Deception, Insects ... and Small Town Horror.

 

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28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE

 

Alex Garland has long since crossed a threshold where critics ask whether he is capable. The question now is only: what strange basilica does he desire to erect next? Whether scripting cerebral annihilation, or descending into hallucinatory underworlds, Garland’s fingerprints are distinctive: intellect lacquered with dread; beauty with entropy. With the previous film (and now The Bone Temple) he circles back to that infected sandbox he began playing in. Yet this is no nostalgic resurrection. This is Garland stripping flesh from his own mythology to examine the bones beneath.

The film opens seamlessly from the prior chapter, with Spike undergoing an initiation ritual into the cult of Lord Jimmy Crystal, a congregation of ‘fingers’ in which every disciple bears the name Jimmy. It is grotesque pageantry; a wandering cabal of zealots who eviscerate innocents not for survival, but by infernal rite. Garland has always excelled at depicting systems of belief collapsing into madness, and here he constructs a sect that feels like a travelling plague sermon.

Nearby, in a palace assembled from bones, an orange-skinned sentinel keeps vigil. Through a haze of opiate hypnosis, he befriends an infected Alpha, and their recurring encounters become a form of friendship. Amid all the savagery, Garland inserts moments of stillness: two fractured remnants of a dead civilization attempting to remember what civilization was. The result of all this is less zombie horror than necrotic folklore.

For me, Lord Jimmy evokes unmistakable shades of Quinn Dexter from Peter F. Hamilton’s sci-fi extravaganza The Reality Dysfunction: a Satanic opportunist ruling over a frontier world. Considering Hamilton built the Night’s Dawn universe around possession, resurrection, and contagion, the inspiration hardly feels accidental. Here, Garland understands the most terrifying figures are not monsters, but charismatic men who turn collapse into theology.

For the first time in the franchise, an American director takes the helm in the form of Nia DaCosta. Despite the transatlantic shift, the film never abandons a British marrow: accents remain regional, the music pulses with famed British artists, and the ethos is still grounded in damp fatalism rather than heroics. This remains a British zombie realm, where catastrophe feels less explosive than terminally inevitable.

Financially, the film’s muted reception may stem from a refusal to replicate the domestic anxieties of its predecessors. Earlier entries derived power from witnessing ordinary families and citizens reacting to societal collapse. Instead, The Bone Temple narrows its focus upon cultic tribalism and insular power structures thriving in ruins. It is, in many respects, the Mad Max 2 of the franchise: a work less interested in survival than in the grotesque societies born afterward. Ultimately, it works as a sprawling morbid ecosystem beyond enclosed homes and quarantined streets. The apocalypse here is no longer an event, but culture.

And that may be why The Bone Temple lingers. Not because it horrifies (though it certainly does), but because it suggests that after enough years, humanity ceases mourning what came before. Violence becomes ceremony, bones become architecture. In Garland’s hands, the end of civilization is a ritual learned so completely that nobody remembers there was ever another way to live.

NEXT OF KIN (1982).

 
My expedition into bygone Australian cinema continues with Next of Kin, a film which feels like a fever dream beneath yellowing wallpaper. Directed with patience, the story follows Linda Stevens, who inherits Montclare, a sprawling rural estate now functioning as a nursing home. An inheritance is one of horror’s cozier entry points; the creaking doorway through which people wander before discovering they’ve inherited not solely property, but history. Here, our bequeathment arrives wrapped in storm clouds and grief.

Montclare itself becomes an organism. During Linda’s first nights, tempest weather rolls across the countryside, and the film immediately understands the comfort of isolation horror: the sense that civilization has packed its bags. Australia’s rural emptiness is captured with elegance, and the surrounding landscape possesses that peculiar antipodean loneliness.

A young and debonair John Jarrett appears early as something of a one-man welcome committee, reacquainting Linda with the estate and its rhythms. Jarrett brings warmth to the film … which is essential because Next of Kin spends a lot of time tightening atmosphere rather than racing toward horrors. The pacing is undeniably slow burn – although ‘slow’ here feels a somewhat inaccurate. Ultimately, the film moves like somebody cautiously tiptoeing through a hallway. 

Linda begins reading her mother’s diaries, fragments describing Montclare’s sinister history.  Thereafter, recurring dreams blur the line between memory and haunting. A new resident arrives at the home, eccentric, adding further instability to an edgy environment. From there, the film descends gradually into psychological seepage. Horror accumulates.

