Apologies for the movie rant the other day. I don’t usually get that worked up. That’s part of the reason why I’d make a lousy movie reviewer. I tend to like most of the movies I watch; I can find the good in almost anything. A movie has to be pretty freakin’ awful for me to slam it hard. Even clunkers like the new Star Wars movies had parts I liked that keep me from declaring them out and out failures. I’m not that picky. Mostly I just want to be entertained. I can find just as much enjoyment in a classic like Poltergeist as I can in a cheese-fest like Galaxy of Terror. It’s just a different kind of enjoyment.

Anyway, in my haze (or mist, ha-ha) yesterday I forgot to mention that Shimmer ended up rejecting “The Cat,” although the editor called it a “solid story,” and said I should have no problem selling it elsewhere. It just wasn’t right for her magazine. So I have sent it off to Cemetery Dance.

Not much else going on writing-wise. I’m working on stories for a pair of December 31st deadlines. One is for an anthology called “The Land and How It Lay.” The guidelines are a little vague; the story has to be about systems and how people function within them, or something. I decided to take the idea of a city and how it breaks down piece by piece and what happens to the people as a result. It’s called “The Center.”

The other one is for the Broken Pencil Deathmatch contest. As I understand it, eight stories are chosen, two of which go head to head each week, with readers voting on the one they like best, until a final winner is declared. For this one I’m writing a weird comedy called “Xenophobia.”

Also, the results of the Zoetrope short story contest are supposed to be posted tomorrow. I’ve got my fingies crossed that my story at least got an honorable mention. Hope, hope…

• Currently reading: "Stains on the Ether," by Peter Crowther

Kat and I saw The Mist tonight, and oh boy, do I need to talk about it.

This “review” will be spoiler-filled, so if you don’t want to have any details, much less the ending, spoiled for you, stop reading NOW!

Okay, I’m going to break it down bit by bit, saving the infamous ending for, well, the end. (I can say “infamous” because in every single review I’ve read so far, it is without a doubt the most disputed element of the movie.)

Before I start, I have to say that I have never seen my wife so angry about a movie before. She said she has never hated a movie more than The Mist.

Me? I liked it. For awhile. Until the end.

The Story

Bad storm brings strange mist filled with tentacles, pterodactyls, and giant spiders (among other things). David Drayton and his young son are trapped in a grocery store with a bunch of others, including a religious wacko who sees all this as the End of Days. The movie isn’t so much about the nasties in the mist as it is about the nasties in the grocery store.

The Monsters

I’ve been waiting many years for someone to make a movie out of The Mist. Mostly because I am completely creeped out by spiders, and The Mist has got some nasty ones. These spiders are as big as dogs and they shoot acid-coated webbing. Overall I felt the special effects in the film were a little too cartoony for me in spots, but the spiders didn’t disappoint.

The Ending

Oh boy. Well, I’ve gotta tell you what it is before I go on, so here goes. Please don’t read on if you don’t want to be spoiled.

Okay, so Drayton, his son, Amanda Dumfries, the old lady, and the old man pile into Drayton’s jeep and drive off. They head back to Drayton’s house to get his wife — surprise, she’s dead, spun up by the spiders (in the original story, the road is blocked and Drayton never finds out what happened to his wife; I guess you can’t have that kind of ambiguity in a Hollywood movie). So they head south, as far as their gas will take them. They run out of gas. They stop. They hear the monsters closing in. Drayton takes out the gun. Four bullets left, five of them in the jeep. So Drayton shoots everyone in the car and steps out to let the monsters have him. But wait! The army shows up! And the mist is dissipating! Thank God! he thinks. We’re okay! The army’s here! We’re saved! Oh wait… I killed everyone. Crane shot of Drayton screaming and crying. Fade out.

Okay, so I hated the ending. I hated it for many reasons, the least of which was I didn’t feel it fit. I just don’t buy Drayton killing his young son, as well as the other three people in the car, right after they made the big decision to leave the supermarket because they’d rather die fighting than just sitting around. Yeah, Drayton looks all tortured and torn up about it, but I still can’t believe he’d do it. I can’t believe the three other adults in the car would let him do it to them. I just didn’t buy it.

I feel like the ending was thought up by the kind of juvenile horror fan who thinks the genre is only about violence and gore and making the viewer walk away feeling like shit. To these people it isn’t possible for a horror movie to be in bad taste, because if someone feels that way, oh well, it’s a horror movie, right? That’s the point! Yeah, well, I’m a horror lover from way back, and I don’t agree with that definition at all. Horror can be horrifying, or offensive, or disturbing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a certain finesse involved. Even a silly blood and boobies movie like Hostel had a better ending than The Mist.

