The Yattering and Jack by Clive Barker

There are days I feel exactly like Jack Polo, the protagonist of this piece. We’ve all had those days where nothing goes right: the key doesn’t work, the blinds won’t close properly, the cat explodes all over the living room. After reading Clive Barker’s short story, I can now imagine the worse every time I lock myself out of a hotel room.  But is it really the worse, or did he give me the ability to see things are sometimes just out of my control?

The story is about a minor demon called Yattering who is sent to harass the mild-mannered son of a woman who reneged on a contract with Beelzebub. That contract, for whatever reason, was to result in the woman’s soul being turned over to Hell. Instead, she confessed her sins at death and ascended to Heaven. Jack is to be payment for this broken contract. To get his soul, the minor demon must cause him to go crazy.

I’m now convinced my ex-wife is a Yattering.

But Jack is privy to the plan and never allows himself to lose his temper or allow his thoughts to settle too long on the fact he’s being pursued. In fact, he has a plan to win the day.

Barker is known for his dark works of fiction, including The Hellbound Heart mentioned in an earlier blog post, as well as Imajica and The Great and Secret Show. But The Yattering and Jack is one of his rare jaunts into lighter, more comedic fare.

Where the book stumbles the most is the almost blasé way in which Barker reveals that Jack is in on the secret. The first third of the story is told from the POV of the demon, and so much times passes that I stop suspecting I might get it from Polo’s point of view. Then suddenly I get insight into Polo in an abrupt, head-hopping transitional paragraph. I say abrupt because Barker’s style is so fluid that anything can happen at any moment, and the reader needs to be prepared. Reading Barker is an act of conscientious reading, in which the text should be studied. He is not a lazy Saturday evening read.

There’s nothing spectacular about this story, though it was featured as an episode of Tales from the Darkside. Because we spend so much time with the Yattering at the beginning, it’s hard to see any kind of character arc from our protagonist. We have to assume that he’s been playing the game a long time, and he finally gets a chance at a final showdown. The biggest arc is for the antagonist, who, in a fit of rage, goes a little mad and makes a couple of clumsy mistakes the way he’d hoped Jack would.

The ending was only mildly satisfying, and leaves open the possibility that perhaps Jack didn’t win. Looking back, the reader may wonder if all the events had been foreseen by the Yattering’s masters and they got exactly what they wanted. It’s a classic case of short-story comeuppance that can be satisfying and infuriating in equal measure.

Clive Barker was a force in the 80s, and has given us plenty of classics. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is just an adaptation of some folktale or fairy tale he’d heard as a kid.

Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King

Got your nose!

Stephen King likes to write. That’s about as obvious a statement one can make when referring to a man who has written more than 50 novels since the 1970s.

But that’s not what I’m really talking about. I mean, Stephen King likes to write. This is why he’s given us massive books like The Stand, It, and Under the Dome. When Stephen King begins a book, it has to feel like climbing Everest to him. Most writers are satisfied cresting the 300-page limit, but King consistently produces novels more than 500 pages long. He likes to write stories, page count be damned. But between all those novels, there are dozens of novellas and countless short stories.

Cycle of the Werewolf is a strange amalgam of both novel-writing stamina and his short story acumen. On the surface, it looks almost like a slick children’s book: big print, glossy pages… lots of pictures. But it’s the content that proves it’s pure King. He weaves a single story across several (12) short stories to bring the reader to a classic conclusion to a classic monster story.

Basically, the book is a “year in the life of” tale of a small town werewolf, as told from the point of view of its victims. We don’t learn who the werewolf is until late in the book, but it’s really less about who the wolf is and more about a small town coping with a monster in their midst. Of course, the town is divided into two camps on what to believe. There’s your average folks who believe it’s an animal or some crazy person, and then there are the town’s fringe citizens who know from the start what they’re dealing with.

It’s a classic werewolf story with classic characters and a classic end. There are even silver bullets. If you haven’t read this book, you may have seen the movie based on it, Silver Bullet. The movie starred ’80s favorite Cory Haim as the book’s protagonist, Marty Coslaw.

Yes, even though it’s twelve short stories, there’s still a protagonist. Here’s where I’ll give King credit: Even though it’s a classic story, the hero is not a classical one. Marty Coslaw is only ten years old and wheelchair-bound. After more than 40 years in the business, many of King’s books have a child or disabled person (or, in this case and a few others), a disabled child as the story’s protagonist. This isn’t King exploiting special needs, it’s King honoring them and treating them like everybody else.

Look, Cycle of the Werewolf is an old story with old characters, but it’s still engaging. How does he do that? It’s an amazing talent, and I would love to challenge him to write a book about paint drying, because I know he could do it and it would be horrifying.

The story, for reeking of so much sameness as other takes on the tale, was well done. Even with its non-traditional format, there was a cohesive narrative that worked and a satisfying character arc for our protagonist. King admits the lunar cycle was jimmied to fit the narrative, and he doesn’t apologize for it. It’s a minor thing, and really doesn’t detract from the story.

So what’s the deeper meaning behind this book? What is King trying to saaaay? I dunno. Seems like he just had some fun writing a neat little homage to the classics. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Rawhead Rex by Clive Barker

From the terrifying mind behind The Hellbound Heart (you might know it by its movie title, Hellraiser) comes one of his short story masterpieces…Rawhide Rex.

But is it a masterpiece?

For two pages I read, enthralled by Barker’s easy-to-read, yet substantially artistic prose. I felt I was reading one of the best short stories I’ve ever laid eyes upon. It was amazing, and for a brief ten minutes I felt as if the short story rapture was upon me. Oh, glorious day!

Then Rawhide Rex himself appeared.

I’ll break this blog post into two parts: the good and the bad. In lesser hands, there would be ugly, but Barker is a master of the macabre on par with the greats. Hell, he is one of the greats. He can get away with breaking the rules because he knows what the rules are and doesn’t give a fuck.

The good: This short is full of fantastic, easy to follow prose. There’s nary a place where I stumbled over the text, even though he writes in a literary style. It’s a watered-down literary style that invites the common reader in and rewards them with popular fiction story-telling with smarty-guy words and phrasing. He doesn’t make the reader feel silly about reading about a monster eating a child.

