Dark Fiction: D.N.A

Dark Fiction: D.N.A

Written by Casey Douglass

Riz pulled over and switched off the engine. The heat shimmered from the rusty orange hood, managing to make it look hotter than the haze floating over the desert highway ahead. It all almost looked real.

Chimes and alerts went off, graphics hovering in front of Riz's face, arrows and tips as to what to do next. He dismissed them with a flick of his eyes and muted the alarms. 

He opened the door and heaved himself up from the seat. His neck and shoulders creaked as he arched them, the hot, moisture-less air setting his lips stinging. He looked up and down the road but nothing else was around, for now at least.

What was this game again? He couldn't remember. Some post apocalyptic Mad Max style wet dream no doubt. Most were, especially after humanity had partly brought this idea into reality. Now they were just VR fodder, a reminder of what could have been.

He walked around the beat-up car, the chrome scuffed, the paint pebble dashed. An explosion boomed over the horizon, the roaring of engines and cheers blowing to him on the breeze. Shit it was hot. He knew he could turn down the sensations the sim fed him, but that wasn't the point.

He climbed onto the scorching hood, the hot metal searing his skin. He grimaced and laid back, his neck sticking to the windscreen. The sun pounded against his face, his eyes clicked as he blinked, all moisture rapidly fleeing. The rumble of engines grew nearer, the vibration massaging his backside as the heat stuck his balls to his thighs. Part of him was glad that he was wearing the grubby overalls he found himself in.

More chimes and alerts sounded. This game was more insistent than most. He read a couple out of curiosity. “Go here...”, “Do that...”, “Kill this...”. He shut them off. How original they all were.

He opened a recording hub and smiled into the glowing blue lens that appeared above him.

‘I’m Rizz, a member of the Do Nothing Alliance. I'm in-,’ he searched briefly, ‘Desert Kings 5, the latest slice of virulent reality entertainment, another system to tell us what to do, where to go, who to be. Well, I’m me, I’m by this road, and I’m going to sunbathe while the dip-shits over the hill masturbate over their desert porn. As I do this, thousands of my associates are doing the same in this and other games, taking no part in their world’s events or economy.’

He paused and spat to the side, his throat starting to tingle.

‘We humans have become used to false pleasure, fake pain, false goals and fraudulent realities. This has left us maladjusted to life in the real world, which is why so many hide in these games. We are using the approach of non-violent protest, in the hope that others will join our cause, or at the least, give their situation more serious thought. We are in these games, we are doing nothing. We are the ghosts of what humans used to be, ploughers of their own furrows, wanderers of unknown paths, and we are tired of society force feeding us tamed realities.’

He looked over his shoulder as roaring metal glinted on the horizon. He looked back at the camera.

‘We have found a way to turn our safeguards off.’

He smiled.

‘Game death is real death. And the neural feedback caused by thousands of deaths just might knock these things offline for awhile, but that’s only a bonus. There aren’t enough of us out in the world, so we will let it crumble, just like you are doing by living your lives in these games. If we died out there, no-one would notice. So here we are. Lemmings on the cliff.’

With an effort of will, he sent the recording lens up out of harm’s way.

A rumbling sound grew nearer. Rizz closed his eyes and took a deep breath. None of it was real, except what his brain made of it all. He’d feel every pixel, taste every line of pain and scream every byte of agony. He knew what was coming, it was the nature of the game to kill without thought or reason. He looked up at the sun.

A hulking lorry rammed into the car, its spiked wheels churning, its flaming exhausts burning and its horn honking as it ripped through the length of the chassis, rending metal and flesh into bloody streamers of gore. The effect was much like a piñata being blown up with C4, except instead of fluttering pieces of paper, there were needle-sharp pieces of metal and glass. These fell to the hot tarmac, skidding and bouncing as they lost their kinetic energy. As the last of them fell still, the truck that had continued down the road juddered.

It glitched up the road a little further.

It stopped.

The clouds in the sky froze.

Two realities held their breath.

