Beware The Shadows

My shared world anthology, Limbus, Inc., has been out for a month or so, but the final cover is only now coming together. Here it is, for the world to see.

Pretty awesome, huh? This cover will take over the old cover in a couple weeks. And that means the old cover will soon be a collectors item. Seriously, it could be worth tens of dollars one day. So click here, and buy it now!

If you follow this blog at all, you know I have a special place in my heart for the Lovecraft eZine, the best place on the web for anything Lovecraftian.

Here I am representing at the 2012 World Horror Convention.

Now they are running a special through the end of the day that is so good I had to share it. Click here to learn more, but here’s the down and dirty. If you buy  The Grimscribe’s Puppets, a collection of horrific short stories edited by the inimitable Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., you get the 2011 and 2012 Lovecraft eZine mega-packs, totally free! That’s an insane amount of Lovecraftian horror (including a story by yours truly). You really can’t go wrong with this deal, but go take advantage of it before it’s too late!

It is evident to me that the Southern Haunting Saga is only going to get better. “The Girl” was a wonderful read, but “The Lurker” is even better. And with hints that the larger secret haunting Crate Northgate is beginning to unravel, I can’t wait for the next installment. Another wonderful read from Bryan Hall.

5 Stars

Cute and pretty cool, too.

Very excited to be the featured author over at the Horror Aficionados group on Goodreads, the largest and best horror group on the site. I’ll be answering questions all month, so if there’s anything you want to know but have been too afraid to ask, come on over and see me! Click here to chat.

Two videos for everyone tonight as Fourth of July celebrations continue. One, the greatest presidential speech ever given. And two, Chinese New Year fireworks from my balcony in Shanghai last February. Enjoy.

Here’s the Star Spangled Banner, with the first AND the fourth verse, something most of you have probably never heard. If the first verse is about the struggle for freedom to survive, the fourth verse is about freedom conquering all.

And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.

–William Falkner, Intruder in the Dust

There are few places more evocative and more truly horrifying than Prypiat, the city that serviced the reactors at Chernobyl. A modern city of 50,000, abandoned in a matter of days, everything left behind, frozen in time by the radiation danger that sealed its fate. If ever there was a place to set a horror film, Prypiat should be it.

Which is one big reason that Chernobyl Diaries, a found footage horror movie from the creators of Paranormal Activity, is such a disappointment. The movie starts off strong. Four friends join an extreme tourism excursion to Prypiat, with the promise that they will see things that few alive have borne witness to. But when they arrive, the guards turn them away, much to the chagrin of their guide (and the best character in the film), Yuri. Not to be deterred, our intrepid explorers break into the city through a back gate. But once they begin to explore the ruins of Prypiat, they begin to suspect that they are not alone.

The strength of Chernobyl Diaries is obviously Chernobyl and Prypiat themselves. The movie does a fantastic job of recreating the abandoned cities, and the period while the group is exploring the city—before anything unusual at all happens—is the best part of the film. But once things go badly, the film lurches into cliché and typical horror movie territory. People do stupid things they shouldn’t do. They split up. They refuse to stay in places of relative safety. They turn their backs to dark hallways.

Chernobyl Diaries is pretty standard bad horror movie fare. And that’s a shame. It started off with so much potential.

P.S. In March, I took my own trip to Prypiat. If you are interested in checking out the pictures, click here.

Two Stars

I am always on the lookout for good horror. Despite my best efforts, I rarely come across a movie that scares me. I found one.

Sinister tells the story of Ellison Oswalt, a true-crime writer whose best work was ten years ago. In an effort to get his mojo back, he moves his family to a small town in the middle of nowhere to chronicle the murder of four people and the disappearance of the family’s youngest daughter. And in a move that the local sheriff notes is in “bad taste,” he decides to move into the house previously occupied by the murdered family. Did I mention the family was murdered in the back yard, hanged from the branch of a particularly sturdy tree?

Things start to go hairy when Ellison discovers a box of Super-8 films in the attic of his home, films that shouldn’t be there (we are treated to a crime scene photo showing an empty attic). One of the films depicts the murder of the people Ellison is investigating. But when Ellison watches some of the other films in the box—spanning several decades—he finds that each one depicts another family, and another murder. But when Ellison makes out the image of the killer in one of the films, that’s when things take a turn for the worst.

I tell you what, this movie is freaky-deaky from the word go. From the very first frame, it’s go time. I am reminded of the similarly named Insidious, a movie that was wonderfully horrific until the last 15 minutes or so, when it sorta falls apart. This movie doesn’t fall apart. And the thing is, it almost never lets up. There are very few opportunities to relax. The Super 8 films harken back to Peeping Tom, the excellent 1960 horror film that was so far ahead of its time that it destroyed the director’s career. But the heart of the movie is purely supernatural and altogether unsettling. The fact that the family dynamic is so well-established only makes it worse. I can honestly say that Sinister is one of the scariest movies I have seen since The Ring.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves a good scare.

5 Stars

Bonus: Sinister manages to breathe new life into the jump scare as well. There is one scene where the lead character sees something that makes him jump out of his chair. I almost fell out of mine.

Bonus, with a spoiler: So I always say, if you end up in a place where something crazy is going on, just move. Yeah, didn’t quite work in this one…

That Which Should Not Be or The Void, doesn’t matter which. If anybody is interested, let me know. I can do interviews, giveaways, the works. Obviously, Lovecraftian sites might be most appropriate, but any horror site will do. Hit me up on email, or comment here if you are interested.

Movies about monsters that prey on children are as old as time. There’s something particularly horrifying about the death of our most precious, and The Tall Man, a movie starring Jessica Biel (and Lance Henrikson, one of my favorites), plays on that fear.

Whether intentionally or not, The Tall Man presents itself as a movie about the slender man, one of the great folk tales of this or any era, the first to come completely from the mind of internet denizens. We are introduced to the town of Cold Rock, a former mining village that is falling in on itself. Poverty grips it, but worse than that, children are disappearing by the droves. Dozens have simply vanished without explanation, with speculation falling on what the townfolk call The Tall Man, a boogey creature that hunts for innocents. But is the Tall Man real, or just a pedophile in disguise?

So that’s how the movie is set up. And if that had been the movie we had seen, I think it would have been a great film. But then things simply go crazy. The movie completely goes off the rails in a direction one would never suspect. It’s bizarre. It’s nonsensical. I can’t decide whether it makes a good movie or not, but it is certainly not what you expect.

And then comes the denouement, the reveal. It happens after the longest ending sequence this side of The Return of the King. Spoilers ahead…

Spoiler Pirate!

As simply impossible as it is to believe, basically the Tall Man is a member of an international organization that kidnaps children from poor families and gives them to rich ones. Jessica Biel is one of their agents. Now, this is all presented as a good thing. A positive thing. It’s perhaps the most pretentious, ridiculous, condescending, insulting ending I have ever seen. And it’s presented as this deep social commentary on the state of the world.

In any event, I do not recommend The Tall Man to much of anyone. Stay very far away. This boogeyman is scary for all the wrong reasons.