#31Days: A Collection Of Horror Essays, Vol. 2

By Robert Gannon

The #31Days challenge is back for another deep dive into the world of horror. Every day in October, media critic Robert J Gannon watches, analyzes, and publishes new articles and reviews inspired by different horror films, TV series, and books. This year, 32 new essays went up just at Sketching Details. Themes for the challenge included anthology films, films directed by women, documentaries, queer horror films, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre series.

#31Days: A Collection of Horror Essays, vol. 2 features 64 original essays on horror media, including an entire series of essays on The Outer Limits completed in October. Come explore the terrifying world of horror, including Halloween Kills, Nothing but Broken Teeth, Deadhouse Dark, and No One Gets Out Alive. #31Days also includes recommendations for additional horror media for each title discussed in the collection.

Full list of subjects:
#Like
A Classic Horror Story
Blind Sun
Body Bags
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker
Deadhouse Dark
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions Extended Cut
Good Manners
Halloween Kills
His House
In Search of Darkness
Knife + Heart
Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
Little Deaths
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
Lucky
Lyle
Nightbreed, The Director's Cut
No One Gets Out Alive
Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
Seance
Southbound
Spookers
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
The Mortuary Collection
The Old Ways
The Outer Limits
The Swarm
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: A Family Portrait
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
The Wind
Things Heard & Seen

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Gannon
• Release date: Dec 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005036089

Book preview

Day 1: No One Gets Out Alive (Film, 2021)

content warning: violence against women, blood, gore

Ambar, an undocumented immigrant living in the United States, moves into a boarding house in a new city. She was the full time caregiver of her ailing mother until her death and now has a chance at a fresh start. Everything starts to go wrong once she enters her new home. Something doesn't want her to leave no matter how hard she tries to improve her life.

No One Gets Out Alive is an adaptation of an Adam Nevill novel written by Jon Croker and Fernanda Coppel. They make some bold choices that add more layers to the narrative to better support the paranormal elements of the film. The original book features an unlucky woman stuck in a string of low-wage jobs trying to find a more secure footing in the world. The film resets the story in the United States and focuses on undocumented immigrants. The things Ambar discovers in her first two days in the boarding house would be enough to send anyone fleeing into the night if they had the choice; she doesn't, and neither do the other women living in the building.

Things don't add up straight away. The landlord, Red, demands an entire month's rent in advance once he finds out Ambar is undocumented. His accounting of how many people live in the boarding house never seems to add up, and the few women we do meet all seem incredibly nervous to talk to anyone. Strange noises eventually come into focus as cries for help. Footprints appear on the ground with no one there to leave them. It's a moody setup for a paranormal horror film.

The biggest issue with No One Gets Out Alive is being a bit too direct. The lead up to the second act blatantly spells out what is happening. Ambar explores the shared study of the living room, which features a collection of photographs, books, artifacts, and constantly playing audio recordings that detail a ritual to appease some kind of god or spirit. I won't spoil it even though the film does. This is the kind of reveal that typically happens going into the third act of this kind of story onscreen. Think learning about Sadako or Samara in The Ring or the reveal of the psychic medium's finding in decades of haunted house films.

The technical execution of the film is good. The special effects look real and the sound design adds a lot of tension. Everything from the costumes to the makeup to the set dressing grounds the story in a believable way. The pacing is just a bit too much like a horror book to soar onscreen.

Nevill's voice as an author is present throughout the film. He is a modern master at this style of paranormal storytelling. His books feature great foreshadowing that twists further than you could imagine as the story progresses. These stories are inevitable, not hopeless, and there is a difference.

In this style of literary horror, the structure is more like a spiral than a more traditional story arc. It feels like you're spiraling down to the final scare with no way to slow the fall. This kind of horror pulls you along, dragging you around key details again and again until every aspect is explored and their true purpose is revealed. You'll often find intentional gaps in your knowledge because the author doesn't want to distract you from the horror. You don't get to breathe in these stories. Film simple reveals too much of the outside world for this narrative format to easily translate from the page.

The last act of No One Gets Out Alive screams onscreen. What happens is unhinged. The story becomes unpredictable without abandoning everything that came before. The grand reveal is inherently cinematic, as the layers of the narrative thrown out so early in the runtime lock into their final forms. The story itself allows the world view to focus in on the most significant details to the horror and it's terrifying.

No One Gets Out Alive is streaming on Netflix.

Day 2: Things Heard & Seen (Film, 2021)

content warning: blood, eating disorders, domestic abuse, violence against women, nudity

I have to address the content warning straight away on this review. I almost didn't finish the film because of the eating disorder content. Catherine is bulimic. She constantly goes on the scale and the film even shows her trying to purge. This is an incredibly sensitive subject that can be dangerous to approach in fiction. I could write incredibly terrifying stories about my own experience with eating disorders and disordered eating but choose not to because of how strongly those narratives can impact other people's well-being. Here, it feels purely like shock value with no greater meaning.

Catherine and George move to upstate New York after George accepts a professor position immediately after completing his PHD. His thesis discussing the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg's art and philosophy on George Inness' landscapes landed him the position, putting his family in a beautiful and incredibly haunted house.

