Bumping Geese 5: The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb

Last week I described Goosebumps as something I'm learning a lot about despite having zero passion for it. That might have sounded a bit harsh. It might make it sound like this has already become some kind of chore for me, rather than as the enjoyable part of the week that it is.

You see, while they are children's books, I really am just a big child. I follow every Spongebob social media page, I feel an immense pure joy whenever I re-watch the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", I think puns and slapstick are the best comedy, and I obsess morbidly over every mistake I made when I was 8 until I am overcome with shame and regret. I'm big, grouchy, pretentious child, but still a child at heart, none the less.

And for the most part, the Goosebumps books I've read have been entirely worth the time I've spent on them. If, like me, you have an lively inner-child and you're interested in the Goosebumps books I've reviewed, I absolutely recommend reading them. They're only a few dollars as e-books and they only take a couple of hours to read.

And now we've got that cleared up, let's talk about this weeks Goosebumps and my especially mild enthusiasm for it.

Anybody else think those bandages look too loose?

'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' is a story about Gabe, an Egyptian American boy on a holiday with his parents visiting Egypt for the first time. I just want to pause here to remark that it's really refreshing for the characters to be both explicitly POC in this book, and for the main characters in a story about Egyptian mummies to actually be ethnically Egyptian, even if still American. Kudos, Mr Stine.

So, anyway, Gabe is visiting Egypt with his shitty parents who won't buy their child a drink even though he's thirsty and they're in the desert. But after a long day of depriving him of water just because they can, they receive a phone call and have to cut their holiday short. You see, Gabe's awful parents are using this holiday as a chance to do some kind of business for their refrigerator selling business, and a meeting they had planned in Alexandria has been bumped forward a week, meaning they need to cut short their time in Cairo. Gabe is understandly upset that his parents have decided to suck quite so hard, but then they have an idea.

Dump the kid with his uncle!

And his cousin he hates!

Parents of the year.

But Gabe does like his uncle, and it means he can stay in Cairo and do Cairo things, and his Uncle - Ben - is an archaeologist working in the pyramids, so maybe he'll get to go inside a pyramid if he stays with his uncle. So Gabe agrees and his parents rush off, no doubt thrilled to be rid of their child, who they clearly hate, because they are terrible.

And a little while later, Gabe's terrible uncle and cousin, who, if we're honest, also seem like they hate Gabe, arrive at Gabe's hotel to look after him. Uncle Ben arrives in a mummy costume just to scare Gabe, and Sari - Gabe's cousin and Ben's daughter - find it hilarious when Gabe, who has been alone in a hotel room in a foreign country where he doesn't speak the language, abandoned by his parents, after spending the day dehydrated, this it's fuckin' hilarious when he nearly shits himself at the sight of a stranger in a monster costume walking unannounced and uninvited into his room.

After dumping some extra trauma on Gabe, Uncle Ben tells him he will indeed take Gabe to the pyramids tomorrow and when tomorrow arrives, they do indeed go to the pyramids. Uncle Ben, as it happens, has discovered a new chamber in the pyramids. And by 'Uncle Ben has discovered' I mean the diggers and students working for him discovered it and he's taking the credit.

It's all very fascinating, but once they're there, Uncle Ben gets distracted talking to his colleagues, so Sari convinces Gabe to run off with her and explore the pyramid. They do, but Gabe falls behind when his shoelace comes untied and he stops to tie it up. Once again abandoned by his family, he wanders blindly in search of Sari and eventually finds her. Or rather, Sari climbs into an empty sarcophagus, waits for a frightened and lost Gabe to stumble into the room, then bursts out at him to frighten him.

So, let's get something out of the way about here. With the exception of poor Gabe, every fucking person in this book sucks. They are just the worst. Like, this book isn't anywhere near as bad as 'Monster Blood', but everyone is as terrible as the little shit that was the protagonist in ;Monster Blood'.

And no, I don't remember that bastard's name. He will forever be remembered as "The little shit from 'Monster Blood', the worst Goosebumps book."

Oh, you don't believe me? How bad could they be?

So, after Uncle Ben finds them --

Hold on. One more tangent. Uncle Ben? Is RL Stine trying to force me to make Spider-Man jokes?

Well I refuse.

You can't make me.

Nah-uh.

Anyway. So, after Uncle Ben finds Sari and Gabe wandering the pyramid and probably wrecking priceless history, the next day Uncle Ben leaves them alone in the hotel while he goes to visit some workers who have come down sick, or maybe gone into shock after some unspecified incident at the pyramid. Sari, who still sucks, convinces Gabe to leave the hotel, against Uncle Ben's instructions, to go visit the Cairo museum. This being a thing Gabe was looking forward to doing with really anybody who would take him because he is desperate for anybody in his family to love him and show him kindness, it doesn't take much to convince Gabe. And so off they go, and are promptly kidnapped by Ahmed, one of Uncle Ben's colleagues whom they met at the pyrmids. Ahmed pulls the old "Your father sent me to get you because he is busy, get into my car and I will take you to him" schtick and Gabe and Sari fall for it, until they realise they're being kidnapped.

Luckily, they escape, and are able to run back to the hotel. A short while later, Uncle Ben returns and they tell him about Ahmed and the kidnapping and Uncle Ben, source of great wisdom that he is, says "I shall go and confront him at the pyramids and you should come with me, children who were his victim!"

And off they go.

Fortunately, this time Uncle Ben gives his children some beepers that will allow him to find them if they get lost. They each also have a torch all their own. And into the spooky pyramid they go.

And then Gabe notices his shoes are untied and stops to tie them up. He calls for Uncle Ben and Sari to wait for him, but the two are too busy arguing over something and so they don't hear and abandon him in the dark again.

Don't get me wrong. I feel for Gabe. I like Gabe. He has all my sympathy... But get some Velcro shoes, kid. Laces suck and you should have learned by now that they're a fool's game.

Oh wait. Gabe is 12 and can't buy his own shoes. His parents need to do that, and because they hate him, of course they would only buy him shoes with laces.

Yes. Yes I do believe if somebody ever buys you a pair of shoes with laces instead of Velcro, they hate you. They hate you as much as Gabe's parents hate him.

Sorry. I don't make the rules.

