Audiobook Evaluation: "In the Tall Grass" (2012) by Stephen King and Joe Hill

This is the absolute first full audiobook I have ever listened to. Of course it had to be Stephen King related, and of course it had to be this. Let me set the scene as I listened to this in my car because it might tell you a lot about my mindset as I listened to this story.

It was late at night, so late that it was probably early. I tend to drive long distances at times, and this was one of those three hour drives I sometimes need to take some nights because life. I was driving from New Jersey to Connecticut (where I live), going through the Saw Mill (River) Parkway in New York. It was so late at the time that there was nobody else on the road. Again, I see this quite often when I drive home that late. So, as I listened to this story about a car pulling off the road on a long-distance trip to check out what's going on in a field of grass, I was also driving and very much ready to be creeped out myself.

So, the mood is set. Now, let's get to the bare minimum about this story without spoiling anything. I really don't want to spoil anything. The story here is way too good to spoil, and I don't really think many people know a ton about this audiobook. While Stephen King and his son wrote this together, I wouldn't exactly call it well known, especially because one of the major forms of this novella is the audiobook format of it. While it also can be found as an e-book and was written in a magazine as well, it has yet to be inserted into one of King's story collections and thus is still relatively unknown despite being incredibly good.

The story follows a simple premise. As I mentioned briefly, a brother and sister are taking a long drive to San Diego, basically taking an extended vacation so that the sister, Becky, will have some time to decide whether or not she wants to abort her child or keep it. She's very young, nineteen, in college, and has become pregnant by an unknown father. Cal, her brother, is supporting her on this trip. They are very close these two, and the big reason might be because they are very similar in the way they think and act. Anyway, on the way they pull off the highway because both of them hear something coming from inside the grassy field. The thing they hear is a young boy crying out for help.

The story continues with Becky and Cal going to try to help the kid, who they think has simply wandered into the field while playing and become lost. The problem is exacerbated though when a woman's voice, the mother of the child, calls out to them to not enter the grass, to stay away. Becky and Cal become intrigued, enter the grass, and seal their eventual fate.

This story is about nature versus humanity, and maybe something beyond nature as well. I would call this a story about an eldritch abomination, one very much unlike a Cthulhu or a Lovecraftian horror, but one also very similar as well. Without giving too much away, the grass, the tall grass of the title, is very similar to the room in the story 1408. While there is much less psychological horror in this story than in that one, the premise is very similar, and the effects of both are quite chilling. While room 1408 seems to be fairly self-contained, more a nuisance than something that people are maliciously going to wander in to, the tall grass, and what lies within it, is very much in the open, unguarded, and finds its own way to attract others into its clutches.

This story is terrifying by the way. Listening to it in the day or at night doesn't really change that. The story still holds a creepy factor that does not go away, not even in the brightest daylight. It is a story about being lost, about being unable to ever find yourself again. It is about being pulled over the edge, being pulled over to the dark side of your own nature, against your will, or maybe as the only way to stay alive. The story has some horrifying set-pieces, although none of them occur within the first half or so of the story. During the second half though, the punches of horror keep flying. Topics such as abortion, miscarriage, cannibalism, insanity, rape, and eldritch horror are spoken about at length, each topic dealt with in a terrifying (and sometimes absolutely sickening) way.

There were moments as I listened to this audiobook, that I covered my mouth in horror and surprise. And on my first listening to this, especially once the second half of the story started playing, I actually needed to shut the CD player in my car off for a while so that I could collect myself. The story had literally upset me so much that I couldn't listen anymore without feeling genuinely sick to my stomach. I can't think of many horror stories that can do that to me, but this one is quality terror.

I don't really want to say much about the second half. There is a stone in a field, and things mentioned very early in the story become very important later on. It's reminiscent of "Children of the Corn" in a way, but that probably has more to do with the setting and slight religious overtones (of one sort or another) more than anything else. Actually the dealing with religion is very much a Stephen King staple going all the way back to Carrie. It seems that those motivated by a religion of fear tend to be the most loathsome sort to King, something I find very interesting.

I know that audiobooks aren't for everybody, but for the amount that I drive, they are basically perfect. And this is a damn good audiobook besides. The audiobook is read by Steven Lang, an actor I know specifically as Mr. Travitt from The I Inside, a character that I really loved, and he does a great job here, impersonating the voices and really doing a topnotch job as both narrator and storyteller. His acting really sells the story, especially when he really seems to get into it in the second half of the story. His voice is downright chilling at times as the story moves on, and that's about as good a compliment as I can give him.

Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, did a great job with this story. To me it has gone down as one of the classic short horror stories from Stephen King, up there with The Mist and N. in terms of quality and terrifying storytelling. I wholeheartedly recommend this audiobook to everybody. Check it out if you can. I wasn't disappointed. Actually, listening to the audiobook a second time really made me want to read, watch, or listen to more Stephen king stories...

So, that might be a thing.

Soon.

Movie Appraisal: Ghost Ship (2002)

Now, here's an interesting movie to discuss. Is this a good movie, a bad one, or only a simple failure as a film? Some, no, most of the reviews for this film peg it as a pretty bad film. Hell, the scores of this film give it so low a score that it's practically in the same league of film as Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, which I think must be some kind of awful insult. My point is that this film is almost universally panned by critics, and I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm here to tell you what I think.


Ghost Ship is a ghost film, first and foremost, something that is fairly rare as a film genre today. I'm not ready to speak about the film's quality yet as both a movie and as a ghost film, but I can say that it does, at the very least, try very hard to be a ghost film. But in another way this film is much more than a ghost film. It's a film that has a very interesting story, reminiscent of 1408 and The Shining at the very least. It has a very psychological horror aspect to it without actually having any psychological horror. It's a ghost movie that uses the psychology of the characters within it to actually have the audience as well as the characters see things that either are not there, or are just in their respective minds. I feel that comparing this film to The Shining and 1408 is apt. The films all share very similar themes and ideas, except that I will admit that not only are both of those other films better than this one, but also that this film is much more of a downer movie compared to either of the others.

See, a ghost film, in this case, is not necessarily a horror film, even if it does try to be. This film is not scary at all. I do mean that. I would find it difficult to find one scene that I can definitively say is supposed to be scary. It simply was not a scary film, and yet it is listed as a horror film. I think that's wrong. This is a ghost film, which is not necessarily horror film. I'll show you what I mean.

Ghost Ship has some very strange ideas and scenes, and some very psychological moments, but that does not mean that it ever really finds its way to scary. I don't know if this movie is trying to be scary either, which is kind of the problem I'm having in reviewing it. If it was trying to be scary, it failed completely. If it was trying to be a ghost story, it succeeded even though it isn't scary. In my mind a ghost story doesn't have to be scary to be good, and that's kind of what I'm feeling at this point. I feel that this was not a bad film in any sense of the word. It certainly was not as bad as The Reaping, which I still hate even after all this time. I actually will even go and say that I liked this film. It wasn't the best film I've ever seen, but I thought it had a lot of great ideas and worked them all out really well. In my mind the film itself isn't the highpoint of this film, but rather the ideas and implications raised by the film. Again it's very reminiscent of 1408 in that way, except that 1408 was very good within the film as well.

Like 1408 though, I feel that this film has a heavy disconnect between the genre it is and the genre it's trying to be. This film is a ghost story, but has far too many elements of straight horror and comedy. Those things don't work in this film. If the filmmakers had decided to try and make a good film they would have focused more on the psychological implications and made this a psychological horror ghost film, but that wasn't the case. I feel that this film may be one of the more controversial reviews I might do, simply because I strongly disagree with the consensus, in much the same way I disagreed with the consensus about Blair Witch 2.

Does it work as a movie? I don't know. I found it enjoyable to watch. I liked it. To me it was memorable. I wouldn't have thought it would have been memorable, and at first I really did think this film wasn't fantastic, even if it was enjoyable to watch. But in seeing the ending and thinking about it, the movie really does appeal to me at a visceral level. I like the ideas of the movie probably much more than the movie itself, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In watching this movie, you must be able to keep an opened mind and try and see what's going on and think about it rather than just dismissing the whole thing as completely stupid. The movie holds up much better that way. Is this ever going to be one of my favorite movies? No, but I do think it is one that should be watched for the sheer ideas of the story.

