Exploring The Afterlife in Dungeons & Dragons

Image by Nanne Tiggelman from Pixabay

Complementing my thoughts on resurrection in a fantasy setting from back in January, the excellent YouTuber DnDHunter has just released an inciteful 15-minute video on what happens to characters that die in the 'official' Dungeons & Dragons mythologies.

Black Friday! (2021)

It's the dreaded Black Friday at We Love Toys and the work force are not looking forward to the hordes of shoppers about to pour in, seeking those "once in a lifetime" bargains.

However, what makes matters worse this year is a meteor shower bringing an alien virus that turns the infected into hideous, angry, monsters seeking to both 'spread the love' and construct a 'nest' for each of the initial meteors to achieve their "final form".

Black Friday! is a fun blend of rage zombie horror, Lovecraftian alien invasion, kaiju action, The Blob, Clerks, and old Quatermass movies.

Leaning into its weird fiction inspirations not everything mentioned in the story is explained, adding to the occasionally unnerving strangeness of what the extra-terrestrial entities are up to and what their ultimate objective may be.

There's plenty of body horror in Black Friday!, with the practical make-up effects on the transformed infected being particularly striking as they evolve into piranha-toothed ghouls, oddly reminiscent of the beast in The Unnameable duology 

Written by Andy Greskoviak and directed by Casey Tebo, the 84-minute flick is a runaway train that doesn't hang around, getting to the meat of its set-up almost immediately and not wasting any time establishing deep backstories for the central characters (these are filled in during the unfolding chaos).

While the film is a satire of corporate America, it is  primarily an apocalyptic splatterfest romp that doesn't take itself at all seriously.

If you're looking for a "people trapped in a store during the end of the world" film, but aren't in the mood for the heart-breaking buzzkill of The Mist, then you could do worse than check out the more light-hearted Black Friday!

Bruce Campbell is in there as the store manager, playing a bigger role than I expected but still a supporting character, while the leads are Final Destination/Chucky's Devon Sawa, Super 8's Ryan Lee, and Pan's Labyrinth's Ivana Baquero, as three undervalued workers in the soulless toy store.

Other familiar faces that pop up include Michael Jai White, while Seth Green provides the voice of a malfunctioning animatronic bear (who might just be a parody of Ted).

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Willy's Wonderland (2021)

A nameless, eccentric, taciturn drifter (Nicolas Cage) finds himself stranded in an isolated town, and the only way he can get the cash to pay for his car repairs is by spending the night cleaning the town's derelict roadside attraction, Willy's Wonderland.

Of course, it turns out that there's a catch... of the supernatural kind.

The animatronic creatures of Willy's Wonderland not only come to life after dark, but are hungry.

There are two major factors immediately in Willy's Wonderland's favour: firstly, is there, really, such a thing as a bad Nic Cage movie (The Wicker Man aside, but that's a whole 'nother conversation)?

And, secondly, any film that plays out with Free Bird scores well with me.

However, ultimately, Willy's Wonderland feels like a movie where the idea was better on paper than in its execution.

Cage playing a character that doesn't say a word is an inspired choice, but his performance is surprisingly restrained. 

Even though there's plenty of violent fight scenes, as well as possibly too many of him playing pinball, he lacks the expected memorable physicality of, say, Sailor Ripley from Wild at Heart.

And the plot, itself, isn't really anything that new.

Both the "town that has made a deal with the Devil" and the "murderous animatronics" are well-known horror movie tropes, but Willy's Wonderland plays them both at face value and doesn't do anything that unique or inventive with them.

The backstory to the events that unfold is gruesomely fascinating and there's a definite consistent verisimilitude about the townsfolk and the bargain they have entered into to protect their own, but I kept hoping for more.

Just off the top of my head, on the animatronic side alone, Willy's Wonderland is Child's Play writ large, mashed up with Five Nights At Freddy's, and The Banana Splits Movie.

The 'serial killer cult' (shades of The Following) was a nice touch, but then the lack of distinctly different personalities within that felt like a missed opportunity.

Cage's silence allowed locals to drop exposition on him - and us - quite convincingly. 

However, several of his character's quirks, such as his regular break schedule (whatever else was going on) are left unexplained, almost to the extent of suggesting his character is a blank slate that simply acts as the story demands... kind of like an animatronic amusement park mascot!

Enjoyable nonsense while it's on, Willy's Wonderland isn't a film that's going to be bothering anyone's Top Ten Favourite Horror Movie lists, but is silly enough for a fun, brain-in-neutral, beer-and-pizza film night viewing experience.

