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

THE SADNESS (2022)

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Fresh from Taiwan, THE SADNESS (2022) is a nasty, viscerally disturbing horror film that is somehow fitting for the COVID pandemic era.

Jim and Kat are young lovers who separate in the morning, Kat to take the train to work and Jim to grab coffee and start his own day. In the background, we become aware of a new virus dubbed Alvin, which scientists are saying is dangerously mutating, though the COVID weary public, sick of lock downs and infected in a way themselves with viral disinformation, is having none of it. As usual, the annoying scientists are right; Alvin is mutating, and those infected become compelled to inflict pain.

If you’re thinking this sounds like the graphic novel CROSSED by Garth Ennis, which isn’t so much read as inviting stomach-turning visual assault, you’re right; CROSSED is an inspiration for the film, just as it was for THE RETREAT, my zombie series written with Stephen Knight and Joe McKinney (it was also inspired by THE ANABASIS by Xenophon). And man, does it deliver: blood and gore and hacking and stabbing indulged to the max, spiced with moments of graphic torture and sexual assault held back just short of indulgent.

It’s ugly stuff, brutal and nasty, and man, it sets up one hell of an apocalypse. The grinning sadists who form the “zombies” in this story are pretty darn freaky and frightening. The combination of blood, tension, and cruelty is viscerally upsetting. The filmmakers handled all of it right in my view, punching you in the face without celebrating the punch, if you will. They adeptly set up long scenes of steadily escalating tension as characters react with terror and paralysis until the zombies arrive to play. The fairly cynical story runs right up to the point of nihilism, as our protagonists try to help people only to get burned, average people lash out in ignorance and fear and cowardice, and even the expert we meet is villainous.

It all ends on a note of hope, though it’s vague and also not very emotionally satisfying. The problem is in the lack of character arcs. In TRAIN TO BUSAN, for example, a detached dad learns the value and responsibility of fatherhood during a zombie apocalypse. In THE SADNESS, nothing is really learned or gained, making the story entirely about the world ending in slaughter and perhaps a thematic message that when it comes to public health maybe we should listen to public health experts. As a result, I wasn’t as invested as I would have liked in the protagonists, whose story simply ends, and it would have been interesting to see more of the best of human nature in contrast with the infected’s worst.

Despite this, I like this one quite a bit as something new in zombie land, a serious gut punch.

MAD GOD (2022)

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The magnum opus of veteran animator Phil Tippet, MAD GOD (2022) is a surreal stop-motion animation horror trip that’s beautiful and puzzling, rolling out like an artist’s scream, a filmmaker’s dream project that amazes you that it somehow got produced.

Currently watchable on Shudder, the film begins with the Assassin descending onto a ruined, mutant, horrible world on what may be a suicide mission under orders from the Last Human. He passes through bizarre landscapes populated by tortured souls, monstrosities, terrible machines, and endless war, and runs afoul of the Surgeon, producing a chain of events leading to the Alchemist creating a new universe that only falls into the same state of decay. A form of decay that never quite dies, one that becomes a malignant ecology of its own.

If that doesn’t make sense, that’s okay. Most of the fun of this creative wonder is simply in beholding. The rest is up to interpretation, if you’re up for it: themes about humanity being prone to its own self destruction, religious allegory about every renewal leading to corruption. Visually, the film is nothing short of astounding in what it achieved technically and aesthetically. MAD GOD rolls out like something Hieronymus Bosch, the painter of the famous landscape of Hell, might have produced if he had the means to produce stop motion animation and a budget.

Otherwise, there’s the emotional impact, which infiltrates more than punches. MAD GOD is nihilistic, sad, horrible. Everything dies, everything is self-absorbed, everything fights everything else to get what it wants, everything beautiful eventually falls into ruin.

Definitely check it out if you’re into–I’m not sure. Something beautifully bleak, horribly interesting, engagingly savage.

THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK Available for $2.99!

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The Kindle edition of my cult horror novel THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK is being promoted by Hachette and Amazon with a Kindle Monthly Deal. Until June 30, you can pick up the novel for just $2.99.

They escaped the cult, but are they free?

David Young, Deacon Price, and Beth Harris live with a dark secret. They grew up in an isolated religious community in the shadow of the mountain Red Peak, and they are among the few who survived its horrific last days.

Years later, the trauma of what they experienced never feels far behind. When a fellow survivor commits suicide, they reunite to confront their past and share their memories of that final night.

But discovering the terrifying truth might put them on a path back to Red Peak, and escaping a second time may be impossible…

Click here to get it now.

THE RETREAT #6: FORLORN HOPE Available!

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Written by my writing partner Stephen Knight, THE RETREAT: FORLORN HOPE, the last episode of our brutal “zombie” series, is at long last available for Kindle at Amazon. I’ve received a lot of letters asking when it would be coming out–thank you for your patience! The book is out, it ends the series with a hell of a bang, and you’re going to love it.

Based on the classic Greek story THE ANABASIS, THE RETREAT is about a battalion of light infantry that evacuates Boston during a horrific pandemic that compels its victims to seek out inflicting or receiving pain, which delivers excruciating pleasure–and makes them laugh and laugh. As America collapses around them, the lost battalion travels south toward Florida, where the last bastion of the government is holding out. If you read them in order, they were #1 (I wrote), #2 (Stephen Knight), #3 (Joe McKinney), #4 (me), and #5 and #6 (Stephen Knight). In this last episode, we find out if they make it, and what it means for humanity.

Stephen is an ace at the military procedural, and the result in an episode packed with non-stop gritty, violent, authentic action that is not for the squeamish. Here’s the Amazon description:

The road has been punishing.

Traveling from Boston to ill-fated Fort Drum, then on to Philadelphia, and again to Mount Weather and Fort Stewart, the First Battalion, 55th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division (Light) is run out, blown out, and virtually waiting for death’s embrace. Now at the border of Georgia and Florida, the battalion receives new orders:

Encamp at Moody Air Force Base…

…and call in the Klowns.

Lieutenant Colonel Harry Lee knows this will spell the end of the battalion. But executing the mission could mean the the difference between life and death…not for the 1/55th, but for what remains of the United States of America.

Lee took an oath when he enlisted with the US Army. But he hadn’t thought it was a suicide contract…

Check it out here.

THE CHILDREN RED PEAK On Sale for $2.99 Through March 31

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The Children of Red Peak is a Kindle Monthly Deal throughout March 31, 2022! It’s priced at just $2.99.

David Young, Deacon Price, and Beth Harris live with a dark secret. As children, they survived a religious group’s horrific last days at the isolated mountain Red Peak. Years later, the trauma of what they experienced never feels far behind.

When a fellow survivor commits suicide, they finally reunite and share their stories. Long-repressed memories surface, defying understanding and belief. Why did their families go down such a dark road? What really happened on that final night?

The answers lie buried at Red Peak. But truth has a price, and escaping a second time may demand the ultimate sacrifice.

“A heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, terrifying tale about the meaning of life . . . A great choice for fans of Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians (2020), Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock (2016), or Alma Katsu’s The Hunger (2018).” – Booklist

Get it here.

 

 

ALL OF US ARE DEAD

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Korea’s latest awesome contribution to apocalyptic horror is ALL OF US ARE DEAD (Netflix), a series about a group of high school students struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse that starts at their school. I went into it warily, expecting it to be YA but not in a good way, and was pleasantly surprised. Wowed, in fact, with me thinking this just might be the best TV series I’ve ever seen with zombies that wasn’t a comedy.

In a high school in a small city in Korea, a student accidentally becomes infected with a virus designed to increase aggression. (What this virus is and why it’s there is explained as the story develops.) The outbreak snowballs across the school and the city at large, resulting in the Army being called in to quarantine it all while managing tens of thousands of refugees. Stuck at ground zero is a few small groups of students, most of them likeable and kids we can root for, some of them hateable villains. What follows is a nonstop, horrific struggle to survive and hopefully escape.

As far as zombies go, they’re the usual rabid runners a la TRAIN TO BUSAN, and the virus is evolving, promising some surprises. When they first start to spread across the school and city, the action is incredible, and the zombies are genuinely scary. The zombies aren’t as important, however, as the human characters are, how they respond to the crisis, how they pull together or fall apart, who survives and who dies. The show is brutal; not everybody is going to make it, though some who die do so with what has to be some of the most badass sacrifices I’ve seen on television.

One of the things I liked most about the show was its attention to realism. A lot of dialogue, character change, and screen time is devoted to the kids trying to figure out what to do next based on available options and then doing it, with every step they take dogged by horrific obstacles and sometimes shadowed by the dynamics of their high school relationships, which they slowly shed as they realize how unimportant all that stuff was in the face of the current threat. Over time, they realistically fuse into a tribe. There is a little philosophy, like why live after you’ve lost everything, but mostly tough ethics, such as what to do if your best friend is hurt and therefore might turn into a zombie and threaten everybody. Most of the action is devoted to surviving the next few hours with courage and homegrown ingenuity, which culminates in a series of incredible set pieces.

Oddly, this strength is also fodder for a criticism of the show, which is its twelve episodes could have been easily shortened to maybe ten by cutting some of its repetitiousness. But no matter, overall, I loved ALL OF US ARE DEAD pretty much from start to finish. If you enjoy good stories with zombie mayhem and apocalypse, you’ll probably love it.