The Little Stranger (2018): adapted by Lucinda Coxon from the novel by Sarah Waters; directed by Lenny Abrahamson; starring Domhnall Gleason (Dr. Faraday), Will Poulter (Roderick Ayres), Ruth Wilson (Caroline Ayres), Charlotte Rampling (Mrs. Ayres), and Liv Hill (Betty):
In stripping Sarah Waters' very good, long novel of its first-person narration by protagonist Dr. Faraday, the film-makers turn The Little Stranger into a dull, decidedly unscary slog with an inert cipher at the heart of the action in Domhnall Gleason's Faraday. This is not Gleason's fault -- he has almost nothing to work with. It's a ghost story for people who find Perry Como music too exciting. Not recommended.
The Cabin at the End of the World (2018) by Paul Tremblay: Winner of the Horror Writers' Association Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel of 2018, this novel takes place at a remote vacation cabin in Maine. Gay couple Andrew and Eric and their pre-teen daughter Wen are enjoying their rural vacation when the End of the World starts, maybe, with a mysterious quartet of strangers arriving to tell them that the three of them have a pivotal role to play in the survival or damnation of all mankind.
I was a little surprised to see that this novel won the Bram Stoker -- until I remembered that the Bram Stoker has been increasingly wonky over the years with its selections. The Cabin at the End of the World isn't a bad novel. But it's not up to the standard set by Tremblay's first two horror novels, A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock.
As the novel ponders the capricious nature of gods and the horrifying precedents of all those Biblical stories that require the literal sacrifice of offspring, the machinery of its plot and the nature of that quartet, what they represent, and how they represent it... the whole thing ends up feeling like an episode of Supernatural, but with less philosophical depth and a lot less hand-to-hand combat.
When tragedy comes, it's moving, but perhaps not to the extent that a more conventional portrayal of supernatural forces might have allowed for. God's machinery and ideology are cheap and threadbare, but the novel itself almost becomes a representation of that concept rather than a critique of it, much less an in-depth examination.
Of course, maybe God isn't involved at all, and maybe the End of the World is not the End of the World. The novel's ending seems less ambiguous than those of Tremblay's first two horror novels. But there's still some wiggle room left for the reader to wonder whether the supernatural was ever involved, or just some folie a sept. Lightly recommended.
The Nun (2018): written by Gary Dauberman and James Wan; directed by Corin Hardy; starring Taissa Farmiga (Sister Irene), Demian Bichir (Father Burke), and Jonas Bloquet (Frenchie): A minor entry in The Conjuring franchise gives us an origin story for the Evil Nun who shows up repeatedly in that franchise. Short story, it's a demon named Valar. Long story... it's a demon named Valar!
It's 1952 and Vatican trouble-shooter Father Burke and novitiate Sister Irene travel to Romania to investigate whether or not a convent/abbey has fallen from Grace. Boy, has it ever! With some help from a local French-Canadian played by a Belgian actor and nicknamed 'Frenchie'* (whew, the creativity), they do battle with the Forces of Evil.
The movie occupies an uneasy and often counter-productive realm between the Roman Catholic horrors of The Exorcist and the demon zombies of the Evil Dead franchise. It all really becomes quite silly, especially once a holy relic containing some of the blood of Jesus Christ shows up. The demon's powers wax and wane according to the plot -- it can seal someone in a grave and bury them, for example, but its minions can be dispatched by ax and shotgun.
Taissa Farmiga is as cute as a button as novitiate and later Sister Irene, sent to fight evil because she had visions as a child. Demien Bichir does what he can with his underwritten priest. Frenchie is, well, Frenchie. What, there were no real French-Canadians available? A few effective jump scares are about all the horror this entry has to offer. Not recommended.
* Alas, not the Jon Lovitz character.
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| I'm Frenchie ! |
Hereditary (2018): written and directed by Ari Aster; starring Alex Wolff (Peter), Gabriel Byrne (Steve), Toni Collette (Annie), and Milly Shapiro (Charlie): As in The Shining or The Exorcist, Hereditary puts a family under malign supernatural pressure and sets the burner to 'Boil.'
