I saw a movie on Thursday, and it made me crazy. The movie was Julia Ducournau’s Raw. It’s about a young veterinary student who becomes a cannibal. It’s the best new film I’ve seen twenty years. I’m going to skip the traditional accolades here. There are too many writers who are far better at describing why the film is great than I would be. And reviewing is not what I do on this blog. I will sometimes point you toward things I like, but mostly it’s a bizarre show and tell with a bit of futurism. So I will instead describe my reaction to Raw, and that will serve as my … [Read more...]
Five Ways to Give Your House That Year-Round Halloween Vibe
There is a permanent roost of vultures in my neighborhood. They gather in the front yard of a house about a half-mile from my home; I pass them often. I can always count on seeing at least five of those hulking dark bodies—often more—huddled together on the lawn. They've been there for years. It’s the only place I’ve seen vultures gather without the presence of a dead body. Want to know what a group of vultures huddled around a meal is called? A “wake.” Yep. The International Committee for Giving Creepy Names to Groups of Birds had a very successful run back in the day. (See also: an … [Read more...]
Horror Films Don’t Scare Me: My Great Eight of the Last Ten Years
In my last post, I listed the films and stories that creeped me out as a kid. The idea was to follow it with a list of what scares me as an adult and look at how things have changed. If that sounds like a bad college paper, don’t worry—I’d never put that much effort into it. For the childhood list, body horror was a common theme. So what scares me as an adult? Global coffee shortages, ankle sprains, and car trouble. But let’s keep it to movies… Here’s the problem: horror movies don’t scare me. A few can inspire a brief sense of unease, but that’s usually as far as it gets. I still … [Read more...]
What’s Scary to a Kid? A Personal Accounting
To keep with the spirit of Halloween, I decided to explore the way in which my film fears have changed between childhood and adulthood. To measure the change, I needed a baseline, and that starts with childhood. I’ll tackle my adult picks in another post. The following list won’t be complete, but it’s what I came up with after sitting in thinker-pose for an hour. These are the scares from films, stories, and scenes that cut me deep. My ultimate goal is to find a common theme. As a writer, I’m hard-wired to try for a specific conclusion—even in a blog post. Let’s see how I do. The … [Read more...]
Halloween: Give Me Ambiance, You Gorgeous Dead
Halloween night is great, but it’s the weeks leading up that I appreciate the most. People invest in the ambiance. I love the ambiance. The streets are full of it right now. Yards and storefronts are thick with the dead and dead-adjacent. In just a five-minute walk through my neighborhood, I can see more ghosts, creatures, mists, bats, spiders, and sinister purple lights than in all the other months of the year combined. That’s saying a lot, because I’m always looking for these things no matter the time of year. Businesses do strange things they couldn’t normally get away with. I’m … [Read more...]