Category Archives: Book

An Exorcism Exception

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So, while I love a wide variety of horror content across all sub-genres and media, one kind of story tends to rub me the wrong way: the possession-exorcism (though just last week, I did write about an interesting take on the subject). Sure – they can be really creepy, there are a couple of classic examples that are really great, well made movies, and it is a very, very popular theme, but it almost always turns me off. They often leave an aftertaste of proselytization, seemingly advertisements for the Church, Catholic or otherwise (in recent years, the Warrens led Conjuring films have been notably unpleasant examples, though they primarily present as hauntings).

Now, there are other kinds of films dealing with demonic or diabolical elements or religious imagery that don’t do this. I think it is because, while they may contain religious elements, they are not about (or even particularly in support of) religion the way an exorcism film can be. Van Helsing holding up a cross to ward off a bride of Dracula I can accept as a simple trope of Vampire fiction without feeling like it’s supposed to teach me to let Christ into my heart. Films can directly feature the Devil as an antagonist, but somehow Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, reveling in his bombast, or Black Philip in The VVitch asking if Tomasin wouldst like to live deliciously, don’t make me feel uncomfortable, as if I’d made the mistake of inviting in two polite, well-dressed chaps who want to give me the good news. I mean, sure, I generally want horror to make me uncomfortable – but not that way.

So what is it about this story? Why does it have this particular effect on me? On one level, a possession film is so often about someone in denial about the “truth” – that radical evil is real and that we are helpless against it without faith, specifically faith in “the Lord.” The story is all about this horrific realization on the part of a protagonist, whether the mother of the demoniac in question or a priest who has lost his faith and must regain it to prevail (both from the Exorcist), who only after accepting this knowledge has a chance of casting out the evil presence.  Scientific methods may be used to try to diagnose the problem, but they will all fail until the only remaining solution is that of the holy man with a cross. And oddly enough, I feel the filmmakers often may not even intend such a message or experience – they are just trying to tell a scary story and are thus leaning on certain generic conventions, but in so doing, the resultant film can have the vibe of a church basement Halloween Hell House – where they are having great fun creating horrible things (because that is, of course, fun), but it is all in service of scaring the visiting kids away from sin.

Maybe I’m overstating it, but it’s the feeling I get personally.

So if I’m so put off by possession narratives, why am I even writing about them? Well, because I have an exception here – a book that takes the story in a really different direction and delivers a totally distinctive tone. And sometimes, when you find a really good book, you just want to go door to door and tell people about it.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2016) by Grady Hendrix

First, I have to say – it is very hard to impossible to really get into what I think is so great about this novel without explicitly discussing the ending, and I feel it features a turn that really can be spoiled. I’ll give a fresh warning before I get to that part and if you think you might like to read the book, do yourself a favor and go pick it up before finishing this text. It’s a really quick read – the first time I did so, I tore through it in one sitting on a flight from Warsaw to NYC, only pausing for meal and bathroom breaks.  

Ok, so this is the story of Abby, whose best friend, Gretchen, gets possessed by a demon, which in turn, must be exorcised. By the end it is. Hooray. Simple, right? But where it is special is in the relationships between the girls.

We start when they first become friends on Abby’s tenth birthday party: an E.T. themed event at the local roller rink (spanning the years 1982-1988, 80s pop culture looms large in this story, very much the air that these friends breath, the idiom they speak – sometimes in shouting misheard Phil Collins lyrics, sometimes in playing Madonna dress up and getting in trouble with one religious mother who does not approve of the material girl, or in this case, just needing E.T. everything). Gretchen, the new girl in class, is the only one to show up, rather than going to a much fancier party being thrown by another kid she doesn’t know; somehow kismet strikes and they really click, thus starting a lifelong friendship. The book takes its time with this utterly non-scary but equally foundational episode, and then carries on taking its time with the next 5 years of the girls’ lives and friendship. I was surprised on re-reading it to find that this only makes up about 50 pages of the book – it had felt like so much more; really getting the connection between them, from running jokes to secrets shared, to embarrassing details of parents’ lives uncovered.

