Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

The Substance

Writer/Director:  Coralie Fargeat

Our living room television happens to face a window that looks out on our side yard, and is probably easy to see from the house next door. The reason I bring this up is because I watch a lot of horror movies, and I watch them before the sun comes up, and it’s very likely my neighbors might glance out the window and see someone being pulled apart by zombies or hacked to component parts by an ax-wielding lunatic.

And if they were looking when I watched The Substance, they would have seen a lot of jiggling, supple female flesh along with some truly grotesque creature effects. Sorry, neighbors! Or…you’re welcome!

The Substance features Demi Moore as Elizabeth Sparkle, a fading starlet whose current gig is hosting one of those exercise shows whose audience is, on paper, other women who want to get fit, but is more likely composed of teenage boys before they discover pornography. After Sparkle is cruelly and cynically dismissed due to her age, she crashes her car, and a young nurse slips her a flash drive: on the drive is an ad for the titular substance.

The substance promises a kind of fountain-of-youth. Humiliated, crestfallen, Sparkle gets hold of the substance. There are rules which I’m fairly certain the audience is supposed to remember, but it’s fairly easy to see that whatever rules there are for the safe use of the substance, they’ll be broken.

Sparkle ends up on the bathroom floor, her body bursting open and birthing a younger version of herself, who ends up going by Sue (Margaret Qualley). Sue and Elizabeth must switch places every week, and whichever one is active must provide a stabilizing fluid to the other.

When Sue (inevitably) neglects her duties, Elizabeth begins to warp and deteriorate.

There’s a lot of Kubrick in the spacious interiors of The Substance, and a sort of futuristic look to the proceedings. Everything is glittery and shiny and colorful. The leads are believable in their roles; every last one of the men (including Dennis Quaid as the executive who fires Elizabeth) are overacted, portrayed as open-mouth-chewing, bellowing blowhards or outlandish buffoons. This is likely by design, but it does distract from the story.

Also distracting is the message of the movie—it’s right out front: the old adage about shallow society discarding people (especially women, especially in entertainment) when they age. But it also portrays aging as disgusting grotesquery. Beyond that, there’s not much to this movie: the message, and the unintentional betrayal of the message.

That having been said, there is also a large quantity of blood and some truly twisted body horror—all of it ratcheted up to 11 in the finale, where Sue, in the process of a monstrous transformation, hosts the New Year’s Eve show. If you’re into blood and gore and body horror (and I am), The Substance is, at the very least, an entertaining watch. I’ll bet my next-door neighbors agree.

 

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Update 11B

Trauma & Therapy

The Trauma of Therapy:
Clinical Death & Rebirth

Compiled & Narrated 

by Anthony Servante

Stairway to Heaven or Synaptic Misfiring?

Introduction:
Before we get started here, let's review a few terms that will be important for the development of ideas in this article. The first is "organic death". Simply, this is a cessation of all bodily functions to a point where the body can no longer be resuscitated or brought back to life. "Clinical death" means, according to the medical dictionary of the term, "death as judged by the medical observation of cessation of vital functions. It is typically identified with the cessation of heartbeat and respiration, though modern resuscitation methods and life-support systems have required the introduction of the alternative concept of brain death". Note that the "brain" activity defines the final step which qualifies the body as living or dead. Technically the body can be dead, but as long as there's brain activity, the body can be clinically dead but the vital organ functions are being performed by machines. In some instances, the machines can be disconnected by order of the family, but it is possible the body will continue to function at the basic level of "activity" and therefore still be alive, even though the body will never gain a full or normal life. The line between clinical death and minimal functional life activity is very thin, nearly transparent.

Our concern here is trauma and how a person who actually gains a full and normal life after clinical death readjusts to his new life or, as many would say, "rebirth". For some, there is therapy to help those who died on the operating table and experienced the lowest levels of brain activity. For them, they must learn to readjust to living again after experiencing a perceived death. Though it is very rare for people to recover from organic death, recovering from clinical death is common, but for the patient on the operating table, in the auto accident, or choking on a bone in a restaurant, their near-death experience can be as real as organic death, and therefore a traumatic event requiring therapy. And as we have seen, sometimes such patients turn to religion more readily than therapy.

But not all of them.

