Catle Rock Reaction: “Past Perfect”

The blood hits the wall in episode eight, as Castle Rock serves up its grisliest fare so far this season (amidst all the carnage, one might almost overlook Odin’s fatal skewering through the eye).

The Castle Rock Historic Bed & Breakfast–a theme destination featuring “actual murders recreated in exquisite detail”–surely earns a five-star rating in the Macabre Republic Travel Guide. To no surprise, the first guests here are checked out early; the subsequent shots of the crime scene are gorgeously gory, with the naked, slashed corpses forming flesh-and-blood counterparts to the establishment’s mannequins.

The reference to Castle Rock as “the murder capital of 1991” arguably represents another subtle Easter egg dropped into the show–a hearkening back to the homicidal mayhem of Needful Things. Viewers needed to be very astute, too, to catch glimpse of the Salem’s Lot sign when Wendell gets off the bus.

Memo to Jackie Torrance: when you find something dripping a suspiciously crimson fluid, you probably shouldn’t dip your finger in the substance and then taste it! That’s crazier than anything your all-work-and-foul-play uncle ever did in the Overlook Hotel (ol’ Halloran-hacking Jack would have been proud, though, of your surprise axing of Gordon).

Most significant dialogue of the episode: the Kid’s admission to Henry that “I waited for 27 years. I rescued you from that basement and I didn’t ask for any of this.” His words are at once revealing and tantalizingly vague (whose basement?). They also offer further proof that the Kid is not the devilish nemesis the town has cast him as.

Still, let’s not make him out to be the second coming of John Coffey; Castle Rock is a long ways away from The Green Mile. That radio report about multiple patients at Juniper Hill lighting their mattresses on fire at the same time furnishes a perfect reminder that crossing paths with the Kid can be an excruciating experience.

Gordon and Lilith’s knife attack on Henry was American Gothic galore, one of the creepiest scenes we’ve seen to date. For a second there, I thought the show was about to go all Psycho and send its main character into early retirement.

The episode’s interiors–the former Lacy home turned murder-capitalzing inn, the Deaver domicile, Molly’s residence with its shadowed staircase–really work to reinforce a theme sounded earlier in the series: the notion that Castle Rock is a town full of haunted houses.

With “Past Perfect,” the narrative pace has definitely picked up; now it’s time for some payoff. Hopefully next week’s penultimate episode will begin to resolve the season’s different mysteries.

 

Mob Scene: The Outsider

Note: the following contains plot spoilers. If you have yet to read King’s most recent novel, you are advised to go rectify that mistake before proceeding.

 

The Outsider unfolds with the public arrest of Terry Maitland, a typical Stephen King everyman who finds himself charged with an unspeakable crime: the savage rape and murder of an eleven-year-old boy. Eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence alike link Maitland to the horrid deed, but the fact that the accused also has a rock-solid alibi sends this seemingly open-and-shut criminal case veering towards the uncanny.

As the section of the novel titled “The Arraignment” opens, Maitland is about to be transported from the county jail to the county courthouse. Upon leaving, he is subjected to the lewd catcalls of fellow prisoners, the shouted questions of reporters that sound “more like invective than interrogation,” and the ill-will of outraged spectators sporting signs blazoned with “EXECUTE THE CHILD KILLER” and “MAITLAND YOU WILL BURN IN HELL.” An ominous mood is instantly set, but this treatment will seem like a welcome wagon compared to what awaits Maitland at the courthouse.

There a jostling, surging crowd of reporters, cameramen, and angered onlookers have congregated. Spectators hurl vile accusations at Maitland’s wife, and literally spit in his face. Maitland is serenaded with cries of “NEEDLE! NEEDLE! NEEDLE!“, an eager prescription of lethal injection by a crowd “chanting like fans at a football game.” What’s worse, Detective Ralph Anderson observes, is that these aren’t just anonymous protesters, but Maitland’s neighbors: “People whose kids he taught, people whose kids he coached, people he had to his house for end-of-season barbecues. All of them rooting for him to die.” A wary Anderson realizes that the local citizens “looked ready to string Terry Maitland up from the nearest lamppost.”  A few paragraphs later, a book is thrown at Marcy Maitland; King identifies the volume as “Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee.” With its call for vigilance, the title alone is significant, and the astute reader will note that this is the (posthumously-published) sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s American Gothic masterpiece featuring the awful lynching of an innocent man. So those cries of “Die, Maitland, die!” might be about to prove eerily prophetic.

Unruly to begin with, “the crowd teetered on the edge of mob-ism” as Maitland is ushered towards the entrance of the courthouse. What follows, though, is not a mass lynching, but the act of a single vigilante who takes justice in his own gun-wielding hand. Horrified, Anderson watches the spectators acting “like hyenas. Everyone stood out in bright relief, and everyone was a grotesque.” Anderson’s catalog of these grotesques includes a figure toting a newspaper sack, who, it turns out, is interested in delivering more than the local rag. Ollie Peterson, the teenage brother of murder victim Frank Peterson, pulls out his weapon and unceremoniously assassinates Maitland. The killing (less than halfway through the novel) is one of the most shocking in King’s works, since readers had to assume that this likable character caught in the grip of a terrible predicament would play a central role throughout.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for Maitland’s arraignment turning into a bloody circus, starting with an inept sheriff who makes an oxymoron of crowd control. Anderson blames himself for not insisting that Maitland not be brought in through the back entrance; the detective also wonders if the district attorney foresaw and secretly hoped for such a public spectacle, “because of the wide news coverage it would surely garner.” King’s strongest censure, however, is of mob mentality, of the hastily judgmental masses prone to guilty-and-won’t-be-proven-innocent irrationality. These bloodthirsty folk are also marked by a morbid fascination: the scene closes not just with the sound of approaching sirens but the “excited babble of people who were returning now that the shooting was over. Wanting to see the body. Wanting to photograph it and put it on their Facebook pages.” And as if all this didn’t make for enough natural horror, another turn of the screw is given later in the novel, as readers learn that events have been manipulated all along by a grief-feasting monster that relishes such violent chaos.

The King canon is filled with fiery mob scenes, but none more devastatingly effective than the author’s latest foray into this grim territory.

 

Castle Rock Reaction: “The Queen”

Castle Rock’s seventh episode clocks in at a whopping 60 minutes, and bigger ultimately proves better.

“The Queen” is aptly titled, as Sissy Spacek gives a regal performance in this Ruth-centered episode. Viewers get to share the sense of existential dislocation experienced by the dementia-suffering Ruth, who glides between the present and past memories as easily as crossing a threshold inside her haunted (not necessarily supernaturally) house. Along the way we learn the import of details from previous episodes, such as the dog that was buried out in the yard but doesn’t appear quite dead to Ruth. All the narrative looping can be a bit confusing (“The Queen” no doubt warrants repeat viewing), and the first half of the episode does drag on somewhat, but there is a terrific payoff at the end, both emotionally and thematically.

Ruth’s jaunts down memory’s winding lanes affords us our clearest glimpse to date of her reverend husband Mathew–and it’s not a flattering look. Overbearing and unbalanced (abusive without ever having to raise his hand or voice), Mathew forms the creepiest clergyman this side of Cycle of the Werewolf.

Arguably the most significant line of the episode occurs when Molly comes knocking and a desperate, disoriented Ruth answers the door by asking, “When are we?” My favorite exchange, though, was Ruth’s joking inquiry to Alan as to why so many magic tricks have pornographic-sounding names, and his response that probably because virgins invented them.

“The Queen” gives a quick nod to Stephen King’s Under the Dome: in an attempt to get Wendell out of the house and away from the Kid, Ruth sends him off to the mall in Chester’s Mill. It serves as a reminder of just how close these two towns lie on King’s fictional map of Maine.

Tension certainly ratchets up when we arrive at last to the scene between Ruth and the Kid. Once again Bill Skarsgard is masterful, understated yet creating an undeniable sense of menace. His quoting of the dead reverend’s lines to Ruth is chilling, and even an act as mundane as cooking up some eggs manages to have an uncanny effect.

The episode, though, is less an example of outright horror than of romantic tragedy–Shakespeare with a senior cast (and I’m not talking about high school upperclassmen). There’s a vicious swerve: after following the imperiled Ruth for nearly a hour and fearing that this will be the end for her character, we instead witness the sudden killing off of Alan Pangborn (accidentally shot by Ruth, who thought she was targeting the Kid). Just like that, Castle Rock’s long-time, knightly defender is removed from the chess board. The twist is gut-wrenching, so much so that at first the viewer might not stop to wonder if this dire event has been diabolically orchestrated by a revenge-minded Kid.

“The Queen” is not an easy episode, but it is an appreciable one. Viewers have to stay on the alert throughout, yet the work is rewarding. Never settling for superficial scares and facile reactions, Castle Rock makes it audience think hard and feel deeply, and this might make the show the most sophisticated genre series currently streaming.

Hundredfold Horror

After receiving over 7000 reader nominations, NPR has published its list of 100 Favorite Horror Stories. The choices (novels, individual stories, and anthologies) have been grouped into ten categories–Blood Roots: Foundational Horror; Zombies and Vampires and Werewolves: Oh My; The Fear in Our Stars: Cosmic Horror and Weird Fiction; Horrible Houses: Ghosts and Hauntings; Final Girls: Horror By and About Woman; Horribly Ever After: Fantasy and Fairy Tale Horror; Hell is Other People: Real World Horrors; Short and Sharp: Story anthologies; The Kids Aren’t All Right: Creepy Kids; and Scar Your Children: Horror for Beginners. The judges (Stephen Graham Jones, Ruthanna Emrys, Tananarive Due, and Grady Hendrix) wax a tad political in their selections/commentary–(modern revisions of) Lovecraft’s racism seems to be a recurrent theme–but overall the accompanying summaries to each text are quite enjoyable to read. So whether you are looking to revisit a classic or to discover lesser-known scare fare, you can now be guided by an ultimate syllabus of horror. Quot libros, quam breve tempus, as some guy named Stephen King likes to say.

 

Castle Rock Reaction: “Filter”

Castle Rock‘s sixth episode, “Filter,” opens with the re-burial ceremony for Matthew Deaver. I know that within the story, relatively little time has passed, but watching this plotline gradually spool out week-by-week has made the settling of Matthew’s remains seem like quite the protracted affair (no wonder he haunts Molly as a restless revenant!).

The mysterious duo who show up at the sparsely-attended ceremony appear even more conspicuous as they station themselves outside a giant camper. That vehicle could be a nod to the RV-riding psychic vampires in Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep, and thus creates a sense of wariness about the strange black man and his young white sidekick.

Best Line of the Episode goes to Ruth Deaver, her blunt utterance, “Coulda sworn we buried your father in that suit.” Terrific ambiguity here: is this just more absent-mindedness from the addled Ruth, or is there something sinister afoot (especially considering that the cadaverous, suit-clad Kid looks like he just lurched out of Night of the Living Dead)?

As Henry attempts to understand his vaguely-recalled childhood forays with his father, the episode leads us deep into the woods. “Filter” felt like it was approaching Pet Sematary territory here, and at first I wondered if that haunting sound Henry kept hearing was somehow Wendigo-related. Turned out to be something much more bizarre, though…

Ironically, “Filter” ends up saturated with exposition–that long scene in which Odin Branch goes on (via emphatic sign language and verbal translation by his protege Willy) about the Voice of God and the Schisma. All this mystic mumbo jumbo comes off like an infodump; more disconcertingly, it steers the story in a far-out direction that is at odds with King’s down-home Castle Rock narratives (in King’s writing, places like Derry and Haven are the more familiar sites of cosmic horror).

What’s in a name? The unusualness of “Odin Branch” causes viewers to ponder the moniker’s signifance. Anyone who’s read American Gods knows this character’s surname references the tricksy Norse god. So is Odin Branch an offshoot of that towering mythological figure? Does the name point to Odin’s self-sacrifice, his hanging on the worlds-spanning tree Yggdrasil?

A blind man could see that Henry was being lured inside the titular Filter–a customized anechoic chamber within the camper–so the springing of that trap wasn’t very shocking (Odin Branch’s sudden voicing of “Not deaf, perfect” did register high on the creepiness meter, though). More intriguing is the question of what Henry will be like once he inevitably escapes from such mind-bending confinement.

A large part of the suspense mustered thus far Castle Rock has centered on the uncertainty of the Kid’s nature. Is he a misunderstood victim or a malicious villain? The pendulum appears to swing towards the latter at episode’s end (was Alan sent off on a wild goose chase so the Kid could wreak havoc on Ruth’s home?), but something tells me there’s a further swerve coming and this character won’t prove to be the embodiment of ultimate evil.

The least satisfying episode of the series to date, “Filter” plays like a placeholder, a forestalling of more significant developments next week. Perhaps the episode will be better appreciated in retrospect, after viewers find out what happened to Henry and Ruth, respectively, and learn more about Matthew Deaver’s machinations and the Kid’s apparent quest for comeuppance.

 

Hardly Garden Variety

 

Why is it that the secrets we don’t like to talk about during our lives are the same secrets we don’t want to take to the grave with us?

The day before dying on a hospital bed after a long battle with cancer, my mother told me a story that happened the year after I went off to college. The story was as strange as the time she chose to tell it.

How’s that for an opening hook? These lines from Mariano Alonso’s short story “Nemesia’s Garden” (published in Cemetery Dance #76) drew me in quicker than the snap of a Venus flytrap.

The story is set primarily in the Dakota Building in Manhattan (filmed as “The Bramford” by Roman Polanski in Rosemary’s Baby; coincidentally, CD#76 also features an essay by Peter Straub marking the 50th anniversary of Ira Levin’s landmark horror novel). Thankfully, though, Alonso doesn’t recur to the device of devilish impregnation. Matters here (involving the botanical extravaganza of a room occupied by the aged, wheelchair-bound eponymous character) are much more exotic and eccentric than suggested by the story’s quaint title.

Alonso’s plot proceeds with subtlety and misdirection, building skillfully to a twisty revelation in the closing paragraphs. Dealing in sibling rivalry, surreptitious poisons, and wild transmogrifications, “Nemesia’s Garden” exudes a modern fairy tale air. But its fantastic elements are well grounded in the everyday, and rooted in the historical (as the story hearkens back to post-Nazi-invasion Poland). Alonso has crafted a tale that is at once beautifully descriptive and hauntingly outre. This latest edition of Cemetery Dance presents several strong stories, but “Nemesia’s Garden” without doubt forms the dark highlight of the issue.

 

***

Postscript: if you are interested in learning more about the haunted history of the Dakota Building, check out this short essay by Orrin Grey.

 

Castle Rock Reaction: “Harvest”

Cataclysm is in the air, right from the start of this fifth episode. As wildfires rage across Black Mountain, a cloud of orange smoke encroaches on Castle Rock (a visual I found eerily reminiscent of the 2017 arrival of The Mist). This impending inferno hints at the diabolic, and creates the sense that all hell is about to break loose–perhaps not coincidentally, just as the Kid is released from Shawshank.

The lingering shot of the Kid’s New Balance sneakers as he is about to step past Shawshank’s gates and into freedom seemed at once allusive and symbolic. The capital “N” on the footwear echoes the title of Stephen King’s apocalypse-concerned novella, and a new balance–an upsetting of moral order–might be in store for Castle Rock now that the Kid is venturing into town.

