The Small Hand (2010) by Susan Hill: Hill's much-earlier The Woman in Black is a fine tribute to the ghost stories of the past. This recent novella, not so much.
Having the protagonist be a jet-setting antiquarian book finder seems like an updated nod to the great ghost-story writer M.R. James, whose collections of early 20th-century ghost stories had 'Antiquary' in the title not once but twice.
Alas, our protagonist and narrator is boring. Very boring. And the ghostly incidents are separated by what seems like endless pages of landscape description, though The Small Hand is more novella than novel.
I suppose two other problems with The Small Hand are its somewhat glib and superficial use of mental illness and the fact that underneath it all, this is a tale of ghostly vengeance that would barely support a six-page EC Comics story. It's all quite a disappointment -- read The Woman in Black instead for Hill at her best. Not recommended.
The Corridor (2010): written by Josh MacDonald; directed by Evan Kelly; starring Stephen Chambers (Ty), James Gilbert (Everett), David Patrick Flemming (Chris), Matthew Amyotte (Bobcat), Mary-Colin Chisholm (Pauline), and Glen Matthews (Huggs):
Very good, low-budget Canadian indie that travels through some of the territory of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" before it and Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation after it, arriving at its own destination.
Five high-school friends still live in their Nova Scotia town 15 years later. A personal tragedy brings them together for a wake to be held over the weekend at one of their remote cottages. One friend struggles with mental illness and the varying degrees of acceptance the others have for his condition. So clearly his hallucinations simply stem from his mental condition, right?
Ha! The Corridor preserves enough mystery about what is happening that the explanations offered towards the end of the movie are criticized by people inside the movie. There's something out there in the woods. And there's something messing with everyone's heads. And in a nice twist, the troubled friend is also the one best-equipped to face the mystery head-on -- to keep his head, as Kipling said, while everyone around him is losing theirs.
The acting by the five principals is never less than convincing, the direction solid and unshowy, and the few visual effects about as good as one can expect from such a low-budget affair. Nigel Bennett, one of those Canadian actors who has appeared in everything, strolls through in an atypical role as a hunter. In all, an effective and affecting film of horrors cosmic and human that actually left me feeling a bit haunted at the end. Recommended.
Predators (2010): written by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch; directed by Nimrod Antal; produced by Robert Rodriguez; starring Adrien Brody (Royce), Topher Grace (Edwin), Alice Braga (Isabelle), Walton Goggins (Stans), Oleg Taktarov (Nikolai), Laurence Fishburne (Noland), Danny Trejo (Cuchillo), Louis Ozawa Changchien (Hanzo), and Mahershala Ali (Mombasa): Overcrowded with characters and gifted with a hilariously miscast Adrien Brody, Predators is nonetheless mostly entertaining. Producer Robert Rodriguez's fingerprints are all over it, though Nimrod Antal is a slicker director than he. Lightly recommended.
The Thin Blue Line (1988): written and directed by Errol Morris; score by Philip Glass: Errol Morris' riveting documentary, backed by a hypnotic Philip Glass score, got an apparently innocent man out of jail. Randall Adams spent about ten years in a Texas jail for a murder that the film overwhelmingly suggests was committed by another man. The film shows how the justice system can go horribly awry, even after Adams finally goes free -- Texas releases him in such a way that he can't receive any wrongful imprisonment funds from the State. Thanks, assholes! One of the essential documentaries (and films) of all time. Highly recommended.
Der Farbe/ The Colour [Out Of Space] (2010): written and directed by Huan Vu; adapted from the story by H.P. Lovecraft; starring Ingo Heise (Jonathan Davis), Marco Leibnitz (Armin Pierske - young) and Michael Kausch (Armin Pierske - old): Deliberately paced, excellent German adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's pivotal 1920's tale of cosmic horror and bodily degeneration "The Colour Out Of Space."
The film-makers relocate much of the action to pre-WWII Germany, with an American prologue in and around Lovecraft's demon-haunted Arkham, Massachusetts.
