As far as I'm concerned, it's her story insofar as she's the one who suffers and changes most--Herbert West is the reason people watch this movie, but he enters as a cold monomaniac and leaves as one, and Dan Cain remains an everyman--and I care about her more than I think the creators ever meant me to.
I loved Herbert West, but we know how I feel about monomaniacs. He's very definitely the anti-hero, though, which I found interesting: the film is not uncritically on his side.
(The whole plot thread with zombie!Dr. Halsey hits all my dread buttons. The subtext becomes text, and Megan is watching her father suffer from Alzheimer's or senile dementia.)
It doesn't hit my dread buttons, but it's poignant where Hill is merely horror: Halsey is a badly broken zombie, but he's aware enough to know there's something terribly wrong with him—hunched in the corner, shaking under his bloodstained coat—and the film doesn't play it for comedy past the initial inconvenience of his death and the wonderfully stupid enthusiasm with which West sets about reanimating him, because hey, he is the freshest body in the room . . .
I have to write the story about Megan-Halsey-by-any-other-name one of these days.
Yes, you do. I'll read it.
I am delighted that you love this movie. Sometimes things are built up and built up for me so much that the actual event is a let-down.
Not at all. It probably exceeded my expectations, and I don't say that just because we were watching it at three in the morning.
(Overpronouncing his words and spitting his consonants, he sounds like a homeschooled student or someone from a very old-fashioned family. I sometimes worry that I sound like that.)
Hah. He sounded perfectly normal to me, if a little clipped; he seems to find the entire universe inherently annoying. See what that says about me.
Here's a charming interview with Jeffrey Combs as himself, sounding nothing like any of his screen characters:
Thank you! Shall totally watch that when I'm slightly more recovered. I'll have to rewatch "Eyes" and see what he sounds like as Harriman Gray.
It was a nice touch to have him be a sordid sort of real-life villain, manipulating his boss, plagiarizing, and trying to coerce his dirty-old-man way into Megan's pants. He reminds me of the Oscar Wilde line about how once someone commits murder it's not uncommon to find them cheating on their income-tax returns.
Yes! I didn't think of Oscar Wilde, but I noted and approved of the plagiarism: if you're a true-minded scientist, however mad, that's villainy.
The actor shaved his head for the role and wore a gross-looking toupee: that's dedication.
That is. I figured he'd just gotten himself the world's most pretentious academic tool haircut.
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I loved Herbert West, but we know how I feel about monomaniacs. He's very definitely the anti-hero, though, which I found interesting: the film is not uncritically on his side.
(The whole plot thread with zombie!Dr. Halsey hits all my dread buttons. The subtext becomes text, and Megan is watching her father suffer from Alzheimer's or senile dementia.)
It doesn't hit my dread buttons, but it's poignant where Hill is merely horror: Halsey is a badly broken zombie, but he's aware enough to know there's something terribly wrong with him—hunched in the corner, shaking under his bloodstained coat—and the film doesn't play it for comedy past the initial inconvenience of his death and the wonderfully stupid enthusiasm with which West sets about reanimating him, because hey, he is the freshest body in the room . . .
I have to write the story about Megan-Halsey-by-any-other-name one of these days.
Yes, you do. I'll read it.
I am delighted that you love this movie. Sometimes things are built up and built up for me so much that the actual event is a let-down.
Not at all. It probably exceeded my expectations, and I don't say that just because we were watching it at three in the morning.
(Overpronouncing his words and spitting his consonants, he sounds like a homeschooled student or someone from a very old-fashioned family. I sometimes worry that I sound like that.)
Hah. He sounded perfectly normal to me, if a little clipped; he seems to find the entire universe inherently annoying. See what that says about me.
Here's a charming interview with Jeffrey Combs as himself, sounding nothing like any of his screen characters:
Thank you! Shall totally watch that when I'm slightly more recovered. I'll have to rewatch "Eyes" and see what he sounds like as Harriman Gray.
It was a nice touch to have him be a sordid sort of real-life villain, manipulating his boss, plagiarizing, and trying to coerce his dirty-old-man way into Megan's pants. He reminds me of the Oscar Wilde line about how once someone commits murder it's not uncommon to find them cheating on their income-tax returns.
Yes! I didn't think of Oscar Wilde, but I noted and approved of the plagiarism: if you're a true-minded scientist, however mad, that's villainy.
The actor shaved his head for the role and wore a gross-looking toupee: that's dedication.
That is. I figured he'd just gotten himself the world's most pretentious academic tool haircut.