tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81508865849564381832024-02-20T22:45:43.943-08:00Shock RoomShare the horror.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-12938394590499207542017-02-17T12:39:00.001-08:002017-02-17T12:39:33.154-08:00The Darkness (2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6nMTJCC7PvTfn2mNaJCiAPZBPfdo_we9kGG-DC20QptsXcZNYT9xKzaB9K0VyEItjuKDqWovKmSf7GXhuasG5qC9-4xZaFpX4CF6sSxTwwbrxX233vUaH6J3uWJSaIV5oD2dcqUN1Imc/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6nMTJCC7PvTfn2mNaJCiAPZBPfdo_we9kGG-DC20QptsXcZNYT9xKzaB9K0VyEItjuKDqWovKmSf7GXhuasG5qC9-4xZaFpX4CF6sSxTwwbrxX233vUaH6J3uWJSaIV5oD2dcqUN1Imc/s320/maxresdefault.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">Can’t recommend this one. I wanted to like it, especially since it began with a family vacation at the Grand Canyon, and I’d love to see more horror films utilizing southwest mythology, the canyon, and Anasazi ruins. The early scenes could have been as eerie as <i>Picnic at Hanging Rock</i>. But the setting only functioned as a starting point and the rest of the action took place inside the home of a white suburban family. From this point on, it’s pretty much by rote.</span><br />
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
Dad (Kevin Bacon, with the same hair he had in <i>Footloose</i>) works too much. Mom (Radha Mitchell) struggles with a drinking problem. Their teenage daughter’s bulimic and snarky. Their son is autistic and is used rather badly in the story as a magnet for the supernatural. We’re told as much by the Internet, where we get all the exposition about the Anasazi, demons, some rocks stolen by the son while on vacation…way too much time spent staring at computer screens.</div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
To save their son the parents consult a medium, and introduce another familiar trope, the person of color who acts as a spiritual guide, aided by her translator granddaughter (yeah). The medium, Teresa, tries to cleanse the house of evil but instead finds evil squatting in a big hole behind the son’s bedroom wall. Very disconcerting to watch the medium divining this space by holding a couple of bent copper wires out in front of her breasts. But maybe that's just me. I'm a woman and you know what we're like.</div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
Some stuff happens and people scream. Kevin Bacon saves his family by yanking his son out of the hole behind the wall, and declares that they’re all safe now. Which I guess also implies he will work shorter hours and Mom will get drunk less often.</div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
Not the worst patchwork home-possession movie ever, just not inspired or very original. The same tropes could work if given a slight edge or a new spin. The movie's downfall is how predictably all of its elements play out.</div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
And <i><a href="http://the darkness 2016" target="_blank">The Darkness</a></i> may have been released in 2016 but it was clearly shot much earlier, judging by the age of its youngest actor. On that subject, it's obvious why <i>The Darkness</i> is streaming on Netflix right now. The son is played by David Mazouz, a.k.a. <i>Gotham</i>’s Little Batman, Bruce Wayne. And, as usual, Mazouz does a good job. Just not enough to elevate <i>The Darkness</i> above a C-.</div>
<div style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-58041579818682669512015-12-01T13:44:00.000-08:002015-12-01T13:44:34.945-08:00Weird Tales of a Bangalorean by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23393072-weird-tales-of-a-bangalorean" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Weird Tales of a Bangalorean" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1413664208m/23393072.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23393072-weird-tales-of-a-bangalorean">Weird Tales of a Bangalorean</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5824082.Jayaprakash_Satyamurthy">Jayaprakash Satyamurthy</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1456886393">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
With this collection published by <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/jayaprakash-satyamurthy/weird-tales-of-a-bangalorean-2nd-edition/paperback/product-22171694.html" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a> in 2013, Jayaprakash Satyamurthy has become one of my favorite writers not only of weird fiction but any fiction attempting to portray both the physical and spiritual adventure of existence.<br /><br />Recently an acquaintance remarked that he'd read this slender volume of extraordinary tales in an afternoon. I don't know how he accomplished this. Every story in the book is so rich in detail and so layered with fascinating social history and acute observations, I needed a break after each one in order to step back and look more objectively at what I can only describe as an immersive reading experience. <br /><br />Delicate interactions between cultures and generations characterize these stories. All the lives lived in the same spot carry equal weight. History is ongoing. Our activity and unanswered desires create an energy, and perhaps a portal. The latter idea is put forth explicitly in the final tale, almost but not quite too complete an explanation. Fortunately the author only touches upon it and then returns to a sense of the mysteriousness of the universe and human nature.<br /><br />Some characters are transformed or transported by interactions with the supernatural. Others cling to a fantasy or a state of mind and become absorbed into the landscape. The magic involved is not conjured or sought out. It arises naturally from the juxtaposition of time, place, and people.<br /><br />Traces of the past linger everywhere. Ghosts of characters from certain stories pass through other stories and add to the density of the background. The illusion created by such overlapping is a steadily accruing sense of the enormity and complexity of life and the ceaseless activity of humankind. <br /><br />Myths rooted in specific places and histories connect with more widely recognized myths and legends but also convey the fortunes and personal disasters of individuals and families. To know the full story is to know how a local family made its way in a constantly shifting world.<br /><br />I bought this wonderful book and I'll buy anything else Jayaprakash Satyamurthy writes. Highly recommended.<br />
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6001633-s-p">View all my reviews</a><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-1053874188430141812014-10-28T09:51:00.000-07:002014-10-31T11:44:17.353-07:00Interview with Angela Slatter<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11564" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11564">
<div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://www.angelaslatter.com/" target="_blank">Angela Slatter </a>is the talented, prolific and acclaimed author of <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.tartaruspress.com/sourdough.htm" target="_blank">Sourdough and Other Stories,</a> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, </span><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11628" style="font-style: italic;">Midnight and Moonshine </span>(with Lisa L. Hannett), <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings</span>, <i>Black-Winged Angels, and </i><i>The Female Factory</i> (with Lisa L. Hannett) (Forthcoming 2014). In this exclusive Shock Room interview, she talks about her most recently published collection, <i><b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Bitterwood-Bible-Angela-Slatter-ebook/dp/B00N7ORQ6W" target="_blank">The Bitterwood Bible</a></b></i>, her writing process, and some of her influences.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11629">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBoZagCtLxwXUehDvp9ut-d1SfxZc8vyqqfMGTzwbzAI-jItWufouKrxLsIVuoU3g0rVe_3Y5TkbF8DwESyednyrlvP07chw16aFYfcLomGWlRwSF40_qt4hyphenhyphendLC4oQEl3lDE4m5sDwwg/s640/blogger-image-267785934.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBoZagCtLxwXUehDvp9ut-d1SfxZc8vyqqfMGTzwbzAI-jItWufouKrxLsIVuoU3g0rVe_3Y5TkbF8DwESyednyrlvP07chw16aFYfcLomGWlRwSF40_qt4hyphenhyphendLC4oQEl3lDE4m5sDwwg/s320/blogger-image-267785934.jpg" width="208"></a></div>
<br></div>
</div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11566">
<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11566">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" dir="ltr">
</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11569">
</div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11568" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11571"><span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11570" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Where did you grow up, and how has the place where you lived as a child influenced your writing?</span></b><br>
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11579" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11578" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I grew up in several places. My Dad was a cop and so we moved around with his job. My sister and I were born in Cairns (in Tropical North Queensland); moved to Ipswich (a mining town in the south of the state) when we were three and one respectively; then out to Longreach (in the Australian outback) at nine and seven; back to Cairns at eleven and nine; and then back to Ipswich at fourteen and twelve. I’ve spent most of my adult life in Brisbane (capital city of Queensland), apart from a four year stint in Sydney.</span><br>
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11580" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What this gives me, I guess, is a really strong sense of home not being about a place necessarily, but about the people you’re with. One of my favourite Clive James quotes, which I shall paraphrase very poorly, is that like all those who’ve left home, I know it immediately when I find it again, no matter where that may happen to be. I think I’ve carried that idea around inside me for a very long time, and I think it’s an idea that comes through in my fiction, especially where I deal with characters who’ve been sundered from their homes and families. </span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11581" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="">Where/ what was your first professional publication?</span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11581" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11583" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11582" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I <i class="">think</i> my first acceptance was from <i class="">Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet</i> for “The Juniper Tree” in 2006, but I also got an acceptance from <i class="">Shimmer </i>soon after for “The Little Match Girl”, and that story was published first.<b class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11584"><br class=""><br class="">Which fairy tales and short stories made a particularly strong impression on you, growing up, and stayed with you over the years?</b></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11583" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11583" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As far as fairy tales are concerned, probably: “The Little Match Girl” for its cruelty and lack of justice; “Donkeyskin” for its ideas about having to hide who you were; “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” for ideas about devotion and self-sacrifice; “Bluebeard” for its ideas about injustice (again) and fortuitous timing; and “Fitcher’s Bird” for its clever female heroine.</span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11583" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11585" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11587" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11586" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As for short stories: “The Tower” by Marghanita Laski for its slow build of tension; “Gabriel Ernest” by Saki for its cleverness and subtle foreboding; “The Chosen Vessel” by Barbara Baynton for being recognisably set in a place I lived; and “The Wendigo’s Child” for scaring the poop out of me and keeping me awake many nights, listening in the dark.</span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11588" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11590"><span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11589" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="">What is your process when you work with a partner, and how is it different from your process when you work alone?</span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11588" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11592" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11591" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When I work alone, I’m probably as close as I ever get to lazy! With a collaborator, someone is relying on me and so I take that trust very seriously. I know I need to respect someone else’s schedule as much as I do my own. Honestly, even when it’s just me I’m pretty good and am a respecter of the deadline because an editor needs me to provide something by a certain time and I try my best to be professional.</span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11592" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11593" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11595" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11594" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When I’m collaborating (with Lisa L. Hannett), our first drafts are brain vomit. Whoever has the spark of an idea starts the story, vomits on the page until they’re empty, then sends that unfiltered brown stuff off. Then the receiver reads the brown stuff, gives it a bit of an edit, then adds new unfiltered brown stuff and sends it off. Then we go back and forth until there’s a full story, then we go to town on a couple of proper, ruthless edits.</span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11595" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11596" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When I’m on my own, there’s only my conscience and the other voices in my head to push me along. I think I find the first draft the hardest because you’re creating something out of air ... when you’re editing, you’ve already got some word-clay there to play with. When there’s just you, the screen/page, and your imagination (with the inner critic laughing at you), it can be challenging ... and suddenly even cleaning the toilet seems appealing.</span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class=""><br></span></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class=""></span></span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFh-4yLjz57h3opTtHkZdeByUosXErR0Rfn2ZKYb-BBB1btOvbmTXPyut1e1uXtvCbT0c3-zYYm96Qn8PmKhKv9NtZyLIcoS5_sr_kqlnyODB94SEEjGowBZkAosxJLEZVNeoLetf1li8/s640/blogger-image-737269732.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFh-4yLjz57h3opTtHkZdeByUosXErR0Rfn2ZKYb-BBB1btOvbmTXPyut1e1uXtvCbT0c3-zYYm96Qn8PmKhKv9NtZyLIcoS5_sr_kqlnyODB94SEEjGowBZkAosxJLEZVNeoLetf1li8/s640/blogger-image-737269732.jpg"></a></span></span></div>
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class=""><br class=""><br class=""><b>How are the stories in Sourdough and Bitterwood Bible connected? What themes, characters, or ideas tie the collections together?</b></span></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;"><br></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">The </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">Sourdough</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;"> collection came first, and my intention was to write a sequel to that book ... but I’d written the story “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” not long after </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">Sourdough</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;"> was published, and I’d taken the name of my main character from a headstone in the churchyard of Lodellan (one of the main locations in </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">Sourdough</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">), and I wanted to continue her story. So, I couldn’t make it a sequel, but rather went for a prequel, and Hepsibah Ballantyne weaves her way through </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">The Bitterwood Bible</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">. I’ve got the sequel written now, am and editing it. </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;"> starts in Lodellan, then moves away from the city, which I did on purpose. </span><i class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11599" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">Sourdough</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">, as the middle book, has Lodellan as its main centre, all the tales somehow circle around it; </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">Bitterwood</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;"> starts in a different city, and then slowly but surely moves towards Lodellan (where the last tale occurs); </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">The Tallow-Wife</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-indent: 0cm;">, as the final book in the cycle, has its opening story in Lodellan then shifts the reader away again.</span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11598" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The stories take place in the same world, which is inflected by my reading of English, French, Italian and German fairy and folk tales. I’m working on a graphic novel of <i class="">Sourdough</i> with Kathleen Jennings, and so we’re figuring out how to mix together all our favourite elements of costumes from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Regency and Georgian periods to get the sort of outfits that have been in my mind onto paper.</span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11601" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11600" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As well as being connected by locations, there are the characters, which may appear as a protagonist in one tale, then reappear in a later story either as a secondary or tertiary character, or as someone than the new protagonist tells a tale about ... so the idea is that you end up getting a much more rounded view that if you’ve only got a single view point character to tell you about themselves and the world around them.</span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11601" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11606" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11605" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As for themes, I think the ideas of home and family and loss of those things are very strong in both collections, as well as ideas about memory and how it shifts and changes across time. I also like to explore issues about female agency or the lack thereof, the position of women, the fear of women, and ideas about witchcraft and legend and female familial relationships. I think those ideas are deeply embedded in the Sourdough Cycle of stories.</span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11606" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11606" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU42FujcxQrlZGd2d8EDztIFgQi0gj_C1ZubVjdSnjmBnA92NbQNkhEk2iJ8NT4fvRyS9QmTu_0TGBp0ey4A7FmcyFEsbTSyIy8vVH-ftbG-vlc_tLONiBydH65CjSlTIVyOy4MeM8GKA/s640/blogger-image--1667528518.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU42FujcxQrlZGd2d8EDztIFgQi0gj_C1ZubVjdSnjmBnA92NbQNkhEk2iJ8NT4fvRyS9QmTu_0TGBp0ey4A7FmcyFEsbTSyIy8vVH-ftbG-vlc_tLONiBydH65CjSlTIVyOy4MeM8GKA/s640/blogger-image--1667528518.jpg"></a></span></div>
