Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

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.

WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD by Benjamin Labatut

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In Benjamin Labatut’s WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, we are given an extraordinary literary tapestry revealing the connections between science and consequence, madness and genius, and knowledge and oblivion.

This is not typically written, somewhere between an essay and a novel, a work of creative nonfiction that explores the brilliant minds and tortured souls of some of early twentieth century’s most brilliant scientists. With a quick pace that had me turning pages as if it was a thriller, Labatut shows us major discoveries in mathematics and physics and what they meant. The personalities are compelling, tortured geniuses for the most part, raising the old question of whether madness produces genius or if it’s the other way around. A novel of theme, the primary exploration is knowledge and the toll this takes on people and societies, with vast leaps in human understanding of the universe contrasted against the backdrop of two global wars and the rise of fascism. It all leads to the boldest leap into triumph and tragedy as several men carve out quantum physics, upending centuries of physics and showing that the pinnacle of knowledge may mean knowing nothing for certain.

Overall, WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND was different than most books I’ve read and a fascinating story not only of science and what it costs but of the geniuses who shook the world.

A BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL ETERNAL WORLD by James Chambers

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In A BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL ETERNAL WORLD, horror author James Chambers provides a new collection of Lovecraftian stories, each hitting a different dark note.

I’d read Chambers’s ENGINES OF SACRIFICE on a lark a few years back and loved it. I say “lark” for two reasons: One, I tend to read novels far more often than I do novellas and short stories, an art form I’m still learning to appreciate as time passes. Second, all the stories were based on the Lovecraft mythos, and I’m weird in that I love everything Lovecraft except reading the actual stories.

With these two collections, Chambers in my honest opinion improves on the original, giving me all the mystery and cosmic horror I love but told through the lens of modern prose and contemporary stories. Each is highly distinct, creating flavors of horror both cosmic and grisly. In A BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL ETERNAL WORLD, the unifying device is a fishing town called Knicksport, where weird things happen, and they might happen to you.

Overall, this collection is a lot of fun and highly recommended if you’re interested in a fresh and thoughtful take on the Lovecraft mythos.

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.