Trauma or Inspiration?
When I was thirteen years old, I had surgery on a muscle tear from a bicycle accident. I overheard the doctor who examined me tell my dad that my scrapes and cuts were superficial but that there was a tear to the leg muscle. I remember my dad asking the doctor if I could wear a strap around the leg to hold the muscle together. The doctor said, No, he needs surgery. The muscle will continue to tear as the boy plays and runs till even walking will affect the use of the leg. My dad agreed, and surgery was scheduled.

I was in the waiting room outside the doctor's office; the door was open. My dad walked out and told me that it's time to go home. When I got to my feet, my knees buckled. My dad noticed but kept walking toward the parking lot. The nurse got me a wheelchair and pushed me out to the parking lot. Needless to say, I was scared shitless by the news. The word "surgery" around my aunts and uncles on my mom's side of the family was always bad news. I didn't think scared thoughts, but my knees buckled anyway. I was scared at a subconscious level. Not from the prospect of going under the knife, as they say, but from the unknown factor that awaited me after the surgery. Some of my aunts and uncles didn't survive being cut open.

I spent the night in the hospital; surgery was scheduled for four in the morning. I was drowsy as I was prepped. The anesthesiologist covered my nose and mouth with a plastic mask and told me to count back from 100 to zero. I don't remember reaching a count less than 90. What I do remember has stayed with me for the rest of my life and shaped the person I would grow to become.

I left my body and floated above the surgeon, who leaned over my small form, covering my view of my open leg tissue, attending nurses, who handed shiny instruments to the surgeon and checked beeping panels and colored lights on consoles, and the anesthesiologist, who kept an eye on the panel that seemed to be measuring my breath and brain activity, judging by the green spikes and straight lines. They moved to and fro, and I finally got a look at myself. I could barely make out my face beneath the mask. I floated forward a bit but still couldn't see my leg. There was a white sheet with a square hole where the doctor's hands were busy with the shiny instruments. Strange, I thought, but where was all the blood, like in the movies; where was the nurse dabbing the sweat from the doctor's brow? Then I decided to fly somewhere more interesting.

I didn't get far. I know because I have no memory of a journey. My eyes opened, and I was in bed in the hospital. The overhead TV was on. The local evening, maybe morning, news was on. Channel Five. Where all the monster movies fill in the late night slot before the channel goes off the air. Four am. Maybe Six or seven pm. 13 or 14 hours had gone by. The nurse asked if I was thirsty. I was. She held the paper cup of water as I drank. I asked for more. In a while, she said. After the doctor sees you. The doctor didn't see me until after the news. He asked how I was feeling. I answered with a question: What time is it? 6:00 pm on the dot, he said. I saw you, I told him. Where? During the operation. The doctor and the nurse exchanged an odd glance. Again, How are you feeling? Fine. May I have some more water? Of course, he said, and nodded to the nurse. And the nurse brought me another cup of water and a tray of hospital food. She fed me as well.

After the doctor exited, the nurse asked, Did you see me too? No. You were all wearing white masks. Except for the girl who put me to sleep. She was wearing a green mask and cap. That's right, she said. Did you see a light? No. How about shadows? No. Only the people in the operating room and the machines. I tried to leave but then I woke up here. Where were you going? To look around. Not up? No, to look around. Did you feel like you were falling before you woke up? No, I was still floating when I woke up. I don't remember if I reached outside. How did you plan to go through the wall? I don't know. I just knew I could. Maybe that's what woke you up--when you ran into the wall. No. The knock out medicine wore off, that's all. It's nothing to be afraid of. I wasn't afraid. I was curious; I wanted to explore. Well, you ate all your food. That's good. If you're still thirsty, just press this button and I'll come back with another cup.

Two days later, my mom picked me up and drove me home. My dad was at work. The doctor and the nurse never asked anymore questions about my floating. Just "How are you feeling?" But I asked a lot of questions, but they were ignored. So as I grew older, I sought my own answers. What happened on the operating table? What did the nurse mean by a 'light? Did I die? At which point during the surgery? Of course, the answers I found in my youth led to new questions. The most important being: What was the difference between "clinical death" and "organic death"? I read everything I could find on the subject. There was no internet in those days. All I had was the library and my aunts and uncles. The books led me to ghosts, god, and the afterlife. My family tried to steer me towards Catholicism. Between the two, I found my love of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and religious studies. I knew just one religion wouldn't give me any answers but their own. I needed answers beyond the one scope of the one faith. I needed a leap of faith over faith itself. That's where the answers lay.

