Horror Movies Seen As Pithy Life Lessons

• Phantasm: Don't have sex in a cemetery at night.
• The Night of the Living Dead: Frankly, just avoid cemeteries altogether.
• Dracula: Beware of illegal immigrants.
• Frankenstein: Early childhood education is vitally important to the development of a child.
• The Exorcist: Don't become a Roman Catholic priest: Low pay, high mortality rate.
• The Nightmare on Elm Street series: Don't take justice into your own hands, especially if it involves burning an alleged felon to death.
• The Friday the 13th series: Don't have pre-marital sex.
• The Hallowe'en series: Seriously, don't have pre-marital sex.
• Cujo: Have your pet regularly vaccinated for rabies and other diseases.
• The Omen: The Italian health-care system is a mess.
• The Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Home gardening can be a life-changer.
• The Day of the Triffids: Green energy is bad.
• Gremlins: Have your pets spayed or neutered.
• Pet Sematary: If you have young children, don't live close to a road.

Cutting Edge (1986): edited by Dennis Etchison

Cutting Edge (1986): edited by Dennis Etchison: Contains the following stories:

Blue Rose by Peter Straub; The Monster by Joe Haldeman; Lacunae by Karl Edward Wagner; "Pale, Trembling Youth" by W. H. Pugmire and Jessica Amanda Salmonson; Muzak for Torso Murders by Marc Laidlaw; Goodbye, Dark Love by Roberta Lannes; Out There by Charles L. Grant; Little Cruelties by Steve Rasnic Tem; The Man With the Hoe by George Clayton Johnson; They're Coming for You by Les Daniels; Vampire by Richard Christian Matheson; Lapses by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; The Final Stone by William F. Nolan; Irrelativity by Nicholas Royle; The Hands by Ramsey Campbell; The Bell by Ray Russell; Lost Souls by Clive Barker; Reaper by Robert Bloch; The Transfer by Edward Bryant; and Pain by Whitley Strieber.


Excellent mid-1980's original horror anthology edited by Dennis Etchison, one of horror's greatest short-story writers. Stand-outs include "The Monster," a rare foray into horror from Joe Haldeman (The Forever War, Forever Peace) that embeds its supernatural horror in Viet Nam. 

There's also a superior tale of religious angst and the common fear of getting lost in Ramsey Campbell's "The Hands." Les Daniels journeys into short fiction for a weirdly hilarious take on EC Comics-style ghostly vengeance, "They're Coming for You." Chelsea Quinn Yarbro offers a disturbing tale of disintegrating memories and consciousness in "Lapses." In all, a solid anthology with very few misfires. Highly recommended.

If It Bleeds (2020) by Stephen King

If It Bleeds (2020) by Stephen King: Stephen King returns to the four-novella volume he previously explored in Different Seasons (1982), Four Past Midnight (1990), and Full Dark, No Stars (2010). I think it's a stronger quartet than Four Past Midnight but not quite as good as Full Dark, No Stars and definitely not as good as the excellent Different Seasons. 

That last one yielded three movies from three of its novellas (Stand by Me from "The Body," Apt Pupil from "Apt Pupil," and The Shawshank Redemption from "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"), while the fourth, still-unadapted novella is an above-average 'Club Story' ("The Breathing Method").

Onwards!

"Mr. Hannigan's Phone": Childhood nostalgia meets The Twilight Zone, as in "this is the most Twilight Zoney novella here!".  King manages to tweak an already-overused horror trope that started with telephones and moved on to cellphones. Bittersweet dark fantasy more than horror.

"The Life of Chuck": A backwards-moving triptych of linked stories exploring the title subject. Again, this is bittersweet and more than a little elegiac.

"If It Bleeds": Private investigator Holly Gibney of the Bill Hodges Trilogy and The Outsider returns to battle another supernatural menace. This is a horror thriller, enlivened by both the concept and by the always engaging Holly, who keeps her personal demons at bay while battling another monster hiding in human form. or forms. 

"Rat": King returns to exploring the lives of writers, in this case a man who not only has never finished a novel but was driven nearly insane by his last attempt to do so. We return to the unincorporated townships and fishing cottages of Maine, and an unexpected visitor with more than a bit of Monkey's Paw DNA.

Overall: Not much horror here, but certainly a worthwhile read. Recommended.

