Santiago was a sickly child, but he was loved greatly by both of his parents and indeed his extended family. He was also, evidently, the glue that held his parents’ marriage together. When Magos leaves New York to return home to Mexico City (where the family previously lived together), Joseph does not follow. Instead, Magos goes to stay with her mother, in an old house that, while it appears immaculately well-kept, is actually crumbling all around them. The metaphor couldn’t be more blatant.

Alone, depressed, yet still incapable of properly mourning Santiago, Magos discovers a folk tale about a woman who fed a deceased loved one’s heart until it regenerated into a new and different person. The story is intended as a warning, but Magos just hears opportunity. She feeds Santiago’s lung. Soon it becomes animate. Not too long later, it evolves into a small, very sneaky, and violently bloodthirsty creature.

The lung monster attacks Magos’ mother’s dog. It attacks Magos’ mother. It kills and eats various neighborhood pets.

Magos and Joseph are reunited, but it seems that any hope of their marriage surviving long term is a pipe dream. The lung monster grows into a young childlike monster, hairy and dexterous with a penchant for fresh flesh, but a welcome substitute for the departed Santiago nonetheless.

They name this monster child Monstrilio. For a while, the family rekindles their former happiness, but with the added wrinkle of preventing Monstrilio from attacking and eating any animals or humans that might cross his path and whet his appetite. Fortunately, Magos and Joseph have the support of their family and friends to support them in raising and protecting Monstrilio — as well as discouraging his true instincts.

As time goes on and the book progresses, it passes between different POV characters: initially Magos, then Lena (Magos’ childhood friend, now a surgeon, who has harbored a lifelong crush on Magos), then Joseph (after he has returned to New York to live, his marriage to Magos now well and truly a relic of the past), then finally Monstrilio himself — now a young man going, simply, by M.

It’s a deftly told tale and the four acts told through different perspectives allows the story to be revealed efficiently, diligently, and with ever-expanding depth. (As a parent myself, I did find Monstrilio to be rather poignant in its portrayal of passing time with regards to growing children — especially as my eldest nears the end of his high school career and is starting to look forward into the abyss of “what next?”. But I digress.)

There is violence. There is bloodshed. There is a literal monster. But Monstrilio is not a mere scary story, rather it utilizes the traits of the horror genre to spin a narrative that is very much about the human condition. As Monstrilio ages into M, he grows more and more humanlike — becoming a better-than-anticipated surrogate for Santiago. Just a lot hairier and far more bloodthirsty.

Sámano Córdova’s literary prose is simple, straightforward, and oh so easy to consume. Monstrilio is a breezy read — and yet, for such an undemanding novel, it does some exceptionally heavy lifting. It lingers in your mind for days afterwards, leaving you to contemplate the various themes and thoughts it evokes but never quite deals with directly.

How Magos and Joseph try to suppress M’s monstrous nature, yet are simultaneously (and secretly even to themselves) suppressing their true nature as queer individuals.

How part of allowing your kids to become adults is getting out of their way, letting them make mistakes and discoveries for themselves, permitting them to find themselves without any limitations or judgment — and realizing that they are far more amazing than you ever expected.

How the horrific can, eventually, produce its opposite. Wonder. Beauty. Pleasantness.

While I initially expected Monstrilio to be an engaging read about a mischievous and dangerous monster (which it was), it blossomed into something so much more. I loved this book and I’m sure that I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

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Jason is now a horror icon. The slasher killer in a hockey mask is immediately recognizable — even to people who have never seen a single one of his films.

But why is that? I’ll admit here and now that this is as far as I’ve watched through the Friday the 13^th films so far (more on that shortly), but to this point there is nothing special about Jason that would warrant such a pedestal.

Yes, Jason is a brutal, vicious, robust killing machine. But shouldn’t an iconic villain be more than that? Freddy had a perverse sense of humor. Michael has a chilling psychopathic vibe. Art takes pleasure in inflicting pain. Jason just kills. He has no personality. And, despite the franchise’s best efforts to impose some sort of narrative reasoning for his manic bloodlust, Jason never becomes anything more than a generic bad guy — an unstoppable killing machine that murders horny teens simply because that’s what happens in slasher flicks. (Also, lest we forget, his presence barely registers in the initial film.)

As it happens, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter doesn’t need Jason to be anything more than what he is. You could take this exact same set up and characters, swap in an entirely different villain — or even just a nameless, bog standard, faceless spree murderer, which Jason essentially is — and it would work just as well. All of which is to say that, despite my general lack of affinity for this franchise, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is actually pretty damn good.

As is widely accepted, it is certainly the best Friday the 13^th movie (at least of the initial tetralogy, which is as much as I can attest) but what’s good about it owes precious little to Jason. It’s everything around Jason that makes this so good. For the first time in the franchise, we have a bunch of likable characters that we don’t want to see getting killed. MVPs, of course, are Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover, whose lovable geeks elevate this beyond the simple formula of boobs and blood that slashers depend on to make bank.

But fear not, there are tits and ass aplenty in The Final Chapter — so much so, in fact, that a running gag involves Feldman’s 12-year-old Tommy repeatedly getting excited at chancing upon nubile nudes, only to have the sight forcibly hidden from him.

Indeed, for much of its runtime, The Final Chapter plays like a fun hangout movie. The characters aren’t just cannon fodder, they are actual characters. Tommy is an affable tween with a penchant for monster masks and a keen mechanical instinct. Jimmy (Glover) is an awkward yet confident guy struggling to make sense of a recent breakup and who desperately wants love and sex. There’s virgin Sarah, big sister Trish, vengeful Rob, divorcee Mrs. Jarvis, doofus Ted — hell, even the nurse at the morgue has a personality and invites empathy. The point is, after three films in which the cast is almost to an individual as dull as ditchwater, The Final Chapter has an embarrassment of riches.

There’s also decent splatter gore too, courtesy of the great Tom Savini, making his return to the franchise for the first time since the initial movie. There’s a lot of cutting edge slicing and dicing and the saw to the throat death is particularly gnarly.

Astute readers of my blog will have noticed that I don’t review horror films or books; I only provide recommendations. After slogging my way through the first three Friday the 13^th movies, I’m glad to have finally struck gold and find myself in agreement with the consensus opinion: that if you absolutely, positively have to watch a Friday the 13^th film, this is the one you should choose.

Will I watch any of Jason’s subsequent outings? Probably, but I’m in no rush to do so. I am curious how the character has endured for so long and why people seem so enamored of him based on the fact that, from what I’ve seen, there is zero reason. Presumably, he evolves to become worthy of his status in popular culture. Time will tell.

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It’s attention-grabbing, immediately intriguing, and strikes an appropriately disaffected, semi-regretful tone that suggests, “hey, we didn’t *want* to eat him, but we just kinda *had* to, you know?”

Although The Day We Ate Grandad is actually the third book in Rosens’ Pagham-on-Sea contemporary cosmic horror series, I must confess that it was the first that I read. Why? Well, that incredible title! Also, the blurb on the back of the book sounded far more interesting to me (i.e. utterly unique) than those of its predecessors, The Crows and Thirteenth.

The good news is that while The Day We Ate Grandad was easy enough to follow without having read either of the prior two novels, it’s obvious that the characters and their conflicts would have felt far richer had I been more diligent in my homework. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel as a standalone read and, yes, I am now invested enough to want to go back and consume the others as well as any subsequent novels that Rosens will undoubtedly add to her already impressive legendarium.

