Editorials
‘Zathura: A Space Adventure’ The Jumanji Knockoff You Forgot About
We all remember our first foray into horror, the moment the switch flipped in our heads, the rush of adrenaline that came with fear was an intoxicating high that had to be chased. We all had our gateway into horror. Everyone had that piece of media that had them frightened, yet left them intrigued and wanting more. Whether it was an episode of Goosebumps playing on Cartoon Network, or one of the black and white Universal monster flicks, both of which were my personal introductions to the horror genre. While the rite of passage varies from person to person, I feel most people’s horror awakenings didn’t start in watching films that were technically classified as “horror” but films that present as a friendly age-appropriate flick for family movie night that would, on the drop of a hat, present some fairly startling and unsettling imagery. Things like Return to Oz, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Coraline, even I was put off by a few scenes in The Goonies. However, one gem I hardly see get talked about is the 2005 sci-fi adventure film Zathura: A Space Adventure.
Why Zathura Deserves More Recognition as Gateway Horror
Aside from being a really fun Jumanji-inspired family film, I feel like it’s a worthy addition to the conversation of eligible gateway horror films. I can recall on numerous occasions having to wait until my younger sister was asleep to be able to put this one on due to some of the creatures in the film being fairly frightening.
Zathura: A Space Adventure follows a bickering pair of brothers and their older sister who find themselves stranded in space after opening up a mysterious board game. They soon realize that they are at the mercy of the game’s various commands and obstacles, with their only hope of getting back home resting on their ability to finish the game.
Zathura was directed by Jon Favreau and released on November 11th, 2005. Between his comedy acting and his first two directorial outings, Favreau signed on to direct the film. The film screenplay was penned by David Koepp, who recently worked on the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh’s supernatural horror film Presence. The film is also an adaptation of the Chris Van Allsburg book of the same name. Allsburg is also the author behind the original Jumanji novel, hence why Zathura is often regarded as a “spiritual sequel” to the classic Robin Williams film.
The film stars a young Josh Hutcherson, who, aside from his iconic role in the Hunger Games films, has recently become a scream king to horror fans after starring in the film adaptations of the Five Nights at Freddy’s games. The A-list ensemble doesn’t stop there, though; a pre-Twilight era Kristen Stewart also makes an appearance in the film. The film also stars Jonah Bobo, Dax Shepard, and Tim Robbins.
How Zathura Creates Tension Like a Horror Movie
The two bickering brothers, Walter and Danny, are stuck at home while their sister is asleep, and their father is at work. Things are mundane until Danny, after being trapped in the basement by Walter, finds an old board game hidden away. This introduction to the films center piece alone is riddled with the traditions you see amongst cursed objects in horror films all the time, even down to the creepy basement with a roaring furnace, a la Evil Dead and Home Alone, respectively. Upon retrieving the game and bringing it back upstairs to his brother, Danny turns the wind-up key attached to the board, and the game begins. While the film does share a premise with Jumanji, a widely beloved family film, I’ve always felt that Zathura had more of an edge to it.
The premise itself is inherently intense, siblings home alone who find themselves suddenly barreling through space, all from the touch of a rusted board game. The duo’s first spin of Zathura lands them in an asteroid field with scolding meteorites crashing through their house. After this, the two realize that the only way to get home is to play through to the end of the game, no matter what Zathura has in store for them.
Not too long after the short-lived and shockingly not fatal meteor shower, one of my favorite pieces of the film is the robot. The robot first appears as a small metal wind-up toy that the brothers brush off immediately. However, it quickly reappears as a tall and lumbering metal monster, equipped with claws, a jet pack, glowing red eyes, and a deep, intimidating voice. This moment in the film was when I had to wait for my younger sister to go to bed before watching the rest. The giant steel Terminator scared the hell out of her, and honestly, I don’t blame her. After an intense chase around the house with Walter being pursued by the robot while Danny takes his turn and gets his card, the robot is subdued and thrown into the basement, surely not to return in the third act.
Practical Creature Effects Shine
The brothers later draw a card that simply reads “visited by Zorgons”; unbeknownst to them, Zorgons are an aggressive race of reptilian aliens that eat meat. The severity of the situation is summed up perfectly when Danny is told that he is, in fact, meat. While I always found the robot to be the most iconic piece of the film, upon rewatch, the Zorgons fit the bill for freaky alien antagonists. Aside from being similar in design to raptors from Jurassic Park with a horror movie makeover, the Zorgons are brought to life purely with practical effects.
