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Indie Film Review: The Animals

Four friends return to their thieving ways, seeing no faith in looking for a job, resulting only in guilt, death and judgement.

Indie Film Review:  Underdog by Ritchie Allen Greer

Still hunting down these elusive reviews in a bid to achieve my #50by50 goal (fifty reviews before my fiftieth birthday, 31 July) so if anyone is interested, let me know! 4** review for Wakeful Children.

Thank you so much to Joshua Henson for this thoughtful and perceptive review of Wakeful Children.

Jul 18, 2019

Joshua Henson

rated it really liked it 4*

*Product Received for Free* When people reminisce on the struggles of childhood, the memories often remain centered on the mundane: forgetting homework, apparent oppression by the adults around you, being forced to eat overcooked broccoli, among many other trials and tribulations. And yet, so many pieces of entertainment that focus on nostalgia fail to recall the unique and rampant paranoias that seemed to consume many a night as a child. The shadows that seemed to dance in the dark, the visions of monsters behind our eyes, the pitter patter of goblin footsteps we were promised were raindrops…

It’s humorous to reminisce at the unfounded worries that seemed so present to us in our youth, and despite their fantastical natures the sureness of our truth. In a number of short stories that each play on these youthful woes, S.P. Oldham places a unique spin on both classic childhood tales and simple gut feelings. The stories are strengthened by the sheer microcosm of each and every monster- from merely a deranged youth who locally terrorizes a family to a personification of insomnia, Oldham plays to the personality of her beasts- the horror of random selection for torment. While some may argue that the locality of her antagonists hinders the ability to chill the reader to the core, the fallibility of some of them adds to a certain realism. For example, in the collection’s opener, Joe Gallows, the titular character is a mere child obsessed with hanging animals. While this is not the end of the story by any means, his progression of victims is jagged enough to shock the first read and provide a near-electric dread throughout repeat reads.

From story to story it is clear that Oldham excels with subtlety. The standout tale of the collection, Devil’s Drop, shows the best of her strengths. Telling the story of siblings who stray into the territory of some sort of demon, Oldham weaves her way out of the need to describe the creature. While this could be indicative of laziness or indecisiveness Oldham’s use of elaboration based solely on the children’s feelings, the near primal dread of being caught where one shouldn’t be, instead creates a bone-chilling vagueness. This manipulations seems to hint that not even the protagonists, who know to fear it, know exactly what they are fearing. Another story in this collection, Absorption, uses a similar vagueness in vignettes to show the corruptive influence of what seems to be an Ent. However, I must concede that the horror is must less effective in the latter, more clearly envisioning a dark pity.

Oldham’s use of phrasing throughout every story manages to mix a sort of simplistic innocence with a near-Lovecraftian sense of knowing too much, and it is this oddly true-to-life childish wit that gives Wakeful Children it’s best moments. While the ages of some characters are purposefully vague, such as the apparent basement-dweller in Blank Screen who mixes childish hatred with vile threats, or the old-enough-to-have-a-family insomniac of The Sandman, every character regardless of maturity seemed to hold a similar sort of wariness born of inexperience. Similarly, in The Sandman, the protagonist’s exploration of the titular creature’s dreamscape is an appropriately Lovecraftian journey into a world that simply doesn’t make sense.

Thus, Oldham displays an impressive ability to evoke the nostalgic fears within childhood without compromising the staying power of the horror. While a few stories in the collection are weakened by the format, which I found too ready to conclude, in general I found each story bite-sized enough to provide a quick thrill, most of which tended to stick with me for at least a few hours apiece. While the horror featured within is of a subtle type (no splatter-fests here!) I found it quietly introspective and showing a command of youthful impulsiveness, spite, and dread.

INDIE REVIEW: S P OLDHAM'S WAKEFUL CHILDREN

In Wakeful Children, Oldham gives us a range of very subtle horror stories. All are trips into the uncanny. Several are horrific, and ALL are best enjoyed with an attentive read (a personal note that you might find helpful: I tried to listen to this book while working on a painting. I used the kindle ap’s text to speech, which is serviceable with some novels, but NOT with this one. Text to speech kills all the subtleties, and this work thrives on its subtleties. An audio book would be great, but the “text to speech” option should be avoided).

Wakeful Children gives us eleven short stories, and in them, Oldham’s landscapes are alive, and they are malevolent. Trees poison, Winter hunts. Holly ensnares. 

Humans populate the top levels of these stories, but it is in the lower surfaces where the eeriness, the uncanniness, and the poetry resides. 

For example, in the second story: “Absorption”, the surface details present instances of domestic unhappiness among a variety of households - these surface stories are easy enough to follow, but the story is actually about a weirdling tree that influences the nearby homes and thrives on the misery it causes. (This second layer, the entire point of the story, is what I missed using text to speech.) The book offers many encounters with the fantastic: evil trees; an embodiment of the Sandman, making its way into the real world; haunted pubs; children at the mercy of nature; voyeurs, who time-travel at terrible costs; witches, with cliffs to beguile on; bed-users, with covers to tremble under; blinding snow and biting wind, each with the space to shriek in.

Fantasy elements creep in strong with these stories - but so does the real world, and so does horror. Oldham gives us one story that takes place via an internet chat room, and the opening story, “Joe Gallows” is horrific and disturbing (not to mention ORIGINAL), right from the start. It is instantly unnerving, and increasingly gruesome - what else would you want in a horror story?

These works are eerie, nicely written and well worth your time - just make sure you read them with your own eyes.