'Locke & Key: The Game' - Cryptozoic (2012)

You've had it rough up until now. With the trauma your family's recently faced it made sense to move to the family estate, Keyhouse, right? But this big old mansion is full of secrets, locked doors, weird noises, supernatural voices, and all types of secret doors. You friends and family are all around you, and the challenges of this house continue to grow, but can you trust your loved ones? Maybe they've been talking to strange voices too! Maybe they're only pretending to need your help. And what's the deal with all these weird keys?

In 'Locke & Key: The Game' three to six players face off against a series of challenges. Players all have to work together to reap rewards, and can use keys to enhance and change gameplay. Only through working together will a single player win the game, but who will it be? Could you have accidentally helped the winner too much?

Gameplay Mechanics

'Locke & Key: The Game,' published by Cryptozoic Entertainment, is at its core a simple card game. Players have "strength" cards with numbers and colors on them. There are cards in blue, black, and white. They will flip challenge cards that have a number to beat (also in blue, black, or white). The first player can choose to play cards in her hand, face down, toward beating that challenge number. Now the next player can choose to put cards in toward that challenge as well. This goes around the table. When the challenge is defeated, there's always a first place prize (for the highest point tally) and a second place prize. When the "game over" card is drawn, players tally up how many points they've scored and a winner is determined.

What makes this game interesting is a separate deck of cards called "key cards." Instead of playing towards a challenge, at any time during a round a player can discard two cards and draw a key card, ending their turn. The key cards are static effects that change the game. Maybe they give you a bonus to all your white cards (that's what the "Angel Key" does), or confer other static bonuses. In the end, these cards can help you a lot, but they won't win you the game.

Replay Value

This is really a very simple game that blooms when more people play it. With enough players this game becomes a game about bluffing, fragile alliances, and secret plays. Therefore, if you've got a group of five or six players, this game will be a lot of fun to return to time after time. But if you've only got a few players it may end up collecting dust.

Overall Impressions

The game does a nice job of taking aspects of the comic (trust issues, magical keys) and turning them into gameplay mechanics. I'm a big fan of most games Cryptozoic Entertainment makes, and this one is a good entry point to their games. It's not very complicated (some may accuse it of being too simple, actually), but it's easy to teach to other players. And if you're already a fan of the Joe Hill-penned comic series… you'll probably really love this game.

Characterized by its stocky body, greenish coloring and black-tipped fins, the Smoothtop Blacktip Shark is probably not one that would come to mind if you and I were playing Scattergories, and the category of sharks popped up on our cards. It's not that I don't think you know about sharks, but rather it's a matter of this unique species being extinct for over a hundred years, last seen in Yemen in 1902.

That is, until now.

Decades after scientists determined that the Smoothtop Blacktip Shark was extinct, back in the 1980s, a handful of them have turned up in a fish market in Kuwait, reports AOL.  It was in 2008 that the Shark Conversation Society paid a visit to the market and noticed a shark there that didn't quite look like the others, and more recent analysis has revealed that it was indeed the elusive Smoothtop Blacktip that they spotted.

Studies at other Middle Eastern fish markets have turned up nearly 50 of the 'extinct' sharks, which scientists and shark conservationists hope will allow them to learn more about the species, and possibly even save them from a true extinction.

Polymer clay is the chosen artistic medium of England-based artist Lizzie Campbell, who runs a studio by the name of Clay Disarray.  Some of her most recent works include clay recreations of iconic movie posters, such as Hellraiser (above) and Little Shop of Horrors, but it's an older project of hers that we're here to shine the spotlight on today.

Before she discovered polymer clay, Lizzie worked with plain old air dry clay, and it was during her early years of playing around with the medium that she spent a whole lot of time working on a special project called 'May Contain Spoilers.'  Over 30 pieces comprise the collection, which she describes as "a visual celebration of cinema, through the medium of miniature clay models and dioramas."

Each of the 'May Contain Spoilers' dioramas depict iconic scenes from horror movies, from Carrie White getting pig's blood dumped onto her head at the prom to the frightening reveal of the killer in 1973's Don't Look Now.  Check out a few of our favorites below, and see many more over on Lizzie's website!

