#FashionVictim

Anya St. Clair is clawing her way to the top of the fashion industry as a writer. She needs to be just a little bit thinner and prettier to make it to the next level, being invited to the most exclusive parties and fashion shows with front row access. The person she simultaneously puts on a pedestal and identifies as a rival is the flawless and beautiful Sarah Taft. Success and fame come to Sarah effortlessly while Any works hard to fall short. Anya wants to be her best friend, be her, and destroy her all that the same time. To claw her way to the top, she has to take the cutthroat nature of industry literally.

#FashionVictim is kind of like You meets The Devil Wears Prada with the dark humor and social commentary of American Psycho. Everything is pitch perfect, hilarious, and biting. Anya St. Clair seems like a struggling fashion writer at first. Her name is never recognized or found on a list right away and her seat is never in the front. She's tagged in hideous Instagram pictures and constantly teased about her weight. I thought I knew what to expect until she had visions of an assistant with a shard of glass in her eye that turned into a real murder. Anya decides to solve her work problems with murder. Toss in her very unhealthy love/hate obsession with Sarah, the woman whose every move is front page fashion news, and things couldn't be more uncomfortable.

As she spirals out of control, Anya still completely follows the fashion industry and their ridiculous expectations. She doesn't really fit in, but she's willing to break herself to do so. Over the course of the novel, Anya's troubled background and delusions become more apparent. It starts with small comments like her recognizing the sound of bones breaking to more obvious things like being annoyed with typical police questioning. Her delusions include hallucinating her victims around her and considering the police investigator an interested suitor. The story bounces from her normal work experiences to her creating obsessive collages to her carrying out her planned murders. It plays out like a slasher film from the perspective of the killer with a large dose of black humor. Every detail drew me in and proved to be different than other killers.

The fashion industry comes out looking pretty terrible here. Everything is extremely superficial and nothing is based on merit. People only care about weight, fashion labels, and accessories. Conversations are riddled with backhanded comments, cruel gossip, and vapid subjects. All out screaming is only acceptable at very top along with outright abusive treatment. The book also touches on institutionalized racism within the industry that has companies not wanting to be branded "ethnic" and hiring one person of color per department to basically not be sued. When the body count piles up, most people aren't bothered. Sarah makes particularly cruel comments about the murder victims, which makes me root more for Anya even though she's a literal murderer.

I read #FashionVictim in a day because the story just grabbed me and ran. The world of fashion felt alien and cruel, not too different from Anya's twisted mind. With both, certain people have no value and are treated accordingly whether that's screaming and basically being treated like a slave or murder. This book worked for me on every level. It's a biting commentary of the fashion industry that brings in pitch black comedy. I would love to see it as film because it's untreaded waters and could be super fun. Highly recommended.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

More Upcoming Horror Movies in the Fall

More upcoming horror films to look forward to!

* The Nun - September 6



The Nun takes place in the 50's and focuses on a Vatican investigation into a nun's suicide. I am not a fan of The Conjuring movies or any of its offshoots. This one seems no different. The main crux of the trailer is the creepy look of the nun, who actually looks more like Marilyn Manson in a nun habit, and the jump scare at the end. The only interesting thing about the jump scare is the misdirection of it. I expect most of the scares to be similar, but I might be surprised. The one bright spot of this trailer is Taissa Farmiga.

* The Little Stranger - August 31



The Little Stranger has a lot of potential. It could be similar to The Others or The Innocents. Of course I could be wrong. The actors are all amazing and the look of the film is remarkable. Just the contrast of the house from the vibrant colors of the past to the monochrome of the present. I have no idea what's going on this movie, whether it's ghosts or something more conventional, but I'm excited to find out.

* The Predator - September 14



In the 6th Predator film, a new type of predator emerges, bigger and stronger, to kill its smaller brethren. Military people try to figure out how to beat it. The problem with this new predator is that people barely beat the regular ones, let alone something even tougher and stronger. Plus it messes up the lore built about the aliens. Perhaps the regular predators and humans will team up? I'll probably watch this and I expect it to be better than the Alien vs. Predator movies.

More to come!

The Bright Sessions Season 3

Dr. Bright's plan to save her brother fell apart because of Damien, who kidnapped Mark, used his manipulative power, and lied to him about everything. Joan and Sam are distraught and have no way to find Mark. The AM is all over Joan and her patients, making sure she won't step out of line again. Caleb and Adam are back together. Chloe continues to help Frank and struggles with Joan's hypocrisy. Unresolved issues between many are brewing beneath the surface and threatening to explode.

