I don’t have a lot to say about this review for the movie based on Party except…HELL YEAH!
And to top it all off the comic book based on Party is also coming out in the first part of next year!
Thank you for being a part of all this!
~ Tom
Category Archives: Blog
What It Means To Make a Mixtape: How Adults Should Deal with Teen Drama
If you were to make a new mix tape today, what would be on it? What songs speak to you right now? Would you go back to the olden days and grab some of the songs from your mis-spent youth, or would you find something a little bit more modern? John Cusack had a bit about this in the movie High Fidelity, based on the book of the same name written by Nick Hornby. You have to time things out right, you want to lead the listener from one song to another to really make sure that they’re grasping your intent.
Giving a mixtape lets a person know you see them, you hear them, and you’re thinking thoughtfully about them. It demonstrates gifting them with your most precious commodity: Time.
I’m curious: what do today’s teenagers do? If you have teenagers, because I don’t quite yet, send me a message. Let me know how teens are sending one another messages that are not direct messages — and by “direct messages” I mean sending oblique messages, sending coded messages, because if I give you a mixtape, that’s a coded message. I’m coming at you from the side. For simplicity’s sake, when a boy wants to tell a girl he likes her, what does he do these days? What are the steps he takes? Because I don’t know if it’s the same as what we used to do or not, but I will tell this:
The feelings are the same.
This makes me so angry with adults who work with teens (or even those who don’t work with teens). What makes me so angry is adults who have completely and utterly forgotten what it was like to be 16, to be 18, or to be 13. It frustrates the shit out of me now, as an adult.
I understand frustration with kids. Yes, when your kid comes home and they’re all bent out of shape because somebody said something unkind to them, or they got a B instead of an A (or they got an F instead of a D, or whatever your standard is right now) and they’re all upset about that, and you’re over here thinking, “This is so not a big deal.” Maybe they got second place in the speech tournament (total gyp!!!) or the team didn’t make the playoffs, and you . . . a tax-paying, mortgage-holding adult or whatever you happen to be . . . is going, “FFS, this is not a big deal, please contain yourself, Young Person…”
Yeah.
I get it.
I absolutely feel the same way whenever one of my kids flips out (and they’re not even teenagers yet) and I’m over here going, “Oh, dude, this is so not the biggest worry you’re going to have in your life.”
But we have to do better, grownups.
We have to remember. We have to go back to those times when we felt that same way, because most of us did. (There were a handful of us who were born at age 30, like, “All right, how do I finish school? I got to finish school and go on with my life, how soon can I do that?” There were a couple of them at my high school who, from day one, were so beyond high school. They were so past dealing with high school trauma and bullshit, high school was just a speedbump for them.)
Most of us actually did go through adolescence. And we went through it hard, in the most dramatic possible fashion. Some of it was legit. I had friends who had no food, friends who were getting hit, friends who had real-fucking-life shit to deal with. And some of it was just . . . drama.
It doesn’t matter which it is when we deal with it as adults. Our response is the same.
We need to remember that, one: this is absolutely real to them. And two . . . they haven’t experienced everything we’ve experienced yet.
Sometimes we place our adult metrics or screens of life experience against theirs and they don’t match up. They can’t. They’re flipping out over this “little tiny thing,” like they got third place in this competition instead of second or first.
We know it’s not a big deal. Trust me, in the grand scheme of things, nobody gives a righteous royal fuck that I was “Best Masque & Gavel Member 1992.” Nobody cares! It doesn’t matter when you’re 47. But at the time? My God! If I hadn’t won that award, it would’ve been so traumatic and so scarring!
. . . And I would’ve gotten over it, because there’s a ton of shit I’ve gotten over, just like you have. But we need to remember this is the first time teens are going through this. The first time they lose the big game, the first time they lose the competition, the first time they get the awful grade, the first time the girl or the boy says “No thank you, I’m not interested.”
We need to remember that and we need to treat them accordingly, speaking to them with love and kindness.
I admit, as an adult, as an instructor, as a parent . . . I sometimes forget, because I have my own problems and I get stressed, and I get snappy, and I say things that I later have to go back and apologize for. But most of the time, my wife and I try very hard to remember that, for whatever it is they are upset about, it’s for real.
