The Daemon - Film Review

 

Lovecraftian horror can mean different things to different people. To some it's stories about vast, unknowable monsters from beyond the stars hidden beneath the waters of Earth, to others it's a slow descent into madness, and it can be a twisting of the body into something less human. Depending on who's writing the story it can even forgo a lot of this and just have a tiny sprinkling of one and still be considered a Lovecraftian cosmic horror. The Daemon, however, tries to do a little bit of everything as it charts the horrors that befall a small group of friends who visit a remote lakeside cabin.

The Daemon opens with Elliot (Nick Searcy), frantically writing a letter to his son, experiencing wild and disturbing visions at his remote lakeshore cabin. From here we jump to the city, where his son, Tom (Tyler Q. Rosen) receives the news that his father is dead, along with the note that we saw Elliot writing. As to be expected, the news of a parents unexpected death can have a shocking affect on someone, and Tom essentially vanishes on his partner Kathy (Sara Fletcher), leaving her in the lurch and ignoring her calls. Kathy turns to her brother, Mark (Oscar Wilson) and his wife Jess (Adriana Isabel) for help, and the three of them travel to the cabin to try and help Tom. However, they find something dark and twisted waiting for them instead.

Grief is the main theme of The Daemon, and not just the grief of losing a parent. The two lead characters of the film are Tom and Jess, and each of them seems to have a well of trauma to deal with. From the opening scene of the film where Elliot is leaving a frantic message for his son it's clear that this is a family with a lot of baggage, and as the film progresses we learn more of this and see how it's managed to seep into Tom with the loss of his father. He's not just dealing with that loss, but all of the painful childhood memories that it's brought to the surface; everything that happened up at the lake decades before, and the tragic events that surrounded his mother.

Tragic mothers seem to be the go to here too, as Jess lays out her own trauma and backstory in her very first scene of the film. A therapist and meditation guide who works with criminals and addicts, Jess it trying to help a hardened career criminal named Mani (Mario Daggett) and opens up about her own past, a past that clearly directed her into the life she now leads, and also still hangs over her like a shadow. Whilst this does not help in the moment, and Mani uses it as ammunition against her, it feels like it informs Jess' entire character and the way that we're supposed to think about her moving forward from here. Whilst Mark and Kathy are sympathetic to Tom they're also somewhat dismissive and abrasive to him, but Jess is the only one who seems to understand grief and trauma and tries to connect with him on a different level.

And if this was just a film about family trauma, childhood trauma, and the loss of loved ones it would be fine; however, there's something dark and twisted waiting for these people up at the lake, and it's ready to use these emotions as a way of getting inside them. The horror of The Daemon is kind of subtle for the most part, and goes for a feeling of unease rather than out and out monsters and gore; though the film does have this too. There's a feeling of madness that creeps its way into the narrative the more the story unfolds, and there are times where you start to question if what you're seeing on screen is supposed to be real in the moment or not, nicely reflecting the characters own slipping sanity.

There are a number of moments in the film of more overt horror, moments that employ some interesting make-up effects, gore, and body horror. These are done particularly well, and thanks to the rest of the film having this sense of quite unease mixed in with the mundane these moments tend to land with a great deal of shock. The titular daemon, the thing living beneath the waters of the lake, has a pretty good design, and feels like it's lifted out of the pages of Lovecraft's work. The lake itself is so huge that you could be forgiven for thinking it's the ocean coast, and so something titanic like this existing just beneath the waves isn't too unbelievable. The creature looks good whenever it's on screen, and the final shots of the film are some of the most interesting and beautifully made in the movie that led to me leaving the film with a huge sense of interest and the desire to know more.

But tying all of this horror together are the central cast. It's hard to particularly like many of the characters in the film. Most of them have some pretty big faults, they're abrasive, they're sarcastic, they're annoying, and most of them don't seem to care about the emotional wellbeing of their friend. For example, Kathy is more annoyed at her husband for vanishing during his grief and cares about getting her credit cards working again instead of actually wanting to help heal her partner. The cast play these roles well, and somewhat gear you towards being excited to see them get killed off. Adriana Isabel is the stand out in the film, and manages to bring a lot more complexity to Jess than you first expect. She plays the character as a woman who seems to have her life together, but could fall apart with just a little push. This is demonstrated wonderfully with her opening scene and the way that Mani shapes her for the rest of the film. And whilst Mani himself is only in this one scene, Mario Daggett appears in some dream sequences and hallucinations that expand his role and makes him an interesting presence in Jess' life.