Dead by Daylight: The Legion First Impressions

Dead by Daylight: The Legion First Impressions

The latest Dead by Daylight chapter – Darkness Among Us, released a couple of days ago, giving players the usual mixture of a new Killer and Survivor to play as. The Killer is The Legion, a multiple-personality killer with a Feral Frenzy attack that allows them to race forward at speed, vault pallets, and also give them a sense of where healthy Survivors are. Sounds pretty decent on the face of it, but as is often the case, things can be different in practice.

My first session spent playing as The Legion was purely designed to get used to him. (I`ll call The Legion him for laziness purposes from here onwards). I expected to lose, and lose hard, as I was comfortably in the red ranks when he released. It took a little while to get used to his “ice skater turning” when frenzying. It felt like a milder adjustment process than getting used to Hillbilly and his own turning arcs, but it wasn’t wholly dissimilar. I messed up a number of tight vaults due to this, but I soon settled to his eccentricities.

As far as his power, it was fun, but it didn’t do much to win me the match. I still felt like I was being looped for just as long as other Killers, even with pallet vaulting and deep wound timers ticking down on a number of the Survivors. If I’d formed my opinion after my first experience with The Legion, I would have likely branded him “A bit shit!”, even allowing for his newness to me. Thankfully the next session I played him, I did much, much better, and that was partially helped with finding some complementary perks for his play-style.

One of the main criticisms levelled at The Legion is how his ability takes so long to down a Survivor. He has been dubbed a “5 hit killer” and other labels like that. Married to this is his low general movement speed, and the way that even his normal M1 attacks deplete his power gauge if they connect. Not very sexy. To me though, The Legion is an ambusher/stalking Killer, maybe even more so than our friends The Shape or The Pig. The Legion needs to get his licks in, then hold back, circling for the chance to end things later. Perks that aid this play-style make this a lot easier.

I’ve been making great use of BBQ & Chilli, Monitor and Abuse, Enduring and Bloodhound. The two that started making a big difference were M&A and Bloodhound. M&A lets me get closer to the Survivors on gens before they know I’m approaching, which is just generally helpful. The expansion in terror radius when in a chase also aids my Survivor locating power, so it gives in two ways. Bloodhound proved most effective for me though, and even at level one, the boost in tracking ability it gave me was immense. Certain maps have very bad scratch-marks right now, and even the ones that don’t, they can often send me the wrong way. Glowing blood puddles though.. much easier to track, and blood shows when you are running in frenzy, whereas scratchmarks don't. I’ve seen others use Stridor and say that it serves them well, but I’ve yet to unlock that for The Legion.

As I said above, I found The Legion to me most effective as an ambusher/stalker. I get my feral frenzy off, hit as many people as I can if others are clustered, or get two hits on one person. I then let myself fall back far enough that the chase breaks. Some streamers have been advocating the “turning away and following them backwards” gimmick. Fair play if they can do it but I don’t bother, it feels pretty cheap to me, but that’s just my opinion. Once I’ve broken the chase by dropping back or going in a different direction, I can then follow the injured Survivor at leisure, following their glowing blood and pressuring them at distance while they need to Mend. If I don’t lose them, there is little they can do. They are going down, either to another attack from me, or their timer running out. Since adopting this play-style, I have 3 and 4 K’d quite consistently as The Legion, with the odd narrow loss thrown in here and there. The enjoyment I’ve gained playing in this way is substantial, even in those losses.

It is very early days with The Legion, with both Survivors and Killers still getting to grips with him, so it’s hard to know what he’ll be like once people are more experienced, and he gets his inevitable patches to tinker with his stats over time. People worry about how viable Killers are at the higher ranks, and where Legion will fit into this, but in my experience, all Killers can do decently well at Rank 1, even Freddy, it’s just a matter of tactics, RNG and who you are facing. You can’t win every game. The Legion doesn’t feel over powered at the moment, nor terrible. I’m just hoping to carry on having fun with him for as long as I can.

Dark Film Review: Nerve

Dark Film Review: Nerve

Review by Casey Douglass

Nerve is one of those films that has been sitting on my Freeview recorder for a little while now. It sounded interesting, but I was just a bit “meh” about actually watching it. Luckily, the other day, I did finally decide to give it a chance, and I’m happy to report that I liked it far more than I expected to.

