Tag Archives: horror

Earth-bound monsters

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When I was eight my parents took me to see the classic horror flick Alien in the movie theater. Little did they know what they were getting themselves–and me–into. They were sure I’d be terrified, but I barely flinched through the horror and gore Johnhurt(except for the iconic spaghetti scene, where the baby alien bursts through John Hurt’s stomach).

Maybe that’s because a few years earlier I was terrified by the flesh-eating zombies in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead–and thus inoculated–from horror.

Nevertheless, the Alien franchise features some of the scariest, awe-inspiring monsters. These are creatures that use aliens.1humans not for food but as breeding pods, suffering through slow, agonizing deaths. Very much an H.P Lovecraft view of horror: the alien monster as a destroying force that gives no consideration to our humanity in pursuit of its destruction.

It turns out, once again, that nature parallels these horrors.

alien 1Take this parasite called Phironima. According to this article, it is thought to be the inspiration for the Alien monster.

And with good reason.

This tiny parasite lives in the ocean. It survives and thrives by attacking free-floating zooplankton. First it carves out the zooplankton’s insides. Then it climbs in and uses the hollowed out creature as its transport.

It’s not clear whether the Phironima kills the zooplankton, but the parallels to the Alien xenomorph are blood-curdlingly clear: a monstrous-looking creature alters and destroys another to use for its own benefit.

This is nature.

American Horror Story: Coven – the autopsy

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Did the writers go astray, or was the whole show a goof?

What was it with American Horror Story: Coven? I could never look away, as much as I wanted to. It was like driving past an accident where you hope to get a glimpse of the burning wreckage.

CovenThe show had a lot going for it. Top-notch cast. Heavy buzz. Solid premise: a coven of witches under attack in New Orleans. That premise alone is overflowing with possibilities.

But sadly it failed to live up to its promise.

The finale gave us a glimpse of what American Horror Story: Coven could have been. The finale involved the selection of a new supreme witch after the reigning supreme, the narcissistic and evil Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange), was supposedly chopped up by her demonic lover and fed to the swamp creatures. After the selection process, the new supreme turned out to be none other than Fiona’s weak-willed daughter Cordelia (Sarah Paulson).

In one of the final scenes Fiona returns. It turns out she faked her death to draw out the new supreme and then hopefully kill her. But Fiona was by then severely weakened. This scene between mother and daughter relayed a complicated, damaged dynamic. If only the show had focused more on this, it would have had a solid footing. It could have been a case study of power, family, good vs evil.

But what we got instead was some unholy mess that bordered on farce.

Exhibit A: next-door-neighbor Joan Ramsey, a religious cliche who gave her grown son bleach enemas (?!?)

Exhibit B: Madame LaLaurie, a sadistic southern slave-owning madam from the 1800s, lalauriecursed to eternal life, who at one point was just a severed head singing (the context doesn’t make it better). LaLaurie goes from rich woman to prisoner to maid to severed body parts, and is then magically reassembled by Queenie, only to have her immortality revoked by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Everything about this character was a fail.

Exhibit C: Young witches Madison and Zoe resurrect Kyle after Madison kills him and his date-rapist fraternity brothers. Kyle spends the rest of the season moaning Frankenstein-style, eventually becoming the Coven’s attack dog/butler. What was the point?

Exhibit D: The previous butler, Spalding, collected dolls and likes to dress as a doll. Oh, and he was missing his tongue for the first half of the season. It was hidden in a box in a closet.

Exhibit E: Cordelia, the witch who became supreme, was so weak and pitiful throughout the eyescordshow that she stabbed her own eyes out (well, not her own eyes…long story) to regain powers that never materialized. Then, in the space of ten minutes she’s suddenly the most powerful witch.

Exhibit F: Death? What’s that?

–Madison: throat slit by Fiona, and resurrected by Misty, then strangled by Kyle

coven–Zoe: impaled on an iron fence and resurrected by Cordelia

–Kyle: killed in a horrific bus crash thanks to Madison and resurrected by Madison and Zoe

–Misty: burned at the stake and resurrected by her own self, then buried alive by Madison, then resurrected by Queenie (sort of — it was unclear how dead she was), then turned to ashes

–Queenie: killed by her own hand (long story), then somehow resurrected (she just shows up alive again and rattles off a 3-second explanation)

–Myrtle: burned at the stake by Fiona, then resurrected by Misty, only to be burned at the stake by Cordelia (after insisting on it (!?!))

–Joan Ramsey: gunned down as collateral damage by the witch hunters, then resurrected by Misty, then killed by mind-controlling Nan (forced to drink bleach) after smothering her enema-clean son (whose ashes told Nan what happened)

Exhibit G: Stevie Nicks showed up for a couple of episodes, as herself, a white witch. She sang and she twirled around. Whatever.

