L.P. Ring's Blog, page 3

Playing Fair

There are definitely spoilers ahead.

It isn’t every day that I think of Star Wars and Stephen King at the same time. Sure, they are both popular culture juggernauts which make ridiculous sums of money for their stakeholders / investors. Plus they both came to prominence in the 1970s and are now approaching almost 50 years in the business. In addition, it’s getting increasingly tough to turn on a streaming service without being hit by a Star Wars off-shoot or a Stephen King adaptation. But sitting in the cinema last Wednesday, bored by the latest addition to the Star Wars universe, I was struck by something that Annie Wilkes – antagonist of Stephen King’s ‘trapped writer’ piece Misery, and main character in recent TV series Castle Rock – had to say about plotting. Because the advice she sagely delivered may have come from an unhinged place, but it rang true enough when I read the book almost thirty years ago to immediately occur to me then. Because cliffhangers have to be played realistic. They have to play fair.

Picture precocious, mostly sane, young Annie sitting in a movie theatre in the 1950s, watching her favourite Saturday morning serial. She’s spent the whole week waiting for the next instalment, wondering how the hero will get out of this latest jam. The show flickers on, the music kicks in, a hush settles over the crowd – no mean fete considering this is a theatre full of kids. And within seconds, young Annie is yelling at the screen in paroxysms of rage. The hero has escaped, as all the best heroes should, but the story has cheated in the pay-off. And Annie, having waited a week to see the outcome to a show that is as real as anything outside those theatre doors, is not willing to let cheating go unpunished.

It’s a lesson that Annie – self-described number one fan of Paul Sheldon – is later eager to pass on. And one which perhaps someone should have outlined almost as vigorously to the writers of The Rise of Skywalker. Because this film has a lot of cliffhangers. Every fifteen to twenty minutes or so in a film which also changes scenes as often as people get shown new properties in House Hunters (my wife watches that show a lot). One of the first of these cliffhangers involves well-loved furry behemoth Chewbacca, a transporter explosion, and mass grief and disbelief that one of their best friends is dead.

We know soon after that Chewie has simply been captured, making any grief over the character’s demise – for the audience at least – short. The rebels discover the same soon after, with Rey announcing to her bemused cohorts that Chewie ‘must have got on another transporter’. So they’ll go rescue him. And everything will be okay. Again.

Which actually sums up any tension in Episode IX of this franchise pretty well for me. Audiences don’t expect heroes to die, and these heroes won’t. Perhaps because the good guys should win somewhere, even if it is only on the TV. Maybe because so many of us (subconsciously) see ourselves as the heroes of our own stories. The death of a major character is an event. It is something that causes a seismic shift in a narrative. Game of Thrones made it such a part of their show that fans joked they could never bear to get attached to anyone on the show. The Walking Dead messed up the death of a character so badly in one (later) season that the show arguably never recovered. But when a character’s demise is undone so casually, it feels like the reality of the show is compromised. So nothing bad can happen then? Rey and the team – the good guys – are basically the leads on Star Trek with the team not even being accompanied down to the dangerous planet by the never before seen ‘Ensign Ricky’, right?

I am aware here that I’m sympathising with the point of view of one of Stephen King’s more iconic horror creations. She sees the world of those Saturday morning serials, and later on the world of Misery Chastain, as hyper-realistic – far more so than her favourite author (or any other author bar perhaps Sutter Cane in John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness) has planned for anyone to do. But once that moment of crisis was overcome so flippantly, any interest in a franchise I’ve never really cared for was far gone. Every following scene of crisis had me knowing that ultimately, this was a movie where (almost) everything would work out. And I didn’t need to worry about the fates of these oddly drawn – slightly cardboard – characters.

It also left me wondering how people who actually are invested in this world reacted to such moments of non-tension. Would the movie have been better with a major character bowing out early on? Was the loss of the older generation of characters – Luke, Han, Leia (unexpectedly and sadly with the real-life loss of Carrie Fisher) – already enough? Perhaps the writers were on a hiding to nothing anyway with this story – no matter how it ended, they’d been boxed into a corner by previous decisions, left with a rescue mission they couldn’t pull off. Certainly the unmasking of the spy among Kylo Ren’s men – initially played quite cleverly for laughs – is hacked up so badly soon after that it seems like someone doesn’t know what they are helming. That moment with Chewie felt like we were having the rug pulled from under us as audience members though. And perhaps if someone is planning their moments of tension, fake deaths should be skipped.

Or perhaps I’d forgotten that this is ultimately a franchise for kids. And that everyone else should just lighten up and remember that Jedi is not a religion, that the dark side is winning often enough outside the theatre to make good winning inside the theatre necessary, and that in the end the good guys should win – even if a little emotional manipulation or manufactured tension is required along the way to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

The (Two?) Basic Plots

Italo Calvino’s 1979 novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller is the search for a book – not a perfect one, certainly, but at least one which both the narrator and his potential love interest Ludmilla -that perfectly imagined (if you are an insecure early twenty-something male) well-read yet not intellectually too threatening female – want to read. Despite both claiming to be confirmed Calvino literati, the hook that grabs them both is the hoary old chestnut of the arrival of a stranger in a new town. This inciting incident, the tangential opposite of Joseph Campbell’s ‘call to adventure’, is what  Scarlett Thomas in Monkeys with Typewriters has suggested to be one of only two real plots. The other, before Campbell enthusiast take up their pitchforks, is someone going on Campbell’s journey.

All stories, Thomas feels, metaphorical or otherwise, classic literature or genre pot-boiler – can be boiled down to one of these two basic plots. Journeys blend the literal and the metaphorical – Lord of the Rings, On the Road, The Old Man and the Sea or The Secret History. These journeys involve both outer and inner change. Frodo Baggins, Sal, Santiago, and Richard Papen all have to overcome both physical and psychological geography to reach their destination, whether it be leading to a fiery pit, San Francisco, self-actualisation or coming to terms with your faults and place in the world.

