Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

HUNGER (2023)

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Recently got a rec to check out a Thai movie, HUNGER (Netflix), about a street cook who works under a celebrity chef. From the food porn to the incisive themes about income inequality to the Thai culture, HUNGER really got under my skin. I loved it.

In the movie, Aoy works as a cook at her family’s restaurant. After being scouted by Tone, a sous-chef at Hunger, a catering restaurant, she has the chance to work for celebrity Chef Paul. Doing whatever it takes, she fights her way to a position of importance on his staff and beyond, seeking to make her mark as a great chef herself and become “special.” Only, being special has its cost. The more one is driven to succeed, the more humanity must be paid.

There are heavy themes of income inequality here. What is happiness, who has it and who doesn’t, and in some countries, it seems the rich have everything while almost everyone else must scrape by. The lesson here is extreme wealth is dehumanizing–one glance at America’s clownish, psychopathic billionaires is enough convince me this is 100% true–whether one is born or otherwise lucks into it, like most of Hunger’s clientele, or gives up everything to claw their way to get it, like Chef Paul. By the end, we must decide if wealth is luxury or having the simple things that really matter.

Chef Paul is a highlight of the movie. He’s a serious bastard, an absolute perfectionist, and he’s sympathetic while also serving as an ideal antagonist for Aoy, as they want the same thing, and he is what she will become if she continues on her path. Aoy is sympathetic if a bit shallow as a character, defined far more strongly by the wonderful colorful secondary characters than by how she is written and depicted. Her ascent and the distance this creates from everyone she cares about struck me as a little contrived, another small downside for me.

Overall, HUNGER is engaging, beautiful, features a lot of great characters, and tells a story with ambitious themes and meaning. I enjoyed this one a lot, it was a great surprise.

ALTERED STATES by Paddy Chayefsky

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In Paddy Chayefsky’s ALTERED STATES, a brilliant young scientist obsessed with exploring the relationship between consciousness and matter undergoes a series of experiments with horrifying results. This is the novel that inspired the 1980 movie directed by Ken Russell. It’s even more fun to read this story than rewatch the classic movie.

Chayefsky is one of my favorite screen writers, giving us some of my favorite movies of the ’60s and ’70s: NETWORK, THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, HOSPITAL, and then of course 1980’s ALTERED STATES. I loved the ideas in the movie so much that when I found out Chayefsky based it on a novel he’d written, I had to have it. The problem was the only copies available were used, and I have a massive allergy to mildew. Whereas I could spend hours in a used bookstore in my younger days and come out with armfuls of cheap gems, these days I can’t stand being in one for longer than 10 minutes. I obtained a few copies but couldn’t get through even a few pages, even after using every trick in the book to dry them out.

Fast forward to a week or so ago, and I learn they finally adapted the book to a Kindle version. What this means: Basically, the publisher scanned the paperback and created a Kindle file, resulting in some weird formatting issues. What it also meant: I finally got to read it.

In the novel, Eddie Jessup is a brilliant scientist obsessed with using various ancient drugs and sensory deprivation to cultivate hallucinations that he believes are actually primal memories, allowing him to regress farther and farther back to the original self, the first thought, the creation of the universe. What he ends up finding terrifies him. Emily, his wife, is far more practical, believing there is no ultimate truth and humans live with pain, and the way they truly live well is by loving others. These viewpoints clash frequently in the novel.

It’s a smart book by an obviously smart writer, packed with interesting ideas. Chayefsky was a far more gifted screenwriter than he was a novelist, resulting in long-winded expositions and monologues loaded with exclamation points. But the ideas are fantastic, smart, interesting–I look at ALTERED STATES the same way I did THREE-BODY PROBLEM, which honestly in my view was not well written as a dramatic narrative yet completely fascinating as a novel of ideas.

So, I’d recommend this one if you’re looking for something different and weird that punches you in the brain.

THE FIRST OMEN (2024)

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In THE FIRST OMEN, we get the prequel to the classic 1970s film THE OMEN that no one wanted but nonetheless turned out surprisingly good.

This movie might have slipped past my radar but for that killer trailer with a lot of creepy images playing backwards and set to the wonderfully moody “If I Had a Heart” by Fever Ray. Though I knew not to ever get my hopes up too high based on a trailer, the effect grabbed me and enticed me to watch as soon as it started streaming.

In the movie, Margaret, a young American notiviate (preparing to become a nun), travels to Rome to work at a Catholic orphanage, where she uncovers a conspiracy to produce the birth of the Antichrist.

