Review: American Gods

I'm never taking recommendations for books again for the rest of my life.

I was going to write this review over a year ago, but frankly I got bored and decided to shelve it for a while. With a television series set to air on Starz, I decided to give my thoughts on what might be the most anticipated show of the year for many people and why it's a big pile of dookie.

The Premise

Shadow Moon--I'm not joking--an experienced conman, is released from prison to find his wife has died in a car accident. After discovering she was having an affair with his best friend, Shadow reluctantly accepts an offer to be a bodyguard for the enigmatic Mr. Wednesday, a womanizing thief. There's more to Wednesday than Edgy Originalcharacter is led to believe, and before he realizes it Wednesday throws Fedoralord into a complex web of intrigue with a grab-bag of whatever shallow religious icons author Neil Gaiman could find.

Yawn.

The first thing that jumped out at me while listening to the twenty hour audiobook (465 pages, if Wikipedia is correct) is that very little actually happens in the plot. Euphoric Originalcharacterdonotsteal is constantly introduced to these fantastical deities covering a wide range of world religions with all the affect of a dirty old broom.

Gaiman must have taken the wrong inspirations from Stephen King, as long passages of nothing happening litter the pages of this Hugo-winning novel. At one point, Laughable Name decides to leave his hotel room to go into the lobby and agonize over a selection of potato chips before returning to his room to watch an episode of Jerry Springer, which is also described to the reader. Did that sound like an interesting series of events? Did you learn anything about the character or the world which, I must remind you, is full of a mish-mash of every deific entity of every major religion?

Unoriginal Joke is occasionally visited by his dead wife and the two jab at each other with smarmy quips that even Joss Whedon would heavily reconsider dropping in a script. Every single line out of the wife's mouth is about how inconvenient being dead is, and the reader is never really given much motivation into her actions aside from feeling bad about cheating on Melvin Dragonlord, and beyond that her character falls so flat that I could never get a read on what she was like before becoming a one-liner-spewing zombie.

Wednesday, an incarnation of the Norse God Odin, is perhaps the most cliched version of the God Gaiman could possibly have produced. A womanizing drunk, the character brings Shadow to a meeting of the Gods where they take their original forms, though most of them are unphased by Odin revealing that the new gods, a shadow group based on new technology, are seeking to usurp the gods of old.

This brings the crawling plot to a very minimal boost, introducing the central conflict. Maddeningly, this conflict has nothing at all to do with Shadow and the stakes are...

What are the stakes?

I still have no clue what the stakes are in this novel. If the American Gods defeat the Old World Gods, it's implied nothing at all will change. Stupid is offered multiple chances to simply leave, but because he has absolutely no character he decides to stand around to finish his stupid job. That's it. That's the plot of the whole novel--so where do the hundreds of pages come in?

Well, because this is somehow an important piece of work for Gaiman, several chapters are dedicated to short stories describing common people interacting with the old gods. These short stories take forever to finish and grind the already glacial pace of the novel to a halt with very little to show for it. Apparently Gaiman doesn't know that ifrits are not gods, and if that's the case why aren't more mystical creatures just kind of hanging around in the world? The story would have been far more fascinating if that were the case, but only one short story deals with this creature and it has one of the most dull, passionless descriptions of sex I've ever read--well, listened to. Hush.

That's not to say the other few sex scenes in the novel are riveting; on the contrary, Neil Gaiman seems to desire his children's stories about fantasy monsters featuring characters actually named Shadow Moon to be taken seriously, but sex is approached by someone who I'm not actually sure has ever lost his virginity. Go listen to the languid descriptions of sex in chapter 8 of American Gods and compare it to the mind-shattering "the earth moved" scene from Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, or the frantic and passionate tryst between Joe and Joanna from Faulkner's Light in August. Passion isn't merely telling the audience all about the grunting piston-like movements of sex or the act of ejaculation, which Gaiman believes elevates sex. I guess you could just handwave it by saying "They don't make 'em like they used to," but comparing the greats to this trash makes it look even more pitiful.

The novel continues to merely exist at several points, going so far as to drop Shadaloo Bison into a completely detached village suffering horrific winters which literally goes nowhere. It's revisited after the main plot is finished, but it feels completely out of place--as if it were a completely different story dropped in to lengthen the novel. I feel like the publisher demanded a far longer book than Gaiman intended to write; if this is the perfect version of American Gods, I kind of feel ashamed for everyone involved.