So what is The Day We Ate Grandad about?

It’s a British kitchen sink soap opera about the apocalypse. More or less.

Wes Porter is a wealthy, antisocial playboy whose nascent sobriety has some curious side effects. Specifically, he can see the future. Or, even more specifically, he can see a handful of possible futures. Hence the novel’s gripping tagline:

“Three possible futures. Two versions of the apocalypse. One chance to save the world.”

You see, the Porter family is an ancient, cult-like family of eldritch entities. Wes’ younger sister Katy is currently the de facto leader of the family following her recent mutation into a ravenous, flesh-eating eldritch god (itself a fulfilment of her prophetic destiny as the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child). Yet despite her enormous power, she really just wants to live a normal life and finish university.

However, when Wes is alerted to a subset of the family cult wanting to bring about the actual apocalypse by breaching dimensions to bring the family’s original progenitor — the Porters’ titular grandfather — into the realm of our reality, Wes, Katy, and their soothsayer cousin Ricky must band together to outwit those who would stop at nothing to end the world.

As far as stakes go, you can’t get much bigger. But Rosens describes her series as “cosmic horror family drama” — so it’s not just about the decimation of humanity. It’s also something of a soap opera. Imagine, if you will, Eastenders or Hollyoaks but where the characters are tentacled monsters.

That’s sort of what The Day We Ate Grandad feels like: a lot of petty drama, vehement grudges, and bountiful backstabbing conducted by a cast of scheming narcissists who each believe themselves to be the main character.

It’s classic soap opera territory. We’re not supposed to like these people, but we do anyway. Their bad behavior is like a car crash we can’t bring ourselves to look away from. It’s fascinating. It’s addictive.

Wes — the central character of Grandad — is the epitome of this. He is an antihero for the ages: a spoiled rich kid who is callous, manipulative, and never entirely trustworthy. Yet fate has conspired to make him responsible for saving the world.

Because — lest we forget — for all the bleak, turbulent, toxic shenanigans that unfold, it does so against the giant threat of cosmic horror. That’s what The Day We Ate Grandad is ultimately about: an unlikely group of heroes struggling to save a world that doesn’t really care for them.

And that shit’s powerful!

Add in the novel’s themes of generational trauma and grief, all-too-human fallibilities such as addiction and self-sabotage, plus the more genre-centric elements of body horror, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftian monstrosities, and The Day We Ate Grandad is a delicious cocktail of horror fiction that is entirely — and so-so-refreshingly — very different.

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The film opens with a series of smash cuts of a family urgently fleeing their home. Amidst the chorus of confused yelling we detect they are fearful of some “she” that inhabits one of the bedrooms upstairs. Finally, just as they’re about to escape out of the door, a female ghost materializes, hovering above them, and screams bloody murder.

Soon after, the house is abandoned. Enter Jack. He is a handyman/decorator for the rental company that owns this property. Upon arriving, he discovers that the previous tenants left without taking most of their possessions, so there’s not a lot he can actually do until the movers come to remove all the furniture.

On a positive note, the vacant unit provides him somewhere to crash for a few nights as his apartment building is being fumigated and none of his acquaintances are returning his calls when he asks if he might spend a few nights on their couch. So, sleeping bag on the floor it is.

That catch, of course, is that this particular house is haunted.

It takes Jack a while to notice. As he busies himself numbering electrical outlets, taking notes of things to be fixed, and doing some light cleaning as he goes, he doesn’t notice the subtle haunting going on all around him.

Eventually, however, the ghost can no longer be ignored. The doorbell rings incessantly. His freshly-order pizza disappears into thin air. And all the markup tape he’d diligently and carefully placed throughout the house vanishes right along with it.

And then the ghost appears. She terrifies Jack just as she did the previous residents. He flees the house but then realizes he left his car keys inside. And then, in a moment of bravery and sheer stubbornness, he reenters the house and determines that the ghost is just a girl. Sure, she scared him, but she isn’t actually scary.

The ghost is Muriel. This is her house. Or rather, it is the house assigned to her by the posthumous firm that ensures houses are haunted. (Think Beetlejuice by way of mumblecore.) Muriel is an incredibly successful spectral agent. She has triumphantly terrified occupant after occupant out of this home for decades now. She has never failed in this mission — until Jack.

While Muriel tries to figure out how to scare Jack away, he only becomes more interested in why she does what she does, and the ultimate business of the organization that ensures the living are regularly haunted. The film dabbles in existential horror; although a ghost’s sudden appearance might make Jack jump, what truly scares him is being alone and of not having a purpose in life.

Gradually, a beautiful friendship blossoms between Jack and Muriel. Slowly, they come to have great affection for one another. But what possible ending could their love story hope to have?

A Ghost Waits is not a scary movie in the traditional sense. But it is a touching and riveting exploration of its themes, and a refreshing and imaginative take on the haunted house/ghost subgenre. The closest comparison I can think of is David Lowrey’s A Ghost Story; there are certainly abundant similarities between the two films, yet they are distinctly different in scope and intention.

It is a sweet, heartwarming, and bittersweet love story positioned very much within the horror milieu. If you’re looking for something a little different to watch with a special someone next date night, I urge you to give A Ghost Waits a try.

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When I first bought Valancourt Books’ boxset of Paperbacks from Hell, Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ is one that caught my eye early on. Its distinct cover design (featuring an illustration of a babysitter in a negligée tied to a chair) promised an obvious conceit: a babysitter at the mercy of the kids she’s supposed to be minding. It seemed like a fun, pulpy, entertaining read.

Oh, how misled I now feel! Better Watch Out, this is not.

Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ is not at all a “fun” horror read. It is a novel of harrowing sadness — and far, far darker than its cover led me to expect. Although, to be fair, my prediction of the story within was not entirely inaccurate:

A 20-year-old babysitter, Barbara, is held hostage by five children (Bobby, Cindy, John, Dianne, and Paul) ranging in age from 10 to 17.

That, essentially, is it as far as the plot goes. The book starts immediately (save for a very brief prologue) with Barbara waking to discover that she has been tied to her bed. Turns out that Bobby chloroformed her in the middle of the night and made her a prisoner. From thereon out, Barbara’s story is just that: her existence as a prisoner of the children. Tethered, shackled, fettered.

The book details what occurs to her over the course of the next several days. But Barabara is a bound and gagged prisoner for all of it.

The book, then, is about the suffering she endures, and the impossibility of her escape. It is a clear-eyed and unflinching novel about pain, the theft of autonomy, and ultimately about how her mind seeks refuge from the pain, from the humiliation, from the agonizing waking hours that seem to stretch into infinity.

I realize this likely doesn’t make the book sound appealing, but I promise you it is indeed a compelling and haunting read. I will concede that the book is torture for its readers.

Most of all, the book is about the horror those five kids represent.

Bobby, Cindy, John, and Dianne are not psychopaths (although it is strongly implied that 13-year-old Paul is), but rather they are entirely nonchalant about the horrors they are inflicting on this young adult that have conquered. At the beginning, they decide to imprison Barbara for a game, but when things rapidly escalate, they continue to act utterly non-plussed about the situation. Their nonchalance is the result of a staggering lack of empathy — and that to me is the heart of the book, and the core of the horror which it possesses.

