David Dubrow's Blog, page 55

Movie Review: Resurrect Dead

Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles is a mostly fascinating documentary about some bizarre tiles set into the streets of major cities across the United States and in South America.  The tiles always say something like this, with minor variations:
TOYNBEE IDEA IN MOVIE 2001 RESURRECT DEADON PLANET JUPITER
Who put them there?  What do these tiles mean? Why are so many of them in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?

The documentary does its best to answer these questions, and as much as possible, succeeds. One of the most interesting elements of the story is Justin Duerr, a primary Toynbee Tile researcher: obviously troubled, he focused a great deal of energy into finding out the truth about this mystery, and it was only during a (likely) imaginary encounter that Duerr found closure regarding it.

The mystery unfolded throughout the film, allowing the viewer to become part of the revelations in a way that made it immediate and striking.  My only criticism is that the movie went on a little too long.  Would I have tried to uncover the mystery of the Toynbee tiles differently?  Yes.  But that's what made the movie so interesting: the researchers were real people working on a project in their own way.

Whether you've heard of the Toynbee tiles or not, you should definitely see this film.  4 out of 5 stars.

Movie Review: The Possession

The Possession is an excellent horror film that puts the lie to the notion that good horror can't be rated PG-13.  The nature of the supernatural antagonist was different enough to be interesting and woven deeply enough into the film to be more than a gimmick.  Don't be fooled by the silly "Based on a true story" thing.  A spoiler-free review follows:

John Winchester: Jeffrey Dean Morgan showed great range in this role, and was believable as both a college basketball coach and a terrified father trying to save his youngest daughter.  His frustration and confusion were palpable throughout.  Even though he'll always be Sam and Dean's dad to me, and I was hoping he'd just kick the monster's ass the way he would in Supernatural , he showed that he could believably go beyond his beloved television role.Poor Kid: Natasha Calis as Em, the dybbuk's victim, did a great job.  Usually, let's face it, kids in movies tend to get shrill and annoying when dealing with perilous situations, but Calis didn't go there.  What was happening to her wasn't fair, and you wanted that filthy, horrible thing out of her.The Others: Kyra Sedgwick was her usual, irritating self in this film, which was probably deliberate on the casting director's part.  She's unlikable in every role she's in, so it worked here as the ex-wife.  Matisyahu as Tzadok stole the show: he was funny without it spoiling the film's intensity, and authoritative as a Hasidic exorcist, of sorts.  The filmmakers used him just enough.  Dybbuks: The notion of a dybbuk box was very neat, and it was quite interesting to see Jewish exorcists using the power of Adonai to fight a demon, rather than the standard Catholic priest vs. Lucifer contest.  There's a great deal of wealth to be mined in Jewish mysticism and folklore.Nastiness: the rolling eye effects were particularly disturbing, as were the moths and other nasty, horrible things the dybbuk inflicted.  The MRI scene was bizarre, but worked.  Seeing the dybbuk out of the box...gross.  This was a filthy, disgusting monster that did appalling things, and it showed.Caring Is Sharing: Unlike far too many horror movies made these days, effort was made to get you to care about what happened to the characters.  This wasn't a film about bad things happening to bad people: it was about awful things happening to decent people, so the outcome mattered.  Go see The Possession on Netflix when you have a spare 90 minutes.  4 out of 5 stars.

Friday Is a Day of Work

The holidays, with family visits, school vacations, and all the work that goes along with them, were extraordinary this year, if tiring.  On top of that, my younger brother came in from Europe for a week-long visit; it was the longest we'd spent together in about twenty years, and I cannot wait to see him again.

