Novella Investigation: "The Little Sisters of Eluria" (1998) by Stephen King

"The Little Sisters of Eluria" is a fantastic novella prequel to The Dark Tower series of novels by Stephen King. It was published in 1998, and then republished in Stephen King's Everything's Eventual collection of short stories and this novella in 2002. It introduces so much of what that series does so well, with Roland ever moving towards his Dark Tower, ready and able to take care of himself, even in the face of the most terrible of things. And what are the terrible things that Roland Deschain, the last Gunslinger from Gilead, has to face? Doctors and nurses.

That sounds silly, but in this post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, fantasy, Western, and dark-styled setting, nothing is what it seems. There is no real medicine, at least not of the type that we know of in our world. So, the "doctors" are much less the doctors that we know of, and much more ominous. And the nurses are not exactly nurses as much as terrible creatures that feast on flesh and blood, semen and fear. And that is what this novella is primarily about: fear.

We are introduced to the Slow Mutants, which feature heavily in the first novel of The Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger. They can be seen in the bottom left-hand quarter of the poster that starts this review off. They are green and one wears a bowler hat. That about all you need to know.

Okay, that isn't. They are leftovers from a bygone age. They are mutants because sometime long ago in the history of Roland's world, atomic war occurred and it destroyed so much. Mutants were the leftovers. They are vicious semi-intelligent things, more like animals than people, but some do have intelligence, and that is actually how Roland ended up in his predicament in this novella. he was attacked by an especially intelligent group of these mutants.

Eventually, over the course of the novella, which runs more like something out of psychological horror than a Western, Roland befriends and perhaps falls in love with one of the vampire-nurses, Sister Jenna, who is not well-liked by the others because she is much more pure than they are, and also much younger. Their relationship intensifies over the course of a novella full of bitter dreams, bad memories, and a hospital that Roland cannot move from.

Everything comes together in the story, from beginning to end. Everything builds upon everything else. The dog that Roland sees in the earlier parts comes back to help take out the evil sisters of Eluria, all while Sister Jenna uses the doctors against them. It's a good ending to a weird and oft-times creepy story. The problem is that we already know, or those of us who had read the first Dark Tower novel know, that Sister Jenna isn't going to go far with Roland. He is alone when his journey begins on the edge of the desert seeking the man in black, and so the ending of this novella is bittersweet. Roland finds himself falling in love with a girl for the second time, and for the second time it ends painfully for him, in heartache and heartbreak, as the first night that they are together, she slips away in the darkness, most probably because of what she truly is. And Roland, again, has to continue on alone, his never-ending journey to the center of existence, seemingly never coming closer to a finish.

I like this novella quite a bit. It's a fun read, fairly short, and really expands upon The Dark Tower  universe of which I am a gigantic fan. I love all of the novels. It is easily my favorite series of all time, book, movie, video game, or otherwise, and I'm glad I can finally start some reviews of the material.

Anyway, I suggest checking the novella out. It's a fun read, and probably a good place to start The Dark Tower series, and also to try it out and see if you could like it.

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.

Book Evaluation: From a Buick 8 (2002) by Stephen King

From a Buick 8, an odd title and a play on the Bob Dylan song, "From a Buick 6" is Lovecraftian-styled horror novel by Stephen King. This novel has become one of my favorite Stephen King novels because of the attention to detail, the pacing of the plot, and the sheer terror in the details. This novel, right here, is the reason why horror is so addictive and so amazing. Anything can scare a person, even a car that serves as a portal to another dimension.

Oh yeah, that's the premise of this novel... and it is wonderful. This is not a so bad it's good novel. And it's certainly not a bad horror story. This is an incredibly well done story showing off the best of a novel that skips time, following a father and his son as they delve into the mysteries of a car that showed up one day and was never claimed. This novel is eerie in almost every way, reminding me of the Somerton Man, just as much as it reminds me of almost any real life mysteries. It almost seems as if it could be real and that's the really scary part.

The novel follows a police officer throughout his life as an officer until his eventual death. But he's not the protagonist. Instead his son, a helper at the police station, takes over that duty. Most of the story is told through flashback from one of several different police officers telling the intertwining story of the thing that resembles a 1953 Buick Roadmaster and his father, Curtis Wilcox.

The story is incredibly effective, blending both past and present into a coherent narrative. It becomes terrifying, not because of what actually happens within the story proper, but rather because of the implications of the story itself. The Buick is left at a gas station by a man in black who disappeared seemingly into nowhere. The Buick drew people towards it. It would make interference with electronic equipment. It would do such strange and inexplicable things, like making people disappear or giving off a terrible energy.

