The Infestation at Ralls Hall (2013) by Thomas Tessier - Short Horror Story Review

Another really old review of something I should have simply read a long long time ago! Back in 2014, I received a press release about an anthology horror film titled Thomas Tessier's World of Hurt. This was to feature five stories from the author's short stories he had written. Two of those stories included were to be I Remember Me, and The Infestation at Ralls Hall, which I was sent eBook copies of to check out. To be fair, the email I was sent did say to read '...whenever you can...'. So I sat down yesterday (at time of typing but at the time of publishing a long time back) and spent a quarter of an hour reading the latter of the two.

Returning to England, Van Helsing has been asked to stop of at Ralls, where a girl's school is located. One of the students; Miss Emily, has had something strange happen to her. Some days previously, she alleges to have been attacked in her bedroom one night. In the time since she has grown heavily pregnant as if she had been with child for six months or so. Van Helsing suspects something unnatural has occurred.

Originally featured in the 2013 short story collection; Remorseless: Tales of Cruelty, this 24 page story was a period piece, being set in and around the time of Bram Stoker's Dracula (I would imagine). The story covers a lot of ground in a short time, throwing the protagonist into the story as if he were someone we were already familiar with. From the initial investigation, to the later more action packed scenes, this tells the story competently and without seeming like anything has been lost for pacing issues. Throughout, formal language is used, both with how characters speak and with the descriptions used.

A neat little story that deals with an unexpected antagonist threat, blended in with elements of demonic possession and some quite graphic moments. The writing style had me fooled that The Infestation at Ralls Hall was an older story than it actually was.

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Joe's Diner (2015) - Horror Videogame Impressions: 'Rotted Meat No.1'

The list of video games I own and have yet to play have gotten to such an amount over the years that I fear I will likely simply not even get around to playing some of them. Due to this, I have been more harsh lately, skipping games if I feel I am just not 'getting' them. This gave me the idea of creating a new series of posts. Titled 'Rotted Meat', these won't be reviews, but instead the impressions I had of certain games, and what led to me abandoning them. The first of these is Joe's Diner...

The Synopsis:

The game is a horror survival game that takes place out in the desert at a remote diner (Joe's Diner obviously). You play as a night-time employee of the diner, and have unusual tasks assigned to you. The place happens to have been built on the site of a Native American burial ground where two rival chieftains were buried. The hate they share for each other even resides in death, and so one of your jobs is to diffuse any supernatural occurrences that might arise due to the spirits of the chieftains still warring.

How the game felt:

This is one of those horror games where you are defenceless, and instead of fighting, you must sneak around the environment trying your best not to get killed by the evil spirits. Having a limited shift time, the game is split into different nights, much in the way of Five Nights at Freddy's, though here you are free to walk around rather than stuck in a single room. The game was unremarkable, basic looking, and really not a lot of fun. 

Reason for abandoning the game:

I started playing this shortly before upgrading to a Playstation 5, and Joe's Diner was one of the rare games that wasn't backward compatible on the new system, leading to me ditching it. Sure, I could have hooked up my Playstation 4 had I really wanted to play this one again, but I found the game super boring and dull, and so I really wasn't bothered about ever going through the minor hoops to return.

Outbreak: The Hunger (2015) by Scott Shoyer - Zombie Horror Novel Review

Scott Shoyer's Outbreak: The Hunger is yet another book I have had for review for a ridiculously long time, having first received a copy back in 2015. At that time, a girlfriend had agreed to help me get through my backlog and read some books on my behalf. She did actually read this novel but soon after we split up, so I never found out her thoughts on it, unrelated I'm sure! Now, I have finally gotten around to reading this, and boy, I wish I had read this one sooner.

John and his young daughter Fi have gone on their monthly visit to the local zoo near where they live in Texas. This trip feels different than usual, with a weird atmosphere at the place. Many of the zoo exhibits appear to be empty, with the animals that are still there behaving very aggressively. John almost decides to cut the trip short when a nervous young man is witnessed being roughly detained by a group of soldiers, but his daughters love for the train that runs around the zoo has John agreeing to ride it with her before they leave. This turns out to be a terrible mistake as staff and passengers alike come under attack from vicious animals. In the unfolding carnage the train derails, John, Fi, and a small group of other families survive, and decide to follow the track back to the zoo. They soon discover that they are being stalked from the shadows by the animals, who are not done with the group yet.
Elsewhere, the survivor of a violent animal attack at an animal rescue shelter is taken to a secure facility by the army, with it revealed that animals had escaped from a government lab, caused a localised outbreak, and that this survivor is patient zero - the first human to be infected by whatever disease or virus has affected the animals so dangerously.

This is a sick book, and for those who aren't on board for a whole lot of animals attacking both adults and children in violent and sickening detail, you might want to get off the train now! There is a cruelness here, with the book often seeming to go into unneeded excessive descriptions of the violence being inflicted. That is not to say I didn't like The Hunger, instead, I thought this was a great novel that really did do something different than the traditional zombie story. Firstly, I thought it was a neat idea to have the whole novel just tell the story of the initial outbreak, before the infection had even spread to humans. There are a few human-like infected here, but mainly just in the more traditional patient zero based subplot rolling on in the background. The zombie animals act very different, even to other zombie animals that have appeared in other books. These ones are as a unit extremely deadly and also extremely fast. The initial attacks are so swift that characters aren't even sure of what is happening, and the animals have some odd behaviour, such as occasionally being found all passed out rather than moving around. These animals also exhibit an intelligence that is frightening to see. Far from acting like dumb creatures, these infected appear to be able to work together and make plans, such as automatically going after any human who appears to be trying to use their phone to contact the outside world.

