Monday, October 20, 2025

The 20th Day of Horror: This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer

 

This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer

I admit, this book's striking cover featuring an ominous cliff face in the image of a skull was enough to draw me in, but then I stuck it on my bookshelf for an inordinately long period of time before eventually snagging a download on my Kobo, where I then plowed through it. While I was not as engaged as I was with some other recent reads, Jenny Kiefer is a pretty good author, and has a firm sense of how to move the story along, so while the book is fairly slow and methodical for the first half, somewhere around the 60% mark it picks up the pace and ends on a rather suitably gruesome note.

The tale spins around four professional climbers/social media stars (two couples and their dog) who use a flyover in a remote wilderness area to find undiscovered scalable cliffs that they can add to their repertoire of potential excursions. A glitchy read on lidar scans reveals what appears to be the motherlode: an amazing looking cliff face in the remote wilderness that no one knows about. Never mind that the readings seem a bit....glitchy? They plan an expedition and head on off. The team starts of excited, though a visit to a local small town diner leaves them with the by now traditional warning from the local folk (waitress, in this case) that things aren't necessarily all right out in the area they are heading to....

The prologue has already forecast that disaster awaits, so the reader knows that it is clear everyone on this expedition is likely doomed. Perhaps the main problem with the story ends up being this expectation, mixed with a rather slow build on the threat as for a good half of the novel the problems are focused on the subtle stuff, such as the group noticing that they can't seem to backtrack, or how their GPS readings don't seem to be adding up. It slowly moves into a more "city folk under threat by a palpable evil wilderness" trope but then we start to get hints of the backstory...ghosts of the past, things that have happened to those who came here before the climbers. At some point the book finally moves forward as the hikers begin to experience injury and eventually madness, and then things get crazy as they begin to experience what are debatably either hallucinations or actual ghosts. By the end of the book it is quite obvious that the supernatural nature of the evil and malign presence which occupies the very soil of the region is palpable, and the fates of all are sealed.

This book relies on a fairly traditional set of tropes, including the "scary woods will get you," thematic, the idea of a haunted area which is not so much a threat due to ghosts but rather a malign sentience itself, and like many more conventional horror novels less effort is made to explore the nature of the supernatural as presented in the novel than to ultimately accept that it simply exists, and it is evil and out to get you. As a result the book plays out fairly conventionally, and while I enjoyed reading it, I do wish it had a few surprises. Indeed (spoiler) the biggest surprise was also a tiny happy one: the dog is the sole survivor.

Reading this not long after Clark's The Tower left me drawing comparisons between the two. I think Kiefer's novel is actually a bit stronger in that it feels like she worked out the plot and pacing rather well, so I didn't ever feel like she had changed the rules of the threat or deviated from the planned story to follow a lead.....the story goes exactly where it intended to. This both works in its favor and against it, as I would not at all have minded a bit more exploration of the nature of the haunted wilderness, even maybe a glimpse as to the true nature of the evil. The characters of the story are not, unfortunately the sorts of people to do that kind of investigation; they are ordinary people facing unsurvivable circumstances, and only get the barest opportunity to question what is happening to them. Late in the story, for example, they have a moment where one of the characters (Dylan) uses her camera phone to try recording the supernatural manifestations she is witnessing, and realizes that the camera is not showing her any of it....she begins to suspect then that something is making them see things, but too late to really save anyone.

Overall, a fun read, you may enjoy it a lot if you like "supernatural nature is out to kill you" type stories, but I think I wish the four main characters had been a bit more relatable, and there are chunks of the book I feel dragged on a bit before interesting things started happening that were a bit too slow for the sort of story this was telling. A fat novella stretched to book length. I give it a C+.

Sunday, October 19, 2025

The 19th Day of Horror: Alien: earth

 

Alien : Earth (Hulu)

Well, it felt inevitable: Alien: Earth is a complete series on Hulu now, and since my household is fairly obsessed with the Alien franchise as a whole (I used to be able to claim the honor of being the Alien aficionado around here, but my son has since usurped that role from me) it is only logical I include this in the 31 Days of Horror reviews.

