The Others: Bet You Didn't See That One Coming

Story time: I got my taste for the supernatural from my dad. While he slowly eased me into the world of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror with super hero cartoons every Saturday, it morphed into a shared interest in the paranormal. I was in middle school when he brought home The Others, starring Nicole Kidman and directed by Alejandro Amenábar. I remember watching it late one night on my laptop without any idea what it was about. All I knew was my dad wanted to see it so it must be good. I’ve always been decent at figuring out the ends of stories, and I wasn’t half bad even then. But what stuck with me even years after first seeing The Others was the thrill of not seeing it coming. I’ve only come across two stories that have completely caught me off guard with their twist endings, one being Dennis Lehane’s novel Shutter Island and the other being The Others.

I loved how unexpected the ending was when I first saw it, so much that the next day I watched it to see what clues I had missed. Several years’ worth of alleged maturity and wisdom later when I watched it for this class, I paid attention to every detail. The only indication I found of a major twist ending was that none of the wardrobe choices quite matched the style of the 1940s, which is when the story takes place. Yet the wardrobe choices were so subtle, I’m not sure I would’ve noticed them unless I was paying attention. If anyone found any other clues, please let me know!

When thinking about the twist ending of The Others and the lack of clues I found pointing to it, I couldn’t help but wonder if the twist was a bit of a cheat. It’s been my experience that twist endings all have clues pointing to them. The truly masterful twists leave clues that are so subtle, they’re hard to find unless you go looking for them. This held true in Shutter Island, yet not so much in The Others. Unless I’m missing something (which is very likely), it’s not that the clues were well hidden, there simply weren’t any.

While I love being taken off guard by an ending, I felt a little… well, betrayed. There’s a difference between being surprised and being blindsided, and The Others has left me blindsided multiple times even though I know what’s going to happen. No matter how I look at it, I keep coming back to deus ex machina--god from the machine. 

Yet, maybe that was the point of the story—not only to take a trope and turn it on its head, but to not let the viewers know they were watching the story upside down the entire time. As you might can guess, I have internal conflict over this movie and what the story achieves. I love it, I always will, but I feel gypped by the ending. There was nothing, not even in retrospect, to get me used to the idea that (SPOILER ALERT)

Nicole Kidman and her kids have been dead the entire time.

At the end of the day, The Others will remain one of my favorite movies. The atmosphere is spot on, the characters are memorable, and it has a twist ending that has stuck with me for about ten years. While I don’t want to translate Amenábar’s technique into my writing, I can respect it for leaving me breathless and wondering. 

I'll Have My Second Sight with a Side Order of Snow: The Shining by Stephen King

Ah, Stephen King. Why did it take me so long to finally read one of your horror novels? The world may never know.

The Shining by King was the first novel so far this term that I truly enjoyed reading. I went in with the expectations from what I know of the movie: Jack Nicholson with an axe and his head stuck through broken door slats shouting, “Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!” No, wait, that was the only expectation I had going into The Shining and that scene wasn’t even in the book. Ah well.

What The Shining did for me that the other books this term haven’t so far was fill me with a sense of dread. It wasn’t constant, else I probably would have been exhausted reading the doorstop of a thing. It was sprinkled throughout so that I was never quite comfortable. A huge part was due to a child being the catalyst for all the paranormal activity.

Danny being only six years old and having the hotel go after him because he has the Shine or Second Sight put me on edge. I like Danny. If he was real, I’d want to scoop him up in a hug and tell him everything will be okay. That the hotel wants his power to stay "alive" heightens the tension more than if it wanted an adult. My sympathy would have been less if Danny was older. Not because I’d necessarily like him less, but because I’d know he had more years of taking care of himself. Yet Danny is young, still learning how to read, and even though he’s exceptional for a six year old, he’s a child. The monsters kids fear lurk that in their closets or under their beds are real for Danny. Whenever the hotel would reach out to him, show him apparitions or put him in a trace, I wanted to yell, “He’s just a kid! Leave him alone!”

