#Horror Short Review

[gbhbl]

Horror Short Review: Portrait of God (2022)

No man shall see me and live – Exodus 33:20.

One of the best horror shorts released this year, Portrait of God comes from writer and director Dylan Clark. It stars Sydney Brumfield, Dylan Clark and William J Clark. No man shall see me and live – Exodus 33:20. A young religious woman named Mia is preparing a presentation based around a painting that is said to be a portrait of God. Take a moment to look at it. What do you see? If it’s…

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#horror #Horror Review #Horror Short #Horror Short Review #Portrait of God

[bookandcranny]

"bound in flesh" was sooooo good usually when i read any kind of collaborative anthology (and i do, frequently) its like very hit or miss but i cant think of a single story i feel like i really disliked. a couple of them were maybe just kinda Fine to me but the majority was like.. banger after banger fr.

perhaps it is just my bias towards body horror (my bias towards trans writers is not applicable here because folks i have read some short stories by trans writers that have Not thrilled me lol) but like. i am shrimply so pleased abt it! id been having some doubts recently because it seemed like whenever i took a chance on some more extreme horror i found it lacking in some way and it made me wonder if it was even the individual pieces of writing or if i just didnt like this level of horror as much as i thought i did, and now i can confidently say, when the shit is good that shit is gooood.

#bound in flesh #lazy reviews #short fiction #horror #trans author

[familyabolisher]

what do you think of gretchen felker-martin’s work, if you’ve read it? I expected a lot from manhunt based on everything I heard about it but found it to be just fine

short answer: manhunt's prose sucked

long answer: i'm so over this little clique which has identified - by and large correctly - that what tends to sell in mainstream publishing scenes for genre lit is v meek, tepid writing with timid politics and didactic liberalism shaping its discourse, and used this fact to effectively carve out a marketing niche. the selling point of manhunt wasn't felker-martin's skill as a writer (to be perfectly honest: she does not have a lot of this); it was her consciously positioning herself amidst a discourse of "puritanism," liberalism, "censorship," "childishness"(!) etc in genre lit such that buying and adulating her book was a way to signal one's immediate "side" in the genre lit discourse wars. like ... that's a grift and a half, innit.

i do have some sympathy for this position! i know that gretchen is largely responding to the harassment of isabel fall, and i respect that. and i do, i guess, agree with her that the bulk of contemporary anglophone genre lit in mainstream spheres is having to measure up to a particular palatability such that eg. trans women's writing comes under heavy scrutiny & the sort of writing that fall was doing encounters precisely the backlash she got. i just - don't buy into her imagined solution of publishing a very graphic horror book about terfs with tor nightfire to own the libs.

the problem is that it's an incurious position. going to the capitalist hegemony and getting mad when there's liberalism in the literature is like going to the circus and getting mad that you saw clowns. there's no desire to move away from these circuits which reward easy stories & bury difficult ones; there's no desire to question why we hold these sites of production up as ultimately legitimating structures. there's a real sense that just getting the big names in publishing to publish the Right books is a significant accomplishment (and by extension, you as the participant who Agrees with gretchen on this matter must therefore Support Her Work).

i'll admit that i never actually finished manhunt - i didn't get very far in at all because the prose just drove me insane. so maybe i can't give a fair assessment of the book. but the problem i had reading it was that like, the prose was bad! more specifically, it was an incurious prose, reflecting what i identified above - an incurious approach to storytelling. it was an excessively didactic voice guiding me as a reader from discourse point to discourse point like she was worried i wouldn't get what she was going for if she didn't make it absolutely crystal clear in quotidian prose. this tends to make for the kind of story where i'll think about it for maybe 20 minutes and then be done with it forever, because you've already given me all the answers yourself. like. challenge me! stop patronising the reader! if i wanted this i would go read a medium article!

like, i like novels that construct discourse through literary technique such that they leave me with these various entry points & angles from which i can think about them & respond to them in a sophisticated manner. when a book comes barrelling into my living room and goes Hi, I Am About Discourse Points 1, 2, and 3, i am left with very little space in which to do that. i also just - and maybe this is boring of me, but - i like when prose is good! it's very like, well, congratulations on publishing a novel where you write jkr getting like burned alive in her castle or whatever it was but did you care about this story as anything more than a vehicle for Discourse? lol

