The 2022 Samhain Awards: Holy Shit, Bud

Horror cinema greatly exceeded my expectations in 2022. Unlike years previous, there are so many superb slices of Hell to recommend you, I have given little consideration here to ranking or relative virtues. This also allows me to be more judicious than usual. What follows is a mix of the...

2021 Reading List: Some Questionable Priorities

In a certain sense, I fucked up, I absolutely did. Last year, I observed that time was, well ... not running short quite yet, but growing more precious with every passing week. Yet I spent so much of my limited free time in 2021 re-reading books, retracing my steps, rethinking my...

The 2021 Samhain Awards

There will, I often remind myself this time of year, come another drought. At some point down the line, the funding will disappear, the fickle fanbase will shuffle off to another fad, and horror cinema will start to suck again. There were hints of it in 2021, but only hints, and...

2020 Reading List: Old Man on a Mountain

I have been more cautious than usual this year. As I contemplate the time I have left here, I've come to accept that for many subjects I will only read one or two books on the matter ... and for most subjects, I shall read none at all. This is...

The 2020 Samhain Awards

Wash your hands, you sinners - James 4:8 This was another magnificent year for weird, brutal, visionary horror films. I definitely watched a lot of horseshit trash, don't get me wrong, but what stands out to me about 2020 is what an unholy feast it was. This here is the longest...

2019 Reading List: Notes From Atlantis

The pace of history has accelerated something fierce in the past two years. As ever, my library and my reading chair exist in opposition to this tidal wave of noise. (Some days, it even works.) Despite my pretensions, though, the list this year is undeniably political -- although it's more...

The 2019 Samhain Awards

This past year of horror cinema has been an unholy feast. Thanks to years of templated jump scares from ghost story blockbusters, not to mention billions of dollars in streaming wars development spending, there is more dumb money out there than ever. Better yet, thanks to recent surprise hits like...

2018 Reading List: Retrospective Selects

Considering this is coming out in the middle of Summer 2019, what follows is my most speculative Reading List to date. Perhaps it would have been better to let 2018 pass by, but the fact is my reading habit has accelerated in the past 18 months -- look at that...

2018 Samhain Awards

Like I said last year, 2017 was an awkward run for the Halloween Industrial Complex. It was obvious that great things were on the horizon, though...and those great things, they have arrived. This year was an embarassment of riches. What follows is an objective, factual list of the best horror...

2017 Reading List: Too Little, Too Late

Since starting my library over in 2012 -- that flood did come for some of us -- I have amassed far too many books. This summer, I will be redistributing most of them. I live in a spacious home in the woods by a river, but I am keen to...