The Monster aka I Don't Want To Be Born (1975)

Recently retired stripper Lucy (Joan Collins at the height of her 1970's allure) has married Italian businessman Gino Carlesi (Ralph Bates, with a wandering accent) and just given birth to baby Nicholas.

However, there's something "wrong" with the child, he's growing faster than expected and seems very aggressive.

Quickly this violence escalates from biting fingers, clawing faces, and trashing its nursery to pushing his nanny, Jill Fletcher (Janet Key) into a lake after he failed to drown her in the bath the night before!

The Carlesi's very patient paediatrician, Dr Finch (Donald Pleasence), is baffled but stresses that Nicholas is too young to be psychiatrically examined, while Gino's visiting sister, a Catholic nun, Sister Albana (Eileen Atkins), eventually comes round round to Lucy's way of thinking: that the baby is possessed by The Devil.

Earlier on, Lucy had confessed to her best friend, fellow dancer Mandy Gregory (Caroline Munro) that, after spurning the lecherous advances of her diminutive co-star Hercules (George Claydon), the dwarf put a curse on her to have a "monstrous baby".

How he is able to do this is never explained and what his connection to "The Devil" is is also handwaved; we're supposed to accept that because he is physically "Other" he has access to black magical powers or some other ableist nonsense.

Other than his 'lapse' in behaviour towards Lucy, at no other time in the 95-minute movie is he shown as being anything but a consummate, professional entertainer in a '70s Soho revue bar.

There's a sleazy veneer to the whole sorry affair that is 1975's The Monster (aka I Don't Want to Be Born aka It Lives Within Her aka The Devil Within Her) that accentuates its general awfulness.

Observe the sudden prevalence of naked female flesh during Lucy's return to the revue bar to confront her ex-boyfriend, slimy club owner Tommy Morris (John Steiner), who may actually be the child's father.

Given that when we see Lucy's act in flashback, she's wearing an enormous outfit (although, for some reason she is then shown in her lacy undies in her dressing room... three years before The Stud and The Bitch), I'd just assumed that this was one of those "cinematic strip clubs" where all the dancers keep their clothes on.

However, during Lucy's return there are a couple of dancers - Maria Lopez and Susie Lightining - auditioning for Tommy, who just casually strip off in the background.

Later, there's a random and unnecessarily protracted sex scene between Lucy and Gino... just before he gets bumped off in the most unintentionally hilarious murder I've witnessed in years.

This scene alone, which suggests that baby Nicholas has suddenly grown into a flesh-and-blood Chucky, was worth the (low) price of the Blu-Ray alone.

This moment in particular reminded me, unsurprisingly, of the disappointing HBO/Sky comedy-horror, The Baby, from back in 2022.

Luckily, ultimately, there's a book on exorcisms in the shelf of the laboratory where Sister Albana (a specialist in animal diseases... or something, it's not really important) is working and so the nun is eventually able to drive Satan out of the child.

Of course, the fact that everyone else in the house is dead by then and this act - for no readily apparent reason - also kills Hercules (who's just dancing at the revue bar and totally oblivious to all this demonic tomfoolery that's been going on), isn't even addressed as the film finishes at that point.

A sordid rip-off of The Omen, The Exorcist, and Rosemary's Baby, with phoned-in performances from most of the cast (there's an awkward scene early on between Mandy and Lucy that just sounds as though they were being poorly dubbed), The Monster definitely qualifies as being so bad it's good - primarily because of the comedy value surrounding several of the murders that the baby commits.

Clearly, some thought was put into the set-pieces, but not so much in how they would all hang together into a coherent narrative.

Even though the film is respectably short in duration, it still feels stuffed with lots of shots of people walking - or driving - through the streets of London (occasionally with 'authentic' dialogue dubbed over it), which, on one hand is a nice snapshot of this period in our recent history, but on the other highlights the paucity of actual story director Pete Sasdy had to show on screen.

Although immensely derivative (especially at that time in horror movies), there's possibly a half-decent story buried in The Monster somewhere, it's just unfortunate that everyone seems to have gone about telling it in such a half-arsed way.

