‘Pokemon GO’ And ‘Stranger Things’: Blend Them Up To Get ‘Digging Up The Marrow’


Fans of Pokemon GO and/or Stranger Things may have let a real screen gem fly by right under their noses without realizing it, and it is high time to give this recent melding of two currently trending concepts, entitled Digging Up the Marrow, the credit it deserves.

If you have any communication at all with the outside world (and you probably do if you’re reading this), you are aware of the mega-fad known as Pokemon GO that has taken the world by storm since it was released several weeks ago. Of course, Pokemon GO focuses on finding and capturing mysterious creatures (Pokemon) in the real world. One of the things that makes Pokemon GO so magical is that it adds a normally unseen layer to the world around us that we can only see through the “lens” that is the free Pokemon GO app.

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Continuing with the assumption that you are not a hermitic recluse, you are probably also aware of Stranger Things, a recently released Netflix original series and another sharply trending topic in the current pop culture scene. Like Pokemon GO, Stranger Things deals with an alternate reality “overlain” on the world visible to most people.

Of course, the two titles — Pokemon GO and Stranger Things — deal with the two realities in very different ways. Pokemon GO is a game where the alernate reality only adds certain aspects to normal reality, while the alternate reality in Stranger Things, a place known as “the Upside-Down,” actually duplicates every aspect of normal reality but gives it a desolate, decaying sheen.

It should also be noted that the monsters in Pokemon GO‘s imagined reality are friendly and can be easily tamed, while the monster(s) in the Upside-Down is/are savage and bloodthirsty.

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Nonetheless, though, one can see the similarity between the two “overlain reality” concepts. It seems that the current generation of media consumers appreciates the concept of alternate realities feeding upon and interacting with our own, and that is why Bloody Disgusting points out that Digging Up the Marrow, a brilliant horror gem released in 2014 and directed by Adam Green that deals with exactly such a concept, really deserves a second look.

Like the monsters in Pokemon GO, Green’s imagined creatures emerge into normal reality, rather than living in their own alternate reality like in Stranger Things. Also like Pokemon, the Digging Up the Marrow monsters are classified into many different species, each of which is given a different name. The Bloody Disgusting piece points out that they are also similarly colorful and cartoonish to their Pokemon GO counterparts.

The similarities to Pokemon GO‘s creatures stop there, however, and those to the monsters from Stranger Things begin. The monsters proposed in Digging Up the Marrow, which are normally confined to an alternate reality known as “The Marrow,” are definitely not friendly faces along the lines of Pikachu or Oddish. Instead, they are actually deformed-beyond-recognition humans who are far from amiable.

Digging Up the Marrow focuses on a retired detective, played by Ray Wise in a performance that is very highly praised by Roger Ebert and basically every other critic who reviewed the movie. Wise’s character is a passionate monster-lover who, even before his discovery of The Marrow, wants nothing more than for monsters to exist in the real world. Sounds an awful lot like a dedicated Pokemon GO fan who wants more than anything for Pokemon to join our world, doesn’t it?

The film, which is presented in the found footage style, focuses on Wise’s detective contacting a horror filmmaker played by Green and discovering maybe it is better if The Marrow’s monsters stay confined to their own world.

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A live-action Pokemon movie has been confirmed to be in the works over at Legendary Entertainment, reports The Inquisitr, but that won’t be out until late 2017, and Digging Up the Marrow is the closest thing Pokemon fans have right now. Besides, the utterly creepy spin the movie puts on the concept might appeal to many Stranger Things fans, too.

[Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images]

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