protean depravity

It is not very often that an epigraph reflects the overall atmosphere and mood of a particular book ideally, but Samanta Schweblin's latest short story collection Good and Evil and Other Stories opening with Silvina Ocampo's words "strange is always truer" is a great example. It is an atmospheric, quite unique, strange work about seemingly everyday situations and people that are just a little bit eerie, but never openly horrifying, yet always slightly terrifying.

Welcome to part two of Cult Classics! It seems like cults are everywhere right now; in the independent news, in conspiracy theories, in media we consume, in movies we watch... Whether an organized group of powerful extremists controlling our lives really exists, or it is the mere paranoid fear thereof mirroring into horror fiction, it is worth to take a look at this phenomenon and the way it is represented in recent horror movies. In this installment we'll study the cults in Son (2021), Midsommar (2019), Hereditary (2018), Mandy (2017) and The Ritual (2017). The titles are linked to their respective imdb pages for full film information and stills. I do presuppose that you watched the movies discussed here, so I will only give the shortest plot summary. It would make sense to watch the movies before reading my cult descriptions, as I SPOIL EVERYTHING.

Let us, for a brief moment, shift our focus to one of Berlin's most interesting film curators in the field of independent cinema: Eli Lewy. When she's not planning one of the many Final Girls Berlin events, she has her own thing going and is orchestrating numerous projects, all in Berlin. Here are two of her projects, two film series that might interest you guys, one ongoing and the other starting in December.

Hey everyone! Hope you survived October and Halloween just fine, and as we enter the dark and grisly part of the year, drinking tea and reading books sounds all the more appealing. And reading mysteries while the weather is raging outside is a comfy classic, so here are some recommendations for those days I hope you enjoy!