His messages and meanings float to the surface easily enough, and at the hands of an inferior writer would almost be spoon feeding. Religion, parenthood, greed, hubris… they all play prominent roles in this story. But, oddly enough, so does false idolization, loneliness, selflessness and modesty. I was in awe of the way Barker juggled all these themes while telling the story of a centuries-old child-eating beast. Without giving a blow-by-blow synopsis of the story, imagine the Lorax as nine-foot tall, immortal, murderous animal with a hatred toward man but a love of sweet, sweet baby meat… who’s into watersports (not jet ski watersports, the other kind).

The bad: So. Much. Head hopping. As students of popular fiction, we’re told this is bad. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but generally it’s believed it’s difficult for the reader to follow who’s thinking what. Barker takes us from the terror of being chased to the thrill of the hunt in a single sentence. If I had read this without being enrolled in a writing popular fiction program, I may not have even noticed. But I am and I did.

There were also a lot of typos. This isn’t really against the writer in general, but it is about the book. Or books, to be more precise. Several books that were 1.) compiled into six short anthologies… at minimum that is two editing/publishing cycles, and 2.) were further compiled into two anthologies… at a minimum that’s three editing/publishing cycles. The typos should’ve been caught and dealt with far earlier. I can deal with them on a first edition, but c’mon now…

So, the bad was less about content and more about style. Let’s get to some general observances.

Rawhide Rex as a monster is fantastic. He’s properly scary but human-like. Think of a blood-thirsty sasquatch if my earlier description of him seems hard to digest. A blood-thirsty, warrior, immortal sasquatch with little knowledge of the modern world. He’s got an agenda that isn’t so much evil as it is evolutionarily sadistic. He’s just a monster that likes baby meat. He hates people like a wolf hates people: encroaching trespassers who have no right to play in the same arena as he.

I’m not saying he’s relatable. No. I found his methods stomach-turning and a little uncomfortable to read. I’m saying he isn’t a mindless monster like something from The Blob or The Mist. He’s just a thing trying to eat and rule over his land.

Like all short stories, the best parts come at the end. This ending featured an unlikely—and arguably, unlikeable—hero that the reader won’t see coming.

If I gave scores, I’d rate this short story some amount of stars out of an equal or greater amount stars (but closer to equal).

Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough

Everybody groaned. I could hear them, spread about the continental United States like Cold War sleeper agents. But instead of spies, they were students. Students of popular fiction. Of writing popular fiction. Of looking at what makes a book marketable and engaging (the two aren’t necessarily intertwined, as one would hope). The assignments had been handed out. The dice were cast.

One such die landed on Sarah Pinborough’s Breeding Ground. A book about giant spiders. The premise alone was enough to draw out moans boredom and squeals of self-righteous indignation. I read the one-line quips on Facebook: “The shittiest book ever,” “It’s hard to find because it’s so awful,” “It was a hard one for me to get through.”

I added my own voice to the chorus after only a few pages, even so much as to decry why such a folly had been wrought against us by our class professor. I even debated throwing the book into a campfire just to take pictures and post about how awful it was and how awesome I was.

In the end, I abandoned my Fahrenheit 451 daydreams. And then it happened. I set aside my self-pity and engaged myself in the book. I surrendered to it.

It wasn’t terrible.

In the beginning, I hated the way Pinborough writes. But you know what? The “mistakes” I saw in her were mistakes I myself have been corrected on. Participial phrases, semicolons, poor characterization. I began to see myself in Pinborough, and draw parallels to my own writing. She’s a woman writing about a man. I’m a man writing a woman. She writes men horribly. I write women… subpar.

There’s nothing fantastic in this book. There are no earth-shattering insights or amazing characters. In fact, I’d argue the characters end the book as two-dimensional as they begin. None of them are extremely likeable, especially the protagonist. We’re introduced to this man who loves loves loves his wife. She’s the center of his universe, the light of his life, the apple in his eyes.

Within a week after his wife turns into a giant spider, he’s sleeping with a random woman who survived the arachnid apocalypse. And by the end, he’s running off with another rare woman.

No, I am not a fan of Matthew Edge.

I’m not really a fan of any of the characters in the book. They’re whiny or mean or paper thin. They are not characters that I, as a writer, would ever want to create. They were just there, created to provide eyes though which to tell a story. Near the end of the book, when there’s talk of other pockets of survivors, I so desperately wished the book had been written from any of their points of view.

Pinborough’s apocalypse unwinds too quickly. Not the spiders themselves, but the characters. They abandon hope too quickly and ride away from their nice, safe house the first day. They put themselves in danger for no solid reason except to move the story forward. It wasn’t natural, and it felt forced. As a reader, I don’t want to be forced to believe or feel something, I just want to experience it and let those emotions come naturally. As a writer, I want to do the same thing.

So why did I end up enjoying it?

It wasn’t pretentious. I didn’t have a grand message (except maybe don’t mess GMOs, but I think even that was a false belief held by the sole scientist in the story). I didn’t feel like what I was reading took any effort. It was, in short, a summer read. It took me nearly a month to read. In the meantime, I wrote a lot, read some other things, and just went about my life. But each time I picked it up, it was where I left off. I didn’t need to go back, or put myself in a “mood” to read it. It was simple.

The book’s cover has the following inscription: “Fans of Bentley Little, Richard Laymon and Dean Koontz will be pleased.”

The joke? That’s for an entirely different book! I’m a huge fan of Little and Laymon (my bookshelf will corroborate that), and I enjoy a little Koontz as much as the next person, but I saw no similarities to them in Breeding Ground. There was none of Koontz’s amazing characterization. None of Laymon’s animalistic over-sexualization (okay, there was one passage…) and I turned the book upside down and sideways and couldn’t find any of Little’s hyper-reality.

No, friends, Breeding Ground is not a great book. It’s barely a mediocre one. But, it’s a quick, unassuming read with a fun monster (the ones at the end are even worse!), that taught me a thing or two about myself and my writing.

There’s a sequel, but I don’t think I’ll pick it up. I’d hate to lose any more respect for somebody who has been lauded of late for her brilliant writing.

The Funeral by Richard Matheson

The Funeral is one of those short stories that are just fun to read, because you can tell the writer had fun writing it. There’s no real message here, no lessons to be learned. It’s just a short story that was written because… Because it could. I can almost imagine Matheson writing it while attending a wedding or family reunion. Because that’s really what this story is about: a family gathering that includes all the embarrassing kin you hope to not see again for a decade or more.

