Ladies With Guns, Part One by Bocquet Olivier - Book Review

 

'Five women from various backgrounds are brought together by fate to fight as allies for their survival. A retired schoolteacher, an Indian who's handy with a bow, a young, immigrant widow from London, a brothel worker who's made off with the till and a fourteen-year-old slave who's been put in a cage. This unlikely band of adventurers must fight off the violence men resort to when caught in greed's ubiquitous grip. They'll do it with arrows, pies, brooms, pots, knitting-needles, and a lethal revolver that becomes even more dangerous in the hands of the sharpest-shooter of them all: a teenager who's been whipped, locked in a cage and freed only to fall victim to pneumonia. These women have got each other's backs and don't take kindly to the worst mankind has to offer.'

Ladies With Guns is a new graphic novel from Europe Comics that takes readers to the wild west to follow the exploits of five women dealing with the evil that men do.

The story begins with Abigail, a teenage slave who is making her way through the countryside trapped inside a steel cage. Dragging and carrying her cage around her as she walks, Abigail has made a desperate bid for freedom, but runs into trouble when a pack of coyotes begin to attack her. Thankfully, help arrives in the form of Kathleen. Kathleen has recently moved to the West from her home in London as she and her husband attempt to build a new life for themselves. However, Kathleen's husband is killed when he's caught up in an accident, and when their caravan comes under attack from Native Americans she flees into the woods, where she finds Abigail.

Kathleen didn't flee the attack unnoticed, however, and is followed by Chumani, a young warrior woman who has followed Kathleen to exact revenge. Kathleen was forced to kill Chumani's brother in order to escape, and Chumani wants revenge. However, the two women put aside their differences in an attempt to help Abigail out of her cage. Unfortunately, the lock proves too hard to break, and so the two women carry Abigail, and the cage, to find help. Abigail falls sick along the journey, and when Kathleen tries to get help in a small town she's almost thrown into jail. Fortunately for her, Daisy, a retired school teacher comes to her aid. Daisy, and runaway sex worker Cassie, go with Kathleen to help Abigail, and the five women are forced to come together to fight for their lives when a posse of men come calling for their blood.

Ladies With Guns is something of a brutal book. The entire premise is about the evils that women are made to live with at the hands of men, and the book doesn't shy away from showing that. The women are hit, stabbed, shot, and beaten as they try to fight off the men who want to reclaim the small, scarred, and hurting slave girl who has already been a victim of abuse and sexual violence. Writer Bocquet Olivier puts the violence front and centre, but never revels in it, never makes it something to look forward to or find joy in. Even when the awful men are being hurt by the women there's no happiness in the act.

What is the source of happiness in this book is seeing these women come together and forming bonds with each other. Chumani, Kathleen, and Abigail are together the longest, and form the biggest bonds. At the start of the book Chumani wants to harm Abigail simply for having defended herself, blaming her for the death of her brother. But, by trying to work together to help Abigail they begin to see that the differences of their people, the animosity between the white invaders and the native people doesn't have to extend to them if they don't want to. A genuine friendship seems to form between them, and soon they begin risking their lives not just for Abigail, but each other too.

Daisy and Cassie are later additions to the story, and whilst we get a good sense of the type of person she is pretty quickly Cassie remains largely something of an enigma by the time the book comes to a close. She seems much more out for herself than the others, was less willing to get her hands dirty to help Abigail for example; but I expect that she will be expanded upon in the next volume, and that my thoughts on her could change.

Speaking of the next volume, I really enjoyed how this part ended, with a huge culmination of things that were building from the very beginning in a huge, brutal showdown that showed that these women are not meant to be messed with. Unfortunately for them, they're now in a position where they can't just claim self defence, that they've just been trying to do the right thing and don't know they've broken laws, as this volume ends with them wanted for multiple counts of murder. It's a great ending to this book, and sets up for some great stuff to come. I'm excited to find out what happens to them next, who could come hunting for the bounty on them, and if they can ever find a safe way to escape from the men pursuing them.

The art for the book is provided by Anlor, who does a great job throughout. All of the environments, from the open plains of the west, to the lush forests, to the old western style buildings all look brilliant and really put you into the setting. It feels like a bold and dynamic film at times, and the choices made for framing and action in the panels make things pop a lot. Speaking of action, Anlor does a fantastic job at making the violence in the book feel violent. There's no moment where it feels like larger than life characters hitting each other to little effect, and every slap, punch, and worse, feels like a huge impact. People get hurt in realistic and brutal ways, and it makes you uncomfortable to watch. Which is perhaps once of the best compliments for a book about the awful nature of violence.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Ladies With Guns when I picked it up, due to the almost exploitative and sensationalist title. But this isn't a story about over-the-top female characters going around shooting things up and being action heroes, it's a story about the violence that women face, the brutality they go through, and five incredibly strong women who stand up and refuse to take any more. This is definitely a series where I'm going to be eagerly looking forward to the next volume.

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Ragged by Christopher Irvin - Book Review

 

'In a feral twist on crime fiction, Cal, a mutt with a criminal past, must step back into the world of animal violence to avenge the death of his wife and protect his pups from the inherent darkness of nature.

'A stunning anthropomorphic tale of love and revenge, Ragged; or, The Loveliest Lies of All is a dark story of a vibrant animal community in a New England wood. Grieving the loss of his wife to a mysterious case of rabies, Cal must avenge her death and protect his pups from the coming winter and the horrors of the forest. It's Wind in the Willows and Fantastic Mr. Fox meet Fargo in Christopher Irvin's signature slice-of-life crime style.'

Ragged isn't your typical crime noir mystery. Yes, there's characters with dark pasts, criminals, death, and infection on the horizon that all put this small community in danger, but thanks to Christopher Irvin's wonderfully weird imagination Ragged does something very different; it sets it all in a community of woodland animals.

Cal is a dog who grew up outside of the woodland community, a member of the wasteland gang, a group of criminals and killers made up of rats, stoats, and weasels, headed up by Maurice, the cruel raccoon. But Cal has long since given up on that old life, having started a family and become a member of the woodland community. However, when his wife, Winifred, goes missing Cal tracks her down to the fells, where she's fled to escape her family, to keep them safe as the infection that courses through her blood turns her feral. Cal does the only thing he can, and ends his wife's suffering.

Keeping Winifred's infection and subsequent death a secret, lest the community think he and his family could be sick and cast them out, Cal tries to find out how his wife was infected in a bid to seek revenge. As Cal investigates the rest of the community tries to deal with the increasingly difficult problems that come from a lack of food and supplies as the local traders haven't visited the village in weeks. Everyone is on edge, waiting for help to come; and with infection and the denizens of the wasteland stirring more trouble is on the horizon for the citizens of the woodlands.

