Archive for the ‘Scary Stuff’ Category

Review: Annihilation (film)

Posted: February 24, 2018 in Review, Scary Stuff
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You know, you often get great horror films. You get great science-horror films. And every now and then, you get a great horror film that makes you think, like Get Out or As Above, So Below. But I’ve never seen a science-horror film that’s not only good, but made you want to speculate so much about its deeper meanings and the questions it raises.

Based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer,* Annihilation focuses on Natalie Portman as a biologist who goes on an expedition with four other women into “The Shimmer,” a place where everything is mutating and changing and no previous expedition has come back alive, after her husband returns from there gravely ill and seriously changed. Once inside, they will be tested in ways they cannot even imagine, and discover something horrifying.

This was an absolutely amazing movie. For one thing, the main cast (which is all women but not treated like a huge deal at all by the film, which I love) are all absolutely amazing. They really make you believe they are these characters, even if they aren’t given that much development. Gina Rodriguez, who plays Anya Thorensen, was especially great, and seeing her transformation through the movie is worth the ticket price alone.

Visually, this film is a feast. There’s so much to look at and take in, but it never really feels overwhelming. Sometimes the imagery is beautiful, sometimes it is baffling, and sometimes it’s creepy, but you’re never going to look away because you want to take it all in. And as for atmosphere, this film does a really good job of just building up an air of strangeness. So much of what’s in the Shimmer is unreal and surreal. It’s unknown to everyone, and the characters have to guess most of the time as to the meaning of things. And that’s what they’re doing: guessing. Very little is confirmed, and so much is unknown. So you kind of feel their fear and paranoia as they start to wonder what is real, what is happening, how it could be happening.

But what I love most about this film is how intelligent it is, and how it makes you wonder. As I said, very little is confirmed with this film. A lot of what we see, we the audience have to draw our own conclusions and decide what is happening, or what the deeper meaning is. Or if there is a deeper meaning. Or if what we’re seeing is actually real. It’s so strange, but at the same time so thought-provoking. And it’s been a while since a film made me wonder this much, made me want to examine it more.

If I’m going to ding the film on anything, it’s the CGI. Except for the film’s climax, the CGI doesn’t work well. It’s not awful, but I feel it would work better in a video game instead of in a live-action film. I would’ve preferred if they’d tried for a more animatronic approach, like with the Jurassic Park films.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving Annihilation a 4.5 out of 5.  A visual thrill-ride of the strange and otherworldly, fronted by a great cast. Definitely check it out and get lost in a world of the hallucinatory and engaging.

*By the way, I tried listening to this book on audio. But the narrator’s voice made me sleepy, so only so much of the novel actually made it into my brain. From what I remember though, the novel and movie differ on a lot. But in a good way.

Rewatch: Mama (2013)

Posted: February 19, 2018 in Review, Rewatch, Scary Stuff
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The great thing about three-day weekends is that there’s plenty of opportunities for catching a few flicks. So far I’ve watched Black Panther (really good, 4.2 out of 5), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (surprisingly decent, 3.5 out of 5), and this morning I caught the ninth entry in my Rewatch Review series, Mama. I honestly thought this film would be painful to watch, but…you know what, let’s get into the review.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT: Mama is about Victoria and Lilly, two young sisters who disappear after their father goes on a murder spree after the 2008 market crash. They show up several years later after living in the woods all this time and are sent to live with their uncle Lucas and his girlfriend Annabel. Pretty soon they start experiencing weird things and find out that the girls weren’t exactly alone in those woods. Someone, or something, was there with them. And it’s come back to civilization too.

WHY I DIDN’T LIKE IT: You know, I honestly don’t remember. I just remember not liking it when I saw it back in college.

WHY I REWATCHED IT: The director, Andy Muschietti, produced 2017’s It, and that rocked. What the hell did I miss in Mama that made studio heads select him to be the director after Cary Fukunaga signed off?

THOUGHTS: Apparently I missed quite a bit. Mama‘s a great horror film.

For one thing, the actors put their all into their characters, and it works. You really see the arc of Annabel, played by Jessica Chastain, going from a carefree rocker girl who doesn’t want to be a mom at all bonding with the girls and growing into the role of a mother. And watching the girls adjust to civilization is fascinating for each one. And seeing these three very different and clashing people come together as a family is heartwarming, but in a way that doesn’t take away from the horror of the film (*cough* unlike Before I Wake *cough*).