I didn’t find myself caring as much for the adult characters. A part of me knew that Jack would fall back into alcoholism, and it was difficult for me to sympathize with him after learning he had hurt Danny in an alcoholic rage. Wendy I could respect for doing what she coud to protect her son, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I particularly liked her. I wonder how I would have liked this book if I didn’t care so much for Danny. While the idea was compelling, it was my attachment to Danny that carried me through all 683 pages of my copy.

One thing I’d like to touch on separate from character appreciation is snow. I will readily admit to not reading much horror before starting at Seton Hill, so I’m still relatively new to the genre, but what is with snow and horror? I understand that it’s a challenge to the characters and can easily become a monster in of itself, but I’m already getting tired of it making an appearance. While I give King credit for making me nervous when the snow drift trapped Danny in the playground tube, later in that chapter, I couldn’t help but think I’d seen this before. Yes, snow sucks—it’s no secret I’m not a fan of it. It can make life miserable and if there’s enough of it, convey a sense of being trapped. I just seem to encounter it quite a bit in fiction, recently.

Snow or not, The Shining kept me turning the page to make sure Danny would make it safely to the end. I’m curious now to read more of King’s fiction, and still a bit guilty that I hadn’t read more of it sooner.

It's a Metaphor!: Ghost Story by Peter Straub

I will shamefully admit that I hadn’t heard of Peter Straub’s acclaimed novel Ghost Story before this class. When I checked it out before reading, I was excited. It had wonderful reviews and was endorsed by horror titan Stephen King as one of the best horror novels ever.

So imagine my disappointment at finding Ghost Story to be one of the more boring books I’ve read.

I wanted to like this book. Straub pays homage to literary heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and hints to Edgar Allen Poe through the writing itself, which affects the overall style of the novel. It’s always been my experience that the pacing of classic novels is slower than in modern novels, and for being published in 1979, I consider Ghost Story to be a modern novel. Yet after the prologue which was filled with intrigue and tension, the pace of the story slowed to a crawl. On page fifty of my edition, Sears James tells his story about Fenny and his brother Gregory. This story grabbed my interest. Yet once it was told, it wasn’t until page 200 when Don Wanderly tells his encounter with the mysterious Alma Mobley when the story grabbed my attention again. Yet after her story was told, my interest waned until the last page. Had I prepared myself for a story told in a more classic literary style, I might’ve more readily forgiven the slow pace. Yet by the time I realized this was partially how Straub was paying homage, I couldn’t connect with the story.

The lack of character connection also contributed to my struggle of connecting to the story. Straub utilizes an ensemble cast, and while I usually don’t mind head hopping or multiple POVs, it didn’t work for me in this book. There were so many characters and so many POV shifts that I never really cared for any of the characters. The closest I came was to Don during his entry about Alma, yet the story didn’t stay with him long enough for me to truly become vested in.

Finally, my last gripe. I thought it was safe to assume that with the title of Ghost Story this would be a story about ghosts. Yet look what happens to people who assume. On the surface, this is not a ghost story despite the title. The big bad is a Manitou, or shape shifter who has taken the form of many women—Alma Mobley included—in order to seek revenge for her murder fifty years before the book takes place. Her henchmen are referred to as vampires or werewolves. Now, I have no problem with beasties as the antagonists, yet I don’t considered monsters the same as ghosts. I felt mislead that the antagonist was a beastie as opposed to a ghost, even though I liked the idea of using a Manitou as the monster. The ghost in this story is metaphorical: it is the memory of murder that haunts the four old men that is the real ghost. Call me literal, but I wasn’t expecting metaphors.

There were elements of Ghost Story I enjoyed, and maybe I’d have a different impression of it if I went back and read it with the literary homage in mind. Yet after this first read, I didn’t think it lived up to the hype.

Hell House, or Your Napoleon Complex has Really Gotten Out of Hand

Not to be confused with Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Richard Matheson's Hell House is an entirely different beast (and I will admit to confusing the titles more than once—I am ashamed).  While it wasn't clear if Hill House was truly haunted or it was lonely and just wanted a friend, there is no doubt that something's rotten in the state of Hell House. Let's start with the name. The Belasco Mansion has such a perverted history that it became known as Hell House. Even if the house wasn't haunted, the history has power. When alive, Emeric Belasco filled the house with every imaginable debauchery, and the knowledge of this history leaves an impression on those who visit Hell House. Former residents of Hell House fell into an animalistic state and Belasco reigned over his base kingdom as "The Roaring Giant".

