30 Days of Night - Steve Niles

I knew absolutely nothing about this story heading in, except that it involved vampires attacking a town up in northern Alaska where the sun doesn't rise for 30 days.  Oh, and that it was made into a movie.

Turns out, there isn't much more to know.  The story itself is pretty simple.  In about eighty pages, Niles tells a story of a town being attacked, and slaughtered, a small group of people hiding for safety, and a random guy flying over in a helicopter to get killed.  There really isn't much more there. None of the characters spend enough time doing anything for you to really care about them at all.  With more pages, maybe something like V for Vendetta, there might have been more chance for a deeper more interesting story.  As is, it's pretty forgettable.

The art doesn't help either.  I'm sure it might appeal to someone, but it was far to blurred and abstract for me.  More than half the panes I couldn't even tell what was going on.  One of the reasons I enjoy graphic novels is for the beautiful art.  And this just didn't work for me on any level.

As for the vampires...  Well they are pretty run of the mill vampires.  With one rather disappointing exception.  Niles does take some time to paint a particular vampire as being a true BA kick butt vampire master.  But apparently in Niles' take on vampires, someone who just turned five minutes ago is just as powerful as an ancient vampire lord.  And can pretty easily kick his butt.  So even the end holds no real suspense or danger.

Overall this graphic novel barely held my interest for the 80 pages it ran.  I can't see myself giving any of the others in the series a shot.  Or the movie for that matter.

Relic - Preston & Child

When I was in college I went with my wife to see The Relic.  We'd seen previews for it and it looked like a great monster movie.  We both loved it.  Not because it was a great movie, but it did have an interesting monster some funny scenes, and some pseudo-science to try to explain everything.  (my wife majored in biology)  It was great fun and we actually caught it at the discount theatre a few more times before it faded away.

So when I saw Relic on our reading list, I was completely stoked.  I've seen Preston and Child's books at work, knew they were best sellers, but never really put the two together until I went to buy Relic.  That of course made me even more excited.

I was not disappointed.

Relic spins a tale about a series of murders at the New York Museum of Natural History that the reader knows are somehow linked to some strange goings on in the jungles of the Amazon.  Some horrific creature is loose, tearing off people's heads and eating parts of their brains.  And of course the police are completely flummoxed.

There were a few things about this that I really liked and helped draw me in.  First, the police are not painted as complete idiots.  D'Agosta is smarter than he looks and competent, he's just in a bit over his head.  Even the arrival of Pendergast isn't so much to compensate for his failures as it is to give him more resources and an ability to cut through some museum red tape.  Second, the science is relatively believable.  Not that surrounding the creation of the beast necessarily, but the equipment and methods they use to perform their experiments are fairly realistic.  Third, the setting is spectacular.  Museums are creepy, and ones as large as this one with so much stuff, are even creepier.

I was particularly fond of Margo.  She is smart, without being a genius, confident, without being foolhardy, and competent, without being a know-it-all.  She cares about her co-workers but also struggles with wanting to further her own career.  She is genuinely someone I could get behind.  Pendergast, while hilarious, was a bit too magically awesome for me.  He instantly notices things no one else does, his wit was a bit too sharp, and of course his aim a bit too good.  But even with those flaws.  I still enjoyed reading him.  But not as much as D'Agosta or Margo.

And of course there's the creature itself.  With just the right amount of 'page time', the creature fills its role perfectly.  Putting aside the dubious way it was created, it makes a great villain.  Combined with the setting, you never know where it's going to strike.  And then it just fades back away.  Once again there is little motivation for the killing, but there IS a thread of one, and it is this thread that makes him more interesting.  Why would a beast eat people's brains?  It gives and clue and a trail for the heroes to follow without making the beast too easy to identify with.

Which of course brings me to its death.  The beast is so cool, so powerful, and then so dead in so few words.  And off screen!  And by Pendergast shooting it in the eye while its bounding at him in a full charge!  From mere feet away?  Did it really take Margo suggesting it for him to think about shooting it in the eye?  And after all his talk about how hard it would be to shoot it in the knee or leg?  And then he just casually pops it in the eye?  This really irked me, and the fact that it happened off screen irked me even more.  It just seemed like a huge cop out after all that build up.

Still, overall, I really enjoyed this book, and will likely try to grab some others by these authors.  I just hope they come up with better endings in other books.

The Blob (1988)

The Blob is a classic.  I don't think there is anyone who hasn't at least heard of the movie, even if they haven't seen it.  While I initially thought we were going to be watching the original (and was supper excited about it) I wasn't too disappointed to find we were doing another remake.  It was fairly well reviewed and I'm not so beholden to originals to not give a remake a chance.