The blurb for Ragged described the story as being a cross between Wind in the Willows and Fargo, and that's a pretty apt description. The book features anthropomorphic animals yes, but it's not a story for kids, and has a much darker tone. The book begins with Winifred being infected, struggling to focus and to get away from her family, and the tone doesn't really get any lighter from there. There's a constant sense of unease and sadness that permeates the book, and as the reader you're waiting for something worse to happen as Cal and the others try their best to carry on.

The story has a large cast of characters, and if the book was featuring humans I think that perhaps it would be easy to get lost as you get dropped into this large community of people. However, thanks to the cast being made up of different animals it became a lot easier to keep track of who everyone was, and what kind of person they were. The characters aren't just regular humans in animal form, and have aspects of their animal personalities baked into them. Certain traits that would feel weird, or perhaps over-the-top in humans fit perfectly with the characters of Ragged, especially as they walk a fine line between civilised and feral.

The story is definitely improved by it being animals as well, and whilst this could have worked in some form with people, changing out the rabies infection to some other form of disease that could cause problems for the community, it just wouldn't have been the same. Irvin didn't just take a story and throw animals into it, but made a plot and a world that could only work because of the unique take on the characters. So much of this book comes back to it being these anthropomorphic animals that you don't even realise how much world building and clever creation has gone on because you're so wrapped up in the main mystery to realise.

I really do think that Ragged is one of those books that will give you different feelings whilst reading it to when you've finished, and that once you start looking back at it once its done you start to see how much bigger it was than you first thought, and how much more intricate everything is. Because of this I think this could easily be one of those books that people end up reading more than once, just to try and get more and more out of it.

Ragged was an enjoyable read, one that was more complex and interesting than I was first expecting, with some unique ideas and innovative takes on the genre that a lot of stories would struggle to get away with. One that's definitely worth checking out for fans of the genre who're looking for something a bit different.

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The Forest of Time Volume One: Children of the Stone by Tristan Roulot - Book Review

 

'Deep in the heart of an enchanted forest, a small village of children lives unaffected by the passage of time thanks to a powerful stone that protects them from it. But when the stone is shattered and a thief runs off with one of the shards, four of the children must set out at once in search of the missing shard before their village is swallowed up by time and everybody in it dies. Armed with four crystals with special powers, the children bravely make their way through the dangerous forest to hunt down the thief, making friends and enemies along the way and encountering one strange creature after another.'

The Forest of Time is a new fantasy graphic novel series coming from Europe Comics that takes readers to a strange world where a small enclave of children have been living deep inside an enchanted forest, where time stands still. These children have been living with the Worshipul One, the only adult, who leads them in their life of science and experimentation.

The children of this small village have lived together for years, longer than their ages would imply, and have dedicated their many years to furthering their knowledge and understanding of the universe. There are philosophers, astronomers, mechanics, and biologists. The children and the Worshipful One have used the agelessness of their village to their advantage, spending years in study of the fields that fascinate them. However, one night a mysterious young woman breaks her way into the village, and shatters The Stone, a magical artefact that kept the passage of time at bay. Stealing one of the pieces of the stone, the thief has destroyed the village's way of life.

With the stone's powers failing, and no way to repair it without the missing piece the thief took, four of the children set out to find the woman and get the missing piece back. However, as they begin their journey into the world beyond their village they encounter new allies, and new dangers; including a masked old man who draws the life force from those around him, who seems bent on stopping the children.

The Forest of Time: Children of the Stone is an interesting start to this new series, and establishes some pretty firm foundations for things to come. The first thing that the book does well is to establish our lead characters, giving us a good idea of who our main children are before things have even gone wrong. Max is the oldest of the children, a brave young man who seems to make taking care of the younger kids a priority, and is the first to step forward when they need someone to go looking for the stone. Theo and Leo are a pair of inventors, and are the comedic duo of the book. When we first meet them they're working on their latest invention, a mechanical bird that can poop on people. Whilst they initially seem to be something of a joke, they prove to be incredibly resourceful, and because of their outgoing nature it's no surprise when they step forward.

The fourth of the heroes sent from the village is the one that makes the least amount of sense to begin with. Marie is one of the youngest of the children, and hasn't yet found the thing that grabs her. Whilst others have chosen their paths to explore she seems like something more of a daydreamer. However, she chooses to go on this mission because she saw the woman who broke the stone, a woman she thinks could be her mother, and who told her to leave with the others. Whilst Marie's thoughts that this woman who looks just like her might be her mother isn't a bad one, thanks to clues scattered throughout the book, and the focus on time an its manipulation, I think it's a lot more likely that the female thief is actually an older Marie, and that she was spurned onto her adventure by her older self.

This is something that I also think might be happening with other characters too. We see time being manipulated in a few different ways,  so going backwards in time isn't a wild an idea as it sounds. I do look at both the Worshipful One and the Time-Eater and think that they're pretty similar looking. If the Worshipful One's beard got a bit wilder and greyer it would fit; plus he could easily be wearing the mask so that the children he raised don't recognise him. Tristan Roulot has certainly seeded a lot of potential plot ideas in this first volume that make it feel like this story is going to be a bit more complex than I was expecting, and will be doing some sneaky and surprising things with the story.

The art for the book has been provided by Guerrero, and looks really nice. All of the children have bold, distinct designs that make them instantly stand out on the page and you never get confused as to who is who; which is a good thing with how many children there are at times. The environments all look really pretty and have a huge amount of detail to them, and you can spend ages looking through some of the locations picking out small details.

Overall I had a really good time with The Forest of Time: Children of the Stone, and am looking forward to finding out where the story goes from here. There's been some interesting stuff introduced so far, and promise of more exciting things to come.

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The Cellar – Film Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Haunted house stories can be hard to get right. They’re one of the oldest staples of horror, and it seems like every take on them possible has already been done. Despite this, The Cellar manages to find an odd little niche to expand upon ghosts, spirits, and the world of the occult: mathematics.

The Cellar follows the Woods family, who have moved into a huge new home that they bought cheap at auction. The house, a huge old manor complete with massive fireplaces, old portraits on the walls, and a fully stocked library, is being pushed as a new start by parents Keira (Eisha Cuthbert) and Brian (Eoin Macken), and whilst young son Steven (Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady) is excited for the move, teenage daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) hates the idea. Ellie’s hate for the house intensifies when she gets stuck in the cellar whilst touring the house, and gets creeped out by something in the darkness.

When Keira and Brian have to head in to work for an important pitch on the first night in the new house, Ellie is left in charge. When Steven finds a secret compartment in one of the rooms that has an old gramophone, they play the record to find a recording of a strange mathematical equation.

