An enjoyable horror anthology with a strong midnight chillers concept.
A genre anthology offers creepy tales inspired by 1980s horror movies.
A high school horror cinephile goes to check out a rare, locally directed film at his town’s drive-in only to suspect that the space parasites in the movie might be real—and possessing the audience. Some high schoolers perform a dark ritual in order to save the theater where they all work from shuttering, but whatever they summoned turns on them instead. Two couples go on a double date to a movie night at a natural outdoor amphitheater—only to have the picture ruined when a severed human arm flies across the screen. Blood and guts are a lot less campy in real life, as the horror movie fans that populate these stories learn again and again. The theaters themselves frequently become places of genuine terror, as in Betty Rocksteady’s “Rise, Ye Vermin!” in which a cineplex employee enters a theater to find the audience composed entirely of corpses: “Dozens of women in various states of decay twitched and jittered. Jenn stumbled, jolting a fresh new pain through her broken jaw. She tripped into one of the aisle seats and fell into a woman with long, dark hair and a hat. The hat jostled and roaches poured out of her empty eye socket.” The anthology, edited by Viola, mixes stories by horror mainstays like Stephen Graham Jones and Steve Rasnic Tem with tales by relative newcomers, such as K. Nicole Davis. Many of the writers have Colorado connections, which leads to some entertaining uses of locations, like Davis’ “On the Rocks,” set in the famous Red Rocks Amphitheater. The book also features frightening illustrations by Smith and retro cover art by Nazzaro that will get any ’80s nerd’s nostalgia juices pumping. The blend of voices working within a loose framework gives the volume some stylistic variety (though it remains—like its source material—noticeably male-dominated). As with any anthology, some of the pieces are stronger than others, but all of them exhibit an understanding for the odd brew of ingredients that make ’80s horror movies so much fun.
An enjoyable horror anthology with a strong midnight chillers concept.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73391-775-9
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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