Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

SWEET HOME, Season 2

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After a sizable pause, Korean monster apoc series SWEET HOME returned to Netflix in 2023. While the second season lacked the grounded intimacy and surprise of the first season, I wasn’t at all disappointed by the shift in tone.

In season 1, a monster apocalypse starts in Korea as seen through the lens of people living in an apartment building. The residents are charming and have big personalities that instantly hook you (as I’ve found in many Korean apoc movies and shows–unlike much of American action cinema, the Koreans are not afraid to be earnest and put it out there to the level of melodrama). When some of the residents begin to turn into bizarre monsters, they have to find a way to secure their building and find ways to survive as the world appears to end right outside.

Season 2 picks up pretty much where the first season left off. Now we see what’s going on outside the apartment building from brutal research into a cure to horrifying decisions made by the government to stem the spread of monsterization to the chaos in the military and safety shelters. Things spiral out of control until a jump in time shows us what appears to be stasis–survivors inside, monsters outside, a tenuous balance which the surviving characters and some new faces must navigate. The season doesn’t end quite tidily, leaving plenty for a future season, but fortunately a season 3 is on the way in summer 2024 (both seasons were shot back to back, apparently).

This is zombie fiction at its best, though with monsters. If you know my INFECTION series, you would probably guess I’d dig this. I loved the overall craziness of it, the uncertainty, how living in terror can derange human thinking and decision-making. And the monsters and apocalyptic setting are awesome, even if the CGI is a little rough at times.

On the downside, the show lost a lot of its clarity. Once it jumps ahead in time, there seems to be no clear overall objective. Instead, characters run into each other while on personal missions that seem to change on a dime. Sometimes, they make decisions that don’t make sense. Plot seems to take the lead over character this season, while the plot seems confused. Even the themes started to get confused, where we’re shown “maybe humans are the real monsters,” which based on what we can see the answer is no, they can be bad, they can react poorly to crisis, they can act first and think later if they’re afraid, but the monsters in this story are definitely the actual monsters that want to kill and eat people.

Despite these misgivings, I had a lot of fun with it. What started for me with great uncertainty–is this going to be a campy comedy? just weird fun?–quickly turned into a seriously dark, emotional, serious take on the chaos and horror of a monster apocalypse. I’m looking forward to season 3.

THE HOUSE OF USHER

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In Mike Flanagan’s latest, THE HOUSE OF USHER (Netflix), Edgar Allan Poe’s stories get a modern twist in this Gothic horror miniseries about the fall of a family and the dark side of capitalism.

Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) ruthlessly runs Fortunato, a pharmaceuticals company, with his sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell). He has led a charmed life of wealth and power, but tragedy has taken aim at him as his children begin dying one by one in horrific freak accidents. As his family legacy dies, he must face the deal he made decades ago, one that produced a dire curse.

This was a ton of fun, offering everything you may love about Flanagan’s brand of character-focused horror, from its recurring performers to the great dialogue to its big themes. In this case, the theme is capitalism, and man, he holds nothing back. The mismanagement of wealth while vast problems that wealth could solve go unchecked, corruption, never having enough wealth even after one has more than one can spend, confusion of wealth with being superior, the destruction of people and the environment, and how vast wealth corrupts one’s morals and spirit. This was one of my favorite aspects of the show.

Besides that, the Poe Easter eggs are fun, but what I really enjoyed was the modern retelling of classic tales like “The Masque of the Red Death,” expertly woven into the overarching story with plenty of solid twists. The Usher kids are all utterly corrupt, and their deaths have a fun comeuppance and sense of justice to them while also being sad, as they realize what they could have been if it hadn’t been for the money. The deaths are often grisly and make Gothic scary again.

Overall, I loved this one and highly recommend it. It’s effective, thoughtful, and a ton of fun.

THE DAYS

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Rivaling HBO’s CHERNOBYL in terms of raw drama, Netflix’s THE DAYS is a powerful story that cements the adage that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. In 2011, Japan suffered a triple whammy: a devastating earthquake, resulting 14-meter-tall tsunami, and subsequent nuclear disaster that rivaled Chernobyl in terms of danger. Sticking as close to the facts as possible, THE DAYS presents a gripping tale of the tragedy as experienced by the workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

As for the disaster, it could have been even more devastating. The earthquake and tsunami knocked out power to the nuclear reactors, resulting in the workers being unable to cycle water to manage the reactor temperatures and resulting pressure. They couldn’t even use their instruments to monitor what was going on. As the fuel rods became exposed and melted down, they released radiation and triggered catastrophic explosions. In time, they threatened to spread radiation across Japan, making at least half the country uninhabitable for generations. Luckily for the world, they didn’t, though for days the reactors were almost fully out of control, and important mechanisms to fix the problem weren’t even approachable for humans due to high radiation levels.

The Japanese miniseries follows an ensemble cast of actors playing various workers, managers, and executives at the power company managing the plant, along with politicians and military personnel trying to stave off disaster. The script masterfully portrays people and institutions in crisis, showing them coming to grips with the disaster and working to solve unprecedented problems with ingenuity, only for cascading effects to thwart them and create new, even bigger problems. The politicians and company executives often get in the way, sometimes out of frustration for lack of information and other times for optics, until they realize what all of Japan is facing and pull out all the stops to help.

Similarly, the managers and workers at the plant slowly realize how hopeless their situation is and struggle emotionally to remain on duty and fight to the last possible second despite the odds and growing risks to dying horribly. One of the things that I loved about CHERNOBYL was the incredible heroism involved in preventing an incredible national and global disaster, and this is on full display in THE DAYS. Also the realism in depicting the reverse: the horror and despair, people cracking under the strain. In one scene, a nuclear expert watching an explosion erupt at the plant falls to his knees keening like a dying animal, and I think he was speaking for all of them, what was going on in their heads.

