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The Mark
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
95 of 235
Kindle
The Mark
By Lee Mountford
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It isn’t the house that’s haunted…

It’s the person.

Kirsty is no stranger to trauma, but when her house is invaded one night, she is left with a strange mark carved into her skin.

And that is when the horrifying ghosts start to appear.

As the experiences grow more frequent—and dangerous—Kirsty must fight for her life and unravel the mystery behind the occult symbol etched into her flesh. This forces her into the terrifying world of the occult, where she learns of a Bible written by the Devil himself.

Can she save her very soul from damnation?

You will love this gripping ghost story, because it ramps up the fear and doesn’t let go until its thrilling climax.

I clearly didn’t learn my lesson from the last Lee Mountford book! So I read this at night in the dark and it truly scared the living daylights out of me. I actually had nightmares it doesn’t help that I one read it in the dark and two have an overactive imagination. It takes a lot for a book to genuinely scare but that creepy shadow and his puppets from under the bed and stair climbers were enough to do it! Ok so bring on the next one!
  
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Suswatibasu (1703 KP) rated It (2017) in Movies

Jan 16, 2018 (Updated Jan 16, 2018)  
It (2017)
It (2017)
2017 | Drama, Horror
7
7.9 (355 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise (1 more)
Child actors
Not scary (0 more)
Unlike the original, scares a little overhyped
I had a lot of expectations going in to watch this remake of a classic. But I'm a little disappointed to be honest.

Unlike the original, this film solely concentrates on the cast as they were children, and there are no scenes of them as adults replaying their pasts. However, it is apparent that there will be a second part, as the kids mention their pact to reunite if the clown ever makes another appearance. In this way, they have changed Stephen King's book, but I'm not sure if it's for the better. One of the gifts of King horrors are the actual plots and storylines that run through them. Here, it actually felt like a slightly scarier version of @Stranger Things with even an actor from the series landing one of the main roles in this film.

On the upside, there were plenty of nods to the original movie, with Tim Curry's clown making a cameo in one of the scenes. Bill Skarsgard's version was just as good as Curry's but the downside was that there was too many scenes with him making an appearance losing the scare factor. Sometimes less is more. The child actors were fantastic, and the back stories were far darker, exposing abuse in its many forms. Overall, it was an interesting watch, but it may have been overhyped.
  
The Twenty Days of Turin
The Twenty Days of Turin
Giorgio De Maria | 2017 | Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This may seem like an unfair review but I can only give this 3 stars because I didn’t exactly understand it. I think that’s mainly because I’m a little slow to the mark sometimes and because I read this in a distracting environment, but this disappointed me and didn’t scare me like I hoped it would.

It was well written, especially since it’s a translation, but parts of it felt disjointed and I found it hard to follow the uncovering of the Library’s secrets and the cause of the disturbing and brutal murders. There was well built tension in this and the white-as-a-sheet nun was pretty terrifying to imagine, but in general, I missed a whole lot of the horror in this.

Reading the translator's introduction (after I had finished the book) definitely helped me “get it” a bit more. Maybe if I had known more about Turin’s history to begin with, I could have connected to the story on a deeper level, but since I had no idea about Turin’s unrest in the 1970’s, that whole subplot went completely over my head.

I hate giving such a little known book a very average review, I like supporting small time authors, but I can’t say much about this author and his work when I have no idea what the hell went on. (OK, that’s an over exaggeration, I half got it).
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated No Escape (2015) in Movies

Mar 26, 2018 (Updated Mar 26, 2018)  
No Escape (2015)
No Escape (2015)
2015 | Drama, Thriller
5
6.9 (13 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Technically competent suspense-thriller can't help coming across as a little bit suspect in the signals it's sending (also, title may not be strictly accurate). Nice American family go to a country which looks like Thailand but definitely isn't, dearie me no, and find themselves imperilled by a native uprising triggered by the Prime Minister's new water works. Can they escape before Pierce Brosnan starts singing again?

