Horror Film Review: Quicksand (2023) ★★☆☆☆–A Shudder Original

After 125 years of horror films, you'd think people would know the basics: never, ever ignore local knowledge of dangerous places and never follow someone else into certain death, no matter how much you love them. Andres Beltran's Quicksand had me shaking my head from the very beginning, first because of the arrogance of our unlikeable protagonists and then because it defied logic.

Sofia (Carolina Gaitán, Encanto) and Josh (Allan Hawco, The Breach) travel to Colombia to attend a conference. They are in the throes of a divorce yet decide to take a hike together to find the La Chorrera waterfall. When a storm moves in and they try to return to their car, they have a violent encounter with an armed man. On the run and desperate, they escape into Las Arenas, the very part of the forest that locals are too afraid to go into.

They might have escaped their pursuer but the couple land up in quicksand and need to use every survival skill they have to save themselves.

Fear will drag you deeper

I'm always conscious that there are human beings behind every project and horror, especially, needs our indulgence and willing suspension of disbelief, but Quicksand was not my cup of tea. I’m also conscious that there is a subset of horror fans who watch films because they get bad reviews and also horror fans who read reviews because they want to vent about a film.With that said..

Spoiler alert: I need to talk about this film and I'm going to dive straight into some key plot points and outcomes below. Turn away now if you haven't watched Quicksand.

If you've ever sat at a table while a couple bickered and aired their dirty laundry in public, then you'll be familiar with the primary dynamic of Quicksand. Sofia and Josh argue in every scene but the audience is never given insight into who they are as people or what caused the breakdown of their relationship. I enjoyed Allan Hawco in The Breach but neither Hawco nor Gaitán had much to work with here.

This was partly due to the bare bones of a plot. In short: married couple are getting a divorce, they inexplicably go for a hike in the woods. They encounter a violent attacker, escape into the one place they've been warned against, and the wife lands in quicksand. The husband decides to jump in after her and then they are both doomed. They very conveniently find a dead man in the hole and are able to raid his entire MacGyver kit. Pity he didn't think of that.

They are initially unable to move their arms above the very heavy mud but luckily, Josh is able to reach into his pants and retrieve a bottle of vodka when Sofia gets attacked by fire ants.

She is likewise very fortunate to be able to conduct neck surgery on Josh to remove a blood clot after he is bitten by a snake. Thank goodness for that MacGyver knife.

In a feat of astonishing agility against the very heavy mud, Sofia is then able to use her upper body strength to lob a lasso (made of a 15kg dead boa constrictor and other bits and pieces) over a rock and pull herself out of the pit. For some reason, none of the very heavy mud is actually on her and she just looks wet.

Miraculously, Josh also survives because he had 6 hours to live after the snake bite and he only had to wait 5 hours and 59 minutes for the antidote.

I wish that I could say more about the cinematography and camera work, but I found it to be quite dull and uninspired despite the forest setting. A lot of the angles and shots were weird and disorienting too, although I could see what they were trying to achieve.

Overall, I'd recommend Andres Beltran's Quicksand be viewed on a night in when you're looking for a good drinking game. Have a shot every time something improbable or impossible happens on screen. It says a lot for a horror fan to choose to believe the paranormal and supernatural over a simple forest survival plot but there you have it. I give it a disappointing two out of five stars; as stupid as they were, the parts where Sofia fell in the quicksand and Josh went jumping in after her were actually quite thrilling. .
★★☆☆☆

A Shudder Original, Quicksand premieres on Friday 14 July 2023. Streaming Exclusively on Shudder and AMC+

Quicksand (2022) Trailer. Directed by Andres Beltran

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Horror Film Review: Night's End (2022) ★★☆☆☆

Today we welcome a brand new contributor to the Addicted to Media team, Mirza Hota. Mirza's first challenge is Night's End, directed by Jennifer Reeder (Knives and Skin)

Night's End starts off really well. An unemployed divorcee shut-in with a history of alcohol abuse (played convincingly by Geno Walker) moving to a new town, away from his ex and their kids to an apartment that turns out to be haunted.

Walker spends most of his days carefully sealing himself off from the world outside of his apartment and making YouTube videos until viewers of one of his clips notice something strange going on and alert Walker to it.

I don't want to give too much away in this review. I have to admit I really enjoyed large portions of the film. It's atmospheric, dark and in parts very claustrophobic which adds greatly to the tension and highlights the main character's loneliness and frustration. The feeling that he is trapped in a prison of his own making.

The lead is very effective and Michael Shannon (who unfortunately does not get the chance to shine here) is always a welcome addition to any film.

Sadly Night's End loses it's edge, and much of the atmosphere towards the end and becomes a bit silly. Again I don't want to reveal too much but the ending didn't work for me. There was plenty there to work with. The main character's isolation, his frustration and anxiety are not properly explored. I don't know if the filmmakers felt they didn't know how to wrap it up or simply felt they had to end things spectacularly but I think they missed an opportunity here.

