Posts

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006)

-
Image
Halloween Reviews 2026 by Max Brooks A collection of survivor testimonies compiled by a United Nations investigator after humanity has narrowly survived a zombie plague.  Author Max Brooks consciously borrows the oral history format from Studs Terkel’s The Good War, using that structure to provide a scope that a conventional narrative novel probably couldn’t manage.  Max Brooks Instead of following a small group of protagonists, the book moves across continents, cultures, and institutions, creating the sense of a much larger historical record.  Soldiers, refugees, bureaucrats, and politicians each contribute fragments of a bigger picture.  Brooks thinks through the implications of the scenario seriously.  "World War Z: The World War of Zombies" (Italian) Different political systems, cultures, and geographies respond in very different ways, turning the novel into a thought experiment about institutional failure, bureaucratic inertia, and how societies handle unco...
Post a Comment
Read more

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

-
Image
  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Director: Tod Williams Writers: Michael R. Perry and Christopher Landon and Tom Pabst, story by Michael R. Perry Stars: Sprague Greyden, Brian Boland, Molly Ephraim, Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Seth Ginsberg, Vivis Cortez, Jackson Xenia Prieto, William Juan Prieto When their home is ransacked, the Rey family (Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland, and Molly Ephraim) installs a security system with video cameras in every part of the house just in time to capture the paranormal events centering on their young son, Hunter.  I love the shaky-cam, docudrama genre, and I enjoyed the first film, but this one fumbled the ball.  It's not a complete disaster; the way its story dovetails with the plot of the first is quite clever.  Unfortunately, this one is too much foreplay without enough payoff.  It also stretches credibility too much at times in order to put certain events on screen; I don't think a teenage girl would talk into a camera the wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project: Second Genesis! (Adventure into Fear #21) (1974)

-
Image
  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Writer: Steve Gerber Artist: Gil Kane Inker: Vince Colletta  Letters: Tom Orzechowski Sent as a bloodsucking assassin by an occult priest who has taken hypnotic control of him, Morbius is shocked to discover the identity of his target. Although outrage over the atrocity he has been commanded to commit allows Morbius to break the spell, his own intrinsic bloodlust cannot be so easily dismissed. (Although the addition of Gil Kane to a book’s creative team almost always improves it, I must say that Paul Gulacy in the previous issue depicted Morbius’s hunger with a desperate savagery that Kane doesn’t even approach.) His prey, however, is not as helpless as he thought. She is able to manifest a future version of herself. Defeating (and feeding on) the warrior woman seems to cause injury to the child. Before Morbius can rush her to a hospital for a transfusion, a group of mysterious cowled figures intercept him with promises that they are her only hope. The...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Final Destination (2009)

-
Image
  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Director: David R. Ellis Writers: Eric Bress, characters by Jeffrey Riddick Stars: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Mykelti Williamson, Krista Allen, Andrew Friscella, Justin Welborn, Stephanie Honore  As in all the previous Final Destination films, a group of characters escape death after one of them experiences a premonition of a terrible disaster.  They spend the rest of the movie in a futile attempt to escape their fate.  I thought the first three movies were okay if you have a hankering for gory mayhem, but this one was so bad that I found myself thinking up my own horror franchise: a group of characters find themselves trapped in a film written by a lazy screenwriter and spend the rest of the movie in a futile attempt to escape their fate.  Fortunately, your attempts need not be futile: push STOP.
Post a Comment
Read more