Quirky Heroines, Happy Endings
1. Nightmare On Elm Street
2. The Grudge
3. The Ring
4. The 7th Sign
5. Dawn Of The Dead (Both)
Bio: Sy Shanti is a being who uses many different channels to express a creativity deep rooted in his two first loves as a child, Alchemy, and Horror .
VisitL https://www.facebook.com/
Want in on this? Send me your bio, your site and your top five scary movies or top five scary books!
Over here in New Jersey, USA, it’s hurricane season, which means the winds are blowing and the skies are deliciously overcast. Rain falls, mist gathers and there’s fog in the mornings. A perfect start to October, wouldn’t you say?
So what are these must see events, you’re asking? With no further ado, let’s get the list going.
Speculative fiction: (according to Wikipedia):
Speculative fiction is a broad category of narrative fiction that includes elements, settings and characters created out of imagination and speculation rather than based on reality and everyday life. It encompasses the genres of science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, horror, alternative history, and magic realism.[1][2][3] It typically strays strongly from reality and so may feature fictional types of beings like mythical creatures and supernatural entities, technologies that do not exist in real life like time machines and interstellar spaceships, or magical or otherwise scientifically inexplicable elements. The term’s popularity is sometimes attributed to Robert Heinlein, who referenced it in 1947 in an editorial essay, although there are prior mentions of speculative fiction, or its variant “speculative literature”.
Easy enough, right? This is by no means a complete list, just something to get you started.
Good Reads LIst – Black Speculative Fiction
Speculative Fiction by Authors of Color
This is the second year of the mighty successful Halloween Party from last year.
You’ve got to attend. And why not? It’s going on the whole weekend. At least stop by to have a little fun.
Click the pic to be taken to the event.
Char of Charred Remains Treat for Trivia Horror Game. Beginning end of September through October 31st. A test of player’s horror knowledge. High scores will win prizes. Game rules on www.charredremainsreviews.
Six week event!
Click this link to be taken to the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1145943362142469/
Blogtoberfest, my yearly fun of things scary, creepy and Halloweeny, is now located at darkindigohearts.com. Click the pic to be taken there!
Looks like this October will be a busy one!
Dahlia
The Thing
PsychoJ.D.’s Revenge
Army of Darkness
Ganja and Hess
Bio:
Eden Royce is descended from women who practiced root, a type of conjure magic in her native Charleston, South Carolina. She’s been a bridal consultant, reptile handler, and stockbroker, but now writes dark fiction about the American South from her home in the English countryside.
She is the author of Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, a short story collection that features the language and traditions of the Gullah-Geechee people, descendants of the first slaves brought to the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. She also conceived and edited The Grotesquerie, an anthology of twenty-one horror short stories written by women.
Eden writes for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Graveyard Shift Sisters, a site dedicated to purging the black female horror fan from the margins and Dirge, the premier dark culture magazine, covering counterculture arts and entertainment, lifestyle, and editorials.
Website: edenroyce.com
Title: The Ouija Experiment, aka The Realm
Genre: Horror, Found Footage-ish
Director: Israel Luna
Writers: Israel LUna
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2364842/
This was a movie that I stumbled upon perusing some streaming service or another. I suppose if you run a search for the title, it will tell you where it’s playing or where you can get it. Honestly, even though IMDB gives it a 3.4 out of 10, I actually enjoyed the movie. I’d even watch it again!
Here’s the setup. There’s a film student (already annoying, lol) who plays with a Ouija board with his four friends. Why? They want to solve the mystery of a drowned girl that happened some time ago. I’m really fuzzy on the details because, well, it just didn’t matter to me after a while.
Let me say upfront…it’s not scary. The acting is bad and the found footage-ish way of filming can by annoying at times. I don’t know if it was the mood I was in, but I thought the film was rather cute. I liked the dynamic of some of the actors, and the self-aware of “I’m a black person in a horror movie” of the black actress was pretty funny at times.
I felt the first hour was quite strong in the way it set up the story. The actors did a pretty good job for a low budget movie that looks like it was filmed in somebody’s house on the fly. In addition, trivia for the movie suggests the actors’ lines were mostly improvised during this first hour. They didn’t do a half-bad job!
As I noted above, when the scary stuff starts, the black actress is the best. She really made me laugh.
A note on the dialogue: this was the best part of the movie. The conversations and rapid exchanges seem real and unrehearsed. Also, the actors have such a good sense of timing, they did not stumble over each other’s lines as is often the case in the found footage movies where the lines are improvised. I just liked hearing the characters chit chat with each other.
Otherwise, the film and its eventual reveal of the long-ago murder was rather flat and boring. Do not watch this movie if you are looking to be frightened. It won’t happen. If you watch it at all, watch it for the actors’ performances and how they interact.
Film Grade: D
Actors Grade: B for snappy dialogue.