"We watch crap movies, we play crap games.
There's too much out there, causing us pain.
The actors are rancid. The plot is stale.
Necro is here to put an end to the fail.
The Necro Critic is in!"
There's too much out there, causing us pain.
The actors are rancid. The plot is stale.
Necro is here to put an end to the fail.
The Necro Critic is in!"
The Necro Critic is a Video Review Show starring Gareth Van Camp as the Necro Critic, a long-haired, sunglasses wearing, root beer drinking Caustic Critic.
What sets him apart from other internet reviewers is his lack of a specialty. While other reviewers tend to have a specific focus, like certain movie genres or retro video games, Necro is more of a Jack of All Trades critic, talking about movies, video games, anime, and even the occasional Top Ten List. His style is also much more down-to-earth and logistical than others, allowing him to defend his opinions in a much more calm and relaxed manner. At least until something pushes him past his breaking point…
While he doesn't have many episodes, nor is he as popular as other more famous reviewers, he has a very dedicated cult fanbase.
You can see his videos here
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Tropes:
- Absurd Phobia: Necro has a really nasty fear of babies. Implied to be caused by the giant robot baby from Baby Geniuses.
- Advertised Extra: A number of his complaints about Ehrgeiz have to do with Cloud being front and center in all of the game's advertisements, despite having almost no presence in it whatsoever.
- Angrish: He gets so fed up with the "awkward groping" running gag in Eiken, that near the end of the video, he completely loses it and starts yelling insane gibberish before repeatedly screaming the word "PAIN" and having to be sedated off-screen.
- Big Damn Heroes: He has a tendency to emphasize these moments with the Indiana Jones theme.
- Big "NO!": Him discovering that there's another game mode in Ehrgeiz. It actually extends past the end credits.
- Broken Record: "Magical Heart?"
- Catchphrase: "Oww... My soul!"
- Cat-thartic Scream: He has a tendency to scream into his cat the same way one would do to a pillow. Oddly enough, the cat doesn't seem to mind it too much. She even has a credit in some of his videos as "Shampoo the Stress-Relief Cat"
- Caustic Critic: He reviews both bad movies AND bad videogames. He occasionally reviews anime too.
- Christmas in July: Discussed in his Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July review.
- Continuity Snarl: He goes on a MASSIVE rant about how Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July's attempt to connect the Rankin/Bass specials into a Shared Universe makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, due a combination of inconsistent timelines, drastically different portrayals of the same characters in different specials, and the same characters seeming to exist in multiple conflicting canons.
- Cool Shades: Part of his standard getup.
- Didn't Think This Through: He mentions how Dr. Jekyll's Evil Plan to kidnap and brainwash Queen Victoria into being his bride is horribly flawed. There's no way he'd be able to keep up killing someone every night in order to keep making his potion, and said potion only works during the night, so there's the question of what he's going to do with her during the daytime when she's back to normal. There's also the fact that someone just might happen to notice the sudden disappearance of QUEEN VIC-FUCKING-TORIA.
- The boy from The Christmas Shoes decides to collect cans and recycle them in order to buy the titular footwear. Necro does the math and points out that he'd need to collect 400 cans* to pull that off.
- Didn't We Use This Joke Already?: Necro's reaction to the second time Carl said the "I'm not a monk, I'm just a friar" joke in Van Helsing"Oh, come on! It wasn't funny the first time! Why the HELL would it be funny the second time!?"
- Baby Geniuses reapeated the one semi-decent joke it had almost verbatim not five seconds after the first time, resulted in Necro's first and only voided PWN'D stamp.
- MAGICAL WORD!
- Disorganized Outline Speech: Something of a running gag with him. He'll occasionally point out three different things to outline a point he's making, while listing them as "1", "B", and some random third thing that represents the number 3 in some way, including "Gamma", "Drei", "French Hens", "The Escape Clause", etc...
- Distracted by the Sexy: In his School Days OVA Double-Feature, he shows a scene of four girls doing a Transformation Sequence while the narrator explains their identity and mission. Afterwards, Necro paraphrases what the narrator said, since several of his viewers were most likely too distracted by the hot naked girls to read the subtitles.
- Driven to Suicide: At the end of his Van Helsing: The London Assignment review, he swears to chug a bottle of cyanide if he ever sees another Van Helsing-related media. Suddenly, the Van Helsing tie-in comic magically appears in his hand, and he follows through on his promise. Unfortunately, what he drank ended up being Diet Mountain Dew, which is an even more excruciating fate.
