Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

HOLD THE DARK (2018)

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With its unsettling aesthetic and larger-than-life characters living at the fringe of civilization, HOLD THE DARK (2018) is superb Arctic noir, even if it ends on a very murky note.

Retired wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) travels to a village in northern Alaska at the request of Medora Slone (Riley Keough), a young woman whose son was taken by wolves. Core sets out to track the wolves who did it, only to make a startling discovery. Meanwhile, Medora’s husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgard) returns from the Iraq War filled with rage over the death of his son and hell-bent on revenge. As local cop Donald Marium (James Badge Dale, who was great in THE PACIFIC) tries to stop Vernon, Core is drawn into a “heart of darkness” trek.

With the moody, brooding Alaskan wilderness aesthetic, the strange and insular people who populate it, and the decisive violence that follows a natural rather than man-made law, HOLD THE DARK is pretty powerful stuff. Core is forced to gaze into the heart of darkness in order to return to civilization and embrace life, while Medora and Vernon fully embrace the darkness and become as wolves themselves. The end is conclusive in regards to character but not really plot, which may leave some viewers puzzled. Despite its murky ending, the strong characters and story punctuated by very real and electrifying violence are engaging, resulting in a thumbs up from this viewer.

CHANNEL ZERO

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Created by Nick Antosca, Syfy’s CHANNEL ZERO is a horror anthology series comprised of self-contained six-episode seasons, with the story line for each season based on popular CreepyPastas. I caught the first two seasons on Shudder and had fun with it. I found it somewhat consume-and-forget TV, but it goes down easy, and it’s pretty well done.

In the first season, “Candle Cove,” a man returns to his hometown to confront his childhood, during which a series of children were murdered and his twin brother went missing. Upon his return, children start disappearing again, with several turning murderous under the spell of a mysterious and wonderfully creepy TV show Candle Cove, which had also aired during the first round of murders.

In the second season, “No-End House,” two young women get mysterious messages inviting them to the No-End House, a traveling attraction that is the stuff of urban legend. There’s far more to it, however. The house is alive, and it wants to feed.

These are competent TV shows though even at six episodes, for me, the first two seasons felt like they were two episodes too long. High marks for genuinely creepy elements, some decent pacing and good acting, and overall interesting stories. Weaker moments involved characters repeatedly making really, really bad decisions.

The third season is out but not on Shudder yet, where I’ve been catching it. The fourth season airs starting October 26, 2018.

Check it out if you’re looking for some fun, light horror packaged in an interesting story.

MANIAC (2018)

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Netflix’s miniseries MANIAC is a surprisingly thoughtful, heartfelt, and puzzling psychological sci-fi dark comedy. I started it expecting typical fare and found myself increasingly engaged with the oddball world and quirky characters.

Directed by the great Cary Fukunaga (TRUE DETECTIVE, BEASTS OF NO NATION) and written by Patrick Somerville (THE LEFTOVERS), the show is set in a sort of sci-fi 80s, a New York in which VCRs and indoor smoking mingle with “ad buddies” (people who pay for your meal and show you brochures from advertisers) and artificial intelligence. There’s a quirky, futuristic-yet-rundown ETERNAL SUNSHINE FOR A SPOTLESS MIND feel to the whole thing, which works here far better than did in Netflix’s THE DISCOVERY, which was pretty much an imitation.

MANIAC is about haunted souls Owen (Jonah Hill), the black sheep of his rich family under an enormous amount of pressure and of questionable sanity, and Annie (Emma Stone), who is plagued with guilt over a family tragedy. Desperate, they sign up for a pharma trial testing a novel treatment involving drugs and fantasy ideation using AI, which promises to eliminate therapy and heal the world of its psychological ailments.

The result is a very thoughtful and quirky story told on two levels, one about Owen and Annie and how they come to depend on each other, and the other about the project team involving an emotional AI and characters played by actors such as Justin Theroux and Sally Fields. Fast becoming one of my favorite actors, Theroux was great in Netflix’s MUTE and shows he can pull off comedy and sympathy with real skill. Sally Fields was fantastic as his domineering, cutting pop psychologist mom.

Overall, I really liked it. It didn’t reach for the stars but it solidly achieved its modest goals, providing an amusing, thoughtful, and entirely original story.

READY PLAYER ONE (2018)

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READY PLAYER ONE (2018), based on Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel, is a really fun, visually stunning sci-fi film that left me feeling kind of empty.

It’s the future, in which overpopulation and environmental depletion have created a dystopia where the vast majority is poor. To escape their lot, most people engage in a global MMO game called the OASIS. When the film begins, we learn the game’s creator died and left a challenge for the players–anybody who finds three keys in OASIS’s online universe will win control of the entire company (and hence, the universe). Another corporation is financing an effort to find the keys so as to win control of their rival and its riches.

Enter Wade (Parzival online, played by the likeable Tye Sheridan), who teams up with friends and Art3mis, a badass gamer chick, to crack the keys by studying the creator’s life and pop culture for clues. He’s on a never-ending quest to find the keys. His goal is to keep the OASIS free so it’s not exploited by other corporations, who would ruin the fun with ads and nickel and diming charges. The action online spills over into the real world, as Wade and his friends battle the bad guys and search for the keys in a universe teeming with more than 100 pop culture references.