Biology v Belief
In the simplest terms, clinical death is the shutting down of my organs (those beeps and green spikes on the machines). It's death beginning, but still under the control of every doctor and nurse in that operating room. As the surgeon wraps up the surgery, each organ that begins to shut down is revived. If every major organ shuts down before I can be revived, that's organic death. After such death, revival of atrophied organs couldn't be fully awakened anymore. Only while the majority of vital organs like the heart, brain, liver, and so on, are still only starting to die, can they be fully revived. Clinical death is more common than organic death, and one of the main symptoms of clinical death is the brain freaking out as his fellow organs stop responding to his neuro-synaptic commands; in this state of panic, the brain projects an image of the body floating above itself on the operating table, sees a bright light, witnesses shadowy figures who one can interpret to be saints, gods, or angels. The brain in a state of desperation elicits common sights and sounds that have been medically known for many year, but people who experience clinical death choose to interpret this commonality as a religious omen. Thoughts of heaven, hell, and immortality help to reorganize the confused brain coming back to its senses after surgery and especially after clinical death. With such thoughts, sufferers of trauma can believe that they saw Jesus or Heaven itself. There is a rebirth, a new life where death no longer holds a grip on our fear. After all, we were floating above death.

But why didn't I turn to religious rebirth for an answer to my floating? Why did I turn to supernatural books instead of Grey's Anatomy? Why wasn't I traumatized? If anything, I feel like I was enlightened by the experience. I chose to read more in order to learn more about the causes behind my experience on the operating table and to find similar cases to mind. One need look no further than our local prisons and jails for cases where prisoners chose religion over reasons and causes for the trauma. Men in prison who are sexually assaulted often turn to religion for a safe mental haven, and find congregation with other born-again inmates to find protection from further harm. Other victims of assault join gangs as a means of safety, for there is safety in numbers. They either become born-again victims of trauma or experts at avoiding future trauma. I turned to knowledge for bigger questions rather than small convenient answers. Little answers were loops that turned back onto themselves. God is always the answer. I wanted to know why. Sure, God is one answer that I found in the bible. But Buddhism led me to reincarnation. Another religion claimed heaven was a state of mind, another claimed that Heaven was on Earth, others that heaven was in the skies and was spelled with a capital "H". I worked through religious study and found safety in academia. Rather than choose one group of born-again believers, I chose the number of students and scholars to direct my search for answers. One book led me to other books, and the best books open doors, not close them.


What is Good and Evil to the Sick Soul?
One of the best books I found on the subject was called "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James. William James is known as the Godfather of Psychology for his lectures and books on the workings of the brain and their effect on bodily reactions per his studies in the late 1800s, especially his lectures in "Psychology: The Briefer Course" (the lengthier course was abridged to allow the layman easier accessibility to the work outside the university). James did not think of the "mind" as an independent source of emotion but as part of a duo, along with the senses, that work together to create the psychology of thought and the physicality of emotion. In terms of trauma, this duality of mind and body becomes imbalanced, one side dominating the other.

For James, the "healthy-minded" individual was the person who found balance with his evil and good sides without having to go through trauma. He is not so much healthy as unconflicted. He doesn't so much lean toward good as he avoids evil. He has learned to deal with any conflicts that may arise and maintain a healthy-minded perspective. That is, until he is surprised by trauma. Here there is an unforeseen imbalance between good and evil. For instance, a healthy-minded individual has a wife who is assaulted by a stranger. In a healthy-minded frame of mind, he would turn to the law for justice. However, evil may become the dominant side of his balance now and choose vengeance by taking the law into his own hands. In a state of trauma, he leaves his healthy-minded balance with his other unproductive states of mind (the police may never catch the man), and seek redress by any means available to him. He is in a state of imbalance due to the trauma, and he accepts the imbalance as productive. With this frame of mind, he can injure and even kill the criminal who assaulted his wife. His mindset is okay with that outcome.Trauma often alters one's point of view in this way.