UPDATE:

• JUSTICE FOR HERCULES: I was thinking more about this movie. When Hercules gropes Lucy, he has a glazed expression on his face and in my headcanon for The Monster I've decided that he was being possessed by an unseen demonic third party, which is why Hercules' random "curse" actually worked.
• JUSTICE FOR SISTER ALBANA: When the police roll up at the end (as the credits roll), they would have found the nun, the child, and a host of brutally murdered corpses. I can't believe the justice system will have much time for "the baby did it" and the Sister is probably facing a long stretch in prison or a psychiatric hospital.

M3GAN (2022)

After the tragic death of her parents in a road traffic accident, eight-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw), goes to live with her workaholic aunt, Gemma (Allison Williams), a robotics engineer at a leading toy company.

Gemma is not at all prepared to suddenly become a 'substitute mother', but quickly realises that a pet project of hers might be the solution: a cutting edge, AI-controlled 'companion doll' called the Model 3 Generation Android or M3GAN (played impressively by Amie Donald, and voiced by Jenna Davis).

M3GAN has been designed to bond to a child and learn from its environment.

While Cady's tragic backstory brings out M3GAN's protective side, this soon escalates into "over-protective" and she starts making sure that anyone that seems to threaten Cady won't do so for much longer.

All this is happening against a backdrop of the toy company racing to unveil the M3GAN before any of its competitors get wind of the doll's capabilities (while exploiting Cady's tragedy in its marketing to demonstrate the utility of their android in such difficult situations).

Picture Chucky from the 2019 iteration of Child's Play getting a Terminator-scale upgrade, assisted by a dash of Tony Stark's inventiveness.

Although it starts slowly, M3GAN soon ramps up the action and tension, tempering it with some laugh out loud moments of dark humour.

Perhaps not enough is made of the 'uncanny valley' factor of M3GAN's near-human appearance, but when it is addressed it leads to some very funny - and believable - reactions (such as the scene where the school teacher mistakes the android for a new pupil).

While the technology employed both on-screen - and behind the camera - to bring M3GAN to life is ultra-modern, there's a definite 1980s tang to the plot.

For instance, the ending seems rather abrupt and doesn't explore the consequences of M3GAN's actions, but still manages to slide in a sly nod towards a sequel (M3GAN 2.0 has already been greenlit for a 2025 release).

Sidestepping the potential for a finale involving mass slaughter and carnage, writer Akela Cooper and director Gerard Johnstone instead choose to make the climactic showdown more personal, with a satisfying resolution that was foreshadowed earlier in the 102-minute movie.

The film certainly has something to say on the possible dangers of an overreliance on technology in our lives, especially in the field of parenting, but it largely skates over this as an excuse for more "killer robot" action.

And I was there for the wonderful "killer robot" action.

Although it doesn't bring anything particularly new to the party, M3GAN is a fun, thrilling, and entertaining serving of sci-fi/horror that hits all the right slasher beats in a classic "cuckoo in the nest" scenario. 

The film's memorable and iconic lead certainly has the potential to spawn a fantastic franchise and I await with interest the many variations of a theme that will be entertaining us in the future (at least until the fiction of androids in everyone's home becomes a reality).

Annabelle (2014)

In late '60s suburbia, ultra-square couple doctor John Form (Ward Horton) and his doll collector wife Mia (Annabelle Wallis) are expecting their first child.

John presents Mia with a vintage porcelain doll we shall call Annabelle for the sake of expediency (even though no name is actually used for the doll in the film).

Soon after this, their neighbour's house, and then their own, is attacked by a pair of crazed Satanic cultists, the female being shot dead by police while clutching the doll we now call Annabelle.

Mia begins to think their house is cursed, a belief given strength by a fire that nearly claims her life, but does lead to the birth of their child, Lia.

The family relocates to an apartment building, but the demonic forces follow them and Mia finds herself hounded by an assortment of evil creatures.

All the time, they are being watched by Annabelle; even though John had thrown her in the trash before the fire gutted their first home, she finds her way into their belongings when they move house.

Annabelle is a prequel to The Conjuring, supposedly fleshing out the backstory of the haunted doll, but really only cobbling together a story to explain how she got into the hands of the nurses who appear in the opening sequence of The Conjuring.

Unfortunately, this early expansion of The Conjuring Universe isn't written or directed by anyone connected with the original movie, and lacking the presence of the Warrens or analogues, Annabelle is a much more mundane and mainstream horror movie.

The film's problems are compounded by the fact that while the demonic entities in the actual Conjuring movies obey a kind of logic that makes them convincing in the context, Gary Dauberman's script - under the direction of John R. Leonetti - for Annabelle just throws special effects-heavy creatures at our protagonists on a whim.