The Nerve of the title is an online dare game, one in which the participants have to complete dares for money, unless they “bail” or “fail”. When the participant signs up to be a Player (you can also be a Watcher), the Nerve platform harvests all of the online information about you that it can, which may or may not be used for your dares. If you are afraid of spiders, as an example, and you’ve posted about it, well, expect creepy goodness crawling up your arm at some point. Some dares also seem to be crowd-sourced, with people voting on what someone needs to do. There are also various rules, like it has to be filmed on the player’s own phone to count. Another rule is to keep Nerve secret, because “snitches get stitches”.

Vee (Emma Roberts) is a shy, geeky highschooler who lacks the confidence to make any of the important decisions in her life. Her friend Sydney (Emily Meade), tells her about Nerve and wants her to be one of her Watchers, as the more Watchers someone has, the higher up the ranking table they get. After Vee witnesses Sydney doing her dare, flashing her naked backside as a cheerleader at a football game, the pair have a falling out when Syndey embarrasses Vee with the guy she fancies. So, like any normal person, Vee rides home on her bicycle and decides to opt into a sketchy online dare platform. As you do. Completing her first dare brings her into contact with Ian (Dave Franco), and that’s contact beyond a mere “Howdi!” Their paths are then entwined for the rest of the film, as they both work together to complete the various tasks set them by Nerve.

Nerve is a slick film. From the computer graphics of watching people through see-thru mobiles and computers, to the various message exchanges and video recording that goes on, it all has a nice polished, technological aesthetic. Even Ian’s motorbike and various stretches of street lighting glow in neon colours. It just made the whole film quite “punchy” in the visual sense, and I enjoyed this. I didn’t really enjoy the soundtrack though, and in places I found it quite annoying, but that’s just due to the music not being to my taste.

The narrative flows along nicely, although there were a few scenes in which I questioned how much Vee could change in such a short period of time. I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t feasible, but certain things felt a bit overly contrived, the breakups and make-ups sometimes occurring in such a frictionless way, it just didn't feel real. I did like the interplay between Vee and Ian though, and the way that the dares tended to escalate. Many of the dares featured public embarrassment, and I could feel myself cringing as the characters had to navigate their way through them. The ending was relatively satisfying too, although for a film called Nerve, it felt like it played it a bit too safe for my liking.

In a way, the true star of the film for me was Nerve, the platform. A system that can scrape personal information from your social media profiles and other online activity, crunch it all and then turn it into a twisted dare-based challenge system? How creepy and brilliant at the same time. The topic of fear and daring to do stuff is also something almost anyone will connect with, the anxiety that pushing your comfort zone can bring, and the everyday feelings of “Oh, if I’d just taken that chance to say hello to that person, but I can’t”. Add people filming you as you try to do that very thing, and a whole new level of stress gets added to things. As I said, you’ll probably cringe along to a good few of the dares, and that’s not even mentioning the ones that put people in physical danger.

Nerve was a film that I really enjoyed, and one that fits into stuff that I find really interesting. It aligns with some of the other books and films that I’ve enjoyed, such as The Diceman by Luke Rhinehart, which is a guy basically “self-daring” with dice, and even non-fiction stuff like Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang, a book written by someone who filmed himself getting rejected so that he could challenge himself to overcome it. Add in the technology aspect to Nerve, and I found it to be quite gripping.

If you’ve not seen Nerve, check it out if you get the chance to.

Film Title: Nerve

Starring: Emma Roberts, Dave Franco

Genre: Thriller

Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman

Released: 2016

Distributor: Lionsgate

Music Review: I Could Go Lucid

Music Review: I Could Go Lucid

Review by Casey Douglass

Dreams, and lucid dreams in particular, have been one of my areas of interest for decades now. From the lucid nightmares that held me prisoner, to the world-crafting that is sometimes possible, they are a domain in which the mind can unleash and run free. I Could Go Lucid, the latest experimental ambient album from Bodyverse, was created with dream mechanics in mind, the improvisation and flow needed by the dreamer to straddle the line between staying in the dream, or bursting the bubble and waking up to everyday reality:

Album Description: I Could Go Lucid is about an instant of awareness in which I realise I could have the chance to create an astonishing reality, if only I could keep consciousness while dreaming, for more than an ephemeral moment. Lucid dreams mean to me a chance to create perfection as I feel they release the power of imagination in its whole potential. Imagination becomes matter to interact with. It’s the brain’ s virtual reality, the off limits oneiric one.

