We need to talk about Westworld.

"Boy, have we got a vacation for you!"

I was, for the first few episodes, a fan-boy of the JJ Abrams reboot.

Carried away by the trailer and the kick-ass pilot, I cut my Critical Faculties by a self-willed swipe on the "Behaviour Tablet". I wanted it to work because I was sold on the pedigree: the Nolan input, Raman Dajwadi on the decks and Hopkins channeling Tyrell.

I also loved the mechanics. The world design, the train hub and the abandoned sub-levels. The narrative misdirection was so well done. It was HBO slick... and the 30 year fast-forward from the original opened up space for ideas about novelty exhaustion and decadence.

But....

----------rewind----------

We can't discuss the Abrams remake without an evaluation of what made the original tick like a clockwork motherfucker.

Michael Crichton's self-scripted and directed blockbuster scared the jimjams off my generation. A staying up late memory of child-unsuitable HORROR.  (CF. Coma, Andromeda Strain etc.). 

70's medical creepiness is on another level.

Synopsis

Two executives take a holiday in a robot Disney theme park where they can fuck and kill without consequence. A virus which self-develops in the base AI blocks the robots from accepting sexual advances and self-murder. They rebel: a tourist is killed by the Black Hat cowboy. The park locks down after "system reboot" and this traps and suffocates the minimal staff in a glass box HQ. Alone and unopposed Black Hat Yul Brynner relentlessly stalks the last surviving tourist ...to conclusion.

Applause.

Health and saftey rules flouted in 80's automated factory.

Influences

Westworld is historically important (for the horror genre) as the analog mother to the digital Terminator.

It introduced the heat sensor; the face melt (and metallic skull) ; the halting speech and spastic robotic motion; the sun drenched Californian sets, void of human presence; and finally the climax in the machine maternity ward (perhaps I'm pushing it, but the T2 finale where molten metal destroys the T1000 recalls the use of 'primeval fire' in the destruction of Yul Brynner)

Terminator was inevitable because the chase-film genre (Duel, Night of the Hunter, Cape Fear etc.) had been given a Westworld bio-mechanical upgrade. So many ideas were thrown up by that android death chase that James Cameron had no alternative but to grab them and run.

Horror
 
The film was scary because of Yul Brynner. His face and his walk are equivalent to a 20 million dollar horror budget. The behind the scenes Disney stuff was also creepy: the white coats, the dead techs by the buggy in the desert, the corpses in the control room. It was a gloriously simple premise, worked up and out with ruthless efficiency.

(N.B. The reboot is anything but simple).

Nooo.. the Black Eyes!!

Westworld fed off wider post-Nixon cinematic anxieties. The Psychiatric-Industrial complex of The Parallax View is one aspect, the anti-sexual revolution fears of the Stepford Wives another. Conspiracy theories about a right-wing backlash: against the loss of male power - using robots and mind control.

There was so much cool stuff bubbling under the surface of this simple chase movie.

Jurassic Park

Crichton was happy to retread and reference his best fictional ideas. So the dissected robots in Westworld's central lab, were 'transplanted' from the donor suspension room in Coma; the dead techs and absent sense of authority recall the Andromeda Strain.

Westworld itself was most brilliantly re-manifested in Jurassic Park...one flea-circus that is very very hard to follow.

Ex-MD Crichton loves his lab scenes...

Jurassic Park is the Platinum package Westworld remake... and its apex predator DNA is 30% Spielberg, 30% Crichton, 20% ILM, 10% Casting, and 10% John Williams. It kept things really simple: hubris. Mankind pushing its luck and getting fucked up when the electric fences go down.

Westworld Reboot

Why on earth couldn't Abrams just stick to the formula? Set it up, get it rolling and then knock it all down...with amazing casting, locations and some clever Battlestar stuff about AI and divine creation etc. It writes itself.

Instead we've got the daily narrative repetition used, essentially, for soap opera purposes; the really slow, half-baked moral awakening for tourists and hosts; a poorly plotted Corporate politics side-story; and just shit loads of un-earned revenge bunk with over-empowered victims turning the tables against not very nasty bad guys.

I was always a big fan of Spartacus, Season 1. Its "Kill them All" finale emotional credits were painstakingly earned over the prior 10 episodes; and then brutally spent with an exhilarating and cathartic 20 minute massacre.

With Westworld, episode 5 we get the dull as F "Blondie" shooting some vaguely threatening robots, and then a camera zoom over and back as music wells like she is fucking Carrie. No she is not. At least not now.. stop frittering away your payback credits. Earn it slow spend it big...

And finally, its just not scary or morally queasy. It could be, with the deserted basement level full of de-activated robots. But by now I know in my bones it won't be. It hasn't got the chops for it. And you can tell by the nervous way it references its glorious forbears.

Red butchers clothes. Back of the net.

Conclusion: The Shadow of Hostel.

Eli Roths Masterpiece. I really hope you have seen it, if not do so right away. It is no way near as boring or gory as the Torture Porn movies that it supposedly spawned. It is the most disturbing of its peer group. It is a subtle, clever and sick movie; and it is much greater than the sum of its parts.

A Bush era, Rendition-friendly Swiftian satire on Western Tourism. And its funny, and gross .. but with a twisted moral heart.

And unlike Westworld it has the balls to actually delivers on its premise. I wont give a review here.Watch it with an open mind. If you are in the right frame of mind you won't be disappointed.

It's most twisted elements are not the torture, but the straight scenes with the Elite Hunting clients. Seemingly normal executives on a very strange vacation. The moral journey they undergo in Hostel is a masterclass in horror and humour compared to Westworlds risible pair. (That Jimmi Simpson - what a bottomless void of tedium - paired with Blondie, they flatline the shows energy levels.)

The scene in Hostel where the two execs get changed into butchers gear and casually chat about outfits is one of  the most creepy parts of the film. (And just to settle accounts, Westworld steals the imagery of the red butchers outfits, the hosing down of corpses in a clinical setting, and the naked interview victim in a chair.)

The concept behind rich people using sentient organisms as expendable playthings is horrible. Westworld needs to deal with this in a grown up way with requisite moral outrage.. otherwise its just sensationalist slave-porn.

Final slagging off comments... for my benefit not yours. (Spoilers)

1) So we have Arnold as some vengeful Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell AI overlord. Ok, I don't like it, but fucking get on with it.. its taking ages to play out.

2) The Thandie Newton side story where she intimidates techs using the Queens English into upgrading her into Roy Battie is an insult.  Lets just compare and contrast Replicant intimidation techniques please...

how robots get what they want from lowly techs...example A

3) The HQ map zone is an illogical counterpart to the Jurassic Park/World control room.  Lets just have desks and a big NASA screen. And the Head of Security ...well...

In Defence


Its not trying to be horror: it would never have got commissioned, and had such a budget, if it was too dark.  Its not a 90 minute movie, so of course it has soapy elements to make up the season run plus sequels. And it is very entertaining and well made.

Ok.. but it is a remake of a horror classic. They could have spent all that money remaking the Waltons if they wanted soap. And if True Detective had the knackers to pull off mainstream (hard) horror, then HBO basically flunked it for all those Volvo adverts.


I hope it pulls itself together, but I doubt it.

Regards
Editorial staff of The Drowned Man