So right off the bat, Alien: Earth is one of the more successful miniseries on streaming in 2025 so odds are if you are at all interested in this universe then you've already seen it. My understanding is that even non fans of the movies will probably enjoy this, since the story of the eight episode series is a fairly self-contained tale; the ubiquitous alien is introduced in a manner which does not require having seen 7 other movies, and focuses on topics which expand the setting of the movies in directions that are hard to explore in a two hour movie format. 

Alien: Earth does something that I am always pleasantly surprised about: it uses its time on screen wisely, and it feels like every minute on screen counts toward the motion of the story, characters and plot such that it does not feel like there's very much filler at all, a common problem with a lot of television series. In fact there is so much going on in the eight episodes of the show that there is no pat resolution to many story elements; it doesn't so much end on a cliffhanger as a "and this will definitely be continued, either on screen or off" sense. I don't know if they've announced a 2nd season yet, but my understanding is the creators already have a script ready.

So what is it about? The plot is divided between two themes, with one plot literally crashing in to the other. The first story focuses on the corporation Prodigy, revealed as one of five megascorporations, and a rival of Weyland-Yutani, which have divvied up control of Earth after what is suggested to have been a very tumultuous period of conflict. Prodigy's territories include two locations of importance: the masive arcology of New Seoul, and  Pacific Rim isle nick-named Neverland where research and development is working under Prodigy's mastermind, "The Boy Cavalier," a supremely obsessive fellow with lots of weird quirks, including a tendency to go barefoot everywhere, along with a deep obsession with Peter Pan. He is clearly a cypher for our own modern Megacorps and their eccentric and often out-of-touch leadership. 

The story starts on Neverland, where Prodigy is attempting to create hybrids, the term to describe human minds uploaded to imprint perfectly into synthetic minds and bodies. They gain the consent of children who are suffering from debilitating and fatal diseases from which they would otherwise never recover, and the experiment is going along quite well, with a handful of children whose minds have suddenly been uploaded into powerful adult synthetic bodies. The five are given new names from Peter Pan, and our lead character is Wendy, who seems to be especially quick to adjust to her new capabilities. She is also obsessed with her older brother from her former life, who works in New Seoul (Prodigy City) as an emergency medtech with the civil defense force.

Throughout the series, the focus on the synthetic hybrids is one of questioning whether this is experiment is working as intended. Similarly to the themes in Alien: Romulus, where the Weyland-Yutani researchers harvest the plagarius praepotens* to engineer genetically modified humans who can survive in space (with at best dubious results, per that movie), Prodigy instead is looking at using synthetic bodies to give the minds of humanity immortality and enhancement. But...is the mind of a person uploaded in this manner really the same person? They use children because the minds of the young are still pliable and capable of being uploaded with better success rates (mostly)...or is that just part of the Boy Cavalier's Peter Pan obsession? What happens when the hybrids realise that they really aren't human, or even perhaps sympathetic to humanity? Or even their old selves anymore? The show tackles and plays with these concepts with fascinating success, making it distinctly interesting science fiction in that regard.

But this is an Alien series, so the other plot kicks off quickly, when a massive deep space exploration craft arrives in orbit and crash-lands in the heart of New Seoul. The massive ship has suffered a critical failure but survives the journey, at least in part due to the sole surviving crewman Morrow, who introduces cyborgs into the setting. Morrow's cybernetics are old; the ship departed on its journey 65 years earlier, and his cybernetics ad thematically in the style of the technology used for synthetic androids in the Alien universe. One also gets a sense that Morrow's basic humanity is a bit eroded (a nod to the cyberpunk genre's concept of cyber-psychosis, maybe) though later on as more of his backstory on the ship is revealed I think a lot of his attitude is completely understandable. 