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11604" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11608"><span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11607" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="">Do you feel your characters often represent your world view, or is it a leap for you to create each character's POV?</span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11604" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11603" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11602" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I always think that each character carries a little sliver of me inside them. I don’t think I could write convincingly if I couldn’t put myself right in the head of the character. So, though I may not agree with their actions, in order for me to understand them and write them, I have to be utterly empathetic to them, see their point of view without judging them, even if they do terrible things. It doesn’t mean I’ll do terrible things, just that I make a conscious effort to understand my characters as well as I can. </span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11609" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="">Do you continue to do much research, or rely upon your background and memory of reading history and fairy tales, when you are constructing a fictional world?</span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11609" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></b></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11611" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11610" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When I’m writing in the <i class="">Sourdough</i> world I have to refer back to previous stories to make sure I keep things consistent. When I’m looking for new ideas to expand, I do more research (research is always fun - at least one of the books on my nightstand is a research book about something), then work out how I can weave it into what’s currently in existence. The important thing for me about the <i class="">Sourdough</i> world is that it feels very much like our own world - or like an idea of a timeless past version of our own world, so that it’s recognisable to most readers - and that the places where it departs from that recognisability are the places where it becomes something unique and startles the reader.<b class=""><br class=""><br class="">Will there be more Angela Slatter books set in the Sourdough / Bitterwood Bible universe?</b></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11611" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b class=""><br></b></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11612" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes! There’s <i class="">The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales</i>, which I’ll send to Tartarus Press as soon as I finish polishing it. And I’ve just submitted a novella called <i class="">The Witch’s Scale</i> to Simon Marshall-Jones at Spectral Press, which takes one of the characters from <i class="">Sourdough</i> and tells a story of another part of her life. She’s one of my favourite characters and it was wonderful to revisit her and fill in some gaps! There are several other characters from both<i class="">Sourdough</i> and <i class="">Bitterwood</i> that I want to write more about, and so I think I’ll manage a few more novellas and short stories in the world. <br class=""><br class=""><b class="">Whose work are you reading these days?</b></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11612" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b class=""><br></b></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="">I’m re-reading Barbara Hambly’s <i class="">James Asher</i> series, which I just love. Jo Walton’s <i class="">What Makes This Book Great</i>. Nathan Ballingrud’s absolutely breathtakingly masterful <i class="">North American Lake Monsters</i>. <i class="">Princesses Behaving Badly</i> by </span><span class=""><span class="">Linda Rodriguez McRobbie. Link and Grant’s <i class="">Monstrous Affections</i>. <i class="">Necropolis: London and Her Dead </i>by Catherine Arnold. Oh, and Gary McMahon’s simply brilliant <i class="">The Bones of You</i>.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class=""><span class=""><br></span></span></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Whose writing excites and/or inspires you?</span></b></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<b class=""><span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></b></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why, S.P. Miskowski, of course! And Mercedes Murdock Yardley. Lisa Hannett, Kelly Link, Eugie Foster, Aliette De Bodard, Margo Lanagan, Cat Sparks, John Connolly, Laird Barron, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Alan Moore, Shirley Jackson, Karen Joy Fowler, MR James, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Charlotte Bronte ... I could go on forever.<b class=""><br class=""><br class="">What are you working on at the moment?</b></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">ALL OF THE THINGS!</span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11613" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11615" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11616"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This year I’ve released </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bitterwood </i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">and </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Black-Winged Angels</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> (from Ticonderoga Publications), and Lisa Hannett and I have written the eleventh instalment in the Twelve Planets series from Twelfth Planet Press, called </span><i class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1414377439406_11621" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Female Factory</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> (which should be out </span><a href="x-apple-data-detectors://1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);" x-apple-data-detectors-result="1" x-apple-data-detectors-type="calendar-event" x-apple-data-detectors="true">on 15 Nov</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> this year). I’m editing my novel, </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Vigil</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">, finishing a short story called “Mr Underhill”, plotting for the sequels to </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Vigil</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">, I’ve got two commissioned stories to write before mid-December, I’ve got another novella on the boil, and another novel called </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Scandalous Lady Detective</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">. And I’m editing </span><i class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Tallow-Wife</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">, writing three new short stories for a collection for Noose & Gibbet, and working on a graphic novel and a picture book with Kathleen Jennings. And I get on a plane for World Fantasy next week. There may be some small, stress-related shrieks issuing from our apartment at the moment.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-59181351164490761522014-10-19T19:59:00.002-07:002014-10-19T19:59:48.765-07:00Far From Streets<span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><i><b>Far From Streets</b></i></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
Michael Griffin</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<i>Far From Streets</i> is a work of long fiction published by Dunhams Manor Press, an imprint of Dynatox Ministries.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
In this brief and splendidly written book, Mike Griffin creates a vivid portrait of marriage and the passage of time, using one location as a reference point and a metaphor. The realistic and (perhaps) magical elements balance perfectly, creating ambiguity and room for interpretation. I was reminded of two classic studies in society and marriage, "The Summer People" by Shirley Jackson and "The Swimmer" by John Cheever. But this story is in no way derivative. Griffin has his own strong narrative voice with which to entice the reader to a place of dark corners and deep regret.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
Dane and Carolyn are lucky. They're intelligent, fit, and affluent. Better still, their love is real, though flecked with the small irritations and quick, bright moments of nihilism that characterize many long-term relationships, held together by passion as much as by habit. Carolyn wants her dream house in the suburbs. Dane longs for the fantasy fulfillment of living in a cabin in the woods. They're hard-working and they're American, so they try to have it all. And while they try, and they struggle with one another's thwarted expectations, life is passing.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
Compressed into short chapters, most of them beginning when the characters wake up at the cabin on weekends, <i>Far From Streets</i> develops an eerie atmosphere, a sense that someone or something is stuck. As Dane and Carolyn negotiate over the circumstances of their lives, the stakes rise. They lash out in an escalating series of violent episodes until the strangeness of their surroundings can no longer be denied. Is the rural setting real, glimpsed across many years, or is it a dreamscape in which this tale of conjugal conflict can be seen in all its potential beauty and madness? Every reader will have to decide the answer.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
Highly recommended.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
(Note: I received a review digital copy of <i>Far From Streets</i> via the author.)</div>
S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-75104322129036622092014-07-20T15:21:00.000-07:002014-07-25T12:50:33.148-07:0010 Horror Stories That Stuck With Meand what I learned from them<br />
<br />
A Shock Room Guest Post by <a href="http://www.angelaslatter.com/" target="_blank">Angela Slatter</a><br />
<br />
I’ve written a lot about the fairy tales I loved as a child and how they’ve influenced my writing, but I also read a lot of ghost and horror stories, which are quite different. They left a trace, those early frights, and I still reach into the back brain for the lessons they taught me about writing and scaring people. So here’s a list of ten short stories that still haunt my dreams thirty-odd years later. These are by no means the only influences, but they are the ones that sprang immediately to mind when I began to think about this post. The only thing that makes me really sad about this list is how few women are on it. :-(<br />
<br />
1. “The Tower” by Marghanita Laski<br />
I first read “The Tower” in a book of stories we’d been set for Year 11 English class. I read it late at night (in the usual last-minute rush to finish homework), and was terrified by it. In Italy, a lonely young English woman at a loose end while her husband is working, discovers the tale of a purported dark magician from the Renaissance period whose own young wife mysteriously disappeared. The protagonist discovers that Nicolo’s tower still stands, so she makes a day trip out of it. She counts the number of stairs as she climbs to the top of the tower, but loses track of time and so it’s very dark when she begins the descent ... so she counts the number of stairs to keep track and to keep her mind focused ... and all of a sudden she’s counted more stairs down than up ...<br />
<br />
You’re left with this wonderful feeling of terror, and this terrific sense that the story continues beyond the page, beyond the final full stop. It’s a deceptively simple tale, very well-paced, with an echoing sense of loneliness. The sense of pace and slowly growing dread have always remained with me.<br />
<br />
2. “Gabriel-Ernest” by Saki<br />
The most gentle and disturbing werewolf story ever. I first read it in Barbara Ireson’s Spooky Stories 2, in the early 80s. I remembering being struck by how terribly English it was, how the very strict sense of manners and impatience with anything different were at the core of − and were the cause of − the tale. And Gabriel-Ernest is a wonderful character, so clever and sleek and dangerous. The dialogue is layered and subtle and works on several levels of comprehension. I couldn’t help, when I wrote one of the stories in The Bitterwood Bible collection, but to name a character ‘the Toop girl’ in a nod to Saki’s ‘the Toop child’ who goes missing. “Gabriel-Ernest” taught me the value of subtlety and layering in stories that, while they may be short, can still have a tremendous impact for the reader.<br />
<br />
3. The one about the Wendigo the title of which I cannot recall<br />
I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called, but I read this tale in my teen years, about a boy who found a strange ‘bird’ skeleton out in the woods − it was about the size of large infant and had a sharp beak. The boy brought it home and kept it in the basement ... I think the family cat or dog disappeared. Somehow, the boy got locked down in the basement, his torch went out, and the last thing he heard was the clicking and clacking of that sharp beak. I consumed this during my phase of reading under the covers with a torch in order to circumvent the lights out directive, so you can imagine the effect it had. It taught me that the home is not safe and that your protagonist can die − both very good lessons for a writer.<br />
<br />
4. “Dame Crowl’s Ghost” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu<br />
I love this one and honestly, what’s not to love? Dame Arabella Crowl in her decrepit finery and her decayed beauty, with her nasty little secret that won’t let her rest? The tender little housemaid come to Applewale House, whose curiosity means she sees more than she should? The story-in-a-story format? I remember feeling that sensation of being frozen to the bed from fear as the old ghost made her way around the room, then the finding of the secret chamber with the murdered boy inside. Wonderfully creepy, with a great sense of time and place evoked.<br />
<br />
5. “The Chosen Vessel” by Barbara Baynton<br />
I read this one when I was about nine or ten, and we were living in a town called Longreach in the Australian Outback (which had a most excellent public library). This story makes me shudder to this day; it caused nightmares at the time, but please note: it did not stop me reading horror. It hit hard me because it’s set in the kind of country we were living in at the time; the drover’s wife is recognisable and the landscape and the situation were also very recognisable and relatable. That’s one of the lessons I took away as a writer: the more familiar something is to us, the more terrifying it can be when a twist of difference is added to it, when we lead a reader down a path that looks familiar and then make it strange. It shakes and shifts the world beneath our feet − and that kind of frisson is why we read horror.<br />
<br />
6. “Red Reign” by Kim Newman<br />
I first read this at about fifteen in the Stephen Jones edited The Giant Book of Vampires and it cracked my mind open. Initially, I didn’t like it: it MIXED THINGS UP! It broke barriers between the walls of stories and made them sit together in class. But, as I have inevitably found throughout my life, the stronger my initial dislike of something, the more I return to it and analyse it ... and then one day I find I love it. I have seen all its myriad facets and how cunning the construction is of the tale, how the characters are so true, the setting so well-painted, the dialogue so brilliantly weighted. “Red Reign” taught me how to look at stories differently, how to write something unexpected, how to throw in surprises that break a reader’s brain in a good way. I still love it and I re-read it at least once a year. And I am still gripped by, and tremendously envious of, Newman’s ability to sprinkle his stories with the most wonderful and fascinating ‘clutter’ that never gives a sense of making the story cluttered − descriptions always appear to be in precisely the right place, always appear to be precisely the thing the story needs at the time.<br />
<br />
7. “The Wailing Well” by M.R. James<br />
M.R. James is the master of making a seemingly harmless tale of schoolboys on a field trip suddenly morph into something dire and threatening. Creepy creeper things in a field, stealing away a child, then having him join their ranks. Enough said.<br />
<br />
8. “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” by Robert Bloch<br />
Again, a Ripper story and again a story I did not initially like because it played with the natural order. And again, a story I went back to over and over until I appreciated everything it did. There’s a sparseness in the language that I love, something that I also find at its best in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon. It taught me the value of choosing the right word, putting it in the right place and not trying to then embroider it, but just to leave it alone to do its job.<br />
<br />
9. “It Only Comes Out at Night” by Dennis Etchison<br />
Another one from The Giant Book of Vampires and it’s left me with a life-long fear of, and distrust for, truck stops, public toilets, and blankets on the back seats of cars. It’s a story about atmosphere as much as anything, for not a great deal happens. Two people pull over into a parking lot at a rest stop, the woman goes to the loo and the man waits. And waits. And waits. He checks out the other cars in the lot and realises they’re covered in dust. They’ve been there a long time. But there are no owners about ... A brilliant exercise in building tension.<br />
<br />
10. “Laird of Dunain” by Graham Masteron<br />
And yet again, another from The Giant Book of Vampires − yes, this book did have a large influence on me! A female painter becomes obsessed by the Laird, she begins to paint with her own blood, eventually eviscerating herself and dying − in the process the Laird becomes younger, handsomer. But that’s not the end: the secondary character who is jealous of the woman who dies? She tears the painting in half in a fit of pique, causing the newly refreshed Laird to burst apart. The lesson I took away from this story is that a tale might be made different by allowing a secondary character to have their head (but only after you’ve done all your foreshadowing); that the best laid plans of mice and men will go astray when you’re busy ignoring someone else’s needs; that humans are often unpredictable. So, this tale is an example of how important psychology and depth and complexity are to your characters.
