protean depravity

  When I was in high school I had a literature teacher who, whenever she did not feel like teaching, came into class pushing a squeaky video cart which makes every young student's heart beat faster with the prospect of watching movies instead of studying. One of those movies, I remember clearly, was Anna Karenina from 1997, the one with Sophie Marceau as Anna. During my lifetime I have watched this screen adaptation three times in total and read the book twice, and although it is one of the most boring books imaginable I remember it fondly. Imagine how bored I must have been in regular class that watching this rather tedious movie was one of the highlights of my school life. Fast forward a few years later at university, I sit in my Introduction to Linguistics course and the professor mentioning that the Czech word “robota” and the German word “Arbeiter” (worker) are etymologically related, opens the doors of a whole new realization to me.

Pretty much everybody's reaction to the title of this anthology is probably something like “Wtf is pizza horror?” Having now finished this bizarre 28 story collection, I still can't answer that question, but I'm 28 stories closer to maybe understanding the concept.

Grayson Hale is the main actor of a murder case that shook Scotland in 2017; the 25 year old American student at the University of Edinburgh confessed to have killed Liam Stewart, one of his classmates, but refused any gullibility as he claimed the Devil, disguised as the man Donald Blackburn, or DB, made him do it. He also refused to plead not guilty due to insanity, because he does not accept he has a mental problem and his story is what it is.

Although I'm all busy trying to finally finish my Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adam, which I won't review here, I'm also back at reading lots of horror this month. Enjoy the reviews!

In its purest form, done right, watching an experimental film is the closest you can come to dreaming another person's dreams. Which is why to watch one is, essentially, to invite another person into your head, hoping you emerge haunted. Lois Cairns, former film critic and film history teacher, lives with her husband Simon and her son Clark in Toronto – a life marked by the search for a vocation, marked by depression, insomnia, intense self-doubts and lack of faith in her abilities as a mother to her autistic child. Catching the glimpse of a woman figure in an experimental movie made by her nemesis Wrob Barney leads her to the first female filmmaker of Canada, Iris Whitcomb – a lead she gladly follows. She actualy receives a funding to research Whitcomb's dubious history in Ontario and Europe, her fanatically religious father who destroyed their family and her connection to a certain Wendish deity called Lady Midday. She can even re-hire her former assistant Safie...

Estranged siblings Louise and Mark find themselves back at their childhood house when both their parents die in an excruciating accident, apparently having left the house in a hurry on a rainy night. After their realtor cousin Mercy tells them she can’t sell a house which is very obviously haunted, they decide to cleanse the house of every single one of their mother’s dolls, self-made art and puppets, which proves really difficult with them constantly locking horns. When they reach the (locked) attic, they find something that both of them separately have been trying to burry into the past and never confront again, but, as it is with every thorough cleansing, things need to come to surface and who knows, maybe they can even explain their past behavior to each other and find some kind of redemption? Can Louise protect her own daughter from what has been some kind of curse in this family for so long? And whatever happened for their parents to leave the house like that?

Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous ed. by Ellen Datlow Reviewing any one of Ellen Datlow’s excellent horror anthologies is always a pleasure as they unanimously feature stories of high-quality writing and are a kind of go-to place for us horror readers who want to discover fresh blood. So I was lusting for her latest themed anthology, the massive Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous anthology ever since the announcement of its publication in the summer and gifted it to myself as a birthday treat in the fall, intending to read a story a day in October, which I did.

Here they are, the first short reviews of 2023! I have been reading a little all over this past month and maybe a little too scattered since I feel my appetite for horror, my need to return to my roots growing again. But for this once I've read mostly books that have a horror element even though they aren't categorized as such. Hope you had a good start to the new year and hope you enjoy my reads!

February is at our doors, yay! The month of February is a special kind of "light at the end of the tunnel" time for me - the last month of the hated wintertime, the month you start feeling the days growing longer and spring is hopefully around the corner... To sweeten these last dark weeks, I declared the whole month as a movie month for myself in which I take my annual leave to watch as many movies as I can during the Final Girl Berlin Film Festival (FGBFF)* as well as the Berlinale Film Festival.