Tag: horror

Book Review – Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

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Summary from Goodreads

Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World on their quest for the Dark Tower. Their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis. But beyond the tranquil farm town, the ground rises to the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is stealing the town’s soul. The wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to. Their guns, however, will not be enough….

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Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King, the fifth book in his series The Dark Tower, is one I’d been wanting to get to for some time. After reading book four, Wizard & Glass, and then The Wind Through the Keyhole (4.5), I had had my fill of flashbacks and side-stories. Though it was without the addition of the latter, I can only imagine what the wait must have been like for fans who’d been reading the series since 1982. I enjoyed those books very much, but even I was more than ready to continue following Roland and company on their quest.Read More »

Book Review – Suspended in Dusk, edited by Simon Dewar

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Summary from Goodreads:

DUSK. A time between times. A whore hides something monstrous and finds something special. A homeless man discovers the razor blade inside the apple. Unlikely love is found in the strangest of places. Secrets and dreams are kept… forever. Or was it all just a trick of the light? Suspended in Dusk brings together 19 stories by some of the finest minds in Dark Fiction.

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While I love horror as a genre in film and gaming, I’ve only had minimal experience with its literature. To help remedy this, I decided to not only pick up some horror fiction, but go out of my way to find something more obscure. I dug up a business card I picked up at Fan Expo last year from Books of the Dead, a horror publisher, which led me to this anthology. Since each story is rather short, I will not be summarizing any of them in a specific way.

What I will say is the book is unified by a dusk motif: in some way or another each story incorporates this time of day as an idea, figuratively and/or literally, such as a peculiar event occurring during this time. Dusk is rarely a crucial aspect of each story, more of a narrative aesthetic that connects them all together.Read More »

My Revelation about Resident Evil

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While actually getting a lot of things right, Resident Evil: Revelations stands as a testament to a lot of what’s become wrong with the series. I recently completed the Nintendo 3DS version of the game, and mechanically it is quite well made. It follows the gameplay model of Resident Evil 4 and on the New Nintendo 3DS it feels even better thanks to the addition of the C-Stick. The game also does a decent job of injecting some survival horror back into the series, with interesting new creature designs, claustrophobic environments, and fairly limited resources.Read More »

Movie Review – The Forest

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The Forest is an American supernatural horror film directed by Jason Zada, starring Natalie Dormer and Taylor Kinney. Much of the story is set in and around the Aokigahara Forest in Japan, also known as the “Suicide Forest” or “Sea of Trees,” located at the northwest base of Mount Fuji. Sara Price (Dormer), an American woman, receives a call from Japanese authorities who are concerned that her troubled twin sister Jess is dead, having last been seen entering this forest. Despite the protests of her husband, Sara travels to Japan to search for her missing sister, whom she adamantly believes is still alive.Read More »

Book Review – Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

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From the inside cover:

Welcome to Night Vale … a friendly desert community somewhere in the America Southwest, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while its citizens pretend to sleep. It’s a town like any town, with a city hall, a bowling alley, a diner, a supermarket, and a community radio station reporting all the news that’s allowed to be heard. In this ordinary little town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are commonplace parts of everyday life, the lives of two women, with two mysteries, are about to converge.

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Welcome to Night Vale is a novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, set in the world of the podcast series of the same name and written by the same authors. As a fan of the podcast this novel has been on my radar for quite some time. I have a particular love for all things weird, eldritch, and vague yet menacing, so the series has been right up my alley since I heard the first episode. While the podcast has been going on for several years, with a number of live shows having been produced as well, this is the first time the series has ventured into the medium of prose.Read More »

Movie Review – Grave Encounters

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Grave Encounters is a 2011 Canadian found-footage horror film, written and directed by The Vicious Brothers. The film is a collection of footage from the final episode of a fictional ghost hunting TV show called Grave Encounters, which was cancelled after airing its fifth episode. This sixth episode was never broadcast. The host and crew are investigating the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, a supposed hotbed for paranormal activity thanks to its tortured history. After touring the grounds during the day they have the groundskeeper lock them in, from sundown until 6:00 AM, as they begin their mission to capture footage ghostly activity.Read More »

The Ending of Dead Space 3

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Spoiler Warning: This post is very specifically about details of the Dead Space series as well as the ending of Dead Space 3. Read at your own discretion.

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Despite having received the game as a gift in 2013 and being a big fan of the series, I only just completed the storyline of Dead Space 3. The game continues a series of sci-fi horror video games developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts.

Something I heard consistently from friends and family that had played through it already was that by the end of the game far too much was explained about the source of the Necromorphs, the undead monstrosities that assault the player-character Isaac Clarke, and the Markers, alien spires that are the source of hallucinations, violence, and the spawning of these nightmarish creatures. Having now played through it, I’m not sure how I feel about it.Read More »

Movie Review – The Babadook

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Recently I watched The Babadook, an Australian psychological horror film released in 2014 and directed by Jennifer Kent. The film follows Amelia Vannick, a single mother who works as an orderly and is struggling to raise her six year old son Samuel. Her husband died in a car accident on the day Sam was born, an event that continues to haunt their small household.Read More »