Now with the individual accepting a new mindset to balance his healthy-minded perspective, he can now face the inevitable consequences of his actions spurred by this point of view. He realizes that he is set on killing the person who assaulted his wife. This realization satisfies the present, as revenge will often do, but the law may not see things that way. He, too, is a criminal now. This new balance has given evil the upper hand. James writes, "If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to our interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion." The pious man who would never kill anyone in his healthy-minded state, where good was higher percentagely over evil, now leans toward evil as a healthy outlook.

I don't want to imply here that we were balanced toward good or evil before the trauma. It's just that good and evil were always in contention. Healthy-mindedness meant dealing daily with that struggle with good winning 51 percent (or higher) of the time. William James points out that we are always out of balance. When you find a wallet on the bus bench, your first thought may be to steal the cash, although your hand may shake as you reach for the money; your eyes may wander as if everyone were watching you as you pick up the wallet. Do you keep the money or find the wallet's owner? You are always being placed in positions where the mind and body fight to make the choice between good and evil, as James calls it. However, after trauma, this imbalance becomes wider, more pronounced. It is easier to accuse the wallet's owner of being a fool, a thief who would steal your wallet if he had the chance. James explains, "Now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as these [i.e, killing and theft], if we treat them as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of maximizing evil, if you please to call it, based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and that the world's meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart." Trauma centralizes the healthy-mindedness of evil when the "heart" needs it most.

James refers to this "morbid" shift from good to evil as the "sick soul". We are remorseful for our criminal acts. We killed. We stole. We are no longer connected with goodness or heaven or god. We are as the beast who strikes without thought or conscience. James explains this consequence of evil action, "Such anguish may partake of various characters, having sometimes more the quality of loathing; sometimes that of irritation and exasperation; or again of self-mistrust and self-despair; or of suspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear." How could heaven hold such a place for such a soul? Yet, in his healthy-minded state, the evil action made sense. It was the right thing to do. Why suffer so after committing the act? Was it not the right thing? While quoting Tolstoy, James clarifies this frame of mind that turns on itself, "My state of mind was as if some wicked and stupid jest was being played on me by some one." Tolstoy refers to this dread as a "thirst for God." Where the healthy-minded individual repositions his view toward evil and acts on it, he finds himself farther from God. Even when in balance with good and evil in contention, still he was not ready for God. His soul was not yet sick.

Just as my soul was not yet sick when I came off the operating table. I floated above the operating table where my body lay cut open, but I did not feel closer to God, nor did I feel farther from God. I felt unsafe because I did not understand what happened to me at this moment of detached experience. If I chose to blame the doctors for bringing me back to life and stealing me of my chance to go to heaven, then I could have claimed sick soul status. But I chose to find answers for this experience. I was still in a healthy-minded perspective where I was struggling to understand if it were a good or evil experience. Did I die and start my journey toward heaven, or did I hallucinate the experience because there was a medical mistake made during my surgery? I still had to realize if this was a question of good and evil.

I realized neither.

It is at this point of realization for the healthy-minded individual who chooses evil when God seems most out of reach that God ironically comes into reach for the sick soul. Clinical death appears to be a doorway to heaven. For now, in this sick and morbid frame of mind, the individual is ready to be forgiven to make himself worthy of acceptance by the greater power over good and evil, the points of contention that have plagued him his whole life. Just as trauma has led him to the dark path of criminal behavior. it is trauma that leads him to the light of his rebirth, a second chance at healthy-minded salvation. Otherwise, that clinical death which initiates that path of light does not lead heavenward but toward an understanding of "clinical death" itself.