Things start slowly but eerily. You get a somewhat weird adolescent daughter (a terrific, odd Milly Shapiro). You get a stressed-out Mom (Toni Collette, superb as usual). You get a well-meaning but somewhat ineffectual Dad (Gabriel Byrne, channeling Donald Sutherland in Ordinary People). And you get a really stressed out teen-aged son (Alex Wolff).
Around the 40-minute mark, something awful happens. Is it just random, horrible luck? Is the supernatural at work here or are we seeing a family whose members -- especially mother and son -- have serious, unresolved psychological issues?
Well, the next 80 minutes or so provide the answer to those and other questions. Hereditary does a nice job of eventually inverting our assumptions about who or what is responsible. It also has more beheadings than A Tale of Two Cities. Along with graveyard robbing, naked cult members leering from the shadows, mysterious lights, impotent authorities, ghostly drawings and writings, people burning alive, and so on, and so forth.
Told in an almost stately, deliberate manner, Hereditary nonetheless traffics in the stuff of Gothic nightmares as it draws to its tense conclusion. It may be too deliberate for some -- I found it exhilarating. I hope to see more from writer-director Ari Aster. He treats both the horror genre and the tropes he used with respect and diligence. Highly recommended.
Unfriended: Dark Web (2018): written and directed by Stephen Susco; starring Colin Woodell (Matias), Stephanie Nogueras (Amaya), Betty Gabriel (Nari), Rebecca Rittenhouse (Serena), Andrew Lees (Damon), Connor Del Rio (AJ), and Savira Windyani (Lexx):
Effective bit of social-network horror, to be watched only on a big screen or two feet away from a computer screen. Or by someone with a really big TV and really good eyesight! This second Unfriended film from the ubiquitous Blumhouse explores paranoia and conspiracy theories and privacy issues where the first explored on-line humiliation and bullying.
The leads are all likable and believably competent in the face of malign hyper-competence. There are genuine shocks amongst the jump-scares. I'm actually looking forward to more movies in this franchise, though I have a feeling that the next one may take place entirely on smartphones. Recommended.
Slenderman (2018): written by David Birke based on a character created by Victor Surge; directed by Sylvain White; starring Joey King (Wren), Julia Goldani Telles (Hallie), Jaz Sinclair (Chloe), Annalise Basso (Katie), Alex Fitzalan (Tom), and Taylor Richardson (Lizzie): Massachusetts is the setting for this terrible horror movie based on an Internet meme/ fake urban legend. It's no more terrible than a lot of recent horror movies. And it does have an almost all-female cast.
A much scarier tale is the HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman, in which all the horrors are human.
However, as the female characters are denied all agency in their struggle with the Slenderman, the whole thing ends up being another nihilistic mess. Slenderman himself is sort of what you'd expect if a committee work-shopped the creation of a mythical creature -- he's a tall, faceless guy in a suit.... with tentacles that sprout out of his back! And a magical house somewhere in the woods! And three bells announce his arrival! Ouch. Not recommended.
Truth or Dare (2018): written by Michael Reisz, Jillian Jacobs, Christopher Roach, and Jeff Wadlow; directed by Jeff Wadlow; starring Lucy Hale (Olivia), Tyler Posey (Lucas), Violett Beane (Markie), Hayden Szeto (Brad), Sophia Ali (Penelope), Nolan Funk (Tyson), and Landon Liboiron (Carter):
So-so horror flick from the ubiquitous Blumhouse. Most of the cast is way older than the early 20's college students they play, a sometimes-distracting fact. A game of Truth or Dare turns supernaturally deadly because of a mysterious supernatural force.
I think the message of the film is 'Don't vacation in Mexico,' or maybe 'Don't play stupid teen-aged games in a sinister, abandoned church in Mexico.' Certainly an adequate time-waster, though even at a bare 90 minutes it feels about 15 minutes too long. Lightly recommended.
