Operation Deja Boo: Complete

We came, we revisited, we conquered our childhood fears. 

Deja Boo, we hardly knew ye! Over the past three weeks, intrepid writers here at Nerds of a Feather dug deep and revisited the (mostly) horror movies that scarred us — at least as far as we can remember. 

There are strange souls such as myself that enjoy horror as an adult and regularly consume visual media that frightens. Many others, meanwhile, tend to avoid them. I believe these two paths both stem from the same impetus: being scared as a child. One group wants to recreate that fearful sensation, while the other would be happy to never experience such things again. 

What decides who gets placed in what group, and why? The world may never know, unfortunately. From my experiences this month and the various posts by my brethren, it is very clear that kids are extremely susceptible to being spooked. This isn't anything new, of course. Kids are born into a world with zero context and absolutely wild imaginations. Every day, they're making sense of the world, and extraordinary or horrific things throw a lever into the burgeoning machine-works of their little brains. 

What's clear from our Deja Boo experiment is that our childhood fears tend to be focused on images, and not entire cinematic experiences. This makes sense, as even the scariest films have minutes upon minutes that are in fact not scary. But the images that get burned into young retinas and seared into our memories can remain for decades. What's even scarier is that you probably don't even have to have seen a movie to be scarred by it: commercials, posters, schoolyard chat, and the VHS boxes at the video store can also serve as triggers. 

This is what makes scary movies so, well, scary to kids. The potential for a fright lurks around every corner, and there's not much you can do to avoid it. Such is the vulnerable plight of being a young human in the world. 

As an adult, I pride myself on being unspookable. But here, I believe, is the perfect place to announce my caveat: I do not enjoy A24 horror. Midsommar? Absolutely not. Hereditary? I will never. Modern prestige horror is based on trauma, and the emotional beating these movies deliver upon viewers is intense, and one I do not enjoy. Not because I'm scared, but because it makes me feel...weird and sad. Some would say that counts, but I'm not so sure. 

Give me a haunted doll, a creepy house, or a bloody monster and I won't bat an eye. But the death of a person's entire family after tragic circumstances? I'm utterly destroyed and despondent. 

Perhaps that's what changes as you get older. The usual frights and scares begin to dissipate and are replaced by adult fears: job loss, cancer, and crushing guilt over past actions. The opening to Midsommar still wrecks me when I think about it (if you know you know). And this despite the fact that the film takes places in blazing white sunlight — not a shadow or monster around.

One thing that stuck out to me during my rewatches was just how often comedy and horror are combined, especially in the formative years of my youth. The 1980s horror genre was chock full of gallows humor, but at the time I was too young to grasp it. I'm not beating myself up here, most kids can't parse such opposite emotions. But I think the horror comedy genre is fascinating, and something I may want to explore next year in another series like Deja Boo. 

The concept goes back almost as far as horror itself, considering Abbott and Costello met nearly all of the Universal Monsters. Combining the two genres gives wide room to play with conflicting feelings, all while reveling in the absurdity that's created when they collide. Some are gross, some are hilarious, and some are psychedelic excursions into wackiness( looking at you, House).

Looking back on the films I and my fellow flock members revisited, I can say that it's a worthwhile activity to engage in during spooky season. I mentioned my quest to a few friends recently and everyone had a story about a movie they saw way too young that has stuck with them. It's comforting to know that we all have similar formative experiences as children, no matter where we grew up or how old we are. My generation had Child's Play, my mother's had Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and my grandmother's had The Blob. Kids today have 100+ years of horror cinema to be traumatized by, including brand new releases on streaming channels that are released weekly. 

For anyone curious about digging into their childhood psyche to revisit old fears, I highly recommend it. You're braver than you think. 

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POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Deja Boo: Poltergeist 2

The second entry in the Poltergeist trilogy is classic kid nightmare fuel, no matter how cheesy it may seem in retrospect

The very first Poltergeist came out in 1982 and had some serious chops: It was directed by Tobe Hooper (of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame) and produced by Steven Spielberg himself. It was a major success, and is universally beloved as a modern take on the haunted house trope.

Needless to say, neither of these two powerhouses returned for the sequel, Poltergeist 2. Does that make it any less enjoyable? No, I proudly say, as someone who loved this movie as a kid and who continues to enjoy it today as an adult.

It does, however, lose a bit of its gravitas. It turns from a quaint, supernatural movie about the horrors of suburban capitalism into a wild, twisty, culturally appropriating spookfest. Once again, I found myself not remembering key plot points in this sequel. Instead, I honed in on specific imagery that sticks with you long after the screen goes black.

The plot

The Freelings, having escaped from their former haunted house (now conveniently disappeared into another dimension), are living at the wife's mother's house. They're far from safe, however, as the main spirit they battled, a 19th-century apocalypse cult leader, continues to target young Carol Ann's life force. A Native American shaman named Taylor comes to their rescue, teaming up with everyone's favorite medium, Tangina Barron (of "This house is clean" fame from the original) to help the Freelings fight off the bad juju. There's not much more to it than that, and the movie consists mainly of scary scenes/monsters/otherworldly forces. They triumph in the end (seemingly). There's a third movie, but only Carol Ann and Tangina return—not even Craig T. Nelson could be bothered to show up.

What scared me then

Look, kids don't always know what's hokey. Sometimes, frightening imagery is enough, as we've learned over the course of this month. The most strikingly scary image in Poltergeist 2 is the main baddie: Reverend Henry Kane, played by Julian Bond. He is truly frightening, in a scary-Flannery O'Connor-preacher sort of way. He's ragged and scary, all rotten teeth and sallow skin.

When he starts singing "God Is In His Holy Temple," you can't help but feel like he's going to crawl out of the screen and kidnap you. He's a worthy villain, and Julian Bond is perfectly cast in this role. He's like biologically created to scare young kids about the terrors of elderly people.

The next scene that scared the living daylights out of me was the son/bathroom scene. The Freelings' teenage son is upstairs alone (yes, in the haunted house that his parents know about), attempting to shave when the dark spirit starts messing with him. The son's spindly orthodontic brace wires start spouting out of his mouth out of control, threatening to consume him as they expand and hold up near the ceiling. His folks come running upstairs to help him, battling the rogue braces wires before they reach the electrical outlet. This scene left a profound impact on me as a young child, and even more so once I reached middle school and got braces myself.

Once again, as I reexamine the past via horror memories, I realize that I was almost continually microdosing body horror. Maybe that's part of growing up: Realizing the gross and almost comical limitations of our corporeal forms.