The novel ratchets up to a massive war between the gods both old and new, but without spoiling too much (out of respect for you poor, innocent TV viewers) most of the battle is completely off-screen. Oh yeah, did nobody mention that? All the action takes place off-screen and Shadow takes part in none of it. You know, like how Anakin has absolutely no reason to be fighting for Naboo and most of the action takes place without him. He manages to get out of bad situations with seemingly little effort, everyone likes him, his name is literally the kind of thing you'd see scrawled on a binder by an edgy teenager, and he has some sort of God blood or something. I guess it's okay to be a Mary Sue if you're a fantasy protagonist though, because nobody reading fantasy has standards anyway.

Conclusion

I guess this is why I hold fantasy and sci-fi in such low regard: not because I don't personally like the genre, but because critics of the genre seem to accept such low quality garbage and heap glowing praise and awards on the mere act of trying. The bar for entry just keeps shrinking, and by reading these types of novels I feel like I'm lowering myself to the standards typical of the genre--which, after the Young Adultpocalypse of the last decade, is lying somewhere next to dinosaur bones lower than the Mariana Trench. Gaiman has emulated the worst parts of Stephen King, a writer acclaimed for his ability to dump out huge tomes every year quality notwithstanding, and applied it to a plot you'd see in a throwaway anime. Boring, monotone, edgy, unoriginal, cringey (Low-key Lyesmith? How can you read this with a straight face and still respect yourself?) and just generally laughable, American Gods is a book that made me seriously question some of my friends' taste.

Poor

Review: Don't Breathe

I wonder why I even bother sometimes. My life is a trainwreck, nobody reads these stupid blogs; I might as well go work in a toll booth or something. Worse, even more depressing, is that I spent twenty stupid dollars to take my girlfriend to see the vexingly well-reviewed Don't Breathe. I just can't win. Everything is awful.

What I Can Only Describe as the "Premise"

Don't Breathe is an accurate title, because I'm pretty sure director and screenwriter Fede Alvarez wrote the plot while holding his breath or something, I don't know, this is a stupid joke. Almost as stupid as Don't Breathe. A trio of idiot burglars decide they're done with living in Detroit (a fair motivation) and that as one final heist, they'll break into the home what I can only describe as Blind Plinkett; as they've discovered, this man received $300,000 in a settlement after his daughter was killed in a car crash. The three bumble their way through this guy's tiny house as they discover the depths of human horror. Many, many laughs are had at their expense.

The Good.

Well, the cinematography is alright. The first act of the film has extensive use of very wide shots, and I have to say these massive panoramas of Detroit are very striking. The movie actually opens with a very impressive shot as the camera slowly pans toward the blind man dragging a body: it creates a chilling atmosphere and establishes the villain as a fairly menacing figure. This scene is sadly an inverse of the set-up for another movie from this year, 10 Cloverfield Lane: while the latter creates a tense atmosphere that's constantly twisted and turn on its head throughout the duration of the film, I feel like this opening shot is instead a cheap way of lampshading a major twist in the second half of the film which, on its own and without this foreshadowing, would come off as the dumbest twist in any movie of all time. Um, well, there are only about a handful of jumpscares. That's a positive. The thing is, the biggest issue with any of this is that...

The Characters Suck.

Every single character in this film is the dumbest person I've ever seen in film. I mean that in earnest; the three protagonist burglars constantly make horrible mistakes at nearly every turn and the villain is such a complete moron that the audience will likely be at odds for who to cheer for or when to feel tense--well, aside from the unevenly-paced jump scares.

At the very least, half of the cast have decent motivations. Money (why is this his name?) and Rocky (why is this her name?) both want to move away from Detroit and relocate to California. Apparently the two also don't want to get jobs so they've resorted to burglary. Alongside these two are Alex, whose dad owns--or simply works at, it's not clear--a security company. Alex is a complete blob of a human who has no desires or drive; he merely wants to stay in Detroit for his dad for some reason.

Outside of the heroes, the unnamed blind villain of the film does very little. He's reactive, but despite being blind is apparently capable of kidnapping, dragging a body slowly across a street surrounded by inhabited houses, and accurately cutting off clothes at a 100% accurate angle and with such precision that even after the character stands up and run away, their clothes appear completely fine. I know that sentence is a mess, but the movie doesn't give me much to deal with.

