The Scarehouse (2014): written by Sarah Booth and Gavin Michael Booth; starring Sarah Booth (Corey Peters), Kimberly-Sue Murray (Elaina Forrester), Katherine Barrell (Jaqueline), Dani Barker (Emily), Teagan Vicze (Shelby), Emily Alatalo (Katrina), Jennifer Miller (Lisa), Ivana Kingston (Caitlin), and Brad Everett (Brandon):
Perfectly serviceable, low-budget Canadian torture-horror movie involving female torturers and tortured, all over an injustice done to two prospective members of a sorority that resulted in them going to jail for manslaughter. This certainly isn't titillating. There are a couple of inventively awful moments, including the only scene that features a topless character (clearly played as topless by a body double). In the end, it's a distaff version of a classic 1950's EC Comics revenge tale, grue and amoral morality and all. Lightly recommended.
A Head Full Of Ghosts (2014) by Paul Tremblay: A Head Full Of Ghosts feels like part of a fictional conversation that began with Ray Russell's The Case Against Satan (1962) and continued through William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (1971) and on into all those found-footage possession and ghostly infestation movies in the Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Conjuring franchises.
It's a superior novel that deals with its own possession case even as it also interrogates and discusses how possession cases have been represented in various media, whether presented fictionally or as "based on a true story." People don't remember now that The Exorcist itself was repeatedly framed by Blatty and the film-makers as being inspired by a "true story" of possession.
Like Great Expectations or To Kill A Mockingbird, A Head Full Of Ghosts is a retrospective narrative. 23-year-old Meredith "Merry" Barrett tells the "untold story" of her 14-year-old sister Marjorie's possession to a writer working on a book about that possession, a possession which occurred 15 years earlier when Merry was 8.
Tremblay's first bit of play here is to have the present-day of the novel be in "our" future, with the events of the past apparently occurring some time around 2014. He clearly wanted this possession to occur in "our" media world of the Internet, Twitter, YouTube, cell phones, and so on, and so forth. He does not invest "the future" with any flying cars or space colonies, so don't get too excited about that "future retrospective."
But wait, there's more! Posts from a blogger named Karen Brissette are interpolated into Merry's narrative. Brissette synopsizes and analyzes the possession, or more accurately, The Possession. That would be the six-episode reality series that made Marjorie and the rest of the Barretts a five-week media wonder.
Among other things, Brissette's blog evaluates The Possession as a narrative structured around father John's economic and social "failure" as he's a white, middle-class man who's been recently put out of work by downsizing and who, in his woes, has returned to a fervent, retrograde Roman Catholicism to explain Marjorie's condition which, as Merry's retelling begins, has been diagnosed as some form of mental illness -- perhaps incipient schizophrenia.
Sarah Barrett, still holding down a job, doesn't believe any of the religious crap her husband increasingly extols. But she's also rapidly being exhausted by being the sole breadwinner in the family while also trying to deal with the time and mental demands of whatever the Hell is making Marjorie's life miserable.
Got all that?
So as A Head Full Of Ghosts writes its own narrative of demonic possession, it also evaluates many of the narratives of possession Pop Culture has dropped on us over the years. And it evaluates the media. And religious faith, and religious mania. All while Tremblay creates convincing, complex characters -- especially with Merry and Marjorie.
There are several major interpretations of what "really" happened offered by the novel, but they are intertwined and not necessarily mutually exclusive of one another. Marjorie may really be possessed. Marjorie may be mentally ill. John Barrett may be possessed. John may be mentally ill. Merry may be possessed. Merry may be mentally ill.
At the very least, even Merry isn't entirely certain of the truthfulness of all her memories during that traumatic five weeks. And she's also aware that certain things remain unexplained or unsolved. The ambiguity Tremblay creates actually increases the horror of the situation. The Exorcist offered proof that there really was a demon at work inside Regan's head. A Head Full Of Ghosts offers no such certainty. Or does it?
