Nerd Alert! Books to Buy With Your Gift Cards!

 

As tentatively promised, it's time for another dive into some of the genre (and adjacent) books that I've been enjoying in recent weeks. Clean those glasses and dive in!

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathanial Philbrick

Nonfiction is a bit of an uphill climb for me, but there's one particular history subject that I can always read about: exploration/nautical hell. Chalk it up to having a passionate fifth grade teacher, but give me a biography of James Cook that details his brutal dismemberment or the horrors of scurvy as it knocked out his crew's teeth and yes, I'm fully there. In the Heart of the Sea is sort of the historical prequel to Moby Dick, an intimidating classic that I've circled like Pee-Wee Herman around the snake tank, knowing I SHOULD read it for its place in literary history, but terrified at the amount of likely dull whaling details I'm going to encounter. In the Heart of the Sea is thankfully a brisker but deeply informative look at the same era and industry, told well by Nathaniel Philbrick as he sorts pieces together the various accounts of the infamous Essex's voyage in 1820. Phlbrick's voice is engagingly entertaining, keeping the history lesson moving with great narrative skill. I certainly didn't expect to encounter 19th century dildos in chapter 2, if that tells you something.

TV/Movie Pairing:

The fascination of In the Heart of the Sea is wonderfully reminiscent of another property based on a nautical failure of the same era. If you loved Dan Simmons' The Terror, this ticks many of the same boxes. And more importantly, if you haven't checked out the wonderful (and vastly underrated) AMC miniseries adaptation, amend that today. Jarred Harris and Ciaran Hinds lead the cast through brutally stark art direction. Yes, the CGI monster is the least effective part (same goes for the presumably non-CGI monster in the book) but the human aspects and nature's wonder are beautifully done. Just promise me you'll skip the completely unrelated second season of the series, which assembled a completely new creative team to tell an unrelated story...very badly.

We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic In the 1980s by Richard Beck

TWO nonfiction on ONE list? What is HAPPENING? Well, hopefully not whatever went wrong with the world in the 1980s, when the system began to prosecute/persecute random citizens for corrupting the youth of America with witchcraft. The Satanic Panic is a dark chapter in this country's history, but not nearly enough is known about why and how it came to destroy so many lives. Author Richard Beck does a thorough dive into a few of the more prominent cases and effectively grounds the action so we the reader can better understand how 1988 California could so easily mimic 1692 Salem. It's all too familiar. 

TV/Movie Pairing

I'm still waiting for the world to find this Philip Schaeffer's Witch-Hunt, a made-for-pennies oddity that manages to develop a fascinating little story on dialog alone. Witch-Hunt is very much about how being part of the Satanic Panic might fester in someone decades later, and while you have to power through its early low budget strained rhythm, once you give in, there's a lot there. 

When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole

The horrors of gentrification take on a literal form in this contemporary tale of a Brooklyn neighborhood. The narrative is effectively split between Sydney, our hometown heroine ready to defend her territory from the invading wealthy whites, and Theo, a nice enough guy discovering his part in the problem. It's a fast-paced mystery with a solid payoff.

TV/Movie Pairing

I found When No One Is Watching by the tagline "the literary Get Out," and that really does fit. If you enjoyed one, you'll likely feel the same way about the other.

God Shot by Chelsea Bieker

Don't you kind of hate yourself for being so damn fascinated by cults? The details are always so strangely enthralling that you end up sucked into a story that almost always involves victimization, often of the marginalized or young. Chelsea Bieker's God Shot doesn't necessarily give us a story we haven't seen before, but she solidly places it from the point of view that we should most be listening to in these scenarios: a teenage girl who is thoroughly enamored by her faith's charismatic sham of a leader, but slowly discovers entirely for herself that there's something very wrong. It doesn't necessarily fall into the horror categorization, but it's deeply affecting in pulling you into a very dark place.

TV/Movie Pairing:

There are plenty of films and documentaries about cult victims, but one the best remains Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene. Like God Shot, it steadies itself in the perspective of a young woman taken in by the promises of an appealing man quickly proven to be horrible abuser. Now don't ever make me write out and remember the order of names in that title again.