The attempt to adapt Irrational Games’ Bioshock for the big screen is a story almost as tragic as that of the game’s fallen utopia of Rapture.  Originally snapped up in 2008 with director Gore Verbinski at the helm (hopefully channeling equal parts The Ring and Pirates of the Caribbean), the film was supposed to be a hard-R flick that didn’t wince at violence.  When the studio execs balked at the proposed $200 million budget and counteroffered with $80 million, Verbinski dropped out at was replaced by 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who then left the project in 2012.  The final nail in the coffin game in the form of Irrational Games’ own Ken Levine, who was given carte blanche by publisher 2K Games to pull the proverbial plug if he saw fit.  He did.

The concept artist for this tale of woe, one Jim Martin, has released his portfolio of art for the sunken film, at it adds quite a bit of saltwater to the wound.  The concept art looks to capture Bioshock’s art-deco sensibility perfectly, and a few of the new environments (the Big Daddy salvage yard?  Yeesh.) seem to dovetail nicely into the original vision of the game.  Of course, there had to have been a reason for Levine to pull the plug on the project, so maybe we ducked a giant, arm-mounted drill on this one.

You can check out a few choice pieces of art below, and the whole portfolio over at Jim Martin’s website.

New comic book Wednesday has come and gone. The dust at your local comic shop has settled. An eerie silence descends as you finish reading your last superhero book of the week. Now it's time for something a little more sinister. Welcome to Bagged and Boarded: comic reviews of the sick, spooky, twisted and terrifying!

The Strain: The Fall No. 12

The Strain is the Guillermo del Toro-approved horror comic about a nasty batch of vampires infesting New York City. These beasts, more creature than Dracula, run in packs and heed the call of their master. This issue we see the professor and his crew of survivors finally in possession of a book that could save them all. But will it be enough to help?

Bag it or board it up? The first five pages or so in this issue read like a Mignola flash-back. It works well with this storyline, where we follow the professor as he seeks revenge and loses the love of his life. The rest of the comic plays out at a modern pace, and though it's a bit jarring, this is still a really enjoyable read.

Wraith No. 3

Now that author Joe Hill is bringing 'Locke and Key' to a close he's begun a new comic for IDW. Wraith is the story of a weird guy with an a awesome old Rolls-Royce. He's been scooping up kids and taking them to Christmasland, where they are transformed into demented little monsters. Now three convicts and a couple of best up cops are riding in that awesome car toward Christmasland. This will not end well for any of them. 

Bag it or board it up? These past three issues have been a lot of fun to read. This series really brings a lot to the table. There are creepy kids, a scary antagonist, and all the messed up imagery you could imagine. Seeing the little kids as monsters is especially creepy when set against the backdrop of Christmasland. Check this comic out. 

Curse No. 1

A father will do anything to keep his ailing son safe. And when his son, who's sick with Leukemia, has hospital bills that he can't pay he looks for extra work. Luckily for him, a werewolf's been terrorizing his snowy mountain town. There's a big bounty out there for whoever can kill the monster, so he goes out hunting. 

Bag it or board it up? Are we beginning to see a trend in horror comics? A few weeks ago 'Bad Blood' released its first issue. In that comic a young man with cancer gets attacked by a vampire. Sickness is a strong motivating factor, and it is interesting to see the issues of cancer brought to the forefront of comics. Is this a new horror zeitgeist?

Night of the Living Deadpool No. 1

Yes. You read that title correctly. The world has gone to hell and the only hero left alive is the one who slipped into a food coma after eating too many chimichangas: Deadpool. Now the "merc with the mouth" must survive in a world of moaning undead. With two sweet swords and an awesome gun, Deadpool seems well suited for this shambling threat.

Bag it or board it up? Whoa. This comic rules. It works on so many levels. There's plenty of humor, the style is amazing (everything is black and white except Deadpool, who's bright red), and it's even a new take on zombies. These zombies moan, cry, and mumble haunting sayings like "I'm so sorry" and " kill me."  Very creepy, very fun. This is my pick of the week, month, and year (so far).

Kristy Jett wrote up a post here on FEARNET last week about horror-loving kids, and the parents who encourage that love.  Her take on the matter, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with allowing your kids to watch and love the same movies that you do.  Sure, there should by all means be exceptions to that rule, as I wouldn't want anyone showing their young children movies like The Human Centipede or A Serbian Film, but as someone whose parents allowed him to watch the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies when he was a kid, I can with 100% certainty say that I have nothing but pleasant memories of that time of my life, and that early exposure to horror movies did absolutely nothing to damage me in any way.

It is for that reason that I absolutely love to see parents allow their children to embrace fictional monsters and madmen, and if you feel the same way, I can guarantee that the video you're about to see will put a massive smile on your face.