The Buick would both "eat" people and spit alien things out of it. And that's what the terrible implication is: there is a parallel universe, or at least that this "car" that could never run, could never even freaking drive and yet was driven to a gas station by some mysterious and disappeared man in black, is only a portal between two separate worlds that find the other terrifying and awful to behold.

The book ends as the Buick is losing power, finally spending any excess energy it has to try and take the heroes of the story into it as they try to destroy it. It fails even if Sandy Dearborn, the Sergeant of the police officers, sees through the portal one last time and "sees" the personal objects of those men who crossed the barrier between worlds.

This novel shares similar themes with two or three other Stephen King works and many, many Lovecraft works. The Mist and The Dark Tower series are the obvious candidates for being so similar to this book. The Mist is almost exactly like this novel, but on a larger scale, without a car, and with mist and monsters pouring out instead of being spit out or taken in from time to time. The Dark Tower series has many similar themes as well, especially in the last three novels of the series that explain "Todash" space and what lies within it. Actually many of Stephen King's more recent novels have built upon these similar themes, with Lisey's Story and Duma Key having some similar ideas and feelings to them. The other few books that have similarities are The Talisman, describing nightmare landscapes and a way to move between worlds, and N. that describes creatures from some other existence bent on the destruction of the universe if certain things are not done correctly. All in all, Stephen King likes the themes that are found in this novel and so do I.

This is a fantastic and horribly underrated novel. Few people know about Stephen King's amazing novels, knowing instead his weaker works like Carrie, The Shining, and Cujo. Those novels were all made into big movies (with a few other well known ones besides, deserving or undeserving), but even though they are known as Stephen King's REAL HORROR novels, they come off as shlock. They are earlier novels by him and do not stand up to the novels that he really takes seriously, like From a Buick 8 as a telling example.

This is an absolutely effective and terrifying novel that proves that pacing, plotting, characters, and atmosphere with an air of mystery and confusion can really lead itself to feelings of absolute horror. it may be subtle horror. It may be the horror of nothing, but, to me, it's the most effective kind of horror and the one that stays with me for months afterwards and still makes me shiver in the night.

Video Game Assessment: Kingdom Hearts (2002)

Have you ever wanted to play an anime boy in a video game? How about if your partners were Donald Duck and Goofy throughout the entire game? Okay, what if there were also a ton of original Disney characters from some great movies like Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Little Mermaid, and many more? What if there were also a ton of popular Final Fantasy characters there as well? It seems like the cartoon lover and old school JRPG video gamer's wet dream. And it is.

Now, I don't like cartoons very much (Although I love most Disney cartoons, because Hell Yeah, but that's not the point.) and I was never into Final Fantasy and I really love horror, so this game already seems to have about a billion strikes against it to a guy like me, a twenty-something jaded male who dislikes cutesy things on pure principle. So, this game doesn't seem like my type of thing.

BUT... and confound it all, I don't quite understand it myself, this game is great. I mean, there are stupid design decisions, insipid characters at points, and the dialogue can be cheesy and corny at points, but this game won me over despite all of that, easily becoming one of the better games I've ever played. Maybe I'm less jaded and cynical than I thought, or maybe I just needed to see a cutesy anime adventure for once in my life, but this game was great, dark in all the right spots, easy to have fun with, comic when it needed to be, and serious in the exact right way. The characters, despite being cartoons, feel real, and that's always a plus for me.

The gameplay is the first thing I'll talk about and it's good, really good. The dodge roll makes up for everything else in this game. I could dodge roll around for hours and it always feels so satisfying to watch the player character, Sora, rolling around for hours. The controls are well done and fun, with a few rage inducing exceptions which I'll get to shortly, and it responds very well and feels intuitive. The gummi ship mini-game which makes the whole thing into a spaceship rail shooter, is probably the best part of the whole game and just makes me happy thinking about it. I spent hours perfecting the PERFECT gummi ship and it was good, really good to see that terrible looking thing get off the ground and murder everything in its path.

Now for the bad. Camera controls. Oh, camera controls. This is where the game confounds me, and make me rage like a baby throwing a fit. The camera is legitimately different from all other games of this type that I've played, requiring the shoulder buttons to adjust it rather than the right analog stick like EVERY SINGLE OTHER GAME OF THIS TYPE I HAVE EVER PLAYED. What the Hell? Why would a person ever think doing that is a good idea? Sure, it works, but since it is so different from everything else, it confuses me after playing other games or before playing those games or whatever, and you have to adjust the camera since the camera is just so bad. Probably the worst camera in video-gaming history. Wow. It was fixed for Kingdom Hearts II, but it still sucks for this first game.

