TICKTOCK by Dean Koontz

 

Dean Koontz hears titles before stories. Sometime in the nineties, TICKTOCK as a title was already brewing in his skull like something trapped and desperate to get out. Wearing the borrowed skin of DRAGON TEARS, it almost escaped, before being politely ushered aside by publishers with sharper marketing instincts. But compulsions don’t fade; they incubate. Eventually, they demand a body.

This novel is that body.

In an Afterword, Koontz admits to requesting minimal publicity for TIKTOCK … which feels fitting. Because, in 1996, I missed it entirely – as though it had slipped between the decade’s floorboards. But there’s something almost appropriate about that. A story concerning something small, hidden, and malicious… overlooked until it’s far too late.

We begin with Tommy Phan, a Vietnamese/American Detective novelist who has just purchased a Corvette, that gleaming altar to the American Dream. To him, it’s not just a car – it’s proof the machine of capitalism has chosen not to devour him. Yet even in his moment of triumph, the author injects a tremor, a premonition. The narrative equivalent of a shadow passing over the sun.

That shadow arrives in the form of a doll.

Not just any doll, either. A devil doll with cross-stitched eyes, the kind of object that looks like it was never meant to be loved. It appears on Tommy’s doorstep like a punctuation mark. From there, the clock begins its countdown. The doll is sentient, malevolent, and fueled by purpose. It wants Tommy dead. Clean, efficient, relentless.

And then, as if summoned by the same narrative gravity that governs so many Koontz worlds, Deliverance Payne arrives.

Del is chaos wrapped in charm. Quirky, abrasive, funny in that off-kilter way that suggests she’s either the sanest person ever … or the most unhinged. Probably both. Her dynamic with Tommy becomes the book’s second engine, running parallel to the horror. Their dialogue crackles with wit, though not the kind you’d ever overhear. Real people don’t talk like this. They don’t volley philosophical one-liners while fleeing supernatural death. But that’s beside the point. Fiction, especially this breed of fiction, isn’t interested in realism. It’s interested in momentum.

And Ticktock moves. It lunges forward with possession sequences, chases that rip across roads and water, and encounters with family that peel back layers of cultural and supernatural history. By the time Koontz begins revealing the why behind everything, the novel has already committed to its own heightened reality. Explanations, in keeping with the novel’s inanity, are controversial.

And there’s no dodging Ticktock’s weight.

This is a long book. Scenes stretch, loop, and there are moments where you can feel the prose indulging itself. Entire passages could have been halved without losing their substance. Then again, this was the nineties, an era where excess wasn’t just tolerated, it was expected. Books sprawled. They took their time … whether a reader liked it or not.

More frustrating, perhaps, is Koontz’s enduring affection for destiny as a shortcut. Characters don’t so much fall in love as surrender to romantic hogwash. In theory, it’s a beautiful idea. In practice, it rarely mirrors the awkward, uncertain machinery of human connection. But again, realism isn’t exactly the contract here. This is myth wearing modern clothes.

And, maybe, that’s the point.

Because for all its excess, its improbabilities, and occasionally indulgent heart, TICKTOCK knows exactly what it wants to be. Escapism with teeth. A carnival ride through horror and humor, where the world outside the page fades into something dull and distant.

We don’t read books to find reality.

We read them to leave it behind.

BODY MELT (1993).

 

There’s a class of Australian film that feels less like it was made and more like it clawed its way out of a VHS tape. Body Melt belongs squarely to that fevered lineage.

As an aficionado of horror for my remembered life, discovering Body Melt this late feels like finding a hidden room. You open the door and the smell hits: plastic and chemicals. Something sweet beginning to rot. 

On the surface, it’s pure B-grade delirium. The kind of schlock that doesn’t ask to be believed so much as endured, maybe even survived. Our central thread is deceptively simple: the Vimuville Health Institute is quietly dosing the residents of Peebles Court, a pastel-bright cul-de-sac that quickly curdles into a suburban petri dish. Their experimental vitamins promise vitality and deliver instead a carnival of glandular betrayal. Bodies swell, leak … then mutate. The human form becomes unreliable, then treacherous.

But Body Melt isn’t just chaos. Beneath the oozing skin and hallucinatory freak-outs, there’s a knowing grin. This is satire with a serrated edge. Fitness culture, wellness obsessions; the sterile dream of suburban perfection … all of it gets dragged into the light and left to blister. Health becomes hysteria.

Tonally, it shares DNA with early Peter Jackson splatter comedies like Braindead, where excess becomes its own language. There’s also a distant echo of House of 1000 Corpses … if it had been baked under an Australian sun and spliced with late-night commercials. The humor is grotesque, absurd – but always intentional. It knows exactly how far it’s pushing, and then leans in further.

