Emesis Blue is a 2023 Australian adult animatedindependentpsychological horrorfan film directed by Chad Payne, based on the multiplayerfirst-person shooter game Team Fortress 2 and sequel to the 2018 Spy's Disguise. The film was produced entirely in Source Filmmaker, by the fan group Fortress Films, and released for free on YouTube on February 20, 2023. Emesis Blue bases many of its assets directly on those of the original game, following the nine playable mercenary characters on a fictionalized depiction of the 2Fort multiplayer map, but maintains a mature, surreal tone with a largely original narrative. At a total of one hour and 48 minutes, it received critical acclaim for its high production value and length, both of which were said to be closer to those of a feature film than a typical Source Filmmaker production.[1][2]
Drawing on the backstory originally presented in Team Fortress 2, the film is set on Halloween of 1968 during the fictional Gravel Wars between mercenaries hired by the companies of Builders League United (BLU) and Reliable Excavation and Demolition (RED). The film follows a largely original plotline to its inspiration, rewriting elements of the story to present a more serious and grounded tone, but includes diegetic references to game mechanics like rocket jumping, the capture the flag game mode, and respawning, with a large part of the films story focusing on a non-canonical "respawn machine" supposedly used in-universe to revive the mercenaries during fighting.[1]
Plot
The film begins with footage of several tests involving the "Respawn Machine", a device that can bring back users from the dead. The footage shows the disturbing effects the machine has on its test subjects.
On Halloween night of 1968, a former BLU Scout named Jeremy visits his former Medic colleague Dr. Fritz Ludwig due to the side-effects of an accident involving the Respawn Machine. Jeremy complains of paranoia, believing he is being stalked, as well as nightmares and the physical defects that got him fired from the company. Ludwig states the machine has had disturbing failures before. Jeremy returns home to his single mother, watching a VHS copy of the 1931 film M he stole from Ludwig's office. He receives a telephone call playing back his previous conversation with Ludwig, before turning to see his mother's decapitated head peering around a wall and a masked figure standing in the corner of the room.
A BLU Spy working as a private investigator and his Soldier assistant investigate the disappearance of BLU chairman and Governor of New Mexico, Jules Archibald. The duo tails a former BLU Heavy as he waits to hand off a briefcase. Spy gets into an altercation with him, but is saved by Soldier who shoots the Heavy dead. As Soldier leaves, a mysterious figure donning a plague doctor's mask attacks Spy and escapes with the briefcase in a hearse.
Ludwig experiences an out-of-body experience where he sees himself inside Jeremy's house, and awakens in his office with blood on his hands. He receives an envelope of photographs of Scout being stalked as well as a phone call, playing their earlier conversation and Jeremy's muffled voice. Ludwig is directed by a bloody inscription in his office to a RED base known as "Conagher Slaughterhouse." At the Slaughterhouse, he narrowly avoids a resurrected Heavy while escaping to the basement. He frees Jeremy, who believes Ludwig to be his captor, only for Jeremy to be wounded, recaptured, and tortured to death by two Engineers who own the slaughterhouse; the Conagher brothers, Zed and Maynard. Maynard manages to overpower and kill Ludwig after a fist fight, only for him to mysteriously resurrect and brutally kill Maynard and Zed, before finding the briefcase that was stolen from Spy.
Spy and Soldier pose as federal agents and search Jeremy's house, finding Ludwig's bonesaw at the murder scene. Arriving at Ludwig's office, they receive a call playing his voice, and find the bloody inscription. Arriving at the slaughterhouse, they outwit and fatally wound a RED Sniper in the sewers, but Spy is captured by the same masked figure who was in Jeremy's house, a Pyro, and the duo are separated. Soldier experiences a temporal anomaly in the base's lobby before freeing a wounded RED Demoman, named Cyclops. He informs Soldier that the base is no longer under RED's control. The two try to reach the weapons locker in the resupply room as they are attacked by a mutated Scout and a group of undead RED mercenaries. Ludwig, now suffering a psychotic break, defeats an undead RED Medic and takes the briefcase upstairs, where he finds Soldier and Cyclops being attacked by the Heavy. He aids them and the trio are forced into an elevator further down to escape the Heavy. Spy escapes captivity and shoots the Pyro, but is burned in a resulting gasoline fire.