Conversely, the arrival in town of a stranger both means the creation of conflict and flux. Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita begins with the arrival in Moscow of Satan – bent on creating mischief and toppling over the status quo. Dea Poirier’s Next Girl to Die sees a detective return to her hometown to investigate the slaying of a young woman. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series in many ways has its cake and eats it. Reacher is on a journey that never seems to end (certainly not if Child is passing on writing duties to his younger brother) while his arrival in town in novels such as Make Me invariably signals seismic changes that at least some of the Mother’s Rest locals definitely don’t want to see. The stranger will arrive, the status quo will be flipped, and nothing will ever be the same again.

I’ve been thinking about ‘the journey’ trope recently, worried that my WIP was too similar to a previous book and that maybe I was just re-treading old ground. When I read Thomas’ comments on that and ‘the stranger’ trope, it was with a mixture of trepidation and relief. Trepidation that my inciting incident was the latter while my overall arching theme was the former. Relief because these plots – of The Odyssey, Oedipus, The Epic of Gilgamesh – have been around since humanity first told stories. My stumbling plots underline the fact that there is nothing new under the sun bar in perhaps execution. They totter alongside antecedents – some worse, many probably better – and will be followed and superseded by others. While Calvino’s novel may start with the ‘stranger comes to town’ trope – and many of the stories within have similarly elusive arrivals – the story is ultimately is the narrator and Ludmilla experiencing their own literary journey. In search of their Holy Grail, they stumble on an international book fraud conspiracy populated by academic turf wars, publishing houses in the throes of anarchy, a tricky translator, a reclusive novelist and even a repressive government regime. By the time their journey is over, they’ll have experienced a range of genres and learnt more about themselves as both readers and as people. Like reading twelive books (well… the beginnings of at least) with an adventure story in between. And plenty of both arrivals and departures.

David Cronenberg’s ‘Consumed’ – “Long live the new flesh”

“Here we are, Cronenberg Morty. A reality where everyone in the world got genetically Cronenberged. We’ll fit right in, Cronenberg Morty. It will be like we never even left Cronenberg World.” – Rick and Morty.

Stepping away from the director’s chair, Canadian director David Cronenberg’s first foray into fiction is about as much fun as any fan of his work would expect. Any artist synonymous enough with an element of popular culture to become its label – Dali, Picasso, Hitchcock – has offered something unique, maybe even beyond the pale. For Cronenberg, a director well-known as an exponent of body horror through films like The Fly and Videodrome, a change in narrative form gives him a chance to examine his interests through a non-cinematic lens, a shot at a narrative form that other directors such as Gus Van Sant, Ethan Coen and Wes Craven have taken with mixed results.

Being a fan of the director’s work since I saw (and recorded on VHS) a season of his films on the now defunct Bravo, probably my biggest surprise was it took me so long to get round to reading this. It was something I figured as a curiosity, the work of an artist tiring of sets, actors and schedules, who wanted something either less complicated (my bad). After all, Cronenberg has encountered more than his fair share of issues with censors down the years, with movies like his adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s Crash encountering media campaigns to have the film banned. And in fact, Consumed offers something far more complicated, serving more as a primer to Cronenberg’s film-based obsessions, containing nods to the aforementioned body horror, Asian exotica (Madame Butterfly), as well as alienation (The Fly, Dead Ringers), technophilia and fear of the future (Videodrome, The Fly, Existenz). Populated by the morose, the cynical, the freaky and the damaged, its selection of French philosophers – one of whom is convinced bugs live inside her, North Korean entomologists, hearing aide engineers, and sufferers of Peyronie’s disease with an unusual enjoyment in 3D printing makes for a concoction that regularly plays beyond the realms of reasonable narrative or character-based conventions. Into all this step two technophile journalists on the track of the most unusual of scoops – whether or not one of the aforementioned murdered French academic was also cannibalised by her now vanished husband. I don’t need to stick my neck out on this one and say that the book is divisive. The Good Reads website score (at time of writing) of 3.13 is testament to that.

Which means Consumed is not for everyone. What it is however, is a quintessentially Cronenbergian work which, if anyone else had written, would have led to accusations of imitation if not downright plagiarism. Fans like myself will find plenty to appreciate while those starting out in their Cronenberg journey can get a fair preview of what to expect in his oeuvre. For a director who spent years adapting authors for the screen – King, Burroughs, De Lillo, Ballard – Cronenberg’s decision to turn to the novel seems logical. It’s a next step for an artist who has been so adept at adapting other people’s work. And with his films already starting to receive the remake treatment with the upcoming Rabid from the Soska Sisters, how long might it be before someone works on an adaptation of Consumed? Rumour has it, it might even be the man himself.

Marianne

Streaming giant Netflix’s efforts to bolster its programming has seen it head to continental Europe in search for material to bolster its programme choices. Adding a particularly Gallic flavour, shows like The Chalet, Black Spot, La Mante and horror / drama Marianne bring us away from major metropolitan areas, to small towns with low employment (a lot of sawmills are closing down), creepy yokels and creepier scenery. The last of the aforementioned series has garnered the attention of authors such as Stephen King and Matthew Farrell, with the former even referencing how the show bears similarities to his own work. Praise indeed and certain to encourage horror fans famished from a lack of proper horror on the small(er) screen.

Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois), the enfant terrible of French horror, has tired of her horror creation – the titular Marianne in a rather on-the-nose nod to the symbol of the French Republic – and killed the proverbial golden goose that has made her name. Dragged back to her hometown by a very public act by an old friend, Emma meets old friends, tries to reconcile with estranged family, and sets about working out what horrors are afflicting her hometown.