Finally, I've remembered my entire life the absurdity of tequila worms. In the film, the father (played by Craig T. Nelson), very obviously is fighting alcoholism. At one point, as he's downing a bottle of the hard stuff to battle his demons, he imbibes the dreaded worm—only this time, it's possessed by the evil Reverend Kane, and the father thus becomes possesssed himself. He acts rudely, threatens his wife, and eventually throws up the tainted worm, which then becomes a horrific, tentacled monster.

This monster is a triumph of disfigured, circus sideshow proportions, and thus extremely memorable for children. Or rather, I remembered the worm growing into something monstrous and obscene even if I couldn't recall specific details about it now. But to this day, I've harbored a bit of a fear about mezcal, too.

What scares me now

Watching this as a 43-year-old, I can't say there's very much that scares me. The magical Native American trope bothers me more than any ghostly fright. The special effects are fine, in practicality, but don't particularly evoke much fear. As a fan of haunted house films, the Poltergeist movies are interesting. There's something inherently less scary for me when said spooky domicile is a California ranch. It's just less atmospheric than a broody, sprawling, black-and-white Victorian manse.

The only thing that I can still sort of defend is the depiction of the Reverend Kane. It's unsettling and creepy, no matter one's age. Cult leaders with an interest in little girls transcend time and space, and are always monsters. 

There's one other aspect that was a bit ahead of its time: the idea of a person being haunted and not just a locale. This would be echoed later in movies like Paranormal Activity, but it hardly pioneered the idea. Not being able to escape a haunting is at once harrowing and claustrophobic. Not being able to escape to the safety of a hotel or a family member's is insane. My father, a former Army Ranger and lifelong cop—and who I once thought invincible—once mentioned his greatest fear was a being he couldn't stop. That still holds true for me, I think, as the idea of an escapable spirit remains frightening.

Adults can scoff at the cheesiness of Poltergeist 2, as it's just good fun, but it's very easy to see why many scenes remain with kids who watch it.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Deja Boo: Child's Play

Child's Play still holds up after 40 years, and is a film that is most likely still scaring children into avoiding their dolls

This movie was the one. The one that caused me to forever fear dolls. Now, is it happenstance that I was also a tomboy in the late 1980s and didn't really like them anyway? We'll never know. But I can say that this movie personally traumatized me, and it's perhaps the scariest Deja Boo I'll personally revisit this month.

Since its release in 1988, Child's Play—or less formally known as "Chucky"—has spawned a franchise of six sequels, a TV show, and a reboot. I think it's easy to forget how chilling the first movie was back when it was just a standalone film. The intervening years have sort of Flanderized the demonic doll into a evil, sardonic toy version of Deadpool. That's okay, there's clearly an audience for this sort of thing.

But when you rewatch this first film that launched everything, it's an incredibly frightening supernatural slasher that sticks with you. Like with Killer Klowns from Outer Space, I don't recall ever sitting down and watching Child's Play from beginning to end when I was a kid. It was whispered about in playgrounds, featured in the lineup in the papery-thin HBO viewing guide that came in the mail, and stacked three deep in the horror section of my local video stores. That was plenty exposure for a young Haley to say absolutely not and bid adieu to even the innocuous Teddy Ruxpin that had previously been living in my room.

There's an easy explanation to why the idea of a haunted doll terrorizes children. They're things of comfort, given to you by a loving adult. They possess an emotional safety that binds you to them. If they suddenly turn on you and at the very least cause trouble—and at the very worst threaten you—you're liable to not be believed. It's only a doll, they'd say. Stop playing, Mom would counter.

Therein lies their fear.

The plot

Chucky is a possessed doll that comes to life in Child's Play, and finds his way via happenstance to the home of young Andy and his single Mom in Chicago. Chucky is the cartoon star of a popular kid's cartoon, and Andy is obsessed—he even has Chucky's trademark blue overalls in the form of pajamas (another terrifying thing to watch given the ubiquity of Chucky in pop culture now). His mom is struggling to stay afloat, but manages to buy a stolen Chucky doll for a song from a back-alley peddler.

Chucky eventually comes to life, and begins tormenting Andy and his family. We find out that Chucky is actually possessed by the soul of a local serial killer who, upon being shot up by a cop played by Christopher Sarandon, utters a magical voodoo incantation and sends his essence into a 2-foot doll.

As a possessed doll, he's not just there for a good time. He has Andy take him via the L train to a sketchy part of town where he can take vengeance on his former accomplice. He then goes and visits his voodoo master, who tells him that he can only come back to corporeal form if he says the incantation again in front of the first human to whom he revealed he was alive. In other words, he now has to kill Andy.

Andy, his mom, and Chris Sarandon eventually figure this all out, and manage to take him out—but not until after he's been kicked, stabbed, shot, and burnt (very Rasputin of him).

What scared me then

Honestly, it was more the idea and image of Chucky that got me more than any specific scene. Seeing a red-headed doll—even if only in brief swatches—was terrifying. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. There's a reason Chucky is up there in the mononym club like Michael, Jason, and Freddie. He's mean-spirited, vulgar, and has zero problem killing men, women, and children.

I think more than the idea of him, though, was his visage. All dolls to me are unsettling, really, but Chucky is beyond the pale. He's creepy when he's the happy, harmless, smiling version of the real-life doll. But when the serial killer's soul wakes up, he contorts the doll's face into an angry, twisted sneer, and the eyes glisten with hate.

It was scary then, and it's scary now.

What scares me now

First, I want to explore what's more disturbing: If Chucky's deranged-supernatural-serial-killer-possession origin was never discussed, or the fact that it is. I think the not knowing would be more disturbing actually, because it would be more like a random act of terror. Him having the backstory somehow makes him more human, I think, so for me it's a little less scary. Now, I still wouldn't want to confront either one, of course, don't get me wrong. But random acts of violence are inherently less upsetting than a situation (no matter how far-fetched) that can be explained at least a little.

The scene where Andy's mom realizes that this stolen doll she bought for her son is truly, evilly alive, is so stark and horrifying. She's looking over the box he came in, and then—the included batteries fall out. This thing has been talking and moving by itself. All of a sudden, all the things Andy's said Chucky's been saying and doing make a lot more sense. It's alive.

Seeing Chucky amble out in the wild, even at a distance, is discomfiting. There's a scene where Andy is watching Chucky run up some outdoor stairs towards him, knowing that Chucky will try to kill him. It's a brief scene, and some may call it a throwaway, but I found it oddly scary. You see this little bright red and blue doll scurrying up steps, moving on its own volition. It's scarier, to me, than any close-up special effect, because it just seems… real. There's an urgency to it that can't be shaken.

