...mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita...

a.k.a, recent reading, as follows:

Victorian

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Aurora Floyd (1862-3)
Classic Victorian sensation fiction – I actually enjoyed it more than the one for which Braddon is now best-remembered, Lady Audley's Secret. The plot centres around bigamy (it's also a canonical work in the 'Victorian bigamy novel') and so, as you can imagine, is of interest on all kinds of levels, but gender and sexuality especially.

Margaret Oliphant – Miss Marjoribanks (1866)
A delightful tale (part of the Chronicles of Carlingford) which bears resemblance to Trollope's slightly preceding Barsetshire Chronicles, of which I'm also a fan. Lucilla, our heroine, is determined to behave sensibly, and also to resolve the lives of everyone around her. Here there are echoes of Austen's Emma (1815), but unlike Emma Woodhouse, Lucilla's management is not wholly unsuccessful. Subversive to an interesting degree yet still moralistic in the classic Victorian mold. I must read the rest of the Carlingford novels.

George & Weedon Grossmith – Diary of a Nobody (1892)
For someone who's got a Victoriana obsession and also a research interest in the rise of the modern bourgeoisie, Diary of a Nobody is perfect. Of course, it's funny, and also a nice counterpoint to more 'serious' Victorian novels (see above) which are yours truly's usual diet.


Assorted Novels

Elizabeth Bowen – The Death of the Heart (1938)
These days I'm not much into 'writerly' writers but I'll gladly make an exception for Bowen, who I hadn't previously read. Her modernist prose makes you want to use clichés like 'crystalline,' and I'm also always a fan of the English novel of manners. In some ways she reminds me of Janet Malcolm (or vice versa) in that both have an exquisite sense of human frailty, but they also like to slyly slip the knife in.

Cornell Woolrich – Rendezvous In Black (1948)
Compared to Chandler and Hammett, Woolrich these days tends to be forgotten as an important noir figure, but the films based on his works are still remembered – Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Night Has A Thousand Eyes (one of my favourite titles) among others. Actually, though, his work is much darker, less procedural-driven and even more psychological than the aforementioned, full of dread. Rendezvous In Black is a revenge narrative following a man whose fiancée has been killed (bizarrely) in an accident with a low-flying plane and an empty liquor bottle. I have two other novels of his waiting, but I'm worried that it'll be too traumatic a reading experience…

Shirley Jackson – The Sundial (1958)
I'm a huge fan of Jackson's fiction, especially the stories other than 'The Lottery' (which is over-proscribed) - and of the great novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived In The Castle (1962). I've been slowly making my way through her lesser known work, which I find uneven. In The Sundial, as in We Have Always…, we find ourselves in a crumbling mansion on the outskirts of a village, both filled with eccentric characters. Aunt Fanny has a vision, delivered by her dead father, of an impending apocalypse, and preparations begin. I didn't warm to this novel though it was interesting, and in some ways could be seen as a test run for some of the themes of We Have Always… I wonder, too, if there is an influence on Stephen King's The Shining (King wrote about The Haunting of Hill House at length in Danse Macabre), particularly in scenes set in mazes.

J. G. Ballard – The Drowned World (1962)
It's impossible not to recognise in Ballard one of the twentieth century's great prophets – which is why I'll reiterate. The Drowned World, an early novella, tells the story of a dystopian Earth on which the ice caps have melted, the seas risen, and the entire planet become tropical. The slow impact of this on the psyche of the survivors – the opaque excursions into psycho-evolutionary biology – along with the tropical/aquatic gothic setting make this a fascinating and prescient piece, if not always compelling.

J. G. Ballard – Crash (1973)
Again, although Crash's reputation preceded it, it didn't do anything to dint the pleasure of reading the work. Like a lot of Cultural Studies and pop culture research people, I find that 'body horror' area/era particularly interesting in which the body-machine complex starts to be overtly represented in forms both erotic and monstrous (note to self: Men, Women and Chainsaws is still waiting to be read). Ballard, Burroughs, Cronenberg, Lynch, and so on. I'm ashamed to admit that Crash (and Dead Ringers) are the two Cronenberg films I've yet to see, but I'm glad to have read the book first – and, like a few other of the works I describe here, it is every bit as stunning as one has heard. And amazing to imagine that it was written in 1973. The blank erotics and stark futurity, the sharp vision of the city and technology, the mutual violation and traumatic inseparability of body and machine and body-as-machine… it's all there. See also Mark Seltzer (thanks again for the recommendation Dr Swan) and also, of course, Donna Haraway.

Lew McCreary – The Minus Man (1991)
I have a long-neglected sideline interest in serial killers, and Mark Seltzer's eponymous work brought a number of references to my attention, including this novel. Generally, I tend to find serial killers a tiresome subject for fiction (particularly as they are now so implicated in crime fiction and television, and don't require a motive, hence obviating the plot work that writers would otherwise have to put in), but The Minus Man (Lydia Lunch has also named a song on her most recent studio album after the phrase) is much more of a psychological work (and, unlike my favourite serial killer novel, Joyce Carol Oates' Zombie, or Dexter, that other tale of a killer hero, uninterested in satisfying gruesome voyeuristic fantasies). While the controversy around the novel (which was also filmed) centred around the sympathy that the reader feels for Vann Siegert, the serial killer from whose perspective the story is told, in fact this seems like a ridiculous over-simplification; in straightforward prose, McCreary sets out a cold but very human psychological study of the killer as a human inhabiting a lifeworld which happens to include the compulsion to destroy others. A work which, as Seltzer pointed out, is thought-provoking both in terms of its original approach to its content, and when considered as a symptom of the violence and trauma at – and reflexively considered to be at – the heart of the modern social-technological complex.


Assorted Non-Fiction

Jessica Mitford – The American Way of Death Revisited (1998)
As is evident elsewhere, although death has been an ongoing theme – as it is for all of us – my recent Death Studies sojourn has been the locus around which various reading has centred in recent times. Mitford's revised version of her classic work takes us through the usual hideous juxtaposition of the biological and the consumer banal (as well as the institutionalisation of capitalist profit-making on the backs of the bereaved). Little of the older material will be news to anyone who's read Waugh's classic, The Loved One – but what rankles and intrigues is the extent to which, despite her original revelation, the deeply cynical corporatisation of the funeral industry has continued unabated. As with any good piece of muckraking – and Mitford's up there with the best – the indignation and disgust flow unabated (to take just one of myriad examples, the fashion for expensive 'double coffins' in which the outer layer is intended to be impenetrable by the elements - causing a build-up of gas inside the coffin due to anaerobic bacterial decay and leading to explosions - the solution being 'burping coffins,' which vent the gas so as to avoid the former, and presumably greater, indignity).

Simon Reynolds – Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past (2011)
There's so much that could be said about this book, but that will have to await a more thorough review. I loved Reynolds' work on post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again, but this one is a bit more personal, also more theoretical and coming from a position of critique, which is interesting but at times fails to gel or seems a little like a mid-life crisis. What I will note here, which others have before me, is that the irony is that Reynolds' thesis - that we now create music which does not attempt to be new, and that this is a bad thing - actually looks back to the time when music saw itself as new (Reynolds thinks '65 was the turning point) as an original golden age. Definitely worth reading - both enraging and engaging.

Scott Carney – The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers (2011)
This book is as gruesome as the title sounds, but it's necessary reading for anyone interested in necro- or thanatocapitalism and the reification of the human body on the unequal playing field of the global 'free market' – while not being as heavy a read as any of that sounds (it's written in an easy journalistic style). Carney's interest in the area began when one of his students, on a group tour to India, committed suicide and he was in the position to supervise the treatment and return of the body. From that point, he explores the various areas mentioned in the subtitle, including the fascinating nexus between holy or ritual head-shaving and the hair industry. For those who enjoyed Mary Roach's Stiff, there are many more interesting explorations to be had into the 'afterlife' of the human – or human biological material. Particularly recommended for the Death Studies cohort (Tim and Pia – also Meredith, you may find this one interesting if you haven't seen it already).

Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011)
I'd really enjoyed Jon Ronson's Them, and so I had high hopes for The Psychopath Test, particularly since, as you're now aware, it deals with a subject I have a deep interest in. But although, as always, Ronson uncovers various near-unbelievable histories and anecodotes, and employs his typical and typically entertaining strategic deployment of his own awkwardness and his unique style of reported dialogue, I found the book a little all over the place. Ronson isn't quite sure what he's interested in (Psychopathology itself, as a concept and as manifest? The 'madness industry' and its pernicious allies in other state and corporate institutions? Institutions and their impact on mental health?) and there is a particularly problematic chapter in which he interviews a former Tonton Macoute, trying to apply his new knowledge of psychopathy checklists – whereas those of us who know much about the area of organised mass violence know that it's precisely necessary not to employ sadists or psychopaths as violence workers because they're too unreliable and anti-systemic - you would think a book on psychopathy, even if not an academic work as such, might pay attention to this kind of thing. Still, all in all a lot of fun.


India

Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance (1996)
Just as good as I'd always heard it was – a Dickensian (I'm not always a huge fan of Dickens, but that's another conversation), addictive narrative set during the massive upheaval of Indira Gandhi's Emergency. In terms of other great recent English-language novels of India, I didn't love it as much as A Suitable Boy, but although Mistry's writing is less exquisitely fine-tuned than Vikram Seth's, the story itself grows powerful very early on.

Gita Mehta – Karma Cola (1979)
A good corrective to the neo-orientalist New Age view of India as a source of wisdom, particularly prevalent in the '60s and '70s – there are some great anecdotes of gurus and devotees, and the intermesh with capitalism, but I found Mehta's 'flip' style to be a bit casual and offputting.

William Dalrymple – The Age of Kali (1998)
Edward Luce – In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007)
I'd already read, and mostly enjoyed, Dalrymple's book on practitioners of different spiritual traditions in India, Nine Lives. But reading Western travel literature on India is difficult in that the writers often haven't caught up with post-colonialism, and that's unfortunately the case both for Dalrymple, who at times appears something of an imperialist nostalgic (I'm also finding that in the work of his I'm presently reading on Delhi, City of Djinns); and for Luce, bureau chief for the Financial Times in South Asia (and now Washington), who is too sympathetic to anti-statist freemarketism for my tastes (not saying that there aren't any problems with the Indian state as such). Nonetheless, Dalrymple's descriptions are gorgeous (and his encounters with Benazir Bhutto particularly stick in the memory), while Luce had access to some very interesting people and the anecdotes, situations and interviews he lays out are both hilarious and chilling, the latter particularly in relation to Partition and inter-communal violence (again, a theme of City of Djinns). I now intend to read some specific Partition histories, which I think may also be helpful for my mass violence research…

Creature Feature: In Brief

Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza - REC 2 (2009)

The first REC, while by no means a masterpiece, was a solid and original piece of horror film-making, doing something a bit different with the zombie genre and making unwontedly welcome use of the hand-held camera – and indeed, managing to extend on the technology and hence the mise en scène. The second, to my lights, is even better – though straying outside the confines of the sealed-off apartment block in a way which breaks the claustrophobia which worked so well in the first instalment, the inclusion of further back story and character diversity makes for a more complex film without losing the simple momentum of the first (and now, with a twist…)

George A. Romero - Diary of the Dead (2008)

A disappointing Romero vehicle in which, unlike the aforementioned, the use of digital hand-held disappoints and irritates, encompassing all the typical flaws of these genres (i.e., severe frustration with the camera holder who however remains untouchable due to their status as such; unrealistic failure to put it down in life-threatening situations). Meanwhile, the internet themes fail to cohere into meaningful social commentary a la Dawn of the Dead. Watch Zombieland instead.

John McTiernan - Predator (1987)

Another in the ‘I can’t believe I’ve never seen this’ canon, this was a surprisingly atmospheric film, with the shadowy South American jungle as the main character – striated shadows dappling the blazing sun and the sweat and blood of the action film. The USA redeems its sanguinaceous Cold War interference in its ‘backyard’ through the trope of the pursuit of Latin terrorists (managing to allay the inhumanity of this killing and also feminize the victims even as we fear their violence by leaving alive the lone female terrorist as a prisoner who ultimately becomes an ally), while nodding to 80s political correctness, such as it was, in the black characters and, naturally the native American who has an intimate connection with the ways of the jungle (all of these sacrificeable, naturally). The ‘reveal’ comes surprisingly late in the piece, and the strangely honourable predator, before he (?) is revealed as an overgrown dreadlocked insect, segues in with the natural world as a ripple in the trees (with effects which haven’t dated too badly, unlike the technology he uses). Apocalypse Now, filtered through the lens of an unironic Schwarzeneggerian (gubernatorial?) all-Americanism.

Jon Harris - The Descent 2 (2009)

Another film in which the environment is the protagonist – in this case, the same cave system in which the protagonists of the first Descent (Neil Marshall, director of the original, returns only as executive producer) found themselves trapped – again, we spend somewhat more time outside the closed environment, here becoming a flaw, and there is also the somewhat unrealistic, but effective, choice to send the sole survivor of the first film back into the tunnels. Essentially we are re-exploring old ground in a less effective rehash of the first film, which was an entertaining diversion with some early moments of fear and claustrophobia before ‘descending’ into a fairly typical monster gore hunt (colour-coded, a nice touch) – here, without the benefit of that unfamiliarity, while the caves remain an original and atmospheric setting, despite a final twist there is nothing here which adds meaningfully to the film’s predecessor.

Wes Craven et al – A Nightmare On Elm Street 1-4 (1984-88)

I wasn’t actually sure if I’d seen the first, but I’d certainly never seen the sequels. And what pleasant – or should that be unpleasant? – surprises were in store! Unlike other the other classic protagonists of the genre – Jason Voorhees & Michael Myers – these films did not have the stigma of having given birth to the rather unnecessary slasher genre, but instead of playing an important role in the development of the blockbuster horror comedy (not to mention the ongoing horror-queering of the all-american dream suburbs) – and we love ‘em for it (and I’m not just saying that because we’re inhabiting here my favourite decade of the twentieth century – the 80s)! Camp as all get-out, with absurdist, ‘body horror’ pre-CGI special effects (reminiscent of other films of the era such as the unjustly neglected Society, or even Videodrome) which invoke a great deal of nostalgia – and a twisted, Burtonesque atmosphere to boot – not only the initial NOES, but also, unusually, the sequels, are extremely worthwhile. Part 2 is noteworthy really only for the extremely overt (and apparently intentional) homoerotic elements (with just a touch of B&D in the shower room), but 3 kicks into high and rather dark gear – featuring Freddy’s intended teenage victims in a mental institution as a result of their belief in the reality of their dreams, and the unexpected appearance of Patricia Arquette (not to mention Laurence Fishburne) - a punk edge, and rather nasty addiction and sexual violence themes (these latter in the development of Freddy’s backstory), also creep in. Part 4 can’t quite live up to the claustrophobic institutionalization and traumatic edge of the third film, but nonetheless it remains a romp, featuring particularly memorable scenes in which Freddy inhabits a roach motel and a pizza (!), as well as an extension of the theme, used to brilliant effect throughout the series, of the indistinguishability of the line dividing reality and fantasy, in a time-loop sequence. Oh, and I was forgetting, we also have a soundtrack showcasing Sinead O’Connor with MC Lyte performing the ultra-catchy I Want Your Hands (On Me) – not to mention the Are You Ready For Freddy rap by the Fat Boys featuring Robert Englund. Dark comedy of the absurd, accompanied by nostalgia for the tainted eighties.

Susan Hill - The Woman In Black (1983)

I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss Susan Hill, given the strong feelings I have for the classical English supernatural tale as manifest from the Victorian era through to the first few decades of the Twentieth century. Perhaps it’s because I have a general dislike for pastiche in literature (if not in other genres) and, in the postmodern age in particular, I tend to find it an excuse for failing to make up an original plot and/or use an original style (while the often anachronistic attempt at adoption often merely puts the skill of the writer being pastiched into an even more flattering light). None of these faults, however, are to be found in Hill’s ghostly novella.

The Woman In Black – set in the early part of the twentieth century, where cars still vie with pony traps – is told with the classic framing device of the elderly reflection on a terrifying and traumatic event of youth; the occurrence in question is the visit of Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, to lonely Eel Marsh House. The house, with attendant crumbling cemetery, lies on a piece of land far out in the windswept salt marshes, accessible only by a causeway which is periodically covered by the rising tide. Kipps is in the process of going through the papers of Mrs Drablow, the late unlamented inhabitant of Eel Marsh House; but when he sees an emaciated woman in unfashionable black clothes at the funeral (getting only surly hostility from the locals on questioning), and starts to hear strange noises from across the marshes and from the locked room at the end of the passageway, things take a turn for the sanity-destroying.