Elevation (2018) by Stephen King: A novella set in Castle Rock -- much like King's low-key 2017 collaboration with Richard Chizmar, Gwendy's Button Box -- Elevation is a story about a kinder, gentler Castle Rock, though not one without its flaws and magical weirdnesses.
In this case, our middle-aged protagonist discovers that he's losing weight. Not mass, weight. Steadily and perhaps even increasingly rapidly, he's gone from 240 pounds to 210 pounds without looking as if he's lost any weight. And anything he carries or wears loses ALL its weight. A recognizable medical condition, this is not.
However, unlike the vaguely similar Thinner, Elevation is not a horror story. It's a quieter fable of smaller kindnesses and redemption spurred by that weight loss. I'd compare it to Ray Bradbury if King were a poetic writer like Bradbury. In this case, though, King's own dedication -- to genre great Richard Matheson -- seems apt, at least for Matheson in his quieter moments.
Rod Serling's Twilight Zone would also be an apt comparison, with one Changed Premise illuminating the good parts of the human condition as well as the bad. Think "A Passage for Trumpet" or "In Praise of Pip," two gentle, sad TZ episodes starring Jack Klugman. And a middle-aged Klugman would actually make a good fit for our protagonist!
It's a slight work but an enjoyable one, and it's not going to take you long to read. I'd almost swear that an embattled lesbian couple in Elevation may have appeared in the first draft of King and his son's Sleeping Beauties before being cut. They're embattled because small-town Maine isn't ready to patronize the restaurant of two openly gay women. Or is it? Recommended.
The Dark Masters Trilogy (2018) by Stephen Volk, containing the following novellas:
Whitstable - 1971 (2013): The first of the three fictional novellas featuring real people stars Peter Cushing, days after losing his beloved wife to emphysema in 1971.
While sitting on the beach near his home in Whitstable, Cushing is approached by a boy who thinks Cushing IS Van Helsing, vampire fighter and nemesis of Dracula. And the boy believes he is being preyed on by a vampire -- his stepfather.
The truth is just as horrible. Cushing begins by trying to shirk responsibility, and then tries getting the authorities to help out. But in the end, the actor has to discover how to face Evil himself, as himself -- though the art of acting does come in handy.
It's a marvelous, sympathetic character study in which the metaphor of vampirism is explored sensitively through one of the real-world evils that it can be a metaphor for. Despite the grim and mournful subject matter, Volk injects appropriate humour throughout -- especially when it comes to people mixing Cushing up with his oft-time co-star Christopher Lee, or to only recognizing him from cameos on current comedy TV shows. Highly recommended.
Leytonstone - 1906 (2015): Alfred Hitchcock's anecdote about his father having him put in jail for a night as a young boy in order to teach him to be good is the spark for this meditation on childhood fears and the peculiar character of the world's greatest thriller and suspense director. As he notes in his afterword, Volk alters the real nature of Hitchcock's family to make him an only child, doted upon by his mother and worried about by his father, who decides on the police visit.
Needless to say, the police visit does not yield the expected results. Volk examines the roots of fear here in childhood trauma, while also having what seems to be a good time coming up with precursors for many of Hitchcock's most famous film scenes. His Boy Hitchcock isn't entirely sympathetic, but he is certainly sympathetically drawn when it comes to his motivations and fears. Highly recommended.
Netherwood - 1947 (2018): In the last year of his life, 'The World's Wickedest Man,' Aleister Crowley, summons England's most popular post-war horror novelist -- that would be Dennis Wheatley -- to a peculiar hotel in Netherstone. Why?
Because Crowley believes a recent apprentice has gained enough magical power to conquer the world -- and, more importantly to Crowley, who lost a daughter at a young age, to fully claim that power the apprentice will sacrifice his own infant daughter.
This really is a great work, straddling reality and the supernatural without ever conclusively establishing that Crowley's fears are "real." One of the things that links the two men is a concern with permanence -- as a philosopher and thinker for Crowley, as a novelist for Wheatley. The third-person narrative focuses on Wheatley's thoughts and reactions, leaving Crowley to be imagined throughout from the outside by Wheatley. This choice generates suspense (is Crowley really on the level or is he just 'aving a laugh?).