My son is 10 and in fourth grade. Recently he and some of his friends got in trouble on the playground for playing Red Light Green Light, and apparently it was a very physical game (because they are 10 year old boys!). The playground monitor said, “No! Stop! You’re not allowed to do that anymore because you’re playing Squid Game!”
To which my wife and I were like, “What is the hell is that?” We had to go look it up, after which, okay yeah, I could see why maybe they would be concerned about it. But it’s not as if that’s what they were really playing! As if this were a life-and-death saga playing out on the playground.
My son came home really upset for having gotten “yelled at” at school. Turns out he wasn’t really yelled at, but the playground monitor didn’t do a good job of expressing her concern, so yes, she was also in the wrong. But he happens to be a very sensitive kid and he was physically, legitimately upset.
What we did not say is, “Son, life’s going to get so much worse, calm down.” You cannot say that to a 10-year-old in the moment. You say, “Oh my God, dude, that really sucks. What happened? Tell me about it. Wow, man, I am so sorry that happened. I’m so sorry you’re upset. Yeah, that really sucks.”
You can come back to it later and have the discussion about how it’s not a big deal, and about how to deal with such a scenario in the future, but you don’t open with that. You don’t lead with that.
This is particularly important the first time your kid comes home with a broken heart.
Man, I am not looking forward to that, because it’s coming. I know it’s coming. You went through it, I went through it, some of us went through it multiple times . . . but the first time, or the first time it’s the big one . . . in my experience, everybody has that one breakup that just fucking crushes you.
The first time they come home with that broken heart, it’s just all the angst and drama that you can possibly imagine, it’s just this Dawson’s Creek and My So-Called Life all over the place, it’s going to be so tempting to say, “Get over it,” or “She isn’t worth it,” or, “You’re too good for him.” Let’s all remember that our first job is to hug them (and maybe get ice cream) and say, “I’m so sorry. I know. I know, and I’m here.”
In other words . . . you sort of make them a mix tape. I see you, I hear you, I’m thinking of you.
Acknowledge that the pain is real. Acknowledge that it is true in this moment and the hurt is fucking real. Remember what it was like that first time, and give your kid or your students that same benefit of understanding.
Don’t worry, the day will come when you can talk about it and have a calm and reasonable discussion about the relationship or about what went wrong or what they can do differently next time, etc. etc. But right then in that moment, man . . . just let them be young people. Remember they are still children, and let them be children. Your brain isn’t even done developing until around age 25; let’s show a little grace.
Don’t dismiss them. Please, I beg you, do not dismiss them.
And maybe, I don’t know . . . make them a mixtape.
This Halloween Was No Trick
How was your Halloween? Mine was pretty good. My littlest had her first trick-or-treating extravaganza ever. She’s four now, which means she wasn’t really able to go trick-or-treating last couple years because of Covid. But she went last weekend and she made the most of it.
It was a mixed experience for me. I’m a big fan of Halloween, as some of you could probably guess. I’ve been catching up on my horror movies and so on.
There were a ton of people out there. That’s what made it a mixed bag for me. I don’t like crowds, not unless I’m the one standing up in front of them. (Then it’s totally okay.) But I just don’t do well with big groups of people these days. And there were a lot of people out. So frankly, I was pretty uncomfortable most of the night.
On the other hand . . .
It felt great. My heart was full. Honestly, I absolutely enjoyed and savored so many different people out together in the nice weather having a good time. Most people handing out candy were on their driveways, enjoying the evening. It was such a shift from the last couple of years.
I hope you were able to either pass out candy or have some yourself. I hope you had a good time. I hope the world was kind to you. That’s the thing about Halloween and those of us who love it. We love the scares, we love the ideas and the dressing up and the black lipstick and the skeletons and everything else. But in my experience, there are no more friendly, or approachable, or kind people in the world than fans of Halloween and horror. I don’t know if there’s a cause and effect relationship there or not, but most horror people I have met over the years I’ve been singularly cool.
I hope you had a wonderful Halloween, and Sarah would like you to know, it’s always a good time to trick or treat.
Take care,
~ Tom
P.S.
If you have avoided my horror stories thus far, let me recommend Those We Bury Back. It’s a quick read about a haunted house, inspired by some real events. Not scary, it’s more of a creeper, and I promise you a happy ending. Check it out here today.
When? Now.