While frequently dipping into the same well of horror movie clichés, Annabelle lacks the internal consistency and strong characters of The Conjuring.

Instead, it's a hodgepodge of ideas, with allusions to the Manson Family murders (the film starts with the trial of The Family as a backdrop), and stereotypical Hollywood black magic and Satanism, mixed in with The Conjuring's take on ghosts and demons, all somehow tied in to this evil doll.

And what can be said of the demonic doll herself? Well, firstly, mint, straight-out-of-the-box, she's a frakking evil looking creation so I can't understand why any sane person would want her in the house in the first place.

But, secondly, even once she starts acting as a conduit for dark forces, she actually does very little.

If she moves at all it's off-screen. In fact, for the longest time she's not even on screen, and her connection to the various ghosts and monsters that appear seems tenuous at best.

Imagine if Chucky had never actually moved during Child's Play and you'll get some idea how naff the doll is as a source of jeopardy.

Although she looks terrifying, she's a lot more effective as a tool of menace when people are talking about her than when we actually see her... doing nothing.

As much as I welcome the idea of a shared universe for The Conjuring franchise, Annabelle really adds very little to the joint mythology.

The film's almost like a self-contained horror movie that was tacked on to The Conjuring bandwagon as an afterthought. 

Child's Play (2019)

Single-mum Karen Barclay (Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza) works on the returns desk of ZedMart in Chicago, and brings home a faulty Buddi doll as an early birthday present for her deaf son Andy (Gabriel Bateman).

The Buddi doll is a robotic companion for children, capable of adapting to their owners, syncing with smart technology etc

Only this Buddi, which says it's name is Chucky (voiced by the legend that is Mark Hamill), has issues.

Once it has bonded with Andy, declaring him his new "bets friend", he becomes psychotically protective, taking punitive measures against anyone, or anything, that it feels has slighted Andy.

Written by Tyler Burton Smith and directed by Lars Klevberg, Child's Play is a brilliant, clever, reworking of the original Child's Play from 1988.

Voodoo possession has been replaced by the vengeance of a pissed engineer in a Vietnamese sweat shop/toy factory, and 2019's Child's Play has great fun with the modern penchant for "smart homes", integrated devices etc

Its resemblance to the original is purely superficial, and that's a great thing because this Child's Play is very much its own thing.

Andy even acquires his own, rather Stranger Things-like, gang of amusing and entertaining young friends, who both help and hinder him in his growing troubles with the overly possessive android (perhaps letting Chucky watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 wasn't the best call?).

As bodies start to drop in the neighbourhood, local police detective Mike Norris (Atlanta's Brian Tyree Henry), whose mum, Doreen (Carlease Burke) lives down the hall from Mike and Karen, gets involved.

Matters come to a head at a midnight launch for the Buddi 2 doll at ZedMart, when Mike thinks he has his culprit.

The climax of the movie is a gruesomely over-the-top splash of Grand Guignol, that skirts Saw-sensibilities to lean more into Evil Dead II (but without any supernatural involvement).

A heady blend of suspense, excitement, creative kills, dark humour and a top-notch cast, Child's Play is one of the strongest new mainstream horror flicks I've seen in ages.

While I love the whole voodoo shtick of the original Child's Play franchise, I think rooting the new movie firmly in the realm of modern technology was a stroke of genius.

Not only is there a tongue-in-cheek lesson here about society's rapid embrace of inter-connected technology, but the pathos Mark Hamill brings to Chucky makes the killer doll almost sympathetic.

He's just responding to societal stimuli to do what he thinks is right to look after his "best friend".

But he doesn't know any better. To paraphrase Brian Conley: "It's just a doll!"

Child's Play (1988)

On the run from the police, voodoo-obsessed serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Deadwood's Brad Dourif) ducks into a toy store to hide.

In the ensuing firefight with Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), Ray is mortally wounded, but before he dies he manages to cast a voodoo spell that transfers his soul into one of the Good Guys' dolls on sale in the store.

The doll eventually ends up in the hands of single mum Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) as a present for her six-year-old son, Andy (Alex Vincent).

Little doe Karen realise that the doll is now supernaturally animated, and intent on exacting revenge of those it feels contributed to Charles Lee Ray's death.

When tragedy strikes around Andy no-one believes him that his doll is alive, and he ends up being taken into psychiatric care.

