P.L. McMillan's Blog, page 25

The Lodge: Movie Review

Ka-chow, here’s your horror enthusiast, back with another review – this time about the movie: The Lodge. It’s a new release so I’ve been careful not to include any spoilers.

 

The Movie

Directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, The Lodge is a 2019 psychological horror movie starring Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh, Alicia Silverstone, and Richard Armitage. It had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019 and was released in the States in 2020.

The movie is about a woman who plans on marrying a guy with two kids. Because of the death of their mother, the kids don’t want to accept her, so dad thinks – you know what would be a great idea? Send my two kids and my soon-to-be new wife to an isolated lodge for Christmas, oh but I won’t be there because of work.

Oh, and the woman? Yeah, she grew up in a suicide cult and was the only survivor and has tons of mental issues.

But no, it’ll be fine.

The three begin to experience bizarre events that set a sinister tone for the rest of their stay at the lodge. Quelle surprise!

 

Review

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I know I had a bit of a flippant tone in my description of the plot, but I truly had a good time watching this movie. I did guess the ending around the mid point of the film, but it was still very entertaining. This is definitely a good movie to watch with fellow horror lovers and some popcorn.

Though the ending was a little predictable (to me), I thought the set-up and execution of the whole movie was excellent. I loved the setting, all the actors involved were phenomenal, and the story was so intricate and layered.

The film manages to address the issue of mental illness, suicide, and the issues of trying to blend families after divorce, without it seeming forced.

Would I say it is a “scary” movie? Not truly. It’s more chilling, eerie, and suspenseful. I also liked that the movie didn’t use the “evil stepmother” trope. Just an overall, great movie and I would recommend it to my fellow horror fans.

 

Score: 7/10 (I did have to deduct some points due to guessing the ending)

 

x P.L. McMillan

The Deep: Book Review

Happy long weekend, for those who live in a country that had a holiday! I spent the weekend doing some chores, running another Call of Cthulhu session, and writing – writing, writing, writing. I’ve written quite a few short stories (a few will be coming out in a couple weeks) and have also been working on a novella.

As it is Monday, I am here with another book review! This review does not contain spoilers.

 

The Author

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Alma Katsu is a graduate of the John Hopkins Writing Program and Brandeis University. Before diving into writing full time, she worked in intelligence for several US agencies and a think-tank. She is still a consultant on merging technologies.

She is the author of The Hunger, The Taker, The Reckoning, The Descent, and The Deep. There is 100% a common naming convention for her novels, that’s for sure.

These novels share another theme: they combine horror/the supernatural with history.

 

The Novel

From the acclaimed author of The Hunger comes an eerie, psychological twist on one of the world’s most renowned tragedies, the sinking of the Titanic, and the ill-fated sail of its sister ship, the Britannic. Someone, or some thing, is haunting the ship. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the passengers of the Titanic from the moment they set sail.

Years later, Annie, having survived that fateful night, works as a nurse on the sixth sail of the Britannic, which has been newly refitted as a hospital ship during the rise of World War One. Unable to shake the demons of the first voyage, Annie struggles for clarity when she happens across Mark, now a soldier, unconscious onboard. Unconvinced, and perhaps unwilling, to accept that he survived the crash, Annie reckons with the bargain that must have been made, and the risk of sacrifice for the one she loves. – from Katsu’s website

The Deep is a pretty ambitious novel that covers both the sinking of the Titanic and her sister ship, the Britannic. The cast of characters includes some fictional ones like Annie, the stewardess, as well as real people, like the Astors and the Duff-Gordons.  

The tale is told in sections, one devoted to the past and one following Annie as she serves as a nurse on the Britannic (still the past but I guess, the less past?). As a stewardess on the Titanic, she gets involved with the Fletcher family and all their drama. It becomes quickly obvious that everyone is harbouring secrets and, when the body count begins to rise, that something supernatural is happening on the ship.

After surviving the Titanic, Annie spends some years at a sanitarium before deciding to work as a nurse on the Britannic. How convenient that she bumps into Mr. Fletcher, injured from the war and someone she has feelings for still. Well, the haunting isn’t finished yet.