The horror / drama has plenty in common with John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness with the show’s protagonist – a moody teenage ‘Sutter Cane’ who is half-cajoled / half blackmailed into resuscitating her most famous creation – something which will allow the very world she is inhabiting to maintain existence. Another Carpenter nod lies in the presence of a town’s dark and grisly past and a guilt-wracked priest that has stepped straight off the lot of a remake of The Fog. There is also a similarity to Stephen King’s Misery, as Emma finds herself unable to escape what has brought her success, those past inspirations or people who are not just over-the-top fans. It’s an interesting nod to the idea of a successful writer ending up trapped in the hamster wheel of their own success. The show is also not afraid to indulge in some gruesome visuals – picture Seven or Angel Heart for example. It also doesn’t overdo the jump scares, instead favouring a creepy atmosphere, religious iconography, and moody night settings. And any showrunner that has an appreciation for The Exorcist 3 gets a thumbs up from me.

So plenty to like then, yet despite the positives for horror genre fans, there is also plenty to frustrate. The creators of the show seem to have done their very best to make the protagonist as terminally irritating as possible, while having police officers churn out lines like ‘stealing is against the law’ is not the kind of thing to bring anything bar eye-rolls from any audience member. Emma’s friends – aside from her suffering assistant – are cookie-cutter characters and everyone standing against Emma is chewing scenery and gurning for all they are worth – being possessed, it seems, can be very Evil Dead. Finally, call me grumpy if you like, but being able to play horror bingo may be an enjoyable fan experience but is also a sign that this show is not so much doing anything new so much as blending a confection of well-worn genre staples. A protagonist who is isolated and questioning her own sanity? Check. A witchy / voodoo-style feel? Check. An other-worldly villain with origins in the dark history of a small town? I’m either in Derry. Maine or maybe in Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s novel Hex. The horror references come thick and fast. That bingo card will fill up super quickly.

A television series that delivers a solid collection of chills is a relatively rare thing for horror fans – and Marianne offers definite rewards if you are willing to forgive the slightly obvious opening and especially grating lead character. Some of the set-pieces are genuinely creepy and the emphasis on atmosphere over jump scares is to be commended. Ultimately, there are plenty of influences on show for horror fans to feel smug for spotting if nothing else. So until Mike Flanagan can finish Bly Manor, a series like this one offers, if not a substantial meal, at least one which has some of the right ingredients.

It’s not horror but…

Horror is my rollercoaster. My version of the parachute or bungee-jump (I hate heights so those things are not life experiences I’m planning). One of my favorite things about the genre is its capacity to turn the complete world on its head in search of identifying genuine fears. Vampires, werewolves, zombies and deranged killers can make you jump, make you shut your eyes, even send you scuttling behind the sofa like a five year old from Cork watching David Banner transform into the Incredible Hulk. The images are scary. Your blood is pumping. You just want whatever you are watching to end. But if you are like me, you’ll be back for more soon enough. Though first you might be peeking around the corner.

Yet that the genre has the advantage of being able to use those stark, terrifying images in order to mainline to more elemental fears is undeniable. A good horror novel or movie isn’t really even about the vampire in the casket, the lady in either room 217 or 237 of the Overlook Hotel, or even the escapee from the mental asylum wearing the William Shatner mask. In recent years, horror movie directors like Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) and Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommer) have taken a new route with the genre, eschewing the more blatant, visceral horrors in favor of a more creeping dread that seeks to access those fears without needing the conduit of a panicked heroine or a blood-soaked antagonist. True, Aster in particular is well capable of setting up a (potentially risible) blood-soaked set-piece, but by leaving aside the typical monsters, they are taking the more challenging road when it comes to frightening their audiences. And more power to them.

But what about the flipside to this – where authors use horror elements in non-horror settings? The Ancient Greeks had monsters and body horror in their tragedies. Shakespeare had Hamlet seeing ghosts and Macbeth’s cackling witches in his. Like the baby climbing the walls in ‘Trainspotting’, the first half of David Cronenberg’s career, or almost any scene in Aronofsky’s ‘Requiem for a Dream’ or ‘Mother!’, there are films that aren’t outwardly horrific but still use such imagery in order to reach their audience. Novels like ‘The Terror’ by Dan Simmons thread the line between historical fiction and horror, in this case using a real historical event as the source point to produce a speculative work about the fate of Sir John Franklin’s expedition to locate the Northwest Passage in the 1840s. As well as a fascinating read, it’s probably the scariest book I’ve read in some time.

Then there are those outwardly straight novels that use horror elements. Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’ features the devil and perhaps unsurprisingly given that personage’s presence, creatures climbing up walls and demonic grinning cats. Perhaps less expected though – and relatively distant from the very real terrors of Stalinist Russia – is when elements commonly ascribed to horror appear in works of outwardly domestic -set fiction such as Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’ or Shirley Jackson’s non-genre fiction.

Plath’s tale is of a protagonist out of kilter with the world, feeling that she cannot relate to those around her and their bullying or self-centred expectations, and as a result is being suffocated by the world and its largely uncaring inhabitants. Similar to Shirley Jackson’s ‘Hangsaman’, ‘The Bell Jar’ is a tale of a young woman’s slow descent into mental illness that uses neglect, mental abuse and claustrophobia to create an almost unbearable existence for the protagonist and a deeply uncomfortable reading experience. That it is a roman à clef adds extra tragedy to the tale.

Then there is Jackson herself, whose work has seen a renaissance in recent years thanks to ardent long-time supporters such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and the Netflix adaptation of ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ by director Mike Flanagan. The American author may be best known nowadays for the aforementioned horror or her dystopian short ‘The Lottery’, but works like the aforementioned ‘Hangsaman’, the semi-autobiographical ‘The Road Through the Wall’ or the short story ‘Louisa, Please Come Home’ offer plenty in the category of domestic terror and the grimness of an isolated life. In worlds such as these, the terror of the everyday can be just as terrifying – isolation and loneliness, neglect, fear of failure, fear of death. All are horrors mined by Jackson or Plath as much as they are by the Kings, Barkers or John Carpenters of the world. And there doesn’t need to be a Pennywise, Freddy Kreuger or Jason Voorhees in the frame. In fact, the absence of such Halloween figures might make these works all the more stark through the focus on the horrors of the every day.