(there's absolutely a place for quotidian + straightforward prose, fwiw, and i wouldn't appeal to Literary Technique as a measure of quality, but - like, it just wasn't a technically skilled book, and it wasn't a book which had much of a desire to be received as much more than a bit of grist for the discourse mill.)

also i find gretchen annoying on twitter but since twitter is the website for annoying people i guess i can't hold that against her

#ask #oh ALSO if anyone remembers the bitchy tell me i'm worthless review i wrote: #alison rumfitt read it (WHOOPS!) and tweeted about it & GFM was in her replies reassuring her about how good it was #which i found funny.....making waves in the annoying bad horror writer community #i have a handful of other issues w/ gretchen and the kind of claims she makes around lot #*lit #but this is the long and short of it

[solarisposting]

I just read a goodreads book review that made me angrier than any inconsequential thing has made me in a WHILE. I loved the book, and I'm not a good critic of novels (or anything); I'm decent at analysis to be fair, but I like a read or I don't (on a spectrum of course).

But good goddamn, this review reeked with pretension and was written like the most unbearable food or music critic's diatribes. Adult character is lost in life, makes stupid choices out of grief/running away from issues/thinking distance from community will help/doesn't act logically as a character in a horror plot? Childish and not very bright! A large bustling family coming together for a major cultural and spiritual threat and asking the same damn questions over and over again, repeating the same arguments, etc.? Tiresome and muddled! Bro is your family (bio or chosen) totally chill? Have you never at least seen (in media or in others' lives) annoying family members beating dead horses for days on end out of concern and love and lack of knowing how else to help???

Dude I dunno, it just felt like legitimate criticisms one might have if they dislike a book or parts of its structure, but then those criticisms were a molehill buried beneath a mountain of hating some super fuckin' flawed characters making wild and awful choices in a time of grief and isolation. Screaming!!!!

#this was a review about Bad Cree by Jessica Johns which i gave five stars btw #i am unreasonably pissed lmao #it was like...just. gripes for the sake of bitching and being unhappy woth a short read that didn't hit typical horror benchmarks. dumb. #it's about multiple generations of cree women in the same family and naturally had a LOT to do with the cumture #and experiences and practices and just. daily lives of cree women mixed with A Horror Plot #but i was still sooo reminded of the chaos and aggravation and love and power and hurt and again love #of when the women on my mom's side of the family congregate #and the connections and rifts and stories memories legends among us all that get passed around rather than #passed down because it all feels so circular. we all repeat ourselves endlessly lmao #like this made me yearn for my family because i saw and felt them in this cast of characters #i'm not indigenous or canadian but i still saw myself and my family in this book and it was such a unique experience #bc it was so goddamn familiar in the midst of learning about this horror plot and how it mixed with cree culture #im emotional and tired and not explaining myself well. but JESUS i cannot wait for Johns to publish her next work #ann with an ie

[franticvampirereads]

This was honestly terrifying. I loved the that this was just as scary as Into The Drowning Deep, but this made it all the more terrifying. Mostly because these characters didn’t know what to expect, they went in planning to make a faux documentary about mermaids not to actually find them and have their faces eaten off. This is one of those things that will stick with you and make you not want to ever set foot on a cruise ship. Rolling In The Deep is getting a solid five stars.

Reading Challenge Prompt Fills:

PopSugar 2023: has a song lyric as a title

#rolling in the deep #booklr #book review #reading #books #bookish #bookworm #lgbtq+ books #queer books #short stories #novella #into the drowning deep #murder mermaids #sci fi books #sci fi and fantasy #horror books #book #read

[thethirdbill]

My video about watching Opal by Jack Stauber for the first time is up! I hope you enjoy my analysis thoughts and reactions if you check it out!