This image is a composite of all the pages of my first comic book, Beckett’s Last Mixtape, which will be launching soon on Kickstarter.
I spent a lot of money on this. I don’t know if anyone will want it.
But I’ll have a comic book based on one of my favorite characters from Party.
Totally worth it.
It was worth it when I blew thousands of dollars to produce Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 stage play for Chyro Arts Venue.
It was worth it driving to the tiny, antique town of Jerome with my wife a few weeks ago. Just for a few hours. (We found a great place for breakfast, and great place for fudge!)
That thing you want to do? Do it. Start today if you haven’t.
Dammit all, this is our only shot! Seize the day and all that. I don’t mean go skydiving or get a second mortgage to afford that European trip (although both of those are legitimate and entirely up to you).
That thing that sets your hair on fire. Do that.
You’ll be happier, and the world around you will be better for it.
Don’t wait.
Take care, be safe,
~ Tom
How To Forge Your Own Joy
When you read the word “forge,” what image comes to mind?
It’s probably not someone lounging on white sand beach, sunning and smiling.
Work in a forge is dangerous. It’s hot, heavy, sweaty work. It takes an enormous toll on the body. It takes a long time to learn. They don’t just “let” people into forges to make stuff. You have to be trained.
It’s not easy.
When looking back upon the times I consider most joyful, they came at the expense of hard work.
At age 45, completing a 13.5 hour crucible event conducted by retired Navy SEALs. That took months of mental and physical preparation, and I bawled when it was over (in the car — I’m not cryin’ in front of those guys!). It was one of the most joyful moments of my life.
Writing and staging a one-man show in my backyard for 120 people over two nights, for free. (And the standing ovation my actor got on opening night.) We spent ten weeks rehearsing that show, never mind the time it took to write. A pivotal moment in my life, utterly filled with joy.
Writing a novel (or two, or three), trying to get an agent, selling a book for the first time, bringing it to market, and doing a launch event at my local bookstore. That journey took more than twenty years. And was a complete joy.
There’s no Joy Fairy flying around bestowing joy in your life or mine.
There are happy accidents and twists of fate that can certainly bring a smile to our faces. Sure. There’s joy in “simple things,” like the giraffe I saw at the zoo today who was leaning over its enclosure to eat landscaping trees. We are almost close enough to touch. A simple, joyful moment.
I’m not dismissing those. Not at all.
But if you’re seeking the hard-core stuff . . . those highs of triumph and joy that make you momentarily immortal . . .
That takes work. Laborious, draining, sweaty work.
We forge real joy.
And it’s worth every drop of sweat.
Work for it.
Take care,
~ Tom
P.S.
Are you on Medium? Be sure to follow me there for writing advice and life encouragement! Tap or click: https://tom-leveen.medium.com/
How My Make-Believe Daughter Got a Book Published
I love all the kids in my debut novel Party, of course. And there is a little bit of me in each one of them. But I feel the most for Morrigan. My heart breaks for her.
I think it’s because she was based on a character I created who was an imagined child of mine.
Yeah. True story.
This is a promo mockup for the Party feature film, now called BUTTERFLIES.
I was dating someone and got to thinking about what our kids might be like. I smiled as I thought about it, and started writing a short little scene. In the scene, our kid–an only child, by the way!–was a teenager. A girl. And she and I were on our back patio having a conversation.
As happens often when I write, I lost track entirely of the story and just surfed the wave of inspiration. I felt invigorated when I was finished, and CTRL+HOME’d back to the top of the doc and started reading.
My jaw slowly dropped.
Our kid was in bad shape. I didn’t even know I was writing it like that. Far from being some tender, bucolic scene of heartfelt emotion, the scene was dark and broody and kind of unpleasant.
Worst — I didn’t come off too well in it.
That was the day I knew the relationship wasn’t going to go the distance. I was right. (Thankfully for both of us.)
So Morrigan was in many ways the first character to come to life in PARTY. When I had the idea to throw a bunch of dissimilar kids into a situation and see what happened, I knew the girl in that scene was going to be a part of it.
None of the actual words in that scene ended up in the published novel, but that’s her, no question.
Fan art commission of Morry.
Morrigan just wants to be seen. In particular by her dad. I know that feeling from both sides of it now. I try to remind myself of what happens to kids who get dismissed by their parents, and work harder at not letting that happen in my house.
