It’s about an already-spoken-for senior, Brent, who turns down Lola, a cute and clearly shy girl, when she asks him to be her prom date.  Brent, who is clearly not a popular kid in school, in fact he’s recently become kind of a loner and a pothead after his father died in car accident, is quite kind when turning down the meek lass, but such kindness is lost on little Lola.  Her father then proceeds to kidnap Brent and force him to be Lola’s date to a lovely prom that happens to take place in their kitchen.

That’s basically it, plot-wise, actually.  Indeed it is this lean, uncomplicated plot that is one of first time writer/director Sean Byrne’s greatest strengths.  It’s not bogged down by unnecessary side stories (though we do get periodic glimpses of how Brent’s best friend’s date at the actual prom is going) or weighty exposition surrounding why Brent has become such a loner. No, THE LOVED ONES is a blazing 84 minutes of constant one-upmanship.  Every time you begin to think Byrne couldn’t possibly top how outrageous poor Brent’s night is becoming, he savagely shoves adrenaline needles into the heart of the film scene after scene until it transforms into a ravaged, bold, and bloody as hell beast that will have you laughing and cringing with alarming regularity.

It’s so refreshing to come across a horror movie that is this enthusiastic about being hardcore.  The never-ending practical gore effects alone are a horror fans wet dream in THE LOVED ONES, but thanks to Byrne’s keen guidance the graphic and disturbing material is never overpowering or self-indulgent.  With a combination of extremely clever production design and camera work he’s delivered a very commercial-looking film that is unbelievably happy to be on the societal fringe of what people expect from horror movies these days.  I realize that’s a strange thing to say – isn’t all horror on the societal fringe? – but there are so few strictly-for-the-fans horror movies that have heartfelt stories with actual commentary on what it means to be a teenager these days (every teen in this movie is genuinely interesting) that when they do come along, they’re such stalwart outliers that they might as well be in a league of their own.

THE LOVED ONES is brilliant, absolutely brilliant.  It’s evident from every page of the script and cut of the camera that Byrne dissected other horror films of its ilk and meticulously figured out how to cull together the ideal entertainer.  He steals from no one and yet evokes the implacable, raucous spirit of the ’80s and early ’90s, a time when everyone on set was pushing boundaries so they could play in their own demented little sandbox.  Yet at the same time it’s very modern with no attempts to be a throwback to, say, the dark humor era of Peter Jackson, Stuart Gordon, Sam Rami, John Landis and Michele Soavi.  It’s got a really great soundtrack and original score that alternates between a delight to listen to and a wake-up call telling you (and the characters, if only they could hear it) to get the fuck out of there.

And my God does it have one hell of a performance from Robin McLeavy!  Thanks to her, Lola rises above being just the weird girl in school with repeated bouts of unrequited love and becomes an instantly memorable passionate and pursuant psychopath. Though she’s the clear queen of the show, everyone else does a great job in the film as well, particularly Xavier Samuel as Brent. Considering early on his capacity for speech is paralyzed when Lola injects some kind of blue household cleaning product right into his vocal chords, we only get to hear a few sentences from him and from then on out it’s all show and no tell.

And the things Byrne shows will perk even the most jaded horror fan right up. I shan’t spoil any of the gags or surprises, but his admirably sick sense of humor is matched only by his carnal knowledge of the kinds of things horror fans like to see in their movies. And it’s all captured with gloriously crisp, no bullshit cinematography that really knows how to put the goods on a pedestal and when to pull back if things threaten to nudge a hair past over-the-top. It’s a daunting task to balance all of the above so harmoniously, no doubt, but Byrne does it with such deft skill and pacing that you’re never given any time to wander from the shocking fun at hand. I have no idea what this new Australian maestro is up to next, but I haven’t seen a feature film directorial debut with this much personality in a long, long time and cannot wait to see anything else he attaches his name to.

Hopefully THE LOVED ONES comes by a festival near you in the near future, so keep your ears open while I keep an Internet-scouring eye on any import DVDs and Blu-rays. It boggles my mind that no US distributor has snapped this dark beauty up from the festival circuit (it’s been making the rounds for months now) as it’s easy to see how successful of a crowd pleaser it is, but I’ve long given up trying to predict what in the horror world is going to be a big hit. All I know is that if you’re reading Horror’s Not Dead, THE LOVED ONES is a perfect match for you.

For those who haven’t seen the original 1973 film, THE CRAZIES is about a small town held under brutal government quarantine after a plane carrying an insanity-inducing, water-born virus crashes into the county water supply.  That’s it, really.  Whereas the original film was a jumbled-up mishmash of an outbreak film that was as much about a few town folk as it was the govies’ inept handling of the situation, this new evolution of THE CRAZIES has abandoned the latter part wholesale.  Instead, it focuses entirely on the town Sheriff (Timothy Olyphant), his wife (Radha Mitchell), his deputy (Joe Anderson) and his wife’s co-worker (Danielle Panabaker) as they try to survive the arrival of this colossal government fluster cluck.