Despite that, I'm glad to return to my writing desk.  What follows are three micro-reviews of movies my brother and I saw.
The Avengers : As I get older, I find myself less and less fetched by superhero films, even ones depicting what used to be my favorite superheroes.  Unfortunately, The Avengers succeeded only in disappointing.  The lack of a central character resulted in a chaotic, plotless mess; Joss Whedon, who can be very occasionally entertaining, failed to bring the story elements together into a comprehensible whole.  All in all, the film was too self-conscious and required that you'd already watched the Thor and Captain America movies before it.  Hawkeye was fun, but under-used, and Black Widow took the typical female Whedon role: an ass-kicking woman smarter than everyone else.  Robert Downey Jr. was great as usual.  Tom Hiddleston was so good as Loki again that it almost made me want to watch Dr. Who.  2 out of 5 stars. Anchorman 2 : I loved Anchorman  and had middling hopes for the sequel, which were borne out by a series of improv pieces that went on way too long.  There were a few very funny parts, including the musical number, the visit with Veronica and her boyfriend Gary, the first minute of the dinner scene at Linda's house, and the final battle.  The rest of it just wasn't terribly funny.  It was clear that on some shoot days, certain actors were more on the ball than others.  For whatever reason, Steve Carell seemed to be phoning it in, and in the scenes with Chani, Kristen Wiig (in her tighty-whiteys) always stole it.  It's extremely difficult to recapture the magic with an original sequel to an original film, and Anchorman 2 failed.  Still, the funny bits were memorable enough to carry it to 3 stars out of 5. Man of Steel : I really, really wanted to like this film more than I did.  As a mixture of Moses and Jesus, Superman is a transcendent figure, a true super hero sent to Earth to help mankind.  Henry Cavill was excellent: hit all the right notes, looked great, achieved dignity in the blue suit with the red boots.  And yet...it was a mess.  General Zod wasn't crazy enough to be a true villain; he just seemed like a massive dick.  There was too much Russell Crowe and not enough Kevin Costner.  Amy Adams wasn't a convincing Lois Lane.  Diane Lane was good, but didn't get anything interesting to do.  The fight scenes between the Kryptonians and Supes eventually became tiresome.  Krypton, however, seemed like a real place with real people, unlike the Richard Donner Superman film.  Still, it was a Superman movie, so it gets 3 out of 5 stars.  
Usually, I'm a Marvel over DC guy when it comes to superheroes, but Superman beat the Avengers handily.

Movie Review: Oculus

Oculus was a genuinely scary film that had a heart, characterized by a good script and characters you could relate to.  While there were certain familiar elements that sanded off some of the edges that would have made it a great film, it still delivered on its promise.  Spoiler-free review follows (I only spoil the mediocre films):
Tim: While the actor playing young Tim had only one expression (a kind of constipated fear, as though he always had to take a shit but was afraid to for some reason), the older Tim pulled off his role well.  Despite his recent release from a mental facility, he was the reasonable character and had plausible (if wrong, of course) explanations for the bizarre events.  He had the best lines in the film.Kaylie: An extraordinary performance from both the child actor and the older actor.  Obviously unbalanced, obviously holding it together with spit and chewing gum, she made the movie.  The young version inspired pathos and the adult version inspired empathy.  Her OCD style of insanity was believable and reasonable, considering the circumstances.  You didn't like her, but you understood her.  A fine line.My Eyes Deceive Me: The filmmakers did an excellent job of messing with the viewer's perceptions, especially near the end of the movie.  There was no way to determine what was real from what wasn't, despite Kaylie's best efforts.  The disorientation was unsettling and one of the mirror's best weapons.Yuck: Oculus earned its R-rating through creative, visceral use of gore.  There were parts I wanted to look away from.  Even when I expected what would happen, I was still grossed out.  Two scenes in particular involving eating were particularly hard.Bros (and Sises) Before 'Rents: the relationship between brother and sister, especially during the flashback scenes, was very poignant.  As awful as it is, at times a sibling relationship is stronger than a parental one, especially when one or both parents is abusive.  Kaylie and Tim's bond in the face of their parents' destruction provided the necessary heart of the film.  Across the board, Oculus was a very good ghost story, and I'm glad I saw it.  4 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Voiceless by Trent Zelazny

I found Trent Zelazny through Twitter; people I respected were following him, so I did the same.  His father, Roger Zelazny, was one of my all-time favorite science fiction authors, and I was interested to see what Trent was like.  This candid interview says a great deal about him as both a writer and a man.

Voiceless, available through Kindle Unlimited, is an extraordinary piece of writing.  It's a disquieting thriller that grabs you by the shirtfront, gets right in your face, and keeps you there, uncomfortable, until it's done.  Not when you're done.

The main character, Max, isn't terribly likable, but you find yourself rooting for him all the same.  Describe him as hapless, call him Mister Milquetoast, but don't count him out.  Trapped in a bitter, loveless marriage; trapped by circumstance in a town named Broken Dream (with its very own Trash Street, no less); trapped in a house with a terrible past; and trapped in his own head with all its fears and impotence, Max has a feeling of defeat about him, but he isn't quite pathetic.  There's a core to him, an essential integrity; it just takes some real nastiness to bring it out.

And nastiness does happen, from petty, cringe-worthy rounds of marital fighting to terrible, life-ending violence.  Nobody emerges unscathed, and several don't emerge at all.

Trent's prose is packed with dark, almost hallucinogenic imagery both within Max's head and without the town of Sueño Roto, making one a haunting mirror image of the other.  When everything comes together in the last quarter of the book, it's impossible to put down.

Voiceless is a book that stays with you in a way only certain books can.

Five out of five stars.

Idaho Shooting: Takeaways

This is a nasty, dirty, shitty story, one of the absolute worst I've heard of in some time, but if we don't dig into it at least a little bit, we'll just paper over it and no one will do the hard work of learning anything.

