Movies: The Endless

I honestly can't decide what I think of this movie.

Mostly I liked it?

Partly I'm not 100% sure what was going on.

Well, no, I think I know what was going on . . .

This is an indie sci-fi/horror film that claims to be "Lovecraftian," which I guess it is. I don't really enjoy Lovecraft, so I wasn't sure I wanted to see this movie. But the trailer intrigued me, and reviews said it was really good, so I decided to give it a go.

Two brothers named Justin and Aaron (because the writers/directors are Justin and Aaron and they also play the main characters, so why learn a whole new name, I guess) grew up in a weird kind of cult. Some ten years before, however, Justin took Aaron away from said cult. When they receive a video message in the mail from the cult, Aaron begs Justin to just go back for a quick visit. He doesn't remember much, you see, and he wants to go . . . I dunno. See if he can remember more? See what's going on with this group?

Justin insists the group is sort of like Heaven's Gate—namely, preparing for mass suicide. But he finally relents and agrees to drive out to "The Camp."

Incidentally, the cult brews and sells beer as their way of financing its members' livelihoods.

Uh . . . So then Aaron starts to feel welcomed and at home in this cult while Justin continues to feel on edge. And there are three moons, and it turns out that people can't leave certain "loops," which are circular areas of physical land (which makes me wonder how they sell their beer if they can't leave The Camp, or how Justin and Aaron managed to leave the cult in the first place). So after a series of strange events and weird characters, the movie becomes about Justin and Aaron needing to get out of there before the third moon is full and they're stuck there forever.

Oh, and there's a big, unseen monster that kills everyone at the end of each loop. Or something.

The Endless is well paced so as not to drag at any point. It's just weird enough to be engaging, and there are some truly tense moments. Also, I appreciate that they didn't make it very gory. At the same time, however, I'm not sure I actually enjoyed it. But I don't know why I have that feeling. I can't put my finger on what causes that slight disconnect.

Still, overall I would recommend it. Because I think most people would enjoy it (if they like this kind of thing), and I suspect whatever impediment stands between me and The Endless is personal and not something from which others would suffer.

Movies: Split

Finally sat down and watched this one.

Look, I know M. Night's movies have been hit or miss (and more miss than hit as his career has gone on), but I did really like Unbreakable, thought Signs was okay despite the gaping plot holes, and even went against the majority by mostly liking The Village. Sure, I think The Sixth Sense is overrated, and I hated Lady in the Water and near hated The Visit and The Happening, so . . . Yeah.

The question then becomes: Where does Split fall on the M. Night spectrum?

Well, let's talk about the movie itself first. It's about a guy named Kevin (James McAvoy) with Dissociative Identity Disorder who, acting as a personality named Dennis, abducts three teens from King of Prussia Mall. At least, I think it was the mall. I guess it doesn't matter.

The first scene, which involves Claire and Marcia talking to Claire's dad about how weird Casey is and how they didn't really want to invite her to this birthday party, is bland and oddly static. The dialogue isn't great, either. It had me worried about what to expect from the movie.

But then they all go out to the parking lot, and again, some of the logic doesn't quite scan. The girls wait in the car, and it's clear something happens to Claire's dad, but when a weird man gets into the driver's seat . . . "Pardon me, sir," Claire says, and I'm thinking, No way does a 16-year-old say that or behave that way when a weirdo gets in the car. It's also not clear why Casey doesn't jump out of the parked car rather than moving super slow and allowing herself to get taken.

Whatever. It's all setup, I guess, and what follows would be typical light horror fare except that James McAvoy totally nails it. Sure, the movie sort of devolves at times into the "James McAvoy show," but it's pretty impressive. And Anya Taylor-Joy does a fine job as wide-eyed Casey.

There continue to be logic issues—how Dennis forces two of the girls to partially undress, but for whatever reason not Casey because she has to stay covered for a plot twist to work; how Dr. Fletcher should probably have been smarter, etc. There are also flashbacks to young Casey hunting with her father and abusive uncle. One expects that to build up to something, but it doesn't quite play out the way one might think, so there's a little bit of a letdown there.

Still, the movie is overall entertaining. I didn't like it as much as Unbreakable, but I probably like it almost as much as Signs and about as much as The Village (again, I'm an outlier in that I really kind of liked that one). It definitely makes me excited for Glass, though I guess I would have been anyway.

tl;dr: good movie, mostly because of James McAvoy, but Anya Taylor-Joy plays well off him, too.