Morrigan’s a good kid at heart. She really is.
I’m excited to see where she ends up in my new serialized novel, FADE INTO YOU, in which I pluck the characters from Party and plant them into the world of Zero – early 1990’s Phoenix in stead of early 2000’s Santa Barbara. She won’t be exactly the same — none of the characters will — but she’ll still be Morry, that sassy little brat who desperately seeks a connection to people.
So desperately it gets her into trouble from time to time,
But then, that’s where good stories come from, isn’t it?
If you’d like an e-book copy of Party, just click over to this page of the website, and I’ll email you one right away!
And if you want to learn more about the exclusive serial FADE INTO YOU, head over to patreon.com/tomleveen.
Talk to you soon,
take care,
~ Tom
The Magic of…Gilligan’s Island
I found myself thinking about Gilligan’s Island this afternoon (for no sensible reason I can discern), and remembering watching the endless re-runs on television as a kid.
Being little, it honestly never occurred to me that they were somewhere on a sound stage in Hollywood. It was Gilligan’s Island; they’d film it on an island, naturally.
Because when you’re that age, whatever is presented to you just is. Just like I never noticed the Brady siblings had no toilet in their awkwardly-shared bathroom.
As a parent now, particularly of my nine-year-old son, I am re-noticing the things that he does . . . well, notice. We have talked more than once (before scary movies, in particular) that everything on screen is just pretend, and he always seemed to accept that. I don’t think he believes that there’s a real King Kong wandering about.
It’s the job of storytellers like me to make our worlds as real to you as that desert island was to me, no matter how old our readers or viewers. It’s no small task, writing and crafting stories well enough that you can get utterly lost in them, lose track of time, or even–from time to time–gloss over a few hiccups. (How did Ginger and the Howells store all their clothes on that tiny boat?)
With every new story, it’s a new challenge. “Worlds” aren’t just about fantasy or science fiction or horror; Zero’s 1990s-era Phoenix is just as much a world as Tanin’s magical, monster-infested land of Kassia. Each time I set out to tell a new story, I’m hoping to create a place and time that feel authentic to my readers. To forget the reality of that sound stage and just enjoy a new adventure.
There are so many more worlds to create. I think I’ll get started!
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…
What Would 14-Year-Old You Say?
Since becoming instructor of writing more than ten years ago, whether that is live at a conference or convention, or virtually, or through a book, has been to tell all of my students, regardless of their age, or experience, that they have stories.
That those stories are valuable and worth sharing.
When I was 14, I borrowed a VHS video camera from a neighbor friend of mine. I did everything with that camera that one might expect, making stupid short videos starring myself—the kind of thing that would be a low-view YouTube or TikTok video today. It didn’t take long to decide I needed to make a “real movie.”
One of my teachers in eighth grade happened to have a beautiful VHS editing system on campus. When I asked him if I could learn to use it, he showed me how. Now all I needed was a story or a script. I remembered some notes that I’d taken a year before, when I was home alone one night during a storm.
Yes: it was a dark and stormy night, just accept it.
Strange things were happening around the house: cats getting freaked out over things that weren’t there. Huge wind jangling tree branches and rattling wind chimes like bones. Strange, inexplicable noises. Being 13 and a fan of horror. movies and already having read most of Stephen King’s oeuvre up to that point, I naturally started thinking in terms of the supernatural and macabre. I wrote all these things down, and those notes and ideas coalesced into something shaped like a story: THE MOON DAEMON! (You can watch parts of it here.)
I asked two friends to be in my movie, and we improvised the film over the course of about three days, dragging the VHS section of the camera around on a skateboard and using a folding card table as our tripod. I edited it at school, and then got to show the final production to one of my classes during a Friday afternoon class. (I still have the original VHS tapes. Hell, I’ve even re-edited the movie once or twice since then.)
I tell you all of that to emphasize one crucial thing: If 14-year-old Me knew how much technology and access to viewers I currently possess in 2020, he would be furious at me for not having made a movie every single damn week.
“You mean to tell me you’re carrying a video camera in your pocket every where you go?”
“Yes, Tom. That is true.”
“You mean to tell me make a movie anytime you want to put it out for the entire world to see and it will not cost you any money at all?”