As I say, solidly put together, and if nothing else Lake Bell's performance is pretty much immaculate - but you have to wonder if the film's depiction of Asian countries isn't defamatory, or at least scare-mongering. It's not surprising this film was banned in some parts of Asia. There's a lot of bafflegab about the hordes of machete-wielding psychos being locals upset about globalisation, but c'mon, guys, this is clearly a film inspired by fears of radical Islamist terrorism, and as such it seems to be presenting every person in Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, etc, as a potential psychopathic killer. For something which is basically second-cousin to a zombie movie, it takes itself terribly seriously; a bit too seriously given how implausible the plot rapidly becomes. Perks up a bit when Brosnan is on screen (not often enough), but is this kind of subject matter really the stuff of such broad entertainment? As a thriller this is okay, but a point knocked off for the dubious subtext.
  
TD
The Damnation Game
10
10.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
This novel has to be one of, if not THE sickest, goriest horror novels I have ever read. For that reason, I LOVED it! The plot is strong, the characters are entertaining and the scare-factor is off the scale!
It soon becomes clear that the author of this novel is the same guy who wrote and directed the first HELLRAISER film. His ability to 'think outside the box' in his writing is evident with certain tropes in this novel that I wouldn't have even thought existed but are absolutely terrifying. I was blown away.

I love the way that horror and comedy seem to be interchanged in this novel in a way that makes the horror even sicker. As the reader, once you realise that certain scenes are actually making you chuckle, it makes YOU feel like the sick one for daring to laugh at such a grim scene. It takes a great writer to be able to do this and to pull it off without coming across like they are just trying to cash in a cheap gag and Barker has this skill down to a T. Excellent stuff!

Just one thing annoyed me about this and that is the two young Jehovah's Witnesses who make an appearance somewhere like halfway through the novel. I thought their characters were far more 2D than all the rest were, and they could have been written much better. To me, they were just not believable at all.
  
Pyewacket (2017)
Pyewacket (2017)
2017 | Horror
5
6.0 (7 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The cast is solid, and the performances are good (0 more)
This premise is a bit dated, it feels like a 90's film at times (0 more)
This film doesn't know WITCH film it wants to be...
Pyewacket is a witchy teen angst film, that feels a bit like it wanted to be Ginger Snaps for witches, following the life of a teen girl whose father has recently died, and whose mother is not dealing well with the new reality.

Against her protestations, her mother moves them to a house in the woods, and away from her school and friends and after a heated exchange, the daughter decides to perform a dark ritual in the woods.

The crux of the film is that she later regrets the decision and is haunted by ghostly presences in the house that she suspects are the result of her ritual.

The whole film feels out of time, as if it were a late 90's early 2000's teen horror, with the majority of time spent exploring teen angst and cringey cliched subculture banter, rather than really tyring to ramp up any tension or scare the viewer.

At no point is a bad film, but it is trying to walk the line between genuine horror and that sort of 'The Craft' style teen culture movie, and it just doesnt seem to really nail either.

Its not bad, its not great, its just ok.
  
Small Spaces (Small Spaces #1)
Small Spaces (Small Spaces #1)
Katherine Arden | 2018 | Children, Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy
8
8.5 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
Fantasy Horror Book marketed for middle school/middle grades
‏I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

Katherine Arden is best known for her adult/young adult fantasy novel, The Bear and the Nightingale. With Small Spaces, Katherine Arden ventures into writing for middle school-aged children. This creepy horror book brought me back to my childhood where I stayed up late reading Lois Duncan, Richard Peck, and Joan Lowery Nixon. Those authors, among others, wrote horror books for children that were able to scare you without being gory.

The description of Small Spaces brought to mind the movie Jeepers Creepers 2 - a school bus full of children breaks down and they are in danger of something in the night/dark. That is where the similarities end. Arden teams up 3 students who are classmates but not friends. They leave the bus for the safety of the forest...

This story is tame compared to many of the horror movies children have seen in recent years. It is the innocence of the story while being scary and suspenseful that makes it such an interesting read.

Small Spaces is the first book in her Small Spaces series. The 2nd, Dead Voices, has a release date of August 27, 2019. I preordered it and will review it as soon as possible.

This 200-word review was published on Philomathinphila.com on 7/24/19.