What happened was that Veronica Rutledge left her handgun in her purse where her toddler son could get to it.  Her son got to it and shot Veronica in the head, killing her.  The details are in the link.

The family is, for all intents and purposes, ruined.  I don't know how you come back from that.  I pray God that they can find comfort in the fullness of time.

Like so many terrible things, it's bad that it happened, but worse if we don't learn anything.  As part of that process, take a look at this story; does it ring any bells?  A 9-year-old girl was handed a weapon she couldn't handle, and as a result her firearms instructor is dead.  Another ruined family.

It's a mistake to call these "accidental" shootings.  Any time a bullet goes where it isn't supposed to, it's because the responsible party was negligent in handling the weapon.  Neither a 9-year-old nor a 2-year-old are responsible parties.  So the responsibility, unfortunately, falls on the victims in these cases.  There are no accidental discharges, only negligent ones.

So how do we learn from this?  What can we take away?

With weapons, familiarity doesn't breed so much contempt as it does casualness.  This is problematic.  If you're going to take on the burden of carrying a weapon (which is your God-given, inalienable right), you have to include the whole raft of responsibilities along with it.  It has to be something you think about.  You have to cultivate mindfulness in its presence, because once it turns into just another accessory, you've put one foot on the path to negligence.

Hand-flapping about blaming the victim won't prevent this from happening again, nor will renewed cries for harsher gun laws.  It's absolutely awful that Veronica Rutledge's name is in the public eye now.  The only good that can come of it is increased mindfulness: a gun owner's most valuable tool.

So What Just Happened?

Overall, 2014 has been quite an extraordinary year.  Here are a few highlights:
My Baby: On March 5, 2014, I published my first novel,  The Blessed Man and the Witch .  So far, the few reactions to it have been very positive to fairly positive.  It's the first book in a trilogy, and I began working on the sequel right after I got feedback from my beta readers.  It's $2.99 to buy, or you can read it free from Amazon Unlimited.  If you like the pieces I've written here, you'll love the novel.What You Are Reading Now: On March 13, 2014, I started this blog.I Went High-Concept: In June of 2014, I changed the focus of this blog from writing, which nobody other than certain writers want to read about, to other things of interest, including book reviews, movie reviews, personal defense issues, horror in general, and social commentary.Twittin' It Up: In August of 2014, I joined Twitter.  At times, I wish I hadn't.  Other times, it's been an interesting experience.Paying off My Overdue Books: In September 2014, in partnership with the Dunedin Public Library, I began writing a Halloween-themed novella that involved zombies, Lovecraftian horrors, and antediluvian terrors, using local teen volunteers as supporting characters.An Unpronounceable Name: On October 19, 2014, the novella A Pennsylvania Haunting: A ghost story in three parts.  In Part One, we are introduced to the ghost.  Part Two details the ghost's malicious mischief, and in Part Three, the ghost story is wrapped up.  Disturbing and graphic at times, especially at the end.Howard Tinkertoy: A man looks through his little boy's kiddie tablet and his life takes a very sharp turn for the bizarre.In Angels in the IHOP, we sit in on a conversation between celestial beings.Fixing the World focuses on a young woman's obsession with the news.What's coming next year?  Another short story of mine has been accepted by Liberty Island, to be published in the first quarter of 2015.  I should be done the sequel to The Blessed Man and the Witch by then; I'll reveal the title when I'm finished the first draft.  A tangential story to Howard Tinkertoy is also on the way.  I may write another Dreadedin Chronicles novella, depending on time constraints.  More movie reviews, more book reviews, more content.  
Thank you for reading!

