Film Review: In the Earth (2021)

As part of my October horror reviews, I’ve been scouring all the streaming services I have access to in order to find films I’ve never heard of before. I found In the Earth on Netflix and the premise caught my eye immediately. After several months of no contact from his colleague, Dr Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), soil scientist Martin (Joel Fry) volunteers for a research project in a quarantined forest in order to find her. With park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia), Martin’s attempt to find Dr Wendle leads them both into danger when they encounter Zach (Reece Shearsmith), but he isn’t the only danger lurking in the woods.

Joel Fry (left) as Martin and Ellora Torchia (right) as Alma

The film was made during the pandemic and it adds such a creepy, dystopian vibe to the whole thing. The coronavirus itself is not mentioned, only the guidelines and quarantine procedures caused by an unnamed virus, which definitely adds to the timelessness of the film. The movie as a whole is more creepy and unsettling that overtly scary, and is an interesting take on folk horror mixed with recent developments in natural science. Directed and written by Ben Wheatley, In the Earth is a classic British horror, pared down and simplified to the basest elements with little music, very reminiscent of Eden Lake (which, if you haven’t seen it, I also highly recommend).

The film features body horror and brutal wounds in a way that isn’t gratuitous but is instead realistic, and doesn’t shy away from blood. I know horror as a genre, especially American horror films, tends to lean more towards grotesque and campy especially when it comes to blood and guts, but In the Earth takes itself refreshingly seriously. I did see one review complaining about the dialogue, but I found the writing to be realistic and the flow of the conversations very lifelike, so maybe it’s a cultural thing. I will say though that the cast carries this film 100% of the way, even if the plot falls apart towards the third act.

As with most of the films this month, I did crochet while watching this. It turns out that’s not ideal for this film, as it relies heavily on surreal visual montages and atonal sounds, particularly in the last half. Though the plot was not watertight, I will commend Wheatley on his use of long shots with a slow zoom; they add to the intensity and are physically uncomfortable to watch. This film is absolutely not for anyone affected by strobe lighting, as in the second half the film nearly entirely becomes a rave, and the combination of the lights and sounds left me with a headache long after the credits rolled.

In the Earth is an interesting mix of ritual and science, and is ideal for anyone who prefers the journey rather than the destination, and those who are looking for horror films that take themselves seriously.

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Book Review: When the Night Bells Ring, by Jo Kaplan

I was offered a copy of this book with a request for an honest review. This review may contain spoilers.

There are several things I’m scared of: heights, clowns, wax figures, and caves, to name a few. I’m lucky in that most of these make for a good horror novel, and I love to be scared. The most effective? Caves. There’s something about the darkness and the claustrophobia, the isolation and the silence, the ease with which you can get lost beneath the ground, that makes for excellent horror, and When the Night Bells Ring was no exception.

The story itself is pretty simple: two women fleeing climate change find themselves in a ghost town and venture into the abandoned silver mines to find water, only to lose their way in the darkness. They find a diary written 150 years before and read it in the hope of finding a way out within its pages. What they discover instead, while battling dehydration and infection, is that they might not be alone within the mines after all.

Kaplan has created a really effective and engaging horror, and despite the simple premise, the story packs a hell of a punch. It made me not want to sleep at night, both because I wanted to know what happened and because I didn’t want to be alone in the dark. Though Waynoka and Mads’ storyline was told in brief interludes between diary entries, it was by far the scariest part of the novel. The descriptions of the mine and what lies inside are evocative and powerful enough to make the hair on the back of my neck rise just thinking about them.

That’s not to say the diary is boring. Not only is it written incredibly well, feeling like real diary entries, but considering it’s the bulk of the novel, it never feels like the two stories are disjointed. The fabric of one story intertwines brilliantly with the other until you cannot separate the two; while I imagine reading the diary alone would be a fantastic mystery, it would feel incomplete without the conclusion provided by the Dust Devils. The characters in the diary are rich and jump off the page. You cannot help but feel sorry for Lavinia even as the town turns against her. Virgil as a setting is so well done and engaging. It really felt like the inclusive, insular small community turning against outsiders even over their own survival.

And let’s not forget the creatures! I’m not sure what they could be called; for once even I, collector of odd folklore, am unsure if they are based off real stories or just a fascinating twist on an old classic. If they are a product of Kaplan’s imagination, then they are a brilliant example of evolution and worldbuilding, well-suited to the desert environment and utterly terrifying. If they end up being based on real folklore, then I would be delighted to learn more about them.

All in all, When the Night Bells Ring is the perfect read for those dark October nights, for anyone who loves villains or hates caves, or any horror aficionado.

Check out When the Night Bells Ring on Amazon and Goodreads.

About the book

Don’t awaken what sleeps in the dark.

In a future ravaged by fire and drought, two climate refugees ride their motorcycles across the wasteland of the western US, and stumble upon an old silver mine. Descending into the cool darkness of the caved-in tunnels in desperate search of water, the two women find Lavinia Cain’s diary, a settler in search of prosperity who brought her family to Nevada in the late 1860s.

But Lavinia and the settlers of the Western town discovered something monstrous that dwells in the depths of the mine, something that does not want greedy prospectors disturbing the earth. Whispers of curses and phantom figures haunt the diary, and now, over 150 years later, trapped and injured in the abandoned mine, the women discover they’re not alone . . . with no easy way out.

The monsters are still here―and they’re thirsty.

About the author

Jo Kaplan is a Los Angeles based writer and professor. She is the author of the haunted house tale It Will Just Be Us and also writes under the name Joanna Parypinski. Her work has appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Haunted Nights edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton, and Bram Stoker Award nominated anthology Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors. She teaches English and creative writing at Glendale Community College.

