repulsive or scary?

I watched "Black

Swan" on DVD last night - too enthralled to turn it off and too horrified to react.

Not a horror movie - but a repulsive one with a curious resemblance to "Human Centipede".

Then there was Barbara Hershey as the scariest mother in any movie ever.

I find myself comparing this to "Insidious". A haunted house movie with no sex, no gore, no modern special effects, only one death - and lots of fear.

I wasn't the only one screaming screaming out loud at the showing of "Insidious". The feeling afterwards was mostly pleasure, having worked out the sympathetic nervous system and flooded ourselves with catecholamines - all for a minor but well crafted, honest scary movie.

Evan is ready

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1160186.ece

high class zombie essay

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/our-zombies-ourselves/8401/

Jody said I should see The Collector

And it is pretty good. Something of a "Saw" imitation, but with a few elegant touches that won me over.

The best of the traps, literally a trap, a room full of bear traps. Reminded me of a routine Penn and Teller do with animal traps.

And (unless I was out admiring the super moon), we never see more of the monster than this. Few horror movies can manage such restraint.

not a good idea

I fell asleep watching a DVD of Inception. Dreaming...

Netflix understands me

Today Netflix told me that, based on my movie ratings, they had created a special category for recomendations for me.

GORY VIRAL PLAGUE HORROR MOVIES

That's right.

when college professors write horror

I remember reading Stephen King's"The Stand" when it first came out and thinking, "This is a great plot. If only there were some characters this would be a great book."

Now Justin Cronin has written that great book. And its the first of a trilogy! With characters, dialogue, a vibrant imagined society, very scary monsters - everything you could want in a good novel. An entire vividly imagined world. This is wonderful.

It doesn't look like Kim Paffenroth is going to make millions of dollars with "Valley of the Dead" but it is a strange and lovely zombie tail. He re-imagines Dante as a survivor of a zombie apocalypse, journeying through circles of zombie hells. The result is moving and elegant.

Now that I think of it, real writers and academics have everything they need to produce superior horror. Anyone versed in the Bible, Herman Melville, The Illiad and the Odyssey, and Shakespeare already has all the horror tropes. And the skills to make them come alive.

This is a wonderful trend and I hope to see a lot more of it.