Tristan Shaw
- Jan 19, 2018

The Weekend Watchlist

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (2017) - Electric Dreams consists of ten episodes, each of them adapted from a different short story by sci-fi author Philip K. Dick. Overall, while a few episodes are generic and predictable, I’d say most of them are worth watching. In probably the best episode of the bunch, "The Commuter," an unhappy train station worker named Ed ends up in Macon Heights, an alternate reality and utopian town. In this new life, Ed’s troubled son Sam was never born. Ultimately, Ed has to choose between the sweet perfection of Macon Heights, or the bitter reality he left behind with Sam. Like Black Mirror, there’s plenty of technological gloom and cynicism in this series, but Electric Dreams is definitely at its best with more humanist, character-driven stories like "The Commuter."

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

It Comes At Night (2017) - A lot of critics fell in love with this low-budget, post-apocalyptic thriller last summer, but I never got around to seeing it until now. With a 44% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 2.5/5 average rating on Amazon, I was a bit hesitant to watch it. After finally seeing the movie, I can only think audiences hated it so much because of the advertising. The trailer and title made It Comes At Night look like something supernatural, even though the true horror of the movie doesn’t come from any outside threat. Instead, it has more of a psychological focus, examining a family trying to keep itself together during a world-ending epidemic. It’s certainly a good movie, but anybody expecting “it” to come is bound to be disappointed.

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

Junji Ito Collection (2018) - Junji Ito is one of my favorite comic artists, so I was beyond excited when I heard his work was being adapted into an anthology anime. Ito’s style of horror is darkly funny and surreal, featuring things like zombie fish and a town cursed to have an obsession with spirals. The first episode of Junji Ito Collection, however, has a hard time nailing the mix of comedy and horror down. There are two segments, one about a boy named Souichi who uses voodoo dolls to harass his classmates, and another about a couple whose daughter turns into a doll. The bulk of the episode is about Souichi, a character so annoying that he comes across as an occultic Dennis the Menace rather than anything comical or disturbing. So far, the anthology’s off to a bad start, but I’m hoping things will improve over the next couple of episodes.

Streaming on Crunchyroll.