Also, the game can be hard at times, really hard. It can be frustrating enough for you to want to throw your controller at your television, so remember to keep calm and try to enjoy it. Some of the boss fights are awful and miserable, full of failure upon failure, and annoyance built upon equal annoyance. Ursula, from The Little Mermaid, and the dude from Tarzan really stick out for me as being miserable fights in the game. The whole game is difficult though, and I have a hard time seeing kids being able to really beat this game effectively. I don't mind hard games, but sometimes it feels almost impossible without leveling up a little, which I actually hate. I don't like grinding, not being a JRPG fan myself.

Altogether though, the story and characters mostly make up for the bad things. The story is one of darkness versus light, with shadow enemies called the Heartless comprising the main bad force against you and the light. And it makes for fairly epic and engaging story. Sora, the hero, is trying to find his friends, Kairi and Riku, but Riku, at least, does not really care to be found, instead engaging in his own story apart from Sora, trying to fix Kairi, and losing himself to the darkness in his own heart. Sora becomes a hero of the light in his own right, fighting the darkness back and having one of the most gut-wrenching sacrifices I have ever seen in a video game. It was well done and jaw-dropping, a ballsy move for a game made for Everyone.

There is darkness in this game. It's not a light little kid's video game. It is a mature look at what kid's like, taking the maturity from each Disney film and their themes of darkness and light, good and evil, and putting them at odds with conventional thinking, making this game something else, something different and wonderful to behold. And fighting Disney villains and evil in general is always a cool thing to do.

The art style is fantastic, especially towards the end of the game, where it is basically breathtaking imagery. I can't even explain it, so go look at it yourself and understand. The music is great, and feels suitably sweet and epic for this game, making it feel both more like a personal journey, and a journey through odd and somewhat terrifying environments at times. It's fun to be a part of and to hear in the background. The voice acting is mostly well done as well, with some people reprising their Disney roles, like freaking Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings) voicing Hercules and James Freaking Woods voicing Hades, and man, I love James Woods. I wish he could be in everything, games, movies, and otherwise. Hell, I'd be happy if the man read books to me. Why can't James Woods play every character in everything ever? The world would be a better place then.

I guess my ultimate point is that this is a great game for kids (although it may be too difficult for some) and adults (like me). It creates a great story and really does some amazing things. I just started playing the second game and it continues doing much of the same. Anyway, check it out if you can put aside being an adult for a while and just enjoy the childish things and some fun gameplay for a while.

Book Evaluation: Abarat (2002) by Clive Barker

Abarat is a young adult book with elements of fantasy, horror, and dreams. It is a well thought-out  novel with an intricate story, characters, and setting. It does have some more negative elements as well, but I'll get to those later. First, I'll start with what I know about Mr. Clive Barker. It's not much, I assure you. He's an author of primarily dark fantasy and horror fantasy and what I know about him the best are two video games that have his name attached to them: Undying and Jericho and the Hellraiser series of movies. That's about it.

Growing up I wasn't a fan of Clive Barker. I was for Stephen King all the way. I didn't really know much about him and his stories never seemed to interest me, at least what I knew about them, which again, video games and the movies. Other than those things I knew almost nothing. Unfair, I know, but there's the truth. Well, recently I read through Abarat and I have to say I really liked it.

Yes, it is very obviously aimed at the young adult market. So, don't read this if you're not expecting something for the twelve to fifteen demographics. That being true, it holds up remarkably well. It is a well-written young adult novel that, albeit heavy-handed at times, exploring a fantasy realm that stands well on its own. Some of the characters, most of them not exactly the friendliest crowd, are fantastically well-rounded even if the main character, a twelve-year old girl named Candy Quackenbush who acts much older than she is, is much more of a generic heroine character.

The setting, with twenty-five islands representing the twenty-four hour clock with one extra, is an incredibly well done idea and work fantastically in this novel.

The problems are easier to jump on though. Although the novel is well-done, it seems that it sympathizes with the wrong characters (in my opinion, of course). It has a bland protagonist and the story seems fairly generic once you take a step beyond the new kind of setting and some of the more brilliant characters. The writing, as I said before, can be heavy-handed, and seems to be written by a man who does not usually write for young adults. (This is where I wink knowingly. Clive Barker is not usually an author for the young adults and kids of the world.) It comes off as if he is trying desperately to dumb down his own language. Clive Barker, when I was eight I was reading The Lord of the Rings. You don't have to dumb down your language for young adults. They'll understand if you use big words, and if they don't then they should pick up a dictionary and learn. My point is the writing is simplified in many ways.