To paraphrase William James from his book of lectures, "Varieties of Religious Experience", "There are two types of evil that plague the "sick soul" (a person in psychological contention with external matters): one, a struggle to adapt to natural circumstances whereby the individual can remedy the conflict with a balance between one's own frame of mind with the tangible outside sources that upset the balance; here the individual fits the natural forces outside with the natural network inside of his head. For instance, the loss of a job which leads to the loss of a roof over one's head can be remedied by finding temporary shelter with a friend or family member or at a homeless shelter until unemployment insurance provides income or until one can find a job, even at a lower rate of pay. The balance in essence is a compromise between one's self (setting pride aside to ask for help and accepting a lower wage) and the conditions one must accept when placed in such an embarrassing situation. Two, the struggle with internal turmoil of self whereby only a supernatural circumstance can provide balance; for instance, if one loses his job and becomes homeless, but his pride is too strong to seek a natural solution, comfort, and therefore balance, can be attained by laying the blame and answers to one's misfortunes on higher sources, namely, a god. In such a situation when help is offered by friends and family to the unfortunate jobless person, this individual may say that it is God's will that he is in such a circumstance but that God will show him the way out" (Var. Sick Soul). For one, the evil is remedied by individual action; for two, the evil is remedied by God.

The trauma of clinical death misleads the crashing brain to see things that provide avenues to such a remedy. During the operation, while you are under anesthesia, you see a bright light, you float above the operating table, you see a man wearing sandals, you experience euphoria. When you come out of the surgery, you are reborn. You saw God. Your sick soul was healed. In discussing Tolstoy's thought of suicide, James differentiates between happiness in a healthy-minded state and happiness in a sick soul state: he writes, "One has tasted the fruit of the tree, and the happiness of Eden never comes again.... Natural evil is swallowed up by supernatural good. [The sick soul individual] is saved by what seems to him as a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before." Note here that the "supernatural" now overrides natural evil. In our example of the man who kills the criminal who assaults his wife and the man who steals the lost wallet, these evil acts are natural, earthly acts. They are forgiveable in clinical death, when sick soul individuals believe that they experience the supernatural hand of God.

And balance returns. Good outweighs evil again with God's blessing. Only, what if during clinical death, that wasn't God? What if it wasn't the brain crashing? What if it were evil itself manipulating your state of mind during the surgery and creating your frame of mind after the "supernatural" experience? This is the question that occurred to me when I experienced clinical death. I mean, if there's a God, then there's a Devil. Just who was it in those sandals that you saw as you died during surgery? And what was his plan in playing you during your most vulnerable moment? We must think of our killer who now feels forgiven for killing. Wouldn't an evil entity persuade such a person to kill again? And wouldn't our killer do as "God" wills?

But these are questions for another day. As I said earlier, knowledge is not posing questions for answers, it's answering questions with more questions. And round and round it goes. Because the answer is either God. Or the Devil. Or you keep asking questions while looking over your shoulder.

 

A November Double Book Review

 
From Barry Lee Dejasu

Not Quite Horror, but Still Quite Good

Kiersten White – Mister Magic

Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu

First off, let it be known that I really enjoyed Kiersten White’s 2023 novel Mister Magic. I’m glad that I finally picked up a copy and read it, but a lot of the hype—and subsequently, the genre that it was purported to be—left me a little disappointed with the kind of book that it turned out to be.

Mister Magic follows Val, a woman reeling from the sudden death of her father. At his funeral, she is approached by three men who are showing their condolences, because they all seem to know her…but she doesn’t recall ever having met them. They reveal that, with her, they had all been stars of Mister Magic, a children’s TV show in the 1980s, showcasing how the imagination holds power—but not nearly as great as the power of friendship. But why can’t Val remember them, or having been on the show? Why can’t she even recall anything of her childhood? And, as hinted at in online posts, discussions, and articles interspersed between chapters—why does the entire show’s very existence seem to have been erased from the public eye? A suspenseful and at times surreal mystery unfolds, taking turn after turn into a labyrinth illuminated by the glow of TV static.

I was invested in the characters and the unfolding layers of secrets and revelations, and impressed with the swift pace, the strange environment (much of it takes place in a six-story house sitting completely on its own in the middle of a desert, with doorless rooms awash in the light of television screens), and the increasingly uncanny mystery at its heart. Punchy dialogue, surreal scenes and motifs, and a very authentic feeling of nostalgia ran throughout it. There were also a few genuinely creepy sequences, which definitely had the horror fan in me perking up.

Some reviews compared the novel to such works as Dathan Auerbach’s Penpal and films such as Sinister, and while I can see the similarities, and although it was an intriguing and suspenseful tale of childhood mystery and eerie revelations on grainy video tapes, it’s not quite the horror novel that I had been hoping it would be.

