paranormal | Lorelei By Starlight

When it comes to paranormal horror, The Ring is in my book as one of the scariest movies ever made. The premise doesn’t sound too scary at first — everyone who watches a particular video tape dies within a week of viewing the tape. Naomi Watts plays Rachel, a reporter who is investigating a string of deaths that seem to be connected to the tape, and she is definitely skeptical at first. But what is on the tape is inexplicably creepy. And then things start happening, and people start dying, and all of a sudden, Rachel is racing against time to save not only herself, but also her son.

This movie is one that actually made me a little scared to go to sleep at night after I saw it — both the first and second times. I haven’t watched it in awhile, but I am guessing that I would still find it scary. Here’s what makes it scary for me:

That freaky girl with her long dark hair all in her face. I watch a lot of Asian horror — this movie is actually a remake of the Japanese Ringu — and the Japanese seem to have something going on with hair. There’s even some mythological history about hair demons. I’m not sure why hair, or hair covering her face, is scary but it works.
The stop-motion filming that makes the creepy girl almost jump toward you as she’s coming out of the well, or crawling out of the TV set. Also, her arms and neck work at odd angles. It’s just not natural and I don’t want it coming at me quickly and with purpose. Ack.

I think, though, what bothered me most about the movie was the faces of the people who died of fright. All purplish and distorted, and you only get a quick glimpse of them – not long enough to really figure out everything that’s wrong, but quite long enough to make a lasting impression of “oh crap”.

Just the idea of the way the curse works. Being targeted simply due to viewing the recording, regardless of who you are or how you came across the video. The potential for accidental cursing wakes up that fear of punishment for unintentional transgression, something that is rooted deeply in us from childhood. Also, the lack of recourse — there’s no way to turn back or change your fate. This is an unforgiving evil, one that doesn’t care about excuses and which is simply angry and ready to strike out and punish anyone within its range. The predatory nature of the force unleashed by the tape, combined with the sure, slow stalking of the victim to a known date death, creates a torturous situation full of dread and completely lacking in the possibility of mercy.

If you haven’t watched this movie yet, just know that once you do the following week is going to be pretty rough for you.

I read several reviews for Robert Jackson Bennett’s American Elsewhere and became increasingly intrigued because none of them could seem to explain what exactly this book was about. After reading it, I see the problem — it really doesn’t quite fit into any particular mold, something that Bennett has mentioned himself in a few interviews. That being said, the book is one that sucked me in immediately and which I had a hard time putting down.

The first chapter pulls you into a kidnapping in progress. A man is forcibly taken from his home, driven out to the woods, and then left there — with a small rabbit skull on his chest. The skull then proceeds to kill(?) him. From there, the book just gets weirder.

The protagonist of the story is Mona Bright, whose father has just died. She has been mostly estranged from him since the suicide of her mother, but comes back to see to his final arrangements. He has left her an awesome car (which she was expecting) and a deed to a house her mother owned (which she had no idea about) in a strange town called Wink. The town of Wink is a mixture of Los Alamos and Stepford — a former haunt of brainy scientists gone all Pleasantville after the lab shut down. As soon as Mona gets there, she realizes that something isn’t right. From her odd encounter with the motel manager, to the even weirder lady in the town records office, she becomes more and more entangled in the town and the mysterious history of the mother that she never really knew.

The reason that the reviews I read of this book didn’t tell much about it is because you just can’t without giving away the fun of the surprises that Bennett has in store around every corner. Just when you think you know what’s going on, you are reminded that you really have no idea what is going on. The story weaves mystery and oddball characters with atmosphere in a manner that is reminiscent of Twin Peaks, and the underlying secrets that Mona uncovers are something different altogether. Bennett can go from a feeling of almost normality to one of eerie darkness in a flash. Some characters are just too dark and weird to even comprehend. For example:

“There is a man standing in the exact center of the garage. He is very tall, and he stands motionless with his arms stiff at his sides. He wears a filthy blue canvas suit, streaked with mud in a thousand places, and sewn onto the surface of this suit are dozens and dozens of tiny wooden rabbit heads, all with huge staring eyes and long, tapered ears. On his face he wears a wooden helmet – or perhaps it is a tribal mask – whose crude, chiseled features suggest the blank, terrified face of a rabbit, complete with curving, badly carved ears. Where its eyes should be are two long rectangular holes. Somewhere behind these, presumably, are the eyes of the mask’s wearer, yet only darkness can be seen.”

Why rabbit heads, Bennett? (I kept thinking of Anya on Buffy who was scared of rabbits.) The answer is actually in there for the reader, and I appreciated that Bennett didn’t spoon-feed it to us, but rather let us puzzle it out on our own. This book is a smart and interesting synthesis of a variety of genres, and it was a fun read. I’m definitely looking forward to checking out some more of Bennett’s work!