What surprised me is how slick the production feels for an early Australian film, its cinematography possessing a polished, almost European awareness. Every room … feels inhabited by forgotten conversations and private terrors.

While we have traces of other films here,  Next of Kin never feels derivative. Instead, it stands as its own strange artefact; a gothic relic hidden beneath the harsher sunlight of the Ozploitation era.

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.

Dead on the Dolmen by Cameron Trost

 

There is something naturally comforting about mysteries that know exactly where they live. Dead on the Dolmen: An Oscar Tremont Mystery is rooted in a way that feels increasingly rare, and the soil it draws from is ancient, stony, and steeped in story. Brittany is not used as postcard scenery, but as lived-in geography. You can feel the damp in the air, the weight of centuries pressing beneath the grass; a sense that folklore hasn’t vanished so much as learned to wait.

At the heart of the novel is the Ankou, that skeletal ferryman of Breton legend, rattling through the night on horse and cart, his scythe in hand. Cameron is careful with this figure. He does not overexplain or modernize the myth into something slick. Instead, he allows it to retain its strangeness, its rural terror, and its ambiguity. The Dolmen itself becomes a locus of unease: a place where history, superstition, and violence overlap. Stones remember. This book understands that.

The narrative pairing of father and son, David and Rowan, serves as an emotional crux. Their relationship feels unforced, lived-in, and quietly affectionate. This is not a story that relies on melodrama to manufacture stakes. The fear grows organically, seeded in concern, curiosity, and the realization that something old may not be content to remain symbolic. When Oscar Tremont enters, he does so not as a disruptive force but as an extension of the novel’s temperament. An investigator of the strange and inexplicable, yes, but one who listens as much interrogates.

This was my first encounter with Oscar Tremont, and what struck me most was his restraint. In a genre sometimes populated by outsized personalities, Tremont feels refreshingly human. Competent without arrogance, curious without condescension. Trost resists any urge to turn him into a gimmick. Instead, our Investigator becomes a lens, someone through whom the uncanny can be examined without being diminished.

Stylistically, the prose is clean and unadorned. Sentences move easily, inviting immersion rather than demanding attention. There is a British coziness to the structure, recalling Midsomer Murders or Father Brown, yet filtered through a continental sensibility that gives the book its European verisimilitude. Dialogue is natural and unshowy … and the supporting cast of village characters feel lightly sketched but authentic.

Perhaps most telling is the sense that the author cares. Trost writes like someone invested not only in story, but in reader experience. There is an openness, a conversational quality that extends beyond the text itself. This is the kind of novel that encourages curiosity, not only about its mystery, but about the folklore it draws from. You may find yourself pausing to look things up, to wander down adjacent paths.

Dead on the Dolmen is not interested in reinventing the mystery genre. As an alternative, it polishes well-worn stone until it shimmers. Atmospheric, the novel reminds us that the most persistent horrors are rarely the ones that announce themselves … but those that have been quietly occupying the landscape all along.

Different Masks: A Decade in the Dark

And so, after ten long years in the reviewing business, I’ve decided to hang up my quill pen. I hope - by way of this Blog – that you have managed to find something you like ... enough so that it prompted you to seek out the author/creator responsible and purchase a copy of their novel or film.

Next year, HodgePodge Press has agreed to publish a polished and updated version of this Blog in its entirety. Entitled Different Masks: A Decade In the Dark, the book aims to be a legacy of support, shining a spotlight on works that continue to inspire all of us working in the horror genre today. With this chapter closed, it will give me ample time to finish all that I have within me personally ... those mythologies that have always been there, just waiting to be unearthed.

Matthew Tait, July 2014.

 

Crimson Peak by Nancy Holder

A confession: during my first viewing of Crimson Peak in a theater I was, at the time, subtly deflated. Guillermo del Toro, such a creative artistic behemoth, had co-written and directed a Gothic romance with shades of unmistakable horror. And yet the experience for me (and for others) felt somewhat tepid.

I stress this was only my first viewing, riding coattails with weighted expectations.

In the time elapsed since then, my appreciation of Crimson Peak didn’t just grow, but began to haunt me in the same way our protagonist is haunted: the color, tone, and imagery all conspiring to make the journey a thing for the ages. Not intended to terrify, Crimson Peak instead invokes both an aching nostalgia and emotional frisson … responses seldom generated in the modern film-making epoch.

