!Spooky stories
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agk's diary
29 October 2022 @ 12:17 UTC
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written on GPD Win 1
before my feverish baby wakes up
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As Halloween spooky times approach, roommate who
loves spooky watched films with Evy + I. Below I
review spooky stories I like!
The Fiery Angel (1927) by Sergei Prokofiev, staged
for Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (15/7/2018) by
Mariusz Treliński.
We watched the first 3 acts on youtube (via an
invidious proxy: yewtu.be) so far. Music, voices,
staging of this challenging opera stun. A woman,
befriended by an angel as a child, grew to self-
harming junkie desperately searching for Heinrich,
who she believes embodies her angel. Treliński
carefully maintained ambiguity: Is it the 10th
century or Khrushchev era? Does Renata's knight
and sadomasochistic companion Ruprecht summon
devils with doctors of dark arts or just have
heroin fever dreams? Spooky.
The Master and Margarita (1940/1967) by Mikhail
Bulgakov
I listened to this novel's audiobook on long
commutes. People tried to convince me to read it
over the last 15 years but always made it sound
stupid. It's not. What Bulgakov did with Pontius
Pilate, smug intelligentsia, witches, censors,
and the devils from hell visiting 1920s atheist
Moscow is shocking, delightful, nothing short of
amazing.
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) written and directed
by Werner Herzog, based on the 1922 film by F. W.
Murnau, itself based on Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Roommate bought the German-language version on
VHS for Halloween this year. Dracula's creepy as
hell. The plague visited on Wismar, Germany, when
he moves there is apocalyptic. Even ugly vampires
are somehow sexy.
Veneno para las hadas (1984) AKA Poison for the
Fairies, written and directed by Carlos Enrique
Taboada
We found this on rarefilms.com, a pirate stream-
ing website. Now I need to watch more Mexican
horror. When the new girl's introduced to the
1960s boarding school, she's bullied/befriended
by a girl with a dead mother who says she's a
witch. The movie had me on the edge of my seat
with dread and fascination.
Faust (1994) directed by Jan Svankmejer, based on
Christopher Marlowe's play and Christian Grabbe's
novel.
I can't remember when I first saw this. Surreal
claymation's the ideal medium for expressing how
reality falls apart into inchoate horror when you
seek arcane knowledge from a pact with Mephisto.
Mephisto consistently makes my skin crawl. Evy
saw him, ran upstairs, said, "Don't you ever show
me anything like that again." Somehow it's uncom-
fortably funny when most unsettling.
Night in the Woods (2017) developed by Infinite
Fall
This is a video game I'd heard a lot about. I
watched a play-through on youtube/yewtu.be when
really sick. It ran about 8 hours. A girl returns
to a dying Pennsylvania coal patch town after
dropping out of college. She lives with her par-
ents, bums around with friends when they get off
work, goes to a bonfire, learns a dark secret.
The game's pitch-perfect, entrancing.
The Left Right Game (2020) produced by QCODE
Roommate and I sat up late listening to this pod-
cast he got me into, an episode after work each
night. Based on a NoSleep reddit thread it builds
a lush urban legend. Like Bloody Mary, something
to do with friends to freak each other out. The
landscape itself's the monster! We paused confus-
ing parts to read the corresponding reddit posts.
An ill-fated roadtrip. Souvenirs: grief, night-
mares, more mysteries.
Midnight Mass (2021) directed by Mike Flanagan
Dying fishing village, isolated island, feels
like it's off Connecticut or Maryland coast: a
young man home from prison newly sober after acc-
idental drunk vehicular manslaughter. Wonderful
priest arrives to lead the small parish while the
island's Father, afflicted with dementia, recov-
ers from wandering-induced exposure on the main-
land. Miracles occur. Supply priest counsels
wonder. Supernatural horror slowly builds thru
the Netflix miniseries. Roommate & I had plenty
to puzzle and unpack between episodes. I found
the end satisfying.
