My Southern Gothic short story “The Wet Knot” will appear in the upcoming literary anthology Dark Lane, Vol. 8, from Dark Lane Books. More information coming soon.
New cover, same terror!
Comet Press has released a new cover for its Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Vol. 2 anthology, which includes my short story “The Field.” The collection is edited by Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax. Click here to purchase.
Excited that my story “Grandfather’s Room” was selected for the upcoming post-apocalyptic horror anthology, Down with the Fallen, from Franklin/Kerr Press.
The Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 2 is out now! The anthology, edited by Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax from Comet Press, includes my short story “The Field.” Get your copy NOW!
Get Out (2017)
Rated R
Blumhouse Productions
Get Out has the suspense, creepiness, violence and jumps scares one would want from a good horror film. Written and directed by Jordan Peele (half of the “Key & Peele” sketch comedy duo), the film’s also insidious with its coiling use of racial themes to enhance its effect.
A chilling opening sequence evokes the Trayvon Martin tragedy as we watch a young black man walking lost in the suburbs at nightfall. Peele immediately establishes a knack for tone and subtext. A character walking alone in the dark is a horror film trope, but certainly the specificity of a lone black man in a white neighborhood adds another dimension of dread to the scene. Notice, in quick, quiet cellphone dialogue, that the man knows how he looks and where he’s at invites danger.
Next, we’re introduced to engaging interracial couple Chris and Rose (Daniel Kaluuya, “Black Mirror,” and Allison Williams, “Girls”) preparing for a weekend trip to Rose’s parent’s palatial estate deep in the exurbs. Rose seems nonplused that her mom and dad are unaware Chris is black; Chris is obviously more concerned about the oversight. Peele plays with racial notions of Rose’s privilege vs. Chris’ realistic concerns here, and in a later scene on the road when they are visited by a police officer. Rose doesn’t hesitate to cut into the officer for what she perceives is racist treatment of Chris, while Chris simply wants to deescalate a situation he’s likely experienced on more than an occasion. The opening sequence, police encounter and an accident en route cleverly set the viewer on edge even before the anticipated visit with the parents.
Said parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) are welcoming in their liberal righteousness. Rose’s father, a successful neurosurgeon, declares he’d vote for Barack Obama for a third term if he could. Her hypnotherapist mother says all the right things but they land with a disingenuousness not lost on Chris. And what to make of Rose’s brother (Caleb Landry Jones, Antiviral), a disheveled rich kid quaking uneasily, speaking inappropriately, like he’s always on the verge of blurting out spoilers?
Back home, Chris’ best friend Rod (LilRel Howery), a TSA officer, is a Greek chorus of sorts, humorously braying about Chris’ naivety of race relations. But Chris—and the audience—isn’t naïve, simply hopeful for the best while laughing at Rod’s over-the-top rantings. You see, Rod says all the things black movie-goers say about white horror movies. He can smell a setup a mile away. Peele, working so effectively as a director of horror, here reminds us he made his bones in comedy.
Over the course of the weekend, Peele quietly but assuredly reels the viewer into a delicious web of paranoia. Suddenly, there’s an annual gathering of friends and family. The winding driveway his lined with black, expensive SUVs, the expansive lawn is a sea of gawking white faces. Chris’ and our time in exurbia grows curiouser and curiouser. His solo trips around the huge house and vast grounds bring unease. The way he’s regarded and how he reacts as the lone black man amongst throngs of old-money white people is a master’s class on how black folks navigate—sometimes moment to moment—competing worlds of racial divide. Chris’ intriguing hypnosis session with Rose’s mom—fantastically visualized as Chris floating in the cosmos with the real world hovering on a big screen TV just out of reach—sets the plot on a course not fully understood until the finale.
Most interesting is the portrayal of the other black faces Chris meets at the house. Every time he talks with or bumps into Stepford-like persons of color, Peele intrigues with the interactions—are they friends or foes, captives or themselves commanding some scheme? In this cauldron of supposed post-racial ennui, we nervously and giddily wait for the shoe to drop. Does Peele’s mixed-race heritage inform the proceedings? Perhaps. The film, in my view, knowingly winks at both sides of the racial coin. What an assured directorial debut!
If there’s a wobbly spot in an otherwise outstanding film, it’s a half-realized backstory concerning the death of Chris’ mother. The moment seems to exist mostly to justify an unlikely act of kindness late in the movie.
In the finale, with the curtains pulled back, the film burst with absurd conflict and straight-up horror and humor. The dangers are far afield from where we would have imagined, and yet with clever insight Peele suggests cultural appropriation is always hiding in plain sight.