S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-40719913248170293272014-05-12T09:35:00.000-07:002014-05-12T13:32:41.313-07:00Home and Hearth by Angela Slatter<em style="border: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Caroline’s son returns to home and hearth at last. She’s a good parent or so she tells herself. She did everything a mother could to bring Simon back, even lied for him. The only problem is that Caroline’s not sure she actually wants him here anymore.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
What is your worst fear? If you're a parent the worst fear you can identify is probably centered around your child. You fear for his safety, his happiness, his health. You would do anything to keep him from harm. And by 'harm' we mean one thing, really. Harm is inflicted by other people, brutal and violent individuals. You would do anything to prevent such people from hurting your child. But what if the source of harm, the inexplicably cruel individual, were your son? What if all of your love and your sense of morality were wasted on him? What if, despite your efforts, he remained a frightening mystery?<br />
<br />
Various authors have tackled these disturbing questions with varying degrees of success. In the new <a href="http://www.angelaslatter.com/spectral-press-chapbook-home-and-hearth/" target="_blank">Spectral Press</a> chapbook, <i>Home and Hearth</i>, <a href="http://www.angelaslatter.com/" target="_blank">Angela Slatter</a> has created a painfully recognizable mom doing her best to reason away her son's dangerous behavior. The occasion is the boy's release into her custody following a trial. The point of view is the mother's. We stay with her as she attempts to re-establish a normal life, fighting every bit of evidence which leads her, inexorably, to a terrible truth.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitsY1Fg2z1sn-C4_tQ8aZm_MVerur5mqMQz0TeSqTEdfij5fdrrlNXICU4AIP2h9nVGYWjN4WNhzDEUSJce1BQUrQaPb6MnBoEQ8c8TBt18SxgVvmpYitfUucxZyMBJ-HDYbejcXa76JQ/s1600/home-hearth-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitsY1Fg2z1sn-C4_tQ8aZm_MVerur5mqMQz0TeSqTEdfij5fdrrlNXICU4AIP2h9nVGYWjN4WNhzDEUSJce1BQUrQaPb6MnBoEQ8c8TBt18SxgVvmpYitfUucxZyMBJ-HDYbejcXa76JQ/s1600/home-hearth-cover.jpg" height="226" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
This is a brief but engrossing story, expertly told. We're not burdened with a lot of exposition. Instead Ms. Slatter gives us perfectly timed bits of information. We gather the nature of the characters bit by bit. The mom is a decent person who has every right to expect her child to be decent. Can maternal instinct correct whatever is wrong with the boy?<br />
<br />
Angela Slatter's gift is for making what is strange seem plausible. She brings that gift to bear upon the most basic of relationships, in this finely wrought tale of parental grief and longing. Recommended.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 12px;">Cover credit: Home and Hearth © Angela Slatter/Spectral Press. Artwork © Neil Williams 2014</span>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-11004215340939054762014-02-01T09:21:00.002-08:002014-02-01T09:21:34.788-08:00The Moon Will Look Strange by Lynda E. Rucker<div class="entry">
For several years I’ve been collecting horror anthologies. Some
have focused on a theme and some have been “best of” annuals. In the
second category I’ve found certain editors can be counted on to gather
and reprint truly exceptional stories. Stephen Jones’s <em>Mammoth Book of Best New Horror</em>, Paula Guran’s <em>The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror</em>, and Ellen Datlow’s <em>The Best Horror of the Year</em>
have no reason to apologize for hyperbole. These are editors who read
widely and with great respect for the genre. The work they deliver is
extraordinary and well worth the cover price.<br />
<br />
While making my way through annual anthologies and reading magazines such as <a href="http://ttapress.com/blackstatic/" target="_blank"><em>Black Static</em></a>, <a href="http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/david-longhorn/supernatural-tales-24/paperback/product-21153841.html" target="_blank"><em>Supernatural Tales</em></a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Tall-Trees-Michael-Kelly/dp/0981317723" target="_blank"><em>Shadows & Tall Trees</em></a>, and <a href="http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-lynda-e-rucker/" target="_blank"><em>Nightmare Magazine</em></a>,
certain names turn up time and again. One writer whose work I’ve come
to admire very much is Lynda E. Rucker. In fact, after reading a couple
of her stories I began to look for her name as a sure-fire sign that the
volume before me was going to be good.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://karoshibooks.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Karoshi Books</a>,
a British small press, is run by award-winning editor Johnny Mains,
Peter Mark May of Hersham Horror Books, and Cathy Hurren, a production
editor at Routledge. Last September Karoshi Books released <em>The Moon Will Look Strange</em>
by Lynda E. Rucker, one of the best story collections of 2013. This is
another instance in which a small press identifies an undeniably superb
talent far ahead of bigger, more bureaucratic publishing companies.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lyndaerucker.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/the-moon-will-look-strange-finalsmall1.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="MoonStrange" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-695" height="300" src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/wp-content/blogs.dir/1096/files/2014/01/MoonStrange-212x300.jpg" width="212" /></a><em> </em><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Will-Look-Strange/dp/1492314641" target="_blank"><em>The Moon Will Look Strange</em></a>
pulls together some of the Rucker stories that appeared earlier in
magazines and anthologies (some a few years old and some quite recent)
as well as three new stories original to the collection. It’s a
beautiful book full of strange, dark-edged, eerie tales. I can’t
recommend it highly enough. If you like weird fiction, or horror with an
emphasis on literary excellence and precise psychological insight set
in fascinating, dreamlike locations, you will fall in love with Rucker’s
world.<br />
<br />
Among the many delights of <em>The Moon Will Look Strange</em>:<br />
<br />
“The Burned House,” in which a woman is inexplicably drawn to the remnants of a personal tragedy.<br />
<br />
“No More A-Roving,” about a young traveler who can’t seem to move on
from the hostel where he’s chosen to rest, and where odd little
occurrences remind him of his longing for connection and his perpetual
need to remain in transition.<br />
<br />
“The Chance Walker,” a story that will keep you up all night
double-checking the windows and doors, and that one spot where it seems
there ought to be a door.<br />
<br />
“The Moon Will Look Strange,” a sharp, painful study of a father’s
grief and the length to which he will go to reclaim what he’s lost.<br />
<br />
“These Things We Have Always Known,” one of the first Rucker stories I
encountered, and still quite impressive after several reads. This is a
perfect illustration of the author’s gift for marrying a character’s
state of mind to the physical environment.<br />
<br />
“The Last Reel,” first published in <em>Supernatural Tales</em>, a
very creepy story about a woman who returns to her deceased aunt’s house
and makes a shocking discovery, all the while carrying on a cinematic
trivia game with her boyfriend.<br />
<br />
These are tales you will not forget. The settings seem familiar and
yet off-kilter, like landscapes in a dream, or places remembered from a
journey years ago. The loneliness and complex desires of the characters
will haunt you. No one is better at capturing rare (and terrifying)
moments of numinous wonder.<br />
<br />
2013 was a year of many fine novellas and story collections. I’d place <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Will-Look-Strange/dp/1492314641" target="_blank"><em>The Moon Will Look Strange</em></a>
near the top of the list. If you love short fiction as an art form and
as a deeply emotional/psychological experience, you can’t miss with
Lynda E. Rucker.<br />
<br />
For more Rucker fiction read <a href="http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/david-longhorn/supernatural-tales-24/paperback/product-21153841.html" target="_blank"><em>Supernatural Tales 24</em></a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Tall-Trees-Michael-Kelly/dp/0981317723" target="_blank"><em>Shadows & Tall Trees #5</em></a>, and <a href="http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-house-on-cobb-street/" target="_blank"><em>Nightmare Magazine</em></a> (June 2013), as well as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Little-Visible-Delight-Lynda-Rucker/dp/061593224X" target="_blank"><em>Little Visible Delight</em></a>,
an anthology I co-edited with Kate Jonez, published by Omnium Gatherum
Media. For non-fiction read Rucker’s brilliant column, Blood Pudding, in
<a href="http://ttapress.com/blackstatic/" target="_blank"><em>Black Static </em></a>and her blog, <a href="http://lyndaerucker.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">in the pines</a><em>.</em> You can also hear an audio version of “The Last Reel” at <a href="http://pseudopod.org/2012/10/19/pseudopod-304-the-last-reel/" target="_blank">Pseudopod</a>.<br />
</div>
S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-27028036348911757122013-10-10T10:18:00.001-07:002013-10-10T10:19:16.321-07:00Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's PathIn the late 1990s, director <a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyoshi_Kurosawa" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyoshi_Kurosawa">Kiyoshi Kurosawa</a> (known to American audiences for such films as <i>Pulse</i>, <i>Retribution</i>, <i>Bright Future</i>, and <i>Tokyo Sonata</i>)
was offered a chance to shoot two video films in two weeks. Aside from
the time constraint, he had a modest budget and one cast of actors for
both films.<br />
This year <b>Third Window Films</b> has made <b><i>Eyes of the Spider</i></b> and <b><i>Serpent's Path</i></b>
available for the first time on DVD outside of Japan. Whether you're a
fan of Kurosawa's mysteries, thrillers, and horror, or just interested
in low-budget, creative filmmaking, I think you will find these films
fascinating.<br />
<br />
<a data-mce-href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/wp-content/blogs.dir/1096/files/2013/10/EyesPR.jpg" href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/wp-content/blogs.dir/1096/files/2013/10/EyesPR.jpg"><img alt="EyesPR" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-636" data-mce-src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/wp-content/blogs.dir/1096/files/2013/10/EyesPR-300x225.jpg" height="225" src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/wp-content/blogs.dir/1096/files/2013/10/EyesPR-300x225.jpg" width="300" /></a><br />
<br />
Sho
Aikawa stars in both movies, and his characters, both named Nijima,
provide each story with a moral and emotional center. In <i>Eyes of the Spider</i>,
Nijima is a man whose young daughter has been brutally murdered. He
seeks revenge but it provides no peace of mind. When he runs into an old
classmate, he is lured deeper into a life of crime as the most
intelligent member of an eccentric hit squad.<br />
<br />
In <i>Serpent's Path</i>,
Nijima is a teacher who helps a friend, Miyashita, in a relentless
search for the man who killed Miyashita's daughter. Together they trap a
guy who formerly served as a low-level yakuza member, and begin to
exact revenge. Soon enough the guy implicates another man, and Nijima
and Miyashita continue their mission, wherever it leads.<br />
<br />
Ordinarily I'm not a big fan of films about yakuza or mafia or any other business-oriented criminal society. <i>Eyes of the Spider</i> and <i>Serpent's Path</i>
surprised me. The storytelling is riveting. The technical quality is
superb. Best of all, both films are character-driven. Every step of the
way, the action is grounded in recognizable psychology and believable
emotions. Nothing happens purely for effect.<br />
<br />
The greatest delight
was the way in which Kurosawa edited his stories. Instead of long,
drawn-out exposition or unlikely commentary, he juxtaposes striking
images to achieve moving (or humorous) and often startling effects. The
result is fresh, timeless, with an emphasis on the humanity of the
characters and a real sense of lives playing out to unpredictable yet