Then, when they’re 16, Gretchen gets possessed and everything goes wrong. The horror elements come quick and hard in this middle stretch: ominous, shadowy figures in the woods, owls bloodily slamming into windows, the feeling of a hand on the neck when no one’s there, creepy voices on the phone at night, beloved pets murdered, white fleshy worm things vomited out. Hendrix pulls no punches in delivering revulsion and shock. But he manages this while at the same time maintaining a somewhat blackly comic tone (I’ve read comparisons to Heathers). But the worst thing is in no way supernatural, but rather just the simple horror of your closest friend changing, betraying your secrets, becoming cruel, becoming someone you can’t trust, someone who hurts people, who is downright evil, and whom you somehow still love. Friendship and love necessarily entail vulnerability, and Abby has no walls to guard her from Gretchen’s malice. She doesn’t need much convincing to believe her friend is possessed by a demon.

So she finds herself an exorcist and now’s a good time to go pick up the book if you think you might like to read it. I’ll wait.

…

Ok, so here is where Hendrix’s book really distinguishes itself from the exorcism pack (and I’ll describe it even though you hopefully just finished reading it). Abby finds an exorcist, Brother Lemon – an earnestly absurd Christian weightlifter with whom she kidnaps, in order to save, her friend. In the process of the exorcism, the demonic presence reveals itself and we get all the typical supernatural spookiness and fluids. Now, Lemon knows all the steps but has never done this before and comes close to killing Gretchen before Abby stops him. He leaves in disgrace and Abby, alone with her friend and something else, has to finish the job.

She starts by following his playbook, reciting prayers and such. It’s kind of working, but she doesn’t believe these words. They are empty symbols for her, and finally, unable to abandon her friend, determined to go down with her if she has to, she finds the words that are true: the misremembered lyrics of a Go-Gos song that played at her 10th birthday party, a litany of singers or actors or shows or jokes or games they have watched or told or played together. The power of Christ might not compel this demon to leave, but maybe the power of Phil Collins can. The power of all the little references and memories, things they have loved and laughed over, secrets they have entrusted one another with. These are authentic things. Absurd and silly and seemingly inconsequential, and real. It is an amazing, exciting, moving sequence.

And it manages to make this the rare exorcism that works for me by basing it on something I can actually believe in. Faith may be necessary for the procedure, but faith need not be religious. Abby acts out of faith, not only in her friend, but in the very concept of Friendship, actualizing not only the love between them, but Love, itself: making out of the frivolous detritus of childhood, icons of power. This was the second time I read it and while the middle section of horrible events lost some effect without the element of surprise, the climax landed just as hard as it had the first time, on a plane, trying to both stifle guffaws and ugly crying – cause that’s kind of embarrassing sitting next to a stranger.

Grady Hendrix has been a really enjoyable discovery for me in the last few years. This was the first book of his that I’d read, but since then I’ve worked through the rest of his available output (some are sadly out of print) – covering a range of horror topics, but all with a kind of light touch – not necessarily comedy, but something humanistic and, for lack of a better word, fun. Whether exploring a haunted Ikea in Horrorstör, a Faustian heavy metal parable in We Sold Our Souls, following middle aged housewives hunting the undead in The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, or most recently, delving into the life changing trauma of being a survivor in The Final Girl Support Group, he offers interesting and entertaining spins on well-worn ideas, that come alive in character without sacrificing the horror. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is no exception.

Horror as Mirror – House of Psychotic Women

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So recently, I see a lot of attention rightfully being given to the excellent Folk Horror documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, released this fall and currently available on Shudder.  I made reference to it just last week. It is a comprehensive and thoughtful study of, if not exactly a genre (as it questions whether generic boundaries might usefully be set in this case), then a mood, a mentality of film.  The director, Kier-La Janisse, with a very wide range of filmic examples and drawing on a variety of critical, academic, and film practitioner voices, effectively surveys a rich international landscape of the meetings of folk culture and practices and horror filmmaking, sometimes revealing a lingering fear of the past, or of the inevitable future, or, particularly in those outside of the English tradition, simply drawing on elements of traditional folklore and thus exhibiting striking cultural specificities. It’s fascinating stuff.

