Monthly Archives: June 2024

It Has Begun

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Last week and continuing for the rest of the calendar year I have begun writing my next novel. No, the werewolf book hasn’t found a home or an agent but in the game you cannot wait. Anyway, the best way to keep my mind off the waiting is to throw myself into the newest project.

This is my untitled American Folk Horror set on an island commune established at the height of the counterculture in the late 1960s and one that harbors a dark secret.

My earlier novels have nearly all been carefully outlined and plotted before I began writing. That is until The Wolves of Wallace Point which quite by accident became my first book written without a preplanned outline. I will admit that after a few thousand words I stopped and sketched an act breakdown but not a full outline, just enough to know what events ended each act.

This book is looking to be a hybrid creation process. I have carefully crafted the core characters with their backstories and motivations, and I have fully plotted and outline act 1 of 5 but not the rest. I know my acts and I think what I will do is outline each act when I complete the previous one.

I have in mind a character death/murder that I have hopes will be the most unsettling and terrifying thing I have ever written, and I can’t wait to get there.

5500 words have already been committed to the first two chapters and a modest production rate of 800 words per weekday should see the first draft completed before the new year. Only the final product will let me know if this has been a worthy experiment or an utter failure.

Fear of failure cannot be allowed to stop you, or one will never get anything of value completed.

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Movie Review: The Bikeriders

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Exploitation movies are ones that often focus on outcasts and other characters not part of ‘mainstream’ culture usually with an emphasis on violence, drugs, and sexual activity.

Slice of Life Movies are a genre that are more staid, calm, and depict the day to day living of a set of characters usually family or close friends without a plot that presents some existential danger.

By Focus Features – IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74764749

The 1960s and 1970s saw a marked growth in exploitation cinema including the ‘biker’ subgenre and the withering of the Slice of life genre so one might expect 2024’s The Bikeriders to be a modern interpretation of exploitation but in reality it is a slice of life where the family is the chose family of the motorcycle club The Vandals.

Inspired by the photobook and interviews found in The Bikeriders as photojournalist and author Danny Lyon and his immersion into the real-life motorcycle club The Outlaws, The Bikeriders is fictional with fictional characters closely modeled on reality.

Told primarily by way of interviews that narrate flashbacks the film follows the growth and eventually degeneration of The Vandals as its nature and membership changed during the late 60s and early 70s. The story’s principal point of view is that of Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer), her love and marriage to Benny (Austin Butler) and the man that divides Benny’s loyalty the club leader Johnny (Tom Hardy).

While there is some violence in this film it is not exploitative and it is not glorified. The Bikeriders at its heart seems to the be about the hole at the center of modern masculinity. Johnny starts the club on a whim and Benny’s deep laconic loyalty is never fully explored. For both these men and most of the members The Vandals fills some missing emotional need, a need that neither man ever explores or voices but drives them to lethal dangers just the same.

This is not a film that wears its thesis statement on its sleeve. The message is left entirely up to the audience for interpretation. Life and death seemingly come at random without reason or meaning throughout the story and there is scarcely any plot. It is a character study of particular people in a particular time, one that will play quite well on streaming at home.

The Bikeriders is not for everyone, but it is an interesting film with vividly drawn characters that remain with after the reels have stopped spinning.

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John Grant: a Study in Masculinity, Arrogance, and Self-Loathing

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Last night in preparation to listening to the podcast The Evolution of Horror‘s discussion I re-watched 1971’s Australian social horror Wake in Fright.

Spoilers

The film, based on the novel of the same title by Kenneth Cook, follows young schoolteacher John Grant on his scorching Christmas vacation. After losing all his money gambling Grant is stranded in the town of Bundanyabba in the parched Australian outback. He descends into a multi-day drinking binge with local men, partakes in a cruel, vicious kangaroo hunt that is more slaughter than hunt, and a likely drunken homosexual assignation. After failing to kill himself and spending the rest of his vacation in hospital Grant return to the even smaller town where he teaches and rents a room answering queries with, yeah, he had a good holiday.

From the moments we meet Grant silently waiting out the end of the school day so he can flee just like the children he teaches it’s clear that he harbors a deep disdain for the people of the outback. This is not alienated by the somewhat larger town of Bundayabba ‘The Yabba’ and he treats these townsfolk with similar condescension. Grant’s action however reveals him to be no more intelligent and in fact less so that the locals enjoying their drink and gambling when he loses all of his travel funds playing ‘Two-up.’ The ancient saying is that pride goes before the fall is concretely fact for the character of John Grant.

