Posts Tagged ‘graphic novel’

“Beautiful Darkness:” This Graphic Novel Will Disturb You

Posted: July 21, 2025 in Review, Scary Stuff
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This isn’t my normal review. But then again, this is far from a normal graphic novel.

So, when you think of tiny, humanoid people, what do you think of? Fairies? The Borrowers? How about tiny people living inside you (and I don’t mean the emotions from Inside Out)? Not with Beautiful Darkness, a graphic novel by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet.

The graphic novel starts out prettily enough. A girl named Aurora, who is like a Cinderella in a 1950s housedress, is being courted by a princely character named Hector. She’s helped by a short little friend named Plim. In the first page and a half, their romance is going just like a fairy tale…until the cutely drawn characters’ home starts dissolving around them, forcing them to leave.

And then it’s revealed that home is the body of a little girl, left abandoned in the woods to rot. Her name, who she might have been, and how she died, never revealed.

And that’s just the start of a very dark saga dressed up in art that, in another graphic novel, would fit nicely in the children’s section at your local library.

This image is so disturbing, I almost didn’t include it in this review.

Aurora quickly finds herself trying to be a leader as she and the other survivors learn to grasp their new surroundings. However, Aurora, who might be the most realistic, as well as the most idealistic, of this community of tiny people, do not have it easy. Except for one mouse, all the animals and insects are as wild as you’d expect, and do what animals do best. The elements take their toll as well. Schemes to survive lead to further deaths or maiming, such as when one character tries to sneak into a nest full of baby birds and eat with them. The result is that her mouth gets torn open by the mother bird’s large beak, leading her to throwing up blood and running away.

But worse than animals, or nature, or survival attempts, are Aurora’s compatriots. Perhaps because they lived inside the body of a little girl, they are almost oblivious in their innocence and naivete. They see each other die, and move on to fish or fly kites or dance like it was nothing. They scheme against and backstab one another. They even kill each other, and do it with such callousness, never once sparing a thought for the lives they’ve taken!

All this betrayal and disappointment wear on Aurora, especially after her leadership role, and her lover, are usurped by rival leader Zellie. She later thinks that she’s found a friend in a loner survivor named Jane, but events soon force her to make the ultimate choice.

A prime example of how dark and uncaring the world of these characters is.

I’ve written before about “corruption of the innocent” before. The idea that the horrors one faces through a horror story destroys whatever innocence you have left and transforms you into something new. It could be childhood innocence, or that you thought the world was a rational place full of rational people, or that the world is ruled by a loving and merciful god. In some subgenres of horror, like Gothic, it could be considered essential. I certainly consider it essential, to the point I have a tattoo on my back representing it.

And it’s been such a long time since I’ve seen it done so well. Aurora tries to stay strong, but her innocence is destroyed in a world where she and her people are as inconsequential as dust motes, and those she should be able to rely on smile innocently while they betray her. In a way, it’s like cosmic horror, only instead of Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones, it’s a forest full of hungry animals and violent nature, as well as your own community.

(That’s not my observation, BTW: it’s the YouTube channel Tale Foundry, where I first heard of this graphic novel and which I highly recommend. You can check out their video about it here, but beware of spoilers.)

Anyway, it’s probably only a matter of time till this graphic novel appears on my personal shelves. In the meantime, I’m awarding Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet a 4.8 out of 5. It’s dark, it’s disturbing, it’s possibly the prime example of a new subgenre called “innocent horror,” and I think you should check it out.

Just don’t show it to young children afterwards. It’ll mess them up in all the wrong ways.

Review: The Dark Tower (2017 Film)

Posted: August 5, 2017 in Review
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I’m going to start this post by stating for the record that I have not read any of the Dark Tower books, or the audiobooks, or the graphic novels. I’m coming at this as an outside fan, someone who likes Stephen King a lot but has yet to try his fantasy series because, as even King puts it, it’s an acquired taste.* I also realize that this is a movie, so they’re going to have to make many adjustments between getting the story from the page to the screen. I’m okay with that, because I’m pretty sure a straight adaptation would be longer than Titanic (and that’s three hours long!). And I somehow managed to keep away from reviews from other sources, so I went into the theater with a clear mind in order to judge this film on my own terms.

That being said, I liked this film.

The Dark Tower follows Jake Chambers, a teenager from New York who is having dreams about this strange world, a man dressed in black who is trying to destroy a gigantic tower, and a man called the gunslinger who hunts him. While the rest of his family and even some of his friends think he’s crazy, Jake manages to find a gateway to the mythical Mid-World, and becomes an important piece in the battle between Roland the gunslinger and Walter O’Dim the Man in Black, as well as an important piece in the battle to keep all of reality from becoming destroyed.

So like I said, this film worked for me. The visuals were very beautiful, giving us this huge world with strange features and breathtaking views. The actors were all great, especially the main three, Idris Elba as Roland, Matthew McConaughey as Walter, and Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers. My favorite was McConaughey, his take on Walter was terrifying. You could sense the psychopathy in this character, the indifference to death and love of destruction. It’s really creepy. Elba was also commanding as Roland, making you feel this intensity, and Taylor as Jake was a believable character who finds himself in this strange world and is trying to make the best of it.

*shudder* Scary dude.

Also, shout out to Fran Kranz as a bad guy. Did not know he was in the film, so it was so cool to see the guy who played Topher in Dollhouse there.

I also thought the fight scenes were choreographed very well. They didn’t look silly or hard to make out, and the camera work wasn’t shaky or anything. And for a series well-known for being complicated and bizarre, I actually felt like it was easy to follow. Sure, some things didn’t make sense or weren’t explained, but I was able to follow it for the most part.

That being said, there were two things that I didn’t like: one was there was this minor character called Timmy, who is supposed to be a friend of Jake’s, and he’s in the film for maybe three minutes and really doesn’t serve a purpose. If you took him out of the story, the film wouldn’t be missing anything. I also thought that the story was kind of by-the-numbers. There wasn’t any sort of point where I was surprised by what happened, or the filmmakers threw me for a loop. Was I thrilled? Yes. Did I was like, “Oh hey, I didn’t see that coming”? No.

But all in all, I think this is the best adaptation of The Dark Tower series we’re going to get without being overly complicated or bogged down in details. I know it’s not going to please everyone, especially hardcore fans, but it was a good film for me, and I would be interested to see a sequel and/or the television series in development based on the movie.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving The Dark Tower a 4.4 out of 5. Go see it, and find yourself reciting the Gunslinger’s Creed for the rest of the day.

*And if the books anything like their probable inspiration, HP Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, particularly The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, I’m willing to wait.