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‘There’s Something In the Barn’

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A Facebook friend alerted me to the movie trailer above. “There’s Something In the Barn.” It’s not one I worked on, nor have heard of it before. Not my kind of thing, really, but some of you might find it amusing. As I’ve often mentioned, I just don’t get horror. I think this springs from being a coward. It takes a braver person than I to enjoy being scared. Let alone to laugh about it.

The take on the “barn elf” here is an interesting one. One would never actually call them barn elves in Norway, I’m pretty sure. As mentioned in my novels, the Hidden Folk don’t like to be called by name. You call them the Good Neighbors, or the Little Old Men, or something like that. And, as the movie emphasizes, offending them is nothing to be undertaken lightly.

It’s basically a reversal on the sweet – but overly sentimental – picture offered in the classic commercial below, released by the Tine Dairy Products Company back in 2017:

You can make a good Christian argument that the horror version is more appropriate. The church traditionally has considered the Hidden Folk to be demons (probably).

There’s a theory that all horror is conservative. I’m not sure that’s true, but I think you can make a good case that Horror as a genre is conservative in its essence, if not in all its instantiations. (Instantiations is a lovely word I learned in Library School).

Got my tree decorated today. And I found a section in The Baldur Game that I think I’ll have to cut, or at least reduce to its bare bones. Like a victim in a horror story.

Blogs, Socials, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Fiction, Poetry

Old Book Love, a Pub Renewed, and More

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Here’s a Thoroughly Professional Video showing a couple of my antique books. They aren’t commercially valuable, but they’re pretty and have the humanistic value of a great books. On the left is the Complete Works of Shakespeare, a Walter J. Black edition, which I think means it’s cheap. I say it’s leather bound, but I’m sure it’s imitation leather. On the right is the Works of Edmund Spenser, an 1895 MacMillan edition.

It’s too bad I don’t have something really nice to show you, but I may record more physical books to better reveal their tangible value, especially if I can up my A/V quality.

Inklings: “The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) has purchased the historic Eagle and Child pub on St Giles’ from St John’s College, with plans to refurbish and reopen the space to the public.”

Poetry: From Philip Larkin
“For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.”

Horror: Mike Duran has written on horror stories and how they fit with a Christian worldview.

Also, some of the story of the man who portrayed Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist.

(Photo: “The Eagle and Child,” Hofendorf/ Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Authors

Author of The Exorcist, 89, Has Died

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William Peter Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist in 1971, has passed away at age 89. He wrote the novel in response to news accounts his classmates discussed while attending Georgetown University. A Lutheran family in 1949 said their teenaged son could be possessed. His symptoms were–supernatural: flying objects, moving sheets, and messages in rashes on his skin. Blatty’s story based on this account has been called the scariest story ever, at least its film adaptation has.

Ted Gioia points this out in his review of the book, which he read last year along with many other horror classics:

This is perhaps all the more surprising given the large dose of theology in Blatty’s conception of his story. Much of the tale revolves around a crisis of faith. There’s little actual bloodshed in The Exorcist, and—in place of the typical arsenal of the slasher films that flourished in the aftermath of The Exorcist—the weapons at play here are little more than holy water, a crucifix and some lines in Latin. The horror is mostly existential…but perhaps all the more unnerving for that very reason.

In 2015, Washingtonian ran a biographic article on Blatty. Here’s a great, little story from his post-college years.

To pay the bills, he worked as a flack for the University of Southern California. Meanwhile, he soothed his acting jones by posing as Prince Xeer, the make-believe black-sheep son of King Saud. The nearly yearlong caper was facilitated by former Hoya classmate turned FBI agent Frank Hanrahan, who would explain to Sunset Strip nightclub owners that he’d been “saddled by the State Department with the task of being ‘this pain-in-the-ass Prince’s’ guide and bodyguard while he ‘cooled down’ from some grave but unspoken problem back home,” Blatty writes in his memoir.

The gambit fooled stars like Zsa Zsa Gabor and led to another stereotype-skewering article in the Saturday Evening Post. There was also a ghostwriting gig for “Dear Abby,” Abigail Van Buren, on a book for young adults. In his memoir, he writes that the result, Dear Teen-Ager, earned a Mother of the Year Award from the Los Angeles Times for its “matronly wit and wisdom,” even though it was mostly concocted by a chain-smoking Blatty during a break from USC.

Fiction

The Realism of “The Witch”

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I’ve read that the historical accuracy of this year’s powerful horror film The Witch is very strong, not just in the setting and costuming, but also in the roots of the story. A New England family isolates themselves in an effort to maintain their purity and in doing so imperil themselves. They aren’t entirely innocent victims of Satan’s disciples, but they cannot foresee the repercussions of what we might consider accusable sins.

Jeffrey Overstreet writes:

The realism of the film is also powerful because of how spiritual evil only seems to grow more and more persuasively present the more closely we attend to the real-world details, and the farther we travel through this time warp into the 17th Century. That has bothered some critics — that Eggers “literalizes” the evil forces that people believed in back then.

That’s a complaint from people who would snicker at the suggestion that the devil is an actual person, not a symbol of human ugliness or a boogeyman for our enemies. But you can’t literalize what is real.