Not only that, but the film does know how to set up a creepy atmosphere while also using jumpscares. I found myself hopping in my seat more than a few times. And as the film goes on, it manages to up the creepiness without showing too much of the titular Mama, who for a horror movie villain is actually kind of sympathetic once you get her backstory. It was genuinely scary.

Of course, the film isn’t without its problems. At times, while Mama’s design is creepy*, the CGI used to make her can be a bit distracting at times. And the music in the final scene kind of makes this really heartbreaking scene kind of melodramatic and sappy. I’m sure the idea was to heighten the sad emotions, but it backfires for me.

And hoo boy, that movie was loud. I turned down the volume and I was sure my neighbors would knock on my door and ask me to turn it down!

JUDGMENT: I honestly don’t know why I disliked the film anymore, and I can see why Muschietti was tapped to direct It.

Mama is a terrifying but heartwarming horror movie with a great premise and wonderful characters played by accomplished actors. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give this film a 4.5 out of 5. I’m so glad my opinion changed on this one.

 

Well, that’s nine films rewatched. My last one might take some time to find, as it’s not usually available in the States. Still, I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are too. Until next time, pleasant nightmares, my Followers of Fear.

*And is probably the inspiration of the look for the abstract painting woman from It. Not kidding, look at those two side by side. They’re basically the same character with a different style…so there’s a King/Muschietti shared cinematic universe now? It’d make sense, this movie does feel like it would fit as a Stephen King adaptation.

“Do-Over:” First Draft Finished

Posted: February 15, 2018 in Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well, I got another story done this evening. And I honestly didn’t think I’d get it done that quickly tonight. I thought it’d take an hour and forty-five minutes to finish off this story. Somehow I got it done in half an hour. But who cares about that? I got a short story done!

Yeah, I use Bitmoji on occasion. In case you forgot.

Anyway, if you skipped the title the story is called “Do-Over,” and is about the lengths one girl goes to fix her life after she sends out a tweet she doesn’t realize is really offensive, ruining her life. Yeah, pretty relevant, isn’t it? In fact, this story was partially inspired by the story of Justine Sacco, the woman who sent a tweet making a joke how she hoped she wouldn’t get AIDS in South Africa, then saying it wouldn’t happen because she was white. When she finally landed in Cape Town, she was a trending subject on Twitter, had received a lot of hate over the Internet, and had even lost her job! However, I decided to make my protagonist a teenager rather than a thirty-year-old woman, because teenagers are still learning what is considered appropriate and what isn’t (actually, a lot of adults are still learning that, but let’s ignore that for a moment, shall we?), and I felt that would make her more relatable.

At least, it did to me. One thing I’m afraid of is that something I’ve said or done will come back to haunt me, especially if it’s on the Internet where nothing dies. I’ve even had friends and family members look over blog posts and stories just to make sure that nothing offensive was said when I wrote about a sensitive topic (my Aokigahara post is a prime example of that). Tapping into that fear and what it might be like to face that sort of hatred and rejection for making what you thought was just a stupid joke online really allowed me to tap into the character and relay things from her point of view.

And speaking of inappropriate tweets, coming up with what my protagonist tweeted was really the hardest part of writing the story. It actually held me up for about three days while I tried to figure out what my character would tweet. Obviously, coming up with offensive garbage is pretty easy. You only need to look at what makes the headlines to realize that. But coming up with something that a teenager would think is a joke was actually pretty difficult. Eventually I took the suggestion of someone in one of my online writer’s groups to do something close to me and, as I’m bisexual, came up with something that would upset me and my fellow LGBT individuals. After that, the story was fairly easy to write.

This also happens to be the shortest story I’ve written in years, a mere thirty-six hundred words. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a short story that short! And honestly, I wasn’t trying to truncate it that much. I knew it would be short, and I just wrote it. It just became short on its own, I guess.

Still, I know it’s far from perfect, and there may be issues I don’t see at this moment. I’ll probably get it beta read before I submit it anywhere.

Even so, I’m happy with the story I wrote and I’m glad I got it done this evening. Next time I sit down to write, I’m getting back to a certain story that I left unfinished and tackles themes of prejudice. Surprisingly, it’s not the last Reborn City book.

Goodnight, Followers of Fear! Pleasant nightmares!