The Lighthouse (2019)

The Lighthouse (2019): Written by Max and Robert Eggers; directed by Robert Eggers: Is The Lighthouse Lovecraftian tentacle horror or a psychological study of men and madness? It's both! You know, like H.P. Lovecraft's sea-themed tale "Dagon"!!!

From the writer-director of The Witch, which also occupied both the supernatural and psychological portions of the supernatural spectrum comes this superior horror film starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson and really no one else as lighthouse keepers with a few too many secrets for a one-month tour on an island off the New England coast.

Pattinson is very, very good as an the 'kid' learning the ropes of lighthouse-keeping from suspiciously salty sea-dog, peg-legged Willem Dafoe. Reality seems to fall apart for both men in different ways as the stay lengthens and the weather worsens. 

Why won't Dafoe let Pattinson into the light-room, much less teach him how to run the light? What is up with the fresh-water supply? Why is that seagull so angry at Pattinson? What's up with the mermaid figurine in the bunk room? And will these guys EVER STOP MASTURBATING? Or is Dafoe, ulp, masturbating?

Eggers juxtaposes the wide open skies and seas of the island with the claustrophobia of the living quarters -- and of the outside closing in on Pattinson when the rain comes down. There are points at which Eggers seems to have learned some valuable lessons from David Lynch, perhaps never moreso than when he lightens the tone with the increasingly loopy arguments of Pattinson and Dafoe, during one of which Dafoe is almost reduced to tears by the possibility that Pattinson doesn't enjoy his cooking. 

Eggers is already a major directorial talent and a welcome addition to the ranks of serious, seriously creepy horror writer-directors. Highly recommended.

Midsommar (2019)

Midsommar (2019): [Credits Here]  Writer-director Ari Aster follows up the superior Hereditary with another smart horror film, this one in the vein of The Wicker Man or Children of the Corn. 

A grieving Florence Pugh tags along with her boyfriend -- an annoying sociology grad student -- and other annoying American grad students to visit the communal village of a Swedish grad student just in time for the special, every-90-years Midsummer festival, aka Lammas, aka, per a surprisingly recent Farmer's Almanac, "sabbats possible." Whee! 

Makes a weird trilogy from unconnected film-makers (the other films would be Let the Right One In and The Ritual) about how no location in Sweden is safe from horror. Florence Pugh stands out as the only really sympathetic major character. Highly recommended. 

The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson (2008) by William Jones

The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson (2008) by William Jones: A fun bit of retro-tinged Cthulhu Mythos-infused stories that form a cycle. Set in 1920's New York, The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson pits the titular Columbia University English literature professor against a series of evils human and otherwise, but mostly otherwise.

The whole thing has a pleasingly pulpy feel, cleanly written and clever at various points. It's the sort of thing I think of as Cthulhu Mythos Comfort Food. It's not daring or revelatory or even all that frightening. But it is entertaining. Jones makes Pearson an engaging character caught up in situations that change the way he looks at the world. And at himself. 

Pearson turns out to possess the Cthulhu Mythos equivalent of magical powers. This comes in pretty handy as Jones' addition to the Cthulhu Mythos, a hideous devouring being from outside our universe, may be about to break through in New York thanks to the machinations of a Blue Blood New York millionaire.

Jones throws in a stereotypical Irish cop as an ally for Pearson, along with a plucky female archaeologist. The novel makes some clever tweaks to Lovecraft's ghouls and to more traditional monsters, including mummies and ghosts. There's nothing here to make your brain hurt or to set the cosmic senses tingling -- and sometimes that's just fine. Recommended.

The Influence (La Influencia) (2019)

The Influence (La Influencia) (2019): adapted from the Ramsey Campbell novel by Michel Gaztambide, Daniel Rissech, and Denis Rovira van Boekholt; directed by Denis Rovira van Boekholt; starring Manuela Velles (Alicia), Alain Hernandez (Mikel), Emma Suarez (Victoria), and Claudia Placer (Nora):

Available on Netflix, The Influence (made in Spain and thus really 'La Influencia') very loosely adapts Ramsey Campbell's superior late 1980's horror novel to decent effect. Some changes make sense either because there's a need for compression in a 100-minute adaptation of a 350-page novel or because certain things in the novel aren't 'cinematic.' Some of those changes may make one view The Influence as being derivative of Hereditary, though Campbell's novel predates that movie by 30 years.

