2017 Horror Part Thirteen

PYEWACKET

Dir - Adam MacDonald

Overall: GOOD

 

For his second time behind the lens, actor-turned-director Adam MacDonald explores a troubled mother/daughter dynamic through some black magic tampering with Pyewacket.  The title refers to one of the unwholesome spirit familiars that infamous witch hunter Matthew Hopkins alleged to have dealt with in England during the 17th century, here discovered in an occult manual by a high school girl who suffers from a significantly dysfunctional relationship with her widowed mother.  Wisely, MacDonald's screenplay paints both parties in said relationship with a nuanced brush.  We can relate to Nicole Muñoz being drawn to, (and then resorting to in desperation), witchcraft after losing her father, just as much as we can sympathize with the bitter, heartbroken bouts of frustration from her emotionally ravaged mother, played by genre regular Laurie Holden.  Muñoz is particularly good here, basking in very few moments of happiness as her traumatic situation reigns diabolical misfortune upon her.  While some of the plotting comes off as rushed and/or predictable in the third act, the dread building is persistent throughout and even with a couple of B-movie tropes in tow, (like Gothy "loser" kids and a video call session with a demonologist expert to explain the rules), MacDonald treats the important aspects of his story with enough intelligence and respect to make the supernatural elements that much more unsettling.

HAPPY DEATH DAY

Dir - Christopher Landon

Overall: MEH

 

Depending on how one feels about premise borrowing, Happy Death Day may either delight or annoy the multitudes of people with admiration for Groundhog's Day.  This includes the filmmaker's themselves who throw in a meta reference to the said Bill Murray classic which this serves as the comedic slasher variation of.  Originally slated to be produced by Michael Bay in 2007 under the title Half to Death, the script floated around and eventually got rewritten as a Blumhouse production with genre enthusiast Christopher Landon behind the lens.  Sadly, the resulting film is front-to-back formulaic.  It does more than just take the bare bones time loop framework from Groundhog's, it also focuses on the unlikable protagonist who has to go through a repeated series of the same thing to realize that she is unlikable and ergo must change her ways to break the cycle.  While nothing surprising happens, (even when something "surprising" happens during the last act), it suffices as mere popcorn fodder and Jessica Rothe is enjoyable as a bitch turned humbled victim turned badass final girl-ish.  There is no rule breaking going on here by design, but it is harmless, makes fun of itself, and is at least more amusing than most movies with obnoxious sorority stereotypes and killers in stupid masks.

 

ERREMENTARI

Dir - Paul Urkijo Alijo

Overall: GOOD

Frequently hilarious as a dark, bombastic, fire and brimstone fantasy, Errementari, (The Blacksmith and the Devil), is the full-length debut from Spanish filmmaker Paul Urkijo Alijo and an impressive one at that.  A rare genre work in the Basque language as well as an adaptation of the Indo-European folk story "The Smith and the Devil", it adheres to the type of arbitrary rules and regulations frequented in fairy tales from centuries past.  It is all played up for diabolical fun here, involving things like devils with pitchforks who scream in agony over the ringing of blessed bells and are compelled against their will to count spilled chickpeas.  The main focus involves a blacksmith who is so cruel and evil that "even the Devil is afraid of him", a blacksmith who has captured a lesser hell-spawn that he sold his soul to, all in purpose of delaying his unavoidable eternity in the abyss.  While the stakes are firmly established and the plot thickens deliciously enough as things go on, the movie is mostly a triumph for its fantastical, humorous tone and wonderful effects work, most of which are practical besides the CGI, fire-bathed gates of hell finale.  Each demon makeup that is utilized has a unique, over the top look and the rest of the period setting is appropriately bathed in dark, natural lighting and plenty of bleak grime.  The fact that the finished result even manages to add a little heart to the proceedings is also in keeping to the popcorn-munching agenda.