#jack stauber #opal #jack staubers opal #opal jack stauber #thethirdbill #youtube #trying to stan #youtubereview #animation #reactions #review #jack stauber opal #horror #horror youtube #short #short film #opal mirror man #mirror man #halloween #happy halloweeeeeeen #jack stauber reaction

[mylifeinfiction]

Come Closer by Sara Gran

The battle was all mine, and I was quickly, obviously, losing.

Sara Gran's Come Closer is a brisk psychological-horror story that's as successfully disorienting as it is exceedingly disturbing. The way Gran weaponizes the first-person - nearly stream-of-conscious - storytelling to build discomfort and fear as Amanda becomes less and less herself is immensely effective in both its execution and thematic heft. And while it's not nearly as traditionally terrifying as I'd hoped, Gran's prose handles the loss of control and sense of hopelessness throughout Amanda's dissociation so tactfully that it builds to a shockingly vicious, truly harrowing finale.

How as this not been adapted into a film, yet?!?

8.5/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

#booklr #book review #come closer #sara gran #horror books #horror #psychological thriller #psychological horror #short books #2003 books #books #reading #fiction #book reviews #readers of tumblr

[evangelifloss]

Pros and Cons of Cannibal Holocaust

Pros:

The scenery shots are nice

Cute monki and pretty jaguar

Tries to highlight exploitation of indigenous peoples by white people

The main theme is nice??? Idk I didn't like it

Cons:

Literally the whole movie

2x cute monki + 4 other animals actually killed

Exploits indigenous people by forcing them to act in the film w/o getting paid, or reimbursement for injury (burns)

main "white" characters emotionally abused and were not aware that animals would actually be killed.

The tribes are portrayed as caricatures despite the narrative trying to criticize our views of them-- their only scenes being "peaceful" involve screaming instead of any attempt to show they have language, overexaggerated movements and gestures in response to anything the "good" white man does, ritually mutilating their own tribal members (all sexually graphic, and only involve women), over-emphasis on the way they eat that is cartoonishly bad I.e., stuffing their faces with meat that is unnecessarily wasteful and messy.

In conclusion, unless you're interested in tracing the movements of horror history and the popularization/introduction of now well known sub-genres (e.g., found footage), don't waste your time.

P.S I didn't list all the cons because I'd end up with an essay

#horror movie analysis #short review #evangelliwatch #cannibal holocaust #cannibal holocaust 1980 #found footage #horror movie #horror movie review #found footage review #horror #horror movie recommendations #i dont recommend it

[mrdcoolblue]

The Ghost Sequences by A. C. Wise

💀🖤

[text ID: Gorgeous writing. Each short story deals with hauntings, including being haunted by grief, regret, and guilt, but several take completely different approaches to what a haunting is, weaving in fantasy, surrealist, scifi, and contemporary elements.

Quote: “A haunting is a moment of trauma, infinitely repeated. It extends forward and backward in time. It is the hole grief makes. It is a house built by memory in-between your skin and bones.” /end]

I read this back in August, and holy crap, this short story collection is my favorite read of 2023. Maybe one of my favorite books of all time. The stories are beautiful and sad and haunting and filled with love, which are frankly my favorite kinds of ghost stories. I had to draw an illustration in my reading journal for my favorite story from the collection: “The Nag Bride”

#the ghost sequences #ac wise #book review #short stories #ghost stories #reading journal #reading horror #my art

[gbhbl]

Horror Short Review: 048 (2024)

From Shadow Pond Productions, and writer/director/editor, Luke Cloarec, comes 048. A horror short that stars Mason Sturgess, Lee McLeod, Charlie Bettesworth, and Emma Ljunggren.

From Shadow Pond Productions, and writer/director/editor, Luke Cloarec, comes 048. A horror short that stars Mason Sturgess, Lee McLeod, Charlie Bettesworth, and Emma Ljunggren. It’s late at night, in some form of student-style accommodation block, and Jake is trying to go to sleep. Just as he begins to drift off, he is disturbed by a knock at his door. Initially, more than happy to ignore it,…

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#048 #horror #Horror Short #Horror Short Review

[bookthroneking]

Four mini-reviews with four-star ratings!

