Burying the Ex - 1/31 Days of Halloween

Hello again!  I am participating in the 31 Days of Halloween Challenge, except I'm making it extra hard on myself by abiding by two additional rules.

#1 I'm only watching horror films I have never seen before
#2 I'm reviewing all of them here.

I'm aware this is absolutely nuts.  But last night I kicked it off by watching the camp horror-comedy Burying the Ex!

The movie has a simple but ridiculous premise: a dude's controlling girlfriend dies before he has a chance to break up with her, and when he finally starts to move on she zombies back into his life.  I have a few issues with the way they chose to portray the controlling girlfriend.  She's a yuppie vegan who works for a Green Life Blog and bullies him into making his life more sustainable.  Not all of her claims are unreasonable (ex: stop letting your brother use your living room for weird sex parties when I'm staying over at your place... it makes me really uncomfortable). but the way she communicates is vicious, manipulative and ultimately abusive.

After a horrifying display of jealous outrage from his girlfriend, our main character decides to break up with her.  Except she dies first.  This leads to a lot of feelings of guilt from our main character.  This is the film at it's most poignant.  How do you react to your abusive partner, who you did love, dying?

Eventually, he starts to move on, with a more laid-back girl who shares all of his interests.  She's a little on the manic pixie dream girl side, but I also kind of love her.  Also, wherever it is in Hollywood these characters live, I want to go there.  Because it their community supports not only a year-round horror store, but a horror-themed ice creamery.  Best neighborhood ever!

Right as our main character starts to move on, his never-quite-became-ex comes back from the dead, rotting and zombified and ready to be together FOREVER.  This is a great allegory.  What do you do when you escape a bad relationship and then your abuser suddenly shows back up at your house?  When time and space have made them repulsive to you, but you're still too terrified to resist their advances?  When (due to size or strength or crazy zombie powers) you know they could kill you if you don't do exactly what they want?

What I love most about this film is that becoming a zombie isn't what makes our antagonist horrifying.  She was horrifying before.  Now she just has super strength and has become physically repulsive to the hero (which is a common feeling for some survivors).  I really wasn't expecting this movie to mirror abuse in relationships as much as it did, and the more I think about it the more I really respect that about the film.

So what does our lead do?  How does he deal with the abuser who used to be so enticing now that the spell is broken (or cast, in this case)?  What do you do when "letting someone down easy" is both impossible and a genuine risk to your physical safety?  When you are finally aware that there's better relationships out there but getting involved with someone involves risking both of your lives because your ex is murderously jealous?

Well, in real life it works a little differently than in the movies.  But this one is worth seeing.  It's campy, has some fanservice bra scenes, and relies on a cast of lily-white California hotties, so it's not super exciting in that way.  But look a little deeper and for a camp horror comedy there's surprising depth. 

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Entertaining 4/5        Intelligent 2.5/5        Unsettling 1/5
 
Scary 2/5        Gory 2/5        Funny 4/5         Artistic 2/5
  

Representation of Minorities 0/5        Representation of Women 2/5
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Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie

Hello again!  Time for something a little different.  This time, a book review!

This is one of the most heart-wrenching, chilling, and intriguing books I have ever read.  I devoured it.  In a single day I consumed every single page.  The tension and immersion are intense.  The premise is simple but the implications are complex. 

One day, all of the children in the world die.  The world is thrust into mourning.  Humanity seems to be over.  There is nowhere to put all the bodies.  Our cast of characters grieve, each in their own disturbing way, for the loss of a child is always disturbing.

Three days later, the children come back.  They struggle out of bodybags crying for their mommies and daddies.  When they arrive home, the children die again.  Their pulses stop, their bodies decompose.  Was it mass hysteria that brought them home?  Parents swear their children's eyes are following them.

The children begin to ask for blood.  A sacrifice of love.  And it brings the children fully to life, cheeks rosy.  They play with toys and giggle and get in fights with their siblings.  All is right with the world.  For a little while.  And then they die again.  And the true horror begins.  What would you be willing to do to bring back your child?

My favorite thing about this book is the way in which it subverts the zombie trope.  Zombies are morally unambiguous.  It's one of our favorite things about them.  They aren't who they used to be and nothing can bring them back and so you just kill them.  Simple.  Easy.  Morally secure.  But what if they weren't that way?  What if they demanded blood and sacrifice but in return they were your loved ones?  What if you could get them back, for a price?

Having a child die is a horrific experience.  What would people do if they had to go through it over and over again?  To what lengths would they go to get their children back?  The best of horror and science fiction asks these sorts of questions, and Suffer the Children passes with flying colors on that part.

The book is very self-conscious in how it understands gender.  Traditional gender roles are explored in a realistic way.  There are stay-at-home moms and working single mothers.  There are men and women both vicious and gentle.  And the book explores the feelings of inadequacy that many mothers feel.  Feelings placed on them by society that they have to be perfect mothers.  And how far will they be willing to go when they've been given a second chance to give everything to their children? The book is subtly subversive.  It challenges the idea that parents (and women in particular) should be willing to do anything for their children.  Ultimately many of the gender roles in the book are relatively normative.  However, the author is careful to keep this work descriptive rather than prescriptive.  It is set in our modern time and reflects our modern time, but delicately.  So while the characters themselves could be more interesting and subversive, the book carefully reflects what small-town America looks like.  And it questions our everyday assumptions about parenthood.

This is a book about pain.  About suffering.  About impossible moral quandaries.  But mostly about guilt.  And how the desire to be a perfect parent (and again, particularly a perfect mother) can become something dangerous when taken to it's extreme.

Horror fans, read this book.