We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Jackson's most subtle work, a studied and compelling rendering of insanity that achieves its effect in part by drawing readers into the strangely routine world of its heroines before revealing the full horror of their existence.There's not actually much in the way of reviews or analysis online. The narrator is unreliable, and the true tale of what has led up to the present moment is revealed slowly. This is an eerie, sad tale. People are evil and stupid, and bad things happen. Maybe the road to Hell really is paved with good intentions.
The last time I glanced at the library books on the kitchen shelf they were more than five months overdue, and I wondered whether I would have chosen differently if I had known that these were the last books, the ones which would stand forever on our kitchen shelf.
The humour is dark, clever, and extremely entertaining. McDonnell’s own charm and niceness are used then subverted in a very smart way, and he himself proves to be a very capable actor. I’m loath to describe anything as flawless, but I can’t find anything negative to say about this short film.
Deep in the Douro river there is a legend about the ghost of a dead bride, who haunts the area. Regardless, a couple of lovers goes to an abandoned house near the river, where they are attacked by the undying bride.
Even now there is little doubt that Night Of The Demon packs a powerful punch despite featuring no gore or, demon excepted, much in the way of special effects. Actually, it is the film's atmosphere of calm, almost twee, post-war British normality which works so well. Tourneur cranks up the tension as Holden — and, in turn, the audience — comes to realise that horror can lurk in the most unlikely places.Rotten Tomatoes has a 100% critics score.
On the borderland between this world and the world of Quiddity, the sea of our dreams, sits Everville. For years it has lived in ignorance of the gleaming shore on which it lies. But its ignorance is not bliss. Opening the door between worlds, Clive Barker delivers his characters into the heart of the human mystery; into a place of revelation, where the forces which have shaped our past —and are ready to destroy our future— are at work.
...patience was easy if it was all you had; and it was....
"I think sometimes there's two different people in the world. The people who understand and the people who don't. And if they don't, it's no use trying to explain, 'cause it's just beyond them, and it always will be."...
"What's the big deal about stories?" she said.Kirkus Reviews has a scathingly negative review. Publishers Weekly says, " this novel confirms the author's position not only as one of horror's most potent and fertile minds but also as one of modern fiction's premier metaphysicians."
"You love them," he said, his gaze leaving her face and slipping down to the water. The glowing forms she'd seen rising from below were within a few fathjoms of the surface now. The water was beginning to simmer with their presence. "You do, don't you? he said.
"I suppose I do," she said.
That's what the connections are, Tesla."
"Stories?"
"Stories. And every life, however short, however meaningless it seems, is a leaf-"
"A leaf."
"Yes, a leaf." He looked up at her again, and waited, unspeaking, until she grasped the sense of what he was saying.
"On the story tree," she said. He smiled. "Lives are leaves on the story tree.
Juliette entered her bedroom, smiling, and a thousand Juliettes smiled back at her. For all the walls were paneled with mirrors, and the ceiling was set with inlaid panes that reflected her image.It is quite short and well worth reading, and then you'll want to seek out more by him.
This bizarre oddity was a film that nobody knew what to make of it when it came out but one that has steadily been gaining ground as a weird headspace cult classic ever since. Exactly what it is about could be anybody’s guess. It is filled with bizarre events that are delivered at a pitch of histrionic melodramatics.Slant Magazine gives it 4 out of 4 stars and says,
Divisiveness and duplicity are at the heart of Żuławski's notorious cult film, and Possession's dramatic structure is almost as schizoid as its protagonists, married couple Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani), whose relationship inexplicably comes apart1000 Misspent Hours calls it "two hours’ worth of an incoherent and often ludicrous mess". 366 Weird Movies says, "This movie is long on style and short on decipherable substance, suitable for the LSD crowd, though with it’s schizophrenic script and cinematography, Possession on top of a dose of LSD would be redundant." Michał Oleszczyk's review at RogerEbert.com says, "It's all like a fast-forwarded Ingmar Bergman film on bad acid; "Scenes from a Marriage" as played in a home-made abattoir." Rotten Tomatoes has an 81% critics score.
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability." She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome -and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all her life...Sookie is a little delicate about public displays of affection. That has never bothered me -not sure why- and I found her squeamishness odd. It does solidify her character, though, as "virginal" in several ways. I found myself being a bit irritated at the numerous well-described sex scenes, and then I thought perhaps I was being delicate myself. Maybe. It did change the tone from horror/mystery to Romance, though, which made it less attractive to me. If the series keeps tending towards the Romance genre, I won't continue reading the books.
But Bill has a disability of his own: He's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of -big surprise- murder. And when one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next...
The film centers around young, insecure opera singer Betty (Cristina Marsillach). After the lead in Verdi's Macbeth is injured in an car accident, Betty is reluctantly thrust into the role in the opera. During her first performance, a murder takes place in one of the opera boxes. Mysterious murders continue throughout the film...
