Recap Notes: MAGP 5 “Personal Screening”

Spoiler Warning: this is a purely selfish exercise in remembering what the hell happened last season (from someone caught up thru MAGP31, 2/27/2025 & all of The Magnus Archives). No promises I’ll keep up with it.

Summary: Don’t diss The Babadook

Casement: CAT2RB2377-10012023-05022024

Lena wonderfully continues to be the worst type of manager (short of actively feeding her minions to a fear entity).

Otherwise, this one’s not a particularly complicated. A blogger is invited to a private screening. Twist: the film’s about him. A caffeine/sleep-deprived Archivist is potentially spotted in the corner of the viewing. Either way, Tom sees something that terrifies him in a home video starring his past trauma and the statement ends.

Other than my minor quibble that the casement giver planned on using a speech-to-text app before knowing the theatre was going to be empty (like the worst sort of human imaginable), this case wasn’t my favourite. Wish the [unintelligible] bits had taken up more of the text for peak horror potential, but I also don’t have the skill it takes to write one of these, so no shade to the writer. Just expressing that something fell flat for me, although it was nice hearing Chester’s voice.

Speaking of Chester, at some point I want to do a better job seeing if he happens to read all of them, but I have noticed that a good portion of his narrated cases have parts redacted:

- Tom’s Terrors has certain posts deleted, MAGP05
- RedCanary’s eye gore pic supposedly removed by a mod, MAGP01
- Gordon J’s inbox shutdown, MAGP11
- 0 comments on Alesis Newmans’ forum posts, MAGP23
- Madam E’s final post never sent MAGP16

If Jon is the ghost in the machine, reaching out to edit in real time, it could substantiate that he is the voyeur in the corner of the hospital room in Tom’s screening, but only time will tell how much he (or what’s left of him) is capable of interacting with the outside and/or digital world. It would be vaguely reminiscent of what he was capable of doing in people’s dreams as an avatar, so not outside the realm of possibility. And I do like the idea of he, Martin and Jonah all having different agendas while sharing one joystick. Even more if Freddie had its own agenda before they were plopped into it.

I also wanted the graffiti outside the theatre to be more than it was. Graffiti’s only mentioned twice in MAGP, and both early-on, but the first time was at the institute, and alchemical so I’ve been primed to look for symbolic tagging. Maybe I have been since “silk will not stitch the butcher’s meat”, but that’s neither here nor there. Hasn’t come back in any meaningful way.

On to the next!