I could go on and on. I won’t. The bottom line: American Horror Story: Coven could have been great. It had an award-winning cast and a solid premise. But the most promising subplots (the witch hunting group, the Axeman) were pushed aside or minimized. Instead, the writers chose camp over coherence.

American Horror Story: Coven — the last gasp

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Is it a good TV show gone bad, or was it never as good as the hype?

American Horror Story CovenOnly one episode left in this season of American Horror Story: Coven. I’ve seen every one. The first few game me some hope. The series had a top-notch cast, some clever ideas, and, most importantly, it is one of the few shows that focuses on horror.

But, the writing… boy oh boy. Sometimes you need to just give up on a TV show. I didn’t.

It’s not all bad. Jessica Lange’s Fiona Goode, the supreme witch, the head of the coven, is lucky. Her character has the best storyline. Her path through villainy is compelling, and Lange is skilled enough to underplay the camp that weighs down the series.

Fiona’s relationship with her daughter Cordelia, a witch who is much weaker than her mother, is compelling and complex. Watching Fiona battle cancer, the loss of her power, mortality, all the while remaining a villain is the highlight of the show for me.

There are several other characters on American Horror Story: Coven who are rich enough to keep my attention: most notably fellow witches Misty Day and Myrtle Snow, and Cordelia’s duplicitous husband Hank Foxx. Even the Axeman, a murderous musician, is 3-dimensional enough to keep me interested.

Most of the other characters, however, are either flat or downright annoying. There’s Madame LaLaurie, the psychotic noblewoman played by Kathy Bates (annoying), and Angela Bassett’s Marie Laveau (one-note). Though their final (joined) fates were well done.

The plotting is a lesson in absurdity. Characters die and are brought back to life. When death is not final it holds no power to shock or disturb. Fiona was supposedly killed. I’d be shocked if she didn’t reappear in the final episode.

American Horror Story: Coven is a show with no internal logic. From the beginning of the season it was emphasized that witches were in danger of dying out — they were being killed off. But in a recent episode, supreme witch Fiona claimed that the process to identify the new supreme would inevitably kill some of the girls. How does killing witches help strengthen the coven?

That is bad writing.

During the course of the season we got to meet the group responsible for hunting the witches down. With just one episode left, I would be rooting for them to kill every last one of these witches, even the so-called good ones. Unfortunately the writers screwed up again. An organization that spent centuries hunting witches had no way to protect themselves against witchcraft, and they were wiped out in the course of a single episode. you would think that such a group would know how to protect themselves.

Logic be damned. Then again, maybe I was expecting too much.

Helix: more zombies coming to television?

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Previews are cryptic, but it’s from Battlestar Galactica‘s Ron Moore, so who knows?

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SyFy is promoting their new show Helix, set to air in January. It’s about a team of scientists fighting a viral outbreak in an Arctic research facility. This virus, from what I can tell, turns people into faster and stronger zombie-like creatures.

But aren’t zombies overdone? What’s left to do with them?

The promo for Helix focuses on the scientific process. Um, okay. Then what?

The good (or bad) news is that it’s exec produced by Ron Moore, the genius who resurrected Battlestar Galactica and then steered it into a wonderful mess by the time it ended after four seasons. Where will he take Helix? Based on his track record with BSG, it’s anyone’s guess.

Hell, he might not even know for sure.

I’ll give it a shot.

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Zombies on Mars?

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(Hint: Doctor Who did it first, and possibly better)

I’ll hold judgment on a movie I haven’t seen, but if this report from io9.com is true, a new horror/sci-fi mash-up is a space disaster.

It’s called The Last Days on Mars — great title, btw — and it’s about a group of astronauts about to leave Mars who discover bacteria that turns them into zombies. Okay, interesting set-up. And it stars Liev Schreiber. Encouraging.

But if the io9.com write-up is to be believed, they fail on two big counts.

First, character. The article describes the crew as “eclectically unlikeable.” Uh oh.

Second, consistency. To quote:

“The space zombies can walk around Mars without a helmet on, but sometimes mild head-butting takes them out. The space zombies don’t seem to want anything but to kill everybody, although there is one lone space zombie who decides to try eating people, but maybe he was just feeling peckish.”

I’ll wait for it to come on Spike TV.

And for the record, Doctor Who already did something similar. It was a special called The Waters of Mars, and it was scary, smart, and had characters you actually liked (though the zombies looked just a little cheesy). Watch that instead if you have a craving for zombies and Mars.

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American Horror Story: Coven – horror or camp?

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There’s a scene near the opening of the first episode of American Horror Story: Coven that is the definition of horror. The year is 1834, and a society madam, played by Kathy Bates, is a vain, sadistic woman who keeps a collection of slaves chained and tortured in the attic of her New Orleans mansion. The camera fixes on the mutilated people. You hear their moans and screams. It is pure horror.

