Episode 13 centers around a reality television crew that goes into a house in Virginia where in the Seventies, a group of paranormal researchers disappeared. The novel uses a unique approach in the narrative style of this novel, by presenting it as a found footage novel, using video footage analysis, journals by members of the crew, and email and text conversation to tell the story. The found footage format is something that has been successfully done in some horror movies, but I have never read anything like this in book form. I applaud the author for taking a chance in this type of innovative approach. And while I applaud the author for innovation, I think this format holds it back in many ways.
Generally I found this novel to be entertaining and as I mentioned I liked the approach. But the biggest downfall is that there is a general lack of tension in the novel. I just didn’t feel the strong emotion that I would expect with this sort of subject material. I also felt that characterization suffered a bit as a result. I also felt the ending didn’t quite deliver in the way that I would have liked. So, in the end, this novel was entertaining and cool, but it lacks a little to make it a really strong novel.
It’s hard to get horror comedy right. There have only ever been a handful of horror comedies that I have seen in my life that I have actually enjoyed. The Monkey falls squarely in the category of a failed attempt at this subgenre.
I actually thought the movie started off good and had some promise. The first part of the movie was a long flashback of these twins who find this toy monkey that their father once had. When the monkey is wound up and starts banging its drum, a horrible death follows. That isn’t the problem with the movie. I thought there were some funny moments early that got a chuckle out of me.
The movie falls apart in the second half where they go to present time. The first problem with the movies is that the characterization is really weak. There are no likeable characters that you would want to root for. The second is that the plot is completely illogical. It makes no sense that the one brother would so desperately want to kill the other brother that he would use the monkey to do it, since the monkey doesn’t work that way. You can’t target someone’s death with it. If he really wanted his brother dead, there would be easier ways to do it. The movie just wallowed in its own stupidity and goes down as yet another terrible adaptation of a Stephen King story.
The Substance is a tale of two movies. It starts off with a really cool premise. An aging Hollywood star is given a chance to create a younger version of herself, but the process has many strings attached. Each body has to be used for exactly a week without fail and each body must be fed a fluid weekly. And then the process is only supposed to happen one time. Deviating from these rules has dire consequences as we find out later.
Besides the cool concept, the execution was pretty good. It was still an odd, quirky movie, but there was a certain logic to it as well as tension being created between the old version of Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, and the new version of her who is becoming a star as the new Elisabeth.
About two thirds of the way through the movie, everything falls apart. Saying that it went off the rails is not strong enough. This movie turned out to be a complete trainwreck. It was just an utter mess of nonsense and illogical actions by the characters. Also, the makers of the Substance repeatedly stated that both the new and old versions are the same person, but this wasn’t true at all. They acted as separate entities with no shared memories. The actions at the end with what the new version of Elisabeth does to the original Elisabeth was completely illogical. The culminating scene was just idiotic. The ending absolutely kills the movie. Like most Oscar nominated movies, this is not worth watching.
This is the second novel that I read from Simone St. James, and much like The Sundown Motel, this novel was a winner. This novel involves a true crime blogger interviewing a woman acquitted of serial murder forty years ago. The novel bounces back between present day and flashbacking to the events from forty years earlier in a really gripping manner. Despite the blogger being a true crime devote, the supernatural figures very heavily in this novel with the presence of ghosts in the accused’s house.
Writing one good novel could be a fluke, but this novel showed that St. James is talented at the craft of writing. The suspense builds throughout the novel. The tension is high throughout. It’s hard to diagnose why a novel works because it’s often hard to pinpoint why a novel is enjoyable, but the characters, the flow and pace, and the quality of the writing are all quite good. Constructing an enjoyable novel is kind of like a chef mixing various ingredients, and cooking them for a certain time and temperature and coming out with an enjoyable meal at the end. Clearly St. James has this process down quite well. The ending was quite explosive and delivered a satisfying ending. Although I didn’t quite enjoy this one as much as The Sundown Motel, I would recommend reading this.