Lightning Flashes Against a Dark Sky

Stephen King – Revival

Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu

Stephen King is kind of an evergreen source of fine literature. For decades, he has continually pumped out one or three books a year, creating so many very popular entries in the horror genre that even those most avoidant of the genre stand a chance at being able to name a few works of fiction—or films, or television shows—that originated in King’s mind. So it is that no matter how many books from as many authors that I buy and read every year, there’s always a library of King’s works available to read—and every time I crack open one of them, it’s like going in for a warm hug from an old friend.

Since its release in 2014, his novel Revival has orbited my bookshelves and to-be-read stacks, silently waiting for me to finally pick it up. Well, that time finally came this October, and what I got from it was a tale that simultaneously defied my expectations and proved to be exactly what I’d expect from a King novel: a big, suspenseful story, a set of very richly-depicted characters, and an intimate narrative that warms—and at times, downright breaks—the heart. And oh, yes…it’s quite unsettling.

This is the narrative of Jamie Morton, an older man looking back at his life, from when he was little onward, through all sorts of milestone events, from family issues to his first love, discovering his love of playing music to his years spent in rock bands, discussions about faith to drug addictions, and the curiosities of living to the terrifying possibilities of death. And throughout all of this, starting when he was six years old, Jamie’s life is inexorably intertwined with that of a Reverend Charles Jacobs, a genuinely kind and caring man with an ongoing penchant for the creation—and application—of electrical devices…

I’d perked up when I heard Revival brought up in several conversations about books that genuinely scared people, and while I can absolutely see the horror elements of it getting to someone, it turned out to not quite be the kind of tale that belongs in the darker spots of bookshelves featuring such terrifying works of his as Pet Sematary (1983) or It (1986). It was a more personally-driven tale that brings to mind his 1998 novel Bag of Bones. (I also need to mention that I was also moved to tears a number of times while reading this, for reasons that are best left experienced by future readers. King is a veteran of playing heartstrings like a well-tuned guitar, and this novel is a perfect showcase for his knack.)

But don’t expect this book to be free of the King of Horror’s dark touch—this big, emotional tale slowly but steadily darkens like oncoming storm clouds over a previously sunny day…and what awaits in the heart of the storm is most definitely horrific, with some shockingly nightmarish sequences that unfold at its climax, leaving behind a truly haunting revelation that will, very fittingly, follow close behind me for the rest of my life.

A story of tragedy, mystery, hope, music, and life and death, Revival is definitive King, and easily ranks among his very best works.

 

Gothic Poems For November

Rhys Hughes

The Toad

Florian heard a weird tale

when he was rather young

from his uncle, who said:

I was an amateur geologist

at university, although I was

supposed to be studying the

science and art of medicine.

But I preferred the outdoors

to the stuffy dissecting room

and I mostly failed to attend

lectures and demonstrations.

I would hike into the hills or

mountains instead and spend

whole days among the rocks

far from city life and clocks.

And once I broke open a stone

with my hammer and found a

toad inside. It was alive, very

ancient, an odd sentient fossil.

For tens of millions of years it

had been preserved, entombed,

imprisoned, damned to a minor

hell. But it was well, it hopped.

I watched as it vanished among

the rubble, free at last from the

metamorphic troubles, whatever

those might be, it had endured.

And for some reason the incident

hurt my mind. I was blind with a

deep fear I had never felt before,

a terror blended with melancholy.

I stumbled away from the site of

my discovery: my own sight was

dim, tears of despair lashing my

face. Existence seemed a waste.

What are we humans, other than

toads inside our own tombs? An

illusion of liberty keeps us sane,

yet we remain horribly arrogant.

Delusional our intellects, caged

by slimy brains, toad-textured, a

world of craniums stuffed with

indigestible intestines of thought.

My depression endured seasons

but never could I proffer reasons

for my suspicion that our skulls

are hollow stones, not just bones.

Yet I recovered in time: I grew

intolerant of my delicate moods,

I returned to my hobby, breaking

stones, chancing on new fossils.

Then one day I met a sculptor in

a gallery who had suffered worse

than me while working on a block

of marble in his basement studio.

