Sinister came out last fall. I was intrigued by the trailer. It had a good lead actor, occult themes, and the villain looked like the singer of a black metal band. I wanted to see it then, but it didn't show at either of the beer-serving theaters within bicycle distance of my home. So I forgot about it until Netflix reminded me.

But I had one reservation. The producers brought us another film with a similar title: Insidious. (The voice in my head as I read these titles belongs to Vincent Price.)

Insidious has a few admirable qualities and creepy visuals, but ultimately it's a hodgepodge of horror ideas with a plot that relies on a child in danger and a husband struggling to hold his family together.

Sinister stars Ethan Hawke as, yes, a father struggling to hold his family together. If he can publish a bestseller his wife won't take the kids and move in with her sister. As plot glue, the family-saving husband usually does nothing for me. But it worked for me in this case, I think, because Ethan Hawke does a really good acting job with a stock horror-film character.

The film opens with a ghastly Super 8 film of a family being hanged from a tree. Next we see Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) and family moving into the same house. Maybe we're not supposed to know it's the same house until a few minutes later when Oswalt looks out the back window at the (gasp!) hanging tree, but, come on.

So, Oswalt is in town to write about the murders and a missing girl. He moves his family into the murder house but fails to inform his wife of this fact. He finds a box of Super 8 film in the attic that shouldn't be there. The film cans have innocuous titles written in Sharpie: "Pool Party," "BBQ," etc. But they're actually snuff films of families being murdered, including the family that lived in the same house. Some of the families are murdered in annoyingly complicated ways. In one, family members are duct taped to patio furniture and pulled by ropes into the pool. Oswalt watches these in dark while chugging whisky. He has a moment where almost tells the police, but then decides against it. A serial killer is sneaking into his home and putting snuff films in his attic–what a scoop!

At this point some people might lose any sympathy for Oswalt. But I bought it, mostly due to Hawke's ability to make his character seem real despite hokey situations. Also this may explain why writers are such useful characters in horror movies. Writers tend to have more moral flexibility. The writer's creed is "Murder your darlings." When Oswalt decides not to inform the police of his find and risks his family's lives for the sake of a story, I said to myself, "He's a true writer!"

I'm reminded of John Gardner in On Becoming a Novelist when he told the story of coming upon an accident scene. He stopped to help a bleeding woman out a burning car. Despite the urgency he found himself grateful to be having such a rich and useful experience to add to his writing arsenal. Gardner wasn't proud or ashamed of this, he was just making an observation.

So the plot goes on. There's a ghoul in the films, and an occult symbol. And in all the murders a child was missing. A professor informs Oswalt that the symbol is for an ancient Mesopotamian god that was said to live in images and steal children. The original bogeyman. The film projector plays by itself, children in Halloween make-up start running around the house but Oswalt can't see them, he burns the film and projector but they come back, and eventually what you knew would happen happens.

The ancient god, Bagul, looks like this:

Pretty much any black metal dudes look like this:

Sinister has pretty cool music. There's interesting guitar work and it goes well with the images. But I would like to have seen how the Super 8 films played without music. Just silent films like they would be for the character. There's no reason why there would be an orchestra hit when Bagul shows up on screen. But that's a problem I have with most movies–too much music.

Sinister would've been cooler if there were a cult that worshiped Bagul, and they were responsible for the murders. Not Bagul himself. After Oswalt burns the films and projector and moves his family back to their old house, he finds the same box in the attic. So Bagul, ancient Mesopotamian god who steals children and lives in images of him, travels via teleportation in a cardboard box labeled "Home Movies?"

Sinister has something at the end that I hate, and I hope we've seen the last of it, along with strobe filters, Matrix-style fight scenes and slow-motion shots of guys jumping while shooting two pistols: it's the evil head-tilt. You know when the killer looks at the camera. He tilts his head in a gesture of sociopathic curiosity. Like, "Funny how this meat sack struggles so before I remove its intestines."

Summary: Not too terrible. Starts strong. Good acting. Falls apart into nonsense. Stupid head tilt.

Favorite Part: Cameo by Tavis Smiley.

My secret murders have been witnessed by the Eye of Horus
The cries of children I stole created a ghastly chorus
With a virgin’s intestines I encircled the five-pointed star
I performed every ritual in the blackest grimoire.

After performing the vilest acts of all
There has been no sight of Astaroth or Baal
Having exhausted the depths of the macabre
I suppose I’ll have to get a job.

I boiled babies in their mothers’ blood
And drowned them in a semen flood
I’ve tattooed myself and opened up my veins
And smeared my walls with feces and brains

But after all the rituals all that remains
Is an acrid stench and crusty stains.
I see now that I’m just a lazy slob
I suppose I’ll have to get a job.

There is a god and he loves us, is what I used to believe
Jesus is said to have said ask and you shall receive
But I asked for every single thing that I could conceive
And I came to realize that there is nothing prayer can achieve.