Matilda by Mary Shelley:

This is a deeply emotional, almost sentimental book, but I mean that as a compliment. The protagonist, Matilda, is a compelling and tragic character; her emotional turmoil is believable and beautifully written. Also, the book deals with a taboo subject (incest) in a very tactful way, and everyone's motivations in this story are heartbreakingly understandable and sympathetic.

The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann

Without giving too much away of what happens in this short story, I fully understand now why it inspired Freud to write an essay on the uncanny. The story itself is fairly mysterious and doesn't offer a lot of closure or answers, but the imagery is very unsettling, almost nightmarish in places. Also, it has a really cool female character, which I always appreciate.

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo

This is a very strange book, and I love very strange books. It's an absolutely beautiful depiction of a community that slowly falls apart from grief, regret, violence and love; the writing style is simple but evocative, each word perfectly chosen. The constant shifts in perspective might make it difficult to follow, but I found it a very rewarding read exactly because of that.

The Bee Hut by Dorothy Porter

I love the way Dorothy Porter used language. Her poetry is close to terse, with simple language and clear imagery, but the moods she conjures in this book are beautiful, almost tangible in places. This is a collection of poems from the last years of her life, and they're very focused of self-reflection and emotion (her hospital poems are very sad to read in context). The poem The Silver Bracelet went on my yearly favorites list as soon as I'd read it.

#book review #classic literature #magical realism #short stories #horror #poetry #2024 reads #reading #booklr #bookworm #my posts

[vanilla0chinchilla]

So... does anyone want me to share some writing I've done?

#one is a snarky book review and the other is a short creepypasta/horror story

[twenty-words-or-less]

Baghead

Summary: Iris Lark (Freya Allan) inherits a run-down pub in Germany from her estranged father Owen (Peter Mullan) that contains a secret: a woman with supernatural powers in its basement.

Alright January horror with interesting motif. Stupidity of character’s decisions sometimes too much to ignore. CGI fire also VERY obvious.

Rating: 2.75/5

Photo credit: Digital Spy

#baghead #baghead 2023 #2023 #Alberto Corredor #horror #supernatural #short film expansion #Freya Allan #Peter Mullan #Jeremy Irvine #Ruby Barker #2.75 #film reviews #film review #twenty-words-or-less #twol #2024 uk release

[wrongpublishing]

BOOK REVIEW: Cosmic Horror Monthly's Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction 

by Elizabeth Broadbent, Staff Writer.

I stan Bertha. 

You will too once you read Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction (Cosmic Horror Monthly). Rage-made art, editor Joolie Toomajan’s anthology howls into the dark night of oppression; its fury-crafted stories push back against the true horrors of our marginalization. Come for the politics—all proceeds go to fund abortion rights in America—but stay for some of the year’s best stories, which shine against the tarnish of injustice.

There’s spec fic here for everyone: literary retellings, a redone fairy tale, sci-fi, fantasy, surrealism, ghost stories, serial killers. Fury seethes through them: fury at abandonment, fury at erasure, but (justly) often fury at objectification. We are baby-carriers, walking wombs. Our sexuality is villainous. We endanger the patriarchy by refusing to die, a la Mrs. Rochester in Laura Blackwell’s “The First Mrs. Edward Rochester Would Like a Word.” 

I finished the first two stories in this anthology (Jennifer Lee Fleck’s brutal “The Girls of Channel 9” and Joe Koch’s “By Their Bones You Shall Know Them”, which reminded me of Brian Bilston’s “America is a Gun”) and had to walk away. “This is one of the best anthologies I’ve read all year,” I told my husband as I took a breather. “I’ve only read two of them and holy shit, this is good stuff.”

You knew, of course, that Haley Piper’s would be a standout. You didn’t know how much of a standout. I might’ve cried while reading “The Girls with Claws that Catch”—bonus points if you can ID the reference. William Faulker wished he’d written Moby Dick; I’d’ve given a lesser toe to pen this one. 

I might’ve cried while reading a lot of these. 

Remember the tears you shed when you heard about Roe? Here they all, wrapped up into speculative fic. 