Nancy Holder’s adaptation in novel form encapsulates the film flawlessly. There’s a graceful sweep of syntax, a haunting melancholy to proceedings that arouses Fernando Velazquez’s poignant score. Here, the author manages to nail each scene with enough restrained nuance it’s like experiencing the tale in a more intimate (and blackly adorned) Gothic setting. A perfect parenthesis to the source material from which it sprung.

 

Hollow House by Greg Chapman.

The author under the spotlight here needs no introduction. Greg Chapman has worked for years now to shed light on the many mediums of horror, both through his own work (novellas, illustrations, and design work), and the work of others; being a vocal mouthpiece for the literary achievements of friends and colleagues and helping to establish horror as a serious genre both in his native Australia and abroad. Earlier this year, Omnium Gatherum saw fit to publish Greg’s first stab at novel length fiction. Already, Hollow House has picked up some favorable reviews. 

Without delving too deeply into plot territory (the bare bones of this can found both in the novel’s description and the many assessments floating around), let’s examine instead both the positives and pitfalls. In Hollow House, the scene is set with an archetypal haunted house at the center of the maelstrom: Kemper House on Willow Street. Surrounding the house, numerous players (the immediate neighbors) are drawn into a spiraling web of death, possession, and desires made manifest. In effect, Greg is taking the inhuman aspect (the house), and using it as a springboard to see how his character's behave and interact. If I could compare this formula to other works, we can see a similar method explored in novels such as Richard Bachman’s The Regulators, and the darker fantasy of both Bloch and Bradbury.

The positive aspects of this novel derive from the human element; Greg has sketched out numerous damaged characters that are a real-life echo one would find on any suburban street: angst ridden teenagers, a retired Army Vet, and the conventional large family. Witnessing how they cope with a house of horrors is an entertaining testament to Greg’s burgeoning storytelling prowess. However, there are pitfalls, and this is often the generic make-up of certain gambits. For instance, opening up proceedings with something as arbitrary as a dead body. In addition to this, having a reporter on the prowl to uncoil layers of information has its DNA firmly entrenched in dozens of horror films.

Small drawbacks aside, this is a novel showcasing genuine heart with some adequate turns of phrase. Above all, it’s a competent signpost of what to expect. With Hollow House, Greg Chapman is merely laying down the load-bearing foundations of a universe of horror to come.  

      

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

A small declaration: the film adaptation of Wonder Boys is one of my all-time cherished film experiences. And I suspect you will probably hear the same thing from many writers, both of the prolific and broad ilk, in addition to the hermetic and oblique. Belonging to a sub-tribe of people who spend a lot of time in the shadows can promote a feeling of loneliness or longing. Fortuitously, along comes a major motion picture with major star power where that sub-tribe is put on show for all the world to see: their intellects and foibles; their addictions and over-abundant capacity to love. Although I don’t know for sure, I'll wager there were wordsmiths all over the world celebrating Wonder Boys. A writers time in the spotlight is brief, and any air-time at all, no matter how momentary, is a brief salve to that ever-present loneliness.

So why did it take such a long time to come around to Michael Chabon’s original novel? Primarily, the man dabbles in genres I seldom haunt. Which is a pithy excuse. Though I think it bears mentioning the author seldom writes about subjects that interest me: (topics such as Judaism, spiritual heritage, among other things). However, something I do know as a certain truth: one's storytelling aptitude can eclipse any theme on show. Or, put more bluntly: an elegant turn of insightful phrase can be the sole reason I plow through a novel, plot be damned. In any case, I am an undergraduate of Michael Chabon’s prose, but foresee steaming ahead with his entire resume.

For those yet to read the novelization, Wonder Boys (for the most part) adheres to all the clever comedy and drama up there in Curtis Hanson’s interpretation. Writer and teacher Grady Tripp is a likable protagonist because he’s all too human. Whether we as a species like to admit it or not, a huge number of us are entirely prone to making mistakes and dabbling in narcissism. And Grady Tripp, over the course of a weekend, frequently does both. But he does so in way that is endearing because we, the observers of his headspace, are given an intimate glimpse into private thought processes; the entire lynchpin of the novel medium itself. (And the reason many books feel like marriages, whereas movies can feel like one-night-stands; but that’s a whole different editorial). Complimenting Grady Tripp in his downfall from literary lion to underdog are characters every bit as flawed: James Leer, Hannah Green, and Terry Crabtree. Except for minor deviations in hair color and attire, what you experience on the page is every bit as nuanced as the laid back performances given by Michael Douglas, Katie Holmes, and Robert Downey Jr, respectively. Filtered through the ringer of Chabon’s quirky prose, I would go so far as to say these individuals are even more entertaining. I’ve known creatives like these; I’ve broken bread with them and gotten blind drunk. (Although I’ve never shot a dog or carried a tuba).

