First Impressions: Bates Motel

Last week I checked out the new A&E series Bates Motel, with my wife and my youngest daughter Kaia.  A few days earlier I had shown Kaia the 1960 classic Psycho - so we were pretty excited to see how this new show would go.

One episode in, and honestly, I'm liking it.

As the series is effectively a prequel to a story most people are very familiar with, it's interesting to see how they play with the interactions between young Norman Bates and his mother Norma.  The casting is really good, both stars Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga come off as quite genuine, and both more than a little wrong - just the perfect mix of what you would expect for the characters.

The premise has them relocating to Oregon after the untimely death of Norman's father.  Here they purchase a new motel and try to start a new chapter in their lives.  Pretty quickly things start to go south.  The police seem strangely interested in the pair and Norman's quick popularity with the girls at his new school seems to be a pretty big problem for his mother.

With a series like this everything comes down to atmosphere - if things go wrong you move quickly from creepy into farce, but so far, the tone is very nicely set and I'm definitely interested in checking out the next episode.

Movie Review: Psycho

Doing a little prep work yesterday, I treated my 15-year-old daughter Kaia to her first viewing of the 1960 Horror Classic, Psycho.

I did this for three reasons.

1) Honestly, whether you're a horror fan or not, there really are very few films as fun to watch for the first time as Psycho.  I told her nothing about the film, except that I thought she might like it and let her enjoy the experience with no knowledge of what the story would bring (totally jealous by-the-way, as I knew most of the plot points the first time I watched it) - for the record, at first she thought Norman was kind of cute.

2) Tonight on A&E the new series Bates Motel is starting, and as it follows a teenaged Norman Bates, she's probably going to either see it or hear about it - so I wanted her to see the original first.

3) In a week or two, I should be getting the 2012 film Hitchcock from my local library, and as the film is about the making of Psycho, I wanted to review the original again before I saw a story set behind the scenes.

In the end we had a pretty fun time watching the movie - at first she thought the title was a little misleading, after all, what's so psycho about a lady stealing some cash from her boss - it was pretty suspenseful however, so my daughter said the movie should have been called Suspense-o (doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it?), but by the end, she admitted, the title was a pretty good one for the story.

Book Review: A Stir of Echoes

Like most people, I’ve seen a lot of movies based on books well before I ever got around to the novel, if at all. Often the film ruins any exciting plot twists you might have found in the book so there is even less of a reason to pick up the original work. But sometimes…

A few years back while in Germany I read Robert Bloch’s Psycho, a book that has become one of the most famous films ever made. Yes there is a secret ending, yes it is incredible, no I will not spoil it for the six or seven people out there who don’t know (it is that cool), so you would think that the original novel would have little to offer a reader who is “in the know.” To my surprise, that book was fantastic, scaring me almost all the way through, and surprising me in story elements that would not have translated well into the medium of film.

Two years ago I read Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, and the same thing occurred; even though I had seen the Polanski film at least five times, the book brought a wicked sense of humour to the material that I was not expecting and totally enjoyed.

This brings me to my current book, A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson. Like most people, I saw the 1999 Kevin Bacon film first (and yes I’ve won more than a few games of six degree of Kevin Bacon using this film or Tremors as a link; interesting note, Serious SDoKB players consider it a cheat to connect through star-studded films like JFK or Apollo 13). It’s kind of funny actually, as at the time the film came out there was a sort of backlash against it, saying it was basically a rip-off of The Sixth Sense, which is funny, because the book is based off of a novel published forty years earlier in 1958.

The book is actually a lot of fun, definitely helped by the fact that I saw the movie more than a dozen years ago so the story seems a little fresher. Add to that the fact that the victim and the killer are different in the novel than in the movie, and you end up with a story even someone who just saw the movie could still enjoy today.

This is the six Richard Matheson novel I’ve read in the last half year (the others were Someone is Bleeding, Fury on Sunday, Woman, I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man) and I love reading any authors work in order of publication because I get to see them grow as an artist. The book is quite good, and makes me want to go back and check out the movie again.

Things I've Noticed #8: Are Remakes giving up?

I just watched the trailer for the new "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie, due out next February and I noticed something pretty strange. Except for the opening bit where the parents of Elm Street burn Krueger alive, practically every single other shot in the whole thing was a direct steal from the original film.

Just as the '90s were filled with kid movie remakes (The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat, etc.), our current decade is full of horror remakes. The problem is this, if you have nothing new to say, why exactly are you saying anything?

I actually don't mind remakes - although I don't mind reading subtitles, a lot of people do and therefore the idea of taking a foreign film and remaking it for western audiences is all right by me, I'm even a pretty big fan of the horror remake, because when it is done well - John Carpenter's "The Thing" for example, it can actually add to the enjoyment of the original without simply being a shameless steal.