The Daemon feels like a small movie that's trying to take some big swings. It has a fairly small cast, and doesn't have too many locations with which to work. It focuses the horror on the characters rather than a set or some external threat. However, there are moments where you can see a larger budget at play when the special effects work gets put on screen that showcases the creativity of the filmmakers. The Daemon is an interesting movie, one that I feel raises more questions than it answers, and as such might not be to everyone's tastes; but if you have a love of cosmic horror it might just be the thing for you.

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The Strangers - Limited Edition Blu-ray Review

 

Horror can be a very subjective thing, and there are some parts of the genre that just don't do it for people. Things like ghost stories can get under some people's skin, whilst others will be very bored by it. This is because when dealing with the fantastical not everyone is going to buy into the premise; ghouls and goblins won't really entertain those who have no interest in them. But there are parts of the horror genre that seem to frighten a lot of people, those that deal with the realistic. 2008's The Strangers plays into realism to a large degree, and builds its story around a very easy premise, one that's likely to have creeped most people out at some point in their life; the idea of someone breaking into your home and harming you.

The Strangers tells the tragic story of James Hoyt (Scot Speedman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler), a couple staying in James' family house out in the countryside after attending a friends wedding. The night was planned to be a good one, with James having set up a romantic scene for Kristen after his surprise proposal. However, after turning him down the two of them are struggling to figure out what this means for their relationship. Their personal issues are disrupted though when a strange woman appears at the door, asking if someone named Tamara lives there. 

Despite sending the woman away strange things begin to happen around the house, and when James leaves to buy cigarettes for Kristen things intensify, and she realises that there's someone in the house with her. Thus begins a series of events that will see the young couple being tormented and hunted through the home as three masked killers descend on them. 

I first watched The Strangers when it was released in 2008, having heard a great deal of positive reaction to it, particularly with people citing how the film gets under your skin. Much of this praise seemed to be down to the realism of the plot, and the fear that people had that something so monstrous could possibly happen to them. However, I didn't really connect much with the movie at the time, and never revisited it. But, with the release of Second Sight's new Limited Edition blu-ray I thought now would be a perfect opportunity to rewatch the film that has gone on to spawn an entire franchise.

The film itself is kind of much as I remembered it, a very slow burn of a movie. Slow enough that you'll question if there's even a fire at times. This does mean that there's time to get to know the characters better, but despite this there's still relatively little that I know about James and Kristen. The two of them are struggling to know what her saying no to marriage means for their relationship, but that's about all I know about them. The film doesn't really tell us much about them, and neither character actually seems to want to have the tough conversation as to if they're even still together. A generous view of this would be that the two characters are left somewhat blank intentionally, so as to allow audience members to project more of themselves onto the leads. However, I found that it went the opposite way, and found them to be two of the most blank and least interesting characters in any film that I'd ever watched. It wasn't even as if they felt like bad characters, as even bad ones would have been entertaining; instead, they were just kind of nothing.  

The plot kind of does similar too, and the single sentence summation of 'people break into a house to try and kill those inside' is about all there is here. As mentioned, the relationship story doesn't really do much, and other than that there's big spaces of the movie where nothing much really happens. There are long periods of the film where you'll be watching Liv Tyler wandering around a house on her own, looking out of windows at nothing. By the time the killers get inside and actually start doing something I'd reached the point where I didn't really care much.

Speaking of the killers, the motivation they have for targeting our characters is  potentially not a bad one, with the complete randomness of it all being a big part of the horror of this being capable of happening to anyone. However, when packaged in a film that's already feeling kind of flat and lacking in plot or character it doesn't really stand out to me as shocking or horrifying, and feels like a lack of care or thought from the creators part. 

The best part of the film for me was the end, and not because it was over. The final scene of the truck with the killers inside driving away, stopping to talk to the two kids, and the children then making their way to the house and grizzly sight within had a kind of grittiness to it that made it feel very grounded and unsettling. It had that feel of an 80's horror film trying to make itself seem like it was based on a true story. It's a quality that made this moment in the film stand out, and if the rest of the movie was able to feel this way then I'm certain that I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more. 

