[book - review] Duma Keys (2008)

The King is always the King...

After a really long career and a huge list of books (many of them masterpieces, really few the bad ones) he is still able to pull out from his hat a wonderful book written in a simply amazing way.

By now all the people who were criticizing him are quiet, impossible to still confine him inside a single genre : he is complete and he create masterpieces outside horror's fences too, touching sides like fantasy, science fiction and even adult novelty like in Stand By Me.
There are also people who accuse him to be verbose... well, I must admit that happens quite sometimes but it's a venial sin.

Like Duma Key's beginning... for the first 50 pages I have been in  complete ecstasy for the prose and the unfold of Edgar Freemantle's story (for everyone of you who is a Kingophile this name summons something, right? ;)), and it seems also kinda of autobiographic : an horrible accident is near taking the main character's life, leaving him alive but without an arm and with a blind eye; King has been more dead than alive after a tremendous accident with his motorcycle, undergoing 7 surgeries and months of therapies.

The book is a sort of diary of Freemantle himself and talks about all the stuff that happened (fantastic/mysterious/tragic) after his move to the Keys for a rehab after the accident. And in Duma Keys he will receive a gift, but the prices will be truly high.

As always the characters are truly exceptionals, like the story that will reveal the paranormal side really far deep into the plot.
One of his masterpiece for me!

[book - review] Dracula unbound (1990)

Like many, I'm fascinated by the sensual and violently primitive figure of the vampire, even if I'm not a big lover of Stoker's book.
Over the years I had the chance to read many books about vampires, some truly masterpieces (Carmilla of Sheridan LeFanu, The Vampire of Polidori) some enjoyable (Kalogridis' Diaries of the Family Dracul or the Anita Blake's series) and then some really horrible (one word... sparkling) to finally find this one.

As like the previous book from the same author I reviewed (Cryptozoic) an alternative theory (that's funny, a new theory about a imaginary character) about vampires' existence is proposed but this time is plausible, it has a logic that goes beyond the book's plot... more, it would be even believable in our own reality!

The characters are well described, sometimes even extremely and the storyline is catching with just some low points now and then.

A book for both lovers of true vampires and sci-fi.

[movie - review] Cold Prey II (2008)

I saw recently the first one and found it really good so I was really after this one.
The big question in my mind was "which road the director will follow?".
To clarify, the first one ended in a way that was clearly an opener for a sequel, but what's left open was how the hell this would happen?
It would follow the path of Jason, creating an immortal killer? Or trying to create something more realistic?

I'm not here to say which way it has been followed here, it's enough to say that they have chosen correctly (for my tastes) and this second episode (at the moment it's a trilogy, still missing to see the third one) kept the great things that made me love the first one.

This time Jotunheimen is just a cumbersome presence and the Hotel has been replaced by an hospital... but the creepy feeling and the anguish is still high, thanks to the storyline and the great work made by building up atmosphere and sense of anticipation.

The plot isn't absolutely something so original but it's solid and even if you will surely guess so many things it won't disappoint you how the story unfolds itself.

The director of this sequel is Mats Stenberg (this is his first work) while the main actress is still Ingrid Bolsø Berdal and her performance is greater than before.

(gifs aren't mine)

[movie - review] Cold Prey (2006)

I love Scandinavia... I'm mad about their culture, history and mythology from when I was really a small kid.
And I've been in Norway, I've been on the Jotunheimen and I found everything simply awesome.

Recently I discovered also a really interesting and lively movies scene (Troll Hunter, Let The Right One In, Dead Snow... talking about the firsts that comes to my mind).
And now this Cold Prey.

A group of friends found themselves trapped in an old abandoned hotel after one of them had a bad accident with the snowboard... trapped because they're hunted by someone.

The white, cold and immense Jotunheimen is a perfect place for a thriller/horror like this the big, creepy hotel the movie is located. Both of the become main characters of the story.

Roar Uthaug and his teams of writers created a solid story (even if not that mind-blowing... you'll guess everything from about the start) and directs a movie where the tension is always high on level and where there's a balanced amount of violence and blood.
It's clear that the main inspiration behind the evil character comes from movies like Halloween (and its Michael Myers) and from Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhee. The hunter in Cold Prey is a good one, but there's no match at all against those two legendary horror icons, especially on the charisma level.