I could wade through every story and rave about its uniqueness, its bravery, its place in the Golden Age of Indie Horror (then thank the God of Horror Writers—nomination for Black Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god of nighttime and darkness—that I’m lucky enough to review right now). I’ll spare you, expect to say that someone other than Joolie Toomajan’s winning a Stoker for this, and I’m not sure who.

Special shoutout Laura Cranehill: Nectarine, Apple, Pear is her first published short story—and she wrote it in the midst of parenting three small kids. Laura, we best see more of your work soon. 

Buy Aseptic now; don’t wait for StokerCon. Like Ai Jiang’s Lingham, this book’s gonna sell out. 

Watch the launch party hosted by P. L. McMillan and Chelsea Pumpkins—you deserve these stellar readings in your life.

Cosmic Horror Monthly Twitter: @ CosmicHorrorMo Instagram: @ cosmic.horror.monthly

#review #gothic fiction #fiction #short fiction #gothic literature #book review #horror books #fiction review #horror fiction #horror literature #indie lit #indie literature #indie press #indie horror #feminist horror #horror anthology #horror collection #small press #political horror #women in horror

[thechaoticreader]

And Then I Woke Up Review

Title: And Then I Woke Up

Author: Malcolm Devlin

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Reading Method: Audiobook

Genre(s): Horror | Dystopian | Science Fiction

Favourite Quote: "Maybe we’ll all have to get used to the uncertainty. Maybe that’s what frightens me. The way you can get used to anything if you’ve got nothing better to gravitate toward."

*Disclaimers: reviews are for READERS 🖤 and this is all my opinion and experience reading the book, if you disagree thats totally fine but please be respectful!*

Its probably obvious by the star rating but I absolutely ADORE this book! I'm not usually a fan of zombies but the way Malcolm Devlin handles them was so unique and impactful that I was hooked! It is probably one of my favourite novels of all time and it feels as though it was written specifically for me. Yes there were zombies (kinda?) but the real horror was in the human psyche and left me questioning my own sense of reality. A truly unique and beautifully written horror novel that will be living in my head rent free!

Read this if you like:

flowery, purple prose

cerebral horror

body horror

short books/novellas

zombies

viruses

commentary on social media/propaganda

1st person narrative

Trigger Warnings:

child death

obsessions (could be triggering to those with OCD)

familicide

gore

mental hospital setting

paranoia

self harm (one scene)

pandemic talk

mention of toxic parental relationships

gun violence

(thats all I can think of off the top of my head but please feel free to add more🖤)

I think this is an excellent example of a successful horror novel that is scary without using triggering subjects simply for shock value! And Then I Woke Up is proof that a story can be terrifying WITHOUT relying on random shocking/triggering scenes, objectifying language, racism, homophobia/transphobia, etc.

I also think that this would be a good pick if you're new to horror!

Lastly, I don't typically like audiobooks but Graham Mack did a fantastic job at bringing our MC to life without sounding cheesy and overacted (the Aussie accent definitely helps)!

And for the annotation girlies, I gotchu! I wish I had the physical copy because there were so many good lines and themes, I think ya'll would eat with this book! Plus we LOVE a pink cover!

#book blog #and then i woke up #book review #bookblr #horror #horror books #horror review #audiobooks #book club #book lover #horror nerd #reading #short books #zombie books #zombie #scifi #light scifi books #dystopia #virus #viral horror

[bookstagramofmine]

Book Review: Someone Else's Horror Story by Rebecca Crunden

Book Review: Someone Else's Horror Story by Rebecca Crunden #BookReview @BookSpotlight @rjcrunden #BookTwt #Books #Horror #ShortStory

Unless you don’t use Amazon to get books, you’ll know that Kindle has a rewards program! For every dollar you spend on a print book, you get a point, and 3 points per dollar spent on a Kindle book! Whenever you earn 300 points on a Kindle book, you can redeem that for $3 to spend on other books on the site! This is awesome if you’re like me and like buying Kindle books! I wanted to read…

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#book review #horror #kindle #Rebecca crunden #short story #someone else&039;s horror story