This is not, however, Janisse’s first foray into cataloguing and analyzing an extensive collection of films.  I first encountered her oeuvre through her engrossing book, House of Psychotic Women: an autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films. I’d never really encountered a work such as this before.  At once deeply personal, grounded in thoughtful analysis, and wide ranging in its scope, it walks quite a line between memoir, scholarship, and compulsive fandom.

Janisse focuses on “horror and violent exploitation films that feature disturbed or neurotic women as primary or pivotal characters,” films with which she has a very personal relationship, with which she has been obsessed throughout her life as a mirror of her own personal struggles. The appendix alone (which actually comprises about half the book, presenting short descriptions of all the included movies) is worth the price of admission, lucidly detailing a tremendous number of films (some at least heard of by a mainstream audience, but many quite obscure, even to genre enthusiasts) through a reflective and compelling lens and inspiring the reader (or, at least me) to seek out as many as it is possible to find. She approaches each respectfully, on its own terms, however artistically serious or exploitively irreverent its own creators may have considered it. From Troma productions to the New French Extremity, from Rape-Revenge flicks to Austrian Art House cinema, and far, far more, these films are taken seriously and appreciated as meaningful artifacts of psychological life, of shared culture.

But the first half is really the heart of the book.  Here, Janisse neither approaches the films chronologically nor generically, but rather, autobiographically, bouncing from one to the next as it is more or less useful for reflecting on some aspect of her own life, of her own character, of her own story. Her project is nicely set up in the preface:

“Over the past ten years I started keeping a log of these films, accompanied by rambling, incoherent notes and occasionally wet pages. I have drawers full of these scribblings: they’re spilling out of manila envelopes in my closet and they’re all pieces of a puzzle that I have to figure out how to put together. But my starting point was a question, and that question presented itself easily: I wanted to know why I was crazy – and what happens when you feed crazy with more crazy.”

The result is anything but rambling or incoherent, but it is unlike any kind of film criticism or description I’d read before (it’s possible that something like this has long existed in some kind of academic-adjacent circles, but it was new for me). The work is richly researched and informed by a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of film history and a kind of scholarly rigor, but it is utterly led by the personal; it is absolutely a program of self-inspection, explicitly and shamelessly subjective in its view of the films under discussion, and then, in turn, using those films as tools to interrogate the author’s own thoughts and choices, all while investigating how and why those films have had such a draw for her – what functions they have served.

Janisse is unflinching in presenting her own struggles with depression, substance abuse, self-destructive behavior, and, in fact, outwardly destructive tendencies. Her relationships with family and friends and lovers all come under the microscope as necessary elements of analysis. There is horror in the films, in her story, and in the act of self-revelation. And somehow, as an author, she pulls off this trick wherein her life’s very real difficulties illuminate the films being discussed just as much as those films shed symbolic and psychologically enlightening light upon those very trials and tribulations.

As someone who has taken up a project of writing about horror, discussing the material that I am so often drawn to, this book is as inspiring as it is intimidating. To approach the content from such a personal place, all while really doing the work, both in terms of research and in terms of self-analysis, is an impressive and moving feat. And it seems such an effective way of discussing the material.  We already sail an endless sea of film criticism, literary theory, movie reviews, and fan responses. And all of those can be fine things – I certainly consume my fair share – I also, in this blog, seek to contribute something as well. But it is noteworthy how novel her peculiarly intimate approach is, naturally offering what nobody else can, as nobody else has lived her life. It is a great reminder that anyone with thoughts, responses, and feelings has something to add to the conversation (but also, that it is best added with real precision and thoughtfulness).