But why?

Because it is grounded in the very real horror of slavery.

I’ve seen 3 episodes of this series so far (I haven’t seen the first or second seasons), and nothing else has compared to this one scene.

Don’t get me wrong, American Horror Story: Coven is entertaining and compelling. It follows a coven of witches in New Orleans (with roots in Salem) as they battle each other and the outside world. But it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a campfest or a gory/horror thriller. Too often it slides into camp.

The actors are big names. Jessica Lange is a great fit for the role of a witch obsessed with holding on to her fading looks and power. But there are times when Lange, Angela Bassett, and Kathy Bates play it way over the top. There’s not much subtlety going on. Or maybe they’re just too big for the small screen.

The best horror is rooted in real-life tragedy, both small and large, because it gets us where we live. Case-in-point: the slave/torture scene. And American Horror Story: Coven has more of this. There’s an infertile woman desperate to get pregnant, and there’s a young man who is revealed to have been molested — both are great set-ups for horror. In the latter, you get the payoff (the pregnancy storyline is developing).

So there is potential. The writers are highly skilled in keeping you watching (and I”ll definitely watch on). I just wish they wouldn’t rely on lazy tropes like the rapist fraternity brothers or Jesus freak neighbor, scale back the camp, and stick with the horror.

Watch this movie: Attack the Block

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British horror done right…

 
attack_the_block_ver4_xlg

The British are known for many things: great music, bad food and teeth, and their one-time love of controlling the planet. But they’re not as well known for horror movies. Maybe this is good: they have little to prove, so there’s no pressure.

Case in point: two of the best horror movies of the past decade: 28 Days Later, a zombie-ish movie that starred Irish actor Cillian Murphy, and one of the coolest, underrated, most bad-ass and too-short-lived doctors from Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston. It’s a hard-edged, smash-bang-fun time. Whatever you do, avoid the sequel (which shall remain nameless), as it nearly ruined the whole thing.

The second film is a horror/comedy, Shaun of the Dead, with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Couple dry British humor with gore and you have a classic. 

And then there’s Attack the Block, a low budget (I’m assuming) indie-style horror. Why low budget? Well, the monsters are kind of… rough. And the movie features the classic horror fail: the empty city streets. 

Get over it. I did, and it was worth it.

So here’s the plot in a nutshell, ripped straight from IMDB: a teen gang in South London protect their block from an alien invasion. There you go.

First, it’s great fun. The action starts pretty early, and once it starts, it rolls along, not too slow, not too fast. It lies somewhere between 28 Days Later (super serious) and Shaun of the Dead (tongue-in-cheek), though more toward the 28 Days Later end of the horror spectrum.

What stood out for me, most of all, was the unique set-up. You meet the teenage hero, Moses, as he, along with his juvy gang, are mugging Sam, a nurse on her walk home. Moses is cruel, someone who you would not choose to identify with, but over the course of the movie, he morphs into the hero of the story, in part because the other characters (drug dealers, vicious aliens) are so much worse, and in part because the extreme situation he finds himself in (battling aliens), forces him to grow as a person.

Rent this movie. It’s worth it, not just because it’s fun, but because it’s a great example of the anti-hero in drama, and it also shows another of my favorite literary conceits: the ordinary man (men and women in this case) forced to confront extraordinary circumstances. None of these people are Jason Bourne or James Bond, and their fight scenes reflect that, which makes it all the better. 

 

Lovecraft leftovers

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I was young and impressionable when I first saw the 1985 horror flick Re-animator. The best way to describe is as a Frankenstein story, with the heartwarming parts hacked out. The source for this story? Providence, Rhode Island’s own H. P. Lovecraft.

This Sunday I got to re-live this part of my adolescence at NecronomiCon, a convention devoted to all things Lovecraft, in Providence, of course, where I sat at a table selling copies of The Last Conquistador.

I don’t pretend to write pure horror in the Lovecraftian form. First, what exactly is that? In my take, Lovecraft’s horror is ultimately bleak, There is no hope – not even a thread. This makes it all the more chilling. The creatures who populate his tales aren’t so much malicious as uncaring, and pretty much unstoppable. Lovecraft excels in mood, and there is only dark.

Edward Lee is a writer in the Lovecraft style. City Infernal, about one girl’s journey through (literal) hell, rivals Lovecraft for darkness, though his heroine, Cassie, is tough and modern (in other words, there is a thread of hope). It is an exciting book that I tore through. And not only is there’s a great sequel – Infernal Angel, but another related book, Lucifer’s Lottery, which features as a character none other than Mr. Lovecraft.

Even bleaker? Try Brian Keene‘s zombie horror The Rising, where it’s not only humans turning into zombies. Don’t even bother uttering the word ‘hope’ on this thrill ride.

I’d say Lovecraft would be proud of these guys.