I entered Don’t Breathe with mixed expectations. On the one hand, one website called it one of the scariest movies in two decades. But, it seems, every horror movie can find a website or critic to make a similar claim about it lately. In fact, I feel as if I’ve naively prepared myself up for a mind-blowing classic over and over again, only to be let down by some critic’s one-sentence profession of adoration. And the premise of Don’t Breathe, while certainly original, appeared to have the makings of a thriller more than a horror movie. As it turns out, many of my preconceived notions were correct. Don’t Breathe does, for most of the movie, remind one an awfully lot of a thriller, and it’s only scary insofar as you can refrain from shaking your head too vehemently at the main characters, who, it might be argued, are asking for what they get. My thoughts? It is what it is. The premise was inherently hard to execute successfully, and I was never truly scared while I was watching it. I consider it important to see every horror film that comes out in theaters (since I consider horror blogging my non-professional profession) but if you’re not so adamant, you might be able to skip this one without missing out on anything substantial. Continue reading “Don’t Breathe Didn’t Take My Breath Away”
When I read the first Chapter of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein today (which was a delightful experience filled with melody and profound thought) it occurred to me, yet again, that I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula earlier this summer and never wrote about it. Sigh. Such negligence seems remiss for a horror blogger, I told myself. This is especially true because I don’t write about many classic horror novels. As a self-professed lover of literature (or, a so-called lit nerd), many of the novels I commit myself to aren’t horror novels (because one must engage in some soul-warming optimism to counter the darkness), so I focus on scary short-stories (and of course, movies) for this blog. And to me, there is much merit in this approach; it is, after all, easier to critique – or analyze, or review – a short story than it is to do the same with a thick, 300-some page novel. (As such, I have immense respect for book bloggers who manage to eloquently sum up hefty volumes in elegant, relatively concise blog posts.) But because I don’t read many horror novels, when I finish a classic novel in the horror pantheon, I have to carpe diem and write about it. So I’ve decided to write about my experience reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and compare it to some cinematic adaptations spawned by the work. 
justdreadfull.com 