Sticking with the theme, I’m curious about other work for my ‘to be read’ list which addresses themes of horror without the prerequisite boogeyman (or woman). What modern works act like a clammy hand on the back of your neck without involving a knife-wielding maniac or killer clown? Halloween is almost upon us after all. And Stephen King has more than enough fans for now.

 

 

When ‘It’ ends?

[image error]Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

‘the Turtle is dead oh God the Turtle really is dead’

If you haven’t finished the book, best be warned there are spoilers ahead.

The arrival of the second half of Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation this September 6, with the accompanying new edition of King’s door-stopper of a novel, gives me another chance – these seem to be a lot of those coming round nowadays – to re-read an old Stephen King classic before catching the movie. Remembering that wide-eyed teen with the whole world ahead, I was one of those who read the version of It with the evil eyes staring out from the storm drain on the cover. It was the early 90s, the Tommy Lee Wallace-directed mini-series was on Sky One, and the threat of Tim Curry’s vicious Pennywise was lurking in every chapter. After THAT beginning, all I wanted was more guts, gore and Pennywise, even if some chapters seemed inordinately long for a fifteen year old’s attention span.

Yes, that beginning. The killing of Georgie Denbrough is one of the great openings in genre fiction. You get this perfect encapsulation of the threat, of those most at risk, and of a world which seems blithely disinterested in the fate of a young boy chasing his sail boat. It becomes a tale of the Losers’ Club – Big Bill, Richie, Eddie, Mike, Stan, Ben and Bev – against a malevolent evil that they are facing for one of the most personal of reasons. And then there are the usual childhood traumas and threats like disinterested parents, burgeoning hormones, and schoolyard bullies – although not on the same maniacal level, if you didn’t have someone like Henry Bowers in your school then maybe you were the Henry Bowers of your school (just saying). The world is a scary place for a kid. And Derry is a scarier place than most.

Reading It again – over quarter of a decade older if not quite as commensurately that much wiser – the fact that Pennywise, so front and centre in the media adaptations and later book covers, is only a visualisation of the threat is so much clearer. King’s writing-chops makes the town of Derry, Maine seem worse than the Sunnydale Hellmouth, with the townsfolk here also accepting with not much more than a shrug the kinds of events that should get most population centers shut down by shady government organisations. The time strands – 27 years apart – are like two train tracks occasionally interweaving yet heading for the same destination. As children, the Losers are battling an ancient evil that preys on their relative powerlessness; as adults they are as much seeking a way to fix lives perhaps irreparably damaged as a result of having been brought up in a town where the inhabitants don’t truly care for the weak. They may put up missing posters and call for curfews, but every 3 decades or so they  trade in others’ lives to maintain the relatively comfortable status quo. The weak of Derry – children, those who euphemistically ‘don’t belong’, criminals – are the cattle. And whatever is lurking in the sewers is hungry.

Whatever is under the town is only part of it because Derry’s history is more blood-soaked than most. The Ironworks explosion, the killings including that of Adrian Mellon, whoever set the fire at the Black Spot – all represents a manifestation of what evil lurks both below ground and in the hearts of those above. The man who folds a newspaper and goes back inside when a girl is being attacked is showing that these townsfolks are either willingly ignorant or easily blinded to the things happening in their town. Pennywise represents a physical manifestation of the cancer that exists here, and is a fantastic image to put on a book cover or a movie poster. Because who doesn’t love clowns? But ultimately, what me-at-15 completely missed, was that a more apt image would have been a town map or a group portrait of the townspeople, continuing on with their humdrum existences without anyone piecing together what a kid with a library card can do. Because after all, ‘Derry is not like any town.’

I find comparisons between King and Quentin Tarantino impossible to resist. Both seem convinced that the mantra ‘less is more’ is something dreamt up by either creatives with not enough time on their hands or similarly time-obsessed readers and audiences who have something else to be getting on with. At just over 1,100 pages, It is itself something of a monster, building a world long on description and characterisation. The scenes of action and drama – primarily the scenes which feature in the films and TV mini-series – are front-loaded by thoughts and feelings of the main characters which allows King access to his usual themes of parental neglect (that his own father walked out on him is well-known), the importance of history and how the present rhymes with the past, and that the underdog can win (against near insurmountable odds) but that win may be bittersweet.

Those nearly insurmountable odds – 7 kids / damaged adults against a power of near unlimited abilities – is where Maturin, the Space Turtle – referenced above – enters the fray as much needed support. And this is where the suspension of disbelief – even in a world terrorised by a clown living in the sewers – takes a particularly tough hit. The world of Derry has been built with such meticulous attention to detail and this world includes Pennywise or whatever power he represents. Derry is so richly – and at times shockingly – tapestried that something as leftfield as this – even if introduced in tandem with It’s potential origins and its presence in King’s The Dark Tower universe, leaves me almost giggling at the very incongruity of it. Muschietti has already stated that he plans to include Maturin in the film, and whether this is true or simply a red herring designed to keep up intrigue is impossible to say. The ending to the book (and that 1990 mini-series), without saying too much too soon, has had more than its fair share of detractors over the years, and Muschetti – whose earlier horror Mama suffered from the lack of a satisfying closing – has a challenge ahead if he’s going to deliver a finale that satisfies the casual cinema-goer as much as Chapter 1 did. Especially, I fear, if that ending features a giant turtle. I await September 6 with some excitement but also no little trepidation. But for now at least, I can put the dog-eared Kings aside and look for some new fiction.

And yet. Roll on Doctor Sleep. Stephen King is an industry.

When 'It' ends?

[image error]Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

‘the Turtle is dead oh God the Turtle really is dead’

If you haven’t finished the book, best be warned there are spoilers ahead.