When the power goes out later that night Ellie has to head into the cellar to turn the fuses back on. Terrified of heading in there alone she stays on the phone with her mum. Keira encourages Ellie down into the cellar, telling her to count the ten steps down as she goes to calm herself. But when Ellie keeps counting, her voice going strange, Keira and Brian rush home to find out what’s going on. When they return Ellie is missing. Keira is convinced that something strange is going on in the old house, something connected to the odd mathematical carvings scattered around the building.

The Cellar is a haunted house story mixed with a mystery. The first portion of the film focuses on building tension with small scenes that show Ellie becoming more and more afraid of the house, and the cellar in particular. These moments are pretty well done, and thanks to some long, lingering camera shots, some creepy music, and well crafted sets, the house does quickly get a spooky vibe to it. Even when Ellie disappears and the film takes on more of a mystery vibe to it there are some pretty creepy sequences scattered throughout. One in particular made my skin crawl.

The central mystery of the piece, the strange cellar and the odd carvings and formulae scattered throughout the house, is one that I found genuinely intriguing, and thanks to a handy mathematics professor that Keira can visit, we get some suitably vague explanations for what’s going on that leads to a type of haunting that feels strangely different from most. This isn’t just a lingering spirit, and it’s not your average demon summoning. The Cellar is genuinely trying to do something different here, and I think it deserves points for that alone. Though in some ways the film does remind me of 2010’s Insidious. I won’t say why, but once you’ve seen the film I’m pretty sure you’ll get what I mean.

The films focuses on the Woods family, and as such only has a small cast. Outside of the family itself there’s only a handful of named characters and speaking parts, and as such the core cast have to work hard to carry the plot themselves. Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady and Abby Fitz are pretty good in their roles of the kids, with Fitz in particular coming off well. She plays the angry teenager well, though has a level of vulnerability to her that you genuinely believe her when the cellar leaves her terrified. There are times where Fitzmaurice Brady comes across as a little creepy, and I’m not sure if it’s an intentional part of the film or not, but it definitely doesn’t hurt for a horror film.

Eoin Macken falls into the stereotypical horror father role, of not believing that there’s a supernatural explanation for his daughter’s disappearance, and has to be brought round to believing the very obvious creepy things happening around him. Cuthbert, however, is the stand out star of the film. This was the first time that I’d seen her in anything since 24, and found her completely unrecognisable. Being twenty years older than the last time I’d seen her, and with completely different hair colour, she felt like a different actress in this film.

She fits the mother role well, and you can see a genuine struggle going on for her as she tries to balance her work life with her kids. She also seems to still be playing an American character, despite sounding Irish half the time. The occasional slips into a more American accent and the use of certain words show that she’s not native Irish like her family, and this made for some great subtle character choices, showing her as someone who has mostly assimilated to living across the world, yet still slips from time to time. Having known people who have married into Irish families, and who’ve ended up picking up a lot of the accent and words to the point you’d think they were Irish too, it felt like a very believable choice for the character.

The Cellar is overall a pretty enjoyably movie. It has some good moments of tension, doesn’t really rely on jump scares or loud music to make the audience feel frightened, and has a unique twist on this kind of story. But it’s far from perfect; it doesn’t really take too many chances, and it doesn’t always keep the tension going. I’d have loved to have seen more time spent on certain aspects of the movie, but sadly because it never took the time to do so it’s not going to be a film that stands out from the crowd.

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Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney – Book Review

 

Originally published in Set The Tape

'Life gets complicated when Death gets involved.

'To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be… rather unusual. Especially if, like Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life.

'To make matters worse, family debt looms – a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor. Lanie finds herself courted and threatened by powerful parties who would love to use her worryingly intimate relationship with the goddess of death for their own nefarious ends. But the goddess has other plans…'

Saint Death’s Daughter tells the story of Miscellaneous ‘Laine’ Stones, a member of the Stones family, a group of people who have strange powers that allow them to tap into magic. Laine is a necromancer, the only one to be born into her family for generations, and thanks to being allergic to all forms of violence has had to live a life sheltered away in her huge family home in order to keep herself alive. But when her father, the royal executioner, and her mother, the royal assassin, both die in quick order she finds her life being thrown upside down.

Laine has to call her older, twisted sister, Animita ‘Nita’ Muscaria Stones, back from her studies abroad to help at the family home when it is revealed that her family was in a great deal of debt. With that debt now fallen onto the two surviving Stones women they have to come up with a way of saving their family home, or risk losing the lives that they’ve become accustomed to. However, when more deaths begin to happen it becomes apparent that there’s more going on than first appeared.

I really wanted to like Saint Death’s Daughter. The blurb sounded really interesting, the set-up sounded fun. It seemed to be the kind of dark fantasy story that I normally enjoy. But thanks to the writing it just felt incredibly inaccessible, off-putting, and hard to follow.

One of the biggest issues with the book is that the author begins by giving the reader a huge info dump. We get seven new days, twelve new months, and a dozen gods and their domains to learn before we’ve even begun the story. This kind of thing, putting huge lists of new names and places at the start of fantasy stories before you’ve even met a single character, has always been something that I’ve found off-putting. I understand that sometimes books throw a lot at you, and that it can help to have a guide to use to remind you of stuff as you go along, but whenever I see pages like this at the start of the book it makes me feel like I’m about to start reading a text book, rather than a story.

Once the story began, this feeling really only intensified. Despite being given a huge info dump right at the start I found myself getting pretty lost very early on, with large sections of the prologue and opening chapters making little sense. The biggest problem was that not only do the characters drop names and phrases that we have no context for at this point, but their regular speech comes across like they’ve swallowed a thesaurus too, so even the parts that you should be able to understand come across as confusing.

I’m used to picking up books where there are strange character names, where we get given places we’ve never heard about, and other in-world words and phrases that you’ve got to learn; it’s a fairly standard part of fantasy. But whilst with most books I am able to learn as I go along, Saint Death’s Daughter never felt like that. Thanks to the way it is written and its over-use of flourishes and excessively odd text I was never able to just relax into the book and go along with it, picking it up as I went. I was drawn out of the story on almost every page as I was going back and rereading things to try and make sense of them.

Some of this confusion wasn’t helped with the constant asides and added information that the author would throw into scenes too. You’ll be reading about Laine and what she is doing in the moment and you’ll suddenly get several sentences telling you about a great-great aunt and her life and how she dies that doesn’t really add anything to the story, slows you down, and makes it harder to try and keep up with the plot. Most of the times these asides seem to be attempts at humour, to inject some kind of odd levity in the scene, yet thanks to them often feeling forced they never feel humorous at all.