Furthermore, the book is just beautiful. From the cover, drawing on imagery from Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, to the sensational vast array of black and white film stills and posters that are peppered throughout, to the 30-something full color pages in the center of the book, collecting striking poster art and images from the referenced films, the whole volume is an art-object, deserving a place on any coffee table. If only I had one…

—

Just as an aside, speaking of mentally unstable female characters in films, thanks to the Gaylords of Darkness podcast bringing it to my attention, last night I watched the 1952 Marilyn Monroe thriller Don’t Bother to Knock (directed by Hammer and Amicus mainstay, Roy Ward Baker) and wow, it is a treat.  I don’t really want to describe it much as I think it’s better to go in cold, but apparently, it was her attempt to be taken seriously as an actor and not only a sex symbol starlet and it is a striking, off kilter performance in an interesting, odd, and sometimes quite tense little picture.  I hadn’t even heard of it before, so if you can find a copy somewhere (and I see it’s available to rent on many platforms in the US – I can’t speak for other markets), I think it’s worth your time.

Hunted by the Past

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So when I first set up this blog, I created three main categories to go in the sidebar: Film Reviews, Theory, and Books.  And somehow one of these has gotten pretty well populated and the other two remain rather sparsely so.  I guess the thing is that everything takes time.  If I write about a film, I probably watch it once to enjoy it and then a second time to take notes and consider it before sitting down to write.  Depending on the length of the film, that’s about 4-6 hours of pre-writing prep.  But if it takes me a couple of weeks (or sometimes longer) to finish a book, it’s daunting to go back to the beginning and start all over again. Anyway, I just finished reading something. I really liked it. I hope you don’t mind that these are first impressions.

The Only Good Indians (2020) by Stephen Graham Jones

Assuming that, like myself, many readers here may see more horror films than read horror books, I’m going to try to be a bit more careful here about spoilers.  So the story largely follows four Blackfeet men who in their youth carried out a bad piece of hunting, going after a herd of elk in an area reserved for elders of the tribe and killing them en masse in a bad way, slaughtering more than they could ever actually use, cruelly and disrespectfully (It’s hard to imagine truly respectful killing, but this is the opposite).

Over the next ten years, they all find themselves haunted by the ghost of that day, both in an emotional/psychological manner and in a really quite literal sense.  Something has come back, something that longs to hunt them down and pick them off one by one, after ensuring that they each taste something of the terror and tragedy they had wrought so glibly as young men.

Yes, they are being haunted by an elk.

It doesn’t sound that scary, but the story is often unsettling and there are some turns that are absolutely brutal.  This avenging presence takes its time and really works its way under their skin. 

A large portion of the book is given over to following one of the four, Lewis, who has moved off the reservation, married a white woman, and gotten a job at the post office.  He has obviously taken steps to leave his past behind him, but it lingers. He is torn by ambivalence regarding his heritage, his past actions, and the people he’s walked away from.

Roughly ten years after the carnage of the inciting incident, which resulted in the four friends being banned from hunting on tribal lands and Lewis and one other deciding it was time to leave the reservation, he flashes back to that day and from then on, starts feeling like he is being watched, toyed with, that he can’t trust the people in his life.  I don’t think it is too much of a spoiler (I already said they were being haunted) to say that he’s right, but the way it plays out, it is easy to doubt. He really goes round the bend, descending into a self-destructive and violent paranoia. I mean, he is basically right about everything, but he is also, by the end of the first part of the book, quite mad, dangerously and tragically so.

Really – some of this gets pretty rough.

It is at this point that the worm turns and what had been merely a vengeful presence, a memory, a sadness becomes embodied—taking physical form and implacably seeking her revenge.  Here the book also takes a stylistic departure, shifting between a third person narration of the actions of Lewis, Ricky, Cassidy, and Gabriel and a second person, speaking directly to the elk-woman or Po’noka:

“What you do after you’ve made your hard way back into the world is stand on the side of the last road home, wrapped in a blanket torn from a wrecked truck, your cold feet not hard hooves anymore, your hands branching out into fingers you can feel creaking, they’re growing so fast now.  The family of four that picks you up is tense and silent, neither the father nor the mother nor the son saying anything with their mouths, only their eyes, the infant just sleeping.”

