and what I learned from them
A Shock Room Guest Post by Angela Slatter
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. :-(
1. “The Tower” by Marghanita Laski
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 ...
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.
2. “Gabriel-Ernest” by Saki
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.
3. The one about the Wendigo the title of which I cannot recall
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.
4. “Dame Crowl’s Ghost” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
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.
5. “The Chosen Vessel” by Barbara Baynton
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.
6. “Red Reign” by Kim Newman
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.
7. “The Wailing Well” by M.R. James
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.
8. “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” by Robert Bloch
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.
9. “It Only Comes Out at Night” by Dennis Etchison
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.
10. “Laird of Dunain” by Graham Masteron
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.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Monday, May 12, 2014
Home and Hearth by Angela Slatter
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.
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?
Various authors have tackled these disturbing questions with varying degrees of success. In the new Spectral Press chapbook, Home and Hearth, Angela Slatter 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.
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?
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.
Cover credit: Home and Hearth © Angela Slatter/Spectral Press. Artwork © Neil Williams 2014
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?
Various authors have tackled these disturbing questions with varying degrees of success. In the new Spectral Press chapbook, Home and Hearth, Angela Slatter 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.
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?
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.
Cover credit: Home and Hearth © Angela Slatter/Spectral Press. Artwork © Neil Williams 2014
Saturday, February 1, 2014
The Moon Will Look Strange by Lynda E. Rucker
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 Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year
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.
While making my way through annual anthologies and reading magazines such as Black Static, Supernatural Tales, Shadows & Tall Trees, and Nightmare Magazine, 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.
Karoshi Books, 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 The Moon Will Look Strange 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.
The Moon Will Look Strange 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.
Among the many delights of The Moon Will Look Strange:
“The Burned House,” in which a woman is inexplicably drawn to the remnants of a personal tragedy.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“The Last Reel,” first published in Supernatural Tales, 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.
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.
2013 was a year of many fine novellas and story collections. I’d place The Moon Will Look Strange 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.
For more Rucker fiction read Supernatural Tales 24, Shadows & Tall Trees #5, and Nightmare Magazine (June 2013), as well as Little Visible Delight, an anthology I co-edited with Kate Jonez, published by Omnium Gatherum Media. For non-fiction read Rucker’s brilliant column, Blood Pudding, in Black Static and her blog, in the pines. You can also hear an audio version of “The Last Reel” at Pseudopod.
While making my way through annual anthologies and reading magazines such as Black Static, Supernatural Tales, Shadows & Tall Trees, and Nightmare Magazine, 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.
Karoshi Books, 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 The Moon Will Look Strange 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.
The Moon Will Look Strange 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.
Among the many delights of The Moon Will Look Strange:
“The Burned House,” in which a woman is inexplicably drawn to the remnants of a personal tragedy.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“The Last Reel,” first published in Supernatural Tales, 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.
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.
2013 was a year of many fine novellas and story collections. I’d place The Moon Will Look Strange 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.
For more Rucker fiction read Supernatural Tales 24, Shadows & Tall Trees #5, and Nightmare Magazine (June 2013), as well as Little Visible Delight, an anthology I co-edited with Kate Jonez, published by Omnium Gatherum Media. For non-fiction read Rucker’s brilliant column, Blood Pudding, in Black Static and her blog, in the pines. You can also hear an audio version of “The Last Reel” at Pseudopod.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path
In the late 1990s, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (known to American audiences for such films as Pulse, Retribution, Bright Future, and Tokyo Sonata)
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.
This year Third Window Films has made Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path 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.
Sho Aikawa stars in both movies, and his characters, both named Nijima, provide each story with a moral and emotional center. In Eyes of the Spider, 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.
In Serpent's Path, 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.
Ordinarily I'm not a big fan of films about yakuza or mafia or any other business-oriented criminal society. Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path 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.
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.
This year Third Window Films has made Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path 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.
Sho Aikawa stars in both movies, and his characters, both named Nijima, provide each story with a moral and emotional center. In Eyes of the Spider, 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.
In Serpent's Path, 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.
Ordinarily I'm not a big fan of films about yakuza or mafia or any other business-oriented criminal society. Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path 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.
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.
Monday, July 2, 2012
The Croning by Laird Barron
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.
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.
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.
In his two story collections, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories and Occultation, the author has explored the consequences of ignoring myth and recurring tropes when they emerge in the modern world. The Croning 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.
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.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
Directed & written by Kim Ji-woonAs 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.
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.
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.
If you liked Tell Me Something or Phone you will probably find A Tale of Two Sisters engaging.
The director also made two of my favorite films: the dark and hilarious The Quiet Family, and a comedy of corporate ambition and wrestler's revenge, The Foul King.
A Tale of Two Sisters 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.)
SPOILER WARNING - Stop here if you have not seen the film yet and don't want to know what happens.
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.
A Tale of Two Sisters 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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
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.
Calvaire (2005)
Directed by Fabrice Du Welz
Written by Fabrice Du Welz & Romain Protat
In the 2005 Belgian import Calvaire, Marc (Laurent Lucas) 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.
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.)
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 (Jackie Berroyer) 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.
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."
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.
My sympathies are with Gloria.
Written by Fabrice Du Welz & Romain Protat
In the 2005 Belgian import Calvaire, Marc (Laurent Lucas) 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.
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.)
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 (Jackie Berroyer) 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.
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."
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.
My sympathies are with Gloria.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
I Saw the Devil (2010)
Directed by Jee-woon Kim
Written by Hoon-jung Park
I Saw the Devil is the latest film from Jee-woon Kim, whose dark and dorky comedy The Quiet Family is one of my favorite films (and provided the source material for Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katikuris). The Foul King further demonstrated a droll comedic style. The director's elegantly spooky short film "Memories" was a standout in the trilogy Three Extremes II. And my wish to share with everyone I know the psychological/supernatural horror A Tale of Two Sisters is one reason I started this blog.
I Saw the Devil 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.
What happens next infuses I Saw the Devil 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.
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.
If this were a typical revenge movie the audience would have to be content with watching the protagonist destroy his enemy. In I Saw the Devil the conflict between the secret agent (Byung-hun Lee) and the serial killer (Oldboy 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?
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.
Written by Hoon-jung Park
I Saw the Devil is the latest film from Jee-woon Kim, whose dark and dorky comedy The Quiet Family is one of my favorite films (and provided the source material for Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katikuris). The Foul King further demonstrated a droll comedic style. The director's elegantly spooky short film "Memories" was a standout in the trilogy Three Extremes II. And my wish to share with everyone I know the psychological/supernatural horror A Tale of Two Sisters is one reason I started this blog.
What happens next infuses I Saw the Devil 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.
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.
If this were a typical revenge movie the audience would have to be content with watching the protagonist destroy his enemy. In I Saw the Devil the conflict between the secret agent (Byung-hun Lee) and the serial killer (Oldboy 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?
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.
13 Assassins
Directed by Takashi Miike
Written by Kaneo Ikegami & Daisuke Tengan
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.
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 Koji Yakusho, in a role every bit as stirring and iconic as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit). 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.
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 13 Assassins 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.
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.
13 Assassins 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.
Written by Kaneo Ikegami & Daisuke Tengan
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.
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 13 Assassins 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.
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.
13 Assassins 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.
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