It feels like Cooney has written an entire world down for this book, that they’ve worked out how everything works, who everyone is and their families going back several generations. It does feel like a thought out and realised world, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were stacks of notebooks on the author’s desk. However, it also seems like they’ve tried to cram it all into this one book, to try to show off how well planned and deep their world is, without realising that it’s taking away from the enjoyment of the story. I’ve seen some reviews comparing the book to Pratchett, that it’s trying to emulate the sense of weirdness and whimsy of the Discworld books, and I definitely see that here; but rather than creating something slowly like Pratchett did, the author seems to want it all up front, dumping several books on us in one overlong and unfunny volume.

There are some good things about this book, it has some dark moments, some interesting characters, it has positive queer, polyamorous, and trans representation. It takes a great approach to normalising more marginalised folk. But it just seems like the author tried to be too big and clever and funny and failed on all accounts, resulting in a book that is an absolute slog to get through (the close to five hundred pages felt closer to a thousand), and something where I was relieved once it was over. I’m sure there’s an audience out there for this book, but I honestly couldn’t recommend it to folks.

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The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz - Book Review

 

'Owen Mann is charming, privileged, and chronically dissatisfied. Luna Grey is secretive, cautious, and pragmatic. Despite their differences, they begin forming a bond the moment they meet in college. Their names soon become indivisible--Owen and Luna, Luna and Owen--and stay that way even after an unexplained death rocks their social circle.

'Years later, they're still best friends when Luna finds Owen's wife brutally murdered. The police investigation sheds some light on long-hidden secrets, but it can't penetrate the wall of mystery that surrounds Owen. To get to the heart of what happened and why, Luna has to dig up the one secret she's spent her whole life burying.'

The Accomplice is the latest mystery thriller from Lisa Lutz and Titan Books, and it gives readers something a bit special as you don't just get one mystery in this book, but quite a few.

The story follows Luna Grey and Owen Mann, two people who've been friends since they met in college. The two of them quickly form a strong friendship, and become inescapable parts of each others lives. People expect them as a pair, they question why the two of them aren't together romantically, but Luna and Owen are simply just friends. 

After knowing each other for nearly two decades the two of them are still in each others lives, living a few houses away from each other, and still being the best of friends. Yes, it might put a little strain on their relationships with their partners, but everyone understands that they're a package deal. When Luna goes out for a run the morning after Owen's wife, Irene, confides in her that Owen's having an affair, Luna discovers Irene's body. The police begin their investigation into the murder, checking to see if Owen may have killed his wife, but Luna is sure that he had nothing to do with it; just as she was sure he had nothing to do with the death of his girlfriend back in college. As the investigation continues, memories of the last time two two of them were connected to a tragic death begins to surface, old wounds get reopened, and their relationship gets put to the test.

I really enjoyed The Accomplice. It felt intriguing straight from the off thanks to the relationship between Luna and Owen. Whilst the story is about the death of Irene and the events that come from that, a big focus of the book (the main focus really) is these two people. As much time is given to their relationship as there is to the two deaths, and the book delves deep into friendship, trust, and toxic relationships. And yes, I said two deaths, as the book doesn't just contain the one murder mystery.

The narrative gets split across two different timelines throughout The Accomplice, alternating between Owen and Luna's time in college, and their present time of 2019. In the present we see them dealing with Irene's death, their changing relationship, and the difficulties they both face; in the past we see the two of them come together for the first time, their friendship forming, and also what happened when Owen's on-again-off-again girlfriend Scarlet is found dead. Owen is, of course, a prime suspect, and we see the impact that has on his life back then; the way that everyone in college other than a handful of friends turn on him, how the Scarlet's family is out for his blood, and how it tests the bonds of his friendship with Luna.

These two interweaving timelines aren't just there to add an extra mystery or to show the strength of their friendship, but also helps to serve the present narrative. The people in the present have issues to deal with, personal issues that have hung over them for years; relationships that have never been the same. As we learn more context for this in the present time we get to see how it began as the past timeline unfolds. It becomes clear that the last time a tragic death plagued their lives it set off a series of events that would forever change them; and it's no surprise when the events in the present have a similar effect.

In a lot of ways the central relationship in The Accomplice is one that you'd want to aim for with your close friends. They love each other, they know what to do to help each other, they're there whenever they need someone, they do good for each other. However, I felt that the book was also a warning about how toxic such close relationships can be, how if you don't manage your behaviour right, if you get in too deep and don't look at more than just your wants and needs it can turn toxic and hurt others. Owen and Luna are no different to other strong relationships we've seen in fiction over the years, albeit with one big exception. There's no romance or sex between the two of them. They love each other in a way that you see in some of the stronger romantic relationships in fiction, doing awful things for and to each other, but its always platonic. And whilst you probably don't want to completely emulate their friendship it is wonderful to see strong platonic love depicted in fiction, as most writers seem to think that any strong friendship has to turn romantic or sexual at some point.

The mysteries of The Accomplice are really engaging, and not just the central ones of how these women died in the two timelines. There are multiple smaller mysteries scattered throughout the book that are just as engaging. Luna has something terrible in her past that she's trying to keep secret (something that I wished we'd gotten more of as it was an amazing part of the story), there's mystery around Owen's past with Irene, mystery around Irene's relationship with her step-father, mystery around why Luna's past relationship with Owen's brother soured. All off these little mysteries keep the reader engaged whilst the larger mystery unfolds in the background, and keeps the book interesting even in the quieter moments. And the central mystery, of who killed Irene and why has such an obvious, simple solution that once it was revealed I slapped my head and yelled 'of course!' for not having seen it coming. It was such a masterful reveal, at just the right moment, that it made the whole thing worth while.

The Accomplice is an engaging mystery story that takes a more personal approach to murder mystery than some other books. It doesn't follow the police and their investigation, and instead focuses on the human connections of the people whose lives have been forever changed by these tragic events. If you're looking for a character driven thriller with a good central mystery, this book is definitely worth a read.

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See You Then – Film Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Relationships make for an easy subject matter to explore within fiction. With most people on the planet engaging in, or trying to engage in, romantic relationships, and with the varied different forms those relationships take, it seems like there’s no shortage for different approaches to take. See You Then, written and directed by Mari Walker, looks to explore a relationship that ended suddenly, one that still preys upon the minds of the two people involved, and what happens when they meet up years later.

The story begins simply enough, with two old college friends who became lovers meeting up for dinner. Kris (Pooya Mohseni) is in town to take part in a business conference, and decides to meet up with her old flame Naomi (Lynn Chen), who still lives in their old college stomping ground, and even teaches art at the college. You immediately see that both parties are nervous about this meet-up, and it soon becomes apparent why, as the film doesn’t try to hide what makes this a bit different from other stories about exes meeting: when they were dating, Kris presented as a man, and she’s since transitioned.

