Tag Archives: horror

Cycle of the Werewolf

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I’ve read all the Stephen King books, right? Weirdly, I had not! (I mean, there’s a non-fiction book from the early 80s about the state of the horror genre that I will probably never read because it is incredibly dated at this point. But we’re not counting that one.) Because there’s this tiny book, as full of illustrations as of text, that I somehow avoided for the past twenty years of reading everything else the man has published, and in real time for over half of that period. (Except for the one that’s due out on Tuesday, I mean. ‘Cause, you know, it’s not here yet.)

Cycle of the Werewolf feels very similar to the kid-book version of ‘Salem’s Lot. Very few of the characters get a great deal of screen time, because the town of Tarker’s Mills is really the main character. And of course it’s impossible to avoid noticing the vampire / werewolf parallel. Even though it feels like a kid-book and probably reads like one for the most part (a couple of exceptions push it up to PG-13 effortlessly), the illustrations would almost certainly keep you from letting it pass as a bedtime story. That said, if you take it as a kid-book written for adults, it’s a pretty decent short story, and let me tell you, the implied Three Little Pigs joke is worth the whole thing, even if I hadn’t liked it otherwise.

Paranormal Activity 3

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Sure, the movie too, but there is something downright unsettling about silent closing credits. Of course, maybe that’s only true if the movie was unsettling first. It’s cool, though, Paranormal Activity 3 was. Remember how there was a demon afflicted family in 2006, these sisters who had boyfriends that liked to film the creepy stuff that was going on around them and they made vague references to similarly creepy things that happened to them when they were kids?

Well, that’s a fact. If anything, stuff was sufficiently creepy as to make me wonder if I should go back, watch the original two films, and try to find continuity errors, because seriously, these people lead severely fucked up lives that they maybe should have been willing to talk about a little bit more, maybe to therapists and exorcists? It wasn’t as good as either of those movies, alas, but really I’m completely a slave to the first person camera horror genre at this point, so I’ll see it no matter how bad I expect it to be or, indeed, am told it is by trustworthy people. Still, now that I have squandered any shred of credibility, I nevertheless thought this was pretty good.

[EDIT from 2021: Confirmed, this does not especially well fit the continuity of the first two movies at all. Unless you account for brainwashing, which is pretty plausible to be honest.]

Marvel Zombies Return

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Remember how the Marvel Zombies series used to be about A-lister characters with cosmic powers, devouring every scrap of food in their reality from one end of the universe to the other and back again? Acknowledging that this was pretty cool, someone decided to get a whole bunch of authors together and write a sequel to that book, so we could find out what happened to them all when they got tricked into another dimension, safely out of the way of the very few survivors of their home plane.

As with most of the series, Marvel Zombies Return is, if not great, absolutely good enough. In some ways, it may have been the most satisfying entry in the series to date. It certainly had the funniest single scene I’ve ever read in the series, and it answered, if not the driving question I’ve had all along[1], at least another very important question concerning the genesis of The Hunger. Plus, you know, all manner of intestines are ripped apart, girlfriends are accidentally eaten, and Hank Pyms are mocked for being prime douchebags enough to stand out in a world full of remorseless killing machines. I can dig it.

[1] “What is the nature of The Hunger as a religion?” For various reasons, I don’t expect to ever find out, at this point. That said, there are at least two more books in the continuity that I have yet to read, and maybe closer to two and a half.

Hack/Slash: My First Maniac

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Get this: a prequel. Well, okay, those happen all the time I guess? But get this: I didn’t actually buy My First Maniac from Amazon. See, local comic store that buys failed local comics stores was having a massive superhero comics overstock sale, and I went in on 80% off day, where I picked up a couple of the more recent Powers, Kick-Ass in hardcover, not Red Son because I tragically failed to find it, and also a Cable collection from the ’80s that my boss apologized about later because he hadn’t been serious about me getting it. How was I supposed to know?! He’s been reading this stuff way longer than me, yo. Oh, and since all of that was still only like $15, I picked up the newest Hack/Slash volume that I had not known existed, since some online company failed to put it in my gold box or even my daily “you should buy this!” emails. Yay for supporting local businesses, right?

Anyway, Cassandra Hack is back — all the way back, in fact, to her first adventures, before she even went out on her own to hunt supernatural baddies or met up with that cool sweetheart of a deformed guy whose name I cannot currently remember but that possibly starts with a V? See, her mom was the lunch lady, and after having seen her daughter Cassie take too much abuse at the hands of the other kids, said lunch lady started slaughtering the school kids and serving them up in the next day’s lunch line. Which, okay, I’m sure that happens on a more-or-less monthly basis somewhere in the world, but after she got caught and committed a particularly gruesome suicide rather than go to jail, her revenant corpse came back and started slaughtering kids at Cassie’s new school, to protect her all over again. And now that she knows about the world that lies behind the world, it’s time to cowboy up and do something about it.