I give Night's End two-and-a-half out of five stars, rounded down to two stars for that ending. This is Jennifer Reeder's first foray into horror.

★★☆☆☆

A Shudder original, Night's End will premiere on 31 March 2022

Trailer: Night's End (2022) - dir. Jennifer Reeder

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Horror Film Review: The Banishing (2020) (A Shudder Original) ★★☆☆☆

There are some houses that should remain empty, whose histories are built on such pain and suffering that the only answer is to demolish them and cleanse the ground. When a priest, his wife and her daughter move into a house in a small village, their neighbours want them to leave. Have they stumbled upon the most haunted house in England? Directed by Christopher Smith (Triangle), The Banishing is a Shudder Original starring Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey) and Sean Harris (Mission: Impossible franchise).

The Banishing is a strange, disconcerting film. The tone is set very early in the film when Sean Harris and a woman dance onscreen for a full two minutes; it is unsettling, uncomfortably intimate and drawn out, a feeling that will pervade the rest of the film. We don't know Sean's character yet but we know to look out for him.

The discomfort continues as we come to meet the priest Linus (John Heffernan) and his wife Marianne (Jessica Brown Findlay). Far from being an upstanding man and a role model, Linus is weirdly insecure and quite cruel.

Then again, so is his Bishop Malachi (John Lynch), what is it with this church?

Linus assures his step-daughter Adelaide that she is completely safe in the house and every fibre of my body fills with the desire to shout at the screen. No, no she's not Linus. You're cruel and strange and I'm starting to hope something bad will happen to you!

Jessica Brown Findlay (Brave New World) is a shining beacon in a very strange film. Stuck in a loveless marriage and misinterpreting her child's increasing demonic influence for normal estrangement, she is tumbling headlong into a fight of epic proportions.

And so she meets Harry Price, the dancer from the opening scenes and a local occultist. Price is obviously the only person who can tell Marianne about the house they're living in, the nature of the threat and how to beat it. It's a fairly paint-by-numbers approach to horror that has been done many times before.

Indeed, other than Adelaide's increasingly obvious possession, there is nothing essentially scary in The Banishing. It is not a horror film as much as a disconnected sequence of scary visions.

If the true danger was merely visions, what was the point? A lot of scared people and some interesting cinematography?

I was struggling to understand why I should care and what the significance was to the viewer when the film ended and those thoughts dissipated to make way for one enduring impression: what did I just watch and what the hell was that ending?

I usually hesitate to give poor reviews but I know there is an entire subclass of horror fans who love bad horror films, the worse the better. Fans of Christopher Smith and Triangle are also going to rush to see this film. With that in mind, I give The Banishing a grudging two out of five stars and recommend to fans of creepy British horror. If you had to choose, I'd recommend last week's Shudder exclusive The Power over this one.

★★☆☆☆

A Shudder Original, The Banishing will be released on Thursday, 15 April 2021.

The Banishing (2020) -Directed by Christopher Smith) - Trailer

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Randi Pink's 'Angel of Greenwood' ★★☆☆☆

May 2021 marks one hundred years since the Tulsa Massacre when the thriving African American community of Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma was attacked by a mob of armed white Tulsans, killing as many as 300 people and displacing 8,000 more. I first read about the events in Lynn Hudson's excellent West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California's Color Line and followed that up with the superb middle grade picture book Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre by author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Floyd Cooper. Naturally I was very interested when I first heard about Randi Pink's Angel of Greenwood, a YA novel set during the terrible events of Tulsa in 1921.

This book has received almost universal acclaim, so it feels daunting to be an outlier. I do think many people will love this novel and they should definitely read it but I'm going to explain why it didn't work for me.

Angel of Greenwood: Bringing to Life Greenwood in 1921

Greenwood in 1921 was a thriving community and the high street was known across the States as the "Black Wall Street". Randi Pink does an exceptional job of depicting the bright colours, bustling high street, vibrant fashions, diverse occupations, culture, and sense of community of Greenwood's residents.

Angel of Greenwood: Historical Novel or Romance?

While we get a taste for the cultural richness of Greenwood, Angel of Greenwood is not simply a novel about a certain point in time; it is a novel about a horrifying event in history. If we consider the purpose of an historical novel, to educate readers about historical events and times, Angel of Greenwood fails because we learn very little about the actual Tulsa massacre, except in the end notes of the book.

Instead Angel of Greenwood is, for 80% of the book, a romance novel but it wasn't quite a romance I felt comfortable shipping.

Angel of Greenwood: Characterisations

There is an enduring theme of worthiness in the novel. People treat the main character Angel well because she is perceived to be churchgoing and virtuous. The boy in the story, Isaiah, initially bullies Angel. He begins to treat her better than he treats his own girlfriend Dorothy Mae once he sees Angel as intellectual and worthy in his mind. I did not like this at all. What about treating people with respect just because that's the right thing to do? More than that, worthiness is an enduring theme in many abusive relationships. I cannot trust a love interest who pits women (or girls) against each other and puts one on a pedestal while treating another like an object.