2017 Horror Part Twelve

SUPER DARK TIMES

Dir - Kevin Phillips

Overall: MEH

 

The full-length debut from director Kevin Phillips, Super Dark Times sets up some intriguing ideas with a disturbed scenario before unraveling wildly in a finale that comes off as more awkwardly arbitrary than satisfying.  That may have been intended though as Phillips teases that a sinister aura is hovering over the film's setting, even opening things with a never explained, mortally-wounded animal found inside of a school.  This heavy atmosphere of, (possibly spontaneous), dread runs throughout, which makes it a gripping experience until it is revealed that screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, (who have continued to have a career penning screenplays exclusively in the horror genre), have nowhere substantial to go with their story.  It could all be saying something about how traumatic experiences cast a permeating cloud of unease over us that certain people are likely to violently spiral out of.  Yet instead of having that unfold naturally while focused on characters who are believably struggling with a profound loss of innocence over an extended period of time, the movie goes for a shocking finale that warrants a would-be false sense of paranoia.  Some audiences may be intrigued by such an outcome while others may be scratching their head in disapproval, but the sloppy conclusion seems unwarranted and its final, uplifting tag undeserved.

 

NOVEMBER

Dir - Rainer Sarnet

Overall: GOOD

A highly evocative and occasionally funny fantasy art film, November, (Rehepapp), sees Estonian writer/director Rainer Sarnet delivering a singular genre work full of grime, spells, spirits, romance, and all things otherworldly.  An adaptation of Andrus Kivirähk's novel of the same name, the story is set sometime in the 19th century where the people in a desperately impoverished village community scheme to survive the impending winter, stealing from each other while trying to trick both the plague and the devil by various means.  In this universe, the supernatural is completely commonplace where kratt servants are made from snow and household items, witches perform magic as a dutiful courtesy, the dead sit and visit with their loved ones, disease is personified as a beautiful woman, then a goat, a wild boar, and one of the lead characters can turn herself into a wolf.  A tragic love story first and foremost, the mystical, folklore elements are so prevalent that the entire thing has a highly surreal vibe, emphasized by its haunting soundtrack and excellent, black and white cinematography from Mart Taniel.  While it is certainly gritty and never portrays its fantastical landscape romantically, the film is persistently spell-binding to look at and many humorous, sometimes even off-color moments are dashed about which make all of the inherent strangeness go down with an odd chuckle or two.

 

SATAN'S SLAVES

Dir - Joko Anwar

Overall: MEH

The first horror remake as part of Rapi Films resurgence with the genre was Joko Anwar's take on Satan's Slaves, (Pengabdi Setan).  Loosely connected to the original 1980 movie and serving as a soft redo/prequel, it is a mostly formulaic, slow burn affair.  While the mood setting is expertly handled with minimal comedic beats, (treating every time that night falls as an anxiety-fest for the audience to witness some spooky stuff), unfortunately said horror-tinged set pieces are almost entirely made up of predictable, loud jump scares.  Even during the more drawn-out bits, the soundtrack department never once resists the urge to bust out the screechy noises and conventional scary music to redundantly slam home the point and ruin the otherwise naturalistic and intensely creepy atmosphere.  Even with this contemporary, stylistic detriment in tow, the actual story is quite silly when one sits back to contemplate it.  Elements such as arbitrary ghost activity and a massage-loving occult expert telling people to read his magazine articles instead of just properly explaining things to them are impossible to take seriously, despite what the eerie and ominous tone otherwise dictates.   Rapi's next re-imagining of one of their beloved, 1980s exploitation film's in 2019's The Queen of Black Magic is far superior, (as is said film that it is based on), but this one almost impresses with its dedication to giving you goosebumps.

2017 Horror Part Eleven

BEAST

Dir - Michael Pearce

Overall: GOOD

An excellent full-length debut from filmmaker Michael Pearce, Beast offers up challenging ideas involving the deep-seeded need for troubled people to find unconditional acceptance and love amongst those who have similarly succumbed to less than admirable, impassioned outbursts.  Led primarily by Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn, both deliver multi-layered performances that showcase a perpetual, internal struggle to come to terms with their own tendencies towards impulsive rage and overall recklessness, finding each other in an environment that puts them at odds with nearly everyone else besides each other.  Buckley's character's tendency towards violent fantasy provides the movie with its only psychologically nightmarish moments, but even those are presented in the most realistic of manners.  This fits with the general agenda to stay grounded in unflinching, emotional vulnerability and Pearce creates a series of moments where the very dirt and grime of the earth covers the people on screen.  As far as setting the appropriate, somber mood, Benjamin Kračun's cinematography and Jim Williams score goes a long way as well.