Chief among these later 'cinematic' changes is the decision to have the malign, elderly Victoria on life support for the duration of the film. In the novel, she dies at the beginning. But I can understand the film-makers wanting to leave the door open for a physical battle between 'Good' and 'Evil' at the climax of the film and not simply a spiritual one.

There are other weird lapses that make me wonder about a longer cut of the movie. The disappearance of a major character goes almost unremarked-upon. The coda seems a bit rushed and implausible as one would imagine SOME further police investigation of the events of the movie.

A few moments of implausibility do jar one out of the horror narrative from time to time. I mean, can you really start a massive fire in your urban backyard in Spain and not arouse the attentions of the police and fire department? Because that is one seriously big fire that gets started about halfway through the movie. 

The direction is mostly assured, though, and The Influence has a lot of scares both intellectual and visceral. The actors are all competent, especially the child actor playing Nora. And there's a really nice design for a demonic figure, made more effective by the decision not to linger too long on it. Recommended.

Evil Dead (2013)

Evil Dead (2013): based on the original film written by Sam Raimi, written by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues; directed by Fede Alvarez; starring Jane Levy (Mia), Shiloh Fernandez (David), Lou Taylor Pucci (Eric), Jessica Lucas (Olivia) and Elizabeth Blackmore (Natalie): 

Made with the participation of original [The] Evil Dead (1981) writer/director Sam Raimi, this Evil Dead makes some smart changes to the low-budget 1980's horror film that launched the careers of Raimi, his brother Ted, and star Bruce Campbell.

The first is to come up with a weirdly plausible new reason for the inevitable trip to a cabin in the woods: four of the five characters are staging an Intervention/Drug DeTox for the fifth, Mia, who appears to have a heroin problem. 

The second is to alter the tone to one of more seriousness, or at least more angst, for the first two-thirds of the film. The Evil Dead is far less loopy than sequels Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness, but next to this Evil Dead, it looks like a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Are there problems? Of course. The addition of a dog to the cast of probably doomed characters goes nowhere, possibly because the filmmakers shied away from graphic violence involving a dog as either victim or perpetrator. The characters are a little shrill at points, though this may be intentional -- certainly, the issues of the various characters are intentional, as is at least one resolution to those issues. The angst tends to overwhelm any attempts at witty or blackly comic dialogue, though. Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer's Body) was brought on as a script doctor to add such wit, but it isn't all that apparent what her contributions are.

Gore and violence come in increasingly rapid, escalating waves as the film progresses. Nail guns (an homage to Raimi's Darkman?) and electric knives do some terrible stuff. Several characters take levels of physical punishment that would have made Bruce Campbell's Ash proud. If you're going to be a character in an Evil Dead movie, you've got to be able to take a beating and keep on punching back. The film bounces ideas from all three previous installments around, sometimes in newly effective ways, though I wish they'd worked the overwrought tape recording of the archaeologist into something other than the closing credits. I love that guy.

Through it all, the Book of the Dead remains indestructible and weirdly attractive to otherwise intelligent characters in search of bathroom reading. Even barbed-wire wrapping and annotated warnings from some previous reader of the tome can't stop the high-school teacher from reading an incantation out loud. Stupid teachers! 

The filmmakers finally jettison most of the serious dramatic tone for the final twenty minutes, cutting loose in a manner more consistent with the series as a whole. Frankly, it's a relief. And the identity of the survivor or survivors comes as something of a surprise. Recommended.

Goke, Body-Snatcher from Hell (1968)

Goke, Body-Snatcher from Hell (1968): written by Kyuzu Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku; directed by Hajime Sato: Fun though often somber and horrifying Japanese scifi/monster movie. 'Goke' isn't so much from Hell as it is from space, the vanguard of a supposed invasion. 

Goke, Body-Snatcher from Hell uses the always-reliable Stagecoach template here, with a limited number of characters randomly brought together by shared transportation (an airplane here, not a stagecoach, lifeboat, or spaceship). 

That airplane soon crashes thanks to Goke's flying saucer. And the survivors are soon beset by problems from within and from without, way without, as Goke has landed on their island to tease and torment them with some Dope alien powers.

The whole thing makes for an effective horror ride with out-dated but often extremely effective visual and special effects. There's more than a hint of allegory as well, with the violence and confusion of the world of 1968 portrayed through assassinations, bomb threats, corrupt politicians, corrupt arms dealers, and an American woman recently widowed by the Viet Nam War.

