Showing posts with label Occult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Occult. Show all posts

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Book review: The Lords of Salem


I'm a pretty lucky reader. I like almost all of the books I read in varying degrees, I rarely find a story so bad that I can't finish it, and I have never wished I could have the hours I spent reading a book back.

But after reading LORDS OF SALEM... well, I'm not saying I wish I had those hours back, but I wouldn't complain if some flying spaghetti monster god of fiction decided in his infinite mercy to grant them to me.

It was an interesting idea, and I liked parts of it, I just felt that there were so many things wrong with the approach, as well as the plot and character development. I say that as both a reader and a writer. And I don't like writing negative reviews, I like to give all creative works a chance; but I also have to be honest. And I honestly don't have a lot of positive things to say about my experience, but I will try to be constructive at the very least.

I'm going to stop here and say that there might be spoiler-ish information in my review, so if you're concerned about that you may want to skip this. My brief spoiler-free version is: If you're a big Rob Zombie film fan, have at it. It's gory, it's heavily influenced by past eras of horror, maybe you'll find it fun. If you're on the fence about his films, or outright don't like them, you may find this less fun. There are interesting, redeemable parts to the story, but the authors make a few wrong turns in terms of plot and character and leave you stranded in a bad part of town by the end.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

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.