But this narrative POV also allows the reader to judge Wheatley as he's judging Crowley -- and equivocating in that judgment. This seems fitting because one's assessment of Crowley relies a lot on just how much one believes in what he supposedly did, and how much one believes HE believed in what he supposedly did. It all makes for a fascinating fictional trip through the lives of two people who are increasingly forgotten as the decades slip by. Highly recommended.
In all: A great book of 2018. Highly recommended.
By the Light of My Skull (2018) by Ramsey Campbell, containing the following stories:
- The Words Between • (2016) : An homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari written for a theme anthology is both a chilling appreciation of that seminal horror film and a grim portrayal of a disintegrating mind.
- The Wrong Game • (2016) : A fictional Ramsey Campbell is visited by haunting memories of a 1970's science-fiction and fantasy convention.
- The Impression • (2014) : Perhaps the most overt nod to M.R. James sees an innocent bit of grave-marker rubbing unleash something on a boy and his grandmother.
- The Watched • (2014) : Sensitive, harrowing portrayal of a boy, an obsessed cop, and a stressed grandmother.
- Reading the Signs • (2013) : Don't get lost. Don't pick up hitchhikers.
- Know Your Code • (2016) : A portrait of a couple in their 'dotage' also involves some of Campbell's love of wordplay and puzzles.
- Find My Name • (2013) : A satisfying nod to a classic folk tale pits a grandmother against a familiar foe for the life of her grandchild. Word play abounds.
- On the Tour • (2014) : A forgotten Liverpool musician becomes increasingly obsessed with the Beatles bus tour.
- At Lorn Hall • (2012) : A tour of an English mansion has no need for a tour guide when those headphones are available! A modern spin on an M.R. James set-up.
- Fetched • (2016) (aka "Nightmare" 2015): You can't go home again. Or maybe shouldn't. Another story dealing with aging and loss.
- The Moons • (2011) : Children in the woods meet a helpful forest ranger. Though he does look peculiar. Very unnerving.
- The Callers • (2012) : Another reason to avoid Bingo with Grandma. Fine portrayal of young and old.
- The Page • (2012) : Campbell's homage to Bradbury also homages Philip K. Dick's conspiracies.
- Her Face • (2018) : Solid vignette about a child's fear of a corner-shop owner, a fear that only increases after her death. Another broken family.
- The Fun of the Fair (2018): A dive into his notes for the classic 1970's story "The Companion" yields a new story with few shared traits with the old story. Well, other than a fearful, lost fairground/carnival and a fearsome meditation on aging.
Overall: My favourite Campbell non-reprint collection of stories since Dark Companions in the mid-1980's. And Dark Companions was one of the ten greatest original horror stories ever. The stories are especially good in their characterization characters young and old, and in striking sparks both dark and light from these interactions.
One of the important lessons one can learn from Campbell is that horror is at its most effective when it's not portrayed as some sort of supernatural revenge. One can find thematic reasons for the types of horror the characters face stemming from their personal histories, but there's no justice in real horror. It's an existential plague.
That doesn't mean there can't be humour, lightness, or word play in a horror story. Or to riff on Campbell's love of word play, I'd say that his 50+ year career spent terrifying us makes him... an eminence grisly... !!! Highly recommended.
Cam (2018): written by Isa Mazzel, Daniel Goldhaber, and Isabelle Link-Levy; directed by Daniel Goldhaber; starring Madeline Brewer (Alice/ Lola), Patch Darragh (Tinker), Melora Walters (Lynne), Devin Druid (Jordan), Imani Hakim (Baby), and Michael Dempsey (Barney): Former cam-girl Isa Mazzel co-wrote this horror movie of stolen identities and mysterious online presences (she also cameos as a check-out clerk).
Protagonist Alice, screen-name 'Lola,' finds her attempts to climb the ladder of popularity for cam-girls complicated by the appearance of another cam-girl who looks and sounds exactly like her -- and is willing to do stuff that Lola is not.
