Godzilla Singular Point

The first Japanese Godzilla endeavor since the highly-questionable (to me, anyway) anime trilogy, and it’s another anime. Sure, why not?

Taking the story to its absolute brassest of tacks, Singular Point centers on a pair of young genius-level intellects in Mei and Yun. The former is a sort of cryptozoologist/maths whiz combo who works to solve a decades-old problem that may or may not involve travel in time and across dimensions, a situation that brings increasing kaiju threats into our world, including Rodan, Anguirus, and more. Yun, on the other hand, is an engineer who stumbles on the signal that sets Mei off, though he’s more focused on the actual on-the-ground happenings with the emerging kaiju, engaging in battles alongside his boss’ robot creation, Jet Jaguar. Yup, goddamn Jet Jaguar is back, baby! That alone makes this show worthy of watching.

The problem comes in when you tackle the writing. I’ve only yet seen the subbed version, so the dub might make things a bit more intelligible and accessible to the average viewer, but the story can be a bit complicated at times. Bricks of dialogue about theoretical mathematic concepts are lobbed at your dome on the regular, mostly conveyed via rapid-fire conversations and text messages that allow for precious little breathing and thinking room. A number of concepts went over my head to begin with, and the characters didn’t make things any easier for me as they discussed them without really clearly defining them for my sake. It’s like sitting in on a class lecture you didn’t prep for – ’cause you majored in a different field. Once things sorta clicked upstairs, something else would be tossed at me, like the Cube 2-style time projections (maybe?). It’s hard to really get into a story if you don’t understand what the characters are talking about half the time, y’know.

Moreover, what dialogue that was intelligible often tended to take the form of belabored and overly-long sentences and declarations. I will grant that this is not unheard of for anime programs, but it gets to be a bit much after a while. Although the actors’ deliveries are pretty solid for the most part, their characters, especially the two main protagonists, are written to be kinda deadpan and straightforward for most of their speaking engagements, robbing the audience of quite a bit of potential emotion.

But, although the story is pretty dense and the dialogue approaching neutron star levels, there is plenty of action to bridge the gaps, and this is where the show shines. Whether it be a Birds-style (or maybe Mist-style?) descent of a flock of Rodan (yes, there’s many more than one, and I’m not sure what a group of pterosaurs is called, so…) or Jet Jaguar taking care of business against Kumonga- and Kamacuras-adjacent critters, the kaiju action is portrayed rather well. The new designs of the monsters work for their story-based directions, and some, like Anguirus, get to be improved upon: the limits of suit-mation don’t allow for our spiky boi to do Sonic-esque spin attacks and the like, much less partake in a bit of time manipulation a la the Tralfamadorians (sort of?). Rodan is decidedly more pterosaurian, complete with folding wings and an almost pelican-like beak situation. Jet Jaguar comes in as a more barrel-chested, hyper-mobile model, eschewing his Ultraman knockoff origins and approaching miniature mech-suit territory (something I am certainly game for).

Then there’s the Big G, which is where I think the show actually did a good amount of justice. Though his addvent into our world is dependent on some dimension-shifting and time warping of sorts, he is given all the gravitas that ought to be afforded a friggin’ world-threatening king of the monsters. He doesn’t truly show up until later into the series, but he is foreshadowed fairly well, and once he’s there he’s a force to be reckoned with. I may not be too keen on his redesign, especially when it comes to the odd-looking ribcage situation, but his bearing and menace make up for any shortcomings inherent to his look.

While I don’t think the story was quite accessible enough to really sink my teeth into, especially when it could have taken the admittedly easy way out by being more of a monster-of-the-week type of affair (not gonna lie, I wouldn’t turn one of those down for the Godzilla universe, just sayin’), I do think there is enough to recommend Singular Point, just perhaps not to any run-of-the-mill viewer. It likely takes more of a direct interest in Godzilla and his kaiju brethren (especially with the metric shit-tonne of background references for the more eagle-eyed of G-fans) to fully appreciate things, but if you take some drink or food breaks during the impenetrable dialogue scenes and just focus on the action, you could still get plenty out of the experience, regardless of how divorced from the story you may find yourself. Hell, just turn the subs off and make up your own story, and you might just find it to be pretty close to what’s happening. As mentioned above, I’m gonna revisit the series with the dub to see if things are pared down a bit for my apparently feeble brain to handle, so who knows? Maybe something new and interesting will present itself. Either way, I look forward to a potential second season of Singular Point, if for no other reason than to see what other cool kaiju action can spring from the creators’ minds.

Nightmare Fuel 2022 I: Bingo Hell

Sometimes special things happen when you and your buddy(ies) are flipping through your various streaming services looking for something potentially entertaining to wile the night away with. In the present case, my buddy and I were perusing Amazon Prime for something spooky or stupid (the same methodology we employed at Blockbuster back in our college daze) when our eyes alighted (alit?) on the peculiar title of Bingo Hell.

How could we not?

As the title may have tipped off, the story centers on a slightly evil-leaning bingo hall that suddenly appears in a neighborhood that’s experiencing the trauma of combined decline and gentrification. The remaining OG residents are being squeezed by the shifting economic milieu and feel like their very way of life is being threatened. Enter the bingo hall, which seems to have quite the influence on the locals. Indeed, it seems to be an Elseworlds version of Needful Things going on here, as the malevolent proprietor provides those down on their luck with what it is they need/desire, only for them to essentially lose their very souls in the process (if not worse). It’s up to a relatively ragtag squad of denizens to face the demon and exorcise him from their town.

As somewhat silly as the premise is, things are played pretty straight here, which works both positively and negatively for the film as a whole. On the one hand, the overt campiness of similar fare is avoided, allowing the threat to actually be perceived as such. Moreover, the messaging about the pernicious dangers of gentrification are able to properly resonate with the audience. On the other hand, there is often a distinct lack of general fun, and several scenes just seem to limply sit there, bogging down the pace and becoming dull in between more exciting bits. Admittedly, some decent characterization is occurring in these parts, but they just lack the oomph of their surroundings.

Thankfully for the production as a whole, the main actors are damn solid in their roles. Richard Brake, whose darkly charismatic performance in Rob Zombie’s 31 put him into my consciousness, cheeses it up a bit here, but still presents a slimily entertaining bingo hall owner with the power to really fuck with you. He faces off against a worthy opponent in Adriana Barraza, with whom I’m not familiar, but who really sells it as a woman seeing her very social fabric disintegrate around her and both wanting and needing to fight back, to re-establish some sort of control and comfort. The rest of the cast is somewhat hit-or-miss, but the general feel is solid. Visually speaking, most of the film is pretty standard and straightforward, but the bits inside the bingo hall are nicely colorful and expressive, evoking memories of music videos from the mid- and late-90s with the various lenses and strongly saturated hues. Otherwise, it’s nothing noteworthy.

And that’s kinda how we felt at the end, that we had seen a solid flick with some good performances, but ultimately the affair left us wanting more somehow, something beyond a riff on Needful Things. Granted, the socioeconomic themes helped, but there just wasn’t enough to really sink our teeth into, to truly recommend to someone passing by. That said, if you need some slightly out-of-the-ordinary horror with minimal gore and an actual message, then you could do a whole helluva lot worse than Bingo Hell, especially if you’re a Prime subscriber. My buddy and I were mostly entertained, our evening not at all ruined, so that’s a plus in my book, given the range of offerings one can find these days on the streams.