This transplant is a good idea because the German actors do occasionally have problems with a convincing American accent. On the other hand, Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a much worse American accent than any of the Germans in his portrayal of Dr. Strange, so perhaps throwing brickbats at the German amateurs here is a bit wanky on the part of the cranky wankers of Internet nitpickery.
Another good idea was to film everything in black and white except for the titular colour. This makes for a creepy contrast that rises above the very limited visual effects. The film-makers also compensate for a lack of funds by suggesting and implying rather than showing. This makes the horror more horrific when it comes. Would that all horror movies took such care regardless of budget!
I really liked the increasingly haunted and hollow look of the actors in the Pre-War section. They face a contamination from Outside that no one could be prepared for. Ants in a meaningless cosmos, some of them believe they are being punished by the Judeo-Christian God. Ha ha! As if you're that lucky you poor bastards!
The DVD, procured from our friends at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS), has the most interesting (and necessary) sub-titling mode I've encountered -- English sub-titles on only when people speak German. Unless you're fluent in German, use it.
In all, this is an impressive piece of horror movie-making regardless of the budget. It's not intentionally 'retro' as the two movies actually produced by the HPLHS are, but the black and white certainly makes it feel partially retro, though the performances are pretty modern. A movie like this or the HPLHS Joints should show aspiring film-makers what can be done without a budget. Highly recommended.
Apartment 16 (2010) by Adam Nevill: The least successful of Adam Nevill's horror novels that I've read (5 and counting, True Believers!). There are good things here, especially the characterization of co-protagonist Seth. But they're overwhelmed by the bad and the inconclusive.
Seth is a struggling artist who works as the Night Porter at an old and exclusive London condo. Very old, very exclusive. London, England. Initially terrified by strange night-time noises issuing from the titular apartment, Seth's days and nights have soon been infected by nightmares and visions. On the bright side, all this really jump-starts Seth's moribund career as a painter. On the dark side, his paintings now look an awful lot like the art of the long-missing artist who lived in Apartment 16.
Uh, oh.
Apryl Beckford is our other protagonist, a chipper American twenty-something who has come to the condo to settle up her late great-aunt's estate. That great aunt hadn't communicated with the American side of the family for decades. Apryl is about to find out why.
Essen, the missing artist who vanished in the late 1940's about 60 years before the events of the novel, was an occult screwball with fascist tendencies. He also may have tapped into some sort of horrifying spiritual reality. That's certainly what Seth believes. And events will gradually convince Apryl, too. Moreover, Essen doesn't entirely appear to be missing any more. And why did one of the residents permanently secure Apartment 16, paying for it to remain forever empty?
As co-protagonist, Apryl seems frustratingly dense at times, especially when it comes to mounting danger. The novel is certainly playing with readerly expectations here, but in doing so, it instead plays into stereotypical 'women in peril' tropes. Really, really stereotypical, especially in a climax which is not all that climactic, and in which Apryl brings only a disposable lighter as a weapon to the Apocalypse. Hey, ho!
Nevill's male protagonists in other novels that include The Ritual, Banquet For the Damned, and Under a Watchful Eye learn enough during their descents into darkness to make a fair showing against dire opponents in the climaxes of their novels. Apryl does not. It's certainly not intentionally sexist, but when compared to Nevill's sympathetic male protagonists (of which Seth is ultimately NOT one), she seems like an unfortunate return to the Screaming, Incompetent Girl.
A visit to a meeting of Essen's cultish fans by Apryl doesn't work so well either. They are stereotypes of fanboys and fangirls: they're smelly, have bad breath, and are pathetically excited by Apryl's fresh loveliness. It seems almost like parody, but of what, exactly? A bad day Nevill had at a horror convention?
That scene throws one right out of the horrors of the novel, as does Apryl's fascination with a sexy (slightly) older male academic and art historian whose sexy sexiness derails every scene he's in, even when he's warning Apryl that she's not a dashing girl detective in a story. Thanks, sexy academic!
