“Oh, God, not another one!”
It’s a title that screams CHEEESE!, and that’s … misleading. Galaxy of Horrors (2017) is a member of an uncommon breed, the movie anthology. Its operational conceit is that a man on a spaceship being transported in a cryogenic pod is awakened early when the ship’s computer system detects damage. Amidst warnings of falling oxygen levels, our nameless victim lacks the proper password to be released from the pod, or even control anything at all.
Including the in-pod entertainment system. Because, perhaps, of damage to the computing system, he’s now subjected to eight short movies of science fiction horror, all while the computer continues to count-down the falling oxygen levels. His anxiety about his own situation amplifies the black humor of supplying a dying man with horror stories that are, themselves, rife with death.
WARNING: Spoiler alert. If you prefer to be surprised, let me just say that Galaxy of Horrors delivers some well-done stories in the SF Horror genre, and I say that as an audience member who doesn’t much care for horror, although I make exceptions for Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). If quick hit-and-run stories are to your taste, this may be for you.
Now, on to the spoilers.
The lead-off story, Eden, was the best. It’s the time of the apocalypse, and it’s brought on by the disastrous failure of the biosphere. Whether the latest American Civil War or climate change is causing it, now nearly everyone must use gas masks to breathe in this near-future scenario. We follow along with a father-son duo who are part of a cult bent on suicide, but not just personal suicide.
Suicide of the entire human race.
It’s tightly wound, as police and cult members die in gouts of gore, interspersed with the American President rehearsing a speech he will soon give announcing the failure of the cult. But he doesn’t really understand, as at one point he tells a captured cult member that the cult’s leader has been captured and killed, to which the cult member replies that was the intention.
A grim view of the future, it’s fast paced enough that the audience hasn’t the time to analyze for inconsistencies. You’re along for a bumpy, nasty ride that you can believe in.
Iris comes up next, and proves to be an insightful look into the dangers of having true Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your phone.
Especially if you’re a murderer.
Dave does murder-for-hire, and in order to get paid for his latest job, he must provide photographic evidence. Having hauled the body into the wilderness, he takes the picture and buries the body. It’s only at this point that Iris, the commercial AI in his phone, tells him the picture is corrupted.
Dave is understandably upset, and not in the mood to discuss his morality with his phone. Eventually, though, Dave ends up clinging to a rock face as Iris guides him down it to pick her up. You see, in a fit of pique, he flung her phone towards the cliff. It’s just too bad she directs one of his feet to an unstable rock formation.
This is an unassuming, well-thought out and executed tale of the implications of the future. While Iris, in this case, is an AI with a social conscience, it’s not hard to imagine an AI without one. A horrific thought indeed.
Flesh Computer investigates the issues of integrating computers and people, and how to treat the results. While technically well done, the plot lacked impact, as a couple of criminals invade the apartment of a man whose hobby is cybernetics. What will happen when he breaks into his own apartment and discovers what the men are doing? It wasn’t so much horrifying as just violent.
If you squeeze it just right, he gets a migraine.
Pathos is an exploration of the frenzied attempts to escape ennui. Our unnamed protagonist is fed through a tube in his head, which also provides management with control of their worker. The work he does is used to pay for that food, control, and for sensory services that substitute for real life. As we come for our visit, he’s attempting to select and pay for a sensory experience, tastes of which appear on the walls of his chamber amidst commercials for same. Meanwhile, management is noting that he’s not paid for nutrition, and they’re threatening to cut off his senses if he doesn’t pay up.
And he can’t remember his credit card number.
Its incoherency masked by its frenetic pacing, ultimately it’s not quite clear enough to clearly connect with the black hole at the center of every thinking person’s soul, that being the question of meaning. But it was quite entertaining as we tried to figure out what was going on.
Eveless concerns a world which has, without explanation, lost all of its women. What to do? Well, two men have found a way to make one of them pregnant, a discovery ambivalent at best since the birth doesn’t really go all that well. And the baby?
A male.
Oh, try, try again, in all of its horrific implications. It’s a slight tale, but not without its charms.
They Will All Die in Space deals with the awkward problem of a damaged colony ship, a lack of supplies, and a food larder. The food larder is, unfortunately, your frozen shipmates. Neatly plotted, information withheld until the proper time, it was a nice story that lets the horror creep up on you.
In Kingz, we discover the drug world isn’t run by bad people, but by something infinitely worse. As we watch the parasite that controls the drug lords move from host to host, it occurred to me that a medieval battle helm might be in order, but it turns out what you really need is a full suit of armor. As two drug runners battle to sell their white powder to a drug lord, one discovers his sister where she shouldn’t be, and then the antagonism of the drug lord gets out of hand. Soon, they meet up with the mother parasite, and that’s when things really go downhill, leaving a single survivor, and a question about parasites. Graphic and bloody, it goes for frenetic but doesn’t quite get there, but the plot is tight enough to carry the day.
Finally, Entity finishes up the anthology, a gossamer web of a story of a cosmonaut who sees her space station explode as she escapes. She floats through space until she encounters an Earth that proceeds to melt into something else. Puzzling and somewhat punchless, due to the lack of connection with the protagonist, trying to understand what is going on turned out to be a fruitless exercise. The sense of horror, beyond that of dying of a lack of air while drifting out of control in space, never quite materializes.
Technically speaking these are well made films; in the end, they succeed or fail dependent on their stories, which is how it should be. I thought some horrific and some not, but I do have to stress that I’m not a horror fan.
But if you are, you might want to check this anthology out.