Goke, Body-Snatcher from Hell is rumoured to be a favourite of Quentin Tarantino. At the very least, he included a Goke-like scene in Kill Bill 1 that involved a jet flight and a lurid orange sky right out of Goke. Fun stuff. And a special award goes to the grotesque visualization of Goke entering and leaving a victim's body, along with a terrific ending. Recommended.

The Dark Half (1989) by Stephen King

The Dark Half (1989) by Stephen King: The Dark Half falls into the transition zone between drug and alcohol abuse and sobriety for Stephen King, whose loved ones staged an intervention some time during the novel's initial composition. And among other things, the novel features a novelist who has struggled with alcohol addiction. 

Protagonist Thad Beaumont also struggles with his best-selling pseudonym having been 'outed' -- or forced into an outing, really, in order to deprive the discoverer of a writer's 'dark half' of any financial windfall after that discoverer tried to blackmail Beaumont. King's own pen-name, Richard Bachman, died of "cancer of the pseudonym" in 1986 under less blackmaily circumstances.

Beaumont himself writes (or, writer's blocked, wrote) mainstream literary fiction, with his first novel almost winning a major prize. His 'own' novels have never sold that well. Writer's block caused him to start writing violent, hard-boiled crime fiction as 'George Stark.' 'Stark' nods to the prolific Donald Westlake's 'Richard Stark' pen-name, if you're interested. 

The protagonist of two of these best-selling novels, Alexis Machine, also nods to a character in a novel by crime writer Shane Stevens, as King notes in his afterword.

Man, that's a lot of nods! One last one would be that Beaumont's name seems to be a gesture towards the prolific fantasy and horror writer Charles Beaumont, with 'Beaumont' itself having been a career-long pen-name for Charles Nutt.

So Beaumont retires George Stark -- in a feature article in People magazine no less! Thad's wife feels relief at this. She never liked the way Thad acted when he was writing as Stark, almost as if he were another person.

Well, yes -- George Stark does indeed turn out to be a different person. Or a different something, anyway. And he's really pissed at having been 'retired.' And he looks and acts a lot like Alexis Machine, the violent and amoral criminal protagonist of two of the Stark novels.

The Dark Half entertainingly wrestles with a surprising number of meta-fictional issues amidst its mostly propulsive plot. King structures the novel in an interesting way. It's what I guess I'll call the 'Two Steps Forward, One Step Back' Structure. 

Stanley Kubrick famously used this structure in The Killing because that's the structure the novel that was the basis for The Killing used. The plot follows one character for awhile until some sort of crisis is reached. Then it jumps back in time to a different character and proceeds forward until the crisis has been reached and passed for another crisis. Then, rinse and repeat. The studio found this structure confusing and forced an infamous voice-over onto The Killing. Here, it mostly works.

Recurring King character Sheriff Alan Pangborn appears here because some of The Dark Half occurs in Pangborn's Castle Rock. Pangborn would soon be the protagonist of Needful Things (1991) and, in an alternate-universe version, a character played by Scott Glenn in the first season of Castle Rock. Here, he's introduced to the weirdness of Castle Rock for the first time (Pangborn hails from New Jersey) but certainly not the last.

In all, The Dark Half is enjoyable, occasionally piercing, and only sometimes a bit padded, especially with lengthy, narrative-halting  biographies of peripheral characters, a recurring problem in King. King would re-use some elements of The Dark Half decades later in The Outsider. 

Somewhat bizarrely, King also gives an academic friend of Beaumont's some traits previously given to a character in "The Crate" (adapted in Creepshow). I have no idea if this was intentional or if King forgot that he'd used elements such as a wife/significant other who annoyingly tells people "Just call me Billie!" 

King does manage the feat of making the common sparrow into a magical figure of hope and dread. You wouldn't think sparrows could conjure up the Sublime, but The Dark Half somehow pulls that trick off. 

Recommended.

The Institute (2019) by Stephen King

The Institute (2019) by Stephen King: Novel: Stephen King returns to the world of psychic children in his new novel with mostly positive results. 

The eponymous Institute kidnaps children and puts them to work doing... what? Well, if I told you, I'd spoil the novel. Suffice to say that the people behind the Institute believe that the ends justify the means and that they're the good guys.