“Yes, Tom. That’s pretty much what I’m saying.”
14-year-old Tom looks at me quizzically, perhaps taking a drag of a Marlboro red cigarette, and says, “What the hell is wrong with you? ”
14-year-old Tom is right. What the hell am I doing? All this technology, all these people, and what have I chosen to do? Watch TV; reruns I’ve already seen a million time. Read lame stuff on the Internet. Make a ton of plans, but never follow through with them. 14-year-old Me has every reason to be pissed.
I don’t deny that 14 can suck, depending on your family and life circumstances. It can be challenging because you’re straddling adulthood and childhood. It’s also a time of wild exploration and dare-deviltry. Of absolutely not giving one solitary f*ck about much of anything if it doesn’t interest you. If you are an American teenager, you still have access to things right now that your parents couldn’t even conceive of when they were 14. But maybe you are in your 40s, or 50s, or 80s. What is stopping you? What’s your Moon Daemon?
It can be a true story about you and your relationship with your parents, or your neighborhood, or your country. It could be that terrible break-up story, or the beautiful story of how you met your spouse. It could be the tear-jerking story about your children, or a laugh-out-loud story about what happened when you got the flat tire on the way to get ice cream one night. Maybe it’s a horror story, maybe to superhero comic book, or maybe it’s a romantic web series starring you and your friends from high school. Maybe it’s a poem, or a song, or a one-panel comic strip that you post every day on Instagram.
Start now.
It’s not about money, and it’s not about Likes, and it’s not about Followers. Put your stuff out there, tell your truth—whatever it is—and people will find you. I will never, ever be one of these get-rich-quick, “How to make $1 million on Kindle!” type of writing teachers. (There’s nothing wrong with making $1 million on Kindle, but I can’t. If I knew how to do that, I would be doing it.) What I can teach you, and encourage you to do, is how to tell your stories.
Try multiple formats. I’ve tried most of them. Some come naturally, like novels. Others I have to work on, like comic books and screenplays. I like all of them in some way, shape, or form. Instead of consuming, take your stories out there. Have a sit down with 14-year-old You and explain to them why you are not doing that. This isn’t about being a published author, or a box office hit producer or actor in Hollywood. If that’s what happens, great. But that is not the measure of success. At least, it shouldn’t be. Trust me, I still struggle with those hopes and dreams and desires, too. I do not dismiss those goals. However, the only way to get there in my experience is to authentically tell those stories that burn deep inside you. Don’t think about the outcome, think about the process.
The Moon Daemon hasn’t exactly won any film festival awards, or landed me a Hollywood talent manager, or made any money whatsoever. But by God, we had an absolute blast. About two weeks before the pandemic really got underway here in Phoenix, I led a group of about 20 people in making an eight-minute short film based on a chapter of one of my recent novels. It was February, it was freezing cold by Phoenix standards; it was the one day we had rain in months. My wife and I were up and out of the house before dawn, driving across the city, to get set up before anybody else got there. I’ll never forget how cold my feet were, standing in puddles all day while my actors were nice and toasty inside my car as I filmed them.
It could have been miserable. It was exhausting, it cost me nearly a thousand bucks, but it got me into a film festival . . . and it was the most fun I’ve had in a while. Not only would I do it all over again, I’m going to do it all over again. We’re already in talks with some of the cast and crew to start a little production company so we can keep shooting films. Because we had a ball. The last time I had conversations like that, two different theater companies formed and ran for 16 years. That’s magic. You don’t dismiss that.
I have two children, and they run me ragged, especially during the pandemic. I have a part-time job. All kinds of other responsibilities to attend to. Just like you. But I love telling stories and I’m not going to let anything stop me. You make adjustments, sure. Maybe your life is such that you get one free hour a week. Great; use that hour. Protect that hour. That is your hour. One thing I can guarantee you: someone out there needs and wants your story. Maybe it’s 10 people, or ten thousand, maybe it’s 10 million. That number doesn’t matter. What matters is they need it.
You know right now about which stories touched you in the deepest part of your humanity. Probably it was a movie or a book, but maybe it was a comic book. Certainly we all have songs that touch us, and songs or nothing but poems set to music. Someone needs your story to have that impact on them.
So write songs, or scripts, or prose. Or just riff online; do a live stream on some topic close to you and share with the entire planet. There is absolutely no reason not to do that.
I don’t mean that you should be stubborn about your story. Absolutely learn to take criticism. Absolutely study your craft and practice it and get better and better and better. I have published nine novels with New York publishers and still consider myself an apprentice at this gig. But I’ve learned a lot, and I keep learning, and I hope to improve each time out. I also have started writing in new areas, like video games and comic books and television pilots; formats I am not schooled in, but that I enjoy learning about. I one-hundred-percent take comments and critiques on those formats, because I don’t yet know what I’m doing. So be open to that, but keep going.
Ask 14-year-old you, “What do you think I should be doing right now? Where am I falling short? How can I be doing things differently?”
I bet 14-year-old you will have some very pointed answers.
Midsommar: A great start that gets gory and infuriating
A young couple and their friends travel to Sweden to visit a rural mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat devolves into a violent and bizarre competition at the hands of adherents to an ancient belief system.
I watched director Ari Aster’s Hereditary about a year ago, and it still haunts me. Not everyone had my reaction, and that’s fine, but I’m telling you, that was one disturbing damn film. I say that in a good way.
So when Midsommar came out, I hesitated; I wasn’t sure I could handle another Aster outing. The film was released in the golden days of 2019, and I decided to watch at last during October 2020, because, what’s a little horror movie compared to reality, amiright?
And to be completely transparent, I have not yet seen it. Not all of it. I stopped about halfway because it was getting dark and my stomach was starting to revolt on me as the film gradually got creepier and more gory.
I saw enough of it, though, to issue one blistering critique that ruined the film long before it hit Peak Gore.
The script of and performances in Midsommar at the top of the show are hyper-realistic and empathetic. We’ve all been on one side or the other of the opening phone calls. Then sudden grief hits, and it hurts to watch, because we’ve been there, too. Aster knows real grief and trauma isn’t, ironically, “Hollywood.” It is real and discordant and no one is pretty when they cry, not really. At the start, the film does a great job of “talk about anything other than what we’re all thinking,” and is worth studying because it is so thoroughly human (or perhaps so thoroughly American?). The cinematography is fantastic too (or at least, has been fantastic up to half way…)
A New York Times review pooh-pooh’d the performance of Florence Pugh, who plays the lead as Dani, a twenty-something suffering from profound depression long before additional trauma crushes her spirit. The review reduces her to a “walking wound” after the terrible tragedy in her family that opens the film. I see the reviewer’s criticism, but disagree—as someone who struggles with depression and PTSD, I felt the depiction was spot-on.
So far so good, eh? Wait for it.
At about the hour mark, not even half way into the film, things get dark and gruesome. It was appalling and shocking and effective, all the things a sequence like that should be in a horror movie.
But the aftermath of this event, which gruesomely kills two people, consists of two of the male leads getting into an argument over their . . . dissertations.
I just want you to picture being out of the country on holiday. Hell, let’s even say you’re travelling for school, for a college degree of some kind. One day into your trip, two people are killed and the folks you’re living with all say, “Oh, sure, did we not tell you? Our bad. This is our way.”
Would you stick around to “study” this group some more?
The scene immediately after these deaths is . . . um . . . unbelievable? That’s seems too gentle a word. Like, no way in hell would these two react the way they do, and the script hasn’t given us any reason to think they would. The motivations here aren’t just weak, they are nonexistent for any reasonable human being
Literally: “That was really, really shocking. I’m trying to keep an open mind, though,” one says.
Yeah, no, bro. You fucking run like your hair’s on fire.
So at this point, it’s kind of hard to stay tuned in. The morbid curiosity of the horror movie fan is about all the juice I have to keep going. I quit watching about twenty minutes later.
Listen—sometimes people do stupid shit, thus, it’s okay for your characters to do stupid shit. An astute reader, as I like to call them, pointed out that in my novel Sick, for instance, which is entirely set inside a high school where a small group of plucky survivors (sound familiar?) try to escape to a Safe Place during a Zombie Apocalypse . . . not a single one of them ever thinks to make a try for the nurse’s office.
That’s sort of a mistake, I suppose. If so, it’s a mistake based entirely on the fact that in four years of high school, I never one went to the nurse’s office. I assume we had one, but I swear to God, I don’t know for sure. So yeah, maybe an oversight on my part as the author, but it could be argued in context of the story that there was no need for them to try such a risky gambit. Still . . . yeah, someone should have at least pointed out the option.
So that was an oversight on my part. Granted.
The choice made at 1h 23m or of Midsommar is not a mistake.
It’s a choice, and it falls so flat that I can barely stand it. It’s infuriating, really, because I’m a big fan of Hereditary (in that it freaked me out so much I’ll never watch it again. That’s high praise). While the script sets up that our intrepid Americans are in fact doctoral candidates, it in no way emphasizes the great lengths to which they’ll go to get their “scoop” story for that dissertation. Furthermore, even if the script had tried to emphasize such a thing, the fact that their reaction to the horror unfolding before them is to argue about those dissertations rather than saying, “Bro, where’s the key to the car?!” is unforgiveable from a character-development standpoint. I would be happy to go along with this premise if the script had established just how critical obtaining these degrees was to the characters, but it doesn’t.
Of late, and I may come to regret this, I’ve tried as much as possible to insist on realism in my horror. When I’m writing or building an outline, I try to stop frequently and ask, “Now what would someone really do here?” You can motivate a character to do just about anything, and then come up with a really fun way to prevent them from getting their goal—that’s the whole point, in fact. Midsommar does not take this approach at all. It pits graphic violence against, of all things, academia, and it just does not sell for me.
Let your characters be real people who have real reaction commensurate with their background. Jack Bauer and Rambo and whoever else aren’t going to have a panic attack when they shoot someone. But I would. You would, too (one hopes). Those reactions are commensurate with our experience. So if you’re going to do something that would strike most people as odd, be sure it’s backed up in the character’s backstory somewhere.
Don’t be afraid to ask open-ended questions of your characters when you come to these choices. You may discover some rich gems hiding. I am working on a novel that I can’t talk about right now, but: in the story, this main character was knowingly entering into a situation where she may be called upon to take a life. Maybe several. How the hell do I motivate that? What would make a person do that? What has happened in her past to make her . . . ohhhh! GOT IT!
See what I mean? I made a brand new discovery about her history that gives the novel a whole new resonance.
Do this, please, whenever your can. I don’t mind mindless horror from time to time, it has its place. So does mindless YA, mindless romance, mindless mystery. Swell. But if you’re setting out to make something else, which Midsommar is clearly trying to do, then for God’s sake, motivate those characters to justify the stupid shit they do on the page.
Halloween Horror Review: Train To Busan
Train to Busan pits a band of survivors against a speeding train full of zombies.
I mean, really, what else is there to know?
The film goes on as most zombie films that have taken a class or two in pacing, letting the opening build relationships and lay out the scenario before the horror begins. By 13 minutes in, we’ve seen this all before, but the script and performances do their job, endearing us to a businessman Dad, his daughter, and their family plight, which is the couple’s impending divorce.
But then right around 15:00, shit gets real.
Suddenly the passenger train is filled with infected undead, who merrily and bloodily go about creating more of themselves as they feast on the passengers. The great physical performances by the infected deserve recognition. These impressive acrobatics are accentuated wonderfully by the music, sound effects, and cinematography.
There’s not much we haven’t seen before — lots of hair-raising near-misses and escapes, and wondering which of the rag tag group of spunky survivors will be next to go. (I will say when the last of them clocks out, it is pretty tragic.) The addition of the train as the primary setting gives the goings-on a nice sense of, pardon me: momentum.
Like many zombie flicks, the ultimate cause of the zombie outbreak is left pretty vague, although it is somewhat addressed in a quick phone call just past the halfway mark.
It feels, though, that mostly the filmmakers are simply building on what others have done before without adding anything particularly new to the canon. The rules are the same: don’t be seen, don’t be heard, don’t get bit, keep going like a bat outta hell for the One Place That’s Safe while Protecting Those You Love . . . with a splash of Who Are The Real Monsters?! mixed in.
It is not a bad thing that these tropes are well-worn. They are well-worn for a reason. If you pick up a film like Train to Busan after seeing the trailer, it’s because you have genre expectations. Those expectations are met well in Train. So while there’s nothing new here, the film is a hell of a lot of fun for fans of the genre.
The math is simple: If you like zombie movies, you will like Train to Busan.
Happy Halloween!