The ship is full of specimens. It was a Weyland-Yutani venture into space, set out long ago when presumably far fewer alien worlds had been visited, to find and return with living specimens of use to the corporation. The failure at its very end, and its crash into Prodigy City/New Seoul is part of the mystery, as well as whether or not the civil defense force can react to the catastrophic results of the crash and eventually figure out a means of containment. The story of the hybrids coincides with this tale when Wendy's brother is identified as being on site, and she convinces her creators to let the hybrid team participate in rescue and recovery operations. Headed by their synthetic handler Kirsh (who is himself weaved into the story as an example of a very old synthetic model), the hybrid teams discovers the real purpose of the ship, and also that five of the specimens on the vessel are, in fact, extremely deadly predators....of which our franchise star xenomorph is but one!

I could write a long time about this show, but advise instead it is better to go watch it for yourself. I will make a few side comments however: one is that there is some debate on whether the show is canonically in alignment with the movies. Some clues sort of suggest no, based on bits and pieces shown suggesting Weyland-Yutani had merged as a corporation before the Prometheus ever set off. The show creators admitted that they didn't pay too much attention to the movies taking place prior to the time period of the show (2120, 2 years before the original movie, and some years after Prometheus and Alien: Covenant), so if you were not a fan of those two prequels then this may not bug you at all. For my take, the Alien franchise as a whole has only been loosely consistent with a lot of these little details, so such inconsistencies (if they really are inconsistent) do not bother me; somewhere someone is writing an official novel or game module that reconciles such discrepancies, I am sure.

Anyway, stop reading about it and go check it out! Solid A+ and my most satisfying watch of the year so far (admittedly from someone who just does not usually get into streaming TV much). 



*A name which, if you immediately know what it is, marks you as a true dedicate (or maybe you just payed close attention to Rook's rambling commentary in Alien: Romulus)

Saturday, October 18, 2025

The 18th Day of Horror: Limbo (PC Steam Edition)



Fair disclosure! I played and completed Limbo on the Asus Rog Ally X, which was an excellent experience. Limbo came out in 2011 apparently, although I thought it was a more recent title. If you are a fan of side-scrolling puzzler/adventure titles then there's a good chance you have already played this fine little game. If you are like me and have not, then I definitely recommend it. 

Limbo is, honestly, a creepy little title that conveys horror through an unexplained, nightmarish world your small child-like character must travel through. His reason for being here is uncertain, his goal is uncertain (escape?) and the reason everything wants to murder him is also unclear, other than the world (Limbo, presumably) is an incredibly hostile place, literally dog-eat-dog. 

Since the story is vague, the horror of the world is conveyed entirely through the experience of moving through it and being killed...sometimes a lot....and then finding yourself waking up a bit before whatever killed you giving you chance to circumvent or thwart whatever it is. The game, like many side-scrolling 2D platformers of its nature, relies on the player to intuit clues as to resolving puzzles through environmental queues. It's not bad about this, actually, though I did consult a walkthrough on about four occasions when I was otherwise stumped. Sometimes the action you need to take is even less obvious. As an example, early on you run into a gigantic spider which waits patiently to murder you. Earlier you spot a bear trap in a tree. While it was clear to me that that trap had something to do with solving the spider issue, it was less clear how to get it down from the branch where it was hanging. The solution was novel (and makes sense) but not intuitive at first as the game had not telegraphed that the solution was even really a mechanical option in the game.

Later on the game gets more platformer-like and the puzzles deal with more physics, especially when you find yourself in the depths of a grim cityscape/industrial factory that, being in Limbo and all, is utterly nightmarish and designed to kill you. I have often hit walls on games like this in the past where the dexterity necessary to pass through such tests is more than I can muster, but Limbo proved to be just fine; a few such areas required some repetition and repeated dying but eventually I figured it out.

Overall a fun experience. I took about four hours to complete the game, which meant it was a satisfying evening experience and that in itself was a pleasant surprise. I have many games in my Steam backlog that are 60 to 100 hours to complete (or more....looking at you Assassin's Creed franchise!) but I would take 15-20 shorter games like Limbo over a monstrous AAA game any day of the week. Solid little game, I will give it an A!