As a political allegory, the stripping away of an individual’s sovereignty over oneself is sadly rather too on-the-nose these days, but Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ also speaks to the realization that world is unfair, but — rather than trying to change it, rather than fighting for justice and righteousness — try only to win the “game” by its established rules, despite already knowing it is unfairly rigged.

At one point, Cindy reveals to Barbara that they’ve played this way amongst just themselves. They’ve each taken turns being the one tied up, stripped naked, tortured. And then when playtime was over, they each headed to their homes for dinner, and a new game would be played tomorrow.

Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ is distasteful, distressful, and utterly haunting. I fully appreciate the perspectives of those readers who claimed to throw the book across the room upon its completion. I also understand Grady Hendrix’s assertion that Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ is not a book you need read multiple times — because it sticks beneath your skin and scars you for life. That’s horror.

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You Are Not Me (Tú no eres yo in its native Spanish) is a disconcerting horror film that benefits from keeping its cards extremely close to its chest. Although it’s immediately clear that something very odd is going on, the film is intentionally secretive about what that something is. Eventually — once the cat does indeed claw its way out of the bag — the film pivots into a wholly new and equally terrifying direction.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Aitana is a young woman who has always had a challenging relationship with her parents. Three years ago, she stormed off after a massive argument, and several months passed before they heard from her again. By that time, she’d wound up in Brazil where, eventually, she settled down with the love of her life, Gabi. Together, they adopted a baby. This trip is the first time Aitana has returned to Spain since her disappearance. It is also the first time Gabi and their infant son, Joao, are meeting Aitana’s family in person.

There is one other key character in Aitana’s immediate family: her disabled brother Saúl. While Aitana’s parents are decidedly standoffish towards Aitana and her burgeoning young family, Saúl is thrilled to bits to have his big sister home and quickly forms a friendly bond with Gabi. He is a lively character, despite his degenerative muscular disease — a condition which has worsened considerably in recent months.

And then there is Nadia the imposter. Aitana’s parents have never mentioned Nadia to Aitana the whole time she has been away. They don’t even think to mention her until Aitana goes into her childhood bedroom and discovers the woman sleeping in her bed and wearing her pajamas.

It is almost like her parents found a random stranger and substituted her wholesale for their actual, absent, daughter. Yet they dote on Nadia in a way they never did for Aitana.

Aitana is understandably perturbed. She has nightmares about Nadia throwing Joao off the balcony. Sure, it was just a bad dream — but in reality, plenty of freaky stuff is happening:

Aitana’s parents throw a Christmas Eve party for a whole host of strange old people Aitana has never met before… Her aunt and uncle who were previously very close to Aitana’s parents tell her they haven’t seen them in months… Nadia is gifted Aitana’s precious belongings, including her dead grandmother’s jewelry… Saúl claims to be able to talk to their dead grandfather then suffers a seizure… Aitana is locked in the isolated guestroom in a turret separate from the rest of the house… After only minimal detective work, Aitana discovers that Nadia might not be who she claims to be at all — but rather a criminal gypsy called Nathalia…

And yet Aitana’s parents won’t hear a negative word against Nadia. They love her like the daughter they never had.

Tonally, it feels like Get Out for anyone who’s felt disconnected from their parents during adolescence or young adulthood.

And then, as I hinted at earlier, You Are Not Me becomes an entirely different horror movie. Without giving anything away, Aitana’s discomfort at her parents’ earlier strange behavior is proved to have been valid and Aitana is forced to collaborate with Nadia as the true terror at work is fully exposed.

You Are Not Me is an unsettling, compelling, and highly creepy horror film. Despite the film’s understated nature, there is a lot going on. We are with Aitana as she suffers through trials at turns frustrating and highly suspicious.

This is lowkey horror, relying on mystery and unease to craft an atmosphere of continuous dread as both Aitana and the audience struggle to put the pieces together to learn what exactly is going on; there are multifaceted levels at play here, as well as shifting subplots and copious red herrings that only serve to emphasize Aitana’s disorientation — and keep you guessing.

Ambiguous in the best possible way, You Are Not Me will linger in your mind rent-free for days after watching.

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It’s only natural, then, that when he comes upon an eBay listing for a real-life ghost, he makes an impulse purchase for shits and giggles. He didn’t really expect to receive anything. And he certainly never imagined that the auction was an elaborate ruse to ruin his life and exact a very specific revenge on him and all those he held dear. Big mistake.

Those goth girlfriends I mentioned? Judas didn’t even bother calling them by their real names. Rather, he gave them each a nickname based on their states of origin. One recent ex was from and called Florida. She was a weird kid who constantly asked weird questions and who shared precious little of her life before meeting Judas.

Near the end of their relationship, Florida became increasingly preoccupied and depressed. Eventually, Judas put her on a bus and sent her home, worried about her well-being. But not worried enough to answer her countless letters or check in on her at all. His life moved on.

Not Florida’s. Her life ended. Mere months after being abandoned by Judas, Floria committed suicide. The ghost that Judas was tricked into buying is her family’s vengeance.

Turns out Florida’s stepfather, Craddock, was something of a psychic medium and conjuror. As his own life fizzled out, he concocted a plotted with Florida’s sister to get revenge on Judas for (as they saw it) killing Florida.

It is Craddock’s ghost that Judas unwittingly purchased — and now that he’s in Judas’ home, he will stop at nothing to drive the poor man insane, kill everyone near to him, and ultimately drive Judas to death himself.

And he’d’ve succeeded too if it wasn’t for that pesky kid…

I’m talking about Georgia. AKA Judas’ latest live-in girlfriend.

Mature beyond her years, Georgia is the level-headed adult that Judas desperately needs in his life — and it’s her who might just save it (his life, that is).

Neither of them may be perfect individuals, but Georgia’s love for Judas is an excellent realization of a sane adult relationship. It is only thanks to Georgia that Judas is able to escape his ranch with his life. But their escape is only temporary — and just the beginning of their trials and troubles… Now, the two of them must travel across the country to pay a visit to Florida’s sister and try to put an end to this whole horrible mess.

Heart-Shaped Box is a thoroughly entertaining and engrossing read. This was my first Joe Hill novel (I know, I know) but I will certainly be back for more.

Action unfolds naturally and often. This is a page-turner that never lets up. And yet, for all the narrative momentum and pleasurable horrors that abound throughout this book, the one scene that stuck with me was during a hiatus in Judas and Georgia’s hair-raising road trip where they spend a few hours at Georgia’s grandmother’s house. Safe for a moment, they take advantage of a comfy bed and a nap together while the afternoon sunshine wafts in through the curtains. It is such a delicate yet evocatively luminous scene, it stopped me cold.

Folks, this guy knows how to write!

If I had one criticism, it’s that the third act deviates into an almost metaphysical, dreamlike plain (something which rarely resonates with me) but the novel still packs a punch and is a virtuoso accomplishment of exciting horror storytelling with depth and levels and nuance. I really, truly enjoyed it.

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I say all this because I had watched the X-Files episode many, many times before I saw The Thing, and while I could certainly see the similarities, I found the two to be remarkably different beasts. True, both are set at isolated scientific stations, both deal with an undetectable infection, both deal with increasing paranoia and mistrust among those stranded together in close quarters. But whereas “Ice” executes perfectly on a TV budget, The Thing has a lot more cash — and blood — to splash on the screen. And splash it, it does!