Perhaps most interesting of this new release is the extras. I enjoy learning about how films are made, and have been known to spend more time watching through making-ofs as I do the films they accompany. I was very interested to see how the film was made, and learning that the house was as et created within an old warehouse was interesting to me, and seeing the take where the sound hadn't been corrected and you could hear Tyler's screams echoing around the gigantic space was a moment that stood out more than the film itself. The new Limited Edition comes with a number of extras, including these behind the scenes features, and some interviews with cast and crewmembers that are brand new to this release. 

Whilst my opinion on The Strangers didn't change much I was glad to be able to give the film another chance, and the extra features and behind the scenes stuff make this a release that I came away at least entertained by. With two new movies in the series being released in 2024, and a third yet to be given a date, it's a great time to revisit the film that began it all, and this new release will certainly entertain fans. 

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Lore - Film Review

 

Horror is a perfect genre for the anthology format, with it taking relatively little time to frighten an audience if the creator has enough skill to do so. Because of this, there has been a large influx of horror anthology movies in recent years, often with a very thinly constructed through-line that barely impacts that other narratives on offer. Lore is the latest entry into the genre, and one that actually seems to have taken the time to try and construct an interesting overall narrative that includes every part of the movie into a more interesting whole.

The British horror sees four friends setting out for an adventure get away. Having engaged in horror experiences and escape rooms, the four of them are looking for the next thrill. This leads them deep into a remote forest where Darwin (Richard Brake), the man running the excursion, tells them to set up camp for the night. Once the tents are pitched and the camp fire is roaring he tells them of the discovery of a mass grave in the area years before, and the strange things that happen around the woods. Telling them that the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest here, he gets each of the four friends to tell a story that frightens them to call out to the spirits of the dead.

This leads up into four separate stories, each told by a different member of the group. The first is 'Shadows', and follows Daniel (Andrew Lee Potts), as he runs for his life from a couple of criminal heavies who want either money or blood. Taking refuge inside an old building, Daniel thinks he's gotten away from his pursuers, but once they come in after him he's left hiding in the shadows. However, he's not the only thing in the shadows, as something sinister begins to hunt them down. 

Written and directed by James Bushe, 'Shadows' begins as a fairly traditional horror scenario, of a remote location, a couple of key players, and the monster hunting them in the dark. And the monster design is pretty solid with some decent suit work too. However, as the story continues to unfold it becomes clear that there's something a little different happening and viewers are treated to some fun twists on the formula. Lee Potts does well in the lead role here too, and delivers a fairly strong performance.

The second story is 'The Hidden Woman', by director Patrick Michael Ryder, co-written by Christine Barber-Ryder. It tells the story of a single mother and her young son who inherit a large house when the grandmother of the family passes away. The two of them start to settle into their sprawling new home, but strange things begin to happen, including odd figures glimpsed in the dark of night, and heavy footsteps throughout the house. This is a fairly straightforward ghost story, and it doesn't really do anything new with the haunted house formula. It's fairly comfortable in the sense that you know what kind of things to expect here. However, it's absolutely the best story of the bunch. It's the scariest of the four stories, with some genuinely creepy visuals and some decent frights, and the ghost, played by Jordaine Lincoln, has some truly unnerving and creepy movement that comes from Lincoln's dance and contortionist skills. 

From a haunted house we move on to the much less creepy environment of a seedy hotel, where a lecherous husband, played by Rufus Hound, has pressured his reluctant wife into swapping partners with another couple to 'celebrate' their anniversary. However, when the kinky foreplay leads into the man being handcuffed and seemingly prepared for a sacrifice by the woman he's hooking up with, things take a twisted turn. This story, titled 'Cross Your Heart' and written and directed by Greig Johnson, is something of a comedic tale, and doesn't seem to take itself too seriously. Part of this tone absolutely comes from Hound, who's more well known for his comedic roles, and injects his character with a sense of fun despite you wanting to loathe him.

It's not all fun and games, however, as this story features a substantial amount of blood and gore as the cult takes over the hotel and rushes towards their twisted end game. The effects are pretty gnarly, and there are a few moments that will turn your stomach. Thankfully, the grosses of these borders on being a bit too over the top and so it makes things a bit easier to stomach. Overall, it's a pretty fun chapter in the movie.

