Movie Night

“Can you pick something already? I swear we’ve been looking for an hour.”

“Dude, chill! I already said to say something if you two say anything interesting!”

Zephyr’s claws clicked the buttons on the remote, scrolling through the next row of movies on Webfilm. Blaze sat on the bed in the room, watching each option scroll by, occasionally tossing pieces of buttery popcorn into her mouth while Heidi kept glancing between the TV screen and her phone.

“I already told you, I don’t give a shit what we watch.” She spoke. Zephyr responded with a groan.

“Well, there’s gotta be something on here…”

“There’s plenty of movies on here, Zeph. It’s a streaming service” Blaze mocked.

“Oh, hardy har. Just… let’s just pick a classic or something…” 

Zephyr continued through the display of movies.

“‘Cretaceous Park’?”

“Hmm… seen that too many times…”

“Ok… ‘The Godmother’?”

“Isn’t that thing like three hours long? No way.”

A frustrated huff. “There’s ‘Maws’.”

Blaze shrugged. “...maaaaybee?”

“Fine… let’s just check the next row.” Zephyr groaned. Pressing down on the remote revealed a whole new line of movies, as well as previews of the posters below the new row. “Ok, so the first one on this row is-”

“Hold on.” Heidi cut him off.

“Huh?”

“What. The fuck. Is that.” Her tone was full of pure confusion as she started at the TV

“What?” Blaze kept staring at the TV, looking for what was so weird. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Heidi pointed a claw at the screen. She had spotted something in the next row of movies. Seeing this, Zephyr moved to that row and what Heidi had seen had become much more apparent, causing all of their jaws to drop.

It was called “Marlowdrick”. What was on screen was the ugliest looking animated furrat they had ever seen, long and spindly like it was some kind of mutant creature alongside spacecats who were thinner than blades of grass. The characters didn't even look rendered, and despite Webfilm listing that the movie had released that year, it looked at least a decade old. The cast list named one popular celebrity, giving the teens no doubt about where all the budget went. All of them had seen low-budget animated movies that were meant to be a time-waster for small kits, but this thing looked so horrendous theres no way a small child wasn't coming out of this without nightmares.

The room remained silent and still for a full minute. The only sign of life was Zephyr, who kept moving the cursor back and forth between the previous movie and this one, just to confirm it was real and not just a trick of the mind. Yes, this movie was completely, undoubtedly real.

“Dude.” Heidi broke the silence.

“...we have to watching this. Now.” Blaze spoke after.

Zephyr was stil slack jawed. How could a movie look this ugly? What kind of higher up approved this? He felt awful for the poor artists who had to make this. 

“Zephyr. We’re watching this. We have to. It’s fate.”

With that, he seemed to finally snap out of it, and speak.

“Let’s do it. Pass the popcorn.”