As that précis indicates, all of the ingredients of the supernatural tale of terror are present here, as are James’ five key features of the English ghost story. Hill herself has indicated that her earlier novels are ‘serious,’ while her latter works, including TWIB and her Serailler detective series, do not fall into this category. Certainly it could not be said that TWIB is an original piece (though we might also say that of many of the ‘classical’ works of supernatural fiction), but it stands as a consummate example of an art which might have been considered lost in the age of torture porn and gritty realism. Indeed, we might ask whether originality is an important demand in genre work. Hill’s writing is fine (in the best sense of that word, and in contrast to the lonely setting), despite the frequent comma splices (but please ignore my soapboxing a pet peeve), rising to more poetic heights in some beautiful descriptions of landscape and atmosphere:

Away to the west, on my right hand, the sun was already beginning to slip down in a great, wintry, golden-red ball which shot arrows of fire and blood-red streaks across the water. To the east, sea and sky had darkened slightly to a uniform, leaden grey. The wind that came suddenly snaking off the estuary was cold.

Am I wrong in thinking that, mood-wise, the echoing spaces and sudden emotional stabs of The Cure circa Seventeen Seconds/Faith/Pornography (that is, in the same period as TWIB was written) would be an appropriate soundtrack? Rosemary Jackson, bringing a feminist analysis to Hill’s work (more on this anon), has suggested ‘coldness’ as its imaginative centre, and the tension between detachment from and desire for life as fundamental. The themes here are the ‘sensational’ passions – possessive love, revenge, fear, memory – refracted in sharp shards through the mirror of the past, a liminal demarcation (reminiscent of James’ own story 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad') which takes form literally in the flat sea surrounding the house, stressing the inaccessibility of the recollected, and the dangers both of the alluring yet treacherous waters of forgetfulness, and those of painful recollection – a double Charybdis which in either case leaves the overcurious subject isolated and, ultimately, suffocated.

In this sense, there is an aspect of the ‘psychological ghost story’ to TWIB, manifest in a not-so-pathetic fallacy, which is heir to works like de Maupassant’s The Horla or even Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (though without that work’s prescient questioning of perception itself) – and we might associate this existential alienation, resolved but never quite forgotten or overcome, with the dislocated temporal position of the narrator, trapped between old certainties and modernist innovations, with the house both as a space of security from the external world (the classic Victorian model), and as manifestation of anxiety - in being, on the one hand, the place par excellence for the determination of (cultural) capital, and, in this case, empty, that is, both void of any audience for such a display, and signifying the growing bourgeois realisation of the ultimate emptiness of the endeavour of wealth accumulation and conspicuous consumption.

On this note, class issues – fluidity and the lack thereof – are central to the landscape here. Class transformation is evident in the narrator’s own trajectory (given in the framing story), and a symbolic moment occurs when he transforms, in the eyes of a friendly but unsophisticated, new-moneyed landowner local, from suave young solicitor to dishevelled and fearful victim of the irrational. Beyond this, the fact that class mores were a determining factor in the events which led to the haunting is made explicit in the text – figuring, in other words, the (equally oceanic) arriviste on a lonesome road (one whose lonesomeness is only exaggerated by the many who tread it yet dare not recognise each other), desiring yet dreading to turn his head to see the ‘frightful fiend’ of class ignominy (a common theme in the sensation novel).

This anxiety – the prevailing mood of both the psychological ghost story, and of modernism itself and those who literarily anticipated its concerns – is also manifest in gender relationships. The narrator here moves in a masculine world of solidity (and reassuring, if undesirable, stolidity) while the appearance of the feminine in the text foreshadows catastrophe and unknowability – whether the unseen Mrs Drablow, the ‘woman in black' herself, or Kipps’ fiancé, Stella, who remains offstage and undescribed virtually throughout. One of M. R. James’ rules for the ghost story is the absence of gratuitous bloodshed and sex, and while this is certainly the case here (and while not wanting to emphasise overmuch the repressive hypothesis), nonetheless the events in question are put in motion by the sexual act (not to mention the absent father) - and the attraction-repulsion between the narrator and the ‘woman in black,’ who is a fallen woman both in the sexual and soteriological sense, who is both punished and who punishes, who is caught textually somewhere between the figure of the ‘natural’ and the ‘unnatural mother’ – certainly holds a strong sexual charge, the most obvious manifestation of which occurs in his discernment of the traces of beauty in her wasted features. One might ask, is there a scent here of the unnamed ‘wasting disease’ – the highly sexualised consumption, perhaps – as a punishment for sexual and maternal misconduct? It might be drawing too long a bow to recognise here the advent of HIV/AIDS, but it certainly resonates with the historical moment in which the novel was published.

Meanwhile, the counter-balancing feminine forces, equally without character – the remembrance of the maternal care of Kipps’ mother and his nurse, the warm asexual figure of his latter-day wife – certainly play into a narrative of the saviour Madonna in contrast to the unnatural whore or the barren hag. But I wouldn’t by any means say that this is a novel in which there lies concealed a misogynist narrative – rather, that these tropes of the supernatural genre, in the hands of a female writer (not that that necessarily counts for mitigation), are played upon and indeed complexified in their emotional import. Indeed, we might read the presence of these ‘silent women,’ and the reasons for their silence, as a statement in itself.

In order to appreciate TWIB, however, it’s not necessary (though it’s certainly enjoyable) to analyse the ways in which this work is a reflection on the sensibilities which shaped the classic ghost story, as filtered through the lens of the early 1980s (a period in which the gothic was once again beginning to take hold of popular culture). In short, what we have here is a worthy heir to James, Le Fanu, Mrs. Gaskell and the other luminaries of the luna-nary canon.

Sydney Film Festival 2010: In Brief

For me, the unquestionable pick of the festival was:

Raoul Peck – Moloch Tropical
It was, on the one hand, a youthful obsession with voodoo (come on, we've all been there), and, on the other, a passion for Graham Greene's underrated novel of Haiti, The Comedians which first got me interested in Haiti. This film is a fascinating dissection of the final days of a fictional Haitian dictator, an amalgam of the Duvalier authoritarians and latter-day ‘democrats,’ by a director who himself was briefly Minister for Culture under Aristide. In some ways, Downfall can be seen as a predecessor but this is by far the better film, set in a gorgeous mountain eyrie sitting not-so-comfortably above the palace torture chambers, and the slums of the Haitian people. A deeply thought-provoking meditation, both scathing and compassionate, on human weakness, political idealism, gender, race, violence and cruelty, and international politics as theatre and as cynical praxis.

And further, in order of impressiveness:

Sean Byrne - The Loved Ones
Fantastic and original Australian prom-night torture-porn. The horror which is only latently concealed in the ubiquitous pinkificated gender consumerism of the present childhood milieu is made manifest – and you’ll never hear Kasey Chambers’ Not Pretty Enough in quite the same way again.

Sylvain Chomet – The Illusionist
An unexpectedly bittersweet tale from the maker of The Triplets of Belville, based on an unfilmed screenplay by Jacques Tati, with perhaps the most gorgeous animation I’ve ever seen, and a surprising storyline, looking at the travails of a down-at-heel illusionist in the age of vaudeville, which beguiles you into thinking that it’s one kind of narrative before gently twisting into another.

Daniel Monzon – Cell 211
A taut, intense and brutal Spanish prison drama with some nasty twists. Reminiscent of the finest moments of Oz.

Sascha Bader – Rock Steady: The Roots of Reggae
A documentary on an unjustly neglected era of Jamaican music, sandwiched between the better-known ska and roots reggae, this film takes as its central premise a rocksteady reunion concert featuring various luminaries of the era, including Dawn Penn, Ernest Ranglin, Sly Dunbar, Marcia Griffiths, and Stranger Cole, an irresistible eccentric who serves as narrator. Every fan will have some favourite rocksteady moments which are left out (for me, where is the Techniques’ Queen Majesty?) but overall, a joyful and overdue celebration of an important moment in musical history and in the development of a globally influential Jamaican music scene, placed in the context of a particular moment in the development of historical, political and racial consciousness.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
An interesting failure – the use of Lynchian devices of fantasy weirdness mixed with domestic normality and hints of darkness to tell a tale based on Thai legend, mythology and religion. Particularly impressive was a central set-piece of stills from a repressive future (one wonders whether this was subversive political commentary), but ultimately an unrealised mélange whose triumph at Cannes is inexplicable.