The movie opens with an astonishing helicopter chase across the expansive white Antarctic landscape. A dog is pursued by two Norweigians, but manages to evade their shooting long enough to seek refuge at a US base, where the Norwegian’s arrival of violence and mayhem is taken as a sign of madness (one of them is killed as a result of a fumbled explosive, the other is shot given the reasonable belief that he is a threat).

But why were they shooting at the dog? Intrigued enough to fly in less-than-ideal weather, helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) takes a doctor out to the Norwegians’ fire-ravaged base where they discover evidence that the Norwegians had excavated something from the ice. They also find the body of a horribly mutated person who was seemingly one of the targets of the fire.

Before anyone is able to properly put the pieces together, however, the dog that started this whole chain of events explodes into a nightmarish tangle of blood, guts, and tentacles, causing all the other dogs in the kennel to, understandably, go absolutely batshit nuts. MacReady and his colleagues witness it too — although the very sight of it is utterly unbelievable.

Finally it all makes sense: whatever the Norweigians dug up was an otherworldly shapeshifting parasite that can pass undetected while containing to infect and replace others. Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Polymorph from Red Dwarf, then split the difference.

The point is: There’s a monster among them and there’s no way to know who it is, nor how many of them there are.

Each of the crew lean into their own area of expertise as they scramble to come up with a strategy to detect the impostor(s) and survive the long winter ahead. But tensions soon reach breaking point, individuals go crazy, and the alien creature continues to attack in a variety of disgusting and disturbing iterations.

In order to survive, each of these distinct characters must rely on each other. The only problem is that, given the nature of their predicament, none of them are able to trust each other.

Rightly regarded as one of the greatest sci-fi horror films of all time, The Thing is loaded with taut atmosphere, creepy dread, and intense paranoia. The practical special effects are astonishing — and wonderfully gory and goopey. The direction, the actors, the cinematography, the score, the production design — every element of this film is absolutely on point.

It is a masterpiece.

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Needless to say, I came to Amityville with high expectations, but after first watching the film, I was unimpressed.

I’m just going to say it: The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979) sucks. It is a dull, boring, not-at-all scary film.

Fortunately, the book on which its based is none of those things.

I really enjoyed The Amityville Horror. Although it follows a fairly standard blueprint for a haunted house story, it does a great job of slowly-but-surely cranking up the tension and escalating the horrors.

(Yes, it’s a well-worn trope that just as soon as the protagonists realize they need to flee, they are unable to do so, but it still gave me some perverse pleasure when the book hit that recognizable note.

Is The Amityville Horror derivative of countless other horror house narratives, or does it deserve to be considered an originator of the modern form? Feel free to discuss in the comments.)

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: a young family are looking for their dream home on a budget. They find the perfect property, only to learn that an infamous murder occurred there in the recent past. Ever since a young man killed his parents and siblings in those very rooms, the house has stood empty — which is why it’s listed for such a good price.

George and Kathy Lutz don’t care. They move right on in.

Very soon, they wish they hadn’t.

Almost immediately, strange occurrences begin to trouble the family. It is inexplicably cold throughout the house, a swarm of flies materialize in one particular room, objects move or go missing, and their little girl discovers a new imaginary friend who has the face of a pig.

Creepy shit!

Part of what makes the book so effective, even half a century later, is the relatable mundanity of the situation: George and Kathy are deeply disturbed by living in the house, it alters their psyches, spooks them, and yet they still have to continue with the tasks of running a household and earning a living. Yes, the family is being terrorized on a nightly basis, but life goes on and bills still need to be paid.

Anson tells the story in a mostly clinical and detached fashion, keeping us at arm’s length from the inner minds of the characters, but it is a cooly effective writing style for this particular spooky story, almost like reading a police report detailing the events of some unfathomable horror.

Despite this largely unemotional approach, it does provoke fear in the reader. There’s no attempt to explain or legitimize the things that are happening. All we know, all the characters know, is that something scary is going on — and not understanding of exactly what is not only feels authentic but adds to the frightfulness of it all.

Of course, this almost journalistic approach is only partially by design, as The Amityville Horror isn’t entirely fictional.

According to Wikipedia, the murders that occurred in the house were real. George and Kathy Lutz are real people, really did buy the house and then fled it less than a month later, leaving all their possessions behind. Naturally, there are various disputes over accuracy, but the consensus supports the book’s marketing that The Amityville Horror is indeed based on a true story.

I’m sure there are greater conversations that could be had (and surely have been in other corners of the internet) about the truthiness of the book, but my interest is only in whether or not it’s a good horror novel.

It is.

The Amityville Horror is a decent ghost story that is well told. It’s a stark, spare, and scary horror novel — worthy of the pedestal upon which it is placed, and far, far superior to the lackluster film it inspired.

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Bring Her Back is a polished and professional horror movie that takes some big swings, is unconventional in what information is laid bare early (or not), and does a great job of mining terror and suspense from its set up.

Half-siblings Andy and Piper find themselves shipped off to a foster home following the sudden death of their father. Andy is almost 18 and plans to seek guardianship of the legally blind Piper once he is legally of age.

Despite their conventional brother-sister ribbing of each other, it’s clear that the two of them share a very special bond and would do anything for the other. They even share a special code word, “grapefruit,” that compels the other to be completely honest. It is both a sweet and authentic-feeling portrait of an unusual yet highly specific familial relationship.

Enter the wedge that will seek to drive them apart: their kooky new foster mother, Laura.

Almost immediately, Laura sets about doting on Piper while keeping Andy at arm’s length. It’s not just the fact that Andy’s very nearly an adult man while Piper’s a young girl. It’s also because Laura’s own recently deceased daughter, Cathy, like Piper, was visually impaired.

It is a role that allows Sally Hawkins to both play with the limits of the whimsical archetype she previously perfected in such films as Happy-Go-Lucky and Paddington and go vehemently against type as something altogether sinister in a thoroughly unsettling performance of the caliber you’d hope would garner some sort of awards recognition.

Hers is a very strange household indeed — case in point: she has preserved her former pet dog via taxidermy; this is a woman who struggles to let go after death — and that’s even before we even get to the household’s fourth inhabitant: the mute young orphan boy named Oliver whose presence oozes maleficent mystery in every scene.

As for the plot, well, the title itself should have given you a fairly good idea of what’s going on… Laura has been unable to get over the death of Cathy and now, somehow, has evil plans for Piper. But what, exactly, isn’t entirely clear.

Horror movie aficionados will of course note the numerous clues that are present as the table is laid: the opening scene depicting some shady occult ritual, a line of white (salt? paint?) that encircles Laura’s house, the barely contained feral personality of little Oliver… (There’s more than a touch of prime M. Night Shyamalan about this one.)

Something bad is destined to happen here — and it’s only a matter of time until the shit hits the fan.

So we know, vaguely, Laura’s goal. What we don’t know is what, precisely, her plan is — or what she’s capable of. Is she simply deranged, or is there a more tangible threat hanging over these kids’ heads? And just what the hell exactly is up with Oliver?

As with Talk To Me, the Philippous employ troubled teen characters who understand the dangers that lurk in their world, but precisely because they are categorized as both “troubled” and “children,” they struggle to convince anyone to believe them — setting up an enormously tense situation where they themselves are powerless to stop the inevitable.

Bring Her Back is a fantastic, fearless, and wonderfully realized horror film that leaves a lasting impression and lingers in your mind for days afterwards. Affecting, suspenseful, and outright horrific, I guarantee that Bring Her Back will compel you to look away from the screen on at least two occasions.

