Rating: 3.5/5
Tobacco Force — five avengers who each represent an ingredient in cigarettes — Benzene, Methanol, Nicotine, Mercury, Ammonia — give a humanoid tortoise (Tortusse) cancer, which causes it to explode in gallons of blood
Chief Didier — a humanoid rat that everyone seems to have a crush on — chastises members for becoming too individualistic, sending them to a retreat
The retreat becomes a framing device for them to tell scary stories — stories in which people make inalterable choices that isolate them from the world — a murderer setting souls free, a bucket of guts bonding with his aunt, a robot initiating a time-travel sequence that takes an indefinite amount of time to initiate, and so on
Fear is the foundation of civilization — we have used stories with fatal morals to encourage correct behavior, aka behavior that maintains the existing hegemony. We try to bond with sex, familial ties, shared interests — but the only thing we share in common is that we are all going to die. While waiting, why not grab a cigarette and sit around the fire?
A very funny and absurd movie. Initially, it felt incomplete, but I think I’ve just watched so many overstated movies that to see something that gets and gets out so effortlessly is a surprise
Stray Thoughts
- Nicotine would be a pretty name to give a child
- Hulu doesn’t seem to understand post-credit sequences, so I haven’t seen the last 15 seconds of the movie