-
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Although graphic horror isn’t my preference, I decided to see Final Destination: Bloodlines. Sometimes an assault on one’s senses can be beneficial, and so it was in this case. Reading or watching the news is often deadly depressing. How much worse could a movie that challenges itself in gross-out death scenes be? To no great surprise, given that horror films are particularly popular during times of socio-political-economic stress, the movie was rather cathartic. Its gleeful gore and perverse sense of humor was just what the (Mad) Doctor ordered. The flick begins in 1968, accompanied by a soundtrack that integrates songs from that era in a sardonic manner. “Bad Moon Rising,”…
-
Sinners
“You keep dancing with the devil…one day he’s gonna follow you home,” so says the preacher (played by actor Saul Williams) to his gifted musician son Sammie (brilliantly acted by Miles Caton) in the film Sinners. The preacher has a point, but it’s hard to resist wanting to move to the music while listening to Sammie on the guitar. Blues music puts the film’s characters into a thrall and casts its spell on the movie’s audience, as well. There is so much about Sinners that is artistic and laudable: the acting, Ryan Coogler’s writing and directing, Ruth E. Carter’s costume design, and basically the prowess of an array of talented…
-
Mapping the Interior
Writer Stephen Graham Jones has quite a following. He is highly regarded by reviewers and readers for his prose and application of his Native American background into his works. His novella Mapping the Interior helped to put him on the map, so to speak, courtesy of a Bram Stoker Award in the category of Long Fiction. First published in 2017, the Tor Publishing Group has just reissued it under its Nightfire banner. That gave me the opportunity to read the book for the first time and rectify a past omission. In its 96 pages, there is much psychological and sociological insight about American Indian culture. But at its heart, the…
-
White Line Fever
White Line Fever by KC Jones is an ode to Stephen King. There are multiple references in the novel to several of King’s works, ranging from a vehicle referred to as “The Silver Bullet” to Stanley Kubrick’s film version of The Shining. Thematically, White Line Fever is primarily a love letter to King’s classic It, a book that focuses on a group of friends traumatized by events that happened in their youth. In Jones’s narrative, four gal pals in their thirties embark on a road trip aimed at bolstering the spirits of the brokenhearted protagonist. She carries the most emotional baggage, but each of the friends has unresolved personal demons.…
-
Follow Me
Recently, I saw two films that fall into the hybrid horror category. Both The Substance (2024) and Companion (2025) weave satire and searing social commentary into their very graphic over-the-top horror narratives. The novel Follow Me, written by Elizabeth Rose Quinn, reminded me of those movies. The book is similar in tone and snark. Its plot zeros in on the rabid desire to be a social media presence. The focus is on pressured young mothers, who feel isolated and undervalued, succumbing to the allure of being deemed an influencer. Like the two films I mentioned, things get taken to extremes. Author Quinn serves up so many quotable quips that it…
-
The Vampire Tapestry
For those who have wondered about having a sensual tryst with a vampire, here’s a literary taste: “Along the contours of his ribs she felt knotted places, hollows — old healings, the tracks of time. The tension of his muscles under her touch and the sharp sound of his breathing stirred her. She lived the fantasy of having sex with an utter stranger; there was no one in the world so much a stranger as he. Yet there was no one who knew him as well as she did, either. If he was unique, so was she, and so was their confluence here.” That eloquently seductive prose is from Suzy…
-
Something in the Walls
Ambiguity in horror fiction must be handled deftly to be effective. If not, the narrative dissatisfies and frustrates. Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce mixes folk horror with a dollop of the supernatural in what is predominantly a character study. Mina, the novel’s first-person narrator, is a conflicted woman. She’s soon to marry to a man with whom she is not compatible. In contrast to her, he is highly organized and science oriented. When Mina expresses her belief that a person standing behind her in one of their vacation photos is her long dead brother, her fiancé strongly encourages her to resume attending grief counseling sessions. At the venue…
-
A Tale of Two Movies
It would be hard to find two recently released horror films as different from each other as Nosferatu and Presence. Nosferatu is a large-scale production reboot of director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent German Expressionist classic. It boasts arty cinematography, opulent art direction, lavish costume design, and elaborate makeup and hair styling. Those sumptuous creative constructions have been acknowledged by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences via four Oscar nominations in the respective categories. Presence, on the other hand, is spare in scope. Shot entirely in one location, the intimate narrative unspools from an unusual point of view: the resident ghost’s. The camera observes what the ghost sees, and…
-
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 16
What would the horror genre do without Ellen Datlow? Her wealth of experience as an editor and anthologist gives her unique access to a plethora of material. In addition to producing a multitude of themed anthologies, for over a decade and a half she has edited The Best Horror of the Year compilations. It never ceases to astound me that the “summation” section in the annual volumes encompasses so much about the writing in the field. The attributed publications run the gamut from the well-known to indie publishers. I had to smile at the mention of a small press compilation titled No Trouble at All, published by Cursed Morsels Press edited by Alexis…
-
“The Greater Arcana” A Retro Review
As soon as the Halloween décor gets removed, the Christmas decorations start springing up. This brings out my barely suppressed inner Ebeneezer Scrooge. To feed my silent “Bah, humbug” and yet embrace the inevitability of the holiday, I chose to read a horror short story set in the season. “The Greater Arcana” was written by Ron Weighell (1950-2020.) The author’s illustrious influences were M.R. James (1862-1936) and Arthur Machen (1863-1947.) Weighell’s 1992 tale well displays how much he respected the works of those masters of supernatural fiction. In it, there are stylistic and reverential elements that honor them. Indeed, the framing structure of “The Greater Arcana” is quite Jamesian: A…