Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

OUTSIDE (2024)

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In the Filipino zombie movie OUTSIDE (2024, Netflix), a family faces its dark secrets and inner demons against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. Though arguably it could have used more zombies and a bit more action, the movie is a breath of fresh air in a genre whose tropes have been overworked by Hollywood, focusing on the human toll of stress when everything falls apart.

The movie begins with a family traveling into the countryside, where Francis (Sid Lucero) believes they can find refuge with his parents. He brings Iris (Beauty Gonzales) and their boys Josh (Marco Masa) and Lucas (Aiden Patdu). They take over the sugar plantation and attempt to hold out, but Iris is anxious about reaching other survivors and wants to leave, while Francis wants to stay.

There’s a lot of slow burn family drama and psychological horror here, as the characters and what drives them unravels like the proverbial onion. Iris appears cold, but she has her reasons. Francis is insecure and tries too hard to prove himself as a man, but he has his reasons. All of it enhanced and salted by not knowing if anyone else is alive amid civilization’s collapse; instead of putting aside all the old stuff because the world is ending, the movie makes the point that the opposite may be true. The actors do a great job communicating in a layered way, both what they want and what they need.

The zombies are pretty well done, nicely creepy. The only trick is by the third act, they start to fade as a threat until the very end, while the family drama boils over. I was all in for it, as I greatly enjoyed the movie and was happy to go where it took me, but some might not be. The location was interesting too, taking us into the rural Philippines.

Overall, I liked OUTSIDE a lot. I’ve seen a lot of zombie movies, and while this one ain’t perfect, it’s good. Where movies like WORLD WAR Z excelled in action but failed in basic character development and making us care, OUTSIDE goes the other way, not providing nearly as much action but offering richly drawn characters who feel like real people, thrown into a claustrophobic horror of the apocalypse.

HELLBOUND, Season 2

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I was blown away by HELLBOUND (Netflix), a Korean series about a strange new phenomenon occurring in which angels appear to people to tell them the hour of their death and that they have been sentenced to suffer in Hell. Season 2 blew me away even more.

The first season reveals the phenomenon and what it means to society. People are of course terrified, wondering what God wants and how to avoid suffering a similar fate as those very publicly beaten by demons before being incinerated and taken to Hell. To prevent societal collapse, a young man named Jung Jin Su–prophesied himself 20 years earlier to go to Hell–understands the only way to save humanity is to create a religion in which people taken to Hell clearly deserve it, leaving you safe as long as you follow his religion’s rules. When he pays to live-broadcast a woman named Park Jung Ja being taken by the demons, everyone believes it’s true–and they all flock to Jung Jin Su’s New Truth Society. Later in the season, after Jung Jin Su is taken to Hell, a charlatan takes over the New Truth and sets out to suppress information that a baby has been sentenced to Hell–directly contradicting the church’s teachings.

In the second season, the New Truth battles with Arrowhead, a mass movement of evangelical fanatics bent on destroying society and handing the ruins to God, and also Sodo, a group formed by a former lawyer dedicated to finding and exposing the truth about the demons. As the Arrowhead continue to gain in popularity and society starts to crumble, the government attempts to make a deal with the New Truth, its agent saying, We know Park Jong Ja has been resurrected, we know you have her, and we want to use her to create a new doctrine and destroy Arrowhead.

What they don’t know is that Jung Jin Su has also resurrected, and his experience in Hell has changed him.

The result is pure cosmic horror. I’ve always found conventional religion to be as scary as Lovecraft. I mean, there’s this Supreme Being, and he loves you, but if you don’t follow the rules and love him back you will suffer for eternity. Now imagine angels appear around the world and tell seemingly random people they are going to Hell, and then demons come at the prophesied time and shred them before burning them to ash. The show explores how humanity might react to such a thing, and how you’d end up with competing religions offering salvation, and then you’d end up with opportunistic people taking over these organizations and using them to gain and hold power and privilege. While the first season was about the battle to either give humanity the truth about its lot or offer it comfort in a new religion, a battle over meaning and interpretation, the second season is about the battle to control the narrative as a means to hold power.

I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s amazing TV in the vein of THE LEFTOVERS, though even more thought-provoking and powerful. Highly recommended.

DARK WINDS, Season 1

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Based on the Leaphorn/Chee novels by Tony Hillerman, DARK WINDS (Netflix) is a crime drama that takes place in the Navajo Nation, with predominantly native actors.

The year is 1971, and an armored car heist and several murders fall on the desk of Lieutenant Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police. Working with a tough police sergeant and a new deputy named Chee, Leaphorn must content with FBI interest in the case, internal divisions on the reservation, and a terrorist movement seeking to gain greater self determination for the Navajo people.

As a crime story, it’s compelling, with numerous threads that slowly tie together to the big showdown at the end of the first season. What makes the show really special is the Southwestern landscapes, the indigenous culture, and the charming characters I found myself really rooting for. There is even a supernatural aspect in native witchcraft, which adds a bit of TRUE DETECTIVE to the mix and elevates the story even further.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with DARK WINDS and would recommend it. No heavy lifting required, though a bit spicier than the usual popcorn watch.