plausible conclusions. Highly recommended.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-81346458738781818912012-07-02T21:02:00.000-07:002012-07-02T21:03:14.516-07:00The Croning by Laird Barron<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVS3ZReYqiP41wg2oyrbip6tkRIdpuOGSZVL-uc6M6cKftQDvZuFnxgSkakkDxiI5ba6pZgiBe1pY_TEPqw0Nk1mdVxAh9OLpaFa3LRWz7S9CHvelYlW_4eMaX9fmV5VoA7LZModohLk/s1600/Croning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVS3ZReYqiP41wg2oyrbip6tkRIdpuOGSZVL-uc6M6cKftQDvZuFnxgSkakkDxiI5ba6pZgiBe1pY_TEPqw0Nk1mdVxAh9OLpaFa3LRWz7S9CHvelYlW_4eMaX9fmV5VoA7LZModohLk/s1600/Croning.jpg" /></a></div>
Laird Barron’s debut novel, published by <a href="http://www.nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=236" target="_blank">Night Shade Books</a>, opens with a fairy tale most readers will recognize: A miller’s daughter spins straw into gold with the help of a strange, misshapen man who demands equally strange payment. When the spinning is done the miller’s daughter marries the king, and must reward her magical benefactor with the gift of her firstborn son. The only escape from the contract is to guess the benefactor’s real name by the time he returns to collect the child.<br />
<br />
Assuming reader familiarity with at least one incarnation of this fairy tale, Barron describes the arduous journey undertaken by the queen’s henchman–who is also her brother and lover–to ferret out the name of the benefactor. Barron’s spin includes profane and anachronistic language, a canine sidekick, and a gruesome discovery: The benefactor is not a one-off con artist. He is ancient and mysterious, insinuating himself into the lives and dreams of thousands of people. He is and is not what he appears to be. And he has henchmen of his own.<br />
<br />
Following the fairy tale we pick up our main story. Don Miller and Michelle Mock are married and by all appearances madly in love. His area of expertise is geology, hers is anthropology. Over the course of five decades they travel together and separately to remote places all around the globe. They have children. They grow old together. On paper this seems like a perfect marriage. Yet something has happened to cause a permanent, subterranean rift.<br />
<br />
Beginning with a bizarre event in Mexico in 1958 Don and Michelle have taken different spiritual paths. Apparently successful and well matched, their surface lives conceal what may be irreconcilable differences. Michelle has grown strong and independent while Don has drifted inward, developing weird phobias and sensing danger just beneath the skin of nearly everyone he meets.<br />
<br />
In his two story collections, <i>The Imago Sequence and Other Stories</i> and <i>Occultation</i>, the author has explored the consequences of ignoring myth and recurring tropes when they emerge in the modern world.<a href="http://www.nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=236" target="_blank"> <i>The Croning</i></a> delves deeper into collective consciousness for the underlying themes that bind and separate individuals over the course of a lifetime. The fairy tale that opens the novel is not a diversion. The timeless fears that created the fairy tale form the underpinnings to a much larger myth, incorporating Cthulhu-inspired ancient beings as well as anthropological adventures, geological history, and a dynamic portrait of the war between the sexes.<br />
<br />
Setting aside the complexity and weight of the narrative, this novel would still be a must-read for the unique style of the author’s prose. No one anywhere combines two-fisted noir with the best traditions of horror quite like Laird Barron. The result is rich with detail, broad in scope, and often shocking in its implications. In Barron’s universe the flutter of a butterfly’s wing is connected not only to a hurricane but to possible car crashes, probable shady business deals, nightmares emerging from the shadows to demand a seat at the breakfast table, and pretty much everything in the attic and basement of every house you’ve ever occupied. This is a writer who comes closer than any artist I can name in capturing the whole shebang of humanity’s place in the cosmos. If you think that’s a crazy exaggeration, you haven’t read his fiction. Read it.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-87663104646089236132012-06-02T11:24:00.000-07:002012-06-02T11:24:08.434-07:00A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)<img alt="Picture" src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/files/library/TaleTwoSistersPoster.jpg" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" /><b>Directed & written by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ji-Woon">Kim Ji-woon</a></b><br />
<b> </b>
<br />
As the film opens, a doctor tries to interview a patient who never
speaks. He asks if she remembers the family photo he shows her, and
urges her to tell him the truth from now on.<br />
<br />
In the next sequence, Su-mi and her sister Su-yeon climb out of the
family car after a long drive home with their father. They take a look
around the yard and inside the house, then exchange a few words with
their skittish stepmother.<br />
<br />
The girls settle in to their rooms, and try to assume a normal
schedule. But something is wrong in the house. Strange noises,
nightmares, and an ongoing conflict with their stepmother cause Su-mi
and Su-yeon a great deal of anxiety, which brings them closer to each
other but makes them more vulnerable to threats from outside. Every
attempt to convince their skeptical father that his new wife is
dangerous makes them seem less believable. Meanwhile, the stepmother is
becoming more weird and threatening with every encounter.<br />
<br />
If you liked <i><a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/archives/124942.asp">Tell Me Something</a></i> or <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323630/">Phone</a></i> you will probably find <i>A Tale of Two Sisters</i> engaging.<br />
The director also made two of my favorite films: the dark and hilarious <i><a href="http://www.iofilm.co.uk/fm/q/quiet_family_1998.shtml">The Quiet Family</a></i>, and a comedy of corporate ambition and wrestler's revenge, <i><a href="http://www.subwaycinema.com/frames/archives/kfest2001/foulking.htm">The Foul King</a></i>.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815245/">A Tale of Two Sisters</a></i> is currently being remade in English for a 2008 release. (Note that the dts produced DVD has subtitles which occasionally lag
behind the dialog, so that the tempo of speech is not always maintained
by the translation.)<br />
<br />
<b>SPOILER WARNING - Stop here if you have not seen the film yet and don't want to know what happens.</b><br />
<br />
Some people find torture scenes more frightening than a plot based on
the agony of loss and grief. But I think grief is the starting point
for horror. What we create in the void that follows defines us as
believers or non-believers, as those who go on or those who cannot go on
without a fundamental shift in how we view, and interact with, the
world.<br />
<br />
<i>A Tale of Two Sisters</i> is about grief, identity, and guilt. It
poses the idea that deep, realistic guilt (structured around a true and
catastrophic lapse in judgment) may only be assuaged by embracing the
object of one's regret and becoming one with it.<br />
<br />
This is abuser-identification in reverse: You become the being you
have wronged, in order to live with what you have done. But the film
goes one step farther, suggesting that madness can be infectious. And if
you believe in the supernatural, the film suggests that guilt and
madness may even summon the spirit of a dead person who has been
wronged.<br />
<br />
As you watch this film a second time, pay close attention to the
camera angles and clothing. Note the physical relation of characters to
one another in each scene. Note that there are times when the
stepmother's ensemble is a combination of colors the two sisters are
wearing. At another time, we see a flashback shot of Su-mi wearing a
blouse worn by the stepmother in a previous version of the same scene.
She duplicates the stepmother's action as well, taking medication at the
dinner table.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Picture" src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/files/library/stepmother.jpg" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" />The
story is full of duplicates--an extra notebook and pen set; an
identical pair of pajamas; a closet loaded with copies of one outfit. A
dead bird appears in two places, apparently at the same time. Su-mi
discovers that her sister and her stepmother have started their period
on the same day. How likely? Not very.<br />
<br />
Once you have learned the truth about Su-mi and Su-yeon, watch the
stepmother closely. Her appearance is entirely different, after Su-mi's
father decides the girl is ill enough to need re-hospitalization. The
stepmother now wears a gray suit, her hair and makeup are softened, and
her manner is gentler and more natural. All of this tells us that the
previous version of the stepmother was one manufactured by remorse and
hatred. The actual stepmother is merely the inspiration for the one in
Su-mi's mind.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Picture" src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/files/library/TaleofTwoSisters1.jpg" style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px;" /><br />
The last few scenes imply that the stepmother, who may seem concerned
about her husband's daughter but who was nevertheless responsible for
the tragedy that triggered her first breakdown, is now haunted. You may
decide that she is finally collapsing emotionally under the weight of
what she has done. Or you may think that the house itself is responding
to the call of insanity sent round by Su-mi's visit, and the unjustly
injured are rising to take their revenge.<br />
<br />
Either way, in the last flashback, you will be both moved and
disturbed by the sight of the defiant Su-mi striding away from her house
while something horrible and irrevocable occurs inside, changing her
state of being forever. It is one of those petty, little moments of
neglect we have all indulged in, never knowing what terrible
consequences might follow.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-24971795639042908982012-06-02T11:11:00.002-07:002012-06-02T11:11:52.300-07:00Calvaire (2005)<b>Directed by <a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0239001/">Fabrice Du Welz</a><br />
Written by Fabrice Du Welz & <a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm1343281/">Romain Protat</a> </b><br />
<img alt="Picture" src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/files/library/CalvairePoster.jpg" style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px;" /><br />
<br />
In the 2005 Belgian import <i>Calvaire</i>, Marc (<a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0524217/">Laurent Lucas</a>)
is a singer, although not a particularly talented or successful one.
With his good looks and scruffy charm, however, he makes decent money
during winter holidays. We first see him performing a maudlin ballad at a
nursing home, where two women make passes at him. Gently deflecting the
unwanted attention, Marc explains that he's on his way to another gig,
and promptly hits the road in his rickety van.<br />
<br />
Hours later, on the road, in the dark, in a downpour, his van breaks down. (A word of advice: If you have to travel long distances, through
territory where you have no friends and you might run into people you
don't want as friends, you can avoid being the hero of a horror film by
acquainting yourself with the inner workings of your only vehicle.)<br />
<br />
So, an irritatingly odd young man wanders by and says he's looking
for his lost dog. He helps Marc find his way from the ailing van to a
nearby inn. As our hapless hero's luck would have it, innkeeper Bartel (<a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0077449/">Jackie Berroyer</a>) is a gregarious man who used to be a comedian, and he's glad of the company Marc offers. (If Marc were smarter, he might ask how a gregarious comedian ends up
alone in the middle of nowhere operating an inn nobody visits. But
maybe this is the kind of question you only ask if you watch as many
horror films as I do.) It seems the tragedy of Bartel's life was the loss of his beloved
wife Gloria, who ran off and left him years ago. Bartel's nostalgia for
Gloria is matched by his wariness of the people who live in the village a
couple of miles away. Bartel warns Marc not to go to the village,
because there is something wrong with the residents.<br />
<br />
The next day, while Bartel attempts to repair the van, Marc goes for a
walk. He stumbles upon several local farmers engaged in an act that
seems to support Bartel's warning about the village. Marc slips away
and returns to the inn, where Bartel has made every effort to make him
feel "at home."<br />
<br />
The title of the film is translated as "The Ordeal." And there were
several times during the second half when I laughed out loud, thinking
it must surely end soon, and not for my sake. There are chilling
moments, like the bizarre dance of ugly men in the tavern, that keep
renewing the tantalizing possibility of more than the film delivers.