Overall, I loved this one. A disaster miniseries that is gripping, horrifying, inspiring, and true.

YELLOWJACKETS, Season 2

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The second season of YELLOWJACKETS proved a disappointing departure from the incredible heights the first season achieved. The second season ate its potential by mostly treading familiar waters.

First, let me gush again about that incredible first season. In the 90s, a high school all-girl soccer team flies to a national competition only for their plane to crash in the wilderness, forcing them to survive on their own for more than a year. Now it’s years later, and we follow several women (strong veteran actors) from among the few who survived. The story unfolds in two storylines, one where we see what happened in the wilderness, and the other where we see the adults struggling to live normal lives, messed up in the conventional sense but somewhat fearless and capable of anything when it comes to surviving. The result teased this is a modern grrl version of THE LORD OF THE FLIES, revealed slowly through the lens of the girls now all grown up. If you’ve read my novel THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK, you know this is my kind of story, and I was happily surprised at how subtle, nuanced, and compelling they told it.

The second season continues the story, and I think most viewers started the season anticipating seeing the girls devolve into savagery in the wilderness, as the end of the first season brought us to the edge of it. Unfortunately, the second season feels far different than the first. They strongly introduce a paranormal element, which would work but ends up a deus ex machina for every weird or bad thing that happens. The adult storyline treads water, endlessly seeming to try to tie off the first season, and even the compelling wilderness storyline meanders. Otherwise, we get the sudden car collision trope, the I wake up and did bad things while I was blanked out trope, a lot of cuteness, and other service tropes. Solid opportunities are squandered, like Coach’s role in the group and a natural devolution into savagery to survive.

Unfortunately, the result is that despite some salient great dramatic moments, there is a general lack of focus, where most of the episodes feel like filler, and contrived and phoned-in conflict, particularly the atrocious police storyline. I really hate coming down on this show. As a writer, I know how much hard work goes into producing something you think people will like, and the result is always heavily subjective. But I was bitterly disappointed with this. I really, really hope they turn things around with the third season and get back to that sharp, compelling, intriguing storytelling that made the first season such a surprisingly great watch.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN Optioned for TV

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I’m proud today to announce my horror novel SUFFER THE CHILDREN has been optioned by Perro Azul for potential adaptation for Netflix, Vix, or another venue.

Perro Azul is a Mexican production house with a solid track record developing Spanish-language TV series and movies. Their work ranges from zombie series to cop dramas to political dark comedies.

Published in 2014 by Gallery Books, SUFFER THE CHILDREN is about a disease that kills the world’s children only to bring them back requiring blood to stay alive a little while longer. The kids are vampires, but the true monsters may be the parents who will do anything to keep their children alive. As the blood supply wanes, their only source may be each other…

This book has been optioned before but failed the funding test due to its grimdark material. I’m hoping this time will be different and this story will finally be brought to life on a screen. Fingers crossed!

THE LAST OF US

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Based on the popular computer game and shot in my hometown and surrounding areas, THE LAST OF US is a post-apocalyptic HBO show about a man tasked with transporting a girl, who may be humanity’s last hope, across what’s left of the United States. In my view, this is an almost perfect apocalyptic series.

Twenty years after the world ended due to a rampant pandemic of fungal infection that turned its victims into monsters, Joel (Pedro Pascal) has lost what was most important to him and lives as a hardened survivor in a quarantine zone. When he’s contacted by the leader of a local rebel organization called the Fireflies to transport a girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the country to a research facility, he resists at first but takes on the burden. For humanity, the stakes couldn’t be higher, as the girl is immune. The story rolls out as a series of encounters on the road, with substantial flashbacks and back stories that slow the pacing but ultimately enrich the overall story and world building.

From every angle, this is my favorite kind of apocalyptic story. Realistic, gritty, savage, inhabited by an evolving and monstrous predatory enemy, full of horrifying moral choices, and showing that humanity doesn’t just come to an end but is holding out in small tribes and in old government quarantine zones now run by a brutal descendant of the military under endless martial law. What used to be that rare breathtaking money shot is everywhere now thanks to cheaper effects, presenting communities and survivors living in the crumbling ruins of American civilization. This is an apocalypse that is hazardous, beautiful, has its own rules and logic, feels real, and looks lived in.

The casting is solid. I had to get past Bella Ramsey looking so different than the Ellie in the game, but she grew on me as the show progressed, and she’s a great actor with a lot of range, portraying a girl who is tough and brassy but also vulnerable and longing. As for Joel, I couldn’t have asked for better than Pascal, who fully inhabits a man who is a true survivor and killer but haunted by trauma and the physical effects of decades of rough living, from minor hearing loss to aching knees. He’s no superhero like in the game, but instead a worn-out, traumatized, bitter survivor who does what it takes and knows how to kill.

The moral choices are absolutely terrific. The organization the government morphed into has eradicated individual rights and freedoms, but they’re also the only thing holding the infected at bay. Soldiers must make a choice to kill refugees, because if they don’t, they may end up fighting them later. A group resorts to cannibalism, but it was either that or die by starvation. It all culminates in the last episode with an ultimate moral choice that may appear to most viewers to be the wrong one even if it is for some good reasons. In this series, there are few heroes and villains, just people trying to survive in different ways, with survival itself meaning different things to different people.

Overall, I loved THE LAST OF US and highly recommend it.