Movie Review: The Damned

The Damned is a mildly entertaining movie that started with an interesting idea and fell promptly into familiar horror film tropes until at the end you didn't care a lot about what happened to anyone. I'm going to spoil the film, so if you're really burning to see it and be surprised by its charms, read no further.  I'M WARNING YOU.
Family Matters: The screenwriter overcomplicated the family relationships between the characters in a failed attempt to add depth to the story.  Rather than give us something we can hold onto and appreciate, like a father, mother, and child, we have a widower, his fiancee, his adult teenage daughter, his former sister-in-law (the dead wife's sister), and the former sister-in-law's colleague who happens to be the adult teenage daughter's wannabe boyfriend.  There was some strained byplay between these characters, but it never went anywhere.  If you're going to have tension between characters, you have to give us a side to root for, and this film didn't.  The characters just weren't terribly likable.  The Evil That Men Do: The possessing force (the soul of a bruja/witch) can see into your spirit and know what sorts of evils you've committed.  From there, she guilts you into feeling worse about them so she can kill you (or force you to kill her so she can possess you.  The rule here is that the witch can only possess the person who's killed the body she's in, almost-but-not-quite like like Azazel in Fallen ).  It turns out that the people who wind up freeing her just happen to include someone who pulled the plug on his dying wife early (Peter Facinelli) and a guy who uses teenage girls as drug mules, at least one of whom died during the process (Sebastian Martinez).  It seemed too pat, too overt.  I've known several pieces of human trash who haven't killed anyone: they're just bad people.  I'm sure most of us know some (or are some).  If you want subtlety and complexity, start with human stories we can relate to, not wife murderers and drug dealers.Character Issues: Peter Facinelli was too young-looking for the role.  He did a good job with the material, but he wasn't convincing as the father of a 19-year-old girl.  The old man was okay, but not menacing enough in the beginning and not tragic enough in his death.  The cop was very good throughout, and his later appearance boosted the film significantly.  I hated to see him go.  The female characters weren't given enough to do, including the little girl, to make them more than disposable cut-outs.Control Yourself: We learn that the possessing force is a witch, but her only power seems to be to possess people.  She can't control the weather or do anything else we typically associate with witches (it might have been interesting for her to have implied that she'd somehow created the downpour that sent the hapless characters to her hotel prison).  Fair enough, but the problem was that she just couldn't keep it together long enough to get to civilization.  She self-sabotaged by having the little girl she'd possessed start acting creepy and dangerous straight off the bat.  If her intent was to get out into the wide world, shouldn't she have just kept up the little kid act until they took her to the city?  Then she could have found a new person to possess so she could return to get her revenge on the families that were responsible for her imprisonment.Location, Location, Location: There was no reason for this to have been set in Colombia.  They used very little in the way of Colombian culture or language, which was a shame.  With Colombia's rich myth cycle and folklore to draw from, this could have been a unique story.  It was a missed opportunity.  Overall, I rate this movie 3 out of 5 stars.  I recommend it, but not strongly.

Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale

My hybrid Christmas/Hanukkah story Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale , was published by Liberty Island!

It's got comedy, pathos, excitement, and the most incisive social commentary you'll ever see outside of a gas station water cooler conversation.  If you've ever been interested in what Judah Maccabee really thinks about the holiday season, then this is the story for you.

There's a little bit of rough language, some implied intimacy, adult situations, mild violence, and angels.  Which reindeer takes a bullet?  What does Heaven's VFW post look like?  Where do cat souls come from?  These questions and more are answered in Get the Greek , free to read on Liberty Island!

Friday Links: The Horror Before Christmas

We're coming up on the last weekend before Christmas, and in-between last-minute shopping and family arguments, try to find the time to click these links:

Jeff at Terrorphoria had some exciting news about his future writing plans: "Ben and I have had lots of conversations about the kind of work/writing/art we both want to do and it's important to both of us to not just hang our hats on talking about other people's stuff, but create some art of our own."At HorrorNews.Net, Corey reviewed the film Asylum: "When all was said and done, After Dark realized they had made a HUGE mistake and the film they were given was garbage. In a desperate attempt to try and salvage their investment, they bring back Chris Mancini. He was given a small chunk of change to come in and try to assemble something watchable. So what did he do exactly? Did he succeed? The answer to these burning questions lies below, so sit back and read on."Jim at Ginger Nuts of Horror got an interview with horror legend Graham Masterton: "Readers like to be surprised.  They enjoy being challenged and I think sometimes they even like to be annoyed by what they are reading.  All I try to do is keep them entertained and make sure (at least for the course of the book)  their disbelief is suspended."Sean Eaton's always-excellent R'lyeh Tribune took us on an outer space voyage to Edmond Hamilton's imagination: "There is a Supreme Council of the League of Planets—only eight were known at the time—that seems unencumbered by a congress or a supreme court.  It is composed largely of scientists, engineers and rocket pilots who rule presumably on the basis of their technical expertise.  The future human race is interesting linguistically; like the hero Jan Tor, everyone has monosyllabic first and last names.  Extraterrestrial biology is somewhat preposterous—the globe men resemble enormous, multi-legged M&Ms, (plain, not peanut).  Nevertheless, the head alien works at a desk, and sketches designs for battle cruisers on good old paper."At The Horror Club, you can take a look at the eyes of horror...if you dare.Wag the Fox interviewed horror author Kelli Owen: "I grew up in northern Wisconsin. We didn’t have a whole lot of folklore there, just, you know, serial killers and cannibals. In second grade I used to make up stories, trying to create folklore I guess (like turning the creepy house on the block into a witch’s hiding place) to scare the other children. Eventually I found like-minded twisted little brats who also told stories, and by fifth grade we had a little circle of demented children scaring each other."Here, I reviewed the movie  Mercy , and released a short story titled,  Fixing the World .Also, Obsidian Point has dropped the price of The Blessed Man and the Witch to $2.99!  It's the perfect gift for anyone who enjoys religious-themed horror thrillers about the end of the world.