FROM, Season 1

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In FROM, a community of people live in a town where people enter but can never leave, a place where monsters come out at night and the real world seems a distant memory.

Streaming on Paramount, FROM begins with the sheriff ringing a bell, warning the residents that dark is coming and they need to get inside. Meanwhile, a family discovers a tree blocking the road during a road trip, which forces them to detour to a crumbling town where nothing seems quite right. They soon discover they’re trapped like the residents, who either try to live as best they can in acceptance of their lot, or take a stand to learn more about the mysterious place and how they might escape.

There’s a lot to like here, from the basic TV drama to the themes of resistance/acceptance to the weird horror elements, which include some pretty gory slaughter of people caught outside after dark. There are plenty of riddles and strange elements to keep you engaged in the mystery, very similar to LOST, in fact this show has some of the same producers. Only, because it’s streaming, it’s like watching LOST with bad language and people torn to shreds.

I do have some criticisms. One is the show tips its hand very early on to show what the monsters look like, and they’re far scarier seeing the aftermath than seeing them attack. Another is every breakthrough on a mystery only leads to another mystery, which kept millions hooked on LOST but turned me off during the second season. I feel like shows like that lean so hard on the uncanny (there’s a dog that keeps showing up for some reason, which appears designed to generate internet discussion about what it means) that I start to feel played, and then leans on weird cliffhangers so much it boxes itself into a corner, and you wind up with a finale where it was all some weird plan by God or a collective near-death experience, because nothing else works. That’s a me thing, maybe not a you thing, though, as again, millions loved LOST and watched it to the end, so if you dug that, I think you’d dig this closer-to-R-rated version of it.

Overall, I thought Season 1 was great creepy fun, and I’m already into Season 2, which is rolling at a nice pace. Check it out if you like “Area X” or LOST type stories.

RED ROOMS (2024)

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In the French-Canadian film RED ROOMS (2024), a young woman named Kelly-Anne becomes obsessed with a serial killer, leading her down a dark road to track down a missing video depicting the murder of a teen. This movie is a master class in horror, cultivating a morbid sense of revulsion using sound and description instead of shoving it in your face.

The movie begins with the opening statements at a trial. We have the defendant, believed to have murdered three pretty young teens and posted the videos as “red room” snuff videos for profit on the dark web (a new digital take on the old snuff film urban legend of the 1970s). We have the prosecutor laying out the grisly crime in detail, letting our imaginations do the work. And we have Kelly-Anne sitting in the observation area, watching the trial day after day.

Is she a serial killer groupie, a sicko who likes snuff films, or is something else at work? She’s a fascinating character in how she pursues information about the case and probes the dark web herself to plumb the case’s deepest secrets. We find out what she’s been doing all along in a nice twist at the end, though this comes at the expense of never really knowing what drives her, why she does what she does. We’re kept in the dark for a reason, and while it’s a good reason, again, there’s the tradeoff. That one vital piece of storytelling, which is what haunts a character and makes them believe what they believe and need what they need.

That aside, I loved it. I found the story intensely moody, the cinematography and soundtrack great, and the protagonist engaging. I particularly loved the use of sound, spoken description, and human reactions to the torture and murder of the teens, which made the crimes subject to the imagination and therefore all the more grisly and horrific. Overall, I appreciated how RED ROOMS took the tired trope of the serial killer and turned it into something deeply engaging.

THE KING TIDE (2023)

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In THE KING TIDE (2023), a desperate community of island fishermen discover an infant with a magical power of healing, resulting in the community forming a virtual religion around the girl and becoming willing to do anything to protect and ensure their access to her powers. The filmmakers wring a ton of drama from a simple story and modest budget, with a terrific payoff.

Distraught after his wife Grace suffers another miscarriage, Bobby takes a walk and hears a baby crying near the sea. Discovering a lost infant, he and his wife adopt the girl, though she is no normal child. Named Isla, she has the ability to heal almost any ailment and keep people young. Years later, the island has sealed itself off and has formed a virtual cult around her. But Isla has another power, one that is darker than healing, and when the girl grows confused and appears to lose all her power, the community falls into chaos, turning on each other and outsiders.

It’s a simple premise and story, the kind of thing you might find in a Shirley Jackson short story or a play turned into a film, but the filmmakers mine a huge amount of drama and tragedy out of it. As things go wrong, everyone becomes an antagonist, and what makes these characters so great is every one of them has a powerful motivation for what they want and what they’re willing to do for it. The town’s now useless medic, for example, believes the community is exploiting Isla and wants her to have more choice. Her adoptive parents want to protect her, and their mother, cured of a catatonic form of dementia, is willing to do anything to avoid going back into that horrible fog. And on and on, all of it leading up to tragedy with a terrific ending. The real monster, it seems, is simple human nature.

Otherwise, the setting is notably bleak, an isolated community on an island in Nova Scotia where the houses are barely resisting the erosion of time and the harsh elements. The people who live there are ordinary people similarly turned rugged and hard by their environment. The pacing is solid and the dialogue just fine.

Overall, I was impressed by THE KING TIDE and would happily recommend it as a simple horror story about human nature that is well told.