joel h
I had no idea that LARPing was so complicated. I loved seeing people enjoying themselves at NERO and being exposed to a world I didn't know much about. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, because I feel the documentary makers should have spent a little more time explaining what was going on, but I'm glad I saw Monster Camp.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
it's a decently enjoyable documentary but maddeningly edited. Its narrative dwells too long on some points but skips over what seem like key areas to define the game involved. It is good when dealing with the individual players and their passions for LARPing. It mostly treats these societal fringes with respect
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I cannot finish watching this... I just feel... Bad. I'm a stout defender of everyone pursuing their passions; as long as it makes you happy: who cares! And these people are doing just that... But there's so much passing them by. I feel miserable for most of the people the film follows. I respect them dearly, but I wish ... I don't know even know what. My ideals are challenged. I see fathers being completely oblivious to their children's needs or helpless mothers observing their sons ruts and I wish I could do something.
Edit: I did end up finishing it. It was super depressing. My hats off to them, but yes... it is a fool's folly after a point. Why do people do it to themselves? When does it stop being fun?
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/16/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Better than "Darkon."
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Audience Member
For a film that is largely based on the notion of embracing individuality, it sure does a good job of furthering previously existing stereotypes. Let me preface this entire review by stating beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am a huge geek. I have been ever since I was a kid. Even I have an impossible time not finding these people way way way beyond bizarre.
Every single one of the people portrayed in this documentary is intensely creepy. As stated prior, if they are trying to shake the 'lives in their mom's basement/sexually confused/ doesn't shower/covered in acne' stereotype, this film is doing a horrible job, because all are well represented.
Beyond all this, the film itself is a mess simply from a documentary standpoint. It is amaturely filmed, narrated through text cards, and really seems to miss the point of itself. Instead of focusing on what could have actually made this interesting, (such as focusing more on the psychological reasons WHY these people behave this way) they choose to spend an absorbent amount of time on office politics, personal drama, and listening to everyone whine and bitch about how hard it is to play.
Unless you really like watching incredibly awkward and creepy people run around in stupid costumes pretending to fight each other, do yourself a favor an skip it. I feel like I needed a shower after watching this.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/19/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It Never Really Talks About Why
Before I wrote this review, one of the things I did was go check my review of [i]King of Kong[/i] to make sure my distaste for this movie over that one didn't have to do with the fact that this is closer to what I do for fun. As I said in that review, I've never really played video games. But in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I spent about the first third of this movie waiting to see someone I knew. And the only reason I stopped then was that Fern, on whom the movie focuses for about a solid fifteen minutes or more, is the brother of one of my best friends. It kind of then became "someone [i]else[/i] I know," but I've always quite liked Fern, and the people I know mostly do Amtgard instead, if they're going to do something along these lines. But it seems that [i]King of Kong[/i] did not fall into the problems I have with this movie for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that I've never played [i]Donkey Kong[/i].
Fern is one of the Seattle-area members of a group called NERO, or "New England Role Playing Organization." They LARP, or "Live-Action Role Play." In other words, they dress up as knights and Gypsies and wizards and fight undead lizards and voidlings and plant monsters. All this took place over a weekend in Millersylvania State Park, about ten miles away from where I'm currently sitting. Unlike so-called pen-and-paper games (though everyone uses pencils, which erase) or computer games, this involves going outside and dressing up. They fight with "real" swords, called "boffers"--the Amtgard ones are sticks of some sort padded with pool noodles, wrapped in duct tape, and covered in fabric--and throw "packets," which are little squares of cloth wrapped around a tablespoon or so of birdseed. A lot of the people are "NPCs," "non-player characters," who play whatever monster is necessary. Others have characters who continue from one game to the next.
But even though I already know why people would do this sort of thing, I wouldn't if I'd just watched the movie. If I didn't have a best friend who has been pretending to be a vampire in public since before I knew her. There is a brief interview with a passer-by who wonders why they can't just play "Red Rover" or something. I mean, who over the age of about nine plays "Red Rover"? Fern is allowed to explain a little bit as to why he prefers being an NPC to being a player character--short answer, it's less confining and offers more opportunities to do a big, hammy death--but the focus on a couple of the guys in this movie would indicate that they're interested in playing because they're big ol' dorks. Fern, it's true, lived with his mother. (I don't know about now.) And two of the other guys fit quite well into a total nerd stereotype. But the short film which is in the special features seems to have more detail than the full-length film does.
Honestly, I don't think the movie really goes into enough detail about any of the non-embarrassing bits. Fern's mother going on about polyamory? Oh, yeah. Two of the guys acknowledging they've technically been high school seniors for as long as it takes most people to get through high school? Sure. But game mechanics? Oh, you don't care about that, do you? There's a lot of behind-the-scenes drama going on which the players don't know about. And the decision was made to keep you from knowing about it until they found out, which I think takes away some of the impact. There isn't enough emphasis on why a major decision is being made; it's clear that it's a lot of work, but it's not entirely clear that it isn't fun until suddenly we're being told with fifteen minutes to go how not-fun it can be. Heck, the only reason I know where the thing takes place is the Wikipedia page, and it is, again, about ten miles away and I know one of the people in it. I don't think the view we're given is any more in-depth than the two hikers got just seeing the players running across the field to go kill NPCs.
There are also some odd assumptions about what we would and wouldn't know. When [i]World of Warcraft[/i] is first mentioned, the film spends several minutes making sure that we know all about it instead of recognizing that maybe a global gaming phenomenon with millions of players might be familiar to the kind of person who would watch this documentary in the first place. But Fern mentions the term "Scadian" once. Now, he's a clever boy (actually, I'm not sure how old he is and am only [i]mostly[/i] sure he's younger than I; I think he was somewhere in his mid-twenties at the time the film was made), so he knows to define it as a member of the SCA. But let's see hands--how many of you know what the SCA is? It's not difficult to look up, and it's certainly not as though no one has heard of it. But it's a lot less mainstream than [i]World of Warcraft[/i], and not the slightest hint of an explanation is given. It led me to wonder who this documentary was even for.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/12/23
Full Review
Read all reviews
>