The problem was two-fold: while portraying prominent themes of the time, Isaiah expresses extremely outdated ideas about girls which ultimately go unchecked. We see this in his treatment of Dorothy Mae and how he patronises Angel. In addition, all of the characters are one-dimensional: Angel is good, Isaiah is misunderstood, the people on the other side of town are poor, and Isaiah's best friend is bad. Perhaps most offensive of all was that Dorothy Mae was probably the most mature, kind character in the book and yet she wasn't treated well at all and again, that goes unchecked.

The issue with one-dimensional characters is that you can immediately spot when they do something out of character and this becomes obvious during the last 20% of the book when Angel and Isaiah make incredibly unrealistic and uncharacteristic responses during the fires and chaos. Also, I wish authors (and directors) would learn more about the true nature of fire before having characters do impossible things during fires on page and on screen.

Ultimately, Angel of Greenwood fell very flat for me. I wanted to learn more about the events of Tulsa in 1921 but instead I'm tied up worrying about one-dimensional characters, an unlikely love story and impossible heroics during a fire.

With a heavy heart, I give Angel of Greenwood a disappointing two out of five stars, one for the beautiful depictions of life in Greenwood, one for drawing attention to an important event in history, and the other for the gorgeous cover, but less one star for the issues I mentioned above. I'm not saying 'don't read it', just that there are better sources if you're seeking to learn more about the Tulsa race massacre in 1921.

★★☆☆☆

I'm compiling a list of superior YA fiction. Visit the Addicted to Media YA Fiction Bookshop to see my recommendations (affiliate link; I will receive a small commission if you purchase using this link at no extra cost to you).

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Graphic Novel: Moon Lake by Dan Fogler ★★☆☆☆

Horror is meant to push you out of your comfort zone. It's meant to be creepy and unsettling and often toes the line between exhilaration and plain fear. Sometimes horror skirts too close to your own fears; I will never forget the scene in The Basement where Cayleb Long's Craig is forced to swallow his own teeth.

So it's not the discomfort and sheer inappropriateness of Dan Fogler's Moon Lake that offended me. It reminded me of a subpar MAD magazine issue but whereas I subscribed to MAD for many years and am a big fan of Dan Foglers, this just isn't very good.

I get the feeling a lot of people are buoyed by Dan's increasing popularity (or have been drinking the same Kool Aid as him) but this should not be receiving a reissue with a brand new cover.

I give Moon Lake a disappointing two out of five stars because some of the artwork is good but if you're a fan of Dan-and-horror, I'd recommend just viewing his The Walking Dead episodes again.

I received an advanced copy of the 2020 reissue of this graphic novel from Netgalley.

★★☆☆☆

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Horror Film Review: Lost Gully Road (2017) ★★☆☆☆

You can tell the characters in horror films aren't fans of the genre; no horror fan in their right mind would, for example, go stay alone in a cabin in the woods with no access to the outside world, especially if you and your sister are up to no good. But alas, our clueless victims don't have our foresight. No television, phone or radio reception? No problem! Just drink red wine and nibble cheese crackers and only vaguely wonder about the dense mass of demonic possession growing in the corner of the room.

In Lost Gully Road, Lucy (Adele Perovic, Total Control) and her sister Cassie are pulling off a con and it involves Lucy staying alone in an isolated house in the woods while her sister ties up loose ends and escapes her suspicious boyfriend. But what of the items that move around the house when Lucy's not looking, the strange noises and that accumulating mass of darkness in the corner? What of Lucy's mental illness, the over-familiar shopkeeper and the nosy housekeeper? And what about the rapist who once lived and died in the house? Well... nothing, as it happens.

With Lost Gully Road, we're promised a "highly anticipated" slow-burn Australian thriller in the tradition of The Babadook and Lake Mungo but the problem is that these are powerful horror films that explore grief, depression and loss whereas Lost Gully Road isn't about anything.

None of the multiple story threads are explored, followed up or resolved in any way, which is disappointing because they seemed interesting; it appears as if the director threw a pile of topics up in the air and hoped one would stick.

The special effects of an unknown force attacking Lucy are laughable, primarily so because at no point does Lucy appear bruised, cut or hurt in any way (except for the scene where her hand was trapped in the door). It occurred to me as I heard yet another audible whoosh and thump that the film relied far too much on sound to signify scares and action rather than show anything of substance.

It's a pity because the allure of independent horror films is in what they manage to achieve on the tiniest of budgets but Lost Gully Road was very disappointing and a waste of Adele Perovic's talent.

I give Lost Gully Road a generous two out of five stars - one for Adele Perovic's acting in the absence of a script or plot, half because the con plot line might have been interesting were it resolved and half for the use of vivid colours and the Red Riding Hood allusion.

★★☆☆☆

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Reviewed: Liz Kessler's Disappointing 'Haunt Me' ★★✰✰✰

A boy wakes up from a long sleep to discover that his family is packing boxes into a van and moving out of home. Where are they going? Why did nobody tell him? That is just the beginning of Joe’s problems. He soon discovers that they cannot see or hear him and that he appears to be incorporeal. What has happened? Is he dead? In a coma?

