protean depravity

Reflections, whether on glass, mirror, or water, have always,  from Narcissus to Poltergeist,  had confrontational, psychological, existential and inherently uncanny undertones for what they might (or might not) show us and what that might stir up inside of us. A mirror, or a reflective surface in the broader sense (a television screen, a photographic lens, a camera's eye, a celluloid film, etc.), shows the bare truth - and yet it is impossible for us to touch, smell, hear or taste that truth. We can only see it. So on the one hand it has the claim of reliability, but on the other hand it lacks depth. There is a conflict there, which, of course, provides perfect fodder for the horror imagination. It is not our world, thus it must be a different one. It is illusion through and through and yet tells us so much about ourselves and our fears; vanity, introspection, evil twins, parallel universes, the future... What's not to like in that, from a horror fan's point of...

The Final Girls Berlin are calling!!! Another year, another Halloween with a traditional program consisting of a short film screening, a costume contest/party and a feature film, which, this year is Mary Lambert's Pet Sematary from 1989!!! The best Pet Sematary adaptation, by the way.

Although the uncanny-ness of buildings in general is tapped out through tropes like the haunted house, the evil place, Gothic mansions and all, the horror of interior spaces has been considerably less explored. Until this year. By using inner spaces as a metaphor for the dark corners of the human mind, Backrooms  literally opened the doors to fantastic ideas and will probably be and stay the prime example, the epitome of this sub-genre. But the recently released Hokum , although taking on a little more on its plate, plays with that idea too - and the result is glorious! I want to start explaining my personal connection to interior spaces with a secret of mine - I very often dream about spaces. When I have those dreams I usually have super powerful and intense feelings upon waking up. Let me elaborate with an example of a recurrent dream I have. In my dream, I am in one of the flats I lived in in the past, or in my current place. All of a sudden I discover a little door, maybe hidd...

The flu has been ravaging my body this past week, and I could barely do anything more than sleep, watch old Turkish series and read a couple of pages at a time... All on a bare minimum level. Luckily, I'm getting slowly better, and I'm much better now compared to a couple of days ago. Because it's been so long that I last discussed my latest thriller reads, there is quite a lot to review now and I hope you can find something that may interest you. Enjoy!

Time for new book reviews... I did an audio-attack and listened to many books that I'm reviewing here in audio format, so there are a lot. Enjoy!

  A little warning before going over to the FFF reviews - I really wanted to chill these last two days of my time off work, so today I met up with my friend Qinqin to go play some mini golf and then go to Swampfest. While walking around Turmstrasse an idiot of a person exhaled a full load of her crack right into my fucking face and I collapsed and had to spend the day at the ER after that. I'm still very shook and upset, but no harm done bodily, the doctors said. I sometimes hate Berlin, please stay safe.     The 40th edition of the Fantasy Filmfest opened spectacularly on September 2 in the big Auditorium 1 of Zoo Palast where all the fancy events take place (it was full to the brim!) and there couldn't have been a better present for me than to have the FFF start a day after my birthday! As a small present all participants of the opening screening were gifted a DVD, Dogman by Luc Besson 😍, and after that I dived into a full week of films, films, and films. Enjoy m...

We're nearing the end of summer, and although that alone makes me feel like crying, I'm happy that there are lots of events in September and October (and there have been times where these months too are reasonably warm), so let's not lose hope right away.

Snail-paced, we finally made it to the third Stephen King short story collection, Nightmares and Dreamscapes , in almost two years, and at whopping 993 pages it looks like we're going to dwell here for a while. Published in 1993, King jokes in his prologue that he likes to publish a short story collection every seven years because the interval between his first three collections follow that pattern (we have to keep an eye on the future collections to see if he breaks that rule).  The collection which is dedicated to writer Thomas Williams consists of 24 pieces of writing: one novella ( Dolan's Cadillac ), one teleplay ( Sorry, Right Number ), one non-fiction essay ( Head Down ), one poem ( Brooklyn August ) and twenty short stories ( The End of the Whole Mess , Suffer the Little Children , The Night Flier , Popsy , It Grows On You , Chattery Teeth , Dedication , The Moving Finger , Sneakers , You Know They Got a Hell of a Band , Home Delivery , Rainy Season , My Pretty Po...