Rocky is the arguable protagonist of the film; Alex is shown at home for a few seconds while he gets codes for a plot-destroying alarm remote--a literal plot device which exists only for convenience. That's his entire character. He has no goals or motivations; like Money, the two only exist for Rocky to have another character to play off. Rocky has very little characterization of her own, so the film shoehorns a hamfisted expository monologue near the beginning while hammering in ladybug imagery. Her mom locked her in the trunk of a car when she was a kid, you see, and she found her way out with the help of a ladybug. Because of that, she has a half-finished ladybug tattoo which she wants to color in when she gets to California. And guess what points her to the plot-destroying remote at the end of the movie? And no, it makes no sense.

There's also a dog. Doggo is a more consistent character, as he desires food, sleep, and chasing humans. He's a cute doggo, but stern. That said, compared to the others he's a bit of a shallow character, so when he becomes central to the plot it feels a bit weak. You know, because he's a dog in a horror movie about hiding from a blind military vet. It's almost as if...

The Plot Sucks. (Spoilers, you silly goose!)

So when the three dumbest thieves in movie history come face-to-face with an indestructible blind god-being, disaster strikes very quickly. Despite drugging the old man's bedroom Money still decides to shoot open a locked door (which, I'll be fair, has some decent framing) which obviously wakes the old man up. The ex-military veteran quickly murders Money while Alex and Rocky steal his money and prepare to sneak out, but the old man--and I'm not making a funny joke--smells Rocky's shoestank and realizes Money wasn't alone.

Alex and Rocky run into the basement and discovers the woman the blind man kidnapped in the film's opening. She's the woman who killed blind dude's daughter, and he's locked her up in an obvious rape dungeon for an unknown reason though if you haven't put together it's an obvious rape dungeon, you're probably this film's target audience.. Alex and Rocky are actually autistic and never once attempt to tell her to please be quiet so they can remove the binding around her mouth; luckily, the girl is also autistic and never makes an attempt to remove the binding to explain what's going on. And oh man, when you find out what's actually happening...

So blind guy knows the two are in the basement because he tied the murderer to a bell (wouldn't he get seriously annoyed by a constantly-ringing bell? Does she just sit still all the time?) and cuts them off outside. He shoots them with a gun in the middle of the neighborhood and cops never show up and accidentally kills the girl, also conveniently shooting Rocky's phone (Alex's phone conveniently ran out of batteries) before the two run away. The blind dude identifies the girl's body by the bindings and shouts a Vader no!--including a fist shake in the air. I saw the twist coming with this girl a mile away, but I was mortified by the fact that the film actually goes through with it. More on that later.

The blind dude shuts off the lights in the basement and what follows is a cramped, unorganized, annoying chase scene in the dark. The film is shot entirely with night vision, and boy oh boy does it look godawful. The film then devolves entirely into the two characters running from, and fighting, the blind dude. Rocky runs into the vents and Alex is beaten to a pulp. Rocky is stupidly caught by the blind dude just as she finds the exit, and he takes her back down to his rape dungeon,

At this point I thought the movie couldn't be any dumber, but the blind dude reveals the girl was pregnant. She certainly doesn't look pregnant, but that's far from the issue--because the blind dude apparently denounced religion, and because that's apparently very bad, he's willing to go to any lengths to do...whatever. His goals are extremely stupid.

Moralize Me, Captain!

I kind of want to touch on how this film portrays good and evil before moving on. Alex and Rocky are the clear deuteragonists, but they really do nothing outside of burglary to establish why anyone would ever root for them. They're placed into a bad situation, but it's hard to actually sympathize with them outside of "feel bad because they're the main heroes." Early on, Alex is shown arguing with her mom, who she still lives with to take care of her little sister--I can't remember her name, but let's call her Sympathy Bait, or SB. Rocky wants a better life for little SB and we're supposed to want her to succeed, but her only goal is to steal from people and move across the country so she doesn't have to work anymore. Why? What's the point? How am I supposed to sympathize with a character whose only goal is to not have to work another day in their life? I feel nothing but disgust for this pitiful being.

The viewer is supposed to feel anger toward Rocky's mom and her dirtbag boyfriend because they're meany-heads. Rocky's mom makes rude comments about Rocky being a possible prostitute, but it really just seems like she's being petulant. Her mom's boyfriend, however, is shown very blatantly to be a huge dirtbag--he's eating cereal on the couch like a neanderthal, but more than that his hands are constantly in the frame so you can very clearly see the swastika tattoos on them. It's like the movie is signalling for you to look right here so you can hate this man because he's bad, Nazis are bad so he's evil. I mean, yeah, that's true, but it's the simplest way of establishing villainy. LOOK, RIGHT HERE, HE HAS A SWASTIKA ON HIS HAND. HE'S EVIL. DON'T YOU GET IT?