While the character displays a deep abiding disdain for the locals, he is shown repeatedly lacking the internal will to resist their peer pressure. He introduces himself as John Grant but when the local cop more than once calls him ‘jack’ a common enough nickname for people named John, Grant never corrects him, despite never during his staying introducing himself that way. Again and again Grant when pressed by other men caves to the pressure to drink, a strong indication that internally Grant is incomplete and possibly at war with himself.

During an evening of binge drinking Grant is led for a nighttime stroll by the adult daughter of one his mates. Janette in a direct and forward manner attempts to seduce Grant into sexual intercourse but after wordlessly and timidly complying he is unable to perform, scrambling off the prone woman to vomit. It is interesting that in a film that stays with John during his multiday alcoholic binge and takes to the effort to deal with going to the toilet the only depiction of retching is when he is sexually engaged with the film’s only substantial female character. Even after his same-sex drunken encounter where many movies would insert a reference to the character vomiting, Wake in Fright does not. John Grant’s sexuality is left an unanswered question with a very reasonable interpretation being that he is deeply closeted and in the hyper-masculine world of the Australian Outback quite self-loathing.

Masculinity plays an important element in Wake in Fright. It is always men who insist on John joining them in drinking. It is men who question why John would prefer talking with a woman to drinking. It is to men that John seems always trying to prove himself with boasts of his skill with a rifle and eventually with his attempt to match their physical prowess wrestling with and slaughter by hand with a knife an injured and immature kangaroo. John’s holiday plans had apparently been to travel to Sydney and be with Robin and yet the entire time he is stranded in ‘the Yabba’ he never attempts to call her for assistance. In the novel is apparently clear that the phot he carries is of a woman he has seen, knows somewhat but is not romantically involved with. The film never directly touches on this fantasy of a romantic relationship, but his visions of ‘Robin’ are never full scenes but something more like a teenager’s imaginings. It is what John Grant thinks being masculine is and something he can’t achieve.

Wake in Fright ends ambiguously on the nature of Grant’s character. The audience has no clue is his comment that he enjoyed his vacation was simply a polite but meaningless response or if in retrospect he did enjoy his sojourn to ‘the Yabba.’ There are dramatic gestures such as tearing up the photograph of Robin or any overly emotional reaction to the town on his return. Any change, revelation, or acceptance of Grant’s character by Grant is purely internal for John Grant alone.

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The Most Unlikely Movie I want to See This Year

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It’s not The Bikeriders which looks fascinating though I suspect I am going to have trouble with the accents. No, the movie I am almost certain to make a trip to the cinema to watch is MaXXXine the direct sequel and third film in the ‘X’ franchise.

A24

When X originally debuted in 2022 I had little interest in seeing it. Slashers are my least loved genre of horror films and nothing in the advertising gave me any reason to suspect that X would pierce that disinterest. Then a number of horror cinema podcasts began touting the movie’s style and quality and I relented taking in a late-night screening at my local multiplex.

X bored me with cliche character acting in stupid manners that no actual person would. It was repeat with the tropes and worn-out ideas from countless other slashers with only the barest of novelties.

Fine. The movie was not for me, and I chalked it up to learning where my tastes differed from those on the podcasts. The prequal film Pearl came and went without sparking any interest in me and this year we get MaXXXine which follows the sole survivor of X and her quest for fame in Hollywood.

Something in these trailers have hooked my attention and curiosity. The cast looks fantastic and despite my utter disappointment with X and its illogical script I am being pulled into MaXXXine’s orbit.

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Juneteenth: A day to Remember Dreams and Nightmares

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June the 19th 1865 is the day the freedom loving Texans were, at the end of a rifle, forced to free the people that they had enslaved, the final state of the traitorous Confederacy to do so. It was not the end of slavery in the United States that would come officially later the same year, but it was a vital and important step along the long rocky road to freedom. A road we still stumble down.

This is a day of celebration as it was the date that the United States Army freed the enslaved peoples of Texas partially validate the great principals upon which this nation is founded. It is also the day to remember the horrific hundreds of years of nightmarish torment our nation visited up a subjugated population. Like an element in a state of quantum state that is simultaneously wave and particle America’s history is both pride and shame.

That the founders of this nation expressed all too human hypocrisy does not negate the amazing ideal that ‘all men are created equal’ nor does that bold septimate absolve them of their evils. The inspiring belief that freedom and equality are due to all people has unleashed a forced unlike any other on this planet and the failures to live up to those aspirations is a source of shame but also a motivation to do better.