Uploaded onto YouTube just a few days ago by Kevin Maher, who I can only assume is the father, the video shows an 8-year-old boy opening up NECA's Phantasm action figure on Christmas morning.  His reaction?  Absolutely priceless.  Enjoy!

If you're a lifelong horror fan like myself, you've probably felt from time to time that you've seen every movie there is to see, and that there are no more gems left for you to discover.  It's totally normal to feel that way, but I can assure you that you couldn't possibly be more wrong.  No matter how many years you've been ingesting horror movies, there will always be a wealth of fantastic ones that are ripe for discovery - it's just a matter of knowing where to look, and being guided in the right direction.  Thanks to the new book Hidden Horror, that search has never been easier.

Hidden Horror is the brain-child of Aaron Christensen, whose name you may recognize from the pages of HorrorHound Magazine.  In an effort to help provide exposure to some of horror cinema's most underrated and overlooked films, Aaron reached out to friends and fellow writers in the horror community, giving each of them the freedom to choose their favorite films that fall into those categories, and essentially write love letters to them.

In the works for the past year, the book is finally completed and available for purchase, and it's jam packed with 101 essays from 101 different writers (including yours truly and FEARNET's own Kristy Jett and Lawrence Raffel!), who cover everything from films you know about but maybe never watched, like May, to more obscure treasures such as Tombs of the Blind Dead and The Hands of Orlac.  In other words, if you buy the book, it'll be a long time before you ever again find yourself thinking that you've seen it all!

You can purchase a copy for yourself over on Amazon, for less than $15.  Learn more about the book on the Hidden Horror Facebook page.

Grimm Episode 311
“The Good Soldier”
Written By: Rob Wright
Directed By: Rashaad Ernesto Green
Original Airdate: 17 January 2014

In This Episode…

A woman named Frankie is sitting outside a bar, grumbling. She carves something into her heavily-scarred arm before storming inside and confronting a man. He pretends not to know her - an obvious lie - and she dabs her bleeding arm on a napkin to “remind” him. He storms out of the bar and immediately phones a friend, insisting that “she is here” and “she is crazy.” He goes home, but Frankie follows him. An altercation in his front yard sends him inside to get his gun, but she is gone by the time he comes back out. Returning inside, the man hears movement. Before he can aim his gun, a wesen with a lion face attacks him and stabs him through the chest with a scorpion-like tail.

The dead man is Ron, a former soldier who now works in home security. Hank and Nick go to speak to Ron’s boss, Jim McCabe, who was also the last phone call Ron made. The details of the story unravel at a steady - but lengthy - pace, so I am going to spare you guys the back-and-forth minutia. Ron, Jim, Troy (the man who found Ron’s body) and another man, Bobby (who lives in Phoenix) all met in Iraq. Ron was in the Army; the others were part of a private security firm with a government contract. They returned Stateside about four years ago, but when Hank checks up on the fourth member of this clique, he discovers that Bobby was killed a week ago in the same manner as Ron: what appeared to have been a poisoned pole or stake shoved through his chest. While they wait until more than halfway through the episode to reveal the “deep, dark” secret that these four men share, it was pretty obvious from the first few minutes of this episode: the men gang-raped Frankie while on duty.

Troy is on edge, and he nearly loses it when he comes home to find Frankie chatting with his wife, Betsey. Troy goes to Jim, the ringleader, and says he wants to confess everything. He can’t live with the guilt, and tells Jim that he already told Betsey. True to his word, Troy goes home and gives his wife a hand-written confession letter. She is horrified by its contents, but agrees with Jim: no one can know about this. She tears up the letter and tells Troy to burn it. Troy is a little shocked by his wife’s callousness. Before he can set the note alight in his fireplace, he hears noises from the bedroom. He runs in to find his wife, dead like the others. The same fate greets Troy. Three down, one to go.

Nick and Hank turn to the team’s commanding officer, Colonel Adam Desai. He is being treated for stage four lung cancer, so he speaks to them via video conference. He knew about the gang-rape, and he reported it to his superiors, but they just swept it under the rug. Desai was frustrated because of the deal that the government made with the contractors: they could not be prosecuted for any crime. Period. He will never forget the date that Frankie was raped: November 11, 2010. Nick grabs the bloody napkin that he took from the bar’s garbage. The symbols correspond. Frankie was carving that date into her skin. Desai has to hang up, but not because the nurses were calling him. He is not in the hospital; he is in a Portland motel room and after his interview he helps himself to a tumbler of bourbon.

