Books & Comics

“The Haunting of Hill House’s” Horrors Are All Human

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Originally published: Sommet Dame Magazine

We’re living in a golden age of horror, there’s no doubt about that. From the politically prescient Get Out to the heartbreakingly family-oriented A Quiet Place, to the thematically resonant Hereditary and The Babadook, the once overlooked genre has proved time and time again that it is capable of telling stories just as nuanced, precise and memorable as any high drama. In fact, even the shlockiest scare-fests are coming around to using a film language that exists beyond jump scares and first-person POV shots, with the latest iteration in the Halloween franchise telling an unexpectedly poignant tale of trauma, and the way it can manifest intergenerationally in a family.

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Sharp Objects Will Cut You to the Bone

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Originally published: Sommet Dame Magazine

Gillian Flynn does not write nice women. That much is evident to anyone who has read her 2012 novel Gone Girl, or watched the David Fincher film adaptation that followed shortly after. Gone Girl’s principal character is as conniving as she is ruthless, as seductive as she is sociopathic, and she captivated audiences on the page as well as on screen. However, the latest adaptation of Flynn’s work, a HBO limited series based on 2006’s Sharp Objects, makes her story seem like nothing more than a temper tantrum.

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“Anne with an E” Is A Sprawling Adaptation That Reaches Far Beyond The Page

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Originally published: Sommet Dame Magazine

Adaptations are hard to get right. There’s a reason the adage “the book is always better than the movie” now haunts the film industry. The stakes are always high, but they are even higher when the source material is beloved, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne Of Green Gables definitely fits that description. The 1908 classic has been essential childhood reading for generations, its characters and settings brought to life time and time again, each reader reimagining them ever so slightly differently.

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