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Tag: horror

Recently watched: Death of a Unicorn (2025)

Posted on August 21, 2025August 21, 2025 By caracabe

Let’s see, we have the widowed father, a corporate lawyer so busy providing for his daughter that he’s lost touch with who she is as a person. We have the daughter, with her two-colored hair and nose ring, cartoonishly progressive, but the only character whose moral compass is working. (At least in the early part of the movie, but we wonder: will the father’s slumbering conscience be reawakened? Who can say? It defies prediction!) We have the dying business tycoon who wants someone beside his bumbling family to carry on his legacy. We have the tycoon’s wife, who just got off the phone with the foundation, and good news about the refugees, we’re relocating them! — Or are we vaccinating them? We have the rich couple’s spoiled son, jack of all hobbies and master of none, who surely will not turn out to be a greedy, manipulative person. We have the rich couple’s servants, who seem to be former special ops. And we have two of the tycoon’s scientists (Asian, naturally), who for some reason work out of his home.

Despite the presence of cell phones and the internet, this movie feels like it was made in the 1980s. Anti-oligarch, but that’s not enough to make it a good movie. Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega are wasted on flat characters in a story with few surprises. A couple of amusing moments. Would not recommend.

Watching

Recently read: From the Belly, by Emmett Nahil

Posted on August 10, 2025August 10, 2025 By caracabe
front cover, showing the shoulders and head of a submerged person, their eyes and above obscured, barnacles on their skin

From the Belly, by Emmett Nahil; Tenebrous Press, 2024.

Moby-Dick in an alternate world, but the whalers are the ones being hunted. Body horror, eroticism, mutiny, nature taking revenge, gods of the deep, capitalism at its most brutal, a main character with a secret (and then another, and another), body count and sense of dread both logarithmically increasing—this book has it all. Interior illustrations by Megan Llewellyn. (I love the pictures, I just wish there were more of them.)

Reading

Recently devoured horror

Posted on May 29, 2025 By caracabe

Recently read

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones. This unusual vampire tale takes the form of a story within a story within a story. The embedded narratives span more than a century, but they are all one story, beautifully told. (I noticed one period vocabulary slip-up, but it’s something only a pedant like me would care about.) The characters are complex, and the dueling vampires might not be the most evil among them, not even when they feed on children. Jones creates his own vampire lore, similar to what we know from Stoker and Hollywood but also alien. The Blackfeet terms were challenging for me to keep track of, but that’s not a bad thing. Blackfeet history and culture are central to the story. A tense, eerie, tragic novel, not without wit and humor.

Recently viewed

Tomie (1998 movie, directed by Ataru Oikawa). I haven’t read the manga series this is adapted from, but if I didn’t know it was Junji Ito, I would have known it was Junji Ito. Being friends with Tomie is like being friends with Hannibal Lecter: you don’t know why you’ve been singled out, and you might not want to eat everything you’re served. But Lecter probably won’t manipulate you into killing him, and if you do kill him he’ll stay dead. This movie does an excellent job of maintaining tension and mystery throughout.

Reading, Watching

Recently read: Familiar, Jeremy C. Shipp

Posted on May 21, 2025 By caracabe

Familiar, by Jeremy C. Shipp, Ghoulish Press, 2024

This could best be described, I think, as cozy cosmic horror. I’m continually amazed by Jeremy C. Shipp’s imagination. Hard to review without spoilers, but if you find yourself transfixed by a desiccated eyeball in someone’s hand, you probably brought it on yourself.

Reading

Recently read: The Reformatory, Tananarive Due

Posted on May 13, 2025 By caracabe

To be honest, I was reluctant to start The Reformatory. I’d read so many good things about it, I was afraid it would fall short of its reputation. But Tananarive Due has never disappointed me yet. Characters to care about, in a suspenseful and heartbreaking story. Just to complicate things for the main characters, who already are dealing with angry ghosts, a psychopathic warden, and the Klan, they also have to manage well-meaning allies who don’t believe in spirits or who do believe in the fairness of the justice system. This book kept me up late at night turning pages.

Reading

Recently viewed: Longlegs (2024)

Posted on April 1, 2025 By caracabe

Longlegs (2024), directed and written by Osgood Perkins.