The unfortunate part was that the ending would have been completely fine by me if it had happened about two minutes earlier, if Drayton had killed everyone in the car and then the movie fades to black, or Drayton runs out into the mist, or any other ending other than the cheap trick of having the army show up two seconds later and Whoops! you should have waited, now the mist is gone, the calvary is here, and you shot your little boy! Isn’t that funny? Do you get the irony?

Ohhhhh, I liked this movie so much up until the ending. Yes, the acting wasn’t great (although the woman playing the religious nut was excellent), yes, the special effects weren’t topnotch, but it was so much more than the sum of its parts, and it had so much working for it that I really felt it was a perfect companion piece to the novella. Up until the part where the movie deviates from the novella, which of course was the ending — an ending that was the total opposite of the one in the novella, I might add. I’ll spoil that one for you, too, because I don’t want you to think the source material was an equal downer. So if you don’t want to know how the novella ends, stop reading now… okay? At the end of the novella, Drayton and the others make it to a motel and it turns out Drayton has been writing down the whole story on hotel stationary. The mist is still around, no army guys have shown up, and he hasn’t shot his kid or any of the others. The message is that although they don’t know what’s happened, or if the mist is ever going to go away, they have hope. Hope. The exact opposite of the ending of the film, in other words. Gah, I’m so disappointed.

And as a horror fan I can get the whole downbeat ending. I can handle the shocker ending. But this isn’t the same thing. As I said before, it would have been a downbeat ending, or a shocker ending, if Drayton had killed the others and then the film ended. But they had to make it all into a big morbid joke by having the army showing up two minutest later, and a few seconds after that, oh look, the mist is clearing up. Terrible.

My wife HATED the ending. So much that it ruined the rest of the movie for her. I didn’t feel quite as strongly, but I agreed that the ending wasn’t appropriate.

Kat felt cheated that we had gotten to know and care about these characters and that to dispatch them in such a gruesome and stupid way was disrespectful and ruined the entire experience for her. Kat isn’t the kind of girl who turns her nose up at horror movies. She doesn’t just watch them because I make her. She likes horror movies. She just watched Planet Terror a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it. She doesn’t mind apocalyptic cinema, she doesn’t expect a happy ending, but this just went beyond all of that.

I didn’t feel horrified by the ending. I didn’t feel disturbed or offended. I don’t know how I felt. I can’t think of the right word. Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe I’ll figure it out in a few days. All I can say right now is that if they had ended the movie before the army showed up, I’d be defending the ending. The fact that they had to turn it into a big WHOOPS!… well, I just didn’t like that. That’s all I can say.

On a lighter note, I told my wife that alternate endings were filmed (which will no doubt pop up on the DVD) and she said, “Well, they picked the wrong fucking one!”

So, in closing, I have very conflicted feelings about this movie. If you didn’t already notice, ha-ha. I can’t say that I hated it as much as Kathryn, because there is a lot to like, but I have such strong negative feelings about the ending that I can’t say I liked it, either. Quite honestly, I can’t say I’ve ever felt so conflicted about a movie. Not in a long time.

My quandary is that the negative aspect isn’t negative in the sense that I would suggest you avoid seeing this movie. You should see it, if only to find out how you react to the ending. I think opinions will vary. Every review I’ve read by those who saw it with more than one person have said the same thing: I liked the ending, my friend hated it, or vice versa.

You should see The Mist. I just don’t know if you’ll like it.

• Currently reading: "Code Warriors," by Jay Russell

My latest short story, “Intervention,” is now available online at Shred of Evidence.

Without giving too much away, I can tell you it’s a suspense story about a man who travels to Wyoming in order to extricate his sister from a cult. No supernatural elements in this one, but I think you’ll still find it entertaining despite the lack of werewolves and life-sucking spiders.

If you do like it, please pass the link along to your friends. You can also leave a comment about the story on the Shred of Evidence website.

I finally heard back from Cemetery Dance regarding my story, “Starlight.” It was a rejection, but it was a personal letter and editor Richard Chizmar said this one came close. He also promised to reply quicker next time. No big deal. I know they’ve been going through a lot over at CD. I figure I’ll send them “The Cat” if Shimmer ends up rejecting it.

Also, here’s the PDF version of the book review I mentioned last week.

• Currently reading: Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

Two positive reviews in the same week! This one is for “Relaxed Best” my horror-noir that appeared in Not One of Us #38:

Any small press publication that reaches thirty-eight issues is to be commended. A ‘zine that, like Not One of Us, edited by John Benson, can do so while publishing a bunch of strong fantasy stories that either play with or defy genre conventions, deserves a much wider audience.