James Rasin – Beautiful Darling
An ultimately tragic homage to Candy Darling – a dark fable of the unfulfilling nature of a life as an artwork and the cruel vagaries of Warhol’s Factory – but as a documentary, this work was itself equally unfulfilling inasmuch as the reason for the fascination Darling seems to have held for her contemporaries is never quite apparent in the film’s material.

Todd Solondz – Life During Wartime
A not-quite-worthy sequel to the stunning Happiness – some fantastic lines and domestic grotesque set pieces, with impressive performances by Allison Janney, Charlotte Rampling and Michael K. Williams in particular – but a confection which is ultimately light and unsatisfactory in comparison to its predecessor.

Ben C. Lucas – Wasted On The Young
A high-school film which looks at the timely issue of the dark side of the Australian obsession with sporting heroism and its golden boys, along with the ramifications of a crime reminiscent of the reagic and horrific Leigh Leigh case (later filmed as Blackrock) – but one which, despite some beautiful camerawork and an interesting and innovative incorporation of digital technology (one which the film industry in general ahs been behind the times in adopting) fails to move and descends to the level of troublesome gender politics in a rape-revenge story in which the female remains a fantasy object motivating male action stemming from pure love or pure lust, rather than a complete human being.

Patrick Hughes – Red Hill
A seemingly promising premise – an Australian Western/slasher genre pic set in small-town Victorian high country and starring Ryan Kwanten. But a promise which goes unrealised – despite the heavy-handed race politics twist, a film with a menacing indigenous killer who remains silent throughout? Really? No, really? Can anyone see the problem with that?

Mario Bava - La Maschera Del Demonio aka Black Sunday, The Mask of Satan (1960)

I’m not sure if I was missing something, but I was somewhat underwhelmed by this highly considered, influential early Bava vehicle. Extremely loosely adapted from Gogol, and set in Moldavia in the early 1800s, the plot follows Katia (Barbara Steele) and her father and brother, aristocratic descendants of the infamous witch Asa (also played by Barbara Steele) and her partner in Faustianism, Javuto. Two doctors travelling through the area (the younger of whom is Katia’s love interest) accidentally unseal Asa’s tomb, and so the plot is set in motion, as Asa and Javuto take their revenge on the descendants of Asa's brother-cum-executioner (yes, it’s a tad convoluted, but don’t let that bother you). The film was censored for some years due to the gruesome opening scene, in which Asa, condemned as a witch by her brother, is branded and has a spiked mask hammered on to her face before being burned at the stake.

La Maschera... is a moodily atmospheric and melodramatic film (as a point of interest the original score was, in the US, redone by exoticist Les Baxter, a piece I must try to track down) featuring some wonderful set pieces, and one can certainly see how influential it has been in the horror genre as a whole. In particular, Barbara Steele has an unforgettable face, not classically attractive, architectural yet also vulnerable, and the focus on the eyes, in particular, and ocular violence, is almost a lynchpin on which the movie hangs. The villains, Asa and Javuto, are vampires of a sort, and again the importance of this film for the development of the vampire genre is evident, but they are by no means the clichéd creations of later films. The theme dealing with the Inquisition and with sadistic torture (as well as the underlying eroticism in the relationship between Asa and Katia) is also a landmark which we can trace through to works such as Witchfinder General and its legion (pun intended) imitations, not to mention the lesbian vampire exploitation genre. Indeed, the film was widely censored and banned on the basis of the queasy brutality of the opening scene. There is a particularly memorable Unheimliche quality to the developing scenes in which we see the regeneration of Asa’s eyeless and scarred, but otherwise perfectly preserved corpse.

Nonetheless, having said all this, there is a certain uncomfortably horsehair, overstuffed quality to the film – like the furniture throughout – which, along with its over-slow pacing (tell me I’m not a typical child of the blink generation), keeps this film from being a paradigmatic example of the dark, stylish genre masterpieces which would reach their zenith in Italian cinema of the 1970s.

Ti West - The House of the Devil (2009)

While the maxim that there’s nothing new under the sun is subject to itself, nonetheless, the last decade has seemed especially blatant in its carbon-copy revivals of old genres (in music and cinema, especially). On the one hand, one doesn’t want to revile this trend, because, despite the fact that I sometimes think that the more obscure corners of a past genre provide endless avenues of exploration, there is a limit to that material – whereas genre revival not only provides more, particularly for those with less access to rare or out of circulation material (these days often related to at least a certain level of tech savvy), but also gives the opportunity to participate in the existence of the work as a contemporary moment, which has its own pleasures. But one does wonder whether there isn’t a certain sterility to the entire endeavour – why one would set out to create an artwork which is as close as possible to an already-existing moment.

On this note, The House of the Devil is a film which, down to the last detail, recreates the eighties horror genre film – and we’re talking here not about the eighties revival which revels in its own kitsch excess, but rather a muted version which seeks to emulate not how we now imagine the period, but a work which was actually created in the period itself. In this, it is extremely successful, and there is an appreciable pleasure to the high-waisted, college-town, synth-rocked environment in which the action plays out. The plot revolves around Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), a college student in need of some fast cash, and a babysitting assignment in a spooky house in the forest outside of town, which is by no means all that it seems. The plot is entirely unoriginal (the title says it all), and the pacing is uneven – a very slow tension build followed by a sudden and extreme climax which, without sufficient introduction, seems ridiculously over-the-top (and I make this criticism as someone who’s generally a fan of the slow and moody build in horror, as opposed to the ultragore-heaped-upon-gore strategy). The house itself, as a space, is perhaps the film’s greatest achievement – neither a classically ominous pile, nor the incongruously haunted modern edifice of films like Paranormal Activity. There are some very fun cameos by Mary Woronov as the creepy Mrs. Ulman, and Greta Gerwig as Samantha’s Valley Girl-esque friend Megan, who features in an unexpected moment of violence in what is perhaps the film’s most successful scene. Overall, however, the period atmosphere alone doesn’t carry the film, while the plot is too unoriginal and uneven to take up the slack – as my friend put it, this is perhaps a truer facsimile of the bad eighties horror movie than the director intended.

Richard Wenk - Vamp (1986)

This camp horror-comedy gem from the 1980s lies unjustly neglected in the cult vaults… but, pursuing my mission to give new (un)life to the contents of the 1980s (Society, I’m looking at you), I bring you a film which features as its centrepiece an undead Grace Jones, with white and red body paint and props by Keith Haring, performing a striptease (Ms. Jones’ costumes throughout are provided by Issey Miyake, naturally).

The plot is simply told: a duo of likeable wiseguys, desperate to join a fraternity, promise to bring a stripper to the frat party that night. But, heading from their wholesome country town into the urban and moral decay of the big city in pursuit of this goal – or should that be ‘score’? – the strip club they choose turns out to be one in which they will become the objects of the wicked desires of the (vampiric) inhabitants, rather than vice versa. Visually, Vamp is a treat – particularly the spectacular presence of Grace Jones, as well as Billy Drago as an albino bad boy – and it features a rip-roaring synth-rock 80s soundtrack remniscent of others such as Once Bitten - I'm currently addicted to Stallion's 'Let My Fingers Do The Talking', a song which is not quite as sleazy as it sounds, but almost - not to mention a cameo by that stalwart of the Asian sterotype, Gedde Watanabe.

