The Spooktacular Eight #31: Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)

As an Italian, it always tickled me silly how back in the late 2000s EA’s idea for competiting with Sony’s God Of War franchise was to pillage The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and basically transform it into a power fantasy action game about saving a damsel in distress, which happens to be done by traversing Hell as described by the Tuscanian poet.

I guess because it was a well known public domain literary work that would also work as a quick and dirty band-aid to feign some refinement, and to be honest everyone was jumping on the hack n slash action game bandwagon at the time, so of course EA would have tried their hands at it.

Still feels fuckin random because they could just have made a Roman Empire themed hack n slash, but i guess they couldn’t push a marketing campaign literally encouraging to “go to hell” and the “sin to win” marketing shizzle.

I’m not even offended because this is so fuckin american it’s hilarious, i mean, sure, it’s based on Alighieri’s first book of The Divine Comedy as in it has the concept of venturing through Hell, it has a guy named Dante, a gal named Beatrice, and The Devil(TM) sure, it’s the same thing.

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[EXPRESSO] Kinds Of Kindness (2024) | R.F.M. Does The Yubi Yubi

Yorgos Lanthimos has been on a roll lately, i especially loved Poor Things, so i was looking forward to his new film, Kinds Of Kindness, even though i had qualms about it being a tryptic/anthology thing, even with the novel spin of the same actors playing different characters in each of the segments.

Then again, Lanthimos reunited with his longtime screenwriter Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer) for this one, so yes, i’m definitely game.

Despite the segments having oddly some very light continuity, this is mostly done for a comedic pay-off/joke, so we have a collection of stories about the titular types of “kindness”, with the first being about a man that falls of favor after refusing to cause an incident for his boss (that also monitors and basically plans/commands his subordinate entire life), the second with a cop that has her missing wife survive from a crash on an island and return unscathed, only for the cop to feel increasingly paranoid about the wife being an impostor, and the final one concering a couple of members of a cult in search of an actual holy maiden able to raise the dead for real.

It’s a bit uneven, with the middle segment arguably being the best one, and the final one being kinda disappointing (and structurally too similar to the first one, which is classic old school Lanthimos all the way), with the feeling it all might have worked better with some of the ideas reworked into a single storyline, especially with its being the longest of Lanthimos films, almost clocking at 3 hours.

Still, it’s definitely worth seeing, even with the slightly excessive lenght and uneven quality of the segments, the acting by the stellar cast it’s incredible as expected. Good stuff.

[EXPRESSO] Junji Ito Maniac (2023) | Adaptation Curse

At this point in time i believe there is a factory somewhere producing monkey paws exclusively for adaptation of Junji Ito works, because you’d have to be a heathen to ask for more after the incredibly disappointing animated anthology known as Junji Ito Collection.

It hurts even more since this “sequel series” (once again handled by Studio DEEN as “Collection” was) basically showed up out of nowhere on Netflix, while the Uzumaki anime announced back in 2019 and supposed to release October last year has been postponed again.

In a fitting roundabout way, i’m not approaching in good spirit this 12 episode series, which also opts for sticking two short stories in one episode.

And honestly i’m not really surprised to realize that Maniac makes Junji Ito Collection look better in comparison, at the very least it had a better selection of stories, while this one seems to be running on fumes, so much that they do Tomie… AGAIN. Actually, they don’t do even that, just the chapters about the photos out of context and don’t even give that a conclusion.

Animation it’s mostly fine (CGI aside), but the selection is odd, questionable at best, the many stories often don’t work for a reason or another, be it editing, excessively brief runtime, lackluster direction, this when the stories themselves aren’t just kinda weak, underwhelming, not scary and forgettable to begin with.

There are some standout pieces, like the “Hanging Baloons” episode, and some odd comedic picks like The Bizarre Hikazuki Siblings, and it does get a bit better halfway through, but it’s not enough, not for a second attempt/season, and while it’s NOT the worst thing ever… please just go experience the various Junji Ito short stories in their original manga form instead of this sub-par anime anthology.

[EXPRESSO] The House (2022) | Trifecta Triumphant

New stopmotion animation film on Netflix with (also) animal people, you know i’m already in.

Even more since it’s a small anthology of 3 stories, one about a poor family meeting a miraculous proposal, one about an anxious ratman constructor trying to score estate success, and the last about an exhausted landlord, all tied together by revolving about the same house, while taking place in different epochs and with different kind of characters, going from humans to ratman and catmen.

The character models aren’t clay or the odd-papermaciè style seen in Mary Shelley’s Frankhole, but go for a very textured felt-wool look, with a very fuzzy feel juxtaposed to the horror atmosphere and visuals, even though just the first story has actual supernatural horror elements, there’s always a sinister or weird tone to most of the events, with some very stilish visuals to match.

Animation it’s top notch, the character models have very good designs and craft, and it’s a quite good trifecta of stories, with a balanced mix of horror, satire, drama and comedy, quite grabbing as you always wanna see where they’re going in exactly. I think the second one it’s arguably the best, as you never quite sure what direction it’s gonna go, gets weirder and has an even weirder ending.

And stuff like a trip-out insects & maggots musical sequence.

And free-roaming hippie catmen.

Honestly, i don’t really have much to complain about or add in general, if your ears peaked up like a fox at “animated stopmotion anthology film with lots of style and fun substance”, the chances are good you’re gonna like this one, easily. And it comes in a pretty good 90 minutes package, with everything in it feeling as long as it needs to be.

What a really great surprise, too. Excellent.