This is the second “black” film in a row I’ve seen that, while presenting pointed issues on race, nevertheless with topical, effective storytelling and capable acting and directing taps into American commonality and manages to connect more broadly. Like Hidden Figures, this film seems to have admirers across the board.
| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive
It Follows (2014)
Rated R
Radius-TWC
With Oculus (2013), The Babadook (2014) and now It Follows, I’m beginning to believe again in my beloved and disappointing mistress, the horror genre, which for years has left me with heartache and heartburn. These recent gems bring hope that there are writers, directors, producers mining this genre who aren’t simply beholden to teen-demographic pandering, PG-13 half-assery and unnecessary remakes.
How’s this premise strike you? Jay (Maika Monroe), a post-high school teen whiling away waning autumn days with her sister and friends, goes out on a date with a cute guy she’s had her eye on. After a sexual encounter in the backseat of his car, cute guy informs her that during sex he “passed” something on to her. If that isn’t a horrifying setup right there, then what he’s passed on certainly is: a creature that can look like anyone, even those she loves, will begin to pursue her at a leisurely, but determined pace. “It’s very slow, but not dumb,” Jay is warned. It will unceasingly stalk her by slowly walking toward her—day or night, in empty places or crowded rooms. Only Jay (and those who have/had the curse) can see it, but it’s real. The brief and brutal opening scenes involving a previous female victim of this curse informs us of what this thing might do if it gets ahold of Jay. Cute guy tells her that if the creature kills her, it returns its attention to the last person to pass it on, and so on. It’s in his and Jay’s best interests, he says, for her to quickly sleep with someone else to move the curse on down the line.
With that setup, taking the teen-sex-equals-death horror trope to new extremes, It Follows builds up more tension than I would have imagined. It’s easy to outrun the thing, unless you’re unfortunate enough to allow yourself to get trapped in a corner, but its relentlessness is what terrifies. Jay can’t ever let her guard down to sleep, to attend classes at the community college. Even being surrounded by loving friends who can’t see the creature offers little comfort. It’s always out there, in some form—familiar or hideous, naked or clothed—walking toward her.
Somehow, director David Robert Mitchell’s film is able to evoke fear simultaneously in wide-open, populated areas and closed-off, isolated spaces. Think about that for a moment. When was the last time a horror film got you coming and going like that? At a park, in school hallways, at the beach, someone among the throngs of people is walking toward you—only you—with the intention of doing things to your body and mind you can’t dream up in nightmares. Hiding away in a sealed-up room or boathouse doesn’t leave you with an exit plan when something comes wrapping at the door or crashing through a window. So effective is the director’s use of wide shots (who or what is that moving in the distance behind Jay?), that any time he moves in for close-ups and tight shots, I tensed up wondering what’s occurring just out of frame. Poor Jay. She wasn’t a virgin to begin with, but was sex worth this? And as things become increasingly hopeless will she turn to sex again as a means to sidestep this curse? Certainly a pair of lustful friends are more than willing to help out. But Jay understands that sleeping with someone could condemn him to death.
Adding to this tense and intense film is the director’s sure hand at fashioning a dreamlike atmosphere. Sure, there’s the intrusive sync score that’s an intentional homage to ’80s soundtracks from horror maestro John Carpenter. Sure, Mitchell tries to affect a timeless quality by giving the film a retro look: tube televisions, phones with cords, cars your father drove. But above all, I think the director’s efforts are in service of tapping a visceral nightscape of inescapable terror that ultimately wears you down. This film: not only does it follow, it lingers.
I like how the kids give simple, natural performances; the lack of snarky, meta-dialogue that passes for cleverness these days is actually refreshing. When the finale at an abandoned public pool brings us to the head-on confrontation we’ve been awaiting and dreading, it’s a bit of a letdown only because everything else has been so effective. Turns out, what the creature might do is a more unnerving prospect than what it actually does.
I don’t need a sequel to this, which I’m sure is coming, but I would like to see more genre films strike out for original territory and tone, even at the risk of alienating the demographic that doesn’t seem to have a problem throwing money at mindless, gory, easily forgotten horror films.
| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive
Oculus (2013)
Rated R
Relativity Media
It’s been a good while since a horror film’s caught me in its spell using strong storytelling, empathetic characters and intelligent construction.
The past 10 or so years have seen the horror genre littered with moderately successful (mostly PG-13) fare—The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Insidious 1 and 2, The Conjuring, Sinister—that has given hope to a perpetually gasping genre. These films have filled in gaps between often uninspired, sometimes insipid found-footage subgenre works (the Paranormal Activity sequels, V/H/S), so-called torture porn (the Saw sequels, Hostel, High Tension, the Evil Dead remake), undead features (Zombieland, World War Z, Shaun of the Dead, Stake Land), teen scream films (the Final Destination sequels, the Prom Night and Carrie remakes).
