You know, this is one of those damn movies I never thought would see the light of day (hehe lame vampire pun). It was announced, delayed, then disappeared for a few years before getting dumped on HBO Max like a dead carcass at the slaughterhouse. Years ago I reviewed the novel for Salem’s Lot and since then I’ve read it at least twice and I can say it is a damn good book and a pretty solid vampire tale. While I never saw either mini-series, the trailer for 2024 was enough to make Savior and I at least excited for a flaming dumpster fire. Did we get it?
Sadly no. Salem’s Lot 2024 is not a garbage fire. That’s not to say it’s particularly great or even good. The cast gives decent performances given a pretty crammed script. Much of the soul, the suspense, and characters of the book are crushed, compacted, and repackaged into a forgettable vampire romp. It’s the kind you can forget the same day you watch it which honestly is a shame given how good the book was. The vampires are more like zombies. Barlow isn’t a nightmarish ghoul like in the 79 mini-series but a parody of that memorable design. There’s not even as much gore or hilarious jumpscares as I thought there’d be in the trailer. In the end, read the book or seek out another vamp movie because good or bad, you’ll remember it more than this thing that should’ve stayed in the development grave. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Grief is a terrible thing everyone needs to overcome in their lives. For widower, Abe, fishing is his great release. After losing his wife, fishing helped him get his life back on track. When his coworker, Dan, goes through an unimaginable tragedy, Abe extends a hand of friendship and offers to fish with him. While a quiet friendship blooms between the widowed men, Abe can’t help but see Dan drowning in despair…until they stop for breakfast on a rainy morning, going towards a spot Abe never heard of that Dan seems all too eager to fish at. Almost obsessively so. During this breakfast, they are treated to a folktale of the river, dark magic, the impossible, and Der Fischer who may have opened the gates between life and death. Desperately the men are on a course that might not just cost them their lives, but also their souls as Dan is willing to sacrifice it all for what he lost? Will Abe make the same choice?
So immediately when reading this I thought of a more Lovecraftian take on Pet Sematary . In many ways, I can see it but Langan weaves a pretty solid story telling the folktale of Der Fischer in between the main story. His writing story is very easy to get into and flowed very smoothly to me. Some will get put off by the story within a story aspect of the novel but he neatly pulls it off and neither story feels overstayed. I like his depictions of Dan’s rising mania and Abe’s internal battle against the abominations they face. I found myself wanting to know more about what Der Fischer unleashed and got to see more horrors from the other world. In the end, if you liked Pet Sematary and wished there was Lovecraft in it or wanted to get into cosmic horror but wanted something more modern, the Fisherman is a quick, well-written read I’d recommend. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Mary is a nobody in every sense of the word. Banking on the dreaded 5-0 and wading into menopause, alone in the world except for her “loved ones” (tiny little porcelain figurines she talks to, her life turns upside down once she loses her job. A job that barely pays her enough to get by as is. A sliver lining comes when her loathsome, dying aunt Nadine calls begging for help. After pissing off Mary’s cousin, Nadine is alone and unable to care for herself. Mary is soon left to journey from New York to the eerie desert town where she grew up. Returning home resurfaces not only her repressed hatred for her crass, despicable aunt by the layers of trauma she spent her life hiding as well as what might be the secrets of the town itself? With bodies piling up, visions playing Mary, and an obsession with a hospital that had been converted from an infamous serial killer’s home, the question becomes who and what is Mary?
So I read this book for my book club, going in completely fresh. I knew nothing about the book or author and was even kind of surprised it came out in 2022. As someone who sucks at socializing, suffers from a host of mental health issues, and is just awkward as hell, I felt for Mary. I found her to almost be an updated Carrie, someone shy, frumpy and pathetically beaten down who just wanted to matter. This story takes a lot of crazy ass turns from being a ghost story, to a psychological thriller, to some bizarre Midsommar levels of WTF. The book deserves to be experienced because it is fun as hell trying to figure out where its going. However fun that particular aspect is, it causes some issues towards the end. A character I hated got a half-assed redemption and the ultimate conclusion, while being fun and over-the-top gory, didn’t really satisfy me. The ending couple of chapters felt unnecessarily open-ended, but given how weird of a ride this story was, I can’t tell you if a sequel would work.
In the end, I enjoyed this book a lot but I didn’t love it. It’s very well written and really engaging but the ending as well as some plot choices fumble it from being great. Absolutely a good read worth checking out if you want a weirder kind of horror book. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Hey kids, have you ever heard of splatterpunk? Have you ever watched Willy Wonka and wished there was Saw in it? Well, Aaron Beauregard has you covered. Before I begin, the cover of this book tells you exactly what you’re getting into. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, fuck that, here’s a good exception to the rule. This book is gnarly so if you have a weak stomach and the idea of children dying triggers you at all as well as some really, really WTF sexual stuff involving poop at one point, this book is absolutely not for you.