Cam takes us into cam-girl culture, an online niche I'm not that familiar with. Alice seems to make a good living from her feed, supplementing it with gifts from some of her more ardent admirers. The ardent admirers are... pretty creepy. Is one of them the source of doppel-Lola? Or is something even weirder going on?
Madeline Brewer makes for an engaging protagonist. The film doesn't condescend to her cam-girl shenanigans -- it's a job, even if it involves nudity and feigned sex acts. And as things escalate both online and in the 'real' world, Alice has to find reserves of character she may not be aware of possessing. All this without a Very Special Ending in which cam-culture is revealed to be The End of the World As We Know It.
Cam is visually interesting, moving between the mundane colours of the day-to-day world and the vibrant f*ck-me colours of Lola's cam-room, other cam-rooms, and the online presences on the cam-girl site. Directot Goldhaber handles both the gradually building weirdness and a couple of explosions of violence with care. There's even a stunner of an 'embarrassment' scene that doesn't pay off later in quite the way the viewer expects it will.
In all, this Netflix film is a solid piece of horror, its characterization of Alice sensitive, its willingness to avoid pat answers a godsend. It even plays fair within the rules of the cam-girl site when it comes to facing the mysterious entity. Highly recommended.
Happy Death Day (2017): written by Scott Lobdell; directed by Christopher Landon; starring Jessica Rothe (Theresa 'Tree' Gelbman), Israel Broussard (Carter Davis), Ruby Modine (Lori), Charles Aitken (Gregory Butler), and Rachel Matthews (Danielle):
Satiric slasher riff on Groundhog Day gradually loses steam towards the end of its eternally returning day of doom for a grumpy sorority girl.
Still, it's a fairly engaging piece of entertainment for most of its length. Part of the reason it bogs down is that it also wants to be a heart-warming tale of someone who learns better, riffing as much on A Christmas Carol as Groundhog Day in this regard. The funniest scene comes as the sorority girl and her new boyfriend discuss Groundhog Day and the films of Bill Murray.
Jessica Rothe does a decent job of making our time-shifted protagonist growingly sympathetic as she tries and fails again and again to avoid her fate. The identity of the killer seems sort of obvious to me, but your results may vary. There's a red herring that feels like it needed another two or three minutes of exposition, or some personal connection to the protagonist that never materializes. It's another Blumhouse horror movie. Are they trying to match the annual horror output of Hammer or AIP back in the 1950's and 1960's? Lightly recommended.
Seven in Heaven (2018): written and directed by Chris Eigeman; starring Travis Tope (Jude), Gary Cole (The Guidance Counselor), Haley Ramm (June), and Clark Backo (Nell): Filmed in Brampton, Ontario! Very slight Blumhouse Joint is less horror movie and more Mirror Universe episode by way of Narnia's magic closet and some risible playing cards. The cast is at least pleasant. Gary Cole wanders through as a Guidance Counselor with mysterious powers. An adequate time-waster for Netflix, but certainly avoidable if you've got something else to watch or do. Very lightly recommended.
Malevolent (2018): adapted by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstanopoulos from the novel Hush by Eva Konstanopoulos; directed by Olaf de Fleur; starring Florence Pugh (Angela), Ben Lloyd-Hughes (Jackson), Scott Chambers (Elliot), Georgina Bevan (Beth), and Celia Imrie (Mrs. Green):
Solid straight-to-Netflix horror movie about fake paranormal investigators and real ghosts. Hey, didn't Supernatural do that bit years ago? And Stephen Volk's The Awakening? There are probably a few too many jump-scares and not enough set-up, but for the most part the movie plays fair with its ghosts and monsters and psychics real and imaginary.
It also makes surprisingly effective use of the 1958 novelty hit "Beep Beep" (aka "Little Nash Rambler"). Certainly better than most of the Insidious/Sinister/Conjuring movies, though bafflingly set in 1986. Because there weren't any cellphones? That's my best guess. Recommended.
