Book Review: Nightmares!

Here's what you need to know about Nightmares!, the 2014 YA novel by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller, it's pretty great.  The story involves some effective scares, a look at how dreams and nightmares can work, and a surprising amount of interpersonal and family relationship issues for a book aimed at Elementary school kids.

The book focuses on Charlie Laird, an eleven-year-old boy who has recently moved into his new stepmother's home with his father and younger brother Jack.  Since moving in with Charlotte (whom Charlie has dubbed "The Stepmonster"), Charlie has been having the same nightmare every time he falls asleep - which moves the book into some pretty creepy territory right there (Think Dreamscape, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Prince of Darkness territory, but toned down for younger readers), and add to it his difficulties getting along with his new family, and you get a surprisingly meaty story.

The book moves at a great pace, keeping you interested and invested in the characters and for me, moved from a "Hey this is pretty fun" to a "Darn it, I have to wait until September for the sequel!?!" kind of mindset.

Well worth the read.

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Fourteen

From One-Shots to an Ongoing Series

For the first three years of Hack/Slash the title was a series of one-shot comics, coming out a few times a year and although the stories connected with each other, previous issues were not necessary to follow the action in the series.

With the success of 2006's Hack/Slash vs. Chucky in which Cassie and Vlad fought popular horror movie character Charles Lee Ray (better known as the possessed doll "Chucky"), it was decided to move the series into an ongoing format from that point forward.  Also, the ongoing series featured penciller Emily Stone, who gave the series a more cohesive look overall, as compared to the many different pencillers and illustrators used in the earlier issues.  Different pencillers would work on specific issues of Hack/Slash as an ongoing title, but the artwork becomes much more uniform from this point forward.

In the original one-shots series Cassie fought Slashers which included a number of straight-forward "kill, but won't stay dead" types (like Halloween's (1978) Michael Meyers), a Slasher who attacked his victims through their dreams (like A Nightmare on Elm Street's (1984)Freddy Kruger) and even a Slasher who used her commands over another sleeping Slasher to kill her intended victims (not unlike the 1920 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari).

With the ongoing series, Seeley was looking forward to "...introduc[ing] more supporting characters, and have crazy little things like subplots!..and...finally hav[ing] the space to tell the story of Cassie's dad, which we've never really touched upon in the space of the one-shots." (Richards, 2007) At this point in the series Seeley also begins looking at other aspects of modern horror films, beyond the Slasher sub-genre with concepts like the rise of torture horror (like the Saw and Hostel series), and even classic concepts like the Faustian bargain (deal with the devil) and more.

It's also interesting to note that even as far back as 2007, Seeley had an overall plan for the series; "I do have an end," he said. "But the hope is that I don't have to get to it anytime soon. I can see myself doing a Garth Ennis or [Neil] Gaiman and going for 60 issues. So, ya'know, make sure ya buy it, so I can do all the cool stuff you won't get in any other book!" (ibid.)

IMAGE USED

Hack/Slash Omnibus #2 Cover.  Retrieved Online from

http://bloody-disgusting.com/photosizer/upload/HackSlaOmni2.jpg

WORKS CITED
Richards, D. (2007, February 8). "'Hack' Writer: Seeley talks Hack/Slash Ongoing" in Comic Book Resources. Retrieved online from http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=9279

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

In my own opinion, the best of the big three slasher series I watched growing up was the Nightmare on Elm Street series. As all kids do I tried to figure out ways to avoid the horrible killers from the movies I watched. Here were a number of my solutions

Bookmonkey’s tips to avoiding the killers

1) Don’t be involved in a childhood event involving the death of a kid with a troubled sibling/parent/babysitter (Prom Night)

2) Don’t go to summer camp (Friday the 13^th)

3) Don’t babysit (Halloween)

4) Don’t be a jerk to the quiet girl in class (Carrie)

5) Don’t be suspiciously nice to the quiet girl in class (Carrie)

In the case of Freddy Krueger (the villain from the Elm Street series), your only option is as follows.

Don’t Fall Asleep.

The genius of the Elm Street movies was pretty simple – as everyone sleeps, and everyone dreams, what if the killer only existed in dreams. The films worked on both the real world level, where the kids worked desperately to stay awake and in a bizarre dream world level, where virtually nothing could save them once they were asleep. The original series has both strong and week entries (the best are parts 1 and 3 followed by Wes Craven’s New Nightmare), and definitely rank among some of my favourite scary films.

Then in 2009 I started seeing trailers for the reimagining. The movie looked sleek, and the tone reflected the creepy and frightening look of the original film. Honestly the main reason I didn’t check it out in theatres was the hiring of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy. I was a traditionalist and considering the character requires total body makeup I wasn’t sure why they wouldn’t hire my Freddy, Robert Englund for the newest film.

But, after checking out both reimaginings of Halloween and Friday the 13^th, I decided to check out the newest version of Nightmare.

The big change in the reimagining? There is a significant question of whether or not Freddy was innocent, and therefore justified in his killings. The film shows us in dream flashbacks the mob mentality of the people who originally killed him (it is their now-teenaged children who Freddy targets) and asks the question, what if he was innocent?

Although I didn’t get the same feeling of respect for the source material that I got withHalloween, the film does look very good, the actors are well cast (and yes that includes Jackie Earle Haley – who really creeped me out), and the idea of micro-sleep, wherein the characters begin to have waking dreams as they hit massive levels of sleep deprivation, were pretty cool. My biggest problems involved the special effects, virtually everything was done with computer animation, and it simply didn’t posses the same level of reality that the stop-motion effects of the original series had.

Although I did purchase the film to check it out, I didn’t keep it, instead I traded it in for a boxed set of the first four films in the original series. Oh yeah, and I bookmarked the music video for Dokken’s Dream Warriors (hands down the coolest tune out of a horror film I’ve ever come across – sorry Cry, little Sister)

Movie Review: Never Sleep Again - the Elm Street Legacy

One of my favourite parts of my latest (and last) undergraduate University course is the subject matter. It's called Communications Studies 425: Film & Genre, and genre movies are exactly the focus. They have units devoted to Horror, Science Fiction, Comedy, and Suspense and I'm having a blast taking the course. My homework this weekend? In preparation for a paper I'm writing next week on the evolution of Horror in film is a documentary called Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.

If I had to describe the film in one word it would be this: Comprehensive. Having 20 to 50 minute segments on every film in the series, the short-lived television series and the cultural influence overall, this movie goes behind the scenes on every film, talking to producers, writers, effects guys, actors, and anyone else involved in the series to give you a picture of how this franchise originated and grew.

Honestly, I was kind of expecting an hour or so of people being self-congratulatory, and in the end I got a four hour look at exactly how these movies came to be, the ideas behind the films and a look back at some of the scariest films of my childhood.

If you can find this movie - give it a look, seriously I can't think of a better examination of a film franchise than this one.