Television: Stranger Things 2

I'm not going to go into detail because I don't want to spoil it for anyone. So I'm going to be pretty general in my statements here.

I've often written about how difficult it is to maintain great quality in sequels, particularly when the first installment was brilliant and somewhat unexpected. When you set the bar that high—and therefore people's expectations as well—it becomes hard to clear it. But Stranger Things 2 does, I think, the best it possibly could to meet the stellar quality of its first season.

That's not to say it's perfect. But you can see they took care not to coast on their good reputation. Real work went into this.

Encapsulated so as not to spoil it for anyone: ST2 returns to Hawkins, and the Upside Down is sort of . . . leaking? The gate sealing it off is weakening. Problems ensue.

I did think it was interesting that, in order to make Steve not appear to be quite so much of a jerk, they simply introduced an ever bigger jerk character. Everything is relative, I suppose. We all exist somewhere on a jerk scale of one kind or another in this world.

There is real tension in this season, too, and some honest-to-goodness horror. Sure, some of it plays like Jurassic Park, but I like JP, so . . .

Did I enjoy it as much as the first season? Not quite. But again, some of that goes back to the first season being a novelty, an unexpected good fortune. I think ST2 is a worthy successor. That's really all we could ask for, or even hope for. It's easy for shows (*cough*Sherlock*cough*) to be pleased with themselves after a brilliant start and just know that people will watch no matter what. It takes commitment to the story, the characters, the actors, and the audience to continue to deliver quality work. For that much, I'm grateful to the Duffer Brothers and their team for putting in the effort.

Movies: The Sound

It's a dumb name for a psychological thriller/horror movie. But whatever.

Rose McGowan plays Kelly Johansen, a woman whose job is to debunk hauntings. She does this through low frequency sounds, I guess? Also: how does she make any money? Do people pay her to come to their houses and do this? She's evidently written a book, and she keeps a blog or Tumblr or something, so maybe that's where the money comes from? I'm just saying, what's the going rate for someone to come to your house and tell you it's not haunted, there's just an airport nearby?

Kelly is smug and borderline unlikable, which is how we know she's going to have to go through something torturous to wipe that smugness right out of her. She gets a message that leads her to an abandoned subway station in Toronto, and she promises her husband (or is he just a boyfriend?) she'll be back in time for that night's party, which sounds (har, see what I did there?) ridiculous considering she's flying to Toronto. I don't know where they are, exactly, so maybe it's a short flight, but still.

In the cab on the way to the subway station, Kelly gets the obligatory phone call from her mother that hints that something strange and/or terrible happened on that day thirty years before. 🙄  So now we know this is definitely going to be a thing.

The cab driver tells Kelly about how he and his friends once broke into the abandoned station, but we don't get to hear what he saw. As for the abandoned station itself, it's apparently ridiculously easy to break into. There's a door leading from the working station to the closed-off one. No tools required, just walk right on in. Again: 🙄

What we get from here on in is fairly standard pseudo-horror stuff with hallucinations, etc. Christopher Lloyd appears as a ghostly maintenance man. Kelly becomes weirdly sleepy and has numerous dreams/hallucinations. Nothing very scary, however, and it's pretty obvious a lot of what she thinks is happening isn't actually happening. Also, how is she getting cell service and Internet down there?

The core of the "horror" (if it can be called that, since none of it is particularly horrific) is a girl named Emily that apparently has something to do with this 30-year anniversary that Kelly's mom called about. Kelly keeps seeing/dreaming of a little girl in a white dress with a doll, and Kelly has the ratty old doll in her duffel . . . I won't give away the ending, but I will say I wasn't wowed—or surprised, for that matter.

For a low-budget, limited-locations production, this one is produced pretty well, and there are a couple of known names starring in it. That's impressive. I just wish someone had given the script itself a bit of a lift. It's murky and soporific and could have used some stronger twists to keep it interesting.

Movies: A Cure for Wellness

There's a genre of movie—I suppose it's a subgenre, really, of horror or thrillers or something—that I call "Hotel California" movies. These are movies in which a central character goes to a place, and spends the rest of the movie trying to get out of that place, but instead gets sucked further into whatever mystery is involved in said place. There are always a number of strange characters involved, and usually one really bad person (who might have a henchman or two). Almost always the main character's sanity comes into question, and there can be an ambiguous ending that leaves the audience wondering.

Done well, you get great movies like The Haunting (1963), though maybe we can thank Shirley Jackson's fabulous novella for that. But most movies in this genre are middling at best, laughable and predictable at worst.