There's also another Australia here. Not the clean geometry of Peebles Court, but the dust-caked nightmare just beyond. A family of feral inbreeds running a service station like it’s their own private abattoir. Kangaroos are reduced to adrenal gland harvests. It feels like a distant, deranged cousin of the Mad Max universe … but here the apocalypse isn’t societal collapse. It’s biological.

The cast adds another layer of strange familiarity. Faces pulled from the warm, reassuring glow of Australian television: echoes of Neighbours, E Street, and Blue Heelers, their recognizability weaponized. Here, the nation’s comfort viewing is fed through a meat grinder.

Narratively, it barely holds together. Logic dissolves and scenes lurch. But coherence isn’t exactly the point. Body Melt operates on a different frequency … one where sensation overrides structure. 

And somehow, improbably, it all works.

Because underneath the slime, there’s a clarity of intent. A disgust with artificiality and a fascination with the fragility of the body. A recognition that beneath the curated surfaces of suburban life, something volatile is waiting.

It’s ridiculous; it’s excessive. It’s often repulsive.

And it’s bloody brilliant.

The Voice of the Night by Dean Koontz

 

Once again, my reading habits have pulled me toward the dust of paperbacks, neon fonts, and those dream-bait covers that promised strange worlds behind a rack at an Aussie newsagent. The Voice of the Night is another such relic … and for me the memory always begins with the cover itself: that eerie, dilapidated house rendered by Brian Coffey. Like the work of Steve Crisp, Coffey captured the pulp-imaginative mood of an era; the sense that something unspeakable lurks just inside the front door.

Reading, what surprised me most was how effectively it functions as a warped coming-of-age tale. Beneath the horror scaffolding lies a study of adolescent psychology, rendered through the uneasy friendship of two teenage boys.

Colin is the new kid in town. Lanky, socially awkward, he’s lost in horror comics and swallowed by social anxiety. He is precisely the sort of isolated satellite that attracts someone like Roy. Roy wastes no time initiating him into his worldview, and the novel wastes no time announcing its intent. The opening line is still a gut punch: ‘You ever killed anything?’ Roy asked.

What follows is less a traditional horror narrative than a descent into the teenage mind when it tilts toward nihilism. Roy is not simply troubled; he is evangelical, coaxing Colin toward acts that begin small and escalate with inevitability. In tone and theme, the book carries faint echoes of a film like The Good Son … though Koontz’s version is far more psychologically layered and arrived years earlier.

What genuinely surprised me is how convincingly Koontz captures the cadence of youth. In many of his works, younger characters feel oddly artificial. Here, however, the banter between Colin and Roy feels painfully authentic. Their exchanges are filled with awkward humor, half-formed philosophies, and the desperate need to impress one another. At times the dialogue becomes almost theatrical, with entire paragraphs consisting of nothing but conversation. For Koontz, this is unusual territory.

Occasionally, I had the sneaking suspicion the author was deliberately sidestepping his usual stylistic impulses. The prose here feels leaner, darker, more confrontational. One could almost imagine the shadow of Richard Laymon hovering somewhere nearby. Given the two writers did in fact spend time together in real life, the tonal overlap doesn’t feel entirely impossible.

The central theme circles around the idea of folie à deux, the madness of two. Roy becomes the gravitational centre of a shared insanity, slowly drawing Colin toward increasingly obscene acts. It’s the sort of dynamic that inevitably makes one think of real-world cases like Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, those horrifying moments when youth collides with something far darker. The Voice of the Night explores that same grim trajectory: the gradual erosion of moral boundaries under the pressure of influence.

Eventually Colin begins to recognize the abyss staring back. His awakening arrives alongside an alliance with a local girl, and the story shifts toward confrontation. As the climax approaches, the mood briefly evokes another eighties horror landmark, Christine, in which young lovers find themselves united by the desperate hope of destroying a monster.

It’s well known that eighties Koontz often feels bolder, more willing to wander into morally uncomfortable territory. Ultimately, The Voice of the Night peers directly into the murky psyche of male adolescence and refuses to blink.

The Rental

 

The modern ritual of borrowing a stranger’s life for a weekend. We scroll, we click … and suddenly we are entrusted with the curated intimacy of someone else’s kitchen and bath towels. It is commerce masquerading as hospitality; trust arranged by algorithm. And in The Rental, that fragile compact curdles.

Two brothers and their respective spouses. An oceanside palace of glass and timber that stands like a small cathedral. The house is bait, of course. Perched above the sea, isolated and wind-lashed, it carries a faint gothic pulse. These kind of home’s promise serenity … but whisper surveillance.

