Everything Belongs to the Future, by Laurie Penny (Tordotcom) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF65 (December 2019).

Close to the end of the twenty-first century, things don’t seem to have changed a great deal in the UK. The seventeenth Halo game is out, the Mercury Music Prize is still running, and economic inequality is still a serious problem. The one big difference is that those with the necessary wealth or privilege can “fix”: take drugs to stop the progression of ageing.

Lisa Frankenstein | review by Stephen Theaker

1989: the unfortunately named Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) has a new home and a new school. When Lisa was a little younger, her mum was killed by an axe murderer. Her dad has now married Janet (Carla Gugino), a nasty piece of work who thinks very little of Lisa. Stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano) does her best to be nice but isn’t very good at it. After another girl deliberately gives Lisa a spiked drink at a party, and her science lab partner sexually assaults her, she takes a shortcut home through her favourite graveyard. She wishes she could be with the subject of her favourite bit of statuary, a piano player who died young in 1837 (Cole Sprouse, one half of the little kid in Big Daddy).

Bad Candy | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Unsavoury horror anthology mostly lives up to its name

Chilly Billy (Corey Taylor of Slipknot fame) and his sidekick Paul (Zach Galligan) host a Halloween-themed radio show at 666 on the dial. Clever. People call in and ask Billy to spin horror tales, which are portrayed in the short films that make up Bad Candy, directed by Scott B. Hansen and others. 

The lack of cohesion, clichéd content, subpar CGI and poorly drawn characters give one the impression that these pieces were cooked up by high school boys. Among the one-dimensional scumbags who populate the film like so many rotting confections are a beer-guzzling deadbeat dad, a creepy old man who taints candy, a drug dealer, a would-be rapist and a sexy, acid-dropping mortician who finds herself attracted to one of her male specimens. Through each of the stories wanders Bad Candy, a creepy clown who enjoys showing his long fingers and mindlessly killing bad people.

The best tale in the batch involves three military vets who play a yearly Halloween game involving rabbits and pumpkins. This one has humour, intriguing dialogue and some impressive makeup. It also offers a unique take on the close-up shot of the man inside the mask, a filming technique made famous in the Iron Man series. 

Another of the film’s shortcomings are the unrealistic and lifeless representations of children. A young boy, looking forward to trick-or-treating, says, “This is going to be awesome” as if reading out of a book. A little girl trips and looks up to see Bad Candy looming over her. Rather than going into conniptions as one would, she unhurriedly jogs off without making a sound. Don’t be like that little girl – run away from Bad Candy as quickly as you can.–Douglas J. Ogurek*   

The Predator | review by Rafe McGregor

Two lonely men too many…

Alien vs. Predator (2004, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson) confirmed that the Alien and Predator franchises (of four and two films respectively, at the time) were set in the same universe.  Although the first crossover and its sequel were both commercial successes, they were rightly panned by critics and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007, directed by Colin and Greg Strause) is the lowest-grossing film in both franchises (when adjusted for inflation).  I remember my initial reaction to news of the release of Alien vs. Predator being what’s the point, quickly followed by who are we supposed to root for?  There are deeper problems with the intersection of the two franchises, however, an essential incompatibility that may explain some of the artistic failures of both films. First, Alien (1979, directed by Ridley Scott) is a paradigmatic work of cinematic art, part of the canon of not just great science fiction, but great film. While the quality may have varied, all five of its sequels have retained the thematic complexity and stylistic sophistication of the original. In contrast, Predator (1987, directed by John McTiernan) is essentially an action spectacular, a testosterone-fuelled charge through the jungle terminating in an Arnie vs. alien duel to the death.  Second, the Alien franchise has employed a wide range of cinematic effects and techniques to represent a species at the very limits of human conception whereas the predators in the Predator franchise have (up until now) clearly been men in monster suits (Kevin Peter Hall, who stood at seven feet two inches, for the first two), an updated creature from the Black Lagoon with an anthropodic mandible that looks like it would be able to hold food as effectively as a dog’s dewclaw.

Murder on the Einstein Express and Other Stories, by Harun Šiljak (Springer Science and Fiction) | review by Stephen Theaker

This title is part of a range intended to bring science and fiction together, which has familiar sf names Gregory Benford and Rudy Rucker on the editorial board. Their ethos is highly appealing: “Authored by practicing scientists as well as writers of hard science fiction, these books explore and exploit the borderlands beteen accepted science and its fictional counterpart.” Unfortunately this book, a short collection of four stories – “Normed Trek”, “Cantor Trilogy”, “In Search of Future Time” and “Murder on the Einstein Express” – doesn’t seem to have been copy edited or proofread. Articles definite and otherwise are frequently absent and tenses are often wobbly, making it a trial to read. If it hadn’t have been short enough to read in a couple of hours I would have given up on it. The author is clearly very clever and an expert in his field, but he is trying to get across ideas that would at times be very difficult for the general reader to follow in even the clearest prose, and that isn’t what we get. Not infrequently I was enlightened more by Kindle’s lookup feature providing the appropriate Wikipedia page (e.g. for the Monty Hall problem) than by the explanations in the book itself. As for the stories themselves: I understood very little of “Normed Trek”, but mathematicians may enjoy puzzling out its functions. “Cantor Trilogy” imagines a future where computers take over the writing and peer-reviewing of academic articles. I stumbled through “In Search of Future Time” without really understanding much more than that it seemed to concern the Turing Test. And “Murder on the Einstein Express” uses an extremely thin fictional frame to support a socratic canter through various thought experiments and puzzles. The author seems to acknowledge the book’s flaws in this story, joking that “criticism of the author’s literary style is strictly forbidden”, and having a character say: “I have always enjoyed writing. The fact that I am not good at it couldn’t stop me, since I had the will and thought it’s enough.” Stephen Theaker *

The Bye Bye Man | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Their warning: “Don’t think it, don’t say it.” My warning: Don’t see it. 

When I go to a horror film, I want to feel something. I want the jolt of a good jump scare, or the lingering unease caused by an unidentified malicious presence. I want to get grossed out, to be appalled by violence, or even to laugh with a good horror comedy. With The Bye Bye Man, a horror film whose primary intent seems to be to scare the viewer, I felt disappointed. Oh, it does occasionally incite laughter, but that’s based on the bad acting and illogic.