Rewatch: The Shining (1980)

Posted: February 10, 2018 in Review, Rewatch, Scary Stuff
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The Shining is considered one of the greatest horror films ever made, based on one Stephen King’s greatest novels. It’s still widely enjoyed today, has been very influential on a number of films and filmmakers, and has led to numerous theories about its deeper meanings, ranging anywhere from the Holocaust or Native American genocides to faking the moon landing. Yet when it was released, audiences and critics didn’t care for the film. Variety actually called it “a disappointment,” and Stephen King himself hates this film with a passion. Director Stanley Kubrick himself has garnered controversy for overworking and even abusing cast and crew during the production of this film.

I disliked this film immensely after I saw it in middle school, which was right after I read the novel. But I’ve since learned a lot about the film’s production and influence. And given the reasons I hated the film (see below), I’m wondering if my opinion needs a change. Let’s find out.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: The Shining follows the Torrance family, who have come to the historic Overlook Hotel to be its winter caretakers. Isolated and cut off from the world, the Hotel’s supernatural side comes out to play, leading to a horrifying descent into madness and murder.

WHY I DIDN’T LIKE IT: It strayed too far from the source material. Not kidding, I hated the film simply because of how much changed from book to movie, to the point it drove out all my other reactions to the film (I can be a real purist sometimes). I actually preferred the 1997 television miniseries based on the movie because it was more faithful to the book,* and no other reason.

WHY I’M REWATCHING IT: Well, you hear so much about how great the film is, and you learn a bit about its production and legacy, and you realize how much a movie differs from its source material isn’t always a bad thing. Kind of warrants rewatching it.

THOUGHTS: That was a rather unsettling slow-burner, wasn’t it?

I’ll give the film this, it knows how to set up a creepy atmosphere with great visuals and sound. For one thing, the hotel is so distinct that it’s a character all onto itself. But it’s the way that Kubrick films the hotel and the characters in it that’s great. The whole film is shot with a wide-angle lens, which means we always see the characters alone in these vast spaces. On top of that, when close-ups are done, the wide-angle lens distorts the characters’ faces, giving the film a sense of surrealism and unreality. Add in the soundtrack, which sounds more like several clashing soundtracks playing at once. Heartbeats, eerie chanting, electronic music, symphonic pieces, all playing at once. It is creepy as hell.

I also like the reveals of scares. The camera always focus on the characters’ reactions to a scare before they show the scare. We see Wendy’s reaction to what Jack has been writing before we actually see it. We see Danny’s reaction to the little girls before the little girls are actually shown. That’s not something normally done in horror.

And finally, the film takes its time setting up the horror. It doesn’t rush in to showing us the gruesome haunting nature of the Overlook, but gives us time to see how isolated the characters are before introducing elements to show how their insanity is growing/the hotel is alive. It’s pretty effective.

However, I did have some issues with the movie. For one, the actors and the characters they portray. I didn’t care for either, really. Jack Nicholson is pretty good at playing a madman, but in my experience, that’s all his performances, and there’s not much transition between normal Jack Torrance to insane Jack Torrance. Shelley Duvall as Wendy…I don’t know what it was, but I just got annoyed with her every time she was on screen. And Danny Lloyd as Danny (ha!) was passable, but let’s face it, the character in the movie isn’t as fleshed out or as deep as he is in the movie. You could change the actor out, and it wouldn’t make that much difference, because Danny in the movie is very flat.

On top of that, I wasn’t ever that scared by the film. True, seeing Jack go after his wife and son with an ax is pretty threatening, but he doesn’t actually hurt them or get close to doing so. And while the film is good at keeping that creepy atmosphere going, it never truly escalates to the point where I feel myself shift from terror.

And like I said, the novel is phenomenal. Was it really that necessary to make so many changes from the source material? Also, what’s with that photo in the last shot? Was Jack reincarnated from a previous caretaker? Did he travel through time? I don’t get it! Explain movie! Explain!

FINAL JUDGMENT: I have a feeling this opinion is going to rile some people. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving The Shining a 3.5. It’s creepy and visually creative, but the actors/characters aren’t that great, and the lack of terror, unexplained final shot, and important changes from the source material are issues that detract from my viewing.

Sad to say, it’s just not a film for me.

 

Well, at least I got that film out of the way. And with The Shining watched, I only have two films to go. Though I have a feeling this next one might be painful to watch…

Until next time, Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares.

*And now I may have to get that miniseries again just to get a fresh opinion (Rewatch series 2?). And I’ll have to rewatch Room 237, the documentary on The Shining movie and people’s interpretations of it. And maybe reread the book? It’s been at least a decade, so I don’t remember it that well. And I should really get to reading Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. Especially since a movie version’s on the way.