Far too many people only want to think of history in one mode or another. That the centuries of slavery are an original and inescapable sin upon everything this nation has achieved, or that the evils of the past are dead and bear no relevance today. Both extremes are wrong headed.  It is the wave and particle duality again. It is both things and it is neither thing. It is the history that we must celebrate and the shame we must never forget.

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The Birds is Overrated

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The podcast The Evolution of Horror for its current season is covering horror films in which nature is the source of horror with Nature Bites Back and last week’s episode reached Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds.

Universal Studios

While I am familiar with the movie and even have some vague memories of it playing on the television while I was present, I cannot actually say that I ever watched the film in its entirety. Now I have and my verdict is that it is vastly overrated.

I am a fan of slow-burn horror which is what The Birds should have been but there is slow and there is full stop dead in the water. The first half of the film is socialite’s Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) and her jesting infatuation and meet cute with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). She follows him to his weekend home in the idyllic coastal village of Bodega Bay just north of San Francisco. Meets his former flame, his little sister, and cool, aloof mother. It is nearly 50 minutes into this film titled The Birds before the first bird strike occurs. There had been no real build-up to this, no ominous images of avian observation, in short from the master of suspense there had been no suspense.

The second half of the film is the building level of bird attacks that comes in widely spaces waves with the attack at the restaurant and gas stations providing the most dramatic clips. (It also displays Bodega bay’s fire department as incompetent as they attempt to use direct water sprays to fight a class B fire.)

The films 3rd act retreats to a siege story as the principal characters become trapped in a house, boarded up tight against the flocking fatalities. Then after suffering one last massive valley from the birds the characters in the lengthy pause between waves get into a car and drive away.

I am not bothered by the fact that the cause of the attacks is unknown. I am not bothered by the fact that there is no clear indication that the attacks actually ever end. That sort of ambiguous ending is something I can very much get behind. I am bothered that the characters’ survival and escape has nothing to do with the characters and the choices that they make. There is no moment of decision. No moment of insight. No moment when someone is terribly torn between what they want and what needs to happen. The birds pause and the characters drive away, utterly and completely devoid of agency on any of the characters’ part.

The Birds is a film I shall not watch again.

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The New Novel

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I am about ready to begin writing my next novel. An American Folk horror set on a commune where things are not as idyllic as they appear.

A title for this piece still eludes me but hopefully something will appear as I compose the work. I have sketched out all the major characters, their histories and their relationships. I know all my major twists and I have in mind what I hope to be a truly horrific scene of one character’s death.

The plan is to begin the actual writing this week, while continuing more of the groundwork for the second half of the novel and completing the book by the end of the year. If I land around 90,000 words that requires a daily output of just around 750 words per day, excluding weekend.

No word yet if my publisher like my werewolf novel but the only thing worse than waiting for word is waiting while doing nothing.

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The Watchers are Best Unobserved

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I am most intrigued by horror films and stories that swing for unusual concepts and ideas. When the trailer for The Watchers dropped it peaked my interested but cautiously.

New Line Studios

The Watchers is the story if Mina (Dakota Fanning) an American woman living in Ireland avoiding the traumatic memories of her mother’s death. While transporting a Sun Conure to a distant zoo Mina becomes stranded in a deep and threatening forest. One that voice over prolog has already painted as not appearing on any map and that draws damaged souls. As night falls Min discovers a concrete structure and warned to flee inside before the daylight is gone or she will die.

Inside she meets the other people trapped by the forest. Ciara (Georgina Campbell) the surviving spouse of a couple that had become stranded in the forest. Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) a rebellious local and Madeline (Olwen Fouere) an older woman who holds the knowledge of the rules that keep them alive. Each evening ‘they’ strange unseen creatures come to the structure and spend the hours of darkness observing the people on display. No one has ever seen the creatures and to be caught outside after dark is to die, as what happened to Ciara’s husband.

This premise, adapted from a novel by A.M. Shine, holds tons of intriguing promise. There are mysteries to uncover. Who are the watchers? Why do they spend their hours watching the trapped humans? What is the nature of the forest and where did the shelter come from?

A premise such as this lives or dies on the answer to those questions and how those answers are discovers. The Watchers fails on both counts. The answers are inconsistent even within the story’s own logic and most are vomited at the audience by way of ‘info dumps.’ when your 3-act movie has a massive info dump in the third act you know that it has failed at the most basic level.

In addition to the supernatural elements The Watchers expects the audience to accept situations that are utterly beyond credibility. There is no way in hell a professors University office remains untouched, unused for 14 or 15 years so a character as go there and discover the story’s final twist.