One thing needs to be said: halfway through this novel is an extended dinner scene, and it was during this interlude where I almost abandoned the novel altogether. Let it be known I loathe dinner scenes in any book. And this one, featuring an immersion into Jewish ritual, is the granddaddy of them all. If you can overcome such hurdles (and I have no doubt some out there will actually find the scene hilarious), then keep on trucking. Regarding the novels third act and climax - Grady Tripp’s epiphany and subsequent redemption - some of the film scenes were altered dramatically … although this is the nature of any adaptation. Cinema is a different language, and translations need to take place.

Wonder Boys as a novel is witty, and it’s absorbent. Sure, the grand appeal here might be a writer writing about writers. But as the old saying goes, somebody has to do it.

Where The Dead Go To Die by Aaron Dries and Mark Allan Gunnels.

After being involved in a community of horror aficionado’s for over a decade, it’s always a treat to come across new voices in the genre – those you can ascertain (without any great prodding) have an instinctual and genuine love for the medium. As all of us working in the field know intimately, purveying the landscape of horror in its written form is a lifelong pursuit, one that begins prematurely and is never entirely abandoned. Although Where The Dead Go To Die is my first introduction to both authors on show, I foresee a permanent relationship forming.

As hinted by the title, this is a novel that tackles a zombie apocalypse – but of type seldom encountered. Here, the carnage is like background music to a greater whole: a whole that sheds a spotlight on the domestic aspect of relationships. Primarily, the novel is a dissection and foreshadowing of how these units respond to an enigmatic infection … and how bonds are forged and weakened by a threat that (although for the most part contained), still looms visceral and menacing in everyday life.

Emily Samuels is a single mother working as a nurse in a hospice interred with the infected. A latent disease, almost a year can transpire before the septic succumb to the labels of Smiler or Bone Eater. During this incubation period, it falls to staff like Emily to ensure this slow transition is tempered with just enough humanity to keep relatives and the populace happy. For in this realm, even the word zombie has been regulated to the shadows; books and movies dealing with the theme subjected to censorship. Of course, there are those who oppose such flagrant liberalism – who frequently picket the hospice and demand the soon-to be-dead have no right to existence. It’s a heady concoction; a deft social commentary echoing Romero’s penchant for the same formula.

Within, the authors have painted a strong protagonist. But overall it’s the supporting characters who steal the more memorable scenes. There’s Emily’s daughter Lucette, a young girl forced to bear intimate witness to her own father’s sluggish demise. There’s Mama Metcalf, a durable member of the staff who briefly takes on the mantle of surrogate mother and grandmother. Inside the hospice, new arrivals are a constant … including young Robbie, a boy whose baptism into the undead is as taboo as it is heartbreaking. Against the backdrop of a snow-laden Chicago Christmas, all the players converge in a showdown of wiles, death, and prejudices.

To give more away here would be an injustice to what lies in store. Though rest assured this is also a novel containing enough graceful and (at times) poetic prose that it reads much like the origami motif the authors have chosen interweave. In essence, a flat piece of paper has been sculpted into a beautiful yet horrific work of art.

Where The Dead Go To Die also contains many lush illustrations by the author.            

Unveiling a cover ...

Severance

This is the second film from British director Christopher Smith I’m putting under the microscope (the first being CREEP only two short reviews ago). A film following immediately after that title in the director’s pantheon, this is Christopher shifting gear from ‘the denizens of the underground tube-world’ to a more sophisticated outdoors romp with comedic stylings. That’s not to say blood isn’t on the menu (on the contrary, it’s delivered in buckets); but Severance is black comedy territory interspersed with some truly unnerving horror in the film’s final stages.  