The recent HBO adaptation of Gillian Flynn's 2006 novel Sharp Objects seems to have brought the generally lamentable fictional trope of the evil child/ teenager back into prominence, as seen in Flynn's book and in novels like Lionel Shriver's ludicrous, over-praised We Need To Talk About Kevin. Of course, The Exorcist's Regan is a forerunner of the mysteriously evil child/teen. So, too, the potentially possessed in The Case Against Satan. And on to the army of demon-haunted or demon-following or demon-possessed children in the Insidious movies and so on, and so forth.
However, Tremblay's Marjorie is a believable, sympathetic character whose ultimate spiritual and moral states are haunting and, possibly, left to the reader to decide upon. Merry, in her 23-year-old self remembering her 8-year-old self, is also a believable creation whose memories may or may not be believed. This is adult horror in the sense that it doesn't cheap out with a melodramatic teen monster collecting the teeth of her victims in a doll house. The ending chills the reader, and then chills the reader just a bit more. Highly recommended.
No One Gets Out Alive (2014) by Adam Nevill: 19-year-old Stephanie has been kicked out of her house by her stepmother after the death of Stephanie's father. She did well on her 'A' levels but can't afford university. So, in a terrible English economy, she works temp jobs, feeling more and more overwhelmed.
A sign in a convenience store for a cheap apartment at least offers some economic relief, though the apartment is in the run-down Perry Bar portion of Birmingham. The landlord, who calls himself 'Knacker,' is a bit creepy but friendly. So she moves in.
Things go rapidly downhill from there. Very rapidly. The bulk of the novel takes place over ten consecutive days, exhaustively described.
No One Gets Out Alive is easy to spoil, so I won't go into much detail about what happens except to note that Nevill merges supernatural and 'normal' horror effectively in an escalatingly awful series of events. Stephanie is an engaging protagonist whose growth over the course of the novel is believable and often heart-breaking.
This time around, Nevill goes after the media as a sort of sub-plot which also rings true. The dismal house is a character in itself, described in detail so as to maximize its miserable, disintegrating qualities. Claustrophobia is a major player here, along with the narrative's emphasis on bad smells, really bad smells, and really really really bad smells as augurs and indicators of Evil, like the fruits of the Devil or at least the mephitic products of the Devil's bottom.
Knacker and co-landlord Fergal are closely observed creations, terrifying and banal, especially Knacker. One does wish, perhaps, that Nevill didn't so closely link physical appearance to morality: Fergal never seems entirely real, and gets less 'real' as the narrative builds. Sometimes too much is too much.
Nonetheless, Nevill's description of Stephanie's suffering, and her reactions to that suffering, never cross the line into exploitation. Though it does feel at points as if the reader is being crushed by events, wrung out. One admires the skill, but one does not necessarily want to read about a character who suffers this much for this many pages for awhile after completing No One Gets Out Alive. Like maybe a year or two. Highly recommended.
The Babadook (2014): written and directed by Jennifer Kent; starring Essie Davis (Amelia), Noah Wiseman (Sam), and Barbara West (Mrs. Roach): A truly great Australian horror movie that rewards multiple viewings and supports multiple interpretations while also being Scary As Hell.
A troubled six-year-old boy's imaginary friend may be neither imaginary nor friend. Or is his troubled mother suffering from the depression she's been fighting ever since the boy's father died on the way to the hospital on the day of the boy's birth? Is there really a Babadook? And where did the Babadook get that snazzy hat?
Among other things, The Babadook suggests a mash-up of Roman Polanski's Repulsion, Home Alone, The Bad Seed, and an Australian children's TV series called Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. In any case, it's a fine movie -- a new classic of intelligent horror. Highly recommended.
Think Yourself Lucky (2014) by Ramsey Campbell: One could see this as the third novel in Ramsey Campbell's Internet Trilogy, though no such thing has ever been codified. The uber-veteran Liverpudlian horror writer understands the New Media better than a lot of young punks a third his age, possibly because he always connects what can happen on the Internet with what has always happened in the unmediated real world.