Friday, October 17, 2025

Tron: Ares Review

I'm interrupting my mad string of daily 31 Days of Horror posts to write about seeing Tron: Ares with the family tonight. I had lowered expectations for this movie because while I enjoyed Tron: Legacy it was not my favorite movie by any means and I had many issues with it. The original Tron holds a special place in my heart, but is distinctly a beast of its time, and aged about as well as a movie trying to do CGI in a nascent era where CGI was all simple vector graphics could (and the rest wasn't even CGI, but rather simulated CGI). That said, I was a kid when the first one came out, and I read the entire novelization the night before seeing the movie, and my mental visual of the book was never going to compete with the poor film....it didn't stand a chance.

So going in to Tron: Ares I did not expect the following: that I not only liked it, I thought it kicked ass. Possibly my second favorite movie of 2025 next to Superman, and may immediately have joined a small but worthy passel of guilty pleasure movies, films I just viscerally love to watch. This list includes Predator 2, Robocop 2, The Thing, Tropic Thunder and The Life Aquatic, to give you sampling of the films I deeply love without justification. Tron: Ares is instantly on this list for me. 

For one thing: The Trent Reznor Nine Inch Nails soundtrack kicks ass and elevates this movie immediately. It is a worthy successor to the retired Daft Punk of the last film. For another thing, this movie maintains a lovely, simple premise that expands the Tron universe without going wild. It raises subtle and interesting questions about what happens when the beings of the digital universe (the Grid) grow accustomed to the existence of the users, and no longer hold theological reverence for them. Instead, we focus on the idea that Dillinger's company and grandson have figured out how to use a variation on 3D printing to create real world hard-light constructs in which the programs can load themselves, and the new security program Ares is one such program. As Ares experiences the world, he realizes that he values something beyond his role as a program in service to Dillinger, and this leads to conflict as he is opposed by the more dedicated and single-minded program Athena. 

Meanwhile, Eve is the CEO of Flynn's old company Encom, and she's trying to discover the secret of permanence....how to make hard light constructs turn into real world things forever. Her work is revealing what amounts to replicator technology from Star Trek; making real food in a 3D printer, for example, that people can eat. In contrast, Dillinger's grandson is focused entirely on the entities of the Grid, and how they can be weaponized. This drives the conflict of the story, which is delivered in glorious, ultra stylish and cool fashion to amazing NIN music, making an almost mesmerizing experience. This really is what I wanted Tron: Legacy to be more like. 

Supposedly the movie isn't doing too great at the box office. I hope it does well enough for a sequel, because I liked it enough to really want more Tron now. Also, this movie made me genuinely like Jared Leto as Ares, and I am still trying to wrap my head around that. Solid A, and this one goes into my short list of films I'll rewatch regularly.

The 17th Day of Horror: The Tower by Simon Clark

 

The Tower by Simon Clark

Originally released in 2005 and published as a mass market paperback under the Pinnacle Imprint, The Tower is Simon Clark in fine form, and also a bit of a change from some of his more popular books (Blood Crazy in particular comes to mind). It is firmly in the haunted house corner of the horror genre, but takes a bit of a twist: in this case the house itself is the evil menace at the heart of the story. I read this a couple months ago so I'll be a bit briefer in my recollection of the details, but I did enjoy this book and felt it was worth talking about in the 31 Days of Horror-thon I have subjected myself to.

The eponymous Tower of the novel is in fact an ancient building, dating back to medieval times and possibly earlier, around which later construction was built out, enclosing the original ancient structure deep inside a much larger mansion. The mansion was an important staging ground for British air defense in World War II and in the years leading up to the time in the novel it was a retirement home for the elderly before being shut down and abandoned and turned by whoever owns the property into a rental in a remote region of England (if you live in England you can correct me on exactly where it is at), accessible only by taking a ferry and crossing a broad wetlands region. 

It is to this house which an aspiring young band of musicians who have recently secured a lucrative contract decide to sequester themselves away in for a month, to compose their new album and strike their fame and fortune. The group consists of a narcissistic leader, the guy who composes the songs and brings along his two girlfriends, his drummer, guitarist, keyboard guy, and a gal whose another girlfriend I think, and whose skillset I can't recall offhand (and apologies, I don't remember anyone's names and can't be bothered to look it up right now)....each is an interesting enough character, though maybe the bandmates are all a little too similar except for the self-absorbed leader, who stands out.