The arrival of the second half of Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation this September 6, with the accompanying new edition of King’s door-stopper of a novel, gives me another chance – these seem to be a lot of those coming round nowadays – to re-read an old Stephen King classic before catching the movie. Remembering that wide-eyed teen with the whole world ahead, I was one of those who read the version of It with the evil eyes staring out from the storm drain on the cover. It was the early 90s, the Tommy Lee Wallace-directed mini-series was on Sky One, and the threat of Tim Curry’s vicious Pennywise was lurking in every chapter. After THAT beginning, all I wanted was more guts, gore and Pennywise, even if some chapters seemed inordinately long for a fifteen year old’s attention span.

Yes, that beginning. The killing of Georgie Denbrough is one of the great openings in genre fiction. You get this perfect encapsulation of the threat, of those most at risk, and of a world which seems blithely disinterested in the fate of a young boy chasing his sail boat. It becomes a tale of the Losers’ Club – Big Bill, Richie, Eddie, Mike, Stan, Ben and Bev – against a malevolent evil that they are facing for one of the most personal of reasons. And then there are the usual childhood traumas and threats like disinterested parents, burgeoning hormones, and schoolyard bullies – although not on the same maniacal level, if you didn’t have someone like Henry Bowers in your school then maybe you were the Henry Bowers of your school (just saying). The world is a scary place for a kid. And Derry is a scarier place than most.

Reading It again – over quarter of a decade older if not quite as commensurately that much wiser – the fact that Pennywise, so front and centre in the media adaptations and later book covers, is only a visualisation of the threat is so much clearer. King’s writing-chops makes the town of Derry, Maine seem worse than the Sunnydale Hellmouth, with the townsfolk here also accepting with not much more than a shrug the kinds of events that should get most population centers shut down by shady government organisations. The time strands – 27 years apart – are like two train tracks occasionally interweaving yet heading for the same destination. As children, the Losers are battling an ancient evil that preys on their relative powerlessness; as adults they are as much seeking a way to fix lives perhaps irreparably damaged as a result of having been brought up in a town where the inhabitants don’t truly care for the weak. They may put up missing posters and call for curfews, but every 3 decades or so they  trade in others’ lives to maintain the relatively comfortable status quo. The weak of Derry – children, those who euphemistically ‘don’t belong’, criminals – are the cattle. And whatever is lurking in the sewers is hungry.

Whatever is under the town is only part of it because Derry’s history is more blood-soaked than most. The Ironworks explosion, the killings including that of Adrian Mellon, whoever set the fire at the Black Spot – all represents a manifestation of what evil lurks both below ground and in the hearts of those above. The man who folds a newspaper and goes back inside when a girl is being attacked is showing that these townsfolks are either willingly ignorant or easily blinded to the things happening in their town. Pennywise represents a physical manifestation of the cancer that exists here, and is a fantastic image to put on a book cover or a movie poster. Because who doesn’t love clowns? But ultimately, what me-at-15 completely missed, was that a more apt image would have been a town map or a group portrait of the townspeople, continuing on with their humdrum existences without anyone piecing together what a kid with a library card can do. Because after all, ‘Derry is not like any town.’

I find comparisons between King and Quentin Tarantino impossible to resist. Both seem convinced that the mantra ‘less is more’ is something dreamt up by either creatives with not enough time on their hands or similarly time-obsessed readers and audiences who have something else to be getting on with. At just over 1,100 pages, It is itself something of a monster, building a world long on description and characterisation. The scenes of action and drama – primarily the scenes which feature in the films and TV mini-series – are front-loaded by thoughts and feelings of the main characters which allows King access to his usual themes of parental neglect (that his own father walked out on him is well-known), the importance of history and how the present rhymes with the past, and that the underdog can win (against near insurmountable odds) but that win may be bittersweet.

Those nearly insurmountable odds – 7 kids / damaged adults against a power of near unlimited abilities – is where Maturin, the Space Turtle – referenced above – enters the fray as much needed support. And this is where the suspension of disbelief – even in a world terrorised by a clown living in the sewers – takes a particularly tough hit. The world of Derry has been built with such meticulous attention to detail and this world includes Pennywise or whatever power he represents. Derry is so richly – and at times shockingly – tapestried that something as leftfield as this – even if introduced in tandem with It’s potential origins and its presence in King’s The Dark Tower universe, leaves me almost giggling at the very incongruity of it. Muschietti has already stated that he plans to include Maturin in the film, and whether this is true or simply a red herring designed to keep up intrigue is impossible to say. The ending to the book (and that 1990 mini-series), without saying too much too soon, has had more than its fair share of detractors over the years, and Muschetti – whose earlier horror Mama suffered from the lack of a satisfying closing – has a challenge ahead if he’s going to deliver a finale that satisfies the casual cinema-goer as much as Chapter 1 did. Especially, I fear, if that ending features a giant turtle. I await September 6 with some excitement but also no little trepidation. But for now at least, I can put the dog-eared Kings aside and look for some new fiction.

And yet. Roll on Doctor Sleep. Stephen King is an industry.

When ‘It’ ends

[image error]Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

‘the Turtle is dead oh God the Turtle really is dead’

The arrival of the second half of Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation this September 6, with the accompanying new edition of King’s door-stopper of a novel, gives me another chance – these seem to be a lot of those coming round nowadays – to re-read an old Stephen King classic before catching the movie. Remembering that wide-eyed teen with the whole world ahead, I was one of those who read the version of It with the evil eyes staring out from the storm drain on the cover – it was the early 90s, the Tommy Lee Wallace-directed mini-series was on Sky One, and the threat of Tim Curry’s vicious Pennywise was lurking in every chapter. After THAT beginning, all I wanted was more guts, gore and Pennywise; even if some chapters seemed inordinately long for a fifteen year old’s attention span.