The toxicology report comes back and finds that all the victims were killed with a scorpion venom. While Nick reassembles the note, Juliette and Hank go through the history and decide they are probably dealing with a manticore. Nick finishes assembling the paper puzzle. Indeed, it is a confession to gang rape. And it looks like Jim is next on the hit list.

By the time cops show up to Jim’s workplace, he has been confronted by an irate but unarmed Frankie. The police take her into custody, and Jim smiles a silent victory. In the interrogation room, Frankie denies killing anyone. She came here to confront them because the pain was more than she could bear, but she maintains she didn’t kill them. Nick outs himself as a Grimm and knows that she is a manticore. But she is not. She reveals herself as a steinadler - a bird wesen - as proof. The only person she ever told was Desai; he was the only person who gave a damn. With the cops listening, Frankie calls Desai, who simply tells her he is getting her the justice she deserves. They triangulate the call, and trace it to the VFW bar.

Jim has also tracked down Desai to the VFW and they face off. Both are manticores, but only Bobby and Ron were killed by Desai; Jim killed Troy and Betsey out of fear that they would rat him out. It’s a reasonably epic wesen-on-wesen battle. Desai stabs Jim in the tail, forcing him to become human. Desai follows suit, and Nick and Hank walk in on Jim stabbing Desai in the chest with a knife. Jim surrenders but immediately tries to play the self-defense card. With his dying breath, Desai proudly declares, “You can’t arrest him for what he did to Frankie, but you can arrest him for what he did to me.”

Meanwhile, Rosalee received a letter from her mom, the first communication in seven years. She wants Rosalee to come visit. She is anxious about seeing her mom again, but the trouble is truly between her and her older sister, Dietta. Dietta is mad that Rosalee spent her youth “partying up and down the coast” while she picked up the pieces after their father died.  It turns out that the true hatred stems from Rosalee never showing up for dad’s funeral. Rosalee admits the painful truth: she was in prison for shoplifting and didn’t even know her dad died until she got out of jail. This admission seems to help repair the rift.

Also: Adalind seems to be getting her powers back - but there may also be a problem with her pregnancy.

Dig It or Bury It?

Dig. I am glad that the show didn’t take the familiar - and easy - I Spit on Your Grave route, with the rape victim being the killer. It was just a nice little twist, and also nice that she had someone on her side, even if she didn’t realize it. Of course, I have a million different voices from my feminist film theory classes debating in my head which is a more offensive scenario. I am ignoring those voices and just saying that this is a nice deviation from the typical rape-revenge scenario.

Big Bad…

…Manticore. We don’t get much info, other than that it has the head of a lion, tail of a scorpion, and come from Persia. They are lethal soldiers with no fear of death.

Prophecies?

Monroe proposes to Rosalee, and his parents come into town. Dad freaks out when he discovers his son is friends with a Grimm.

Dracula Episode 109
“Four Roses”
Teleplay By: Daniel Knauf
Story By: Jesse Peyronel
Directed By: Tim Fywell
Original Airdate: 17 January 2014

In This Episode…

Grayson is convinced that the Order was behind Mina’s attack and wants to start war with them. Renfield tries to explain that Davenport acted alone in this, but Grayson doesn’t believe him. He goes to Van Helsing in the hopes that he can calm down Grayson, but now that Grayson has lost possession of the resonator, he considers their contract null and void. He’s out.

Browning is frantic over his missing children, but Jayne is annoyed. She has hunters coming from all over Europe to hunt Dracula, and she doesn’t have time to deal with Browning’s domestic issues. Besides, as a member of the Order of the Dragon, Browning swore that his personal needs would never supersede those of the Order. Despite the fact that he has seen Grayson walk in the daylight, he is convinced Grayson is Dracula. Jayne finds this absurd. While she continues prepping for the arriving hunters, Browning sends the police to search Carfax Manor for the children. Of course, they are not there. Renfield suggests that perhaps Van Helsing took the children, a notion which Grayson dismisses. Except that Van Helsing did take the children. After the resonator was taken into custody, Van Helsing thought the only way to exact revenge was to kill the Browning children. Of course, when push came to shove, Van Helsing couldn’t do it, so instead he keeps the kids in drugged stupors in the basement of an abandoned house.

