hypertwink

The Conjuring 4: Last Rites (2025). Man, this was terrible. Way too long, took forever to get the Warrens to the actual case, the case family got dropped for the entire middle of the movie, unbearably saccharine epilogue. The whole plot turns on the Warrens' daughter Judy having almost died as a baby, being gifted with Lorraine's clairvoyance, and being chased down by the demon(s?) who had her marked for death. However, somehow the characters don't figure that last part out until the climax even though it's blatantly obvious ten minutes in, so the emotional arc of Lorraine mentoring Judy into embracing her gift rather than telling her to hide from it is crammed into like a minute and a half.

Oh and Ed has heart trouble again, which means nothing. He's fine at the end. The bit in the middle where the doctor tells him he can't afford another heart attack is just a red herring.

People said this was something of a return to form after The Conjuring 3, but despite that one's glaring holes, at least it wasn't the draggy self-indulgent mess this one was.

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Him (2025). A promising college quarterback is invited to train with the greatest professional quarterback of all time (Marlon Wayans) and gets more than he bargained for. This is football as a cult/football as folk horror. It is not, despite the impression I got from the trailer, about a kid making a deal with the devil at the beginning and then having it unravel on him; it took me a solid hour to accept that it had no intention of being that specific movie.

This movie has a lot of really nice shots, and both Wayans and the lead Tyriq Weathers are both great. I'm always here for folk horror and weird ritual shit, which this has elements of. I enjoyed the surreality as Cade questions how much of what he sees is even actually happening. The ending is very fun and my favorite part of the movie, even if the movie gets a bit too much into explaining itself.

That said, I wasn't sure what all the movie was trying to do. Thematically, I don't feel like the movie added much more than what was in the 90-second trailer. I also, as always, had several worldbuilding questions. (My preferred headcanon is that ( spoilers ))

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The Long Walk (2025). In an ambiguously 50s-ish alternate America, fifty young men volunteer to go on the annual death march until the last one walking wins.

This is an adaptation of my favorite Stephen King book of all time. I have a bunch of thoughts on it, but tbh they're kind of all praising with faint damns, because they're essentially quibbles. Overall, this captures the essential spirit and theme of the book so well that quibbles are all I have. In fact, in that regard it's probably one of the closest adaptations of a King novel ever, because so many of them go sooooo far off the rails. The emphasis on the relationships between the walkers, the dreary vibe, the body horror, the horrific brutal deaths: it's all here. The movie changes the ending, in keeping with what I felt was a bit of Hollywood dramatization throughout, but the changes still keep to the spirit of the book's ending, I feel.

I keep thinking I'd like to go see it again before it's out of the theater. We'll see if I manage it. In the meantime, I have had a great time watching interviews with the cast and discussions of how it was made. This is one of those movies where the story of the production is as good as or better than the movie itself. Garrett Wareing, who plays Stebbins, says the cast walked 261 miles in the process of making it. 261 miles!!! He talks about how literally the entire production was mobile: makeup, the food, everything. It just rolled along with the actors. It's also kind of amazing to think about these actors having to do basically ALL their acting while moving. I feel like mostly in movies people aren't having big serious conversations and walking around at the same time. And they filmed the movie chronologically, which IMO really makes sense since they were continuously changing locations and let the actors organically develop their characters and chemistry.

The director is Francis Lawrence, who got started directing Constantine (2005) and has since directed every Hunger Games film except the first one, so he is a big budget guy. This is the lowest-budget movie he's ever directed ($20M). Several people involved have commented it was a passion project for him, and it really shows. His love for the novel might also explain how he ended up directing so many movies for Death Games: The Franchise??

This series of interviews is my favorite I've seen so far, but this interview by the Dead Meat folks has fun stuff too, especially in the second half when everyone has found their footing.

I think this movie is the one I've had the most fun thinking about in a long time.

I have read some books which I had few thoughts or feelings about.

Dark Woods, Deep Water by Jelena Dunato. A varied cast of characters all end up at a haunted castle which won't let them escape. This is dark fantasy with strong but not specifically identifiable fairy tale elements. First person POV with multiple POVs is a struggle, especially when everyone's narrative voice sounds the same. I was disappointed that the naive rich girl whose heart gets broken and then who gets cruelly married off didn't get written with more nuance. IDK. It was fine, I guess.

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The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister. A family of siblings in rural Virginia with an ancestral charge to protect a nearby bog has to figure out what to do when the bog, for the first time in family memory, does not produce a woman to marry the eldest son.

I read this because I am always on the lookout for stories about people who are raised or sucked into very skewed perspectives, especially when those perspectives are supported by reality - for example, their very real bog-mother here. And this definitely delivered! That said, this feels more like a work of gothic fiction than anything else. Their terrible disintegrating family home just gets worse as the story goes on, and the ending in particular reminds me very strongly of

spoilers

We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

That said, I am not sure what I am meant to take away for this one. There are definitely themes of ecology and environmentalism, but also this is a family of very real characters with all their various squabbles and relationships. To be honest, when the book was over I was mostly sad about the ending for the two siblings who reminded me so strongly of the spoiler above.

An odd duck.

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The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice by Margaret Killjoy. The third novella in the Danielle Cain series, in which Danielle and her group of fellow anarchists tell ghost stories around a campfire. I always enjoy Killjoy's vibe, even when it feels like there's not a ton of substance, like here. And I guess others feel the same, because the kickstarter to fund this blew way past all its main goals. Hopefully that means we'll get more Danielle Cain books in the future.