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Book Review: We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror by Howard David Ingham, illustrated by Steven Horry

We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror by Howard David Ingham, illustrated by Steven Horry

Room 207 Press, 2018

ISBN: 9781722748814

Available: Kindle, paperback

Full disclosure: We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror is Ingham’s authoritative (although he would probably cringe at me using that term) look at folk horror. Pagan conspiracies, witchfinders, dark fairy tales, and cult activity are only a few of the themes of the movies he presents.

Ingham lays out some guidelines to how he wrote this book. Entries are arranged by theme and not chronologically. He states that this is not meant to be used as a reference book, and there are plenty of spoilers throughout. The author uses various icons, designed and illustrated by Steven Horry, to indicate specific information for readers (a bony thumbs up indicates he enjoyed the film, a bloody knife indicates gore, a stop sign warns readers of more sensitive material such as rape, abuse, etc.). Ingham specifies that he makes use of content warnings as a means to inform the viewer and help them make an informed decision before they watch a film. The author also provides a synopsis of each film with autobiographical information, as a means to break down the piece at hand. Similar to Kier-La Janisse’s autobiographical topography, House of Psychotic Women, Ingham includes personal information in each section. So much content blended with the autobiographical information makes for a very long read, but also an interesting one. While he states in his introduction that his purpose is not to review the films, he does provide many of his personal opinions of the works discussed.

There are 16 total chapters in this book. Ingham covers folk horror from the Silent Era to modern film, and has an international scope. I won’t go into every chapter in this review, as it would be a weighty endeavor on both myself and the reader to parse out. However, I do have some favorite chapters. Ingham begins with what he calls “The Unholy Trinity (Plus One)”, which includes Curse of the Demon (based on an absolutely beautiful tale by M.R. James, whom the author discusses in multiple chapters), Witchfinder General (a favorite of mine, given that I adore Vincent Price), and The Wicker Man (starring another favourite of mine, Christopher Lee). The “plus one” Ingham includes in the chapter is Blood on Satan’s Claw, another film based on the work of M.R. James. In the second chapter, Ingham discusses folk horror on British television from the 1970s, such as Against the Crowd, selections from the Play for Today series (Robin Redbreast, Penda’s Fen, A Photograph, and Red Shift), Ghost Stories for Christmas, The Stone Tapes, and others. Particularly interesting in this chapter is the discussion of his own experience with class hierarchy and how he felt like an outsider.

For those of us who like our horror comedies (especially of the British variety), the author presents solid reasoning as to why shows like Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, The League of Gentlemen, Look Around You, and Detectorists belong firmly in the folk horror genre. If you haven’t seen Inside No. 9, developed by the creative team behind The League of Gentlemen, go check it out. You won’t be disappointed. The last chapter, “The Revived”, discusses films such as The Wicker Tree, Kill List, Sightseers, A Field in England, The Witch: A New England Folk Tale, and others that have been created in the last decade.

The author includes an extensive index of films referred to in the text, which makes my horror film must-see list much longer. If you are new to folk horror, or just want to brush up on your favorite horror subgenre, I recommend picking this book up. I think the major criticism I have with this book is (and again, I read the advanced readers’ copy so some of this may have been picked up upon final edits), there is an excessive use of “and” at the beginning of many sentences, and a few sections could use a tighter edit. Otherwise I think this is a solid addition to a horror film collection. Recommended.

Contains: a lot of spoilers

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Editor’s note: We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror is a nominee on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction.

Posted on May 4, 2019 by , 1 comment

Book Review: Inspection by Josh Malerman

Inspection by Josh Malerman

Del Rey, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1524796990

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Hot on the heels of the biggest Netflix movie of all time, Bird Box, Josh Malerman is poised to continue his climb to stardom in this stellar new novel, a strange story that takes a left turn through the woods of Michigan instead of following a well-trodden road.

For anyone who has read him, Malerman a refreshing read because he eschews the normal, refusing  to follow formula: he entertains  readers. as well as forcing them to think. Bird Box, Malerman’s first novel, has been followed by Black Mad Wheel (music was the antagonist, allegedly), Goblin (a connected set of stories), and Unbury Carol (a western/horror/romance),

Inspection may remind some of 1984 or The Giver. The premise is that two towers exist in the forest, each just barely out of sight of the other. Within each, 26 students are raised from birth, given names of simply letters. The Alphabet Boys. The Letter Girls.  Neither is aware the other sex exists. The leaders of the experiment, D.A.D. and M.O.M., train their prodigies in several subjects, the arts, and more, honing the twelve-year-olds for mysterious lives.

The initial sections force the reader to push past the typical storytelling format, as the characters and setting require an intricate set up. Assigning each student only a letter for a name accomplishes both identity and sameness, the reason of which will reveal itself in layers. The schooling and activities impressed upon the students are mindbending and brutal: bizarre games and social events that twist in logic and morality.