All four mercenaries begin to lose their grasp on reality as they move deeper into the Slaughterhouse. Soldier and Cyclops find Archibald locked inside a cage, but the soldier is separated from the two. Cyclops, seemingly in purgatory, meets a third Conagher brother, Dell, who describes the Limbo-like eternity mercenaries experience between respawns. Soldier and Ludwig find evidence of Archibald's initial experiments with respawning and the extreme toll it had on subjects. Soldier then finds Cyclops frozen to death in a cryogenic lab, as well as numerous clones of himself, before he and Ludwig defeat the resurrected Sniper and Pyro. Spy finds Archibald confessing to war profiteering with the respawn machines over the phone and shoots him, then forces Ludwig and Soldier to play Russian roulette, killing the Medic. Soldier narrowly avoids being killed himself while being pursued by the Heavy. He finally escapes the Slaughterhouse as it burns down, and the Heavy is crushed as it collapses.
Soldier is interviewed by a BLU agent, who instructs him to stay quiet about the events that previously unfolded. At Archibald's funeral, attended by the rival brothers Blutarch and Redmond Mann, CEOs of BLU and RED, Spy gives a cover story of Ludwig murdering Archibald and committing suicide, installing himself as Archibald's successor. A resurrected Ludwig suddenly rises from Archibald's supposed coffin and shoots Spy, battling his way out. Soldier defects and hands Ludwig the briefcase, helping fight off the Mann brothers' bodyguards and BLU mercenaries. The mysterious plague doctor watches through the chaos. Soldier kills a wounded Blutarch and Ludwig escapes the police in an ambulance, running over Redmond in the chaos, only to die in a car crash outside the city. He meets Archibald, Jeremy, and Dell in purgatory. Additionally, the Jules Archibald Foundation is seen in a newspaper to be under investigation for its crimes by the authorities. The film ends with Ludwig emerging out of the flaming Respawn Machine in the burning Conagher Slaughterhouse.
Cast
"JazzyJoeyJr" as the Soldier
David Love as Jules Archibald and Blutarch Mann
Cameron Nichols as the Scout
John Whinfield as background voices
Anton Pelizzari as Zed & Dell Conagher and background voices
Chad Payne as Dr. Fritz Ludwig, the Detective, Cyclops, Maynard Conagher, Redmond Mann, the Hunter, Agent Stemmons, and Stalingrad
An honorable thanks was given to late voice actor Rick May, whose legacy voice acting in the original game was occasionally used for the Soldier's screams and laughs.
Production and style
Emesis Blue was developed over the course of four years in Source Filmmaker, led by Australian writer and director Chad Payne. The film combines 3D Source animation with strong, neo-noir lighting, focusing on authenticity to the original game's assets and acknowledging the technical limitations of the software.[1][3] Sharp red-and-blue lights are used over otherwise desaturated sets to emulate in-game team differentiation, while policemen and other background characters not readily available in the original assets are shaded out as silhouettes to distinguish them from the canonical cast of Team Fortress 2 models.[1]
A second Team Fortress film by the creators is "all but confirmed" under development as of 2024, currently titled Murder Inc.[1]
Reception
Emesis Blue has been lauded as the first mainstream feature film to have been produced with Source Filmmaker, and the first Source project of its kind since Darkest Days, an earlier hour-long musical fan-film based on Left 4 Dead 2.[1][3] Praise was directed towards the film's tone, visuals, voice cast, and technical ambition, while its narrative was described as reliant on mystery, nonlinear storytelling, and audience engagement through fan theories.[1][2][4] Some background details of the film's universe were noted as overly reliant on familiarity with the original game's story, but the experience was otherwise described as appealing to general horror fans as well.[1][2]
Film journalist Kayvon Bumpus noted some remaining budgetary constraints placed on the film, but nonetheless considered Emesis Blue a potential "crowning achievement" for both machinima and Source Filmmaker, writing that "countless projects with more budget, staff, and polish have failed to impress like this animated indie gem does".[1] Gaming critic Yahtzee Croshaw praised the film as an engaging noir narrative and an example of what he coined as post-punk, arguing its production and tone subverted mainstream filmmaking standards by instead relying on the punk art practices of earlier satirical works like Heavy is Dead.[5]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