 

DAVE MADE A MAZE

Dir - Bill Waterson

Overall: MEH

 

A purposely absurdist, hipster friendly fantasy film, Dave Made a Maze takes a ridiculous premise to mostly inventive places while meandering a bit along the way.  The debut from Ohio-born writer/director Bill Waterson, (who co-authored the film with Steven Sears, also a relative newcomer), the story generates some automatic laughs when the preposterous situation is first established.  As things prod along and our series of quirky characters react in mostly nonchalant ways to what is happening, the plotting goes in circles that rather appropriately mirror the on screen plight.  As the title would suggest, everyone gets lost in a maze that has no business actually existing in the real world, (or in this case, isolated to a single living room of an apartment), and about half of the dialog is people stopping to say "We need to get out of here", and then the inevitable wacky surprise to keep things moving interrupts them until the next time such a series of events is repeated.  This monotony is a shame since the movie is full of clever, mildly to adequately amusing ideas and it also has a relatable, not too heavy theme of accomplishing something in lieu of lingering in slacker meaninglessness, though this is hardly explored in much depth.  Probably silly enough in an idiosyncratic way to please those looking for something unique to sit through, but it also misses the mark in a handful of ways.

MUSE

Dir - Jaume Balagueró 

Overall: GOOD

A return to by-the-books supernatural horror for filmmaker Jaume Balagueró, Muse, (Musa), is a highly formulaic one that mostly gets by due to the complex and intriguing nature of its source material.  José Carlos Somoza's novel The Lady Number Thirteen offers up an interesting variation of occult witchery which for genre fans will likely remind them of Dario Argento's Three Mothers, here expanded to seven immortal women who each go by the moniker "She who...".  In addition to this, the use of poetic expression itself holds a sort of open ended power where many legendary works by several authors over the centuries have been guided by their wicked influence and when recited, can raise people from the dead.  There is much to unpack with a multitude of rules at play, some of which are only vaguely alluded to instead of properly divulged for the audience.  In any event, Balagueró generic, muted-color pallet presentation which uses a persistent musical score unfortunately creates a mildly campy tone that makes some of the plot points seem more contrived and goofy than they deserve.  There is plenty of heavy, emotional weight to the proceedings though with characters struggling with their own promises of undying love and deep seeded grief, plus for the most part, the movie keeps these elements in proper check.

2017 Horror Part Ten

IT

Dir - Andy Muschietti

Overall: MEH

Several years in development to somewhat redeem the rather flawed 1990 miniseries, the first inevitable remake of Stephen King's It plays all of its cards as safety as possible with predictably derivative results.  Argentine-born Andy Muschietti was the last in a handful of directors to land the gig, but this has all of the feel of a major budgeted, big studio production as opposed to a filmmaker's vision because the former is exactly what it is.  A criminal amount of jump scares are utilized that emerge literally every single time that the incessant music shuts up for a second or two, plus all would-be frightening set pieces are made ridiculous by atrocious CGI and hackey sound design.  So stylistically, this is pure, relentless popcorn schlock that renders the entire production laughable instead of even remotely scary.  The script, (which likewise numerous screenwriters took a stab at), updates King's source material understandably enough and wisely omits that whole underage orgy plot point, but even at over two hours in length, the film feels rushed in trying to establish its array of characters and the family dysfunction that motivates their bonding experience.  Because both the novel and the Tim Curry-led miniseries are seeped in popular culture at this point, this adaptation gets by on the familiarity of its bullet points as opposed to deeply exploring or enhancing them.  Speaking of Curry, at least Bill Skarsgård does not make a bad Pennywise for his select few moments on screen where he is not reduced to a pointy-mouthed cartoon.  Plus Finn Wolfhard steels the show as the wise-cracking Richie Tozier, the only character thankfully allowed to not take such nonsense seriously.