In the forests of Hungary, the sales division for a military arms corporation are travelling on a bus through twisting mountainous terrain. Boarded by a motley crew of disparate English workers (and one American), their destination is a luxury retreat in the wilds to participate in team building exercises. Right off the cuff, we know we’re in comedy country by the cast alone. There’s Gordon (mildly overweight and bumbling, reminiscent of Nick Frost’s character from Shaun of the Dead); there’s Steve (a young everyman who has a penchant for magic mushrooms); beautiful Maggie (the American), Jill (full of punch lines); and rounding off the ensemble are Billy Harris and Richard the Manager. When their bus encounters a tree blocking access to the road, the driver soon abandons ship, leaving the group completely isolated and in charge of locating the retreat solo ... which they soon do.

The Lodge (old and decrepit), contains documents alluding to its past history: a mental asylum – or perhaps a re-education center for Russian war criminals. Though the true history is never agreed upon, one thing is for certain ... a fresh pie found in the kitchen containing a human tooth is evidence enough they are not alone. When Jill spots a sinister intruder loitering in the bushes later that night, all agree abandoning the Lodge would be a wise course of action ... though not before a game of paintball to ensure at least some team-building activity takes place. What soon follows is carnage, and lots of it, as the group is slowly picked off one at a time by a cabal of bloodthirsty maniacs.

Despite a somewhat meandering middle-act, this is an intelligent romp that balances the precarious juggling act of suspense and humor perfectly. Though Severance is certainly a vehicle for the ‘slasher’ sub-genre, there are just enough amiable twists involved for that particular title to seem somewhat ill-fitting. While gore-hounds will get their subtle fill (decapitations, bear-traps, and torture sequences), there is also a modicum of ‘heart’ facilitated by a gifted cast who seldom put a foot wrong. Also noteworthy are the practical special effects, producing a gritty and stylish element to proceedings complementing the European locale.

Still relatively unknown in some horror circles, Severance is a ride that without question deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Dog Soldiers, Shaun of the Dead, and The Descent.

Hoffman's Creeper and other Disturbing Tales

For a few years now I’ve been watching Australia’s Cameron Trost – from humble beginnings publishing with Midnight Echo, to his shorter novel Letterbox, and finally acting as midwife and editor-in-chief to Black Beacon Books, an independent publishing venture specializing in mystery, suspense, psychological horror, and the just plain weird. In short, all the niches we’re here to promote. Though still in a stage of infancy, the small press is already showing professional hallmarks by working with a gifted team that includes Greg Chapman (whom I’m sure some of you met at the recent WHC), David Schembri, and Sandra Fowke. With Hoffman’s Creeper, Cameron gives us all the stories that have led him to this point – an imaginative chart showcasing broader influences while at the same time giving rise to his own unique voice.  Here is a snippet of some:

The Ritual.

One of the collections openers is probably its strongest, the tale of a small cadre of female school students who - in order to gain power - turn to thaumaturgy and establish a coven. It’s one containing an amiable twist, with a side of perversion. Foremost, it establishes Trost’s style: a fair heaping of dialogue with subtle mystery in the background like far-off radio noise.

Kangaroo Point.

A kind of reverse-coin approach to mental-illness. Eric Sanderson, while taking the walk home along the path past Kangaroo Point, encounters another man in the act of suicide meditation. With nicely crafted characterization, this is somewhat evocative of King’s tale The Last Rung On the Ladder. Here Cameron weaves the human into horror.

Hoffman’s Creeper

The title tale is also one of the more memorable ... the story of Professor Samuel Hoffman – a professional botanist whose adoration of the plant realm will see him adopt some eccentric (and macabre), practices. Though one could call this a more staid take on Little Shop of Horrors, I found something more here: a perspective of the world that views other species (in this case plant life), humanity’s equal if not better. In the real world it’s a science we are only now beginning to penetrate – just how conscious is the green world surrounding us?

So ... what can we take away from the collection? As a working whole, the stories presented are 'light' dark fiction (some bordering on YA). Though Cameron knows how to construct a clean sentence, the subtle horror provoked – at times - a casual response. A positive method Cameron employs is a kind of fail-safe twist (usually within the closing paragraphs) designed to rock reader's perceptions of what came before. It’s a token technique – one that other writers aspire to but which Trost seems to have mastered.

With any debut collection there will be drawbacks (novice things like show, don’t tell), but for the most part Trost has laid down solid groundwork for future endeavors.