Fiction

Facing Fears and Ourselves

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http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/joeljmiller/time-to-panic/?utm_content=buffer0edce&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Speaking of scary, Stephen King said the new movie The Witch scared the hell out of him. From what I’ve read, I think it would do the same for me, but then I don’t take to horror movies well. Josh Larsen says Christians may find some good themes in that story. “For Christian horror-movie fans, it functions as a provocative consideration of the ways religious extremists may be particularly susceptible to the devil’s whims.”

Authors, Fiction

S.A. Hunt Blends Genres Naturally

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Fantasy author S.A. Hunt is interviewed here on his path as an indie writer.

“With Outlaw King, I was intentionally trying to write a straight-faced fantasy, but as usual my old love, horror, came sneaking in the back door and put its two cents’ worth in. . . . And to me, an engaging fantasy is a story that can effectively leverage well-written horror elements: the Jabberwocky of Alice in Wonderland, the Others of G.R.R. Martin’s books, the totemic Taheen of King’s Dark Tower books and his iconic Man in Black. When a fantasy story has an antagonist that’s almost prohibitively dark and monstrous, a fresh weird monster you love to hate, it really ups the stakes. Weirdness is what gives the creative world its addictive edge, I think.”

He talks about the fact that he chose self-publishing like most people, with the clueless hope for wild success, and he continues to struggle now. “It’s strange. I’ve felt like I was trapped in this bulletproof bubble for the first two years or so, hermetically sealed off from the world, screaming silently for someone to notice me…and now I get the occasional comment from other indie authors to the effect of, ‘You’re an inspiration to the rest of us indies,’ or ‘Thanks to you, I’ve decided to finally push myself and write that book I’ve been wanting to write,’ both of which are something I have a lot of trouble internalizing, but they feel incredible to hear.”

Hunt says the interview went long, so he posted several more questions on his site.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Werewolf Cop,’ by Andrew Klavan

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He parked in a little neighborhood near the service road. He sat behind the wheel with his eyes shut, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He told himself that this would pass. He’d track Abend down. He’d “confront” the dagger, whatever that meant. After that, he’d be free to turn himself in or die or… do something to make this stop. Meanwhile, though…. The guilt and horror were like thrashing, ravenous animals in him. Guilt and horror – and grief too. Because he’d lost something precious, something he’d barely known he had: he’d lost his sense of himself as a good person. Even death wouldn’t restore that. Nothing word.

As you know if you’ve been following this blog for a while, I’m a confirmed fanboy when it comes to Andrew Klavan. I discovered him after he’d become a conservative, but before he became a Christian. I consider him one of the foremost thriller writers – and one of the best prose stylists – of our time.

Still, although I’ve praised all the books he’s written since then (specifically since the Weiss-Bishop novels, which I consider unparalleled) I’ve honestly thought he’s been kind of treading water, not quite sure where to go with his art.

Who’d have thought he’d hit his next home run with a horror-fantasy book? But Werewolf Cop, in spite of its William Castle title, is an amazing reading experience. Klavan has moved in on Dean Koontz’s turf, and done the genre proud.

Zach Adams is the hero of the book and the titular werewolf cop. He’s a Texas native relocated to New York City, where he works for a shadowy government police agency called “Extraordinary Crimes.” Along with his partner, “Broadway Joe” Goulart, he’s become a legend and a sort of a celebrity. He has a beautiful wife and a family he loves. But his life isn’t as great as people think it is. He’s worried about his partner, who has come under suspicion for corruption. He’s afraid of being blackmailed by a woman over a mistake he made. And he’s got the murder of a gangster by a mysterious, almost legendary European criminal to solve.

And that’s before he gets mauled by a werewolf.

I could quibble a little about the fantasy element in this story – werewolves here are pure Universal Pictures, rather than the genuine folklore article. But Klavan mines that old movie scenario for amazing psychological – and spiritual – insights. I was riveted from the first page to the last, and deeply moved at the same time.

You should be cautioned – there’s rough language, as in all Klavan’s books, and the gore element is what you’d expect in a werewolf story.

But if you can handle that, and wish to see old material raised to new levels, Werewolf Cop has my highest recommendation.

Authors, Fiction, Non-fiction

Derrickson Talks Horror, Reality with New Movie

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Scott Derrickson is the writer and director of the new movie, Deliver Us From Evil. He was also the man behind for Sinister , The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. He believes fear strips away the lies we usually tell ourselves and forces us to face reality. He sat down with Steven Greydanus to talk about his style and the new movie.

More here.

Fiction

Is Christian Spec-Fic Too Restricted?

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Last month, we talked about the place or lack thereof for language, violence, and sex in Christian fiction. Mike Duran was our source for that post, and now Mike says he has “learned of another fictional archetype that is, apparently, off-limits for mainstream Christian fiction — zombies.”
The reason is that a Christian worldview doesn’t allow for the undead. Since zombies can’t exist, then fictional zombies shouldn’t be in our stories.
Mike says, “Forcing fiction to neatly fit your theology is a losing proposition… at least, if creative storytelling is your aim.”
I agree with Mike. I wonder what imaginative cliches Christian fiction readers/publishers accept as normal but are just as unChristian (in worldview terms) as zombies and other creatures of the dead?

  1. God’s plan of prosperity for us?
  2. No one ever goes to Hell?
  3. Homosexuals as demon possessed?
  4. Hateful people repenting on the turn of a dime?

What do you think?
Other reading: Loren Eaton’s post on this question, “Is it legitimate to discover joy in works primarily intended to arouse fear?”