Seemingly trapped in his bedroom, Joe has no other option but to wait. Soon, another family moves into the house and Erin moves into Joe’s former bedroom. What starts off as a vague feeling soon becomes more as Erin begins to feel and then see Joe.

The pair have a lot in common and begin to fall in love. But what of Joe’s brother Olly? What is he hiding and can Erin trust him?

The premise sounded so good and I was really looking forward to reading Liz Kessler’s Haunted. I had read her short story “Love Is a Word, Not a Sentence” that appeared in Amnesty UK’s Here I Stand collection and was impressed with her idea that being gay may be punishable by death in many parts of the world but can still be a death sentence in other societies due to bullying and hatred.

I therefore expected a lot from Haunt Me. I expected Kessler to tackle some very serious issues and to be fair, the book does address drug taking, suicide, bullying and bereavement. The problem is that these were more of a backdrop to the story and ultimately, Haunt Me is just another young adult story about an ostracised girl falling in love with a supernatural being and almost destroying herself in the process.

There was also a mean girls sequence that I found to be completely unnecessary. When are authors going to start writing about strong supportive friendships, the ones that start in school and last until old age? Could that not also be a form of wish fulfilment and escapism if written well?

Not surprisingly, I did not enjoy Haunt Me and found the long, descriptive paragraphs describing each character’s point of view to be incredibly laborious. Reading a novel should not feel like a chore.

I give Haunt Me a disappointing 2 out of 5 stars. It's been a long time since I was this disappointed with a novel but comparing it to my last two-star review Rachel Vincent's The Stars Never Rise, I see that I have a theme of disliking stereotypes and tired old clichés in young adult novels.

★★✰✰✰

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Book Review: The Stars Never Rise by Rachel Vincent

Stop me if you've heard this one before. In a not-so-distant future, the human race is under threat and a massive church-like structure has emerged to control the populace and protect them against the threat.

In Rachel Vincent’s The Stars Never Rise, that threat is a shortage of souls and the emergence of soul-devouring demons, and the church-like structure is The Church.

While I'll give credence to the author for the originality of the souls idea, its manifestation as still births and the subsequent attempts of those in authority to control reproduction sound like something straight out of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Perhaps at this point I should stop to point out that Rachel Vincent is one of my favourite authors and if this book has come out ten years ago, I would probably have loved it. Not only is it fast-paced and entertaining, set in a dystopian nightmare, but it provides a searing critique of right-wing tendencies and the dangers inherent when church and state are too closely aligned.

The problem is that at this point, it is just another dystopian book and as much as I want to love anything that Rachel Vincent pens, I'm overcome with the glaring similarities to other works.

Take Finn for example, a human soul without a body but one that is able to possess other bodies (in a good way, of course). The body-snatchers idea feels like Stephenie Meyer's The Host which in itself was taken from a whole genre of B movies dating back to the dawn of Hollywood. The bodiless soul idea reminded me a a little too much of Gena Showalter's Intertwined and the idea of walled cities and badlands reminded me both of Lauren Oliver's Delirium and Julie Kagawa's Blood of Eden series.

There was also another snag. As much as I love Rachael Vincent, I just couldn't reconcile the notion of finite souls. To me there are both new souls and reincarnation and for some reason I couldn't suspend disbelief enough to consider a finite number of souls (if you can use that term when dealing with the purely esoteric).

I guess the ultimate measure of young adult book is whether it makes you snort with derision and The Stars Never Rise made me snort. Out loud. It was towards the end and Nina had only just admitted she couldn't make out the colour of a car in the dark when she mentions Finn's bright green eyes. Again. For the 1,000th time. I'm fairly new to this notion of the Young Adult fiction stereotype of green eyes (having green eyes myself and never noticing they were rare or overused) but I can see why readers are becoming so irritated by this particular stereotype.

So how would I rate this book and would I recommend it? I would definitely recommend The Stars Never Rise if you are new to the realm of dystopian fiction or if you're going through that phase where you simply can't get enough of it. You'll love it, it's good and you'll likely finish it in one sitting. But if you're about to pick it up and you're wondering if you have the energy for yet another dystopian young adult adventure? Maybe give it a miss.

With a heavy heart, I give The Stars Never Rise a disappointing 2 out of 5 stars. It feels strange to do so because really, what was I expecting? I doubt I'll read the next in the series and quite frankly, I'd prefer it if Vincent returned to more unusual urban fantasy like we saw in Soul Screamers and the Unbound series.

You can buy The Stars Never Rise at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

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Book Review: Normal by Graeme Cameron

Normal, unremarkable, invisible. There is a killer on the loose in England but you won't see him coming because you won't even notice he is there at all. That is until he falls in love with a checkout girl and begins making fatal errors, of course.

Normal is the debut novel by Graeme Cameron and is due for release on the Mira Books imprint on 31 March 2015. It is a small town England version of Dexter or Silence of the Lambs, told in the first person narrative of a nameless killer.

