Posts: 2020
December 30 2020, 14:56
My 2020 in books
I’ve had a tough year reading books. I fell into the trap of seeing reading as work and lost the joy of it. Writers aren’t supposed to admit to not enjoying reading.
December 26 2020, 17:04
Language muscles
This week I watched: Heart of Midnight (1988), The Grinch (2018), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010), De Palma (2015). This week I read: Equilibrium, by Tonino Guerra; The Art of the Novel, by Milan Kundera.
December 22 2020, 21:42
Why do I write here?
I’ve written more posts on my blog in 2020 than ever before. It was tricky to start with — I had to find a new voice and get in a groove. As the year ends, and I begin to think about 2021, I find myself wondering, are they worth the time I put into them?
December 21 2020, 20:01
London Gothic, Nicholas Royle
The protagonists of London Gothic are walkers, art lovers, film buffs and train nerds. They are loners, in the main, fascinated by urban spaces and routes between places.
December 15 2020, 20:55
She Dies Tomorrow (2020)
This isn’t a horror film, though it is marketed as one. The camera is often still as figures move towards us, faces blurred by lights or shadows, which creates a sense of dread.
December 10 2020, 20:46
To the Ends of the Earth (2019)
I couldn’t resist another film by my new favourite director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, care of my Mubi subscription. Knowing a film I fancy is going to disappear in a few days makes me create the time to watch it.
December 07 2020, 21:28
Exit Management, Naomi Booth
The term ‘exit management’ is a euphemism for firing troublesome employees. Lauren is exceptional at it, and is highly valued by her monstrous boss, Mina, for her emotional control and ability to get the worst jobs done.
December 03 2020, 21:42
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Tomek is nineteen, lonely and living with his possessive godmother in a Polish apartment block. Every evening he spies on Magda through his telescope when she comes home from work.
November 27 2020, 13:50
Creepy (2017)
The films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa were a revelation to me in October’s #31DaysOfHorror — I started with Pulse (2001), then went back to Cure (1997), and both were masterpieces.
November 25 2020, 15:25
November culture
It’s good to play around with your projects and try new things. I still suffer from a degree of imposter syndrome, and I probably always will.
November 22 2020, 08:12
Jigsaws
My mother loved to do jigsaws. She would stay up late, after every one else had gone to bed, and do them on the dining table, which is also where she would do the book-keeping for whichever company she was working for at the time.
November 14 2020, 12:46
Creativity 2.0(.21)
I wonder what next year will bring? I wonder how I can make my craft feel more fun? With those questions in mind, we enter a season of change.
November 04 2020, 09:01
Lockdown, Part 2
This is a pep talk to myself as I go into another lockdown. It’s shit we have to do it, but we do, and better late than never. These are tough times and periods of lockdown are hard on the spirit.
October 31 2020, 08:00
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Danny Torrance is an alcoholic, but finds a place of peace and sobriety in New Hampshire, where he uses his shine to ease the deaths of the elderly people in a local hospice.
October 30 2020, 08:00
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Bride of Frankenstein contains some of the most iconic images in cinema, but it opens with a scene I really didn’t expect — Lord Byron and Percy Shelley praising Mary Shelley for her book, Frankenstein.
October 29 2020, 08:00
The Exorcist (1973)
A cultural behemoth. It’s an astonishing film and deserves the plaudits. As I watched it, the question that kept coming up in my mind was, why Regan?
October 28 2020, 08:00
Tenebre (1982)
Tenebre is set in Rome, but we could be anywhere, because the story stays in hotel rooms, suburban streets and modernist buildings made of concrete and glass.
October 27 2020, 08:00
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
People in the background of shots look directly at the camera. A windscreen is a web of cracks that we struggle to see through. The score is spidery and jarring, and the camera is often off-kilter.
October 26 2020, 08:00
Land of the Dead (2005)
I’d been so careful in choosing the films up to this point, but for one night I thought I’d just go with something random, and here we are. Land of the fucking Dead.
October 25 2020, 08:00
Christine (1983)
Stephen King is brilliant at weaving vivid teenage experiences into his novels. Christine was one of the formative books of my childhood. But this is a horror film first and foremost.
October 24 2020, 08:00
Prom Night (1980)
Like Scream’s Ghostface, the killer in Prom Night can be dodged and knocked over. This is not Michael Myers. There is a lot of disco.
October 23 2020, 08:00
A Cure for Wellness (2017)
The vampiric financial services industry meets the parasitic wellness industry in a fairy tale where an ambitious young man is sent to a Swiss sanitorium to bring back his company’s rogue CEO.
October 22 2020, 08:00
The Dead Center (2019)
In a Nashville morgue, an unnamed man comes back to life and walks out. A short, sharp film, less than ninety minutes, and it zips along.
October 21 2020, 08:00
It Follows (2015)
The film opens with a wide shot of a leafy suburban street, and we look closely for whatever we think the director wants us to see. Like Jay, we are trained from the start to scan the horizon for trouble.
October 20 2020, 08:00
The Beyond (1980)
There is a portal to hell in the basement, and people get mysteriously hurt while working in the house. Like Hellraiser a few years later, the dead return to claim the ones that escape from hell.
October 19 2020, 08:00
#Alive (2020)
After Fulci’s barely moving dead, these running zombies are a bit of a shock. Technology is an ally, but the adult Joon-woo seems to be in a semi-infantile state.
October 18 2020, 08:00
The Mummy (1932)
The original Universal horror films are a bit of a blind spot for me. Imhotep has many magical powers, including mind control. Boris Karloff’s stare is a thing to behold.