I guess anyone who knows history kinda knows where the story ends up.

 

The Review

“A riveting, seductively menacing tale of love, loss, and betrayal set amid the glamour of the Titanic…” – Library Journal (starred)

“An impressive, horror-tinged trip back in time… a darkly captivating tale of haunting, possessions, secrets… painstakingly researched and meticulously plotted.” – Publishers Weekly

So, I love horror stories that revolve around the ocean, which is why I picked this book up. I was also curious how the author was going to twist the history of the Titanic to involve the supernatural.

Unfortunately, I found this story boring.

One main issue I had was that I feel like the author expected readers to automatically get invested in the characters because some of them were real people and it felt like she expected the reader to already know a lot about them. W. T. Stead is a prime example. She briefly refers to the scandal he experienced before his trip but never goes into depth about it. It’s more like an overview. I had no idea who this guy was, so I felt obligated to Google him. Honestly, I don’t want to have to do that when I just want to enjoy a book. But she ends his part of the story with, what I am assuming, is supposed to be some revelation or heartbreaking moment? Well, it was completely lost to me because I wasn’t a history buff.

I just felt like there was a prerequisite to truly enjoy this novel.

The plot also felt lacking. Again, I think it leaned heavily on the fact that it was assumed the reader would have knowledge about the Titanic and the Britannic enough to carry them through. It lacked a lot of tension and excitement for me. I honestly felt like I was reading a general overview rather than a novel.

Overall, a really disappointing experience.

1/10

x P.L. McMillan

Dark Gods: Book Review

I binged on Grady Hendrix this past month, so I decided to switch gears. A friend (hey Emry!) and I were talking about interesting reads and he brought up Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein. The book itself is out of print, you can only get used copies (at an eye-widening $40 bucks for the mass market paperback on Amazon)!

Well curiosity got its little kitty claws in me, so I took the plunge.

 

The Author

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T.E.D. Klein (a.k.a Theodore “Eibon” Donald Klein) is a New Yorker and a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, so much so he even wrote his honours thesis on him. During his life, he’s worked at Paramount Pictures, as an editor for the Twilight Zone magazine (1981 – 1985) and for a true crime magazine called CrimeBeat (1991 – 1993).

And yes, he actually took “Eibon” for the ‘e’ in his byline, supposedly so that it would resemble the style of Lovecraft and M.R. James and also spell out his nickname, “Ted”.

As a writer, his collection of works is not massive but he was often praised as being one of the “finest of modern-day horror writers” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). His works include: The Ceremonies, Nighttown, and Dark Gods, as well as various short fiction.

Fun fact, he was also featured as a character on the Ghostbusters cartoon.

 

The Collection

Four stories, “Children of the Kingdom,” “Petey,” “Black Man With a Horn,” and “Nadelman’s God,” deal with creatures of the urban night, a hungry beast, a ritual murder, and terrifying apparitions – Amazon landing site

I’ll try not to include any spoilers but I will be going into each novella individually.

Children of the Kingdom

This story is set in New York during the blackout of 1977. The protagonist is looking for a place where his grandfather can live safely and finds what seems to be a pretty good deal. Grandpa isn’t content to just sit around in a retirement home and wanders the neighbourhood making friends, one of which is the enigmatic “Father Pistachio”. The protagonist gets to know the Father, who claims there was a race that existed alongside humans and were rather hostile. The Father seems to believe in the whole hollow earth theory and is writing a book about it to expose them. The Father is adamant that the species is still alive and had a habit of attacking the human tribes, stealing their women, and the like.

While the protagonist gets to know the Father, he’s also noticing weird stuff going on in the retirement home, especially in the basement/laundry room. There’s vandalism, and one really gross moment when someone has jizzed all over his wife’s skirt (?!) but the staff blame it on the local gangs of kids. There are also various interjections of the protagonist reading newspaper articles of deformed babies being found in sewers and people being attacked in their homes. The protagonist begins to grow uneasy, then the blackout happens and everything hits the fan.