As the group arrives in the small town nearby and leaves the ferry, they find themselves in a drenching storm and stumble across their first omen, an exausted stray dog on the road. One of the bandmembers takes pity on the dog and brings it into the car. This dog is an important character in the book from this point on. 

Anyway, they come to this spooky house, notice it's odd architecture, and are perplexed at a clock which seems to blare from every room equally and goes off on the hour, often inconveniently while they are trying to record. They barely have a day's time to do some practice when they've had it with this clock and try to find its source....and it looks like the source may be in the weird smaller building/tower buried inside the inner building. 

The first night things start happening. One of the team has an oppressive dream of the house literally closing in on him, crushing him to death, but he wakes up thinking maybe it was a dream but his chest bruise suggests otherwise. The next day things get worse, as more horrific things are imagined and one of the girls disappears on the property. There's an old groundskeeper, it turns out, and we the readers learn he is a slave to whatever entity possesses the house. Indeed, the entity may have been there a very long time, and demands sacrifice periodically. I don't think the group gets further than another day or so before they are all keenly aware they are being hunted by the house, which seems determined to stop their music and kill them.

About the biggest problem I can identify in The Tower is that over the course of reading it I began to get the feeling that Simon Clark had a good core premise for a story, and he filled in the gaps and bits as he went along. The hint of the house's ancient nature, perhaps originally the location of an ancient shrine used to appease some ancient chthonic old one beneath the earth was never more than hinted at, which is a shame, because I would have liked to see a bit more of this. We get a lot of grisly dream sequences where people witness their own deaths, then later that death confronts them in the real world and with luck they might escape it....and in the end, the dog they found at the beginning turns out to be a shockingly important key to their escape. 

I was motivated to plow through the book over several days and enjoyed every minute of it. I had a vague feeling I had read it many years ago when it first came out, but my memory was so faded on that first read that I was able to enjoy it with surprises aplenty. Although I own a copy of the physical book in my library, I snagged a copy on Kindle and read that (the better to keep my original intact and uncreased; it's an old book now!) Well worth a read if you like weird house haunt tales, or if you happen to enjoy Simon Clark's writings. I am a big fan of his, and this book, like all of his works, was well worth the time.

Thursday, October 16, 2025

The 16th Day of Horror: Deep Gravity TPB

 

Deep Gravity TPB

Released by Dark Horse Comics in 2015, this graphic novel is based on a story by Mike Richardson, scripted by Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Bechko, and illustrated by Fernando Baldo. Deep Gravity is a fine example of what Dark Horse Comics does best: mini series (repackaged as graphic novels) focused on distinct stories that don't need to tie into some sort of existing IP universe. Deep Gravity is particularly entertaining in that it feels like a graphic novel adaptation of a twenty-tens movie we never got to see. It's one part explosive scifi action and one part space survival horror, and nestles well in the "horror SF" tradition without feeling like it is riding on any specific film or story's coat tails.

Deep Gravity's tale is about the arrival of the deep space freighter Vanguard around the remote world Poseidon, located around a fictional red dwarf three light years from Earth. The corporation Maelstrom holds the contracts to supply and manage the colony located on Poseidon, which is a higher gravity world with a unique ecosystem of creatures that exhibit both plant and animal-like traits, but the toxic elements in the ecosystem plus a higher exposure to radioactive particles (presumably due to a weaker magnetosphere, or its proximity to a red dwarf star?) means the people assigned to duties on Poseidon have to rotate out every three years, the maximum safe period humans can occupy the planet before risk of death goes up exponentially. 

Our protagonist is Steve Paxon, an engineer who volunteered to join the three-year journey as one of the lone crew on the Vanguard to remain conscious as a ship tech while the rest of the new colonists are kept in hibernation. His motives aren't driven by money or altruism, but rather to follow his ex-girlfiend Michelle, who was arrived three years ago for a tour of duty on Poseidon and is about to finish out her rotation. His three years on the Vanguard gave him time to reflect on what a poor life choice this was.