It turns out that Kris is trans, and that she didn’t really realise this about herself when the two of them were dating years before. Kris talks about how she kind of knew, but was still figuring it out, and that her doing so was the reason why she up and left Naomi without warning. Despite the potential bad blood, and lots of nerves, the evening seems to go well between the two women, and as the night wears on they travel from one location to the other, talking about their lives, their careers, families. The two of them begin to reconnect. However, as they spend more time together more painful parts of their old lives begin to come to the fore.

See You Then is not going to be the kind of movie that everyone will like. It’s a conversation piece, following these two women as they dissect their lives and discuss their dreams for the future. They’re joined briefly at times by other characters, often men who appear for but moments, but ultimately it’s just the two of them. They haven’t met for any real reason, there’s no big thing that one of them is waiting to bring up, and it just feels like a snapshot from real life, of the kind of meeting that I’m sure we’ve all experienced at one time or another. But even within the realms of these kinds of films it feels like See You Then tries to do something a bit more.

Queer voices are often overlooked in media, trans ones especially, so getting a film that squarely centres a trans woman’s experience is wonderful. Especially as the film doesn’t try to sensationalise anything. Kris is a regular, normal person. She has a boring sounding job where she works in tech. She goes to dull work conferences. She’s recently gotten out of a relationship with a man she met through her hobby. She’s a normal person. And the film makes a big point of this. There are times when Kris talks about her transition, how it saved her life and how she wouldn’t be alive if she hadn’t done it, but she downplays the idea that it’s anything ‘amazing’.

There’s a moment in the film where Kris gets visibly angry with the idea that her having transitioned makes her special, condemning the term ‘brave’; something she’s heard a lot. This is a narrative that is so often used in media that it seems to be the only alternative to the other big media representation of trans journeys: the tragedy. Trans people are either treated awfully, having lost their families and homes, forced into crime to survive, and often then victims of murder. Or they’re overcoming great strife, staring down fear and hatred, to blossom and become amazing. And Kris rejects these notions, showing that her life is no different from the average cis person’s, and that transitioning wasn’t something that makes her brave. It’s something I’ve encountered myself, more than once, and it’s a narrative that might seem benign, even positive, but often puts undue pressure on regular, ordinary folks who just happen to be trans.

Getting to see a trans woman represented as a regular, ordinary person was such a refreshing change. Especially as Kris is far from perfect. Over the course of the film we see that Naomi has her issues with Kris. Not for being trans, but because of the way she ended their relationship. Naomi has clearly been carrying this baggage around with her for years, and it may even be part of why her happy life, a life where she should be at peace, seems to leave her feeling empty and even jaded at times. Kris coming back into her life brings some of these issues back up to the surface, and over the course of the movie we get to explore this long held trauma.

The acting in See You Then is what really makes the film work. The script is well crafted, and it feels like a natural conversation, something that other films like this sometimes fail at, but it’s the two leads who carry the entire movie, and make it work. Lynn Chen is great throughout, and even from the first moments she meets Kris you can see that there’s something under the surface. Whilst at first you can pass this off as just surprise at seeing her ex having transitioned, you learn that there’s more to it than that. You can feel the discomfort and the pain bubbling just beneath the surface, even when she’s trying to be happy and kind.

Pooya Mohseni is fantastic as Kris, and I think the fact that the film actually cast a trans woman in the role makes a huge, huge difference. Her pain over the hard parts of transition and the damage to relationships feels completely genuine, and she’s able to capture the absolute euphoria of getting to live as your true self in ways I’ve never seen a cis actor do so. The two of them manage to breathe a lot of life, and huge amounts of honesty into the portrayals.

See You Then takes a look at a very personal, intimate evening between two people whose lives have had a huge impact upon each other. It examines the ways that relationships change, how people evolve, going from wonderful moments of joy to some devastating revelations, and manages to feel incredibly genuine throughout.

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Plainer Jane #4 & #5 – Comic Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

The Plainer Jane series continues with issues #4 and #5 being released in quick succession, giving fans of this dark crime series a chance to catch up with teenage contract killer Jane as she tries to navigate her dual life as a killer for hire and a student nurse.

Despite the series being called Plainer Jane, we don’t really get a huge amount of time to spend with the titular character over these two issues. We get some time with her at the start of issue #4, getting to see her interact with her mother, spending time in her medical lessons, and even watching her kill off another of Manchester’s criminal elite, but we don’t really spend much time really getting to know the character the same way we did with the first issues. And issue #5 has even less of Jane than #4.

Instead, readers begin to see the bigger impact of what Jane has been doing, catching up with the cops looking into the sudden spike in gang killings, and the criminals who can see that there’s a problem going on, and want to do something about it. These scenes really open up the world that the series writer David Wilburn has been creating. Not only do they give us broader context for what it means when Jane starts killing criminals, but they help to build the tension. We know now that what Jane is doing hasn’t gone unnoticed, that factions on both sides of the law know that she exists and plan to take action against her.

It really does begin to feel like Jane has bitten off more than she can chew with these issues, that she never thought through what her choices meant beyond the most immediate, and that she’s going to be facing some serious consequences. But then I also think that these issue have been showing us that Jane is perhaps in a worse place than any of us were expecting. As these two issues go on, Jane becomes more and more withdrawn, she spends less time with her friends and family, she talks less, and even the narration begins to dry up. She’s not even trying to pretend to be ‘normal’ anymore. I think this is showing us that by choosing this path, by making killing her path in life, she’s losing more and more of herself to it, and that the Jane we have now is very different to the one we started this journey with.

With Jane getting less time to shine as a character, becoming more of a figure that moves from scene to scene simply performing actions than being a real person, other characters begin to move into the spotlight. One that definitely gets a good show here is Sergeant Tyler Lewey, one of the officers working on the gang murders, and whose wife has been in a coma since being injured in a previous issue. Lewey, it turns out, has a big part to play in this story, bigger than I was expecting, and I won’t reveal what that is to avoid spoilers; but I will say that he becomes something of a complex character, and one that may divide some readers.

The artwork for both issues is by Samir Simão, who provides some nicely crisp and clean work for the two books. The art style follows much of what we’ve seen before, with simple black and white illustrations with the odd splash of red to draw your eye or highlight certain things. There are some great two-page spreads that look brilliant, and have a ton of detail to them, and it really does feel like the series is hitting its stride in terms of how it wants to look.