They really must think they're the good guys because they've been killing a whole lot of children for decades. And their families. King remains fairly ruthless throughout the novel, making things seem more plausible. There's a heck of a death toll, both depicted and implied, and the vast majority of those deaths are children between the ages of about 8 and 14.

But soon after the novel begins, the Institute makes one mistake -- they kidnap a boy genius. They didn't kidnap him because he's a boy genius. Human intelligence is irrelevant to their aims. Well, until it interferes with them.

King plays a bit with structure in the novel, beginning with a secondary protagonist -- a former police officer who goes walkabout and ends up as the Night Knocker in a small Southern town. After about 50 pages, we jump to our primary protagonist. A beginning writer would probably be told not to do this shift. But King can do what he wants -- and the structure does cause suspense insofar as we wonder how events in demon-haunted Maine (where the Institute is located) and the Southern whistle-stop will dovetail.

In all, it's enjoyable and fairly tight. The characterization of the children is typically astute. And the characterization of the assorted antagonists, while occasionally one-note, makes sense when one considers that they're people doing terrible things for what they believe is a noble cause. That's going to disconnect one from empathy -- or require people with low empathy from the get-go. It's also the only King novel I can think of in which probability calculations play a major role. Recommended.

Rabid (1977)

Rabid (1977): written and directed by David Cronenberg: [Cast and Crew]: Early David Cronenberg film features a fetching and sympathetic soft-core-porn actress Marilyn Chambers (topless a lot here) as a motorcycle crash victim who gets turned into a vampire by plastic surgery gone insanely wrong. And what a vampire! 

Chambers feeds on people with what is essentially a sharp-toothed penis that pops out of her armpit. Phallic mother, anyone? All that, and the penis turns its victims (sort of) rabid. Hence the title! 

Low-key and creepy in that patented Cronenberg manner, full of body horror galore and a semi-apocalyptic finale set in and around Montreal. Everyone speaks flat Ontario English, though, to a weird extent at times -- filmed in Quebec, the movie nonetheless feels like it's set in Cronenberg's Toronto.

 Extremely enjoyable, and with a last twenty minutes that expands upon and deepens the sadness of the fate of the last survivor of George Romero's seminal Night of the Living Dead. Highly recommended.

Space Vampires !!!

Queen of Blood (1966): written and directed by Curtis Harrington; starring John Saxon (Brenner), Basil Rathbone (Dr. Farraday), Judi Meredith (Laura), Dennis Hopper (Grant), and Florence Marly (Alien Queen): 

Queen of Blood writer-director Curtis Harrington got a title homage from Jim Jarmusch this year as Jarmusch's zombie film The Dead Don't Die took its title from a 1975 TV movie directed by Harrington and scripted by genre great Robert "Psycho" Bloch.

Here, Harrington assembled a new film using a lot of spaceship footage from two Soviet sci-fi films. The story is all his, though it resembles more than one antecedent -- perhaps most notably C.L. Moore's 1930's science-fiction horror story "Shambleau."

Basil Rathbone supplies what is basically an extended cameo as Basil Exposition. The redoubtable John Saxon is the lead astronaut. Dennis Hopper, counting down to Easy Rider, plays the least convincing astronaut in cinematic history. And Florence Marly plays the silent Alien Queen, our eponymous Queen of Blood.

The movie chugs along pretty enjoyably. It ends somewhat abruptly, suggesting a sequel that never materialized so far as I know. The Alien Queen is suitably sinister, but it's her eggs that are especially disturbing. Certainly not a great movie, but an entertaining one. Recommended.

Lifeforce (1985): adapted from the Colin Wilson novel The Space Vampires by Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby, Michael Armstrong, and Olaf Pooley; directed by Tobe Hooper; starring Steve Railsback (Col. Carlsen), Peter Firth (Col. Caine), Frank Finlay (Dr. Fallada), Mathilda May (Space Vampire), and Patrick Stewart (Dr. Armstrong):

As crazy as this movie is, it's far superior to its over-rated source material, Colin Wilson's ponderous, pseudo-intellectual 1970's novel The Space Vampires. Why the producers didn't keep the title of the novel is beyond me -- it's way better than the generic (though descriptive) Lifeforce.