I'm glad I did, because this movie actually surprised me.  Of course I wasn't expecting much, after all even the original isn't exactly an Oscar winning tour de force.  But what worked for me was that this movie never took itself seriously.  The fact that it was set in the '80s definitely helped.  I'm not sure how well this monster would do in modern society with cell phones and internet.  It really relies on people not knowing where it is or even that it exists at all.  So the time period was crucial.  Not to mention that it set up a lot of the jokes.

And for a movie that unashamedly pulls a full grown man down a sink drain (hilarious by the way) it really had very little gore.  On the flip side, the creature effects were surprisingly good.  The way you could see people through it as they were being digested was very well done for the budget they obviously had.  The only times when it started to look really bad where the full shots of the entire monster at the end.  But the initial shots rode a perfect line between campy and creepy.

The Blob itself is an interesting monster villain.  Like the Alien, it exists for a single purpose.  Eating.  It has no conscience, no far flung motive, and no deep plans.  Eat as many people as I possibly can then move to where I can eat more people.  Of course it does make some odd decisions based on this for plot purposes (chasing a girl and three kids into the sewers while a crowd of people is hanging in town square) but for the most part it does what it does.  This doesn't make for a very deep villain, but as we've discussed, sometimes the best monsters are those whose motivations are either unclear, or very simple.  And so the Blob works for me on a sort of slasher level.  I really can't see making a serious horror film out of it, but it works in the context the film puts him in.

As for the film itself, the humor saves it.  I laughed through most of this movie, and it was obvious I was supposed to.  I appreciate dark humor, so the idea of a guy's girlfriend suddenly devouring him as  he tries to grope her, or a man being pulled down a drain pipe, are hilarious to me.  Not to mention some of the over the top dialogue.  The acting is mostly average at best, with no character deep enough to root for on anything more than a superficial level, but it worked for the movie.

Would I watch it again, probably not.  But I certainly enjoyed watching it once and it definitely had some images I will never forget.

Twighlight at the Towers - Clive Barker

With one story I didn't like at all, and one story I very much enjoyed, I was eager to see just where this tie-breaker from Barker would land me.  Unfortunately, it really didn't do much decide me either way on his work.

First off, I love the title of this piece.  Just reading it gave me a little chill and sense of foreboding.  Great set up.  Of course, it also set my anticipation for some towers.  Every page I thought, surely there are going to be some towers coming soon, right?  But no.  Unless I missed something completely, the only object that might be construed as a "tower" is the ruined building Ballard goes to at the end.  A shame.  Of course he could have been going for something more symbolic, but if so it was lost on me.

The story itself isn't a bad one.  I was completely thrown off guard by the spy thriller set up, it wasn't what I was expecting at all, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.  After all, I like spy thrillers so I settled into it pretty easily.  Barker's prose is solid, as usual, and he spends a lot of time letting us get to know Ballard.  For all that time, though, I really didn't feel anything for him.  In fact I never grew attached to any of the characters.  Perhaps this was due to Ballard's own detachment.  Everything felt as if it were being held off at arms length.

What I did like was the way he worked werewolves into a spy story.  Sort of a Jason Bourne deal with the government using subdued werewolves as super spies.  I liked that premise a lot.  I actually think it would have made a much better novel than a short story.  But Barker handles it well.

What didn't work for me was the ending.  Ballard just wanders off to an abandoned building that seems to be a werewolf hangout and... what?  I really got no sense of what Barker was going for here.  It seems there are a lot of werewolves, but I'm not sure if they have full control over their forms.  It seemed like they didn't.  If not, how are they surviving here on their own?  Is the out of context passage from Genesis supposed to be a call to action?  Lets go subjugate the world?  It just fell flat for me.  I needed more.

Overall I couldn't really like or dislike this story.  It wasn't bad, but it didn't garner any kind of emotion from me at all.  Certainly not fear or horror.  And so my opinion of Barker remains neither high nor low.  Unfortunately, that means I likely wont read any more of his works.  There just hasn't been enough to inspire me to do so.

Godzilla (2014)

While I would not consider myself a huge Godzilla fan, I have seen all of the movies.  In fact I have also seen all of the original movies lampooned by MST3K.  Really, I think that is the best use for a Godzilla movie, and in that vein I love them.  There is just something so entertaining about sitting back and watching some mindless monster action that really pays little attention to real character development or even really making a whole lot of sense.