Jonathan wakes in the morning with Lucy and is disgusted with himself. He dresses and leaves without saying a word to her. He takes a carriage and goes straight to Browning. He has decided to join the Order, but he insists on knowing why the Order attacked Mina. Browning insists that Davenport acted alone, and realizes that it was Jonathan who shot Davenport. They shake on his joining the Order. As a sort of hazing, Jonathan must obtain the blueprints to Grayson’s resonator, which he does so with relative ease. He is inducted shortly thereafter, in typical secret society fashion: robes, chants, kneeling, and a blood oath. Later, Browning has his engineers go over the resonator blueprints. The city had returned the resonator to Grayson because, as Browning points out, “if there is no demonstration, there can be no failure.” And Browning wants a spectacular public failure.

Grayson goes to visit Mina, but he has a little errand first: he drops off a few of his vampire brethren at a billiards hall and locks them in with a few members of the Order. When Jayne comes upon the blood-soaked scene, she sees it as a declaration of war. (Browning is there as well, and he takes the opportunity to tell the cops that his children are staying with his wife’s sister, and it was all a telegraph mixup. He finally agrees with Jayne that they don’t need any additional police scrutiny.) Mina is starting to remember seeing Grayson attack her attackers, which he insists never happened. Despite her pleas for him to stay, as he watches the sunlight move across the room, he knows he must go.

Lucy is feeling pretty terrible about her night with Jonathan, and her mother notices her mood. She begs Lucy to open up, and she finally does: “Why didn’t you tell me it was natural for a woman to fall in love with another woman?” Mom steps back from her daughter, alarmed, and Lucy realizes Jayne has played her. Desperate to make amends somehow, Lucy visits Mina in the hospital, and is relieved when Mina greets her warmly. She does not move away when Lucy sits at the edge of her bed, and she freely reaches for her best friend’s hand. Emboldened by this show of affection, Lucy encourages Mina to call off her engagement. Mina becomes suspicious and soon figures out (though the words are never spoken) that he and Lucy slept together. Mina throws Lucy out.

Mina escapes the hospital and goes to Jonathan’s home. He is surprised and angry to see her there, forgetting that he gave her a key. She is mad that he hasn’t visited her in two days, but after her visit with Lucy, she knows why. Jonathan’s defense is that Lucy was throwing herself at him. He tries to pull her to him, but she fights away and he tells her to leave, that she won’t hear from him again. Of course, before she goes, Mina just has to know: “Why?” “Because you love Grayson.” Mina has no response for this, so she rushes out into the night. Stumbling down the cold, wet streets of London, she bumps into every passerby she can, then steps in a puddle and notices Ilona’s reflection reaching for her. She passes out and is nearly run over by a carriage.

Mina wakes up in the hospital as Grayson is leaving another rose for her. So he sits with her. After some small talk, she finally asks: “What is happening between us?” He admits that she reminds her of “someone I used to love named Ilona.” Mina has dreamed of her since she was little. Her next question tears up Grayson: “Do you love me?” “Don’t ask me that,” he begs. “I have something I have to finish; until then I cannot move forward. Besides, you love Jonathan.” She reveals the tryst between Jonathan and Lucy, and Grayson is offended for her. Mina’s mood turns and she asks to be left alone. Grayson leaves with rage towards Lucy.

Lucy is sobbing in a milk bath, and I honestly expect her to kill herself. But something much better happens. Grayson/Dracula comes in, rips her throat open, forces her to drink some of his own blood, and leaves. Lucy is left alone in her now-bloodied bathtub, shocked - but alive.

Dig It or Bury It?

This episode started off a little slow. Lots of people wallowing in their own misery. But then it ended where I think a lot of us were waiting for it to go - Dracula turning Lucy into a vampire. Frankly, I think she is better off like this. Her life was kind of in the toilet;maybe she can rise above the nonsense as a vampire. It does make me wonder, back in that time period, which was worse: to be a vampire or to be gay?

Prophecies?

Browning sets the resonator to explode, and Grayson faces off against Jayne in the season finale.

The Following Episode 201
“Resurrection”
Written By: Kevin Williamson
Directed By: Marcos Siega
Original Airdate: 19 January 2014

In This Episode…

We open where last season left off, with Ryan and Claire getting stabbed. Both are taken to the hospital, but only Ryan survives. 

A year later, Ryan has cleaned himself up. He runs in the mornings, takes his medications diligently, and is in AA - he has been sober for five months. No longer an agent, he works at the New York College of Criminal Justice, teaching crime scene analytics. He seems to enjoy it, and he is good at his job. Joey is with his grandparents in witness protection.