Towards the end of the movie, after they've tried repeatedly to kill Chucky, he gets burnt to crisp, all blackened wax and sooty skin. He's alive still, and at this point, at his most physically disgusting. I think this part is especially scary because not only is he a haunted doll, which is frightening because he resembles a real child, but he's also burnt beyond recognition. No one wants to imagine a badly burnt child, but that's exactly what he resembles. It's horrific, and it compounds the fear you've been facing all movie-long to this point.

Child's Play is an upsetting movie, and I feel a little justified in being such a scaredy cat about it in my youth. I dare any parent to let their child even know this movie exists—you'd have the same situation.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Deja Boo: Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Killer clowns are objectively scary, we'd all say. But somehow as a kid I couldn't realize what a joke this movie was.

Remember back in 2016 when creepy clowns started appearing all over the globe? It was easy for would-be scarers to do, because it seems like clowns are near universally frightening to many people. I was definitely scared of them as a kid, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space served no small part in this gigantic fear. 

I was fortunate enough to never be exposed to Pennywise from It, though I knew he was in the pop culture ether. No, my first exposure came from two things: an Emmet Kelley clown poster my own mother decided for some reason to hang above my bed, and a clown lamp that also appeared around the same time. They didn't last very long, and I definitely remember a dramatic scene when they had to be quickly removed. 

What scared me then

I didn't carry too much clown trauma going into the late '80s, but Killer Klowns from Outer Space became an HBO fixture, and therein lies my clown fright re-imagining. I do not remember watching it from start to finish ever, strangely enough, but I saw previews and clips while my parents were watching it on TV. I knew my parents enjoyed it, but they were in their late 20s and prone to enjoying dark comedies.

What I do remember, I remember in brief, impressionistic swatches, like some sort of modernist author from the 1920s. The absolutely horrific clowns (only later would I appreciate the extraordinary practical effects it took to bring them to life) are running amok in an unnamed city after their circus bigtop space ship crash lands on Earth. I remember the bright pink, cotton candy cocoons that enswathed their victims, and found myself feeling claustrophobic at the prospect.

Normal, everyday clowns are creepy enough, but these guys are grotesque, distorted, malevolent beings that kill and maim. No thank you.

There is also a slightly unhinged, rock and roll theme song titled the same as the film that is also somehow very disconcerting. It's slightly menacing, but also very, very catching.

This is all I really remember, honestly, about the movie, besides harboring a strangely antagonistic feeling towards it for 35 years. I haven't watched it since, but remember it being unsettling. As an adult, when I clicked past it while searching for movies on streaming platforms, I'd chuckle and say, "Oh, I'm not watching that ever again." And so it remained in the outskirts of my mind for a lifetime.

What scares me now

Reader, there is nothing scary about this movie. Yes, the clowns are gruesome, but if anything, I was in awe of the production value and how well-done they were. 

You may notice that I left out a plot subsection in this review, but I did this purposefully because there's not really one to speak of. The clown aliens crash land on earth, then start killing people. End of plot. It was so bad that I actually found myself watching it in 5-10 minute increments because it was just so boring. This is a win, I suppose, for my adult self and my lack of fear. It's nice to know that some things are just unable to be reconciled when you're young.

I honestly can't believe I didn't revisit this film for a lifetime because of a few poorly sketched clown memories. I approached it with an open heart, though. I found myself thinking about the premise itself — alien clown beings that have traveled the universe and are violent. Perhaps it's like the classic chestnut of a million monkeys with a million typewriters somehow managing to type out Hamlet. Maybe, in a million galaxies, a sentient, traveling species emerged as circus clowns, with popcorn guns and a penchant for balloon animals. Sure.

But after I mused poetically at this for a few moments, I began to just be annoyed. Even at 88 minutes, it dragged and dragged. The movie is mainly visual bits that relate to circus activities: at one point, a killer clown is entertaining passersby on the street with a shadow puppet show. As the grand finale, he makes a scary monster that leaps from the shadow and devours the watchers. To kill a killer clown, you need only take aim at his big red honking nose. 

I could go on and on, but it would only bore us both. Of all the movies I plan on watching for this Deja Boo series, I am most embarrassed by this one. There's no accounting for taste, I guess, and also no accounting for fear as a young, impressionable child. Clowns have firmly occupied a space in society as things of terror, and when you couple that with alien, murdering clowns, it's perfect fodder for an anxious child to latch on to. And latch I did!

Nuance is missing from a youthful perspective, as kids can't separate comedy from horror, and that's exactly what this movie is about: the hilarious results of killer alien clowns wreaking havoc on a small community. It worked with Halloween and Friday the 13th, and it worked (to some small, niche extent) with Killer Klowns from Outer Space. 

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Highlights:

• Not every movie has its own rock and roll theme song
• The commitment to the circus bits is admirable
• Great practical effects
• Not scary one bit

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Deja Boo: The Gate

A surreal '80s horror gem aimed ostensibly at kids is like if Dario Argento directed The Goonies

This is the scary movie for me—the one that has stuck most vividly in my mind since I was a child. Released in 1987, The Gate is a Canadian horror film that features a tiny Stephen Dorff in his pictorial debut. It's my first entry in our new Déjà Boo series, where we'll be revisiting the movies that made us squirm as kids.

The '80s were fertile ground for horror films, but this movie really has nearly every trope you could possibly want: monsters, demons, Satanic panic, body horror, zombies, minions, and rockets. It's jam-packed with spooky action that somehow landed only a PG-13 rating, though we all know that the censors were a bit looser back then.

The plot

Glen (Stephen Dorff) is a typical '80s kid—shy, uncool, but sweet—who wakes one morning to learn that the giant tree in his backyard has been struck by lightning. He and his friend Terry, a young metalhead, dig around in it and find geodes. Slowly, the hole starts getting bigger, and weird things start happening.

Glen's parents go out of town for the weekend, leaving him and his friend with Glen's big sister, who in true '80s fashion throws a house party. Unbeknownst to the kids, they speak the existence of a hellmouth into existence when words appear on a magnetic notepad. This, accompanied by the accidental sacrifice of the family dog into the hole, unleashes ancient gods that begin trying to escape.

The rest of the movie, I'll be honest, doesn't make a ton of logical sense. The kids battle off demons and ghosts that appear in the house, before Glen uses a toy rocket to defeat the final big bad.

I'm still not quite sure who the audience for this one was. Having the parents go away for the weekend is classic '80s kids-in-charge energy, and it's in good company with other movies like The Goonies and The Explorers.

But there are scenes and themes that are way too over the top for young folks, and I don't think it's cool enough for teenagers. Adults then? I'm still not sure. If it was aimed at kids, it's sort of an introduction to horror, in a sense. Nothing becomes repulsive to the extreme, but as a 10-year-old watching this, I was definitely microdosing body horror and Giallo vibes.

