Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Here, in relation to what I was talking about in the student edition, I will give a detailed account of – not the usual topic of student slackers – but the science fiction films.

The best of the new batch is the post-apocalyptic virtual world I first mentioned. Even their teacher agrees that it was well thought out, and required minimal special effects – only one that is available with any video camera.

Several people in the school are visited by a tall guy in a hooded sweater, and then there is a flash of them in their own white hood. One girl slips down the stairs and becomes unconscious without being approached by the hooded guy, and she wakes up in a world where the sun has died and the survivors huddle in the dark.

She rejects this, and wakes up back at the stairs. But this time, the roles of the people she was interacting with earlier have been changed. The female janitor is now her classmate, her over-excelling classmate now cannot even spell “asparagus” and their teacher is now wearing student clothes. She runs after the hooded guy again, and that's when she finally accepts that it is just a dream world they all built to escape from the horror of their real existence.

There are only two questions here: why is their dream world a school? No rationale was given as to why it wasn't a beach somewhere. And what was with the Hindu costume of the sunless survivors, even having that jewel on the forehead, when their dream world was again not even remotely any part of India?

The “Silent Hill” tribute was next best, only suffering from lack of originality, the obvious and pathetic attempt of the policemen in the end to appear and act Western, the lack of establishment between the former and current owners of the house other than a short text explanation, which is too bad given how the former owners of the house was given just (as “World Police: Team America” puts it) a very effective montage of scenes with background music that was , and - as I mentioned before - the lack of close-up shots of the otherwise very good actors, particularly since most of it was filmed in the dark.

Otherwise, special effects were minimal, the camera angles and fake blood were good.

The two part story had two many lead characters, some very rushed (not well rehearsed) fight scenes and too much of a mixture of several science fiction concepts (a super-human serum, escaping to the past, genetic passing on of “powers”) that didn't meld that well and wasn't explained enough. There were also too many text screen interludes that were better off shown (“and they fought”).

Session 1579 thought of cool scenes to film first, then the science fiction concept second. Class dismissed.