I'm only just now seeing it

Man I love Chiwetel Ejiofor. Dude is always such a pleasure to see acting. He always brings his whole toolbox to the show. His scenes with Renate Reinsve are great by themselves, little acting classes. They both really committed to this youtuber's weird vision & it really does work perfectly. Obviously Duplass kills it as Phil as well, and delivers one of the subtler yet most terrifying scares of the movie (maybe you get it, maybe not. if you don't, maybe it's better that way).

I love how Mary's office may as well be the backrooms, with its cheap 80s chintz and Sam Solomon JC Penny's aesthetics.

I love how Clark ran back into the zone & grabbed a stool. A lot of people on reddit were saying it was to prove it was real - but some of us knew immediately he grabbed it because Hey: free stock!

I like it. Fuck off. I actually love it, even despite the terrible pop rock closing thing it does. I wouldn't mind a fan edit that replaces all that garbage with movie soundtrack!

But it's really about Smee and Slightly. They're heartbreaking and adorable. The actor doing Smee (Jonathan Ajayi, just looked it up) kills me. He looks so perfect with the 70s hair, and does such a job of being lovable. His sadness and terror at the death of Arthur really hits home. Smee's spiritual importance to the rest of the dead children deserves a bit of examination in s2. If he turns bitter, that's it for all of them; he's their heart & soul.

Arush, Slightly, is the MC of s1, to me. He does the most changing, and experiences the most reality. Wendy/Marcy is alright, but Arush, whoof. His story is the one that actually means anything. Special Girl, though, is doing good work as a childish person who lacks the life experience to understand that she's selfish, or that being selfish is bad; the performance is most worthy. It's just that Arush's problem moves me more.

People complaining about the monster itself are full of shit. It's the best alien suit yet made, and adhere's more closely to Giger's vision than any of the overwrought & over-cool-ified ones from Aliens onward.

Complaints about the behavior of the creature are rooted, similarly, in the same kind of fannish nonsense that made people angry that the Backrooms movie didn't contain all nine hundred pokemons from the (lesser) responses to Kane Pixels' original short movies. That is, they've replaces the actual Alien of 1979 with their own headcanons and are now crying because they aren't being respected. Fools! Its behavior is clearly explained in the imagery: it's shown multiple times that staying still and controlling your emotions is a way to avoid its wrath. Everything that happens with the younger one is being controlled by Marcy. Pay attention!!!

I know there are things like emergency services and specific initiatives that were enabled by the internet, but life for me and mine was unequivocally better on every metric that matters day in & day out

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