What scared me then

There are a few major scenes that have stuck with me over 30+ years, and they are honestly still creepy as hell. One is the scene in which Glen, having demonically grown an eye in the middle of his hand, has to stab it out with a shard of glass. I wouldn't have such a visceral reaction again to body horror until I was 13 and watched Nicholas Cage's character in The Rock stab a syringe straight into his heart as a poison gas antidote. These things stick with you, apparently.

The other scene(s) revolved around the animated/claymation minions from Hell. They gasp and run and claw and grab, all while being about 8 inches tall. Several scenes are gruesomely creepy, and evoke a more macabre Lilliputian from Gulliver's Travels.

Somehow I forgot completely about the scene where Glen, faced with an attacking, demonic version of his best friend, is forced to defend himself with only a Barbie doll. He manages to gouge out Terry's eye with the legs. Wild stuff. Sometimes The Gate is like Evil Dead 2, just absolutely insane but also kind of funny. See also: When Glen's sister straight-up yeets a boombox at a zombie to knock him down.

Another interesting thing I noted on this rewatch is how the film has two modes when it comes to sound: It's either complete silence, or foreboding instrumental dirges. The atmosphere, as a result, is always menacing, and it really serves to underscore the unease throughout the runtime.

What I noticed now

I can totally see why a young me found this movie scary, and I'm not sure any kid today could handle it any better. What struck me most now are the things that were a little quieter in the film. For one, the fact that the family dog dies and they don't even call their parents on their vacation to let them know. I find this near sociopathic-level behavior, and I say this as someone who adores Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead.

Not only does the dog die, but Glen's sister's wannabe boyfriend is tasked with taking him to animal control(!?!!?!). When he finds out it's closed, he simply returns to the house and dumps it into the hellmouth. Absolutely not.

Anyway, moving on. The subtle background aspects that permeate The Gate are quite spooky—bugs flocking to a windowpane at night, up close chainsaw noises, eerie mists. Even the shadows your own toys cast in the moonlight can be unnerving. I experienced this many times as a kid even with the most benign of playthings. I remember getting a 6-foot tall cardboard cutout of C3PO and being scared to death waking up to him for the first few weeks.

I also found that seeing a kid’s perception of their own house being haunted is especially upsetting. It's supposed to be a place of refuge and love, so when demons start attacking it, you can feel vulnerable. Glen is interesting because he's not a bland and angelic Carol Anne, but he's also not incredibly self-assured. He’s a Final Boy, except everyone else lives—they just don’t contribute to their salvation as a group. Only Glen gets them out of their demonic jam.

The movie ends on a high note, with all evil crises avoided. The house, of course, is utterly wrecked, and as an adult now, I am annoyed by how much I kept wondering what it would cost to completely redo a living room wrecked by Satan.

Highlights:

• A young Stephen Dorff's film debut
• It's basically microdosing body horror for kids
• Great depiction of Satanic panic and heavy metal
• The Goonies if Dario Argento directed it

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

New post series: Déjà Boo

Join as we head once more into the breach to face the spooky movies that terrorized us as children

Spooky season is upon us, and this year we’re launching a new series of reviews sure to frighten and delight. Following on the heels of 2024’s First Scare, where members of the flock dove into films of the horror canon they’d somehow managed to avoid thus far, Déjà Boo will send us back to revisit the movies that scared us as kids.

For some, this will mean movies that have since become comfort watches, as growing up often enables you to put things in perspective and recognize that boogeymen and monsters are creatures of the imagination more than anything. Grownup life has a way of bringing other, more mundane frights to the forefront—things like cancer, job loss, and broken hearts.

For others, though, it will be the opposite. Sometimes, scary moments experienced at an impressionable age can get installed in the software of your soul, forever leaving a trace of fear and squirminess that even decades as a rational adult can’t shake.

My family was very much a movie family, and growing up, I had a rich education of sci-fi classics, ‘80s action, and the regular rotation of HBO contemporary hits. When Halloween came around, we enjoyed the usual seasonal favorites and spooky comedies, but classic horror wasn’t really on the menu. Think Monster Squad, My Best Friend Is A Vampire, and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. Those cult gems were more my speed.

I didn’t even partake of the Universal Monster series until well into my 30s. I did, however, spend a lot of time at the local video store, Video South, on Wilmington Island in Savannah, Georgia. My first real exposure to the terrifying world of horror cinema came through perusing the scary movie section at said store. There was no way on Earth that any such film would make it to the checkout clerk, but walking around and taking in the spine-chilling covers was a spooky treat in itself.

Those gruesome VHS covers were how I began microdosing horror as a kid, as I walked alphabetically down the aisle through the spine-chilling art of Basketcase, Dead Alive, Hellraiser, and Puppet Master. Back then, I couldn’t imagine a world where anyone would enjoy being horrified, let alone myself.

Fast-forward 30 years and here I am, the kind of person who goes to new release scary movies by myself and then casually analyzes the spooks and jump scares. I do not get scared, I do not leave the theater checking for ghosties, and I don’t have nightmares (well, not about slashers). Yet still I crave them and the ghastly vibes they provide.

Strangely, I can still remember the memories of actually being scared as a kid, and they are vivid and real. They’ve somehow outlasted all of the truly spooky moments from hundreds of movies since. I’m hoping that other members of the flock can articulate these types of moments in their own formative films, as well.

I’m going to kick off my viewing with 1987’s The Gate, about a group of kids who have to battle demons after a fallen tree unseals a hellmouth in their backyard. There are images and scenes in this one that have stuck with me for decades, and I’m excited to go back and see how hard they hit as a 43-year-old.

Also on my list are Poltergeist III, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Child's Play, and The Witches(which isn’t really scary but good lord did it scar me). I know a fellow flock member is doing Event Horizon, which is up there in foundational sci-fi horror that made the HBO rounds in the ‘90s.

One thing I’m eager to see is if other aspects of these movies will stand out to me now that I’m too mature to get scared by brief glimpses of body horror or unnerving scary movie-theme musical earworms. That’s the beauty of time and perspective on childhood memories, though.

At the very least, diving back into the classics will be a fantastic time to hang out with baby Haley in the best month of the year.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Practical Magic 2

Cozy witchy vibes are back! Fans of the original will have fun, despite what critics are saying.

To a certain kind of person (including me, I'm one of those people), the first Practical Magic movie is the very definition of a comfort watch. For nigh on 30 years, I've turned to it at the first hint of cool weather and Halloween decor in stores, reveling in the atmospheric soundtrack, the seaside-manse-that's-also-a-character, and the extremely '90s girl-power sister vibes. The plot, for those unfamiliar, concerns two sister witches that have man problems — not just Sally's abusive boyfriend, but the entire family's inability to find love due to a generational curse from the Owens ur-witch way back in the 1600s. It's silly, I'm not afraid to say, but that doesn't make it any less fun or heartwarming. It's essentially a rom-com with little spells and lots of cats, and while I'm not usually a romantic comedy type of gal, this one hits the spot.