And now that I have thoroughly explored the other side
I know that there’s nowhere for magic and hope to hide
A painful, pointless struggle is all that life can provide
And since I’m too much of a coward for suicide

I suppose I’ll have to get a job.

For the last several years the podcast has been my favorite medium. I discovered them when my wife bought me my first iPod. I'd estimate that 80 or 90 percent of the time I'm listening to something, it's a podcast and not music. I like to listen to them whenever I'm doing the day's 1,001 tasks. The meager household chores I manage to accomplish are almost entirely due to the wretchedness-reducing power of podcasts.

All dish washing and gutter cleaning is done in my aural cocoon. Pity my wife. Sometimes she lives with the equivalent of a mental patient who has made a psychotic break, an unresponsive schizo who laughs randomly and gets angry when interrupted from his reverie.

I've listed my favorites on the right side. I listen to several from the Earwolf family. That's where my favorite comedy is coming from these days. There are some that have ended their run that are worth checking out. My favorite of these is "Analyze Phish." Over the course of six or seven episodes Harris Wittels tries to convince Scott Aukerman to like the band Phish. I hate Phish, but I loved this podcast.

If you have any recommendations based on what you see here, please leave them in the comments.

I'm as ready as any American to put the election behind. Sure, I did some gratuitous end zone dancing, but it's understandable. I've been an active voter for 20 years and this is the first time where I got my way on all kinds of votes. The good guys won, the rape guys lost, and voters surprised me by voting for progressive issues all over the country, including marijuana and civil rights. Forgive me, Republican friends (I have some), for being a poor winner.

But in this new week I swore to put all the schadenfreude behind me. Then I read this article in the Washington Post. It's about Republican soul-searching in the wake of another loss. These stories are the rage now and this one is pretty typical.  But it was this part that was awesome:

"Her calendar read “Victory Day!!” and she had planned to celebrate in the office by hosting a dance party and selling Romney souvenirs. But instead she was packing those souvenirs into boxes, which would be donated to a charity that sent clothes to South America."

Somewhere in Paraguay or Bolivia a village is going to get a shipment of Romney/Ryan t-shirts. Imagine a playground filled with kids who don't speak English getting mud all over their bright white Romney t-shirts, and they don't give a shit what the words mean.

This makes me happy.

I recently watched “The Devil’s Rock,” a horror film from New Zealand. The film is set in the Channel islands during WWII. The plot concerns a commando who discovers that an SS officer has summoned a demon to use as a weapon. He conjured it using a suitably old and spooky-looking book called “Les Artes Noirs.” Of course, the demon is tricky. Whoever looks at it sees the woman he loves the most. But the demon only uses this power so the poor guy will come close enough to become a quick snack.

It’s not too scary. There aren’t any cheap shocks timed with orchestra hits, and most of the violence has already taken place by the time the commando arrives at the bunker. But there is plenty of gore. The dead bodies serve as demon grub and occult tool boxes.

The acting was good, and the story was pared down to its essentials. But I also liked how the story took the Occult seriously, and not from a Christian perspective. Souls and Satan never entered into the equation. The Occult, like applied science, is just a set of tools to manipulate the world. It's the kind of magic an atheist can believe in.

If this film were American-made and given a higher budget it probably would be terrible. It would be longer than its 83 minutes and have horrid CGI. Also the producers would require it to appease the Christian-dominated sensibilities most Americans have, regardless of whether their churchgoers or not. There would be talk of souls and how you imperil them when you deal with evil. Most American horror takes place in a Christian universe where any Occult activities are de facto Satanism. The person who dares to defy God must pay. This moral and metaphysical order of the universe that the typical moviegoer imagines may be vague and infantile, but it must be reinforced and never questioned.

Year after year "The Exorcist" is touted as the scariest film ever made. It’s constructed well, but I can’t commit to it because the story exists in a Catholic universe. The drama relies on elements that can’t be taken seriously by a rational person. The Catholic viewer believes that there are demons and they do horrible things just for the sheer ugliness of it all. And though there is an omnipotent God who detests them, he won't intervene directly. He relies on his representatives in the church.

For the nonbeliever its horror comes from ugly images, the tragedy of the little girl's suffering, and the typical horror film shocks and editing. But it can't achieve true horror because the premise is impossible. The exorcists, no matter how gravely they go about their task and no matter the insults and pea soup they endure, are just witch doctors waving totems and spouting mumbo-jumbo. Not to mention it reminds me of the history of people with mental illness being treated as possessed or willing collaborators with the Devil. (However, I am a fan of "The Exorcist III," which was really just a serial-killer movie with the great George C. Scott.)

So what is there for the thoroughgoing infidel with a horror jones? There is plenty of natural horror. A case can be made that reality offers the worst terrors. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer"  showcase perfectly mundane horrors. The zombie plague of "28 Days Later" is a simple disease. And pretty much anything a demon can do an alien can do better. E.g., John Carpenter's "The Thing" is both exquisite horror and science fiction.

