Posts filed under 'Reviews'
This is the film that has caused a media-frenzy over the last few months. It was virtually banned in France, as the powers that be slapped an 18+ classification on it – although an appeal saw that reduced to a 16. Last year’s August Frighfest gave it a UK premiere, (which is where I saw it and originally reviewed it for Quiet Earth), and it’s about to receive a straight-to-DVD release in the US, having been picked up by the Weinstein company.
In the 1970s Lucie was abducted and held captive for a year in an abandoned slaughterhouse. The doctors could find no evidence of sexual abuse, suggesting something other than the instant gratification usually associated with abduction cases. After her escape Lucie lives in a care home, where she meets Anna, herself a victim of abuse, who becomes her best friend and confidant. But Lucie is haunted by guilt that violently manifests as the emaciated woman whom she left behind in order to save herself.
Fifteen years later, and Lucie has managed to trace those she believes abducted her. Alone, she visits the couple, who now have a family, and exacts graphic, unmerciful shotgun revenge. Anna arrives to help Lucie hide the bodies, harbouring doubts that these are the people who abused her best friend, but beneath the house she discovers a series of hi-tech rooms and whitewashed corridors, adorned with back-lit images of women, young and old, dying in various different circumstances.
Who do you go to build something like that? This set-up is a pretty specific piece of subterranean engineering with an obviously unwholesome intent. It soon becomes clear that the people Lucie has murdered were part of a larger circle; a secret society who have enough money to guarantee silence, and it’s in these pristine purpose-built surroundings that Martyrs sets off on a grim journey through extremely dark places to eventual enlightenment, as Anna becomes their next victim.
Martyrs will most likely be compared to the Hostel films, and those other French fancies: Switchblade Romance, Frontiers and Inside, but for all the wrong reasons. Yes, there’s a secret society that abducts, tortures and ultimately murders innocents, but the elderly patrons of this particular group have very specific reasons for targeting women only; and it’s via this shared and secret obsession that Martyrs transforms into a brutal quest for knowledge that, in the view of this particular sect, or cult, can only be gained through disciplined abuse and torture. The inference is that there is a close network of members and locations dotted throughout France, each with their own subjects, each subject being forced to go through the same unspeakable regime, towards the same end.
Martyrs delivers true hopelessness as Anna is subjected to an unrelenting programme of suffering. This fifteen minute sequence is astonishing and painful to watch. I just wanted it to end, and quickly, but for Anna, it lasts months and only leads to other levels of preparation for what she must face. This sequence is not meant to be enjoyed, on any level.
The sect’s quasi-religious thirst for the unknowable ultimately saves Martyrs from falling victim to its own gory excesses, which in the first two-thirds of the film are considerable, and on a par with the bloody events seen in the aforementioned films. But Martyrs isn’t a torture-porn film in the Hostel sense of the term, far from it. Those films, and Hostel especially, are about killing for the sake of killing. Martyrs has a reason for every piece of its protagonists’ pain.
You may love it or absolutely hate it; and almost without exception, Martyrs has divided the opinions of critics and genre fans. It’s not a film that you can or should enjoy on certain levels, but it is there to be experienced. Immediately upon leaving the cinema I sat not knowing what to write as I couldn’t get the taste of that prolonged scene out of my mouth, out of my head, it affected me that much, and I had to delay writing the review for a couple of days in order to gain a considered, rather than reactionary, perspective.
So, several months after viewing the film my opinion has not changed, but other scenes have come to the fore as I’ve thought about it: the violent haunting of Lucie brings to mind the desperate struggles for survival in The Descent, but played out in her irretrievably damaged mind; the unquestioning, uncompromising and ultimately brutal friendship that Anna and Lucie share is at once touching and bewildering; the oft-criticised raison d’etre behind the cult can make or break the film for the viewer; it made it for me.
And now, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m ready to watch it again, this time as a fan of horror cinema, this time for a purely horrific, white-knuckled experience.
Pascal Laugier should be commended for giving us a film that is well-written, stylish and technically brilliant, thought-provoking and stomach-churning. Martyrs will become a genre classic, but as with The Last House on the Left, it’ll be a long, hard and unforgiving road to transcendence.
Laugier’s now at the helm of the remake/re-imagining of Hellraiser, and, well, that seems like a good fit indeed.
Reviewed by Mathew F. Riley
[Mathew's book reviews can also be found at Bookgeeks]
April 12th, 2009
Reviews have started to flood in for ‘The Absence’, and I’m pleased to report 
that the word is very, very positive! Check out the links below for the full reviews.
