Women in Horror: Goodnight Mommy

* spoilers *

There's something wrong with the mother. Her face is covered by bandages as the result of cosmetic facial surgery and even through the bandages bruising is quite obvious. She seems to be completely different from before the surgery: more severe and less prone to laugh or sing like she used to. She puts strict rules on her twin boys Elias and Lukas to allow for her to rest and recuperate including complete silence in the house, blinds always drawn, and playing only outside. It's curious from the beginning that she completely ignores Lukas: doesn't serve him food or drink, doesn't accept presents from him, doesn't listen to what he says, and only interacts with Elias. When possible, she avoids the children altogether, even pretending to be asleep when they try to wake her. Could she be someone masquerading as their mother? 

Good Night Mommy centers around the mystery of the mother. The children think there's something wrong with her or she's a completely different person than she says she is. They do usual childish antics like being loud, bringing in cats from outside, and generally being kind of a nuisance. When caught, their mother becomes cruel and acts violently towards them.Then they discover pictures removed from the house, prompting them to investigate their mother further. Things escalate further when the cat they brought in the house is found dead in the basement. Elias and Lukas leave it for their mother to find in a terrarium and she flies into a fury, demanding Elias to repeat the she is his mother and to never talk to Lukas again. The boys are locked up in the house until the mother turns sweet and offers them a present. The first opportunity they get, they run away to a church to try to find help, but they are returned to their home.

At this point, I am completely sympathetic to the boys. Their mother's mercurial moods are unpredictable. The abuse she doles out is cruel and extreme considering the offending acts. Elias and Lukas are far from perfect, but they don't deserve to be treated terribly for acting like children. The whole situation is undeniably suspicious and it's understandable for the boys to looks for answers. The film is brilliantly constructed and filmed to build up uneasiness through a lot of pointed silences and uncomfortable scenes. Beyond the mother's abuse and the cat's death, nothing is really wrong, but something is definitely off in the house. Small things like the out of focus framed pictures, the mom's all white bedroom and dress, and the way the characters sometimes just stand and stare for uncomfortable stretches heighten the off kilter feeling. The amorphous and haunting soundtrack also adds to the uncomfortable atmosphere. The last third of the film throws everything we've believed into question.

When the mother wakes up, the boys have tied her up and literally torture her in a variety of ways including burning her face with magnifying glasses and supergluing her mouth shut to try to find out where their mom is. These scenes are incredibly uncomfortable both from the nature and length of the scene. My sympathy shifts from the sons to the mother even if she is an imposter. No matter what she's done, she doesn't deserve to be callously tortured. The mother finally concedes to allow Elias to speak with his brother because Lukas was killed in an accident. This was far from the conclusion I expected, but it makes sense. Elias already proved his capacity for cruelty with burning the bugs outside and presumably killing the cat himself off screen. Lukas always encourages him to be more extreme and callous because he is a hallucinated aspect of Elias' own psyche that can't process his twin's death. He reacts with violence possibly because his mother does so on a smaller scale. The film ends with Elias setting the house on fire after he challenges the mother to see his hallucinated brother and she fails. 

This brings me to the mother. I completely understand her after the last revelation of the film. She is processing her own grief while trying to raise her son and help him process his. Not only did her son die, but her husband also left her. She can't afford to keep the large house anymore and has to adjust to a great many new things in addition to her grief and her remaining son's grief. It must be painful for her to see and spend time with Elias since he looks exactly like Lukas, so she hides from him and doesn't quite know how to treat him when he misbehaves. The bandages symbolizes her own pain and grief. It keeps her from relating to her son and she needs time away from him to process, causing her to neglect her son's needs. Since Elias killed the cat, her reaction to that makes so much more sense. He murdered a cat and left if for her to find while denying she is his mother and talking to his dead sibling. While her abuse is still horrible, she's obviously overwhelmed and simply doesn't know how else to help her son with no other support. Her solution is to force him to repeat true things, but it simply doesn't force him to believe them. When she returns all smiles and presents, it's clear that she realizes how monstrous her actions were and she wants to make amends without actually admitting her faults. The mother is human and wants the best for her son. Like anyone else, she needed to process her own emotions and she made a mistakes along the way. 

Goodnight Mommy is slow burn film with incredibly uncomfortable scenes. The tragic ending shows how toxic denial and ignoring grief can be. Lukas and Elias Schwarz are amazing actors. They can elicit sympathy from the audience one moment as innocent children and then turn psychotic the next. Susanne Wuest is also formidable as the mother and brings depth to her role. It would have been easy to make the mother a flat character especially since her face is hidden for more than half the film, but Wuest makes the role memorable and keeps the audience guessing. I highly recommend Goodnight Mommy and I would recommend it to those who liked The Babadook as it shares theme and circumstances. 

