protean depravity

I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time now and have been postponing, then came the FFF White Nights, and then Berlinale, and also lots of work, and yada yada yada, and it's kind of late, but finally here I am scribbling something, because I don't want to keep putting off reviewing this movie to the point that it's too old to be relevant, and the second part of the 28 series, The Bone Temple, deserves it. It is such, such a good film all around. Let's analyze it then! (OBVIOUSLY SPOILERED REVIEW)

Jenny Kaplan is as New York City as they come – independent and complex, trying to make a living through a severely underpaid job at the lifestyle magazine Bread and Circus , and always one rent away from being evacuated. Her biggest accomplishment is a very personal and honest piece of autofiction that includes her break up and abortion, titled “Drano”, which got her the most views and support she ever had, but also brought along powerful enemies, such as The Brotherhood and, unfortunately, the owners of her workplace.

The new year started so busy that I almost forgot about publishing the short reviews. Luckily, because of that, there are quite a few now since they added up. In the meantime I discovered a new favorite author, Drew Huff, I fell in love with The Divine Flesh,  the way it was written and the subject matter was totally up my alley, so I have been stocking  up on Huff's books (because I'm totally expecting to do nothing and sit on my couch and read books as long as the snow piles up outside, the way it does now). I also really want to focus on short stories this year, and to put a dent in my TBR by finishing all the horror anthologies I collected over the years, and I started doing that. Hope you enjoy my short reviews, have a great winter time! 

  Welcome to part three 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 The Void (2016), Last Shift (2014), Kill List (2011), The House of the Devil (2009) and Martyrs (2008). 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 SPOILER EVERYTHING. I also decided to add an additional part 4 to this series as I ended up finding more cults that ...

Let's start the year 2026 with the hope that these empty cinema seats will be the only places to witness horrors and that horror will stay strictly confined to fiction. And the first opportunity to fill those seats will be during the upcoming film season - our first station is the  Fantasy Filmfest White Nights  on January 24 and 25, which is like a mini winter break weekend for horror fans. I usually only watch a couple of films during the White Nights, but this year I feel like 2025 wasn't that great of a year for horror, and I feel somewhat starved for more movies. So I decided to take a leave from Hammett on that Saturday and to watch all the films on the first day, and three films on Sunday. Let's take a look at the trailers and talk about them, in order of their appearance at the FFF.

After breaking routine in the last installment of "The Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King" and comparing a novella with its film adaptation, here we are back to our usual, continuing discussing the short stories in the second King collection Skeleton Crew . It would be good if you read along, or at least know or be familiar with the stories because I will spoil everything! Let's go!

Hey friends! Here some short reviews, hope you enjoy them!

Alright, constant reader, let's finish up this first chapter in the series A Short Story Reader's Guide to Stephen King, by taking a look at the last four short stories in King's first collection  Night Shift . The four stories discussed here are The Last Rung on the Ladder , The Man Who Loved Flowers , One for the Road , and finally, The Woman in the Room , two of them are horror stories and are pre-published before being included in Night Shift , while the remaining two are rather contemporary, or even literary short stories that are rather on the emotional side and which have been written specifically for this work. As usual, it might be better to read the short stories beforehand, because I will spoil everything.

The yearly StokerCon was last week, and the latest Bram Stoker Awards (BSA) have found their new owners. The BSA's are arguably the most important awards in horror fiction because they basically decide which books will enter the horror canon and which will not, and authors who have been granted the award, or even have been nominated, carry that title with a certain kind of honor - even though it's the books that make the authors, not the awards. Being a USA-based award, the lineup is usually heavily from there, which can be a shame as there's great horror from everywhere these days. It's always wonderful to see a name or two who made it despite being in translation, and this year there's Mariana Enriquez from Argentina and Sofia Ajram from Canada, but unfortunately nobody outside of the American continents. It is usual I don't always agree with the nominees or winners, as I think the same names keep on rotating and some fresh horror authors who do deserve to be ...

Finally did I collect enough short reviews to post here... I have been reading a lot of non-speculative fiction and the birthday week of the Hammett bookstore plus my regular day job finished my energy off, resulting in me not being able to read everything I wanted. But I'm still happy there were a couple of really good books amongst the ones I managed to read. So, here are the short reviews, I hope you enjoy them!