Yet, Hell House is haunted. Rather than the house itself generating the hauntings from residual energy, visitors of the house experience violent apparitions and attacks from entities. What struck me about these apparitions was how they chose to attack their victims. Two men and two women are visiting Hell House. Only one of the men is directly attacked by being locked in a steam room and is eventually killed. The other man—a physical medium—manages to separate himself from being attacked. Both women, one a mental medium and the other the wife of the man who dies, are attacked sexually. The medium is not only killed, but she is also raped by a ghost and sexually assaulted multiple times leading up to the rape. The other woman is possessed by an entity that causes her to attack both men in the pursuit of sex and cast doubt onto her sexuality.

When reading these attacks, I was taken aback by the actions the entities took on the women—how both women had the control over their bodies taken from them in different ways. But after separating myself from the initial reading and thinking about the story, I couldn't help but wonder what Matheson was saying by only having the women be victims of sexual abuse. Maybe the time the novel was published had an influence, but given what supposedly happened in the house, homosexuality isn't far-fetched. The violent apparitions were all male, yet they chose not to exhibit their power over the living men the way they did over the women.  

The only reason I don't speculate why there couldn't be a female entity to go after the men is the ending. Turns out the paranormal activity was all controlled by a single entity: the ghost of the Roaring Giant himself, Belasco, who had found a way to live after death. Now, this is all fine and dandy, but the rest of the ending I had to read it multiple times through tears of laughter to make sure I understood correctly. Turns out ol' Belasco was no giant. He was a tiny man with a Napoleon complex who’s motivation for everything was to convince others he was tall. Please, if I’m missing something about the ending, tell me. I'm at a loss for an alternate interpretation. Although at a towering 5'3", I now have a whimsical motivation to haunt and terrorize the living.

Hell House had elements I enjoyed. I liked the in-your-face aspect of the hauntings—Belasco wasn't a power to be dismissed. I enjoyed the constant pull between the logical and the unexplained that carried throughout the story. Yet after gaining distance from the story, I'm not sure if I like that only the women were the victims of violent sexual assault. And the ending… well, it only emphasized what I've always said: don’t mess with short people.

Now There Be Ghosties: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Last term there were beasties. Now there be... well, ghost-ies.

When I saw Shirley Jackson on the reading list this term, I was excited. The only thing of hers I’d read until now was The Lottery, the granddaddy of dystopian short stories and what I sense was a major influence behind The Hunger Games. I’d heard of The Haunting of Hill House, but hadn’t had a chance to read it until this class. I’m a fan of The Lottery. It’s one of those stories that made me stop in my tracks, so I had high hopes for The Haunting of Hill House.

Yet while I didn’t hate it, Hill House didn’t fill me up with the same dread I was expecting thanks to The Lottery. Yet what happens to protagonist Eleanor Vance comes close.

The spirits of Hill House have a special interest in Eleanor. After receiving the invitation to Hill House as an assistant in an experiment to prove the existence of ghosts, Eleanor leaves the reluctant charity of her disapproving sister and steals the car in an attempt to go on her first real adventure. Not only is Eleanor intent on seeking an escape from her quiet and dull life, but she is also socially stunted and seeks the companionship she’s never truly had.

Of those who are visiting the house during this experiement, Eleanor is the weakest and the most easily influenced out of the group—the most susceptible to believe that the house is haunted, whether she realizes it or not. She sees manifestations that others don’t, and she receives personal messages from those long gone who still haunt Hill House’s halls. Through this attention, Eleanor begins to feel a kinship with the house unlike anything she'd felt with another person. It’s forgotten and unwanted, like her, and she opens herself up to the house so much the spirits override her senses and drive her to the roof where she can jump to her death to be morbidly united with the house forever.  Even when she is forced to leave, Eleanor finds her way to remain at Hill House and drives into a tree, killing herself.