The gritty post-industrial streets, greasy spoons, and, in this case, sewers of the decaying 80s cityscape, familiar from other works including Batman and Howard the Duck, provide a nice sense of atmosphere. Despite the setting, the homoerotic (or should that be bromantic?) undertones (not to mention the classic conflation of sex and danger so commonly present in the vampire trope, here reworked in the service of the 80s teen sex comedy) are not far below the surface (gentle reader, have you ever found yourself insisting that you sleep in your same-sex buddy's bedroom with only honest intentions?), particularly in the oddly moving scene in which AJ (Robert Rusler), having been turned, begs Keith (Chris Makepeace) to stake him (and that pink tuxedo!) – while the suggestion of straight romance seems like a nod to commercial tropes rather than a heartfelt inclusion. Finally, who could not love a film in which a skeleton flips the bird? Fangs for the memories…

Argentriptychation

Suspiria (1977)
Profondo Rosso ('Deep Red', 1975)
Tenebrae (1982)

There’s probably little new to add to the vast reams of commentary on Argento’s work – but here am I, here you are - or, to put it another way, Dario where all men have gone before... I must admit, to my chagrin, that I’ve started watching Dario Argento films a number of times on DVD and turned them off. But I thought that a big screen festival might present the perfect setting to challenge my déclassé tendencies (not that all culturally acclaimed works are deserving of their status – Radiohead, Animal Collective, oh and Stephen Sondheim, I’m looking at you). And it was. The two great strengths of Argento’s classic films – visual and sonic aesthetics – mean that they demand to be appreciated in an immersive environment to have their full impact – while the faults of the less realized aspects of his work, plot and character, fade into the background.

In balancing these elements, Tenebrae was the most impressive of this trilogy (having already mis-spent some time with it, I gave the unfortunate Phenomena/Creepers a miss, despite the involvement of the divine Jennifer Connelly), inasmuch as the dialogue achieves a depth of B-grade camp which contributes to the perfervid atmosphere – my favourite line being that delivered by the conflicted femme fatale: ‘I feel so … sleazy.’ While the decadent fin-de-siecle atmosphere of Suspiria (the first in Argento’s ‘Three Mother Trilogy’) is beautifully achieved, it savoured just a little too much of the flocked wallpaper and overstuffed furniture so redolent of less iconic ‘70s B movies – whereas the modernist chic of Tenebrae, combined with Goblin’s synth soundtrack which, for my taste at least (I am a diehard fan of the synthesizers of the 80s), hit the spot just a little more closely than the admitted masterpiece produced by Goblin for Suspiria, and worked more perfectly with the overall aesthetic. Indeed, Argento himself intended the film as a ‘step into the world of tomorrow,’ set in a futuristic city a few years in the future, and while this isn’t clear from the film itself, the mood that this intention has created is clearly apparent.

Suspiria is renowned for its set pieces, which are indeed the strongest of this trilogy, but Deep Red, a strange mix of horror and comedy (but not quite a horror-comedy) which is otherwise the weakest of the three (though dealing with some interesting social issues – the artist through a Marxist lens, and homosexuality, even if the plot workings related to the aforementioned ultimately plays to homophobic stereotypes) also has some deeply memorable, and deeply creepy, tableaux: while the evil puppet is a masterful moment, for me it is perhaps the ‘eye in the wardrobe’ which is the most memorable and arresting scene in a film very much concerned with the gaze, the close-up as an inquisitorial device, one which transforms the everyday into the sinister and mysterious. Indeed, the relationship between the gaze (directed at the fictional text), and the film itself as an object, is one which is made manifest in both Tenebrae, where the murders follow those described by a thriller writer, and in Deep Red’s obsession with the ocular. A flaw in the latter is the language, however, which jumps from English to Italian (and even German) from sentence to sentence - at least in the print I watched - a device which never quite gels.

Of course, we should perhaps consider Deep Red and Tenebrae separately, as examples of gialli as opposed to Suspiria’s horror supernaturalism, but this distinction is somewhat nebulous given the supernaturalism which sets the plot of Tenebrae in motion, and the horrific deaths which are central to all three. Argento, as has often been noted, knew how to give his audience grue without making this the defining characteristic of his work – but, although the majority of victims are female, to my mind charges of misogyny are unjustified, except in the context of the comparison between the gender politics of the times and our own, as well as the masculinist themes of the hard-boiled detective, as embodied in the unsuccessfully comedic ‘sex war’ between Deep Red’s protagonists.

Apart from the audio qualities of Argento’s films – which includes not only Goblin’s soundtrack work but also, in particular, the precise employment of cuts between diegetic and exegetic sound – the colour is perhaps the most impressive achievement, drenching the works in lurid and glistening sheens which are not only deeply beautiful, but which are a highly effective tool, in creating the film as a self-contained world, another facet which tends to detract from their flaws (apparently this is a result of the use of imbibition Technicolor, if that means anything to you, gentle reader – to me it conjures only visions of overindulging film technicians).

While we may have Argento to thank for the unfortunate rise of the slasher flick, the present works, for all their flaws, are not only hugely influential and enjoyable – to return to my original point, they remain paradigmatic embodiments of the cinematic (in all senses) in film, a timely reminder in an age in which, as far as the cult film is concerned, we have traded the embodied experience represented by the arthouse cinema for the widespread choice and availability offered by DVD and the internet – a process with elements of the democratization of taste which I certainly wouldn’t want to sniff at, but nonetheless in some ways a pyrrhic triumph of the market.

Ruben Fleischer – Zombieland (2009)

While brains do seem to be the flavour of the moment – second only to fangs – that’s not to say that among the dross, there won’t be some moments which are entertaining, if not exactly original masterpieces. Zombieland does what it sets out to do very well – to entertain and amuse. The story, such as it is, follows an ‘odd couple’ – nerdy college student (Jesse Eisenberg) and a hard-living macho type (Woody Harrelson), thrown together by chance in the aftermath of the disease-based rise of the zombies – as they journey across a near-empty America (in echoes of the wonderful opening scenes of 24 days later, minus the poignancy, but also the incoherent self-importance) – on the way encountering two sharp-witted sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) who serve as foils and provide the inevitable love interest (one does wonder why the male hero is an atypical unattractive nerd, while the female is a typical fox, but perhaps the good boy/bad girl role reversal makes this inevitable). The visual aesthetic, in particular, is very nicely done, with a cartoony feel reminiscent of Fight Club, while the humour is self-aware without giving the sense of trying too hard. The narrative is thin – and the Bill Murray cameo, though amusing, perhaps outstays its welcome – but overall, this is a simple film which is highly entertaining, the perfect popcorn experience – along with Shaun of the Dead, another one to chalk up for the fast-expanding genre of zombedy romcoms.

Mitchell Lichtenstein - Teeth (2007)

There is, of course, a long tradition of the horror movie as a metaphor for the disturbing bodily changes and desires of the teenager. And there are a number of (relatively) recent films in this genre which I esteem highly - particularly the excellent Ginger Snaps, and also Cabin Fever (shame about the execrable Hostel). I was hoping Teeth would fall into this basket. I didn't think that the film could possibly live up to the tagline, "a coming of age story via David Cronenberg," but I thought its presence might be a positive sign nonetheless. And so, after reading some polarised reviews, I thought I'd give it a go.

Having done so, I'd have to agree with the reviewers who called this film a missed opportunity. Speaking of metaphors, while the teen sexuality one is very much in evidence, as far as fear of female sexuality Lichtenstein (incidentally, the son of the famous pop artist) has decided just to dispense with the whole metaphor thing, and go straight for the vagina dentata. The film began promisingly. Twenty-year-old Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a teen abstinence advocate. There are some nicely done, though very heavy handed, early scenes satirising the 'promise keepers,' and throwing in some material on evolution (an evolutionary mutation is the nominal explanation for Dawn's, ahem, VD) and pointing out the sexism inherent in this kind of discourse. But as soon as Dawn's seemingly abstinence-supportive friend Tobey (Hale Appleman) forces himself upon her, we move into fairly standard horror territory. All men are sexual predators, except a girl's daddy - including doctors, and creepy stepbrothers (incidentally, I don't know why filmic purveyors of violence are so often portrayed as pierced - facial piercings have a nasty habit of getting ripped out in violent encounters); and they're going to get what they deserve (I don't intend to imply here, by the way, that this is a misandric story - that's not it at all).

It is refreshing, if that's the word, to see a film where the 'female rape revenge' story isn't played out in a context of brutal, bleak rape voyeurism, a la I Spit On Your Grave. But as soon as the violence starts, the story veers from quasi-realist to non-realist in a rather dissatisfying way (it's the veer I object to, not the one or the other); characters seem to have little or no motivation for their actions, and to behave out of character for the sake of the evolution of the predictable plot, while the interesting discussion about female sexuality and constructions of viscerality, religion, fear, humiliation, and sexual power is instantly jettisoned.