I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Review: Winchester (2018)

Posted: February 3, 2018 in Review, Scary Stuff
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A bit of background before I start this review: in case you didn’t know, or you’ve never read my third list of haunted locations I want to visit, the Winchester Mansion, known today as the Winchester Mystery House, is quite real. It was first started in 1884, but was continually worked on and added onto, around the clock, for nearly forty years. Sarah Winchester, the widow of the owner of the Winchester Rifle Company, believed that the spirits of those killed by her husband’s company’s rifles were after her family and had previously killed her husband and infant daughter. On the advice of a medium, she moved out to California and started building a house that doubled as a maze, meant to confuse the spirits who were after her family. She kept adding onto the house until her death, after which work completely ceased. The house is now a national landmark, and is reputedly haunted to the brim. It is this house, its mistress, and its hauntings that this movie is based on.

Everyone got that? Good.

Winchester follows Jason Clarke as a troubled psychiatrist who is sent by the Winchester Rifle Company to evaluate Mrs. Winchester’s mental state to see if she’s still fit to be a majority shareholder. Mrs. Winchester, played by Helen Mirren, allows the psychiatrist into her home at the same time as a powerful and angry spirit arrives. Together, they must confront this spirit before it kills every member of the Winchester family, and then some.

I went with a friend to see this film. I don’t know what my friend was expecting, but I was hoping, based on the trailer and what the film is based on, that it would be decent at least. At the end, we both agreed it wasn’t that.

Winchester suffers from a number of issues. One of the biggest issues is script. The film’s story is underwhelming, bogged down in exposition and with a villain who, while in concept sounds cool, in execution seems kind of boring. The villain actually reminds me of people’s reactions to Helmut Zemo in Captain America: Civil War. This is a character that’s supposed to be powerful and menacing, but for a lot of audience members (not me, though), the character’s film treatment was not intimidating and lacked menace. For me, Winchester’s villain was like that.

Another issue is the scares. There are a few good jumpscares and creepy imagery, but other than that, the movie isn’t that scary. It tries to build atmosphere, but it doesn’t go as far as it could to build an atmosphere. In other films, we’d see ghost children running in the background, shadows threatening to attack a character before someone walks in and interrupts. Stuff in other films that works very effectively. If we had more of that, the film might actually be a little scary.

I also didn’t care for Jason Clarke’s performance. He’s never been my favorite actor, but this time he was just terrible. Half the time he just mumbled his lines. After the film I just looked at my friend and I was like, “Would it have killed him to speak up?”

But the biggest thing going against the film, at least in my opinion, is the house itself. Or rather, the lack of the house. The actual Winchester Mystery House is a gargantuan structure: four stories, 161 rooms, two bathrooms, seventeen chimneys, two basements, three elevators. Stairs going nowhere, doors that open onto sheer drops, skylights and windows, etc. Even fake bathrooms. An entire maze of a house. But we wouldn’t know it, based on how little we see. A few key hallways and rooms, and some stairs for the arthritic, but barely anything else. If you never saw one set of stairs or a few key exterior shots, you would never know that the house was as huge and confusing as it is. I know the film didn’t have a huge budget, but come on! If you’re going to make a film about a giant maze-house, utilize the maze-house! You could probably make for a more exciting climax if you did that!

Did the film have any good points? Well, Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester was actually kind of badass. She’s portrayed as this strong woman who works through her grief by battling the supernatural every day, and she doesn’t care what you think of that. It’s pretty cool. That, and the costumes and rooms, what rooms we see, anyway, look true to the time and are absolutely beautiful.

But that’s it. It’s not exactly awful, but it’s not very good either. It’s just below average.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving Winchester a 1.5. There’s a lot of potential in the concept, but this film definitely did not live up to it, producing an unremarkable period piece trying to be a good horror film. So if you’re looking to be scared, I suggest skipping this one entirely. It’s all bark, and absolutely no bite.

“Hannah”: My First Short Story of 2018

Posted: January 28, 2018 in Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well, after the fourth draft of Rose, I knew that I didn’t want to go into another novel too soon. I wanted to do some short stories. And I somehow managed to get my first short story of the year out in five days. Impressive. These usually take about two weeks to a month. On a good day.

Hannah is a ghost story about a team of paranormal investigators that explore an elementary school that’s reportedly haunted, and what they encounter in there. And for a Rami Ungar short story, it’s actually shorter than most I’ve written, just under fifty-nine hundred words. Usually they end up between seven-thousand and nine-thousand words. I wonder how that worked out?

