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T. Kingfisher’s ‘The Hollow Places’ is an Unsettling, Quirky Read

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The Hollow Places

T. Kingfisher’s The Hollow Places hits bookstores and online retailers today. It’s an entertaining tale of alternate realities, friendship, and perhaps the oddest museum of curiosities known to man.

Kara aka Carrot is not really living her best life as the novel opens. Her marriage has ended, and she’s faced with moving in with her parents to make ends meet until she can get back on her feet when an unexpected call comes in from her eccentric uncle, Earl.

Earl isn’t the healthiest he’s ever been and he extends an invitation for her to stay with him and help run his museum, humorously called The Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy. Overcome by nostalgia and seeking what seems a safer shelter than living with her overbearing mother, Kara quickly agrees.

She soon finds herself running the shop on her own while Earl recuperates from knee surgery, and everything is running smoothly until she finds a hole in the drywall upstairs. The hole isn’t the real problem, however, as she soon discovers what appears to be a hidden hallway on the other side of the wall that should not exist.

With the help of her new best friend, Simon, who runs the next-door coffee shop for his sister, the wall is soon opened up and when they pass through it, they find themselves in a terrifying new world where nothing is what it seems, everything is deadly, and a scrawled message on the wall “Pray they are hungry” has them running for their lives.

Kingfisher is an excellent and enviable storyteller.

From the first page, she draws us to Kara with wry wit and a feeling that she is someone we know, someone we can care about and root for as she faces the road ahead. In fact, there are moments when the reader is having so much fun that they are expertly lured into forgetting that horrors could and are lying around the corner.

Moreover, those horrors are fantastically unique. I won’t say much more than that, but among other things, you will never look at willow trees the same way ever again.

Yet even then, Kara is completely relatable, especially in 2020, in her approach. Of course she’s terrified, but there is a sense of “Oh, so this is what we’re doing now?” in her reactions that I can honestly say I seem to have on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis this year.

Speaking of character work, it would be a huge oversight on my part to not speak to the character of Simon. I love him a lot in this book, and honestly, would love an entirely new book just based around him. He’s a gay character in a horror novel that is so much more than a stereotype. In fact, he actively defies some while embracing others much like most of the real life gay men in my life, myself included.

It was utterly gratifying to see this man working together with Kara, becoming her friend, helping her and being helped by her. Could the character arc have used some more fleshing out? Sure. But there is still plenty to sink your teeth into with Simon and I want to thank Kingfisher for the gift of this character.

Throughout The Hollow Places there is frivolity among the horror. Kingfisher invites us to hold her hand and skip toward certain doom and by God, we’re going to skip and probably sing a song or two along the way. I was reminded more than once of the giddy glee of watching The Evil Dead or Tales from the Crypt for the first time. It’s not an easy balancing act, but one that the author pulls off with alacrity.

You can order your copy of The Hollow Places by CLICKING HERE, and I cannot recommend enough that you do so. It’s the perfect read as we inch toward Halloween!

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Another Creepy Spider Movie Hits Shudder This Month

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Good spider films are a theme this year. First, we had Sting and then there was Infested. The former is still in theaters and the latter is coming to Shudder starting April 26.

Infested has been getting some good reviews. People are saying that it’s not only a great creature feature but also a social commentary on racism in France.

According to IMDb: Writer/director Sébastien Vanicek was looking for ideas around the discrimination faced by black and Arab-looking people in France, and that led him to spiders, which are rarely welcome in homes; whenever they’re spotted, they’re swatted. As everyone in the story (people and spiders) is treated like vermin by society, the title came to him naturally.

Shudder has become the gold standard for streaming horror content. Since 2016, the service has been offering fans an expansive library of genre movies. in 2017, they began to stream exclusive content.

Since then Shudder has become a powerhouse in the film festival circuit, buying distribution rights to movies, or just producing some of their own. Just like Netflix, they give a film a short theatrical run before adding it to their library exclusively for subscribers.

Late Night With the Devil is a great example. It was released theatrically on March 22 and will begin streaming on the platform starting April 19.

While not getting the same buzz as Late Night, Infested is a festival favorite and many have said if you suffer from arachnophobia, you might want to take heed before watching it.

Infested

According to the synopsis, our main character, Kalib is turning 30 and dealing with some family issues. “He’s fighting with his sister over an inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a shop and brings it back to his apartment. It only takes a moment for the spider to escape and reproduce, turning the whole building into a dreadful web trap. The only option for Kaleb and his friends is to find a way out and survive.”

The film will be available to watch on Shudder starting April 26.

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Part Concert, Part Horror Movie M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Trap’ Trailer Released

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In true Shyamalan form, he sets his film Trap inside a social situation where we aren’t sure what is going on. Hopefully, there is a twist at the end. Furthermore, we hope it’s better than the one in his divisive 2021 movie Old.

The trailer seemingly gives away a lot, but, as in the past, you can’t rely on his trailers because they are often red herrings and you are being gaslit to think a certain way. For instance, his movie Knock at the Cabin was completely different than what the trailer implied and if you hadn’t read the book on which the film is based it was still like going in blind.

The plot for Trap is being dubbed an “experience” and we aren’t quite sure what that means. If we were to guess based on the trailer, it’s a concert movie wrapped around a horror mystery. There are original songs performed by Saleka, who plays Lady Raven, a kind of Taylor Swift/Lady Gaga hybrid. They have even set up a Lady Raven website to further the illusion.

Here is the fresh trailer:

According to the synopsis, a father takes his daughter to one of Lady Raven’s jam-packed concerts, “where they realize they’re at the center of a dark and sinister event.”

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Trap stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills and Allison Pill. The film is produced by Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock and M. Night Shyamalan. The executive producer is Steven Schneider.

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Woman Brings Corpse Into Bank To Sign Loan Papers

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Warning: This is a disturbing story.

You have to be pretty desperate for money to do what this Brazilian woman did at the bank to get a loan. She wheeled in a fresh corpse to endorse the contract and she seemingly thought the bank employees wouldn’t notice. They did.

This weird and disturbing story comes via ScreenGeek an entertainment digital publication. They write that a woman identified as Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes pushed a man she identified as her uncle into the bank pleading with him to sign loan papers for $3,400. 

If you’re squeamish or easily triggered, be aware that the video captured of the situation is disturbing. 

Latin America’s largest commercial network, TV Globo, reported on the crime, and according to ScreenGeek this is what Nunes says in Portuguese during the attempted transaction. 

“Uncle, are you paying attention? You must sign [the loan contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, as I cannot sign on your behalf!”

She then adds: “Sign so you can spare me further headaches; I can’t bear it any longer.” 

At first we thought this might be a hoax, but according to Brazilian police, the uncle, 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga had passed away earlier that day.

 “She attempted to feign his signature for the loan. He entered the bank already deceased,” Police Chief Fábio Luiz said in an interview with TV Globo. “Our priority is to continue investigating to identify other family members and gather more information regarding this loan.”

If convicted Nunes could be facing jail time on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and desecration of a corpse.

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