It is a striking turn and initially took some getting used to, but it has an interesting effect throughout the rest of the novel as, from one line to the next, the narrative may shift, situating the reader in the position of the killer, the aggrieved party seeking retribution, while still readily identifying with these four guys, all well drawn, each deeply flawed, but trying to do better—utterly human, and hence unforgivable, two legged, rifle carrying threats from the perspective of the elk.

I don’t want detail the events of the plot because there is effective suspense here, and the book is worth reading, but thematically it is interesting and rich. It may even be somewhat muddied, but maybe that’s good.  This exploration of guilt, native identity, nature, responsibility, respect and disrespect, historical violence, revenge, inconsolable pain that can’t be forgotten, a past like a millstone round the neck, and the question of a future freed from that weight is all the more rewarding for the fact that it is messy like life and not clear like a political tract.

We have endless cycles of harm having been done – to the environment, to a people, to animals, and to individual humans who repent their misdeeds, who love the people in their lives and whose loss will, in turn, harm others.  And there is a sadness that lingers, a guilt.  Life on the reservation feels bleak, a dead end road for those who stay, but life off the reservation feels like abandonment, like erasure. Everyone has done wrong in one way or another and it is not clear if forgiveness is ever possible—of oneself or of others.

And that is life, right? We take things for our own need and others are harmed and we move on. Every minute of the day. But the book asks us to pause and dwell in that space for a moment, to consider repercussions, to have a moment of recognition for the horror another has experienced.

There’s a moving passage late in the book wherein the daughter of one of the four comes across the site of the initial hunt and comprehends it in a very personal way:

“But, that story being true, it also means—it means her dad really and truly did this, doesn’t it? Instead of being the one down in the encampment, bullets raining down all around, punching through the hide walls of the lodges like she knows happened to the Blackfeet, to Indians all over, her dad was the one slinging bullets, probably laughing from the craziness of it all, from how, this far out, they could do anything, it didn’t even matter.”

It’s a heart breaking moment of horrific realization. And it is only with that, it is only by reckoning with the crimes of the past, that there can be any hope of, if not resolution – perhaps that’s not possible—restitution neither—but some kind of forward movement, growth—life. And this is true regardless of whether we’re talking about an elk hunt gone wrong or any of the endless inherited traumas of human social life. Our history is full of horror and if we never open ourselves to it, endure it, build empathy out of it, and seek in whatever limited manner we can to heal from it, we will doom ourselves to carry it without end.

Anyway, it was a solid read. I recommend it strongly and am eager to check out something else by Stephen Graham Jones.  I understand his new book, “My Heart is a Chainsaw” is supposed to be worthwhile.  Perhaps I should add it to my basket.

The Imp of the Perverse

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It’s a busy time for me right now. I’ve started this blog and besides writing, I need to stay on top of self-promotion. I’m working on a new show and there are texts to write and learn, rehearsals to organize and run, and tentacles and monsters to stitch together (more on that in another post). And of course, I also have to work (preparing and giving classes and doing proofreading) and earn money to keep myself in bandwidth, liquid latex, and fake fur. And yet, the other night I watched four episodes of a TV show that I don’t even really like that much. Argh.  Why? Why would I do something so pointless?

I think good old Poe put his finger on it in his 1885 story, The Imp of the Perverse, which puts into words so clearly, a human tendency at the heart of so much of his writing, a tendency which may often go unconsidered. The overwhelming urge to perform an act precisely because it is the wrong thing to do:

“I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse — elementary.”