The Bright Sessions becomes more complex as it goes on. The characters continue to develop, grow, and create new relationships. Joan is worried for her brother since he was kidnapped by Damien. She also struggles with her ties with the AM that simultaneously allows her to help Atypicals live normal lives and puts her patients in danger if their abilities prove too interesting for the AM to ignore. The AM also forces her to work with Wadsworth, her former friend and colleague, who she still finds herself admiring and achieving breakthroughs with. Chloe criticizes Joan for chastising her for being unable to give people privacy with her ability to read minds while Joan records people without their knowledge and feeds information to the AM. This situation isn't black and white, so there's debate on all sides with good points.

The AM is seen in more detail this season. It's always loomed in the background but now we get to see how it operates on an everyday level and its deeper recesses. Every day, they take in Atypicals to test them and assess if they need help on a more intense level to control their ability and blend into normal society. On the surface, this seems normal and even altruistic to help people. If you probe deeper, they are conducting unethical experiments and trying to find people with specific, rare abilities to exploit. Mark fills in many of these gaps with the abhorrent way he was treated while confined to the AM that includes mental torture, physical torture, and threats to his family to comply. Each season, the veil gets pushed back a bit further on this organization and it's not pretty.

The character who grows the most is Frank. He's always been in the periphery of the show and only appeared in person last season. Joan talks through some things with him and it's truly heartbreaking. He reveals details about his military service and the experiment his unit consented to. They all had an artificial empathic connection to one another that lost focus over time. Their shared decision to not tell anyone about the complication so they could stay together had devastating consequences, but was understandable in the situation. The fact that a huge revelation about Mark's story line happened the episode right before took away a bit from this emotional episode.

The last few episodes of this season went places I didn't think the show would go. It was surprising, devastating, and hopeful all at the same time. Damian goes from fairly harmless to dangerous through his rocky journey. The ending is explosive in a variety of ways. Many characters who have kept their feelings hidden have meaningful conversations with others to hash out feelings, articulate what has been unspoken, and get issues out into the open. It's also the most violent episode from an unexpected source. I'm hyped to see what happens next season both in the relationships and in the main action of the show.

The scope and cast of the show continues to grow. It's wonderful to see representation in so many different spheres. A glimpse of a new Atypical is seen. Rose travels through dreams and doesn't know whether to be honest with her girlfriend about her ability. I'm interested to see how she will fit in with the group and how the group will move forward in the face of the traumatic events of the last episode. The next season is ongoing so I'm excited to listen as it's being produced.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Slender Man (2018)

High school students Hallie, Chloe, Wren, and Katie are best friends who dream about running away from their small town together. When the guys of their group are hanging out and plan to summon the Slender Man for fun, the girls decide to rise to the challenge and summon him as well. They watch an eerie video and close their eyes after a series of bells. Nothing happens for while and everything returns to normal until Katie suddenly disappears. Hallie decides to investigate theories behind the Slender Man to try to get her friend back.

Slender Man is a supernatural horror film based on the infamous creepy pasta. This film tries to take a sweet, wholesome group of girls and throw the Slender Man in to make their lives fall apart. They all have their own problems and reasons for wanting to get out of the small town they live in. Most of them are essentially interchangeable and not well acted, but Joey King seems to be the only committed actor. These girls are supposed to raise emotional stakes, but the audience doesn't really care about them. One character disappears at the beginning of the film to kick off the mystery. Wren disappears for most of the movie for no reason only to reappear for a second at the end. Chloe has creepy stuff happening but is never mentioned or seen again. The emotional stakes for the characters are about the same as for the audience: very low.

Even though it has its own lore and mythology, this Slender Man steals from The Ring with a much less creepy internet video. The people who watch the video have weird stuff happen as time goes on, but it comes off terribly. The effects look awful and come off unintentionally funny. On top of that, the latter half of the film is about as boring as watching dirt. The Slender Man is barely seen and is less threatening than The Bye Bye Man. That film is a masterpiece compared to this one. There's also the added factor that the real life attempted murder in Wisconsin put Slender Man in the public eye. The film avoids direct parallels, but the concept of sacrificing things or people to the Slender Man is there in addition to characters growing obsessed with him. It's distasteful.

The Slender Man is one of the worst cinematic experiences I've had in recent years. There is no tension, little scares, and numerous dropped plotlines and characters. The visual effects are lackluster at best and there's no reason to care about any character. The one brief shining thing was Joey King's performance even though she was gone for a third of the film. Avoid this like the plague unless you have insomnia or just like being bored.

My rating: 0.5/5 fishmuffins

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

Audrey Rose Wadsworth has a privileged life with a wealthy family. After her mother dies, a rift appears in her family as her father isolates himself. She turns to science and throws herself into studying anatomy and forensics at her uncle's laboratory against society's expectations and her father's wishes. One day, the body of a mutilated woman is delivered for her uncle to collect evidence in a disturbing case of multiple murders. Audrey throws herself into the investigation along with an annoying but brilliant rival Thomas Cresswell despite the risk of danger and irreparable damage to her reputation.

Stalking Jack the Ripper is the story of Audrey and her unconventional science education, her endeavor to solve the true crime mystery, and her first love. Some of these aspects work better than others. Audrey is a smart young woman who suffers from "not like any other girl" syndrome. She soundly rejects other women as frivolous and beneath her, which left a bad taste in my mouth. Victorian society pressures women into a certain mold that doesn't necessarily show how they are inside. This goes against her anachronistically modern view of women and their abilities. I relate to Audrey's grief about her mother's death and the negative changes she sees in her father. Her grief also led her to learning about anatomy and forensics. She takes courses dressed as a boy and stays silent even though she knows the answers. As a whole, I didn't hate Audrey, but she annoyed me.

The biggest problems I have are with Thomas Cresswell, the picking and choosing of what part of Victorian society are used, and the way the villain is treated. Thomas Cresswell is incredibly intelligent and also incredibly arrogant. His condescending nature has a misogynistic tinge to it as he mocks Audrey for not being as educated as him (because women are barred from classes). He seems to be there only to be better at everything than Audrey. I didn't find him likeable in any way and grew even more annoyed that she grew attracted to him when he's so awful. The book played lip service to some aspects of Victorian society at the beginning and then completely ignored them by the end. Audrey gallavanting around the city with Thomas and no chaperone would have destroyed her reputation. The final nail in the coffin of this book was how they treated the villain when his identity was revealed. Audrey and Thomas has the audacity to offer him resuming his normal life if he agrees to stop murdering. I felt so angry reading this because this isn't the action of a hero and it shows such privilege.

Stalking Jack the Ripper is not my favorite book. It has numerous flaws that include an annoying love interest who puts her down at every turn, inconsistencies with Victorian society (either go with it or ignore it), and an infuriating protagonist. My favorite part of the book is Audrey's view of anatomy, how she's adapted to work with the bodies, and her skill at finding clues. I also didn't guess the mystery before the end, which is rare for these teen mysteries. I am a sucker for Victorian era mysteries and this one lost me. I won't be continuing the series.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins

The Devil's Doorway (2018)

The Vatican sends a team of two priests, Thomas Riley and John Thornton, to investigate a possible miracle in 1960 Ireland. At a remote Magdalene Laundry, a statue of the Virgin Mary supposedly cries blood. Father Thomas expects its nothing, but more idealistic and young Father John sees the possiblility of an expression of the divine. As they stay longer, children can be heard playing at night and more and more about this place shows that there is much to hide.

The Devil's Doorway takes the very real horror of the abusive Magdalene laundries with the supernatural. This institution within in the Catholic church hid "fallen women" (meaning sexually active, pregnant out of wedlock, or sex workers) from their communities, abused them, forced them to work, and keep them confined. In the last few decades, the mental, physical, and sexual abuse of the women by priests and nuns who ran the laundries in addition to taking thousands of children born and selling them overseas. All of this is much more horrific than anything supernatural writers can come up with, so I thought some of those aspects fell flat.

The whole investigation starts because of a statue of the Virgin Mary crying blood and it turns out to be so much more than that. Strange sounds are heard at night including the eerie sound of children playing. All of the Mary statues cry and then explode in one of the most effective scenes of the film. A particularly violent pregnant woman is chained up in the basement, apparently possessed. These aspects could have been a bit more streamlined. It's a lot of supernatural just thrown around that don't really seem to be connected to each other. The possession in particular seems to be there just because it's expected to be rather than furthering the story. The payoff for the creepy children voices wasn't executed very well and seemed rather cheesy even though it pointed to the reality of children dying in the "care" of these institutions.