I'm also going to clarify my "heavy-handed" statement. It seems that there is a working morality within the story and that the readers and audience are supposed to go, "Oh boy, that's wrong." or "Oh man, that's right! You go girl!" I don't like either of these things. I guess I like the vague ideas better. This novel seems to be more a take on fairy tales. Actually that is one of the first things I thought about when reading this. It's a modern fairy tale with clear cut good and clear cut evil, and I find that tedious.

Altogether though, it is well done. The beginning of the novel is particularly great. It starts the story off ridiculously well. The lighthouse scene is one of the best in the entire book and even holds up well against many other, better novels. The ending is weaker as the novel clearly wants me to side with the good guys, when the big evil dude is clearly more sympathetic and the stronger character, a selfless character who gets dragged into evil because of a very selfish woman... or maybe I'm being unfair... although I don't think so. I think people can make sacrifices for peace... I guess that's just my limited imagination or something...

Oh, I don't have a limited imagination? Huh. HUH, I say.

Anyway,if you want to read a decently done young adult fantasy novel done by a horror novelist, this is well done and is very interesting, but you should really read The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King instead. Great novel, standalone and, in my opinion, brilliant. Plus, it's connected to The Dark Tower series. How can there be a loss there?

Movie Appraisal: Deathwatch (2002)

Deathwatch is an interesting take on the psychological horror genre. I won't say that this is the psychological horror film to end all psychological horror films, nor will I say that it's better than a ton of the mainstays of the genre like Jacob's Ladder, 1408, and Sauna, but I will say that this is a good film for satisfying a bit of a psychological horror junkie.

The film takes place in World War I in the trenches and follows around soldiers from Great Britain as they fight their way through the Germans. The movie has an interesting cold opening followed by a very different kind of set piece altogether. You might think that this is a film about war, and to a point you would be correct, but this is a film about war like Sauna and The Objective are movies about war. There's no real war that we see on screen, rather most of the movie shows us imagery of war and the horrors one could see, from madness, to losing limbs, to forgetting God, to being shellshocked, and others. I feel that this movie shows a decent psychological approach to war, especially World War I and its trench warfare and lack of good medicine.

The barbed wire imagery is especially telling, and I feel it makes this movie even better. I'm not going to praise this movie up and down. There's a lot wrong here even if some of it is done pretty well. The acting is decent, but some of the actors are better than others. Andy Serkis really stands out in his part, blowing away the other actors in this by a long shot. The CGI stuff (I suspect it's CGI at least.) looks pretty fake, but then again this is a 2002 movie, and I guess I can forgive it a bit, since it alternates between looking really good and looking pretty bad. The fog effects are sometimes very good and other times pretty awful.

There are gore effects well, and I do understand why they're there, but I also think some of it was completely gratuitous. I feel that the filmmakers really shied away from very visceral imagery, but at the same time seemed to revel in gore, which makes absolutely no sense if you haven't seen the film. I almost feel like they showed us the wrong scenes as gory save one towards the end that I felt was especially justified to show. Most of the gory scenes felt tacked on and needless where a lot of the scenes that should have had gore shown in them really did shy away from the gore. It really made no sense to me, especially in a horror movie like this.

The cinematography is decent, but not amazing. This is not a masterful psychological horror movie, just an interesting and decent one. Most of the scares come early on in the movie as does most of the atmosphere. By later on the movie really kind of loses all suspense and becomes a glorified slasher film which really took a lot away from this film. It was too predictable, too easy to figure out. There were no interesting twists or turns, no huge revelation, no interesting plot. If you've seen any given psychological horror movie, you've seen this one. The thing going for this one is that it's different. The characters are interesting, it takes place during World War I, and it has a lot of war imagery when most psychological horror doesn't. That's not necessarily a huge plus in my mind, but I do think this movie really does work decently and was kind of enjoyable if not even close to the best film of its genre.

There's not much more I can really say. The ending was silly, the story moved slowly despite being a short film, and I never really felt engaged with anything besides Andy Serkis who was playing, like always, a crazy person.

Man, if I could I would just make a movie about Andy Serkis flipping out. I could watch that guy flip out all day. The best parts of the movie for me were him flipping out at people. I can't stress that enough. If you have some kind of deep Andy Serkis flipping out fetish, this is the movie for you, otherwise just go watch Jacob's Ladder since it's a better war-driven psychological horror movie by far.

Movie Appraisal: Below (2002)

What a strange movie. I'm not entirely certain how I should review Below. Should I review it as a World War II movie? A submarine movie? A horror movie? A psychological horror movie? A ghost movie? Or some combination of all of those? I just don't know. I don't know what genre this movie is trying to be besides regular creepy.