And for the record, the Hannah in the title of this story is not based on any Hannah I actually know. And that’s a few: it’s a popular girl’s name in the Jewish community, so of course I’ve met and made friends with several. The titular character’s name actually has to do with a famous urban legend from another country, which I can’t name or go into without giving too much away about the story. I can’t even go into details of the legend, lest I give too much away. However, the name Hannah is a clue, if you want to try to figure it out. Let’s just say, it’s an Americanization.

Anyway, I’m hoping this short story is some good. I’ve been listening to a lot of horror anthologies on audio book lately, so I think I’ve absorbed some of what those had to teach me on short story writing. I also learned a lot from the fourth draft of Rose on concise language and strong writing (thanks Joleene), which probably contributed to its shorter length. And at the very least, if the story is terrible, at least it’ll be well-written.

Of course, there’s still things that can be improved. I think the middle and ending are pretty good, but I’m worried the beginning has too much exposition and telling, and not enough dialogue and showing. I’ve seen short stories do that well, of course, but I’m not sure if it’s done well here. Well, I suppose that’s what second drafts and beta readers are for. And hopefully once those are done, I can get this story published somewhere (I have a few ideas of where I would like that to happen).

Now that Hannah is done, there’s another short story I’d like to get to work on as soon as possible. Maybe even tomorrow, if my schedule allows. I’m looking forward to this one: it’s a story with a wonderfully relevant topic to today’s world.

For now though, I’m headed to bed. After all, I’ve got work in the morning. Goodnight Followers of Fear, and until next time, pleasant nightmares!

Thoughts on Lovecraft: Part 4

Posted: January 23, 2018 in Living and Life, Reflections, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Well, it’s been a year since I last had a Lovecraft binge (see Parts 1, 2, and 3 for my previous binges). And while I didn’t read any actual Lovecraft stories in the year (holy cow, that long?) since my last binge, he was certainly never far from my mind. I read a lot of fiction influenced or modeled after his work, including the Lovecraft/YA novel Awoken* (read my review here), shopped around my own Lovecraft-themed story The Red Bursts (still working on that), and wrote an article about why there’s not more adaptations or even a cinematic universe based on his work. No, surprise, after all that I was ready for another dive into his work. And boy, did I enjoy the eldritch swim.

So if you’re not familiar with HP Lovecraft (and I’d bet good money that you’re not), he was an early 20th-century author whose ideas and stories proved very influential on storytellers like Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Allan Moore, among others. He’s considered the father of cosmic horror, the idea that humans are basically ants in our universe, that there are beings and truths so great and terrible that even glimpsing them can cause madness and death. It’s pretty bleak stuff, if you think about too much about it (which I have).

So this time around, I read “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” Lovecraft’s only finished novel, “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Dunwich Horror,” “History of the Neconomicon” and “The Whisperer in Darkness,” as well as several fragments, one letter excerpt, and one parody story, but I won’t go over those. And I got to say, these were definitely some of the most enjoyable of Lovecraft’s stories. They were consistently creepy and kept me engrossed in the story, as well as with the most accessible language (dude liked to pretend he was a contemporary of Poe, rather than a contemporary of Ernest Hemingway). Or am I just used to his style now?

The interesting thing about these highlighted stories is, they also mark Lovecraft’s shift from pure horror to science-horror. Sure, he’s done that before–“Herbert West: Reanimator” is the story of two men trying to discover the key to bringing back the dead using science, a theme also explored in “Charles Dexter Ward,” but more thriller and magical than science-fiction–but here there was definitely a more sci-fi element in his work. “The Colour Out of Space” and “The Whisperer in Darkness” both involved aliens, with the former involving a sort of alien infection and the latter involving aliens that have been visiting Earth for centuries.

Why did Lovecraft make this shift? Well, around the time these stories were written–late 1920’s and early 1930’s–was also the birth of science fiction as a proper genre. Pulp magazines like Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories were huge sellers, and since pulp rags like these were where Lovecraft normally published his work, he would’ve been aware of the young genre and its exploration of humanity’s possibilities through space exploration, technology, and aliens. It’s no surprise that he’d take elements from those stories and give them a freaky twist. And lo and behold, it led to Lovecraft writing some of my favorite works by him (especially “Colour Out of Space.” God, that was freaky, considering that what happened in that story could maybe happen in real life).

