The God & The Weight

Oh boy, two days off in a row, I thought. Maybe I can watch a movie, I thought. Maybe even two! I could use a snazzy, full-speed turducken of a horror film, crammed to bursting with meaty chunks of festering gore, erupting from the scabby, maggot-encrusted pustules of a thousand, intestine-vomiting, rabidly infuriated, toxic, stampeding zombie hordes! And hey! Maybe the two films I watch will be FOREIGN! Imma get all multicultural up in this bitch! What a great idea! I thought.

So, four hours later, here I sit: face swollen like a Macy's Day Parade balloon, cry holes inflamed, enough tears to fill 37 Ziploc bags. Gallon capacity Ziploc bags, not the snack sized ones. Yeah, probably not the smartest thing I've ever done. I thought about following that double feature blubberfest with a rewatch of The Arrival and then committing suicide by sticking my face into a boiling vat of frying medium.

And because I have to make every single goddamned review I write all about myself (sorry, some of my forebears were Republican and I haven't been able to fully wash the stink out of my genes yet), I am now going to tell you why these films left me emotionally devastated and tie it to some childhood trauma as yet unresolved. You know, like I always do. Because that's how I roll, mutherfuckers.

I started with Train To Busan, because that's the one I've been neglecting the longest. And at first I was all like: "Okay cool, straightforward zombie apocalypse shit, and this time around there's no Brad Pitt with a kicky little neckerchief to make humanity look totally not worth saving." High speed train gunning it across South Korea, just ahead of an outbreak which signals its appearance via a reanimated Bambi. Executive Asshole Dad reluctantly hauls his 9 or 10 year old daughter onboard, planning on dropping her off at mom's house once they reach Busan. The daughter is an unsmiling mirror image of her father, silently pining for his love but clearly well aware of the fact that none will ever be forthcoming.

 In the wings gather the supporting cast: teenage cheerleader with a crush on oblivious boy, pregnant woman with big dumb husband, two elderly sisters and an older version of the Executive Asshole, who is more than willing to throw anyone and everyone under the train (literally!) to save his own ass. Inevitably, somebody gets bitten and pretty soon the entire train is being overrun by contorting, foamy, white eyed snarling Zekes, plunging their incisors into kimchi flavored flesh and making more Zekes. Separated by 5 car lengths, Asshole Dad, Big Dumb Guy and Oblivious Boy fight their way through the hordes to reunite with the daughter, the wife and the potential girlfriend. Along the way, Asshole Dad becomes repentant dad and realizes just how much he loves his little girl. Much emotion ensues. Also blood. Lots of death. And I'm sitting there sobbing like a little bitch because I was also nine years old when my asshole dad turned into a zombie.

He came staggering home one night, infected with the Late 70s All-About-Me virus, and announced he was leaving us for an eighteen year old girl. His eyes were glassy. He didn't look at me. I cried until snot covered my face like Vaseline but he was unmoved. He was already gone, eager to be out chasing after younger flesh, numb to anything but his own wants and desires. And so Soo-Ahn's asshole dad leads his daughter around like his personal hunk of breathing meat, instructing her to be ruthless, to be unfeeling and think only of self-preservation. Soo-Ahn is disgusted with him and confronts him at one point, not angrily but wearily, sounding decades older than she is. "Dad, you only care about yourself. That's why mommy left." 

Yeah.

By the end of the film, dad has realized how very wrong he was. He throws himself in the path of danger to protect her, sacrifices himself to save her and - in the films final moments - recalls the day she was born as having been the brightest and most beautiful day of his life. As a kid, and even as a young adult, I entertained many fantasies about my dad finally coming around, realizing how selfish and stupid he was to throw away the gift that was me and bugger off without a look back. My fantasies always ended in two ways: me becoming rich and famous and gorgeous and worthy and turning a cold, deaf ear to his apologies, or him on his deathbed, holding a sepia Kodak of me in one hand and writing his will with the other, telling me how sorry he was and leaving me a billion-kajillion dollars, a castle and a pony.

Neither scenario would ever come to pass.

So, I finished crying and moved onto last year's Cargo, starring Bilbo Baggins, the truck from Razorback and a whole lotta badass aboriginals.

We like to think that facing death brings out the best in us. Death is the great equalizer. We all must succumb like the bags of meat that we are, old and worn out and returning to the soil and all that profound shit. It certainly brings out the best in Andy, an amiable bloke with graying hair and a scruff of beard and a pretty blonde wife and a pretty blonde baby girl named Rosie. Life would be pretty sunny, all pink and gold and filled with dancing lollipops and kangaroos in footie pajamas, if it weren't for the fact that the zombie apocalypse has already obliterated much of Australia and presumably the rest of the world. Andy and his family have taken refuge on a houseboat, but the inevitable happens: his wife Blue is bitten whilst foraging for food and now has 48 hours before the virus takes over and turns her into a walking food processor. Andy manages to get Rosie away, but he's bitten in the process. The countdown begins as Andy wanders the Outback, looking for someone to take care of Rosie when he's gone.

The outcome is inevitable. We know Andy will die. Andy knows he will die. All of us float through life thinking that somehow, it won't happen to us. Death isn't something we can see or touch so we live our lives selfishly, never 100% convinced of our own mortality. And when it comes, we panic and fear and lament, all for nothing. Andy doesn't have time for that shit. He's got to find someone to take care of his daughter. There isn't time to grieve or reflect. Andy is already dead, he's just not gone yet.

Would that life ended this way for everyone - boom, you're dead. You now have 48 hours to put your affairs in order and tie up your loose ends. Maybe if my dad had been given notice, he would have corrected his own mistakes. That's the last fantasy I have, and I'm clinging to it. If my dad had been anything like Andy, had one shred of morality in his coke-addled soul, had been fully aware of his impending death, remorse would have moved him to apologize and rectify. But he didn't. My dad died on September 19th, 2015. I found out about it a month ago. I wasn't surprised. Nor was I upset...at first. How do you grieve for someone who has been dead for years and missing for decades?   And when the upset finally hit, it wasn't sorrow I felt, it was rage.

My dad lived selfishly and died selfishly. He was married to wife number six when he passed. He never told anyone about me. The only child he admitted to was his first son, who committed suicide at age 20. Dad told Wife #6 that his son had choked to death on a piece of meat. Even at the end, dad was covering his own ass, refusing to take responsibility for his actions. Sixty eight years old, diabetic, afflicted with Parkinson's, estranged from his entire family, and he still couldn't fess up and admit what a bastard he'd been, couldn't claim his three living children, couldn't give anyone the smallest scrap of an apology. Because he couldn't be wrong. If my dad had been bitten by a zombie and had forty eight hours to prepare for death, I think he would have spent the time stripping baby-me naked, smearing me with barbecue sauce and preheating the oven to 450 degrees.

In the end, Rosie is turned over to an Aboriginal girl and her remaining tribe, who will raise her as their own and no doubt tell her stories of her father's brave sacrifice when she is old enough to understand. She will help rebuild the Earth (or at least the Australian part of it) and live her life knowing she was cherished and loved.

I, on the other hand, simply wish to leave these words behind: Men, especially those of you with daughters, please pretend that you have forty eight hours left to live. Talk yourself into it - you will die in two days. Really try and convince yourself of your own mortality. Because hey, you might die sooner - life is cruel that way.

Then look at your little girl and ask yourself what you want to leave her with.