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Despite having only known each other a few months, Billy, Melody, and Troy have quickly formed true friendships, partially because of the shared burden of having each suffered tragedies in their recent pasts. Billy, for example, lost both his parents in a car accident — which is what inspired his interest in the phenomenon of roadside memorials.

Their idea is to discover memorials and share the stories behind them — of those who were lost and those that they left behind — in the hope of not only shedding some light on why the bereaved feel compelled to erect a roadside monument but also, by extension, serve as an additional artifact of remembrance.

Yet despite the three musketeers’ respectful intentions, it seems someone (or, more likely, plural someones) is apparently vexed at their snooping around these shrines.

Someone is watching them. Stalking them. Trying to scare them. Willing to hurt them.

At first, there are merely the expected cultural conflicts between the bigoted hillbillies and the two-thirds POC traveling outsiders. But then, things get creepier… Our heroes begin to feel (quite reasonably) unsafe camping out every night. The very real threat of violence against them grows increasingly palpable. And that’s before things get downright freaky.

They discover a strange symbol covertly graffitied on several of the memorials. Naturally intrigued by this eldritch emblem, they seek out its meaning — only to learn that it has ties to an ancient folk religion; that they might have unwittingly angered a local cult, and thus put a target on their backs…

Memorials is an engrossing and compelling read; an affable adventure that, while it takes its sweet time, allows us plenty of opportunity to get to know its characters and to enjoy their company.

The characters are what makes this book. Chizmar does a great job of crafting three individuals who are at once both recognizable archetypes and fully-rounded and unique individuals.

Despite the fact that the story wasn’t plotted in advance (according to the author’s endnotes), its pace and twists flow naturally and sufficiently to keep you constantly engaged and wanting to find out what happens next.

There’s also a significant mystery element to the book, which keeps you turning the page to learn more. The longer the journey goes on, the more clues and red herrings are uncovered. People from Billy’s past come back into his life, new characters are introduced… But who can actually be trusted?

Eventually, of course, the book veers into severe horror territory, but by the time it gets there, the stakes are compounded because we’ve spent so much time with these characters and come to like all of them very much. We don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Which, well, too bad.

In that way, Memorials unfolds both naturally and realistically; beginning in a world analogous to the reality we all inhabit, and slowly slipping into one altogether stranger and more terrifying — a jolt of true horror in a world that is already harsh enough.

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Christine tries to justify her actions to both herself and the elderly Mrs. Ganush by saying that she was just doing her job. (No doubt that rationalization has only become more poignant in the years since Drag Me to Hell was released — given the current state of American capitalism run amok, ever-increasingly disparate wealth inequality, and the general hellscape perpetuated by people just doing their job, that hollow justification is much harder to swallow.)

Unfortunately for Christine, Ganush doesn’t merely rage against the machine — she targets Christine specifically: she is the personification of the bank that has booted her to the curb. And not unfairly, as Christine herself later admits that she could easily have given her another extension. Except she wanted to be personally rewarded. God, capitalism sucks.

Ganush initially attacks Christine in a deserted parking garage in a virtuoso sequence of raw violence that is devilishly wicked. And then she places a curse on Christine — a curse, we later learn, which involves her being increasingly tormented by a Lamia goat demon for three days, at the end of which she will be literally dragged to Hell. No backsies.

Over the next few days, Christine endures multiple visits from the Lamia. She is terrified. She is attacked. She feels like she is losing her mind — certain that she is in grave danger from something horrific that shouldn’t exist in the too real world of car payments, rent, and 401ks.

Desperate to make sense of what is happening to her, Christine seeks help from a spiritual advisor. She scarifies her pet kitten in an effort to appease the Lamia. She participates in a séance. She tries to transfer the curse to someone else (top of her list: her competition for the promotion). But in selling her soul to the man, Christine has in effect done exactly that. She’s sold her soul. She has exactly zero of redemption.

Drag Me to Hell is a blatant critique of modern capitalistic exploitation: Christine’s problem is the direct consequence of her causing someone economic harm in order to benefit financially herself. Later, her dwindling hope for salvation is reduced to a medium who has prior experience dealing with this Lamia — but only if Christine can come up with $10,000 within a matter of hours. (She tries to, by selling crates of her prized possessions. But the pawn store owner senses her desperation and severely undercuts her asking price.)

But as thinly veiled as the film’s scathing social commentary is, it’s perfectly easy to focus purely on the horror story at hand and have a rollicking good time. Drag Me to Hell is one of the genuinely scarier PG-13 horror movies out there. I’ve no doubt that had I seen this film at a more tender age, there are certain scenes that would have certainly creeped me out. As the grumpy old man in training I now am, and with considerably more horror experience under my belt, it was less so — but still thoroughly impressive.

This is a slick, CGI-heavy, mainstream horror movie complete with a bombastic score that could have been ripped straight out of a comic book hero film. Darker, meaner, and more nihilistic than you’d expect, I found Drag Me to Hell to be both intelligent and an awful lot of horror-oriented fun.

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For Harry Picard, the homicide detective charged with solving their murders, the case is a real head-scratcher. To start with, leads are few and far between. Other than driving a distinctive black automobile, the only clue to the perpetrator is that he is apparently a wealthy foreigner. Not exactly a needle in the haystack of the nation’s capital — a city brimming with international dignitaries and civil service workers.

But as the killings continue — and the killer apparently escalates his prey beyond the irrelevant ladies of the night — Picard is forced to confront a most unfathomable truth: the killer might be a genuine vampire. Or at least someone who believes himself to be.

In Will Errickson’s introduction in Valancourt Books’ Paperbacks From Hell edition of Progeny of the Adder, he credits the novel as being the first example of fiction to take a classical horror villain and transpose them from their traditional setting into one more contemporary.

Exactly how accurate that is, I don’t know, but Errickson goes on to point out that Progeny of the Adder was originally published in 1965, a full five years before Jeff Rice’s more renowned novel, The Kolchak Papers, was completed. (That novel infamously inspired a series of movies and TV shows — and directly influenced The X-Files.)

Indeed, Progeny of the Adder feels much more in the mode of a procedural-focused crime novel than a typical horror genre piece. But that’s precisely what makes it so compelling.

Yes, we horror readers know going in that the killer of this story is a vampire (the cover illustration kind of gives it away) but for the bulk of the novel, the characters themselves are in the dark.

And so, we get to be a fly on the wall as this archetypal hardboiled cop slowly pieces together the clues available to him to try and catch the killer.

For the entire first half of the book, that’s what Progeny of the Adder is. It’s a police detective story. And it’s great. Dark, gritty, utterly compelling. We come to sympathize with Picard the same way we do, say, McNulty in The Wire, as gives his all to crack the case assigned to him, all the while hitting roadblocks, getting caught up in political red-tape, and all the rest of it.

We are with Picard all the way. He’s not a faultless hero, but neither is he just a cop. He has hopes and dreams of his own, damnit. He has a crush on a policewoman from the Women’s Bureau called Susy. Soon enough the two of them embark on a burgeoning romance and she is inevitably harangued into going undercover as a blonde streetwalker in an effort to help capture the killer.

And then everything changes. After identifying their prime suspect and cornering him on the property where he’s holed up, realization hits that there might actually be more to this murderer than anyone expected. Although Picard is still reticent to admit the killer is actually a vampire, it’s clear at least that the killer certainly wishes or believes himself to be a vampire — which, as far as the policeman cares, is all that really matters.