There's an occasionally melancholy, occasionally slapsticky, and always observant feel to this novel. Travel agency grunt David Botham has a job made recently more difficult because of the end of his relationship with his boss. His current girlfriend, a cook, is having boss problems of her own at work. And Botham's recent verbal outburst has attracted the attention of the leader of a local Liverpudlian writers' group who thinks Botham's verbal talents suggest untapped potential as a writer.
Like the amiable, almost-accidental serial killer of Campbell's The Count of Eleven, David is something of a repressed soul. Various factors involving his (still living) parents and assorted childhood experiences have led him to keep pretty much everything in, all the time. And the writers' group guy seems to be right -- indeed, David's near-hysteria at someone suggesting he try writing and publishing confirms this fact very early in the novel.
But it's the Internet Trilogy, isn't it? While The Grin of the Dark explored the conspiracy theories and strange online feuds of the Web and Seven Days of Cain explored online dreams of wish fulfillment erupting into the real world, Think Yourself Lucky examines the ways in which the anonymity of the online world can encourage a person to say and electronically do things far too vile for the real world.
David discovers there's a blog with a name seemingly plucked from a phrase he uttered during his verbal rant. And the blogger has begun to recount terrible acts of revenge on people for even the slightest of slights or accidents. For instance, the blogger describes severely crippling a man who had inadvertently caused him to scratch his car. That man is David's neighbour, and the car that got scratched is David's.
Think Yourself Lucky works as a character study of someone who's almost morbidly withdrawn when it comes to honestly expressing his emotions. It bears some resemblance to Stephen King's The Dark Half. However, Campbell's characters are both more finely drawn and a whole lot funnier than King's. And the relationship between the mysterious blogger and David is a more complex one than that between the writer and his doppelganger in The Dark Half.
The blogger has a certain amount of right on his side, though not when it comes to the apparently injurious and homicidal acts he says he commits. If there actually are injuries and murders committed by this blogger. This is very satisfying fare that rings changes on the long-standing horror trope of the Doppelganger or the Other. Recommended.
What We Do In The Shadows: written and directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi; starring Jemaine Clement (Vladislav), Taika Waititi (Viago), Jonny Brugh (Deacon), Cori Gonzalez-Macuer (Nick), Stu Rutherford (Stu), Ben Fransham (Petyr), and Jackie van Beek (Jackie) (2014): Hilarious fake documentary from the people who brought you Flight of the Conchords centered on the exploits of four vampires rooming together in the Greater Wellington Area of New Zealand. There are jarring moments of violence throughout, but the movie overall is surprisingly genial in its portrayal of the vampires and their kith and kin.
One of the things that makes the movie so enjoyable is its rigorous attention to the details of living as a vampire, spun at most points for maximum hilarity. It's hard to groom when you can't see yourself in a mirror, for instance, and for a young vampire, learning to fly can be a real hassle. The vampires are aware of fictional constructions of their habits -- they even crib one bit of hypnotic shenanigans from The Lost Boys, all the while mispronouncing 'spaghetti' as 'basgetti.'
The laugh-out-loud moments are often truly gross -- Dandy vamp Viago's problems with tapping the vein of a victim lead to an awful lot of spurting blood, while new vamp Nick learns the hard way why vampires shouldn't eat chips. Meanwhile, 8000-year-old Petyr lurks in the basement listening to his headphones and refusing to attend house meetings. But he's a good listener!
I mean, really one wishes a 'serious' vampire movie would be this well-thought-out. The writers know their vampire mythology. But they also work some ridiculous changes on their sources, whether it's through Vlad's problems with shape-shifting or the eternal war between vampires and werewolves. What We Do In The Shadows is a sheer delight. Leave your reflection at the door. Highly recommended.
Revival by Stephen King (2014): Cruising in under the radar after the big splash that was 2013's award-winning Doctor Sleep, Revival is what Doctor Sleep purported to be: a return to full-blown supernatural horror by Stephen King. Like King's It, Revival is a horror novel that salutes a lot of other fictional horrors. It mainly concentrated on the horrors of the big screen in its overt references; Revival mainly goes after written horrors right from its Dedication page onwards, as King lists several horror writers and one horror novella (Arthur Machen's spectacular, more-than-a-century-old "The Great God Pan") to whom he's dedicated Revival.