There are a couple of pages right at the start of issue #5 that are full colour, and look more painted rather than drawn. This only lasts for the one scene, and it’s not clear why it’s different here. In previous issues we’ve had back-up stories done in different, colourful art styles, but that isn’t the case here, and it does feel slightly jarring and out of place to start the issue this way before going back to the regular style.

The Plainer Jane series has been a really interesting book, one that has been weaving a story that has been getting more complex and layered as it s been progressing, and it really feels like its building towards something big now. We’ve got more characters involved, a bigger world, and more at stake than we first began with. With all of the developments across these two issues I’m looking forward to seeing what issue #6 has in store for us.

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Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror – Blu-ray Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

It feels like this is a great time to be a fan of classic monster movies. Godzilla is celebrating new success in the west thanks to the Monsterverse, which is getting a spotlight shone on its original films; films like Nosferatu are getting new releases to celebrate their anniversary; and classic films from the 1950s are getting new box-set releases, such as last year’s Cold War Creatures collection. Now Eureka Entertainment are bringing fans three new Blu-ray releases in Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror.

This new collection brings together three films from the 1940s and 50s that take a more science fiction spin on the classic monster movies. These were the decades where the European Gothic was out of fashion (can’t be setting stories in European castles whilst the Nazis are still fresh in people’s minds), and instead writers have turned to science to explore themes of horror. These were the decades where radiation and mad scientists reigned supreme, and these three films showcase a pretty wide assortment of these movies.

The first in the set is the 1941 film Man-Made Monster, which starred horror icon Lon Chaney Jr early in his career with his first horror role, before his big break in The Wolf-Man later that same year. The story follows Dan McCormick (Chaney), a man who survives a tragic accident that kills dozens of others when a bus crashes and becomes electrified. It turns out Dan has some kind of immunity to electricity, and agrees to work with some local scientists to investigate this. However, one of the scientists has some shady ideas about what to do with Dan, and after subjecting him to some awful experiments, turns him into a glowing, brainwashed killer filled with electricity.

Man-Made Monster, directed by George Waggner, is the mad scientist story of the piece. Despite becoming a ‘monster’, Chaney isn’t the villain of this film, with that role being filled by Lionel Atwill’s Doctor Rigas instead. The film played into the fears of the ‘supermen’, of people turned into soldiers, mindless monsters that couldn’t be stopped. Made during World War II, but before the US had entered the conflict, the film is absolutely influenced by the fears of the time, and makes for a fascinating watch. It also comes with an audio commentary from authors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, who discuss the film, the actors, and monster movies of the era in greater detail.

Also on the first disc is the 1957 film The Monolith Monsters, directed by John Sherwood. This film is one of the more unique sci-fi horrors of the era in that despite the title there’s not really much of a monster in this film. The movie begins with a meteorite crashing into the desert outside of a small town in Southern California. The meteorite scatters strange black rocks across the landscape. When the locals come into contact with the rocks a horrifying reaction occurs, turning the people exposed to it into stone.

Worse still, the local authorities learn that when exposed to water the rocks grow in size, eventually shattering into more pieces, spreading the rock further. When a huge rainstorm rolls through the desert the space rocks grow to gargantuan size, spreading towards the small town. Now the sheriff and the local geologist must figure out a way to stop the spread of the rocks in time to save the town, and possibly the rest of the world.

The Monolith Monsters is a truly unique monster movie. It doesn’t have a creature coming to kill you, there are no alien monsters or mad scientists. Instead it becomes more of a science thriller, with scenes of folks in labs trying to analyse the strange space rocks, and doctors trying to stop the victims dying. Where the movie really excels, however, is in the model work. The monoliths are these interesting creations that grow on screen, towering over the desert, destroying houses as they shatter and spread. The miniature work is definitely the part of the film that shines above the rest, and is worth watching for that alone. Eagle eyed viewers may also get a kick out of noticing that the town is also the same set as both Back To The Future and Gremlins, being one of the first films made there. As with the other film, The Monolith Monsters comes with an audio commentary that delves into the making-of, by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby.

The final film in the set is Monster on the Campus, released in 1958. This film, directed by Jack Arnold, deals with the dangers of radiation, and is a quite fun Jekyll and Hyde style horror. The film is set at Dunsford University, where Doctor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) is researching into evolution and human history. He’s excited to receive a specimen of the coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for millions of years. The living fossil will help Blake in his research. However, strange things begin to happen on campus to those that come near the fish.

When a dog drinks some of the bloody water the fish arrived in, it becomes aggressive, and grows large fangs. Even a dragonfly that lands on the creature isn’t immune, and grows to huge proportions. Blake believes that somehow the irradiated blood from the fish is reverting animals to more primitive states. He also thinks this could explain the large, monstrous person seen around the campus killing people, but first he has to make the authorities believe his outlandish claims.

Monster on the Campus was my favourite of the three films on offer here, and seemed to have a lot more to it. Whilst there’s very little mystery as to who the monster is in the film (Blake gets infected almost immediately), it is still fun to watch him try to piece the evidence together, especially as he’s investigating himself. The movie keeps the monster hidden for much of the runtime, which is for the best as the mask used is pretty shoddy, yet remains very charming in its ridiculousness. Thanks to the kitschy nature of the film it’s a lot of fun to watch, even it it’s not perfect. It also comes with a full length commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.

The films on offer in this set are a lot of fun, showcasing a lot of the range of movies on offer from the period. They’ve got some big name stars, some famous directors, and some special effects work that are absolutely delightful. If you’re a fan of old monster movies this set is absolutely worth checking out.

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Shadow Avengers: A Marvel: Crisis Protocol Novel by Carrie Harris - Book Review

 

'Earth is on course for a devastating invasion from the Dark Dimension, forcing the world’s mightiest heroes into unthinkable alliances, in this heart-stopping new novel in the Marvel: Crisis Protocol series

'Doctor Strange created the Shadow Avengers to save the world from Dormammu, but instead they’re on the verge of dissolution. When sudden weather anomalies across the world correspond with Asgardian heroes emerging from portals ripe with Dormammu’s magical signature, the Shadow Avengers realise the “Master” is making his move. Loki, Venom, and Green Goblin are behind a ceremony plotting to open a portal big enough to encompass Dormammu’s presence. From the Sanctum Sanctorum to the streets of NYC to beautiful Wakanda, the Shadow Avengers must stop Dormammu at any cost – but the Master, in all his cunning wisdom, has something greater in store that will doom the world once and for all.'

Shadow Avengers is the follow-up book to last year's Target Kree, which saw several characters coming together to stop a threat to the Earth that had already destroyed another planet. Towards the end of that book not only did we learn that a larger force was at work behind the scenes, but we saw Doctor Strange recruit Miss Marvel into a new secret team. This book picks up several months later, where this team, the Shadow Avengers, have been working to protect the Earth from the threat of Dromammu.