 The story revolves around Asper, who the audience is led to believe is a vampire out to have a second chance at a funeral. He enlists the aid of Morton Silkline, a proprietor of final farewells. In Mr. Silkline’s case, money talks and he provides Asper with a funeral, even though he thinks it’s just a joke. On the appointed day, Mr. Asper and all his ghoulish buddies arrive. We get everything from famed hunchback Ygor to pointy-hatted witches, and all manner of monster in between.

And just like our family gatherings, there’s always that one person who ruins everything. In the case of Mr. Asper’s funeral, it’s a mouth witch. Just like that crazy aunt. Without a blow-by-blow rundown of the plot, I’ll say that the event goes downhill quickly.

The Funeral is just one of many short stories included in the paperback version I Am Legend. My theory is that Tor included the shorts as a way to make readers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth when by the extremely short novel. But while the main event is somber and carries a deep message, the short stories offer lighter fare. The Funeral shows that a serious novelist can get the sillies out without compromising the integrity of his/her other works.

Matheson writes good novels, and he writes good short stories. His style doesn’t change greatly from one to the other. He has the same expansive vocabulary and artistic narrative that was popular in its day. It’s a narrative that harkens back to a day when it was okay to have a formal vocabulary and people still dressed up to take a flight. So many novels today are written at what seems to be a fifth grade level to attract the most amount of readers. They’re the equivalent of wearing sweatpants and flip-flops on a trans-continental flight.

I really tried to find a deeper meaning in this piece, but each “message” I came up with seemed stretched, as if I was attempting to read more into it than was actually there. Maybe Matheson didn’t have a message, but a couple hours to kill. Maybe he was up at midnight working on some great masterpiece and decided he needed something silly to counteract the seriousness of the work in front of him.

If there is a pre-conceived message here, I think it’s that every family has that one relative you just wish wouldn’t show up, but you invite them anyway because they’re family and it wouldn’t be the same without them.

I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

I’ll admit that I’m one of those guys that once they see the movie, the book version goes to the bottom of my reading list. This book made me rethink that policy. First off, aside from sharing a title, this book and the motion picture starring Will Smith have little in common. Secondly, the story-telling of Richard Matheson has consistently failed to translate to the big screen*. Not that he’s incredibly nuanced or that his stories can’t be translated, but there hasn’t been the right direction to capture his character-based stories.

This is especially true with a character like Robert Neville, the self-proclaimed Legend. For much of the book (I’d call it a novella), he is our sole window into the world. There is limited dialogue for the first two-thirds, with the exception of some fantastic back-and-forth with a dog (okay, the dog wasn’t a very a good conversationalist). I actually found that once there was a two-person dialogue, the story lost some of its luster.

That’s because Matheson does such a great job with Neville’s characterization. We know Robert Neville. We laugh with him, and we feel his frustration. We hope to have it together as much as he does when the vampire apocalypse comes. Because he does come off as fallible. He has his meltdowns and his tantrums, and they are well-deserved. But he has some successes and we are thrilled when he does.

Speaking of failures and successes, I can’t help but think that Andy Weir was a little bit inspired by this story. First off, alone in a strange world, Neville is forced to do what is necessary for his immediate survival, which he does admirably. Then, he becomes a self-taught geneticist and is able to “science the shit out of it.” He walks us through his experiments and gives us just enough information to keep it plausible, without boring the hell out of us. I appreciate a book that doesn’t treat me like an idiot, but also doesn’t treat me like a scientist. Matheson maintains a good balance. Better, in many ways, than Weir.

I want you to read this book, so I’m not going to go blow-by-blow with the plot. What I will tell you, is that this story is fundamentally a survival story—but not Neville’s. Imagine the world as you know it ends, and you’re the sole remaining human. But there’s a more advance species in man’s place. Would you fight that species? Would you hide or try to make peace with them? If they’re truly terrifying, and you’re prejudiced against them for something people similar to them did, would you allow yourself the dignity of going peacefully into the night? These are questions Legend asks. At what point do you give up, and if you don’t, can you expect the other side to? The last Neanderthals didn’t stand up against the homo sapiens and destroy them. No, he bred with them or died alone.

Matheson’s stories are often philosophical, and he does what a writer should: makes the reader think long after the story is told. When does the hero become the villain, and can we cheer his success when that success costs innocent lives?

I spent the entire book asking myself why he’s Legend, and finally found out on the last page. And it’s an answer worth working toward.

*The exception that proves the rule is Stir of Echoes. Kevin Bacon’s descent into madness is pure Matheson, and is as faithful adaption of one of his novel’s I’ve found.

Ghostbusters; or the best damned movie that ever was or ever will be

Directed by Ivan Reitman
Starring: Everybody that mattered in 1980s comedy

So, here we are. The final review for my first semester at Seton Hill University. I’ve spent a long time staring at the blinking cursor on this post, and I’m just not sure how to start. Why? Because Ghostbusters is my favorite movie. It has been since I was six years old watching it on VHS for the first time. My birthday parties were all GB themed through the sequel in 1989. The Real Ghostbusters (the animator series for you uninitiated) was a staple of my Saturday Morning Cartoons viewing. In short, this review is going to be extremely biased.

At its core, Ghostbusters is a comedy. It was written by two alumni of the famous improve troupe, Second City, and starred three. It’s a comedy with ghosts. It has a couple of slightly unnerving scenes (Dana getting chair-napped is one), but it isn’t overtly scary, and it doesn’t really try to be. It’s about three – then four – guys who find a way to fight and capture ghosts just as the city is about to come under siege by an ancient evil. It’s in the same vein, but much more ambitious than other comedies of the era that featured SNL and Second City comedians. It was a comedy that aspired to be fun on more than just the comedic level.

I credit the movie with introducing to horror. At five years old, it told me, “hey, ghosts aren’t scary… it’s okay to talk about them, to write about them… you should read more, Chad.” You have to slow it down and play it backwards, but it does say that. In short, the movie, to me, was magical. It spoke to me as a kid, and it still speaks to me as an adult. I shared it with my children (who seem to like the second one better for some reason) at the theater when they re-released it last year. To me, that was bigger than any re-release of a Star Wars movie.

So, let’s look at what makes it special:

The opening scene at the New York Public Library. It’s an iconic opening that showed more maturity than most comedies or horror movies at the time. It really opens like a monster-of-the-week TV show, in which we’re introduced to the “threat” before the protagonist.