This is where the book falls into difficulty. Without the cold, objective glare of a profiler, we're given very little insight into the killer's motives beyond what he tells us and he isn’t the most forthright of narrators.

What actually happens is that the reader is subjected to the misogynistic inner dialogue of a killer as he lures unsuspecting women into his van and either murders them immediately  or abducts them, holds them captive and terrorises them before he releases them into the woods only to hunt them down and kill them anyway.

There is no pattern, nothing links his victims, we’re told little about his motivations beyond that his father wasn’t particularly nice and his mother abandoned him as a child.  It could be that this lack of structure to the serial killer’s actions belies a lack of research on the part of the author but it might simply be an opinion that not all sociopaths follow a set pattern.

What did seem unlikely to me were the actions of the police and the manner in which they accumulated evidence about the murders and disappearances. Firstly, there are CCTV cameras along just about every stretch of canal in England as was evidenced in the disappearance of Alice Gross and Chris Brahney. It is possible but unlikely that the entire events taking place in the book alongside the canal would not have been captured, at least in part, on CCTV.

The police become hellbent on pinning the crimes on the killer in Normal but at no point whatsoever do they present a shred of evidence beyond our narrator owning a white van combined with a healthy dose of the great old police stereotype: gut feeling. Again, that might work in a novel set in any other country but roads in England are teeming with CCTV and average speed cameras and it is highly likely that the police would have had a significant amount of evidence at their disposal including the exact number plates of the van they were looking for.

The final nail in the coffin for me was how unlikely the characters’ actions were in Normal. The narrator paints his hostage Erica as morally bereft and quite insane by the end of the book but no amount of Stockholm syndrome would even come close to explaining her actions. Likewise, the detective Fairy would never have colluded with him, in a manner real or apparent. He was losing out to tokenism, he would have dug his heals in and solved the damn case. And finally, Green would never have switched back and forth between mothering him and essentially letting him get away with murder.

A last word on character development. We’re lead to believe that all of this mayhem ensues when the killer falls in love with a checkout girl but ultimately, she falls in love with him. Nothing about his actions suggests anything further than distraction and he certainly doesn’t grow as much the author would like you to believe.

It's always disturbing when a book has a string of positive reviews to find that you are the sole dissenting voice. On the one hand, I commend the author for writing such a vile, hateful character but on the other, I'll probably stick to Twitter next time I want to browse the innermost thoughts of a sociopathic misogynist.

It occurs to me that Normal is probably a spoof and I probably just didn’t get it but from the cover commendation by Lee Child, all appearances were that this was a serious attempt at crime fiction. Besides, there are far better researched, more intelligent ways to write comedy.

I did laugh out loud on more than one occasion while reading the book and for this reason I give Normal a disappointing two out of five stars.

.

I wouldn't completely avoid it but I wouldn't recommend it either.

if you must, Normal is available to purchase at Amazon.co.uk. Honestly, I'd rather recommend you read Darkly Dreaming Dexter instead. At least Dexter was likeable.

---

An advance, electronic copy of this book was provided to me for the purposes of this review and all opinions contain herein are my own. This review contains affiliate links.

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Film Review: Debug (2014)

Debug is written and directed by David Hewlett (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Cube) and stars Game Of Thrones’ heart throb Jason Momoa alongside Adam Butcher and Jeananne Goossen. It is a tense and claustrophobic psychological thriller, a feat achieved even though the film takes place in the well-lit and vast expanses of the space freighter.

Despite this, Debug also manages to be incredibly boring.

In the far reaches of the galaxy, a massive space freighter stands derelict. Six young computer hackers are sent across space to the freighter, charged with debugging the malevolent computer systems of rogue programmes as punishment for their cyber crimes. As they separate to apply their skills, it soon becomes clear that they are no match for a vengeful artificial intelligence that will stop at nothing to become human. What secret does this ship hold and what fate lies in store for the hackers?

It seems that it is the ultimate curse of the film fanatic: the more excited you are about an upcoming release, the more disappointed you will be when it just doesn’t live up to your high standards. This was certainly the case with Debug. The premise sounded incredible and I was really looking forward to different kind of psychological thriller, one set in space and with a plot that involved hackers, artificial intelligence and a lot of action. In fact, the trailer just about promised non-stop action.

Warning: Spoilers ahead. The problem is that in creating a beautiful, atmospheric and claustrophobic film – the cinematography really is quite good – the director managed to achieve a clinical, sterile and rather eventless film in which the characters are picked off one by one and nothing really happens. Even the deaths seems to happen with such precision that you’re left wondering how exactly you should feel about them. It really did remind me of those nightmares where you die and wake up in a hospital ward which is frightening in and of itself but nothing else happens because that is scary enough.

Ultimately the film relies too much on what amounts to be a couple of plot holes. Why did Kaida (Jeananne Goossen) lead them to the space freight? She said it was to get them home sooner but how on earth could she possibly suspect that would work?