The final of the four stories, 'The Keychain Man' written by Patrick Michael Ryder and Christine Barber-Ryder, and directed by Patrick Michael Ryder & James Bushe, is the lightest of the four, and feels like it's bordering on a light hearted spoof of the slasher genre that still wants to be a horror story. It tells the tale of a group of friends who head to the cinema for a midnight screening, but find themselves trapped in the building with a murderous employee who's gone on a killing spree after being fired. From the first moment we see the killer, where he's so large that his head is out of frame, and we get him having to call the manager to help with the till because he's messed it up, it's clear that this story isn't taking things too serious.

This tone follows through with a lot of the character moments, such as the guy in the front row getting angry that people are talking through a washing-up liquid advert, or the cinema employee who assumes one of the survivors is a pervert when he's hiding from the kill in the women's room, being built around having fun more than anything else. And even though this story doesn't skimp on the blood and guts it never feels gratuitous, and borders on the ridiculous, such as a character being bisected with a popcorn scoop. The segment feels like something of a cheeky love letter to slasher movies that fans of the genre will like.

The film ends with the framing narrative, in a way that will raise a few questions as to the true nature of what you've just seen. You'll want to stick around during the credits, however, as some of the lingering questions I had come the end are answered a few minutes later with a nice little coda that puts a decent little bow on things and left me feeling pretty satisfied.

Lore doesn't really do anything new or different, and the kinds of stories we have here will feel familiar to horror fans. But, it feels like the filmmakers approach every aspect of the film with the desire to deliver fun, and they largely succeed. The movie isn't too scary, it's got some humour, there are some great practical effects, and the framing narrative actually feels like an important part of the tale rather than an afterthought to justify the anthology format (a trap that a lot of other horror anthologies fall into). For those looking to have a bit of fun for a couple of hours and want to see a decent collection of British horror, Lore makes for a great choice. 

Lore will be available to stream exclusively on the IFC Channel from 26th August, will be in Select UK Cinemas from 27th September, and then available on Home Entertainment from 21th October.

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I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones - Book Review

 

'1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.'

Slashers are a popular bunch, often going on to spawn entire multi-media franchises that feature them gleefully killing teens and other victims in a variety of over-the-top ways. You just have to look at the fact that characters like Chucky, Jason Vorhees, and Ghostface get announced in projects like Mortal Kombat or Dead by Daylight as ways of bringing in players to see that slashers are big business. Part of this is that you kind of come to enjoy these costumes killers, eager to watch their antics, to see imaginative kills, or to hear them crack bad one-liners as they gut some hapless teen. But you rarely come to care for them in any real or meaningful way. I Was a Teenage Slasher changes this, however.

Set in the small Texan town of Lamesa towards the end of the 1980's, the book follows Tolly Diver, a young teen who begins the story as a pretty decent, average kid. Tolly works in the local hardware store, helping his mother out where he can. He hangs out with his childhood best friend and secret crush, Amber. He's getting by in life the best he can, neither excelling nor failing. He is, for most part, fairly normal. 

This makes things even more surprising then as Tolly is the titular Teenage Slasher, a young man who will go on to engage in a murderous rampage, killing a lot of people in horrific ways. After Tolly is the target of a cruel prank that takes advantage of his peanut allergy, things spiral out of control, and the kind, decent Tolly becomes a figure of fear.

Written in the first person, the book reads as a memoir of sorts, a confession from a young man who knows what he's done is so unusual, so bizarre and evil that he needs to leave behind an explanation for why he did what he did. Because of this fairly unique point of view for a slasher story, you come to care for Tolly a great deal; more than a murderer deserves by a long mile. There was a fairly recent horror film called In A Violent Nature, that presented a slasher movie from the killers point of view. The film was, for the most part, roundly rejected as being pretty bad. I've even seen some reviews that call it downright boring. I Was a Teenage Slasher is the kind of story that In A Violent Nature wanted to be, as it puts the killer at the centre of the narrative and makes you actually care.

This is not an easy feat, as most of the time fans of the slasher genre like their killers to be either faceless monsters who are more representations of horror than people (think Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers), or they're campy killers who revel in murder and mayhem (Chucky and Freddy Kruger instantly come to mind). Most slasher stories don't want to delve into the inner workings of these people, they don't want to tell you why or how because of the most part it tends to take away from the killer's charm. We know that Michael Myers killed his sister and spent years in an asylum, we don't need to see those years or see how broken he is. Every time a Ghostface killer is unmasked and reveals their motive a Scream film becomes a little less interesting. So, a book that's doing this the entire time probably falls into these same traps, right?