I'm diving into the original as a prelude because it's absolutely impossible to talk about the sequel, Practical Magic 2, without talking about what fans loved about the first one. With all of these recent reboots of beloved films, folks are desperately hoping (and movie studios are desperately trying) to recreate lightning in a bottle. Most, in my opinion, don't really succeed, largely because they're doing the same thing with the same cast, but with no real shift in story, characters, or locale. Because of this, the sequels usually pale in comparison to the original. It's a tale as old as time, I'm afraid.

Fortunately, Practical Magic 2 has rich source material, as both it and its predecessor are based on novels by Alice Hoffman. Set roughly 25 years later (as far as I can tell), the new film brings us up to speed with our main characters quickly. Beloved elderly aunts Jet and Fran are now in their 80s, still living in their magical house by the sea. Sally and Gilly are in their 50s, while Sally's daughters, Kylie and Antonia, are in their 20s.The curse is still around, though Sally has wiped her children's memories of being witches, but they're not aware of it in the first part of the film.

The plot follows the youngest daughter as she absconds to England to learn about the origin of her family's curse as her lover Gideon lies in a coma after a bike accident, fearful that his death is imminent (fun fact: Gideon is played by Xolo Maridueña, who was great in the decent nostalgic vehicle Cobra Kai from a few years back). Her mother and aunt follow her, hot on her trail. Once they arrive in London, they meet a good-guy warlock named Ian (played with effortless charisma by Lee Pace) and team up to track Kylie down. 

The climax revolves around Kylie confronting a distant relative/bastard of the Owens line that's mad he didn't inherit witch abilities, and together, through the power of sisterhood and witchcraft, the main characters defeat him. Throughout all this, they learn that the only way to break the curse is for a witch to sacrifice herself, so that's exactly what Aunt Frances does, wading into the water à la Virginia Woolf as she rushes to meet her sister Jet who died at the beginning of the film.

Look, on paper, the plot sounds like something out of an episode of Charmed. And yes, the pacing is just as all over the place as the original. But this film wasn't made for critics, sitting at roughly 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. Neither was the original, which has a similar score, actually. It's made for the fans who have loved it for more than a generation. 

But for the first 30 minutes I was a little skeptical. "Oh, they bought a Ninja margarita machine to make their midnight cocktails, great." But once the characters take off to England, everything starts to find a groove. Lee Pace lends a depth and humanity to every scene, and casting him was a wise decision. The autumnal cozy atmosphere of rural England also creates a new way to feel spooky and chilly, another good choice that helps distinguish the films. 

What I was thinking about most in the days leading up to seeing it was what the needle drops were going to be. The first movie wouldn't be what it was without iconic Stevie Nicks songs, that triumphant Faith number, and the iconic Harry Nilsson "Coconut" scene. These songs are so deeply woven in to poignant moments from the film that I honestly can't imagine it without them. They move the plot along as well as the characters and set pieces. 

In Practical Magic 2, we get yet more Stevie Nicks (and I'm fine with that, as "Landslide" is a perfect tearjerker), some Olivia Rodrigo to keep it hip, Florence + the Machine, a Mazzy Star cover, and finally, a closing number in the form of "Dancing in the Moonlight" by King Harvest. All in all, I think they chose perfectly, and this music will help cement the movie in folks' memories. 

By the end, I found myself emotionally invested in everything, and for me, that's enough. The witchcraft is definitely more on display in this one: there are grimoires, left-hand magic, and frank talk of spells. Witchcraft was more incidental, in the first one. The first movie was about sisters that happen to be witches, while the new sequel is about witches that happen to be sisters. 

I do think this one fares better than fellow comedy-horror bedmates like Beetlejuice 2 and Hocus Pocus, but I suppose that's not saying much. I've talked about this before, but no reboot or sequel will ever do the same thing as an original, no matter how much we try. But for hardcore fans, Practical Magic 2 is decent enough, and that works.

My only real complaint is how distracted I was by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman's faces. I could write an entire manifesto about botoxification of women in cinema in the modern age (but really, who couldn't?) but I truly could not stop thinking about how these women, 62 and 59 respectively, have not a single wrinkle on their face. For a movie about female empowerment, it's a bit sad to think that not one gray hair, not one crow's foot were allowed to grace the screen. But that's an article for another day, and sometimes us feminists just have to revel in magical cinematic nostalgia for a little bit.

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Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken. 

Film Review: Terminator 2 (35th Anniversary)

The sequel that set the standard for action films holds up perfectly after 35 years

When Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out in 1991, I was 8 years old, and my suburban household had a no-holds-barred approach when it came to R-rated movies. Consequently, I've seen it dozens of times, mostly in the '90s on VHS. This was also, for some reason, back when R-rated films released profitable lines of children's toys. I had all of the action figures, including the plastic-goo-flesh pump that overlaid "skin" on a Terminator metal skeleton.

When I found out there was going to be a 35th anniversary re-release, I knew exactly where I'd be. Terminator 2 is widely regarded as one of the best action movies, best sci-fi movies, and best sequels. It was the highest-grossing movie of 1991, and set the stage for James Cameron's eventual future triumphs in Titanic and Avatar.

But after 35 years, does it hold up?

Absolutely. On this rewatch—it'd been a few years since I'd last seen it from start to finish—I found myself rapt at the effortless storytelling and human beats, and there's a few key things I'd like to review about in lieu of a traditional narrative post-mortem.

Sarah Connor: The opposite of a Mary Sue (and maybe also a Cassandra at the same time)

Has there ever been more character growth between two movies than that of Sarah Connor, mother of the savior of humanity? In the original Terminator, Sarah is a young, naive waitress thrust into a world of violence, destruction, and utter fear. The movie ends with her hitting the road to Mexico, pregnant and filled with a newfound knowledge of the apocalypse that's coming.

When we meet her again, 10 years later, she's almost unrecognizable. Locked up in a mental institution, lean, muscled, and doing perfect chin-ups on an up-turned hospital bed. She has seen some serious, serious shit. Over the course of the movie, we witness her perform extraordinary feats of physical prowess, shoot and reload countless weapons without even looking, and wrestle with killer robots. We also learn that she's been training John for his eventual rise to power in the resistance since he was born—spending time in jungles, flying in helicopters, and stockpiling arms in the Mexican desert. For a female protagonist in the early '90s, this is incredible. It hit me while watching that she is the exact opposite of a Mary Sue, having put in a decade of work to show for skills and talents, learning from outlaws, scumbags, ex-army guys, and countless others. She is deeply competent in many different ways, and competency is hot.