So, did we need this? Not really, though the film isn’t a cash grab on familiarity but instead uses it as a launch pad to find its own creepy identity. Since this is a prequel, we know basically where everything is going, and while the result isn’t very surprising, it’s great to look at, and it keeps you invested by focusing on atmosphere, mood, and imagery instead of jump scares. A really interesting aspect of the creepiness itself is the self-effacing rituals of the Catholic Church itself, which contributed nicely to the mundane sense of general threat and eeriness. The movie also captured that ’70s horror aesthetic really well, respecting its source material and adding to it, and also presenting a few aesthetic nods to other punchy horror films of the era like THE EXORCIST and POSSESSION. Nell Tiger Free was a real surprise as Margaret, giving her heart and soul to the role and bringing a lot of layers to the character.

Overall, I liked THE FIRST OMEN a lot. It didn’t wow me and produce the same sense of wonder like THE OMEN did back in the day, but it’s a respectable companion to it, and a worthwhile horror movie even without the franchise.

THE BOYS, Season 4

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The latest season of THE BOYS (Amazon Prime) continues to use the appearance of modern superheroes as the lens for brutal satire of today’s America. From this cutting satire to plenty of OMFG moments and crazy amounts of laugh-out-loud violence and gore, this was the best season yet.

In this season, the vice presidential candidate is secretly a superhero, the president is trying to have her assassinated by the Boys before she can do it to him after the election, and Homelander recruits new members of the Seven to realize his destiny–build a nation where common people are sheep ruled by superheroes for his son Ryan.

Of course, none of it turns out the way they think it will.

In past seasons, superheroes were used to both realistically evaluate what they’d look like in the real world while also skewering American culture and capitalism. In THE BOYS, superheroes aren’t paragons of virtue selflessly toiling to save people from catastrophe, they’re corporate products–carefully crafted celebrity personas designed to maximize revenues. With great power comes not great responsibility but a bigger propensity to screw up and hurt people, as these superpowers don’t make people better, they simply make them more of who they are, and unaccountable on top of it. As for the satire, it nails everything, with notable examples being corporations and celebrities acting performative on social issues.

In Season 4, the writers take on the willingness of certain people to worship strongmen, America’s innate fascist streak, the cynicism of big business towards average people, and how easy it is for the media to manipulate people to hate the “other” to the level of functioning as a cult, complete with its own reality, language, crazy logic, and fascist longings dressed up in star-spangled bullshit. If that sounds familiar to you in today’s gladiator-style politics, you can guess why this season made some people angry–certain they were in on the joke for three seasons but not happy when the joke was on them in the fourth.

The only downside to this season’s bold moves and smart writing was another season of Frenchie’s guilt–the character is a downer, they really need to find something else for him to do.

Overall, THE BOYS is brilliant TV, one of my favorite shows, and in my view honestly the most realistic depiction of what superheroes would actually look like in the real world.

Hachette Launches “Run For It” Horror Imprint

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I have a new imprint at Hachette Book Group! Cool news as it’s a brand-new imprint dedicated to horror.

From the press release:

Hachette Book Group’s Orbit division has launched Run for It, a new horror imprint. Run for It is Orbit’s fourth imprint, alongside the flagship Orbit SFF imprint; Redhook, launched in 2013, which focuses on commercial fiction with speculative elements; and the digital SFF publishing imprint Orbit Works, launched in 2023.

Run for It will publish Orbit’s current horror authors, including Craig DiLouie and Andy Marino, with plans to add more. Its inaugural titles are slated for summer 2025.

This is good news for horror, which is going through an extraordinary surge.

WE USED TO LIVE HERE by Marcus Kliewer

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In WE USED TO LIVE HERE by Marcus Kliewer, a young woman welcomes a family into her home, as the man says he grew up in the house. The result is a nightmare of shifting reality. Creepy and crisply paced, this new horror novel was a lot of fun.

Eve and Charlie live in a big old house they recently purchased and intend to flip. Eve is an anxious people pleaser, Charlie tougher and more practical. When a family arrives one day asking to have a look around the house, as the man once lived there, Eve lets them in. Only, events cascade that prevent them leaving, and the longer they stay, the more reality itself seems to shift. Intermittent epistolary chapters establish a spooky lore around the house, giving us the impression that it is not just a house.

Apparently, the novel started as a series on Reddit back around 2014, and it was so popular it was eventually fleshed out as a novel. My short review is I loved the read, though the last act wasn’t as strong as I would have liked as it doesn’t quite pay off on all the strong elements.

What I liked: Eve and Charlie are very likeable characters, the lore around the house provokes a sense of wonder and by the end makes sense, the writing has a page-turning pace, and there are plenty of little creepy moments that never feel kitchen-sinked. The mystery really propels the story, reminding me of novels like 14 by Peter Clines and HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Danielewski. What I didn’t: The last act is solid but rolls out as fairly conventional, not quite paying off the numerous questions raised earlier in the story. Which would be fine if the lore and those questions were in the background, only the story really leans into it.

All told, this jaded horror reader closed the covers a very happy camper. WE USED TO LIVE HERE is a super impressive debut and a distinctive addition to horror.