Blood Autumn by Kathryn Ptacek

Is there anything more wonderful than discovering a used bookstore that has both cats AND a huge stretch of horror paperbacks? I stumbled upon such a gem on a recent vacation (the Book Corner in Niagara Falls, New York) and left with a literal boxful of random treasures, including this sexy vampire romp. I'd never heard of the author or title, but for $1, that juicy cover art couldn't be denied. And what a find! August Hamilton (amongst her many names) is a gorgeously drawn villain, a deeply carnal succubus who tears through men every which way. It's hard not to root for her.

TV/Movie Pairing

August makes you thirsty for the kind of glamourous lady vampire that sashayed through castles in the Hammer years. I confess that's a bit of a blind spot for me so at the lack of recommending the wrong one, I'll say you can never go wrong with Catherine Deneuve's otherworldly performance in The Hunger. If you're looking for something newer and woefully underrated, the divine Gemma Arterton shines in Neil Jordan's underappreciated Byzantium. 

Anything here strike your fancy? I'm always on the hunt for more reading, so if you've found adjacent picks to some of these, share them in the comments! And as always...

Ya Gotta Get a Gimmick

Silent House is one of those films that might be impossible to thoroughly discuss without spoiling. Though there is plenty to say about the gimmicky “single shot” illusion of the filming style, I can’t go into any detail whatsoever without erupting into a fit of how the major twist negates everything that makes the film annoyingly unique in the first place.

So here’s the non-spoilered review of Silent House: it’s a mildly new, occasionally unnerving haunted house(ish) tale with a great central performance and stupid filming gimmick that completely undoes everything about itself in the final act. One could do worse than watching it for 90 minutes, but one could also save his or herself a momentary spike in blood pressure when some things are revealed.

Now open that expired gallon of milk: we’re going to get spoilery.

Quick Plot: Sarah is a spacey young woman spending time with her dad and uncle as they clean up their old summer house, an isolated little property that has apparently been hosting angry squatters during the offseason. On this particular afternoon, our pretty heroine is visited by a mysterious girl claiming to be her old childhood pal. Sarah doesn’t seem to actually remember the woman, but she fakes it well enough before returning upstairs with her dad to throw away some childhood mementos and breathe in some wall mold. Everything is fine and dandy in a poorly lit manner until Sarah’s dad leaves the room, a giant bang is heard, and it becomes increasingly clear that someone has ominous plans for our leads.

Directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau (the same team that brought us Open Water), Silent House is occasionally effective, particularly in its first hour or so. Having absolutely no clue what menace is tormenting our star works incredibly well, and Elizabeth Olsen has the kind of glassy wide eyes to sell true fear. But much like Open Water, this is a film built more on gimmick than substance, and in that exists two problems:

1-The ‘one shot’ illusion doesn’t really add much to what we’re watching, making us instead constantly distracted by the fact that we can’t really see anything

2-Once the film’s twist is revealed, it negates everything, primarily, the entire one-shot illusion

I’m going to spoil Silent House. And I am not going to feel bad about it:

About halfway through the film, I thought to myself, “I wonder if this is one of those ‘the victim IS the killer’ twists.” But then I said, well, that CAN’T be the case since everything we’ve thus far seen has been this “one continuous (not really) shot” and our eyes have been on Sarah the entire time. So if she is indeed the killer, that means I just watched absolutely nothing.

And then, like a pixie cut sporting French woman wielding an axe in the early 21st century, little Elizabeth Olsen proves to be starring in a nonsensical J-horror of sorts meeting Law & Order: SVU.

Oh yeah: and she did it.

Right. She, this character whom we’ve had our eyes on straight for 90 minutes, somehow managed to take down two much bigger men when we weren’t looking. Except, you know, we WERE looking. For the entire film. Which was “one-shot.” Meaning “one-shot where our eyes were on Sarah the entire time.” But she’s the killer. You missed that I guess.