It is the one year anniversary of the Havenport massacre. A woman named Carrie Cooke is releasing a book on the incident. Ryan is keeping his nose out of it - he wants nothing to do with Joe Carroll, the cult, or the happenings at Havenport. He is having a small dinner party under the auspices of meeting his niece’s boyfriend, but really they are just concerned about him being alone on the anniversary. Attending is Ryan’s niece, Max, a cop; her boyfriend Chris; his AA sponsor Barry; and another woman from AA named Melissa. But it seems his family and friends were worried for nothing: Ryan seems to have really cleaned up his act. Which is good because later that night, shit hits the fan.

A man wearing a Joe Carroll mask moves between subway cars. He is joined by two more, similarly dressed men, who start screaming “Resurrection!” The melee begins, and they stab everyone in that subway car. “Joe Carroll lives. Ryan Harding can’t stop us. The resurrection is coming.” They escape up the subway tunnel.

Ryan hears the news when he wakes up the next morning. Five are dead; a lone survivor has been hospitalized. He goes to work as normal, but of course, he is hounded by the press. He offers a brief statement, that his thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families, but he is no longer involved in this case or the FBI. He gives his students the same spiel but the feds are there to talk to Ryan, so class is dismissed. Mike sees the same report from his home, but he is not on scene. Though he was never indicted for the murder of his attacker last season, he is still on suspension. These new attacks change all that, and an Agent Phillips requests his help. 

Ryan and Mike see each other at the hospital for the first time in about five months. When they last met, it was in a bar. Ryan was smashed out of his mind, and Mike just wanted to get their stories straight. Mike is a bit annoyed that Ryan never answered any of his phone calls - he needed someone to talk to. They speak briefly with Lily, the lone survivor of the subway attack, who seems to blame Ryan for her injuries, at least in part. Agent Gina Mendez takes Ryan to the FBI command center and she runs down the facts. There are eight known acolytes still out there, that didn’t die or go to prison. They are running body scans on the surveillance footage of the three attackers, and one is probably Carlos Perez, a known Havenport cultist. The other two are unknown, and Ryan offers little help: they could be old, or they could be new. He insists he is strictly a civilian and leaves. Mike chases him down, but Ryan is adamant: he’s done.

Except he’s not done. He goes home to his tidy apartment with its state-of-the-art security system. There is one door that is behind an extra set of digital locks. This is the crazy room: every surface is covered with photos, clippings, notes, and miscellany to do with Joe Carroll and his cult. He also has a small arsenal of weapons. Max comes over, and Ryan shares this new information with her. They match Carlos with an alias they had been following, Robert Diaz. Max thinks it is time he take this news to the police; Ryan simply leaves.

He goes to a shambling walk-up in a bad-ish part of town. Picks the lock and enters, gun drawn. Carlos appears and the men fight, Ryan knocking him out. He sits on his chest and wakes Carlos violently. Carlos denies everything. Ryan wants to know where Joe is: “We both know he isn’t dead.” Carlos tries to deny it - he hasn’t seen Joe since the lighthouse fire. After being slapped around a bit more, Carlos admits that he picked up Joe on the beach after the fire. Joe survived the fire, but Carlos hasn’t seen him since that day. Ryan thinks they are using the attack to lure Joe out of hiding. Carlos breaks free from Ryan and runs. Ryan gives chase, but runs into traffic and is hit by a taxi. Ryan is fine, but Carlos is long gone. Back in Carlos’s crash pad, Ryan finds the Joe Carroll mask and a Playbill with the name Heather Clarke circled. He calls Max, who informs him that Heather Clarke turned up dead 45 minutes ago.

We know what happened to Heather. She had been flirting with a young man in her building, and the man followed her inside her apartment. They end up in bed together, but he doesn’t want to have sex - he just wants to touch her. Of course, this may be because Heather is already dead. He dances with the corpse, then brushes her hair and does her makeup before putting her to bed. Then he takes a shower - something that seems pretty natural after playing with a corpse. But there is a surprise (for the audience) in the bathroom: this guy has an identical twin brother.