Eleanor is whoI found to be the most interesting aspect of The Haunting of Hill House. She is not a strong protagonist. If anything, most of the action happens to her rather than her seeking out the action. She becomes puppet-like—consumed by the energy of the house so much that it controls her.

This loss of control I find to be the most chilling aspect of Jackson’s novel. While it’s the dark moodiness of the setting that helps contribute to the Victorian Gothic feel of the novel as a whole, it’s how the spirits warp Eleanor’s senses so completely she’s deluded into believing she must die in order to remain at Hill House that takes the novel beyond Gothic into horror. Because there is nothing particularly special about Eleanor as a heroine, she easily slips into the role of the every-man. This reminds the reader while their disbelief is suspended that they too could be susceptible to supernatural influence.

What happens to Eleanor also represents a loss of control that most people fear. When she arrived at Hill House, she sought only an adventure, and before she was possessed wanted to seek out her own life separate from her family. Yet she loses control over her actions and her thoughts to seek death as a means of remaining at Hill House. This loss of power to an unseen supernatural entity is the recurring fear that drives forward all ghost stories I’ve either read or seen, and while this fear is presented more quietly than some, it delivers.

While it might not have been my favorite story read to date, The Haunting of Hill House has rightfully earned its place among the ranks of ghost story heavy-hitters. Just because a protagonist might be conventionally weak doesn’t mean that their story can’t send chills down readers’ spines.

Week 12: Snow

I’m not sure about all of you, but it seems fitting that this week the book in question is Snow by Ronald Malfi—I haven’t been warm in a week and I’m still in denial over the first snow of the season. I finished the book under piles of blankets with a fleece zipped up to my chin, and I still couldn't get warm. The reading material didn’t help the cause.

I know I've mentioned in past blog posts that I’m not a fan of snow, or winter, or being cold in general. I’d rather be too hot than too cold any day. Snow was the third piece this term that was set in an extremely cold setting—first 30 Days of Night set the stage in Alaska, followed by The Thing in Antarctica, before finishing up in Woodson, Minnesota with Snow. 

The setting of Snow pulled double duty in this week’s book, and this was the first and only of the term that’s done so. Not only is the setting enough to make your skin crawl (literally, goose bumps abound) but the setting is the monster. Snow itself is the beastie that goes bump in the night.

If I didn't have enough issues with the cold…

It all starts with Todd traveling cross-country to visit his son. However, all flights are cancelled due to a freakishly intense snow storm. Todd decides to rent a car anyway and drive the rest of the way to his son. At this point, it was like watching a bad horror movie when screaming, “DON'T GO IN THERE!” at the TV starts. One of the worst snow storms in history and we’re going to drive in it. Insert face palm here.

But how else are the hero and the people he picks up at the airport going to encounter the monsters? It’s clear something strange is afoot after picking up a hitchhiker with vertical slashes over his shoulder blades. Turns out he's been possessed by the Snow. The Snow, or skin-suits as they’re later called, are these near-formless beings that need a host to become solid and feed. They attach and insert themselves through the shoulder of their hosts by means of scythe-like limbs in place of hands. Any trace of the host is gone. Even though the bodies can be destroyed, the Snow will only be damaged. Fire is their only vulnerability, as the heat gives them solid form and strips them of defense.

The most unsettling thing about the Snow is what they do to children. For whatever reason, the Snow can't inhabit a child-host without erasing all facial features. It’s like “The Idiot's Lantern,” the episode of Doctor Who when Rose loses her face. There's no explanation as to where the Snow came from, but it's implied they're aliens. 

While I did find the faceless children both disturbing and sad, I was underwhelmed with these monsters. Aliens have popped up now three times this semester, and so many of the monsters this term were reliant on a host. The hosts in Snow become zombie-like, and I'm starting to tire of zombies. While the book was a fast read and I enjoyed aspects of it, these monsters did nothing for me. It was three hundred pages of the main characters running away from the Snow. Yes the Snow were active monsters, which I enjoy, but there was a profound lack of backstory for them. Lack of backstory isn't always a bad thing, but they weren't the most interesting monsters I've read about. I had a hard time getting invested in the quest to defeat the Snow.