First up we have Fatally Yours - ‘…no amount of words could ever adequately describe the masterpiece of horror that Hussey has created with ‘The Absence”.
Next, Dark Fiction Review - ‘… a master craftsman of horror.’
Bookgeeks - already quoted on the back cover!
Highlander’s Book reviews - ‘Reminiscent of “The Shining”… there have been previous claims for Britain’s answer to Stephen King but on the strength of his work so far Bill Hussey richly deserves the comparison.’
Jason ‘the Bonebreaker’, at Mad Ravings of an Entertainment Junkie - ‘So far, the best book of 09!’
Novelist Peter Mark May at Novelblog – ‘a fine teller of English ghost stories.’
And Simon Kurt Unsworth - ‘This is a smart, literate piece of horror fiction.’
These great reviews come on top of previously published pieces by Geoff Nelder (‘Bill Hussey is the new MR James’) and Garry Charles.
I’d like to thank all these reviewers for taking the time to consider the book and posting up their thoughts.
In other news: there are now signed copies of ‘The Absence ‘ in the following London stores: Waterstones Picadilly, Foyles on Tottenham Court Road and Waterstones Holborn.
April 1st, 2009
In theory, all the ingredients that should make Dante 01 an effective science fiction / horror hybrid are present; but theory is very different from execution…
Director Marc Caro was one half of the innovative team behind the dark adult fairytales Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children; and his input to that successful collaboration is shown here as he runs solo for the first time: the claustrophobic steely cold environment, the lumbering spacesuits a la Sunshine; the shadowy ship, much like the Event Horizon.
The crucifix-shaped Space Station Dante 01 is a medical experiment; criminally-insane prisoners avoid the death penalty by agreeing to undergo drug trials and observation by a skeleton crew of scientists and security wardens. This uneasy arrangement is rocked when a new and unspeaking inmate, (Lambert Wilson, who played The Merovingian in The Matrix films), arrives under the care of a beautiful scientist, Elisa, who is under orders to test a new nanotechnology-based drug. The new prisoner, nicknamed Saint George, is apparently the sole survivor of an event that wiped out his crew and left him with the gift/curse of seeing inside people’s bodies. As Eliza’s drug kills the inmates, Saint George brings them back to life, seizing hold of the nano-tech virus and eating the infection, healing more than just the drug-induced illness. The prisoners and remaining staff must race against time to save themselves from the self-destructing ship and the determined Elisa.
The dialogue is appropriately minimal and the acting eerily intense; the entire cast is shaven-headed, the uniforms colour coded. Women are small and elegant; the men are huge, and craggy-faced, or physically twisted and manipulative. Characters’ names represent their actions: Charon the Prison Warden; Caesar the murderer; Lazarus, and so on. There are a couple of scenarios that should never have got past the draft scripting stage – why oh why would the emergency detonation shutdown switch be located beneath the prisoner’s quarters, at the far end of a corridor flooded by boiling water…?
Frustratingly, the event that shaped Saint George is not explained at all, not even hinted at. His talents are very much like a Sineater’s – taking on the sin of the deceased, but also moving into the God-like through resurrection and saintly silence, crying for the pain of others and the visions he experiences. This quasi-religious non-message begs explanation – just why is Saint George seeing what he is seeing, and what is his purpose? Unfortunately the film is simply too short, at 84 minutes, to answer these questions; the climactic scene is simply a repeated loop of special fx, that whilst technically spectacular and visually iconic, is far from informative and ultimately unsatisfying.
Still, Dante 01 is worth your time for its looks, quirks and impressive character acting, but it could have been so much more.
Reviewed by Mathew F. Riley
[Mathew's book reviews can also be found at Bookgeeks. This review was originally published in the Winter 08/09 edition of Prism, the Newsletter of the British Fantasy Society]
February 25th, 2009
Thomas Ligotti knows something we don’t, something so dark and indescribable that we might go insane should we encounter it first-hand. We should be thankful to him, then, that he merely hints at whatever he sees in his writing, but even toned down you’ll find it difficult to ignore or deny the profound black emotions he portrays.
My Work is Not Yet Done brings together ‘three tales of corporate horror’ (as was the original Mythos Books sub-title) – the eponymous novella, a novelette I Have a Special Plan for This World, and a short story The Nightmare Network, and marks an evolution in Ligotti’s endeavours. Earlier collections immersed the reader in oddly bleak small town landscapes, the terrors of emerging memories and latent fears, coulrophobia, masks, puppets, loneliness, insecurity and anxiety. Indeed Ligotti has suffered from the latter condition all his life and this manifests strongly in many of his stories, especially in the seemingly personal and very accessible horror that is My Work Is Not Yet Done, but, and this is the evolution, so does a healthy vein of black, black humour.
