I must admit, when Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein was first announced, my heart sank. Do we really need yet another film version of such an iconic story? Like many I’m getting a bit tired of the recycled tat we get in cinemas these days and would rather see a truly original story. Surely AI hasn’t grasped us yet to the point where we can’t come up with new ideas?
If there’s one horror trope that’s been used to the point of exhaustion, it’s the vampire. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could come up with an original vampire story after Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys and, god forbid, Twilight.
Robert Eggers therefore seems to have taken the sensible route of not trying to come up with an original story. As any vampire-afficionado will know, Nosferatu is a reworking of a story that first existed as a silent film, and then as a remake in the 1970s. Even though I wasn’t expecting anything new, I still went to see the film as soon as it came out.
So many film adaptations of Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula have appeared over the years, surely there’s no original angle left? Renfield, which focuses on the famous vampire’s assistant rather than the big man himself, makes a brave effort to prove critics wrong.
Yes, David Cronenberg’s world is disgusting and morally bankrupt. But what makes it truly disturbing is the realization that, perhaps, its crimes are less futuristic than we’d like to admit.
become a cliché to the point that they seem to have lost much of their ability to scare, I still can’t resist a good vampire story. For every boring, unimaginative Twilight rip-off, there’s a lesser-known gem lurking in the darkness somewhere, waiting to be devoured. Or, perhaps, to devour unsuspecting readers first. One such story is Necroscope by Brian Lumley.
Many will know George R. R. Martin from his Song of Ice and Fire series (better known as the TV series adaptation, Game of Thrones). I’ve always been intrigued by the premise of the series, I don’t like watching TV, and I haven’t read any decent fantasy in a very long time. But the books are so damn long and there are so many of them. Would they be worth it?
My love for horror has recently been rekindled. With yet another dreadful Saw instalment out there, one would almost forget that there’s still plenty of original stuff around. Not only that, older works are increasingly at risk of being forgotten. To support my own memory as much as anything, here’s a quick overview of some good books I’ve read in the past month.
Blackwater is a Southern gothic family saga, tracking the lives of several generations of the Caskey family, as they make their fortune in the fictional town of Perdido, Alabama. Connecting the many subplots is the story of Elinor, a woman who mysteriously appears during a flood, marries one of the Caskeys, and proceeds to rule the clan. Oh, and she’s also a river monster.
The Dark Frontier is thrilling ride through the Weird West: a world which feels both excitingly familiar and exquisitely strange. Anyone who feels slightly bored by more traditional western stories will find plenty to enjoy in this new collection of genre-bending writing.
Self-publishing is often frowned upon, seen as a vanity exercise that removes the gatekeeper function of traditional publishers and releases floods of drivel onto an already saturated media landscape. My own opinion is a bit more nuanced. I think publishing and self-publishing can easily exist together. Indie and DIY approaches have long been common in other creative sectors, such as music and film. And with everyone broadcasting themselves on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, I can’t see why self-publishing my thoughts in book form would be a weird or embarrassing thing to do.
cococatani 