Things Heard & Seen is written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, adapted from the novel All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage. This is a beautiful horror film, pulling massive influence from the artwork of the Hudson Valley.

Not to diverge into close-enough-to-local history for me, but the setting of the film is home to an impressive collection of historical artists who spent their careers capturing the beauty of the region. They typically worked in these massive landscapes packed with detail. One of my professors used a collection of this artwork to illustrate the sublime, something so beautiful you struggle to describe it at all. The critical theory so terrified me that I began incorporating the approach in my own creative horror writing. The sublime scares me. This is thematic element of Things Heard & Seen and I imagine Brundage leaned into Swedenborg and Inness specifically for this effect.

Conceptually, the film has a simple thesis: what if George Inness and Emanuel Swedenborg were right? This is discussed throughout the film, casting a shadow over everything. The framing of the landscapes and coloring even matches Inness' more famous paintings. The setting and plot align with their beliefs on spirituality and the afterlife. This is literally defined at the beginning of the film: every living thing has a spiritual counterpoint. Inness' goal was to capture this energy in his work.

In the film, this means hauntings are real and not hidden. You see the stuff move on its own and the full body apparitions straight away. The driving force of the film is not the haunting itself but the strain on George and Catherine's relationship. The relative isolation of upstate New York gives them nowhere to hide from their problems. Everyone knows everyone else but George and Catherine admittedly don't know all that much about each other. Dating led to pregnancy led to marriage led to grad school led to a professorship far away from either's support group in a few short years.

Things Heard & Seen isn't a safe film. This is not because of any extreme horror narrative or shocking visual but because of its narrative choices. I've seen horror films where a haunting represents the state of a toxic relationship or some incredibly damaging secret in someone's life. I haven't seen a modern horror film approach it figuratively and literally in quite some time. I wasn't scared by the story; I was repelled by the whole thing. Finding horror in a literal interpretation of theory can be terrifying, but would perhaps feel more honest if the theory was trusted to scare an audience on its own.

Things Heard & Seen is streaming on Netflix.

Day 3: The Mortuary Collection (Film, 2020)

content warning: grieving, blood, nudity, sexual assault, gore, medical/surgical footage

In The Mortuary Collection, Montgomery Dark runs the Raven's End Mortuary. This darkly beautiful home is filled with stacks of books. A young woman named Sam inquires about the help wanted sign in the front. She convinces Montgomery to tell her some of the darkest stories he's collected throughout his many years in business.

The Mortuary Collection is an anthology horror film from producer/writer/director Ryan Spindell. Spindell is the writer and director behind many short films over the past decade, which makes a darkly comedic anthology horror film a perfect match for his skills.

He pulls from the Amicus style of anthology horror film. A framing device to connect the various stories. This framing device is an entertaining short film in its own right, centered around the charismatic Montgomery Dark and the skepticism of Sam. The framing device in an Amicus film would be a highlight in its own right. Great characters actors like Burgess Meredith or Ralph Richardson would guide the cast through the world of these stories, showcasing various tales with ironic twists and lessons a bit too relevant to the characters learning them.

Part of the joy of The Mortuary Collection is knowing anything could happen within these rules. Sam even calls it out after the first short isn't as clever as she expected. The pair of them have more than enough personality to cover for the missing ensemble cast in this style of anthology. They comment on the form of the film while actively participating in it.

The first story is short but really sets the tone for what comes next. A woman attending a house party locks herself in the bathroom to hide away from a man. He finally takes the hint and leaves her alone. Then she starts going through all the things she stole at the party and digging around for more to steal. This one is short, goofy, creepy, and well produced. This hits all the beats the first story needs to in an anthology horror film.

In the second short, a fraternity is in charge of a safe sex advocacy club. This is pretty common shorthand for just wanting to have sex, especially in horror films. The revenge and punishment take center stage, but they hinge on one of these frat dudes removing his condom during sex without consent. This is hard to accept when played for comedy. The body horror after is well executed, but you have to sit through that scene to see it.

The third short is about a man who is overwhelmed by his life. His wife became chronically ill and he is struggling to cope. His one joy is lovingly preparing elaborate meals for her before blending them up so she can eat in her catatonic state. This one is a sad and scary in equal measure. The suspense is set up in the framing device and only builds as the story crawls to its inevitable conclusion. Things have a way of turning in anthology films and this one is no different. I haven't seen a horror short quite like this one before and I'm not one going to shake it off easily.

The fourth story is intended to be a surprise. This is my favorite short in the film, a love letter to the horror genre serving multiple levels of narrative. This is the best short in the film and well worth the wait.

The technical execution on The Mortuary Collection is strong. The joy of the anthology format, especially in horror, is if one story doesn't work for you, the next one might. You're bound to enjoy at least one tale in an anthology like The Mortuary Collection. There's too much variety in style, plot, and tone to not. Single-director anthology films aren't as common anymore, but they can showcase for a director who knows how to make a short film. Ryan Spindell is one of the directors than can handle this on his own.

The Mortuary Collection is streaming on Shudder.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions Extended Cut (Film, 2021)

content warning: blood, gore, violence against women, mental wellness

A few weeks ago, I discovered that there is a completely different version of Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. The Extended Cut features an entirely different beginning and ending that changes everything from tone to theme to plot. Now I loved the Theatrical