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Women in Horror: Dead Spots

Mackenzie Babin needs a new start. A few months ago, she was pregnant and blissfully happy with an adoring husband. Now, her baby miscarried and her husband left, already happy with someone else. Everyone tells her to get over it, but she can't escape the crushing sadness. Alone and miserable, she sets off to drive back to Texas to live with her alarmist mother. On the way, she narrowly misses hitting a deer and stops in front of a defunct diner. Resolved to show she can do adventurous things and open a new chapter in her life, she enters the abandoned restaurant only to become trapped in a dead spot, a nightmarish place between the worlds of the living and the dead. Mackenzie has no idea who is a real person and who's a parasitic monster or a wraith. The odds are stacked against her and she just wants to go home.

Dead Spots is an unexpected read. I've read a few Rhiannon Frater books before and this one is a bit different than her usual. It all starts out fairly normally with a typical blissful day between a very pregnant Mackenzie and her husband Tanner. Then everything falls apart when she miscarries. Tanner stays around for a little bit, but can't handle her sadness and her grief. Most of her friends were his friends, so her circle has dwindled to her mother, who insists that she did something to make the miscarriage happen. Everyone just expects her to move on and get over it, but she simply can't. Grief has to be worked through, not forgotten for the convenience of the people around them. Everyone grieves differently, but all people see after a while is a depressing person they don't want to be around. I've seen this happen in real life as well and it's horrible. Rhiannon Frater writes the situation realistically (and partially autobiographically) and it makes the reader feel the crushing sadness of losing everything significant to you plus your support system.

When Mackenzie happens into a dead spot, everything changes. She thinks she's going insane as the world tries to kill her using shades of her husband and her mother at their worst as well as any other fear or anxiety she has to hurt her the most. In a dead spot, merely thinking or worrying about something can trigger the production of wraiths, a change in the setting, and of course an attempt on her life. In this world, a person can die multiple times, but part of their soul is eaten away each time. The mechanics of the world are creative. Regular people can shape a dead spot to its former glory and make it a safe haven with everything they need if they have enough power and haven't died too many times. They can also create objects and heal themselves with this power. These people are varied, so they don't always work for the greater good. A creepy clown made an amusement park into his torture chamber where he finds the same girl over and over and kills her in different ways. Other creatures in the world include incubi/succubi who suck energy from people until they become wraiths and shades that are kind of like ghosts.

Rhiannon Frater really shines with her character development and character relationships. Mackenzie starts out pretty broken and she finds it hard to cope with the dead spots as she found it hard to cope in real life. This supernatural place is a way for her to work through her demons and her grief and come out stronger the other side with some hope. Right when she comes in, Grant, an actor from the 50's, latches on to her in the guise of helping her. At first, he seems nice and normal, but small things he does start to bother me like putting her down, telling her to only listen to him, keeping her ignorant to the true rules of the world, and isolating her from potential friends who he brands as enemies. He is revealed to be an incubus who tried to manipulate her into a parasitic romantic relationship. Although he is a supernatural villain, so many of the strategies he used are employed by real life manipulators: the isolation, the gaslighting, the negging, and the exploitation her weaknesses. This part of the novel is where Mackenzie is at her weakest. She follows Grant around and falls into his manipulative traps.

After they are separated for a while, Mackenzie runs into a little boy named Johnny and another shaper named Luke. Mackenzie's and Luke's relationship contrasts hugely with her relationship with Grant. He respects her boundaries and her wishes. He's honest with her, teaches her the true rules of the world, and allows her to make decisions herself. They work truly together and support each other without ulterior motives. They both want to leave the in between world and go back to having normal lives. Their romance develops organically by getting to know each other, taking care of Johnny, and fighting to protect each other. It highlights all the things horrible things that went on between Grant and Mackenzie that felt off at the time, but it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

Dead Spots is one of my favorite books by Rhiannon Frater. It feels like an emotionally honest book that delves into some truly dark territory. I appreciated the author's note at the end that tells the real life events that happened to inspire the story. Frater dreamed the world after her own miscarriage, which she took months to physically and emotionally recover from. She does a wonderful job of grounding this tragedy in reality and using the fantastical world to work through her grief. The only criticism of the book is the fairly flat depiction of Mackenzie's mother who is consumed with OCD and the abrupt ending. Other than that, it was enjoyable and exciting throughout.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

The Secrets of Love and Death

Theo "Turtle" Dawson is going through a hard time. His brother A.D. died and his mother isn't taking it well. She copes by ignoring Turtle and keeping A.D.'s room obsessively clean. Turtle copes by eating sweets and meekly trying to avoid bullies at his school. Two events turn his whole world upside down. A girl named Rita Calderon saves him from a bully and his two giant brothers. Then his brother A.D. comes back from the dead. Rita gets him to wake up and live his life. He falls in love, lets go of the candy, and becomes more self assured. His brother, on the other hand, unsettles him. At first, it's wonderful to have his brother back. It's like nothing changed at all. Then he presses Turtle into stealing a drink from the market. Then the demands get more and more dangerous from there and Turtle loves his brother, but sees how wrong it is. Will he give in to his brother's demands despite the danger? Will his new found love suffer because of A.D.?