HOUSEWIFE

Dir - Can Evrenol

Overall: GOOD

Once again basking in the Satanic, Euro-horror sleaze of yesteryear like a gleeful kid in a candy store, Turkish filmmaker Can Evrenol delivers another nightmare logic bit of absurdity with Housewife, his English-speaking follow-up to 2015's equally grotesque and bananas Baskin.  Perhaps the best aspect of Evrenol's growing aesthetic is that he manages to create spiritual homages to the work of Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Paul Nashcy, and any other European cult movie trailblazer from the 1970s without stylistically copycatting old school cinematic tactics.  Instead, his vision is his own and something wholly seeped in the contemporary, even if this sometimes means that hacky dialog and annoying jump scares rear their ugly head to appease the James Wan fan who may come across his stuff.  The old school nods are unmistakable for those who share Evrenol's exploitation tastes but of course, this would be merely a derivative throwback for the sake of it if he did not up the ante with some gasp-worthy moves of his own.  Exploring repressed, childhood trauma and the fear of motherhood in a delightfully ridiculous manner that pulls out all of the occult stops in an off-the-rails finale, the story here will probably never hold up under a microscope, but if one is down for the hellish ride, you cannot help but applaud its absurdity.

THE BABYSITTER

Dir - McG

Overall: MEH

Far too in on its own self referential, meta joke, The Babysitter is another horror comedy that tries way too hard to be clever while making fun of genre tropes left and right.  Brian Duffield's script was picked up from 2014's Black List by director McG who had previous done those stupid Charlie's Angels movies and Terminator: Salvation, oye.  Going in blind which is essential for something like this, there sure is one hellova rug pull that happens in the second act, but everything surrounding that rug pull is a combination of idiotic and obnoxious character traits for everyone on screen, plus plot points that are nowhere near funny enough to justify how nonsensical they are.  Samantha Weaving's title character and Judah Lewis' "afraid of everything who of course is going to overcome all of his set-up fears by film's end" protagonist assuredly make the most unrealistic babysitter/babysittee duo in the history of recorded fiction.  Having adorable science-fiction nerd-out conversations, sharing in-jokes, reciting lines to old movies, and, (most nauseating of all), actually performing a choreographed dance with each other, it is all enough to bail on the movie before it even gets going.  Once it does, the blood-drenched, foul-mouthed gags solely rely on everyone behaving in a preposterous manner, but the movie goes for heart-warming, coming-of-age cuteness at the same time which makes for a misguided, annoying tone that never formulates itself successfully.  By the time "We Are the Champions" plays while Lewis inexplicably drives a retro car into his own house, flips over several times, and walks away without a scratch, it is also about time to ask for your eight-five minutes back.

2018 Horror Part Fourteen

THE POOL

Dir - Ping Lumpraploeng

Overall: WOOF

 

Pushing Hitchcockian, minor-detail suspense into ridiculous, miserable, nail-biting annoyance, Thai filmmaker Ping Lumpraploeng's The Pool is an unintentionally silly bit of survival horror.  The first and most glaringly obvious faux pas on Lumpraploeng's part is opening the film six days after the rest of the main story takes place, with a scene that replays later in the movie anyway.  By doing so, the next ninety-minutes of our lone, functional character trying to escape are rendered completely tension-less as we know good and well that he remains in his predicament until the flashback catches up to the beginning.  Granted, it is a movie and one would assume that every time that the people on screen are mere centimeters and milliseconds away from freedom, such a thing would of course result in more torment, yet thus lies the fundamental problem with such a premise.  It would work far better as a short than as a full-length movie and with various elements veering into torture porn, neglected common sense to drag out the running time, far-fetched plot points, killing the dog, Thai swimming pools apparently not believing in built-in ladders, and one of the worst CGI animals in recent memory, yeah, just forget this one.

 

THE TOKOLOSHE

Dir - Jerome Pikwane

Overall: MEH

An incoherent cliche fest and the debut from director/co-writer Jerome Pikwane, The Tokoloshe is a South African boogeyman story and a messy one at that.  The biggest problem is the editing which seems to bypass necessary scenes and makes every character on screen underwritten to a fault.  It has the look and feel of a straight-to-video 90s horror film, with lame, loud, manipulative music playing through every scene and busy camera work capturing laughably grimey scenery and awful, (though thankfully only occasional), CGI in an attempt to be creepy.  The performances are on the straight and narrow and there is some semblance of heavy subject matter involving child abuse, (subject matter which is poorly conveyed in such a choppy form), but it comes off like a bombastic schlock-fest, just minus the schlock.  When the audience is never clear on what the actual folkloric menace is supposed to be or why it is doing what it is doing, on top of unintelligible plotting driving the whole thing to an anti-climax that leaves a frustrating amount of questions dangling in the air, there are sadly no chills to be had, as well as a feeling that there may be a better, actually intelligible movie hiding in here somewhere.

 

ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE

Dir - John McPhail

Overall: MEH

 

A full-length reworking of Ryan McHenry's short Zombie Musical, Anna and the Apocalypse has its heart in the right place but fails to achieve the type of quirky uniqueness of the films that is is deliberately tailored after.  Clear nods to High School Musical, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shaun of the Dead, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More with Feeling", to name but a few all co-mingle in a standard manner that is not likely to turn any viewer's heads in amazement.  Tonally it is a bit all over the place, but the characters are likeable, (save for an obnoxious principal whose eccentric douchebaggery is never explained), and several of the inevitable death-by-zombie-bite moments are touching due to the solid performances.  Being a burst into song musical, said songs are obviously important and Robby Hart and Tommy Reily give all of the numbers a contemporary pop sheen that is equal parts cringy and loaded with hooks.  The movie ultimately makes the same mistakes that most modern comedies do in that it exchanges cleverness for jokes and there is nothing here that is laugh out loud funny, yet some of its coming-of-age, rated-R spoofiness and violence is at least worth an adorable chuckle or two.

2018 Horror Part Thirteen

DON'T LEAVE HOME

Dir - Michael Tully

Overall: MEH

 

The first horror venture for independent filmmaker Michael Tully, Don't Leave Home is heavy on subdued atmosphere though this is somewhat at the expense of a properly fleshed-out narrative.  While hooded supernatural figures, nightmares within nightmares, a lead protagonist who keeps the weird things that she keeps seeing to herself, and some comically creepy behavior from old people fulfill the standard horror movie prerequisites, the story itself is quite unique as it involves a former priest with a sort of undisclosed supernatural curse/gift that somehow through the years has led him into the hands of a clandestine group of weirdos that auction off his paintings.  This only scratches the surface of course, but Tully and co-screenwriter Francis Uzoma seem to hit a wall in the third act that lets the remainder of the film meander in its ethereal mood, only to wrap-up in a vague manner that may frustrate more viewers than not.  The whole thing is a bit too nebulous to have any sort of emotional point, despite a solid performance from Lalor Roddy whose guilt seems to have long been taxing on his psyche for quite awhile by the time that we meet him.

 

THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD

Dir - Dominique Rocher

Overall: GOOD

In order for a zombie film to have any sort of singular relevance nowadays, (post the boom where every country was delivering their own derivative take in the genre, one after the other), it must offer up something more than a ragtag group of survivors arguing amongst each other while they struggle to put a bullet in the head of their loved ones.  Thankfully in this regard, director Dominique Rocher's adaptation of Pit Agarman's novel La nuit a dévoré le monde, (The Night Eats the World), does an adequate job of justifying its existence, taking almost all of the action, gore, and societal critique out of such movies with a totally intimate look at but one person's pragmatic method of being the only one presumably left who does not want to bite other humans to death.  Anders Danielsen Lie spends nearly the entire movie on his lonesome, yet such solitude takes a psychological strain that allows him to justify keeping an infected person almost as a pet, thinking out loud to him from behind a locked elevator shaft.  The story empathizes the monotony of survival as Lie begins his endeavor rather level-headed, (gathering up supplies and fortifying his city apartment complex), only succumbing to the isolation after an undisclosed amount of time.  There are few surprises to be found here, but spending the entire movie as a mere fly on the wall to the emotional devastation of total seclusion is a refreshing take and one that would be repeated to an extent in the 2020 South Korean film Alive.

 

DRAUG

Dir - Klas Persson/Karin Engman

Overall: MEH

 

The debut from Swedish writer/director team Klas Persson and Karin Engman Draug goes for a grimy and literally dark aesthetic to its pagan tale of supernatural vengeance.  Sadly though, it is a frustrating view for this very reason.  Save for a couple of lackluster digital effects sequences and some beautiful drone footage of the desolate Hälsingland forests, the camera work is almost exclusively hand-held which coupled with the copious amounts of weathered dirt and blood on the crop of warrior characters, makes for an intimate and stark presentation.  All of this sounds great on paper, yet the editing is annoyingly spastic and the color pallet brings out the barely decipherable tones of rock, mud, water, timber, and foliage which makes the whole thing more of an ugly mess where the viewer regularly cannot get their proper footing as to what they are even looking at.  While Persson's musical score is evocative, it also plays through far too much of the movie, clashing with the more naturalistic atmosphere that the visuals are trying to convey.  Further problems arise as far as the hacky horror elements are concerned, with screechy jump scares, slow zooms, inconsistently persistent ghosts, and a scene where a gross old lady trips balls and screams cryptic nonsense at the camera.  It certainly does not treat the miserable period setting with any glamor, but the simplistic story alone cannot carry what is essentially a B-movie drenched in grit.