The story is pretty good, involving a salvage crew being told by a pilot that a big damn luxury ship is sitting out in the Bering Strait just ready to be salvaged. The crew comes aboard the ship and starts experiencing very strange things, eventually coming to a end with a confrontation with something that is beyond the living. I love how it was done. I love how the acting was surprisingly good even from the smaller parts. I do tend to like Karl Urban and Gabriel Byrne, and they were both very good in this film, although it could never be considered their best roles. Desmond Harrington, playing Jack Ferriman (Now, that's a name to run away from if I've ever heard one.), really brings out his acting pants. At first I thought this guy was easily the worst actor I have ever seen, but as the movie progressed I could see exactly what he was going for and it was unsettling. I was unsettled, not scared, but very nervous about his role in everything. Hell, he's one of the reasons I liked this film as much as I did. His performance was really very well done, and I'm glad I had the chance to watch it.

As for the cinematography, and I do feel I have to mention it, even quickly, it was not amazing, but also not terrible. I thought that some of the shots and CGI were incredibly well done and other parts of it, such as the shots of the characters, were not as well done. I like the scenery of this film as well. I especially like it for the kind of film I do believe this film was trying to be. Some of the ruined environments look really good, and realistic even, which is always a plus in a movie like this. Also as a point, why do movies like this have this idea of showing a topless woman against the backdrop of a ruined place? I mention that because it was something I was hanging my head about as I was watching the film. it always seems that in some stanky, nasty, dank, and dark environment some chick needs to be getting her top off. I know it show a contrast between ruin and beauty... or whatever... but I think it's a little sick. It doesn't matter that the chick who was doing it was a ghost... well, I guess it kind of does actually... but my point is that some filmmaker was probably getting off on it and that kind of makes me uncomfortable for so many reasons.

Anyway, I did like this film. I felt that although it was not as good as 1408 or The Shining, Ghost Ship can draw some pretty  heavy and serious comparisons to those films. If you enjoyed either of those films or their original stories, go and check out Ghost Ship. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Movie Appraisal: Inception (2010)

Okay, I have to collect my thoughts after watching this film. Wow. Just wow. I'm almost speechless. This film was beautiful and extremely well done. This is the kind of movie that every single movie should be. It was wonderful from beginning to end. It surprised me... no, it stunned me. I was expecting something decent and kind of watchable, something like the other films of Christopher Nolan (the director), like Memento or, God help me, The Prestige, neither of which I liked very much. This film was sublime. It was long, but never felt long. It was beautiful and always felt real even though most of it took place within dreams.

It was an exciting experience from beginning to end. The storytelling was top-notch even if it was predictable. (And it was predictable, incredibly predictable.) That's not necessarily a bad thing though. I thought that the film going the way it did was the only way the film could have possibly worked. Any deviation and the film would have been phenomenal and especially not to me.

I'm not saying this is a perfect film, and sure I can criticize and nitpick some small things. The beginning of the film goes very slowly. Some of the characters feel a little thin and kind of unreal, and the whole science-fiction premise is kind of barely based in real science at all. Despite those tiny... and I do mean tiny... flaws, the film is wonderful. Due to the nature of the film and the interpretations you could come out of the film with, the characterizations could make PERFECT sense, as can the slow start, and even the science-fiction premise.

I like films like this. Actually these are the films I not only like, but really love. They are vague and have a huge amount of interpretations and conclusions. This is why I love Jacob's Ladder and 1408 and speak of how good those films are at every turn. Those films have multiple interpretations. They both have such odd things happening that it's hard to believe they are happening in reality. Inception is exactly the same even if it isn't a horror film. It deals with the same arguments of fantasy versus reality and the real versus the unreal. It doesn't show all its hand, and it proves, in my opinion, that even a popular movie can be intelligent and philosophical, unlike drivel like The Matrix.

The story is basically one of a man, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), trying to find a way back to a normal life after finding himself in a bit of a bind. He is a professional dream thief with his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). They essentially try to steal information from people in their dreams by making a dream world and breaking down a person's mental defenses.

The story unfolds and we find out that Cobb wants to reunite with his children whom he is estranged from for various reasons that I'm not going to spoil. Cobb isn't allowed into the United States for a certain reason and soon after Cobb and Arthur's job fails, the person who they were supposed to steal information from, Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe), approaches them with a new contract. They accept and the story unfolds from there, bringing other characters into the fold such as Eames (Tom Hardy), Yusef (Dileep Rao), and Ariadne (Ellen Page). (I like how they named her Ariadne since she's "spinning" the web of the dream. Really big pun there, folks.)