The mythology. The creators worked diligently to create a story around a real mythological figure in Gozer the Gozerian. Sprinkle in a wacky marshmallow man and a fictional book about ghosts, and you have a recipe for a respectable amount of research to put into a horror/comedy.

The stars. Obviously each character was brought to life by their respective actors. Egon, perhaps the most underplayed character, was also the richest. He was Sheldon Cooper before there was a Sheldon Cooper. I can see how the passing of Harold Ramis was the nail in the coffin of a true sequel. Once you remove two of the iconic actors (assuming Bill Murray was never going to sign on in the first place), you really are unable to create the magic of the original movie. For the record, I think the sequel was a fine movie, and better than most sequels. Some of the jokes were old hat, but they were true to the characters that delivered them. It was a continuation of the story vice a rehash or stagnant plotline that did nothing to move the characters forward.

Effects. Now they’re dated, but at the time they were phenomenal not just for a horror, but for a comedy. The painstaking detail that went into the miniatures and the development of the ghost fighting equipment was a really special moment in movie-making.

The techno-babble. Of course, we know we can’t cross the streams because that would be bad, but they development a whole science for the movie! That plays into the mythology, but it also tells a lot about how serious the makers took the movie. It wasn’t just another Stripes or Caddyshack or Planes, Trains and Automobiles… it was bigger than all of that.

The film makers delivered not only a great movie for the time, but captured the imagination of millions in a way only Star Wars had been able to that time. It’s an iconic movie, and I one that’s special to me and millions of other big kids my age.

I’m going to take a few lines here to talk about the new movie. If it has the same DNA as the original, it’s going to be just fine. I don’t care if it’s got four women in the lead or not. It was never about the gender of the stars, but the chemistry and the story.

I’m ready to believe you.

If You Build It, They'll Be Pissed

AKA: Poltergeist

Directed by Tobe Hooper
Starring: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Heather O'Rourke

This is a movie I dreaded watching again. I've seen it so many times in my life, that I really didn't feel like subjecting myself to it. I rarely watch a movie more than once, and when I do I require decades between viewings, or it has to be fantastic (I'm looking at you, Ghostbusters... see you next week!). I passively watched Poltergeist last Halloween season, and my three year old loved it. But I didn't notice something on that last viewing that I picked up on this one: It's legitimately freakin' scary.

Bear with me, because I know what you're thinking: "It's just a cheesy 80s horror movie." Well, you're only half right... or should I say, half complete? It's a cheesy 80s horror movie brought to life by the cinematic masterminds Steven Spielberg (Screenplay) and Tobe Hooper (Director). Hooper has brought some of the most iconic horror films to life over his career. Texas Chainsaw Massacre? He wrote it. Salem's Lot? Directed it. The Funhouse? Director. Djinn? Yeah, I think he apologized for it. And Spielberg? We know what he's done.

It's when they form like Voltron and tell a story that is both cheesy fun and nuanced, that we see each of their brilliance amplified. Hooper is an undeniable master of horror, and provides enough atmosphere to add enough scary spice to Spielberg's heartfelt screenplay to slide it into the horror category. Without Hooper's keen eye and direction, this could have easily been another of Spielberg's early "Shit's Weird in the Suburbs" stories.

But without Spieldberg's script, Poltergeist could have been a flop. He gives the characters nuanced flair that we don't see in a lot of mainstream horror -- they have personalities! They get high, and have couple idiosyncrasies. Spielberg has a gift of bringing the mundane to life, and he makes it easy for us to see ourselves in the situations he creates. Well... almost...

First of all, we all know the development they live in is built on a cemetery. Got it. But what doesn't make sense, is they put in all this effort to move the headstones but not the creepy ass dead trees? I've owned a house, I know dead monster trees hurt the resale value, but they went so far as to build a freakin' roundabout around one of them. And then everybody acts all surprised when one of the Oz apple trees tries to eat a kid. No, it was bound to happen.

And what's up with the storms? Every time one came through it reminded me of the storm over Dana Barrett's midtown building, and that at any moment Gozer was going to appear and make them choose their Destructor -- Shit, that's next week again. But man, those storms were weird.

Here's where Spielberg's brilliance as a storyteller come through: The comedy that makes the audience put its guard down. We see several instances of it, and it is usually followed quickly by a good scare. For example, who comes into somebody's house and decides to fry up a steak? The guy who's going to imagine peeling off his own face (stop picking at it!).

My favorite exchange in the whole movie has always been when Diane Freeling and Tangina discuss who's going to enter the spectral plane to go after Carol Anne.

Tangina: "You've never done this before!"
Diane: "Neither have you!"
Tangina: "You're right, you go!"

There's no big speech about who's right or wrong, no long diatribes about meaning of the spectral plane and how one person is better prepared than the other... no, it's cut and dry, just how I imagine it would play out in real life.

The movie is extra scary in that it stays on the final scene scare a beat longer than most, and really give this movie a dual climax. Just when you think it's over and that everybody is okay, the real shit hits the fan and all those bodies that had suburbia built on their heads start popping up in dramatic fashion.

I really learned that just because I watched something to death in the 80s, doesn't mean it still can't hold a surprise or fright for me. I really got into the parental fears (I'm going to ignore the fact they didn't seem all that concerned their daughter was sucked into a closet vortex and disappeared for several days... I mean, I guess they were concerned, but they didn't seem devastated), and Diane's emotional peril throughout the movie.

I learned another thing, too: The Holiday Inn has come a long way since the 80s.

Law and Order: Paranormal Investigation

AKA: The Exorcism of Emily Rose, directed by Scott Derrickson

Starring Laura Linney, Tom Wilkonson, and Jennifer Carpenter

RT: 121 minutes

A lot of horror movies throw you into a dark forest or creepy house and leave you there, relying on creepy scores and jump scares to keep you interested. There are some, though, that stand out because of the action outside of the scary situations. These types of movies keep my attention more, because I’m allowed to not just breathe, but to see the world that takes place around the scary shit. This puts the whole scenario into perspective, and allows the viewer to imagine it taking place in the real world.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is one such movie. More courtroom drama than horror movie, we get a view of the messy aftermath of so many other exorcism movies… Mainly, what happens to those involved when the exorcism goes horribly wrong. In this case, Father Moore is put on trial for negligent homicide. To ratchet up the drama, the prosecution puts a devout Christian on the case, while the priest gets the Agnostic. It could have been a gimmick for gimmick’s sake, if it hadn’t worked so well.