3 low-income families receive the chance of a lifetime from the reclusive billionaire and philanthropist, Geraldine Borden. She and her adopted son, Rock, have invited the families with their total 8 children to come and test some new state-of-the-art playground equipment in exchange for $3,000 per family. Not a bad deal, right? The parents even get to relax in their own private theater and monitor their children at play…until things go violently wrong. Ambushed by ravenous dogs, the children are chased through a razor blade-laced chute to a dungeonous series of macabre games where survival is the only reward. The parents, captive in places, are forced to watch there beloved children fight not only the horrific games but also themselves as Geraldine’s twisted games unfold…
Holy shit this book gave me whiplash. Is it a fun read? Hell no! Is it an exciting read I literally couldn’t put down? I really couldn’t. The kids are the superstars of the story and a lot of praise to Beauregard for writing thoughtful, authentic children instead of angelic Hollywood kind of kids. I felt for quite a few of them on their reactions and grisly fates while also cheering when the villain of the eight gets his just deserts. The games are eerie and pretty imaginative with some incredibly disturbing outcomes. I like that Geraldine is in no way a sympathetic or redeemable villain in a modern world of tragic villains. Rock is a really tragic character and his redemption at the end is well-earned. The flaw in the book is the parent sections which do drag the pacing down. The book is organized into 3 POVs: the kids, the parents, and Geraldine. The parents are literally locked in place and most of their sections revolve around reacting to what just happened to their kids. It makes the pacing a bit bumpy, especially around the middle.
So in the end I really enjoyed the book, though all be damned if I didn’t need a hot shower and a hug after. No, there’s no happy ending and yes this book is depressing and horrific but the ending lands and is self-contained which is cool. It’s honestly well worth a read and well written if you can get past the grotestuque subject matter. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
What do you think of when you hear about the Old West? Cowboys, Indians, covered wagons, and dusty saloons where a shootout is a shot of whiskey and a whore away? John Wayne? Clint Eastwood? John Marsten? Well, like most people I did too. I heard many tales that this novel was one of the darkest, if not the darkest westerns ever written with one of the most fascinating villains in literature. Does it hold up to the claims?
The story begins with a young runaway referred to as The Kid who finds his way into the Glanton Gang, a crew of scalp hunters roaming across the west near Texas and Mexico in the 1850s. Normally I’d go deeper into the story but Blood Meridian doesn’t have much of a coventional plot. Much of the book is an experience in haunting philoshy and depravity. For real, this book is grim as hell so if you are easily triggered by racism, violence to people or animals, gore, or rape stay away from this book.
Cormac McCarthy (Rest in Peace) beautifully illustrates a hellish depiction of the Old West and the horrors of man left his own devices. There is some truly horrifying imagery and the way the book is written, I felt strained as the gang does getting worn down after dozens of bloody raids and losses in a unforgiving desert. Could this be a second hand horror story? I can see it in the way Dante’s Inferno could be seen that way. I really like that the Kid is not a good kid corrupted by the debauchery or even has anything close to a redemption- nope- he’s just as cutthroat and ruthless as Glanton and the rest. The standout, the man who does steal the show of the book, is the mysterious Judge Holden. He’s a huge, hulking hairless albino man that is almost inhumanly intelligent and depraved more than the rest; the sermons he gives are legendary and off putting as hell. Whenever Holden appears I was instantly griped and I think the praise he receives as a villain is well earned.
So is this book a masterpiece, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. First, this is not written like a modern book. McCarthy is a novelist in the true sense of the word; ten pages in I said “oh shit this is one of them smart people books we don’t get anymore”. He won’t hold your hand. He has a pretty impressive vocabulary. You have to pay attention. One thing I admit irked the shit out of me was that there are no quotation marks but an awful lot of dialogue; do you see why I said pay attention? He also loves giant sentences with little punctuation so if you are trying to rush, things will blend together. The pacing is a double edged sword. 350 pages doesn’t feel like it.
In the end, this book is a masterpiece of dark fiction but be warned it’s not the easiest read and if the book didn’t hit you hard enough, the ending will. May the gaming gods bring you glory and like the Judge, you keep dancing on and on gleefully.
After being surprised by Jaws (novel) I was really curious how much Spielberg changed for the movie. While I have reviewed the Jurassic Park series and while the movie is pretty much a cultural phenomenon, I’m not going to regurgitate the plot because the general plot is the same. What I’m going to do is basically talk about the differences and while I actually really enjoyed the book for some pretty damn different reasons.