Perverseness

The story is an odd one, but I love it.  For the first half, it comes across as a treatise on this psychological element, its narrator (who I had first assumed to be Poe-as-essayist) expounding upon history’s failures to account for irrationality before describing and naming this drive and giving three familiar examples: the urge of a usually succinct and generally kind speaker to irritate his or her listener by blathering on in a circuitous manner (an urge which my wife could attest I sometimes indulge in—though, to be fair, I could never claim to be laconic to begin with), the temptation, when standing on a precipice, to take the plunge, and the penchant to put off till tomorrow that which we most want to do today.  His characterization of this procrastination is, perhaps, most striking in how true it rings.

“We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer…”

I can only assume based on my own experience of living, that this is a situation everyone has been in.  But maybe it’s just me and old Edgar…

Shortly after, the story takes a turn and becomes, well, a story.  The narrator is telling us all this to explain how he ended up in this cell, condemned to die.  Having committed a very well calculated and painstakingly carried out murder, which had gone off without a hitch, and after which, he had acquired a large inheritance and lived comfortably for years, the narrator had realized that the only way that he could ever be caught would be if he “were fool enough to confess.”  Following that epiphany, he could not stop thinking about it until he finally snapped and publicly declared his wrong doing.  Thus, it was this imp of the perverse that has led him to his doom.

First of all, it is a tasty bit of irony that our example here of the imp is not the drive that led him to kill, which had been fully rational, but rather, that which has led him to confess.  You might take for granted that a devil on the shoulder is more likely to needle someone into crime, into “sin,” but in Poe’s conception it is simpler and more broad.  Simply the wrong act.  The one for which there is no good reason, no motive.  The motive for the killing had been obvious—money. The motive for admission is not so clear—but it surely wasn’t guilt.

Broader application

In this, I think Poe captures a human truth which, to this day, can still go overlooked.  How often are characters in books, in films, on TV, written to be internally consistent, psychologically understood characters, driven by clear motivations.  We criticize the writing when that lapses. And yet, I don’t think that’s who we always are.  And it’s not merely a case of some kind of Freudian death drive, but that sometimes we act with no clear motivation at all. Sometimes we do something stupid, something cruel, something self-defeating, or just something odd or nonsensical simply because that is the thing that we do.

And this is not only a literary concern.  I remember circa 2010, reading an essay reflecting on the economic crisis at the time, which criticized modern economists’ continued reliance on an outdated and inaccurate figure from classical economic theory, Homo Economicus. First conceptualized by figures like John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith, this theoretical economic agent “acts to obtain the highest possible well-being for him or herself given available information about opportunities and other constraints, both natural and institutional on his ability to achieve his predetermined goals.”  A great deal of economic models have been based on this notion that en masse, people act out of rational, informed self-interest.

While people may be essentially self-serving, I think it unrealistic to state that we are, as a rule, rational or informed. Thus, forecasts, economic or otherwise, based on such expectations seem doomed to inaccuracy.  To be fair, there are many competing theories and Homo Economicus was already being criticized in Mill’s day, but the idea persists. We still expect ourselves and each other to have reasons for doing what we do.

Horror

So what about horror? This is a horror blog, after all.

Beyond the fact that this qualifies as a horror story (murder, madness, and what not), I think that any time that horror (film, writing, etc.) falls into being too rational, it can ring false. Or at the very least, it can feel flat. But when a taste of mystery is sustained, when we can’t see the whole thing, when it feels that there are depths we cannot plumb, it is that much richer; it has a chance of delivering that delectable shudder of the uncanny.

I mean, of course, there should be motivations. I’m not saying that we should abandon all sense of psychological causality and lazily just offer up any old thing without thinking it through, but if at the end of the story, a killer can honestly and exactly state their motivation, whether it be revenge, money, fame, or love, it often underwhelms, not doing justice to the staggering inferences of a word like ‘horror.’ In counterpoint, think of the final moment of The Strangers when the killers, asked why they have done these horrible things, simply answer, “because you were home.”  Chilling.

Horror is best when there is an element of not just the unknown, but the unknowable. And that need not mean abstract, tentacled, ancient, evil gods from another dimension. Rather, if a work brings us into contact with that which is unknowable within the human heart and mind, it can be most effective.