All of a sudden, this modern sleuth is up to his neck in research into vampiric folklore and movie tropes — and advocating for his colleagues to carry crucifixes and garlic to help bring this night stalker with superhuman strength to justice.

The fact that no-one ever truly believes the killer to be a vampire is in itself interesting. The novel plows on as it began, as a police procedural first and foremost. In that way, Whitten doesn’t just bring an ancient evil into the modern day, he supposes how the modern world would react to it. Of course no one would believe in the magic of it all! People would recognize that the vampire was a danger, sure — but not that he was really a vampire.

Progeny of the Adder is a lean, mean, violent and very different horror novel. It is a page-turner of an enjoyable cheap paperback, but one that provides a unique lens to engage with impossible monsters through a gritty, reality-focused perspective.

I grew up watching The X-Files. To me, it makes perfect sense that FBI agents should routinely hunt down liver-eating mutants who can squeeze through air vents. It never occurred to me that mainstream storytelling had to evolve to a point where the adventures of Mulder and Scully were possible. Even though their predecessor was inarguably Kolchak, Progeny of the Adder provides an engaging window into how entertainment got there — and we are all the better for it!

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How did a film from the director of such lauded classics as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I’m Going!, and Black Narcissus cause such outrage?

The same way most things upset the self-appointed morality police: it was different and it made people uncomfortable. Suffice to say that respectable film fans of the early 60s were not at all ready for it.

Peeping Tom was a slasher film before there were slasher films. A horror film that did not fit neatly into the contemporaneous horror boxes of the time — which is to say it was neither gothic creepfest nor monster movie, but something wholly different.

Sure, Peeping Tom could be seen as affiliated with the psychological thrillers or crime dramas of the era which often involved suspense, danger, and killings, but such films were never oriented with the murderer at their core.

In Peeping Tom, the serial killer is the protagonist. Mark is a camera assistant who works in the film industry and has a side gig photographing soft porn pin-ups. Over the course of the film, the audience is invited to feel sympathy for him, see the world through his eyes, and even root for him to varying degrees.

Close to two decades before Halloween and Maniac, Peeping Tom’s opening shot literally put the audience into the killer’s perspective via his camera’s viewfinder as he picks up a sex worker, follows her to her boudoir, then attacks her.

Mark’s camera is both his recording device and weapon (well, technically, it’s a spike on the camera’s tripod, but it’s close enough). In its choice of murder weapon, Peeping Tom strongly insinuates that cinema is intrinsically linked with violence.

The film forced the audience to see the world through the eyes of the killer and provided them the opportunity to not only be repulsed with the images they saw on screen, but with themselves for enjoying it.

But Peeping Tom goes beyond POV shots in channeling Mark’s perspective throughout the film. He isn’t simply the film’s main character, he is its emotional center. We feel for him because he was traumatized as a child; never mind that these traumas caused him to grow up to be a murderer. We pity him. And yes, we root for him despite not wanting him to succeed (perhaps most notably: the scene where he’s hiding above the police investigation of a studio soundstage, we desperately hope he isn’t discovered).

This simultaneous empathy and revulsion was radical in 1960. Today? Not so much.

Widely regarded as a proto-slasher, Peeping Tom employs many of the subgenre’s traits long before they were codified (the extensive use of POV shots, the psychological trauma that made Mark a killer, the symbolic selection of his victims, the ritualistic nature of his murders) while being much more psychologically complex than is typical. There’s no mask in Peeping Tom, for example — instead it internalizes evil as opposed to turning it into mechanizable iconography such as a hockey mask, striped jumper, or clown makeup.

Condemned on its original release, Peeping Tom has been subsequent reappraised in the intervening years and is now widely regarded as an important if atypical horror film worthy of study and praise.

It’s true horror lies not in the (gore-free) violence it depicts, but in the forced identification it imposes on the viewer.

Buy Peeping Tom on Amazon.

Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery is immediately absorbing and unrushed to get into outright horror territory, perhaps because its setup is horrific enough.

Abitha was cast off by her father and essentially sold off into a marriage with an as-yet-unnamed pioneering settler of America. Now thousands of miles away from her native home in England, Abitha lives with her halfwit husband Edward on their homestead on the outskirts of a Puritan New England village.

Expect, it’s not exactly their property. Not yet at least. The parcel of land still technically belongs to Edward’s bullying brother, Wallace. The young couple have very nearly paid off their debt, but they’re about to have the ground literally ripped out from beneath them with the revelation that Wallace used their almost-land as collateral for a business deal that flopped.

Determined not to allow Wallace to destroy the fragile life they’ve built together just as they were about to finally be free of him, Abitha oversteps what is permitted of a woman in this primitive society in standing up to Wallace’s cruel ways. Fortunately, Edward is there to protect her. Until he’s not.

Something wicked this way comes. Or, rather, it was there all along. An ancient evil in the forest that borders Abitha’s farmstead awakens. Sprites with the bodies of animals and the faces of young children call the figure Samson. He’s a goatlike humanoid that is exactly what a puerile Puritan would imagine the devil be.

Edward falls into a cave. Samson arises. Wallace uses Edward’s death as leverage to try and take control of the disputed estate, but Abitha is having none of it. All alone in the world, the girl clearly sees the two possible futures ahead: either she fulfills the agreement between Edward and Wallace and subsequently takes ownership of the farmstead herself, otherwise she falls into servitude to Wallace and probably winds up getting sold off again into another unwanted marriage.

Abitha is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Fortunately, she’s intelligent enough to find a slither of opportunity given that even the uber conservative Puritan laws of the land grant a widow the right to act in her deceased husband’s stead.

And so, Abitha is granted the opportunity to produce one last bountiful harvest on the hardscrabble land she and Edward have already poured so much sweat equity into. But she’s just a small thing, there’s no way she can manage it. Is there?

Wallace certainly doesn’t think so, and so he begrudgingly allows her the time to fail, confident that he will be able to claim ownership eventually. What he doesn’t anticipate is that Abitha will strike up a friendship with the creature that calls himself Samson.

At the beginning of Slewfoot, Samson isn’t sure who he is. He thinks of himself as both a shepherd and a slayer, as a conduit for Mother Earth, and in learning about Jesus Christ from Abitha, he notes similarities between himself and the Christian God.

Samson is Abitha’s benefactor. He helps her farm succeed. But a reckoning is coming. Horror will ultimately occur.

For much of the story, it is not clear exactly who or what Samson is. He clearly has great power, but he just as obviously sits outside of the conventional God-Devil dynamic. Surely he’s a sort of old god, a pagan throwback to when the world was young. He himself doesn’t know. Slewfoot is as much about his journey of self-discovery as it is about Abitha’s last-gasp fight for independence.

While not really a scary book, Slewfoot certainly occupies the horror sandbox both in subject matter and occasional bloodiness. Who or whatever Sampson is, he is never positioned as the villain; that’d be the Puritan townsfolk who see the devil in every wild creature’s footprint, and whose own insecurities result in them lashing out at anyone slightly other — and it’s the threat of their ability to control Abitha’s destiny which is most terrifying.

Slewfoot surely owes a debt to the movie The Witch, and also more longstanding examples of pilgrims-versus-witches fiction such as The Crucible. Indeed, the plot points of what happens to Abitha serve to make Slewfoot a definitive archetypal example of this genre.