Tobe Hooper directs ably and the actors are all solid if occasionally wonky in this tale of a NASA expedition to Halley's Comet that encounters a giant spaceship in the cometary core filled with dead, giant, bat-like aliens and three mysterious, perfectly preserved human bodies. Needless to say, the expedition soon loses contact with Earth. The silent ship returns to Earth orbit. Aboard it is a dead crew... and those three mysterious human bodies from the spaceship.

Steve Railsback, best known for playing Charles Manson in the 1970's TV adaptation of Helter Skelter, here plays cinema's second-least convincing astronaut ever. Though his constant freak-outs do make sense given that he's the sole surviving astronaut from that cometary mission -- and that one of the suddenly resurrected bodies found on that ship now has the hots for him. And a psychic connection.

Lifeforce was one of the great box-office bombs of the 1980's. It's a shame because the set design and prosthetic monster effects are terrific, and the narrative is generally quite gripping. Peter Firth does solid work as the world's most unflappable SAS officer. Captain Picard shows up as a psychiatrist. Unknown Mathilda May acquits herself admirably as the alien 'woman' with the connection to Railsback, especially as she's stuck playing roughly 75% of her scenes buck naked. Recommended.

The Beetle (1897) by Richard Marsh

The Beetle (1897) by Richard Marsh; this 2004 Broadview Press edition edited by Julian Wolfreys: In 1897, Richard Marsh's The Beetle outsold that far-better-remembered horror classic, Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was a short-term victory. Nonetheless, The Beetle is a fascinating slice of fin de siècle Victorianism with an unusual narrative told by four different first-person narrators.

Julian Wolfreys' edition provides a lot of worthy commentary and context for the novel, especially in relation to the anxieties and obsessions of late-Imperial Britain. One should read his lengthy introduction after reading the novel, however -- it's one long Spoiler.

In sequence, the novel tells the story of The Beetle in the voices of a hapless, homeless, unemployed clerk; a gentleman scientist; a headstrong noblewoman engaged to a bedeviled Member of Parliament; and the Confidential Agent (what we would now call a Private Detective) hired to help sort out the Affair of the Beetle.

The eponymous Beetle is the star of the show, a shape-shifting, gender-bending emissary from demon-haunted Egypt -- as Wolfreys notes, Britain's travails in Egypt were a major source of Imperial agita in the latter part of the 19th century. Like Dracula himself, the Beetle is also a threatening Cultural Other, inscribed with a myriad of the fears of the period. 

Like X-Men: Dark Phoenix, The Beetle ends with a train chase. At least it makes period sense here. Marsh's novel is a bit murkier in its climax than Dracula, but I'll leave that for you to discover. The narrative of the poverty-stricken clerk is certainly the most emotionally affecting of the four narrative streams. Marsh also does a fine job of writing a self-aware, independent woman's POV in the third stream. 

The second stream is enjoyably wonky -- Marsh's scientist, a friend of the female narrator since childhood, is a pompous goof who's working on weapons of mass destruction (specifically poison gas) for the British Army. All of this is treated in a strangely off-hand fashion, and I'll go just a bit spoilery to note that none of the weapons research pays off in the climax of things. It's just there.

Our narrating Confidential Agent brings things to a somewhat orderly close -- mysteries remain, but like Van Helsing in Dracula, the Agent marshals the forces of Order against the invasive Other. The Beetle doesn't have the pulpy, bloody heft of Dracula, but it does have its own charms, racist and bigoted though those charms may be when it comes to any and all non-WASP characters in the novel. 

Wolfreys finishes this edition with excerpts from a number of end-of-century source texts to situate the novel further in its context. In all, this edition and the novel, recommended.

Mayhem (2013) by Sara Pinborough

Mayhem (2013) by Sarah Pinborough: Several of the characters in Mayhem were real 1880's Victorians, chief among them primary vocalizer (seriously) Dr. Thomas Bond, who worked for Scotland Yard in the 1880's and 1890's. Unlike most crime novels set in Victorian London circa 1888-89, Mayhem does not focus on Jack the Ripper. 

Instead, Mayhem sends Bond and two others on a quest to discover the identity of a real, never-identified murderer who operated contemporaneously with the Ripper -- The Thames Torso Murderer. He or she got that name for dropping disassembled bodies into the Thames, the heads never to be found. The killer's most brazen act was dumping one body at the construction site of New Scotland Yard!