Honestly, I’m glad I decided to check out HP Lovecraft two-and-a-half years ago. Sure, his early works can be hit-and-miss, but as time went on, he got better. And by this point in his bibliography, he was very good at writing stories that stayed in your mind. It’s a shame he didn’t achieve more of a following during this time, because maybe then we’d have more works by him (sadly, he died in 1937 at barely forty years of age), and he’d be more well-known today.

And while I’m done with my latest binge, I’m looking forward to my next one, whenever that is. Especially if the stories from this point on are as good as the ones I read this time around. And seeing as At the Mountain of Madness is the next story in my collection, I’d say that’s a definite possibility.

Have you read these stories or others by Lovecraft? What are your thoughts on them?

*Funny story about Awoken: so I follow this woman named Lindsay Ellis on YouTube (check out her channel here) who does a lot of videos on our media and culture. Yesterday she uploaded a video about whether or not the hate over the Twilight franchise was warranted. During said video, she mentions she and friend/frequent collaborator Antonella “Nella” Inserra wrote Awoken as a parody of Twilight, only with Lovecraft characters instead of vampires. My mouth hit the floor. I had no idea that the novel was a parody of Twilight, let alone written by those two women under a pen name. Though now that I think about it, it explains quite a bit.

I reached out to both women on YouTube and Twitter, letting them know that I read the novel, my ignorance of its authorship, how much I actually liked it, and that I reviewed it on this blog. They asked for a link, and I sent it to them. Since then, I’ve gotten hundreds of views from their readers/viewers on that one review, and the number of reads is still growing. Wow. Didn’t expect that. Pretty cool. Probably won’t last a week, but it’s still cool.

Also, I learned about Poe’s Rule: if you write a parody of something, unless you ad a healthy dose of comedy, people will think it’s serious fiction in a particular style. Which is apparently what happened to me, as these readers are telling me. Good to know.

Rewatch: The Evil Dead (1981)

Posted: January 20, 2018 in Review, Rewatch, Scary Stuff
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You know, I’ve seen a lot of YouTubers do series where they watch specific kinds of stories–sequels of great hits, weird-ass anime, the Mummy series, etc.–and I appreciate what they do, but I feel like I’m getting an idea of the horrors they have to endure just to entertain me. A lot of what they watch can be really bad or silly or painful, and they endure it just to bring me YouTube commentary and humor.

How do they do it as often as they do? They must have some serious endurance.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT: A bunch of friends/lovers go to a cabin in the woods for the weekend, and obviously, something horrible happens. It’s the embodiment of the cliche, if not the original that started the cliche.

WHY I DIDN’T LIKE IT: I saw it right before the remake came out, and I thought it was totally stupid. It was dated, the effects were terrible and cheap, and far from scary. I could not see how it became a phenomenon. And after I saw the remake and loved it, I was amazed that the original didn’t just get swept into the dustbin of history.

WHY I REWATCHED IT: You hear enough people talk about the influence of the original, and even do YouTube videos comparing both films (YouTube is a big part of my life, if that’s not obvious), you start to wonder if you missed something. It also started a phenomenon, as well as jump-started the careers of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. Not to mention that the shooting was pretty dangerous: people were actually thrown into and had furniture fall on them. Not only that, but when the characters are fighting demonically-possessed friends with sharp knives, they’re actually fighting other actors with gunk in their eyes, completely blinded, while using actual sharp knives! Kind of makes you want to see if your opinion needs reevaluating.

THOUGHTS: Ummm…it’s better than I remember it. A little better, anyway.

There are some things about this film that are good. The camera work is always interesting, showing things from points of views I don’t normally see in horror films. At times, it feels like a drone is holding the camera: odd angles, fast movements, branches and whatnot hitting the camera. There are some really atmospheric moments, like when the characters arrive and there’s this eerie music and the porch swing is knocking against the wall.

And there are some shocking moments, like the…rape-tree scene. Yeah, if you didn’t know, that’s a thing this movie has. And it’s shocking and disgusting. Which is what the filmmakers were looking for, the most shocking horror film ever put to screen at that time, so I guess they got what they wanted.

But I have a lot of problems with this film. For one thing, the shock and awe only stays shocking as long as the audience isn’t desensitized. And I’ve been desensitized since I was nine and saw my first PG-13 movie. And when that stuff loses it power, what’s left has to hold up the rest of the film, and it doesn’t do that very well. Biggest issue I have is the effects: I know they’re going for memorable and it is, but they’re very silly at the same time, and in a horror film, even when I put aside my distaste for excessive gore, that’s just going to turn me off.

