Reviews in Brief, pt. 1

In light of my ongoing desire not to bore you all to death, and also the simple fact of my unrelenting laziness, here are some short reviews of some miscellaneous things I’ve encountered recently. Some of these are good, and some are tremendously awful. Enjoy. Or, maybe, don’t, I guess. Depending.

Ages ago I had the pleasure of doing a live tweet of the film The Haunting of Helena with the very awesome Horror Honeys. If not for the live tweet it would have been a total waste. Terrible acting, bad computer-generated effects, and a plot so blatantly scavenged from the detritus of better films that it would have been laughable if– actually, it was laughable. A recently divorced lady and her daughter move into an apartment in Italy. There’s something about mosquitoes, and war victims, and, like, immigrants…? I don’t know. Terrible. 1 scoop out of 5.

Coffin Hill is a comic about Eve Coffin, a witch-turned-cop who gets shot in the head and then isn’t a cop anymore and goes home and like, deals with a demon in her hometown? And when she was a teenager she was a bad witch, but only because her mom neglected her. And she kind of lured her friends into the woods and got at least one of them eaten by aforementioned demon. Something like that. The first volume has great art, but a very thin narrative. Still, it’s fun. 3 scoops out of 5.

The Canal is a joint Irish/Welsh film production, and kind of a smarter Sinister: a film archivist, David, buys a new house and settles in with his lovely wife. Five years later she’s cheating on him. She disappears, then turns up dead. David learns from old-timey film clips that his house was the site of a murder more than a century previously, and weird things start happening. Impressive cinematography, great acting, and a nice Twin Peaks vibe are offset by tacky special effects and a final act that falls flat. 3 scoops out of 5.

Dark Horse’s new comic series Harrow County is only on its very first issue, but holy crap, it’s awesome. Cullen Bunn’s writing is good, and Tyler Crook’s art is gorgeous. I don’t know a lot about graphic art, but Crook’s cartoony watercolors, far from being goofy, somehow accentuate the eeriness of the narrative. (It’s about a witch, by the way.) The first issue even features a little bonus story, wonderfully creepy, written by Bunn and beautifully illustrated by Owen Gieni. I’ll most likely do a full review once the series gets its first trade, but for now, I highly recommend you check out Harrow County #1. 4 scoops out of 5.