Film review: The Possession

I like figuring out how stories work. They all have histories, rules, connections and themes that are waiting to be unearthed. The difference between the good and bad ones, for me, is that the good ones have innards that make sense. They might not be obvious, they might require some work to figure out, and they might even surprise you. I always hope they'll surprise me, I like that part. If they're really good, the next time you go back to the story they'll even change.

The... not-as-good stories don't make a whole lot of sense.

Film review: Sinister

 In SINISTER, Ethan Hawke stars as true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt who has brought his wife and two kids to live in a house formerly occupied by the slaughtered family he intends to write his newest book on. That sounds reasonable, right? After finding a box of 8mm snuff films in the attic, Oswalt realizes that the person responsible for this most recent murder may have been attacking families for decades. 

In retrospect, I wish I had thought to live-tweet my thoughts on SINISTER while I was watching it.

Book review: Your House Is On Fire, Your Children All Gone

A quick look at the book's description from its cover would indicate to anyone why I picked this up: "Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horror." They had me at Shirley Jackson, but the rest helped too.

I finished the novel feeling more perplexed than anything. I wondered, "Did I miss the horror? Was I not paying enough attention?"

Book review: "Red Rain" by R. L. Stine

Before I was the Librarian of the Dead, before I was even a teenage Library Page of the Dead, I was just an odd little kid who liked reading all sorts of creepy stuff. Some of which I probably shouldn't have been reading. The price one pays for having a reading comprehension level that exceeds one's mental and emotional maturity.

I used to love the paperback, pulpy horror-thriller novels about high school kids being terrorized and haunted and vamped and slaughtered. One shots, anthologies and series by the likes of Christopher Pike, Caroline B. Cooney and of course, R. L. Stine.