Frank Dominio, or ‘Domino’ to his ignorant colleagues, works for a nameless corporation that produces unidentified products. As a middle-manager he attends bland and unnerving meetings with his management colleagues. He is afraid. The Seven Dwarfs, as he calls them, are a bunch of revolting individuals, all of whom he despises. But it soon becomes obvious that Frank is more than just your usual disgruntled, or nervous, employee. This man hates: “I wanted to do things to Richard that would make the sun grow cold with horror.” And he hates because he sees no point in his own existence or that of those around him, and of the company he works for and the products they produce.
The first third of the novella revolves around Frank’s increasing paranoia, exasperation and strange sense of acceptance of the banality of his place in the scheme of things, an order he’s not convinced of anyway, as evidenced when he feels his Proposal has been stolen by The Seven Dwarfs and a colleague attempts to console him:
‘In the grand scheme of things,’ the voice continued before I grabbed it with both hands and wrung its neck, spitting out my words of contempt through gritted teeth -
A: There is no grand scheme of things.
B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity.
C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity.
Unceremoniously sacked, Frank hatches a plan to get even with The Seven Dwarfs, a special plan that involves a lot of guns and a massive Buck Skinner Hunting knife… but Ligotti does not take the easy way out – there’s no extreme version of Falling Down here. The story twists into unpredictable shadowy realms as Frank is abruptly overcome by a supernatural force, something he terms ‘The Great Black Swine’ which enhances his senses, empowers his actions and provides him with an understanding that only serves to justify his bleak world view and quest for revenge.
I Have a Special Plan for This World, the novelette, is set within the Blaine Company that has recently relocated to Golden City, (aka Murder Town), a city enveloped in a yellowish haze and renamed to attract corporate entities like the Blaine Company. And entity is exactly what it is, as ‘the atmosphere of tension had become so severe and pervasive that one could barely see more than a few feet in any direction’. Written from the perspective of an employee, who although keeping his head down, closely observes strange phenomena that restructures the Blaine Company, almost organically, and certainly supernaturally: as senior personnel are murdered near the company HQ, and office drones are gradually replaced by the city’s homeless, a Presence forms within the Blaine Company offices… a presence that still wants to ensure a profit. Summoned to meet this incorporeal management entity, our protagonist reveals some career aspirations of his own.
Much of Ligotti’s fiction is in the first person and both My Work is Not Yet Done and I Have a Special Plan for This World hold true to this viewpoint. Having read several interviews with him (and conducted one a long, long time ago) I find it difficult to separate the author from his characters – and this is what makes Ligotti’s fiction so impactful: you can feel him seething as he writes these words; and while obviously monstrously cynical about the corporate drudge, he infuses each tale with a dry and deadly humour that those of us who work in such noxious environments will be able to appreciate only too well.
Differing considerably in approach, the vignettes of The Nightmare Network present us with a series of initially persuasive classified adverts, propaganda and job vacancies that might have been written by any one of a million young advertising executives at the inflexible behest of a massive corporation’s publicity department: ‘Okay, here’s our Brief. Now go deliver. Oh and here’s what we want it to look, sound and feel like. We don’t NEED you, but do we want to USE you.’ Excerpts from a Supervisor’s notebook expose the extremes management are prepared to go to in order to maintain their position at the expense of their subordinates as the Company goes down. The adverts become increasingly desperate in tone, revealing the great uncaring vacuum behind the cosmic corporate bullshit – a bit like the current trend for those reassuringly pathetic ‘we’re GREEN and we CARE’ ads that assault us relentlessly. Considerably more experimental in tone that the previous two stories, The Nightmare Network left this reader nodding his head in agreement, as if he’d read a little bit of the truth.
I’ve been reading Ligotti for most of the twenty years he’s seen publication and the utterly convincing intensity and obscurity of his visions may be why he’s found it difficult to break out of the horror genre’s niche reading circles during this time. Admittedly his dark star has risen in the US over the last couple of years with 2 graphic novel adaptations of his work and a DVD release of the film adaptation of his short story, The Frolic. With the UK release of My Work is Not Yet Done (and his previous collection Teatro Grottesco also available as part of the Virgin Books horror line up) hopefully this situation will change.
Consider your weird fiction education incomplete until you’ve sunk into Ligotti’s disorientating literary darkness. His words will engulf you.