Campbell Scott (The Amazing Spider-Man) plays the mustachioed Ethan Thomas, the prosecutor. He sometimes comes off as laughable, but he handles the role well and provides a measured counterpoint to Tom Wilkonson’s (Batman Begins) Father Moore. Ethan goes after Father Moore like a rabid pup in an attempt to defend his religion from someone he sees as responsible for a girl’s death. Father Moore, on the other hand, has no interest in being acquitted; he only wants to tell Emily Rose’s story. That requires him to turn down plea deals which could save him serious prison time.

Those two actors do well. So did Laura Linney (The Truman Show), as the Agnostic defense attorney assigned to defend Father Moore. She handled the role well, and shows growth over the course of the movie… the only character that does.

It was Jennifer Carpenter’s (Dexter) Emily Rose, however, that stole the show. She wasn’t in the movie a lot, but when she was it was clear that it was about her. Fans of Dexter know Carpenter as the hot-headed sister Debra Morgan to serial killer Dexter. They also remember that she could go from foul-mouthed badass to foul-mouthed emotional wreck in the blink of an eye. She does it again here, staying mainly extremely (and understandably) upset and terrified.

So, to the plot. Emily is possessed, her health takes a turn and she’s on the verge of death. An exorcism is attempted, but fails. Emily refuses another attempt in the hopes that her death will help others.

There’s also a doctor that feeds pigeons and dies. He was at the exorcism, and when he decides to testify on Moore’s behalf, he gets hit by a car (Devil’s Advocate, anyone?).

This was my first time seeing the movie, and I think if I’d seen it even six months ago, I would have hated it. Hated it because it wasn’t a horror movie. It was a courtroom drama that happened to include an exorcism. In fact, it’s similar to The Exorcist in that regard. But I think I've grown as a person over the course of the past half year.

Horror movies that attempt to be more than what they are billed as are often maligned for not having enough gore, or enough scary parts (and there are plenty of creepy and intense parts of this movie), when in reality they just succeed at providing a fantastic balance between the horrors of the supernatural and the mundane of real life.

So what happens to Father Moore? In this case, you’ll need to watch to find out (it does sort of jump the shark when it comes time for the verdict and/or sentencing), but it’s a damn fine film despite that.  

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

WARNING: Spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, turn back now.

I've been pretty hard on most of the books/movies I've read this semester, except for The Shining (I love you Stephen!). But I think it's time to turn that around, don't you?

You might remember the Exorcist from such films as, The Exorcist and... well that's it, because he dies at the end... rather unceremoniously, too. The Devil's in the heart disease.

But don't be sad, because the book, despite its title, isn't really about Father Lankester Merrin, noted philosopher-paleontologist, but about parental fears and the regrets of children.

The Exorcist is about Hollywood starlet Christ MacNeil and her daughter Regan, and to a lesser extent, Father Damien Karras (no, not that Damien). Long story, short: Regan is possessed by the demon Pazuzu (who isn't the worst of demons if you look at the lore), and for more than 300 pages we search for a medical reason for the following ailments:

-Speaking in strange languages
-Change in voice, tenor
-Levitation
-Random odors from scratch
-Unexplained knocking
-Extreme contortions, including turning of the head 180 degrees
-Superhuman strength

Yes, the priest Karras is more likely to believe telekinesis than demon possession.

The doctors try ever more complex treatments/tests, but to no avail.

Finally, easier than Karras made it sound throughout the book, the local Bishop approves an exorcism.

But again, the story isn't about the exorcism, and it really does play such a small and anticlimactic part of the book.

Imagine your child is inexplicably ill, and no matter how many specialists come in and poke and prod her, they just can’t figure out what’s wrong with her. It’s an extremely frustrating proposition, and one that I’ve actually been a part of. You are watching your child literally deteriorate in front of you. To make matters worse, she has already lost a child, and has an extreme distrust of medical professionals.

It’s also about a priest suffering a crisis of faith after the passing of his mother. Take a minute and think about your own parents. How often do you see them? Talk to them? Go out of your way to be with them? No imagine they trust you more than themselves, and they literally put their lives in your hands. Karras does that and he kicks himself the entire book for making what he thinks of as the wrong decision.

Blatty uses the paranormal to bring our natural fears to life. This isn’t a religious book. It’s a book that has religion in it. It’s not about the Devil or demons, but there’s one it. The book is about being an adult; about the choices we make and the choices that are taken away from us. Helplessness. Regret. Fear.

This book could play out as a medical drama just as easily as a horror.

Blatty is a strange character. He is both simultaneously literature and popular fiction. He brings symbolism and metaphor to the everyday reader like Wolfgang Puck brings gourmet to the airport food court. He is accessible and non-threatening.

The Exorcist is a true classic. It welcomes every reader, regardless of education or reading level. It’s as a rewarding read for the everyday academic as is for the one-book-a-decade crowd.

Blatty writes how people converse. Not every sentence begins with a capital letter, and sometimes a sentence contains multiple semicolons (Scott, if you’re reading this… Semicolons are good… Embrace the semicolon). At the end of the day, I felt like I was told a harrowing story by a fantastic story-teller.

NOTE: I read The Exorcist in one sitting(ish). It went quickly and held my interest throughout.

Paranormal Activity, directed by Oren Peli

Paranormal Activity (2009)

Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

Directed by Oren Peli

RT: 1:26:00

In 1999, a film was released nationwide with the following notice at the beginning

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary… A year later their footage was found.

Of course, this comes from the love-it-or-hate-it hit, The Blair Witch Project. Shot on a budget of about $35,000, it went on to rake in nearly a quarter billion at the box office. It was part ghost story, part witch hunt, part documentary. At the time, it presented an original concept: found footage. By no means was this the first time such a technique was used, as it was also used in 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust (the shooting title for that film was Green Inferno, which was the release title of Eli Roth’s own cannibal film), but it did bring it to the mainstream in a fun new way. As a writer, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that it is similar to epistolary novels such as Frankenstein.

Ten years later, the film Paranormal Activity debuted with a similar premise. It wasn’t the first since 1999, but it was arguably the scariest since Blair Witch.