The film isn't worth rejecting out of hand; visually it's nicely done, and it remains an interesting concept which I admire for having a stab at revealing the subject matter which remains a misogynistic subtext in most horror films; and turning a spotlight upon that subject matter as an overt subject for a narrative, and for reflection, in its own right. But given that this somewhat valiant attempt is doomed to failure early on, the accomplishment of this film is to open up possibilities of further investigation of this kind of approach to the standard tropes of the horror genre, rather than to accomplish a meaningful investigation in itself.

S. T. Joshi (ed.) - American Supernatural Tales (2007)

S. T. Joshi is known for his anthologies and work on classic supernatural authors such as Lovecraft, Blackwood, Dunsany, and M. R. James, so I was quite excited about this anthology. Some of the stories included will be familiar to anyone with a passing acquaintance with the genre – Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, Chambers’ The Yellow Sign - but one could hardly put together an anthology of American supernatural literature without including work by these authors. Each author is also given a brief introduction. While the volume is titled ‘supernatural stories,’ these are essentially horror stories. There’s always a problem here – as in movies, there’s a permeable line between non-supernatural gore, tales of serial killers, and supernatural horror or dark supernatural work – but there’s not really anything here which is ‘supernatural’ without being intended to scare, or involving fear or violence. This in itself says some interesting things about the labelling of the genre and a reluctance to raise certain associations, which may be connected to ‘literariness.’ But on to the tales…

Though I’m a fan of the classic ghost story, a lot of the time my issue with the genre is that we know what’s going on fairly early in the piece, and the story doesn’t really add any more. Some of the earlier pieces are very much like this. We begin with Washington Irving’s The Adventure of a German Student (1824), a fairly standard retelling, set during the French Revolution, of the story of the woman with the band around her neck. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Edward Randolph’s Portrait (1838), an ‘unheeded supernatural warning’ narrative, brings us to American shores, and has some nice political period detail from the War of Independence. Fitz-James O’Brien’s What Was It? (1859) is a bizarre story (with a whiff of opium) of a wholly substantial invisible thing, in which the usual pattern of such stories (the impossibility of laying hands on the creature) is not followed, but with unsatisfactory results. The Bierce tale is The Death of Halpin Frayser (1891), an odd, fragmented narrative of incest and poetry from beyond the grave. I must confess that I’ve always preferred the idea of Bierce more than his actual writing…

We then move to Henry James’s very characteristic The Real Right Thing (1899), a fascinating, highly nuanced examination of the concept of the ghost as a disembodied presence whose existence (as in The Turn of the Screw) exists ambiguously between materiality and the consciousness. Clark Ashton Smith’s The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (1932) is an interesting, Lovecraftian merger of horror and science fiction which doesn’t quite follow through on a rather chilling Martian monster. Robert E. Howard’s Old Garfield’s Heart (1933) has a very refreshing Americana style (though inevitably accompanied by the indigenous American as supernatural Other), and gives an interesting twist to reanimation in which it is the presence of life, rather than death, which is the source of horror. The American mood continues in Robert Bloch’s Black Bargain (1942), a Faustian tale with some nice atmospheric detail, but which confirms my feeling about Bloch; that his work is over-rated. I have similar sentiments about August Derleth, whose main claim to plaudits is his championing of Lovecraft, though, as Joshi thankfully notes, he utterly failed to understand the nature of Lovecraftian work. The story included here, The Lonesome Place (1948) is a well-worn tale of the thing under the bed or, in this case, near the grain elevator; with a nice coda, however.

Fritz Leiber’s The Girl With The Hungry Eyes (1949) is a breath of fresh air, dwelling on consumerist themes which, in this chronological connection, gives an interesting historical perspective on the changing nature of society, though it also introduces the overt sex-and-misogyny brand of horror which would continue to blight the genre. Ray Bradbury’s The Fog Horn (1951) is a strange, moving interesting tale, not entirely a success but very worthwhile and original (something I’d say of much of Bradbury’s work) – imagine the story of the Loch Ness Monster written by Raymond Carver and you’ve got something like it… Shirley Jackson’s A Visit (1952) is, to my mind, the standout piece, though I’m biased where Jackson’s concerned; gorgeously understated and yet at the same time dramatic, a set piece, a meditation on gender and emotion, it stands with the best of her work. It was also nice not to see The Lottery, which I think is overrated as far as her work is concerned. Richard Matheson’s Long Distance Call (1953), in which being dead doesn’t mean one can’t keep up with new technology, begins very nicely, but peters out in horror cliché, while Charles Beaumont’s The Vanishing American (1955) is closer to self-help than horror. T. E. D. Klein’s The Events At Poroth Farm (1972) is a vaguely Lovecraftian story with a very nicely-done atmosphere, but with an ending which disappoints – and I personally prefer my horror stories with some kind of explanation for why events have come about as they have…

We then come to more modern concerns. Stephen King, I think, is a writer who, while his work is problematic, particularly in his later period, is often undervalued and bracketed with those of much lesser talent. I was disappointed that the work of his included here was Night Surf (1978), which to my mind was one of the weaker stories in the collection it’s taken from, Night Shift - though its subject, a killer flu, does seem rather prescient from today’s vantage point, and is more original than much of his material. Dennis Etchison’s The Late Shift (1980), a tale of zombified Seven-Eleven clerks with interesting racial undertones, also looks even more relevant in the context of present-day exploitative hyper-capitalism.

Moving away from the concerns of contemporary society, Thomas Ligotti’s Vastarien (1987) whisks us back into a Cthulhuesque environment of the forbidden, madness-inducing book; well-written stylistically, but hardly an original concept (I’m yet to be as impressed by Ligotti’s work as many seem to be, but I haven’t read a great deal of it). Karl Edward Wagner’s Endless Night (1987) is a nice little piece of delirium, though it suffers from the common problem of stream-of-consciousness works in that there is no satisfactory resolution, narrative or otherwise. Norman Partridge’s The Hollow Man (1991), a piece told from the point of view of the Wendigo, is one of the stand-outs of the collection, though the idea is perhaps a little under-fleshed-out (and the pun is very much intended regarding the subject matter).

The postmodern rears its head in David J. Schow’s Last Call For The Sons of Shock (1994) is an interesting treatment of B-movie stereotypes and horror icons, in comic-book style; but it suffers from that perennial problem of 90s horror (I think particularly of Poppy Z. Brite), the darkwave pop-culture reference - personally, I may be a Cramps/Cure/Bauhaus fan, but I don’t give you kudos for checking them in your story; I find it to be trying a little hard. Joyce Carol Oates’ Demon (1996) suffers from a similar problem to Endless Night, though there is a nice gory final scene – but I find the experimental-stream-of-consciousness thing to be a bit overdone in modern horror, presumably as a backlash to the genre-conservative nature of the older horror tale. By far the most horrific work of Oates’ that I’ve read, and by far my favourite, is her novel Zombie, based on Jeffrey Dahmer. We finish with Caitlin R. Kiernan’s In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888), a work which fuses the modern concern for the underclass with the traditional trope of the professor who finds out more than he (it’s usually he) bargains for; while the palaeontological details (Kiernan is a trained palaeontologist) give a nice ring of authenticity; though, as in Wagner’s story, one could wish she could have avoided rounding the story off with a quote, which I personally find a lazy habit in a writer, and one which often shows their own work to disadvantage.

Overall, this is an interesting and valuable volume, demonstrating the historical evolution of the American horror story and showcasing some classics of the genre, as well as giving opportunities to some lesser-known names, and fusing so-called
‘low’ and ‘high’ culture. However, at least to this reader, it demonstrates that the glory days of the genre lie in the past. The stand-out tales are from authors whose names are well-known among aficionados; there’s nothing in the newer material that shows the originality of, say, the Lovecraftian combination of horror and science fiction, or of Shirley Jackson’s chilling domestic gothic; nothing that makes this reader want to run out and track down the works of any promising new authors whose writing holds an interest extending outside the confines of the genre. If this collection is anything to go by, musty tomes remain the proper domain of the horror story…

Juan Antonio Bayona - El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2008)

I like films in which a house is a major character, and El Orfanato fits the bill precisely. Laura, with her husband and her adopted, seriously ill child, Simon, returns to the crumbling mansion, on a cliff above the sea, where she was raised as an orphan; her aim is to run it as a loving home for disabled children whose parents are in need of respite. But there seems to be something strange in the house… and then her son disappears…

El Orfanato is Bayona's first feature-length film, but it is 'presented' (whatever that means) by Guillermo Del Toro, of Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy and The Devil's Backbone (among others). I liked EO a lot more than del Toro’s most recent film, Pan’s Labyrinth, which seemed to me through its magical realist treatment to trivialise a very serious subject, the Spanish Civil War. This film dealt with the personal rather than the political, (hence) much more successfully. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s visually beautiful. The atmosphere is very well done; there are genuinely frightening moments, but it isn’t a typical modern day thriller in which we’re constantly kept on the edge of our seats through hackneyed chase scenes, ‘jump’ moments and screeching violins. Both atmospherically and in terms of subject matter, it reminded me of other films which I have a lot of time for like The Others or Haunted. Finally, it goes beyond the typical haunted house genre in that the intentions of the ‘ghost,’ and the way in which the narrative resolves itself, are by no means predictable.