Shutter Island is a Hotel California movie. Crimson Peak kind of is, too. And A Cure for Wellness fits this genre as well.

In this movie, Dane DeHaan plays Lockhart, an ambitious New Yorker sent by his (financial? hardly matters) firm to Germany to fetch back one of the CEOs from some weird health spa he's practically moved into. The spa is situated in the rebuilt remains of an old castle, so of course there is some crazy story to go with it. Two hundred years before, a baron married his sister because she was the only one "pure" enough for him to breed with. The sister got pregnant and the peasants hauled her out of the castle, cut the baby out of her, and tossed it in the river. They burned the sister alive and set fire to the castle. Cuz what else did they have to do back in those days? (Actually, the peasants were just angry because the baron was doing experiments on them and killing them all off.)

From there, the movie takes a predictable course. There is a strange young "patient" named Hannah who likes Lockhart because he's younger than all the usual old people who come to the wellness center. Lockhart, meanwhile, spirals into madness as he tries to (a) find the CEO and convince him to come back to New York, and (b) deal with snakes or eels or whatever is in the water.

Seriously, though, the movie could have been called Something in the Water. Cuz that sums it up pretty well.

A Cure for Wellness is pretty much exactly what I expected. You wouldn't have to know Gore Verbinski directed it to guess it was his work; it's just very Verbinski. Trigger warning, though, for people who might have trouble with rape scenes. And also: that's not how menstruation works. I mean, really, the water doesn't turn into the Red Sea when we get in the bathtub or shower, dude.

I'll admit a liking for these kinds of movies. If you like them, too, you'll probably find this one moderately diverting.

Books: My Favorite Stephen King Novels

Okay, so one of the groups I'm a member of is currently debating whether Stephen King's Revival was great or terrible. Of course, it's all a matter of opinion, but as people started writing that it was in the "bottom 10%" of his books or whatever, I began to think about which of Uncle Stevie's books are my favorites. (BTW, you can find my review of Revival here.)

Now, I've read a lot of King but not nearly all. So I can only rank what I've read. And I also sort of see Uncle Stevie's work in two parts: pre-Bag of Bones and post-Bag of Bones. So I'm going to rank them in two "eras" accordingly. And I'm only looking at novels, not anthologies.

Pre-Bag of Bones Favorites

1. 'Salem's Lot
2. The Dead Zone
3. The Dark Half
4. Misery
5. The Shining
6. Pet Sematary
7. It
8. Needful Things
9. The Green Mile
10. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
11. The Stand
12. The Tommyknockers
13. Insomnia*

*I didn't actually finish this one, but I'm grateful to it for introducing me to the work of Stephen Dobyns.

You'll see I never read beyond the first Dark Tower book. And there's a lot more I haven't read, too, and might never get around to.

I used the press conference scene in The Dead Zone for a dramatic interp piece once. I had to do a lot of different voices!

Post-Bag of Bones Favorites

1. Duma Key
2. Bag of Bones
3. Lisey's Story
4. Revival
5. Dreamcatcher

I really, really disliked Dreamcatcher. I started both Under the Dome and Finders Keepers but never finished either of them. Cell, meanwhile, is one I really want to read but—dare I say it—I'm a little frightened to!

'Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone, and Bag of Bones are the only Stephen King books I've read more than once. I'd definitely re-read Duma Key, though, too. In fact, there are a lot of books on this list that I find myself periodically wanting to go re-read, but then other books are stacked and waiting and I never quite get back around to old favorites.

Do you read Stephen King? If so, which of his books are your favorites?

Movies: The Conjuring 2

Just in time for Hallowe'en!

I enjoyed this one more than the first (and I didn't think the first one was bad, so . . .)

Not to say there weren't issues. Some very basic things, like why not get rid of the chair that seemed to be central to the ghost's activity? And, why didn't Ed give the girl that crucifix right from the start?

If you're wondering what I'm talking about, The Conjuring 2 covers what was known as the Enfield Poltergeist which terrorized a family in Enfield, England. In particular, 11-year-old Janet was the main target. As ever, things start strange and get stranger, yet no one seems to think it's worth mentioning or doing anything about it until the furniture starts moving. By then, however, it's too late. Janet finds herself repeatedly possessed by what claims to be the spirit of Bill Wilkins.

Meanwhile, Ed and Lorraine Warren have just come off the famous Amityville case, and Lorraine wants to take some time off. She's been shaken by a vision of Ed's death and also some kind of demonic nun. (Here is where another issue pops up: why hang the painting of the demon nun in your office?) But when they hear of this family in England that needs their help, despite Lorraine's misgivings, they go.

