Tag: John Langan

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Color Out of Space Review

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Important Note: I’m linking this article to a blog post where Richard Stanley was accused of domestic abuse here. Obviously, this kind of behavior is horrific, and Stanley shouldn’t be working as a director. This note was added to this article on 03/24/21, but the rest of the article has been left untouched.

I got the chance to see Richard Stanley’s 2019 adaptation of The Colour Out of Space (Yes, Lovecraft intentionally spelled color that way for his story) on Wednesday (January 22nd). It was a ton of fun seeing the film with fellow Lovecraft fans, and afterward, my friends and I even did a little movie discussion at an H.P. Lovecraft inspired bar near us, J.B. Lovedrafts. We even saw a special version of the film that included a Q &A with some of the cast and the director.

Since more people seem to watch videos over reading reviews these days, I thought this was a good opportunity to try my hand at a YouTube review. The experience was fun, but I have a lot to learn about presenting a spoken review in front of a camera. I forgot to mention two cool observations, and I didn’t feel I was always as coherent as possible, but I think I still got most of my points across. I also forgot to ask for people who saw the film that hadn’t read the original story to let me know how they felt the film was because I am interested in a non-Lovecraft fan’s perspective.

SPOILER WARNING FOR EVERYTHING BELOW!

If you’re interested, here are the two points I didn’t touch on in the spoiler section that I wanted to. I really liked how the color seemed to affect the members of the family differently. Cage’s character is haunted by a horrible smell, and I loved that particularly because I thought it was probably a reference to the Dunwich Horror, where there’s a line that goes, “as a foulness, ye shall know them,” referring to identifying evil, ancient entities. Also, as my friend Tom pointed out, Lavenia’s character spends most of the film trying to leave the Gardner farm, and at the end of the movie, the color may have granted her wish and teleported her to another world.

 

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The Fisherman

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The FishermanYesterday, I finished my third book of the new year. I enjoyed John Langan’s short story collection, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, so much that I wasted almost no time reeling in his most recently published novel, The Fisherman. After consuming the work in under a week, I can safely say that it includes everything I enjoyed in his short fiction while adding new layers of horrifying goodness.

The narrative follows Abe, an extremely likable widower, as he recounts the haunting experiences and myths surrounding the mysterious Dutchman’s Creek. Here I must pause to deliver an amusing anecdote. While listening to The Fisherman via audible, en route to Philadelphia with my wife, I couldn’t help adding my own soundtrack of “Dun Dun DUN” to the story as Abe recounted the first time he heard about Dutchman’s Creek from his friend, Dan. Immediately after I finished my theme, the narration stated, “If this had been a movie, I guess this would’ve been the moment ominous music boomed on the soundtrack.” My wife and I had quite a laugh, but I think that perfectly illustrates how well Langan knows his own story.

While Abe is the primary protagonist, most of the story is relayed by a different character. He is a cook who bears a striking similarity to H.P. Lovecraft. Besides both people being named Howard, the cook is also described as having a lantern jaw, being a writer, and coming from Providence. Putting all those things together paints a very particular picture, and I loved it. Howard relays the spooky story about Dutchman’s Creek’s origin that he was told by a minister, who heard the story from one of his parishioners in a nursing home. Much like a real fishing story, this one comes via several degrees of separation from the teller. As for the origins of Dutchman’s Creek, you’ll have to read The Fisherman yourself to get all the horrifying details, but I can’t help telling you that the antagonist of the novel is a kind of supernatural Ahab set on capturing a sea creature that would put Moby-Dick to shame.

During the novel, there were at least two references to some of Langan’s short fiction that I loved. The first was a kind of magical right of passage that two characters must make to a city patrolled by bird-like figures who should be familiar to those who read Outside the House, Watching for the Crows in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu. The second was when Abe passes by the headless statue of a pregnant woman, which readers of Mother of Stone, the closing tale in The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies should recognize. These connections deepened my reading experience and made me hoot with amusement when I came across them.

Alright, I better stop rambling about how much I liked this novel, or we’ll be here forever. In summary, The Fisherman is a great read. It has a protagonist you love (imagine if Pet Sematary was told from the perspective of the kindly neighbor instead of the doctor), a classic Weird narrative (with enough spooky fish to please a resident of Innsmouth), loads of intricately detailed references (to other horror works, Moby-Dick, and more), emotional resonance (anyone who’s ever lost someone will find themselves connecting with the novel’s portrayal of grief), and lastly, it will keep you turning pages toward its appropriately disconcerting ending. I can’t recommend this novel enough if, like me, you’re a horror reader who leans toward the Weird.

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The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies

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The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous GeographiesThe Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies by John Langan

I loved The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies. The book collects nine of John Langan’s short stories, some original and some reprinted. I first encountered Mr. Langan’s work in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, which I have been slowly devouring since I bought it back in 2016. While I was at the beach this past summer, I read his tale, Outside the House, Watching for the Crows, and I loved it as much as this collection. I marveled at his ability to use nostalgia in the service of telling a good horror story. About two weeks later, I encountered Mr. Langan in person.

Soon after my beach trip, I was lucky enough to present my academic paper, The Shadow Over Horror Tropes, at NecronomiCon 2019, in Providence, Rhode Island. It was there that I listened to Langan speak during the Outer Dark’s State of the Weird Podcast. Afterward, I ended up crossing his path a few times during the convention, but I didn’t realize he’d written Outside the House, Watching for the Crows until I got back from Providence. Somehow, my brain failed to make the connection that I’d read his work, even though I had my copy of The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu with me, and I saw his name tag multiple times. Suffice it to say; I’m still annoyed at myself for not getting his signature. Reading The Wide, Carnivorous Sky has only intensified my regret over missing the chance to pick Langan’s brain about his fantastic prose.

In my opinion, the tales in The Wide, Carnivorous Sky can be divided into two types. There are those where Langan experiments with the conventions of telling a horror story, and there are those that are more traditional. As a reader, I loved all these tales, but as a writer, I especially loved the avant-garde ones because they showed Langan’s narrative creativity.

I felt that four of the nine stories in this collection fell into the experimental category. The first was How the Day Runs Down, a tale in the form of a play concerning the zombie apocalypse and the afterlife. The mundanity of what happens after we die in this story was especially spooky to me. This is one I’d love to reread in print since I listened to The Wide, Carnivorous Sky on Audible. Immediately following How the Day Runs Down is Technicolor. This is a tale in the form of a lecture that concerns Poe’s exceptionally wonderful story, The Masque of the Red Death. Of course, writing this now, I can’t help but realize that How the Day Runs Down and Technicolor are both tales masquerading in other narrative formats.

The most avant-garde of these stories is The Revel. It’s a meta-tale told from a narrator dissecting the Werewolf story in progress by explaining all the elements, from the monster to the characters. It’s a unique take on the subgenre and another one I’d love to revisit in print form. The last tale to mix up narrative conventions is the final one in the collection, Mother of Stone. Langan uses the second person to tell a story about local lore and exorcisms. This one made my spine tingle quite a bit. As a writer thinking about craft, I wonder how much of that was due to hearing the narrator refer to “you” instead of a third person protagonist?

While I’ve devoted a little extra page space to the experimental tales, the five traditional tales are just as fun. The collection opens with Kids, a short and visceral story about a teacher dealing with, let’s say, unruly students. The collection’s namesake, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky, is a fun twist on vampire mythology. It also reminded me of the science fiction horror classic Predator, because it concerned a group of soldiers confronting an alien foe with military strategy and good old-fashioned moxie.

Possibly my favorite tale of the entire collection, City of the Dog is amazing. The story uses nostalgia in a similar way to Outside the House, Watching for the Crows. The major difference is that City of the Dog connects with H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, specifically his famous tale, Pickman’s Model. Langan’s story is a masterclass on creating a believable character. The protagonist is extremely well developed, and I loved the haunting ending, which leaves the protagonist filled with fear and regret. I think this tale perfectly illustrates how vital a character’s regrets are to a good horror story.

Another excellent tale that deals with Lovecraft is The Shallows. This story explores what the world looks like after Cthulhu has risen. It’s effective in a similar way to City of the Dog, as regret is a core part of the tale again, but the tone is bleaker since the world has been wiped out. It’s full of the quiet moments of contemplation that I think good post-apocalyptic fiction requires. Lastly, there is June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr. Norris, a fictional account of an incident in the writer Laird Barron’s life (I just reviewed his exceptional collection, Occultation and Other Stories, last month). The story concerns a car designed to draw occult symbols using human blood to summon horrible monstrous entities. So, naturally, I loved everything about it.

If you like horror, weird fiction, or anything in between, you should read or listen to this collection. All the tales are unique and entertaining. Langan even mentions my favorite superhero team, the X-Men, in a few of his stories. I highly recommend checking out The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies. And since I just listened to three short story collections in a row on audible, I think a return to novels is warranted. So, I may follow-up Langan with more Langan by reading his 2016 novel, The Fisherman. What better way to start 2020, then with a healthy dose of horror?

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