Snow by Ronald Malfi

It’s always great to come across a new monster, one that makes you afraid of the familiar. Such as the dark or museums or black lagoons. In Malfi’s Snow, the monsters take that most beautiful of sights—lightly falling snow—and turns it into a nightmare.

Looking at the cover and reading the description, you might think it’s a book about creatures who take advantage of heavy snowfalls like blizzards and storms to stalk their prey. But you’d be wrong (it’s okay, it happens to me a lot). In Snow, the monsters are just that: the snow. And it doesn’t matter if it’s stormy snow or winter wonderland snow, they’re going to cut you open and climb inside, and walk you around like Krang.

Unfortunately, the story Malfi tells is all too familiar: stranded traveler in a strange town holes up with an unlikely gang of survivors and systematically gets them all killed. That’s right, look at that trope: Our heroes inevitably get a whole lot of people killed in their attempts at escape or rally support. But I digress.

With Snow, we see our hero, Todd Curry, trying desperately to get a flight out of O’Hare to visit his son and ex-wife for Christmas. Todd has a checkered past, with his gambling a driving force for his wife to leave him and take his son. But, he’s changed now and he’s ready to make amends. He’s so desperate, in fact, to see his son that he decides to drive from Chicago to Des Moines in a snow storm. At night. With strangers.

Without giving the entire plot away, I will say that he meets up with foes both human and not, and does his best to survive. He does a lot to keep other people safe, but in the end, he also gets a few people killed (not directly, but indirectly—like those kids that were doing just fine by themselves in a church until they rescued him and his female cohort).

Malfi is a great popular fiction writer. He doesn’t introduce any new ideas or fresh characters, but he takes what he knows and weaves a great little story. It’s a quick, read, too. Some of that has to do with page count, but I really feel it was Malfi’s writing. He drops us smack dab in the middle of the action in an arguably pointless prologue (we get the backstory again later), before he pulls back to introduce a few characters, and then drops us back in and never lets up. There is no lull time in this book. It’s the literary equivalent to a Michael Bay movie. (Okay, I just re-read that last sentence, and I think it’s a little too much.)

Let’s talk about gore. There’s a lot of it in here. It’s been awhile since I’ve read an overtly gory book. I haven’t been avoiding them, but I’ve gravitated to more thriller than horror lately. But here’s the deal: Malfi’s gore is there for a reason—to a point. Each blood splatter and length of intestine is there to paint a picture. Except when it comes to the description of the snow creatures entering the body. He describes it in detail. Every. Time. It got redundant and probably added about 10 pages to the book that didn’t need to be there.

Snow is very similar to The Mist. I mean, strange weather phenomenon leads to unseen horrors and anybody caught outside was almost certainly going to be turned inside out or dismembered. I’ll give Malfi this, though: his ending is far less ambiguous than King’s novella (and far less what-the-fuck?-y than the movie).

I didn’t get a chance to read this book in the snow, and perhaps that would have added to its -ahem- chill factor, but it was a solid novel with decent characters (even if they felt forced from time to time, as with Shawna’s back story). Malfi handles the tension well, but there were a few instances where he pulled too tightly and it eventually broke. Unfortunately, one of those times is in the climax with a character who we thought was dead and stopped caring about (hey, sometimes you gotta move on), makes an appearance just in time.

Snow used a simple plot and recycled characters and gave us a solid read. That proves to me that story-telling is more important than plot. I’ve read this story a hundred times under different names by different writers, but I still saw this one through. Why? Because of the story-telling.

The Thing, directed by John Carpenter

No, not this The Thing

The Thing (1982)

Directed by John Carpenter

Starring Kurt Russell

The Thing. What can I say, except I really wanted to love this film. I really wanted to like this film. I really wanted to appreciate this film.

One out of three ain’t bad, I guess. I didn’t love or like the film, but I can appreciate it.

I appreciated the premise and the special effects, but the storytelling and plot didn’t work for me. From the too-long, plot hole-filled opening sequence to the too-short, plot-hole filled finale, I spent more time being mad at the movie for existing and trying my damnedest to stay awake during the expansive lulls in the story.

Let’s talk about plot holes. The movie opens with a helicopter-borne dog hunt. That’s fine, I suppose. I know I’ll learn why this guy’s shooting at a dog soon enough. But it’s about a ten-minute sequence and when they finally land the hunter turns out to be Benny Hill and blows up his own helicopter. Then he points a gun at a group of people, doesn’t say a word, and gets shot in the head. I’m pretty sure if I were chasing an alien dog, I’d be screaming something like, “Hey, that’s an alien dog! Stop him!”