Seth is marvelously developed, though he too suffers at the end, suggesting as much Plot Device as Pity. Really, everyone does, because Apartment 16 ends up seeming like the first half of a much longer novel. No such novel has so far appeared. Until it does, I'd suggest avoiding Apartment 16. Not recommended.
Cthulhu's Reign (2010): edited by Darrell Schweitzer:
- The Walker in the Cemetery by Ian Watson
- Sanctuary by Don Webb
- Her Acres of Pastoral Playground by Mike Allen
- Spherical Trigonometry by 朝松健 [as by Ken Asamatsu]
- What Brings the Void by Will Murray
- The New Pauline Corpus by Matt Cardin
- Ghost Dancing by Darrell Schweitzer
- This Is How the World Ends by John R. Fultz
- The Shallows by John Langan
- Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names by Jay Lake
- The Seals of New R'lyeh by Gregory Frost
- The Holocaust of Ecstasy by Brian Stableford
- Vastation by Laird Barron
- Nothing Personal by Richard A. Lupoff
- Remnants by Fred Chappell
Entertaining anthology goes with the depressing scenario 'What happens AFTER H.P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones return to reclaim the Earth?' and runs with it in enjoyable albeit often oppressively depressing ways. But some of the stories contain faint hope, and the overall selection ranges broadly from Heist Comedy ("The Seals of New R'lyeh" by Gregory Frost) to hard science fiction ("Nothing Personal" by Richard A. Lupoff) to post-modern stream-of-consciousness ("Vastation" by Laird Barron).
Along the way, stories attempt to portray what the world post-Cthulhu would look like. A writhing mass of endless screaming meat? A patchwork of broken reality? A maze haunted by sadistic smaller versions of Cthulhu? A world in the process of being changed to suit its new masters, the Moon already transformed into a red and glaring five-pointed star in the squirming heavens? A seemingly normal neighbourhood that gets less normal the closer one looks? A baleful orb of anti-matter?
Yes, all this and more!
The stories are all at least competent. Many are inspired. "The Shallows" by John Langan is a modern classic, I think, counterpointing the mundane and the weird both in setting and in the (one-sided) conversation a survivor of the rise of Cthulhu tells to, well, an unusually crabby house-guest. Fred Chappell's "Remnants" offers a slice of hope in what sometimes seems like the first part of an epic, hard-science-fiction series. Recommended.
Full Dark, No Stars (2010) by Stephen King: King's third four-novella collection (after the great Different Seasons and the indifferent Four Past Midnight) is a bleak affair in which three of the four novellas feature women revenging themselves against monstrous men.
1922: This is the closest thing King has ever written to a noirish novel by James M. Cain (Double Indemnity) or Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me). Out in the bleak Midwest of the Year of Our Lord 1922, a farmer plots to kill his wife because she wants to sell her land to a hog-butchering firm. Narrated by the farmer in first-person, 1922 is a bleak tale of (possibly) spectral revenge with a hint of Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart."
King does a great job here of writing a protagonist whom, while well-spoken, is as dumb as a fencepost. He doesn't go Blood Simple -- he's simple long before he sets out on his murderous course. And he takes a lot of people with him. It's a haunting, distressing piece of work with no particularly sympathetic characters.
Big Driver: Things go terribly wrong for a female mid-list mystery novelist on her way home from a speaking engagement. Is revenge in the cards? Yes. Yes it is. The protagonist is sympathetically drawn (and is one of King's few characters with a cat as a pet, for what that's worth). The antagonists sort of slide off the believability plateau about two-thirds through, allowing for gruesome revenge without any need to parse the rightness or wrongness of it all.
Fair Extension: The shortest piece is also the grimmest. Well, maybe. A cancer-stricken man makes a deal with the Devil (or a devil, perhaps), possibly the same one from King's award-winning short story "The Man in the Black Suit." Things go poorly, though perhaps not as one thinks. It's a sort of one-note horror piece, drawn out a bit too long.