No sooner has Steve landed on Poseidon with the rotation of staff than do bad things start happening, as the flora/fauna of Poseidon are reminiscent of Harry Harrison's Deathworld novels; it's a dangerous planet. His pilot buddy his badly injured after Steve decides he wants to go look out the security perimeter for fun, then he distracts Michelle when she's trying to assist in loading a larger beast for transport; Maelstrom hauls a lot of specimens back to Earth as part of hits contract, you see. Either way, Steve is a bad luck magnet who can't stop distracting people at critical moments. 

The story ramps up when the Vanguard, having delivered the new team for the colony loads up and returns to the Vanguard in orbit with a mix of the old crew rotating out from the colony plus the many specimens they have on board, including an immense, insanely deadly octopoidal beast called the galeocrinus, alias the "Leo," a hyper-predatory beast that can squeeze into lots of narrow confines with the instincts and intellect of an octopus and the appetite of a bottomless pit. That would be all fine, if it remained confined.....

After docking while moving the cargo around, something odd happens, and the Vanguard shifts trajectory for mysterious reasons right into the path of an asteroid, and ends up being critically damaged. The destructive wake of the asteroid leaves many of the crew and creatures dead, but Steven and a handful of survivors work to escape the wreckage as it begins orbital decay, while the Leo also survived and begins hunting them. It turns into a race against time to figure out what happened, how to escape, and if Michelle is still alive to be rescued.

This was a great read! Not a long read as the original print run was only four issues, but well worth it if you enjoy a good scifi/action/disaster themed survival horror tale that manages to do a good job within the genre without feeling like it is borrowing from any other property in the cluttered horror SF genre. 

I think it might only have been improved a bit if Baldo managed to make a few of the crew look a bit more distinct from one another (Steve is utterly generic so does not stand out among other utterly generic crew men in certain scenes), and one might imagine that with more time or pages to expand on the broader story we could have been treated to a bit more of Poseidon itself. The book ends on a definitive note, but also suggests maybe a future story could revisit the universe of Deep Gravity. I'd give it a B+.  

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

The 15th Day of Horror: Ugetsu (1953)

 

Ugetsu (1953)

One thing people around me can probably tell you is that I just won't shut up about how much I love the movie Ugetsu, and I have watched it several times now, each time finding some new bit or piece to enjoy. Originally produced and released in 1953 by director Kenji Mizoguchi, Ugetsu is a period piece set durng a period of civil war in the 16th century in Japan. While it is, strictly speaking, not a horror film it is almost more of a blend of genres, reflecting the kwaidan tradition of the period in which it is set, in which weird tales can often blend with more conventional narratives to tell a fable and perhaps even a moral lesson (or, just as often, a "just so" story).

The story focuses on two families in a small village near Lake Biwa, trying desperately to survive during an eruption of civil war in which the peasantry of the land are treated as nothing more than a resource to be abused and discarded. Genjuro and his friend Tobei conspire to take their ceramic wares across the lake to the city where it is still possible to make a living, and while they try to bring their wives along at first, fear of the risk overcomes Genjuro who leaves his wife Miyage behind with their young child. Tobei's wife Ohama stayes with him.....but as things progress, everything falls apart. 

Genjuro makes money selling his wares, but he encounters the beautiful noblewoman Wakasa, who quickly lures him to her estates, despite mysterious warning from the locals, where he becomes enmeshed in an affair with her. Tobei aspires to become a real warrior, and to seek the status of a samurai; by pure luck he manages to be in the right spot at the right time and manages to ambush a warrior with a suit of armor, which he takes and then presents himself to the army where he quickly advances in status. His wife, now lost in the conflict, ends up recruited into prostitution.

Without saying anymore, I will right off the bat identify this as a solid A+ film, absolutely worth a watch from the perspective of a haunting tale of historical drama mixed with the weird horror conventions of a kwaidan. Read on for spoilers of this 72 year old movie!