There were some good performances in the film. Jason Momoa was very good in his role as the murderous I Am but I would certainly have liked him to ham up the horror a bit. Adam Butcher was good in his role as James McKay although how he landed up being the protagonist of the film when he spends most of the climax passing out and bleeding to death is beyond me. Kaida (Jeananne Goosen) is the ultimate anti-heroine of the film but was let down greatly by a really flaky plotline involving a colleague she may or may not have murdered in order to save the rest of the crew.

Ultimately, I’d say that Debug was the greatest film disappointment for me in 2014.

I'd give Debug a disappointing two out of five stars. I wouldn't say it is a complete waste of time but I'd definitely recommend that you catch it on DVD or Blu-ray rather than going to see it at the cinema.

Released by Signature Entertainment, Debug is out on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK and is available for purchase from Amazon.co.uk.

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Horror Film Review: Reaper (2014)

Moments before his scheduled execution, a convicted death cult congregation leader escapes to continue his murderous rampage. Known only as Reaper, the killer is on a vigilante mission to bring justice and vengeance upon the unholy. Sinners be warned!

Meanwhile a young woman leaves a message for her mother assuring her she is in safe hands before proceeding to hitchhike across the USA. What could possibly go wrong?

Released just in time for Halloween, Reaper is the latest slasher horror from director Philip Shih and writers Mark James and James Jurdi. Taking place mostly at the isolated Last Chance Hotel, the film follows the Reaper’s harrowing exploits as he cuts down some very savoury characters only to meet his match in young Natalie (Shayla Beesley). Reaper stars Danny Trejo, Vinnie Jones and Jake Busey as well as Justin Henry (the kid from Kramer vs. Kramer) as the truly creepy Last Chance desk clerk Caine.

So is it any good? Well, not really, in fact it is pretty bad and not in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way. It’s not scary, the acting is terrible and the cinematography has the feel of a really bad quality soft porn show that you sometimes catch by accident when flipping channels at 2am. Not that we can expect much more from the slasher genre, but the premise sounded really interesting and if the directors had focused more on the Reaper’s truly sick purpose and less on Natalie’s cleavage, it could have been a better film.

Would I recommend Reaper? It would be okay for a Friday night in and would make for a great drinking game – you could drink every time they show a gratuitous part of Natalie’s anatomy or every time a reasonable actor like Danny Trejo gets to say something truly hackneyed – but no, I wouldn’t recommend it. There are much better films coming out on DVD this month in any case, including the disturbing Open Grave which I’ll review next week.

I give Reaper a disappointing two out of five stars. The premise wasn't bad and it could have been a decent film with a bit more focus on the actual killer himself.

Released by Signature Entertainment, Reaper will be out on DVD and Blu-ray on 6 October 2014. It is available for purchase from Amazon.co.uk.

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Audiobook Review: Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

Anna Dressed in Blood was a darkly atmospheric horror story by Kendare Blake.  Terrifying in parts, it told the story of ghost hunter Cas Lowood and the ghost who changed his life.  It was beautifully written, almost lyrical and poetic in parts, and was ultimately devastating.

While I knew that a sequel for Anna Dressed in Blood had already been penned, I nevertheless felt at the time of reading that it would have been perfect as a stand alone novel.  Having listened to the audiobook sequel Girl of Nightmares, I still feel that way.

Girl of Nightmares picks up six months after the events of Anna Dressed in Blood.  As Cas and his friends Thomas and Carmel struggle to pick up the pieces and carry on with their normal lives, it becomes increasingly clear that whatever happened to Anna isn’t good and it certainly isn’t over.  The problem is that Thomas and Carmel have their own problems and when Anna begins to appear to Cas both in dreams and in waking nightmares, he doesn’t have their support.

Girl of Nightmares sees the trio travel to England and Scotland to track down the mysterious Order of the Biodag Dubh as Cas becomes increasingly determined to embark on a solution that might just cost him his life.

It is unfortunate, but I really did not enjoy this audiobook reading of Girl of Nightmares.  Initially, I was surprised because none of the characters sounded like I expected them to.  Cas is a powerful ghost hunter and Thomas an equally powerful witch but narrator August Ross’s breathy, mild tones seemed to do them no justice at all.  This is to be expected with audiobooks though and is usually something you grow used to.

The problem occurred when Cas and Thomas went to London.  Seriously, no one here speaks like that.  Londoners no longer sound like Eliza Doolittle and possibly never did.  It was not just August Ross’s accents that jarred but Blake’s writing too. We don't actually call sausages ‘bangers’, the ‘north country’ refers to the north of England not Scotland, and heads were not displayed on pikes on Tower Bridge (mainly because beheadings stopped in 1747 and Tower Bridge was only built between 1886 and 1894).

I became quite nervous when I heard that the trio were travelling to Scotland, and sure enough, Ross’s accent was simply diabolical. 

