Today I came to the realization that all of my grandparents are dead.
People who I thought would be with me my entire life, people who I loved, but people whose presence I took for granted, even when I did my best to fight that instinct. It didn’t happen all at once, but it felt like I blinked my eyes, and the people who held me as a baby, raised me as a child and reached out to me as an adult were all gone.
My Mama died when I was a child, at least seven or eight years old…
Everyone is frightened of something irrational.
If you ever meet someone who tells you they don’t scare easily or nothing makes them uneasy, then they’re either a liar or they aren’t looking hard enough. We all have our fears, our paranoid nightmares, the things that make our hearts race when an unfamiliar bump in the night is heard. None of these things can ever hurt us in reality, not always, anyway. They’re like Familiars. We can embrace them, accept them, learn to live with them, or we can let them eat away at us until we’re consumed. …
Humanity is constantly evolving every day, and as our world changes more and more rapidly every day, the way we tell and perceive stories also changes. Some mediums and genres seem more resistant or baffled by change than others, who embrace the change head-on. So far, I think the genre that has been the most welcome to change has been horror. Some may be “shocked” by that, but if you think about it, there’s nothing surprising about that at all.
No matter how many faceless avatars on the internet want to argue about how horror is only for gore-hounds (it’s…
Death, taxes, and resurrected nostalgic properties in Hollywood (regardless of profit). Three things that can always be counted on in life, no matter what. The film in question today even takes an opportunity to clown on this notion halfway through.
It’s been thirty-three years since Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) and Semmi (Arsenio Hall) ran away from the kingdom of Zamunda to Queens, New York to steal the hearts of American audiences in the original comedy classic, Coming To America. Considering the success of the film, it is kind of astounding that it took this long for a sequel to happen…
Wanda Lamb could think of a hundred and one places she’d rather be at this very moment.
She could be in the library, cramming in a few stories before closing time.
She could be in her living room, watching TV with mom and dad.
She could be in her basement, where all her video games were.
She could be in her bedroom, underneath her sheets, with a pen, paper, and ink, drawing her own little ghosts and ghouls, illuminated by nothing but the beam of a flashlight.
And so on.
But no, instead, she was freezing her fingers and toes…
A universal truth for the horror genre is mankind’s undisputed fear of the unknown. We don’t know what lies in the shadows. …
Let’s be honest, satire is probably the hardest genre to truly pull off successfully. Most masterclass examples of satire are either untouchable classics like Dr. Strangelove or fantastic pieces of work that satirized their subject so well that they tragically became enveloped into the very organism they were poking fun at like Fight Club. It’s the kind of genre where every step the storytellers take is part of a balancing act on a tightrope smaller than a piece of string. …
Honestly, what does one even begin to say about the year 2020? If you had an even marginally good time, chances are, you’re a monster. Absolutely nothing was left unscathed by the wildfire that was last year, including moviegoing. Our entire concept of moviegoing has been warped. I’m desperate to return to a theater but also terrified of whether or not it’ll still be the same. Regardless of what happens in the future, what got us through the past was movies, and it’ll always be movies for me. All of the best films of a year in some way capture…
“Time to go,” said the impossibly tall man standing in the corner of Lawrence’s dressing room. Lawrence leaned back in his chair and stared down the unwelcome guest, twirling his mustache.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lawrence did his best to never take his eyes off the figure, even if he couldn’t see his opponent’s eyes for himself. They were shrouded in a shadow cast over his face from the old threadbare traveler’s hat resting on his head. The only identifying mark that Lawrence could make out was the long, grey beard poking out from the…
Nobody was going to catch Abby this time.
She was almost back to the clearing where the Visitors always picked her up. Her lungs were on fire and her legs were like toothpicks, but she kept running, clutching Anthony closer to her chest as she did so. She wasn’t going back to the hospital. She was finally going back to Apolexa, the planet the Visitors took her to, and maybe this time, they’d let her stay, especially if she explained the gravity of the situation to them. There wasn’t any other option. She had promised Anthony.
Abby had been abducted…