If, you know, she can just find another example of the genre, and prove that her mother wasn’t just a fluke in existence and ability-to-be-killed-by-her alike, and hold onto her angst hard enough to not get distracted by offers of friendship, and find sufficiently goth-revealing clothing to create a legend with. Spoiler alert: she somehow manages that last one, despite the odds.

Shark Night 3D

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When[1] you watched Snakes on a Plane, did you catch yourself thinking, man, this movie is perfect, but I wish it didn’t have one of the coolest people on earth in the lead role, because, you know, that is just way too cool, for this movie. And also, maybe, I don’t care if it’s this specific title, it could Spiders in a Barn or Badgers on an Easement or Sharks in a Lake, whatever, just give me my monsters and tell me where they’ll be! And perhaps you also thought, wait, I don’t understand why there was thoroughly gratuitous nudity in this movie, I’d rather watch a movie where it would make sense at several moments throughout to script to have naked college students but then keep them essentially clothed instead, just to completely invert the paradigm.

If so? It’s pretty sweet to know that someone intimately involved with the creation of Shark Night 3D reads these reviews, because there can’t be very many people in the world with that thought process, for it to have taken 5 years to create this particular cinematic gem. The plot doesn’t make a lick of sense, though at least several of the character motivations do. My favorite part of the movie is when the main chick character tells the main guy character a story about how her ex-boyfriend tried to murder her, only she didn’t notice that it was attempted murder, and she still hasn’t noticed it as she’s telling the story, and the guy listening to the story doesn’t notice either. …and then the film goes on to never actually admit it at any later point, too, even though it also doesn’t explicitly deny it in a shocking twist where Sara is in fact the Shark Queen or something and has set up the whole situation to feed her children.

Y’know, come to think of it, that would have been pretty bad-ass. But this movie was okay too. Incidentally, the most shocking and horrifying moment of the film follows the credits, in case you were considering taking it in at this late date.

[1] Yes. When you watched it. Not if. Don’t make me come over there.

Marvel Zombies 4

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This sequel to Marvel Zombies 3 (as opposed to the series in general, because the third volume went off in an entirely new direction, you see) is interesting not for being a good zombie story (it was not bad, but it was also not good), but for being an archaeological study of the period of Marvel that I’m reading right now. The main characters are chock-full of the Marvel horror experiment: Morbius the Living Vampire![1], Jack Russell, the Werewolf by Night, Simon Garth, the [voodoo type of] zombie, Man-Thing, Daimon Hellstrom, Son of Satan, and, okay, some witch chick that I haven’t yet heard of. But my point is, these characters are wandering in and out of all kinds of crossovers with the comics I am reading (June 1976, now), and have titles of their own that all started since 1974. I am honestly surprised at how many of them have stuck around, though there are certainly changes, as I think there would have to have been. ‘Cause, really.

Alas, after all the interesting set-up that I speculated might be coming from the previous volume, Marvel Zombies 4 was a pretty straightforward fight to avert apocalypse. That certainly has its place in comics, unquestionably, but after setting up the MZ continuity to relate to horror and destruction and the existential angst of wanting to be a good guy but virally failing, watching some world fight off an incursion without any examination of the deeper causes of things and without… well, okay, in their defense, the book where we lose is already written, so putting that scenario on a new world is redundant. But I still say that using the MZ world as a springboard for “look, an apocalypse to avert!” is too, and I guess that’s why I was disappointed. Man, I wish they’d used the space to explain what the fuck is actually going on instead. Particularly if they’re going to insist on giving it religious overtones in the first place. Religious overtones = “there is a responsible party”, not “random happenstance in the universe, what are you gonna do?” So use that, Marvel Zombie authors!

On the bright side, the end of the book contained black&white issue 1 of Tales of the Zombie, which was a lot grimmer and a lot more nudity-filled than I expected a Marvel title to have ever been. Plus, it was pretty decent, even without its own more direct version of well-timed archaeology. I still won’t mind just watching these characters interact with my superhero continuity instead of actually reading about them too, but I’m at least getting a clearer picture of why people would have.

[1] I mean, they don’t themselves use the exclamation point as part of the name, but I cannot see how to say that without planning on being excited about it, and so.

Fright Night (2011)

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A number of years ago, I declared Fright Night to be the best vampire movie. I’m glad I did this, because it would be implausible to just make the claim now. “No, seriously, you guys, I totally always thought so!” Plus, of course, I stopped thinking so just recently, because Let the Right One In was downright incredible; that said, I do not mind drawing a line between film from the vampire’s point of view and film from the slayer’s point of view, and letting them therefore split the honor evenly. Completely different movies, and while the Swedes made the objectively better one, Chris Sarandon has a lot going for him on the non-art-house, specifically vampire-focussed front.