The Tale (2018): written and directed by Jennifer Fox; starring Laura Dern (Jennifer), Elizabeth Debicki (Mrs. G.), Jason Ritter (Bill), John Heard (Bill - Present Day), Ellen Burstyn (Nettie), Frances Conroy (Mrs. G. - Present Day), Common (Martin), and Isabelle Nelisse (Jennifer - Age 13):
Harrowing tale of childhood sexual abuse based on writer-director Jennifer Fox's own experiences. The cast is excellent, especially Isabelle Nelisse and Laura Dern as Jennifer Fox at 13 and in the present day, respectively. The movie also deftly wields Jason Ritter's essential likeability to good effect in his role as a predatory track coach.
The movie takes a different path than normal in its exploration of memory. In the present day, Jennifer hasn't repressed her memories -- she's reformulated them into something she can live with. Her mother's discovery of an essay about the "relationship" she had with the track coach and a riding coach forces the memory box open, however, to be reevaluated by Jennifer in the present.
The result is clever and thoughtful, as Jennifer interrogates her 13-year-old self while also having to re-evaluate her interpretation of the events. Those around her also have to deal with these memories as the memories themselves "change." Ellen Burstyn is sympathetic and confused and guilt-ridden as Jennifer's mother. Other participants don't want to admit knowledge of what was going on, much less guilt. Recommended.
The Outsider (2018) by Stephen King: 40-year-old Terry Maitland is a beloved high-school teacher and Little League coach in the small Oklahoma town of Flint City. But overwhelming witness, fingerprint, and DNA evidence suggest that he brutally raped and murdered an eleven-year-old boy.
So Detective Ralph Anderson makes the call to arrest him. Because Anderson is freaked out by the fact that his own son played Little League, Anderson decides to arrest Maitland in as public and humiliating a way as possible -- during a Little League game, with the stands packed.
A problem soon develops, however, as Maitland's lawyer and his own investigator discover: equally overwhelming evidence shows that Maitland was nowhere near Flint City at the time of the rape and murder.
Does Maitland have an accomplice? Did he try to commit the perfect crime? But if he tried to commit the perfect crime, why did he go out of his way to talk to witnesses before and after the murder while wearing a blood-soaked shirt? Why do the plethora of fingerprints and bloodstains suggest that he went out of his way to leave physical proof of his crime?
So begins The Outsider, Stephen King's new novel. This one is in many ways like a very detailed X-Files episode. No Mulder and Scully, but halfway through the novel Holly Gibney of King's Bill Hodges Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch) will be called upon to fill the role of an outside investigator with experience when it comes to the paranormal.
For King the novel is pretty tight (it's 500 pages, so yeah, maybe there could be some trimming -- though I really only wished for more, not less). The details of the investigation are ably portrayed. The characterization is superb. It's a mash-up of the supernatural and the police procedural that works really well, perhaps in part because King practiced with End of Watch.
The novel also examines how good police can make catastrophic mistakes, as Ralph Anderson does with that initial public arrest. Anderson is the protagonist here, a good cop faced with something beyond his normal experience. Thankfully, brave, extremely intelligent Holly is there, a most unlikely Van Helsing, but an effective one. Her A/V presentation on what kind of thing they're facing is a miniature masterpiece of horror laced with unlikely comedy that rapidly turns to dread.
There are certainly derivative elements -- there are always in King, a master of synthesis far more than thesis. But the characterization and the pacing keep things going, along with some new (for King) locales. The climax is a dandy, another dark descent made by unlikely heroes in service of the light. Highly recommended.
A Quiet Place (2018): written by Bryan Woods, Scott Beck, and John Krasinski; directed by John Krasinski; starring Emily Blunt (Evelyn Abbott), John Krasinski (Lee Abbott), Millicent Simmonds (Regan Abbott), Noah Jupe (Marcus Abbott) and Cade Woodward (Beau Abbott):
Best known as Jim from The Office (USA), John Krasinski does fine work here as co-writer, director, and co-star of A Quiet Place, a quiet piece of science-fiction horror that was almost a Cloverfield movie.
The movie isn't as quiet as the hype suggested. Or maybe I'm just more accustomed to quiet movies than most audiences and critics. It is pretty quiet, though. As the trailers and posters tell you before you enter the theatre, A Quiet Place follows the efforts of a family to survive an alien invasion by creatures who hunt by sound.