October 17 2020, 08:00
City of the Living Dead (1980)
Zombies really bothered me as a kid. Seeing the insides of the human body spill out was as pure a vision of horror as I could imagine. Guts should not be outside of your body.
October 16 2020, 08:00
Blade (1998)
Blade is like a magical source of future movie ideas. The opening sequence is brilliant. A fun, if empty, blockbuster
October 15 2020, 08:00
Cure (1997)
Takabe, a detective in Tokyo, investigates a series of murders, each by a different killer, but all carving a cross into their victims throats.
October 14 2020, 08:00
Spring (2014)
If Guillermo del Toro shot a film scripted by David Cronenberg, based on a story by HP Lovecraft, then had it edited by Richard Linklater, you would get Spring.
October 13 2020, 08:00
Jacob’s Ladder (1991)
Jacob is beset by visions and fever dreams. We constantly switch between realities, from the Vietnamese jungle, to his home in New York City, and it’s bewildering, for him and us.
October 12 2020, 08:00
Noroi: The Curse (2005)
This mockumentary is made from grainy handheld video and low-resolution clips of Japanese televison shows. It revels in its fragmentary, low-fi nature. It feels cursed.
October 11 2020, 08:00
Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Gilderoy is a fish out of water in a remote Italian sound studio. He thinks the film he's working on, The Equestrian Vortex, is about horses, but in fact is an Italian horror film about the torture of witches.
October 10 2020, 08:00
Piranha (1978)
Being nibbled to death by a swarm of piranha is a different agony, I imagine, to being bitten in half by a great white shark. It’s fun, with a surprisingly dark heart.
October 09 2020, 08:00
Fascination (1979)
Marc, a thief, steals a bag of gold from a gang, and is chased by them to a nearby chateau, where two women, Elisabeth and Eva, are waiting for the arrival of their marchioness.
October 08 2020, 08:00
Vampyres (1974)
The first of my #31DaysOfHorror choices this year that I would say is exploitation cinema, I chose Vampyres, naturally, because of the cover art.
October 07 2020, 08:00
Knife+Heart (2018)
Knife+Heart (Un couteau dans le cœur) is a modern giallo film that plays out in a gay porn production company in the summer of 1979.
October 06 2020, 08:00
Death of a Vlogger (2020)
A bang-up-to-date social media horror mockumentary. Twenty years on from Pulse, people still feel empty and disconnected, but now everyone has a webcam. Affecting, funny, and unnerving.
October 05 2020, 08:00
Pulse (2001)
The Tokyo in Pulse is empty and eerie. People are lonely and disconnected from each other. The characters are all young and, in one way or another, alone.
October 04 2020, 08:00
The Crow (1994)
Eric and his fiance Shelly are murdered by a gang of men on the night before their wedding. Eric’s soul cannot rest until he gets justice.
October 03 2020, 08:00
The Fog (1980)
The Fog is an old favourite. I watched it over and over again on VHS as a kid, recorded off the television, and it embedded Adrienne Barbeau’s radio DJ, alone in a lighthouse on the edge of town, as a lifelong crush.
October 02 2020, 08:00
Atlantics (2019)
Atlantics is art house, and it’s a romance, but it’s hardly a horror film. It is, however, fascinating.
October 01 2020, 08:00
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
I wanted to start this year’s #31DaysOfHorror with a classic. I’m trying to watch only films I haven’t seen, and Creature From the Black Lagoon was the oldest unwatched horror film I owned.
September 30 2020, 16:39
October beckons
I love October. I love September too, but October is the favoured child.
September 20 2020, 12:13
In the foothills
Graham Swift once said, ‘All novelists must form personal pacts with the pace of their craft.’ Now I am in the foothills of my second novel, that quote is a comfort.
September 06 2020, 15:38
Doing 31 Days of Horror, 2020
With 2020 being a demented shitshow, I did fleetingly wonder if I wanted to do #31DaysOfHorror again this year, but then I remembered why I love horror films — they are an escape from reality.
July 12 2020, 05:28
Reality Bites
Reality Bites is still surprisingly affecting. I had low expectations. I’m not sure why. There is something about your early twenties that is particularly painful and potent.
May 25 2020, 08:56
Writers on lockdown
I miss the opportunities to write in a coffee shop, with the ritual of a double macchiato to get me into the groove, especially on my way into work.
May 18 2020, 06:09
Leaving Rebecca
It’s hard to pinpoint when I stopped reading Rebecca. I started in the middle of April, and I chose it for many reasons. There were so many little cues from the universe that it felt rude not to read it.
May 16 2020, 11:40
Website as digital garden
I’m doing okay in my little lockdown bubble. We live in a relatively rural spot, we have a garden, and we are working remotely pretty successfully. The days are going really fast.
April 21 2020, 14:22
The inner Wonder Woman
Last night, I had a deep dream of stasis and being held. I seemed to accept it, though there was a suggestion of pressing against constraints. I can’t remember any details. It’s a feeling from a fragment.
April 17 2020, 10:34
My favourite five books of 2019
In 2019, on Goodreads, I set myself the challenge of reading 52 books. Here are my favourite five.
April 12 2020, 15:55
A walk around my writer’s block
It took me thirty years to get from wanting to write a novel to finishing one. I walked away from writing several times, but I always came back...
March 31 2020, 22:21
Escape room
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed all of us back into our homes, and my writing room is now where I also do software development work for my employer.
January 29 2020, 19:22