Granted, I know that many folks use the Mary Sue descriptor almost exclusively for (strong) women, so I'm hesitant to even justify it with a response, but I think that's why Sarah Connor is unassailable in the canon: she literally can do it all when it comes to evading Terminators. Compare this to the common criticism of Rey from the Star Wars sequel trilogy; we have no idea how she can fly starships or fight so well.

One other thing that hit me while watching: Sarah Connor is basically Cassandra from Greek myth. Cassandra was a Trojan priestess blessed with the ability to see the future, but cursed to never be believed. Sarah didn't ask to be the mother of John Connor, hero to humanity, but she was fated to become her. And in so doing, learned about the horrors that await humanity and the eventual nuclear war that would devastate the planet. She ends up in a mental hospital because I imagine at some point, her PTSD got the better of her and she leaned into the story of the future in all its gory detail, hoping that someone, anyone, would listen. I don't think folks realize what a burden that knowledge must be, and how horrible it must be for someone to internalize day in and day out.

James Cameron's daddy issues on full display in a Terminator father-figure fan fiction

Maybe it's because I'm older now, but it's impossible to watch Terminator 2 without having your heart break at least a little over the relationship between the T-800 (Arnold) and John Connor. Having never known his real dad (or at least, he won't until he's older and meets him in the future), John has bounced around foster homes and been around Sarah's random boyfriends.

The T-800 is sent back to protect him at all costs, but he also has to obey him. The two bond over the course of the movie in a truly touching way. As Sarah muses, "It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him."

James Cameron has been vocal about his issues with his father, who always disapproved of him becoming a filmmaker. In a podcast I remember learning that even after winning an Oscar, his dad still was cold and distant. Taking this into account, Terminator 2 hits very different. Cameron turned the monster from the first film into the ultimate protector and bastion of unconditional love. Even writing this out, it sounds cliché, but the performances have to be seen to be believed. It works. Another parallel? John only spends a few short days with the Terminator—almost exactly the same amount of time that Jack spends with Rose in Titanic. So, yes, you're right, "My Heart Will Go On" could theoretically be the theme song for this movie, too. Old Jim Cameron is a big fan of love touching one time, but lasting for a lifetime.

This is Arnold's defining role—full stop

One of the reason the aforementioned relationship works so well is because of Arnold's performance. It's some of his best acting, both emotionally and physically. Does it make sense for scientists in the future to program language in a robot with an Austrian accent? No, it does not. But does it help nearly every scene? Yes! And this is partly because Arnold's not the greatest of actors. By portraying a stern robot with a limited emotional capacity, he's already got it made in the shade.

But he's not like he was in the first Terminator. That's a completely different role with a different motive and personality. In that movie, he's playing Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. In this one, he's got to form a bond with a human boy, and his programming allows him to learn. The scenes with John are truly heartwarming, and Arnold's comedic timing and facial expressions are absolutely perfect. At this point, Arnold was 43, not at the peak of his physical conditioning, but very close to it. He's a presence, and there's a reason why the entire world spouted "Hasta la vista, baby" for years afterward.

Terminator 2 works so well because it's a horror film masquerading as sci-fi

It's sci-fi because of the worldbuilding, of course. And the use of technology, time travel, and robots. The Terminator extended universe is a delight to spend time in, and I've enjoyed every entry into the canon over the decades. But Terminator 2 (and this applies to the original Terminator, too) is truly a horror film in two main ways. First, the aforementioned slashers: The T-800 and the T-1000 are unstoppable, largely silent, and possessed of otherwordly brute strength. When you think they're dead, they're not. When you think you've gotten away, they crash a truck over a bridge and keep heading your way. When you think you've crushed them in a steel mill a decade earlier, they show up again with the same face. This theme of being powerless to stop a methodical monster who will stop at nothing to destroy you is textbook horror.

Second, the movie's structured almost exactly like a horror film, too, with all the attendant tropes. You have the pulsing, loin-girding, percussive score. You have the incredible body horror of the T-1000 getting mangled, his skin peeling off and bullets perforating his back. The scene where he degloves his arm skin to get Miles Dyson to believe him is body horror writ large.

But perhaps the scariest part is the liquid metal Terminator. The T-1000 is shot, stabbed, crunched, frozen, and still gets back up every time they try to destroy him. And still he keeps coming, like every psycho killer you've ever seen. And the scene where he melts through the bars of the hospital is basically straight-up ghost behavior. People gasped in theaters when that happened, and not just because of the CGI.

Final thoughts

After my rewatch, I realized that Terminator 2 is just as good as I remembered it being throughout my entire life. The CGI, while groundbreaking at the time, does exactly what it's supposed to, and it doesn't take you out of the movie (unlike a lot of late '80s/early '90s films). It's meant to look real, and it does. This is better than the hyper-realistic stuff we have today, and also better than the absolute garbage effects of older films (looking at you, Poltergeist 2). The performances are still great, the storytelling is tight, and the emotional heart of it still makes me tear up just a bit—just like it always has.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a meta narrative on slasher films, queerness, the media that shapes us, and desire. 

Lots of movies about specific interests are often referred to as "love letters to [blank]" — so much so that it's a bit of a cliché, at this point. But Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, directed by Jane Schoenbrun of I Saw The TV Glow, truly is a love letter to slasher films. In telling the story of young director Kris (Hannah Einbender of Hacks), who gets the extraordinary opportunity to revive the classic horror franchise that she grew up with, Schoenbrun creates their own new slasher world, complete with  lived-in world building and mythology.

The film itself is full of painted vistas, dreamy sets, movies-within-movies, and absolutely insane needle drops. But despite all this, it's the cinematic equivalent to inside baseball. There is a lot going on in the film, and fans of Schoenbrun's work will most likely revel in the weird, glorious, and twisted world they created. For folks who are into horror but in a more casual way, they may walk out confused. To be fair, it's confusing. A24 passed on it, if that tells you anything. There's an entirely different analysis that could be done from the trans perspective, but I'll leave that reading to others who can speak to it more meaningfully.

The heart of the film revolves around two main relationships: Kris and Billy Presley (played by Gillian Anderson in her best Southern Gothic Norma Desmond) as they spend a wild weekend exploring the possibility of a reboot, and Kris & Billy and Little Death, the recurring villain the series. 

First, Gillian Anderson's final girl-all-grown-up performance is absolutely the stuff of dreams, and maybe one of the strongest parts. Presley inhabits the abandoned summer camp where the first movie was shot, having become the classic ex-Hollywood recluse archetype. When Kris arrives, she's greeted with classic Southern hospitality: two buckets worth of Kentucky Fried Chicken (complete with dipping sauces) and copious amounts of weed. 

Kris and Billy are attracted to each other, and shortly after meeting hook up. Kris grows frustrated, declaring herself "bad at sex." Billy is empathetic and doesn't pressure her to continue. She admits that she too has had trouble with coitus, and has relied on imagining Little Death watching her have sex. Kris, we learn, that despite her status as a queer feminist filmmaker, frequently fantasizes about being a sexualized final girl. She admits that as a young child (perhaps too young to be exposed, in fact) she obsessively watched the Little Death franchise, and this fantasy became embedded in her psyche. 

For many people, media shapes us in ways that go beyond just taste — including the ones kept secret from everyone else. Horror and sex have always been intertwined, for a multitude of reasons: teenagers are drawn to it. The line between fear and desire is razor thin — titillation goes both ways. Horror films have often been also used as morality plays, where the "horny" teens get their comeuppance by way of brutal stabbing. Then there's the homosexual subtext in Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, a movie so gay that Freddy Krueger himself becomes the metaphor of being gay for a young teen, an intense self-loathing that permeates the film. Movies like Sleepaway Camp added to the gender dialogue, though that film has been hotly debated in recent years by queer scholars as to what it's really trying to say.

Much of the film revolves around these two characters simply talking and eating, and Schoenbrun in an interview with The New York Times described it as being influenced by My Dinner With Andre, the 1981 character study where the leads dine at Cafe Des Artistes and simply chat about life. The fried chicken, and then the candy that's every where — these all speak to the joy and comfort we get from pleasures of the flesh.

It reminds me of the novel Cranford, where the strict Victorian women must retreat to the solitude of their own room to enjoy oranges. When my English professor back in 2003 mentioned that this was absolutely a metaphor for sexual desire, I was floored. And yet, here we are, 175 years later, and we're able to witness the exact opposite of such prudishness. We get not only the metaphor — there are literally gummy bear and Sour Patch Kid chandeliers — but also later, two women having sex on screen. In another era, the simple fact of the main characters being gay would have doomed them to certain death by the villain. The very opposite happens, however.

They are thus connected together in their respective sexual proclivities that revolve around the fictional monster. Naming him "Little Death" is a little too on the nose for me, but one can see where it could be clever. The movie's end then gets meta as they insert themselves into the world of the film, and that's where I stopped understanding what exactly was happening. But that's okay! I admittedly came for the vibes, and I stayed for the vibes.

When it comes to meta-textual films, I think there's a very thin line you have to tow: Staying part of the "new" plot while not crossing streams too often. Self-aware media has existed for a long time (Hamlet, anyone?) but recent films have had varying degrees of success. Adaptation, for one, but also Scream, Being John Malkovitch...the list is surprisingly longer than you'd expect. Personally, I'm not the hugest fan, as I mentioned before I think there's such a thing as being too clever. It can quickly obfuscate nearly everything else about the film, especially the acting and the story. 

For Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, I didn't worry about the meta-ness of it all. Sometimes, you don't have to understand every single beat of a movie to enjoy it. When the characters didn't die at the end of the run time, I just shrugged and said, "Great!" It was enough for me to live in this odd world for a little while. The mythology of Little Death is so well choreographed that it felt like home. The opening sequence uses that classic exposition trick of overlaying the titles with a 30-year history of the franchise via newspaper articles. This old trick is up there with the Indiana Jones airplane-travel-red-line-on-a-map trick, and I'm a huge fan. By the time the movie starts, you have a really good grasp of this lived-in franchise and its ups and downs over the years. As someone who wishes there were more classic slasher villains in the world, getting this fake one is actually really fun.

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Highlights:

• Gillian Anderson eating fried chicken.
• Classic homages to Sleepaway Camp, Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Friday the 13th, and countless other horror films.
• The Counting Crows needle drop being used in a scene Adam Duritz could never have imagined when writing this sad ballad.
• Great supporting cast in Eva Victor and Zach Cherry
• Like many good horror films, it has hilarious moments to break the tension

Rating: 7/10

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Want to watch basically just a no-stakes, super-long episode of The Mandalorian on a huge movie screen this summer while eating popcorn? You can.

A long time ago (3 years), in a galaxy far, far away (Hollywood)...

Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau had just finished writing season 4 of The Mandalorian TV show. But amid all of the hubbub of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, LucasFilm decided to hold off filming it and instead prioritized making a Mando movie. And that, my friends, is why The Mandalorian and Grogu exists. 

Once you learn this, everything all starts making a lot of sense. Here are the answers to a few questions I know you'll have right off the bat:

• Yes, it's essentially a two-hour episode of the TV show that's released in time for summer blockbuster season. 
• No, it doesn't reveal any interesting lore or invest in heavy world-building.
• Yes, it has the typical Filoni-esque easter eggs, fun cameos and Clone Wars-style easy, clean, G-rated storytelling.
• No, there's absolutely no reason this had to be a movie.
• Tragically no, (for me), the Armorer isn't in it. 

The plot

Our guy Din Djarin is enjoying life as a single dad and contracting for the New Republic. As per usual, he's tasked with a tit-for-tat mission: If he agrees to rescue Rotta the Hutt, son of Jabba the Hutt, his aunt and uncle will provide intel on the location of post-Imperial Warlord Commander Coin. 

He finds out that Rotta, voiced by an unrecognizable Jeremy Allan White, is a popular gladiator on the cyberpunk planet of Shakari. The whole plot revolves around Djarin rescuing and/or escaping from various monsters, creatures, and aliens and double-double crossing the Hutt aunt and uncles. 

There's not much to it, though it does get a little convoluted. It's the standard fare of any Mandalorian episode, really. Problem --> learn about McGuffin to fix said problem --> encounter difficulty --> Obtain McGuffin --> Watch Grogu eat something.

What makes a Star Wars movie a movie

Lest it sound like I'm one of those fans who pooh-poohs nearly every Star Wars entry into the canon, The Mandalorian and Grogu isn't a "bad" film, and this is coming from someone who used to post weekly Mando recaps here. There's just...not much to think about. And maybe that's okay! If the goal for LucasFilm was to launch a fun Star Wars movie for the summer that's just a popcorn movie, I have absolutely no qualms with that. There are definitely things to like about it (more below). 

But Star Wars movies, in general, are emotional gateways for fans. Watching Luke stare into the binary sunset on Tatooine, witnessing Anakin and Obi-Wan's final duel on Mustafar, and experiencing Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor's final embrace on Scarif— these are the moments that stick in our hearts and have followed us into adulthood. Even the polarizing Last Jedi had moments of awe, shock, and absolute sadness.

