Movie Review: Chappie

The topic of Artificial Intelligence seems to be a major selling point in movies nowadays. Before, we had the excellent Her which explored the possibilities of a computer becoming very much like a human, so much so that a human could actually fall in love with it. Soon we'll have Ex Machina and Avengers: Age of Ultron that will continue to explore the possibilities and consequences of having AI. 

From Neil Blomkamp, the director of District 9 and (unfortunately) Elysium comes Chappie. Chappie is a film about a robot who is given consciousness equivalent to a a humans. Chappie (Sharlto Copley), the titular AI, is able to learn, love, and live. In some cases, it's almost like a futuristic version of Pinocchio in that Chappie is just trying to be a regular human. As with all of Blomkamp's films, Chappie takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa and explores the idea of having a robotic police force being used to combat the rampant crime in the city. This robotic police force, also known as the SCOUTS, are incredibly efficient and effective at apprehending criminals, whether it be through force or not. 

Movie Review: The Babadook

When it comes to horror movies, I tend to be very particular about the genre. I can understand how something like the Saw movies are, in fact, horror, just a different kind of horror when compared to something like The Grudge or Friday the 13th. Horror movies comes in all sorts of flavors and it's important to take this into account when you watch them. Perhaps what isn't horrifying to you may be horrifying to others. In the end, it's always going to be about the terror that the film invokes on it's viewers, for better or for worse.

So what does this mean for the Indie horror film The Babadook? Well for one, it's not a traditional kind of horror movie in that the titular creature is the main focus of the movie. The Babadook does something that I haven't seen in a horror movie in a while, and that's tackling the concept of stress, insomnia, and built up tension within an individual. The results of these negative traits is the Babadook itself, but that can be explained later.

Like the movie, this image gives a sense of constant dread