2018 Horror Part Twelve

THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL

Dir - Ashim Ahluwalia/Can Evrenol/Severin Fiala/Veronika Franz/Katrin Gebbe/Calvin Reeder/Agnieszka Smoczyńska/Peter Strickland/Yannis Veslemes

Overall: MEH

Uneven yet admirable for its culturally rich aesthetics, The Field Guide to Evil is an ambitious folk horror anthology from the Legion M production company that brings together filmmakers from eight different countries, each contributing their own entry.  Opening with three acceptable ones from Austria's Veronika Franze and Severin Fiala, Turkey's Can Evrenol, and Poland's Aginieszka Smoczyńska, the forth from American Calvin Reeder is easily the weakest out of the whole and seems distractedly amatuerish compared to everything else presented.  Yannis Veslemes' "Whatever Happened to Panagas the Pagan" and Peter Strickland's "Cobbler's Lot" are the most fairy tale-esque, with the latter taking a highly stylized, quasi-silent film approach to its material.  Katrin Gebbe's "A Nocturnal Breath" blends in a bit too much with some of the others to make a satisfying impression, though Ashim Ahluwalia's "The Palace of Horrors" takes a Lovecraftian cue and is the most effectively creepy out of the bunch.  Still, each story presented here could probably benefit from a more full-length approach as the folkloric details are quite intriguing yet often times barely touched upon, resulting in some rushed endings along the way. 

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE

Dir - Stacie Passon

Overall: MEH

The first cinematic adaptation of Shirley Jackson's final novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle is muddled with bizarre characterizations that make any kind of coherent through-line difficult to decipher.  When each central character seems to be afflicted with eccentric mannerisms to say the least, yet the story is not presented in a fantastical manner, the audience is left with a conundrum to get their proper footing.  As her sophomore, full-length effort behind the lens, Stacie Passon never quite establishes the type of story that she is telling which is primarily a problem for those unfamiliar with Jackson's source material.  The only mystery seems to be why the highly aloof Blackwood family behaves the way that they do with the youngest member casting makeshift spells in a constant state of paranoia, the elder sister cheerily smiling and making light of every situation that transpires, and the handicapped uncle talking over people in an alzheimers daze.  Sebastian Stan showing up only complicates things more as he is either equally as crazy while annoyed yet also manipulative as to what is going on or he could actually be the lone voice of reason in all of this.  By the film's conclusion, it just seems to be one frustrating showcase for mental illness in a period setting with romantic music playing throughout the whole thing.  Whether or not that is a good or bad thing depends on if the viewer can find something, (anything), to latch onto.

 

BORDER

Dir - Ali Abbasi

Overall: GOOD

Iranian-born filmmaker Ali Abbasi and Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist join forces on Border, (Gräns); an adaptation of the latter's short story of the same name which originally appeared in his anthology collection Let the Old Dreams Die.  The film can obviously be seen as a metaphor for the loss of one's culture and the upheaval suffered by orphans, (since as the title would suggest), it deals with the personal and emotional "border" between humans and creatures of Nordic folklore, whose mythology is fascinatingly tweaked in a real world, modern day setting.  Struggling with the traumatic reveal of her true heritage, Eva Melander's biologically artificial humanity is called into question by Eero Milonoff who represents a type of retaliation against the gross mistreatment and obliteration of their species, (i.e race).  Both Melander and Milonoff turn in very impressive performances under largely unrecognizable, heavy prosthetic makeup which is startling to behold, purposely challenging the audience to project their own sympathy towards their plight.  Sticking to a similarly tranquil yet grounded tone as he also did on his debut Shelley, Abbassi presents a number of shocking, even grotesque images yet he does so in a tender, beautiful way that is centered on a heartfelt romance no less.  It is all richly complex in this manner and a thoroughly unique genre experience, treated with a type of sincerity that is wholly appreciated.