天下制覇

Maximum tragedy.

Impressions:

This appears to answer the question "What if we remade The Thing, but as a depressing melodrama instead of a horror movie?" An alien shapeshifts into a dying orphan boy's dead dog, and then hangs out with him as he slowly dies of exposure before shifting into his body and wandering right off again. All the while, dramatic music blasts away at the sheer unrelenting tragedy of this horrible plight. I want to know how an entire village sprang forth a few miles from his rock form, and yet apparently in those thousands of years of evolution, the first animal to die near him was a pet dog.

These kind of depressing shows are definitely neither my bag nor forte, and this definitely won't make a convert out of me. The whole thing felt very exploitative. Kid is dying, kid is dying, kid is dying, wring out maximum suffering and tears, sad orchestra crescendo, kid is dead, but look how beautiful everything is in the hallucination of heaven. Space wolf watches all with detached, impassive curiosity. Truly, this is the ambrosia of life. I don't like dramas much, but when I do, it's because they're driven by the characters. And yet, this shies away from them going all Donner Party too, so it also feels a little spineless. You want to really sell desperation? Let's do it. Let's eat a family member. Or we can just crank the sad violins up another three notches and make everything hazy. See? Like you're looking through tears. So much emotion. Yes, yes.

Next Episode:

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