12. to 9. Other to Mother

9. Psycho  

I've mostly tried to avoid the canonical favourites and given more recent entries a chance, but this is so classic, so iconic, so redolent of the genesis of slasher terror I couldn't ignore it. Dark, anxious, voyeuristic, and at times frightening in a way that's rarely if ever been equalled, here's creepy Norman Bates in all his Oedipal glory. Plus, uh, Janet Leigh, and "we're all in our own private traps." The first of many horror films to draw on notorious real-life serial killer, Ed Gein (Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs coming later), this set the bar extremely high. Then it decided to go in its own oddly claustrophobic and decidedly bittersweet direction. Goddamn it, this is one brilliant movie. The simultaneous birth of both slasher film and psychological horror.

10. Let the Right One In  

Sweden. Of all the films on my list, this is the one—had I been paranoid—I would have suspected as a personal dog whistle: externally cold, broad hints of inner warmth, unflinching, strangely loving, gender-confounding, drenched in a quiet yet creepy mood, and plain harrowing in its implications. I mean, in one sense, it's a story about a boy who's bullied and isolated who meets a girl who isn't what she seems, while the implied romanticism remains frozen beneath the (ice!) story that ultimately unfolds like icebergs slowly calving off from the greater mass. All of which, when you reassemble it, appears to comprise the bleakest of awful futures. Yeah, okay, and it's a vampire film. Sort of. Just watch it.

11. Funny Games  

I'm in the weird position of loving Michael Haneke's films yet loathing his judgmental attitude toward his audience. There are two versions of this film, both worthy contenders, and both filmed by Haneke (in 1997 and 2007), yet the "point" appears to be our insatiable lust for and expectations of vengeance, as dictated by some perceived tension between European art cinema and Hollywood convention. Whatever. Both films are worth our time, because aside from Haneke's moral hand-wringing, these films remain incredibly tense, visceral, violent, violating, and harrowing examples of home invasion horror, a la Straw Dogs, The Last House on the Left, and The Strangers. They are also elegant and beautiful in their way, juxtaposing the nihilistic immediacy of death metal with the baroque grace of Handel.

12. Oldboy 

South Korea. How do you begin to describe Park Chan-wook's singular, standout film? It's horror, sure; but it's also a thriller, a punishment and revenge tale, and a mystery. Who knew that, given the choice, protagonist Oh Dae-su would probably not choose to solve said mystery? It's a hyper-aware, brutally violent, unpredictable, anguished, mad, insectile, strange, appallingly human and damn near operatic horror film, and if you don't have some kind of emotional reaction to it, you are probably dead. In one sense, it's a seafood massacre. Hammerhead violence vies with live octopus consumption, while the eventual unfurling of the plot makes you wish you could recoil into your spiral shell until viral humans have danced their final dance and left the earth for good.

16. to 13. Staring Into the Abyss

13. Audition 

Takashi Miike's masterpiece, in my opinion, and one of the greatest examples of "abuse horror," a term I literally just made up. But yeah, it's beautiful and creepy in equal measure, and when the torture occurs, it's unrelenting and unflinching, which I admire while at the same time wishing it wasn't. The best horror should never depict femininity as weakness, and this certainly doesn't even try. Not so much a feminist revenge flick as a subconscious reordering, a reckoning. Honestly, rather than listen to me spout off, stop right now, seek out this film, and watch it.

14. Don't Look Now 

Whether you take Nicolas Roeg's piece of cinematic genius as a psychological depiction of how grief can undermine the deepest love, or whether you succumb to a supernatural interpretation, you will be unable to escape the cloying mood of sorrow, horror, and dread that pervades every crimson-tinged frame of this movie. Sutherland and Christie are peerless here, whether they are engaged in wonderfully carnal attempts to forget or are taking psychic leaps into a dark, arcane, almost pagan Venice. Creepiness and wrongness vie with a watery Renaissance city that still dreams darkly of ancient sins, murder, and illicit love amid its oily canals and murky piazzas, knowing we can never go back to the innocence of our past.

15. A Serbian Film  

Right on cue, here comes the gore. And the awfulness. And Exhibit A in why so many people label the horror genre despicable and morally bankrupt. Because, trust me, this film goes places most people in the genre won't. It lacks all restraint and good taste, and yet... despite what its haters say, it's not without merit. It's true to itself, to its political vision, and to a kind of faux snuff aesthetic. Sure, the themes are appallingly bleak—in fact, some see its transgressive nature as a political statement in itself—but it's consistent in its stark brutality, as well as extremely, unforgettably upsetting. The word "relentless" is overused, but here it fits like a dirty, infected glove. In fact, "relentless and infected" perfectly encapsulates the effect this film has on its viewers—those who are still left at the very end, that is. This is why I come to horror. Not for trinkets but for dripping viscera, lost terror, and to be thoroughly disturbed. Hard to condemn something for which you seek. If you have the stomach for it, watch it, but know you probably won't ever have the luxury of forgetting it.

16. Monsters  

By now, anyone foolish or bored enough to have been paying attention to my list might possibly have sensed a theme. Mood. Atmosphere. Dread. Disquiet. Don't get me wrong, I can be up there with the gorehounds, sometimes, reveling in the spectacular and the viscerally loathsome, but deep down I simply love the eldritch caress of light and shadow, of ambience, muted colour, subtlety, creepiness... and true fear. Not always, but for the purposes of this list, for sure. And you be sure to seek out the right version—a low-budget 2010 UK film set in Mexico. Again, it's probably best described as science fiction, but for me, the apocalyptic background, in which the compromised horizons crackle with anxiety, portents, and bad arrivals, works better on a horror level. And the story itself—of people desperate to find their way home against increasingly poor odds—is heartbreakingly human.

Of Wharves, Loneliness, and Monsters

Yes, I know I've been discussing horror movies on a writing blog, and my justification is that I'm writing about them, aren't I? Okay, that's fairly lame, but it's my train set and I'll crash the engines into the bridge supports if I damn well want to, okay? But I also don't want to forget those little orphaned pieces of writing, or indeed writing news, that can so easily end up scattered amid a flurry of desktop files or even somewhere out there in cyberspace, where no one can hear them digitally scream.

First off, Indies Unlimited just published Indies Unlimited: 2013 Flash Fiction Anthology—their latest collection of Flash Fiction Challenge winners from last year—and I am particularly proud of my own small contribution. You can buy the anthology here, but I'll also repost my story with its prompt. Remember, these are accompanied in the book by the beautiful photography of K.S. Brooks, and I really urge anyone to get their hands on the full-colour print edition. So here's the prompt, followed by my story: 

This is where it had been happening. Back in the summer, when Gary Kessler disappeared, everyone had thought he had drowned. When they found his body, they knew differently.

Then there was the little Hamilton girl, Old Tom Billings, and half a dozen more.

Most of the time they never found the bodies. Sometimes they would find parts. The town council didn’t want to hear about it. They stuck their heads in the sand and hoped it would go away. Deputy Aldridge knew differently. He had seen it. He saw it take Sheriff Wilson, and he knew it had to be stopped. He came here tonight to put an end to it. He just had to wait till dark.

***

Till Dark

Although he’d seen terrible things, a pretty sunset never failed to bring a tear to Deputy Aldridge’s jaundiced eye. And this was as pretty as any, down by the lake that lay placid as mirror glass under the warm hues of a fading day.

No time for sentiment tonight, however—he had come to stop a monster. A thing he called, simply, The Horror. The town had suffered enough. He would wait until full dark, the time it always indulged its predations, and he would end its thrall. Checking his Glock 17, he felt a strange calm descend.

Crouching in the dwindling light, senses alert to the gentle sounds of evening—the creak of a frog, water sounds, a distant train—he recalled the awful endings already endured by the townsfolk: the Kessler kid, rangy adolescent limbs torn off; old Tom’s unspeakable final minutes; and worst of all, little Lucy Hamilton. His nightmares about her fate alone fueled the raging insomnia he’d picked up after Gulf War I. No, it would end tonight. Only one of those killings had been prompted by cunning not bloodlust: Sheriff Wilson. His old friend had come so close to solving the mystery.

