The survey ship Derleth sank in April 1983, all hands lost. Forty years later, a coastal station picks up an automated distress call from the vessel: a recent tsunami has left the Derleth partly above sea level on an Alaskan reef, allowing its solar-powered systems to reactivate. The company that owns the ship hires salvage…
Ayize Jama-Everett and John Jennings Unpack Their Box of Bones
Horror takes on a whole new meaning when told by and about Black people. With so much of history for people of the African Diaspora bound up in enslavement, it’s difficult to separate any artistic expression from the generational trauma and the continued weight of racism. Though it is as disturbing to read those stories…
REVIEW: The Dollhouse Family Has Dark Surprises in Every Corner
The story of The Dollhouse Family begins when a little girl named Alice inherits a gift from an obscure relative: an antique, lavishly-detailed dollhouse, complete with five little dolls in period costume. These toys offer Alice some escapism from her unhappy home environment, dominated as it is by her abusive father. And if she says…
REVIEW: Giga #1 is a Gorgeous, Simmering Pot of Tension
Giga #1 steams with the tension of a world marred by violence and war. The wars have been fought for so long, people can’t remember exactly how they started and can’t imagine what it’d be like to have them stop. I wasn’t sure a mech-style Gundam-esque comic was going to my thing but it is…
REVIEW: Animorphs Graphic Novel #1: The Invasion Pulls no Punches
Our names are Alenka and Melissa. We can’t tell you our last names. We can’t even tell you the towns we live in, or what state. It’s not because we’re shy – it’s because if the Yeerks find out who we are, they’ll stop us from writing this review. Despite the danger involved, I was…
REVIEW: Dracula, Motherf**ker! is a Technicolor Terror
Dracula is one of the biggest blockbuster shockers of all time, a story we know like our own flesh and blood. Every decade raises its own re-imaginings, but the 1970s was a particularly fecund decade for Dracula and his children, from Hammer Studios’ final stake-thrusts at Christopher Lee’s Count to works like The Tomb of…
REVIEW: Black Hole Heart Explores Friendship through Horror
I am the kind of person who wants everything to make sense, and for everything to have a reason. Perhaps paradoxically, I also LOVE horror, a genre where questions often go unanswered, or the source of the horror is never fully explained. Horror stories examine relationships in ways that don’t follow normal logic, and I…
REVIEW: Strange Skies Over East Berlin’s Terrors are Equally Human and Alien
Is there anything more terrifying than the truth? Strange Skies Over East Berlin, from Jeff Loveness, Lesandro Estherren, Patricio Delpeche, and Steve Wands, asks this question with every dread-inducing page. Following an American spy trapped within a Soviet bunker during the heights of the Cold War, Strange Skies is equal parts chilling extraterrestrial horror and…
Celebrating Vivica A. Fox and David DeCoteau’s B-Movie Empire
In honor of Vivica A. Fox‘s birthday, I wanted to take a deep dive into her Lifetime movie catalogue with director David DeCoteau — because why not?
What’s Real and What Isn’t in Cursed Films
Horror has long been a worthy genre, but it’s lately been getting it’s analytical due. Streaming site Shudder has created excellent original documentaries, History of Horror and Horror Noire. The streak continues with five bite-sized episodes of Cursed Films. The series reexamines some of our more infamous pop culture memories about horror movies. With its…
Our Darkest Dreams Described: Horror Fiction in the 20th Century by Jess Nevins
Horror fiction has a history problem. While its cousin, the science fiction genre, has been eagerly mapped by decades’ worth of enthusiasts, much of horror’s heritage has been documented in comparatively little detail. Perhaps this is due to the genre’s aura of disreputability; or maybe we can point to so many of horror’s finest specimens…
Jane Mai’s Soft is a Brilliant Retelling of Carmilla
CONTENT WARNING: This article contains discussion of abusive relationships. When a friend recommended I watch a low budget webseries about a lesbian vampire who falls in love with her plucky college roommate, I didn’t realize it was based on Carmilla, a vampire novella by Sheridan Le Fanu older than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I was fascinated…