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Freaky (2021)
Freaky (2021)
2021 | Comedy, Horror
Freaky is an ode to 80's slashers by way of 'Freaky Friday', hence the title.


Blissfield has an urban ledged, the Blissfield Butcher, who strikes every few years at the school prom. Due to an antient Aztec knife, the Butcher swaps bodies with Millie, a high school girl who only has 24 hours to switch back.

Like I said, Freaky pay homage to the 80's, the obvious is the 'body swap' aspect and the title, both of which are references to 'Freaky Friday'.
The references don't stop there though, the film references most of the popular slashers, mostly through the weapons the killer uses, there's everything from an ice hook to a chain saw, there is even a quick nod to the Cenobites.

The film starts by following a lot of the slasher tropes, a small party and a killer. The film changes pace when Millie and the Butcher swap bodies and, until the end the kill count is relatively low. The slasher references run all through the film in a similar stile to 'Scream' and 'A Cabin in the Wood' even becoming slightly self aware with lines like 'Your Black! I'm Gay! We are so dead'. This doesn't/. take away from the film though.

Like i said, most of the kills are at the start and end of the film with most of the action being Millie trying to avoid being arrested whilst finding a way back to her own body but it is a good film and well worth a watch if you don't need your slashers to serious.
  
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The Travelers
The Travelers
Chris Pavone | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
147 of 250
Book
The Travelers
By Chris Pavone

Once read a review will be written via Smashbomb and link posted in comments

It’s 3:00am. Do you know where your husband is?
 
Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Soon Will’s bad choices—and dark secrets—take him across Europe, from a chateau in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion, from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs of Iceland. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications—and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.
 
It’s 3:00am. Your husband has just become a spy.


I can appreciate where and what the author was trying to do but this just didn’t grab me at all! It was a hard slog through. Two stars may seem a bit mean and I would encourage people to at least give it a go especially if you enjoy spy novels.
  
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Hazel (1853 KP) rated The Snow Child in Books

May 30, 2017  
The Snow Child
The Snow Child
Eowyn Ivey | 2012 | Fiction & Poetry
6
7.8 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
A Fairytale
“Terrific”, “Spellbinding” and “Enchanting” are just three of the many words that critics have used to describe this book; they are also a slight exaggeration. Obviously it is a matter of personal opinion but this novel, whilst having an interesting storyline, was a little too drawn out and, at times… not exactly boring but not all that gripping.

Set in Alaska during the 1920s this is the story of a couple, Jack and Mabel, who, aside from a stillbirth, have not had any children despite their desperate longing. Now that they are both approaching fifty years of age they know that they will never be able to have a son or daughter of their own. One winter, during the first snowfall, the two of them on an uncharacteristic, spur of the moment impulse build a snowman next to their cabin. Rather than building a large snowman they make a smaller one in the shape of a girl, decorating her with scarves and mittens – they have made a snow girl.

Eowyn Ivey has based her novel on a Russian fairy tale, Snegurochka, which in English translates to The Snow Maiden. It was Arthur Ransome’s retelling, Little Daughter of the Snow, which inspired Ivey, but the general storyline is essentially the same, although some versions have alternative endings. For those who are familiar with Snegurochka and its variants will know that it does not end happily therefore it seems inevitable that The Snow Child will head in the same direction. However which ending will it most resemble?

Throughout the novel it is impossible to be absolutely sure that the little girl who turns up outside the cabin the day after the snowman has been built (and destroyed) is in fact the snow girl magically transformed into flesh and bone; or whether it is a lost child and the circumstance are purely coincidental. There is a third option: Jack and Mabel could be imagining things through their desperate longing, but this is easy to rule out.

The snow is understandably a key theme throughout the story. At the beginning the anticipated Alaskan winter is imagined as a “cold on the valley like a coming death”. Not only will it be unbearably freezing, Jack and Mabel will struggle to make do with their limited amount of food and supplies. After the arrival of the child the winter becomes a happy occasion. Jack and Mabel’s relationship improves and they become less isolated after befriending some neighbours. The only heartbreak is when the girl, Faina, disappears in the spring; but as she comes back as soon as it snows, winter becomes something to look forward to. Another snowy link in the story is Faina’s name, which she claims means “the colour on snow when the sun turns” in Russian. This also makes the idea of her truly being the snow girl more convincing.

The novel does predictably have an unhappy ending but the epilogue makes up for this by revealing the contentment of the remaining characters a few years into the future.

As already mentioned, The Snow Child was not a very gripping read, but it was a beautiful tale in the way that fairy tales, even those with unhappy endings, often can be.