It has to be said, accents are extremely hard to do.  One has only to listen to the way they butchered the American accents in BBC’s Spooks to know that it can happen to anyone.  But it was both the narrator and the writing that went wrong with this one. Perhaps the accents wouldn't have been so obvious without the audio narration but I have been unable to read the novel since without imagingin the accents.

Beyond the accents, I missed the Thunder Bay, Ontario setting.  Everything about the journey to Britain felt clichéd from the mannerisms and accents, to their host’s library of ancient tomes, to the stuffy, sinister and Masonic-like secret Order of the Biodag Dubh.  Coupled with the trek through the forest, it simply felt like too much had been lifted from other novels.  I also felt that the gratuitous swearing detracted from rather than added to the story.

I would absolutely recommend Anna Dressed in Blood to anybody but unfortunately cannot say the same of Girl of Nightmares.  Not surprisingly, it seems that I am in the minority in my opinion so if you would like to do so, you can purchase the unabridged audiobook version of Girl on Nightmares narrated by August Ross from Audiogo.com.

Two stars out of five.

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Book Review: Outside In by Maria V Snyder

Outside In is the sequel to Maria V. Snyder's dystopian, young adult novel Inside Out.  In Inside Out, it was established that the Insiders were living in a giant structure that was hurtling through space and that Outside did not represent blue skies and green fields but rather Outer Space. Using live sheep and vegetables grown through hydroponics to feed the population, the systems of Inside were self-sustaining and everything was recycled to further perpetuate the system.

Inside was divided into two main population groups: the uppers who controlled the systems and the lowers who performed the manual labour. The Travas family and the Population Control Police controlled the population of Inside with brutal and often lethal means and the seeds of discontent amongst the uppers and lowers were sown.

Inside Out reached its climax with the uprising and rebellion lead by a scrub named Trella and Outside In begins after those events. The Travas family are all locked up and Trella hopes to return to a quiet life while the newly formed Committee runs the affairs of Inside.

Trella's quiet life does not last long, however, as a series of attacks rock Inside (literally), thus putting Inside’s support systems into grave jeopardy.  Added to that, affairs between Trella and her boyfriend, Riley, are strained as he struggles to understand why she won't stand up and be a decent leader to her followers.

I had read Inside Out in February this year and gave it a 5-star review on Blogcritics as I’d found it innovative, imaginative and exciting.  It is reasonable to say, therefore, that I started reading Outside In with pretty high intentions.  Unfortunately, the book simply didn’t match up to those expectations.  Perhaps it was intentional and mirrored Trella's desire not to get involved, but the first half of Outside In truly dragged. It felt mechanical and stilted, as if the events in the book were being reported, rather than a story told. 

This resulted in a lack of depth in the novel.  Snyder has received criticism from readers in the past for constantly rehashing the events in her previous novels (this was especially true of Fire Study, the last in the Study series). With Outside In however, I felt that Snyder did not do enough to recap readers on the structure and systems of Inside and the various characters.  Characters are constantly introduced to the story and Snyder makes constant reference to the unique structure of time in Inside but it all seemed rather confusing and distracting given her lack of detail and depth.

Both books fall into the romantic fiction corner of the young adult market and perhaps most telling was that I did not relate to any of the men in the book, especially Riley who is meant to be Trella's love interest. There was simply no chemistry between Riley and Trella and in fact, I spent most of the book convinced that she was going to land up with another character Logan to whom she showed far more interest, respect and attention.

As a whole, Outside In felt extremely rushed as if Snyder realised she had dragged to the middle of the book and then needed to conclude the book in a certain time frame or page count.

Gone was the expert storytelling and weaving in of clues to be found in Inside Out or Poison Study from Snyder's Study Series. Instead, the reader was simply told of the constant betrayals and mutating loyalties of the characters in the book. Ultimately, the reader was left not knowing who to believe or, indeed, what the truth actually was. This was certainly complicated by the shallow characterisation in the book.  It was impossible to gleam the characters' true motives or intentions as no real depth or purpose was written into their actions.

As the book rushes towards its end, the great battle, resolution and conclusion take about fifteen pages and it seems like few of the great questions are really answered.  It is frustrating to say the least and it is hard to ascertain whether Snyder is setting the reader up for another book in the series or whether the answers were altogether too vague and insubstantial to leave an impression.

As impressive as it is that Snyder has managed to produce eight novels in six years, it is important that Snyder focus on quality as opposed to quantity.  Poison Study and Inside Out were fantastic novels introducing rich and wonderful worlds full of detail, imagination and innovation.  Perhaps this level of disappointment would not be possible with a less talented author but Maria V. Snyder is talented and I hope that she slows down somewhat and focuses again on weaving exciting and complex stories.

Outside In is not a stand alone novel and it would be hard to follow the events if the reader had not read Inside Out first.  However, the reader could certainly get away with enjoying the first novel and leaving out the sequel altogether.  I give Outside In two out of five stars and would possibly hesitate before reading a third novel in this series.