Slewfoot is historically inspired, but ingeniously modern. This isn’t a simply another retread of an old-fashioned story you’ve heard versions of before; there is a lot more complexity and nuance at work here. It’s an engrossing, bewitching, and spirited horror novel.

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There is something about the film’s tone (horror-focused, interested in science, serious but never taking itself too seriously) and aesthetic (dark, shadowy, all the scarier for the less you see of the low-budget monster).

Indeed, Alligator is a B-movie which does not restrict itself to the limited expectations of the genre. Despite the film’s budget, it feels like everyone is going for broke to make the movie the best it possibly can be. Everything — from Teague’s energetic direction, to Joseph Mangine’s moody cinematography, to the late great Robert Forster’s solid performance — works together to wring the absolute biggest bang from the movie’s buck and elevate it to far more than the sum of its parts.

All of which is to say that though Alligator might easily have been dismissed merely as a cheap Jaws knockoff, it is distinct and special enough to earn its own place among the pantheon of GOAT creature features.

Not bad for a film which is essentially about a massive killer alligator living in the sewers of Chicago.

Yes, Alligator is both inspired by and fuel for the urban legend concerning alligators in the sewers (as is mocked in Spielberg’s E.T. — a discreet nod to this film’s homage to his Jaws, perhaps?).

The origin of the murderous monster in this movie is a baby gator pet that was flushed down the toilet 12 years earlier. As it swelled to enormous size thanks to chemicals dumped by reckless capitalist scientists, so its young owner grew up to become a herpetologist who assists Forster’s detective in his crusade against the reptilian beast (in a neat touch, the characters never make this connection — it is for we the audience alone to enjoy).

As the alligator grew, it fed mostly on rats and other sewer-dwelling vermin, until it was unknowingly fed dead dogs dumped in the sewer by a crooked pet store owner — played by Sydney Lassick, who coincidentally has a memorable role in a season four episode of The X-Files. (Robert Forster was never in The X-Files, but he did feature in both Twin Peaks and Breaking Bad, which is close enough.)

But I digress…

After an accidental slip into the sewers himself, the pet store guy is eaten, and the alligator develops a taste for human flesh. And so ensues a fun horror movie which also borrows aspects of the crime procedural and disaster movie genres.

I meant it when I said that Alligator punches above its weight. Despite its small budget, it gives us a fantastic sequence in which the alligator romps along a city street and gives the illusion of a grander scale as individuals react to the beast (a kid grabbing a knife from his mother’s kitchen to go hunt the animal is a random highlight). Another great moment is when a pompous big game hunter gets his bloody comeuppance at the jaws of his prey (“Clever girl”).

As with the shark in Jaws, of course, the alligator itself is mostly obscured by shadows out of necessity — but it is all the more horrific because of it.

Alligator may not have struck the cultural zeitgeist in the same way as many Spielbergian blockbuster did, but it remains a solidly entertaining horror flick that impresses on every level.

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Naturally, her mother assumes this fanciful assertion is just the product of her child’s youthful imagination — and at worst her way of coping with the trauma of being lost in the woods where who knows what happened to her…

The thing is, she’s telling the truth. And she keeps on telling it. Even as a thirty-year old working in customer service. Everyone knows her as the weirdo who claims to be from outer space. Most people dismiss her as a kook, some bully her. Only a precious few accept her outrageous claim.

Here’s what really happened: all those years ago, exploring the woods, Anastasia encountered an alien plant that had grown there, its seed having fallen to Earth, and it killed her, then it replicated her, and then the sentient plant lived its life as if it was her.

And she’s not alone. There are hundreds if not thousands of these fatal florae imitating their human victims all over the globe. All of them have the same compulsion as Anastasia to blurt out their true nature and to warn of the coming invasion. But no-one really believes them.

Then, one day, aliens hit the headlines around the world. Audio recorded from deep space is apparently a broadcast from an extraterrestrial life form. Aliens are real — and they’re coming this way. Suddenly nothing will ever be the same.

The invasion Anastasia warned she was a forerunner for has finally turned up.

Overgrowth is billed as a sci-fi horror novel, but for all the blood-drinking, terrifying creatures, and death that take root in its pages, in terms of true creepiness, it never bests the chilling opening chapters which focus on young Anastasia’s murder and rebirth. For most of its duration, the vibe is more of a Spielbergian sci-fi adventure. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

To me, Overgrowth is best considered existential horror because — in between evading dangerous federal authorities, being forced to team up with an alien-hating astronomer (as a kid she survived an encounter with a hostile herb and has held a grudge ever since), and coming face-to-face with the green spider monster that is her biological mother — Anastasia’s primary conflict is an internal one:

Is she more human or more alien?

When the shit hits the fan — which it very much does — to which side should she pledge her allegiance? Does she side with the Earthlings who never truly accepted her and who often outright shunned her, but who raised her, made her who she is, and who include all the people she loves? Or does she take the side of the intergalactic creatures that are her true kin — even though they want to harvest humanity in its entirety?

It’s a delicious dilemma, made all the richer by the body horror that progresses from the moment Anastasia first hears her true tribe’s message — we’re talking shedding skin, increasingly green pigmentation, and that aforementioned thirst for human blood.

Consistently engaging, entertaining, and always well told, Overgrowth was a bit of a different horror novel than I’ve read in a while and it was a refreshing change. There are certainly similarities to Gwen, In Green, and other reviews understandably namecheck Day of the Triffids and Little Shop of Horrors, but Overgrowth is uniquely its own thing. Ultimately, it’s the story of a lifelong outsider who is finally compelled to confront her true nature and the conflict this causes when her true nature is to kill all humans.

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Let me explain… Buffet Infinity is a horror comedy that eschews a conventional narrative form in favor of telling its story through an hour and a half of faux local news clips and cheesy ads for local businesses.

And it’s a masterpiece. No, really.

As the film “channel surfs” through commercials for personal injury lawyers, mattress stores, and used car dealerships, the crumbs of the core narrative is established:

A strange sinkhole has appeared behind a local shopping complex, and a mysterious new all-you-can-eat restaurant, Buffet Infinity, has opened nearby.

Buffet Infinity and their main competitor, Jenny’s Sandwich Shop, trade attacks on each other in an ongoing and escalating war of ads. Blows are exchanged between the two, cutting each other down, fostering suspicion of the other, and going to outrageous extremes to outdo their competition in every conceivable way. It’s laugh out loud funny, and yet it’s also extremely unnerving.

And that’s before Jenny disappears. She’s not the first disappearance, either. There have already been a significant number of missing pets and there’s about to be an epidemic of missing people. But Jenny is the first — and the most significant.

Suddenly, it becomes glaringly obvious that something is very wrong concerning Buffet Infinity. Despite the early news reports excited about the new restaurant offering endless meal options, fears rapidly mount regarding the restaurant’s baffling lack of staff and its tumorous growth as it annexes the businesses on its borders and eventually metastasizes across the entire town.

My hot take is that Buffet Infinity is analogous for AI and AI-powering data centers. While it might be argued that the restaurant itself is sentient, there is certainly evidence that its ads demonstrate an artificial intelligence gradually absorbing and replicating what it has learned. Its initial ad is extremely rough around the edges, which a stumbling voice-over which implies the speaker has never actually spoken before. With each subsequent spot, however, the ads improve in quality, they breach the uncanny valley and become increasingly polished and refined.

It’s learning, it’s copying.