We've seen King grapple with Machen's novella recently, in the mostly successful 2008 novella "N.", collected in Just After Sunset. And you don't have to have read "The Great God Pan" to enjoy Revival. Though you really should read it in any case. It's swell!
To use a baseball metaphor that seems appropriate to the baseball-loving King, Revival first appears to be a solid double hit by a slow-footed power hitter who's lost some bat speed in recent years. But the double falls into a gap between outfielders. Things start to happen. When the play is over, Revival's delivered a lurchy, gasping, but successful (and terrifically exciting) inside-the-park home run. It's not the sort of towering, out-of-the-park slam that was a novel such as The Shining. But it's impressive nonetheless, maybe more impressive for its relatively greater rarity.
Revival begins in very-small-town Maine. We're somewhere near other King towns such as Castle Rock, but Castle Rock or Derry would be a metropolis by comparison. King gives us something new with the Morton family, from which his narrator Jamie Morton springs: a family with more than one child, and the family dynamics this entails. It's rare ground for King, who's generally depicted one-child families (though sometimes, as in It and "The Body," families whittled down to one surviving child by tragedy). King is out of his comfort zone, which is good. The family stuff works. So, too, does having Jamie Morton grow up to be a recording engineer and occasional session musician rather than the standard writer-protagonist of so many King novels and short stories.
Told by Morton in the present day, Revival shows Jamie Morton's long, intermittent relationship with his town's preacher, from Jamie's boyhood in the 1950's and early 1960's to 2014. Three years into Preacher Charlie Jacobs' small-town tenure, a terrible tragedy ends his priesthood, and his belief in God.
The aftermath of this first tragedy (there will be many more, for many people) sees King write one of his finest scenes of non-supernatural horror. Jacobs gives a nihilistic, God-denying sermon at his church. That's not the horror. The horror comes with the townspeople's reaction to his sermon, a reaction that rings utterly true and horrible in its smug, nasty religiosity buttressed with the most awful, judgmentally toxic gossip. It's a great scene of horrific mourning, one to stand with the funeral scene in Salem's Lot.
Then... we're off. I'll leave the specifics of the plot for you to discover yourself. Jamie Morton's post-teen-aged problems parallel those of many other King protagonists; the solution to these problems is different from what we've seen before in King. Jamie and Jacobs form a twinned narrative, two addicts whose addictions ultimately merge into one.
Along the way, King nods both explicitly and implicitly to 200 years of written horror in English. Jacobs' obsession with electricity and what it can accomplish in the realms of life and death gestures towards that early megalith, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Obsessions with death, the dying, and what lies beyond death nod to Poe (perhaps most notably in one scene to Poe's short story "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar").
And there are many, many others, including Machen, including H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury. King also nods to himself nodding to H.P. Lovecraft in one of the horrific images offered at the climax of the story, an image which echoes something in King's explicit Lovecraft homage, "Crouch End."
There are other King-on-King moments dotted throughout Revival, mostly to good effect, from the tiny, sinister "Billygoats Gruff" door in It to the terrible, hidden invaders of "The Ten O'Clock People." And for those of you who've read King's non-fiction horror survey Danse Macabre, there's a notable riff on something King discusses therein -- the Ray Milland-starring horror movie X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. Seriously. And it works. And HE CAN STILL SEE!
Certainly, the horror takes awhile to build in Revival. And you may at points think you know where the text is going. Does it go somewhere unusual for King? Good question. It goes where it goes. I think the climax is terrific and utterly earned by what's gone before. Implications for everything that happens earlier in the text allow for a re-evaluation of the events we've read about... and, possibly, a re-evaluation of the narrator. Possibly. In any case, really a terrific and enjoyable horror novel from young Mr. King. I hope we'll be seeing more from him! Highly recommended.
