It’s a Scary World

Tomorrow night, I leave for Atlanta to attend the Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird, which is being held in the belly of a real-life monster lab, aka Silver Scream FX Lab. As I write this, there’s still a few hours left to get in on the IndieGoGo, with plenty of cool swag up for grabs. (I’ve got an essay in appreciation of Mike Mignola–along with some art by Mike himself–in the program book!)

Because I’m gonna be otherwise occupied over the next few days, I managed to sneak into a preview screening of Jordan Peele’s latest last night, and I wrote up my (as spoiler-free as possible while still actually talking about the movie at all) impressions for Signal Horizon. It’s a movie I’m looking forward to talking about a lot more once other people have seen it.

I figured, since I’m headed out of town anyway, and I just posted a new film review for an actual new film, rather than something stumbling onto Blu-ray from the ’90s or the ’70s, it was probably a good time to talk about my film writing a bit. (There’s also the little fact that Revenge of Monsters from the Vault is currently up for pre-order.)

For various behind-the-scenes reasons, I’ve been doing a lot more film writing lately, and posting it places other than here, mostly Signal Horizon and Unwinnable. I think, in doing so, I’m also carving out, bit by bit, my own identity as a film writer, whatever that actually means.

I’m especially proud of the writing I recently did for Unwinnable about Audition, an incredible film that I hadn’t seen in almost twenty years. But I also wrote about kickboxing cyborg movies in general and Albert Pyun’s Nemesis in particular, and about the 1994 Double Dragon movie–which, I didn’t know until I was writing about it, was only the second live-action video game adaptation ever made. Which maybe explains some things?

I haven’t had as many things pop up at Signal Horizon lately, though you can go back and read my reviews of stuff like Bloody Birthday and Fulci’s Zombie. More recently, I wrote about the new Arrow Blu of Horror Express, a film that I also covered in the first volume of Monsters from the Vault. (Which, it bears repeating, you can get if you pre-order its sequel here.)

There’s lots more like that on the way, but that ought to keep you all occupied while I’m out of town. If you’re coming to the Outer Dark Symposium, I’ll see you there, and if we haven’t already met, come up and say hi. And if anyone wants to bring me any Hellboy Day swag, I’ll be tied up with Symposium stuff all day on Saturday, so it would be much appreciated!