Dammit, John Carpenter is so good at making films that come REALLY CLOSE to being what I want out of psychological horror—then veer away at a crucial moment into "AND THEN THEY WERE ATTACKED BY A SCARY MONSTER! BLAH!"

The concept of Prince of Darkness is so cool, and I'm very proud of how well I unwittingly paid homage to it with Puzzlebox's "Strangevirus."

But the film invokes so many interesting ideas—possession by an sapient and contagious alien liquid, weird obsessive behaviors, quantum physics, the nature of evil, telepathic transmissions from the future, God and Satan as ancient astronauts...

And then it shows a practically Matrix-grade disinterest in following through on any of them. Instead, it's the same old threats of violence and the same old gouts of red Karo syrup, and it just turns out to be so unimaginative. I desperately want to see the *anti-film* of Prince of Darkness, the one that actually gave a shit about its premises, followed through on them, and skipped the stabby bits.

Carpenter, of all the damn people, should know there are MUCH more frightening things than physical harm. FFS, half the movie is building up to those threats, but then it devolves into another goddamn treatise about the Awesomeness Of Hitting People With An Axe.

Luckily, I just so happen to be writing at least two projects with body horror themes. And now I have something to REACT AGAINST. In particular, I am so looking forward to telling one of these stories FROM THE SIDE OF THE POD PEOPLE and actually having an explanation for their actions besides "they are pure elemental evil, because somehow that is a real thing."

I love strapping failed texts like this to a surgical bed and Frankensteining them into something better. *lighting bolts; mad cackles* >:D