What makes everything hum is not its premise but its people. Alcohol flows. Molly dissolves restraint and jealousies bloom. The horror here is at first domestic, then technological. A slow, suffocating realization the most dangerous thing in the house might not be hidden in a smoke detector, but sitting across the dinner table.

Our Airbnb anxiety is almost a social muscle memory. Hidden fees, smiling hosts as gatekeepers. The uneasy choreography between guest and owner. Here, our host is brusque, racist … and vaguely hostile. When cameras are discovered, the film pivots into a guessing game of authorship. Who orchestrates the rot?

Only later did I learn the film was directed and co-written by Dave Franco. For a debut, it is slick and self-assured. And the presence of an A-lister like Jeremy Allen White elevates proceedings.  

Its ultimate defect (let’s face it, we all knew one was coming) lies in a third act. Human combustion is traded for a payoff with slasher vibes. If only the cast were granted a more intimate, character-driven reckoning and this could have brushed the high echelons of indie horror. 6.5/10.

 

Scream 7

When Scream 7 opens with a self-aware sequence built around fresh, disposable characters, the pacing feels hesitant. You may find yourself wondering whether the formula is finally beginning to strain. And yet … it’s worth remembering this franchise has remained remarkably sophisticated across its lifespan, never once collapsing into the kind of schlock that swallowed so many of its eighties slasher counterparts. Even in its most indulgent moments, it has prized intelligence over excess.

Historically, Scream films have thrived on the kinetic charge of adolescence: high school corridors and college campuses functioned as petri dishes for hysteria, hormones, and horror. Here, however, the energy has shifted. No.7 operates within the architecture of domesticity. Mother and daughter. Kitchen tables in lieu of lockers. The drama unfolds less like football game and more like a family reckoning. On paper, it feels like natural evolution. Characters age; franchises mature. Yet the early misgivings linger …

And then something interesting happens.

Artificial intelligence, the bogeyman of our waking lives, is threaded into the narrative bloodstream. In reality, AI provokes unease. On screen, however, it becomes a hall of mirrors. Motive fractures. The whodunit calculus grows unstable. For a series that built its reputation on unmasking formula, this technological infusion grants the writers a playground of near-limitless possibility. Every suspicion feels both justified and suspect.

What impresses most is the script’s willingness to drag its own legacy into the light. Every trope you can catalogue from the previous six instalments is addressed, dissected, and repurposed with meta nods. Expect red herrings that feel like inside jokes and revelations that land with both inevitability and surprise.

Performance-wise, the ensemble commits fully … even when the material teeters on the brink of excess. Emotional beats are sold with conviction, grounding the more labyrinthine plot turns. In interviews, Neve Campbell suggested the gore had been dialed back … I actually found the opposite. While not gratuitous for its own sake, several kills are staged with creativity. The choreography is sharp; the aftermath lingers.

By the midway mark, my apprehensions had largely dissolved. The domestic focus, initially suspect, deepens the stakes. When violence invades the home, it carries a different tune. The franchise’s progression feels, if not flawless, then at least logical. This is not reinvention for its own sake; nor is it a hollow retread. It is a continuation that acknowledges time’s passage.

Walking out, I felt something rare for a seventh entry: satisfaction. A sense of narrative symmetry. As though the circle that began in a suburban living room decades ago had tightened.

Somehow, against expectation, the mask still fits.

 

Relics by Shaun Hutson

 

There are certain writers who do not knock politely. They bash in hinges and grin through splinters. Since the 1980’s, Shaun Hutson has been doing precisely that – long before ‘extreme’ became a marketing badge and splatterpunk found its modern clergy. If horror has a gutter laureate, Hutson has long occupied the throne.

Relics opens up with a premise that is archetypal and academic: an archaeological dig which uncovers a subterranean chamber packed with the skulls of children. The bones seem ancient. They are not. This unsealing coincides with a series of ritualistic murders in which victims are disemboweled and their entrails contorted into letters of the alphabet. Language becomes viscera. Communication, carnage.  

The novel orbits two poles. On one side, a dig rich in Celtic ecofacts where archaeologist Kim deciphers tablets foretelling the rise of an ancient God named Dagda ... unless innocent blood is spilled. On the other, inspector Stephen Wallace is tasked with pursuing a killer who gouges out eyes and rearranges organs with a butcher’s finesse. Between it all lies a landscape of British hooligans, sadists, and opportunists … figures far removed from the incel loners who populate a universe like Richard Laymon’s. Hutson’s England is all boot boys and bile.  