Also, the end of the Snow was predictable. It was made clear around the middle of the book that they could be defeated by fire, so it felt like a long while before a big enough explosion came about to wipe them out. Yet the ending is left open. It's revealed that Woodson wasn't the only city plagued by the Snow, so the beastie-alien are free to run around the country looking for a bad enough snow storm to ride in on. 

What I enjoyed about this book was the dialogue and the setting. The dialogue was fast paced and read how people talk. I appreciate a well-placed juicy expletive because it’s real (or maybe my perception is warped because I work with a bunch of sailor-mouths), and let’s face it. If someone’s running away from the Snow with its scythe-hands of doom, “Oh fudge” probably isn’t what would come out of most mouths.

I also liked that the setting was both a setting and a monster. I've read books where the setting absolutely contributed to the scare-level, but I liked that Malfi took this a step further and had the snow become a perversion of nature. I think it had more of an impact because it’s so cold right now. Might not have thought about what’s riding on the cold wind so much if it was a balmy 80 degrees out.

Let's just say, this book didn't change my opinion about snow, but I’m not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Week Eleven: Relic

This week it’s out of the cold and into the museum in the novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

First, let’s talk about the monster. The bad beastie in this novel is called Mbwun, which translates into “He Who Walks On All Fours.” The name itself is an indication of the rich history Preston and Child gave their monster, which I don’t always need, but almost always enjoy when it’s given to me. Mbwun is an ancient creature. The son of a demon who’s the South American equivalent of the Devil. Part primate, part lizard, all intelligent killer. A clear image of Mbwun is never given, which reminds me of how the audience isn’t given much of a chance to look at the Alien.

Flash forward (or backward) to the nineties, and an artifact bearing Mbwun’s image in a crate full of egg-like pods and unusual plant fibers is sent from the Amazon Basin to the New York Museum of Natural History. But no one expected the stowaway….

Dear Mbwun hitched a ride with the crate to the museum, and he has an addiction to hypothalamus glands in human brains. He is able to live quietly for years eating the plant fibers in the crate, because these fibers have a genetic makeup that mimics hypothalamus glands. But once his access to the plant fibers is cut-off, our monster must find sustenance elsewhere.

With this, the brutal killings start.

Overall, I liked Mbwun as a monster. He’s not merely a killing force of nature who only acts on instinct. He is highly intelligent in an almost human way. He knows to remain out of sight and only started the killings after his plant source ran out, which I think is interesting. He’s practically indestructible with a thick hide that bullets can’t penetrate, but his weakness is a bit cliché: the eyes. Ah well.

What I didn’t like was how this particular monster came into being. Throughout the entire book, everyone keeps focusing on the egg-like seed pods, which left me assuming they weren’t seeds at all. There were a couple mentions of Whittlesey—the head of the exhibition that went to South America and brought back Mbwun—disappearing, but it doesn’t seem too far-fetched because there’s a monster on the loose. Yet in the epilogue it’s revealed that Whittlesey became Mbwun by eating the plant fiber. I had to read the explanation a couple times before resigning myself to an “Okaaayyy…” It bothered me that I’d been led through this book to believe that Mbwun had hatched, when on the last couple of pages the rug was pulled out from under me. I now have some trust issues with this book.

Anyway, another thing I enjoyed was the setting. I love museums, and some of the exhibits lend themselves to letting imaginations run wild. Not only are there plenty of places in the museum itself for the monster to hide, but the museum is built over an elaborate tunnel system. And while the museum is large, it becomes a prison if locked with Mbwun sneaking around inside looking for tasty morsels.

Now, even though there were aspects of the book I liked, I had an issue with pacing. The probably impacted my perception of the pacing, but for whatever reason, this almost 500 page book was 959 pages on my Nook. One flip of a “page” might have counted for three pages, but there’s no denying parts of this book were slow. A lot of time was focused on the technology used to analyze what Mbwun was, and these parts dragged. Even though the search to find out more about the museum monster was a constant throughout the entire story, I felt there was a lot of down time between when I got to see the monster in action.

Overall, not my most favorite book, but parts of it I enjoyed. Not sure if I enjoyed it enough to want to see the movie, though. But I might just be more careful of the shadows next time I go to the museum.