So the book for Jurassic Park, while having a lot of the splendor and wonder of the movie, there is actually a lot of smart ethical questions and corporate evil in the book. In fact, Hammond is actually an eerily evil sociopath that is hell-bent on basically being his own god, no matter who dies in the process. The book never feels preachy about the ethical issues and the science but expertly feels like a grim kind of foreshadowing of how everything goes belly up. Another huge difference is the body count and gore in the book which is definitely past the pg-13 boundary and a lot of characters die in the book that don’t in the movies. The climax is more intense and well, a bit more brutal but also more realistic and fitting. Pretty much the only part of the book I couldn’t stand was Alex, Tim’s now younger sister (in the movie she was the older); she’s annoying and I swear she almost gets her, Timmy, and Grant killed at least half a dozen times in some pretty idiotic ways. Hammond maybe my favorite part of the book, starting as the kindly if not delusional grandpa figure he was in the book to becoming a heartless bastard as the story unfolds. The book is reasonably paced and Crichton had a great way of not talking down to his readers but not dumbing his themes down. In the end, I highly recommend the novel for Jurrasic Park, especially on Audible like I enjoyed it. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
The original reason not to go in the water, how many few movies have ever become as legendary as Jaws? Well, like Spielberg’s other book based classics Jurassic Park , Schindler’s List, War of the Worlds, and Ready Player One, Jaws came from a novel as well. If you aren’t familiar, Savior covered Jaws (1975) back when, so I’m going to skip the synopsis and stick to the novel’s content.
Well, let’s start by saying Jaws is a story of many things, and the shark just kinda feels there for most of it. The story mostly focuses on the town of Amity’s struggling finances, Sheriff Brody looking into political corruption and his budding marital issues that becomes a whole other tangent as Ellen Brody sleeps with Matt Hooper…oh and did I mention a shark is killing people? Seriously, if you thought there was a serious lack of shark in the movie, well, the book doesn’t give you much more except for some gory aftermath. While their are some good tense moments towards the end, there are a whole mess of times I unintentionally laughed my ass off or asked WTF aloud much like IT (the novel) . For example, the comical over the top reaction to finding the first victim, Ellen and Hooper’s WTF sexual fantasies, and the cartoonish, sleazy mayor gave me a lot of laughs. Like the movie, Quint is awesome but he doesn’t show up until almost 2/3s of the way through the book. I also have to give the book credit on the serious downer ending. As for pacing, the book is a slow draw; on audiobook I feel it’s more effective because I feel like if I was reading it I would’ve lost myself easy. So I honestly have to say the book is meh overall and I think the movie is a much better story and unless you were a super fan of the movie, the book is pretty skippable. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
After a near death encounter with the infamous Xenomorph species along with Amanda Ripley, Zula Hendricks has taken a security lead gig on Jericho 3, a a developing colony. The aliens haunt her nightmares and have taken a toll on her body but her drive to rid the galaxy of the beasts is still ablaze; at least she’s nowhere near Wey-Yu. But the terror never stops for long, a deranged scientist gets his hands on an egg and the experiment kicks off to study the beast, but something’s different; the host was a longtime medical guinea pig infected with the traces of a highly contagious flesh eating disease. What does this mean for the new born Xenomorph? One of the universe’s deadliest monsters has evolved…
Prototype is a actually a pretty good Alien story, despite the stock movie cover which originally put me off. The plague alien ( they call it a Necromorph in the book but I don’t want to compare Alien to DeadSpace ) is actually pretty badass and a really cool idea. Hendricks is a pretty good protagonist dealing with the pressures of being a leader and dealing with new kind of monster. I like that this story is a damn good case of how much devastation 1 Xenomorph can cause. While it’s connected to Isolation and a follow up comic, the book stands pretty well on it’s own. It’s well paced and it doesn’t take long for things to happen. In the end, Alien: Prototype is a fun Alien standalone that adds something new to the dreaded acid blooded monsters and is worth checking out. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
So for those who have been keeping up with things on the blog, my first book is debuting through Barnes and Noble’s website as Savior covered in The Flies Inside Pre-order . That being said, I myself enjoy reading books on reading to find truth on how to improve or get a laugh on how full of shit the author is. I’m glad to say On Writing by King is one of the most helpful and insightful I’ve heard. In this book, we get a good look at the legendary writer’s back story as well as some of his personnel tips on the trade. If you have Audible, I highly recommend adding this to your library because it’s pretty cool hearing it straight from the man himself as well as from his son Joe Hill, another good author in his own right. While not my typical content for review, I’ll say it’s well worth a read or listen for good advice and some stories from a legend, especially if you are a writer like myself. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Haven’t we all found ourselves in the clenches of a soul ravaging dead end job? Amy, like many of us, finds herself deep into a tedious life as a ORSK partner, employee of one of the largest furniture chains in the US. With dreams of a well paying desk job, away from ORSK and her hardass boss Basil, her mom’s trailer, and her roommates she can’t afford to pay. One day Basil pulls her into the office one day, and rather than fire Amy, he makes her a offer: stay with him and another partner overnight to catch a vandal messing with the store before a huge corporate visit. Easy cash, right? It turns out the answer behind the mischief may or not be partners wanting to stage a ghost hunting show, a random homeless dude, or something more sinister from the past.
This is a really strange read in a sense. Being a longtime retail slave I feel Amy’s pain here. The characters are alright and while the story takes awhile to build, the pay off is interesting enough. While the horror and comedy aspects aren’t great, the story is entertaining and familiar because of the retail experience. My favorite part is the beginning of each chapter with a old school ads that go to a dark place as the story continues. While its not for everybody, its a alright read that isn’t too long. In the end, it’s a alright book that’s checking out.
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