The procedural threads, it must be said, strain credulity. Wallace will appear at crime scenes with uncanny punctuality, as if ushered by a narrative teleporter rather than real transport. The investigative mechanics feel perfunctory, even intrusive. Yet this has never been Hutson’s true arena.

His true arena lies in gore. When Hutson writes it, he does not suggest; he saturates the fucking page. Blood has temperature. Excrement and other bodily emissions are rendered without coyness. Animal cruelty, particularly in the depiction of dog fighting and other scenes of calculated brutality, will repel many. It probably should. However, the caveat is clear: this is pulp horror operating without anesthetic. To enter such territory expecting restraint is to misread the signpost.

Hutson’s excesses are not limited to gore. His action scenes tend to sprawl, sometimes running twice as long as they need to, and a firmer editorial hand could have sharpened several confrontations. The narrative momentum sags under the weight of its own enthusiasm.

What elevates Relics beyond adolescent provocation is craft. Beneath Hutson’s juvenile ferocity lies a writer who understands cadence, pacing, and the architecture of dread. The suggestion of curses, of ancient forces stirring beneath earth moving machinery, lends the narrative a mythic undertow. Bizarre accidents at the dig hint that something older than law enforcement has taken an interest.

For a novel born in the 1980s, Relics is unsubtle, frequently excessive, and occasionally clumsy in its scaffolding. Yet it possesses an energy that many contemporary horrors, polished to a lackluster sheen, lack.

Part archaeological nightmare, part occult procedural, Relics is wholly committed to its own depravity.

The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz

 

Returning to early Dean Koontz feels oddly reassuring. Those mass-market paperbacks, spine-creased and yellowed, carry with them muscle memory. Before you begin, you know the rhythms. And yet, like revisiting an old neighborhood, the journey retains its power to unsettle.  

The Eyes of Darkness, originally published in 1982 under the Leigh Nichols pseudonym, occupies an interesting position in Koontz’s mythology. It’s a product of its time … but also a blueprint for everything that followed. A grieving mother; a child presumed dead. Shadow agencies operating beyond accountability. Beneath it all, there is the suggestion the horrors are not supernatural but bureaucratic, sanctioned, and carried out in fluorescent rooms by men who believe themselves necessary. 

The novel opens with a premise that Koontz would return to: a deceased child who refuses to stay silent. Tina Evans, one year on from the loss of her son Danny, is in survival mode when a message appears in his bedroom: NOT DEAD. From here, Koontz allows grief to do what it does best: erode certainty. Is this madness? Or something worse? Tina’s refusal to accept an easy answer becomes the novel’s emotional engine.

Koontz’s formative prose has a workmanlike quality that is often overlooked in discussions of his later, more philosophical work. Here, the language occasionally slips into something dreamlike, especially when Tina’s internal state fractures. The gaudiness of Las Vegas is rendered vividly in the opening act, all neon excess and artificial promise … before the narrative migrates toward harsher terrain. Desert gives way to mountain, heat to ice. The geography mirrors our protagonist’s descent into a truth that grows increasingly inhospitable.

Structurally, The Eyes of Darkness adheres closely to what would become a familiar Koontz pattern. Tina is joined by Elliot Stryker, a man of competence, integrity, and unwavering belief. Together they form the novel’s moral axis. This is both a strength and weakness. On one hand, the author excels at forging bonds under pressure. On the other, both characters are almost aggressively virtuous. Their moral clarity is so absolute it occasionally strains credibility. They feel less like ordinary people than idealized figures; the sort of good-looking, unblemished protagonists favored by Hollywood films. 

The antagonistic forces, by contrast, are more compelling. Koontz’s fascination with secret government programs and unethical experimentation is on full display, and he approaches the material with a restraint that latter novels lack. There is no overt political sermonizing here, no heavy-handed thesis. The menace arises instead from implication: the casual efficiency with which lives are erased, the institutional certainty that sacrifice is justified so long as it remains classified.

Our climax delivers what readers expect: psychic phenomena, megalomaniacal figures … and a conspiracy large enough to swallow individuals whole. There is also, in hindsight, an eerie prescience to some of the novel’s speculative elements – ideas that would take on an uncomfortable resonance during the recent pandemic. Whether coincidence or intuition, it adds a faint aftertaste of unease to an already charged finale.

The Eyes of Darkness is not without flaws, but I feel it’s an important artifact. It captures Koontz at a point where his imagination was ferocious but his voice unencumbered – where story took precedence over doctrine. Like other early works such as The Key to Midnight, Shadowfires, and The House of Thunder, it is a reminder of why his readership grew vast in the first place. Predictable, yes. But predictability, in the right hands, can feel less like limitation and more like ritual.