The ostensible “N.” Easter egg is subtly inserted, but the same cannot be said for Jackie (birth name: Diane) Torrance’s reveal that she is the niece of Jack Torrance and adopted the name of the notorious Overlook caretaker to spite her parents. This invocation of The Shining felt forced and distractingly on-the-nose; the show arguably ranges too far afield here from King’s Castle-Rock-centered material (before we know it, we could find ourselves in the author’s Dark Tower multiverse).

Last week’s episode showed how an exhumed coffin gets shrink-wrapped prior to transportation. In “Harvest,” that same coffin (Matthew Deaver’s) is the subject of a phenomenon called “exploding casket syndrome.” No end to the morbid tidbits on Castle Rock!

The moments of intimacy between the elderly Alan and Ruth were very touching. Viewers got to watch a pair of veteran actors–Scott Glenn and Sissy Spacek–at the top of their game, creating maximum emotional impact with minimal effort.

Alan had the lion’s share of great lines in this week’s episodes. My favorite was his sardonic, hardly-thrilled reaction to Henry’s installment of home security cameras to monitor Ruth: “Why don’t you just put a chip in her like a golden retriever?”

The horror of Castle Rock again succeeds via obliquity. The scene in which a cake-cutting at a child’s birthday party turns into a deadly stabbing spree proves all the more unnerving for occurring off-screen (merely overheard as the camera focuses on the intruding Kid).

With “Harvest,” the inaugural season has reached its halfway point, and the various plot threads have started to weave together. What pattern is actually taking shape still remains a mystery, though. The Kid’s closing question–“You have no idea what is happening here, do you?”–is posed to Alan but can be extended to the audience as well. We still don’t know where exactly the show is headed, but there appears to be little reason to doubt that the Weird Shit is about to hit Castle Rock’s fan.

 

Apocalypse Not/Now: A Review of Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World

In his recent string of hit horror novels (A Head Full of GhostsDisappearance at Devil’s Rock), Paul Tremblay has made a name for himself as someone who can cleverly rework well-worn genre conventions. The author’s latest effort, The Cabin at the End of the World, operates in a similar manner, adopting and adapting the elements of the home-invasion narrative. At the start of the novel, a quartet of intruders wielding homemade, quasi-medieval weapons force their way inside the New Hampshire vacation cabin of a gay couple (Andrew and Eric) and their seven-year-old adopted daughter (the Chinese orphan Wen). These aren’t your typical invaders, though; the mysterious foursome aren’t mute sadists, mere thrill-killing Strangers in masks (actually, the masks aren’t donned until after the break-in, and for a most unexpected reason). Rather than forming stock villains, the intruders act from allegedly heroic impulses: these ultimate humanitarians have specifically sought out Andrew, Eric, and Wen to help stave off an impending global apocalypse.

Tremblay has also established himself as a master of ambiguous horror, and Cabin proves a darkly shining example of unsettling uncertainty. Are the intruders the acting hand of a higher power or just touched in the head? The divine-inspiration-vs.-devastating-delusion debate rages throughout, fueling the book’s narrative drive. Tremblay deftly blurs the line between causation and coincidence, and further heightens the ambiguity by playing with viewpoint (e.g. the reliability of one character’s observations is called into question after he suffers a serious concussion).

Written in the present tense, Cabin is marked by an incredible sense of immediacy and urgency (Tremblay brings readers up-close-and-personal with his protagonists, to the point of practically sharing the disorientation of head trauma or the pain of a knee-wrecking bludgeoning). The novel’s unity of setting (much of the action unfolds in a single room, a la Wait Until Dark) gives it the feel of a stage play. Like a work of drama, the novel is heavy on dialogue; this is only realistic, though, since the terrible decision that the intruders ask the protagonists to make necessitates considerable convincing. The verbal back-and-forth never grows tedious, thanks in large measure to Tremblay’s ability to build believable characters.