But, ultimately, this is a short, simple tale of cruelty and revenge
enacted without a breath of compassion.<br />
<br />
My sympathies are with Gloria.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-19902131303736981832011-06-15T10:08:00.000-07:002011-06-15T10:08:39.737-07:00I Saw the Devil (2010)<b>Directed by Jee-woon Kim<br />
Written by Hoon-jung Park</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588170/"><i><b>I Saw the Devil</b></i></a> is the latest film from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0453518/">Jee-woon Kim</a>, whose dark and dorky comedy <i>The Quiet Family </i>is one of my favorite films (and provided the source material for Takashi Miike's <i>The Happiness of the Katikuris</i>). <i>The Foul King</i> further demonstrated a droll comedic style. The director's elegantly spooky short film "Memories" was a standout in the trilogy <i>Three Extremes II</i>. And my wish to share with everyone I know the psychological/supernatural horror <i>A Tale of Two Sisters</i> is one reason I started this blog.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs4mdYJOBvzmm1x2KIAI23DiYjEmyZVfX148gCPSnZ0a2fea_8AA0KtN_3TEidKPTbaaJ6ATiB6D69B90det42GdUwH_AunXfim3-zOo5q1pkY4k-CKdCI-0za8hH0XYY2BGUbgJ1MCes/s1600/ISawTheDevil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs4mdYJOBvzmm1x2KIAI23DiYjEmyZVfX148gCPSnZ0a2fea_8AA0KtN_3TEidKPTbaaJ6ATiB6D69B90det42GdUwH_AunXfim3-zOo5q1pkY4k-CKdCI-0za8hH0XYY2BGUbgJ1MCes/s1600/ISawTheDevil.jpg" /></a></div><i>I Saw the Devil</i> begins with a van driving through snow and pulling over near a car with a flat tire. Inside the car a young woman is killing time with her cell phone. While waiting for a tow truck to arrive she makes romantic small talk with her fiance, an ardent and attractive young man who is stuck at the office and can't come to her rescue. The young woman declines an offer of help from the Good Samaritan in the van, but the man doesn't leave.<br />
<br />
What happens next infuses <i>I Saw the Devil </i>with a sense of urgency. The Good Samaritan turns out to be a serial killer trawling for victims. This would be just another act of random violence in an unpredictable world, both absurd and tragic, except for one unusual fact. The fiance who is plunged into guilt and vengeance is not an office worker. He's a government agent, a man with extraordinary skills and a killer instinct. So he takes time off work to track down, torment and annihilate the man who killed his beloved.<br />
<br />
A similar premise--innocent victim avenged by a relentless loved one--has been used plenty of times. What Jee-woon Kim brings to the revenge film is an adult approach to character behavior. His characters have complex emotional lives. Over the course of the story they face the boundaries of psychological endurance. It is unusual to find a filmmaker of such intensity and virtuosity who focuses on the significance of simple decisions and actions, and on the tiny cruelties and wordless victories of real human interaction.<br />
<br />
If this were a typical revenge movie the audience would have to be content with watching the protagonist destroy his enemy. In <i>I Saw the Devil</i> the conflict between the secret agent (Byung-hun Lee) and the serial killer (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/"><i>Oldboy</i></a> star Min-sik Choi) yields a couple of weighty moral questions: When and how does violence end? If our hero becomes as intent upon his horrific mission as the killer is dedicated to his evil pursuits, then who is the good guy?<br />
<br />
Some over-the-top dramatic action will hold the attention of viewers who are not interested in answering these questions. Adults who are convinced by early scenes to crave an eye for an eye will have more to think about. The final moment of this blood-soaked thriller says it all: Nothing can satisfy our deep-rooted desire to set the world right, following the loss of everything that we love.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-26859024218745379612011-06-15T00:35:00.000-07:002011-06-15T00:35:00.358-07:0013 Assassins<b>Directed by Takashi Miike</b><br />
<b>Written by Kaneo Ikegami & Daisuke Tengan</b><br />
<br />
Late in Japan's feudal era the reigning Shogun has chosen as his successor a younger brother whose sadistic and amoral nature guarantees that the country will descend into chaos and war under his leadership. Among the Shogun's administrative officials it is decided that the chosen heir, Lord Naritsugu, must not be allowed to rise to power. Yet challenging the appointed future Shogun would be an act of self-destruction. In order to stop Naritsugu, and to avenge the families he has brutalized, a senior official secretly gathers a group of samurai to try to track and kill Naritsugu.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh87vvh9KYGKDUA6fig5chZiLIvJIw5lFMi_fQm3j2g4e1qkkBqS-srGdud44WZL6KfirK0qNXCWkAoi9v9qV-L6PfD6chDO42uYeocyLaJGIXtuk7tMgwLt8Fuk72cYeUeiOxniYDT6h4/s1600/13Assassins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh87vvh9KYGKDUA6fig5chZiLIvJIw5lFMi_fQm3j2g4e1qkkBqS-srGdud44WZL6KfirK0qNXCWkAoi9v9qV-L6PfD6chDO42uYeocyLaJGIXtuk7tMgwLt8Fuk72cYeUeiOxniYDT6h4/s320/13Assassins.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>The samurai enlisted for this cause are grateful for the mission. After years of inactivity most of these men long for a defining moment, a purpose upon which to focus their skills and their devotion to honorable action. They are led by Shinzaemon Shimada (the great <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0945131/bio">Koji Yakusho</a>, in a role every bit as stirring and iconic as Rooster Cogburn in <i>True Grit</i>). It is his commitment to balancing the scales of justice which inspires the samurai who follow him into what may prove to be both a suicidal and unsuccessful quest.<br />
<br />
Now and then a great revenge movie comes along to both express and assuage the outrage that remains after an era of extreme moral compromise. This one is courtesy of the master filmmaker Takashi Miike. There is no obvious political statement in the film, but there is a clear moral imperative. In the world of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1436045/">13 Assassins</a></i> those who use their power to harm the powerless, and their exemption from scrutiny to behave with dishonor and cruelty, are considered the lowest of human creatures.<br />
Miike knows horror. Not just its formal conventions but its source, deep in the protected recesses of our imagination. Whatever horrific act we can imagine, someone has surely committed for reasons too shamefully selfish to justify.<br />
<br />
<i>13 Assassins</i> is listed in the IMDb as Miike's eighty-first directorial project. His mastery of cinematic form and storytelling is everywhere apparent in this period action film. From the first frame to the last, his precise attention to detail rewards the viewer with indelible images. Some of those images are horrific and some are profoundly spiritual. All are in the service of a heartbreaking tale of dishonorable conduct and moral vengeance that audiences can enjoy as pure entertainment and as a balm to the casualties and calamities of our time.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-7178407797109665022011-06-12T16:04:00.000-07:002011-06-12T16:04:59.642-07:00Hater by David MoodyFirst published by its author in 2006 <i>Hater</i> by David Moody was republished in February 2009 by Thomas Dunne Books in the United States and Orion Books in the United Kingdom. The first in a three-book series, <i>Hater</i> was followed by <i>Dog Blood</i> in 2010.<br />
<br />
Moody's previous publishing effort, the post-apocalyptic <i>Autumn</i> was originally offered for free online. More than half a million downloads of the novel created enough buzz to lead to a movie adaptation and republication of the five-book series.<br />
<br />
The story of <i>Hater</i> begins with a random act of violence between two apparent strangers. The action is then observed by dozens of people on their way to work. Witnesses are torn. Should they assist the hapless victim? Should they try to stop the attacker? Or should they try and make it to the office on time?<br />
<br />
"Sometimes having such a dull and monotonous job is an advantage. This stuff is way beneath me and I don't really have to think about what I'm doing." (p. 9)<br />
<br />
So says Danny McCoyne, the protagonist in <i>Hater</i>, who arrives at the office a little later than he had planned. With these lines the character introduces his general attitude and sums up a large percentage of modern jobs. We've all been there: moving, talking, and making it through the day, yet mentally zoned out. The only incentive for returning every morning is a paycheck, and there are at least a dozen times a day when that hardly seems worth the sacrifice, the damping down of the soul required for daily survival.<br />
<br />
This common state of mind--hovering slightly above and to one side of the physical world--could be relaxing. After all, it is a bit like meditation. It could be adapted into a form of emotional and intellectual self-discipline. But the healthy benefits of meditation rely upon the absence of constant irritation.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, Danny's work environment is not pleasant. His supervisor is obnoxious and belligerent, petty and spiteful. His co-workers can be evenly divided into sniveling kiss-ups and the naturally inane. One of the reasons Danny lingers in his half-there condition is to avoid getting angry enough to erupt at his fellow workers on a regular basis.<br />
<br />
When he isn't struggling to contain his temper, Danny is bored stupid by the tedious routine at the government office where he processes fines for parking violations. At the same time, he is a little afraid of the enraged drivers who come barreling into the office hoping to scream their way clear of paying the standard fee to retrieve their impounded vehicles.<br />
<br />
At home Danny copes with three small children who compete for his attention and never seem to shut up. His beloved yet increasingly alienated and harried wife finds fault with every move he makes. They seldom make love, and they are always tired. Just as disheartening in a different way, their combined salaries don't go far enough to afford luxuries that might relieve the close quarters and constant sacrifices that currently define their personal lives. They strive to be patient, loving parents, while longing for just one day of freedom, just one whole night of sleep.<br />
<br />
Sound familiar? Of course it does. Moody has accurately and vividly described the way a large part of the population in Great Britain and the U.S. manage to get by, week after week, year after year. In every area of the lives we have created, our sanity and our self-importance are chipped away bit by bit.<br />
<br />
Surviving urban competition is a continual struggle, a deft balancing act. No wonder, then, that some of us go stark, raving mad. We are playing by the rules in a society that demands we behave properly at all times and then sporadically and extravagantly rewards certain individuals who behave badly, sometimes going so far as to call them "mavericks" and heroes.<br />
<br />
We strenuously ignore one provocation after another, all day long, without any sanctified form of release other than music concerts and sporting events, which have come to represent far too much to their devotees. This fact is highlighted in the book when an act of violence at a concert is initially misinterpreted and applauded as part of the show.<br />
<br />
The first time Danny witnesses someone losing control and directing aggression at another person, he watches with the same mixture of curiosity and disbelief we've all experienced at the spark of a crisis. In our orderly and unsatisfying world, in the midst of all the mundane activity we have contrived, denial is our most common response to the extraordinary.<br />
<br />
Danny goes from denial to caution, and then to a gradually dawning recognition that the violence he observes in various public places may not be a series of isolated incidents, but possibly a rising wave of brutality. Something has gone wrong, and no one will explain how it has happened, or how to remedy it. Most frightening, no one can predict which person will be next, in the role of aggressor or victim.<br />
<br />
As our protagonist begins to understand how widespread the problem is, Moody draws a meticulously detailed progression to reveal Danny's shifting consciousness. We travel along with the character, smoothly and plausibly, from denial and shock to protectiveness toward loved ones, and beyond.<br />
<br />
The final phases of the story are entirely believable in terms of human nature, and I won't spoil them by giving away too much. Moody has achieved something rare and quite moving, with this book, which is to portray the outer boundary of what people are capable of doing, without making the story seem like pure fantasy.<br />
<br />
Danny's actions make sense. Furthermore, few of us attain adulthood without witnessing at least one act of inexplicable violence. In addition, we read about such acts in the news all the time:<br />
<br />
"Arkansas man sentenced for killing slow hairdresser."<br />
<br />
"Canada bus passenger beheads seat mate."<br />
<br />
"Arizona boy charged with killing father 'loved his dad.'"<br />
<br />
"Man stabbed to death outside a fast-food restaurant in Oxford Street."<br />
<br />
Moody has cleverly taken our constant awareness of such events occurring at the fringes of our lives, and fleshed out the individual scenarios for them. Interspersed with scenes of Danny gritting his teeth through another encounter at work or another argument at home, the author presents situations in which people go ballistic with one another. These moments are scarily grounded in natural, nuanced behavior and are set in a context we can recognize all too clearly.<br />
<br />
The beauty of Moody's novel is the way in which it depicts people shifting from abject boredom and self-repression to pure rampage. When it occurs, this tumult of energy is both frightening and familiar--exhilarating in an instinctive, animal sense. Worse, the rush that occurs when Moody's characters resort to base brutality is the most normal thing in the world, every bit as human and real as a family cringing in horror at the fragile periphery of it all.<br />
<br />
The final scenes of Hater leave open the possibility of either a thematic or chronological sequel. This may be one reason some of the basic questions raised by the protagonist are not answered satisfactorily. A pre-existing state is hinted at, but not played out entirely. However subsequent installments might develop, the theme of this book will be tough to follow: Maybe we ought to find better, healthier, and more satisfying ways of channeling our innate aggression than putting on trendy clothes and making nice at the office every day.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>First published in 2009. </i></span>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-86532724737065834202011-06-10T10:13:00.000-07:002011-06-10T10:13:50.211-07:00Tragic Life Stories by Steve Duffy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhlvFTFkHy3z1Od-Y-lS213obpxDVZgWSGlZLWQ5rLD3mPQrXOS2AD8s3KEnkNZpztUUYABeQ9dceOmkmLvFYjaMupfcDa1AWyn3awX2xgd_3ARCilnV4jgfcGq4JlEbVvnxB9RCZHpPI/s1600/TragicLifeStories.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhlvFTFkHy3z1Od-Y-lS213obpxDVZgWSGlZLWQ5rLD3mPQrXOS2AD8s3KEnkNZpztUUYABeQ9dceOmkmLvFYjaMupfcDa1AWyn3awX2xgd_3ARCilnV4jgfcGq4JlEbVvnxB9RCZHpPI/s1600/TragicLifeStories.jpg" /></a></div>Certain names in a horror anthology’s table of contents will automatically compel me to buy the book. Steve Duffy is one of those names. His modern tales of horror, with their sardonic observations on the foibles of human nature as it traipses through the 21st century, are a must-read.<br />
<br />
<br />
So when <a href="http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/ashtreecurrent.html">Ash-Tree Press</a> announced the publication of <i><b>Tragic Life Stories</b></i>, a collection of nine recent Duffy short stories, I had to have a copy. Now that I have read it, I have made a decision: No one other than my husband gets to borrow it. No one else can even look at it, because it’s my cherished copy. If that makes me selfish, big deal.<br />