- Every Episode Ending: "This is The Necro Critic, saying..."
- Freak Out: During his Ehrgeiz review, his player character dies permanently, forcing him to level up the other character separately to beat the final boss. He takes it about as well as you'd think..."TAKE THIS YOU FUCKER!!! DIE!!! DIE, YOU DEAD BASTARD, DIE!!! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIIIIEE!!!"
- During his Zardoz review, he puts a blanket over his head to see if it will uncover repressed memories. After a brief pause, he sees the giant robot baby from Baby Geniuses. His immediate response is to throw the blanket off of him and shoot it repeatedly, screaming like a maniac the entire time.
- Pretty much his entire Eiken review.
- Frothy Mugs of Water: He is often seen drinking bottles of root beer or cream soda and treats them like they're alcoholic. Justified in that he was 19 when he started making his videos.
- Funny Background Event: His The Santa Clause 2 review begins with him getting ready to review Red Ninja: End of Honor, only to throw it away upon the realization that it's Christmas. If you look carefully, you can see the game box hitting the light fixture behind him and busting open.
- Gainax Ending: The Jekyll + Hyde review ends with Necro killing Devil Critic only to be killed by the real Necro and Devil, who reveal that the previous Necro and Devil were robot clones of them from the future, only for the living Necro to reveal himself as a robot. Afterwards, a guy watching the video decides to leave a nasty comment on it, only for Necro and Devil to appear behind him and torture him by forcing him to watch The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2006).
- Hell Is That Noise: BABY WANT A HUG!!!
- I'm Having Soul Pains: His Catchphrase is the page quote for this trope.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: He has a tendency to spout these on occasion, immediately followed by the audience booing.
- He jokingly admits to getting death threats for the joke at the end of Call Me Tonight.
"This is The Necro Critic: reminding you to always wear protection during phone sex. It's the only way to prevent hearing AIDS" - Inflation Negation: Briefly mentioned in his Christmas Shoes review.Kid: [Five dollars] is a lot of money. A real whole lot.Necro: Yeah. During The '50s, maybe.
- To be fair, the movie was set during The '80s, but even then $5 wasn't considered a "real whole lot of money".
- It's a Wonderful Plot: Discussed in his Santa Clause 3 review.
- Said review also provides an interesting subversion: Necro's existence has practically no bearing on the world whatsoever. The only thing that changes is the fact that Devil is running the show now. Of course the guy telling him this was just lying to make him miserable before killing him.
- It Was His Sled: This is the reason why he refuses to talk about the infamous ending of School Days, as a favor to people who haven't seen it yet.
- Jekyll & Hyde: Subverted. The Devil Critic is introduced this way* , but he's later revealed to just be his brother taking over for him while he's in an energy shot induced coma. And then it revealed that they were both warring robot clones from the future.
- Just Here For Cloud: See Advertised Extra above.
- Klatchian Coffee: Mana Energy Potion, which gave him the energy-rush needed to plow through Ehrgeiz's Quest Mode. He tried to use it again to get through The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2006), but since he wasn't gaming, it turned him into Devil Critic. Or so you'd think. In actually, it just made him crash so hard that his brother was forced to cover the next review for him.
- Large Ham: Devil Critic
- Large-Ham Announcer: "Bukkake Death Race 2011"
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy
- Made Myself Sad: From his Sleepwalkers review."What? Graveyards are a very romantic place for a date! I mean, I always take MY girlfriends on dates to graveyards. (Beat) God, I'm lonely..."
- Man on Fire: Abused so much in Van Helsing, that he started a Burning Man Count in the same vein as Spoony's "Fuse Box Count". He's reused that same counter in a couple of other videos.
- More Dakka: Somehow, his handgun is fully automatic.
- Noodle Incident: His Eiken review opens with him and Devil returning home from apparently saving Christmas. They are both horribly bloodied and bruised, someone apparently died, and they vow never to speak of it again.
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Parodied in his Spider-Man 3 review, where he constantly refers to New Goblin with sequel names of increasing ridiculousness; including Green Goblin: Reloaded, Goblin 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Harry Goes To Hell: The Final Goblin.
- Offending the Creator's Own: Averted in his Christmas Shoes review. He begins the video by directly pointing out that he is a practicing Methodist in an attempt to avoid the inevitable criticisms that he is only hating on the movie for being a Christian film.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: See Noodle Incident.