His chisel had slipped and so the

slab had split. And inside was an

empty space, and what intensifies

the horror: a withered human face.

There was a man within the stone.

Alone, the sculptor, turned to run,

but the ancient being emerged and

bounded high over his dazed head.

And came to land in front of him

with a grin that had been waiting

a thousand centuries to spread so

wide, a smile compressed inside.

This prehistoric survivor had legs

like those of a toad. Imagine that!

The sculptor trembled as he spoke

and bile rose in his burning throat.

He was ruined, a nervous wreck,

unable to work or sleep. The toad

blocked the stairs from basement

to the upper world. He swooned.

And when he regained his senses

he wore an eternal wound. I count

myself lucky that my toad was an

amphibian, not a palaeolithic man.

Silently I nodded and left his side

to wander the galleries sadly, this

cursed stranger with whom I had

no quarrel but abhorred entirely.

The uncle finished his tale with a

sigh. But Florian never dared to

ask why it had no obvious moral.

Eclipse

Night in the afternoon

and briefly the beasts

that must shun the light

feel free: they see stars.

A breath of darkest air

for them: I do not care

to stare for long, a song

of the void on my lips.

I always lower my eyes

from the skies, avoiding

the whips of their focus,

a mumbled hocus pocus.

For a few minutes: evil

basks in the absent sun,

basilisk and ripe demon,

cockatrice with obelisk.

The eclipse kisses death

with shadowed lips and

blackens my slack spirit,

a frozen putrefying root.

Prospect Park

The building is tall

but not wide: inside

the hall are piles

of worthless antiques

piled high in unstable towers

and these prevent

visitors from peering

too far into the shady depths,

but if you are invited

to pick your way

through them, your day will

descend into chaos

and you will wish to flee:

unfortunately

the labyrinth of oddments

and arcane curios

will confound your attempts

to escape and

you will find your home,

isolated, remote,

but never alone

in the burning dark

at the rotten heart of a house

in Prospect Park.

__________________________

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Longlegs

Writer/Director: Oz Perkins

On paper, Longlegs is a fairly standard story: an FBI agent hunts an elusive serial killer who leaves cryptic clues. But this is Oz Perkins, who’s behind the eccentric movies I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House (glacially paced, nearly ruined by idiosyncratic narration) and The Blackcoat’s Daughter (brilliant, if somewhat confusing).

In Longlegs, we meet FBI agent Lee Harker, seemingly timid, possibly psychic, the latter a plot point that the movie mystifyingly seems to drop. Harker is investigating a supposedly Manson-like killer who somehow persuades a father to murder his family and, without being present, leaves a cryptogram for the police to find. Moreover, each family has a daughter born on the 14^th of the month, the killings taking place shortly before or after that daughter’s birthday. This all, of course, has an occult meaning.

Oh, there are strange dolls with orbs in their heads, too.

The performances are first rate. Malika Monroe, who in real life exudes movie star glamour, is gaunt, tired-looking, mousy. Lee’s mother Ruth is played by Alicia Witt as spacey, strange, and secretive. But Nicolas Cage’s performance anchors the movie…maybe anchors isn’t the right word. It does the opposite—casts it adrift from the “thriller” category and sends it straight into deranged, disorienting horror. Even for Cage, this is a weird one. I have no adjectives for it. I almost wish he had appeared uncredited. I don’t think I would have recognized him. I think many wouldn’t have.

Despite the familiar beats that understandably draw comparisons to Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs strides straight into the dark realms of the Satanic and the supernatural. The assured direction, atmospheric cinematography, and sound design (some super-weird choices there) work in concert with Cage (who also produces) to provide a deeply disturbing movie experience. It’s hypnotic. It’s odd. It is, at times, as utterly terrifying as modern horror gets.

 

An Intimate Portrait of Grotesque Innocence

 
Sophie White – Where I End

Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu

Sophie White’s latest novel, Where I End, is probably going to be the most uncomfortable read you’ll pick up this year. Originally published in 2022 by Tramp Press, this year the novel finds a new home in Erewhon Books, an imprint of Kensington Books, which will help spread the attention, accolades, and hype that this Shirley Jackson Award-winning novel deserves.