During his campaign of revenge, Chucky - as the doll calls itself - discovers how to transfer his soul back into a human body, which means more trouble for the Barclay household and Detective Norris.

As the first movie in the Child's Play franchise (before the multiple sequels, reboot, TV series etc), the mythology at work here is pretty straight forward, allowing the story room to breathe and develop at a natural pace.

Yet director Tom Holland - who co-wrote the film with John Lafia and Chucky's creator Don Mancini - still keeps things moving at a cracking pace, getting in and out of scenes at just the right moment, without a wasted moment.

Events unfold over a short period of time and in a relatively contained environment (I reckon well over 50 per cent of the movie takes place in the Barclay's Chicago apartment), limiting the number of potential loose ends and plot holes.

As well as the tense horror (home invasion, disbelieving adults etc), there's a definite slice of dark humour (naturally accentuated by the sight of an animated child's toy dropping f-bombs and attacking people) in Child's Play that simultaneously leans into and distracts from the inherent silliness of the premise.

An exciting and engrossing horror flick, Child's Play - unlike some of the '80s horrors I've been revisiting of late, thanks to various streaming services - works as well today as it did when it was first released.

It's clearly a period piece now, but the fashions and lack of mobile devices don't impact the story.

I definitely need to start tracking down the sequels, as I do love a good, rambling, horror franchise (check spoilerific video below for a taste of what's to come).

Pet Sematary (1986)

Before the latest adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary hit cinemas in 2019, I thought I'd remind myself of the original from 1989, another veteran of the VHS years that I'm pretty sure I haven't seen for decades.

And, to be honest, while well made, it doesn't feel as though it has stood the test of time.

In a nutshell, a man is told - and witnesses with his own eyes - that if he does something, something bad will happen.

He does the something and the something bad happens.

Hilarity ensues.

A doctor, Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff), wife Rachel (Denise Crosby), and two young kids, Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes) move into a country house beside a road frequented by fast-moving lorries.

Thanks to friendly neighbour Jud Crandall (The Munsters' Fred Gwynne), they soon learn that in the woods behind their house is an old pet cemetery, where local pets killed on the road are buried.

However, while his family are away at Thanksgiving, Louis has to deal with the death of his daughter's beloved cat, Church, and so Jud leads him to an area way beyond the cemetery, a cursed Indian burial ground (because, America) that can supposedly bring creatures buried in it back to life.

But they come back "wrong".

Turns out the only time someone tried it with a human being, they turned into a flesh-eating zombie, so that's never been tried again.

Only, some time later, little Gage gets mown down on the busy road, and Louis kind of flips out (understandably), steals his corpse from the proper graveyard, and takes him up to the old Indian burial ground.

Naturally, the Gage that returns isn't Louis's beloved toddler... but a human Chucky doll intent on murder and mayhem.

Although working from a Stephen King screenplay, Pet Sematary has a whole host of problems, not least of which is that the central conceit - even if we accept that in this supernatural verisimilitude that the Indian burial ground has the power of resurrection - there are no anecdotes, not a single one, where using it has worked out for the best.

There is not a single iota of evidence to suggest that it brings someone back as anything except a soulless ghoul.

And yet, Jud still dangles it in front of Louis as a way to avoid having to teach his daughter about the fragility of feline life.

Then, on top of that, we have the kitchen sink approach to the story: there's an American Werewolf In London-style friendly ghost looking out for the family (Brad Greenquist); Ellie has very accurate and unambiguous prophetic dreams (which may be, but possibly aren't, connected to the appearance of the ghost); Rachel is haunted by her dead sister; when Gage returns from the dead he has the power to create very vivid illusions (something the earlier zombie in the film most certainly didn't have); in the denouement there's meaningful shots of clocks showing midnight - but time has never been mentioned as a factor in this process.

Even, stepping back from the surfeit of supernatural elements, towards the end of the movie a house burns down right at the side of the main road, but - even though considerable time passes afterwards - no fire engines or police cars ever show up to investigate.

I don't know if explanations were cut, or they were simply considered superfluous, but Pet Sematary feels - although it clearly wasn't, with Stephen King's direct involvement in the script - like a child making up a story as he goes along ("And then this happened, and then this, and you wouldn't believe what happened next...").

I'm hoping the remake corrects this jumbled storytelling and delivers a more cohesive narrative.

I get that the idea of a cursed burial ground that can bring people back from the dead is very creepy and that Pet Sematary is a tale about a man driven by grief to do something stupid and dangerous, but it's more contrived than convincing.