The Ricochet Reviewer: Books, Movies, and Comics

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 by Jack Finney Dr. Miles Bennell and Becky Driscoll realize that the population of their small town is being replaced by emotionless duplicates.  Everyday routines continue, but neighbors become harder to recognize and trust.  Jack Finney makes ordinary social life feel unstable—friendships, relationships, even confidence in one’s own perceptions—and the book works as a thriller, with escalating pressure and a pace that keeps the plot moving.  Jack Finney You can read it as a story about the horrors of conformity and loss of freedom, but it also functions as a propulsive genre narrative.  Finney denied a political message in his story, calling that “balderdash” and saying he wrote it “purely as a good read.”  I didn’t expect the novel’s ending to be as optimistic as it is, and though it is more believable than the hopeful wrap-up of the 1956 film version, but I still prefer the harsher ending of the 1978 film adaptation.  One h...

HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 by Gary Gentile Newspaper reporter Elaine Adams discovers a story in South Jersey’s Pine Barrens when a human skeleton is accidentally exhumed.  This and other acts of violence seem to be connected to a reappearance of the local nightmare—the Jersey Devil.  It is the latest spike in a repeating pattern, because people haven’t only been dying lately; they’ve been disappearing for years, even decades.  Author Gary Gentile is on pretty solid ground when delivering direct, pulpy horror.  The problem is that he keeps slamming on the brakes for dramatic interludes where every conversation runs two or three pages too long.  That bloat also puts his weaknesses under a spotlight, and the characterization is sometimes truly awful—especially with the women. I never call women "whores," but there is one character here who can only be thought of as “the whore,” because that’s plainly how the author thought of her: cartoonishly sexualized and described ...

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 by Algernon Blackwood The novella first appeared in this collection. A hunting trip in the Canadian backcountry goes wrong when something in the woods notices the men and starts to close in. They are well beyond any road or settlement, and author Algernon Blackwood never lets us forget how far they’ve gone, that they’re swallowed by country that barely seems mapped—miles of trees, waterlogged ground, lonely lakes. Algernon Blackwood  That landscape isn’t just a backdrop; it’s the real subject of the story. The forest comes across as immense and utterly unmoved by human presence, an environment that will keep existing long after these men—and their little campfire—are gone, so the fear becomes less about a creature in the shadows and more about being absorbed into that huge, uncaring space. The “monster” feels like an expression of the place itself, a way for the woods to reach out and claim someone. The characters are drawn more as clear POVs than deep...

HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Writer: Mike Friedrich Artist: Paul Gulacy Inker: J. Abel First, let’s get reintroduced to Michael Morbius and his terrible curse. I like the idea that Morbius is capable of “softening” his attack so that it is not necessarily fatal, but that he must also get away quickly so his overwhelming hunger does not compel him to finish his victim off. A couple of holy men, Reverend Daemond and Rabbi Krause, who is also a scientist, stumble upon Morbius as he rests, and his reaction to them is not typical for him. They attempt to help him with discouraging results. Calling on Satan appears to get results where science fails. Now that Daemond has control of the Living Vampire, it appears that Rabbi Krause has no further use. Reduced to a state of servitude, Morbius is sent to assassinate a rival. A good fast-paced tale, a bit too padded with flashbacks despite its short length. Paul Gulacy really does an exceptional job of portraying Morbius's feral, desperate hunger. ...