Ghosts of Eden

I decided to pick up a scary book for Halloween from the library. This was on the display and they didn't have the one other people in one of my book clubs was reading. This looked interesting and was. It is a short read and it only took me two days to read. At first it was very scary, a haunted house with evil, maybe even violent, ghosts. The main character was likable and had a horrible past. As she tries to release the ghosts from "the Serpent" she encounters many of the ghosts of the town as well as her neighbor with Down syndrome and his teacher. They are all destined to deal with "the Serpent" and the battle part as well as the actual haunting in the house is great. I had a hard time putting it down. However, part of it just didn't work for me. This may be a spoiler but oh well... "the Serpent" is an alien trying to take over a planet his race created. He is ancient and angry. I think the alien part is too much. I didn't need the history of him or what he was... the lack of info would have been better. However, i loved the description of the ghosts and how they died. I loved the movie 13 Ghosts because of the background given to each ghosts character, and it was similar here. The reason the main character is "the Impure" is just not enough though. She should have committed something worse to be considered that. I also appreciate how she made it historical with the legendary fire but it just took much away from it. The scariness was lost with the fire and that was sad... and the ending was a little too happy!

All in all a good scary book with some very gruesome parts. I might read it again some day but skip the parts about the aliens and the fire. I give it three and half bookmarks out of five.

Scary movies that aren't so scary

As a tradition Jason and I rent scary (or what he hope will be scary) movies to watch while we carve our pumpkins. This year was no different. Last years movies gave me nightmares for a week and that was the best part. However, this year did not work out so well.

The first one, my pick, was Suspect Zero. I have always loved crime movies and TV shows (especially Law and Order the original!!). I had heard of this when it came out and it sounded great. It was in the horror section so I thought, "Why not?" We watched most of it but just couldn't bring ourselves to finish it. It was very slow and a little disjointed. It was graphic and a little disturbing and the idea of a serial killer without any pattern and who kills tons of people without remorse is creepy. Also the idea of being able to see other people through their minds is creepy too. However, these two creepy factors where not enough to carry a story. The acting was not great and the story was a little disjointed. I didn't want the hero to succeed and I didn't care about catching the bad guy. A little gory but not worth renting.


The next one was Jason's choice. He had read some good stuff about Cloverfield. I was not very excited about this but we did try it. It is a typical monster attacks a big city (ie. NY) and causes much havoc. People die and the main characters probably will not make it out alive. The premise is good enough. Godzilla has always been popular and this should have worked. I guess part of the problem is that you don't care about the characters... they seem to privileged to us. The monster is also not the scariest. Yes it eats people and attacks people like nothing else. It is supposedly a baby though and we are supposed to feel bad for it as it is trying to deal with the world around it. All in all the way it was filmed, the moving between the past movie and the present, and the fact we already knew what the monster was ruined it for us. Interesting to see the concept of America's monster but not too scary. A little gory but not much of that either. Totally skip-able.