Click here to buy,

Crowfield by Dani Brown

Reviewed by Anthony Servante

Author: Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as “56 Seconds”, “Becoming” and the hugely popular “Ketamine Addicted Pandas”. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more.

Book Description: "At the end of the motorway, underneath the orange sodium light glow sits Crowfield. Parts of the council estate were claimed by the marsh before the first residents moved in.
Creatures lurk in the shadows. Their mummified toes poke out of their leather boots. They spread frost with their breath and bring death to Crowfield’s residents, young and old.

They don’t bring death to Spencer. They bring something worse. Eternity on the estate wrapped up in a golden brown spell cast from the end of a needle. Spencer needs to reach the only phone on Crowfield that works. He can phone his father and convince his father to rescue him.

Nigel takes the call, but Spencer is still just a baby. He hasn’t told anyone about Spencer. He hasn’t told anyone of that night he spent with Joyce in the bowels of Crowfield. Only her cat knows he was there.

A white cat stalks the rats and crows of the estate, watched by the scarecrow on the green. The scarecrow watches the ferns and heathers spread and the orange orb lights flicker on over the marsh.

Beneath each orange orb is another creature waiting to climb out and help Joyce make another scarecrow to hang on the green."

Review: In Crowfield, Dani Brown has written a living, breathing nightmare that pulls the reader in and from which the reader will not want to wake. By choice. Often in my dreams, even the bad ones, I visit horrible places that I refuse to leave for as long as sleep will allow. From Dani's story (if that is what this surreal horror can be called), we enter a place inhabited by scarecrows, mutant roaches, shadow creatures, and all manner of unseen terrors. But it's such a memerizing world, we are easily captivated while simultaneously be repulsed. 

Using beautiful prose to convey gruesome horrors, Dani creates a haunting and visceral tale that is more than just a story. It is an experience that is full of color, sound, and smell, used to full effect by the talented writing style Dani utilizes; she creates a depraved landscape where urban decay becomes alive with monstrous creatures both big and small, neon and dark, sulphorus and chorine, and alluring but dangerous. The language makes Crowfield work and rewards the reader with a very frightening but enchanting horrorscape. 

As an aside, I must point out my favorite sequence in the book: the vloggers visit to Crowfield. What I liked was the inversion of the narrative: Crowfield narrates the arrival of the vloggers, describes their predicament, and initiates their ouster. The vloggers merely respond. And, yes, there are many sequences such as this. 

Whether you read the book in one sitting, or savor it over a week (as I did), you will enjoy Crowfield by Dani Brown. Either way, the experience will stay with you like, well, a lovely nightmare. 

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Bring Her Back

Writer/Director: Danny and Michael Philippou

I saw on social media a horror writer complaining about a theme they felt was overused in the genre: trying to resurrect a loved one who has died. Good luck getting rid of that one. It’s as intrinsic to the genre as the werewolf and the vampire. As long as death exists—and it shows no signs of going away, no matter the advances in medicine—we will explore the ways people will try to reverse it, and consider what will go terribly wrong when they make the attempt.

17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his half-blind sister Piper (Sora Wong) lose their father and are forced to cohabitate with a step-parent. Andy could become Piper’s legal guardian when he turns 18 in three months, but a trouble past puts that strongly desired arrangement at risk. Laura (Sally Hawkins, brilliant in a difficult role), said guardian, is a former counselor who’s fostering another child—a mute boy named Oli, who is somehow frail and menacing at the same time. Laura had a daughter who died by drowning. She immediately works to try to sabotage Andy.

The movie starts off boldly, showing a videotaped occult ritual that is squalid and violent. How that tape connects to the events of the movie unfolds darkly and with wince-worthy scenes that make the viewer turn away from the screen. We see more of the ritual we witnessed at the start of the movie. When Oli’s true identity is revealed, the situation deteriorates.

Bring Her Back is, as they say, not for the faint of heart. There’s regurgitation, self-mutilation, the consumption of corpses, and a . I tend to look unfavorably upon movies where the horror is a metaphor for grief. This isn’t quite that—grief is the engine, but the horrors are stark and unyielding, effectively offset by some moments of humor, though less so than the other excellent horror feature of 2025, Zach Creggers’ A+ movie Weapons. Bring Her Back is a few steps up from the pair’s previous feature Talk to Me. It’s one of the best horror movies in recent times, managing to be intelligent, emotionally intelligent, and balls-out bonkers violent. I look forward to the Phillippous’ next (three-word-title?) outing. If their trajectory is like that of Creggers, they are moviemakers to watch (from between your fingers).

 

"Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison" by William Cook

Reviewed by Anthony Servante

To appreciate “Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison” by William Cook, the reader need not be a fan or detractor of The Doors’ singer/lyricist Jim Morrison. One merely need to appreciate good poetry. But that is the question: What is “good poetry”? For an answer, we look to the poetry itself. William Cook addresses this concern immediately by revealing to us his intentions: “In order to validate my claim that [Morrison] is a significant poet worthy of canonical consideration, the focus of this critique will be on Morrison’s own words and poetry.” This is important for the readers to know up front so that we do not confuse Cook’s emotional connections to the music of The Doors or to the turbulent history of the poet himself. The work will speak for itself, and it is the job of the critic to teach us to listen to the voice of the poetry by eliminating all manner of white noise that surrounds the work, be it the poet’s controversial life or the turbulent times the poetry was written in.

The general rule in literary criticism is to critique the work, not the person, place, or time, for criticism is cold analysis, not praise or rebuke. It deconstructs the work and finds strengths and weaknesses. What makes the literature work on its own terms? William Cook is to be commended for applying this rule to his critique of the work of The Doors singer/lyricist Jim Morrison in “Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison. In an age where creative work from books to movies is attacked or worshiped by writers who confuse admiration and disapproval for critical analysis, it is good to see that William Cook elevates the traditional role of critic up alongside those of artist and author.

Whether Cook is writing about serial killers, the literature of horror, or the poetry of a generation, we can always trust him to clear away the clutter of emotional bias and offer us a lucid analysis that gives the reader a better understanding of the subject matter. Well done, William. Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison is another worthy example of your critical skills.