, you might make it home but your luggage won't, so I'm in favor of staying the course and not panicking, there's food at the airport so why not just relax, have some fried chicken and not worry about it?
THE PLOT: Gloria is an out-of-work party girl forced to leave her life in New York City and move back home. When reports surface that a giant creature is destroying Seoul, she gradually comes to the realization that she is somehow connected to this phenomenon.
AFTER: Come on, say it with me this time - "THIS is a weird movie." Almost TOO weird, but then maybe there's no such thing as "too weird", there's really no bottom to that chasm, now, is there? We're meant to believe that whenever this messed-up woman walks over a certain spot on a certain playground in a small New Hampshire town, then a giant colossal monster appears in the city of Seoul, South Korea. And her movements on the playground in New Hampshire are mimicked by the monster, meaning that she could easily step on people on the ground, or swat a helicopter out of the sky, if she's not careful. But I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here, first the movie starts out just like any little indie film, with a woman who's got a drinking problem, causing her NYC boyfriend to break up with her, which causes her to return to the small town she grew up in to try to get herself together, or maybe start over.
But the problem there is, she bumps into her childhood friend, Oscar, who now runs his late father's bar, and after accepting a waitress job at the bar, Gloria falls into another cycle of bad relationship juju, she's just traded downward and a love/hate relationship with Oscar develops. Clearly she only thinks of him as a friend, but when she starts dating Oscar's more attractive friend Joel, Oscar gets jealous, and before long he's making her work late shifts and allowing her to drink at a bar, when we all know that a bar is the last place where a person with a drinking problem should work. But Oscar also keeps bringing Gloria free furniture for her parents empty house, plus he's her boss, so I guess that's a complicated relationship?
Things get worse when the colossal beast shows up in South Korea for the first time in 25 years, and not-so coincidentally, Gloria hasn't been in her hometown for exactly that period of time - so she starts to realize that she and the monster are connected, and I guess this is some kind of metaphor, but it kind of falls JUST short of having some meaning. Like, is this the beast within her, or does the beast symbolize her drinking problem, or her self-destructive behavior? A little clarity here might help the film, but the movie in general is very unclear on the "HOW" and "WHY" of everything.
And you might think that the solutions to Gloria's problems would be very simple, like maybe don't drink so much, or don't work at a bar, or don't walk through the playground if you know that walking there causes the monster to appear in Seoul. Or, I don't know, maybe leave town all together if that's where the nexus or the portal or whatever is. Then maybe work on your issues, go to some AA meetings, see a therapist, do something positive or constructive, because clearly whatever you've done so far just ain't working. But no, Gloria decides to show Oscar and his friends that when she walks through the playground, the monster walks through Seoul. When she dances in the playground, the monster dances in Seoul.
What's worse is that Oscar then learns that he has the same ability, when he walks through the playground, a giant robot walks through Seoul. Again, what does this mean? Does he have a dark side also? Why are these the only two people who have this power, does this mean that they are meant for each other, or are they meant to be each other's nemesis? Again, is this a metaphor for the hostile nature of relationships, the battling monsters are from Venus and the giant robots are from Mars? Is this a man/woman thing, deep down men are uncaring, unfeeling automatons and women are secretly beastly and dangerous to themselves and others? Or am I just reading too much into this situation? No, that's OK, lazy screenwriter and lazier director, I'll do all the work, you just sit there.
If I'm right, maybe this is an innovative mash-up of monster movie and relationship film - but maybe that's giving the film a bit too much credit. I'm still scratching my head over the HOW and the WHY of it all, though.
There's a huge NITPICK POINT to be made concerning the delay involved with a television broadcast, even if it involves a live feed. The monster's movements appear to be completely in sync with Gloria's, but the monster is half a world away. Even if something magical or mystical was involved here, and the signals from her brain could travel through the Earth or across the globe instantaneously, it would still take time for the video image from a camera to be uploaded to a central server, then broadcast, then sent to a live feed, then to the tablet that Oscar was holding. There really is no "Now", even with an internet live-stream, you're always going to be looking at a few seconds ago, so syncing up her movements with the monster's doesn't make sense. But during the pandemic there were bands that recorded music together, even though the band members were in different locations, so I'm thinking they must have used some software during the recording to account for any transmission delays, right?
The bigger NITPICK POINT probably concerns how Gloria somehow got herself to Seoul without having enough money for plane fare - she probably wasn't making enough money as a waitress to pay for a last-minute flight to Korea, that would be a couple thousand dollars at least. Did she sneak aboard a cargo plane or something?
The final confrontation between Gloria's monster and Oscar's robot makes even less sense than that - just saying. BUT, I will credit the film for getting one thing right, when it's 8:00 am in New Hampshire, it's nighttime in South Korea, and SO MANY films get this wrong, they show events happening in different parts of the globe and they just use the same lighting.
Also starring Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Driven"), Austin Stowell (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "Monster"), Dan Stevens (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Hannah Cheramy, Nathan Ellison, Sarah Surh, Haeun Hannah Cho, Joe Costa, Christine Lee, Rukiya Bernard (last seen in "Get Over It"), Agam Darshi (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck").
RATING: 5 out of 10 blackouts
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