- One Degree of Separation: He directly references the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game to point out how ludicrously convenient it is how every character in The Christmas Shoes just happens to know each other.
- Overly Long Gag: MAGICAL HEART!!!
- Overly Narrow Superlative: Played With in his The Adventures of the American Rabbit review, where he calls the titular hero "the worst America-themed, Animal Superhero ever conceived", directly comparing him to Yankee Poodle.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Devil Critic is extremely hammy and outspoken compared to Necro's much more subdued demeanor.
- Refusal of the Call: His Boku no Pico review, presented in its entirety."No." *
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Jack Frost from The Santa Clause 3 points out how Santa has his own holiday as well as a great life, he asks what he has in comparison. Devil responds by listing the sheer amount of media influence the character has.
- Running Gag: He has a couple.
- "GIANT _____ OF DEATH!"
- *clap* Makes sense to me!
- Burning Man Count
- "But just in time!" (cue Indiana Jones theme)
- "FEAR MY TENTACLES!!!"
- "Pointless! How pointless!"
- "Well now, THAT is some fucked-up shit."
- "Aww... What could possibly ruin this touching moment?" (one scene later) "That could."
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The title card for his Boku no Pico review is a lazily drawn stick figure of Necro, with a note from his artist saying "I'm not drawing shit for this. I'm out."
- Sexual Euphemism: He refers to the idea of Frosty the Snowman impregnating his wife as him "snowplowing her and filling her with his ice cream".
- Shared Universe: Discussed and mocked in Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Sidekick: The Devil Critic.
- Silliness Switch: The only fun he has with Van Helsing: The Videogame is by toying around with the game's numerous graphics-altering cheats (which are, strangely enough, found as random collectables throughout the game).
- Squick: His reaction to the idea of "an old man getting it on with an elderly fat lady in the body of a 20-year-old girl."
- Sunglasses at Night: He once wore pair of reading glasses on top of his trademark shades.
- Take That!: Apparently, The Irate Gamer once sent Necro an unsolicited video cameo, asking him to feature it in one of his reviews. He even told him what context to use the cameo in as well as suggesting what specifically to review. Needless to say, Necro was very offended by this gesture. So instead, he used the cameo clip in his The Santa Clause 2 review in a joke at IG's expense.Necro: Not to make accusations or anything, but [Toy Santa] is one tommy-gun away from blatant plagiarism! And believe me, as an internet reviewer, I know a thing or two about blatant plagiarism.IG: (looking up from playing a video game) Are you talking about me?
- He followed up on it with a similar joke in the next video, also from the footage sent to him.
Devil: That's right, folks. The titular Escape Clause was just a poor excuse to make this movie into a cheap, crappy knockoff of It's a Wonderful Life. And trust me, as an internet reviewer, I know a thing or two about cheap, crappy knockoffs.IG: (indignant) Really? - There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In order to get out of reviewing Van Helsing: The London Assignment, he tries to destroy the DVD by repeatedly punching it, stabbing it, hammering it, throwing it on the ground, stomping on it, smashing it with a sledge-axe, running over it with a lawnmower, setting the debris on fire, baking the ashes into a cake, eating it, crapping it out, burning it AGAIN, selling the ashes to a coke-head, shooting him after snorting it and then planting the gun in his hand, and blowing up the guys house. It wasn't enough to get rid of it.
- The Stoic
- Training Montage: He did two of these while playing Ehrgeiz's Quest Mode. One while progressing a character to the end of the game, and a second one maxing out the other character's levels by exploiting a bug. Both done to the tune of Paul Stanley's "Live To Win".
- Parodied in his Baby Geniuses review, where he plays the training montage scene from that movie to the tune of DVDA's "Montage".
- Troubled Fetal Position: His Baby Geniuses review ends with him feeling so empowered about finally confronting the movie that traumatized him as a kid, that he decides to try conquering his paedophobia* as well. After turning on the scene where the giant robot baby is rampaging against the adults, it immediately cuts to Necro in this position while sucking his thumb.
- Unintentional Period Piece: In his Call Me Tonight review, he straight up breaks into song* about how blatantly and hideously '80s the characters' fashion choices were.
- Video Review Show
- Visual Pun: He very vocally enjoys eating a piece of cheesecake while watching a scene in Call Me Tonight, where the female protagonist is out int the rain with a wet, clingy, transparent shirt.
- We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Occasionally, this happens to him whenever something he's reviewing causes an insane breakdown, immediately followed by a brief scene of him after the off-screen sedatives have kicked in.