No. Stephen Graham Jones does something that I would never have thought possible, and made the slasher a character that I actually cared about on an emotional level. Tolly is a killer, he does terrible things, but you feel for him at the same time. There are points in the book that actually made me emotional, and I found myself caring for Tolly quite a bit. The book manages to juggle the meta commentary, the winks and nods of the genre, and the bloody gore-filled kills with a story about friendship, love, and family. 

I Was a Teenage Slasher is a fairly unique novel, one that puts in the villains shoes in ways that you don't expect, and gets you to reconsider the way you look at characters like this. A roller-coaster narrative that is packed full of shock and schlock, yet manages to contain a ton of heart too. 

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A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher - Book Review

 

'Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

'After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

'Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.'

Fairy tale retellings are a popular genre. People know the original story pretty well, even if it's not something they've read for decades, thanks to it being a part of their childhood. As such, there will be times when you just want to return to a story that feels familiar, yet still does it's own thing and contains a number of surprises for you. T. Kingfisher has a brilliant grasp at this, and this isn't their first time using stories that you'll know to create her own work. Even her original tales have little nods, even if just tonally, to other writers and stories. Because of this, the normal trepidation I sometimes feel going into a retelling wasn't a factor here, as I knew Kingfisher would steer us right. 

A Sorceress Comes to Call introduces readers to Cordelia, a young 14-year-old who lives alone with her mother, Evangeline. Evangeline isn't your average single mother, however, and the book doesn't hide the fact that she's our villain. We learn that Cordelia is as much a prisoner in her home as anything else, and Evangeline abuses the poor girl at an almost constant rate. Added onto this is the fact that Evangeline has magical abilities and uses these to torture the girl. Despite the terrible conditions, Cordelia manages to find some solace in Falada, her mothers horse familiar, who provides the girl with the only companionship and freedom that she knows. 

When Evangeline makes the two of them leave their home in the middle of the night, and sets her sights on a wealthy squire, Lord Evermore, it sets into motion a series of terrible events. Fortunately, Hester, Evermore's companion, knows just what Evangeline is, and sets out to stop her from achieving her wicked aims, hoping to rescue Cordelia from her abuse at the same time. 

One of the things that I absolutely adored about A Sorceress Comes to Call is the fact that Kingfisher gives readers an older, slightly worn down, female lead, rather than putting all hope of good triumphing over evil onto the pack of some young woman. Hester is pretty no-nonsense, having this air of having been everywhere and seen everything. She gets stuff done and commands respect, and her struggling with her bad knee is the kind of tiny touch that just makes me fall in love with a character. I'll admit, I'm getting on in years, I'm not going to be the young heroine of any kind of story, especially with all of my disabilities, so having an older woman with some bad joints having to step up and be the hero was a wonderfully refreshing and unique feeling spin on the genre.

This is the kind of thing that I really love about Kingfisher's work, those moments of the unexpected, where you think the story is going to go a certain way but then things take a sudden shift. She's also great at melding different genre's together, and despite being a dark fair tale A Sorceress Comes to Call also manages to incorporate a lot of humour into the mix, with some genuinely funny moments that help to break up the tension and the sense of creeping horror. This balances well with so truly dark and twisted moments to create a story with plenty of chills and thrills, along with carefully constructed moments of peace throughout. Like I said, Kingfisher is so good at this kind of thing. 

T. Kingfisher is a writer who I love to read, and I'll pick up her books without even reading the back because I trust her to deliver a fantastic, engaging read that leaves me wishing for more. And A Sorceress Comes to Call is no exception to this. Despite the book being a decent length at 400 pages it flew by, and by the time I got the to end I wished that there was more. Yes, the story was wrapped up and things were done so there wasn't really anything else for the book to do, but I'd happily just hang out in that world following some random side character just to get more of Kingfisher's prose.

Whether you're familiar with the original fairy tale or not, A Sorceress Comes to Call will keep you not only entertained throughout, but will dig its claws in and refuse to let go. T. Kingfisher is one of the best writers out there, and you'd be an absolute fool to miss out on yet another fantastic addition to her catalogue. 

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