<br />
Tell you what. I’ll share a little of it with you, here in this post. Then you can go buy your own copy.<br />
<br />
In her introduction Barbara Roden notes the shift that occurred when the author of the book decided to move from his early career ghost stories, which resided in the world of M.R. James’ antiquarian books and fireside chats among gentlemen of letters, to tales of terror set in a world quite recognizable to today’s reader. This choice, combined with an astonishing ear for common speech and a fascination with what makes people do what they do, is a defining characteristic of Duffy’s recent writing. The eeriness of his prose is often achieved by introducing something weird but entirely plausible in a situation that is mundane and familiar.<br />
<br />
We have been to these places, lived in these shabby yet comfortable apartments and houses, observed the odd behavior of a neighbor or a stranger and said, “Hm. I wonder what that’s all about.” Finding out what that’s all about is central to Duffy’s fiction and that is why, when it hits home, it stays with you.<br />
<br />
The title story begins with a writer, Dan, perusing the shelves of a local bookstore. Emotionally stunned following the loss of a significant relationship and the cancellation of a book contract, Dan is engaging in that most human and despicable habit of the unhappy writer. He is trashing the published work of other authors. As he moves from a spiteful summation of the popular titles in his genre, fantasy, to the non-fiction section, his angry wit sharpens. Most of the non-fiction takes the form of what Dan calls “tragic life stories.” These are the drug and rehab and dysfunctional family memoirs that have proliferated over the past two decades and have won a multitude of readers who like to wallow in another person’s sorrow.<br />
<br />
While grinding his teeth Dan meets a woman of apparently boundless compassion, who shows great interest in him and his writing. She also loves “tragic life stories.” Given the popularity of such memoirs, his current state of mind, and his attraction to this new, possibly romantic interest, it seems natural enough that Dan goes home and promptly begins writing such a memoir from the point of view of a horribly misused boy. From this point on, Dan is living a lie. But the power of his imagination may be greater than he thinks.<br />
<br />
In <b>“Tantara”</b> we see a couple taking a day trip. Isobel is indulging in a favorite pastime, studying an old church in a country village. Pete is indulging Isobel and fighting both his boredom and his hatred for anyone they encounter who appears to be much more affluent than they are. Following a strange incident on the road, Pete and Isobel stop for a bite to eat and Pete’s enmity is aroused by a celebration of locals, but he soon makes a discovery that turns his hostility to terror.<br />
<br />
<b>“Certain Death for a Known Person”</b> is a slightly more traditional supernatural story. A young man is visited by a being who demands a bargain to save the life of someone the young man knows and cares for. As horror fans know, such a bargain always comes with a catch. The beauty of <b>“Certain Death”</b> is in the cleverness of that catch.<br />
<br />
Donna is a new employee trying to begin her job and establish a routine, but her desk and work area have been commandeered by a team of repairmen on an apparently endless assignment to correct <b>“The Fabric of Things”</b> in the crumbling building. In this surreal story Donna makes it her mission to create and define her role as an employee despite the strange machinations of the ubiquitous repairmen.<br />
<br />
The protagonists of <b>“Nightmare Farm”</b> and <b>“Someone Across the Way”</b> are men who sense that something unnatural is occurring, the foundations of their carefully established lives have begun to shift. Yet they are powerless to fight the effects, let alone discover the cause, until it is too late. They have become who they are through inertia and when radical change comes to threaten that identity, they have no skills with which to meet it.<br />
<br />
These stories might be, at heart, unbearably sad if not for the razor-sharp wit Duffy employs in each characterization. He knows these men, knows their yearnings and dirty secrets, and he draws them so expertly that we laugh at their self-delusion while we fear for their safety. They don’t even have the ability to engage in camaraderie with other men. In <b>“Nightmare Farm”</b> Jamie takes his partner’s recurring, scream-inducing dreams in stride, but he is terrified by the prospect of having to kill time with Garth, “an alarmingly bearded man with no detectable capacity for banter.”<br />
<br />
<b>“Only Passing Through Here”</b> is a spooky tale of a burglary gone wrong–as wrong as it can get. And <b>“Numbers”</b> charts the tangled myths that attempt to explain inexplicable illness and death in the days before AIDS research provided (also unsatisfactory for the human soul) answers.<br />
<br />
The crowning achievement of the collection is the superb story <b>“The First Time.”</b> Here memory and middle age reflect upon a breathtaking moment of youthful passion. The boy on the verge of being a man has grown up to be something other than he imagined. He is now haunted by a single act for which he can never atone, and which has altered the course of his life. Despite its supernatural elements <b>“The First Time”</b> is a genre-breaking tale of regret and remembered desire that will linger with the reader for a long time.<br />
<br />
Steve Duffy is much loved and widely published, so look for his work in anthologies and future collections. For now you can find a long list of his credits at <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/376166.Steve_Duffy">Goodreads</a>.<br />
Share the horror.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-69993723721687175382011-06-10T10:09:00.000-07:002011-06-10T10:09:45.868-07:00The Kids Are Not All Right: INSIDIOUS and THE BLEEDING HOUSE<div class="entry-content blogentrytext"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeU494qCt5kymlaTqNeEiBRMQTcrRZd-Yjj1O5R9QJ7q2kNiAUHxiTW_1TQPX11bZmc78mY90rV0YEcsXsNtD7VbWiXuRbz7uwU2cAqjOW_VkpK0Ym3KJqj45l77iv9h-kHwht0_iUsGY/s1600/Insidious.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeU494qCt5kymlaTqNeEiBRMQTcrRZd-Yjj1O5R9QJ7q2kNiAUHxiTW_1TQPX11bZmc78mY90rV0YEcsXsNtD7VbWiXuRbz7uwU2cAqjOW_VkpK0Ym3KJqj45l77iv9h-kHwht0_iUsGY/s1600/Insidious.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Insidious</i> begins like many family situated horror films. Dad goes to work (he's a school teacher). Mom continues to unpack boxes in the new house (which is actually an old craftsman home, the kind filled with woodwork and old fashioned doorknobs). The kids explore the place's creaky corners while skewed camera angles and sound effects warn us that this world is not as safe as it appears. </span><br />
<br />
One of the great things about <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1591095/"><em>Insidious</em></a> is the way it captures, simply and without melodrama, the exhausting nature of parenthood. Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) adores her three children. Yet she is clearly at the end of her rope, setting aside her work as an aspiring musical artist and committing all of her energy to this dream life with kids. When she tells her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) that she can't take much more, her words have weight. Unfortunately Josh is distracted by a need to work that seems practical at first and compulsive on second thought.<br />
<br />
The terrible issue at the heart of this family is the care Renai must provide for their son Dalton after he has an accident in the new house. Dalton slips into a state which the doctors can’t label a coma. In fact they don’t understand what is wrong, but the added anxiety and uncertainty push Renai over the edge. While alone with the kids, she begins to see weird things. Baffling and terrifying things she can't explain to Josh. She breaks, and she begs him to move the family to another house. Because this is a smarter than average film and because Josh is a loving husband and father, he agrees.<br />
<br />
The Lamberts pull up stakes and relocate to a more modern, less creaky, not so spooky abode in another neighborhood. And things seem okay, until they don't. Renai is shocked and thrown off course again when she sees something, or someone, in her new home.<br />
<br />
At this point, because the director (James Wan) and writer (Leigh Whannell) have taken time to lay the groundwork for it, we are allowed an exquisite and all too rare pleasure as viewers: We get to choose among several possibilities that might explain what is going on with Renai and her family. As a grownup jaded by too many superficial plots and overwrought performances, I appreciate the subtlies of <em>Insidious</em>. Its charms worked on me, and although there were places where I had to make a leap of faith I did not regret making them. The pay-off was pure black silk, and worth every penny.<br />
Kudos to the designers, editor and casting director. This seamless production owes a great deal to its experienced cast of actors, inventive costuming and makeup, terrific lighting and a pace that never leaves you pondering for too long.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535566/"><em>The Bleeding House</em></a> screened at the 2011 <a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival/">Tribeca Film Festival</a>. Philip Gelatt’s psychological horror presents another family, one that appears to be the antithesis of the Lamberts. Matt and Marilyn (Richard Bekins and Betsy Aidem) lead an oddly disconnected life at the end of a dirt road miles from town. Their two teenaged children Quentin and Gloria (who only answers to the name “Blackbird”) are quite different products of a dysfunctional upbringing. The son can’t wait to escape the tedium of their anti-social existence. Gloria gives the impression that she would not fit in anywhere, at any time.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6pnsHYf7kDzVL6xmiYOeeANEOmaruOyErBWllWIgR0IRbD072eY-oD6FDeS44ZCxZHL0EhiIDRjio_KwNLkf4FMJnEV6QwLhaxbk1JnDqzRzrOTU5d2YQ0_dTStArBTZ7F0GbcNczmhE/s1600/BleedingHouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6pnsHYf7kDzVL6xmiYOeeANEOmaruOyErBWllWIgR0IRbD072eY-oD6FDeS44ZCxZHL0EhiIDRjio_KwNLkf4FMJnEV6QwLhaxbk1JnDqzRzrOTU5d2YQ0_dTStArBTZ7F0GbcNczmhE/s1600/BleedingHouse.jpg" /></a></div>While we wonder what made this family such a mess, a man named Nick (Patrick Breen) appears and asks for a place to stay overnight. His car has broken down, he explains. The garage won’t send anyone to help him until morning. He is stranded, and his distress offers Matt and Marilyn a chance to be Good Samaritans. It also gives them a rare opportunity to make conversation with another adult.<br />
<br />
At the dinner table Nick demonstrates his gift for gab. He is a believer, a man of morality, and a doctor. His patter seems too refined but this might be because he is at odds with his era. He has a soothing effect on Matt and Marilyn, maybe because they are all too grateful for company. They admit to being outsiders in their community. As the night goes on they allude to their estrangement with society in more poignant terms.<br />
<br />
When Gloria argues with Marilyn over the condition of her bedroom–not your typical bright pile of junk, but a stark collection of insects mounted on scraps of paper with a date of death scribbled in one corner–Gloria trumps her mother with an unnecessary and shocking display of cruelty. Now we get it. Something is wrong with the girl, and it isn’t superficial. This is when the evening truly begins.<br />
<a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/bleeding_house-film35065.html"><em>The Bleeding House</em></a> is about the allure of brutality for certain people. The film sort of balances this with an unexpected revelation. The family’s secrets are not all shameful and not all bad. Nick is a talkative dude. Some viewers may tire of his endless fascination with good and evil.<br />
<br />
The element that kept me going was the film’s somber tone. In an age of snarky films that wink at the audience while hacking limbs and glorifying impossibly powerful villains, it is refreshing to see a movie whose director is not afraid to take his subject seriously. <br />
</div>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-71042459164567962172011-04-10T20:14:00.000-07:002011-04-10T20:14:45.624-07:00Rot & Ruin<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shock Room Book Review</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong><a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/files/2011/02/RotRuin.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #004386; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-211" height="226" src="http://blog.seattlepi.com/shockroom/files/2011/02/RotRuin.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; display: inline; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 24px; margin-top: 4px; max-width: 640px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" width="153" /></a>Rot & Ruin</strong> (Simon & Schuster, 2010)<br />
by Jonathan Maberry<br />
<em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Review by Cory J. Herndon</em></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jonathan Maberry’s short story “Family Business” in the 2010 <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">New Dead</em></strong> anthology was a character-driven piece that gave some needed warmth and heart to a sometimes bleak (but never dull) volume. It’s a story about family that isn’t cloying or sentimental. In fact it’s a pretty engaging coming-of-age adventure that just happens to take place fifteen years after a zombie apocalypse. <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rot & Ruin</em></strong> marks Maberry’s expansion of that short story into a young adult novel that fully realizes the potential of the world glimpsed in “Family Business.” This is a dark, gripping, hilarious, horrifying, touching, dangerous, and most of all real place that’s populated with believable characters–even the teenagers. <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rot & Ruin</em></strong> is the <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Huckleberry Finn</em></strong> of zombie apocalypse novels.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rather than simply use the original story as a jumping-off point, Maberry completely reshapes and expands the narrative by adding context, back story, and menace–not just the ever-present threat of the undead, but all-too-familiar human villains too. The author spends much more time with protagonist Benny Imura as he faces his impending birthday, his fifteenth since First Night. Benny was just a baby when the worldwide zombie outbreak struck a decade and a half earlier, and remembers only terrifying glimpses. But he is certain he remembers Tom running away from their home with Benny in his arms, leaving his parents to the walking dead. Benny lives with his older brother Tom in a mountain community that hides from the dangerous, zombie-infested world outside behind makeshift walls and guard towers.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In short, Benny has come to believe his older brother is a coward, while local bounty hunters with nicknames like Charlie Pink-Eye and the Motor City Hammer represent the height of human achievement (an admittedly low bar at the end of the world). And so for Benny’s entire life he has blamed his brother for the fact he’s grown up with no parents in a makeshift hometown that might not last.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As if the end of the world wasn’t enough, fifteen is the age at which the community cuts your food rations unless you start contributing to the greater good. Benny now has to find a job, and is ready to do anything that doesn’t involve apprenticing to his brother.