While I don’t expect the characters to be that fleshed out–not that kind of film–but they could’ve done a better job of establishing their relationships early in the film. I could not tell who was dating who, and they waited till nearly two-thirds into the film to reveal that Girl #3 was Bruce Campbell’s sister. Um…could’ve pointed that out earlier. I thought she was just a fifth wheel who went with the other four so she didn’t have to feel bad about not having a boyfriend. Which she was, but the sister part should be mentioned earlier.

And weirdly enough, for the bare-bones story, it actually gave me questions. For one thing, after the sister’s possessed and one of them is badly injured, the other characters are way too calm. Why are you so calm? Your friend’s possessed! Be a bit more freaked out and active! And why are the spirits said to be “sleeping” prior to being summoned by the incantations in the Book of the Dead, but they’re able to possess a hand or cause cars to swerve into the wrong lane? They seem pretty active to me! Are they like Cthulhu, sleeping but still able to affect the world, they’re just not at full power unless under certain circumstances? I’m so confused.

JUDGMENT: It may have caused a phenomenon and started a few careers, and you should see it for those reasons, but I wouldn’t expect to be really scared once you’re past age fourteen. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give the original Evil Dead film a 2 out of 5. That may be the unpopular opinion, but let’s face it: some classics don’t age well with time. We saw that with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I’m seeing that with Evil Dead. And I’m not sorry for pointing that out.

At the very least, I’ll check out the next film. I hear that and its sequel are at least a bit more enjoyable. And hopefully they will be.

 

That’s all for now, Followers of Fear. I’ve already reserved #7 in this series, and I think that, even if I don’t enjoy it as a film, I’ll find it interesting from an academic point of view. I’m talking Nosferatu.

Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

Are Horror Characters Dumb?

Posted: January 8, 2018 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Go to any slasher movie. I guarantee someone will do something stupid. And I also guarantee there’s a reason behind why they did it.

So yesterday I was doing some edits on Rose* and one of the points in the beta reader notes stood out to me. In that particular point, my friend/colleague/beta reader Joleene Naylor pointed out that it was taking the titular character Rose a lot longer to figure something out about the scene that Joleene had figured out much earlier. My immediate first thought was, “Well, it’s horror. Everyone’s a bit slower in horror.” And that thought really stuck with me. Yeah, the characters in horror aren’t always the brightest bulbs in the closet, are they? People in slasher films take too long to realize there’s a killer hunting them around a lake notorious for murders and disappearances, the family stays in their haunted house and might even pretend things are normal even if it’s obvious there’s demonic possession at work, dumb teenagers run upstairs when they should run out the door. They either realize something well after the audience has realized something, or they make really dumb decisions. And it’s such a well-known trope, it gets parodied quite a bit in our media, like in this Geico commercial.

This got me thinking: is this intentional on the part of horror writers? If so, why?

Well, I thought about this throughout the day (couldn’t write this before because I had to go to bed and then to work), and I think that what’s happening is intentional. However, I don’t think the intention is to make the characters stupid idiots.

First, let’s consider something: we’re the audience, and the characters are characters. In our daily lives we’re not keyed up, checking to see if horror-movie circumstances everywhere we go (and if we are, we’re usually recommended to see a doctor about that). It’s only when we sit down for a horror story that we start looking for signs of horror, because that’s what our brains are trained to do. Similarly, unless they’re enjoying a horror story or think they’re in one, characters won’t typically see all the signs of something evil around them unless that evil chooses to make itself known.

There’s also the fact that authors have to tell a story, and often the stories they tell have to be of a certain length. For example, I classify a novel as sixty-thousand words or more, so I have to figure out how to keep a novel going for that long. One of the ways to do that is to make the characters figure things out much slower than the audience, either by only giving them clues slowly or later in the story, or by actually making it so they can’t connect the dots until it’s convenient for the story. And considering that part of the appeal of horror, the thrill of the mystery and the unknown as well as our reactions to it once exposed, this is a sound strategy.

Okay, so making characters slow on the uptake is part imitating people in the real world, part storytelling tool. But what about stupid decisions?

Well, that’s actually pretty easy to answer: they’re under stress. When a character is being chased by a killer or trying to get away from a ghost, they’re under unimaginable pressures. So unless they’ve been trained to think under pressure, like in the Army, they’re not going to make a rational decision. They’re going to make split-second decisions that they hope will ensure their survival, and because it’s a horror story, they’ll likely make the wrong decision. Unless the author says otherwise, of course.