A Good Marriage: Revenge will be served again, as a woman married for more than 20 years to a seemingly good-guy accountant discovers that he's a serial killer. The novella's examination of what one would do under these circumstances is nuanced and suitably thrill-filled, backed by a sort of existential dread about just how much anyone knows about even their closest friends and loved ones. The investigator who shows up at the end seems to be a dry run for Bill Hodges in character if not in physical appearance.
Overall: Well worth a read. Nothing here hits the heights of the four bruisers in Different Seasons (Apt Pupil, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Body, and The Breathing Method). Really, what could? And when do we get a goddammed movie of The Breathing Method, btw?
Winter's Bone (2010): adapted by Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini from the novel by Daniel Woodrell; directed by Debra Granik; starring Jennifer Lawrence (Ree) and John Hawkes (Teardrop): Set in the dystopic rural backwaters of Missouri, Winter's Bone earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination and announced the arrival of a teen-aged Jennifer Lawrence with a Best Actress nomination for her.
Most of the actors who surround Lawrence are amateurs tapped for their local authenticity. I didn't notice. The acting is fine from everyone, and especially so from Lawrence and John Hawkes. Everything seems authentic, though the movie is a Quest Narrative, about as long-standing a story structure as there is. The plot manages to avoid stereotypes in its depiction of its blighted rural areas and their impoverished residents.
There's an almost dystopic feel to the movie. One can see how the producers of The Hunger Games franchise, seeing this film, would think to cast Lawrence as the heroine of that series. But her quest here, grounded in horrifying reality, is a far more compelling journey through the night. Highly recommended.
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub (2010): Peter Straub has been a fine writer of the supernatural for decades. A Dark Matter, though, is a dreadful piece of work. It's structurally and metaphysically ambitious -- I'll give it that -- but Straub's reach has far exceeded his grasp here.
The only horror novel from a major writer I can think of that's this bad in the same way is William Peter Blatty's exhausting, overly precious Legion, with its dollar-store profundities and its precious little toe-dips into actual philosophy, religion, and cosmology.
Yes. Of a certain type of horror novel, from 35 years of reading horror novels, I can say this is the second worst one ever. No wonder it won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel of 2010 from the Horror Writers Guild. It must have stunned the voters into a stupor.
Back in 1966, a group of high-school and college students were taken in by figuratively and literally rambling guru Spencer Mallon. They did something in a meadow. One person died. One person disappeared. Everyone was changed forever. Now, the one member of this group of students who didn't go into that meadow, novelist Lee Harwell, sets out to find out what really happened.
This isn't an unusual set-up for a horror story -- M. John Harrison's great novella "The Great God Pan" similarly and far more evocatively deals with the aftermath of such a supernatural event decades later.
A Dark Matter, though...phew. Lots and lots of telling rather than showing (to cite one example, we're endlessly and repeatedly told how everyone just absolutely loves "the wondrous Eel", Lee Truax, Harwell's 1966 girlfriend and 2009 wife, but her wondrousness is sparingly, parsimoniously, sketchily depicted).
We're told how magnetic and amazing Spencer Mallon was and is, but given very little to convince us that he is magnetic and amazing beyond everyone's love and adoration of him. And when we move into the more and more overtly supernatural...hoo boy. You'll never look at that iconic painting of dogs playing poker the same way again, let's just leave it at that. Or AstroTurf.
Silly, sketchy, ponderous, pretentious, pompous. Oh, and Lee Harwell, novelist and frame narrator, boy what a drag he is. He wears expensive shoes. He drinks expensive liquor. His horror novel once got him on the cover of Time magazine in the 1980's. He's a crashing bore who often repeats himself and doesn't seem to be gifted with an editor who will actually edit anything. And there's that wondrous Eel, doing nothing particularly wondrous until the very end. But she is so very wondrous, unlike this lousy novel. Not recommended.