What worked in the new film is what worked in the Blair Witch: the unseen. We spend the bulk of the movie as clueless as the actors as to what is happening. Because of the style it’s shot in, we aren’t privy to anything that they (ultimately) won’t be privy to. I say “ultimately” because at night, when they’re asleep, we get to watch. Like voyeurs on the 20^th floor looking down on somebody about to be mugged, all we can do is scream for them to look out. Of course, they can’t hear us.

Paranormal Activity takes advantage of both the jump scare and a build-up in suspense. It can’t really be called a slow-burn, because the first scares happen on “Night 1,” the first night of available footage.

Quick background if you haven’t seen the movie: Katie and Micah are living in a suburban San Diego home. She is an English student, and he is a day trader. They have been together about three years, but have only recently moved in together. It wasn’t until they began living together that Micah discovered Katie had been “haunted” her entire life by an unknown entity. To capture evidence, he buys a video camera and…

We get to see multiple nights following his camera purchase, each one more frightening than the last. Of course, Micah wants to capture the best footage possible, so he tries to provoke the entity through a Ouija board… And succeeds!

On Night 21, three weeks since buying the camera, the entity finally gets to Katie and Micah.

It’s no secret I’m not a fan of found footage films, that they are gimmicky at best and annoying (motion sickness anybody?) at worse. However, in Paranormal Activity it works. It harkens to the many ghost hunting shows we see on TV now, but does so in a low-tech way. Yes, we get the EVP and some strange footage, but we don’t get spirit boxes and infrared. It doesn’t try to shove it in our face that it’s going for “found footage,” or that it’s like any other ghost hunt. It’s a raw take on the original ghost story, and free of soundtracks and over-production, it makes you feel like you were a part of it..

What I think makes it work, is that it’s a simple telling of a simple story. It relies not on special effects or great plotting, but teases out the viewer’s own fears of the supernatural. Simply, it allows the audience to be haunted without ever dealing with their own ghost.

Grave's End, by Elaine Mercado, R.N.

I'm fairly certain that Ms. Mercado included her R.N. designator to assure us that she is an intelligent woman of science. A medical professional and not a wingnut. That's fine, I'm okay with it. Wingnut or not, this entry is about the book, and not Ms. Mercado's credentials.

Written less as a novel, and more like a memoir, Grave's End tells the tale of Elaine Mercado, her daughters Christine and Karin, and for a time, her ex-husband Nameless, as they live out their lives in a house that's desperately trying to get their attention.

They move in in 1985, nearly two years after buying the place. Why? Because there's a grumpy old man and his doe-eyed wife living in the basement. I just want to prepare you now, Elaine and her family are about the slowest moving group of people on the planet. It requires many years of a problem to move them to take any sort of action. You'll see.

Let’s take a look at that year again. 1985. Remember it. Write it down on a piece of paper, fold it up nice and tight, and tuck it in your front pocket. Ready?

From the start, they experienced nearly every haunting phenomenon in popular culture today. It’s like watching an entire season of Ghost Adventures in one book. And it takes like 12 years to watch it. From orbs to whispers, to paralyzing dreams. We see full body apparitions, mists and shadow creatures. There are ominous forces focusing on the basement and she and her two daughters are constantly under “attack” by the entities in the house. This starts from Day 1. I take that back; her youngest daughter Christine isn’t subjected to one-on-one haunting. She only experiences the hauntings if her mom or sister are around.

It takes Elaine 12 years to finally get a medium or paranormal psychic to come visit. I get that this took place before Al Gore invented the Internet, but she draws everything out like a neurotic. She fears any kind of judgement or confrontation… Unless that confrontation is getting molested in the middle of the night by a ghost. She seems totally cool with that. I mean, why else would she let go on for so long? Elaine sets women’s rights back to pre-suffrage times, and I really dislike her for that. I know it’s not fiction, but a strong lead is important to any story. Imagine if Elliot spent two hours locked in his room with E.T., hand-wringing and tisk-tisking himself for not being stronger? You’d never watch that move. Elaine is about the worse protagonist I’ve ever encountered in a book. I didn’t want her to win, I just wanted her to do something!

 For example, she throws a Halloween party. This is great! She can show off her ghosts ala the Deetz’s. But, no. The one friend who senses and sees something, swears she’ll never come back. So what does Elaine do? She completely avoids the topic with her for the rest of the time they worked together. Why, Elaine? Why would you stop talking to the one person who might be able to tell you what’s going on? Oh, you don’t want to risk losing her as a friend. Well, Elaine, you have to break a few ghost eggs to make a ghost omelet.

 Now, keep in mind that was about 10 years after moving in. That’s right. It took 10 years for help to arrive, unannounced, and Elaine clammed up.

 The next year she asked her brother for help, and it took him another year to find a medium and a parapsychologist. And they cleansed the house in about an hour.

The book itself is little more than an encyclopedia of paranormal phenomena, and shouldn’t be read for entertainment value. If you’re very interested in haunted houses, it’s a decent read. Ms. Mercado could have benefitted from a – pardon the pun – ghost writer in this case. There’s are a lot emotional events in the book, but Mercado glazes over them in a matter-of-fact way.

Except for her fear of being alone. That she dwells on for 12 years.

On Writing Horror, from the Horror Writers Association

About ten years ago my job sent me to a Microsoft Excel course. It was only two days long, but it was supposed to teach me about the basics of working with Microsoft’s most hated program (right after Access). In fact, it was so basic, the entirety of the first day was dedicated to the three icons in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

I returned to work the next day and told them I had better things to do with my time.

That’s not necessarily my feelings regarding On Writing Horror, which was published by Writer’s Digest Books and written by members of the Horror Writers Association. But, the book doesn’t necessarily touch on any groundbreaking topics or provide completely new information that we wouldn’t expect to see from myriad other craft books.

However, I found the following sections enjoyable, in that they provided unique insight into the craft of writing horror, vice generic advice about the craft of writing.

Keep it Moving, Maniacs: Writing Action Scenes in Horror Fiction, Jay R. Bonansinga.  In this section, Bonansinga puts into words what most readers don’t really notice, but benefit hugely from: the ramp up in suspense and action during a horror novel. Establishing rhythm (Bonansinga, 96), made me feel liberated in my style of writing. What I once did to emulate, I began to do because I saw the value, and reading this section really solidified my feelings on the issue. Rhythm can draw the reader deeper into the story, the dialogue, the narrative and bring him closer to the precipice of whatever resolution is coming and –

Then stop.

It’s like edging, but in a literary sense.