All right. So where were we? Oh yeah. Gabe is lost again. He goes running around looking for Sari and Ben. He doesn't use his beeper because he is sure Sari will make fun of him for being lost and scared again. Then the tunnel he's in just fuckin' collapses under him and he falls into a chamber full of mummies, mummy-making-tools, and a tar pit. Oh, and scorpions. And the scorpions just start going to town on Gabe's feet. They hate his shoes with laces, too... Or they just hate Gabe. Why not? Everybody else does.

Luckily, Gabe isn't there long before somebody finds him. Just before he falls face first into the scorpion nest, Sari finds him and grabs him, stopping him mid-fall. Unfortunately, it is Sari, so she's a total bitch about it, and also she's now lost and separated from Ben. And then just because the universe wants Gabe to suffer, both he and Sari are found by Ahmed, whom you may remember from a few paragraphs ago when he tried to kidnap them. Only now Ahmed is new and improved Ahmed With A Knife edition Ahmed.

Ahmed reveals that he tried to kidnap them to force Ben to leave his pyramid explorations. He also frightened the workers who fell ill, also to stop the exploration. Ahmed, you see, is the descendent of ancient Egyptian priestess Khala, who put a curse on all who would violate her tomb/mummy chamber. But this is one of those not-so-impressive curses where a direct descendant of the priestess has to be in the area, and know about the curse, and know about the violation, and agree to carry it out by murdering the culprits and mummifying them.

And, look, I don't want to tread on anybody's beliefs, but this is one weak arse curse and Ahmed is just a serial killer. Dude just wants to murder some archaeologists and any priestesses or ancient curses seem peripherally involved at best.

Before Ahmed can begin the murders, though, Uncle Ben shows up to rescue the kids and absolutely fails. Gabe, Ben, and Sari try to escape, but still fail. Ahmed gets tired of their shenanagins and decides that instead of the mummification plan, he's just going to push them into a boiling tar pit.

But at the last moment, standing on the edge of the tar pit, seconds from a painful death, Gabe reaches into his pocket and remembers his lucky charm. His special talisman he has carried this whole time. A treasure he picked up at a garage sale. A mummified hand called The Summoner, told to have the legendary power of, well, summoning. And what does it summon?

Mummies, apparently. Because Gabe holds the mummified hand up like he's calling on the power of Greyskull and Ahmed freaks out and then all the mummies in the room - victims of Ahmed and his ancestors - come to life and try to throw Ahmed in the tar pit. But only monsters are allowed to die in  a Goosebumps book, and Ahmed is a human, so after doing him a spook, the mummies let him go and Ahmed runs off. The mummies go back to sleep, Gabe and his family go back to the hotel and...

And nothing. Gabe's parents come back to Cairo and the book ends without a twist.

And so ends what is, by far, the least moist Goosebumps book in the series so far.

Really, everything in this book is so dry and sandy that it's like the four previous books stole all the moist out of this one.

And how is this decidedly un-moist book?

It's okay. Not the best. Not the worst. A solid "Sure" on the scale of "Pfft" to "Aww yeah!".

One of the things that is really interesting about this task of mine to read all the Goosebumps is that I get to see, one book at a time, how RL Stine has evolved as an author. All authors change, grow, and usually improve with time. Even though 'Stay Out of The Basement' is still the best book in the series so far, on the whole, the quality has been on an upwards climb and that is especially clear in this book because, as of 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' RL Stine has learned what a joke is.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I cannot stress hard enough to you how awkwardly, deeply, and amazingly not-funny RL Stine is. I genuinely don't think, that in 1992, when he started writing Goosebumps, he knew what a joke was. Characters would make jokes, and I'd know they were jokes because RL Stine would call them that in the narration, but they were not funny. They were not anything remotely resembling a joke. It was like he was taking his wildest, most desperate guesses at what counts for humour and screaming "IS THIS IT? HAVE I DISCOVERED THE FUNNY!?"

And no, Mr Stine, you had not.

Until now.

In 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb', RL Stine discovered puns.

And, fortunately for RL Stine, and for me, I am a giant grumpy pretentious child and I fucking love puns.

All right. I think that's it. This blog is feeling a little long, today, and I have stuff to do. I did have a Marxist take for this one, but I don't want to take up too much of your time and we've had a lot of tangents already. If enough people ask for it (drop a comment down below) I'll come back to it, otherwise, well, for this look back on a little story about mummies...

That's a wrap!

Bumping Geese 4: Say Cheese and Die!

So far I've been reading the Classic Goosebumps reprints line. These were published in the late 2000s and each of the books I've read so far include a brief Q&A with RL Stine in which he talks about the book, himself, and promotes a (at the time) upcoming line called horror land.

This gives me an additional insight into the series beyond just reading them.

So I'm rapidly becoming an expert on all things Goosebumps, a thing I have only the mildest of interest in. It's sort of weird to find myself so dedicated to something I feel absolutely no passion for.

Still. It could be worse. I could still be reading Monster Blood.

This is not the cover art for the version I read.
This is the cover art I remember seeing in the library as a child.

Fortunately, 'Say Cheese and Die!' is not Monster Blood. Not only does it not feature any monster blood, it's a pretty good book. I really liked this one. It's not 'Stay Out of The Basement'  good, but it's good.

'Say Cheese and Die!' is about Greg Banks, your ordinary 90s kid living an ordinary 90s life. One ordinary 90s day, he and his friends Shari, Michael, and Bird decide to indulge in some ordinary 90s entertainment by breaking into the neighbourhood abandoned/haunted house. But it turns out the house is not so abandoned or haunted, after all. It has become the squat of the local creepy vagabond known only as Spidey.

While Greg and his friends are picking through Spidey's garbage and possibly the antique belongings of whoever owned the house before Spidey moved in, Greg finds a hidden compartment with a polaroid camera. Greg, who enjoys both photography and apparently theft, takes the camera to play with and snaps a photo of his friend Michael, posed on the basement stairs. No sooner than he has taken the photo, the wooden beam Michael is leaning on snaps and he falls and injures himself. As this happens, Spidey returns to the house, and the friends must flee before they are discovered raiding the creep's home.

They escape safely - or so it would seem. But Greg is sure he sees Spidey watching them from the house. But that's not the only frightening discovery. The photo Greg took of Michael, now developed, shows Michael falling from the stairs, but Greg is confident he took the photo before the fall.

The friends shrug it off and go their separate ways, Greg keeping the stolen camera with him. When he gets home, he tests the camera again, this time taking a photo of his family's new car. Once again the photo develops wrong. The car in the photo is a wreck. Greg tries to shrug it off as some kind of defect in the camera, but the thought that this camera can take photos of the future, or perhaps causes a terrible future to occur, nags at his mind and frightens him.

Over the course of the next few days, Greg takes photos of his brother and his friends, even himself, driven by a morbid desire to prove the camera is not merely broken, but holds some kind of power. Each time he takes a photo, it shows his subject in terrible danger, or suffering a horrific injury. These frightful images even haunt his dreams. And sure enough, one by one, the terrible predictions of the photos come true. There are no deaths, but his father ends up in hospital after a car crash destroys the new car with him in it. Despite this, nobody is willing to believe Greg.

That is, until, he takes a couple of photos of Shari at her birthday - at her insistence - and instead of showing some horrific future for Shari, it doesn't show her at all. Shari does not appear in the photos Greg takes. And this too comes true! By the end of the day, Shari has vanished entirely.

Meanwhile, Spidey has begun his hunt for the missing camera. Greg spots Spidey following him around town, and returns home one day to find his room has been ransacked while the whole family was out. And I am sure there's a J. Jonah Jameson joke in here somewhere, but damnit, I just can't put my finger on it.

Camera. Spidey. Pictures.
I know the joke is here somewhere!

Shari is missing for a few days. Her family, friends, and the local police conduct a search of the town and the woods near her house, where she vanished, but Shari is nowhere to be found. Then, in a rage, Greg destroys the photos he took of her - the ones in which she did not appear - and as mysteriously as she vanished, Shari returns.

At last Greg's friends believe him about the camera, but all except Shari are too afraid to go back to the abandoned house with him and return it. So, in the final chapters, it is Shari and Greg who take the camera, on one not-so-ordinary 90s stormy afternoon, back to the neighbourhood abandoned house and place it back in the hidden compartment where Greg found it. At last the nightmare is over.

Except it isn't! Spidey finds them in the basement returning the camera and traps them. There, he explains that he, an evil scientist, invented the camera with a friend of his, an even-more evil wizard. But Spidey, whose real name is Frederick Fritz, stole the camera from his partner in... evil. As revenge, the wizard cursed the camera so that it would bring harm upon, and steal the soul of anybody who it took a photo of. The curse also made the camera impossible to destroy and I guess never run out of film. That's not said explicitly, but it's a fair assumption. Fritz decided to give up on his life of evil science and wizardry and hide the camera away forever, with him as its sole guardian. Alas, now that Greg and Shari know the secret of the camera, Fritz intends to keep them prisoner forever, so the secret never gets out.

A brief scuffle ensues and in the mayhem, the camera goes off, taking somebody's photo? But who.

Spidey, obviously, who immediately dies of fear for what the camera will do to him. Greg and Shari lock the camera away again and leave, putting the evil of the camera and of Dr Fritz to rest forever.

OR DO THEY!?

No. Because I know this book has at least two sequels and also it's not Goosebumps without a last minute twist ending. So as the novel closes, we see the two local token bullies stealing the camera from the house and running off into the spooky sunset to... Well, I don't know what they'll do. But RL Stine token bullies are almost as irredeemably sociopathic as Stephen King token bullies, so I'm sure it will be awful.

And I'm not going to say that is a highlight of Stine's writing. They are cheap, one-dimensional, throw-away secondary villains. Buuuuuut I got to admit, the idea of those two psychotic little shits with the cursed camera, stumbling arse first into its power, then terrorising the locals with it is a genuinely disturbing and frightening thought.

And that brings us to the important question. Is 'Say Cheese and Die!' a frightening story?

Well, there must be something scary about a cursed camera because this isn't the first time I've encountered it. 'Say Cheese and Die!' has a lot of similarities to the 2019 film 'Polaroid' directed by Lars Klevberg. The internet tells me that Polaroid was not well received, but I thought it was fine. 'Shutter' directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom in 2004 also heavily features photography as a horror motif. Spirit photography is a tradition almost as old as regular photography. So there must be something here. Do cameras frighten us?

Well, fear of technology is a common theme in horror fiction, but I think, when it comes to 'Say Cheese and Die!' and camera based horror in general, it's simpler than that.

Here is a quote from film maker Alfred Hitchcock.

"There is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise’, and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean. We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boom!’ There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence.

"Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!’

“In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense."

Suspense and horror go hand in hand. 'Say Cheese and Die!' utilises the same kind of suspense technique Hitchcock is talking about. We, the audience (and, in this case, eventually the story's protagonist), know the camera has some kind of curse or power, we know that what the photo shows will happen, and that the photo always shows something terrible. So from the moment Greg takes the photo and RL Stine gives the description of what is going to happen, we the audience are watching every line for indication that the terror is coming.

When Greg gets in the car the first time, after he sees the photo showing it wrecked, we know something bad is happening. We hold our breath, our muscles tighten, we read about the car swerving into on-coming traffic and our mind screams "THIS IS IT! THE BAD THING!"

And it doesn't happen that first time. But we know it will, eventually. So every time we see the car in the story, we say to ourselves "Is this it?"

And because what we know is coming is horrible, and because we care about the protagonist, we fear for them. Suspense becomes fear. And that's what horror is all about. Making us fear.

So was 'Say Cheese and Die!" frightening? Not in the same deeply visceral way that I found 'Stay Out of The Basement' frightening. But, again, that book was the perfect blend of elements to make my skin crawl. But 'Say Cheese and Die!' is very effective. I was afraid for Greg. I was holding my breath as he got in the car, and as Bird stepped out into the baseball field after we see a photo of him laying in the same field, looking like his neck is broken. So yeah. This one was frightening. This one was good.

And once again, each book comes with just the one analysis. So since we've taken the time to break down the elements of good writing and the techniques of the craft, you'll just have to wait until next time for the politics.

Yes, yes, I know.

The suspense is killing you, I'm sure.

Bumping Geese 3: Monster Blood

 I had a dream I met R. L. Stine. He had heard about my endeavour to read all the Goosebumps books, to review and to analyse them, to catch up on a part of my childhood that never was. He was pleased by my decision and asked if he could help me. I told him he could give me a copy of all the books I still had to read, save me the cost of buying them all. He said he would, but they're out of print and he has no control over that. I thanked him, anyway, for his encouragement.

That's one of two Goosebumps related dreams I had this week.

At the start of the week, I began to receive questions about how far I was along with the next book, when this blog would be written.

So I guess this is just my life, now. It wouldn't bother me so much except, well... Friends...

'Monster Blood' sucked.

Nothing within the book resembles what is depicted here

'Welcome To Dead House' was a pleasant surprise. Flawed but engaging and creepier than I expected from a childrens' book. 'Stay Out of the Basement' was genuinely frightening and a marked improvement over the first book. 'Monster Blood' is what I was worried the series would be when I started reading it - uninspired childrens' adventure fiction masquerading as horror comedy but sorely lacking in both horror and comedy.

'Monster Blood'  is the story of Evan... Evan Ro.... Even Robbins? Roberts? Hold on.

Evan Ross. The Goosebumps wiki tells me his name was Evan Ross, which is handy, because apparently I've already begun the process of purging everything about this book from my memory.

Anyway. 'Monster Blood' is the story of Evan Ross, a young lad who goes to stay with his great aunt Kathryn while his parents look for a new home in Atlanta, where his father is being transferred for work. Kathryn is an eccentric crone and completely deaf. She also doesn't speak sign language or read lips, so she mostly just talks at people and to herself. And to her cat. She's a childless widower and Evan takes a quick dislike to her and her home. He is forced to sleep in a camping cot set up in her office, she has no TV, no toys, and Evan isn't interested in any of the books on her shelves. Worse still, her cat is a mean spirited animal that provokes Evan's pet dog Trigger, prompting Kathryn to force Trigger to stay outside for the duration of their stay. Topping it all off, Evan quickly gets the attention of the neighbourhood bullies, the Beymer twins.

The only respite for Evan is found in a friendship with Andy, a high-spirited girl from the neighbourhood. Andy shows Evan the town and takes him to a local toy shop, where Evan finds and purchases an old can of toy slime - basically silly putty - called Monster Blood. Evan and Andy have a good time messing around with the goop on the first day. While they're playing, Trigger steals a chunk and eats it, to Evan's chagrin, but the dog seems okay. The following day, though, Evan notices that the Monster Blood appears to be growing, and it tries to consume anything that touches it, including people. Trigger also begins growing at an alarming rate, eventually becoming the size of a pony.

Evan tries to conceal the sinister growing goop from his aunt by storing it in a series of increasingly large containers, even gives a chunk to Andy to take home. But Andy faces the same problem with her share of the Monster Blood. Eventually Evan tries to ask his aunt for help, writing a plea for assistance on some note paper, but Kathryn thinks it's a joke. Evan and Andy try taking the Monster Blood back to the toy store, and to the shifty shop-keeper who seemed reluctant to sell it in the first place, but the store has closed in the few days since they visited.

The novel climaxes when the Monster Blood, now as large as a large man, seems to come to life and begin terrorising Evan, Andy, Kathryn, and the Beymer Twins, consuming anything and everything it touches, trapping it in the depths of its slimy, oozy, bouncy core. And it sure is bouncy. The climactic scenes see the Monster Blood shape itself into a bouncing sphere so that it can chase down the protagonists.

And then, somehow, it gets even more ridiculous. Spoilers.

In the final moments, it is revealed that Aunt Kathryn put a spell on the Monster Blood when Evan and Andy brought it home. She bewitched it so that it would drive Evan away, or kill him in the process. Why? Because Kathryn herself is also bewitched. She is under the control of Sarabeth, her pet cat, who is actually an evil shape shifting witch who has been dominating Kathryn for decades, and wanted Evan gone because she feared Evan would find out.

It's all sort of unfortunate because Evan is as thick as a stack of bricks and would never have noticed if Sarabeth didn't send the Monster Blood after him. So that, and the pony sized Trigger, become Sarabeth's undoing, and the Monster Blood ultimately consumes her, undoing all her magic and ending her reign of terror over Kathryn. It is a twist that comes out of nowhere, feels completely out of place, makes no sense, and makes everybody involved seem like kind of a dunce. It also immediately creates a lot of questions and narrative inconsistencies that the book never bothers to answer.

I can't help but feel that whole summary reads as kind of dry and boring, but in my defence, that's what the book is. So far, the Goosebumps books I have read all have a similar narrative pace, and that pace is a slow burning fuse on a tonne of dynamite. The books start slow, drip feeding you spooky scenes, fake-outs, and foreshadowing, then it all comes to a sudden climactic peak of frantic and tense action and confrontation with the horror.

But 'Monster Blood' falls flat by being not scary or tense at all. In 'Welcome To Dead House' the first and second act are slow, and not much really happens, and there's a lot of quiet mystery about the house and the town, but that mystery presents as spooky ghost children and mysterious voices from the closet.

In 'Monster Blood' it's just dull scene after dull scene of Evan watching the Monster Blood grow bigger and nothing else happening.

But that's not even the biggest problem I have with 'Monster Blood'.

The biggest problem is that I had to spend 130 pages with Evan Ross, who may just be the most unlikeable protagonist in any book I have ever read. This little shit is ungrateful, judgmental, and condescending to everyone around him. He is utterly miserable from the first pages. While Andy is a delight - funny, caring, honest, personable, assertive - Evan seems to go out of his way to bring her down. Really, Andy deserves a better friend and Kathryn deserves a better nephew.

I hated every moment I had to spend with Evan. 0/10. Would not recommend. Would not inhabit his point of view again.

And yet...

And yet I do feel a touch of sympathy for Evan.

Evan may have opened the can of Monster Blood, may have wilfully bought it and played with it, but he didn't create it. He didn't set it upon the world to grow, consume, and destroy. Evan was a victim. But worse yet, for a long time, Evan was the only one who could see that the Monster Blood was an issue.

Kathryn doesn't believe him. Andy, for a long time, thinks it's maybe weird but no big deal - or at least not her problem. There's a scene in which Evan takes Trigger to the vet and the vet, seeing this over sized dog, declares it to be unusual but perfectly healthy. The vet runs some tests, but decides to wait and see if there's anything to actually worry about.

In a way, for a lot of the story, Evan is very much alone in conflict with this terrifying unnatural force of destruction set on infinitely growing and consuming everything it touches.

And here in the year of our lord, 2020, I suspect there's a lot of people who can relate to that.

And those people are Marxists.

Yes, it's that time.

When I first mentioned that I was considering reading all the Goosebumps books, I was asked for the Marxist take on Monster Blood. Why Monster Blood specifically? No clue. But here we are.

If you didn't pick up on the very subtle analogy I was crafting above, the Monster Blood bears some striking and frightening similarities this capitalist hellscape we've all come to understand as the world we live in. Its only goal is to grow and consume, and the only way it can do that is to destroy everything it touches, to treat nature, people, objects all alike as food. And it doesn't matter that Evan opened the can, that Kathryn set its growth in motion, that Sarabeth thought she was in control of it - all of them would ultimately suffer as the Monster Blood's victims. Likewise, it didn't matter that Andy and the Beymer twins really had nothing to do with it, that they were bystanders. Everybody. Everybody is in the Monster Blood's destructive path.

And Evan knew. And he tried to warn everyone. He was the first to suffer. He was the proletariat at the receiving end of exploitation, understood what was happening to him, saw what would happen to all, and tried to warn the world of the terrible future ahead.

In the year of our lord 2020, we can now see that the end game of the class struggle is the destruction of the planet. Capitalist exploitation and the pursuit of infinite growth will not only continue to cost the workers their lives, it will inevitably turn back on the capitalists and destroy them. All the wealth in the world won't save them. They can own every piece of property on Earth and none of it will mean a thing when the Earth is a dry, burnt, lifeless husk. In class war, there are no victors.

And maybe, just maybe, the only solution here is revolution. We Marxists must unite as... A giant bewitched dog... And we must crash tackle a shape-shifting capitalist witch into a blob monster... You know. The blob monster that is Capitalism and that's... Currently threatening our deaf great-aunt who... I guess is... Middle-management? Also, now she can lip read, even though we made a big deal of how she couldn't before?

And then after the revolution, Andy... Who I think is, like, a politically unengaged liberal... Wants to take a piece of the capitalism home as a souvenir but when she goes to pick it up, it has mysteriously vanished...

Okay, fine. Look, it's not a perfect metaphor. What do you want from me?

'Monster Blood' is a boring book with a miserable protagonist in which nothing happens for too long, and when it finally does happen, it's a farcical non-sequitur both narratively and tonally. Sure, I can make a Marxist analogue out of anything, but even Bob Ross would produce an occasional sub-par landscape if all you gave him was a palette of Cadmium Yellow Shit.

Whatever. I'm going to go read 'Say Cheese And Die.'

At least I never have to read a book about Monster Blood ever again...

Bumping Geese 2: Stay Out Of The Basement

When I was young, I happened to see the original 1960 Little Shop of Horrors. I'd seen the 1986 film adaptation of the stage musical, and I was a fan, so seeing the original film was an exciting novelty.

The 1960 film and the 1986 film have very different endings. Spoilers. In the 1986 film, Seymour electrocutes the plant and it dies and then Seymour and Audrey live happily ever after.

In the 1960 version, the plant just fucking eats him. And then the monster plant's flowers open for an expectant and excited crowd, and the flowers have the faces of all the people the plant has eaten.

Little Nope Of Horrors

That shit fucked me up. To this day just the thought of it gives me chills. Looking up that image on Google, it occurs to me that my mind has probably made the whole thing a lot more horrific and convincing than 1960 film effects actually allowed, but, you know, I'm happy not to go back and double check.

Anyway.

Goosebumps book #2, 'Stay Out Of The Basement' is some creepy shit about about monster plants.

Nothing good has ever happened in a basement

Oh, and this one is also weirdly damp. A lot more wetness going on. Anyway.

'Stay Out Of The Basement' concerns the Brewer family - mother, father, son Casey and daughter Margaret - and the strange goings-on in their basement. The Brewer family live in California, and the father, a doctor of botany, has just lost his job as a researcher at California Polytechnic. Rather than get another job, he decides to hide himself away in the basement for hours on end, conducting botanical experiments on his own, continuing the very work that got him fired from the university.

This obviously puts a strain on his relationship the children and Mrs Brewer. Then Mrs Brewer's sister in Arizona is hospitalised, and Mrs Brewer must go to assist her sister, leaving Casey and Margret in the precarious care of their now estranged Father.

Margaret immediately notices strange new developments in her father's worsening state. Not only is he cold and distant, but he stops eating with his family, a wound on his arm never seems to heal in the weeks they are alone with him, and eventually they even discover his hair has fallen out and he is growing leaves from his scalp. At one point a visitor comes to see Dr Brewer's work and seems to vanish completely, never leaving the basement.

Several times, Casey and Margaret sneak into the basement to look at what their father is up to, and see their basement has been almost completely transformed into a rainforest of bizarre new plants. They find evidence of the missing guest and hear strange, human-sounding noises coming from a locked supply closet. Attempts to get their father to open up are met with vague half-truths about his attempts to splice plant and animal DNA to create a new kind of life form that is both animal and vegetable.

Pokemon. Dr Brewer is just breeding Pokemon.

In the book's finale, Margaret's worst fears are realised when they break into the supply closet and find their father tied up and gagged, apparently locked away by a plant monster that has replaced him. Or perhaps this Dr Brewer in the supply closet is the plant monster copy, locked away for being a dangerous abomination? In the end it is up to poor Margaret to decide which is their real father and which one gets the axe. Literally.

And it seems she chooses right, when the closet-father speaks warmly to her in a way the plant monster never did. Most of the remaining plants are destroyed, and the ones that are less creepy are moved to the garden. The family is reunited, safe again, and it looks as though Dr Brewer may even get his job back. Apparently California Polytech has changed its position on funding mad scientists playing God. Makes sense.

But then, in the final moments, Margaret is outside amongst the strange new plants when she notices one of them seems to be trying to get her attention. And that little flower appears to have the face, and voice, of her father!

What a twist!

And also.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK RL STINE

I've heard that Walt Disney once said children are resilient enough to handle anything so long as there is a happy ending.

Apparently Mr Goosebumps has a different philosophy, which is

FUCK THE KIDS, HERE'S SOME TRAUMA

Okay. Look. Plant monsters creep me out. This book reads like it was written specifically to scare me. Like the first book, the horror is well delivered. The tension is real, the scares are effective. I didn't notice any major inconsistencies in the narrative like in 'Welcome To Dead House' and there were fewer jump scares.

Jump scares, by the way, don't work well in books. In films they're over used and obnoxious, but they can at least get the heart racing. In books, they always - ALWAYS - fall flat.

So in every way this book is an improvement on the last. Better written, creepier, an even more imaginative set up with even more frightening monsters. Dialogue is still a bit awkward. But, look, this review is coming out on a Monday because I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed book #1 that I could hardly wait to get to book #2. That's praise enough on its own, right?

But 'Stay Out Of The Basement' also made it clear why these books were a success and why, decades later, I can read them as an adult and still get pulled into them, still have them tug on all the right emotions, can overlook that I outgrew this reading level a long time ago.

The best horror serves as an exploration of humanity's common and real anxieties. I've said this before right here in on this blog. A haunted house is never just a haunted house. A slasher is never just a slasher. A zombie is never just a zombie. Beneath the surface of great horror is something all of us feel in our daily lives. 'Stay Out of The Basement' is about creepy plant monsters, but it's also about a father who loses his job and retreats from his family into an unhealthy obsession to try and regain his pride. It's about a husband and wife who become estranged from each other and in doing so, from their children. It's about grown up problems shaking the foundations of grown up lives, and it's told from the view of children who don't quite get it, who see the problem, but the adults won't talk to them about it. Their parents try to protect them by keeping them at a distance, but in doing so only expose them to new danger.*

The Brewer family is in crisis, and that manifests as a plant monster that replaces their loving father and fills their house with a dark, primal, prehistoric dread...

And then it has a creepy as fuck ending because, again: fuck the kids, here's some trauma.

*No Marxism this week. One analysis is enough.

Bumping Geese 1: Welcome To Dead House

I - and you may know this already - am a crazy person. Sometimes I have crazy ideas. Sometimes I vocalise those crazy ideas and then my friends encourage me. This is what happened when I said recently, apropos of nothing, 

 "Hey, I never read any Goosebumps books when I was a child, even though I'm totally the kind of person who would enjoy them." 

And then I said "Well there's nothing stopping me from going out and reading them now, as an adult, who is probably still the kind of person who would enjoy them. Hey, why don't I read EVERY GOOSEBUMPS BOOK EVER."

And because I am friends with a bunch of enablers, I was encouraged. Thanks, friends!

So now I'm going to read every Goosebumps book, in order of release, one a week, until I finish them. Or get really depressed and give up on life. We'll see. And maybe I'll find a way to turn my reading of spoopy children's books into Marxist propaganda, because that's another thing I like to do.

I mean, not just spoopy children's books specifically. I can turn almost anything into Marxist propaganda. I know this because I said I could, one day, and again, I am friends with enablers of my own personal madness.

Anyway. So the first Goosebumps book ever released is Welcome To Dead House, first published in 1992. I think I read some kind of later edition, though, because stuff is mentioned as happening in the early 2000s and nobody mentions how that's weird or in the future, so I guess the dates were goose-bumped forward a bit for later audiences? I dunno.

Magenta is definitely the spookiest colour

'Welcome To Dead House' is the unusually moist story about Amanda Benson and her family - brother Josh, mother who I don't think gets a name, and father Jack - who are notified that their father's great uncle who he has never heard of has died and left him a whole house in his will. Jack, sees nothing unusual about this and, presumably between sending money to exiled Nigerian princes, packs up his family and all their belongings, quits his job, and moves them to the small town of Dark Falls and into their new, totally free, totally not haunted mansion.

But it turns out inheriting a random house in a random town from a random relative you've never met is a little suss, and indeed the whole town of Dark Falls is a little suss. It's very dark and cold, there's lots of shadows but not many people around, and the Benson family pet dog Petey, normally a well behaved little guy, seems to hate the town and everybody in it he meets. 

Pro tip for you all, in case you ever find yourself in a horror movie or novel, if your normally well behaved dog starts barking a lot, GTFO ASAP. Always trust dogs.

Amanda struggles to sleep, has bad dreams when she does sleep, and keeps seeing mysterious children running around her new house and hearing disembodied giggles and whispers. Frequently she finds her clothes have been moved or scattered about while she's not looking. Between the disappearing children, ghostly whispers, the one time the kids in the neighbourhood do what looks like an attempted murder, Amanda thinks maybe Dark Falls is a bad place.

Unfortunately for Amanda, everybody around her has yet to unpack their brains from the move, and her parents gaslight the shit out of her every time she says something, until even she begins to doubt her own experiences. Turns out she was right, though, and everybody in Dark Falls is a zombie ghost (or maybe a ghost zombie) and every year they con some random family into moving into the Benson's new house before killing them. And then that family also become ghost zombie zombie ghosts and the vicious cycle continues... for reasons.

But don't worry. Amanda and Josh manage to murder the fuck out of every zombie in the town and then move back to their old house. And it all ends happily ever after. EXCEPT MAYBE NOT OMG TWIST ENDING.

The ending reminds me of the Christopher Nolan film "Inception". You remember how (SPOILERS BEGIN) Leonardo DiCaprio finally reunites with his family and before he hugs his children he spins his little top thing and it wobbles but doesn't fall and the film ends and you're meant to be all "Is he still dreaming after all?! WHO CAN TELL." (SPOILERS END) and it's a terrible scene and the movie should have stopped before it wasted your time with that ambiguous nonsense?

'Welcome To Dead House' pulls that same shit.

And it's bad.

The prose is nothing special, of course. But this is a spoopy children's novel for children, so I really can't judge it for being simple and using small words like 'if' and 'it' instead of big words like 'Constantinople' and 'Timbuktu'. There are also some minor errors of continuity which aren't huge but definitely made me stop and go "Huh?" and that made the narrative feel a little clumsy in ways that "It's for kids!" isn't a valid excuse.

Also, as mentioned, the book is just bizarrely moist. Every other page something is being described in terms of how damp it is. As far as weird fixations of horror authors go, I prefer reading about wetness than, say, the way Stephen King gets weirdly hung up on describing what character's penises are doing, but, still... Why? Why all the fluid?

All that said, it was still enjoyable. The tension at points genuinely had me gripped and some of the frightening imagery was surprisingly intense and scary. Graphic macabre body horror is not something I was expecting, but, hey, I'm always onboard for body horror.

The ghost zombie zombie ghosts were also a neat idea. I call them that because they don't really fit into either category. They're very much their own monstrous thing and I give points for creativity to horror authors doing something unique with their monsters.

So that's that. All in all, a fun time. An enjoyable novel, goose warts and all.

One Goosebumps book down. I don't even know how many there are, or how long this will take, but I'm genuinely looking forward to reading more and continuing with this random exercise in not-nostalgia. Join me next week as we bump more geese with 'Stay Out Of The Basement'.

Have A Go (A Let It Snow parody)

If I might borrow a phrase...

Hello Internet

It's December. It's the holiday season for many people around the world. And as the year closes, it is tradition to look back at the year gone and try to process all that has happened. I don't know about you, but I have personally had one of the shittest years of my life. But I'm trying very hard to process the world through the lens of positivity. I have been looking for all the good in the world this year.

And I have been failing.

Because there is a lot... Just so much shit going on in the world right now. I can barely get past the bullshit around me in Australia to begin to comprehend how bad it is everywhere else. And so to help me process this, I wrote a song. Well, a song parody. I shared it on Facebook and Twitter this morning, and now I'm sharing it here. I present the new holiday anthem for Australia

"Have A Go (A Let It Snow parody)"

Oh the fires outside are frightful
But the cricket is so delightful
In the Land Of The Fair Go
Have a go
Get a go
A fair go

The police show no sign of stopping
So children's pants will keep on dropping
Everyone fear the Popo
Have a go
Get a go
A fair go

Now the bosses are all in awe
Because the workers walked off of the job
But the unions will be declawed
Because there's so many wages to rob

Human rights are slowly dying
And MedVac is no longer flying
But we gave LNP a go
Have a go
Get a go
A fair go

And now, like any good joke, I intend to kill this one by explaining all the shit I've been sifting through in my search for joy and good vibes.

Australia is on fire

Australia is a hot place. It's also a place with a lot of bushland and rain forests. And right now it's on fire. Australia is on fire for a decent chunk of every year, but this year we're approaching record levels of damage from bush fires and a major problem is that it has been hot and dry on unprecedented levels. These fires spread across multiple states, have claimed people's lives and homes and have caused the air to become dangerously toxic. It's bad, yo.

Meanwhile, our federal government has spent an awful lot of time twiddling its thumbs. The prime minister thinks the cricket season should be enough to cheer up those who have lost their homes to fires. At the suggestion that volunteer firefighters who are taking time off work to fight fires should be compensated for their bravery, our head of state also suggested that's a silly idea since the volunteers want to be out there fighting fires.

Oh, they're also under-equipped for this ongoing disaster and so the fire service has begun crowdfunding for replacement gear. Important things like face masks. Sources below.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/16/nsw-braces-for-severe-heatwave-as-bushfire-threatens-blue-mountains-homes
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/22/australia-bushfires-factcheck-are-this-years-fires-unprecedented
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/10/sydneys-air-11-times-worse-than-hazardous-levels-as-australias-bushfires-rage
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/something-to-cheer-about-scott-morrison-slammed-over-bushfire-cricket-tweet
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/12/firies-and-fury-exhausted-volunteers-decry-pms-claim-they-want-to-be-there
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-11/nsw-bushfires-firefighters-raise-money-to-buy-face-masks/11790096

Police Strip Searching Minors

The New South Wales police force has faced harsh criticism recently for a series of full body strip searches conducted at a music festival. This particular music festival is an event run exclusively for teenagers (age 13 to 17), so these strip searches were conducted on minors. Regulations for police require that any minor being strip searched by police must have a guardian present. In more than 20 cases, this didn't happen. Strip searches also shouldn't be happening outside a police station unless there is an imminent and serious threat. These searches were conducted on site. Oh, and they didn't find any drugs or weapons or anything at all that would be a threat or, you know, illegal.

The state commissioner of police defended these searches, despite them appearing to be in obvious violation of regulations. He also said that people should be afraid of the police. That's a thing that happened. I could spend more time unpacking this but it's kind of sickening and I don't want to think about it much more. Sources below. Look for yourself to see the depth of this insanity.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/02/nsw-police-told-15-year-old-lift-your-balls-up-strip-search-no-adult

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/they-need-to-have-respect-nsw-police-chief-defends-strip-searches

Job Walk-Offs and Union Busting

In Sydney, port workers, construction workers, and electrical workers have walked off job sites and refused to work while exposed to the dangerous levels of smoke in the air because it is hazardous to their health. Obviously. That's just how it works when the air has become poison. Obviously employers are not happy with workers putting their health and life ahead of profits.

Meanwhile, the federal government has been trying to pass a bill that gives more power to the courts to interfere with workers unions. These powers include terminating the employment of union officials or de-registering a union as a union. What horrible crimes would a union need commit for these punishments? Poor administration. Errors of paperwork. You know, the big issues. The bill is called the "Ensuring Integrity Bill" but basically everybody recognises it is about trying to weaken union power.

But that's not the only front on which our government wants to empower business owners over workers. While the coalition says it will come down hard on wage theft and introduce harsher penalties, they're making sure those penalties won't apply in situations where it was just a mistake. Of course it just so happens that "We accidentally underpaid our staff millions of dollars" is the favourite go to excuse for people like George Colambaris whose company was found to have failed to pay more than 7 million dollars earlier this years. Apparently it was a mistake because paying people is so hard to figure out. Anyway, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has described wage theft as a systemic problem in this country. Sources below.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/docks-halt-electrical-workers-stop-work-as-sydney-s-pollution-worsens-20191205-p53hbr.html

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-28/ensuring-integrity-union-busting-bill-senate/11745678

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/government-edges-closer-to-passing-union-busting-legislation-20191126-p53e8v.html

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/19/wage-theft-coalition-says-tough-new-penalties-wont-apply-for-genuine-mistakes

Medvac Repeal

Sigh. I don't even want to talk about this. But anyway, the federal government has just repealed the 2018 medical evacuation laws that empowered doctors to arrange for immigrants in off-shore mandatory detention centres to be transferred to hospitals in Australia if they need care. At this stage, the government holds the power to universally and without question veto any such suggested treatment.

Only last year, the UN addressed Australia and called for a revision of its laws after ruling that the country had breached several international human rights laws. That is obviously not happening. In fact, CIVICUS has reported that civil rights in Australia shrank this year. This fact may come as a shock to any white people in the audience and probably nobody else. Sources below.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/jul/18/celebrity-chef-george-calombaris-fined-for-underpaying-staff-by-78m

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/16/un-body-says-australia-breached-human-rights-laws-and-needs-to-review-migration-act

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/07/australias-civil-rights-rating-downgraded-as-report-finds-world-becoming-less-free

The fuck is a "fair go"?

The concept of "a fair go" is meaningless nationalist rhetoric used to talk about how fair Australia is. It's the concept that in Australia, in anything you do, you will get out what you put in and everybody is on a level playing field if you're willing to work hard for reward. Everyone is treated fairly. 

It's obviously not true, but it's a trope our Prime Minister wheeled out in his first press conference as head of government. There's really not much to say on it and no point to explore just how hollow and vapid a concept it is. Especially not when the below satire comic has done it fine without me.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/26/what-does-scott-morrison-mean-when-he-says-if-you-have-a-go-you-will-get-a-go

Ramble Review: Murder Party (2007)

You know what I love? Horror movies. Also Halloween. Also October. And I really love watching horror movies through October in the lead up to Halloween, at which time I... Well, I just watch more horror movies. And since I'm still of a mind to ramble about movies, let's ramble about movies. Let's start with Murder Party.

Murder Party is a 2007 horror comedy film by auteur Jeremy Sauliner. It stars Chris Sharp, Aandy Barnett, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt, William Lacy, Stacy Rock, and Skei Saulnier. It premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. It is currently available on Netflix.

Sharp stars as a lonely young man named Chris who finds himself without any plans on Halloween. But on his way home, he stumbles upon an invitation to a costume "Murder Party" let on the ground. Chris decides to attend and is taken hostage by the party's hosts, a group of art students, whom reveal their intention to murder Chris for art. Shortly after announcing their plans, the group's patron Alexander (Barnett) arrives to witness the murder and decide whom he will offer a grant for their art. But the group decides to wait until the witching hour before committing the crime, so Alexander and the art students kill time with pizza, sex, video games, and a game of truth or dare aided by sodium pentothal. Chris, tied to a chair and gagged, watches their debaucherous shenanagins as he awaits his inevitable artistic murder.

The small cast play the roll of self-absorbed and vapid artists convincingly, each one a desperate sycophant hanging off Alexander, who is every bit as vapid but twice as slimy. Sharp does a commendable job performing through mumbles and facial expression, making the most out of a mostly still and silent roll.

The narrative unfolds in small selection of cramped locations that bespeak the low budget of the film more than they do any mood, theme, or style. As a whole the film is distinctly lacking in style, which is surprising for an auteur production. It is what one might describe as a journeyman effort in film craft: competent but no more. The exception to this is in the exterior shots of the New York residential neighbourhood where Chris lives. The establishing shots capture the beauty of late October superbly, and the dressing of cheap Halloween decorations evoke an authentic seasonal charm that is enough to win over any Halloween fan.

But despite so much working in favour of the film, it was ultimately a disappointment. As a comedy, the film really only has one joke: look at how vapid all these art students are. Aren't they pretentious and asinine? This joke is dragged out in various forms through the entire second act of the film and it wears thin quickly. I suspect this would make for decent catharsis if you went in with a pre-existing hatred for the art student stereotype it's using. But if, like me, you're lacking that need to see straw men suffer, it is a lot of mean spirited tedium as you watch unlikable characters be unlikable as you wait for them to die.

Beyond its premise, the horror part of "horror comedy" doesn't kick in until the end. I imagine most people will be able to predict how the film climaxes before the halfway mark and it's a promising idea: a satisfying and humorous payoff that sees the art students' debauchery and narcissism give way to violence, leaving poor Chris to watch from his place in the chair. But the film doesn't even commit to the obvious choice, and halfway through it abandons this idea for an even more generic murderer-chases-victim ending that works in a few more jabs at pretentious artists before winding up with Chris returning home.

If you watch enough indie horror films, you start to notice a few problematic trends. One trend is that the film makers seem to go out of their way to make their characters unlikable. I can only hazard a guess at saying this is to make it all the more satisfying when they meet their bloody demise. But the cost for this cynical pandering to a gore-hungry audience leaves us with 90 minutes of watching people we don't like and that's not enjoyable. Murder Party goes out of its way, knowing its characters are awful people, but offers zero reprieve. Chris is not developped enough to be a hero we can root for or sympathise with. For all Sharp's effort to make the most of his role, there just isn't enough character for him to work with.

The second trend is that the auteur will come up with one interesting idea but have no idea how to execute that in a feature length format. Long time readers might remember that this was basically the problem I had with The Human Centipede. One idea, stretched thin into tedium. Similarly, Murder Party's one gag is not nearly enough to sustain it. When it isn't unpleasant, it's boring. The premise itself earns little more than a chuckle, meaning you can get pretty much the entire enjoyment of the film by reading the synopsis.

If what you want is to watch unpleasant people be unpleasant before meeting a bloody but uninteresting death; if you have a particular hated of young vapid and narcissistic artists and want to see them make fools of themselves before suffering, then this film might offer something like catharsis, but I'm not sure it will offer anybody real enjoyment. Ultimately, it's just a boring film. Not even bad in an interesting way.