Aldridge was tired. No more. All light had leached from the sky, barring a sprinkling of stars. It was time. All was quiet. Even the frog seemed to hold its breath. Deputy Aldridge sighed, inserted the Glock into his mouth, pointed up toward his brainpan, and put an ending to The Horror.

Second, and this is a simple one, I wrote a haiku recently. It's my first, but I kind of like it. Here it is:

Now I am alone

I hear the windchimes sing, though

there's no longer wind

And last but not least, now and again I join Dan Mader and co on his blog for the free writing exercises he hosts there every Friday. The latest one had a two-minute limit which, as anyone who's ever attempted it knows, is actually very difficult in terms of building any coherent narrative. They're more ephemeral and impressionistic, usually. But on this occasion a tiny short story appeared unbidden, which you can read among the other excellent entries here, but I also felt like I wanted to embellish it a little, which I've now done and will post here for posterity... or because I hate to see lost little orphans. (Oh, and yeah, it's still short. Just not that short.)

Wharf

"It's down at the wharf." Lauren was insistent. Her frown was adorable, always was. "The thing in the water."

"Then we'll go there." I wanted to see it, after all.

"You'll see it." Trembling, tears beginning.

We were fast. Wharf rats ourselves, really. Running between the ancient guano-spattered pilings and docks, laughing in that serious way we always had. One that was also kinda sad, truth be told. 

Lauren needed this and I wanted her to. Show me, I mean.

But we looked everywhere. All over hell's half-acre and then some. Red neon Firestone signs from pure memory. A tawdry motel named The Shamrock. These were the years soon after the noisome winds blew garbage like soiled snow through the rusty alleyways and gunmetal gantries. These were the quiet days following. The high plains whistle inside our flinching ears.

And we kept looking awhile. Beneath the water and out. Backs of warehouses, well inside loading bays, deep within oily backwaters, long-dead feathers floating on scum. Alert we stayed. Studied reflections aplenty and craned our necks to the mostly birdless sky. Where light came. But we never once saw Lauren's creature. Sure didn't mean it never existed. Just never saw it is all.

32. to 29. Carnies to Barbies

29. Wolf Creek 

The Aussies are coming. And then some. This film takes its sweet yet never boring time building backstory and character so we truly care about these young British and Australian backpackers, before unleashing a "based on a true story" demented Crocodile Dundee character with the innocuous name of Mick Taylor. And yeah, we're plunged into a nocturnal outback world of pure awfulness we hope is over sooner rather than later, for the sake of the innocent and undeserving young folks stalked by this revolting yet gleeful human monster. If you can stomach it, it's a brilliant, sickening, relentless horror film, period.

30. [REC] 

The great thing about the current state of horror in film is the truly global aspect of it. On my short list alone are French, Swedish, British, American, Australian, Finnish, Japanese, Canadian, South Korean, Dutch and, here, Spanish offerings, all bringing something new to the genre. Nerve jangling, claustrophobic, and pretty much plain terrifying, you're off balance throughout, with the film seeming to posit numerous scenarios (zombies, demons?) behind a strange and gruesome outbreak among the residents of a quarantined apartment block. Oh, and yeah, it's frightening.

31. The Wicker Man

Unlike anything else, this British film from 1973 was dated from the moment it was released, which doesn't matter, since it was self-contained and creepy-strange beyond belief from the get go. A unique clash between paganism and Christianity, liberal sexuality and puritanism, prurience and piety, bacchanalia and Presbyterianism, the rampant and the reproachful, the sensual and the censorious, all of its no-doubt predictable struggles play out against the foment of the times in which it was conceived, and yet the final and—oh god(s) help us—lasting impression is one of bleak, stark, inexorable, human-centric horror. Hence its inclusion here.

32. Carnival of Souls

The early '60s was a fertile period for new takes on horror. For one thing, I was born. Okay, kidding. Ha! But yeah, Hitchcock was working his special alchemy alongside a few others whose careers were—sadly and quite frankly, stupidly—not exactly enhanced by their association with the genre (I'm talking about you, Michael Powell!), but the context for this particular gem is difficult to unravel from such a distance. Eerie, creepy, spooky, and haunted are all adjectives that occur, but for me, the feminine sensibility—as depicted by the anxious, blurrily magisterial Candace Hilligoss—is the warm, strange heart of this self-contained and atmospheric wonder. That and a truly disconcerting "something wicked" motif, as painted by the manic, incessant dark carny music. (Pro tip: the full movie is on YouTube.)

No One Ever

After the party, we all go down by the shivering river. 

Winter, cold, but nowhere ice. Kirsten laughs at the richly carved salmon sculptures curled all perfect for the tourists, while live herring gulls circle overhead, warm someplace within their torpedo torsos, and occasionally screaming. Ornery as fuck.  

Rafe, one acquisitive eye on the tawdry sub-stripmall liquidation warehouse bargain world outlet stores, at last says this: "Let's go. Find something good. Could we?" 

And Lucinda knows she gotta head back south soon enough, cross the stupid dumbfuck border before it gets even stupider with dumbfuck holiday traffic, beat the cheap gasoline and dairy hound dogs, the Costco bandits, Walmart outlaws and Bellis Fair pillagers, and make time and peace with the toothy, chummy, American dumbfuck country mouse. (Here I might point out the green, mostly submerged and peeling boat, not so much offshore as offbank, but there have been many observations throughout our history every bit as profound yet equally and utterly ignored.)

An anticlimax, then.

The real cruelty of life is this, a gathering of negatives: We stumble on the only soul who makes us want to do nothing but sing, only to find that their song is not ours, and never will be.

After which the rains come. And boy, do they come. Gets so the local critters all abandon this place, leave their possible return to fate and the glimmering stars. Bridges, backroads washed out. Nowhere left to ford, all ravelled up in muffled acreages and submerged indeterminacies.

I probably loved Kirsten the most, who always laughed and never succumbed until the very end. She revered things with such lively aplomb. The quiet reserve, the crow score, the chicken-scratch bordello throat-song.

"You'll never follow me all the way," she taunts. And she's right. I went on some tangent, sparking off of the mainstream, reading from some profane backwoods gospel, gleaning banjo pickings in scree-fanned draws, collecting possums and coons a-plenty and hurling them half-assed and wild, aimed mainly potwise, learning their death scents too. Like I learnt her sex scent all along. Her sex scent. Near makes me pause it does.

While Rafe laughs his cynic laugh. Not because he's a cynic but more 'cause he lost all belief in being anything beyond or aside from someone won't do nothin' all that good or ere that bad. Settled for things. Best equipped to hang from the fugitive's neck and chant the death knell requiem. Which may as well be a cynic, I guess, oh lord so jaded and lost.

But Lucinda. The real Lucinda. She will return. Again and again, tires crunching cheap motel parking lot gravel, her serious face levelled athwart a serious plane. She will sit alone, her cold, hard nipples gathered like fat, dry raisins, her elbows jutting chickenwise, her lorn, gone cuntwarmth terrible in its loss and desirous in its recall, she unable to feel her twitching nose or pursing lips, her arid breath a spectre so lonely it makes loneliness itself seem near gravid with joy.

"Love is what I felt back there, and love is where I'm headed," she says, a chastened banshee, heart defiant while eyes downcast.

Rafe sneers. Sucks on what's left of his teeth.

"What the fuck you got to sneer about?" I ask, the first thing I ever said in this furious, chaotic world that ever mattered.

No one ever answers. No one ever. I think about crying and realize I got no tears, and everything moves relentlessly on, even if the world itself stops. Especially then.

___________________________

Not even sure why or how, but this post by my awesome friend Dan Mader somehow birthed this piece. Oh, and Faulkner.