[potential spoilers follow]

I think this is supposed to build some kind of tension in the sense that we're supposed to worry Lorraine's vision of Ed's death will be realized. But I never felt worried for Ed at all. Being that Ed and Lorraine are real people, I kept thinking, I'm pretty sure that's not how he died. Not that I know how he died; I've never looked it up. But it's the kind of thing where I'm pretty sure I'd have heard that story if that's how it had happened, if that makes any sense.

If you look up the realities of the Enfield case, you'll see that Janet, once grown, admitted to making some of it up, along with her older sister. Many investigators believe it was entirely made up. The movie addresses this slightly by having Janet caught on camera throwing stuff around in order to make it appear that the spirit had done it. However, it also excuses this by having Janet tell her siblings that the spirit threatened to kill them all if she didn't make the investigators leave (and her being caught faking it caused them to pack it in). One also has to wonder whether, while possessed, a person might not wreak destruction in any case?

The ending was, to my mind, a bit weak after all the build-up. The first half of the movie is simply watching the spirit ramp up its offense against this family, and then the Warrens come on the scene, and there is a kind of wire crossing between Bill Wilkins and Demon Nun, and things devolve from there. Are we supposed to believe the demonic nun lured the Warrens there? Seems excessive. Also, why did the demon tell Lorraine its name? Surely it knew that information would give Lorraine power over it? Then again, why does any demon do any of the things it does?

Sidebar: A Bit of Fun

While watching, my husband and I kept thinking the Simon McBurney character reminded us of Moss on The IT Crowd. We couldn't stop laughing over it, and now we really wish they'd do some kind of Hallowe'en special. Jen could be the skeptic played by Franka Potente? Can that be made to happen?

Movies: 10 Cloverfield Lane

I didn't enjoy it as much as Cloverfield, but part of that may be because I saw that one in a cinema full of people and this one at home.

10 Cloverfield Lane also does not have the conceit of "found footage." Instead, its the story of Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who leaves her fiancé after an unspecified argument, packing her things and driving off only to get in a terrible car crash. She wakes up in a bunker where Howard (John Goodman) tells her he saved her from some kind of terrible attack. Howard used to be in the Navy and has evidently worked for years on building this bunker for just this purpose. Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) helped him build it and demanded admission when the attack occurred. So the three of them live there amidst questions of whether there really has been any kind of attack, or if maybe Howard is crazy. The story tilts one way then another, and the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but I won't give it away.

There was definitely some tension, and no one but John Goodman could have pulled off the part of Howard. But aside from the tension and the questions hanging over everything, I can't say I was as entertained with this one as with Cloverfield. It was clever and interesting but not, somehow, actually as engaging. Again, that might be the difference between a darkened cinema and my living room, but that is what I walked away feeling.

That said, still definitely worth watching.

Haunted House Movies

On Good Friday 1999, two of my best friends and I decided to do a thematic movie night in which we rented haunted house movies. We tried to do it by decade. We went to a video store (remember those?) at picked up:

The Uninvited
The House on Haunted Hill
The Innocents
The Haunting
The Shining

. . . And one other movie. That none of us can remember.

(It also occurs to me that we didn't really have a 70s movie in there, unless there's another one we're forgetting we watched.)

It would help if we could even remember something about the final movie, but after the mind-numbing Shining, and given the late (early) hour, we simply can't. I only vaguely have the notion HBO had something to do with it. Like, we'd had to settle for some HBO movie rather than a "real" one. But I can't even remember who starred in it. A guy . . . with dark hair . . . I think there were kids?

Clearly, this movie did not leave much of an impression. I was debating whether it might have been Haunted with Aidan Quinn, but the plot doesn't sound familiar to me. So then I also watched the Beyond Darkness trailer, which has the dark-haired man and the kids, but it didn't spark any remembrances either.

Hmm.

In truth, haunted house movies are my favorite kinds of scare—so long as they stay largely psychological and don't get too gory. I even love really bad haunted house movies. So if you have any favorites, feel free to suggest them!

Movies: Crimson Peak

Not as bad as I thought it would be.

Okay, you can count that as damned by faint praise, but here's the thing: I love Gothic stories. When I first heard about this movie, I was really excited about it. Then I saw some trailers and worried it would be too gory for me (I do suspense but not gore). And then the reviews weren't great, but . . . My love of all things Gothic (yes, okay, and Tom Hiddleston, at whom I would gladly stare for a couple hours regardless of what else was happening on the screen) won out and I decided to give it a try with the reasoning I could always turn it off if it was too bloody.