This is perhaps most obvious in a tony black and white advert that is a clear mimic of the most recent Jenny’s ad, but which then goes off script to inexplicably spend an inordinate amount of time highlighting the restaurant’s polished brass doorknobs — a rip from an unrelated commercial about cookware that previously played?

(There’s also an omnipresent droning noise that infests the town; it is suggested that its origin is Buffet Infinity — another reason to draw the data center comparison.)

As the movie progresses, things get weirder.

A trailer for a made-for-TV movie airs, purportedly based on the “true story” of Jenny’s disappearance, but portraying her as an exploitative money launderer with a drug addiction and ties to the criminal underworld.

A cadre of small business owners come together to oppose local politicians, seemingly in a coordinated defense of Buffet Infinity. But do they actually support it or are they afraid of what will happen to them and their livelihoods if they don’t? (Though not exactly analogous for recent public versus politicians clashes over data center approvals, its certainly evocative.)

Simultaneously to all of this, there are ominous messages paid for by the suspiciously-named Westbridge Society for Religious Freedom, which turns out to be a Scientology-inspired cult but which might actually be on the side of good as they are the clear leaders of the fight against Buffet Infinity and see it for what it truly is.

By the time the movie reaches its crescendo, there have been exploding heads, levitating masses, and eyeball genitals.

There is so much more that could be said about Buffet Infinity. I’m confident there is so much more to be discovered on rewatches, too. It is an amazing accomplishment; it’s outrageous, ambitious, crazy, hilarious, and utterly freaky movie that is unlike anything you have ever seen before.

Buffet Infinity is ridiculous film and so perfectly of this ridiculous time we’re living in, I’m declaring it the first must-watch movie of the year.

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Feral is cute. Its characters look adorable and are designed to echo that classical Disney animation style. It’s like The Aristocrats meets Dawn of the Dead — which is absolutely the intent.

At the series’ start, our core characters are a trio of indoor cats that are now stranded in the deep, dark woods — and a whole host of crazed and rabid creatures are now trying to kill them.

In the world of Feral, the rabid “bad ones” are analogue for the infected monsters of zombie lore. In the woods, these are mostly foxes, racoons, and wolves — but housecats are certainly not immune. They too could be turned. Or simply murdered.

Elsie, Lord Fluffy Britches, and Patch are unceremoniously dumped into this very Walking Dead environment at the start of issue one with precious little context. Immediately, it is survive or die. It’s chaotic and instantly absorbing. Even though these are cartoon cats, we quickly recognize this horrific world they’ve found themselves in and understand the stakes.

As the series progresses, we gradually get snippets of the backstory that allow us to understand what exactly is going on in the world. A massive infectious outbreak has led to large swarths of the countryside being quarantined. Although animals appear to be primarily at risk, the infection also endangers humans. The authorities have ordered the surrender of all pets to be tested and quarantined — and it was one of those animal control trucks that Elsie, Lord, and Patch were riding in when it crashed into the woods. Thus, the setup of the series’ first major arc is essentially Homeward Bound in Zombieland: get through the zombie-infested woods and back to the safety of home.

The ongoing nature of the comic books series allows for various stories to be set up and resolved at varying clips. Like a soap opera or long-running serial, additional characters cycle in and out of the plot. There are allies. There are enemies. But no-one — not even our core trio — is guaranteed safety.

Feral might look for all the world like kids’ entertainment, but this is not one for the kids. Over the course of the first dozen or so issues, the fearful felines must combat a swarm of rabid bats, a terrifying cat lady, and an extended sequence which is surely an homage to an iconic Jurassic Park set piece.

Written by Feecs, Feral is a team effort; he shares cover billing with illustrators Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez, and colorist Brad Simpson. This foursome were previously responsible for the similar charming-yet-chilling limited comic Stray Dogs, which was marketed as Lady and the Tramp meets Silence of the Lambs. So, you know, they have a pedigree for this specific niche.

Feral creatively skews its cute aesthetic to indulge in suspenseful, mature narratives. Thanks to its fast-paced episodic nature, you remain addicted as one story arc transitions into the next, with something even more dangerous almost always inevitably around the next corner. Thanks to its fast-paced episodic nature, you remain addicted as one story arc transitions into the next, and as you learn more about the characters you get more invested in them, even as they are discovered to be increasingly more complex. It is, naturally, the cat’s meow.

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It’s really, really good, y’all!

The film begins with some elliptical scenes which introduce us to Jess, a young mum worn down by her role as the single parent of an autistic son. These opening scenes feel intentionally disjointed and have a Lost Highway vibe about them, but they do a great job of efficiently establishing the film’s central character and key backstory elements.

Soon enough, however, the narrative is on solid ground — but not for long. The perspective shifts to Greg, who has invited several friends for a day out on his yacht. One of them, of course, is Jess. But when she arrives at the marina, she is somewhat disheveled, disoriented, and seemingly on the verge of tears.

The group set sail and we quickly get to know everyone. Then a massive storm rolls in out of nowhere, the boat is capsized, and the group are stranded. Thankfully, an ocean liner appears out of nowhere to rescue them. Except when they climb aboard, they find it eerily deserted. Or is it?

As the group explore the ship’s labyrinthine corridors, they experience a series of strange occurrences. They’re sure they saw someone on deck earlier, but whoever it is remains hidden.

And then the killing starts. The bloody murders unfold in startlingly quick succession. Before the film is even 30 minutes in, Jess is the only member of the shipwrecked group still standing. Staggering on to the deck all alone, she hears voices — then sees herself and her companions stranded on the hull of Greg’s upturned-yacht and calling for help.

That’s right, she’s stuck in a time loop.

Writer/director Smith has said that he “wanted to make a cyclical film that explored Déjà vu avoiding using the same elements seen in Jacob’s Ladder.” Well, mission accomplished.

Triangle has a meticulously crafted script. Jess doesn’t just repeat the worst day of her life over and over again, she interacts with the other characters and causes things to occur that have seemingly already happened.

Melissa George essentially carries the movie and gives an endearing and entirely believable performance as Jess as she evolves from a traumatized woman to being shocked at the horrors about this ghost ship, to becoming something else entirely by the film’s end. She is magnificent.

Indeed, the acting is pretty uniformly top notch. (Shout out in particular to Michael Dorman of the excellent and cancelled-too-soon TV show, Patriot.)

By the end of the movie, three or four versions of the shipwrecked crew have boarded the ocean liner. Each time, the original Jess’ actions are markedly different — but are directly responsible for something that she had previously experienced. Hers is a lineal journey against a cyclical narrative.

It is wild, but it all makes sense. It’s an incredibly impressive Rube Goldberg Rubik’s Cube screenplay with no obvious plot holes that struck me.

There are some disarmingly horrific visuals here too: among my favorites where those that suggested that Jess has been through this time loop many times before. There’s a drain in which she drops her locket on to a pile of dozens of duplicate lockets. There’s a corner of the ship where multiple bodies of the same person lie strewn about the deck.

It’s unnerving, creepy, and completely compelling.

And yes, there are several nods to The Shining, too: most notably cabin 237, a message scrawled in blood in the mirror, and the same phrase written over and over again…

This is not your average time loop horror movie. Jess — and the movie overall — is very intelligent. She quickly comprehends the weird situation in which she’s trapped, figures out the rules, and comes up with a plan to escape. It’s what every movie that uses this device should be. Truly great.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. You can support Horror Harwood by buying Triangle on Amazon here. Thank you :)