Much like the better, but still innately flawed High Tension, Silent House doesn’t really deserve to exist as a movie in its current state. See, think back to ANOTHER film with a twist I’m about to spoil, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.

Gandalf is working HARD today.

In The Village, the audience gets a twist ending that has no effect on the characters whatsoever. Bryce Dallas Howard’s heroine learns about the twist, but then other factors come into play that negates them in her mind so therefore, the only character actually affected by what happened onscreen is someone played by the director in his signature unnecessary cameo in the final scene. We spent 100 minutes watching something that ultimately has no effect on anything.

Sort of like how in High Tension--

(Sorry dude)

We watch (admittedly, a much better) mess wherein what we think we’re seeing isn’t actually happening in the least. 

Had Silent House been told through more conventional filmmaking techniques, it would not have been a great film but it could have been a good one packing a strong lead and some effective scares. But because it’s based on a well-received Uruguayan film that made waves due to its style, Kentis and Lau have created the equivalent of a stylish rain coat made of shaving cream. Yes, it looks neat, but as soon as you dare test it out for its purpose, the whole thing evaporates.

Silent House is scary at times. I’ll give it that. But once you discover its secret, what you REALLY discover is that every minute of its running time is a fantasy of its makers. The one-shot trick means we can’t even chalk up Sarah’s psychosis to a second personality. How could someone else exist in her mind when we’ve watched her in REAL TIME? 

I am perfectly fine and encouraging of filmmakers using new means to tell stories, just as I am positively okay with token twist endings. But when you pair the two together in a way that doesn’t make sense, it’s like putting hot chocolate on unicorn steak. 

Well, maybe not that analogy since hot chocolate covered unicorn steak sounds positively delicious. My point is this: if you want to use a filming gimmick, you have to be sure it makes sense for the story you want to tell. A one-shot film could be perfectly fine. But when you apply that trick to a script like Silent House, you are annulling the very film you are trying to make. 

In case it’s not clear, I am angry. 

High Notes

As she demonstrated earlier last year with the complexity of Martha Mary May Marlene (or Mandy Melissa Marie Megan Marcia Marcia Marcia, I give up), Olsen is proving to be one of the most interesting actresses to emerge from her generation. Yes, the role is a written like a mess, but Olsen does the best she can to make us not hate Sarah, even when the script calls for her to hide under yet another table

I’ve said this time and time before: it is easier to fight the forces of evil with your hair out of your face. So thank you, Sarah, for grabbing that hair tie amidst the threat of attack

Low Notes

Oh well, I don’t, I mean, what can I say about A MOVIE THAT GETS FAMOUS FOR ITS GIMMICK EVEN THOUGH THE GIMMICK MAKES THE MOVIE NOT MAKE ANY SENSE

Lessons Learned

When in doubt, hide under furniture. Your sociopathic subconscious will NEVER think to look there

Though production on the actual film has now been discontinued and the far improved technology of the digital world has rendered them obsolete, one should still always keep a Polaroid camera on hand. If nothing else, it’s a mildly effective source of short spurts of light

If you’re worried about the audience not being able to know who a character is in relation to another, be sure to have one constantly acknowledge said relationship in every bit of dialogue, i.e., “My brother can really get on my nerves!” or “I’m not leaving my brother!” or “Look, little brother…” and so on.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Silent House made me very angry. In the words of Project Runway’s spectacular contestant Dimitri, it is a one way monkey but I shall add, it is a one way monkey without directions to that one way. Olsen gives a better performance than the script deserves, and while there are occasional shots of intrigue, there’s also the whole “the camera seems to be lingering on that empty space. I bet there---oh, there goes a shadow” moments that make for a great trailer and predictable movie. If you’re easily infuriated by bad endings, stay away. I imagine the complete nonsense of the twist is what warranted Silent House an “F” grade from theatrical audiences, and while this is certainly a better film than some other Friday night junk, it is indeed built upon a premise that ultimately damns it to a realm of boos hisses.