I made it through.

So. The movie. It features Tom Hiddleston as Loki Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet, who rather like my six-year-old son just wants to invent things and play around with big machine except

SPOILERS, SWEETIES

his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain, who will always be Murph to me) keeps harshing his mellow by forcing him to marry wealthy women and then kill them.

This time he contrives to marry Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), only daughter of a wealthy merchant in New York. Edith is frowned on by others who think the taint of industry smells bad, so it's quite the upset when the dashing baronet plucks her out of all the furbelows and frills of society. They waltz and everything!

When Edith's father dies is a terrible bathroom accident (this was one scene that was nearly too bloody for me), she ends up with all his money and a new husband. Also a really creepy sister-in-law.

Things go from there. Edith's ability to see ghosts helps her navigate the dangers of her new position. And while it's pretty clear early on what the truth is [highlight here if you want to know: Lucille and Thomas are incestuous lovers], I actually expected a bit more supernatural underpinning, an Elizabeth Bathory kind of thing or something. In the end, I found it rather mundane in comparison.

But I still enjoyed it. More than I expected to anyway. It's true, I suppose, that whenever you have low to no expectations, you can't be disappointed. Only happily surprised. So while this is no bright star in the galaxy of filmmaking, I think it has the potential to be a cult favorite among certain circles. Very small circles. Maybe just me. But that's okay, too.

Television: The X-Files, "Home Again"

Admittedly, last week's episode was a tough act to follow. To avoid too close comparison, this one eschewed humor and went for gore and sap (an odd combination).

The mystery part involved a "Trash Man" killing anyone involved in a homeless relocation project. That was the gore bit: people getting ripped apart. "Treating people like trash," lectured the artist who had created the Trash Man (who then apparently came to life). He likened it to people who recycle and feel good about themselves about it, when in reality there is still an overflowing landfill somewhere. Out of sight, out of mind. Moving the homeless to a shelter was the same thing, only with people.

Well, okay. That was our Lesson of the Week.

Meanwhile, Scully's mother had a heart attack. She asked for her estranged son Charlie. There was a lot of weepy stuff, and the way this story line tied in with the first was that it left Scully worried that William (her and Mulder's son) felt "thrown away." It was sad and sweet, to be sure, but I do feel they're pounding this nail in further than necessary. We know giving William up was difficult. We know it's a weight Scully (and Mulder) carry. But . . . I dunno. It feels a bit much.

I will say I don't disagree with the LotW. I was thinking about it just the other day, in fact, when our town went out of its way to remind us that throwing away batteries is technically illegal. We're supposed to take them to special disposal sites. And it made me wonder why so many people still throw their batteries out. My conclusion is: because it's easier.

In order to effect change in people's behaviors, you have to do two things. 1. You have to make the consequences big enough to matter. 2. You have to make it easy for people to do what it is you want them to do. Why do more people recycle? Because the city gave us special bins and sorting trash isn't all that hard. If you gave us a special bin for batteries, or at least made the disposal centers numerous and nearby, we'd probably follow the rules and dispose of batteries properly. (I'm using a universal "we" as I do try and follow the rules myself.) Barring that, if the consequences were big enough—if people were relatively sure of being caught, and if there were fines and/or jail time involved—we'd also probably be motivated to behave the way you're asking us to behave.

But this is a tangent. As for The X-Files, it was an okay episode. I know they can't all be goofy. In fact, if they all were, the show wouldn't be as good.

Television: The X-Files, "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster"

Let's just let Darrin Morgan write all the things from here on out, shall we?

After returning with a couple somewhat weak episodes, we get this classic, loaded with humor. Mulder is having a crisis of faith over how many things he believed in have been debunked, so when Scully shows him this monster sighting case, his hopes are not high. But the path to the truth proves to Mulder there are more things in heaven and earth . . . (And yes, extra points for the Hamlet, Mr. Morgan.)

I won't go into details; I don't want to ruin it for anyone who might watch. But if the first two episodes turned you off—if, like Mulder, your faith in The X-Files was dampened—this episode should help restore you.

Movies: The Visit

Okay, so I have mixed feelings about M. Night Shyamalan's work. I know his movies are full of holes and flaws, and it has become a pastime of some people to point those out. And I honestly wasn't as blown away by The Sixth Sense as so many people seem to have been when it came out. But I do, in general, enjoy his movies. I think they're nicely done, and I usually am at least a bit entertained. It's only after the fact, when one thinks very much about them, that one sees the lack of clothing on the emperor. While watching (at least the first time), I'm usually drawn in enough not to be diverted in such ways.

Alas, The Visit did not draw me in. It was weird but not scary, and the "mystery" failed to engross me. I had it figured out fairly early on, and there wasn't any point at which I was all that worried for the main characters. Plus, the moments in which the characters made ridiculously bad decisions (as in so many horror movies) were egregious enough to be distracting.

I hadn't really read anything about the movie before watching it, which is my preferred way of going into a Shyamalan film. Turns out it's about two kids visiting their grandparents for the first time ever. Rebecca is 15 and an aspiring filmmaker, so the movie is all from the point of view of her filming the titular visit, interviewing her grandparents and so on. Her younger brother Tyler is 13 and a would-be rapper.

These kids' parents are divorced and the mother estranged from the grandparents which is why Rebecca and Tyler have never met them. And also why their mother does not accompany them on the trip. She just puts them on a train and off they go. This alone seems like a terrible decision, but I was able to let it slide. Later on, when there should have been calls to 911—that's when I was like, NOPE.

The bulk of the movie is Rebecca and Tyler trying to make sense of weird things happening at their grandparents' house. Their grandmother is "sundowning," which means she goes crazy every night at 10:00 or so. Their grandfather is incontinent and hides the dirty diapers in the barn, and he also dresses up for nonexistent costume parties. Yet when the kids Skype with their mother (who is out on a cruise with her boyfriend), they play down the bizarre nature of things. Or at least Rebecca does. She's keen to get her grandparents to confess some kind of forgiveness so that their mom can be reunited with them, so I guess she feels it works against her plan to say, "Nana and Pop Pop are crazy!"

I won't give the twist away, though it's pretty standard fare and easily seen coming.

On the whole, I was kind of bored and disappointed with the whole thing. Rebecca and Tyler fail to be engaging enough characters to carry the film, and the grandparents are certainly creepy in some ways, but I didn't find them entirely threatening. The whole thing felt like Paranormal Activity Lite. Which might be right for some audiences, but does nothing for me.

Television: AHS: Hotel, "Chutes and Ladders"

The vampire stuff in this show is just dumb. I want to say that flat out. It's overwrought and trite at the same time, which is almost impressive. In a bad way. But maybe that's what they were going for? Dunno.

The music cues especially. Ugh.

Everything else, though, is pretty interesting.

This episode gives us the backstory on the hotel's original owner, Mr. March, whose particular pleasure was bloody murder.

Meanwhile, Wes Bentley (because I really can't think of him as anyone but Wes Bentley) brings his daughter to the hotel for a fashion show, and she sneaks off with that other kid . . . I have to say, after his son disappearing you'd think Wes would be watching his daughter like a hawk. But no. He's kind of a lousy father.

But anyway, the daughter discovers her brother isn't dead and hasn't aged. She tries to get him to go home but he says he IS home, that he likes the hotel, and she can just visit whenever she wants.

And vampire stuff. Sigh. Um . . . Lady Gaga decides she wants a new boyfriend, basically, and evicts the one who was Kathy Bates' son in favor of a coked-up runway model. Whatever. I'm pretty sure she was the wife of Mr. March, too, way back when. Was probably the one to call the police on him when she was tired of him.

And Sarah Paulson's just sort of there. Still. I'm sure we'll get her whole story eventually.

It's pretty bad, perhaps, when you've given up on character names and are just calling the characters by their actors. It's not that I'm not enjoying it, though. I'm not blissed out on it either. I'm curious to see where it goes but worried this show has lost the ability to surprise or amaze me. We have come to expect the shock factor, so . . . ::shrug:: We're no longer shocked. Or wowed. And maybe we don't have to be. So long as the story itself is good, the show shouldn't need to up the ante every season. But we've come to the point where now it feels like it might be trying too hard. And that's never good.

Television: AHS: Hotel, "Checking In"

I expected something creepier, actually. Or less cliché. I mean, vampires and creepy kids and dead things in mattresses . . . Maybe I'm jaded, but none of this wows me.

Though I will say I'm pretty curious about whatever is going on with Wes Bentley.

And I do have a weird "Hotel California" story, but I won't go into that here. Plus my play "Warm Bodies" was about a haunted hotel room, so, you know, I dig the subject matter in general.

Oh, if you're wondering, this season is about, well, a hotel. Owned by a vampire (Lady Gaga, natch). Except the building is being sold, and that puts the bizarre workings of the hotel in jeopardy. By which I mean Kathy Bates having to procure victims for said vampire, and Sarah Paulson as, um, an undead hooker? I might have some of that wrong; my mind wandered a bit.

Maybe it's just a slow start. Maybe it will build. I'll watch it anyway, or at least leave it on while I play 1010 on my iPhone.

Theatre: Dracula by LATW

I can't seem to escape Hamlet these days (not that I especially want to, but still). This being Dracula, there was a lot of Hamlet in it.

But anyway.

This was an interesting production. The characters dressed the part but performed at microphones while foley artists provided sound effects and a screen projected atmospheric background images. Sort of like watching a radio performance, really, though there were some acted bits to give a good sense of what was going on.

And it was all exceptionally well done.

In particular, Alexis Jacknow as Mina, Nicholas Hormann as Van Helsing, and Patrick Wenk-Wolff as the titular Count did stand-out work, but honestly, everyone was fabulous. It was a real treat to watch.

I brought my 9-year-old son, too, and yes, he got a bit freaked out at times. The wolves howling, and Summer Spiro's (Lucy) ear-piercing screams . . . But at the end of it all, he professed to liking it. "It was cool," he said, which is high praise from the likes of a jaded pre-teen. Still and all, if you have squeamish kids (mine likes scary stuff), this probably isn't the show for them. And mine is still just young enough to have the sexual overtones go over his head. But only just; it's a sultry story and this production doesn't gloss it.

The show is roughly two hours, no intermission. An evening well spent.

Television: Scream Queens, "Pilot" & "Hell Week"

So if you're looking for something kind of ridiculous, this fits the bill. While I couldn't stomach some of the bloodier parts, I did find Scream Queens entertaining. I know everyone says "Mean Girls" and, yeah, this is that except here at least some of the mean girls get what's coming to them. Of course, some innocents become collateral damage along the way.

I won't go into details about the plot, but to summarize: A sorority house ruled by meanie Chanel (Emma Roberts doing pretty much the exact same thing she did in AHS: Coven) is targeted by a serial killer. Why? Well, it might have something to do with how one of the pledges was left to die in a bathtub during a party 20 years ago. The pledge had just given birth, and now that baby is old enough to take revenge.

This is the running theory, though there are certainly a number of suspects on offer in the show, which is part of the fun. Jamie Lee Curtis does a fine job as the dean who hates sororities, and there are at least two characters obsessed with and/or turned on by death.

I've already dropped Minority Report, but I'll continue to watch Scream Queens. It's over the top, and I could use that in my otherwise rather heavy viewing diet.

The Return of The X-Files

FOX has confirmed a 6-episode return of The X-Files. I know because every newsfeed and my entire Facebook stream is filled with it.

I was a religious X-Files fan up until around 1999 or 2000. Somewhere in moving to Boston and becoming a grad student, and in David Duchovny leaving and Jason Patric stepping in, I lost the thread and didn't feel driven to pick it back up at any point.

But prior to all that, whoa boy, big fan. My best friend Tara and I would write "Memos to the Crew" back and forth—joke letters in which I pretended to be Chris Carter and she would be the crew, writing to complain about David and Gillian's antic behavior. I've still got them all somewhere . . . We also had an ongoing joke that Chris Carter and I were psychically linked because every time I suggested something might happen on the show, it did.

My final project at UT was an X-Files spec script. I remember working that summer on the Hope Floats set, and there was a FOX directory of course, and I called Chris Carter's office once but hung up when his assistant answer. (I assume it was his assistant.) Too shy for this biz, I suppose.

But anyway. I keep seeing the news of an X-Files return ("limited-run series"), and how they're touting the fact Duchovny and Anderson will be back, too. And I have to wonder: How much of them "being back" is part of a setup to pass the baton to other, younger agents? How much of it is designed to hopefully set up a new series?

I could be wrong, of course. But it seems like the logical move. Carry forward the old fans, bring in new ones.

Let's see if that old psychic link holds up.

Movies: Daybreakers

After enjoying Predestination so much, I thought I'd give this one a try, even though horror films aren't usually my thing. It was a tad bloody for my taste, but pretty decent. And at least the vampires don't sparkle.

Daybreakers is set in 2019 (keep in mind it was made in 2009), in a time when a virus has turned the majority of the population into vampires . . . And the humans are dwindling as they (a) become vampires or (b) become a food source. Alas, there isn't enough blood to sustain the massive vampire population, so they are on rations and searching for a synthetic substitute. So far none have worked.

Ethan Hawke plays Edward (har!) a sympathetic vampire who refuses human blood. His job is as a hematologist for a company run by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill)—he's one of those on the front lines of trying to find a blood substitute. After all, the humans are almost extinct; a substitute would buy time for the humans to repopulate before the vampires began hunting them again. (Human blood just tastes better.)

Starving vampires are turning into "Subsiders" that become increasingly batlike and mindless. Desperate for blood, they'll attack their own kind or even try to drink from themselves.

The movie is an interesting blend of zombie apocalypse and vampire myth. After Edward helps a group of humans get safely away from vampire authorities, they come back to tell him they have a cure for vampirism. Then they take him to Willem Dafoe, which sounds like a mean trick, but it isn't really. In this movie Willem calls himself Elvis and likes classic cars. He also is a cured vampire. With Edward's help, they're able to recreate the vampire cure . . . And cure Edward in the process.

Of course, being human isn't such a great thing in this world. When Bromley catches Edward and his friends, Edward sells the cure as a way to re-establish the dwindling human population, thereby boosting the blood supply. (I guess they've eaten all the animals already? I didn't see any animals . . .) Edward gets Bromley to bite him with the idea that he wants to be a vampire again. Except what works in one direction . . .

Well, look at it this way: A vampire bites a human, and the human (if s/he doesn't die) becomes a vampire. But when the vampire becomes human again, then the process works in reverse: When a vampire bites a cured vampire, the vampire becomes human. Now, it isn't clear how Edward knew this. It's not like he had time to test it as a theory. So he was mostly going on faith, I guess.

But it works. Bromley becomes human again, only to be set upon by his own vampire soldiers who are starving for blood. As they drink from him . . . They begin turning human. Only to be set upon by other hungry vampires. So on and so forth. It's actually pretty clever, though it requires quite a number of sacrifices on the side of cured vampires in order for the "antivirus" to spread.

So I liked Predestination a lot more, but then again, that was based on a Heinlein story. This one the Spierigs wrote themselves. Kudos to them, then, for doing a solid job there. It's not perfect, but it's definitely not bad.

Books: Revival by Stephen King

It's Frankenstein.

And before you accuse me of spoiling it for you, let me just point out that Uncle Stevie doesn't hide this fact. Look at the book's title, its cover image. Get 30 pages in and read all about Charlie Jacobs' obsession with lightning and electricity, with harnessing its power. It doesn't take a mental giant to make the connections, so that by the time we get to the end of the book and there are characters named Franklin and Shelley and Mary and Victor . . . Ta-da!

But the fun, as they say, is in getting there.

Look, I don't love all of Uncle Stevie's books. I have definite favorites (Salem's Lot and The Dead Zone from the old stuff, Duma Key and Bag of Bones and Lisey's Story from the post-accident era). This one is . . . okay. There's something slow about it, though I see why it's constructed and paced the way it is; it goes as fast as it can, which is in places nothing more than a lumber, Frankenstein's monster in prose form. But nothing is wasted. Everything that is there is a necessary organ to final beast.

The narrative is given by Jamie Morton, whose life has intersected with one Charlie Jacobs on several occasions. First Jacobs was reverend at Jamie's church when he was a kid. Then Jamie stumbled, almost literally, onto Jacobs at a county fair in Oklahoma. A tent revival in Colorado. A house in New York State. And then it all comes back home to Maine.

Honestly, I could see it as a TV miniseries, each night a different encounter as the story puffs out. Might have to switch actors as the characters age, though.

The last 40 to 60 pages are pure King, his personal twist to the Frankenstein story. It's the kind of horror that's difficult to visualize despite King's descriptions, which means it would probably be difficult to film (or render in CGI) either . . . You know all the old criticisms about how King's stuff "doesn't translate to screen" sometimes? (I'm thinking of everything that was said at the end of the IT TV two-parter.) Those criticisms might definitely apply here, though with all the advances in technology, maybe they could design something suitably horrific without it looking ridiculous.

It's a good book, but not a great one. While in some places I didn't want to put it down, in others I felt like a horse pulling at my traces, desperate for things to be moving. This stop-go storytelling gave me a bit of literary whiplash.

BUT.

It is the kind of thing that's likely to stay with me. Good writing has nothing to do with genre and everything to do with telling a story that sticks. And Uncle Stevie is very good at that.