Mathew F. Riley
[Mathew's book reviews can also be found at Bookgeeks]
February 15th, 2009
Two new reviews of TAGD have appeared in recent days.
The first comes from the really rather excellent GUD (Greatest Uncommon Denominator) Magazine. For their stunning artwork alone, GUD deserves a wide readership. In a positive review, GUD’s Debbie Moorhouse concludes that TAGD is ‘Definitely one for the Horror fan who prefers to get more in their favourite genre than just blood and gore.’
The second review can be found at the rather fun Haunted House.Com – a website which, among other things, provides a directory of haunted houses in the US! Reviewer Joe Gray was quite impressed with TAGD’s bogeyman, stating that - ’Mendicate is a one of the most frightening villains I have encountered in any movie or book in a long time.’
I’d like to thank these reviewers for taking the time to read and consider TAGD.
February 13th, 2009
In December I reported that Through A Glass, Darkly had made it to the no.
2 spot in Speculative Fiction Junkie’s Top 5 Reads of 2008. Now I’m equally as delighted to tell you that the book has also appeared in Fantasy Book Critic’s ’best of’ list for ’08. It’s a real honour to be sitting alongside books and authors I have admired this year, including Toby Barlow’s brilliant verse horror Sharp Teeth and Scott Sigler’s Infected. The really breathtaking piece of news from this feature is the line, ‘Through A Glass, Darkly was easily the best horror novel I read in 2008.’ Considering the company TAGD was keeping, this is truly humbling.
Another great review blog featuring ‘a best’ of ’08 book list is Dark Wolf. Again, I am very proud that TAGD has made it to no. 2 on Dark Wolf’s list. Interestingly, as in Speculative Fiction Junkie’s top 5, this list includes the wonderful The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Needless to say, I’m overwhelmed to be mentioned alongside two such great writers.
February 3rd, 2009
Dark Fiction Review, a new blog set up to write about those books that have ‘scared the pants’ off the reviewer has gone live. I’m very happy to say that the first book reviewed on the site is ‘Through A Glass, Darkly. Check it out at the link above – a few brief snippets follow:
‘a dazzlingly high-quality debut novel’
‘I was even reduced to tears at one point early on in the book when…’
‘a disturbing and provocative debut novel’
January 28th, 2009
David Moody’s been following his own path for several years now. Via his Infected Books, he self-published to relative acclaim, and impressive sales, whilst developing a deservedly healthy fan base. He’s arguably best known for his Autumn series – across five books, Moody involved the reader in a darkly raw and realistic, very British zombie apocalypse, (a zombie apocalypse with a difference, but that’s another review). During those independent years Moody published several other titles, includingHater, which has now been picked up by Gollancz in the UK, and in the US by Thomas Dunne Books.
In Hater, Moody has tweaked the apocalyptic virus trope in a very simple way. And it is an utterly devastating tweak. Seemingly normal people suddenly turn into killers. There is no warning, no time to think as the pure urge to kill the person in front of them overwhelms the affected, (infected?). As the violence spreads, the media coin a term for those who succumb to these mysterious violent urges: Haters.
Moody is a master at involving the reader in the minutiae of everyday decision-making. This isn’t as tedious as it might sound given the scenario in which he places Hater’s protagonist Danny McCoyne. Danny is a straightforward family man, married to Lizzie, with three kids and a father-in-law who doesn’t like him; they live in a cramped flat with no spare cash. Danny works in a meaningless administrative job in a nameless city. His days follow the predictable path of boredom as he goes about his pointless work tasks; and of exhausted frustration, as he laments his loss of freedom now that he has kids. Danny is ensnared in that work/life balance juggling act most of us are familiar with.
In the first-half of Hater, Moody shows us just how trapped we’ve become within this rut of system and routine. He worries about his next pay-check and how his boss has got it in for him. Lizzie wants Danny to stay at home with her and the kids, but he thinks he should continue to go to work, despite the surrounding chaos, the chance of being attacked, and the impending martial law. Think about it: what if there was a serious outbreak of avian influenza in London? Would you go to work, or stay at home? Does the money matter more than your health? It’s not as easy a decision as you might think, especially when you’ve got a family to feed.
Interspersed with Danny’s ruminations are depictions of some of the random attacks. Within these two or three page ‘interludes’ Moody provides enough context and detail to allow the reader to empathise with the Haters and their victims. As the killings spread into the streets and across the country, society divides into two, behaviour changes and a new prejudice emerges, replacing all the old bigotry of religion and race. You either hate or you don’t. People fend for themselves and attacks on others are ignored. It’s too dangerous to get angry – you might be mistaken for a Hater. Cracks appear as the authorities struggle to come to terms with this new social structure.