The story begins in typical comic book fashion, by giving the readers what at first appears to be a completely unconnected super hero fight to get them drawn into the story. Whilst trying to grab some pizza, Eddie Brock, the host to the Venom symbiote, sees an Oscorp truck being driven through NEw York by Loki, the Asgardian trickster god. Following the god, Venom discovers Loki dumping strange looking chemicals into the New York sewer system. A fight ensues between them, over the course of which Loki manages to place a magical necklace around Venom's neck. This necklace puts Venom under the control of some unseen presence; just in time to Spider-Man to arrive and think that Venom is being a villain.

Spider-Man brings up the incident during a meeting of the Shadow Avengers, but gets little interest from Doctor Strange, who wishes to focus on the threat posed by Dormammu. Leaving Spider-Man and Miss Marvel to look into it, things begin to spiral out of control when other strange incidents begin to happen across New York, and Wakanda. With magical storms raging in both locations, and strange portals appearing and dropping out alternate reality versions of Asgardian gods, Strange begins to realise that these incidents may not only be connected, but might be the latest invasion plan from Dormammu.

When I say that Shadow Avengers reads like a comic I mean it in the best possible way. A lot of novels based upon comic properties tend to read like novels, stories that take a more character focused approach, putting us in the heads of one or two main characters and telling a story that whilst great, probably wouldn't work in comic form. This story, on the other hand, feels like its leapt off the comic page. It's paced really fast, with characters always doing something important or learning something new. We jump perspective a lot, going from one member of the team to another, and there's a lot of action and fighting scattered throughout the book. This story would take very little alteration to be made into a several issue long story arc, and making that work in book form is extremely impressive.

As the name suggests, the story doesn't focus on one particular character, but a roster of heroes. There are some who get more stuff to do, such as Miss Marvel, but every single member of the Shadow Avengers does get to do something, and gets at least one moment to shine. The book also manages to give a decent amount of time over to Eddie Brock, who became a much bigger part of the book than I was expecting from the description. Carrie Harris does a good job at keeping all of these plates spinning, at giving every character something to do, and making sure that no one has been left out of things for too long.

One of the things that I liked about the book was how Harris didn't try and make a big thing of the mystery around who was doing things. There is a level of secrecy to begin with, with some of the characters referring to a mysterious master pulling the strings; but with this being a Shadow Avengers book, and them being exclusively about stopping Dormammu it was pretty obvious that's who it was going to be. And thankfully the book doesn't try to make it seem like some huge, unexpected revelation when his identity is revealed during the story. It's not treated like some big revelation that you were never going to guess; and because of that it never feels like the book is trying to trick you or treat you as stupid in any ways. That's something that I can respect.

Shadow Avengers is a good follow-up to Target Kree, a book that took the small hints and promises at the end of that book and gives readers something exciting as the pay-off. It manages to pack in the action, gives just enough mystery to keep readers guessing what might come next, and features some great depictions of some of Marvel's biggest characters. Carrie Harris clearly knows this universe and these characters, and she's the perfect author to tell this story.

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The Tangleroot Palace by Marjorie Liu – Book Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

'New York Times bestseller and Hugo, British Fantasy, Romantic Times, and Eisner award-winning author of the graphic novel, Monstress, Marjorie Liu leads you deep into the heart of the tangled woods. In her long-awaited debut story collection, dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.

'Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously-plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of travelling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.

'Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu’s first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.'

The Tangleroot Palace is the latest anthology story collection from Titan Books, but rather than bringing together a host of different authors Titan have decided to shine the spotlight on Marjorie Liu, the Hugo, and Eisner award winning author. In this lovely collection Liu presents readers with several short stories from across her career that showcase her creative and engaging fantasy work.

There are several stories in The Tanggleroot Palace which feel so oddly similar to our own world they could easily be taking place in a time we know, just out of sight. Others, however, take place in strange fantasy worlds, alternate histories, and even possible futures.

The first story in the collection is ‘Sympathy for the Bones’, which follows a young woman who lives with the local town witch, learning how to work her magic to assist the older woman. Despite having been raised by this woman, the young girl feels no love for her, having suffered at her hand over the years. Using the skills the old woman has taught her, she hatches a plan to be rid of the witch forever. This story felt like the perfect introduction to this collection, slowly drawing the reader in and introducing the more magical elements slowly as it went. It had some creepy and dark moments, and painted a wonderfully morally grey lead.

‘The Briar and the Rose’ is a twist on the Sleeping Beauty story, where the bodyguard of a powerful and influential woman discovers that her mistress is actually a witch. Not only that, but she’s possessing the body of the woman she’s residing inside, and that she needs to ‘sleep’ every week to maintain that hold. However, when she sleeps the body’s real inhabitant is able to wake up, and the two women form a strong relationship. This was a wonderful queer romance story, with an inventive twist on the traditional tale. Very quickly the story set the stakes with the evil witch, and the desperate lovers, and before you knew it you were rooting for these two women to find a way of escaping from the curse that keeps them apart.

‘Call Her Savage’ is a story that takes place in an alternate history, where magic and crystal skulls have been used to advance society in wildly different directions to our own. Set during a war between China and Britain, we follow a Chinese super-soldier, a woman who has been granted super-human powers and abilities, who must sneak into enemy territory to save an important figure. The story dealt with themes of betrayal, trauma and morality in war in surprisingly detailed ways for such a short story. Liu does a ton of world-building here too, and it very much felt like this could be part of a much bigger series.

‘The Last Dignity of Man’ is Liu’s comic book story, a field in which she’s actually won awards. It tells the story of a rich businessman who’s obsessed with Superman. He wants Superman to be real, and would give anything for it to happen, and so sets out to become Lex Luthor in the hopes that being Superman’s greatest villain will somehow force the hero the world needs to become real. This is perhaps the strangest story in the bunch, and whilst Alexander Lutheran’s motives and way of thinking don’t make complete sense, you get the sense that they’re not really supposed to, as over the course of this slightly bizarre tale you really get to know him, and see how much help the man really needs from those in his life. Despite the weirdness, it ended up being an incredibly sweet story.

‘Where the Heart Lives’ felt the most fairy-tale-like story of the bunch, and really leans into the almost dream-like nature of magical stories. It tells the story of a young woman who travels to a magical forest, and who begins to live with a group of people with strange powers, and a connection to the spirit that lives deep within the forest that surrounds them. There’s a good sense of mystery to this story, and it felt like a full YA fantasy story condensed down, with all of the ‘will they won’t they’ stuff removed and a focus on the main events. Because of that, whilst it was good it did feel a bit light, and is a story I’d have enjoyed seeing being given more room.