This The Thing

So, that set the tone, and I tried so hard to get past that. But I hate movies dealing with paranoia. Especially when that paranoia is about who’s the secret alien. It almost always turns into two hours of, “Where were you?” and “How do I know you’re not the alien?” or “I’ve developed a test that will definitively identify the monster, though I have no way to test my hypothesis or—ahhhhhhhh! I’m dead now.”

Where was I? Oh, plot holes. There was a lot of fire, but nothing burned down. Not sure if we could classify that as a plot hole, but it was certainly annoying. Especially with all that dynamite laying around.

And there was plenty of other stuff. It was a lot of watching Kurt Russell sulking interspersed with gross-out special effects.

Okay, let’s talk about the special effects, because those were the high point of the movie. They were fantastic, if sometimes cheesy, and were executed seamlessly with the action. There was a period in the late eighties and nineties where the special effects were laid over the film in post-production, and they never came off right. The Thing was laden with practical effects and animatronics that gave the movie a realistic feel. Sometimes it was cartoonish, like when we watch a belly bite the arms off a doctor while he’s using defibrillators, but for the most part they were extremely well executed.

The alien itself is the source of the biggest plot hole for me. It’s a creature that kills and mimics. It seems to be able to take on its knowledge, which leads me to believe it’s not only sentient but also intelligent. So why, oh why, is this creature whose survival depends on his stealthy take-over of all the humans continuously expose itself? The biggest point of contention for me was when it was in dog form. It was placed in a kennel with the other dogs, and instead of biding its time until it could be alone with a human, it

immediately attacks all the dogs and exposes itself.

It does that several times throughout the movie, and it got annoying quick.

From a story standpoint, I don’t feel there was any great character arc from our survivors. They didn’t grow, but instead finally just settled down at the end.

This was my disjointed review of the film, because the film itself is disjointed. John Carpenter didn’t do a bad job, but the premise could have resulted in a much stronger film.

An American Werewolf in London, directed by John Landis

Directed by John Landis

Starring David Naughton and Jenny Agutter

 An American Werewolf in London is one of those films that proves that not only can comedy co-exist with horror, it’s nearly required. They really are two sides of the same coin, and without one to contrast with the other, the piece is going to fall flat. We see an example of that in Night of the Living Dead, which is as humorless as the British monarchy.

Werewolf gives us a good mix of horror along with the comedy that director John Landis is known for. It isn’t necessarily a fresh take on the story, but Landis and company do such a great job in the story-telling that it is now one of my favorite werewolf movies. What’s great about it is that it doesn’t rely on one element over the other. It is both funny and frightening in equal measure.

A lot of the humor rides on the delivery of the movies three stars: David Naughon, Jenny Agutter and Griffin Dunne. Agutter doesn’t necessarily deliver funny lines, but her role as the straight man, er, woman for Naughton’s David character goes a long way.

I think the real star of the movie is Jim Baker’s special effects. The practical effects used in David’s wolf transformations could still seem fresh by today’s standards with slightly more creative cinematography and post production. His graduated rotting effects for Dunne’s Jack character aren’t just great, but great fun.  I will not, however, that part of the fun is seeing how quickly he rots. Three weeks after the attack and the wounds look fresh. Over the next two-three days he rots further. I don’t think it’s necessarily a goof, so much as a Landis wanting to get gross in an adult theater.

My biggest qualm with the entire movie is the final scene. We went on this great journey with David and Nurse Price (Agutter), but we get no payoff. There’s no happily ever after or anything that could lead us to believe the story may continue in another way. There isn’t even a long stand-off to allow the tension to build.

But it’s the scenes leading up to the finale that make this film above par. Sure, we get some internal shots of an adult theater, in which nobody bats an eye when David starts groaning and grunting as he transforms. We know why, wink!

Maybe because it was brought to us by the same person who brought us Animal House, but I find it hard to believe that a nurse, albeit a British nurse, would bring home a patient. Especially one who acted as odd as David. He gave her no reason to trust him, and she seemed way too willing to accept his crazy rantings. But that’s okay, because it’s a movie. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just entertaining.

And I was greatly entertained by the film, having watched it at 30,000 feet while on a flight from Fargo, ND. I had a choice between that or watching another Marvel movie, and I’m glad I went with An American Werewolf in London. Not just because I got some homework done, but because it is a genuinely good film with good dialogue and great special effects.

Alien, directed by Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) -- The second best thing to happen that year.

In 1979, something amazing happened. It was unprecedented and was a gift to the entire world. People have applauded the stroke of creative genius that was given the planet that year, and it has only gotten better with age. I’m talking about, of course, me.

Oh, wait, something else happened in 1979 besides my birth?

Okay, we’ll talk about Ridley Scott’s seminal hit Alien. It was The Terminator before The Terminator, in that the sequel was better was the original, but was good enough to spawn one.