The infected animals are the ghastly stars of the show, and being set in and around a zoo there are excuses for why there are a large assortment of these creatures. Everything from tigers, lions, and bears to goats, meercats and wolves. They attack in explicit detail with victim's body parts being ripped off and chewed up, again, especially distressing when it is happening to young children!
John, generic name aside, made for an engaging protagonist. The backstory of him surviving a dog attack as a child explains why he is able to lead the group, while his worsening vision, due to forgetting the eye drops needed after a recent operation on his eye, gives a sense of bigger danger. His determination to protect his daughter is well realised, and really there wasn't much bad about this part of the novel. The subplot was less interesting only due to secret army bases and experiments on infected being so part and parcel of the zombie genre. Occasionally the novel gets a bit carried away, with a few chapters, especially near the end, which seemed to just be there to pad out the length of the book rather than add anything new. Some of these mini-stories of characters meeting their end were worth reading. I loved the really cruel chapter that saw a man trying to find his children, unaware that not only were they already dead, but that unknown to him he had sustained a fatal wound himself. This just exemplified the jet black humour that would sometimes pop up.

I loved Outbreak: The Hunger, it genuinely hooked me, but at the same time, I sometimes had to take breaks due to the misery and horror of the story. This sets itself apart from other zombie novels by taking a wild deviation to the tried and tested expectations, but towards the end especially it had some twists that I would hardly say I didn't see coming from a mile away. This was the first in a planned trilogy, with a quick Google search revealing the other books in the series are now written and out, I may have to check those out on day (turns out I also have the second book awaiting review on my heap of shame).

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Life After: Shorts Anthology Volume 1 (2023) by Bryan Way - Horror Anthology Book Review

It was back in 2022 when I first heard of horror author Bryan Way's Life After series of zombie stories. Life After: The Arising featured an unlikeable lead and told a relatively (for a zombie apocalypse) mundane story but something about it just worked. This was followed up by a sequel - Life After: The Void that was even better and showed the first novel wasn't just a fluke. So far that has been it in the main line series, but the author has also put out six short stories over the years set within the world of Life After and written in a more traditional third person form rather than the first person perspective of the novels. As the title hints at, Life After: Shorts Anthology Volume 1 brings together those first six short stories into one volume. Even more exciting is that there is an exclusive seventh short story set several months after the events of the second main novel.
I used my own photo of my battered and coffee stained copy of the book for the cover image as a mark of respect. It has been taken to my work to read on my lunch break countless times, and even travelled with me earlier this year when I went to Normandy with my father. I feel a sign of having enjoyed a book is how used it naturally comes to appear.

Reading the novels and the shorts I had in my mind a certain image of what the characters looked like, I admit that some of them didn't have the most flattering image in my mind, especially when it came to the main books protagonist character of Jeff Grey. This anthology introduces portraits of each of the main characters drawn by artist Seth Lang. If it had just been images based on what Way himself and Lang had imagined the characters had looked like I would have probably still defaulted to the images in my mind, but in a genius move Way cements these pictures by stating that that they were actually drawn by one of the characters in the books, meaning I have no excuses to discount them as not complete canon.
I won't go into too much detail for the first six short stories as I have previously given them their own review. I wasn't too sure if going back to them would be as exciting second time around. In another cool move though, Way has put the stories in the order they take place within the Life After universe, not in the order they were originally written. This makes them much more interesting as you are able to follow the flow of the unfolding apocalypse a lot better. 

Each story and each chapter within that story begins with a date, making it easy to see how far along things have progressed. One of my few complaints is that I wish that each individual page had these dates as I found myself constantly flicking back to see how much time had passed between the individual stories. Anyway, it starts off with The Cemetery Plot that occurs even before the start of the first novel. Telling a story about a greedy man taking extreme measures to get his deceased relative's inheritance. I enjoyed this one about as much as the first time reading it. The same was true for the next few, The Phoenix (guy meeting his ex-girlfriend at her place of work gets caught up in the unfolding zombie crisis) and the excellent The Line of Duty (the perspective of the apocalypse from an embattled police station, this one I still think would be excellent as a short film). While Zugzwang was still a little bit confusing due to the amount of characters introduced, I thought this side story that takes place during the events of Life After: The Void had improved a bit, and becomes one of the more important stories in the anthology as many of the same characters reappear in the new seventh story.

