Night of the Comet

Regina: No, I didn't make it with him last night. Why you so weirded out?
Samantha: Alright Reg, why should I be weirded out? My sister, who swiped every guy I ever had my eye on, has now swiped the last guy in the whole freaked-out world.

Hector (Robert Beltran, Raoul from Eating Raoul), the last guy in the whole freaked-out world

Night of the Comet is a teenage fever dream from 1984. A fun Saturday afternoon kind of movie. Its ingredients are: teenagers, neon, pop music, montages, shopping malls, the apocalypse, comets, government conspiracies, bad guys, Mary Woronov, light social commentary, and some other things.

It's a high-concept movie light on its feet. An update of Cold War era sci-fi movies that exist purely in an imagination.

It's a solid movie to watch with a group of friends in a shopping mall or multiplex across from a shopping mall. It gives moments to chat about. Some lines you'd maybe want to quote.

Willy: I'm not crazy, I just don't give a fuck.

I enjoy movies like this because they seem honest about their agenda to entertain, and the main theme is the joy of cinema. Everything feels good and nothing hurts. Quite charming.

It's the story of a neon-kissed apocalypse in Los Angeles and it happens before your eyes, there on the screen, and the laws of reality are damned by the truth of a cinema that makes shit happen.

This movie could have been even crazier and cared even less about reality. It's weird that Hector checks on his family in San Diego -- the journey addresses the issue of apocalyptic loss and grief, without dealing or growing. In a movie like this, maybe it's best not to address emotional issues at all. Strikes me as kind of insincere and cheap, maybe. I'm not sure.

When Hector visits his mother's house a child mutant comet zombie chases after him, and Hector says something like "it's a good thing I like kids", while he runs out of the house (although he has a gun), and that poses the universally relatable dilemma of anguish and its battle with the potential to shoot a mutant comet zombie that was once a child. Come to think of it, I like the San Diego sequence, and also I was sort of touched by another narrative strand concerning the unfaltering principles of scientist Audrey (Mary Woronov!).  She chooses self-sacrifice over self-preserverence, because the latter would come at the cost of others. Cool. Woronov, cool to the core.

Darkness and light, right. Does Night of the Comet give juices to the audience -- juicy questions about personal recovery and possibility? It doesn't have the attention or patience to work these things out, sure, but they're not meant to be worked on, that's not the design. Anyway, we're the architects of our thoughts and can continue the conversation for ourselves.

If you can buy that, you're fine. I don't think the questions are captivating -- yeah, the apocalypse would be lonely, yeah, it'd be tough to shoot a thing that was once a child, yeah, stealing life from others is a shitty thing to do. Easy questions, easy answers. And the emotional beats are too light to be meaningful. I think it burns fuel in these moments. One should be allowed to forget the troubles of reality when one enters the imagination.

Still, pretty cool. Nice job everyone.