None of this would be worth hashing out, of course, except for how someone (apparently, Marti Noxon! Who knew?) decided to remake Fright Night. So, I was pretty ambivalent about that[1]. On the one hand, it’s been better than a generation since the original came out, so there are upsides to modernizing the characters and the effects. But on the other hand, man, I loved that movie, and since when does Hollywood ever do a good job of reinterpreting something that was itself originally good? Since now, I guess!

‘Cause, yeah, the modern Fright Night? Still in my top five vampire movies, I suppose primarily on the strength of the core story, which is by and large unchanged. See, there’s this kid living with his single mother, and strange things start to happen. Before very long at all, he narrows them down to his recently moved-in neighbor Jerry, who he believes is a vampire. And then, you know, hijinx ensue! Just like in the original, the show stealer is the mentor character, a late night TV host played by Roddy McDowall in the original and a Las Vegas magician played by David Tennant this time out. People call the movie part comedy, but I never really thought that was right. It’s just excellent at the tension relief that most horror movies aspire to, without ever actually removing the fear. I guess it’s that I can’t believe that any movie this good at providing a scary and realistic portrayal of  modern vampires[2] can be a comedy. But yeah, it’s pretty damn funny. Sometimes. The rest of the time, it is creepy, or scary, or awesome.

[1] In the torn way rather than the barely stirring myself to care way.
[2] I mean, actually scary vampires in modernity, as opposed to the angsty, misunderstood, paranormal romance vampires that have taken over the landscape. You know, I might like this movie just as much without nostalgia, simply by virtue of being about an honest, straightforward, hungry vampire, who isn’t in love with anyone and isn’t trying to reform himself. Seriously, guys, we get it, it’s played out! (I am all the more surprised this was Marti Noxon, now that I’m really thinking about it!)

Final Destination 5

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The Final Destination series is in its own way every bit as comfortably broken in as Friday the 13th was by this point in the ’80s (which is to say, apparently, 1991); I know all the rules, better than the characters do, and even though of course there are new twists and turns, there is a fair amount of comfort in being able to settle back and enjoy the upcoming squirm-fest unencumbered by analysis about how things may or may not work. Is there more to say about Final Destination 5?

Nah, I guess not.

The Walking Dead: No Way Out

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Here’s the thing. For the last few books, Kirkman has been losing me. First there was a big mislead about the possibility of resolving the zombie threat, and then he started exploring themes he’s already explored before. Yes, he finds ways to invert them and make them new, I admit that, but if he’s already holding mirrors up to his thematic territory, I can’t help but notice that the plotting has dragged for a long time. And as the herd comprising his original characters has thinned and new characters join up, only to be lost to the rightfully dangerous environment themselves, I’m having an ever harder time even recognizing the characters; and that only makes it harder to care about them. But back to my main complaint, about the dragging plot: for instance, in No Way Out, the characters find themselves threatened on all sides by a) rampaging evil humans looking to take advantage b) a horde of zombies c) weather-based food shortages, I guess?, just when things were starting to feel safe and human again. Whichever one you pick, we’ve been here before. A few people die, the threat passes and/or the survivors pick up and move on, and soon we’ll be back here again.

And yet, every damn book there’s either a huge cliffhanger or else some kind of plot- or character-based epiphany that makes me think he’s finally gotten the story to turn a corner and something new is on the horizon, or in this case both, and either way, I have to at least find out what happens next to decide if the series is worth it anymore. You’d think I would learn.

Priest (2011)

Priest was an odd duck of a movie, because it didn’t really try to be anything. There’s this weird alternate reality, see, where humans and vampires have been openly at war for centuries, and despite that the vampires are far stronger and vastly numerous, somehow the sunlight advantage has allowed humans to progress scientifically and spiritually throughout the years, culminating in some kind of religio-genetic hybrid warriors with cross tattoos on their faces who took the war back to the vampires and pretty much won it.

Only now, maybe the war isn’t really over after all, and the church leadership is in denial and considers anyone who wants to investigate the opposing viewpoint to be anathema. So there’s you a great little theme about corrupt religious power, versus reason, versus true faith, probably versus other possibilities as well, only, yeah, once the premise was settled, they went nowhere with it beyond cartoonish antagonism. And there’s a thick, rich Vietnam metaphor in the priests, who everyone can recognize as having been part of this great war that was a stalemate at best, and they no longer have any place in society now that what they were created for is over, and one of them is beset on all sides, by the law, by his past, by threats to his family, and this is the most Rambo-like character I’ve ever seen, only…. again, they did nothing with him. He almost had a sympathetic superior, but not really. He kind of had people to go rescue to prove the war hadn’t ended, but the scope was too narrow.

So, instead of all this potentially rich territory, there was a lot of CGI kung fu, cool explosions, and implausible usage of motorcycles. Oh, and a giant pile of sequel-bait, except all the possibilities for conflict more compelling than “we’d better kill this next dozen vampires” was already ignored and discarded here in what I hope will not be described by future generations as the first movie.