In case you're wondering, that's both active and passive sound. Passive-only and the aliens would spend a lot of time running into things as a tribute to the T. Rex of Jurassic Park and its inability to see things that aren't moving. Ha ha! But no, the aliens also possess some sort of active sonar.
Krasinski and real-life spouse Emily Blunt are excellent as the parents of three children, one of them -- the oldest daughter -- deaf. Do you think that deafness will become a plot point, perhaps even a major one?
Krasinski wisely keeps the monsters mostly off-stage and barely glimpsed until the climax. They're interesting creatures design-wise, and that design plays into the finale. The film also does a solid job of presenting pertinent information without relying on conventional exposition. A lot of information about the alien invasion appears in newspaper headlines pinned to the wall of Krasinski's character's workshop. So, too, possible foreshadowing of things to come.
For the most part, A Quiet Place is about desperate people who nonetheless remain competent in the worst situations. In this sense, it's a throwback to 1950's horror-science-fiction movies, except that instead of following experts trying to combat giant ants or flying saucers, we're on the ground with a single family. It's surprising how refreshing competent characters can be. It's almost subversive!
Perhaps there are a few things that don't quite ring true. But overall, this is a lovely piece of work, tense and tart and occasionally sweet, with characters one comes rapidly to care about. I do sort of dread the fact that a sequel has been ordered, however. Unless it involves alien invaders who hunt by the sense of smell. And is presented in Smellorama! Highly recommended.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (2018) by Michele McNamara, Paul Haynes, Billy Jensen, and Patton Oswalt:
The Golden State Killer of the sub-title got that name from author Michele McNamara 20 years after his last known crime, named thusly by McNamara on the Internet because GSK's other nicknames -- The Original Night Stalker, The East Area Rapist, EAR/ONS, and The Diamond Knot Killer -- did not cover the full range of the rapist-murderer's crimes.
He had instead been given different names in different areas of California at different times between 1976 and 1986. He has never been identified or caught.
McNamara was married to comic actor Patton Oswalt. She died of complications related to prescription medication (probably) in 2016 at the age of 46. She left behind Oswalt, a daughter, and the unfinished manuscript that would become this book. Oswalt, lead researcher Paul Haynes, and investigative journalist Billy Jensen finished the book, or at least completed it.
It's a solid, clearly unfinished 'True Crime' text. What makes it different than a lot of True Crime books is that it's as much about McNamara's (self-admittedly and in the title) obsessive search for the identity of the Golden State Killer.
Her search uses Internet resources and message boards, real-life interviews and consultations, and a lot of sifting through the seemingly endless boxes of evidence. But she also outlines the reasons for her interest in the case, the toll it takes, and her family background.
McNamara isn't an elegant prose writer (and someone should be severely chastised for letting the neologistic abomination 'pre-planning' through the editorial net on several occasions). This isn't Truman Capote's In Cold Blood or even Erik Larson's The Devil In the White City. What it is, is a straightforward crime story that gradually mutates into another riff on Ahab and Moby Dick. That McNamara's insomnia over the last few years of her life led to the prescribed drugs that may have killed her only makes the Moby Dick comparison more poignant, especially with the killer uncaught.
So we're left at the end with facts, aided by advances in DNA technology, and aided even more by crowd-sourcing the investigation via message boards and McNamara's own website. McNamara speculates on crimes that may have been committed by the man who would become the Golden State Killer prior to 1976. She also speculates on why the GSK went from brutal rapist to a serial murderer of couples, on why he stopped, and on whether he lives today.
But McNamara is also attentive to the limits of speculation, detailing failed leads and referring to wrong assumptions in other, solved serial-killer cases. It's grim stuff at times. Here there be monsters.
I wish the completists had found a better way -- or better writers -- to deal with the unfinished portions of the manuscript rather than the somewhat clunky concluding prose by Haynes and Jensen. But I also understand why those involved with McNamara's writing legacy wanted the text to appear in its current state. Recommended.
