Editorials
[Anime Horrors] “The Promised Neverland” Is a Journey Full of Suspense
As one of the most highly anticipated anime horror shows of the year, The Promised Neverland has been an experience brimming with tension. Now that the show has just hit its halfway point in the season, this month’s Anime Horrors will take a look at the progression of the anime so far and how it is shaping up.
The Promised Neverland takes place at an orphanage and follows three protagonists named Emma, Norman, and Ray. These three protagonists, all the age of 11, live at the orphanage with other children; their caretaker, who the children refer to as “Mom,” showers them with joy and care. Between warm cooked meals, time to play, and regularly scheduled tests they are scored on, the children live happy lives. The only major rule they must obey is that they are not allowed near the gate outside the orphanage; the gate is part of a giant wall that surrounds the land the orphanage is on.
During a scene where the children are taking a test, chatter among them provides insight to the skills of our three main characters; we learn that Norman is a genius, that Ray is also very intellectual, and that Emma is the athletic one with a strong ability to learn fast. We see Emma and Norman’s skills in the form of playing tag; while Emma can move quickly and jump high to evade Norman, he can outsmart and tag her when he’s “it.”
In episode one, a younger child named Conny is leaving the orphanage. After she says her goodbyes to everyone, her and Mom begin walking towards the gate, the latter humming a creepy tune. Cleaning the kitchen area, Emma finds Conny’s plush bunny; her and Norman decide to run after Conny and make sure she gets it. As they come upon the gate, they only find a truck, but no sign of Conny or Mom. Emma eventually discovers Conny’s dead body in the back of the truck, her eyes empty and her skin gray. They hear voices nearby and decide to hide underneath the truck. Demons appear before them, speaking about how the children are meant to be sold to the rich as food. It is revealed later on how children are picked and shipped out; based on a child’s age and test scores, a system is in place to determine the ripeness of a child’s brain (which is what the demons enjoy eating).
To add to their shock, they see Mom interacting with the demons; finding the opportunity to escape, the two return to the orphanage, confronting the fact that they are essentially livestock on a farm. Our main characters then begin working on a plan to leave the orphanage and take all the children with them.
The first episode does a great job setting up our cast, the personalities of the three main characters, and the narrative that is to play out. Emma, Norman, and Ray are sincerely likable, offering fun and quirky personalities. As each episode moves forward, the children develop their strategy and prepare everyone to escape the farm. They decide to use the game of tag as a means to train the younger children, teaching them to strengthen their bodies and how to evade being caught.
So far, The Promised Neverland hasn’t gone to extreme lengths to present anything “horrifying” (outside the discovery of Conny’s dead body). Upon first finding her corpse, as well as a nightmare Emma has, Conny is drawn in a ghastly manner; her limp body and gray tone are chilling in appearance. In the moments where the show does aim to portray an aura of creepiness, the animation displays darker shades of shadowing, along with ominous music.
One of the show’s best qualities is the emotional bond shared between the children; Emma’s determination to save everyone makes for a great driving point in rooting for them all to succeed. The other excellent element of the show is its suspense; like Death Note, The Promised Neverland plays more off the cat and mouse game between the three main characters and Mom. At the end of episode one, Emma and Norman accidentally leave Conny’s plush bunny under the truck (which Mom discovers). Coming into episode two, she begins to suspect that the older children are aware of the secret behind the farm. As Emma, Norman, and Ray plot out the details in escaping, they strive to remain normal in the eyes of Mom; even though they suspect that she is onto them, they cover their tracks for the most part. The plot thickens when our main characters learn that each child has been implanted with a tracking device for Mom to keep an eye on them. The latter eventually decides to hire an assistant (Sister Krone), who adds an extra layer of complexity to everyone’s problems; not only is Krone a threat to the children, but she also wants to betray “Mom” and claim her status.
The plotting can drag on at times, but thankfully, the show drops satisfying twists to revamp engagement. These twists come in the form of Emma and Norman discovering clues behind the farm, as well as the small discoveries they and viewers uncover regarding the outside world. The land outside the farm is unknown to our main cast; when Emma tries to look over the wall surrounding the farm, all she can see are trees. Norman hypothesizes that the world outside must be a demon’s world, which concerns him as to how the children will survive on the outside. Towards the latter end of the season’s first half, a hint reveals that the children may have an ally on the outside (but so far there are no greater details).
The Promised Neverland is off to a good start; my primary hope is that the game of cat and mouse intensifies and there is more creepy imagery. As one of the brand new shows of 2019, The Promised Neverland is full of intriguing possibilities. Thanks to likable characters, a mysterious world, and other unknown elements, it’ll be fascinating to see how season one concludes.
Expect a full review of The Promised Neverland once season one wraps up.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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