The Secrets of Love and Death is a complex book with a lot going on. Its greatest strength is in the characters. They all simply ring true. Each has their own different motivations and viewpoints, whether they are open-minded or bigoted, virtuous or morally bankrupt. All of them also have their own emotional baggage that they either work through or use as motivation to make others feel their pain. Turtle tries to be good, but finds himself being blinded by his grief and love for his brother to properly assess the situation until its too late. His home life makes me want to give him a hug because his mom is also so blinded by grief that she can't see her living son and his needs through it. Rita has to take care of her sometimes coherent grandmother who hoards cats to an unhealthy degree. She chose to hide it, but didn't take it out on others. Ansley Meade the bully has a not stellar home life, but he chooses to lose himself in alcohol and inflict his pain on others. A.D. was killed before his time and also uses his pain to hurt others. I loved that none of these kids have perfect lives and the main differences are how they deal with their pain. I saw myself and a lot of my friends reflected in these characters. The novel has a lot of fantastical elements, but the realism is what gives it life.

The novel starts out with normal, everyday events. Turtle and Rita are in love for the first time and all the messiness, anxiety, and happiness that comes from that. Turtle becomes more confident and self assured, but still experiences doubt and his previous, more cowardly feelings coming back when times get tough. Rita opens up about her real home life and fears being rejected. All are very real and relatable situations. As the book go on, more horror and supernatural elements occur. It starts with a short scene with a Teddy Bear and then it's forgotten for a little while. Near the end of that book that creepy teddy bear comes back with a vengeance, so it made up for the first half of the book not having enough horror for me. With a teen book, I didn't expect the story to go so dark with the main villain, but it's more realistic and I appreciated that. A.D. returning from the dead opens up a whole supernatural can of worms. Another spirit also attempts to communicate and a clairvoyant gets mixed up in the story.

Overall, The Secrets of Love and Death is an exciting supernatural book with universal human emotions at its core. Everyone processes grief and pain in different ways and not always in healthy ones. I'm a little sad this is a standalone because Rita and Turtle were so fun to read, but I'll settle for waiting for more books from E. Van Lowe.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

Love Letters to the Dead

It's Laurel's first year in high school and the first school year without her sister, May, or her mother, who moved to California after May's death. She transferred to a different school so that she wouldn't be pitied and known as the girl whose sister died. Her English teacher assigns a project to write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because he is May's favorite singer and also because she relates to his emotional lyrics.This first letter leads her to write to other dead celebrities, such as Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Judy Garland, and John Keats. Laurel relates her lonely existence, her first friends at her new school, their antics, and her first boyfriend. Unfortunately, her refusal to talk about her issues and her penchant for doing dangerous things drives the people she loves away. Can she work through her issues before she permanently loses her friends or causes sever injury to herself?

Love Letters to the Dead is a very emotional book. Laurel goes through a lot in a very short amount of time and uses her letters to a variety of famous dead people to cope with it. She relates to their lives, their feelings, and their tragedies. I'm surprised that she researched more than what is common knowledge about their lives so that I learned something about them as well. Her letters also describe her new life and how she tries to transform herself. High school has much different expectations than middle school and she wears her sister's cool clothes and changes her habits to fit in. I generally liked Laurel and I felt for her. She's trying to work through her grief and the deep pain she feels while making mistakes along the way. Ava Dellaira employs beautiful, poetic prose that made me relate to Laurel and also made the book easy and enjoyable to read.

Unfortunately, I had quite a few issues with the book. Dellaira's lyrical prose isn't consistent. At times, Laurel writes in short and very simple declarative sentences that are a stark contrast to the lyrical prose that ventures into deep territory. It felt a bit disjointed and weird to me. She befriends Hannah and Natalie who basically peer pressure her into drinking, ditching classes, going to college parties, etc. She doesn't seem to want to actually do these things, but only wants to appear cool to her friends. This is never seen as negative, is never really addressed, and left a bad taste in my mouth. These are also very similar to May's destructive behaviors, but they magically didn't negatively effect Laurel's grades or behavior during school or at home even though she was getting drunk a lot, partying late, etc. I also didn't like her relationship with Sky. The chemistry was forced and the double standards were glaring. Sky expected Laurel to tell him everything while he kept up this mysterious guy facade and kept things from her late into their relationship. It was a bit awkward and the double standard bothered me. I was also shocked that her mother just decided to move out of state and leave her grieving family very soon after such a traumatic event. I felt it was incredibly selfish and pretty much unforgivable, especially when she calls weekly and expects Laurel to be ok with it.

Love Letters to the Dead is a mostly beautifully written novel. I enjoyed Laurel, her journey, and how she related to these dead people. Her story pulled at my heartstrings and took me on an emotional rollercoaster. The book addresses these mostly tragic figures lives well and informs the reader about their lives and their feelings. I did have some significant issues with parts of the story, but I overall enjoyed it.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins