David Bain is the author of Gray Lake, Death Sight and other supernatural thrillers. His shorter work has appeared in many publications, including Weird Tales and Strange Horizons, and in anthologies like Piercing the Darkness (Lansdale, Golden, Ketchum,
  • About Author David Bain

Dave & Dennis review GERALD'S GAME

11/17/2017

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C. Dennis Moore and I have collaborated on books like Band of Gypsies, involving body-hopping demons, Jimi Hendrix and the fate of the universe, and Return to Angel Hill which sends my psychic detective Will Castleton to his haunted town. We've decided to do an at-least-monthly movie review - he picks one, I pick one, and so forth. This month, Dennis chose...

GERALD'S GAME
- A minor King work, yes, but an important and triumphant adaptation


by David Bain

5 out of 5 stars

Dennis and I are a bit late to the party on reviewing Mike Flanagan’s cinematic interpretation of Stephen King’s novel Gerald’s Game. But I’m going to use that to my advantage.

I’ll often stop people midsentence who try to sell me on a movie or book I haven’t seen or read. I feel a review should be my own interpretation, bereft of outside opinions. Just as I like to go into a novel knowing as little about it as possible about what to expect, I usually like to review a movie on its own terms, in a bubble, as if other reviews don’t exist.

Which makes adaptations from other media especially tricky, especially if I’ve read/listened to/watched/otherwise experienced the other version(s).

Do I follow Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic? Of course I do.

But I’ve far too often found that while the “general consensus” will sometimes attract me to a piece, too many presuppositions make one’s life stale.

Taking a deep, cleansing breath before the opening credits and entering a film with your mind receptive allows you a more full experience.


In the week or two before I actually watched Gerald’s Game on Netflix, I encountered countless reviews, mostly by fellow horror and dark fantastic writers on Facebook, which said either, “It sucked as a book and sucks as a movie,” or “Minor Stephen King novel equals minor Stephen King adaptation.”

Then I actually watched the movie for myself.

Here’s my main thought:

If the name “Stephen King” weren’t attached - and especially if the idea of “one of Stephen King’s lesser books” weren’t attached - this movie would be considered brave and ingenious.

As I was watching Gerald’s Game I found myself thinking, my God, this isn’t just a good movie, this is a great movie.

And this isn’t just a good Stephen King adaptation, this is a fucking great Stephen King adaptation!


And then I looked at Rotten tomatoes and saw 90 percent of critics liked it, while only seventy-some general viewers admired it.

​Although it’s not unique, that’s still a fairly big disparity for RT.


I find myself wondering if the difference is there because the "professional" critics think more in the streamlined and episodic language of film, while the “audience” critics are more likely to have read the book or have the influence of literary circles and critics weighing over them.

King’s book is relatively slim, especially for the author of epics like The Stand, Under the Dome and the Dark Tower books. It’s basically a locked-room mystery with endless flashbacks and monologues. It’s definitely not King’s usual plot-heavy structure.

Here’s the thing. I really like the novel. I enjoy seeing novelists break out of their usual mode, and King is self-aware and well read enough that he can do so effectively. But there’s a lot of dislike, if not hate, out there for Gerald’s Game, the novel, and I think it’s not because it’s a bad novel, but because it’s totally off-brand for King.

All this is not necessarily to say I am The Great Open-minded Buddha of Film and Fictiondom, but I do think our expectations sometimes get the better of us.

I found this movie to be a good example of that. 


Lecture over.

Clear your mind.

Let’s talk about film stuff.


For starters, boy, that Mike Flanagan just keeps getting better.

I wasn’t much for Oculos or Ouija: Origin of Evil, but maybe that’s because I’ve become jaded with horror movies in general lately and my expectations are so low. (See my notes above.)

And then there was Hush, a great, stylistic closed-setting serial killer Netflix exclusive. 

Moviemakers like small sets like this because it reduces production costs - but viewers like them because TENSION. Hush worked on both levels - and with practically no dialogue. No big casts or sweeping scenery to distract. It’s all (mad slasher) man vs. woman.

In contrast, Gerald’s Game is firmly in the woman vs. herself category. King has worked in this genre, and variations of it, ever since his first novel (and the first of his films to be adopted), Carrie. The Gerald’s Game novel is also something of a companion piece to King’s previously filmed Dolores Claiborne, and I was surprised Flanagan chose to keep the reference to a property he doesn't have film rights to.

It’s also to Flanagan’s credit that he’s championed a film which some would have considered mostly unfilmable - the premise, which I suddenly realize I haven’t even mentioned yet, is that Jessie, our protagonist, is chained to bedposts, having rather grimly played along as her husband tried to spice up and rekindle their marriage, when he suddenly had a heart attack and died.

Flanagan and Jeff Howard’s screenplay then has Jessie talk to her husband’s ghost and a dream version of herself to personify her inner monologue. This technique seems to have pulled a few critics out of the story, but I don’t see how. It’s good dialogue and utterly appropriate to to the situation. Did they really want just more shots of Jessie sitting there, chained to the bed, talking to herself? Did they want a voice over? I would love to have seen the excoriations of that movie!

Also, there are some complications involving dangerous intruders that stretch believability to a debatable margin - they worked for me because, hey, fiction. I’m all about dangerous intruders in fiction. My disbelief is fairly easy to suspend.

Although the novel was published way back in 1992, for me, the whole thing felt incredibly timely; the story can be seen as a metaphor for the way our society, and especially Hollywood, treats women - the power plays by dominant males, the way society tries to trap (handcuff) women into certain roles; the victim-blaming. And there’s also the matter of a certain childhood abuse Jessie suffered at the hands of her father. I’m glad Flanagan decided to pull no punches in this regard, as it serves to strengthen Jessie, the character - both in our eyes and in her own - and give her the idea for her eventual escape.

Another point: I’m not a big fan of the tinting of movies. The Lord of the Rings is forgiven because, hey, Fantasy. It’s another world. It’s different than ours. I get it. But superhero movies are set in our world. Our world on steroids, yes, but still our world. And yet the color tinting in Gerald’s Game works for me because of the eclipse which is central to Jessie’s childhood abuse story. You ever been in an eclipse, even a non-complete one? Colors get friggin’ weird, man! Plus the events of the eclipse “color” everything else in Jessie’s life. So yeah. Tint away, Flanagan!

And I’ll save the best for last. Carla friggin’ Gugino. Damn. We’d better start considering Netflix originals prominently at Oscar time is all I’m saying. For both roles she plays in this. Or, rather, for the many roles - the strong, the weak, the dominant, the submissive, the broken, the desperate victim, the fighter, the arisen champion.

Yes, Gerald’s Game is based on a minor work. But only if you consider the author in question’s overall oeuvre - and it’s a triumphant film, not only because of where it dares to go in terms of what it says about gender, but especially given its nominal genre, which it easily rises above.

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Mike Flanagan to the Rescue.
I Can’t Sing This Movie’s Praises Enough

by C. Dennis Moore
I’d like to start by making a case for writer/director Mike Flanagan getting some friggin recognition as an amazing horror film maker. He’s been on a killer streak since his feature film debut a short SIX years ago with Absentia, which was creepy, original, and a total mindbender. Then there was Oculus in 2013, a movie about a HAUNTED MIRROR, and he made it work beyond my expectations. 2016 brought Hush in which a deaf woman battles a mysterious stranger deep in the woods, and he makes a movie with almost no spoken dialogue 100% engaging. I haven’t seen Before I Wake (also 2016), but that same year he made a THIRD movie, this time Ouija: Origin of Evil. I skipped this one in theaters because I thought the first movie was a total waste of time and money, but what a mistake that was. Flanagan took the idea of a sequel/prequel and completely eradicated the bad taste left by the first Ouija. The man is on a streak you rarely see in horror movies these days.

But when I heard someone was making a movie of Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game, I had a few first thoughts. WHY? That was one of my least favorite King novels. It’s about a woman handcuffed to a bed after her husband has a heart attack, the movie’ll be 25 minutes long. Amid all of those first thoughts, not a one of them was positive.

Maybe if I’d done the research and found out Mike Flanagan was writing and directing, because my God what a job he’s done on this story. King has long been considered the MASTER of modern horror, but this writer/director from Salem, MA has taken one of the “master’s” worst books and made it into one of the BEST King movie adaptations.

We follow Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) on a getaway to their remote cabin where Gerald wants to engage in some sex games. He wants to start with the handcuffs. After shackling his wife to the bed, he’s ready to get down, but Jessie isn’t feeling the role play and she says no. After some heated back and forth, Gerald suffers a heart attack and dies on the bed. Jessie kicks him onto the floor, and then reality begins to set in.

She’s still handcuffed to the bed.

The next few days are a fight to survive a weekend without food or water, and no one will be by the house to check on them until after Jessie is dead, so she has to do something, and quick. Oh, and there’s also a stray dog that’s made its way into the house and begins to snack on Gerald. And thank God for that, because Jessie is in no position to fight it off herself.

And this was the movie I was expecting, 103 minutes of Carla Gugino handcuffed to a bed, talking to herself and trying to figure a way to get out of this situation. But Mike Flanagan is smarter than me and more capable of turning a less then impressive novel into a stunning piece of film. When Gerald gets up from the bed and when a healthy and bitter version of Jessie appears at the bedside, things get even more interesting than they already were.

And then the flashback comes with Henry Thomas as father to Chiara Aurelia’s Young Jessie and my God what an impressive movie.

The performances are incredible, especially Gugino who practically carries this movie by herself, but Greenwood’s portrayal of the older and jaded Gerald Burlingame was a master class is RE-acting.

And the script. What a friggin script! The dialogue exchanges between Jessie and herself, and Jessie and dead Gerald had me cracking up one minute and with chills down my spine the next.

Say what you will about King adaptations, and I know some horror fans are not Flanagan fans, but I don’t get that at all, because he took what had all the potential of being in the top three most pointless King movies in history and turned it into, hands down, one of the best ever. I was a fan after Absentia and Oculus, but if this is the direction he’s heading, I’m all in for whatever he wants to do next. Because Gerald’s Game isn’t just a great King adaptation (it’s not too hard to be great among such a hit and miss list), but it’s just a great movie period, well-made, beautifully-shot, and Gugino is not getting the credit she deserves as an actress, simple as that.
​
I went into this movie hoping for the best, but knowing I did not like the source material at all, and I came out a changed fan. Still don’t think the book is any big deal, but if THIS is what it’s possible to do with this story, hell yes, Mike Flanagan. Do LISEY’S STORY next; I struggled to get through that book in a month, but I’d love to see his take.
Gerald’s Game is currently streaming on Netflix.

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31 Horror Stories: Day 17. "Two Houses" by Kelly Link

11/12/2017

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​First off: I wanted to slip some SF in here, and I almost included "Bloodchild" by Octavia E. Butler. Go read the story! Or anything else by Butler! Then come back and read my thoughts on Kelly Link's story and read everything by Link. 

You're back? See, isn't "Bloodchild" an awesome story?

But we're talking about Kelly Link here. Link is one of those wonderful writers whose next story will be something you totally don't expect. There is no typical Kelly Link story. There is no consistency other than excellence. 

"Two Houses" is, in essence, a clubhouse story. Once upon an old-timey day, the sensibility was that the actual first-hand horrors would be too much for the genteel reader to bear, so the horrors were framed by gentlemen in a safe and fancy and genteel club trading ghastly tales over their hot toddies. 


Add a century or two, and Link transposes the setting into a spaceship and transforms the characters into men and women passing the time after being called out of a cryogenic sleep by their ship's AI. 

It's an interesting effect that the tales we're told by the astronauts - tales which are illustrated and enhanced in holographic form by the AI - are generally the same as might have been told in one of the old-timey gentlemen's clubs. Only the setting in which the stories are related is futuristic, and yet, since this is the not-too-far future, maybe only one generation removed from now, in terms of the characters if not time itself - they've been in sleep-stasis, after all - is futuristic.

There's usually a twist or literary trick or two up a Kelly Link story's sleeve, and "Two Houses" is no exception. Without being too spoilery, suffice it to say the spaceship itself might also be a haunted house and it has everything to do with the AI. 

Multiple stories, layer upon layer, in fact, each well told within its genre and traditions all in one spooky tale. What more could you want? 

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31 Horror Stories: Day 16. "The Scariest Story Ever Told" by Colin Nissan

11/8/2017

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I bookmarked this ages ago.

I still read it from time to time.

It's pretty hilarious.

I already addressed humor and horror with Clive Barker's "The Yattering and Jack." 

But I didn't address over-the-top horror. 

"Yattering" attempts to suspend your disbelief even though you're in on the joke. 

This New Yorker offering, however, simply takes every horror trope and cliche and throws it on the heap atop the next one and the next. 


And yet ... and yet there seems to be a certain respect for the genre here despite the pointing out of all its weaknesses. 

What pleases me so much is that I kind of see this piece as a metaphor for all the safe remakes and reboots and reee-reee-reee Psycho soundtrack imitations out there.. 

If we get too safe and comfortable and familiar with our ghosties and ghoulies we'll be as disaffected as the once mysterious and dangerous drifter at the end of this story. 

We'll drop our machete and stalk off, saying, "I hate this place so much." 

Please, horror.

We need you.

Don't you dare abandon us.

We're hanging on by a thread of maybe two, three good movies per year. 

But there's a wealth of great novels and tales that would be cinematic gold if only they were given the chance. 

Come on, Hollywood Horror, show us some respect. Man up and give us more monsters worth cringing and cowering in front of!

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How I Came to Write "Little Helper"

11/8/2017

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by
David Bain

This discussion of how I came to write my short-short story “Little Helper” will be longer than the story itself.


I love short-short stories.

And in the ‘90s and ‘00s, you could actually sell “microfiction” in small press magazines and even anthologies. The pay would be pennies, maybe a buck or two, but a five or six of these might eventually pay for a Hot & Ready pizza and a six-pack of Keystone Light plus a rental of some creature feature. There are worse ways to earn a fun, boozy night in front of the boob tube.

“Little Helper” first appeared, in fact, in an anthology series, edited by G. W. Thomas, called FLASHSHOTS. G. W. - whose pulp story collections such as The Book of the Black Sun should really be far more popular than they are - ran a website/mailing list where a daily story, complete but under the length of a normal typewritten page, would be published on a web site or sent out to subscribers on a daily basis.

I was amazed at how much story could be packed into such a small space.

I mean, 100 words is nothing to write, right?

It’s five minutes, right?

Less.

One minute, for some, on a good day.

And I suppose there were a couple authors who could toss off a few dozen of these a day - According to the infallible Wikipedia, “In one famous stunt, Steve Allen made a bet with singer-songwriter Frankie Laine that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. Composing on public display in the window of Wallach's Music City, a Hollywood music store, Allen met the quota and won $1,000 from Laine. One of the songs, "Let's Go to Church Next Sunday," was recorded by both Perry Como and Margaret Whiting.”

Most of us are not Steve Allen.

Nor would we want to produce such a number of short-short stories in a single day, under normal circumstances.

And many of us agonize much, much more than five minutes over this word, that image, this comma.


While it’s true you can get paid by the word and Flashshots did indeed pay, most authors in the business of saying something.

And even that can be faked - my bet is even most of Steve Allen’s songs written during his marathon were of some nominal substance and one could even possibly find some sort of profundity in them. A million monkeys and a million typewriters, and all that.

But I only had a handful of short-shorts in me. Same with poetry. I edited a seminal H/F/SF poetry collection, but I’m not very good at writing the stuff. I need the open canvas of many, many blank pages, a space to throw word after word.

The tightness and succinctness of poetry and short-shorts are difficult and elusive to me.

Which is why I respect them and their practitioners so much.

As for the subject of the story, well, it’s a pretty much literal telling of something terrifying that actually happened to me as a kid. One of my grandfathers was a drunken, broken man and, being a kid, and naive, I loved and respected him beyond all reason, which made the terrible request he woke us with one night all the more shocking to me at the time.

This little story only adds the part about the kid in question actually carrying out the request.

I also deal with this same incident in a short kind of surreal “creative nonfiction” essay available to my Patreon fans in my ongoing STRANGER THAN NOW collection (and as a thin, tiny paperback.)

Some incidents you will revisit for the rest of your life. They loom larger some days, smaller other. You can meditate, you can grow beyond them, you can learn to forgive, empathize, sympathize, you can reduce the moment to mere words, but the memory, the terror of that moment, always remains accessible.

It’s such an odd sentiment. I don’t wish pain, terror or abuse on anyone, and I seek as little as possible in my own life, but incidents like this certainly make us so much stronger if we can rise above them.

I’m grateful what happened happened. Because it taught me so much about how not to be bitter and how to face fears.

And I’m grateful for the resulting stories and the positive reactions from readers.

And yet, if I could remove it from my history, would I?

Would I?

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“Little Helper” is currently available
as part of the ongoing short story collection
DREAMS ONE DREAMS DURING STORMS,
available only to members of
​The Bain Insider’s Club at Patreon.

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