I don’t think it’s much of a plot spoiler to write that Cabin‘s plot doesn’t resolve with an overt revelation or deliver definitive answers. End matters here can be interpreted in multiple ways, which only renders the situation more disconcerting. This also enables Tremblay to avoid a somewhat trite twist, a climactic redux of the similarly-themed film Take Shelter. My one real complaint with Cabin‘s conclusion is that its resort to third-person-plural viewpoint in its final section is a bit jarring, creating a syntax that can distract the reader from the situation presented.

In any event, Cabin is best appreciated not for its plot but for its prose: Tremblay crafts exquisite sentences,evincing both a clarity of vision and profundity of thought (e.g. “Bullets, those shiny brass threats, are seeds spilled and spread over the black-as-spotting soil trunk interior. Andrew ghosts over the evidence of his earlier struggle with Sabrina and those leavings now read like tea leaves, a forecasting of the events in the cabin that followed.”). As the author of the World’s Longest Dissertation on Cyberpunk, I can’t help but love a book that includes a line like “The gray sky is a smear, a Neuromancer sky, dead and anachronistic.”

Tremblay no doubt aims big in this novel, which deals with the fate of the world and humanity’s relation to the deity (not necessarily Judeo-Christian). While not quite the pulse-pounding instant classic of psychological/supernatural horror it has been hailed as (I would classify the book as more disturbing than outright terrifying), the novel is nothing less than impressive. A binge-read that resonates, The Cabin at the End of the World is the perfect place to start for those who have yet to encounter this abundantly gifted writer.

Castle Rock Reaction: “The Box”

Some random thoughts on this week’s episode of Castle Rock:

As Andy Dusfrene no doubt would attest, Shawshank was never a model correctional facility. But, man, based on the glimpses of the prison provided thus far by Castle Rock, an inmate might be better off serving his time in the jail in Midnight Express.

The disgruntled Dennis Zalewski offers some strong insight into the character of Castle Rock when he grouses to Henry about the town: “Bad shit happens here because bad people know they’re safe here. How many times can one fucking town look the other way?”

Best quote of the episode, though, belongs to Molly Strand. While trying to sell Warden Lacy’s house, she assures the potential buyers that Lacy didn’t commit suicide on the premises, and then enthusiastically offers: “A serial strangler died in my house, and I like sleep like a baby.” It’s nice to see that actress Melanie Lynskey hasn’t lost her comedic touch since her stint on Two and a Half Men.

The venerable Scott Glenn makes for one crusty and salty Alan Pangborn. Surely this isn’t the sheriff that Constant Readers remember. Then again, this current depiction of the character might be a natural extrapolation: makes sense that he would end up so grizzled and gruff after all the bad shit he had to deal with in this town over the years.

Once again, the series exhibits a deft handling of Stephen King Easter Eggs. Viewers who recall that Vince Desjardins was one of the bullying hooligans who ran with Ace Merrill in “The Body” will have a deeper appreciation of the adult character referenced in this week’s episode. Anyone missing the call back to that minor figure from King’s novella, however, won’t be left befuddled by the storyline.

One of the strongest aspects of Castle Rock thus far has been its casting, and “The Box” demonstrates that even a weekly guest star can give an incredible performance. David Selby is awesomely unsettling as creepy barber/hoarder Josef Desjardins. Selby also proves an inspired choice in this sense that he once starred in a show featuring the most American Gothic town (prior to King putting Castle Rock on the map) in the Maine region of our Macabre Republic: Collinsport in Dark Shadows.

Once Dennis Zalewski decided to turn whistleblower on Shawshank shadiness, he seemed doomed for an early exit from the series. Nevertheless, his demise came in a shockingly unexpected form. The climactic massacre scene was quite haunting (and expertly filmed, with Dennis’s rampage playing out on a bank of monitors). Looks like that well-intentioned fist-bump with the Kid (the last guy to touch the mysterious inmate ended up with fantastically-metastatic cancer) ultimately bumped off poor Dennis.

Through most of four episodes, Castle Rock has been a slow burn, which made the sudden violent fireworks in the conclusion of “The Box” that much more arresting. I am eager to see next week’s episode, to find out the fallout from the terrible shootout.