The Maze was a purposely disorientating story first read around as it starts in the middle of a action packed situation. On a second read I picked up on so much more that I hadn't noticed the first time around due to the eventual revelations the story provides. Of the original shorts that just leaves The Basement which is certainly Way's most depraved story. Perhaps it was knowing what was to come, but I found this had improved massively on a second read through, plus since reading it the author has confirmed that the belief of certain characters as to what caused the dead returning to life was actually incorrect. I do dislike it when there is a neat and tidy explanation given in zombie stories, always takes away some of the mystique.
New and final short The Siege really was a case of saving the best till last. This features a story featuring the main novel characters, but used in an interesting way. I thought the cleverest idea was to not feature protagonist Grey in the story. Instead he is often referenced by other characters, and even glimpsed in the background at one point. The story here was exciting, without too many spoilers it is about the influx of new survivors to the school the rest are hiding out at, set to the backdrop of a siege from the walking dead who are all too aware that there are living in the school. It was a bonus that my favourite character - former national guard soldier Anderson features a lot in it.

Going into this anthology I was a bit worried that I had a biased opinion of the stories having enjoyed speaking to the author over emails. That worry was dispelled with The Siege, it really was a great story, and has made me really want a third main line entry, something I believe Way is currently working on. As always, you will get a lot more out of this anthology if you have read The Arising and The Void, but even without having done that, there is plenty to enjoy here.

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The Walking Deceased (2015) - Comedy Zombie Horror Film Review

I've had somewhat of a morbid curiosity about spoof zombie film The Walking Deceased (also known as Walking with the Dead). On the one hand, it looked terrible, on the other hand however I had a terrible nights sleep and had a splitting headache, and so wanted to watch something that I wouldn't have to focus on too much (at the time of typing). Where this Scott Dow directed comedy horror fails is its choice of things to spoof, and the unmistakable fact that mainly this just isn't funny.

Twenty nine days after zombie apocalypse swept the world, Sheriff Lincoln (Dave Sheridan - The Devil's Rejects, Scary Movie) awakens from a coma to discover everything has changed. Him and his son, Chris, (Mason Dakota Galyon) team up with a group of survivors, including among them Green Bay (Tim Ogletree - Supernatural Activity) and Chicago (Joey Oglesby - Supernatural Activity), and together they decide to head for apparent safety at a remote farm untouched by the zombie plague.

Spoof movies don't have a great track record, especially in recent years. Even relative greats, such as Scary Movie eventually got bogged down with worse and worse sequels. My biggest complaint with The Walking Deceased is its choice of media to mickey take. The film is two fifths The Walking Dead, specifically the second season of that show. The spoof works as the show is super serious. This is also however, two fifths Zombieland, and one fifth Warm Bodies. The spoof aspect fails at this point as it is trying to poke fun at comedic films which did their own comedy a billion times better than what is achieved here. At best this does a poor impersonation of those, and it was almost embarrassing how unfunny this was compared to those. Zombieland was a very funny film, the attempts here to make fun of that fail for the simple reason that it was a comedy itself.

Outside of the film taking place for half its run time at a farm that seemed very similar to Hershel's from season two of The Walking Dead, the main way for this to spoof other films is via the use of similar characters. Thankfully the best character here was Sheriff Lincoln, with actor Sheridan really nailing the way that Rick Grimes speaks in a way that was kind of funny. The recurring joke of him constantly referring to his son Chris as 'Carl' was nearly amusing. I also found that the side character Darnell (Andrew Pozza - Supernatural Activity) had occasionally vague smile worthy moments, the character being an obvious stand-in for Darryl from The Walking Dead, whose constant attempts to kill the undead with his tiny crossbow always ending in failure when the arrow pings off them ineffectually. Galyon was perfectly fine as the Carl stand-in, but he didn't do too much to stand out. On the other side of the spoof you have Ogletree and Oglesby doing their best to channel the spirit of Columbus and Tallahassee respectively, but failing due to the actors for those two characters doing far better jobs.

There are plenty of undead throughout, but they don't really feature in many action scenes, the whole farm part in particular was mostly zombie free. The make-up effects were fine, a bit random, but passable. It was the humour and the story that really made this fall flat. If this had been funny but plotless it would have been much better, and if this hadn't been funny and had a decent plot it would also have benefitted. This median line of unfunny and lacking plot was what led to its downfall.

Usually, even with the worse spoof film there are one or two genuinely funny moments. Here I never managed more than a hint of a smile. Looking past the badly aged homophobic and sexist jokes, and ones about bodily functions and sex, this was at its best when it was channelling The Walking Dead, but whenever it swerved back to trying to out-funny Zombieland this really began to show how much of a worse thing this was. The Walking Deceased can currently be streamed on Amazon Prime Video, but I can't really recommend it.

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The Elder Scrolls Online (2014-23) - Fantasy Video Game Review

I first intended to review The Elder Scrolls Online many years ago. This was the first MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) that I played and so far remains my favourite. My problem with reviewing this is that it isn't really possible to complete. There has to be thousands of quests and new content is always being released. Annoyingly the game never tells you exactly how many hours you have sunk into it, I estimate mine must be somewhere between a hundred to two hundred hours.

It has been literal years since I completed the main storyline in the game and so I can't really say what the story would have been. Something concerning demons and cults most likely. The way I play the game is like a roving adventurer. I go to wherever my next quest is, rather than head to an area and experience everything it has to offer. It's an irritating limitation that you can only have twenty five active quests at a time, meaning there are so many new quest givers I have to ignore and walk on by, with the hope to remember where they were so I can revisit when more convenient. My travels take me all around the game world but the haphazard way I play the game means no quest really means that much to me. One moment I can be helping a lizardman out in the swamps, swearing to retrieve a cursed object for him, the next moment I teleport myself off to Skyrim to uncover a plot concerning killing the Skald-King. My journey keeps everything always feeling fresh.

I have tried the Final Fantasy MMORPG, but despite liking that world more, the quests are far more bland, and I absolutely detest that you are forced to go into dungeons with other real people. Elder Scrolls for the most part, allows you to experience much of the game on your lonesome. There have been plenty of updates over the years, my favourite was the ability to get an A.I companion to always be by your side. There was an update some years back that made all the weapons much stronger, making playing the game so much more fun. It can be frustrating that you start some quests, only to discover three or four steps down the line it was intended as a group quest. The group dungeons are far too hard for someone to do on their own, but I have zero desire to play with real people.

The amount of quests is ridiculous, some are better than others, all feature fully voiced characters. From stopping an army of the undead, to investigating cults, travelling to the demon world and saving villages, there is always something to be doing. Best of all, and something which stopped me playing Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls has no monthly subscription requirements. Sure you have to pay for expansions, but there is no monthly cost. For many years I did pay the subscription, this gives you all minor expansions for free, as well as an unlimited inventory size and in-game currency each month. Worth doing if this is your main game, but I tend to play this in fits and bursts, whenever I have the space on my Playstation 5 hard drive to have it installed.

Graphically this isn't stunning nowadays, but at least on the newer consoles and PCs this loads really quick, and it certainly isn't an ugly game. This is one of the most popular games of its type, and if you like your straight faced fantasy then there is plenty here to appeal. It is a huge time sink however, and if you are the type of person who likes 'beating' games then this will frustrate. Overall though, I always come back to The Elder Scrolls Online, no matter how long I've been away, I love getting lost in the world.

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Age of Ultron Vs. Marvel Zombies (2015) - Zombie Graphic Novel Review

Age of Ultron Vs. Marvel Zombies is the final graphic novel I currently own that uses the Marvel Zombies licence. Like Marvel Zombies: Battleworld that released the same year, this one takes place in the 'Battleworld' (a place where different multiverse have combined into one large whole). I had heard bad things about this, but it didn't really do too much wrong in actuality.

The Hank Pym from the Western world of 1872 is sent over 'the wall' (a huge structure designed to keep the worst multiverse worlds of Battleworld away from the rest) for the crime of trying to construct a clockwork metal man. The bad part is ruled over by three factions, zombified Magneto who controls the undead population in the Deadlands, Ultron who rules over the robots of Perfection, and a reptilian force (who don't factor into the story). Before Hank can fall prey to any of these he is rescued by the trio of Jim Hammond, The Vision and Wonder Man who take him to a protected settlement they've named Salvation. As an alternate version of Hank was the one who created Ultron in the first place, the three hope this Hank will be able to identify a weakness in the humanity hating robot and finally put an end to his reign of terror. Meanwhile, sick of fighting each other, the robots and zombies have decided to team up, merging to become zombie cyborgs in order to destroy Salvation.

This graphic novel brings together Age of Ultron Vs. Marvel Zombies issues 1-4. Perhaps due to the short length it was decided to also include issue 1 of Age of Ultron, an issue which sits awkwardly at the end of the novel. I assume that was to get people interested in that storyline, especially as it ends on a big cliffhanger. It didn't have zombies but it was set in a post apocalyptic world. As for the zombie story itself, by now pretty much every Marvel hero and villain has made an appearance several times over. Still, it was fun to see these characters again. On the undead side you have Magneto, Sabretooth, The Vulture, M.O.D.O.K and Owl as the ones I immediately recognised. On the hero side my favourite appearance was a Punisher who appeared to be from the 17th Century, armed with flintlock pistol and sword and wearing a Witchfinder style hat. A lot of the other heroes I didn't really recognise, as always this is something that will give a lot more enjoyment if you are familiar with the characters.

Larry II: The Squeequel (2015) by Adam Millard - Comedy Horror Book Review

I feel like Adam Millard is an author I really should have read more of by now. Back when the UK Festival of Zombie Culture was a thing he was a regular guest and always seemed liked a nice guy. One time I ended up picking up a copy of his comedy horror book, Larry and judging from my review I really enjoyed it. I say going from my review as my memory of the book is shockingly bad, but even despite that, getting into the sequel, Larry II: The Squeeequel was an easy feat. Spoilers for the first book inevitably to follow.

After getting chopped up, decapitated and burnt alive at the end of Larry it seems the geriatric slasher's path of bloodshed and murder was at an end. Life has returned to normal for 'final girl' Amanda Bateman and her friends. However, a year later, Larry's mother (with the aid of the carpet fitting brother of a witch doctor) manage to resurrect the pig mask wearing, axe wielding maniac, who discovers he now has a psychic link with Amanda and is able to pinpoint her location to the nearby city of Haddonfield. Amanda also is able to discover her old foe is back from the dead, and so teams up with her best friend Freddy, as well as enlists the help of a very butch Nun called Sister Geoff in order to stop the killer for good.

As I mentioned in the prologue to this review, my memory of the first book is very patchy. Larry II was a book in similar style to the more recent Don't Smell The Flowers! They Want To Steal Your Bones! by Duncan P. Bradshaw. That book was so jammed of nonsense and fourth wall breaking that it threatened at times to derail the story going on. Here, fourth wall breaking is very much in effect, there is a constant back and forth with characters seeming to be aware they are in a book, and often commenting on the descriptions and language Millard is writing with. There were also a heck of a lot of recurring gags throughout the two hundred and sixty six pages, something that I am a huge fan of thanks to the books of Robert Rankin.

Distraint: Deluxe Edition (2015) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

A few years back I got in a real bad habit of buying no end of digital games in various sales. It became a problem as I wasn't actually playing these games, they were just joining an already out of control backlog (seriously, its well over a thousand games waiting to be played). Lately I have started pecking away at some of these games and Distraint: Deluxe Edition was one of those. It just goes to show how little I know of the games I own, as this turned out to be something quite a bit different than what I assumed it would be.

Distraint is a psychological horror game with a grotesque art style to it. You play as a young man named Price. You are a bailiff for a law firm and have been promised by the firm's three elderly bosses that should you successfully get three different tenants evicted from their properties that you will be made a partner. While there are other parts to this, the meat of the story has you solving minor puzzles in a limited 2D setting in order to evict three people. The first person you have to evict is an elderly and lonely woman and while you are successful, just what your job entails begins to really affect you, especially after learning the old woman was forced to move into a crueley run nursing home.

On the surface this doesn't scream horror, but the game has a distinct pixel based horror look to it, a letterboxed world of corridors and rooms that has the colour palette of a simplified Silent Hill, and the music to match it. There are six main areas in the game, including the three based around solving simple puzzles to evict tenants. In addition to the old woman, there is a level set at a log cabin out in the woods, and one that has you exploring a drug den in a squat. This is a dark world that is far more sinister than the real world. Here for example you will find a man in the basement of a nursing home chopping up the bodies of the recently deceased in order to save costs on funeral arrangements, and a large blood splattered dog who has recently savaged a fox. The game is 2D and has you as your gigantic headed protagonist waddling left to right, clicking on doors in the background to enter various rooms. There is no voice work in the game, instead the dialogue is all presented as basic looking text.

Among the Sleep (2014-2019) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

Among the Sleep is a game I have owned for years, yet I have never gotten around to playing it. The reason for the delay was that I recall there was a lot of interest when it first got announced, but upon its release it got a more muted reception than many people expected. It stands on its own for having the character you play as be a two year old child, but in a horror setting, seeing the darkness of their world through their eyes.

The game takes place on your second birthday, as one of your presents you are given an old teddy bear which you take an immediate liking to. Later that night, after you have been read a bedtime story and put to bed, you awaken in your crib to discover your bear has vanished. Managing to get out of your crib, you explore the house and discover the teddy inside the washing machine, which you manage to open. The teddy explains to you that something doesn't feel right, and that you should seek out your mother. This begins a journey through various different horror tinged locations as you seek out four items that relate to memories you have with your mother, in order to be reunited with her.

The idea behind the game is a good one, I've played games before where I have been a young child, but never in a first person horror setting such as here. This is a adventure game that is combat free, instead there are slight puzzles that must be solved, and some vague stealth gameplay in that each new location you visit has its own adult sized monster walking around in it. Playing as a toddler I expected it would be impossible to die, that isn't the case though don't expect any sort of gratuitous scene of death, instead the screen just fades to black. Death can come from drowning, or by being caught by one of the black smokey antagonists stalking the levels. As a child you don't really have any powers. You can drag stools and open drawers to climb up on surfaces, you can run, but do that too much and you will fall over into a crawl (actually kind of irritating). Then, for moments when things get too dark (fear represented by the screen shaking), you can press a button to hug your teddy bear which will create light.
Obviously you are a silent protagonist, you don't even cry out when scared, the story telling falls to the teddy bear, he is the one who sets out your goal of exploring these different levels. Story is also revealed by environmental details (packing boxes for instance suggest you have only recently moved into the house the game takes place in), as well as blurred flashbacks that feature a bit of muffled dialogue, I assume as the child wouldn't be able to understand what was being said.

Riven (2015) -Short Horror Film Review

Riven is a short nine minute award winning Norwegian horror film which was directed by Sjoerd de Bont. The flow of this felt almost formulaic but was different enough to what I figured that I was left pleased. This has recently headed to the Dark Matters' YouTube channel.

Sara (Maike Boerdam) is a barmaid who has gone into the dusty attic of her bar in order to find some wine glasses. Once up there however she discovers an old full length mirror covered up, wiping the dust off its surface she is startled to see in the reflection a white door which isn't there. It is her subsequent exploration of where this door could be and what is on the other side that brings in the horror.

There are three actors in this short (Raymond Kurvers as Sara's partner, Willem, and Katarina Justic rounding out the small cast. The character of Sara takes centrestage and after a brief intro she is up in the atmospherically dusty attic, which was a great looking location. The stuff with the reflection being different to what is actually there I have seen before, and even seen done better. That isn't to say Riven wasn't good, I enjoyed it despite heavy use of CG to simulate a particular effect. I for one was happy it didn't end on a jumpscare ending, it had a little bit more of a sinister feel to how this wraps up. The film is in Dutch with English subtitles, but there is only really dialogue at the beginning and end with most the short playing out with Sara on her own.

At under ten minutes Riven is another short that is worth a watch. It makes effective use of a good choice of location, and while it may not feel especially new, this nonetheless  ticked a few of the right boxes.

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Rusty Lake Hotel (2015) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

I have had a bad week full of bad luck and as such I have been unable to keep to my usual schedule of blog posts. It has led to me spending more time than usual in my bedroom, it was there I looked into what decent iPhone games there are. I learnt of an interconnected series of slight horror games that take place in a shared universe based around the mystery of Rusty Lake. Many of these games were included in the free to play Cube Escape Collection. Rusty Lake Hotel was the first 'premium' game, meaning I had to pay for it, but at around £1.50 (I believe), it was well worth the price. 

In the grand order of the Rusty Lake series this is actually the seventh game and so some of the story around the edges here will not make much sense unless you have played the other games. Rusty Lake Hotel takes place in 1893 in the titular hotel. This hotel, owned by Mr. Owl, and run by Mr. Crow, has invited five guests to stay for five nights, they are Mr. Deer, Mr. Rabbit, Mrs. Pigeon, Ms. Pheasant, and Mr. Boar. Each day they will be treated to a new meal, one in which you have to collect the ingredients for. The darkness is revealed in the recipes themselves, each one is a meat dish, the meat coming from one of the guests...

Like all the other games in the series this one is an escape room game. Instead of escaping however, each of the five rooms takes place in one of the hotel guests' rooms, the goal is not to escape, but to find a means to kill the guests. Each of the rooms is full of simple puzzles to solve. Clues for these puzzles are dotted around the room in pictures and notes, often the prize for solving these will be keys used to unlock cupboards that in turn reveal either more puzzles, or items used to progress. Most the rooms have a theme to them, Mr. Rabbit for example is a magician, so his room is full of magic tricks, Ms. Pheasant wants you to take photos of her, and so her room is set up for a photo shoot.

Marvel Zombies: Battleworld (2015) - Zombie Graphic Novel Review

It was just last week when reviewing Marvel Zombies Destroy! that I stated I felt like it was a series of diminishing returns for each new entry in the Marvel Zombies series. I began to wonder if the problem were the books themselves, or if I was just jaded with it all. Now I have read Marvel Zombies: Battleworld I can confirm it was the former, as this one was a real return to form.

This takes place within the context of the Secret Wars arc. No idea about any of that but at least this begins with a page of text explaining things. Basically the multiverse has been destroyed and Dr. Doom was somehow able to create one giant world made up of different realities put together. Elsa Bloodstone is a member of S.H.I.E.L.D who spends her days on the Wall. This huge construct is what separates the zombie infested Deadlands from the rest of the world. One night she gets in a fight with a zombified Red Terror, she defeats him but not before he teleports them both over two hundred miles into the Deadlands. It is there she encounters a young amnesiac child, and with a horde of zombies in between her and the path back to the Wall, she instead decides to go with the young child's gut feeling that they need to head in the opposite direction, further into the unknown of the Deadlands.

While not perfect I did really enjoy reading Battleworld, and with Elsa you have a strong willed protagonist. Before I have criticised the amount of humour stuck into a serious story, here though that humour fits in with Elsa's jaded outlook on life, and her grudging mission to keep the mystery child safe. Her journey is punctuated with frequent flashbacks to the harsh treatment she endured at the hands of her father, the immortal Ulysses Bloodstone. The flashbacks intercut the main story going on as well as her father's words appearing as speech bubbles. She is in constant battle with herself to ignore the teachings he gave her, she frequently has to go against her deep seated instinct to instead become her own person. The main plot may be her and the child's journey but Elsa's past experiences shape a lot of the story, especially towards the end with some unexpected and cool revelations.

Last Ones Out (2015) - Zombie Horror Film Review

You can tell that writer and director Howard Fyvie was heavily inspired by 28 Days Later when coming up with his South African zombie film Last Ones Out. Everything by the fast moving infected 'zombies' to the up close and shaky camera footage during action scenes, even to the protagonist waking up alone in hospital. The only problem with this one however is the distinct lack of infected and some dumb and annoying characters.

A young American man, Henry (Greg Kriek - Maze Runner: The Death Cure) had been in South Africa to keep his fianceé company while she was working in the country. Due to needing to have his appendix removed he was in a rural hospital, and so when a mysterious new virus sweeps the continent and turns those infected into flesh hungry maniacs he finds himself in a bad situation. After the hospital is overrun, Henry is rescued by Sunet (Christia Visser), a nurse and together they team up with a doctor, Siseko (Tshamano Sebe) and a man named Vincent (Vukile Zuma). Henry manages to get in contact with his fianceé, but she tells him the unfolding disaster has made her contemplate her life choices and that she no longer wants to be with him! However, she does offer him (and him only) a place on the convoy that she has arranged to evacuate herself and her team. With the false promise that all four of them will be able to join the convoy, Henry and the others set out into the wilderness of Africa to get to the rendezvous point.

Things don't start off well and that is mainly the path of the whole film. The first biggest problem is Henry, this character is self centered, bossy and downright rude. Being in a strange country, and seeing the outbreak as nothing to do with him he just wants to leave, happy to trick his companions in his selfish desire to save himself. This is all designed I guess to give him a redemptive arc, and that is what is attempted with the character. I couldn't look past his earlier actions though, and where early in the film he had been trying to assert himself as the leader (even right at the start when he was still drugged up and barely able to move he is barking out orders!), this arc gives him the opportunity to become the leader he so desperately wanted to be. It sucks that he was made the central hero when I would say Sunet is much more of that. She is the one who rescued him, she is the one who carries on with the plan even when everything looks dire, yet she is made to play second fiddle to the arrogant Henry.

All Hallows Eve: The Reaping (2015) - Horror Anthology Film Review

As part of the films I watched for Halloween last year I took a look at the deliciously dark and twisted anthology horror All Hallow's Eve that featured three shorts and a meaty wraparound segment all directed by Damien Leone (Terrifier). I noticed there was a sequel on Prime Video, All Hallow's Eve: The Reaping, and so watched it without really looking into it. I was disappointed that outside of the general idea this was unrelated, it may feature an increased amount of short films over its ninety minute runtime but Leone didn't appear to be involved in this at all, and it began to feel a little bit of quantity over quality.

The wraparound story features a young woman who discovers a VHS tape left outside the door to her apartment. Watching it she finds a series of different horror films. The first anthology had a lengthy wraparound that had its own story going on, this time around there is barely anything, it's like an inferior re-run, except with a man in a subpar looking pumpkin mask rather than the supremely creepy Art the Clown.
Making up most of the film then are the eight different short films, starting with Bryan Norton and Antonio Padovan's Jack Attack. In this, a young boy and his babysitter carve a pumpkin together, but it is when they go to eat the seeds that the horror begins. This featured some great special effects of vines swirling around, and went to a dark place. It was as gory as I expected for a sequel to a very gory anthology. This was maybe The Reaping showing its hand too early though as none of the other short films matched this in terms of gore.

Up next was Marc Roussel's The Last Halloween. This had a cool spin on a traditional Halloween horror by having it take place in a post-apocalyptic world. Four children are still determined to go trick or treating and all is going well until they come across the fortified home of a survivalist who does not seem inclined to give them a treat. I thought this was a clever idea, a cautionary tale that featured a fun guest appearance from Julian Richings (Blood Hunters, The Witch: A New England Folktale), let down only by some dodgy looking CG flames.

This is when the Halloween theme is mostly abandoned with only one other short seeming to take place at that season. The Offering is from Ryan Patch and succeeds by showing absolutely nothing but suggesting everything. In this one, a father and son are on a drive out to a remote location in order to give an offering to...something, before midnight comes. The understatement may typically disappoint but I loved that nothing at all was shown, the horror coming from your own imagination.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (2015) - Sci-fi Video Game Review (XBox One)

I've recently started playing through all of the Gears of War games and with the very first one in the series I decided to play the newer remastered version that came out in 2015 on the XBox One, rather than the original 2006 XBox 360 version of the game. After the boredom of Gears of War: Judgement I was hoping this would put me back on track and thankfully it did, remaining as fun and exciting as the game I remembered in my mind.

Gears of War takes place fourteen years after 'Emergence Day'; the day in which a vast army of monsters poured forth from within the ground of the planet Sera. The battle between these monsters (known as The Locust) and the humans has continued ever since. The game begins with Marcus Fenix (voiced by John DiMaggio), a former COG soldier being freed from prison by his old war buddy Dom (Carlos Ferro). He is reinstated and put in charge of Delta Squad that eventually is comprised of him, Dom, cocky engineer Baird (Fred Tatasciore), and former Thrashball star Cole (Lester Speight). They are tasked with obtaining a resonator. This device is meant to be able to map the Locust's underground tunnel network, it is hoped that by doing this a lightmass bomb can be detonated to destroy their main stronghold.

This game is still so much fun to play. The cover based combat never grew tired, I loved the various times you would roadie run from cover to cover, slowly pushing forward, and occasionally getting the opportunity to flank enemies. The game is full of set pieces and a lot more variation than I remembered. There is a driving level, levels set at night in which you have to stay in light to avoid getting killed by monstrous birds, boss fights against huge monsters, there's even a level set on a moving train. This variation keeps the game feeling fresh from start to end, even if the end features a very frustrating final boss. There are a bunch of weapons used throughout the six or so hour campaign but the only one really worth using was the Lancer, this being is an assault rifle with a chainsaw attached to it, and the other worthwhile weapon named 'Hammer of Dawn' which is essentially a satellite targeting system. 

They Look Like People (2015) - Horror Film Review

Recently I watched the charming supernatural romance film A Ghost Waits and discovered the lead actor from that film, MacLeod Andrews was also in a film that had been sat in my Shudder queue for quite a while. They Look Like People, which was written and directed by Perry Blackshear (The Siren) sounded like it would be a spin on the familiar idea of the 'body snatcher', that of humanity secretly being infiltrated by an alien force. In a way it was, but there was a twist that made it work that bit better in a realistic setting.

One day Christian (Evan Dumouchel - Doctor Sleep) encounters an old best friend of his, Wyatt (Andrews) out on the street. It has been around a decade since they last spent time together, so wanting to make amends to Wyatt for them drifting apart, and seeing that his friend doesn't appear to be in a good place he insists he comes stay with him. Wyatt is troubled though, he has discovered that aliens have secretly been taking over human bodies and that a war is very close to happening. For reasons unknown he has the gift of being able to tell which humans have been taken over and which are still themselves. Part of him suspects this is all down to a mental illness of his own mind, yet he is unable to completely disavow the idea that maybe what he is experiencing is really happening...

This was an interesting spin on a well documented idea and it is to the credit of They Look Like People that it resists the urge to dumb down the ideas it is exploring. It is never a hundred percent clear what is actually happening but the movie leans in a way that makes it clear what the viewer was intended to think. The film succeeds mainly due to Dumouchel and Andrews whose on screen chemistry works very well. These feel like actual best friends, helped along by montage sequences of them goofing around. It was also a neat idea that both of them are hiding secrets about the type of person they really are under the surface. Wyatt keeps his thoughts of a secret invasion to himself, and makes excuses when he slips up. Christian appears to have really pulled his life around, he is outwardly full of confidence and success, yet as the film proceeds cracks begin to show, things that are presented to the viewer are later twisted to reveal they aren't exactly how they appear. That both the main characters have visible flaws makes them all the more likeable. Mental health has a poor record in films, especially horror, yet here the character maybe suffering from it is treated humanely, rather than presented as a monster.

Circle (2015) - Horror Film Review

Circle has been on my Netflix queue for a while now so decided to check it out finally. It was co-directed and co-written by Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione who both worked on TV series The Vault and both seem to share some common similarities. There have been plenty of horror films that feature just the one mysterious location, it was only a few months back I reviewed The Odds which has a similar set-up. It dawned on me as I began watching Circle that a movie in which not a single character moves from the spot they are standing in could make for something quite difficult to review.

Fifty strangers awake in a dark room, each of them standing on a red glowing circle on the floor. Before too long they figure out that they are stuck inside of some sort of game, every few minutes they are supposed to vote on someone to get killed. This results in electricity shooting out an orb in the centre of the room and zapping the loser instantly dead. They come to the realisation that at the end of the game it is likely there will only be one survivor...

To put Circle in the worst light you could just say it was Cube but with all the action and excitement sucked out of it. These characters don't know how they got to be there, but a lot of mystery is removed by these characters all being on board to the idea that they have been abducted by aliens. This is explained very early on by one of the characters who remembers being part of a mass panic to flee a city when he was abducted. Whether that is true or not doesn't matter, the characters believe this and so it isn't a question of who has captured them, but more about guessing the motivations of the captors. Nearly the whole film takes place in the dark room, the only visibility being the red lit structure and the characters bathed in light. This brings the focus squarely onto the characters but did mean everything looked a bit samey.

Abandoned Dead - Reissue Out Now - Horror Film News

The new colour corrected and digitally enhanced Director's Cut of the 2015 indie horror Abandoned Dead is out on Amazon Prime and IMDB TV and iTunes thanks to Indie Rights.

This horror stars 'scream queen' Sarah Nicklin (Sins of Dracula) and Judith O'Dea (Night of the Living Dead) and is about a security guard who becomes trapped inside a dilapidated inner-city medical clinic where she comes under assault from supernatural forces.

The Forsaken (2015) - Horror Film Review

There are few things better than when a film you have zero expectations for blows you away with its quality. Such was the case with Yolanda Torres's The Forsaken (the director of The Odd Perspective, and co-director of The Afterglow). I was hooked from the very first shot of the movie, all the way to the end credits, I just could not look away.

A band of criminals that include among them, Mr. Bodie (Ian Breed - The Afterglow), Mr. Quartermass (Paco Perez), Mr. Blake (Pol Ferraris), Mrs. Peel (Sarah Tyler Shaw - The Afterglow), and Number Two (Alberto Esparza - Anunnaki The Fallen of the Sky) arrive at an abandoned house deep in the the Spanish countryside. They have very recently kidnapped the daughter of a wealthy businessman (Sara, played by Claudio Trujillo) and the house has been chosen by their boss as a place to lay low until the ransom is paid. It is not too long into their stay when they begin to notice strange things occurring, names written in blood mysteriously appear, strange noises can be heard coming from the locked basement, and not one of them is able to make a conscious effort to exit the house. The door to the property is unlocked, but each person is strangely unwilling to leave. It soon becomes apparent there is something evil lurking in the house, something that can see into the soul of a person and see the true ugliness lurking there.

I loved this movie, I'm so glad it remained consistently atmospheric and thrilling throughout. As it got towards the end I was praying that it wouldn't drop the ball, and indeed it doesn't. The singular location, along with the survivors of a botched crime, and their hostage of course, was a similar concept to that used in Reservoir Dogs. Add in a stunning soundtrack that felt like a lost John Carpenter classic (most resembling the theme tune to The Thing with added sinister whistling) and a cast of characters who just about managed to stay the right side of cliche and you have a slow boiling horror show that constantly had me wondering what was going to happen next. The opening of a camera zooming in on the house, and then slowly sweeping around the rooms added atmosphere before things even started, this brought to mind the beginning of The Evil Dead. Then for the films finale there is a sequence that reminded me a lot of the ending of Return of the Blind Dead, no bad thing.