Some Christians argue that a godless universe is synonymous with terror. The Christian writer Mike Duran makes this case in this blog post. He writes: "In the atheistic model, when we see our Universe for what it really is, we should be very, very afraid." The atheist horrorist, he says, creates terror by invoking God's absence and laying bare the chaotic truth at the heart of everything.

I don't think that's right. Lovecraft, and especially his modern day descendant Thomas Ligotti, don't derive their terror from God's absence. True, there may be no god or life beyond this one, but they go further. Existence isn't just pointless, it's rotten to the core. In fact Ligotti coined this term to describe it: "Malignant uselessness."

Yet, I imagine a Christian universe would be far more terrifying than the real one could ever be. Life would never end, and we would have to choose between two evils: one named Hell with its fire and teeth-gnashing, and a hell of boredom and chastity called Heaven. Also we would have to submit to the doltish rule of a jealous god that has more in common with an Elder god than Christians would like to admit. 

But my point for writing this is to advocate supernatural and Occult horror films for atheists. While Lovecraft is the atheist horror writer par excellence, his tales haven't translated well to film. The best I've seen is "The Dunwich Horror" from 1970 and starring Dean Stockwell, who gives a great and creepy performance far removed from his comic character on "Quantum Leap." He wants so bad to steal that Necronomicon.

Aside from that, the best Lovecraft or Lovecraftian movies I've seen were comic: "Reanimator" and "The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu." Everybody knows the former, but the latter is woefully unknown. Like "Shaun of the Dead" it has great performances and a hilarious script, but it is totally immersed in Lovecraft. The more you know the source, the more you'll love it.

"The Devil Rides Out" is a great horror film based on the book by Dennis Wheatley, a prolific British horror writer. He published a ton of occult thrillers starring the Duke de Richleau and they read like Satanic Ian Fleming novels. Some more of these were made into films.

"The Devil Rides Out" is almost guaranteed to be good simply because it stars Christopher Lee. He plays the Duke, who is a master of Occult arts, including astral projection.

This movie has animal sacrifice, magic circles and even a summoning of the devil. It takes it all very seriously, and at no point does anyone pray to Jesus for protection. The only way to battle the evil occultist Mocata is fire with fire. Wheatlely's novels were popular because he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Occult. Or made his readers think so. I suspect he took many liberties.

But hands down the best occult movie I have ever seen is "Simon King of the Witches." There is a trailer for the film available on Youtube, but I don't recommend it. Evidently the studio didn't know how to market it. Despite what the trailer implies, there are no cheap thrills, the movie has lots of humor and Simon is no villain. Simon is a true magician who doesn't need hokum like ancient amulets and crystal balls. When he needs to construct a magic altar he goes down to the hardware store and puts the stuff together in a basement.

You can watch the entire movie on Youtube or get it from Netflix.

I just realized that these movies I recommended came out in the late '60s, early '70s. This was an Occult Golden Age. My favorite Occult books and music came out during this period too. It'd be worth exploring why in another post. And also why it faded away. Or maybe I'm just out of the loop and it's stronger than ever.

I've always felt I was born in the wrong time and class. I envy the rogues of Balzac's novels who live their lives of sordid dissipation. Carousing and whoring gourmands who live for the night. It took an adequate inheritance and a disregard for public opinion.

Awaking a few hours before the night begins
with dried wine and whore juice on our chins

We lead a life of dissipation
we drink without cessation
Endlessly imbibing a libation
Combining food with fornication
Yielding to every temptation
Heedless of our souls’ damnation
Our pricks rise to a whore’s flirtation
And weep at her gyration
In her ass our cocks have their lactation
In her pooper there is no impregnation
Pleasure is our fixation
Cognac may decrease our duration
And deaden the sensation
But with enough adoration
Our staffs will reach ejaculation
We withdraw after our seeds’ migration
And with no regard for sanitation
We resume the culinary inhalation
And the alcoholic rehydration
And the whores resume titillation
Seeking still more compensation
And through extensive molestation
Our members gain some augmentation
But through excessive inebriation
With our brains mired in retardation
We can barely achieve penetration
And despite perverse stimulation
And a more than generous application
of saliva and escargot butter for lubrication
The night ends in flaccid frustration
And we stumble blindly to our destination
And find our beds amidst lower class privation
We enjoy dreamless hibernation
And spend the hours of the sun’s aspiration
Our consciousnesses’ temporary cessation
Bathed in urination, defecation and unknown vegetation
Then before dusk a reiteration

Awaking a few hours before the night begins
with dried wine and whore juice on our chins

I carefully packed my two bottles Cowiche Canyon for the flight home. I also brought a bunch of cans. I didn't think they needed special treatment. I just made them fit the suitcase. But when I picked up my bag I smelled beer, and upon opening the bag found some wet clothes. Fortunately the bottles were unbroken. What happened was some cans got crushed. They were beat up bad, which makes me wonder what the hell they do with our luggage when we're not looking. But this story has a happy ending. Most of the beer survived.