Sarah Pinborough does a nice job evoking the squalor and sorrow of the poor sections of London, setting them against the more refined social circles in which Bond moves in his civilian life. His work on the Ripper murders has already caused Bond to seek out opium as a relief as the novel opens. Things are going to get worse. Much worse. The Ripper is only a symptom of something in London -- the Thames Torso murderer is the cause. As skeptical as Bond may be of the supernatural, he will nonetheless have to face it before the novel ends.

Mayhem is sympathetic not only to Bond but to the female murder victims of the killer, some of whom receive chapters devoted, third-person, to their plight and to their fears and hopes. Pinborough also turns one of the unlikeliest suspects in the Ripper murders into a sympathetic, haunted figure essential to find the Torso killer. In all, a solid novel of crime and the macabre. Recommended.

The Scarehouse (2014)

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.

The Little Stranger (2018)

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

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.

Disappearance at Devil's Rock (2016) by Paul Tremblay

Disappearance at Devil's Rock (2016) by Paul Tremblay: In his follow-up to A Head Full of Ghosts, Paul Tremblay again walks a line between supernatural and natural horror with this story of a missing teen in small-town Massachusetts.

Troubled teen Tommy Sanderson -- introvert, zombie-obsessed -- disappears one night while out with his two best friends. He seems to have disappeared into the (real) Borderland State Park. The questions of 'why' and 'how' and 'where' will occupy the rest of the novel. 

His best friends Luis and Josh are clearly hiding something. His sister seems to know something. And his mother is also haunted by memories of his father, who deserted them and then disappeared himself, into death after a single-vehicle accident.

Soon, mysterious apparitions (if they are apparitions) and messages start to appear. The mother has a vision of a gruesomely disfigured Tommy. And they everything seems to focus on a Borderland landmark called Devil's Rock.

Except it isn't really called Devil's Rock -- that's the name Tommy and his friends gave to it, without any real provenance. A story about the Devil lurking in the park since time immemorial also seems to be dubious. But strange things keep happening. And getting Luis and Josh to tell the truth about that night seems to become more and more difficult as Tommy's disappearance stretches on.

Tremblay's novel ends up being as much about the sort of secrets that can devastate families, and the sorts of problems that can snowball into horror for teenagers. There's more than a whiff of Lord of the Flies in some of the revelations towards the end of the novel -- but touches of what may or may not be the supernatural throughout also suggest a certain inevitability to Tommy's narrative. 

The novel does a nice job of creating believable human evil, in teens or adults, without giving us anything along the lines of teen psychopaths and bad seeds. The entire enterprise tilts a bit more towards sorrow than horror, though there are several scenes of excruciating awfulness. 

Tremblay notes in his afterword that the title and some of the novel's concerns are a nod to Picnic at Hanging Rock, with its mystery surrounding the disappearance of a school teacher and several students in Australia. Tremblay's book is ultimately more concrete than that mysterious film, and somewhat more conventional. Recommended.

Us (2019)

Us (2019): written and directed by Jordan Peele; starring Lupita Nyong'o (Adelaide Wilson), Winston Duke (Gabe Wilson), Shahadi Wright Joseph (Zora Wilson), Evan Alex (Jason Wilson), Elizabeth Moss (Kitty Tyler), and Tim Heidecker (Josh Tyler): 

Jordan Peele again demonstrates an impressive ability to rework genre tropes for shock and social commentary. Here, we start with the doppelganger and end with... well, that would be telling. Peele's first two movies, this and Get Out (2017), have melded genre and social commentary, and been critically and financially successful. It seems to me that Peele is still developing, though, that his best work lies ahead if he stays the course.

The childhood trauma of Lupita Nyong'o's character bleeds into the present when she and her family (the charming Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex) visit her grandparents' cottage in coastal California for the first time in decades. Something happened in a creepy house of mirrors at the local amusement park long ago. Now it's about to happen again.

Nyong'o is terrific as a dominating mother and wife. Winston Duke makes an affable Everydad forced to summon reserves of courage and ass-kicking to protect his family. And daughter Shahadi and son Alex are no slouches when it comes to monster-fighting. If the things they face really are monsters.

With about 25 minutes to go, Us veers into the territory of the totally loopy. To be fair, so did many Twilight Zone episodes in the final Act. There's maybe a bit too much evident straining to make the social commentary explicit and concrete here. But at least there is social commentary. And rabbits! Keep an eye on the videos on that shelf at the beginning -- they are relevant! Recommended.