The movie provides some groundbreaking special effects, and cinematography and story-telling on par with Kubrick, but in a sweaty, face-hugging, chest-bursting kind of way. The story was good, the acting was well executed, and the script was admirable. But what made this film the classic it is, is the monster.

 Aliens to that point were, for the most part, just like us, bipedal and intelligent. Alien upped the ante by showing us an alien that was driven by instinct with all a host of evolutionary traits that make it more menacing than any animal on Earth.

The titular character is actually four different “monsters” throughout the film. We first see it as a large egg. At this point of the film, we are already dealing with unknowns: An mysterious distress signal, a strange world, a monstrous ship. When we come across the eggs they represent a code without a cypher: Where did they come from? What is in them? We know they’re dangerous because the look scary. We know something horrible is going to happen. We just don’t know what.

And then it happens. We see our second iteration of the monster when it bursts from the egg and attaches itself to one of our heroes’ face. Now it’s a little scarier, not because we can see the monster, but because we don’t know what it’s doing. The attack was fast, there was no tension. The tension is in learning about the creature, and waiting to see what it does. In their attempts to remove it, they learn they know even less about it than they thought. It bleeds acid, a fantastic evolutionary defense mechanism. So they wait to see what happens. Now we’re scared because this creature seems so primitive, yet so advanced. And it’s feeding off one of our characters.

Then it lets go. Whew!

But we’re smart and that know it would be a really short movie having the alien just let go and die right there. Something else must be amiss.

So we wait to see what that is, the already heightened tension only gaining more ground. Just when we see the crew begin to relax (our former patient one of them) and have a nice meal, part three of the alien appears.

This time it claims its victim, bursting through the Kane’s chest (we all know the scene, and probably enjoyed the parodied version of it in Space Balls), and disappearing into the bowels of the ship.

And now the genius of the monster’s anatomy and physiology begins to make sense. It’s like a biblical version of Russian nesting dolls. Eggs beget face-huggers beget chest-bursters beget the Alien. So complicated it’s simple.

So now we have the Alien (with a capital A) running around the ship and a group of miners with heavy artillery that they can’t use. Why? Because shooting, cutting or otherwise knicking the Alien will result in its corrosive acid blood eating through the hull and killing them all. So the only recourse is to attempt some space-aged Wile E. Coyote-type traps as they get picked off one by one.

By now we see another trait the Alien has: a rigid tongue that has its own mouth. I’m not sure what the evolutionary value to that is (the better to taste and eat you with, I presume), but it is a creative twist. Because by this time we’ve seen the Alien in all its glory, and not much is left to the imagination. By now, the tension is less about what the threat is, and more about how to deal with it. But I think that’s what separates this movie from its superior sequel: It’s a horror movie, whereas Aliens is a science-fiction flick.

There’s a pretty cool twist that I won’t give away, but it’s a chance for Scott to reimagine what the insides of an android would look like.

This movie provides us with a great example of how to create a new and relevant monster. Forty years on, and this creature holds a spot among the pantheon of greats because it’s creative. More importantly, it’s terrifying because it’s a monster that makes sense for its environment.

Night of the Living Dead, Directed by George A. Romero

The first five minutes of the film features the famous line, “They’re coming to get your, Barbra!”

They didn’t come fast enough.

I really, really wanted to like the movie. I took deep breaths and told myself that even though the movie is nearly 50 years old, it’s a classic for a reason. Even if it’s because it’s so bad it’s good. I also told myself not be a snob about it being in black and white. Plenty of great films are in black and white. Miracle on 34^th Street. Clerks. The first fifteen minutes of The Wizard of Oz. B movies rarely take advantage of the latest in film-making technology, and the same holds true in Romero’s Living Dead.

I know I’m going against the grain, but there are multiple reasons it took me nearly a week to get through, in 15 minute increments.

1.)    Awful acting. The best actor in the movie died in the first ten minutes. He issued his warning (albeit, it was in regards to something altogether different) and then got into the lamest fight ever with a zombie, er, ghoul. We are then subjected to a litany of bad actors who yell for no reason.

2.)    Bad script. The concept was good. No, great. You take Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and swap out vampires with zombies, er, ghouls and you get Night of the Living Dead. Romero admitted it was a direct rip-off of the book in an interview with Cinemablend in 2008. The dialogue, on the other hand, was just terrible. From Ben’s over-the-top berating of everybody in his immediate area (and he’s the hero?), to Barbra’s catatonic presence throughout. And things escalate quickly. A disagreement over where to hole up quickly devolves into a gun grab. There’s no opportunity to develop the characters. None. There are no arcs, no moments of redemption. No heroics. We literally sit down and just watch people die for 95 minutes.