Father Thomas and Father John are the duo sent to investigate the miracle. Thomas is borderline atheistic and jaded while John is idealistic and fairly innocent. This type of pairing is pretty typicaly in possession movies and works well here. They are a bit shocked when the Mother Superior directly calls out the corruption of priests and points out that quite a few girls at the laundries were abused by priests. Her character had great promise, but she remained one dimensional and villainous. The priests are the most likeable characters as they stumble around trying to solve this mystery and getting caught up in the deeper, sordid secrets of the laundry. I didn't like the nuns are basically painted as what's wrong in this situation (even though they aren't blameless) considering that they have no real power in the church as a whole.

The Devil's Doorway does some interesting things. It's a found footage film set in the 1960's and has the visuals to match. The atmosphere can be suspenseful and the plot is fairly well crafted. With the subject matter, I was hoping for a much more critical view of the Catholic Church and it turned out to lay the blame to the nuns who are partially at fault, but don't make the overarching decisions that made the institution and its abuse a reality. Having the priests clutch their pearls about the abuse didn't ring true to me at all, let alone anything else. Overall, it's a decent horror film, but I left disappointed at the tired tropes and random grab bag of supernatural.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins 

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

Kris Pulaski founded a metal band in the 90's called Durt Wurk with her high school best friend Terry Hunt. They were on the verge of something big when Terry threw a tantrum and ruined it for them all. He split from the group, made them all sign contracts to never play music again and sign over ownership of their music among other things, and left them. Twenty years later, Terry is the height of corporate rock music while Kris is reduced to managing a Best Western. She rediscovers her love of music and sets out to reunite with her bandmates, confront Terry over his betrayal, and make music again.

We Sold Our Souls mixes a deal with the devil, a Lovecraftian cult, and a scrappy metal band to create its weird and wonderful mythology. It all starts with Kris moldering at the Best Western, struggling to deal with naked, deranged patrons.  Because of Terry and his contracts, Kris has no prospects or real future. I am completely on board with her when she sets out to rebuild her band and face Terry. The situation is all the more heartbreaking when their relationship is shown. She and Terry grew up together, mourned legends, traded tapes, learned music, and finally founded Durt Wurk together. He threw it all away to become the Blind King and head Koffin, the most commercially successful and soulless metal band. It merges the commercial nature of Kiss mixed with Nickelback, only with metal music. Melanie is a huge fan of their music who is disillusioned and drowning in college debt. She proves to be significant to the story in surprising ways.

I love the way Hendrix talks about music. Kris started out as a kid in a basement struggling to make music with hurting hands and strings only to transcend the pain and frustration when she finally plays the opening chords of Iron Man. The same music heard by thousands finally came out of her own guitar. Later on, Durt Wurk played for a different crowds (hostile and not) and succeeded in transforming them with their music and energy. Melanie and Kris bond over their shared love of Dolly Parton (after butting heads over their differing views of Koffin) and pass the time singing her music all the way to Vegas. The manufactured to appeal to the widest audience type of music fro Koffin is described very differently than Durt Wurk's earnest and heartfelt but imperfect songs. The way music is described borders on magical but feels accurate. It has a way of bonding lovers of the same music and transforming listeners and performers alike.

The horror elements took me by surprise. I thought it would be similar to The Devil's Candy or something more straightforward. The creatures that gave Terry the contracts are bigger and more monstrous than our perception allows us to see. They never communicate directly because they don't even speak the same language. The minions are only aware that they know human greed and feast on souls. Their main minions are cookie cutter UPS drivers that aren't much more than automatons. In addition, all the followers of Koffin act as their eyes and ears. When enough followers gather, they stop truly being individuals and answer commands to destroy. Kris isn't safe anywhere. The creatures have already gotten to anyone that might matter to her and every person is a potential informant or attacker. The eldritch nature of the villains plus their far feaching eyes and ears keeps the suspense and sense of danger high as the novel moves along.

We Sold Our Souls is a treat to read. There are so many different elements that Hendrix melds together to make this unique novel. I loved everything from the music to the characters to the villainous monsters. The story is a love letter to metal music that still critiques the negative things about it like how women can be harassed at concerts. I have no issues with this book and I loved how it ended like it started. I highly recommend this and any other Grady Hendrix novel.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins