get in, loser, it's spooky season: books & movies edition
my fave spooky reads
Hi hello hi. Welcome to my dungeon. I’ve got a few things coming soon, like my September “what I bought this month,” but as it’s officially October, I could not wait to share some of my favorite things with you—spooky books and movies.
Here are some of the ones I’ve been enjoying very much. Do you have faves? Do you hate my choices? Please, confront me in the comments.
28 Days Later
I only just saw this film for the first time, but man!
What’s great is that it’s not quite horror in a fully traditional sense. It blends a post-apocalyptic world, that does feature zombies, with a survival narrative and a found family road trip moment.
It is hard to find this film, to the point that I could only buy a DVD of it because I couldn’t find it at my local libraries or on any streaming platform. (And yes, that’s in my September “what I bought this month,” though it was a gift for my partner who really wanted to watch this.) But, for about $15, I got both this and its sequel.
So, for those that don’t know: in 28 Days Later, a virus (from chimps that are being tested on by humans (trigger warning for some violent chimp imagery, some animal testing imagery, and someone killing a chimp— I did cover my eyes for that part— in the first five minutes) moves to humans. The virus, though, is ostensibly one the humans gave them—humans filled the chimps with rage. Cut to the current vibe which is, well, bleak—humans have become infected with the rage virus, which is transmitted by blood, and if they’re infected, they become rage-y violent meat bags.
Enter our protagonist, Cillian Murphy—I think his name is Jim?—who wakes up post-coma or hospitalization and is like, “This is not my beautiful house. And this is not my beautiful wife. How did I get here?”
I kid, kind of. Again, I’d say if you do not like horror movies, but don’t mind some zombie action, this is a pretty great film either way. It has some jump-scare moments, but you usually know they are coming.
It by Stephen King (the book!)
I read my first Stephen King novel this year, which was Carrie. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I’ve never thought of King as anything like a hack, but I recently heard him described as “pop horror,” and I thought that was interesting.
Anyway, It. You probably know the rough gist of it: creepy sewer clown guy who just wants some friends to join him.
What I didn’t know, having not seen the film(s)—that’s next on my list—is the way that the novel is, for a good 1/3 of it, a series of vignettes. The story follows a handful of different people, and you don’t really know how it will all link up except a vague idea that they’re connected. This made the book really enjoyable. I will also recommend the audiobook, narrated by Stephen Weber, who does a superb job.
Major trigger/content warnings for fatphobia and racism—probably King’s most egregious offenses in this book, anti-semitic language, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, homophobia and violence against queer people described in graphic detail, and lots of blood and gore.
The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monika Kim
I read this book as an ARC, and I enjoyed it. First, the cover is amazing. Second, it really sticks with you.
In this book, our main character, Ji-won, is the oldest daughter of a family that’s recently been up-ended. Her dad leaves his family, and her mom, and sister, are super destabilized. Since Ji-won wants to do everything she can to support her mom—in part because she thinks her mom’s despair may be, well, reaching dangerous levels—it leads to a weird set of circumstances when her mom starts dating a miserable white man who forces himself into their lives.
But, more than that, Ji-won finds herself having strange impulses. . . and she’s not sure she can control them for much longer.
Trigger/content warning for body horror, cannibalism, violence, fetishization and sexualization of Asian women and teenagers by adult men, and stalking.
Mary by Nat Cassidy
Nat Cassidy is someone who I’m pretty sure I’ve actually met a few times in the New York theatre scene because he’s a playwright, and I (was/am?) a part of that scene. I doubt he’d remember me at all, but tickle me surprised when I found his novels and realized he was the same person I’d previously run into. Earlier this year I read and enjoyed Nestlings, but I’ve been especially delighted by Mary, which I find a more sinister, upsetting tale that I love a lot.
Mary is a 49-year-old woman who is staring down a world, that could give a fuck about her. She’s talked down to by basically everyone, her young coworkers at the local bookstore think she’s old and out of touch, and her landlords are probably going to kick her out and sell the building. On top of that, she keeps. . . seeing things. Like, when she looks at women her own age, their faces seem to melt off. In a rotting kind of way. It’s unsettling, to say the least. But when she asks her doctor, he’s like, “You’re not sleeping well, plus you have perimenopause. Take two sleeping pills, call me in the morning.”
When Mary’s troubled—and troubling—aunt Nadine calls her, begging for her help because aunt Nadine is dying, Mary figures she has nothing to lose, and goes back to the unsettling, tiny town of Arroyo, Arizona.
The audiobook, narrated by Susan Bennett, is very good.
Content warning for lots of misogyny (especially against women over 40), light homophobia, descriptions of blood and gore, one imagined sequence of animal murder, and hallucinations and ghosts.
Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable by Sarah Gerard
This is a memoir with a heavy dose of “true crime,” which is a genre I don’t really partake in. I read an ARC of this, and it’s really stuck with me.
The author knew Carrie, a young woman who she knew at college, who she finds out is murdered. Carrie and the author operated in similar circles as adults in New York City, and the strange series of events surrounding Carrie’s life, legacy, and murder haunt the author—who is a legit detective in addition to being an author. It’s very unlike most “true crime” I’ve ever read, and it spends a good amount of time exploring the life of Carrie and her experiences in the world—it’s humanizing, written with a literary lilt, and very unputdownable.
Stay tuned for more spooky-themed reads of the month, including a reread of some classic Goosebumps novels and some other books and films.
What are some faves you’re enjoying this spooky season? I’d love some recommendations!