Below reminds me of Event Horizon in many ways, except it's not even close to as good and is a bit more psychological in some aspects. I don't think it's a bad film per se, but it isn't a great film either. The acting shouldn't even be talked about. The characters were forgettable. The plot was a bit ridiculous. The horror wasn't fantastic (although it was decent), and the best thing this movie had going for it was the claustrophobia.

As a World War II movie, this one has just enough of that era's plot to get by. Honestly though, I can see a movie like this taking place during any era. The few parts that are really World War II era specific aren't done incredibly well. I like the era talk and what I'm supposed to believe are the era's clothing, but besides that this movie really has nothing to do with the era it supposedly is in.

As a submarine movie, it's not a bad flick, showing the claustrophobia and nervousness in such tight quarters. I actually think that the claustrophobic elements in the film are the best things in the film. Most of the imagery involving the limited space is quite well done.

This movie is not really a horror movie. Oh, it has elements of horror, but it's more a thriller... and even that is being generous. It does have a jump scare from time to time and it wants you to believe it's building up the scares for the climax, but it's not. It's just playing games and pretending to be something it isn't. Sad really.

Psychological horror? Ha! This is weaksauce psychological thriller material at absolute best. This is the kind of film that would make Jacob's Ladder laugh with rage! Anybody who even compares this film with a gem like Jacob's Ladder is confused and probably insane.

I guess there are ghosts? I don't really know... It's never explained, which is fine, but it's also not done well which isn't fine at all. I do like the banging coming from outside the submarine. I thought the sounds were very well done, but the imagery really does leave something to be desired. As a horror film it falls apart, but I think it would stand up fairly well if it were a creepy radio drama. As I said, the sounds are actually fantastic.

This is not a great film and I don't have much to say about it. It's decent, but there are so many better films out there... why would somebody watch this over any other given movie? Hell, I only watched this because I was going to watch and review The Beyond by Lucio Fulci and I couldn't because my television was in use. So, I had to freaking settles for watching this on my laptop. Yeah. That's my story for watching this piece of crap movie... Anyway, it's not unwatchable, just not great. Watch it in the background while you're doing something else and you'll have much more fun than if you're watching it.

Movie Appraisal: The Ring (2002)

The Ring is probably the best film remake I have ever seen. Most remakes in my opinion are terrible. This one is actually quite good. I was going to review Ringu, the original Japanese movie, but I had absolutely no time to watch it and will review that one at a later date. I've seen The Ring a ton of times and found it to be a pretty easy movie to review for my last review of October (even though technically I'm doing this review a week after Halloween. This is what happens when one has a busy schedule of classes and puts all of this on his plate as well.).

Anyway, this is one of my favorite non-psychological horror films that still is very much a horror film. I love the imagery in this film. I like it better than even most psychological horror films. The haunted videotape is awesome unto itself and actually becomes quite hard to watch since you know what it is and what it supposedly does to the viewer. The film grabs you and never lets you go, and I can't usually say that about most recent, very mainstream films. The story is fantastic. The acting, with Naomi Watts leading it, is fantastic and believable. There are genuinely very creepy moments that will leave you with nightmares for years to come. I've always liked the fact that it rains throughout the entire movie. The fog is awesome as well. And the little girl, Samara coming out of the television screen is one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen in my entire life in a film.

Seriously, if you haven't seen this film, see it. It's absolutely worth it. If you have seen it, watch it again. It's a great film that should be watched as often as possible for its setting, tone, plot, acting, awesomeness, terror, et cetera. It makes most films seem awkward and annoying in comparison.

I love the pacing of this film. I have to say that. I feel that that is something that isn't said often enough about films, but pacing is a legitimate art-form in some ways, and here is one of the best examples of great pacing that I know of. Most horror films kind of need good pacing, but this one is just fantastic. It could be that the film is a bit of a mystery plot that revolves around Naomi Watts' character, Rachel, trying to find out about this videotape. I deem this film of the mystery-horror genre. I know most people call this psychological horror, but those people are stupid and should be ignored. What I've mostly reviewed in movies over these last thirty-one days has been psychological horror. This movie is entirely in the real world. It has no epic dream sequences or anything. This is one of the fines examples of mystery-horror, but not an example at all of psychological horror. Hell, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, is a very definite psychological horror film. This one is not, but that doesn't make it bad at all.

Anyway, this is an awesome film. The visuals are some of the best you'll ever see. The acting is fantastic, the plot is different and pretty awesome, and everybody should see this movie at least once in their lives.