And even if they’re not in a stressful, life-or-death situation, the need for survival can cause us to do very stupid things sometimes, as well as our characters. Polly Chalmers, one of the protagonists of Stephen King’s Needful Things, keeps a charm around her neck, despite suspecting that there’s something alive in it and it’s twisting her personality somehow, because the thing is easing the debilitating pain of her arthritis. In other words, fulfilling a need to help her live.

Sometimes a character acts a certain way either because they’re imitating real people, or the author needs them to be that way.

So it’s not that characters in horror stories are dumb or slow. They’re victims of imitating people in the real world as well as the author’s discretion in storytelling. And we the audience, free of those issues, are able to pick up on things they can’t or won’t for a little while longer.

Of course, we will continue to call characters stupid and wonder how they could not do the smart thing. That just comes with the territory. But perhaps the next time we sit down for a scary movie, we’ll also consider what the characters are going through, as well as what the storytellers behind them decided was best for the characters and their story.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Hope this gave you plenty to think about. I had fun just thinking of it. Until next time, pleasant nightmares.

*Speaking of which, the editing on Rose is going very well. Yesterday I got through four chapters, bringing me halfway through the fourth draft. At the rate I’m going, I could be done before the end of the month. And after that, hopefully it’s a short wait till I find a publisher. God-willing, anyway.

Review: Insidious: The Last Key

Posted: January 6, 2018 in Review, Scary Stuff
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You know, horror sequels get a bad reputation for getting silly or boring over time. Now, there are some that do give this rep some credibility (looking at you, Jason Takes Manhattan). But among horror sequels, there are some truly great gems that have as much punch, or sometimes even more punch, than the originals. And Insidious: The Last Key is one of those sequels, not just for being scary and creepy, but also for keeping things interesting with a character-driven narrative.

In this entry in the Insidious series, Elise Rainier (played by unacknowledged Hollywood treasure Lin Shaye) is called back to her childhood home to defeat the evil spirits that live there and which haunted her childhood. As she and her two stalwart companions Specs and Tucker delve deep into the hauntings in the house, they will not only uncover horrors from the Further, but from this world as well, and from Elise’s own dark memories.

This was a seriously solid horror movie. The best part of it, of course, is Lin Shaye’s performance as Elise Rainier, along with the character’s own arc in this movie. The arc itself is kind of similar to Elise’s arc in the last film–that she’s dealing with trauma and has to overcome it to save a life–but here, the scars are so much deeper, and the raw emotion you feel from Shaye as Elise opens them up makes it seem all so new. You feel her pain, you feel her wanting to make amends, and when you see her triumphs, you share in them.

As always, the atmosphere in these movies is creepy, the right balance between tension and jump scares. The creepiest part, in my opinion, is the antagonist, The Man With the Keys, or Key Face as he’s listed on Wikipedia. This is such a freaky looking demon, and unlike the Man Who Can’t Breathe from the last film, who got scary once you could see him in the light, The Man with the Keys is freaky no matter when you see him. In the light, out of the light, he’s so scary. I think if you put him up next to Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise and had a contest on just visual terror, it’d be a very close call.

I also like, in addition to the many keys we see in the movie, there is just so many key-shaped imagery in the movie. Pumps, signs, etc. They’re all key-shaped, kind of tying into the theme of the movie of opening up old wounds and opening up the past.

I also thought that new character Imogen (whose name only makes me think of the song “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap) was an interesting addition. Not giving anything away, but her presence in the film could be a hint of where the franchise could go from here, given where this film takes place in the series’ timeline. Especially if Lin Shaye wants to finish her time with the series with this film or with the next one.*

Was there anything I didn’t like? A few things. I honestly thought the climax wasn’t as epic as it could’ve been. Not only that, but a few things we saw in the trailers didn’t show up in the film, which is always annoying. And finally, Specs and Tucker, our supposed comic relief, just weren’t that funny.

But all in all, Insidious: The Last Key is well worth plunking down cash for a ticket. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 4.4. Check it out, and open yourself up to some terrifying storytelling.

That’s all for now, Followers of Fear. We’re likely going to have a bunch more reviews this month, so I hope you’re ready for recommendations and opinions. And if the trailers I saw in the theater are any indication, I’m going to have a lot to say in 2018.

Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

*I’m assuming that we’re going to get a sequel, given that already the film has made back its budget and then a bit two days after coming out.

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