The Fertile Ground of Horror

Dear Weirdlings,

Another week, another assemblage of fun horror and weird reads for your enjoyment.

Movies

Brea Grant Talks Lucky, Indie Movies, and Making Horror Fun (Knotfest)

“I think horror is such a fertile ground for talking about things and playing with themes in a way that makes them really palatable,” says Grant. “You can do these really broad and huge things, you can do something like Lucky, which is really at its core about perpetual violence against women, but I can take it and make it a little funny. That’s a tough line to draw on a movie but I can really talk about these issues in a real way and I think people will be able to swallow them.”

Blood Moon Trailer Has a Taste For Red Meat (Bloody Disgusting)

The story: “When Esme and her ten-year-old son, Luna, move to a small desert town looking for a fresh start they attract all the wrong kinds of attention. As the locals begin to probe, Esme must battle to protect her son and a terrifying secret before the next full moon threatens their very existence.”

Games

The Rise of Unapologetically Erotic LGBTQ+ Games (Wired)

Mark Hill looks at the frustrating struggle that mainstream games have had with portraying sexually, noting that indie developers are stepping into the space to provide alternatives.

Lifeless Planet is an Enjoyable, Genre-Bending Sci-Fi Adventure (Superjump)

Available on the Nintendo Switch, Lifeless Planet “contains elements of sandbox exploration, puzzle platforming, Cold War-era science fiction, and just a dash of horror.”

Literature

Good Girls, Baby-Eating Monsters, and Crafting a Narrative (Interstellar Flight)

“I’m extremely uninterested in writing or reading flat female characters…,” notes Isabel Yap, author of Never Have I Ever. “I’m usually writing towards that subversion. Not so much writing not-good girls, but writing girls in all their complexity and weirdness, their sometimes-ugliness, their truths, which still surprise some people because it remains jarring to have that truth come out in media.”

13 Horror Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021 (Bloody Disgusting)

An assortment of horror reads for a variety of tastes.

Short of the Week

From Mark Lediard and Gavin Williams, “Chromophobia” reveals an apocalyptic landscape in which colors can be deadly — in a wonderfully creative concept.