Recovering with Stab-tastic Results
It’s official. I’m back at work!
Testing negative after my week and a half of covid and I feel like I’m part of the world again. It feels great to talk to friends face to face (with masks) and actually get out of the house. Thankfully my symptoms weren’t severe, but staying quarantined until achieving a negative test was a mental drain. I tried making lists to keep myself productive and busy during my last days. It worked for a bit until my laziness got the better of me. Depression started sinking its teeth in again and more often than not I was waiting for sleep to carry me into the next day as if that would fix my problems of today. Fresh air and a different location were much needed.
Though I may have slipped on productivity I did grasp onto a few things that helped my sanity. The first of which was a creative boon. With my friend hyping up his movie coming to a streaming service very soon (It’s on Tubi! Check out Fountaine and the Vengeful Nun that Wouldn’t Die) I started thinking about getting back into screenwriting. When I was in college I wanted to be a filmmaker, a director specifically as cliched as that sounds but soon drifted toward screenwriting until I found my passion in prose. However, I did write a few screenplays… unfinished sadly, but I think that’s going to change. I decided that I’m going to dedicate myself to writing a screenplay that I want. I’m not going to think about budget, if it’s practical, or if it’ll ever get made. I want to write it for myself. And so, I started writing a treatment. It’s called Tomb of the Wolf Men. It’ll be bloody, it’ll involve football, and most importantly it’ll deal with themes about sexuality and the horror of that transitional window where people start to notice how others see you as desirable. I haven’t been this excited about a creative project in a long time.
In between daydreaming about my new screenplay I was watching one of my favorite comfort shows, Psych. As a teenager in High School, there were two tv shows that defined me; Psych and Monk. The latter helped me get through a lot of emotional baggage that I was carrying and honestly it has only gotten better with age as you realize that amount of respect they infused in that show. Psych, on the other hand, really defined my humor. It may have also cultivated my love of film, but I definitely grafted their style of humor into my own life even though nobody else in my friend group understood it.
One of the episodes that I revisited is an all-time classic, Last Night Gus. It’s based on The Hangover and is easily one of the funniest episodes Psych has to offer. They really pushed their characters out of their comfort zone and allowed them to explore uncharted emotional territory. In a way, it’s one of their more bonkers episode that swerves into their ridiculous nature. If I had to recommend an episode for anybody to check out Psych, it’ll definitely be this one.
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But, what made my week(s) was easily watching the new Scream movie. Being in the era of reboots, remakes, requels, and all the other cinematic re’s, it was a breath of fresh air to watch a movie that clearly had so much love for their own franchise. Scream (2022) works to an extent if you haven’t watched the other four movies, but you’ll get a lot more out of this recent adventure if you’ve not only seen the previous installments but have watched them recently. I was so glad I ended my quarantine by rewatching movies 3 and 4 because there are a lot of details and characters that pop up that I would not have remembered.
What I loved most about Scream (2022) was its take on modern horror. Pretty much everything they wanted to say has been said on ‘film Twitter’ in one way or another, however, it was such a pleasure to hear characters talk about their own genre in a constructive way on the big screen. The opening even mentions ‘elevated horror’ which is a huge discussion point when it comes to what constitutes a horror film these days. I was worried I wouldn’t like this since Scre4m already dealt with the remake conversation, and I was so happy to be wrong. Scream (2022) is all about the legacy movies like Halloween (2018), where they’re refreshing the franchise by going back to the original and working from there, and somehow Scream (2022) works the best. It feels like the start of a new journey while giving you just enough of the legacy characters’ closure. It easily has its cake and eats it too, and if they make more I’m totally on board.
The kills in this movie are gnarly. I wouldn’t say they’re creative, but they are sure as heck brutal. The camera lingers on every kill and you can see the imperfections of each attack. My favorite kill involves daylight and it’s one of the most chilling scenes in the franchise. Then there’s an excruciating scene involving a wheelchair that had me on pins and needles. And the blood. There’s so much blood. I was really impressed with the color and texture they used here. A lot of horror movies these days don’t have a good mixture for their blood, but this worked wonders. The actors must have had a blast.
The other series that got me through the week, especially during my quarantine, was Ewan McGregor’s latest ‘Long Way’ series, Long Way Up. This is an AppleTV+ original in which McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman hop on motorcycles and travel the world. In this particular series, they’re going from the southernmost point of South America in Argentina and ends with them in L. A. USA. This honestly surprised me by how cathartic it all felt. It was my feel-good show of the week and you learn a lot. McGregor and Boorman would stop along the way to get to know the locals and the scenes they captured on film are astounding. It really gives you a new perception of the world.
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And lastly, I’d like to end this newsletter with a new feature. Introducing The Cozy Badge! This is an award I’ll give out every time The Cozy Caterpillar has a new post that basically states who, or what, helped me most to get through my week. The first winner of The Cozy Badge goes to… Ewan McGregor! I’ll dive more into him and Long Way Up in my upcoming Originally Streamed post, but he was the sunshine in my weeks of sickness and while you watch this unbelievable series you’ll come to find him to be the most soulful goober. He has an excellent perspective on life and watching him on screen put a lot of meaning in my depressive days.