As well as in dreams, also in the in musical creative process I perceive a certain amount of surreal content, and it too links with imagination and with the act of materialising ideas. For this reason I am currently experimenting through improvisation, in a journey between surrealism, expressionism and situationist drift. I try to let ideas flow, so my will subordinates to accidents and emotions. I become an explorer or a traveller with an uncertain destination. This atmosphere has resulted in a creation of six pieces in which the priority is simply to keep the integrity of the original idea itself.

Nothing has been planned nor post-produced. This is involuntary music.

The first thing I noticed when listening to I Could Go Lucid was the general sound of the notes that reach the ear. They have a fluffy, music-box type quality, a plinky-lightness that hints at white clouds floating across an azure sky, or candyfloss at the beach, or even a balloon being carried off by the breeze. Not all of the notes were like this but that’s how many came across to me. There are higher, chime-like notes too, and deeper bassy tones, but the ‘light ones’ usually made me think along those lines.

The next thing that I soon came to appreciate was how each track seemed to build up. Each might start with a handful of single notes, maybe making a melody, maybe just staying really minimal. This initial opening would then gain an extra layer of new notes, freshly dancing around the previous ones. The first track, Pink Sunsets Were Very Calm, seemed to get higher and higher, each layer adding the impression of floating up into the sky. Yet the next track, Poplars Were Made Of Cherry Blossoms, seems to have the initial notes underlaid by lower ones, going down and down. I liked the way in which each track seemed to grow in complexity, but never getting too hectic or busy. The clever use of breaks and pauses no doubt helped in this also.

My favourite track of the album is Waves Against Marble Columns, as I found myself musing about H.P Lovecraft’s Randolf Carter and his Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath. The notes of this track put me in mind of a clock chiming the hour, and the melody led to me thinking about the various temples and churches Carter visited during his dream adventure, the strange architecture and people who worshiped inside them. There is a kind of lumbering quality to the rhythm a little later, one that caused me to imagine what Carter would have made of a strange funeral procession walking through beautiful streets paved with rock quarried from far and fantastic locations. I enjoyed this musing and I must admit that it’s rare for such a “light” sound to cause my thoughts to turn to something as dark as Lovecraft, but it was a genuine pleasure.

I Could Go Lucid is a fine ambient album, one in which the lightness of the notes hides a surprising darkness that seems to cling to certain portions of certain tracks. A little like browsing the religion section of a library, only to find some naughty git has hidden some porn magazines between the various bibles.

Take a look at the I Could Go Lucid page on Bandcamp at this link for more information and to listen to the tracks.

I was given a copy of this album for review purposes.

Album Title: I Could Go Lucid

Album Artist: Bodyverse

Label: LONTANO Series

Publisher: ROHS! Records

Releases: 18 Dec 2018

Indiegogo Spotlight: Feral

Indiegogo Spotlight: Feral

I really enjoyed the time I spent browsing Indiegogo yesterday, checking out the new horror projects and just generally absorbing their enthusiasm. So here is another Indiegogo Spotlight from me, this time about a female-led horror called Feral.

Feral is set in an isolated forest. A young woman who is on a camping trip with her boyfriend ends up having to fight a supernatural force that leaves her trapped and alone in said isolated forest. Feral will deal with issues of trauma, violence and shame, and is hoped to "truthfully dissect a painful reality that’s far too familiar for most women, and far too many others, and we hope our film can help in the healing process."

FERAL - TEASER. from Madeline Metcalfe on Vimeo.

The teaser above is certainly a tease, but the music and disturbing smile (and of course, the dribbling blood) all make it wet the appetite for what the finished film could be like. I hope writer/director Madeline Metcalfe and her companions manage to get it funded, as it sounds like a very interesting prospect.