Yes, that beginning. The killing Georgie Denbrough is one of the great openings in genre fiction. You get this perfect encapsulation of the threat, of those most at risk, and of a world which seems blithely disinterested in the fate of a young boy chasing his sail boat. It becomes a tale of the Losers’ Club – Big Bill, Richie, Eddie, Mike, Stan, Ben and Bev – against a malevolent evil that they are facing for one of the most personal of reasons. And then there are the usual childhood traumas and threats like disinterested parents, burgeoning hormones, and schoolyard bullies – although not on the same maniacal level, if you didn’t have someone like Henry Bowers in your school then maybe you were the Henry Bowers of your school (just saying). The world is a scary place for a kid. And Derry is a scarier place than most.

Reading It again – over quarter of a decade older if not quite as commensurately that much wiser – the fact that Pennywise, so front and centre in the media adaptations and later book covers, is only a visualisation of the threat is so much clearer. King’s writing-chops makes the town of Derry, Maine seem worse than the Sunnydale Hellmouth, with the townsfolk here also accepting with not much more than a shrug the kinds of events that should get most population centers shut down by shady government organisations. The time strands – 27 years apart – are like two train tracks occasionally interweaving yet heading for the same destination. As children, the Losers are battling an ancient evil that preys on their relative powerlessness; as adults they are as much seeking a way to fix lives perhaps irreparably damaged as a result of having been brought up in a town where the inhabitants don’t truly care for the weak. They may put up missing posters and call for curfews, but every 3 decades or so they  trade in others’ lives to maintain the relatively comfortable status quo. The weak of Derry – children, non-whites, criminals – are the cattle. And whatever is lurking in the sewers is hungry.

Whatever is under the town is only part of it because Derry’s history is more blood-soaked than most. Whoever set the fire at the Black Spot represents a manifestation of what evil lurks both below ground and in the hearts of those above. The man who folds a newspaper and goes back inside when a girl is being attacked is showing that these townsfolks are either willingly ignorant or easily blinded to the things happening in their town. Pennywise represents a physical manifestation of the cancer that exists here, and is a fantastic image to put on a book cover or a movie poster. Because who doesn’t love clowns? But ultimately, what me-at-15 completely missed, was that a more apt image would have been a town map or a group portrait of the townspeople.

I find comparisons between King and Quentin Tarantino impossible to resist. Both seem convinced that the mantra ‘less is more’ is something dreamt up by either creatives with not enough time on their hands or similarly time-obsessed readers and audiences who have something else to be getting on with. At just over 1,100 pages, It is itself something of a monster, building a world long on description and characterisation. The scenes of action and drama – primarily the scenes which feature in the films and TV mini-series – are front-loaded by thoughts and feelings of the main characters which allows King access to his usual themes of parental neglect (that his own father walked out on him is well-known), the importance of history and how the present rhymes with the past, and that the underdog can win (against near insurmountable odds) but that win may be bittersweet.

Those nearly insurmountable odds – 7 kids / damaged adults against a power of near unlimited abilities – is where Maturin, the Space Turtle – referenced above – enters the fray as much needed support. And this is where the suspension of disbelief – even in a world built with as much meticulous attention to detail as King’s Derry – comes (for me at least) under sustained attack. Derry is so richly – and at times shockingly – tapestried that something as leftfield as this – even if introduced in tandem with It’s potential origins and its presence in The Dark Tower universe, leaves me almost giggling at the very incongruity of it. Muschietti has already stated that he plans to include Maturin in the film, and whether this is true or simply a red herring designed to keep up intrigue is impossible to say. The ending, without saying too much too soon, has had more than its fair share of detractors over the years, and Muschetti – whose earlier horror Mama suffered from the lack of a satisfying closing – has a challenge ahead if he’s going to deliver a finale that satisfies the casual cinema-goer as much as Chapter 1 did. Especially, I fear, if that ending features a giant turtle. I await September 6 with some excitement but also no little trepidation. But for now at least, I can put the dog-eared Kings aside and look for some new fiction.

And yet. Roll on Doctor Sleep. Stephen King is an industry.

Homecoming

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No matter how much Gabe Clark stared at that ceiling, he couldn’t work the damp stains into any logical sense. His search for patterns began as soon as his eyes blinked open, first with that ceiling, then with the shape of the trees in the wind or the clouds overhead. By the end of the morning he was even analysing the sodden tea leaves as he listened to Telemann’s overtures played at just enough of a volume to hear. He woke to the same silence as any other morning; the same silence he now realised, that had really settled over their home as soon as their son had finally left. The same silence he had always hated, but which in the mornings his wife had suddenly demanded. Yet now, he knew, the shock of waking to any noise might permanently still his aching, stuttering heart. He forced himself into a sitting position, grunting at the pain in his back and the spring poking at his ass, wincing at the feel of the long un-vacuumed carpet on the souls of his feet. The bed springs parped as he lifted himself off the mattress, attention now on the thin beige curtains that had never adequately blocked the morning light. He could still hear his wife’s voice promising a trip into town where she could buy the materials necessary to re-curtain every window. Another for the list of chores now never to be completed. Most of all, it seemed, old age brought a need to find projects to whittle away time. You had study, work, kids, and finally deathless tedium. He padded to the door, ignoring the loose toenail clipping which stabbed him underfoot. It would be there again tomorrow. Maybe then, he might be bothered enough to pick it up.

Make breakfast. It wasn’t time yet to pay attention to the grunting from what had previously been referred to as the guest bedroom. He could already feel her hair run through the fingers of his right hand. Always the right because she had insisted for all those years that he sleep on the left hand side of the bed. Creatures of habit, the rules set down early that would be followed for a lifetime. Stepping from carpet onto tile, he remembered how he had always made the tea, even after she had in their later years – in a moment tantamount to sacrilege – eschewed the proper brews for simple tea bags. ‘Too much work. Too much fuss,’ was how she had dismissed the morning ceremony. But now was his time again, and her remaining tea bags had been sliced open to allow for more if also weaker brews. He swished the remaining leaves back and forth before spooning out a quarter serving per cup. He would end up drinking both anyway, the second cold and making him retch slightly. The water sputtered from the tap, its griminess now a modest yet irrevocable sign of this new world order. The gas flickered into life before a dull blue flame settled beneath the kettle. Gabe left the water to boil as he sought out a morning’s listening. Then finally settled on the CD in the machine anyway. The notes from the harpsichord settled a few decibels below the swish of the violins. He wanted, in one mad sad moment, to drag the curtains aside and let whatever existed out there into what was left of his world, whether it was simply nature on its inordinate daily course – the practiced movements of millennia once interrupted but now allowed free reign again – or the final furious remnants of humanity’s blip on the timeline of this planet’s existence. The world would continue to turn, unmolested. Gabe stood there, marvelling at the thought and labour that had gone into such a composition even as he squinted at the family photos; some in harbour for years interspersed with newer glossies sent pre-framed by Junior’s wife. All now, regardless of sentimental value or grudging forbearance, covered with a substantial sheen of dust.

His forefinger swished in time with the music, marveling at how centuries had ticked by with very little else created of such beauty. Up to and beyond the point when he would normally be summoned by the whistle from the kitchen. He knew what was wrong even before he’d returned to the lifeless stove and barely tepid water. He flicked the gas switch – once, twice, a third time. Bent over to rock the cylinder back and forth. It had given off its last faster than he had expected. He tipped the water into the cups, watched as the unsatisfying brew formed. They could have had a few decent cups these last few mornings after all, he lamented. He picked up the cups and whistled along to what he knew was still playing in the front room. Those batteries would soon be gone too. Then there’d be no need for any more sacrifices.

Up the stairs again. The tea in his left hand sloshed slightly along to the shakes not-so-recently attributed by a mournful and now probably deceased G.P. to the onset of Parkinson’s. He turned left at the top of the stairs, away from his own room and towards where she was kept. Shouldered the door open, a whispered lilt of ‘good morning’ slipping from his lips as he nudged forward. The room was darker, blankets nailed into the header. Squinting would not help so much in this near dark; he was just about able to make out the jerking movements in the bed. Grunts, guttural and laced with hunger cravings, escaped from his wife as she strained against her bonds. It had hurt him to tie her up this way. But in the end he knew it was for both their sake. He settled both cups on the side locker and eased into the kitchen chair he’d placed alongside the bed. ‘Looks like a nice morning, dear. Cold of course, but there won’t be much rain.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, summoning up his memories from what he had read the evening before until he was ready to begin his recitation. ‘Oh, no. I can’t believe I forgot my glasses!!’ The same manufactured excuse delivered in a half-falsetto that she didn’t even register anyway. I guess I’ll just have to make do with how I remember it. He was convinced it was good to read to her, but even a torch light would make her anxious. So he had to memorise her romantic drivel as best he could. And pretend, pretend, pretend that their reality hadn’t been fractured and mauled like the world outside.

‘Jane Eyre wasn’t it, dear. About six chapters in, I think.’ It didn’t need to be word perfect, just twenty minutes or so where he could furnish her world with some of the adventures she had enjoyed so much before. Also twenty minutes, he regretfully admitted, where he wouldn’t have to struggle for conversation. Days spent crouched behind curtains after all, didn’t offer much in the way of subject matter. His gaze settled on his best approximation of where she lay. A life-time spent among the shelves of academia, yet it had taken this illness for him to consider reading the so-called classics of English literature. She had taken his chidings about fiction being a waste of time with general good humour, only very rarely reminding him that she never questioned his interest in long dead economists. ‘What has John Maynard Keynes done for us lately after all?’ He smiled at the memory, took a deep breath, and continued the tale of the lovelorn, uppity governess and the moody Mr. Rochester.

He had been speaking for barely five minutes when the creak of shoved aside furniture drove a stab of panic through both his heart and mind, tensing his muscles near enough to spasm. He leaned in, grasped at the spindly arm wrenching against the leather restraints. Her chokes were, he knew, a reaction against his touch rather than the potential apocalypse from below. He closed his eyes, voiceless words condemning him for the carelessness of leaving the CD playing. A middle finger to life’s restrictions that would alert the intruders to his and Miriam’s presence. He fumbled upwards, jerking away instinctively at the snap that found no sustenance, and ran his fingers – left hand for once – across her brow, kneading the crown softly. There could be whispers on the stairs soon, careful treads up each one as steps approached the landing. Then right or left? He thought they would go right first, giving him a few extra moments. But to do what? They wouldn’t understand. Would kill him out of greed and spite before killing her out of fear and ignorance. It was better to let her be free. Let her take him with her. And maybe take them too.

His hand slid from her brow, along the leather strapping and down to the fastener. He worked carefully at the buckle, flicking back the prong from the frame, and sliding the strap free. Another leap back, this one causing him to topple back the chair. Stealth did not matter. Soon enough they would be up here. Time was against he and Miriam, if it had ever been for them. He unfastened the arm restraints, never minding the nails that dug into and lacerated his lower arm and onto the back of his hand. Next, he wrestled with the straps for both kicking feet. Soon what had once been Miriam was only restrained by her right arm. The mattress heaved with her thrashings, bed springs united in protest against the body slamming against them. He wondered if the voices he heard on the staircase were in his imagination. One last set of buckles and she would be free. But to do what? If she went for her gaoler first, he hoped it would be quick. If they caught her eye as they entered, who knew how things would end.

She half-leaped at him, straining at the buckles still containing her raging hunger at the wrist and elbow. He shoved her back, his left hand almost seizing up as it fastened around her neck, pinning her there as the right fumbled desperately for the final prongs. He dragged at one, hearing it snap away. Behind him, the door creaked, a light shining across the room. He caught a glint of light in her eyes, this new stimulation destroying the desperate bond of gaoler and prisoner. His hand snaked up to the elbow. Just one more. He could already imagine blows raining down on his back and head. Maybe even a shotgun blast ending his life seconds before it would end whatever was left of hers. He dragged the strap one-handed from its frame and pulled, her arm rising in unison, sending the prong scraping at the leather. It was enough. Her hand pulled through the loop and she was free for the first time in two months. Her finger nails raked down the skin of his cheek, her hips bucking at his weight, sending him backwards, tumbling off the bed. Hitting the floor, any loss of breath at the impact was ignored as he twisted towards the door, suddenly eager to see the trespassers and thieves who would now be dealing with much more than for what they had bargained.