Take Ian Roger’s “Relaxed Best,” the darkest story on offer, combining as it does the tropes of hard-boiled detective fiction with elements of paganism and witchcraft to create a horror story shaded with a sense of menace and creeped-out paranoia. Private investigator Ryerson is hired by Veronica Marchand—known as the Blue Fairy for her skill in playing the stock market—to investigate husband Jonathan, whom she suspects of straying from the marital bed. The alias signals Veronica’s true nature, and explains her success in predicting stock prices. It also suggests that there’s more to this marriage than Ryerson anticipated, with the possibility of some kind of demonic pact being hinted at as the story strays down the kind of horror/crime hinterland explored in fiction as diverse as William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel and Jay Russell’s Marty Burns stories. Like Hjortsberg’s Harry Angel, Ryerson is soon way out of his depth and discovers too late the meaning of the term “relaxed best” as he pays the price for Marchand’s broken contract.

A very astute review, I thought. Especially since I am a huge fan of Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel (which was made into the film Angel Heart) and Jay Russell’s Marty Burns stories.

Check out the rest of the review to see what else they have to say about this excellent magazine.

I’m off to Ottawa in the morning to help my brother-in-law drywall his basement and drink beer. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.

• Currently reading: "The Silver Heel," by Robert E. Howard

First, Horror Library, Volume 2 received a mostly positive review from The Fix. Here’s what reviewer Michele Lee said about “Charlotte’s Frequency”:

“Charlotte’s Frequency” by Ian Rogers has a science fiction slant. Morris, all set to enjoy his newly purchased big screen TV, instead discovers a modern-day Charlotte, a la Charlotte’s Web, feeding off something far worse than the crickets living around the water heater. Morris and his wife, Jude, both start to feel sick, weak, and dangerously vulnerable. Charlotte herself seems to be half organic and half electronic, spinning webs that feed off electricity and the people around her. This fable, however, doesn’t end with three happy children and their anthropomorphic porcine friend. On the cutting edge of today’s hi-tech world, stories like “Charlotte’s Frequency” will drag horror kicking and screaming into the new century.

Pretty freakin’ sweet. Gotta love that last line.

Also, my review of Elizabeth Hand’s latest novel Generation Loss was printed in last Friday’s edition of The Lindsay Post. I don’t have a PDF of the actual newspaper page yet, but you can read the review online.

Finished a new horror story called “The Cat.” Can you guess what it’s about?

Also, I heard that Touched by Wonder is in its second printing, which is great news.

I’m getting lots of positive feedback on my latest story, “Relaxed Best,” in Not One of Us #38. People seem to enjoy the crime-noir aspect coupled with the horror elements. The issue is only $4.50, so if you haven’t checked it out, this is certainly one of the more inexpensive markets where you can find my work.

Even better, if you’ve been reading this site over the past week, you’ll know I’ve got a couple of free stories appearing online soon. One of them within the next week or so.

• Currently reading: Live and Let Die, by Ian Fleming

Colour me amazed. Not only did I sell another story, but I sold it to another e-zine, and it was the next oldest story I’m currently flogging around. Crazy, eh? (My current oldest story is now “Leaves Brown,” and I’d really like to sell that one because it would complete my little East Coast Trilogy that also includes “Twillingate” and “The Currents.”)

Received the e-mail this morning that “The Kid Pool” will be appearing in an upcoming issue of The Written Word.

Strangely, the e-zines with which I’m most familiar are the ones that publish horror or sf, but the two sales I made this week were for straight literary stories. Not that I’m complaining. I really like both these stories and I’m very glad they finally found homes.

I had always been suspicious of e-zines because, as a web designer myself, I know how easy it is to just throw up a website and say you’re publishing an electronic magazine. That’s why so many of them are crap, and why so many of them fold within the first month. That is not the case with The Written Word, or others like Shred of Evidence, ChiZine, Strange Horizons and TQR.

These websites have established themselves as legitimate markets that consistently publish strong, entertaining fiction, and I’m glad to have my work be a part of them.

Big thanks to Kurt Kirchmeier, who told me about The Written Word. I never would have made this sale without ya!

• Currently reading: Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming

My boss and I attended the annual Workplace Health Fair yesterday at the Lindsay Armoury. We went to take pictures and gather material for a press release, but I also ended up talking with someone from the public library who knows I’m a writer. She was the same person who tried to arrange a reading for me at last year’s Reading Week (I was on my honeymoon at the time and couldn’t attend).

Again, she suggested I do a reading, maybe around March Break, and then asked if there were any books featuring my stories that she could order for the library. I happily e-mailed her a list of titles, along with their ISBN numbers.

Having a contact in the library system is definitely a big plus. It should provide me, and the rest of the writers in those anthologies, with some good exposure.

• Currently reading: "The Potato," by Bentley Little