SPOILER SECTION

So far the horror of the story is primarily of small town folk getting swept up in a time of severe conflict and the damage it does to their otherwise more innocent natures....but the horror creeps in with Genjuro's tale as he eventually discovers that his new love, Lady Wakasa, is in fact a yurei, a ghost woman who perished and her estate burned to the ground as a result of the civil wars. Her covetous ghost does not want to let him go, until he at last realizes what he has fallen victim to and manages to escape. Meanwhile Tobei is reveling in his barely earned military success when, taking his men to a brotherl, he runs into his forgotten wife and realizes suddenly what he lost in order to gain his warrior's status. 

Eventually, the three converge back on their home village, realizing they enjoye the simpler life so much better. For poor Genjuro his descent into the haunted world is not yet over, as he returns to his wife and home, seemingly intact as she has waited for him all this time, only to discover the following morning that she, too, was a yurei, and she held on only long enough to see his return. 

Ugetsu is such an amazing movie, it is absolutely worth watching for anyone who meets one of these criteria: enjoys Japanese weird tales (kwaidan), enjoy Japanese cinema in general, enjoy period piece films, enjoy engaging historial dramas, or enjoy ghost stories in general. As I said above...this is a solid A+ for me in and my short list of all time favorite movies. It's available on streaming in various places and I believe Criterion has it on blu-ray.   

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

The 14th Day of Horror: Rabid (1977)

 

Rabid (1977)

Right off the bat this is one of Cronenberg's earliest horror films, and one which apparently garnered a cult following. It's main character, Rose, was played by Marylin Chambers who is otherwise better know for her work in the adult film industry, and I think this might have been her only "normal" acting credit. She actually holds up quite well as the protagonist of the film, and in true Cronenberg form there is no happy ending here, for anyone.

A quick rant: while trying to find a good cover image for this movie, I notice that a lot of them use a brief image midway into the film of a woman from the hospital who freezes to death in a walk-in freezer. It is a brief throwaway scene, and I am entirely unclear on why this image is used so prominently in most cover art depictions, given it is entirely unrepresentative of the rest of the movie.

The premise of the film lies within the venn intersection of plague/pandemic films and zombie apocalypse films. Had I known this was a sort of soft apocalypse zombie plague film I would have watched it a long time ago, actually. Rose and her boyfriend are part of a tragic motorcycle accident, which takes place near the Keloid special surgical hospital focused primarily on cosmetic surgery, but the good Doctor Keloid is also involved in various experimental procedures. To save Rose from deformity and loss of skin, he submits her to a specialized treatment of skin grafts that involve an apparently untested process using morphogenetic treatment. Unknown to the doctor, this treatment causes Rose to change....she heals quickly, but also grows a stinger like appendage which can emerge from near her armpit. This stinger can drink the blood of victims while anesthetizing them and later causing memory loss.  Later, the victims recover, but within hours go insane as they manifest an irrational hunger and a desperate need for violence. These infected can, in turn, transmit this sort of "super rabies" to anyone they bite or come into close contact with.  

As the movie progresses the disease spreads and soon Montreal is a hotbed of a deadly pandemic. The story unfolds at a tense but measured pace, and focuses on Rose as she at first gives in to her own hunger for blood, even as her incredibly lackluster boyfriend tries to find her. She eventually realizes she may be the source of the plague, and comes up with a way to test and confirm this. The film ends with Montreal potentially in a new era of perpetual martial law as the only solution the government has for containment and treatment is to shoot the manifesting infected.

This film holds up really well. It's got that seventies vibe, which is important to understanding the movie; the pace of the story and the progress of the overall reaction to a growing epidemic are suitable for the time period. This grounded sense of realism makes the movie feel just a bit more realistic and thus a bit scarier than some more over-the-top films of similar nature.

Al in all, this is a movie you will best enjoy if you like vintage horror, but I honestly think it holds up surprisingly well, even if the events of the film would have a harder time making sense in modern cinema. Rose's mutation, for example, would require a bit more explanation as to why she grows a deadly plague-bearing, blood-drinking stinger, for example. But in 1977? Makes perfect sense. Solid B!  