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a sequence which neatly fills in readers on how Maberry’s zombie world works and how people survive there, Benny tries his hand as an apprentice in just about every field except zombie killer. He tries locksmithing, important because locks help people feel safe even if they’re not needed against the dead. He tries fence-testing, acting as human bait to lure in “zoms.” He tries pit throwing, which turns out to be a polite term for mass gravedigger.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Further attempts include tower lookout, fence builder, and “erosion artist” who sketches zombified versions of undead friends and relatives so people might recognize them if they ever see them out there in the wide world. A world into which no one but Tom Imura, Charlie Pink-Eye, and those who brave the post-apocalyptic roads to deliver supplies between survivor towns dare to tread. After finally failing as an artist, too, Benny asks his brother to take him on as an apprentice. It’s his last resort.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Once Benny makes his decision and the die is cast, Maberry keeps the attentive reader glued to the page with tantalizing hints about unseen characters, places, and events past and present. A few clues seem to indicate this zombie apocalypse is <strong>the</strong> zombie apocalypse–Romero’s original <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Night of the Living Dead</em></strong>, that is. These clues are as well-placed as they are fun and unexpected for a fan of the genre. The author also develops a rich, vibrant supporting cast of friends, neighbors, and enemies for Benny that he dares the reader to get attached to, always a dangerous prospect in a story like this but a welcome one. (At Shock Room Horror, we don’t shy away from danger as long as it’s aimed at fictional characters.)</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Maberry pulls off a delicate trick here. Fictional teenagers Benny’s age can easily come off as annoying to readers and to other characters in a story. Maberry has created a fifteen-year-old with plenty of reason to be bitter, and he is. Yet you sympathize with Benny, even when he’s treating his brother Tom, his only family, worse than he’d treat a zombie, or when he’s trying to impress the thugs and killers he idolizes.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It helps tremendously that Maberry never leaves Benny’s point of view. As the youth learns how things really work outside of town, where survivors don’t always fear the dead and humans can be more dangerous than biters, the reader’s own perspective on the seemingly familiar setting changes. Without relying on Twain’s first-person style (knew I could work that in somewhere) Maberry’s persistent adherence to Benny’s POV naturally stokes the slow-burning, uneasy dread. For much of the first two sections (Maberry divides <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rot & Ruin</em></strong> into three parts) the potential horrors of Benny’s world lurk in the shadows and only emerge often enough to keep you turning page after page. But in the final third? Answers. Revelations. Twists (naturally). Fear for characters you’ve grown to love, hate for those characters who would harm them, a riveting conclusion that’s impossible to put down, and the welcome possibility readers haven’t seen the last of this extremely expandable setting.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is the book’s finest accomplishment. Through Benny’s eyes the reader sees how a typically heroic “zombie killer” would, in the real world, be nothing but a pathetic, murderous, and evil grave robber at best–and a cruel sociopath at worst. We learn how a collection of seeming lunatics who dwell unarmed among the dead–sort of like beekeepers working naked and covered in honey–might not be so foolish after all. We see how Nix, a girl and a friend (but not a girlfriend) Benny has known all his life, might be something more to him. Along with Benny, we learn what the family business really is, and what it really isn’t. It’s all masterfully done.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All due respect to the popular “zombie mashup” horror genre typified by <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pride and Prejudice and Zombies</em></strong>, <strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Night of the Living Trekkies</em></strong>, and anything where Dracula and Sherlock Holmes team up to fight Cthulhu monsters with H.G. Wells’s time machine; this is how to combine classic themes from American literature, terrific characters, original storytelling, and the remorseless shambling hordes of the living dead. If I may paraphrase one of the great film zombies of the last century: Send more books.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cory J. Herndon is an author, game designer, and unlikely to last beyond the “trapped in a farmhouse” stage of the coming zombie apocalypse.</em></strong></div>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-7925338954512158962010-03-19T22:30:00.000-07:002010-03-19T22:30:10.637-07:00Surveillance (2008)<b>Directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch<br />
Written by Kent Harper & Jennifer Chambers Lynch</b><br />
<br />
People are weird. If you accept this fact, then life will make more sense, but only in a very weird way.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409345/"><i>Surveillance</i></a> is set in a town so small, out of the way, and downright boring that the local cops spend their days shooting out the tires of speeders on the freeway. Their follow-up routine is to put the drivers through a humiliating encounter with the law that guarantees they will either never speed again, or never travel through this part of the state.<br />
<br />
During one of these confrontations something very bad happened. And the very bad thing is somehow connected to a recent series of grisly murders in the area.<br />
<br />
Enter two FBI agents, sent with their black suits, interrogation training, emotional tics, and cameras to interview everyone involved and get to the bottom of the story. The agents (played with verve and wit by Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) are as eccentric as their subjects--a rattled police officer, a traumatized little girl, and a young woman who trusts no one. As each character recounts part of the story from their limited point of view, a sort of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_%28film%29"><i>Rashomon</i></a> develops. Even if everyone is telling the truth, something doesn't make sense.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirr8z7VuGTRQTtvg3NwYbwm2NjprAtJ4u7NSpuEFPNXKCanV7kKbdwtFwSGTqK2bdbsHTUGOHgmbwb86nu3VVi0it3qxlr-ycoMoiqu510ATIXZV_IRNDwFkBA-VRJ4Op6EEj1PfQCVy8/s1600-h/Surveillance1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirr8z7VuGTRQTtvg3NwYbwm2NjprAtJ4u7NSpuEFPNXKCanV7kKbdwtFwSGTqK2bdbsHTUGOHgmbwb86nu3VVi0it3qxlr-ycoMoiqu510ATIXZV_IRNDwFkBA-VRJ4Op6EEj1PfQCVy8/s320/Surveillance1.jpg" width="235" /></a></div><br />
<br />
In her first full-length feature since 1993's <i>Boxing Helena</i>, writer/director Jennifer Lynch uses our expectation of her and her father (executive producer David Lynch) to clever advantage. From the beginning, we suspect that lies are being told, but by whom, and for what purpose? Not knowing makes it difficult to side with anyone, so there is no clear-cut protagonist. Further alienating the viewer is the Lynch signature soundtrack, often inappropriate or off tempo.<br />
<br />
As certain suspicions are confirmed, and we think we have it all figured out, new and awful surprises come to light. The build is almost excruciating, but the pay-off is oh so sweet. The story's loose ends are tied snugly together, by the final scene. And if you have ever been as bored as the cops who patrol the fringes of this flat, deadbeat town you will probably find the conclusion both creepy and funny. <br />
<br />
Kudos to Ms. Lynch for the oddball casting in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409345/"><i>Surveillance</i></a>. Ormond and Pullman are delightful as middle-aged interrogators with secrets of their own. But every character has depth and significance, thanks to a supporting cast that includes Cheri Oteri, French Stewart, and Michael Ironside.<br />
<br />
Even if you figure out what's up before the end, the ride is screeching good fun. Thanks to Scott for the tip on this film!S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-91495570799730152682009-11-22T20:55:00.000-08:002009-11-22T20:56:19.797-08:00The Imago Sequence and Other StoriesLaird Barron<br />
Night Shade Books<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvY8pLpuCKK6qPxLtAQ6u4ouCp-BQk9N5nomqWynLIsdc_Pl1YBkvlynQ9i3RZ5IpDisO2XfYyOBOF86u-2e8kiyD95ZhjmU8LR5nkkmkESiG76JtdbE9bohMf8hy7LxT_8JJz9mek-bE/s1600/ImagoSequence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvY8pLpuCKK6qPxLtAQ6u4ouCp-BQk9N5nomqWynLIsdc_Pl1YBkvlynQ9i3RZ5IpDisO2XfYyOBOF86u-2e8kiyD95ZhjmU8LR5nkkmkESiG76JtdbE9bohMf8hy7LxT_8JJz9mek-bE/s200/ImagoSequence.jpg" /></a><br />
</div>Laird Barron is well known to readers of <i>The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>. Five of the nine stories in this collection were first published there. His work also appears in about two-dozen anthologies and numerous magazines online and in print. He's the winner of a Shirley Jackson Award for <i>The Imago Sequence and Other Stories</i>, and has received seven International Horror Guild Award nominations and five nominations for a Locus Award. If you haven't read much fantasy fiction lately and you're under the impression that speculative writing is dreamlike or disconnected from every day experience, Barron's fiction will change your mind.<br />
<br />
The tales in this collection fuse the supernatural and the quotidian with disturbing results. Barron creates a world that looks, feels and smells like reality. Yet just outside this world, touching the edge of the picture and threatening to cross over into it, are the shadows and shapes of something dreadful. Like the conjured images of a Rorschach test, the longer you look at these shapes, the more ominous they appear.<br />
<br />
I was amused but not really surprised to read that the author of these psychologically piercing stories used to raise huskies in Alaska, and that he had extensive martial arts training. The lower echelon political figures, cynical real estate tycoons, broken soldiers of fortune and former athletes and beauty queens who populate his stories resonate with a graphic sensibility writers can only gain from experiences unrelated to the literary arts. When these characters speak, it is with a weariness born of too much knowledge about the human condition. When they finally decide to act--and they seldom do so on a whim--it is with a grim understanding that the future may easily hold greater pain and horror than the present, for there is no end to horror in the history of our race.<br />
<br />
From the aging paramilitary protagonist of "Old Virginia" to the guilt-ridden mogul in "Hallucigenia" there is a deep and adult sense of mortality that darkens even the most casual exchange. "Shiva, Open Your Eye" follows the spiritual journey of a serial killer whose self-justification is profound and global in its proportions. The compromised characters of <i>The Imago Sequence and Other Stories</i> search for lost works of art and hidden records in attempts to explain the inexplicable. Like a Werner Herzog film, their dangerous yet well documented adventures lapse into obsessive, nightmarish enterprises that lure them ever onward to their doom.<br />
<br />
This is the only collection of stories I have ever read that actually entered my consciousness to the degree that I dreamed about its landscapes and characters. Chalk that up to the author's extraordinary prose style, which is densely descriptive; and his ability to weave hard-boiled action reminiscent of Lawrence Block together with allusions to another dimension that would make H.P. Lovecraft shiver. Barron's universe walks and talks like this one, but it is haunted by a greater darkness just beyond our influence, making its way toward us with an alarming determination.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-9411348616876150672009-09-17T21:45:00.000-07:002009-09-17T21:46:37.240-07:00Someone's Tiptoeing Inside My Brain<i>Hatchet for the Honeymoon</i> (1969) is a Mario Bava film starring Stephen Forsyth as John Harrington, or John Harrington as Stephen Forsyth. The names are interchangeable, no? The European hero is preposterously handsome: huge eyelashes, a pile of curvaceous black hair, and a closet full of ascots.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQanmjHNIuoZK_ccYJj-bNtDfBNbKVgzskeKTYseb1H6HxIWEdu5cBdxqxJQan782vXFT6LI2Lq_-Fq7xu_9_23LbQfu1LxEockn1bs83_7mLfdhaMOSZVz0cSo2vvcPy2skQhZX3eQJE/s1600-h/HatchetHoneymoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQanmjHNIuoZK_ccYJj-bNtDfBNbKVgzskeKTYseb1H6HxIWEdu5cBdxqxJQan782vXFT6LI2Lq_-Fq7xu_9_23LbQfu1LxEockn1bs83_7mLfdhaMOSZVz0cSo2vvcPy2skQhZX3eQJE/s320/HatchetHoneymoon.jpg" /></a>As I watched our suave Euro-dude showering and shaving while describing his habit of killing young women, I had to wonder if Bret Easton Ellis ever saw this film before he wrote <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho"><i>American Psycho</i></a>. Whether he did or not, the narration-by-perfect-yet-certifiable-stud routine is not as original as I once believed:<br />
<br />
"No one suspects that I am a madman, a dangerous murderer!"<br />
<br />
Not simply a murderer, but a dangerous one.<br />
<br />
Later on, Euro-dude trades snotty quips with his angry German wife over breakfast on their fancy terrace. He notices the morning newspaper headline, and says mournfully:<br />
<br />
"How sad--another bride killed!"<br />
<br />
<br />
Yes, if you check out this film, be warned: Brides will die. That's because our hero runs a bridal shop, so he gets first dibs on all the pretty brides-to-be who need killing. Please note: Euro-dude does not call it a bridal shop; he refers to it as "the fashion business" he inherited from his mommy. <br />
<br />
This film has so many things to recommend it. I don't know where to start. So I'll just sling it out there:<br />
<br />
• jittery camera movement<br />
• dubbing that is either genius or begs for a new translation of the original<br />
• a soundtrack ranging from music box twinkle to shrieking death-a-coming warnings<br />
• saturated late 1960s colors (dig the groovy deep purple/screaming yellow combo)<br />
• actors who snarl, stare, and fume as if they were in a silent movie (which, given the sound quality, they might as well be)<br />
<br />
The visual quality depends on how crazy you are. At one point Euro-dude describes a flat-chested model as "37-22-37." Or maybe he was thinking of the combination to his office safe. It's hard to tell, since he's nuts.<br />
<br />
After correcting this estimate of her figure--he got the waist wrong by half an inch--the flat-chested woman tells him she's modeled a few wedding dresses in her career. He lets her know she'll have to model them "constantly" if she's hired, because she might not have noticed she's applying for a job at a bridal shop--sorry, Euro-dude--"fashion business." Then he says she'll have to model pajamas and "land-jury." In other words: "Everything a bride might use on her wedding day."<br />
<br />
So forget that travel outfit and toss the extra suitcase in the river, girls. All you're going to need is a wedding gown, jammies (he doesn't say what kind, so I guess flannel's okay) and "land-jury."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX7utXIyTSSktzp3E3-YAaE1QLbxc5k-wp8EKyIClQqxI6mUH-HmGTL-UdTO8PODcSOfcLOmhsItCuGoeGeShTlF9TW-Qy5pbzVETpVe9LZvov_hX0oFSp9LgtosH_49jGrq6HZPja65Y/s1600-h/Hatchet2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX7utXIyTSSktzp3E3-YAaE1QLbxc5k-wp8EKyIClQqxI6mUH-HmGTL-UdTO8PODcSOfcLOmhsItCuGoeGeShTlF9TW-Qy5pbzVETpVe9LZvov_hX0oFSp9LgtosH_49jGrq6HZPja65Y/s320/Hatchet2.jpg" /></a><br />
</div>The killing method involves mannequins and bad dancing. For the rest of the plot, you will have to rent this beauty. Let me just say: When a scene about toast cracks me up so bad I have to hit the pause button, I'm giving the whole movie four stars.<br />