All of actors performed at a really good rate. Between them, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (that will be in Chernobyl Diaries) and Tomas Alf Larsen, already in Troll Hunter.

[movie - review] Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

It was 1986, and i was 10yo... I can still remember when the news struck on tvs and newspapers. How they were talking about what happened, about the radioactive cloud that could hit everywhere, the poor people that have died and the ones who will die soon because of radiations.
Probably 10 years isn't enough to fully understand the magnitude of a disaster like this one, surely not right away but it have left a strong footprint on the time being.
With the passing of time Chernobyl never completely faded away from our minds (i guess it did from who's in the control room, but that's another story) and stories, legends started to blooming over the years.
Let's face it : the place,it's history,all those voices around it,the secrecy that seems to cover everything, is like a wake-up call for the imagination of people and horror history is full of stories where mutations, holocausts and the fall of society is builded up on some nuclear mayhem and Chernobyl fed them well enough.
Without going too back in time I can easily remember a good first person shooter located there (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) and now this movie, that tells us the story of six tourists (plus a local guide) on an extreme tour in the city of Pripyat, where workers of Chernobyl's reactor used to live and that has been left in great hurry, leaving everything behind and changing it into a ghost town.Obviously things turns into nightmare (it's an horror movie!) and our heroes should fight to survive.

Bradley Parker (at his first try behind the camera after have worked as digital artist in movie like Fight Club, xXx and Lake Placid) direct a movie where, at least, not too many gender stereotypes are presents, apart the dualism good brother (Jesse McCartney/Chris best known as singer but with some movies and tv series in his story, like Greek) and bad unstable brother (Jonathan Sadowski/Paul tv-movies face but that also has been in 2009 Nispel's Friday the 13th) but that lacks where a movie with a location like that MUST have its strongest point : atmosphere, eerie sick suffocating atmosphere!
The attempt to build it up over the first part of the movie fails for the most, so the rest of it suffers for that ... and for the fact that things seems to happen a bit too quickly or, better, not enough things happen before the end is upon us (that is too much easily predicted too).

The faulty direction is also the reason why the characters seems so flat even if decently performed by the cast.
Between them we can find Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Cold Prey I/II ,movies that clearly Bradley Parker missed, because they're full with a shitload of things his movie lacks), Nathan Phillips (Snakes on a plane, Wolf Creek) and a couple of actors more accustomed to tv series (Devin Kelley - The Chicago Code) or as character actor (Dimitri Diatchenko - bad russian guy in some movies or tv series episodes) but blame isn't theirs to share, they all did a pretty decent work on screen.
Closing, this is surely a missed chances to create a good flicks and all the blame is on the director and his writers, but I can also say that i saw many worst movies around and that you can find some amusement too here.
Giving it a try won't hurt.
(gifs aren't mine)

[movie - review] Antiviral (2012)

Some little spoilers are present

Is it the single sick mind that rot society from the inside?
Or is society itself that is sick, and infects every single one of us on different levels, as a virus can infect someone while being inactive on some others?

While society is driven by few people (the Powerful) it's sure as hell that all of us are conditioned by it and many also crave to be as the people who society put on covers, on the big screens.

So there are people that dress exactly like their idols, who change the colour of their hair, start drinking something because the star advertises it on tv. There are people who undergoes surgery to become like the star who they're worshipping.
Obviously over the entire history of cinema many directors filmed their personal manifest of complaint and Brandon Cronenberg did the same with this one.

In the movie society has reach a sick level of mass-media mania : people goes to clinic to have injected the same illness their favourite stars have... Even worst, they want to eat meat grown up from celebrities cells!

Within this sick sad world a young seller, working for one of the biggest company in the business, fell finally into it's own mania, driving the whole society to the ultimate madness...

Brandon Cronenberg, obviously son of David, filmed a slow movie (it reminded me the rhythm of his dad's Spider) but not boring, far from that. The aseptic look of some scene well contrasts the dirty things people are doing it it.

Fantastic performances by the main actor Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men : First Class, The Last Exorcism) and a short part also for the great Malcom McDowell (I really need to state some of his works?!)