3.)    Abhorrent cinematography. I’ve seen B movies that understand its budgetary limitations and attempts to compensate with creative camera angles or increased thematics. That doesn’t happen here. The filmmakers do little more than show up with a camera. Yes, there are a couple of attempts to get “artistic,” but they feel forced. They were using B&W film, yes, but instead of using it for effective contrast like what we see in Psycho, we just get a swirling mass of grey, dark grey, and black.

4.)    Where are the scares? I didn’t feel any build-up. There was one attempt at a jump scare. We are given gore for gore’s sake, and I guess that was what passed as scary in the late 60s. No, that’s not the case. Rosemary’s Baby came out the same year and had all the elements Living Dead lacked.

5.)    “They’re coming to get you, Ben.” The last five minutes of the movie is a search party under no threat as it systematically dispatches remaining zombies, er, ghouls. One might think, “well that’s just fine!” Well it wasn’t fine. Ask Ben.

It was just such an abrupt end. It didn’t leave anything to the imagination of the viewer. It didn’t hint at a world-ending apocalypse. It was really just a single night of living dead.

So what would I have done differently? I think I would have made the Barbra character stronger. Even for the era this was made she was too weak. It was the sixties! Women’s lib and such! And the best we could get from Barbra was a half-hearted attempt to hold one end of a board in place for Ben as he nailed it over it a door.

I would have beefed up the dialogue a bit, too. Over the course of the entire movie there were really only two dialogues going on, and one was a monologue due to Barb’s silence. The other was whether to go to the basement or stay upstairs. Sure, there were moments that took us away from those two conversations, but the film always went back to them.

Overall, I didn’t find this movie as enjoyable as I should have. It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with me as a horror writer. Were my expectations too high? Or do I just not know a good film when I see it?

World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z was one of those break-out hits like The Hunger Games, The Martian, and The Da Vinci Code. But what sets this book apart from those three (other than not starting with the article “The”) is that it is not follow the traditional narrative we see in most books. There isn’t a beginning, middle and end in the sense that we’re all used to when picking up a book.

Rather, it is made up of an end with a prologue.  

I read the first few chapters of the book, like I do with all books. I pick it up, I turn the pages, I follow the story.

I hated it.

I was strapped in and braced for a rip-roaring ride through the zombie apocalypse. I saw the movie, and though I knew it wasn’t exactly faithful to the book, I was hoping for so much more. Where was the instant classic that so many people love? In fact, after this book, I hated the movie more because it could have been so much more. It could have been as great as the book I read.

Wait, what? How could I simultaneously hate it and love? Easy.

I hated reading it, but loved listening to the audio book.

I have never listened to an audio book for more than a chapter or two. I hate being read to. I hate listening to books as much as I hate reading movies. Call it an aversion to media-based synesthesia.

This past week a made a marathon move across the country. Some days I was driving fourteen hours or more. Of course, that amount of time on the road left little extra for curling up with a book. I decided that a book called World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War would best be told, well, orally.

And it was. What was at first a pile of rejected journalist’s notes became a cohesive story that could have been the isolated audio track of a History Channel documentary. The audio book employed some pretty well-known names in the entertainment industry, and it was fun hearing them take on the roles of survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

I listened to the entire book in one shot, after reading only the first section (Warnings) a few weeks prior. I found it far more engaging than what was on the radio in Mississippi on a Sunday (although, there were plenty of horror stories there). I found it more engaging that my travel mix. I found it so engaging, that I drove longer than I should have so I wouldn’t have to wait until the next day to listen to it some more.  I listened to it until I made it to my destination and then I sat in my car and listened to the final Goodbyes.

It was riveting as an audio book.

Brooks does a fantastic job weaving the science, horror and political machinations of a zombie apocalypse into a cohesive novel. Telling the story in any of those three formats would be good, but he goes or great and gets as close as possible with the format he chose.

Because as great as the book is in its format as an audio book, I think I would have enjoyed it more in a more traditional format if I was reading it.

I would almost venture to say Brooks took the easy way out by skirting the essential elements of a good fiction novel and instead relying nearly solely on dialogue. He gives brief descriptions in that dialogue, but for the most part it’s just folks talking. He organizes the “interviews” in a beginning, middle, and end, but for the most parts it’s just folks talking.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant technique and there are some haunting passages. My favorites were Air Force Colonel Christina Eliopolis and Todd Wainio. Not sure if it’s my military background or that they were just the most action-packed, but I really found myself drawn to these characters. Eliopolis had a somewhat cliché story, but it was still haunting—when acted out in audio book. I went back and re-read that section and found it less satisfying in print.

Brooks is the son of comedian Mel Brooks and wrote for a while on SNL. He’s found himself a niche in the zombie genre with a couple of hits, including WWZ and The Zombie Survival Guide. I’m glad I discovered the virtues of the audio book, because I don’t think I would have liked this as much as I did if I’d read it in its entirety.