Petey

This novella is split between commentary from an attendant working at a mental institution and events happening at a housewarming party.

The characters at the housewarming party are amazied at what a steal the owners got the house for, exploring the pre-furnished rooms and antique furniture. The new owners expound on how weird the previous owner was while never really explaining how he ended up at the facility while they got the beautiful house for practically nothing.

During the whole evening, some guests begin to feel like something is off. They find a tarot card deck with a strange extra card added to it, strange story books about monsters, and eerie scratch marks on some of the furniture.

While this is happening, the attendant is hanging out with the previous owner who, in a fit of madness, managed to damage his throat in a way preventing him from speaking so they have to speak through a kind of morse code. The madman is terrified, trying to warn the attendant that something is hungry.

Needless the say, the housewarming party doesn’t end like the hosts intended.

Black Man with a Horn

This novella features the Tcho-Tcho, which is part of the Lovecraft mythos. The protagonist is sat next to a guy on the plane who is obviously wearing a disguise. Curious, he gets into a conversation with the man, learning that the man used to be a priest and is terrified for his life. The priest claims that during his missionary work, he met the dangerous tribe. At first they treated him kindly, then his companions disappeared or ran off. Eventually he found one of the men with something horrible growing inside his body, nurtured by the Tcho-Tcho.

The priest escaped but was convinced they were still after him, based on the fact that a song seems to be following him, sung in crowds or out of sight, but matching a song he’d heard the tribes women sing. In particular, the man seems triggered by the image of a man holding a horn (instrument, not like an animal horn). The protagonist then sees a similar image in a museum and, in typical Lovecraftian fashion, begin to research it.

A newspaper article alerts the protagonist to the fact that the priest has gone missing and he goes off to investigate that next. Learning more and more, the protagonist begins to suspect he himself might be the next victim of the sinister, fish-like beast that took his friend.

Nadelman’s God

Nadelman is an author who lets an angsty poem he wrote in college (it was a phase, mom!) be used as lyricsc for a metal band. One of their fans is convinced the lyrics are an incantation (same type of fan who’ll play his records backwards) that can bring a monstrous deity to life. Nadelman rolls his eyes at first, but then the fan (who is communicating to the author through letters because this is the 80s) shares information Nadelman has never shared with anyone.

He becomes convinced he needs to see what’s happening and goes to visit the fan. The whole visit unsettles him further. The fan truly believes he has created a hungry god and now people are starting to turn up dead.

 

The Review

All these novellas are set in New York and, boy, does Klein not paint a kind picture of the city. It seemed to have its very own presence and a dirty, claustrophobic one at that.

Overall, the stories were quite fun. Nadelman’s God was definitely my favourite, with Children of the Kingdom coming in second. I did find Petey a little predictable and I wish Klein had expanded the end a bit more. There was a lot of lead-up and the ending seemed pretty abrupt.

I do need to address one blaring issue though. This guy was a fan of Lovecraft and seemed to also share Lovecraft’s views on race. So there are a lot of negative depictions of anyone who isn’t white. It’s not great, to put it simply.

If you can ignore those parts, the novellas are original and very enjoyable.

Children of the Kingdom: I liked Klein’s take on the whole hollow earth theory and the gradual buildup to the end. I guess my main issue would be that the characters seem to handle everything that happens in the novel pretty well, taking everything in stride, as if the bizarre happenings are just everyday New York events. Especially in the case of what happens to the wife. But otherwise, a very unique story and utterly eerie.
Petey: As mentioned previously, a little predictable and I wish the ending had been expanded. Otherwise, the characters were very realistic and the slow burn buildup was great. I loved the dialogue in this piece, it just so perfectly highlighted the banality of overly polite conversation.
Black Man with the Horn: this one definitely highlighted Klein’s love of Lovecraft since he breaks up his sections with quotes from Howard himself, whether real or fictional, I’ve no idea. I enjoyed the overall story line and think it’s a great example of cosmic horror.
Nadelman’s God: I loved this story! I loved the idea of a fan becoming obsessed with an author’s writing, that they truly think there is power behind the words. Then the author himself begins to wonder, is this true? Is he mad? Am I mad? The story had a great buildup, a great set of characters, and a perfect end.

With scoring this collection of novellas, I am placing a value on the core of the stories themselves. It’s a shame that Klein displayed some of same racist values as Lovecraft.

Would I recommend this for fellow cosmic horror fans? That’s a tough one. I know die-hard fans won’t be bothered by the high price tag, I don’t regret buying it. I suppose I would recommend it to similar readers such as myself, ones that will be able to easily ignore the racist bits and still enjoy the stories.

If you’re not the type to easily brush away casual racism, I’d say just skip this one.

  7/10

 x P.L. McMillan

B is for Beasts is now available!

Great news, everyone!

The anthology by Red Cape Publishing, B is for Beasts, is now live on Amazon! You can read it for free if you have Kindle Unlimited, or get the hard copy for $10.46.

B is for Beasts, the second book in an epic series of twenty-six horror anthologies. Within these pages you will find a collection of thirteen stories from some of the finest independent writers on the scene today. From oversized bugs to Kaiju, vicious woodland creatures to giant spiders, B is for Beasts contains a range of terrifying stories in which the humans are always the prey. – B is for Beasts Amazon page

My tale is “Mrs. Rumtifusel’s Fur Coat”, a little cryptid tale I think you’ll enjoy. Check out this recent review from Kendall Reviews:

Set in 1961, “Mrs. Rumtifusel’s Fur Coat” by P. L. McMillan is a wonderfully rich story with a heck of a bite. Susan drags her boyfriend into a curiosity shop where she hopes to find the perfect accessory for her Halloween costume. She finally convinces the shop’s owner to rent out a fur coat, on the stipulation that Susan return it before the sun sets. I don’t want to spoil this story, so I’ll just say ignoring this condition might be the last thing Susan ever does.

So don’t wait! Get your copy today and let me know what you think!

x P.L. McMillan

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires: Book Review

Well I read Horrorstör and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, so I guess none of you will be surprised that I went ahead and read The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. This book is really new so this review will be spoiler-free, don’t worry!

The Author

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He also wrote Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom in the Seventies and Eighties that followed the success of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and Thomas Tryon’s The Other. It is so popular it won a Stoker Award, and while you may not know what that is, trust me when I say that it is a big, big deal that gets Grady 20% off all purchases at the Franklin Mint. – from Hendrix’s website

I already outlined Grady Hendrix in my Horrorstör review, so check that out if you need more information.

The Novel

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is a spiritual sequel to My Best Friend’s Exorcism. It’s about adult friendships rather than high school friendships, and while it doesn’t feature any of the same characters it takes place in the same neighborhood, about five years later, in the Nineties. It’s the story of a book club who realize that their new neighbor might not just be some yankee from away, he might be a literal monster. But who’s going to take a bunch of housewives seriously? – from Hendrix’s website

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is a horror novel that was published just this month. It’s set in the same town as My Best Friend’s Exorcism and as you may have read in the above excerpt, it is a spiritual successor to My Best Friend’s Exorcism.

The themes of friendship are there, along with the familiar WASPy characters. This time it’s a vampire, rather than a demon, that threatens the protagonists. Instead of parents and adults not believing a teenager, it is husbands who refuse to believe their wives.

The same claustrophobic feeling that was in My Best Friend’s Exorcism is in The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. You get some women afraid to defy their husbands, to make a scene, to cause a stir and bring embarrassment to the family. They have to rise above it and band together, to use what they know, and let their love for their families and each other fuel their courage and drive their actions.

Hendrix also takes an interesting twist on the vampire legend, which added to the thrill of the story.

The Review

This was another gripping story with dynamic characters, and a setting that was a character unto itself. In all three novels; Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, there were similar themes of helplessness, toxic settings, and painfully human characters.

I really enjoyed Hendrix’s unique take on vampire lore in this story. I won’t say more and leave it to you to read and see how he twisted it.

In The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, it almost felt like there were three antagonists: the vampire, the belittling husbands, and the housewives’ own prejudices and fears. It made for a unique sense of tension, where you grow to dislike the husbands as much of the villain.

At times, it did feel like the husbands were rather one dimensional. Of course, it could be realistic for the time setting, but I wondered if there would be at least one husband who would take his wife’s word, who would trust his wife, the woman he married and supposedly loved. But all the husbands acted the same and mostly all made the same mistakes, and just presented barriers to the wives. Maybe, if you read it, you might not read it the same way. Let me know what you think!

7/10

x P.L. McMillan

My Best Friend’s Exorcism: Book Review

After reading Horrorstör, I just had to pick up a copy of My Best Friend’s Exorcism! This review is going to be spoiler-free so go on then, read away.

 

The Author

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He is very, very beautiful, but if you ever meet him, please do not let this make you uncomfortable. He does not judge.

The New Yorker once ran a short profile of him, and this means that when the time comes and they are lining people up for the Space Arks he will be guaranteed a seat ahead of you. – from Hendrix’s website

I already outlined Grady Hendrix in my Horrorstör review, so check that out if you need a refresher!

 

The Novel

Set in 1988, during the Satanic Panic that had Americans looking for Satanists under every heavy metal album, My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a touching story of high school friendship and demonic possession. It’s basically Beaches meets The Exorcist with all the E.T. love, Phil Collins, wine coolers, United Colours of Benetton perfume, and demons from Hell that personified the 80s. – from Hendrix’s website

My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a horror novel that was published in 2016. It’s set in 1988 and revolves around two best friends: Abby and Gretchen, who live in South Carolina. One night, they decide to take some LCD, as teenagers are wont to do, and Gretchen disappears into the woods. She appears some hours later with no memory of what happened to her. Then she begins to act crazier, and crazier, and crazier – not to mention evilly. It leads Abby to believe that her best friend is possessed by a demon and she decides that she will stop at nothing to save her best friend!

 

The Review

Another amazing novel from Hendrix that I, again, couldn’t put down and that I, again, finished in two days! The strengths of this novel were similar to that of Horrorstör, Hendrix weaves a powerful story of friendship (I may have teared up at the end but refuse to comment further) with realistic, tragically human characters. I really think that the characters in this story really make it as powerful and entrancing as it is.

On top of that, the setting in South Carolina, a small town with a distinct class line and stiff WASPishness is claustrophobic, adding to the overall sense of tension. Hendrix also mixes in the futile struggles of a teen girl trying to help a friend in a world of strict adults that refuse to listen with the helplessness of someone struggling against the invisible class lines enforced by elitists, creating a frantic sense of a protagonist drowning all while she tries to save her friend.

The story itself didn’t hold many surprises for me. It was a pretty straightforward exorcism story, but it was still such an entertaining read with such a bittersweet ending.

Cherry on top is another amazing cover — this time by Doogie Horner and Hugh Fleming.

8/10

 x P.L. McMillan

Horrorstör: Book Review

Wow, you must be thinking, another book review? Why yes, dear reader. Another book review! I actually finished this novel in two days, not because it was super short, but because I couldn’t put it down. So carry on, follow the Bright and Shining path, to my spoiler-free review of Horrorstör.

 

The Author

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Like gravity, or ugly people, Grady Hendrix is hard to escape, especially here on his website. In this place, he is all up in your areas and he even wrote the words that you are reading right now. When you are on his website, he can see you. He can see you right now. – snippet from Hendrix’s website

Grady Hendrix is an American author, journalist, and screenwriter and a founder of the New York Asian Film Festival. Before becoming a professional writer, Hendrix worked in the library of the American Society for Psychical Research, Besides his novels, he has also written for numerous media outlets, including Playboy Magazine and The New York Post.

 

The Novel

Considered a horror-comedy, the 2014 novel Horrorstör is a sleekly packaged “haunted house” story, designed to look like a classic furniture catalogue, complete with coupons at the back. The novel revolves around an IKEA-esque furniture store called ORSK (“Need something? Just ORSK!”) in Cleveland, Ohio. Employees have noticed that things were being damaged during the night, sales were suffering, and the security cameras were showing nothing. A rather loyal store manager picks two other employees and volunteers them to join him on a nine-hour dusk-til-dawn shift to catch the culprit. They are joined by two other employees who had snuck in with cameras and gear, convinced that the store is haunted.

Through the night, things start on a scale of creepy, greatly escalating to terrifying as the ORSK store turns out to be a horrifying mix of a shifting House of Leaves style store filled dangerous, tortured spirits.

 

The Review

I couldn’t put this book down, at all. As a result, I managed to finish it in two days.

The book is amazing.

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but Hendrix (and subsequently the illustrator; Michael Rogalski, and cover artist; Christine Ferrara) have really redefined how a novel’s cover and art can help add to the overall plot and atmosphere of a book. The illustrations of ORSK products, which mark the beginning of each section, grow increasingly alarming as the novel progresses, which I thought was rather clever.

The story itself is original, witty, and humorous, spinning the classic haunted house premise on its particle board ear. The characters within the story really added to it as well. Hendrix has a clever way of making you dislike a character in the start, then grow to love and cheer for them in the end. In an assemble-it-yourself-using-a-stupid-Allen-tool nutshell, the characters in Horrorstör are well rounded and compelling. The setting, on top of everything, is also like a character unto itself – a creepy, untrustworthy skulker, lurking in the background and ready to betray. Add to that witty dialogue, well used gore, and you have one exquisite tale of terror.

From start to finish, I did not want to put this novel down. So I didn’t. I just stayed up really late and read until I got eye strain.

It has been such a long time since I’ve found a novel that has so transported me away from my own life, in such a well written way, that I lost sleep over it! And with that, dear reader, I highly recommend you pick this one up if you haven’t. I know I loved it so much that I just bought Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism to read next!

  10/10

 x P.L. McMillan

Cold Skin: Movie Review

Just yesterday I posted a review for the movie, The Lighthouse. I wanted to post this review shortly after because I actually watched Cold Skin a few weeks ago on Shudder (the horror channel offered by Amazon) and Cold Skin is a movie with a similar premise to The Lighthouse.

This review is spoiler-free!

 

The Movie

 

Cold Skin was released in 2017 and is a French-Spanish (the film is in English though) sci-fi horror directed by Xavier Gens. It’s based on novel of the same name, published in 2002, by Albert Sánchez Piñol.

On the edge of the Antarctic circle, a steamship approaches a desolate island. On board is a young man, poised to take up the post of weather observer, to live in solitude far from civilization. But on shore he finds no trace of the man he has been sent to replace, just a deranged brute in the lighthouse who has witnessed a horror he refuses to name. For the next twelve months his entire world will consist of a deserted cabin, rocks, silence and the surrounding sea. Then night begins to fall… – Samuel Goldwyn Films website

It stars Ray Stevenson, David Oakes, and Aura Garrido.

 

Review

I really enjoyed this film! It was fun and really gave me Lovecraft vibes, since the sea creatures definitely rock that Innsmouth look. In the very beginning of the movie, the protagonist – Friend – lands on this desolate island whose lighthouse has been barricaded and there are wooden spikes built onto the outside of it! The lighthouse keeper is immediately a suspicious character and things escalate quickly to keep you on the edge of your seat.

The ending is surprisingly heart-wrenching and tragic. It is completely an under-rated indie film and I would recommend that any fellow Lovecraft fans out there watch it (Shudder has a free seven day trial, hint hint).

After watching The Lighthouse, I did compare these movies. Ultimately, they are very different but when I watched previews for The Lighthouse and heard references about mermaids in it, I thought they might be rather similar.

Cold Skin was way more straight forward, had a very classic linear plot, and Lovecraftian Deep Ones-type creatures. Obviously your girl here preferred Cold Skin over The Lighthouse. If you’re looking for a satisfactory thrill ride and a realistic take on how humans might react to humanoid-fish monsters, this is the movie for you. I might just re-watch it to get the icky taste of The Lighthouse off my brain.

Score: 7/10

x P.L. McMillan