One of Favrau’s main reasons for directing the film was the commitment to practical effects over CGI, so the freakier parts of the film are elevated tenfold by the lifelike prosthetics and set pieces. The lead Zorgon is also played by Derek Mears, who many horror fans remember as playing Jason Voorhees in the 2009 Friday the 13th remake.
A Movie Full of Hidden Cosmic Horrors
The boys are temporarily saved by a stranded astronaut who spawns in after another card is drawn, who tells them that the only way to ward off Zorgons is by turning off every light in the house and cutting off all heat. The introduction of this character opens up another can of horror genre worms as we learn his backstory. The Astronaut reveals to the brothers that long ago he played Zathura with his brother, whom he fought with often, and upon pulling the “shooting star” card and being granted a wish, he wished for his brother to disappear.
After his immediate regret, he tries to wish him back, but is unable to because it was no longer his turn. The astronaut ends his monologue with the chilling line “There’s some games you can’t play alone”. If that isn’t a dark lesson with a sprinkle of cosmic horror to some degree, I don’t know what is.
Why Zathura Remains an Underrated Family Horror Experience
While Zathura: A Space Adventure is essentially Jumanji and space, the film takes its premise to some intense heights. While it’s not nearly at the level of traumatizing generations like Return to Oz and Matilda reached, it certainly pushes the envelope further than one would expect a Jumanji adjacent family film to go.
Between killer robots, flesh-eating lizard monsters, and the dread of meeting a fate such as being stuck in space, all because of a sketchy board game found in a creepy basement, Zathura is certainly worth a revisit for any nostalgic horror fans. Maybe you have a starter-level genre fan in your life, and if you’re worried that throwing them in the deep end and showing them a bona fide horror show would be too much, I’d say 2005’s Zathura: A Space Adventure is worth the time.
The Host (2006) may not be director Bong Joon Ho’s most acclaimed film, but it’s certainly the one that I find myself revisiting the most. At the time of its Cannes premiere in 2006, it was lauded for how effortlessly it handled both a mix of genres that make it hard to pin down and for how smoothly it delivered its social commentary. Beyond that, its dynamic directing and instantly iconic monster make a creature feature of a different caliber. 20 years later, it’s hard to say the film is anything but some of his best work, even against the impressive catalogue that Bong Joon Ho built up in the following two decades of cinematic excellence.
Among the likes of Best Picture winner Parasite, jaw-dropping crime thriller Mother, and even its much more popular creature-drama counterpart Okja, The Host stands as an incisive movie in Bong’s filmography that manages to cut right to the heart, even on rewatches. But what is it that makes it so endlessly effective, and so continuously cathartic, on every single watch through?
The Host, Real Life Ecological Horror, and Dirty Secrets
While kaiju films intertwined with ecological horror are nothing new (Godzilla as a franchise has revisited the well many times since vs. Hedorah in ‘71), The Host is one of the only kaiju films to succeed at really unsettling you with its subject matter. It has a verisimilitude that is undeniable, and the reason why is shocking: it’s actually inspired by a real-life story.
Before Shin Godzilla tackled the collapse of faith in civil authority, the dangers of bureaucracy, and the uncertainty of our ecological future, The Host was here to blend all of our contemporary fears into a thick slurry of sickening terror and add a dash of real-life depression to it. The movie is overtly inspired by the real-life McFarland Incident, in which a mortician named Albert McFarland, working at the U.S. Army’s Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, commanded a subordinate to dump 24 gallons of formaldehyde into the Han River rather than dispose of it properly.
The opening scene of the film is a recreation of this incident, overtly labeled the cause for the film’s monster, the Goemul, to mutate into what it does: a gargantuan, deformed, half-blind fish creature. What ensues from its birth is a harrowing few days in Seoul, as father Gang-du and his estranged family race to try and rescue his daughter Hyun-Seo from the creature. As the Park family’s search for its youngest member puts them on the path of opaque health officials and military hiding secrets about the creature, a clash between the public and the government begins to brew and threatens pure chaos.
Taking Large Scale Horror and Making It Personal in The Host
In the following decades since Bong’s heartbreaker kaiju born of pollution was put to the screen, the real life Yongsan Garrison painfully remains a symbol of ecological irresponsibility on the part of the American military. Its groundwater is saturated with insane amounts of carcinogens, nearly 30 times the permissible standard.
In the great knife twist of governments obscuring the truth, the status of forces agreement between the U.S. and South Korea gives them effectively carte blanche to dispose of chemicals without any sort of supervision or oversight, mainly for the sake of “keeping the peace”; it’s a dangerous and all too realistic parallel to the smokescreen the government uses in the film to keep the South Korean public in the dark, supposedly in the interest of public safety but more obviously in defense of optics.
There’s an ever present irony, and a hard to swallow misfortune in this fact, that makes the film’s biting commentary sting just a little worse and for much, much longer. As our delicate ecosystems hang in the balance, we live with a sword dangling above our heads; few still have hope that the powers that be can or even want to keep it from cutting us. That’s the real horror the film draws on, and it’s a soul draining theme that permeates it.
But amidst these large-scale societal fears that the script explores, Bong Joon Ho has added an emulsifier of sorts. One pivotal ingredient that takes the large-scale and makes it personal: a sense of alienation in everything. The way the film is structured, from how its characters are written, to how its narrative is split, to the very flow of hope and fear that it uses to pull at your emotions, relies on evoking a sense of alienation in the viewer.
A Cast of Characters Without a Country
Each of the characters within The Host is a man without a country. Each one alienated from the other, their estrangement is evoked for some very dry humor at times, but it’s a laugh that makes you cry. In what is possibly the film’s most overtly humorous scene, the Park family falling out and crying at the memorial service, Bong uses the physicality of the event and their clinging to one another before being torn back apart to represent the family’s irreparably divided nature. There’s a deep sickness of longing in the family, a sense of complete otherness from parent to child and sibling to sibling that is delved into as the characters progress throughout the film.
Our main character Gang-du, is the clearest example of a person who slipped through the cracks and simply ended up alienated from the entire world; he’s a child of poverty, malnutrition stunting his mental growth. Neglected by his father, he ended up resorting to picking around for scraps through the tradition of seo-ri, a type of subsistence by theft that becomes the film’s shorthand for the solitary nature of its characters.
Alienation and Family Trauma at the Heart of The Host’s Horror
His siblings both share this hunger, particularly Nam-il. Once a gifted student and political activist, it becomes clear later in the film that Nam-il has become alienated from his own political identity and sense of self. Becoming a cold and mean-spirited alcoholic, Nam-il has grown numb to hope for change as he is left behind by friends who have become part of the system he wanted to dismantle. Disillusioned by the state of government, Nam-il is consumed by nihilism and trapped in the very bottle he seeks escape through. Even the most accomplished of the siblings, Olympic archer Nam-joo, whom the family delights in watching, is alienated by virtue of becoming a symbol of her family and country’s success rather than being her own person.
A Camera That Embodies Separation
As the script puts together these characters consumed by alienation, Bong places them in the frame with the intention to make you truly feel their hopelessness and terror as the world falls apart around them. Bong favors wide shots of the cast, who often stand alone, contrasted against an encroaching threat. The close-ups he uses in conjunction with them are often uncomfortably intimate, reflecting the trapped state of the Park family, both emotionally and when physically endangered by the monster.
The Agent Yellow sequence is the film’s starkest example of this; each of the Park family being swallowed up by the rolling chemical cloud, scattered protestors starting to grow violently ill as they’re separated from their people. But if I had to hedge my bets on the most striking, it’s between two interspersed sequences: the scientists going to lobotomize Gang-du, and Hyun-seo’s daring escape attempt, which coincide at the end of the second act. They’re so radically different in just about every aspect, with Gang-du’s medical horror being bright and hauntingly sterile in its invasiveness; Hyun-seo’s prospective climb to freedom, mere feet away from the monster is caked in grime and masked in minimalist lighting.
Bong Joon Ho, The Maestro of Emotional Manipulation
But both of these scenes exemplify how masterful a filmmaker Bong truly is. After building up these tragic characters you feel dangerously close to and then placing them in nightmare scenarios, he’s able to get his hooks into you. The whole movie is filled with moments like this where Bong, through visual language and frame perfect editing, drags you up and down on an emotional rollercoaster.
He fills you with hope for the Park family and then shocks you with reveals that snatch your seat out from under you. By tapping into our own fears of the world and then placing us alongside characters whose fear of isolation compounds onto your own, Bong Joon Ho’s The Host stands as a film of true emotional power.
It’s a testament to just how truly moving and profound a horror film can be in the right hands, and of the way a genre film can be pushed to its absolute limits. Loneliness is a heavy weight to lay on the heart, and there are few films where it feels as heavy as The Host.
In May 2015, my father died. It wasn’t sudden, but it was difficult nonetheless. I had just moved to Rhode Island, no longer able to afford Boston. One evening that August, in the midst of my grief, I met up with a new friend I had made since moving to the Ocean State. We had bonded over our love of horror movies – the thrillers we loved, the new releases we did not, what we thought was missing from the genre. At some point, I thoughtlessly said, we should make our own horror movie.
So one fine Tuesday night, Brandon Perras-Sanchez picked me up to discuss this possibility. He shared an idea for a horror movie with me that he had with his friend, Christopher Dalpe. It started as an absurd riff on hookup apps. “Brandon and I knew we wanted to put a dick through a meat grinder,” says Chris. We picked him up and all drove to Ogie’s Trailer Park, a dive bar in Providence’s West End. As Brandon recalls, “our blood pact was made that night at Ogie’s.” That evening, we began building upon their ideas of what would become our first feature film, Death Drop Gorgeous.
I bring up my father’s passing because I think, in many ways, this project carried me through my grief. If you’ve watched Death Drop Gorgeous, this might be silly to read – that a John Waters meets 80s slasher drag queen exploitation film helped me process the loss of my father, but as Joni Mitchell once wrote, “laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release.” I’d find myself in cafes in Providence every weekend, writing pages and pages of what the three of us discussed, following our sticky note outline. Then, every week, we’d meet up and read the pages aloud. Brandon made it gorier. Chris made it wittier. We’d change scenes, switch the order, add more, delete less.
Go In, Completely Blind
In this process, we didn’t consider the road ahead. Prior to that, I had always been a type-A Virgo. I planned, I assessed, and I organized. None of us had shot a short film, never mind a full-length. Brandon had gone to school for some sound design, but he didn’t major in screenwriting or filmmaking. We didn’t bother ourselves with those trivialities. Letting go of that control and not considering what it would take to shoot a feature lent to our momentum. Maybe that naivety is in part the reason we finished it at all.
Building a DIY Horror Filmmaking Collective
At some point in pre-production, Brandon looped in his long-term friend, Wayne Gonsalves, to create a more realized character of Dwayne, and his partner, Ryan Miller, to help with finessing the story. We became a strange quintet, running around town, shooting scenes, figuring it out as we went along. No permit? No problem. (Not a joke, we’ve never got a film permit – not for lack of trying! They just never emailed us back.)
At some point, we realized we had to name ourselves. I think it was Chris who came up with “Monster Makeup”; it referenced our first feature: the drag, the gore, and special effects, but it also represented what we did: we made horror movies, we created monsters.
There were a lot of conventions we ignored. For me, this article is not only about reflecting on our work, but also about sharing our process. Like adulthood, there are milestones in a filmmaking career that you’re, allegedly, supposed to follow. I’m not insinuating they don’t help, but there are other ways to make your filmmaking dreams a reality.
The Coven Becomes a Collective
If you finish this article and remember any piece of advice, I want it to be this: if you’re going to shoot a DIY, shoestring-budget movie, you have to have community, and you must collaborate. No matter how intimate and personal your vision may be, filmmaking is inherently collaborative. As a collective, we had to shed our egos. Of course, over the decade, there have been a handful of disagreements, but we never saw our movies as these precious things that only one of us had the final say on.
Funding a Microbudget Horror Movie Through Local Support
Community is the reason our films exist. Death Drop Gorgeous was mostly set in nightlife, and most of us had been working in the bar scene for years. We knew the queens, the venues, what drew crowds and what didn’t. We called in favors to shoot a fake trailer. In addition to a crowd-sourcing campaign, to raise our budget, we also threw fundraising events from a drag show, to a (human) pup Best in Show, to an interactive murder mystery.
“Our projects would not exist without the immense support we received from our friends, family, and community,” says Chris. “Not just money. The spaces we’ve filmed (gifted and donated), the actors and talent (volunteers, many acting in front of a camera for the first time), costumes, makeup, pizzas for the crew – everything has been a labor of love from this weird village, and I’m eternally grateful.”
“We are forever indebted to our Providence family,” Brandon affirms. These films transformed from pipe dreams to community initiatives. As more folks joined our projects, the more it was helped along by others outside our core five. Our thank you speech could be its own feature-length. Somewhere along the lines, we convinced our city we were filmmakers, and eventually, we started to believe it, too.
Working With Your Community as Creative Inspiration
I emphasize collaboration and community because I think aspiring filmmakers feel limited by what they don’t have and not inspired by what they do have access to. We knew drag queens, we knew nightlife, we knew local music. It’s not just “write what you know,” it’s also “write what you have.” I also think some filmmakers have a sense of ownership of their work that doesn’t come from a place of pride but a place of possession. If you’re going to shoot a microbudget film, you need to learn when to take notes, and let others take the reins.