Feral is looking for funding to help with a variety of costs inherent in creating a film, from paying actors, to travel costs and insurance. If you'd like to support this project, you can view its Indiegogo page at this link.

Indiegogo Spotlight: The Rave

Indiegogo Spotlight: The Rave

I've never been a "raver", I bow to the gods of metal and dark ambient, but when I saw this campaign on Indiegogo, I was intrigued. The Rave is a short horror film in which people take strange drugs at a rave (shock!) and stumble across "gruesome horrors" after ingesting them.

The film is being created by third year students at the Baltic Film and Media School, and the Indiegogo campaign is hoped to help them with creating the "stunning visuals loyal to the techno rave scene. Without money this would be impossible to realise."

As well as being a horror, the makers hope the film will promote conscientious drug use, as it brings attention to the risks inherent in dosing yourself with unknown compounds and creations.

Watch the Vimeo teaser below. I did, and I was quite taken with the visuals and the aesthetics of what was happening. This film looks like it will be well worth watching when it is finished.

The Rave / Reiverid Teaser from Reiverid on Vimeo.

If you'd like to support The Rave's Indiegogo campaign, you can check it out at this link.

Dark Music Review: Esoterika

Dark Music Review: Esoterika

Review by Casey Douglass

Esoterika is the most recent album from Humanfobia, a dark experimental music project from Chile. It consists of two members: Mist Spectra and Sábila Orbe, and is a project inspired by the supernatural, life after death and ghostly happenings. The music could fall into any number of categories, from dark ambient to witch house, but it’s dark, which is the main thing I tend to look for.

On Esoterika, Mist Spectra provides the haunting feminine vocals, her phasing shimmering words at times clear and bright, at others like a whisper from the grave, depending on the track. Sadly, I don’t speak Spanish, so I couldn’t understand what was being said, but the track titles gave enough of a hint for me to get the feel of what was happening.

This leads me to the first track that I clicked with: Gato Negro (black cat). A bouncy electronic tone sets a rhythm, and is soon joined by the sharp meow of a cat. It’s all a little discordant, which is part of the charm. The cat sounds range from the normal to the quite severe, and at times, the other sounds in the track seem to mimic the cat. By the end, I thoroughly had the cat’s meow on my brain, and came away really liking the track.

Next up is Phantasmal Doppelg▲nger. A fast beat is joined by a ghostly wavering voice, while a quieter rhythm sits in the background, carrying the track along. Beeps and bursts of electronic noise join things, a little like a modem handshake at a laser show, and the voice, when it fades and reappears, shimmers. The overall image this track created in my mind was what it would be like for a ghost or creature to come through an old CRT monitor, only to stare the user in the eyes as their double.

Ʃso₸erika is next, a punchy track with a mixture of both masculine and feminine vocals, along with various electronic tones and beats. The vocals seem to stutter in and out, phasing with the pulsing notes. It almost sounded a little like a chip-tune song to me at around the midpoint, something from an old NES video game corrupted by dark influences maybe? A fun track though, either way.

MΛgic Spells of Doom is the final track I wanted to talk about individually. Fuzzy electro noises and vocals from Mist Spectra echo and squelch into a soundscape that's ripe with buzzing activity. There is also a pleasing muffled effect, like the digitized sounds are happening underwater. Later there are what could be the sounds of a radio sweeping through frequencies, maybe the spell-caster of the title tapping into different levels of existence?

All of the tracks on Esoterika are haunting in their own way, the various electronic sounds, samples and tones creating a dark digital space in which technology and the supernatural just might be meeting and bashing out a few obscene offspring. I’m not used to listening to the kind of electronic beats that Esoterika provides, but the dark samples and tone held this dark ambient fan’s interest throughout. What’s more, Esoterika is a free download from the Humanfobia Bandcamp page. You can visit that page by clicking here if you’d like to find out more. You might also like to check out Phantasmal Doppelg▲nger below:

Album Title: Esoterika

Album Artist: Humanfobia

Released: 8 Oct 2018