‘After the Blood’ is actually something of a prequel to some of Liu’s other work, but still stands on its own as an interesting story, set in a future where a deadly disease has destroyed most of humanity, and those left behind have had to use more old fashioned skills to get by. Oh, and the virus has also turned some of the survivors into supernatural beings, so there are monster and Amish vampires. It’s a fun story, one that I think doesn’t quite give enough information to be great as there were times I was left wondering why things were happening, but overall it was an enjoyable tale, and definitely left me wanting to read the series it ties into.

The final story in the book is the longest, the titular ‘Tangleroot Palace’. This story introduces us to a young princess who has grown up in her father’s castle able to do whatever she wants. She’s pursued the things that she finds interesting, leading to a princess who loves horse riding, reading, and messing around in the gardens. She’s a free spirit. However, when her father informs her that she’s being married to a supposedly brutal and frightening warlord in order to protect the kingdom, she decides to run away from the palace, setting her sights on the Tangleroot forest, where powerful magics are said to reside. This being the longest story in the collection means that we get to spend a lot more time with the characters, and as such I found that I came to really like the princess, as well as the folks she meets along the way. As with some of the other stories in the book, it did feel like a scaled back version of a story that would normally be given a book all to itself, and as such felt a bit light in places, but was otherwise interesting, engaging, and delightful.

The Tangleroot Palace is a great collection of stories from an author with a lot of talent. Most of these stories are short, but you still find yourself coming to care for the protagonists, being invested in the stories, or intrigued by the worlds that Marjorie Liu has created. The stories collected here highlight where Liu’s skills lie, with crafting stories, characters, and worlds that very quickly become engaging and intriguing. The stories all feel like they could have been books in their own rights, that they could have been expanded upon and built into bigger tales, and in some ways it does feel a bit of a shame that some of them haven’t been. Whilst I loved reading the stories on offer here, a lot of the time I felt a little sad that they didn’t go on longer.

As a way of being introduced to Liu’s work, this book is a great way of seeing if she’s an author you want to try out, as it showcases her variety and versatility, and gives you some idea of what to expect from her other work. I did have a lot of fun reading these stories, I just wish I had more of them.

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Superhost – Blu-ray Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

The horror streaming service Shudder have brought another of their popular films to home release with the new Blu-ray of Brandon Christensen’s Superhost, giving those who haven’t signed up to the horror network the chance to check out the kind of content that they have on offer.

Superhost follows Claire (Sara Canning) and Teddy (Osric Chau), a young couple who host the YouTube channel ‘Superhost’, which sees them travelling the country, staying at various rental properties, and reviewing them. With their channel having seemed to have reached its peak, the two of them are struggling to find new ways of attracting more viewers. Teddy is pushing to try some whimsical editing techniques, but Claire seems stuck in a state of anxiety, depression, and even anger, over their source of income not going anywhere.

When the couple travel to a beautiful, remote house in the woods, Claire thinks that they might have hit the goldmine when they meet Rebecca (Gracie Gillam), the young woman who has rented the home to them. This over-the-top happy and perky young woman quickly shows that she has something of a strange edge to her, and Claire thinks that this ‘crazy’ woman will help the views roll into their channel. Despite not wanting to exploit the woman, and just wanting to find the perfect time to propose, Teddy agrees to keep featuring the odd woman in their recordings, but when Rebecca starts to veer from quirky into frightening the two young vloggers begin to believe that they may have made a mistake.

In the special features on this release, writer/director Brandon Christensen talks about the genesis for this story, about how when renting a room from someone he had to get the owner round to unblock the toilet, and it was only then that the thought occurred to him how scary the situation was. You could be renting from anyone. The person you talk to online could be completely different to the person they appear to be, and it could be incredibly dangerous if they turned out to be a bad person. This kind of fear is something that many of us who have used Airbnb and similar sites might not have really thought about too much. The fact that you’re staying in another person’s home, that they could have a spare key and enter whilst you’re sleeping, that there could be anyone asking you to stay in their home, is genuinely quite frightening.

Superhost puts this fear right at the forefront of the film, and you don’t get long with things being ‘normal’ before you start to feel a bit uncomfortable about the situation. The film doesn’t give you a huge amount of time to relax into things before introducing Rebecca and beginning the journey into horror, and whilst this helps with the fast pacing of the movie and the relatively short runtime, it does mean that we never really have a chance to get to know Teddy and Claire beyond their initial set-ups.

From the very first scene we know that Claire is worried about their channel, that the stress of losing followers is getting to her and changing her into a more negative person. We get to see that Teddy is trying to placate her worries, is looking at the positives, and is planning to propose. And we never really move beyond this. Most of the scenes with the two of them after this are just more of the same, more of these same personality traits and worries. They don’t go beyond their immediate goals and concerns, and whilst this doesn’t necessarily make their characters bad, it does leave them feeling a bit shallow. But then again, perhaps that’s what the director wanted: a young couple who live online and are nothing but shallow people chasing fame and fortune via the internet.

Whilst Chau and Christensen do a fine job but never really feel anything more than just fine, the real star of the film is Gracie Gillam, who is absolutely wonderful as Rebecca. From her very first scene she steals the movie away from the other leads. She comes across as one of those perpetually excited, energetic kinds of people who make you feel tired just by being around them and trying to keep up. At first she seems sweet, if not a little naive about what she’s saying and doing and how it could affect others. But as the film goes on Gillam begins to put more and more of an edge into her performance, and pretty soon it’s clear that this is a woman who could snap at any point, for any reason. It’s chilling how well she walks that line, how she can go from relatively normal to frightening with just a look or the way she says something. Despite how wonderful she is to watch, you will be yelling at Claire and Teddy to just leave, and I think Rebecca is very much the kind of person you’d run from if you ever met her.

Alongside the film, the new release comes with some behind the scenes features and making-of documentaries that go not just into how the film was made, but the challenges of making it during a global pandemic and how that affected the production. Having seen a number of behind the scenes breakdowns of movies it’s interesting to see one taking a slightly different approach, and showing how the current global events are changing how films are made, rather than just focusing on the regular processes of a movie.

There’s also a series of bloopers, and some visual effects breakdowns that show how some of the big moments were made, as well as some incredibly subtle visual effects that you probably didn’t pick up on when watching the movie. In addition to this there’s a commentary for the film from the director, who goes into more detail about the creation of the movie, and two shorts called ‘Scaredycats’ that Christensen directed.

Superhost is a decent movie, that moves with a decent pace, has a pretty strong cast, and with a short runtime doesn’t outstay its welcome. It takes a simple premise and pushes it to its extreme to deliver an enjoyable and creepy horror experience.

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