Stream This Absurdist but Empathetic Documentary About Live-Action Gamers

A scene from “Darkon.” Ovie Entertainment

‘Darkon’ Where to Watch: Stream it on Amazon Prime; rent it on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, or YouTube. Save it to your Watchlist.

This 2006 documentary from Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel takes its title from the Darkon Wargaming Club, a society of live-action role players in suburban Baltimore. Strapping on homemade armor and whacking each other with foam-padded weapons, these weekend warriors (and wizards and elves) gather to enact elaborate story lines of conquest and intrigue. But peel away the helms and tunics, and you’ll find a diverse group of people, driven by personal or economic dislocation to find fulfillment in an imaginary world: a stay-at-home father, a single mother, a young businessman, a teenage misfit.

“Darkon” is bracingly honest — and, in the context of today’s cultural conversations, prophetically relevant — about the limits of escapism. And the determination its subjects display in using their own imaginations to find agency and joy is deeply moving. At a time when wide swathes of nerd culture have gone toxic, the downtrodden but upbeat adventurers of “Darkon” are downright inspiring. — Sean T. Collins Stream an Overlooked, Terrifying Slice of Satanic Panic From John Carpenter Alice Cooper, center, in “Prince of Darkness.” Universal Pictures   ‘Prince of Darkness’ Where to Watch: Rent it on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu. Save it to your Watchlist. The writer and director John Carpenter birthed the slasher film with “Halloween,” reinvented the creature feature with “The Thing” and created the sci-fi dystopia of our age with “They Live.” The guy is good. But he has never been better than in one of his most overlooked efforts, “Prince of Darkness” (1987). This bone-deep-disturbing supernatural horror film pits an outmatched team of professors and students against Satan himself, who appears in the form of a swirling green ooze that the Catholic Church has kept sealed away for centuries. As that evil essence permeates the claustrophobic and abandoned urban church where they’re trapped, the academics’ mission switches from study to survival. Simply put, this movie just feels wrong. Both the story’s structure and the entity’s powers shift constantly, preserving the power to shock. The theology underpinning the horror, meanwhile, is perverse enough to make even my extremely lapsed Catholic jaw drop. If you liked the madness of “Hereditary,” bow to the “Prince.” — Sean T. Collins

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