The scream pierced his ear-drums petrifying his mind and catching any words of triumph or warning in his throat. But far worse was the pair of light blue petite wellington boots that stood in the doorway. Over the din he could hear Junior yelling a young girl’s name, could imagine a hand reaching round the door and dragging the child – their own granddaughter – backwards as the light fell from her hand and smashed on the floor. He roared at the top of his lungs, demanding that his Miriam pay attention to him now, that she not bother with the father and daughter half-tumbling down the stairs ahead of god knows what his mother and the girl’s grandmother had become. But a slither of cruel reason sliced through his panicked thoughts, telling him that Miriam’s hunger would not be fore-stalled. And besides, she could always come back for him later. He would keep.

NZIFF 2019: ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

The New Zealand International Film Festival is back for another year of cutting edge Indie and International favourites. So what is there for the film fan looking for something to watch through their fingers?

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Midsommar – Ari Aster / Florence Pugh, Will Poulter.

Being more than a bit of a horror fan, the arrival of Ari Aster’s Midsommar – his follow-up to the critic’s favourite from last year – left me both ridiculously excited and apprehensive. Billed by one critic as the horror movie to beat in 2019, Midsommar has so far gained largely positive critical feedback. Yet with a Rotten Tomatoes audience score hovering around the 60% mark, Ari Aster may well be delivering another marmite-style movie experience. Although the director and his work may be divisive, the same can’t be said for star Florence Pugh who, whether acting in low-budget haunted house thrillers or beauthifully wrought period dramas, is one of the best actors working today. Whatever the actual quality of the film – a run time for a horror of 140 minutes-plus is often best treated with suspicion – the curious alone will ensure these tickets sell out fast.

When? Embassy Theatre, August 13th (this is the only showing at time of writing).

https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/midsommar/

The Nightingale – Jennifer Kent / Aisling Franciosi

Another sophomore effort – this time from The Babadook director Jennifer Kent – this tale of frontier justice set in Tasmania drove some audiences members to the exits when it was presented at the Sydney Film Festival last year. Slated for release next month in the US and Australia, Kent’s subject matter alone is likely to lead to plenty of column inches and hand-wringing in some media regardless of the quality of the production. With its focus on the power dynamics that can allow the committing of shocking acts against others, this film is likely to inspire comparisons with other Aussie westerns such as The Proposition or horrors like Wolf Creek. Perhaps not one for the squeamish, but prepare for debate about how topical the story is considering recent world events.

https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-nightingale/

Koko-di Koko-da – Johannes Nyholm / Ylva Gallon

Three years after a family tragedy, a still grieving couple attempt to fix their strained marriage by going on a camping trip (what kind of marriage counsellor would recommend this?). What follows is an adult fairy-tale replete with nightmare visions and menacing characters as the couple attempt to negotiate a landscape where death seems to lurk behind every tree. Nyholm’s sophomore effort has been compared to The Babbadook in some quarters but with a meditation on grief that bears resemblence to Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, expect these otherworldly scares to come with a heavy dose of emotional realism.

https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/koko-di-koko-da/

In Fabric – Peter Strickland / Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Pitched as a gleeful satire that attacks both fashion and our society’s materialism, Strickland’s latest work dips heavily into the giallo-style cinema of European directors like Dario Argento. Lovelorn bank employee and single mother Sheila (Jean-Baptiste) needs a dress for an upcoming first date with a man she has met over the internet. Coaxed into a purchase that’s certain to impress her date, Sheila’s new purchase brings her a lot more than she bargained for. Stylish, darkly comic with a mix of eroticism and body horror, this either definitely is or definitely isn’t an ideal date movie. The former or the latter definitely depends on what you are into.

https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/in-fabric/

The Hole in the Ground – Lee Cronin / Seána Kerslake

The terrors of parenting have been fertile ground for horror writers and directors since before Roman Polanski and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. Cronin’s feature film debut takes us to the bleak west of Ireland where a mother on the run from an abusive relationship finds herself doubting her own reality as the eponymous sinkhole of the title begins to exert an unholy influence on both herself and her son. Throw in the usual unfriendly townspeople and you’ve got a recipe for a woman the the verge of a nervous breakdown regardless of what horrors exist in the woods.

https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-hole-in-the-ground/

Come to Daddy – Ant Timpson / Elijah Wood

Elijah Wood continues his journey away from the shire with this deranged comic thriller promising to show pretenders to the genre-flip throne how it’s really done. Wood is Norval, a wannabe-DJ on the edge of a mid-life crisis that returns to his hometown in hope of some father-son bonding with estranged dad Stephen McHattie (in fine, craggy-faced weirdo form). What follows is a heart-warming tale of how a father and son can overcome both cross-generational prejudices and the dangers of toxic masculinity to form a deeper, more satisfying familial bond (this is definitely not what happens). I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this to be NZIFF 2019’s Mandy. 

https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/come-to-daddy/

Knife + Heart – Yann Gonzalez / Vanessa Paradis

Any movie where a character says “yesterday, we came. Tomorrow, we die,” is likely to be somewhere on the ‘dark’ scale, and this tale of murder and ambition is another work that wears its giallo influences on its sleeve. Paradis plays a writer and producer of porn films who, recently estranged from her lover, sets upon the ultimate project to win back the affections of her paramour. A film which begins and ends in blood, Gonzalez’s latest effort competed for the Queer Palm at the 2018 Cannes Film festival and should be high on anyone’s list seeking an evening of sex and mayhem. Add in the wonderful Ms. Paradis on top form and this is a film that deserves more than the screenings allocated. Fingers crossed!

https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/knifeheart/

Check out the full schedule: https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/schedule/