Sure, along the way there have been a few that have aspired to press beyond the status quo—The Descent, The Cabin in the Woods, You’re Next, Plus One, Let the Right One In, The Purge—but frankly these days I’m finding more satisfaction with dramas and thrillers (Headhunters, The Square, the True Detective cable series, Good Neighbors) that have used horror elements for accent than with horror films themselves. Personally, I think those PG-13 successes have as much to do with abysmal alternatives as they do with being genuinely impactful genre efforts.
Oculus arrives at a time when I’ve grown tired of observing my favorite genre on life support. You’ve been waiting for a horror film that engages you as a viewer, right? Here you go. This is a full-blooded horror film that gets the job done right.
The short of it: This film is about a haunted mirror. But really, any piece of household furniture in the service of this script and this director (Mike Flanagan, Absentia) might get the job done.
After years of being separated by tragedy, two siblings reunite to take on the evil forces they believe responsible for the death of their parents. Specifically, Kaylie (Karen Gillan, Guardians of the Galaxy) believes the Damask-like antique mirror brought into their home 11 years ago eventually drove their father to murder their mother and eventually take his own life. Lack of evidence of these supernatural forces led to brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites) taking the blame and spending years in a mental institute. Kaylie has grown into a beautiful and successful antiques dealer who reacquires the mirror with a hidden agenda to seek revenge and clear the family name. Tim, meanwhile, has come to believe most of the details of the tragedy have been reworked by his mind as a coping mechanism and has simply come to accept the sad facts of his deeds.
The past and present stories function on parallel tracks, which work seamlessly even as the two time periods draw ever nearer until the finale, where they actually overlap.
OK, enough of the plot. I’ll leave you to discover its many terrors and surprises. Sound, lighting, editing and acting are all on point, but Oculus uses sure-footed manipulation of perception as its trump card. Because the mirror can manipulate time, space and sound, the film uses this device to manipulate the audience as much as the siblings.
An excellent scene, for example, involves the protagonists not sure which version of themselves is real and which is their mirror illusion. One pair is inside their home facing imminent danger, while the other pair has escaped the house. Should they act to save their endangered selves inside the house, or is it a trick of the mirror to get their outside selves back inside the house? Flanagan has a lot of fun goosing the viewer with such scenes.
Kaylie, thinking she’s fully aware of the mirror’s capabilities, has rigged the house with recording devices, alarms, and has outside contingency plans and even a failsafe. But really once we—and she—discover that the forces behind the mirror can affect and distort video/audio feeds and cell phones, how sure are we of any thing we see or hear?
This is how you build terror: you plot it, you create characters (in two time streams) that we care about, you give us the ground rules and then reveal that those rules can be bent, you use the tried and true tropes of the genre not simply to shock but to enhance story and characters.
Kaylie’s manifest love for her brother when they were kids is contrasted with her present-day disappointment in his willful attempts to deny a devastating past. Meanwhile, her obsession that has only grown since Tim was taken from her threatens to overtake her careful, rational plans. Tim tries to temper his hard-won sanity with his love for his sister; to reach her on some level involves embracing her self-assured belief in the mirror’s evil—that belief once sent him to the psych ward for years.
This film keeps getting compared to The Conjuring. This film is better than The Conjuring.
| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive
Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
Rated R
Paramount Pictures
I know, I know.
Any movie with the number 4 or higher at the end of its title risks automatic long-in-tooth status. And so it goes with the fourth installment of the catching-demon-terror-on-videocamera franchise.
2007’s PA’s found-footage trope terrorized with a single camera mounted in a bedroom. PA2 (2010) one-upped that film’s voyeur content by tapping into a multiple-camera surveillance system. PA3 (2011) went old-school by bringing the pain via VHS videotape. This latest film opts to zing us with up-to-the-minute digital wizardry—laptop Skyping, cellphone video, even a videogame system’s motion-tracking technology (very cool) gets in on the action.
The producers obviously see human beings getting dragged out of frame by invisible demons as a hallmark of the franchise, but I think it’s become stale.
I should be cheering a movie that prefers slow-burn creepiness over attention-deficit quick cutting, flittering shadows and hushed demonic sounds over gore. I’m continually amazed at how these movies encourage—no, command—you to scour every inch of the frame, seeking out the lurking, about-to-pounce terror even as you’re trying to look away. There are shocks to be had, but by now, it all seems so familiar. And by now, can’t we delve a little deeper into the origin of this family-obsessed demon/witch coven nonsense, or just let it go already?
As I rolled my eyes at the post-credit setup for the next one, I’ve decided then and there to heed my opening warning about titles with growing numbers.
| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive
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