The story is labyrinthine and beautiful, a tale being woven together through dreams. As the characters go deeper into the dreams, we, the audience, go deeper as well. We learn the secrets as characters learn the secrets... we feel their pain, know their confusion, fight their fight. It's beautiful and satisfying in every sense of those words. I found myself utterly taken in by the plot, following it as closely as a deer follows headlights. What I'm trying to say is that the story is wonderful and brilliant. It's incredibly hard to find something I dislike here. I love the vagueness of it all. I love how some things don't seem to make a ton of sense. I love how some things aren't explained.

Hell, this movie can make a great comparison piece to Black Swan. This movie succeeded where that one failed. This movie left me wanting so much more whereas Black Swan told me way too much. This movie was visually stunning, but didn't rely on that alone, whereas Black Swan only had visuals to fall back upon because its psychological and plot elements were badly done. The film is so much better than Black Swan that it's hilarious. To me this isn't so much a comparison as it is a slaughter. Inception wins by a landslide.

Another obvious film to compare this to is What Dreams May Come, a beautiful movie that shares some similar elements to this film. I don't even really want to go into it that deeply because both films are so beautiful and stunning that I'd rather not spoil anything about them. If you've seen both films, you already know what my comparisons are, and if you haven't seen both films, then go see them immediately, you stupid fool.

There I go calling my readers "stupid fools". Oh, well... can't do much about it now. It's not like I can just erase it or anything... well, I can, but... then I'd have to move my finger and everything... *sigh*... I simply can't be bothered.

I'm going to gloss over the visual effects here. The movie is beautiful, enough said, but it's not the visuals of this movie that make it beautiful, it's the story, the subtle art of the cinematography, the wonderful editing, the great direction, and the amazing acting. Everything comes together and creates a world and a story that I find hard to look away from. This is a movie I didn't want to end because I wanted to see more. I wanted more to happen... and yet it ended exactly where and how it should and left me smiling.

I do have to mention the acting again. It is superb. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Leonardo DiCaprio both really did an amazing job, as did Ellen Page. I've never even seen her in anything before, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt for that matter either, and they both do a wonderful job. It was wonderful to see Ellen Page's awe as she descends into the dream for the first time. And watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt was fantastic. He had an interesting character with a unique outlook. He was pretty cool.

Okay, I'm practically gushing over this film... but, to me, it really is that good. I would happily watch this Inception over and over again, like I would do with Jacob's Ladder, 1408, and Stay if I had the time. It's such a beautiful piece, both psychologically and emotionally, as well as visually, and it's kind of inspiring to know that a film like this can go on to not only be made, but to do well in popular opinion. I haven't even touched upon some of my favorite sequences, as the team, gradually decreasing, goes from a dream into a dream within a dream and into a dream within that dream and so on. It works out so well, showing the tension  on every level of the different dreams. Some of the emotional bits towards the end are absolutely fantastic and beautiful (I keep using that word!) and work so well in my opinion. Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but if you have a heart at all you have to empathize with Cobb and maybe even want to cry a little bit... not that I did for I am a man, but it does get kind of sad, you know? And I wouldn't necessarily blame even a manly man for crying a little tear out of his eye a little bit at the ending sequences... Yeah...

Anyway, I'm going to stop gushing. Go and watch this film. It's really good and really fun and pretty darn wonderful. It was a great film experience. It made me happy.

Movie Appraisal: Paranormal Activity (2007)

So, here's yet another movie. I've done a lot of movies, haven't I? I guess I find it easier and quicker than reading books or playing through a video game... the thing is that I haven't been going and hating all of these movies, which I find strange. Maybe it's because most of the movies I've watched so far have been good... or maybe I'm just reviewing movies that I enjoy. I'm not sure, but here's yet another movie I liked.

Paranormal Activity is a creepy movie. It's atmospheric and wonderfully weird. I like the movie from beginning to end. The pacing is fantastic with the daytime shoots and the feeling of everything being over during the day... and the nighttime shoots and the absolute terror of the creature awakened by the two young lovers.

The scariest part for me was watching this alone in a creaky old house on a Lovecraftian street, at around 1:00 AM. Yeah, I found it hard to sleep, let me tell you.

If a horror movie scares me, it's good. Period.

This movie uses the pacing, the minimal set and money, and the actors effectively. It's as if the director actually knew what he was doing. Look, I've seen so many movies out there that want to be this but aren't, so this movie is like a breath of fresh air rather than the punch in the gut that most movies like this are.

I would watch this movie over and over again. That's about how good I feel about it. It's no 1408 with all that movies excellent visuals, but it has something awesome nonetheless. It has a feeling to it... an energy that means something... there is a true fear there that cannot be explained and should be a true fear besides. I love a movie like this because it isn't about a simple ghost or monster or something... it's about something alien... something we cannot comprehend and that's what makes it scary. It's what makes 1408 scary too. When you put a human face on something it takes away the horror of what's happening. You can understand a person. We can be dicks or dweebs, terrible people or good... but we can understand each other. We all bleed. We all die. We all want to be loved and love in turn... and most of all we want ourselves to be right. That's all there is to understanding humans... but things that aren't human are much more terrifying. They scare us to our core. We don't understand their motives and thus we fear the unknown.

I guess my point is that this is a good movie and worth watching by yourself in the dead of some awful night. Seriously, do yourself a favor and check this out. If you like the movies I do, you won't be disappointed.

Movie Appraisal: 1408 (2007)

The first time I saw this movie, I was about as happy as I could be. This movie is psychological horror at its best. It has artistic and beautiful imagery combined with an amazing story and great performance by John Cusack playing the lead character of Mike Enslin, a successful nonfiction author who writes about paranormal phenomena, or lack thereof in different places.

I like this movie a lot. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. I like how everything goes back to the psychological aspects of the character of Mike Enslin and how much he's gone through with losing his daughter and walking out on his family. In many ways, although John Cusack is the only actor who is really in this film, the room itself, Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel in New York City, is like another character with its own motives and ideas, and it becomes a fascinating battle of wills between Mike Enslin and Room 1408.

In many ways, going back to a previous review of mine, this movie reminds me of Silent Hill 4: The Room, mostly because both character from the respective stories are stuck in a room with no way out.

I like how this movie starts out too. It's almost as if it might be some kind of comedy film rather than the psychological horror film it turns out to be. John Cusack has a few genuinely funny moments in this film before he enters the room and even after he has as well. His chemistry (for the little time the other actors are in this film) with Tony Shaloub, who plays Mike's agent, and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the manager of the Dolphin, is awesome and hilarious. It makes the film seem like it could be nothing more than a zany comedy before taking back the curtain and showing off its horror side. Even the colors seem indicative of something other than a horror movie. The film is not shot as most modern horror movies are with a filter going toward the grainy or the blue end of the spectrum. It's like the movie itself is trying to mess with the viewer's own perceptions as well as the protagonist's. It's an amazing feat if that's what the film was trying to pull off, and I think it works amazingly well.

I just want to take a moment to speak of the source material. "1408" is actually a short story by Stephen King anthologized in his 2002 collection of fourteen short stories, "Everything's Eventual". I remember reading the story a few years ago and not being blown away by it. There were other stories in the same anthology that I thought were much better like "The Man in the Black Suit", "Riding the Bullet", and "The Little Sisters of Eluria" to name a few. For whatever reason though, this story was the one that did well when all the rest kind of faded to general obscurity, and I'm going to postulate it has something to do with the similarities that this story has to a very famous Stephen King novel turned movie, The Shining.

Now, on the surface, and underneath the surface there are a ton of similarities between the two works from the history of violent deaths in both hotels (but in 1408 it's in Room 1408 specifically) all the way to the main character going insane from the place itself.

Now, I like this movie and I've been biting to review it for a long time, but I will admit that this movie isn't for everyone. It can really make a person feel like they're losing their mind a little bit and for people who don't like their mind messed with it can be a difficult movie to watch and enjoy. A friend of mine watched this movie with me a while back and he was thinking that reality was falling down around his head. Granted it was about four in the morning and we had also watched Jacob's Ladder, another great psychological horror film, that night... but he was intensely nervous after we watched this film, whereas I was gushing with joy at being able to watch it, so much so that for the next six months or so I would watch this movie every few weeks just because it gave me a reason to really smile. I like certain movies and this is one of the movies that really appeals to me, and I think it's the psychological horror aspects of it. But what I find hilarious is how I never really liked the source material, but I loved the movie.

I guess that sometimes the movie of a novel or story can be better than the original itself.