I have to wonder how you'd even translate House of Leaves into a cinema format without it coming across as very art house pretentious, or losing a lot in translation. It seems like a story meant to be confined to the pages of a book, IDK.
I go to horror to be scared and anxious in a safe environment. Like why I like guro. Look at all this shit that disturbs me. BUT I CHOOSE IT AND I AM SAFE. AGH. This is how I deal with being a neurotic shitfuck.
I think you could make a film based on the film discussed in the book, but not a film OF the book, if that makes sense. And i think parts of the book are deliberately absurd, unparsable nonsense. It really rewards skimming, imo, esp on a first readthrough. Alternately, just read the house stuff, then go back and read the johnny stuff.
@Lissiel I fucking love House of Leaves. Yes. I can't do that because I like giving myself headaches from trying to figure it all out at once. Unfortunately. Maybe we should have a thread for just this?
I would love there to be a book club, though if it's anything like previous book clubs I've been in, I will suck at reading at the same pace as everyone else, ha. ALSO here's some more creepy shorts for your edification and delight: EXIT One Last Dive
@Ruevian who cares about reading pace? just throw everything under spoilers that say what part of the book they refer to. HoL has chapters. Sort of.
Soul Eater goes to some pretty horrifying places in between the silliness and light-hearted comedy, from possession and body horror to child abuse and bullying. Also, for me, the two creepiest stories I've ever read are Charles Stross's A Colder War and Kelly Link's The Specialist's Hat. Completely different kinds of creepy, so they're hard to compare. Trying not to spoil them, A Colder War is the kind that has everything laid out and you know exactly what's going on, and The Specialist's Hat very much isn't.
Ooh, I loved A Colder War. It plays with the original mythos so well, and meshes it with the existential horror and paranoia of the Cold War so deftly. Spoiler: A Colder War ending And the ending is such a wonderful twist on the fucked-up aspects of Lovecraft's ethos. The rampant xenophobia and fear that he thought was the only rational response to a disinterested universe is EXACTLY what dooms humanity to nuclear/eldritch annihilation. The whole "your soul got eaten by Cthulhu" thing was... less convincing, but it worked for me because at that point the protagonist doesn't know if it's true and can hardly bring himself to care. Anyone read John Dies at the End and its sequel? Not sure if they count as "horror" exactly, being dark comedy first and foremost, but they certainly draw on the methods and tropes of the genre.
I watched the movie! Never read the book (didn't even know there was a sequel). I'll add it to the list. :D
John Dies at the End is so freaking awesome. I haven't read the sequel yet, but it's totally on my list.
@littlepinkbeast I've been looking for A Colder War for a while, thanks for the link! Personally I preferred the sequel which felt a little less crude? And I love enormous spiders in fiction, sooo its title obviously called to me.
@Lambda I agree that the sequel was more polished in terms of theme and plot, but the batshit haphazardness of the original had its own charm, IMHO. (Unless by "crude" you refer to its reliance on toilet humor and dick jokes. Which is fair, but (a) I don't remember that being less true of TBiFoS, and (b) the world is a better place for containing the line, "You're all just a figment of my cock's imagination.")
The Babadook is on Netflix, or at least it was like two weeks ago. Also in the mainstream-horror-movie area is It Follows, which has maybe two jump scares and one instance of gore and is completely fucking terrifying. Will be paranoid forever probably, but it never got to the point where I had to stop watching. Amazing soundtrack too, adds so much to the feeling of oppression.
@littlepinkbeast I fucking loooove The Specialist's Hat. I read it after Seebs recommended it and I am now a Kelly Link fan. (I bought one of her short story collections (Magic for Beginners) and then after reading it I gave it to a friend who wanted short story collections for her birthday - I was ambivalent towards it at the time since I didn't like all the stories, but I wish I had kept it. Stone Animals was chilling.) I confess I cannot watch horror movies. I liked Cabin in the Woods (EXCEPT FOR THE ENDING, which Spoiler sure, ok, it works great as a metaphor! tear down the tired old tropes! risk what happens when you stop feeding the audience the cliche, fucked up stuff it likes! but you ALSO HAVE TO MAKE YOUR ENDING WORK ON A LITERAL LEVEL, JOSS. but that is about as creepy as I can go in film. Wait, no, I really liked Pontypool (except for the ending, again). And Marble Hornets. But I have a super intense avoidant reaction to building suspense. Stories are 80 times scarier read out loud than read to yourself. I did actually try to watch the Babadook with a friend. There is a picture of me hiding under a blanket while he gives the camera a thumbs-up. My review of it, having made it through two-thirds of the movie, is that it set out to be really viscerally unpleasant to watch AND SUCCEEDED WITH FLYING COLORS and that is why I can't watch it, lol. Grinding sleep depression and grief and a sense that nothing is safe is not fun for me to watch. Spoiler: Babadook spoilers the scene where she is masturbating and the kid comes in is EUGH. augh. well done, filmmakers, that is TERRIBLE. Mostly I read creepypasta. I read The Spire in the Woods (tw: suicide, rape, attempted suicide) today and it was quite good! A lot more buildup and better writing than most of the stuff on nosleep. More engaging as a character piece than a horror story, though. /walloftext
Oh man though, the elevator scene in Cabin in the Woods so so gooooooood. I want to read about EVERY SINGLE ONE of those monsters. I really like the calgary gideon keys creepypastas. Rituals are my favorite kind of creepypasta anyway, because i love the idea of the real world having little hooks and twists into suddenly Fucking Weird, and then those have just enough meta narrative that it brings out my MUST KNOW EVERYTHING side. Why do any of these things? Who are They? Whats the deal with the allspice? I love it.
