From: bijgh@hotmail.com

ZONE ONE

I really liked this one - though not for everybody. A sort of day-in-the-life (actually three days) story along the lines of JARHEAD or BUFFALO
SOLDIERS following a civilian three-person team tasked with mopping up "straggler" zombies in Manhattan after the proper Marines have cleared out
most of Zone One. Pretty literary and spends as much time musing on New
York boutique shopping as it does on zombies, but as more of the history is revealed in flashbacks it's an interesting speculation on what it would actually be like to live through an apocalypse and how fucked up you would
be afterwards. "Refuges fail - it's what they do".


A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS

This one was more disappointing. A young woman tells the story of her
sister's possession by an evil spirit and/or mental breakdown. It's very well written and the author (Paul Tremblay) writes convincingly in the voice of an eight year old and then as a valley-girl blogger (I wish he hadn't bothered),
but the whole thing tries to be a bit too clever. He's obviously a massive horror fan and layers swathes of meta-commentary on top of in-jokes (distractingly at some points - why does the narrator talk at length about HOUSE OF LEAVES but fail to notice a major character is called Navidson?).
For all that the central case is barely fleshed out - big sis is either "possessed" or "mad" and that's as much detail as you're going to get about either. The sad endis telegraphed from the start which reduces my
investment in the family and leaves me less affected by their travails. As I say, disappointing because I think Tremblay has a horror classic in him - but this isn't it.


HEX

Another one that drops a whole load more developments on you and then
abruptly ends - aren't we going to talk about any of the shit that just happened? Shame because it has a great premise and I was enjoying it
until the last third. Translated from Dutch, this version wisely moves the action from a rural Netherlands town to upstate New York, because there are
194 countries that are not the USA and I don't want to read about any of
them. For 400 years Black Spring has been cursed by the ghost of an evil
witch who still haunts the town. Anybody who moves into the town must
stay there or die. By now the townsfolk have adapted to their situation, got used to having a ghost appear at random, and assisted by the Pentagon,
cover up the problem to the world at large. No-one has died for almost fifty years and it's all going fairly well. Until now. Great idea for a film - just skip
all the weird crap at the end.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)