Editorials
[Future Movie Reviews] Len Wiseman’s ‘They Live’
Greetings. I am a film critic from the future. The near future. So near it wouldn’t even impress you. Everything’s the same. It’s depressing. As a future film critic, it’s my task to electronically deliver spoiler-filled reviews of awful films from my present to yours with an aim to keep these cinematic atrocities from existing in the first place through the power of premature bad press. These are my chronicles: The Future Movie Reviews.
Len Wiseman‘s (credited, here as Alan Smithee) update of John Carpenter’s They Live is so bad it may start its own fight clubs. Its cockeyed point of view bravely damns all those who disagree to such an extent, I’m tempted to call it high art. But that would be a mistake. This isn’t an example of artistic expression, it’s class warfare.
We frequently complain about remakes being creatively bankrupt rehashes of familiar moments haphazardly glued together with perfunctory crap. Len Wiseman’s They Live doesn’t have this problem. It’s wide-eyed and dedicated. Nearly every scene feeds into its overall theme in one way or another. Which means technically it’s actually a very good film. If it’s morals weren’t rotten to the core, I might even compare it favorably with Carpenter’s original.
The film stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Nada, a corporate banker living the highlife on Wall Street with friend and fellow corporate Banker, Frank (played by Jamie Foxx). One day, Nada accidentally walks in on a behind closed doors political meeting. On his way out of the room, a young Senate hopeful slips a pair of sunglasses into his pocket without his knowledge.
Later that day, however, he notices the new sunglasses. Upon putting them on his head, Nada enters a whole new world hidden from most of us. Instead of seeing working class people busting their humps to make ends meet, the glasses reveal a nation of illegal aliens and freeloaders. Magazines, billboards, money, and television shows order everyone to “chill out,” “get some welfare,” and “have a taco, Amigo.” ATMs in the bad parts of town reveal themselves as literal government teats from which the proletariat get their funds. The glasses also exaggerates peoples’ true ethnical heritage and adds fifty pounds to their already heavy frames.
This kicks off a series of violence set pieces where Nada gears up with weapons and enters the bad parts of town waiting for altercations, much like Paul Kersey in Death Wish. These scenes are where Len Wiseman’s They Live most robs the original. A fat bum asks Nada if he has any gum. Rather than just saying “no” like a normal human being, he responds with a forced, “I’m all out of bubblegum,” then shoots him. There’s also a moment where, just before blowing her brains out, Nada tells a female crack addict, “You know, you look like your head fell in the cheese dip back in 1957.” After shooting her, he eyes the mess and adds, “Make that nineteen forty seven.”
Each of these lines, of course, comes accompanied by The Rock’s signature raised eyebrow, verifying both this film’s way off moral compass and its absolute ignorance regarding its own toxicity.
This becomes even more apparent in the big fight scene between Nada and Frank over the glasses. In this version, Frank puts the glasses on immediately. He just doesn’t think it’s such a big deal because he grew up with poor parents. Nada and Frank fight simply because the more Nada wears glasses around his fellow Wall Street shark, the more Frank resembles everything else wrong with the city. But Frank is a badass, so killing him takes longer. Way longer.
I understand a remake wanting to outdo the original, but this fight scene is ridiculous far beyond what Carpenter did. Len Wiseman’s They Live runs almost three hours long. Half that running time is this fight. It just goes on and on and on. An over reliance on shaky cam and CG gore make it that much more insufferable. Like with the original, people will be talking about this fight. Unlike the original, however, it will only be as a warning.
You spend most of your time with Len Wiseman’s They Live waiting for the inevitable ending in which Nada sees the error of his ways. But no, the film instead justifies his actions as heroic. He doesn’t even die. After killing Frank, a bunch of shady figures approach him, informing him that he passed their test and can now join their political party. The film then cuts ten years later and reveals The Rock as President of the United States. He says something about “cleaning this place up,” puts on the glasses, and then smirks with that raised eyebrow.
The mystery now is how this whole thing came to be. Len Wiseman’s the last director on earth to assume some kind of political stance in his films, so someone clearly put him up to it. This is made more obvious by Wiseman’s insistence on the Alan Smithee pseudonym. In a way he should be proud. Rather than making yet another piece of Hollywood fluff, Wiseman has given the world a film people will probably discuss and condemn until the end of time. Perpetual infamy is still a form of artistic immortality, right?
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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