With the seamless and dramatic precision of a turning victim, Moody completely reverses the perspective of the narrative as the virus of violence comes knocking at Danny’s door. This is less of a twist and more an expected development, and allows Hater to evolve into a survival story of a very different nature.
With no obvious vector of transmission, conspiracy theories abound and the government does itself no favours with its lack of communication with the general public – not something that feels so outlandish these days at all. And, as with Romero’s zombie films, and the more hate-fuelled 28 Days and WeeksLater, Moody only has to suggest some top secret security-type shenanigans for us to be satisfied, and get on with rooting for Danny in his fight for survival. I would have liked Moody to take subsequent events further – but maybe he will in the near future…
Moody is most definitely a man with a plan. A plan that has recently come to fruition, given this deal with Gollancz, and the fact that Guillermo del Toro’s picked up the film rights to Hater. He’s also secured a deal with Thomas Dunne Books for the Autumn zombie sequence, (which has already spawned an independently produced film, due in 2009). A sequel to Hater, Dog Bloodwill be published in 2010.
Hater is a simple story, powerfully told, and if David Moody’s this good part-time, how good’s he going to be, given his well-deserved freedom to focus upon his apocalyptic formulae on a full-time basis?
Mathew F. Riley
[Mathew's book reviews can also be found at Bookgeeks, and his film reviews at Quiet Earth].
January 13th, 2009
I’ve just been informed that ‘Through A Glass, Darkly’ has made it to no. 2 of Speculative Fiction Junkie’s Top 5 Reads of 2008! It’s a real honour to be in a list that includes ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Jack O’Connell’s ‘The Resurrectionist’ – an author who shares my passion for comic books. You can find the Junkie’s original review of TAGD here.
December 17th, 2008
I am intrigued and impressed in equal measure by this book. It’s a literary hoax, purporting to be the autobiography of a non-existent book forger, a literary hoaxer himself, a serious wine buff, and, oh yes, someone who can see demons. That Gollancz have dressed it in a faux-antique jacket and presented it as an autobiography (complete with blog for the author) suggests they are going along with this conceit because it enhances the reader’s enjoyment, and to be fair I would say this is true. The author is Graham Joyce, in point of fact, and in the US it will be published under his own name, with the title How to Make Friends With Demons. All this frivolity must not distract from the fact that this is an excellent, literate, compelling novel which could easily pass for literary fiction in the mould of The Gargoyle or similar.
William Heaney, our narrator, works for an unspecified youth organisation, something which brings him in to contact with government and funds a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, including a passion for fine wines. As well as his day job, Heaney is writing deliberately bad poetry for a friend to pass off as his own to an arts establishment that can’t seem to get enough of it, and working on scamming substantial sums of money out of impressionable book collectors by faking up first editions of 19th century masterworks. The proceeds for this go not on special vino but on supporting a drop-in centre for the homeless. Yes, quite the enigma, Mr Heaney, even before we get to the business of the demons.
William Heaney says he can see demons – the embodiments of people’s weaknesses, their vices, their failings and their self-deceptions. It’s a lovely idea well realised, a constant thread throughout the book, but it’s not central to the plot – rather, it’s a way of making Heaney stand apart from the other characters. The arrival of an invite to the launch of a book by an old university acquaintance triggers a series of flashbacks that explain why Heaney is something of an emotional cripple and pinpoints the time when the ability to see demons manifested itself.
The story of Heaney facing (literally) his and other people’s demons is woven in with a burgeoning love affair, to which William is at first resistant; the unearthing of old memories triggered by the book launch invite; and the fate of an old Gulf War veteran with potent demons of his own. It’s a very well structured and compelling tale, which ties up all these strands very effectively, and I enjoyed it a great deal. At the close, the question of whether William Heaney really can see demons, is mentally ill or is just winding us up because he can is left hanging, another layer of deceit and artifice, maybe a hoax to go with Heaney’s many others – and possibly the most successful one of all, because I, for one, really want to believe him.
Guest Review by Simon Appleby of Bookgeeks
December 4th, 2008
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This is the film that has caused a media-frenzy over the last few months. It was virtually banned in France, as the powers that be slapped an 18+ classification on it – although an appeal saw that reduced to a 16. Last year’s August Frighfest gave it a UK premiere, (which is where I saw it and originally reviewed it for Quiet Earth), and it’s about to receive a straight-to-DVD release in the US, having been picked up by the Weinstein company.