Opera contains some of the best thrill sequences in Argento's career. The camerawork is amazing, going from extreme close ups of crow eyes, knives, Betty's eyes, exacto blades, to the contrasting wide open spaces of the opera house, the fitting room, and Betty's apartment. The camera moves, across huge wonderfully designed sets, and in gliding point of views (from the killers, Betty's, to the flying crows over the opera audience)- just great cinematography and use of Dario's distinctive, wonderfully cruel, and beautifully brutal, imaginative eye.Rotten Tomatoes has an 83% critics rating.
A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was interested in other things besides moose—amongst them the vagaries of the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....and from a bit further on:
The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.Tim's Book Reviews recommends it saying, "If you have read Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley and are looking for more authors of their ilk, look no further than Algernon Blackwood." Weird Fiction Review includes this story in its discussion of Blackwood.
Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another shadow that was not a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon Défago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there, watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about it.... Then sleep took him....
I’m sending this email to warn you it is in the coffee. I knew something was wrong when I took the first sip. There was something spicy about it.
During a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, one sits in anticipation of the horrors lingering just outside the frame, and there's a profound sense of unease in those moments of stillness and indecision. Existential dread is an easy catchphrase to toss around, and has become the label for many a psychological terror tale dabbling in the fragility of the human condition. Kurosawa's movies have a genuinely unnerving effect on the viewer because they deal with the kind of loneliness that exists in an overcrowded world.Moria says it "offer is a great deal of haunted atmosphere, which almost compensates for total confusion about what is happening." Empire Online gives it 3 out of 5 stars and says, "While not exactly reaching Ring-levels of terror, it’s certainly one for connoisseurs of the weird." DVD Talk says, "this is the kind of film that symbolizes what's so special about the sudden emergence of Asian horror. With very little gore and an overabundance of atmosphere, this is a strikingly thoughtful, Highly Recommended take on humans and their place in the universe." Horror News says, "if you are into the ghostly side of J – horror really like RINGU and JU – ON and still have not seen PULSE it is definitely worth your money and time". It has a 73% critics score at Rotten Tomatoes.
Honeymooning in Hungary, Joan and Peter Allison share their train compartment with Dr. Vitus Verdegast, a courtly but tragic man who is returning to the remains of the town he defended before becoming a prisoner of war for fifteen years. When their hotel-bound bus crashes in a mountain storm and Joan is injured, the travellers seek refuge in the home, built fortress-like upon the site of a bloody battlefield, of famed architect Hjalmar Poelzig [who was Verdegast's rival for his wife before the war]. There, cat-phobic Verdegast learns his wife's fate, grieves for his lost daughter, and must play a game of chess for Allison's life.The music is intrusive, in my opinion.
Blind since the age of two, 20-year-old Hong Kong classical violinist Mun undergoes an eye cornea transplant after receiving a pair of new eyes from a donor. Initially, she is glad to have her sense of sight restored but becomes troubled when she starts seeing mysterious figures that seem to foretell gruesome deaths.Trailer:
The Eye succeeds in simple quick scares heightened by some disturbing visuals that remain unsettling without turning to gore. The Pang Bros. definitely have that old school Robert Wise The Haunting sense of nightmarish eye cnady combined with perfect auditory fx to make you jump in your seat a little.Scary Minds closes its review with this:
The Eye is a horror movie which understands exactly what that means. Firstly it has to try and scare the audience rather than grossing them out, and secondly it has to work as an actual movie, with plot, themes, character development etc. The Pangs deliver on all fronts and this film is more than highly recommended, it’s one of those elusive must see movies in the dark genre. If you don’t think ghosts are scary any more, then let the Pang Bros re-educate you on that point.Best-Horror-Movies.com says, "The Eye starts strong and never lets up" and calls it "a highly effective and well made horror/mystery/thriller". Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 64%, but the audience score is higher.
Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nervously and replied, "When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had said, "I don't mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say.I've read that it's considered influential and that it stands at the beginning of the modern urban fantasy genre. It places the ghost in a distinctly urban, industrial setting.
the film does create a constantly eerie atmosphere – the ever-present suggestion of something enigmatic and mysterious waiting inside the pyramid. The production design adds to immeasurably to this, creating a marvellously gloomy, perpetually dark atmosphere.Oh, the Horror says, "it’s a movie that knows what it was created to do, and it does it. The effects are magnificently realized, and the set design (helmed by James Cameron when he was merely the king of second unit directing) is impressive". DVD Talk says, "it's an entertaining one that delivers the goods, crammed as it is with gruesome makeup effects, an indescribably outrageous alien-rape sex scene and, for its budget level, extremely imaginative art direction and Star Wars-style visual effects."
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