<br />
But I'm still not doing justice to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hatchet-Honeymoon-1969-Stephen-Forsyth/dp/6305869138"><i>Hatchet for the Honeymoon</i></a>...<br />
<br />
When our hero decides to stop messing around with models and focus his considerable craziness on his wife, the story gets much deeper and weirder. In this mid-section of the film Bava's camera work achieves the level of high art. Some of the imagery is stunning and unforgettable. The wife, a dedicated spiritualist, has her own special way of fighting back which is eerie and chilling.<br />
<br />
Oh, and there's a suave Euro-cop who doesn't like our hero. When he shows up to investigate the disappearance of a Harrington model, he struts his smooth style and his jurisdiction by saying to 37-22-37:<br />
<br />
"There ought to be a law against pretty models going away without leaving a forwarding address."<br />
<br />
Yeah. There ought to be a law.S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-32117065036776989252009-01-11T00:09:00.000-08:002009-01-11T00:31:00.775-08:00Tell Me Something (1999)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?product_id=497"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 145px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-ZJOpqkqAUWimrJIamYxQRb0o3coNimBJdq-6OxKQgy1TS8e7Do_LngGA51u1aBBX3YpgmlelRGq2uce6IZUmZUKY3LNXC-gc2MzV8MtTBt049rz6agmJaY_4MW1Odu_jTSf2BOKEts/s200/TellMeSomething.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289945285519127426" border="0" /></a><b>Directed & written by Chang Yoon-hyun<br /></b><br />In common with <i>Seven</i>, <i>H</i>, and <i>Memories of Murder</i>, this South Korean film is a psychological thriller in which a jaded cop tracks what seems to be an unstoppable serial killer. The paradox of <i><a href="http://www.kino.com/tellmesomething/">Tell Me Something</a></i> is: the closer the primary detective comes to solving the case, the more his personal flaws undermine his ability to distinguish the truth among the evidence. In this way filmmaker <a href="http://www.subwaycinema.com/frames/archives/kfest2001/tellme.htm">Chang Yoon-hyun</a> sets up a game of cat and mouse between killer and cop, but also between hero and audience. We see what is at stake for the engaging hero. We also see when and why his reason fails him.<br /><br />During a summer of intense heat and torrential rain, body parts begin to turn up in black plastic bags all over Seoul: in a crowded elevator, on a basketball court, on a highway. The police team established to solve the case is led by Detective Cho (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0359197/">Han Suk-gyu</a>). Humiliated and tainted by a previous case, and viewed skeptically by his fellow officers, Cho immediately invests too much in this opportunity to redeem himself. Fortunately he has help from another seasoned detective.<br /><br />Together the two cops rearrange the mismatched body parts and apply all of their experience to unraveling the apparently motiveless murders. Just when they seem to be at a dead end, they conduct a routine interview with a fragile yet attractive young woman, a visual artist, and discover an extraordinary coincidence linking the victims.<br /><br />Exquisitely shot, well acted, and haunting in its depiction of human frailty, <i>Tell Me Something</i> takes a few turns that challenge suspension of disbelief. Yet it works, because it is both visually stunning and satisfyingly visceral. This is a film for a rainy night when you feel like giving yourself over to a dark, relentless story that could never happen, but, hey, what's that sound on the stairs? No, <i>you</i> go check.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(originally published S. P. Miskowski 11/2/07 12:25 p.m.)</span></span>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-62330071645726425662009-01-10T23:53:00.000-08:002009-01-11T00:30:35.263-08:00Rosemary's Baby (1968)<b>Directed by <a href="http:///">Roman Polanski</a><br />Written by Polanski, based on a novel by Ira Levin</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary%27s_Baby_%28film%29"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 247px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb9KkH50Yf7aWIKCx1oN1aDVcvKRsyGjtEly1nINP9x-8CPs1rqSvmcArwOTRWHyK7-rXlkhTjbTf2Mes1E7DBHajANA6809_4edUibiIqp1rLJIW81Jb5KXk3QnaGEsrsmSCZ0IyhZdA/s320/RosemarysBaby.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289942127899425826" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><b>SPOILERS</b><br /><br />For several years I watched this film once a month. It was a comfort cookie, a personal ritual. Along with the glass of red wine and the heating pad, it signaled the happy fact that I was (again) not having Satan's child. Now, as always, that is the job of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001201/">Mia Farrow</a>.<br /><br />By the way, this probably won't be my last post about <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/"><i>Rosemary's Baby</i></a>. It is a film I know frame-by-frame and line-by-line. But its sweet complexities, chilling presumptions and amusing absurdities require several essays to do them justice.<br /><br />I assume most readers have seen the film. But for the benefit of the other six people:<br /><br />Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband Guy move into a big, old (barely affordable) apartment in an infamous building in New York City. Creaky and spooky things abound, and it soon becomes clear (to viewers) that the bloody legends connected to the place are based on real occurrences. The Woodhouses are taken under the wing of an elderly couple named Castevet, who form a surprisingly close bond with the ordinarily skeptical Guy. Some bad things happen, but they are quickly swept under the tasteful throw rugs when Rosemary discovers she is pregnant at the same time that Guy's career seems to be taking off at last.<br /><br />Every <i>RB</i> fan has a favorite element, one that brings all the others together. Mine is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002106/">Ruth Gordon</a>. This performance greatly enhanced her career and led to international fame as the 80-something star of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067185/">Harold and Maude</a>. But I cringe at the sound of Gordon's voice when her <i>RB</i> character, Minnie Castevet, tosses around pleasantries that are not quite right, yet not weird enough to arouse suspicion in our titular heroine.<br /><br />In fact, the fey and rather dim-witted Rosemary could have figured out the whole plot if she were less shallow. But she fixates on her neighbor's lack of coolness: Minnie's bad home cooking, bad hair, and wall-to-wall carpeting. Minnie's grating pronouncements and quirky mannerisms draw attention away from the acutely bizarre setting, and provide a grandmotherly smugness against which the petulant Rosemary can react.<br /><br />And Rosemary does react, rather than acting. She is an unformed flower child. Her psyche is so malleable that she tells Minnie and Roman Castevet she doesn't know what she believes. She is a creature <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0505615/">Ira Levin</a> (author of another cult classic, <i>Stepford Wives</i>) drew in obsessively accurate detail: The energetic young woman without a clue, the sweetly sexy wife who prefers to let an older, wiser hubby take charge of her.<br /><br />Rosemary is constantly quoting the men in her life. She quotes her husband, Guy, then her elderly friend and mentor Hutch, then her doctor. She only resorts to quoting a female friend when she has to argue with her husband and she's been severely weakened by prolonged pain. Once the pain subsides, Rosemary returns to the obedient manner of a happy little girl. She eats and drinks what she's told, and becomes so involved in her jolly pregnancy that she forgets all about the rest of the world. All of this is part of the Castevet plan, of course.<br /><br />If she only had a brain, Rosemary might have figured out that the "long arm of coincidence" Minnie cites is nearly impossible, and the blank spots on Minnie's apartment walls do indicate that the pictures were removed recently and that's a very strange thing to do, and…<br /><br />Well, watch for yourself. The giddy fun of seeing Rosemary stupidly putting herself in harm's way (and Satan's lovin' embrace) just never gets old.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(originally published S. P. Miskowski 10/31/07 12:12 p.m.)</span></span>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-74229682930122569142009-01-10T23:40:00.000-08:002009-01-11T00:30:05.832-08:00Vacancy (2007)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/Vacancy-Kate-Beckinsale/dp/B000RGN2JI"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 242px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT_p8ySxuHUDZlomGV_E-_58Cc8PfV6T7y6b29qkmyxxDL0vxn_lNkKZIuH2P7thTa3ukEhT0UAzZuqUqmhfO7lZnTS7iLDfp3djlTuXGecb5ZFhOjJWc3AW0YCzt_KSRu47leO6hOdE4/s320/VacancyDVD.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289939093475670578" border="0" /></a><br /><b>Directed by Nimród Antal<br />Written by Mark L. Smith</b><br /><br /><br /><b>Spoiler Warning</b><br /><br />Forty-five minutes into <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452702/">Vacancy</a></i> the idea pops into my head:<br /><br />"Couples Therapy - Extreme Weekend"<br /><br />From that moment on I watch for signs that this tiny thriller is a new addition to the self-help horror category occupied by <i>The Game</i>. Not that that would be good…<br /><br />The film starts with a classic set-up: A husband and wife on the road at night, heading for a visit with the wife's family. They don't get along, and we soon find out why. They are in mourning for their son, a toddler seen in photos but mercifully not represented in flashback.<br /><br />Blame and guilt and regret and the wife's cranky predisposition explain why she's on happy drugs and he's taken an alternate route to make the grim ride shorter. The cliché about men not being able to follow directions on a map provides an excuse for stopping at a lonely gas station where the price signs haven't changed in decades. The friendly attendant (uh-oh) checks under the hood and tells the couple they are at least thirty miles off track. He's such a nice guy you just know you'll see him again.<br /><br />A mile down the road, of course, the car dies. So Mr. and Mrs. Imminent Divorce walk back and try the seedy motel near the now-closed gas station. The manager is both greasy and shifty, but he assures the skittish couple that the bloodcurdling screams from his office are on TV. So they check in.<br /><br />Try to recall the most crummy motel room you've ever encountered. One so layered in grime, and pulsing with cockroach life, you wouldn't dare touch anything. The only feature with any promise: a pile of unmarked VHS tapes.<br /><br />Hubby tries to kill time watching what first appears to be a slasher flick then possibly a snuff film. Then he notices that the backdrop looks disgustingly familiar. In fact, all of the films were shot in the room he and his wife now occupy.<br /><br />This is when things are supposed to heat up, but they don't. Because this is also the point at which the writer and director run out of ideas. Which is why I start supplying my own:<br /><br />What if the husband has signed them up for extreme therapy? The motel manager is the counselor, and the situation is designed to bring the wife and husband back together.<br /><br />What if the husband has hired everyone else in the story to scare his wife and allow him to be a hero?<br /><br />The deeper into the story we go, the more this makes sense. Everything that goes wrong is the husband's fault. Maybe that's because he's in control. (Hence <i>The Game</i>.) The plan could backfire when the wife figures it out, and then she has to escape not only from the creeps but also from her grief-scarred, insane husband…<br /><br />Nope.<br /><br />So, as much as I appreciate the subtle acting by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000295/">Kate Beckinsale</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005561/">Luke Wilson</a> as the tormented couple, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001844/">Frank Whaley</a> as the manager, <i>Vacancy</i> is a disappointment. It lacks an adequate framing device, which would make it more than a thriller about nice people pursued by freaks. And when I can think up a better plot than the filmmaker, I'm about as grumpy as Kate Beckinsale on prescription happy pills.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(originally published S. P. Miskowski 10/29/07 5:55 p.m.)</span></span>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150886584956438183.post-7062648435169368892009-01-09T18:59:00.000-08:002009-01-09T19:20:16.703-08:00Severance (2006)<b>Directed by Christopher Smith<br />Written by James Moran<br />& Christopher Smith</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.severancefilm.com/"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 207px; height: 304px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH-kEodsyltTeX8asFGaQsSZ5M5_hyLBbC20lUBc_3h9orLmSXQVLHbUSJayXD359FVZcQozFiUZk52DmHfTuPHOWriKKYEEmVdx6aMTVj6WOlBUq-uKWz4W9-_6bkGuYiWOXXKGwRZZ0/s320/Severance.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289496118140203394" border="0" /></a>Any intelligent person forced to take part in an office team-building exercise knows how easy it would be to slip from controlled corporate rage to homicide. The creators of <i><a href="http://www.severancefilm.com/">Severance</a></i> understand that feeling. In place of traditional slasher film targets (such as obnoxious teenagers) they have substituted the people we most want to see mutilated and murdered: co-workers.<br /><br />When their bus breaks down somewhere in an Eastern European forest, several sales employees of the multi-national Palisade Defence have to schlep their belongings to the nearest hotel. There they await instructions from the American executive who planned their trip. The hotel turns out to be a moldy inn equipped with no amenities except weird pie. And every step outside the place lands the unhappy employees in (often excruciating) peril.<br /><br /><b>Acting Talent</b><br />Thanks to a terrific cast that includes <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0364977/">Laura Harris</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0245705/">Danny Dyer</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0570570/">Tim McInnerny</a> (Lord Percy Percy and Capt. Darling of <i>Blackadder</i> fame) there is no need for over-the-top special effects. Don't get me wrong; what is here is truly horrific. But the point of view makes it so. For example, there's a scene in which a character sees something that gets his feet moving a lot faster--only we don't see what he sees. We see the sheer, animal terror in his eyes, and this is just as effective as anything the props department could have dreamed up.<br /><br /><b>Plausibility</b><br />While some horror filmmakers court plausibility with computer graphics, Christopher Smith makes the bolder and more disturbing choice to go natural. All the stunts and threats come from realistic or believable objects, relations, and circumstances. The style works; it hurts to watch.<br /><br /><b>Wit</b><br />A couple of the best jokes in this film are a long time coming. Yet they're set up so expertly, you recognize every punch line the second it arrives.<br /><br /><b>Story</b><br />You'll spend about half the film trying to figure out if the force preying on our busload of working stiffs is supernatural, psychological, or real. When you finally know, the answer is satisfying in so many ways. All the pieces fit together as snugly as a perfect jigsaw puzzle.<br /><br />Break out the good wine. Screen this one with smart friends you want to impress <i>and</i> terrify.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:78%;" >(orig published S. P. Miskowski 10/29/07 3:20 p.m.)</span>S.P. Miskowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07176386274348362718noreply@blogger.com0