Smashbomb

"McEwan’s razor-sharp descriptions of human emotion always hit me hard, and I find this to be the most haunting and heartbreaking of his books. A father looks up in the grocery store and realizes his four-year-old missing; the search for her destroys his marriage and his life. I’m a huge fan of McEwan’s—my first feature was based on his short story “First Love, Last Rites,”—but this is the one that stays with me."

Source

Kudos

Darren Fisher (2454 KP) rated Ghost Story in Books

Dec 10, 2020

Ghost Story

Peter Straub | 1989 | Mystery, Paranormal, Thriller

6.8

(5 Ratings)

Book Rating

Classic Chiller!

Classic chiller from Peter Straub. An epic tale about a group of ageing men who form The Chowder Society, a place where they share ghosts stories between them, and are united by a terrible secret from the past. Expertly written, solid characters, and genuinely creepy, this is Peter Staub on top form. Essential reading!
Note: If you enjoy this I seriously recommend his equally fantastic ghost story Full Circle (aka Julia/ The Haunting of Julia).

Kudos

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Richard Yates

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

First published in 1962, a year after Revolutionary Road, this sublime collection of stories seems...

BackToTheMovies (56 KP) rated The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019) in Movies

Jun 21, 2019

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)

2019 | Drama, Horror, Thriller

2.5

(6 Ratings)

Movie Rating

With it being 50 years since the tragic Manson murders in California we have a year of Manson movies. We have the independent film Charlie Says which explores Manson and his cult in sensitive detail before the tragic night. We have Tarantino’s Once Up A Time In Hollywood which has been given the go-ahead from Sharon Tate’s sister to be made. Then we have this. The Haunting of Sharon Tate. An overly exploitative piece that twists truths to create a narrative and completely trashes the legacy of the late actress.

August 8, 1969, the night that Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent were brutally murdered. The film focuses on the days before the tragic event. The movie dramatizes the slayings and plays on the notion that Sharon Tate predicted her own death in the days leading up to the slaughter.

Surrounded by bad acting and awful scripting it was a very poor choice to make this film in the first place. Writer-director Daniel Farrands has created an offensive and frankly insulting ‘thriller’. Hilary Duff stars as Sharon Tate and whilst she somewhat looks the part, she doesn’t have that raw magic and flair that Sharon had. This tragic event has been turned into some stock-horror slash um up movie with a psychic paranormal twist.

At one point Manson’s song ‘Cease to Exist’ plays to Sharon over a tape player and the Manson Family stalks Tate and her friends around her home. It really is that bad. The introduction of the movie shows real-life footage as a black and white Hilary Duff talks about her own death. The opening scene of the movie is enough to want me to turn off the film instantly.
The Haunting of Sharon Tate still
With no care or respect being paid to the real-life counterparts, the movie has very little to say other than ‘you’re going to die soon’. There’s no feeling of empathy. The Haunting of Sharon Tate is just a 90-minute exploitation of a horrific night in Hollywood’s history.

https://backtothemovies.com/exploitative-trash-the-haunting-of-sharon-tate-review/

Kudos

EmersonRose (320 KP) rated Betrayal at House on the Hill in Tabletop Games

Nov 13, 2019

Betrayal at House on the Hill

2004 | Adventure, Exploration, Horror, Miniatures

8.3

(56 Ratings)

Tabletop Game Rating

Very Replayable (0 more)

Complicated to learn (0 more)

This game is a lot of fun! The idea is that you pick from a set of characters with different attributes to form your party and then together you built the haunted house. You take turns drawing tiles that have different rooms on them, creating a multi-story, very spooky house. There are a few ways to do so but eventually, you start the haunt. At this point, depending on how the haunt started, you pull out a guide that tells you what is haunting the house. Sometimes its the party against the game and sometimes one of the players is turned and they get a special set of rules to try and help the game beat the party. There are a lot of different haunting options, so the game feels fresh and exciting even after you have played it several times. The game is complex but after you play once you get the idea and it is easier upon replays. Definitely a great choice for board game lovers!