For a Star Wars movie to have no stakes goes against everything we love about the franchise. Djarin and Grogu get into some tough scrapes in this movie, but there is never a single second where you worry about them not coming out on top. There's even a scene where Grogu has to take care of Djarin for a few days as he lies unconscious recovering from a venomous dragonsnake bite (in a great parallel to Pedro Pascal as Joel recovering in The Last of Us — he's always a down-on-his-luck single dad, isn't he?). 

The things I liked

I've probably said this before, but I like any glimpse into the Star Wars universe writ large, and seeing gorgeous tableaus on the big screen is always a delight. I particularly enjoyed:

• The murky, swampy Hutt planet of Nal Hutta, including the rusty towers that folks will recognize from Jabba's palace on Tatooine. That little bit of continuity just hits different.
• Visiting the cyberpunk planet of Shakari was an interesting addition to the Star Wars "clime-as-planet" database. Though futuristic in shape and feel, it was actually inspired by 1920s Prohibition-era Chicago. It felt lived in and different from the hyper-modern versions of Coruscant we've seen over the years. 
• Ludwig Göransson, who also does the score for the TV show, really outdid himself with the Shakari theme. He takes the Eastern-style pipe and synth leitmotif we're familiar with and incorporates streaking synths and neon audio bursts that creates a Blade Runner-meets-Star Wars vibe. It's Outrun/vaporwave/synthpop but set in space. It slaps.
• The various monsters and beasts are a blast to watch — but then they better be, as it's the only action/plot device in the film. 
• If you live long enough, you get to watch your heroes become X-wing pilots. Seeing Sigourney Weaver don the iconic helmet and go careening through an alien planet was absolutely Ripley-level badassery.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I went and saw this on the big screen on the Thursday before Memorial Day. It was me and a handful of other hardcore Star Wars fans, and we all laughed and reveled together at certain points. It didn't affect me emotionally at all, but maybe that's not always necessary for a fun movie. Like I mentioned earlier, I appreciate any time spent in a galaxy far, far away.

I just may not be able to convince other folks to go with me. 

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The Math

Baseline score: 6/10

Bonuses: Martin Scorsese as an alien food stall owner; the killer synth score;

Penalties: No real soul; Grogu is experiencing Flanderization; absolutely zero stakes; I cannot take a Hutt with six-pack abs seriously.

Gonk droid count: 0

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Hokum

Irish folk horror and a haunted house full of actual scary moments. (Spoiler-free)

As an avid horror movie fan, it takes a lot to shiver my timbers. When I'm sitting in the dark rows of a cinema during a new release, I sometimes try to view it through the eyes of those who don't revel in scary delights. Regular (some would say normal) people who jump at grotesque faces, get unsettled by hideous screams, and hide their eyes when the blood starts to flow.

During Hokum, I had quite the experience trying to imagine how such folks would react, mainly because I was extremely, deeply unsettled. That doesn't bode well for everyone else. But also, I loved every minute. It's rare to get a scary movie these days that actually delivers honest-to-goodness scares without absolutely wallowing in A24-level trauma dumps that just emotionally punish you for two hours. Hokum achieves this despite having some gnarly generational guilt scarring on the main character, Ohm Bauman. 

Ohm is a successful writer visiting the Irish hotel where his deceased parents had their honeymoon, aiming to spread their ashes in the woods nearby and also maybe squeeze in some writing while he's abroad. It's not just anytime for him to be visiting, though, it's Halloween. The creaky old hotel is chock ablock with carved turnips, the OG jack-o'-lanterns whose origin lies in Ireland and Scotland. If you haven't seen one, they are ineffably creepy, and the effect is truly unsettling. Fun fact: During the pandemic, I carved a turnip into one such jack-o'-lantern to see it in person. It is not only difficult to do, as root vegetables aren't soft and full of seeds like modern pumpkins, it's also eerie. Picture for proof:

Baumann, as a deeply cynical author-type who's honestly downright mean, is portrayed by Adam Scott, who's playing against character here. Instead of the usual nerdy and demure guy, he's terse, angry, alcoholic, and absolutely alone in the world.

While at the Irish hotel, he encounters malevolent employees, a locked-up honeymoon suite that's haunted by a witch, a woman gone mysteriously missing, and a local forest man who stays hopped up on magic mushroom milk. It's hard to get too into the plot without giving away the twist, so I'm trying to keep it high level. 

The hotel is essentially another character in the movie, and the camera does a good job of lingering on all the dusty, spooky 1950's accoutrements: vintage clocks, distorted angel sculptures, and countless ringing bells. It's the exact opposite vibe of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, which is large and open and expensive. This hotel is quaint, small, almost claustrophobic. 

Fittingly, the atmosphere that follows you from room to room is dark and foreboding, and the multiple effective jump scares are a feature, not a bug. Some horror aficionados decry the use of jump scares in elevated horror, calling them cheap or gimmicky. But the jump scares in Hokum are earned, and sometimes, you can even see them coming — and even as they slowly approach they still make you flinch. That's how good they are.

Monsters, gore, and humans don't scare me, and fortunately Hokum doesn't rely on these for its scares. Instead, it's all spirits, witches, and demons, and the production design renders them absolutely nightmarish. There's one fiend that resembles the Momo challenge hoax monster that went viral for terrifying kids about a decade ago, all bulging eyes and rictus smile. There's a scene at the end that is reminiscent of the ending of Ghost, where a character is dragged into the afterlife, and I was actually cheering for the divine justice it was bringing to life. 

The most effective part, for me, of the film is how the Irish folklore organically starts to seep into Baumann's defense mechanisms. Early on, he dismisses the conjuring tales and chalk circles for protection as so much hokum, but as he descends into the lair of the witch, he absolutely starts to believe. Watching him search for his magical stick of chalk in his jacket transforms from "Maybe I'll try this!" to "I absolutely have to do this to stay alive."

When you dig deeper into the themes of the film, there's also some good (and not really didactic) lessons about forgiveness, self-compassion, and letting go, and horror can be an especially good vehicle for these.  Ghosts, of course, aren't real, but the emotions that humans leave behind in the living can haunt one for decades, and a tormented spirit can be a regular person struggling with big feelings, not a poltergeist.

What sets Hokum apart from the Weapons and Smiles of the world is that it comes by its themes honestly, and allows for actual character growth. It feels human, and also lived-in in a way that makes you believe everything, despite the folklore freakout of supernatural beings. 

But the scariest part of the entire movie wasn't what was on screen. It was the fact that I was in a matinee theatre all by myself for the first hour. Then, someone walks in with a huge popcorn and soda, and sits down in front of me a few rows. Within a matter of minutes, they then walked out, leaving the snacks behind. It was 100% a ghost. Or maybe it was just hokum.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.