Vampires suicide by sunrise just another cliche (spoilers)

In the last 4 vampire movies in a row that I've watched, a vampire commited suicide by watching the sunrise. Spoilers ahead...

These movies were not chosen for any other reason other than I felt like watching them. It all started with Let the Right One In, followed by Thirst, Daybreakers, and then 30 Days of Night.

Let the Right One In

I heard lots of good things about LtROI from the start, but also didn't pay much attention to it because I tend to avoid things that are overhyped, sometimes to my loss. LtROI was a brilliant piece of work, but I'm not writing this post to recite the same praises and fanfare, this is about the scene where a vampire kills themself by sunlight.

In this movie, it is a middle aged woman name Virginia who turns into a vampire and decides to take the easy way out by a sunlight suicide. (That's pretty catchy, "sunlight suicide")

The scene: Virginia is in a hospital bed and asks an aide to open the blinds for her. Upon opening, the sunlight hits her and she bursts into flames as tall as the ceiling in a violent and painful eruption. The scene doesn't last long, but I'm guessing the entire room and possibly half of the building burnt down to the ground. What I love about this scene is the suddenness of the eruption. From the overall tone of the movie, you are not expecting such pyrotechnics. I'm using the word eruption because that's what it is, so much more than any other burning vampire I've seen in any film.

My rating: 5/5 burning vampires

Thirst

After watching LtRIO, I was in the mood for another foreign film and the film I came across just happened to be another vampire movie. Having not heard anything about this movie, I gave it a try, and it is now one of my favorite foreign movies.

In Thirst, our protagonist is a priest with such selflessness that he gives his body over to science and turns into a vampire. Trust me, it's better than that sentance I just summed it up in.

The Scene: The ending. Sang-hyun (the priest) drives a car with his girlfriend Tae-ju sleeping in the passenger seat, and her mother in the backseat, to a cliff with nowhere to hide from the sunrise in sight. It's Sang-hyun that wants to commit suicide here, and he realizes that Tae-ju is pretty damn psychotic and needs to die too. When Tae-ju wakes up, she sees the situation and tries to hide in the trunk. Sang-hyun rips off the top of the trunk and throws it into the ocean. She then hides under the car, and he proceeds to push it off her. When she finally accepts her fate, they sit side by side on the hood of the car facing the sunrise and burn to death. Their burn is a slow burn, like wood burning in a campfire. The scene is shot exceptionnally well, and it's almost romantic, except for Tae-ju's mother being in the backseat and staring at them from a comatose state, that's a little akward.

My rating: 4/5 burning vampires

Daybreakers

After watching 2 foreign vampire movies, my friends recommended Daybreakers. I vaguely remember seeing previews for this movie and barely remembered that it looked pretty cool. I liked it, but nowhere near as much as LtROI and Thirst.

The Scene: The opening scene. A 12 year old girl writes a suicide note and you catch hints in her note about her being very old and tired, and just wanting to end it. She proceeds to walk out the front door and sit in the lawn waiting for the sunrise. When the sun comes up, she starts to burn, and you can see the cg coming out. The whole scene is mediocre.

My rating: 2/5 burning vampires

In Daybreakers defense, it was a good movie. It was also a "science fiction horror film" with more of it's focus being on the farming of human blood and the developement of a cure. The movie itself is good, just not the suicide scene.

30 Days of Night

After watching an American vampire movie, I wanted to give another one a shot and came up with this from another friend's recommendation.

Overall, I like this movie very much. It's a very good horror movie with a sense of desolation. The vampires are depicted as very feral and brutal, which was a nice change.

The Scene: The ending. Josh Hartnett is a vampire and he goes with his wife, who's not a vampire, to watch the sunrise on a snowy cliff. Cuddled up in his wife's arms, the sun rises and he slowly turns to ash, and somehow his wife is barely affected. What attempts to be an emotional scene was just another cliche suicide by another sad vampire.

My rating: 1/5 burning vampires

Maybe it's just that seeing the same scene in these 4 movies really just dulled my senses toward it. Blade really needs to make a comeback. Hopefully we'll see that whenever Wesley Snipes makes his comeback from his financial problems.

All caught up with Dexter (spoilers)

Disclaimer: There are spoilers below. Lots of them. In fact, the whole post is a giant spoiler.

My wife and I have just caught up with Showtime's Dexter. I can't wait for season 5's start, but I have to say I am incredibly disappointed by the ending of season 4, with Rita's death.

As a family man myself, I was really enjoying watching his struggle to balance family, work, and killing, and I was very happy to see it all coming together for him. One of my favorite aspects of the show was watching him become an overprotective dad and husband. I would've loved to see a full season of him with a happy family doing what he does, but Dexter isn't an ABC family show, it's on Showtime for a reason. I guess I forgot how the show started, how Dexter himself started, a lone serial killer struggling with a dark passenger. I'm a little resentful how long we got to know Rita, only to have her die off so suddenly.