I think that Dark Castle Entertainment actually started out with a pretty good idea - remake b-movies from the 50s and 60s with better actors and bigger budgets. The key however is to stick with movies that can be remade without alienating their key audiences.

When the remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" came out, I wasn't excited, I was kind of pissed - the original 1951 film said everything so perfectly, what could a new movie do?The point of a remake is to take the original material and do something new with it, if you simply copy the original, but add a new word here or there, it's called plagiarism.

Now I'm not saying remakes should never happen, but at the very least they should show something different - and for the record, a higher gore level is not different - I mean something different with the story, or the theme, or characterization.

I remember being blown away back in 1998 by the idea that Gus Van Sant was going to remake, shot-by-shot Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and although the result was not great, at least you can say he was honest about what he was doing.

Things I've Noticed #7: The 5 Reasons Horror Fiction Rocks

A couple weeks ago I spent almost an entire post explaining why I hated Scott Smith's The Ruins. As we have now entered October, I figured it might be a good idea to explain some things I love about Horror Fiction.

1. It's pretty much the only genre that allows you to kill off your main character - yes, I know, people die tearfully in dramas and often in action and mystery books, but for the most part, your main character is a guaranteed survivor - unless you're reading horror and then all bets are off.

2. Shorter is often better - Short Stories seem to be a natural place for Horror, I think it's easier to ramp up the tension and really get the fear going when the story is less than 50 pages. Even when I think of my favourite horror novelists, Stephen King and Richard Matheson, both of them excel at the short story.

3. It can even work when you know how it will end - case in point, I read Psycho by Robert Bloch two years ago - and even though I had seen the movie and knew the entire story, the book seriously gave me a case of the heebie jeebies.

4. Horror is not often considered literature - and sometimes that suits me just fine - I read a lot of books that are good for me, but every once in a while it is nice to just read something that has an incredibly high "Cool" factor. Also, since it is not considered literature, more people are willing to talk to you about it.

5. Horror is an emotion - so it can show up in any genre. I've read horror westerns (Track of the Cat), Horror Fantasy (Night's Master), Horror SF (The Sheep Look Up) and tonnes more. Unlike other genres, horror can easily sneak up on you anywhere - and when it mixes with comedy (my personal favourite), you get something very cool!

I think the reason I love horror is simple; I like getting an emotional reaction from the stuff I read, and really good horror can leave you a little scared for a long time.

Things I've Noticed #5: Age Appropriate Materials

Whenever you look up a top ten list of horror movies, you are bound to come across The Exorcist, it's the horror equivalent of Madonna on a top ten pop music list of the '80s. It joins Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre as horror movies everyone has to see, like Star Wars and 2001 are to SF fans.

So as a die-hard horror fan I have seen this movie a lot, and let me tell you, the first time I saw it (age 12) my opinion was this:

BORING! By the time I got to the end I was definitely checking out a book instead of watching the film. (Picutred above - and yes I was reading a Grover book at age 12 - that book is AWESOME! and for the record, more suspenseful to my 12-year-old self than The Exorcist anyday) I mean, you spend most of the movie watching a mom wander around Washington D.C. talking to people, you don't even get to the devil stuff practically until the end and it's over pretty fast.

At age 16 I saw it again, and my opinion changed - the girl is pretty scary and I was beginning to be able to appreciate camera angles and the strange imagery throughout the film.

As a parent of 2 at age 20, I watched the movie again and you know what (pictured left) This is one of the scariest movies ever. The stuff with the mom finally clicked with me - to have a child so sick that you end up going back and forth between doctors and therapists, who give you no hope, and end up going to priest for help (the mom is a capital-A Atheist) suddenly became very relatable to me.

Here's my theory, certain books and movies work best at a certain age. The Exorcist doesn't work for kids, because the scary stuff is aimed at parents. You get more out of it when you can relate with the main character (the mom). This happens with books too, I first read Lord of the Rings when I was in grade 5 - but to be honest, I mean I first read Fellowship in Grade 5 and then all the Sam and Frodo bits of the next two books. I simply didn't have the patience to wade through all the rest of the book at that age.

Now, does this mean I think kids shouldn't even give The Exorcist a try? Of course not, but what I do think is that certain books and movies benefit from being revisited. Earlier this week I talked about my first impression of The Terminator (at age 10), At first it was scary, when I re-watched it in Junior High it was awesome, and only last year (age 32) did I see the Christ story parallels and the fact that every machine in 1984 is also trying to stop Sarah Conner.

So we can view it one of two ways - either certain books are aimed at certain audiences, and therefore resonate better with them. or (and my personal favourite) I may be getting smarter...