Splat Goes the Hero: Visceral Horror, Jack Ketchum. This was truly a treat in a craft book: advice from one of the masters. A lot of horror writers today shy away from gore for the sake of gore. This is a good thing. But, sometimes the gore is necessary to move the story along, or to shock or move the reader. Ketchum talks about that fine line between honesty and exploitation (Ketchum, 121-122), but the gist of it is, the details are what make us feel the pain. If we’re writing a book about a creature that burrows its way into the soft, pink, fleshy corner of your eye, you need to explain how that feels. But, you should also know how it feels. Ketchum’s section is about the truth of writing, and sometimes… well, sometimes the truth hurts.

Take a Scalpel to Those Tropes, W. D. Gagliani. Another great entry, this essay talks openly about the blending of tropes to make them new. Gagliani uses the Wolf Man as an example, but we see these familiar tropes being used in new ways almost every day. The CW show Supernatural is famous for taking what we know and giving them a slight twist to add newness to them. And when it decides to create its own new monster (Jefferson Starships – why? “Because they're horrible and impossible to kill”), it takes elements of existing monsters. Creating a new creature today almost invariably requires us to rehash what already exists. But, Gagliani explains that we can do it without trying to be sneaky about it.

A terrifying, and wholly saddening section was dedicated to directing me toward the small press for “classics and new out-on-or-over-the-edge genre releases.” (Everson, 223). This sounds wonderful! Except, it does little more than point the reader to publishers to buy more books, as many of the ones listed take on few, if any, new talents. 

Beyond those sections, the book goes on to talk about screenplay writing, radio (audio theater) and research. Which is fine, if you suddenly woke up one morning and thought, I want to write!

I want to learn how to play the bagpipes, but I haven’t a clue where to start. A book called On Playing the Bagpipes would be fantastic for me. As a writer, the basics presented in On Writing Horror don’t offer any new tricks, secrets or insights into the business. However, it does provide the new writer an opportunity to hear directly from their favorites on what makes them tick. Overall, this book is tailored toward the novice writer, but there are plenty of other craft books out there for the intermediate writer that is prepared to take their craft to the next level.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anybody in an advanced course of study like an MFA, but I will definitely hand my copy down to the first person who tells me they’re interested in learning what it takes to put together a decent story.

The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

 "In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their new home on suburban Long Island. Twenty-eight days later, the entire Lutz family fled in terror."

So reads the back of Jay Anson’s Amityville Horror, the classic “true story” of benevolent spirits terrorizing a young family. So terrifying and dark were the powers in that house, even the local diocese and priests were afraid to visit the house… 112 Ocean Avenue.

This review will be a little different than past reviews, because Amityville Horror is billed as non-fiction. The characters in the book are true, and the DeFeo murders are also true. There is also a house at 112 Ocean Avenue (Now 108 Ocean Avenue to hide from looky-loos and tourists… you know, because tourists are dumb), and it is as described in the book and on the book/movie covers: A Dutch Colonial.

The haunting that occurred to the Lutz’s after they moved in? That has been debated, and mostly refuted by the local diocese, William Weber (Ronald “Butch” DeFeo’s defense attorney), and convicted murderer Ronnie DeFeo himself.

Everybody knows the story of the Amityville Horror, either through the book or the original film and the TWELVE additional films, that include sequels and remakes. But what is the book if not non-fiction, as claimed by so many?

It’s God-awful. If we look at the book as a work of fiction, it is poorly written with awful character development. Jay Anson, a documentary writer who hadn’t written a novel until Amityville, was extremely brilliant when it came to writing the book. He acquired the book rights before writing and publishing, and was able to embellish slightly the haunting the Lutz’s experienced. But, he wasn’t a very good novelist, and his book reads more like the transcript of a campfire story, replete with unnecessary exclamation points and zero creative prose. Without the “true story” tagline, Amityville Horror could be the worst novel ever written. In fact, it’s opening line is a fine contender for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: “George and Kathy Lutz moved into 112 Ocean Avenue on December 18. Twenty-eight days later, they fled in terror.”

But, before I abandon it there and move on, let’s look at the whole package. It was sold as a true story, and the simple writing of Jay Anson goes a long way toward selling it. If you look at Anson’s other work, (he followed up Amityville with the novel 666) you see he is capable of creativity, and not just fact regurgitation. But really, that’s all Amityville Horror is.

Is it by design? Is there genius in the way Anson marketed the book? After all, he was a documentary writer, so he knew the power of non-fiction. If he could harness the demonic horror that was popular during that time (The Exorcist – 1971, Rosemary’s Baby – 1967). Books of that ilk were also becoming big-money movies.

So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to give Anson the benefit of the doubt: He set out to create a raw, realistic story of Satanic haunting. In that regard, he succeeded. Its rawness and lack of creativity definitely lend an air of authenticity, much as The Blair Witch Project (1999) did with movies.

Fortunately, Amityville Horror didn’t create its own literary sub-genre like Blair Witch did with the “found footage” style of horror we see in film.

Here’s what I did enjoy about the book: Its simple writing, paired with its low page count, resulted in a great read during a morning-time power outage courtesy of the Pacific Northwest weather.

Is Amityville Horror fact, fiction, good, bad? I don’t know! If it’s fiction, it’s bad. If it’s fact, it “is what it is.”

The Others, written and directed by Alejandro Amenabar

The Others (2001)

Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston
RT: 1:44:00



This is the first movie review/analysis for my Readings in the Genre (RIG) course. Because of the theme, Hauntings, I thought I knew what I was getting in to.

I was fortunate enough to have never seen this movie before, so watching it for the class was a new experience. I didn't go into it with preconceived notions about what the story is, or what it should be, or how it should end.

*Warning: There will be spoilers ahead.

 The Others follows the story of Grace Stewart (Kidman), and her two children, Ann and Nicolas. Grace and her children live in self-imposed exile in Jersey (Old one not New), following WWII. The exile stems from Ann and Nicolas's extreme photosensitivity, resulting in a penchant for heavy curtains. Amazon and Netflix were invented for this family. Grace's husband (Eccleston), went missing during the war, and they live with the hope he will return some day.

The movie begins with the arrival of three applicants for the recently vacant house staff positions. The elder Bertha Mills, ancient Mr. Tuttle, and young mute Lydia are immediately hired because they fit the criteria of showing up.