Part of the reason why I'm disappointed is because of writer's obsessions with "twists". As the commercial 2 episodes before season 4's finale (episode 10) stated, this was "the seasons biggest twist". As soon as I read those words on the screen, I knew something bad was going to happen. Not bad as in what they want you to think, but bad as in a bad writing choice. I knew they were going to do something "shocking", this entire show has been shocking from the beginning. Shocking is discovering Christine was Trinity's daughter, back in season 2 when Lila blew up Doakes, and of course the first time you saw kid Dexter crying in a puddle of blood. This wasn't shocking, it was a poor writing choice.

Will I still watch season 5? Hell yes. I want to see how he deals with his guilt, his job, and what's going to happen with the kids. I'm also curious to find out how much more Deb learns about her brother. Unfortunately, I can see how this will lose a part of their audience, primarily I'm thinking of my wife and other wives, mommies, or even the single females who's favorite part of the show was watching him take care of his family. I really hope they don't make another poor writing choice and have him move on too fast, and by too fast I mean within this next season.

Maybe it's strange to say, but I think people still have a lot to learn from Dexter.

Kataklysm Radio on Pandora - Best workout music

Pandora is my favorite source of music during workouts. I love the random choices made by their "Music Genome Project." However, one of my challenges has been to find the perfect workout radio station.

With Amon Amarth being my personal favorite, it was logical I started with that. It was off to a good start, but began leading a little more into the depressive black metal of Immortal and Darkthrone, and the epic viking metal of Bathory. That would normally be fine by me, as I'm a huge fan of both genres, but I was looking for something a little more on the brutal edge of metal.

Kataklysm is a band that I've always known about, but have generally ignored for being somewhat generic metal. However one day while pumping iron, a Kataklysm song came on Amon Amarth Radio. It was perfect. The beat was solid, the guitars extremely crunchy, and the vocals just right.

That's when I created the Kataklysm Radio Station, and have been hooked ever since. It gives me the perfect blend of brutality, and even brings back some fond memories of Decapitated and Dying Fetus. It's also responsible for my guilty pleasure Devildriver.

Devildriver is another band I have ignored, primarily due to the direct history of terrible nu-metal. I admit, as a preteen I listened to Coal Chamber. It's just that most of the bands from the genre, which I refuse to name, seem stuck in a world of suck and shopping malls. Dez Fafara has really, in my opinion, broken out from that shell and created something great. Although they are still somewhat cliche' in some of their riffs, breakdowns, and even Dez's growls, they pull it off just right. They remain my guilty pleasure.

Here is a list of bands that appear on Kataklysm Radio, in no particular order (as Pandora likes it):

Kataklysm (duh)
All Shall Perish
Amon Amarth
Devildriver
Requiem
Decapitated
The Absence
Lamb of God
Behemoth
One Man Army & the Undead Quartet
Deicide
Dying Fetus
Misery Index
Goatwhore
This Ending
Arch Enemy

These bands are perfect for workouts, especially when you're lifting heavy. Right when you're feeling muscle failure and some brutal blast beat, crushing riff or breakdown comes on and you pull off that last rep, it's such a good feeling.

There really is power in the metal. (lol)

Okkultokrati - On Mouth Of Hells

Here's a new obscure black / thrash / sludge metal band I came across called OKKULTOKRATI.

The band was born out of a need to transcend the surface of pointless
metal and punk that overflows Norway's borders. Why just get
inspiration from international unholy culture when just outside the
living room window you will find the purest horror you can imagine?
Both the Norwegian natural landscape and on the outskirts of every
city is filled with all kinds of vile pleasures for young creative
souls.

The basis of the mood and the lyrics of "No Light For Mass" is a
fascination for atheist metaphysics. While feeding the ego is
increasingly taking up space on the Internet and the media,
Okkultokrati latches onto the concept of the general state of the New
Age movement and its fringed side tracks. If you look behind the
colorful rainbows and happy-go-fatal philosophies you will find
aborted reincarnations, astral mutilation, and telepathic deportation.
Okkultokrati channels the negative energy into 9 tracks of nekro
spirituals and encourages spiritual rationality.

I have no idea what they're talking about in the second paragraph, although it sounds great. "...aborted reincarnations, astral mutilation, and telepathic deportation"? Filled with much angst and overall fuck-it-ness, this band fulfills the urge to lash out and give a big middle finger to whatever it is that's pissing you off. I'm actually a very happy guy, so I don't really have anything in particular to aim that middle finger at, but sometimes it feels good to know you can.



Music video overview:

Black and white. Norwegian landscape of snow and trees. Walking angrily through a tunnel. Solo headbang in tunnel. Angry faces in the dark. Swinging a torch in an abandoned area. Walking alone across a barren landscape. More headbanging in a tunnel. Bloody hand on a wall. Solo headbanging in a closed off doorway. Carrying a torch like a zombie. Angry poses. First person view of skiing downhill.

All in all, awesome. I love this shit.