This Week's Blogs (11/19/26 - 11/26/23)

3

EMESIS BLUE: A Search For The Disturbing And The Horrific In A Cartoonish Video-Game

(11/23/23 - 11/24/23)

Chapter 0 - General Introduction

This will be an attempt to analyze and criticize the 2023 source-filmmaker film EMESIS BLUE. Which is a horror parody of the game Team Fortress 2. Let's get into it, shall we?

So, EMESIS BLUE is a 2023 source-filmmaker horror film based on the game Team Fortress 2. It was directed by Chad Payne, and includes not only playable characters from the game itself, but also characters from the game's lore and deeper story, such as the comics, website Easter-eggs, updates, and information in the game.

The story itself is a horror fan's dream - even better if that horror fan is also a Team Fortress 2 fan - with lots of mastery of the suspense, sudden cuts, inexplicable plot twists and turns and parts, nonsensical logic, unexplained and off-camera deaths, and more. In fact, it's actually better if this film is considered less of a movie and more of a concept of what a dream feels like: nonsense and sudden plot twists and whatnot; getting along with characters and feeling like this story has a sensical plot; losing those befriended characters and feeling sad about that; and the end makes about as much sense as the beginning, none.

I guess I should try to explicate the story of this sophisticated and labyrinthine film... oh, wish me luck.

Chapter 1 - The Plot (Of A Non-Plot) And Some Opinions

And so it goes like this: the film introduces the characters Scout - who is canonically the son of Spy, who is also in this film - and the Medic - or Ludwig, who canonically didn't even finish his medical degree, or rather ironically - and Scout goes to see the doctor - Ludwig - due to having nightmare problems. The Medic shrugs it off as a weird problem, and prescribes him medication for sleep. It's implied at the end of the film that it's diazepam by a company called "Emesis," which explains the film's title, but that's beside the point. After Scout gets the prescription, a box full of VHS tapes falls to the ground and its contents spill out all onto the floor. "Dang, you got a movie store in here," jokingly remarked Scout. Then they leave the Medic's office. In the film, the box falling on the floor was caused by... Medic, in the future. Again, beside the point.

Then two more characters are introduced: Soldier - who is canonically named "Jane Doe;" rest in peace, the voice actor for the original character in TF2 - and Spy; they're both working for law enforcement as detectives of some sort. Or rather, Spy is the detective, Soldier is the muscle.

And a small remark, time travel is a big concept in this film. Trying to explain this horror film without mentioning time travel, and its time-skips which make no sense, is like trying to fly but with half a wing on each side of your back. You can try, no one's stopping you, but the more you omit, the more it makes less sense. Or more. I jus- I- it's so confusing.

Anyway, at this point - ironically enough - I'm gonna skip a lot just to get to the point. After Scout comes home, he takes out a VHS tape which he took from Medic's office, and it bears the title "M."

Medic comes home to make sure Scout's ok, only to find him and his mother brutalized and murdered, and a giant "M" staring at Scout's corpse. This causes Medic to shake, tremble, and fall down due to shock and grief.

Soldier and Spy enter the scene. They suspect that Medic is responsible, due to him being the last person Scout had been with prior to his murder. As such, he's considered a suspect.

Trippy, weird stuff - much either hard to keep up with or unintelligible to me - later - and the introduction of Heavy, who canonically has a PhD in Arts I'm Russian Literature - and we get to the penthouse, which is an abandoned place that was abandoned due to certain, unsettling events that occurred there, with the place being declared unstable.