Upon their arrival, a whole slew of mysterious events begin to take place, leading Grace to believe the house is haunted. Strangely enough, she never stops to think it might be the new staff she hired, despite their own admission that they used to work in the house a long time ago.

Finally, fed up with the hauntings, Grace tries to run into town to get help, but is met in the woods by her long-missing husband (Eccleston)! He seems distant, and after a day says it’s time to leave. He was just there to say goodbye. Was he another ghost? Did he show up just to give his kids false hope their daddy would still be around? Did he cross the boundaries of death itself for one last booty call?

Long story short, because I want to get in some analysis vice plot regurgitation: The Stewarts are recently deceased, following Grace’s mental breakdown in which she suffocates her two kids and somehow kills herself with a shotgun that is arguably longer than she is tall. And the ghosts, the Others? Those would be the new living people who just bought the house. So what this movie did, in essence, is flip the traditional ghost story and tell it from the point of view of the ghosts (just not as hilariously as Beetlejuice did).

This movie, with its decidedly Shyamalanian twist ending, hit the theaters a month before 9/11, and is one of the first horror movies of the new millennium. It’s use of atmosphere and its characters to ramp of the horror was a nice departure from the 90s teen horror movies.

Idealistically, it can be likened to Henry James’s 1898 book, A Turn of the Screw. However, with the exception of some similarities in characters, and maybe a rough interpretation by writer/director Alejandro Amenabar of the meaning of the story, the two have little in common.

There are points in the story that are difficult to understand why they are there. For instance, the return of her husband for a day, (Eccleston's role in this movie is only slightly shorter than his turn as The Doctor), and then he disappeared, did nothing for me. It wasn’t a great goodbye moment for me, and served no real reason. In fact, Grace seemed to get over his second disappearance rather quickly. The only thing I can point to, and I’ll choose to believe this so it makes sense, is that the house and surrounding fog manifested her husband to keep her on the property. Unfortunately, it doesn’t explain why she got over his leaving again so quickly.

The movie does a good job at the end explaining how the living “haunted” the ghosts, and how the juxtaposition of the two roles could be executed and leave no clues behind.

In the end, it is a simple ghost story about a haunted house. There isn’t really anything new in the story-telling or movie plot until the last five minutes. And even then, it seems the movie should end with "Shake Senora,” as the ghosts come to terms with their fate and learn that haunting can be fun!

The Shining by Stephen King

When people ask me who my favorite writer is, I feel a bit silly and vanilla for answering, "Stephen King." I mean, I'm a horror writer, and I should be bending over backwards to espouse the contributions of little-known writers to the genre. When people ask me who my favorite writer is, I feel like an amateur, a rube, a newbie to the world of horror.

But then I go back and re-read something I read as I kid, something from King's early days, and I remember: He's my favorite because he's so damn good! I'm not a hipster trying to define myself through false-idolization, with my awesome lumberjack beard contrasting stylishly with my Chuck Taylors (full disclosure: I do not have a beard, but I have Chucks).

So, it was with eager anticipation that I bid my time throughout this RIG until it was time to read the Shining. Excitement grew with each passing novel, and I checked them off like so many chores. My reward, halfway through, would be the modern masterpiece that is The Shining. And I wasn't disappointed. When I read it for the first time, probably 25 years ago, the themes presented went over my 11-year old head. Alcoholism, child abuse, the fact that failure was not only a part of life, but presented the bulk of it.

I was young. I was idealistic. I needed the money. (Currency for me at the time was gore, and buckets of it... I mean, what the hell was wrong with me?)

This time around, the book made me profoundly sad (but more on that later).

First, the basics:

The Shining (1977) was King's third book, preceded in publishing by Carrie (1974) and Salem's Lot (1975). It was written while he lived in Boulder, CO, and coincidentally enough takes place near there.

The book is about a young boy... or is it about his father? Possibly the mother. Why the indecision? Because King told the story so perfectly from each's point of view, that pinpointing the exact protagonist is almost impossible. However, it's widely agreed on that the book is about five-year old Danny and his psychic powers dubbed "shining."

But let's talk about it from his father Jack's point of view, because therein is the true horror of the book. Jack is a recovering alcoholic, a mean drunk who inadvertently hurts his little boy in martian (martini)-fueled rage. He gives up the booze, but not before the damage is done to his tenure-track teaching position. Now, out of work and with a deadline looming, he takes any writer's dream job: a low-effort caretaker job in a secluded resort that has closed for the long winter season. In Colorado. With bad roads. And limited communication with the outside world. What could possibly go wrong?

REDRUM.

REDRUM could go wrong. And it does. King uses the setting, the Overlook Hotel, as a backdrop to tell the story of his own alcoholic demons (alcoholism is his demon, not that there are demons that are alcoholics).

The Overlook has a colorful, storied history replete with murders and unnatural deaths. It isn't unlike Hill House, in that it's the building itself that has become the antagonist, and not any single ghost. There’s one thing it wants, and it’s Danny. But to get to him, through the boy’s strength with the Force Shining, it has to go through Dad. Jack’s weakness is his alcoholism and the hotel uses it to slowly tear down Danny’s defenses. Along for the ride is his mom, Wendy, who’s only weakness is her love for her husband. It’s almost a naïve love, and a type that probably wouldn’t get much sympathy with today’s crowd.

So, over the course of a few months, the hotel whittles down both Jack and Danny, until it all comes to a crescendo at the end.

But let’s talk about what makes me sad.

King’s free-form style of writing is often emulated, but never duplicated. It’s a style of writing that leaves the reader both breathless, but so deeply attached to the characters. They are real. They don’t have single sentence feelings. They aren’t Neapolitan with oddly perfect delineations of flavor. They’re complex, with overlapping flavors. They are Moose Tracks, or Rocky Road. And like Rocky Road, they’re nuts. King puts that on the page like no other (especially in his early work when I would argue he was at the top of his game), and when he does it so sublimely as he does in the Shining, even the most damaged character becomes our hero.

In this story, our hero fails. He succumbs. But before all that, he loves his little boy more than booze, more than his wife, and more than himself. And his little boy loves him and King gets that across in a way that is real and deep. If you have a little boy, you see yourself and your son in these roles. When Jack fails, you fail. When Danny loses a father, you are lost to your son. You can feel the feels, as the kids say, and they don’t feel good.

Yes, in the penultimate moment of the story, a part of me died because a part of Danny died.

My name is Chad V. Pritt, and Stephen King is my favorite writer.