J suspects something exists beyond the borders of his world when he sees a shadowy figure beyond a tree in the yard. It sends him on a journey that will alter him in ways he never thought possible, changing how he views his compartmentalized world. When a strange book lands on the students’ beds one day, one that reveals the truths about life outside of the school, the walls begin to crumble and terror of a new kind creeps into the students’ lives, one that could send them to “the corner,” a place from where no one has ever returned.

K embarks on a similar path, one that will bring her to a world she never knew existed.

Inspection will challenge readers. The result of Malerman’s story is a rewarding psychological journey that is guaranteed to garner him new readers and please his fans. His examination of the human condition, and of the “nature vs. nurture” debate, is relevant to the educational system and parenting today’s youth.

Finding a genre that fits this story will be a tough task, but one that should be determined by each reader. Inspection is destined to become one of the most talked about novels of 2019– and  it should be. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Dave Simms

Posted on March 19, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Sleeping with the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror by Darryl Jones

Sleeping with the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror by Darryl Jones

Oxford University Press, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0198826484

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

In Sleeping with the Lights On, Darryl Jones addresses the origins and evolution of horror, and provides a brief but wide-ranging, descriptive overview of the relationship of violence, taboo, and fear to culture, society, and storytelling that will provide newcomers with a readable and easy-to-understand guide to the horror genre’s major terms, critiques, subgenres, and tropes addressed in both lay and academic literature. Those more familiar with the horror genre, may be acquainted with many of the ideas and criticisms, but Jones organizes the information effectively. In his introduction, he starts by tracking the origins of horror through early literature, religion, and myth, following through to the present day and making predictions about the future of horror. He provides clear explanations of terror, horror, the Gothic, the uncanny, and the weird, citing major, primary sources for their origins and definitions, and argues that changing cultural anxieties inform the development of the horror genre. Further chapters discuss major branches of the horror genre: monsters, the occult and supernatural, horror and the body (this includes transformation and cannibalism as well as body horror), horror and the mind (focused on madness, doppelgangers, serial killers, and slashers), and mad science.

In each of these chapters, Jones explores the breadth of the topic by first addressing the general concept (monstrosity, in the chapter on monsters) and then getting more specific and discussing critiques and analyses of how their representations and meanings  have changed with the times, through a more specific examination (in this case, of the representation of cannibals, vampires, and zombies in society, culture, history, and literature). Although he is able to address these only briefly, it is clear that his knowledge is deep as well as wide.

An afterword discusses post-millenial horror and Jones’ predictions for the future of horror. Noting that one of horror’s defining characteristics is its existence on the margins and manipulation of boundaries, he observes that its recently gained respectability in academic circles and the way it is now marketed to mainstream popular culture may be compromising its transgressiveness. Jones coins the term “unhorror” to describe movies that use horror tropes, sometimes exaggeratedly, and using computer-generated effects, without actually being horrific (he seems to be focused on recent kaiju movies, which do definitely differ in tone depending on who is making them. I don’t think anyone can say that Shin Godzilla is “unhorror” despite its CGI, though) and introduces “Happy Gothic”,  which uses a Gothic mode but in a romantic, whimsical way.

Jones also notes that recent storytelling in the genre is rooted in cultural anxieties about economic, ecological, racial, technological, and political horrors, all of which are very real parts of people’s lives right now, as well as a return to “old-school horror”, but that Asian and Hispanic horror are also having a major impact on the genre, as well as television, podcasts, and Internet memes such as Slender Man. Jones concludes that horror is expanding past the page and movie screen directly in front of our faces, to include new voices and new fears in ways that, at this time, we can’t even imagine.

As this is a short book, it really isn’t possible to cover everything, and I feel like Jones maybe stretched himself a little too far in trying to include as much as he did, especially in his afterword. He devotes just a few sentences to YA horror and paranormal romance(entire books have been written about this), and a few to the “Happy Gothic”, without really elaborating or providing examples (I have never heard of this and now I am curious). His attempt to describe “unhorror” was fragmented as well. He just didn’t have the space for everything I think he would have liked to have said, so the end felt a little unfinished.  I was also a little frustrated with the index. While it lists authors and titles of books and movies cited, movies were not always identified by the date (there are a number of movies titled Godzilla, for example) and terms defined in the text were not always included (abjection, taboo, and sublime, for instance). This is less of a big deal if you have a paper copy that you can just flip through, but doing that on the Kindle is more difficult. The “further reading” section was also difficult for me to read, and I would have liked a little space between citations. These are minor quibbles, though.

This is a great book for anyone looking for background on the genre or arguments for its validity, or who is just interested in the topic, and especially for newcomers seeking a good overview of the horror genre in literature and cinema. Highly recommended.

 

Posted on February 9, 2019 by , Reply
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