Trial-and-Error
What we learned in the previous film, we would apply to the subsequent project. Saint Drogo, our second feature, was an intentional shift. We lassoed in local photographer and musician Kevin Bowden (who scored a majority of Death Drop Gorgeous) to ensure a more visual spectacle. The quintet became a sextet. We wrote a leaner script without a B, C, and D plot. We wanted to explore another genre and demonstrate our growth. “Myself, and some of the other crew members, lean more towards dark, bleak, folk and fantasy horror,” says Brandon. “We really wanted to take a shot at it.”
While we didn’t want to limit the story, we did go into writing Drogo with the reminder of having undergone such a long production with Death Drop, which included an ensemble cast and numerous locations; we wanted to make filming more manageable for us. Sometimes, the pressure of limited setting or characters forces you to wrestle with the story, assess your resources, and really consider the necessity of scenes. In turn, producing more effective work.
Queen of the Rats and a Decade of Filmmaking Lessons
Our next feature, Queen of the Rats, feels like the culmination of what we’ve learned over the course of these ten years. It’s a meld of our first feature’s flippancy and chaos and the intentionality, cinematography, and nihilism of our second feature.
“I think you’re going to laugh,” says Chris of Queen of the Rats. “It’s a genuinely funny script with amazing characters. But there’s a lot of heart in it, and you might feel sentimental and nostalgic for a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“It’s even exceeding my own expectations,” notes Brandon. “I know every asshole in the biz will say ‘there’s really nothing like this,’ in regards to their own film, but in all sincerity, there really is nothing like this.”
Defining Success as a DIY Horror Filmmaker
Our method is not ideal for everyone. Sometimes, it’s not even ideal for us. Each project consumes a huge portion of our lives, with productions taking over two years, shot in between our day jobs, and we are still fundraising to make each one happen. But we’ve accomplished a lot and never let what we lack compromise the vision. What I am most proud of is our commitment. It’s also worth considering, however, what you as a filmmaker define as success. Sure, we have bigger dreams, but I still feel a great sense of fulfillment finishing these projects, like I’ve run a marathon.
All our lives have changed in the course of our collaborations. As Chris notes, “We’ve all grown up together. We’re a family, and these guys are my brothers. We’ve all changed jobs, boyfriends have come and gone. We’ve been to weddings and funerals together. We’ve watched the city that inspires our films change and transform…With each creative project we’ve taken on, our community and network has expanded, and it feels like our little creepy family just keeps getting bigger.”
“Being able to navigate through this dystopian pedophile pyramid scheme hellscape with a circle of some of your best friends is a blessing”, says Brandon. “There’s comfort and solace knowing that as our work/life balances wax and wane, our dedication, or addiction, to making horror films and content will always remain a sturdy axis.”
Why Queer Horror Stories Matter More Than Ever
Art carried me through the grief of losing my father. Horror helped me cope. These aren’t new, profound concepts, but something I want to highlight, especially given the current state of, well, everything. We need new voices in filmmaking. We especially need queer stories right now. As humans, we aren’t meant to withstand this much grief constantly. We’re going to need art to carry us through.
Monster Makeup is having a retrospective exhibit in Providence, RI, at AS220’s Aborn Gallery for the entire month of June. Opening reception is June 6th. On June 13th, we will be doing an artist talk at the Aborn Gallery and screening a preview of Queen of the Rats. Both events are free.
Final words of advice from the Monster Makeup crew:
“Make whatever you feel passionately about, no matter how successful it may or may not be. Letting that pass you by will always haunt you.” – Wayne Gonsalves
“Story matters. Whether you’re shooting with Richard Deakins or on an iPhone, if you don’t have a story, you’ve got nothing.” – Kevin Bowden
“Aim high. Make it work. Dedicate weekly time to writing, filming, whatever, and you do not stray from that schedule. Get creative. Do not compare your art to other art in a self-deprecating way. DO NOT GIVE A FUCK WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK.” – Brandon Perras-Sanchez
“Just get started, and you’ll learn by doing. Every mistake you make on set will just make you a better filmmaker. Utilize the resources within your community and its natural enthusiasm for filmmaking. It will only elevate your project many times over.” – Ryan Miller
“Follow people’s advice if you want to do what they’re doing. Follow your gut if you want to do something new. Regardless of which one you choose, do it with friends.” – Chris Dalpe
(Behind the scenes photos of Death Drop Gorgeous were taken by Chris Eastman. Behind-the-scenes photos of Saint Drogo were taken by Maxwell Snyder. All other photos by Kevin Bowden)