El Orfanato is not a wildly original film, or one which leaves you thinking; but it’s a very aesthetically satisfying experience, which does what it does very well.

Matt Reeves – Cloverfield (2008)

If I said to you, imagine a cross between Godzilla, Eight Legged Freaks and The Blair Witch Project, that wouldn't be a film you'd be running to see, right? That's why I'm not going to say that about Cloverfield.

I was skeptical. But although I'm generally far from a fan of the 'hand held camera=extra, arty, reality' style that became so prevalent after BWP, it really works in this film (as it has in others, such as Series Seven). The conceit is that the film, recovered by the Department of Defense, was the digital camerawork of 'Hud' Platt, filming a friend's going-away party when monster/alien disaster strikes New York. The action is intercut with previous sequences involving the group of friends and their relationships.

This isn't at all a typical monster film, however - although towards the end it comes closer to what we'd expect from the genre, with a strong narrative pull, and does so very effectively in genre terms, without overplaying its hand. In terms of atmosphere, it reminded me more of works like Cube where the psychology of a pressure situation is the focus and the event is the framing device in which it occurs. Again, I didn't initially feel sympathy for the main characters as a fairly film-standard bunch of young, rich, vacuous New Yorkers, but this really changed over the course of the work.

There's also another point of interest here, in that in the light of September 11 it seems to me quite a daring choice to make a very 'real' feeling creature feature flick about an attack on New York. Perhaps that also added to the fact that the trauma, poignancy and tragedy really worked, for this viewer at least. I also admired the fact that the film wasn't delivering on our genre expectations of heroism, and on the meaningfulness of action in terms of its resolution.

While there are a lot of similarities with BWP (including a viral marketing campaign, and the release of a 'mix-tape' soundtrack to a film with no musical score, though the tracks are played in the original party sequence), I enjoyed this film more, given that, in comparison to the aforementioned film, the genre/subject Cloverfield was working with is much less adapted to the mood it so successfully created, giving this work a real originality, which, combined with narrative and emotional drive, and the successful use of the genre conventions without exploiting them or simply setting up the cliches and knocking 'em down, made for a film that I have a lot of time for.

Tony Krantz - Sublime (2007)

George Grieves goes into surgery, the day after his fortieth birthday, for a routine colonoscopy. But when he comes round, things have gone wrong. More wrong, even, than a surgery mix-up… He’s having strange hallucinations, or are they? Memories return from his birthday party the night before, which seem to be entwining themselves with his present reality and his anxieties - but why can’t he seem to convince anyone to take him home?

Sublime opens impressively. The surreal, noir-ish mood is very well done, as is the mood of understated, but increasing, disquiet, and the mysterious, fleeting symbolic and physical connections between the disjointed scenes. This is one of those films where the location, in this case, the hospital, is a character in its own right. But, as in many other films of this ilk (Identity), a set-up like this (what’s going on here?) is easy to put into motion, but difficult to resolve in a satisfactory way. In this case, the understated mood goes out the window (and in comes the gore), in the process introducing all kinds of issues, which remain unresolved, around tricky areas like class and race; and finally we’re presented with a completely unsatisfactory, but total, explanation for George’s experience.

An interesting film which is certainly outside of the run of the mill, and superior to, the standard mainstream horror movie, but which ultimately fails spectacularly to deliver on its tantalising initial promise.

Point Pleasant (2005)

Point Pleasant is a plasticky American Fox series about the struggle between Good and Evil (note purposeful capitalisation), involving a great deal of overt Christian material in relation to this struggle. So why did I like it so much?

Everything here is not quite as it seems. The plot follows the character of Christina, a girl who is washed up on the beach in Point Pleasant and who slowly realises that she is - well - the devil's daughter, and is fated to have an intimate role in a coming apocalyptic scenario. The town itself is a fairly typical American TV show realm of beaches and bods, so to speak.

On the one hand, the show holds the same kitschy appeal as the Christian supernatural delvings of daytime soaps. But things here are rather more complicated; it's by no means so simple as Christian equals good guy, though we are at first led to believe that this is the case. Indeed, there's a low-key satirical element (I'm not sure if it's entirely intentional) as regards the tropes of Christianity in popular fiction, a la Left Behind. The complexity (for a mainstream TV show) of the plot development, the concepts involved regarding morality, and the way in which our perception of the heroes and villains of the piece changes, is one of the show's strengths. Unlike many other TV shows and films in a similar vein, the action is never driven by special effects, and neither the conclusion, nor the final actions of the main characters, are predictable.

I also found that the setting of the show really worked for me; call me a sucker for suburban gothic (not to mention Biblical blood and thunder), but, in a similar manner to Desperate Housewives, The Devil's Advocate or The Craft, there's a nice contrast between the shiny, plastic surfaces and the dark, Biblical-melodramatic thematics; one which also allows complexities to develop contrary to our expectations. Finally, though the teens are, for the most part, more looks than substance acting-wise, there's an excellent performance by Grant Show as the villain of the piece, and I also very much enjoyed Dina Meyer, who I loved in Starship Trooopers.

Point Pleasant's executive producer was Marti Noxon, known for his work on Buffy. Though PP definitely has more of a soap-opera quality to it, fans of Buffy - those who appreciate relatively sophisticated supernatural action/melodrama in television - might well find a lot to like here. Unfortunately, it was cancelled after 13 episodes - the final two, which bring the action to a conclusion, are included only on the DVD release. In one sense, it's a shame - but where TV is concerned, being left hungry for more is often a better option than watching a promising, successful series have the life wrung out of it season after season. Better to end, Armageddon-style, with a bang...

Francis Lawrence - I Am Legend (2007)

While it had its flaws, I'd enjoyed the 1964 film The Last Man On Earth (with Vincent Price), like this film based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend (which I haven't read), so I was curious to see what this treatment was like. This film, however, didn't have a whole lot to recommend it despite a few nice moments.

Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, a virologist who failed to prevent a cure for cancer mutating into a hideous disease which killed most of the population, and turned the rest into ravening zombies, except much speedier than 'zombies' would normally imply. Neville, who may be the last survivor, and whose wife and daughter may be dead, is still working on a cure in post-apocalyptic New York, with only his faithful hound for company. One of the film's worst scenes involves the death of said canine. There's also an awful, bathetically angsty scene between Smith and some mannequins (seriously).

I'll admit that I like Will Smith; he's got an easy charisma that's rare among male Hollywood stars. And he's certainly smoking hot in this film - we get to see a lot of flesh, though nothing too intimate - this is Hollywood, after all. However, as other reviewers have noted, in this film, playing such a tortured role and without (for the most part) other characters to bounce off, his charisma (his strong point) is muted. Another flaw is the completely illogical plot; why, for example, does Neville still have access to electricity and running water for his experiments? This example could be multiplied many times over.

A more serious issue is the not-so-subtle Christian propagandising the film engages in throughout. I really didn't appreciate being evangelised to in this propagandistic, concealed way.

Strengths? The aforementioned Will Smith eye candy - and there were some very nice, atmospheric scenes set in an abandoned New York city (though in conception that's nothing we haven't already seen in 28 Days Later, a more interesting failure), and also in Neville's underground laboratory. But overall, I'd stick with The Last Man On Earth.

Eli Roth - Hostel (2005)

Presenting the second, and possibly final, instalment in my grumpy-underculture-snob-meets-horror-of-the-noughties series... this film really had no redeeming features whatsoever, and I don't mean that in a good way.