In the age of never-ending reinvention of the vampire trope (and frankly, of every other trope too), it is pretty damn hard to create something original, and more importantly, something meaningful out of this rusted, crusted, dusted motif. One way of achieving such originality is putting the vampire in all sorts of unconventional, unexpected, surprising, sometimes even silly or compromising situations, which, if we're being honest, isn't all that original anymore. Another way is to dive into the heart of what vampires are about, and use or maybe modify that foundation in order to suit your story and to make your point. Horror author Stephen Graham Jones makes exactly that in his latest novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter , and to make a meaningful point, as is well known, is his strong suit. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is the nested narrative of present-day academic Etsy Beaucarne who wants to write a book about the 1912 diary of her great great great grandfather Arthur after it wa...

Heyo! Finally some short reviews before the spring, the academic semester and Easter holidays begin - hope you enjoy!

The first batch of 2025 movies behind us, now comes the fun part of raising hopes for upcoming horror movies that are in line for this year. There's even a concrete reason I'm posting this right now, because this Saturday is Sneak Preview time at the Creepy Crypt and since I have to stick around in Kreuzberg for hours after work until the Creepy Crypt showings begin, I choose my movies carefully. Well, Sneak Preview means that I have no idea what will be shown, only that it's an upcoming movie, so I took a look at movies that I think might be on this Saturday and I'm going to pitch their trailers here (the titles are linked to the teasers or trailers). So this post will be something like an exciting guesswork for the next Sneak Preview. Edit throughout time: They ended up showing the horror comedy Y2K , which really wasn't mine, so I left after the first 15 minutes. But it wasn't all lost, in order to pass the time between Hammett and Creepy Crypt I watched an...

In the same way as it is not unusual to return to the same music one used to listen in their teens and twenties, I lately feel the need to return to books that I've read in my early youth and that have left a mark on me. Of course, the role both books, music, and the associated communities play in the shaping of one's personality is undeniable, so presumably no matter how many decades past, you'll always be partial and subjective, and it's nearly impossible for the fan to give an objective assessment on these works. It would be still interesting to observe how you perceive them now compared to back then, and what feelings those same books awake in you today.

On the verge of her cousin Keziah's marriage, Bata, a girl who lives in a small Nigerian town with her family, has a kind of episode during which she steps into another dimension and, dressed as an awesome warrior-bride, kicks the ass of an evil ghost bride, who apparently formerly was engaged to her cousin's groom. See, Bata has been different all her life, suffering from nightmares which keep the whole household awake - and make them resent her a little bit. Before she is subjected to an exorcism by the town's medicine man Dibia, she is snatched by a magnificient spirit who takes her to Ibaja La, the land of ghost brides, and informs her that she is a sort of chosen-one, and she has a paranormal mission she needs to fulfill as a Bride-Sentinel. Of course, for a ten year old girl coming from a family in which things are less than ideal, a household divided into itself, a house in which she always has been the odd one, to arrive in a sort of wonderland of young women in ...

The reading slump... Sooner or later we all fall victim to this unuterrable nuisance and it's hard - all you want to do is escape and find shelter in imaginary worlds, but the real world and its weight interfer with your concentration and don't let you sink into your books. I have been suffering from a major slump in the past month or so, maybe even for longer, so I'm trying to concentrate on fewer and maybe lighter books or audiobooks I want to have finished until the end of the year, but honestly, I'm not sure I'll even be able to reach that goal. Nevertheless I managed to finish a couple of good titles, and I'm still reading some good ones that I haven't finished yet. So, I hope you enjoy the reviews and have a happy Halloween!

    Got my ticket for the horror theme park!

It always sucks a little bit when the summer ends; the days get darker and shorter, the weather gets chillier, the city gets fuller, the leaves change colors... But pre-fall, September and early October, is still a nice enough time before hell ascends to Berlin and stupid winter begins. And this year it's an even better time than usual, because there's so much going on that it's head-spinning!

Warning as usual, this article is full of spoilers, please see film first! Argh, new nightmare unlocked! On this planet, there is possibly nothing creepier than a surgically enhanced Nicolas Cage blowing you kisses, singing happy birthday. This is the gist of Oz Perkins' recently released horror picture Longlegs. But another paramount takeaway is that, congratulations Mr. Perkins, you are our new shooting star in the skies of horror, an auteur of our own! Let's first have a look at this delicious work of art which charms with beautiful and clever point of view shots, marvelous set designs and lightning, clashes of warm and cold colors in locations, and the combination of all these as a visual feast right from scene one!

  Here we are at the peak of horror in the third millennium, dear people! Continuing from the last post which covered the first two of the pre-pandemic golden years of horror cinema, we'll now take a look at the following two years in which climactically good horror was released. Let's take a look at the best of the best!