Alec Worley's Blog, page 2

Science Fiction Double Feature: 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002) + 28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007)

I’ve added a spoiler-flag for those who haven’t seen the first movie, allowing you to skip a section in this post. But expect trailer-level spoilers overall.

Having lived through 9/11, Brexit and Covid – while barely surviving the world’s current epidemic of algorithm-induced psychosis – watching 28 Days Later makes you wonder if someone travelled back in time to give Alex Garland a checklist to work from while he was writing the script.

Like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1984) and Peter Weir’s The Trum...

How to Build a Haunted House

Cover art by Josh Simmons

House? It’s more of a mansion, really. Maybe even a chateau, a palatial country estate fallen to ruin among the trees. It seems to grow an extra storey of broken windows every time you look up at it. Turn a corner and you’re walking down a row of boarded doorways, more like an abandoned street than a single residence.

This is no gothic cathedral with graves on the lawn and bats in every belfry. It’s just some curious shamble of New England brickwork, its dripping beams an...

Review: House (Josh Simmons, 2007)

Cover art by Josh Simmons

House? It’s more of a mansion, really. Maybe even a chateau, a palatial country estate fallen to ruin among the trees. It seems to grow an extra storey of broken windows every time you look up at it. Turn a corner and you’re walking down a row of boarded doorways, more like an abandoned street than a single residence.

This is no gothic cathedral with graves on the lawn and bats in every belfry. It’s just some curious shamble of New England brickwork, its dripping beams an...

Aces of Weird: House (Josh Simmons, 2007)

Cover art by Josh Simmons

House? It’s more of a mansion, really. Maybe even a chateau, a palatial country estate fallen to ruin among the trees. It seems to grow an extra storey of broken windows every time you look up at it. Turn a corner and you’re walking down a row of boarded doorways, more like an abandoned street than a single residence.

This is no gothic cathedral with graves on the lawn and bats in every belfry. It’s just some curious shamble of New England brickwork, its dripping beams an...

Who Goes There? (1938) vs The Thing (1982)

Cover art by Hannes Bok; poster art by Drew Struzan

The classic sci-fi novella Who Goes There? by ‘controversial’ editor John W. Campbell has become something of a footnote next to the popularity of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Carpenter’s masterful 1982 movie has not only consumed Campbell’s 1938 story but replaced it in the public consciousness with an eerily perfect adaptation. It’s a cultural eclipse made all the more startling when you consider John W. Campbell is one of the most influential ...

Science Fiction Double Feature: Who Goes There? (1938), The Thing (1982)

Cover art by Hannes Bok; poster art by Drew Struzan

The classic sci-fi novella Who Goes There? by ‘controversial’ editor John W. Campbell has become something of a footnote next to the popularity of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Carpenter’s masterful 1982 movie has not only consumed Campbell’s 1938 story but replaced it in the public consciousness with an eerily perfect adaptation. It’s a cultural eclipse made all the more startling when you consider John W. Campbell is one of the most influential ...

Vampires Don't Have to Be Horrible

God bless Guillermo del Toro, patron saint of the fantastic. Creators of the weird and wonderful should have a candlelit icon of the Mexican maestro framed above their desk, his boyish mop haloed with tentacles, a third eye peering from an open palm, owlish behind those glasses, bearded and beaming like an eldritch Santa. He’s one of our greatest living fantasists, the monster kid made good. As an Oscar-winning filmmaker, artist, producer, writer and fanboy, he balances a child’s love of the lur...

Review: Cronos (Guillermo del Toro, 1992)

God bless Guillermo del Toro, patron saint of the fantastic. Creators of the weird and wonderful should have a candlelit icon of the Mexican maestro framed above their desk, his boyish mop haloed with tentacles, a third eye peering from an open palm, owlish behind those glasses, bearded and beaming like an eldritch Santa. He’s one of our greatest living fantasists, the monster kid made good. As an Oscar-winning filmmaker, artist, producer, writer and fanboy, he balances a child’s love of the lur...

Aces of Weird: Cronos (Guillermo del Toro, 1992)

God bless Guillermo del Toro, patron saint of the fantastic. Creators of the weird and wonderful should have a candlelit icon of the Mexican maestro framed above their desk, his boyish mop haloed with tentacles, a third eye peering from an open palm, owlish behind those glasses, bearded and beaming like an eldritch Santa. He’s one of our greatest living fantasists, the monster kid made good. As an Oscar-winning filmmaker, artist, producer, writer and fanboy, he balances a child’s love of the lur...

Fantastic Beasts and How to Write Them

Amazing Stories, January 1949, cover artist unknown, via Wikimedia Commons

Upon reaching the limits of civilised knowledge, the mapmakers of yore would resort to monsters. Hic Sunt Dracones – Here Be Dragons. In truth, cartographers almost never wrote this1, but there’s a reason the phrase has endured. It conjures images of fabulous beasts prowling the margins of the world, of plumed leviathans coiled around galleons daring to cross seas uncharted. Here be not only dragons, but the eternal bounda...