Then you get this massive speech by the blind dude about how he's ditched religion, and a man without God can do aaaannyyyything. It's such a stupid motivation for a villain but it's taken dead-serious by Rocky to the point where she actually acts afraid by this fact alone. He reveals his master plan, which--man, I don't even know anymore. How does this plan even make sense?

The Twist

So let me explain this in the most scientific way possible. The blind man kidnapped the woman who murdered his daughter and restrained her in his basement. In his estimation, the woman stole his daughter and owes him one. She was pregnant with his child despite not appearing pregnant at all--certainly not given any reasonable maternal health facilities--and that, because Rocky caused the blind man to kill her, she now owes him a child. He then retrieves a beaker full of his semen from a freezer and heats it up on his stove because Rocky now owes him a child. But the blind man would never force himself on a woman--he says so himself! And that's when the turkey baster comes in. It's not rape when it's a plastic tube!

At this point I gave up any attempt at taking this movie seriously and spent the next five minutes doubled over in laughter. If you saw this movie in the same theater as I did, allow me to apologize. I'm sorry you were also taken in by Don't Breathe's insanely high Rotten Tomatoes score. I certainly couldn't breathe for the remainder of the running time.

I'll just put it outright. The fact that this movie very seriously had an old blind man waving around a turkey baster full of dribbling cum officially holds it up as the funniest, most hilarious, unbelievably uproarious movie of the entire year--probably the entire decade, honestly.

Of course, he doesn't manage it. Alex appears just as the blind man cuts Rocky's pants (which mend rather miraculously right after) and tries to baste that turkey. Why would he do it right then, though? What if she was on her period? What if she had an IUD? Those things work, you know. What if she was on birth control, what if his dirty old sperm was dead because he had it in a stupid refrigerator and warmed it up on an oven, what if it just didn't take? I hate to tell Alvarez this, and I hate to break it to other virgins who might believe this, but even many couples who attempt to have children typically have to work weeks or even months at a time. Of course particularly fertile couples might be able to get pregnant quickly, but the notion that this will assuredly cause Rocky to get pregnant right away is just silly. What kind of stakes are those? The three of them broke into this guy's house, stole his money, trashed his place and drugged his dog, and she might get pregnant from a one-time insemination. Don't get me wrong, that shit's disgusting, but it's utterly stupid.

The other problem is that this movie really doesn't have legs to approach sexual assault in any way. It's a topic that needs to be approached delicately and Don't Breathe does it with all the subtlety of a cargo ship--far more immense and mighty than a simple commercial fishing boat. It's only here for shock value and adds nothing to the movie. We didn't need to feel this much vitriol for the old man--he's a weirdo who stoops to murder when his home is invaded. Did we need the turkey baster to be involved in any way? It's too much, dude. Dial it back a little. It's like asking for mild at Chipotle and they dump the hottest sauce they have on hand on your delicious burrito. Calm down dude, how could I possibly enjoy this if you're going to go insane with everything? Murder was enough.

Then they have an EPIC TAKEDOWN!!!!!!! when Alex appears to save Rocky and she shoves the turkey baster in his mouth. The two tie him up downstairs and he's so upset at the taste of semen that he breaks out of the restraints, sprints through his crowded basement, and shoots Alex to death. From here the film heads toward what can meekly be described as a climax where Rocky has a desperate chase from Doggo. Doggo is tricked into being trapped in Rocky's car and blind dude somehow finds her some distance away and drags her back.

Rocky sets off the home alarm with the convenient plot device and throws blind dude into his attic. We're completely robbed of a denouement or resolution for Rocky's parents, but she's just shown in an airport with her dumb sister. Rocky conveniently notices a news report which shows the blind man is still alive, though he is not admitting to the stolen money. Rocky gets away with theft and property damage and we're supposed to feel good.

Conclusion

I was hoping for another It Follows and instead fell face-first into some weird amalgamation of Harry S. Plinkett and the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "The Gang Gets Trapped." As an unintentional comedy, Don't Breathe is pretty damn hilarious. Bad characters, moronic motivations, possibly the most hilarious twist in movie history, and an all-around dull atmosphere create a movie that's going to surely appeal to people who enjoy jump scares and manufactured tension. It's dumb Hollywood drivel that feels three times its short length, and I would only recommend it to someone who wants to watch a so-bad-it's-good horror movie.

Moronic