Max is at the location where Heather was found after her twisted “date.” She is propped up on a park bench, dressed in a nightgown and posed as if reading from Joe’s book. She is dressed as Gwendolyn, a character from the book that was inspired by Claire. Ryan shows up, and Mike is there as well, begging for some help on this, that this is a specific message. Ryan claims he has nothing, and once again begs off from the case. Mike knows he isn’t over it - six months ago he requested Joe’s DNA profile. Ryan simply tells Mike to “take care of yourself.”

Carlos meets up with a girl at a motel. The twins who killed Heather, Luke and Mark, join them. Carlos’s face is all over the news, and Luke is pissed that they have been exposed like that. Carlos promises to get Joe, and Mark tells his brother to let it go. Luke is clearly crazy and forces Carlos into a hug - then karate chops him. Carlos is spastic, but he will live. 

Meanwhile, Emma is still in the picture. She is punked out and living with a couple girls in a tiny apartment. News of the subway killings upsets her deeply. She is clearly jealous that a new Joe Carroll cult is on the rise. She had been in contact with Carlos, but as far as I can tell, she did not know that he was involved with the subway slaughter.

Deep, deep in the woods, a few guys have holed up in a cabin. There is a girl there, turning tricks. A teenager calls from the living room for his buddy to come check out what is on the TV. A big, burly, lumbering man with a thick, shaggy beard comes in. It is Joe Carroll. He is alive and well and biding his time.

Dig It or Bury It?

I am so excited for this new season to get underway. I also like the new conflict that this episode seems to be setting up: a war of the cults. I think Emma was in Carlos’s apartment looking for a Joe mask, to see if it was really him on the subway. But Ryan had already taken his mask, so there was nothing incriminating for her to find. But clearly, she doesn’t like the idea that someone else is taking - or trying to take - her title as lead cult girl. I’m not even sure if she knows that Joe is alive. But I think that two warring factions of the cult could be very, very interesting.

Prophecies?

Emma tries to regain control of the cult, and the twins get even creepier.

One of the keys to nailing a "found footage" movie is to give your audience a good reason as to why cameras are always running -- even when mass carnage is underway. It's not always believable that a woman would hang on to a video camera while she's being chased by a raving maniac, but it is sort of believable if your horror movie is about a low-rent porno production whose very gimmick is to film everything. And, yes, the "Lucky Bastard" porno site most definitely aims to film "everything."

READ FEARNET'S PARTNER REVIEWS OF LUCKY BASTARD

2014 is set to be a big year for the Paranormal Activity franchise, as yet another sequel will be haunting theaters this October, in the wake of The Marked Ones.  While this month's installment was classified as a 'spin-off,' the impending sequel is being considered the official fifth installment in the franchise, and plot details are nonexistant at the moment.  All we really know is that another family will find their lives overtaken by a demonic entity, as is the typical set up for films in the series.

Late last week, the folks over on Movie Hole scored some exclusive details about the cast of characters that will fill out Paranormal Activity 5, which gives us a bit more of an insight into the family whose home will be the sight of the titular activity.  According to the casting sheets, the film will center around Ryan, his wife Emily, their 6-year-old daughter Leila and Ryan's younger brother Mike, who are described as follows...

"Ryan, 26-31, is a ‘big kid’ - he’s a video-game designer who has relocated his family from New York to Pala Alto for a cushy gig at Rockstar Games.

Though somewhat of a hippie (she’s into organic food, loves the arts and music, won’t let her daughter eat Gluten, and sports tattoos), wife Emily is considerably more serious than her young husband – she’s constantly on the go, does Yoga, and though loving, has an air of maturity about her. Her sister died a year before.

Their daughter Leila seems to be a mixture of both – a bit of a fearless, opinionated tomboy."

Directed by Gregory Plotkin, Paranormal Activity 5 is set for release on October 24th.

In addition to some epic battle sequences, the real highlight of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the character of Smaug himself, a massive fire-breathing dragon that was brought to life with some of the more impressive visual effects that have appeared on the big screen in the last several years.  But using computers to create giant mythical creatures is one thing.  Using the pages of a book is an entirely different one.

Based out of Denmark, Victoria (aka FarTooManyIdeas) is a self-described 'artsy-fartsy Danish American,' and she's the woman responsible for the incredible piece of art you see above.  Yep, that is indeed Smaug the greedy dragon, sculpted out of the pages of a Danish copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.  Also take note of Bilbo Baggins hiding around the corner, who is also made out of pages from the same book.  Now that's what I call bringing a book to life!

Thanks to Laughing Squid for bringing this to our attention.  You can see many more of Victoria's recycled creations over on her website.