That said, I did try to approach this new entry into the movie series a bit differently.  After all, it touted itself as a more serious installment.  Something that would really try to bring home the suspense and even a bit of fear.  Maybe?  But in the end it really comes down to the source material.  A giant lizard rampaging through a city.  And no matter how much I try, I can't suspend my disbelief enough to make that even remotely believable and scary.  It just doesn't work.  It doesn't matter how real they make him look.  It doesn't matter what they pit him up against or how much destruction he causes.  It's Godzilla.  And, to me, that name is synonymous with laughter.

Even going in with all of that, though.  This movie has got to be one of the worst I've seen.  I mean, what is the main draw of any Godzilla movie?  Why does anyone really go to see it?  Is it for deep emotional characterization?  Mind opening philosophizing?  Nope.  Godzilla.  That's what we want to see.  And that is exactly what this movie does not give us.  We are forced to wait until the last twenty minutes to really get any good footage of Godzilla doing anything destructive.  And even those 20 minutes are so dark that you really never get a good view of what's going on.

I could go on, this movie is just chock full of logical flaws, poor direction, bad writing and cheesy effects, but really it all boils down to the king of monsters himself.  He may not be scary, but he has a certain personality after all these years.  You expect certain things.  And this movie fails on every front to deliver.  Just an immense disappointment.  Pacific Rim was a better Godzilla movie and that is just...  Sad.

Snow - Ronald Malfi

There were only a couple books in the reading list this semester that I was truly looking forward to reading.  Snow was one of them.  I don't know why.  I hadn't heard anything about the book, or read anything by Malfi before.  I vaguely remembered seeing the book in Barnes & Noble when it came out, but that was all.  Still, there was something about about the idea, about killer snow, that got me excited.  After all, I love snow.  In all amounts and any time.  I chalk it up to growing up in south Florida but ever since I've moved to Colorado I just can't get enough of it.  So taking that thing I love and turning it into something deadly?  That was a great hook.

And all that waiting paid off.  First, Malfi does a great job developing characters that I actually care about.  Todd is far from perfect, but he is painfully aware of his faults and trying to make himself better.  I found myself actually rooting for him.  And all of the other characters, no matter how long he gave them to live, were developed and human.

And then he pits them against "snow elementals" and skin-suits.  I loved the idea of snow monsters that could just rush up out of the snow and stab you, or carry you off into the sky and drop you through a church ceiling.  Their powers were interesting and frightening, and he only explained what he needed to.  The addition of the skin-suits was a mix for me.  They were basically zombies and I'm not fond of them.  But it did give the characters something more tangible to fight against.  Something they could kill more easily and see more readily.  And that was important for building the tension in a lot of scenes.  (Like the handprints on the window of the church)  So I can see why he did it.  And the fact that he explained why they needed to enter the skin-suits was critical

There really was too much about this book and the monster it featured that I liked.  I could go on for a long time.  But I'll focus on the end.  Breeding Grounds failed me completely at the end, but Snow delivered.  It was a bit predictable, but at least it kept the tension high and all made sense.  (Well, aside from the military arriving so soon after they were called)  And I was very happy to see that Todd did not end up with Kate.  That final scene, where he finally gets to see his son, and his ex starts to see that just maybe he could be a different person...  That made the ending for me.

The Thing

The Thing is a classic '80s horror flick.  We have average acting combined with bizarre special effects trending closer to grotesque then scary, and, to cap it all off, a climax that doesn't make much sense but has plenty of action and explosions.  And yet, somehow within all of this we find a sort of guilty pleasure enjoyment.

The idea of the monster in The Thing is definitely frightening.  An alien that can kill and then imitate anything.  You never know who or what it could be.  So you have to be suspicious of everyone.  This idea works great as long as you don't scrutinize it too closely.  (like how does it get all the memories of the person it imitates?)  And of course the movie has a lot of fun in the '80s playground of communist suspicion.

The actual reveals of the monster, however, just don't stand up to time and the movie doesn't have the atmosphere of Alien to fall back on.  When we do see the Thing, which is fairly early in the movie, we are treated to something truly bizarre, but not really frightening.  I would much rather have had a longer lead up to the reveal, with people disappearing one by one and us trying to guess what was going on and who was responsible.  But then, that would have been a different movie.

 And then there's the climax.  An explosion fest that would make Michael Bay happy, but that provides little in logic.  So you think the alien wants to just freeze and wait for a rescue mission, so your plan is to blow everything up and die?  Cause that prevents the alien from freezing and waiting for a rescue mission how?  The shining light to this is the final scene, where MacReady and Childs are left freezing in the snow, neither sure the other isn't going to kill him.  I have to say, that is a great ending.