My #bookreview is brief/won't spoil, to spread good, great, & spectacular #horror#books far & wide.
💙📚 You may presume you'll know the story that unfolds in I THINK I'M ALONE NOW, but you'll be wrong as hell. I read this novella in a single sitting: Ali Seay has written a thoroughly enjoyable, vivid, violent, deliciously dark chunk o' horror set in the 80's that's, like, totally rad. (Grindhouse Press)
looking for horror book recommendations, ideally from women and/or queer authors. starting by listing every horror book and deleting everything on any r/horrorlit recommendation thread because holy fuck how is anyone still stuck on Stephen King in 2024.
okay but seriously though. i don't know what's out there because i've been reading mostly short web fiction for a year. the last few formal horror books i've read were:
gonna throw out some keywords and generalities: i'm about to read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58830202-from-below. i vibe with Empty Spaces, some Cthulhu Mythos stuff, i love the sci-fi horror in the Southern Reach trilogy and Roadside Picnic and The Descent and pretty much everything by Peter Watts. i like Seanan McGuire and i liked the one book i've read by Seanan McGuire as Mira Grant (but it was the magical girl one so idk how much it applies to her actual horror stuff). i've read Ada Hoffmann but i only liked the first one. i think China Miéville is pretty good and Clive Barker is kinda mid. i think anything as trope-frozen as vampires and werewolves and ghosts is for children and yes i realize i said i liked Mythos stuff earlier. anything marketed as a "thriller" or "psychological horror" i will probably hate.
@vyr If you liked Mexican Gothic you may like Roses of Pieria. It's kind of a supernatural-mishmash but it's a lot of fun (and sapphic).
Under the Pendulum Sun (Jeannette Ng) is brilliant, described as "Anglican Missionaries go to the fairylands, it doesn't go well." It's a very specific flavor of horror, but it's one I like a lot and don't see often
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher is a creepy-as-hell retelling of Manhen's White People, while Hollow Places is based on Blackwood's Willows.
@wendigo right? What IS it about these gross movies haha- I had to look it up, maybe there is one I haven't seen, the latest, X from last year. I think I need to see Spiral too maybe? Hmm. And XI already for next year!
2024 marks the 45th anniversary of sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien, which was released May 25, 1979.
The first time I saw it I was pretty young, it was on TV and censored. We actually had it recorded on a VHS from TV, which is something my family did a lot. I only saw the full uncensored version years later! 😂
@jake4480 Agreed. I mean, what's the point if you're going to butcher a film? There's hardly any gore in 'Alien', and you absolutely cannot edit out the young alien's emergence.
@wendigo 😂 for real. I think it was to cut out cursing, too. The sweariest movies put on TV always got butchered in the weirdest, sometimes funniest ways. Fork you or motherforkers etc 🤣😂🤣
Most supernatural horror I can think of has either sex or something bedroom related thrown in.
I would have recommended The Gate (1987) otherwise, as that's a suitably weird horror movie, with young protagonists, rated PG-13. But parts do take place in the kids bedroom.
I like The Village(2004), which fits your criteria, but it is a little slow, non-supernatural, and might have too many (unnecessary) twists.
@DM_Zeppelin
A cartoon that comes to mind, though I think not the vibe you're looking for, is the series Centaurworld (2021). Starts as an annoyingly saccharine My Little Pony type cartoon. Getting gradually more weird and ominous, and ends up with sort of body horror and one of the creepier antagonists in a kids cartoon.
Or, better for autumn viewing, Over the Garden Wall. On point for atmospheric, kid-oriented dark fantasy. This series is pretty much unimpeachable.
Happy birthday to the great Peter Cushing, who was born on this day in 1913. I'm sure a lot of my lifelong love of #horror came from late night viewings of many Hammer films with Peter and his good friend Christopher Lee, probably at an age when I was too young for them but didn't care, because I loved them.