We follow the story, such as it is, of American backpackers Josh and Paxton, and the Icelandic Oli, who are hanging around Europe doing what backpackers do (drinking, taking drugs and looking to get laid) when they find themselves in a whole passel o' trouble when they fall prey to an organisation 'sourcing' subjects for the snuff play of the rich and perverted. There is a skerrick of character development in the juxtaposition of uninhibited Pax with the supposedly more bookish Josh (I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief when he mentioned Kafka), but overall there's little here in the way of character or plot: boys meet psychos, boys get tortured, boys try to escape from psychos.

What's interesting, though not, I think, intended, is what this film says and doesn't say about the relationship between the USA and Europe. Made by Eli Roth (I quite enjoyed his Cabin Fever, which had a shadow more of the original, and of the b-grade, about it than Hostel) with the support of a cinematic bete noir of mine, Quentin Tarantino (did you know that in France they call it 'bete noir'? Leaves 'Royale with Cheese' in the shade anyday - I think I'm freaking out!), this film plays very heavily on stereotypes of Europe in general, and Eastern Europe in particular, as an old and evil place where a thin veneer of civilisation overlies a deeply cynical barbarism. In this world, the young and naive Americans (along with the hapless party animal Oli) find themselves entirely out of their depth and easy prey.

But the film doesn't seem sure what it wants to say. Are we to view the protagonists, who are a typical amalgam of the privileged (they're studying law and English) and the boozing party animal, as stereotypical idiot, ignorant American tourists who are only concerned with the gratification of their own desires on whatever object presents itself, and deserve all they get? Are we to see them as understandably hedonistic, carefree young men indulging a last bender, for whom we should feel sympathy? Given the lack of character development or emotional involvement, this seems unlikely... What isn't in doubt in terms of perception is that Eastern Europeans themselves (and indeed all Europeans, with the exception of Oli) are seen as black-and-white figures of evil. There's a long tradition of the Anglo colonies holding this view, of Europe as corrupt and corrupting of the youthful, naive and innocent colonial, from the works of Henry James through to David Cronenberg's latest, Eastern Promises. But I wouldn't call this Oedipal stereotype a proud pedigree.

Hostel has been both highly praised and highly damned; but I don't particularly think it merits either. Despite the plaudits given to the film as a horror film, I didn't find it scary at all - even the usual chase-scene-shrieking-violins-suspense, which most modern slasher flicks have on tap (because it's an easily achievable emotional trick), don't really work in this film, where they're let down by a soundtrack that goes beyond the standard 'noticeable violin cheese' into the realm of fondue.

On the other hand, accusations that the film has led to a new genre of 'torture porn' or 'gorno' also seem overblown; certainly as a one-time gore aficionado I didn't find it particularly confronting, and we might think both of historical predecessors such as Bloodsucking Freaks, the Troma films, or Mexican and Italian horror exploitation films, all of which are much more interesting than this little work. Indeed, perhaps the novelty was that this film brought splatter-gore out of the cult underground and into the popular mainstream; but even then I don't think this argument would hold, given the popularity of big-budget movies like the recent ...of the Dead films, or House of 1000 Corpses. Or perhaps (I can't speak for Corpses here, as I haven't seen it) the novelty is that the only thing about Hostel which makes an impact is the gore. I suspect the latter...

James Wan - Saw (2004)

While I'm not at all a fan of the 'new' style horror movie (with the exception of the resurge in b-grade), I like to keep up with major developments in the field, so I'd been meaning to see Saw. for some time now. I'd been somewhat put off by comparisons to the highly overrated Se7en, but I found Saw a lot more pleasing, perhaps because it had no pretensions to be anything other than what it was - a nasty little psycho movie, but with smarts.

The film suffers from the usual modern horror problems - serial killer with no meaningful motive, over-reliance on gore (I prefer my films either b-grade gory, or without, thank you), and my very least favourite - what I call 'Friday the 13th' syndrome - the characters (especially but not only women) never take the opportunity to put the villain out of the action once and for all when they have the opportunity, but instead fail to for the sake of the plot, and in the process entirely jettison the shreds of realism on which the genre trades.

Having said this, however, the 'twist' in this particular example is very nicely done: we follow the characters from a deathtrap situation through a history of how they came to be there, and with what consequences. This format means that we don't get tempted by another sin of the modern-day slasher flick, setting up a line of ducks and shooting 'em down one by one as a substitute for a plot.

It's a clever work - the twists are nicely done so that, when you think you're one step ahead of the film, it's in fact got the drop on your expectations. The twisted, intricate little scenarios the film presents are themselves are very ingenious, and will please those with a mind for complicated death traps in classic crime style, with a modern twist in the upping of the macabre factor. The atmosphere is very nicely done (though nothing out of the ordinary) - I found myself at times conceiving of the movie as a game made in reverse, given the fact that much of it is a series of very elaborate problem-solving exercises - but unlike many films these days which seem empty inasmuch as they're made for or from action-based gameplay, the ingenuity this involves maintains interest in the film medium as well. Overall it's a well-put together little package which is not for the queasy, but which holds pleasures beyond the standard mindless short'n'nasty slasher film that passes for horror these days.

30 Days of Night (David Slade, 2007)

These days, any genre horror that doesn't disappoint me I consider successful. That's not meant to damn by faint praise - 3DON is not a film that'll leave you thinking or change your life, but it's an enjoyable little horror confection which stands above its peers, though by no means a classic.

The film is based on the comic book miniseries by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, which I haven't read (intriguingly, the comic was originally an unsuccessful script pitch - how postmodern!). It is at times, however, evident that the plot, which is jumpy and jerky, and at times seems written simply for the purpose of advancing the action, is taken from a longer narrative. It is set in Barrow, Alaska, a small town above the Arctic circle where midwinter sees the eponymous period of darkness. As the last day nears its close, Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett), the town sheriff, is troubled by strange, macabre pranks... meanwhile, his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) is stranded in town. As the dark descends, we become aware that a gang of vampires has descended to terrorise the town, and our protagonists must play a deadly game of hide and seek for the next month.

These are not the sophisticated vampires of Anne Rice or Poppy Z. Brite; rather, they're brutish predators. The against-type casting of Danny Huston as Marlow, the head vampire, is nicely done; imagine a nondescript businessman become an archaic, blood-drenched fiend. The others, however, are stock-standard horror-movie fare. The script also at times clunks along in horror cliche mode, but there are some unexpected lines, and also some unexpected action, which lift the film above the standard Hollywood horror I-want-those-two-hours-of-my-life-back standard. Indeed, the male characters' reaction to blood and horror plays nicely against film cliche. It's a beautifully made piece, and the bleakly picturesque setting doesn't do any harm either, while George and Hartnett are both on par in their respective roles.

Overall, it won't go on your list of must-see classics, cult or otherwise - but for some entertaining horror that's got a twist more originality than standard Hollywood genre seatfiller, you could do a lot worse.

Jeff Lieberman - Blue Sunshine (1976)

I've been meaning to watch this film for a long time, because it's referenced both in the title of the album by Robert Smith and Steve Severin's criminally under-known project The Glove, and also in lyrics by The Meteors. However, despite some nice moments, it didn't altogether live up to the expectations I'd had raised...

The narrative follows Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King), who's at a groovy party when his friend rips his hair off, and begins butchering his fellow party goers. Zipkin, under police suspicion, begins to do his own investigation; and, as other bald murderers surface, he becomes convinced that the deaths are related to a batch of bad LSD from their (common) wild student days.

The initial murders, in particular, are done nicely, and the wild-eyed, bald killers are a nice theme (though I did wonder why the men retain strands of hair while the women become egg-bald, and their behaviour starts to become less scary and more farcical by the film's end). However, there were none of the psychedelic touches I was hoping for - genre-wise, this is more or less a straight-up multiple psycho killer story, if such a thing is conceivable, complete with red herrings and a heavy-handed 'Drugs: Just Say No' message.

Zipkin's actions seem more necessary to further the plot, than realistic for someone in his situation (if, for example, you were trying to warn someone that they might turn into a psychotic killer because of some bad LSD they'd once taken, wouldn't you, well, warn them that they might turn into a psychotic killer because of some bad LSD they'd once taken?). The plot itself meanders, and seems to lose its narrative sense as the film progresses, and a psycho-on-the-disco-dancefloor scene, which could've been well played, disappoints. So, although there are some original touches, overall I found the film a let-down.