Where I End is the narrative of a young woman living on an Irish coastal island, and the morosely isolated day to day life that she spends caring for her bedridden mother…whose unknown condition has left her a paralyzed, gaunt, haggard shell that does little more than utter creaking groans, eyes flicking back and forth. The narrator, who is eventually identified as Aoileann (“EEL-un”), along with her Móraí (Gaelic for “grandmother”) toil away at bathing, feeding, changing, and constantly repositioning the mother on her bed using home-made pulley systems and leather straps. It is the mother’s terribly vegitative state—coupled with the constant, angst-ridden care routines for her—that leaves her referred to throughout the book as “the bed-thing.” Elsewhere, the inbred inhabitants of the island are cruelly indifferent—and often just plain cruel—to Aoileann, and her father is away most of the time, leaving his mother and daughter to take care of what’s left of his unwell wife. So it is that Aoileann’s world becomes very quickly flipped over when she meets an artist from the mainland named Rachel and her six-month-old baby, who’s come to the island to help set up a museum being opened…and nothing will ever be the same for Aoileann.

You’d wish Aoileann was an unreliable narrator, because the story that she carries the reader through is so grim and uncomfortable that you’ll find yourself groaning and shifting around in your seat. There’s hardly anything in the way of violence or gore, which is why it doesn’t quite fit the bill of “body horror,” as some reviews and blurbs describe it. Aoileann’s narrative is less horrifying than it is unflinching, presented in such a matter of fact and intimate delivery that brings the grotesquerie even more tangibly, uncomfortably into your senses.

Mystery and disquiet can be found throughout this tale, such as how mother somehow frees herself from her bed at night, only to be discovered in her paralyzed state in different rooms or even outside, and the mysterious symbols scratched into the wooden floors, seemingly by her. But there’s also an overpowering sense of wonder, and of beauty, to the narrative, as Aoileann’s childlike naïveté and candor captures moments of gruesomeness and bliss within the same scope. Sophie White is an artist of the written word, and readers are putty in her hands.

In some ways, Where I End reads like a spin on Shirley Jackson’s seminal 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, if written with the hallucinatory stylings of Joyce Carol Oates and Patrick McGrath. Worth noting, too, is how the book shares some similarities to Naben Ruthnum’s depressing and disturbing novella Helpmeet, which was released the same year, and which makes a darksome companion piece.

By turns tragic, grim, mysterious, and beautiful, Where I End is a tale that you’ll never forget—even though at times the things that Aoileann does and thinks will make you wish you could.

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Salem’s Lot

Writer/Director – Gary Dauberman

This straight-to-Max movie is the third adaptation of the masterful Stephen King novel that tells the story of a writer returning to his hometown to find it on the verge of being overrun with vampires. The first adaptation, for television, by Tobe Hooper, is a masterpiece of atmosphere, with great performances, memorable set pieces, and material shockingly adult-themed, for its time.

The second adaptation remains unseen by me.

I’ve seen the 2024 version referred to as the Cliff’s Notes version. That might be slightly unfair; any adaptation restricted to under two hours has to condense the story—but in this case it’s apt. The cuts are just egregious. It’s not simply plot and suspense that’s cut out or changed, the characters are all bloodless ciphers. Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), the writer, is supposed to exude warmth, to be a kind of father figure for Mark Petrie, the horror-obsessed boy with whom he tackles the infestation. Instead, the actor is bland and unremarkable, as is his vacuously agreeable love interest, Susan Norton.

The vampires have CGI-red eye, Kurt Barlow, the main vampire, lacks the ghoulish effects of the Hooper version, and though I thought the character was a CGI creation, he was actually played by actor Alexander Ward. His human helper, Straker, is another character so expertly (and creepily) essayed by James Mason in the Hooper version, that the character here feels like an afterthought.

Also an afterthought in the movie is the Marsten House, centrally featured as a locus of evil in the book, here just another set. This iteration of Salem’s Lot is just a collection of missed opportunities. There’s not enough of the sense of a small town deteriorating—it’s all compressed; everything happens too fast. The only spark of invention is the location of the vampiric townsfolk, changed from the book and from earlier adaptations, and that’s a little too little, a little too late.

A lyric I heard somewhere leaps to mind: “Do it right or don’t do it at all.”

This shouldn’t have been done at all.