You can purchase Outside In by Maria V. Snyder at Amazon.co.uk ¦ Amazon.com

I'd recommend that you first purchase Inside Out at Amazon.co.uk ¦ Amazon.com

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Article first published as Book Review: Outside In by Maria V Snyder on Blogcritics. This review contains affiliate links

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Music Review: Klaxons – Surfing the Void

Artist: Klaxons Album: Surfing the Void Label: Polydor  Release date: 23 August 2010 Genre: Dance-punk Rating: 2/5 stars

When Klaxons burst on to the UK music scene in 2006, they took everyone by surprise.  They were edgy, bold and daring and critics scrambled as they tried to box them into one particular genre.  They failed as Klaxons fitted into neither the indie rock or dance punk genres and soon the nu rave term was coined.  Forever arrogant and avant-garde, Klaxons tried unsuccessfully to distance themselves from the nu rave label, but the more they tried, the more they became champions of the scene.

Their debut album Myths of the Near Future was one of the strongest debut albums to hit the English indie music scene in years.  It featured ten energetic and manic tracks that were massive hits on dance floors across the country.  Klaxons live shows were legendary with the band performing in increasingly bizarre outfits, while their surreal lyrics had fans rushing to read the works of Richard Brautigan and J. G. Ballard. 

The accolades and awards began to stream in during 2007 as Klaxons won Best New Band at the NME Awards, XFM’s Live Breakthrough Act, and the 2007 Mercury Music Prize for Myths of the Near Future.  By early 2008, Klaxons were kings of the indie rock scene as they won the NME Award for Best Album for Myths of the Near Future. 

Shortly thereafter, Klaxons virtually disappeared from the scene and began to record their next album.  A couple of new tracks began to surface at live gigs and fans generally liked the edgy sounds of the tracks, including “Valley of the Calm Trees”.  Disaster struck in March 2009 however, when NME reported that the label had shelved the sophomore Klaxons album and forced them to re-record it.  Vocalist and frontman Jamie Reynolds was quoted as saying "Yes [we were asked to re-record part of the album]. Because we've made a really dense, psychedelic record. We've made a really heavy record and it isn't the right thing for us, I understand and know that. First and foremost we're a pop band. I haven't thought about that for a long time, and now it's in the forefront of my mind."

It was the first signs of what would become death by record label.

The next sign came while watching Klaxons live on stage at Exit Festival in July 2010.  Gone were the crazy costumes, the stage theatrics and the massive personalities.  Instead, there were four nicely dressed, well-behaved lads singing perfectly nice tunes.  The tracks from Myths of the Near Future sounded watered down and tame, while the new material lacked soul or personality.

It is safe to say that when Surfing the Void was finally released in August 2010, I felt underwhelmed.  I wasn’t sure what to think really.  Klaxons had been my favourite band for close to four years and yet the album was simply disappointing.  I tried as hard as I could to push through those feelings as there were numerous albums that I had initially disliked (including all of the Pixies albums) but had then grown to love above all others.  I began a period of listening to Surfing the Void repeatedly, trying to make it grow on me.

That was when I had the most shocking revelation: I wasn’t just bored or underwhelmed with the album, I hated the first six tracks.  Title track “Surfing the Void” and “Extra Astronomical” were the worst.  Jamie Reynolds’s vocals began to grate on my nerves and the tracks seemed to make my ears bleed.  Now I like my music loud, edgy and noisy.  The Klaxons track “Magick” will go down as one of my favourite tracks of all time and the new Does It Offend You, Yeah? album Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You is probably my album of the year for 2011.  It is not that the first six tracks are noisy, they are just whiny-sounding ghosts of the tracks they could have been and would have been were it not for record label interference.  The best example of this is “Valley Of The Calm Trees” which sounded great live but lost all of it’s charm once it was recorded.

The album definitely picks up in the second half and “Twin Flames”, “Flashover”, “Future Memories” and “Cypherspeed” are good tracks but none of those songs is an absolutely winner.  There were two tracks on Myths of the Near Future that didn’t become my favourite song at one time or other as all of the others became firm favourites to be played over and over again.  None of the last four songs on Surfing the Void has that “play to death” quality.

Admittedly, it is difficult to see where Klaxons will go from here.  The band recently cancelled their upcoming US tour which was to have included an appearance at Coachella.  Fans had accepted that they needed to go louder and bold for their sophomore album but they landed up being tamed by their label.  Can they recover from this and return with a third album to take the scene by storm?  I doubt it.  If you look at their promo photos, it looks like the light has gone out of Jamie Reynolds’s eyes while James Righton and Simon Taylor-Davis have long looked like they’d prefer to be somewhere else.  Who knows? A follow up album couldn’t be much worse. 

It took a long time to finally admit to the disappointment of Surfing the Void but I give the album two out of five stars.

If you really feel you must, you can purchase Surfing the Void at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.  I’d recommend streaming the whole album first though, just to be sure: Stream: Klaxons - Surfing the Void.

You’ll be a lot happier if you buy Myths of the Near Future instead at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

Article first published as Music Review: Klaxons - Surfing the Void on Blogcritics.

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