Monday, October 13, 2025

The 13th Day of Horror: Monster Island (2024)

 


Monster Island (2024)

This awesome hidden gem from Singapore is playing on Shudder right now, so I definitely advise checking it out if you are a fan of classic monster movies. Also called Orang Ixan, Monster Islands starts in 1942 during World War II, on a Japanese Prison ship transporting American POWs and Japanese prisoners, specifically a former Japanese soldier named Saito who is being returned to Japan for execution. He is chained to an Australian (or British?) POW named Bronson, and not long after the ship is attacked and sunk by American fighter planes. The two washed up on a remote island, seemingly the sole survivors, and are forced to learn to trust one another as they realize that they are not alone on the island....some sort of monster is hunting them....

This movie is a nice, component production with good FX, a good budget, a smart action/horror story focused entirely on Bronson and Saito, with a few other survivors figuring in to the mix about midway in.  It owes a bit of it's lineage to a few films: the obvious one references as point of inspiration is the Creature from the black Lagoon, but I was reminded slightly of a couple other films as well, specifically ENemy Mine, and of course Predator. It's hard to throw soldiers into a jungle island and have a monster stalk them and not be reminded a bit of Predator. 

One thing the movie is not doing is riffing off of the mythos, as while the creature is a bit like an aquatic Deep One-like monster, the aquatic beast is most definitely just a cunning creature and not at all related to the spooky lineage of cosmic horror. The movie takes its queues from the more conventional monster movie genre, and does a great job of it. 

I actually was really happy to stumble on this movie while browsing Shudder, as I needed a break from the incredibly bad The Old Ones and the goofy, fun but ultimately far too silly Mark of the Werewolf. A movie that was earnest in its effort to make a serious movie of survival horror with actual characters and situations you care about was a refreshing change of pace. Solid B! Similar to Primitive War, it appears that there is a foreign film market out there which is just knocking hits out of the park.


Sunday, October 12, 2025

The 12th Day of Horror: Primitive War (2025)

 


Primitive War (2025)

One of the coolest things I learned from Primitive War is that there is apparently an Australian box office blockbuster film industry, ands that it has cool directors like Luke Sparke making amazing movies on a fraction of the budget that American blockbusters consume. Primitive War got a very limited theatrical release about a month ago and I managed to catch it twice with different family members. Yes, Primitive War was so good I watched it twice in the same weekend. I also enjoyed it about twenty times more than the last three Jurassic World movies combined.

Primitive War opens up in the middle of the Vietnam War during an offensive push into territory where the American troops suspect Russian activity to aid the Viet Kong. A previous recon team went in to the valley where strange things are being reported and no one came back, so a second recon/rescue team is ordered in top find the first team and evidence of what the Russians are up to. The team does not discover Russians (though there are Russians), but instead they find dinosaurs....lots and lots of dinosaurs.

Indeed, it appears the Russians have a secret research base nestled in the region, and they've been experimenting with some sort of particle collider that created a wormhole into the ancient past, dragging what is clearly a near infinite number of dinosaurs....like, more dinosaurs than is ever seen in all of the Jurassic movies, into the 1960s. The collider experiment is out of control, and a myriad of dinosaur laden epochs are literally bleeding in to the modern world!

What ensues from all of this is a tale of survival horror, mad scientist generals, an aggrieved Russian paleontologist, an escalating series of increasingly amazing set pieces and action sequences, a team of American soldiers that all have better and more distinct personalities than any of the characters in the latest Jurassic World movie could evoke, and an end sequence that is so ridiculously over the top that it has to be seen to be believed.

Honestly, if you are a fan of dinosaur movies, pulp adventure films, or heck, enjoy a good old "soldiers vs. extremely bad odds" type setups, Primitive War is very much worth a watch. Although it doesn't have the perfect polish of a film with a bigger budget and a bunch of star recognition actors, it manages to accomplish everything your typical blockbuster manages to, with more fun and flair than is ever normally seen in movies with much bigger budgets. Primitive War was a solid A and well worth a watch. Indeed, I enjoyed it so much I plan to find more of Sparke's other films to see how they are.