The greatest failing of The Watchers is not the clumsy exposition or the bluntly illogic f it backstory and construction but rather that the characters are flat, uninteresting, and devoid of any characteristic for which someone forced to endure a screening might find some form of emotional engagement. I never once cared what happened to anyone in this movie. Throughout the screening I was more concerned about getting some sleep unreservedly uninterested in any of these people’s outcomes.

I can find no reason that anyone should endure this movie.

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The Ultimate Fundamental Force

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The fundamental forces are fascinating and mysterious elements of the universe. Electro-Magnetism harness and yoked by humanity powers our modern life. The Strong nuclear force binds the cores of atoms together. The Weak Nuclear force drives decay and radioactivity. Leaving gravity exerting the least force of the four through teamwork that extends across the universe proves stronger than all the rest creating black holes and breaking physics itself.

But the ultimate fundamental force is Motivated Reasoning.

Motivated reasoning is the power that makes 1984’s Big Brother a terrifying possibility. It is not that everyone knows the truth of a situation and simply complies out of rational self-preservation but rather once a desired outcome is formed how easily we craft elaborate justification and logic chains to bind ourselves to the fiction that produces the satisfying result.

It powers out divisive and partisan politics. As parties move and reform around new priorities and populations very few former members leave for pastures more in line with their stated positions but rather the people find circuitous routes of reasonings that ‘justifies’ their loyalty to new positions.

Motivated Reasoning extends its deceptive grasp beyond politics. It reaches wherever emotion and identity impact. Show me something that is important to a person sense of self and there you will find motivated reasoning.

This force is particularly dangerous because it is so subtle. Working its way on us from our subconscious influencing the very things we give any weight to before we are even aware that we have given something a value of importance. People rarely ask themselves, ‘Why do I think this?’ ‘Why do accept this?’

I am no more immune to motivated reasoning than any other person walking this planet. I try, I try very hard to interrogate myself as to what is beyond my acceptance of a fact or my ‘gut feeling’ on any subject, but being human, being a creature of socialization, I fall short as we all do. But we must try.

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A Non-Believer’s Fascination With Religious Horror

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Yesterday I wrote about faith being a critical and essential component in the success of 1973’s The Exorcist. Today I am thinking about the other religiously themed horror film that also work for me and how strange it is that an atheist enjoys these Christian stories.

In addition to The Exorcist the other massively successful and franchise inspiring ‘devil movie’ of the 70’s is The Omen. This film’s theology is not as well sourced or faithful The Exorcist playing much more directly as the genre intended for it, horror. It doesn’t raise question but presents the inevitability of the ‘End Times’ and the futility of humanity’s position in the grand scheme. A perfectly positioned movie for its decade The Omen is the bleak and cynical counterpart to The Exorcist’s questions of faith and love.

Two months ago, I went out and watch the pair of religiously themed horror films release in the spring of this year, Immaculate and The First Omen, the latter being a prequel to the aforementioned 70s film.

Of the pair it has been Immaculate that persists in my thoughts. I have a review of the film here on my blog, but I am going to expand on my thoughts a bit. There are by necessity spoilers.

Seriously — spoilers for the big reveal.

Black Bear Pictures

Immaculate unlike either The Exorcist or The Omen is quite subtle in its relationship with the supernatural aspects of religion. It is an easy interpretation of the film that absolutely nothing that occurs is beyond normal accepted reality. A perfectly valid way to view the story is that the fanatical faithful of the convent are deluded. The ancient and rusted spike is not from the crucifixion and the genetic material is not that of Jesus. That their cloning attempts are of some random person and the deformed products are just tragic miscarriages.

It is also possible that the spike is exactly what they believe it to be and that the convent’s repeated attempts to clone the son of god will, if successful, produce the opposite, the ‘anti-Christ.’

A third interpretation is that the convent and its faithful are doing precisely what they believe, bringing about the second coming of the Christian savior by cloning and producing him by way of a virgin birth.

Side note, it is a common misconception that the phrase ‘immaculate conception’ refers to Jesus’ conception without sexual intercourse but theologically it is about Mary and her being born without ‘original sin’ and thus possessing the purity to bear a god.

The film gives no clues if any of the three interpretation I have presented are the ‘correct’ way to view the events of the film. From the story as presented one cannot determine is Cecila is a young woman abused by fanatics, the savior of humanity, or the vessel through which it is damned.

This week I obtained Immaculate on Blu-ray disc and I look forward to listening to the director’s commentary.

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