Film Review: Last Night in Soho (2021)

I’ve gone through a phase of not watching anything recently, so this October I’m trying to watch more horror content. This film was picked on a whim – to be perfectly honest, I didn’t realise this was a horror at first. It feels a little more like a paranormal thriller.

Directed by Edgar Wright, Last Night in Soho manages to combine ghosts and the fear of a lack of control with the genuine scares of living in university halls. After she moves to London to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer, Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) begins to have dreams and visions of Soho in the 1960s, following the ravishing Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) as she tries to achieve her dream of becoming a singer. In London, Sandie meets the charming Jack (Matt Smith), and as her life spirals downward, Ellie finds her own life falling apart.

Reflections and mirrors feature prominently and are woven throughout the film. Ellie’s slow breakdown manifesting through frustration with her art was done so well, and was really relatable. Both McKenzie and Michael Ajao (John) were incredible in their roles, and throughout the entire film was a brilliant rhythm underlying every movement and piece of dialogue.

The scares are mostly paranormal and CGI, with an ominous atmosphere in a few scenes. There is quite a bit of blood for an otherwise gore-free film, but overall the horror elements were more subtle with no jump scares, giving the film more of a neon thriller vibe.

Spoilers in the next paragraph!

Anya Taylor-Joy (left) as Sandie and Thomasin McKenzie (right) as Ellie

I did find the ending kind of underwhelmed the overall message in the beginning of the film. Sandie was the one who had been coerced into prostitution and was the victim, yet the ghosts were the ‘wronged’ ones. It does open up a whole ethical discussion that I won’t get into here, but it’s interesting that, although these men participated in the oppression and abuse of a young woman, they are the ones needing saved from her resulting rage. The final shots of Ellie seeing both her mother and Sandie in the mirror brings the story full circle and is a satisfying end to the film.

All in all, Last Night in Soho is an enjoyable film for beginner horror fans, but lacks on the scares and doesn’t quite deliver on what the first act promises.

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My first dive into horror theatre: Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning

The title of this blog post is a little bit of a lie; this was actually the second horror theatre production I’ve seen. However, I completely forgot to blog about the first one, so we’re running with it.

I was never into the theatre growing up. The emphasis was on acting, singing and dancing, and I didn’t have the physical grace to excel at any of those. Even in the mandatory school drama classes, we focused on acting rather than producing or writing. It wasn’t until last year, when I took an advanced creative writing module for my degree, that I finally realised the flexibility and beauty of theatre as an art form. Since then, I’ve waded through the shallows of dramatic production, adapting short stories into screenplays and going to shows that I would otherwise be too intimidated to attend alone, including the Edinburgh Fringe festival. The theatre scene where I live is small, and so I’ve been keeping an eye on the local theatre’s website for anything remotely interesting that comes up, usually tours of musicals and the odd ballet, nothing particularly horrifying, but last month I finally found something that was right up my alley.

Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning is the bloodcurdling classic rewritten through a non-masculine lens. I went in knowing it was slightly altered, the setting changed to 19th-century Aberdeenshire where Bram Stoker lived for several years, the dialogue changed to Doric rather than English, and the tale of Dracula itself wrapped up in the framing device of a women’s asylum, but I thought it would otherwise be a fairly straight-forward retelling of the story.

I was wrong, but in the best way.

I read Dracula itself for the first time a year or so ago. I enjoyed it, taken aback by the epistolary style of the novel, but was left feeling a little let down by the absence of Mina Murray. She tied the characters together, she compiled the journals and articles, and she led the men to Dracula himself, and yet as a character she felt… neglected. Underdeveloped. An afterthought.

Morna Pearson, the writer, strips the novel down to Mina, the most important part of the story, and builds it back up from there. Mina is the main characters, the one we follow all along, the one who develops the most, shaped by the world she inhabits and the situation she finds herself in. The first act follows the novel pretty much faithfully, but the second act is where things go off. I had never considered the implications and ideas she raises but they have consumed me entirely since the play’s standing ovation three nights ago.

Pearson, of course, did not create this masterpiece alone. The cast, all either female or non-binary, are electric, the ultimate force breathing new life into a century-old classic. They give evocative and nimble performances, none more so than Danielle Jam, who plays Mina, and Liz Kettle, our eponymous Dracula. Pearson explains that she shaped the characters around the cast, and they bring so much life to their characters, both in the framing and in the story itself. Maggie Bain’s performance in their dual roles in particular is unparalleled; they slip between the detained asylum patient and the arrogant, misogynistic Dr Seward with so much ease as to be almost scary, down to the tiniest movement of their characters. Jam is a marvellous Mina and I will not be able to read the novel again without hearing her voice as the narrator. As the feared Count, Kettle glided across the stage with ease, bringing chills every time she emerged from the smoke and fog.

Danielle Jam as Mina Murray (left) and the asylum patients: (back, left to right) Maggie Bain, Natalie Arle-Toyne, Anne Lacey, (front, left to right) Ros Watt, and Ailsa Davidson.

The play doesn’t hold back on the horror either, featuring plenty of jump scares and Gothic imagery from the second the curtains open. The staging is built phenomenally well, a static structure that is somehow incredible versatile and transformative, used to the fullest extent. The framing device gave the story a circular narrative, which I love, and yet subverted the usual tragic associations. The actors’ movements, choreographed by Vicki Manderson, flowed so smoothly and naturally as to appear unrehearsed.

If I hadn’t seen it the last night it was showing in my local theatre, I would have gone back every performance to watch it again. It was a truly powerful performance, with the strongest cast and stunning visuals. It was the kind of performance that makes me want to write, just in case I can create something remotely as good as this. It was absolutely stunning, and if you have the chance to see it, please go. You’ll thank me later.

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