Visually, the movie is stunning, and while the third act drags as it struggles to bring everything to a finish, it’s a briskly paced, action-packed story. The characters are likeable enough, and we want them to win. There is plenty of pop culture references to keep people yelling, “Ha! I remember that!” (I’m not that kind of guy, though I did love that the bad guy bore a striking resemblance to the teacher in THE BREAKFAST CLUB.) Where the film fell flat for me was in its themes.

First, we see that humanity has given up on the real world. Nobody is interested in solving the problems humanity created, they just want to escape online into a universe that has become more real to them. That’s just depressing no matter how you cut it, made worse by the fact in the real world Wade has no friends or much of a family, and goes so far as to confess he’s in love with Art3mis when he barely knows her and only knows her as an avatar in a game. He never learns that maybe he shouldn’t live his whole life online but instead try to engage with the real world and find the same level of meaning and purpose there.

Second, Wade is supposed to learn that the game creator is just a guy with humble beginnings, but that same game creator required Wade to intensely study his life to solve the puzzle. This is connected to the third and biggest thematic flaw, which is knowledge of pop culture is far more important than becoming a better person through the messages pop culture delivers. All the good guys are obsessed with pop culture, with the coolest being able to recite Monty Python by rote and the like, while the super-lame bad guys don’t really care about pop culture.Wade is rewarded for the equivalent of knowing every line of HARRY POTTER, but not for knowing and acting on the moral lessons that make HARRY POTTER great. Imagine how satisfying the story would have been if Wade was say in HARRY POTTER world to find a certain key, uses his knowledge about HARRY POTTER to get close to it, and then has a choice to be selfish (appearing to win but ultimately losing) or act on the themes in HARRY POTTER and win, growing into a mature human being in the process.

In the end, I liked the movie, because, well, Spielberg–it’s big budget, bold, fast-paced, action-packed sci-fi packed with great world building and eye candy–but didn’t love it, as its themes were hollow and unsatisfying.

HELL HOUSE, LLC (2015)

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HELL HOUSE, LLC (2015) is an excellent found-footage horror film, a part of the genre I typically avoid due to its predictability and lurching cameras. While the screenplay focuses on the scares and gives us little reason to invest in the characters, it’s a solid horror film propelled by mystery and suspense and just plain good fun. My editor, Bradley Englert, recommended this one to me, and it turned out to be a great recommendation.

The film begins with news coverage of tragedy at a haunted house attraction in Abaddon, NY. Nobody knows what happened to the people running it. The police sealed off the house and refuse to release details of their investigation. Five years later, a documentary crew tries to find out what happened. They’re approached by Hell House, LLC’s sole survivor, who has tapes.

The result is a story about a Halloween attraction company arriving in Abaddon to set up “Hell House” in an abandoned hotel for Halloween. They end up living there for the month leading up to the attraction opening to the public. We’re introduced to the owner, his girlfriend, three crew members, and three local actors they hire. While living in the hotel, they transform it into a pretty cool haunted house, learn some of the hotel’s very strange history, and deal with scary occurrences.

The characters are likeable, though we’re not given enough story for them to really invest in these people. There are conflicts, but they’re on the surface, and otherwise each character is given a single trait that defines them: Alex is the driven owner in denial about what’s going on, Sarah is his cute and plucky girlfriend, Paul is a goof, etc.

The main event is the house itself and the mystery surrounding it, what happened the night everything went down, and the suspense leading up to it. While low budget, the monster element is pretty well done. There is some denial and bad decisions that affect willing suspension of disbelief–like scared people running around in the dark with flashlights instead of turning on the lights–but the raw found footage feel and pretty decent acting make up for it and then some.

Overall, HELL HOUSE, LLC is a solid, tense, fun horror flick, and as a found footage film, it’s actually quite great.

CLIMAX (2018)

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Written and directed by Gaspar Noé, CLIMAX (2018) is a French horror film about a group of dancers celebrating after a rehearsal and succumbing to a group freakout after somebody heavily spikes the sangria with LSD. The result is loud, crazy, but at times oppressive and tedious.

Supposedly, the film is based on a true story about a dance troupe in the 90s. It begins at the end, and even rolls the final credits, before introducing us to the dancers by way of a series of audition tapes. From there, we see the final rehearsal, filled with some pretty amazing dance moves, and the after party. After a while, it becomes clear that the sangria was spiked with something heavy, leading to a sinister collective freakout.

The film is highly stylized, with red lighting and odd camera angles and even the camera being upside down for a while. It’s also lightly scripted, resulting in stimulating visuals but very little story and virtually no character development beyond the one- or two-dimensional. The whole thing comes across as a single interpretive dance piece, with the director telling the dancers to just keep dancing in character. What we do get to learn about the dancers is largely (and at length, and repeatedly) that they’re full of themselves and horny. As a result, we may be interested in seeing what happens to them but really don’t care what does. Combined with Noé staying way too long on his sequences, the result is overstimulating tedium. There’s something not quite right with a movie when I’m watching an extremely titillating scene but I’m checking my watch, or that I leave the theater feeling like the movie was 2.5 hours when it was only an hour and forty minutes.

In the end, I liked CLIMAX quite a bit, but in a reluctant sort of way. The idea, the dancing, the madness, the rush, and the overall audaciousness of the film all add up to something unique and extraordinary. But for me, in the end, it ended up feeling oppressive and self-indulgent without a solid payoff.