Nicolas Cage gives the kind of high-amplitude performance you hire Nic Cage for. The movie is visually unsettling, and the script has intriguing elements. But the big twists are obvious ahead of time, and Longlegs doesn’t commit to its craziness. It tries to make sense, when it should embrace the nightmarish irrationality at its heart. If it did that, I might accept Carrie Anne’s odd dialect without wondering why she’s adding all those S’s to words. Entertaining enough to watch once, but not to rewatch.

Watching

Recent reading, Feb 5 2025

Posted on February 5, 2025 By caracabe

Queer Little Nightmares

Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry, edited by David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli; Arsenal Pulp Press, 3rd printing, 2024.

This is what small presses are for! Queer Little Nightmares is a collection of stories and poems for the monsters in all of us (especially the queer ones). Diverse in style and content, these works are both deliciously weird and grounded in emotional truth. Standouts for me include the stories “The Vetala’s Song” by Anuja Varghese and “Strange Case” by Eddy Boudel Tan, and the poems “Godzilla, Silhouette Against City” by Ryan Dzelzkalns and “Cryptid Cruising” by Avra Margariti. But they’re all worth reading.

Horror: A Literary History

Horror: A Literary History, edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes; The British Library, 2020.

This collection of essays surveys the horror genre in English and American literature from the 18th century to today. Sometimes the style is ridiculously academic, but the content is interesting throughout. Every chapter ends with a list of references and a “What to Read Next” section, making it a useful book to keep on hand.

Blog, Reading

tiny frights podcast #49: “When Spirits Return, Requesting a Favor” by LindaAnn LoSchiavo

Posted on October 24, 2024 By caracabe
abstract cover art with the suggestion of something (an angel? a predatory bird?) emerging from a dark background

Learning to be dead is a difficult lesson. Episode 59 of the tiny frights podcast features the poem “When Spirits Return, Requesting a Favor” by LindaAnn LoSchiavo, from the Walpurgis 2024 issue of the zine. Check your usual podcast sources or use one of the links below.

Bandcamp:  https://caracabecreations.bandcamp.com/track/tiny-frights-episode-59-when-spirits-return-requesting-a-favor-by-lindaann-loschiavo

RedCircle: https://redcircle.com/shows/bd120807-a3c4-49a2-b380-80cc1a2c7442/episodes/d8f6fcce-9aa1-4485-8218-425ec146df12

Podcast

tiny frights podcast #58: “How Green Was My Valley” by Robert Beveridge

Posted on October 17, 2024October 17, 2024 By caracabe
abstract cover art with episode info that's in the post

Some workplaces have trouble retaining employees. Episode 58 of the tiny frights podcast features the poem “How Green Was My Valley” by Robert Beveridge, from the Walpurgis 2024 issue of the zine. Check your usual podcast sources or use one of the links below.

Bandcamp:  https://caracabecreations.bandcamp.com/track/tiny-frights-episode-58-how-green-was-my-valley-by-robert-beveridge

RedCircle: https://redcircle.com/shows/bd120807-a3c4-49a2-b380-80cc1a2c7442/episodes/d6d0c23b-5a27-4e9b-8928-0e442f6afc0c

Podcast

tiny frights podcast #57: “Everything You Know About Witches” by Warren Benedetto

Posted on October 10, 2024 By caracabe
abstract cover art with episode info that's included in the post

What everybody knows ain’t necessarily so. Episode 57 of the tiny frights podcast features the story “Everything You Know About Witches” by Warren Benedetto, from the Walpurgis 2024 issue of the zine. Check your usual podcast sources or use one of the links below.

Bandcamp:  https://caracabecreations.bandcamp.com/track/tiny-frights-episode-57-everything-you-know-about-witches-by-warren-benedetto

RedCircle: https://redcircle.com/shows/bd120807-a3c4-49a2-b380-80cc1a2c7442/episodes/7be2f602-0ec8-4dfe-ba97-91c7dba02e7a

Podcast

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Recent Posts

  • Recently Read: Macbeth, graphic novel by Gareth Hinds
  • Recently Read: Moonflow, by Bitter Karella
  • Recently watched: Death of a Unicorn (2025)
  • Recently read: From the Belly, by Emmett Nahil
  • Recently devoured horror

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