Not only do they have to contend with a ‘contain at all costs’ military presence, but the rest of the townies pose an even more lethal threat.  The virus, which carries over the original film’s codename of Trixie, has the effect of transforming the infected into hideous killers swarming with varicose veins.  They’re not mindless, though.  Depending on the stage and severity of incubation, the Crazies can still talk and plot, they’re just crippled by poor impulse control.  That last bit makes for an exciting and fresh variant of dread we don’t see often in Hollywood horror: human in thought, zombie in action.

That loss of control is the theme that runs throughout the film thanks to a script from Scott Kosar (THE MACHINST) and Ray Wright (CASE 39) that may just be the best horror remake script to reach production since the ’80s.  What makes it so outstanding isn’t how drastic of an improvement it is over Romero’s original, though that obviously doesn’t hurt, but how respectful it is of the audience’s intelligence.  There are zero cringe-inducing moments of, “Now why would anyone do that?” going on.  Every character has been written from the ground up to propel the storytelling through justifiable action and not clawing exposition.  We learn the mysteries of Trixie as the characters uncover them along their way out of Ogden Marsh, and the characters only ever come across the information organically; which is to say never does the script enter the standard issue “here’s where we explain everything” phase.

As strong as the script is, however, it would fall on deaf ears were it not for the cast, all of whom warrant serious investment from the audience.  No one ever appears above the material, instead each actor plays their role with the straightest of faces.  That may seem an odd compliment as that’s kind of their entire job, but it’s worth mentioning considering how easy it is to imagine other actors not giving their all to ‘just another horror movie remake’.  The chemistry between Olyphant and Mitchell makes for such a natural, genuine marital bond that when Olyphant tells a fellow detainee pleading for him to not rock the boat, “How about you don’t ask why I’m going back for my wife and I won’t ask why you aren’t,” you feel the considerable brunt of his determination all the more.

And as much as I am a fan of their work together, my hat is off to Joe Anderson as the scene stealing deputy.  I can’t stress enough how impressive Anderson is here.  His work in THE RUINS proved he has what it takes to sell emotion no matter the material, while his work in THE CRAZIES proves what he can do when a script keeps him walking and talking past the first reel.  He bestows the role of Olyphant’s loyal deputy with a protective edge I can’t quite place my finger on, but suffice it to say, no matter what kind of success this film ends up finding, Anderson possess the rare talent that allows an actor to vanish entirely into a role; a talent that almost always leads to becoming a household name.

But not only does THE CRAZIES have a smart script and an adept cast, it also announces the arrival of a great genre director.  I know Breck Eisner has been on the scene for a while now, but as enjoyable-in-a-fluffy-way SAHARA was, I’ve seen nothing from Eisner that screamed he’d be the right match for this material.  His “FEAR ITSELF” episode didn’t exactly help expectations for THE CRAZIES either, yet here we are with one of those rare, dime a decade remakes that just hums with quiet efficiency.  The plot of THE CRAZIES may be simple in description, but that’s not to say it lacks complexity.  In turn, Eisner was able to balance the delicate character work with the requisite quotients of gore and spectacle one expects from a studio horror movie.  I’ll not get into specifics so as to avoid spoilers, but there are three big sequences here that are guaranteed to get the audience squirming and buzzing in all the right ways.  And that’s not to mention the myriad of smaller gags, thrills, and earned (but not cheap) jump scares that contribute to the consistent aura of doom that hangs throughout.

THE CRAZIES is the kind of horror movie that just sneaks up on people.  Even though I’ve sung its praises quite strongly here, I wager you’ll still be surprised by how uniformly good it is.  Even as you read these words, I bet you’re thinking, “Nah, it can’t be all dead on, can it?”  Well, it can.  I’m honestly having a hard time finding anything all that negative to say about the whole production.  THE CRAZIES is just fantastic; a kind of mini-wonder that doesn’t come along all that often.  Please see this movie, good horror is too rare to neglect at the box office.

This isn’t so much a review as it is a discussion of the film watching process.  You’ve been warned.

SHUTTER ISLAND is maddeningly brilliant and the maddening part isn’t the film’s fault at all.  We as viewers have grown accustomed to a certain breed of film from Hollywood whenever the words “psychological thriller” can be appended to a film’s description.  Anyone who watches even a normal amount of movies and is over the age of, say, 16, should have a sixth sense for plot twists by now and can become bored when a film’s big revelation is as painfully clear as it is slow to arrive.  When a film focuses on a Federal Marshall (Leonardo DiCaprio) sent to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of a patient at a mental institution for the criminally insane and the increasingly (and rapidly) bizarre behavior and hallucinations that surround him, you begin to concoct a certain conclusion in the back of your brain.

As the Marshall’s investigation begins to waver even further under mysterious influence it becomes abundantly clear what direction the film is taking.  Normally this would be fine, but such telegraphing becomes undeniable around the 45 minute mark.  In fact, the film’s end game becomes so clear at this point, that I was ready to mentally check out of the film.  Then Laeta Kalogridis‘ screenplay (adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel) introduces a hypothetical that completely rejuvenates the film.  It hits like a cold shower, jolting the viewer back into the intrigue of the Marshall’s undertaking.  But unfortunately this awakening doesn’t last long and the film falls back in line with its telegraphed agenda.

What’s so maddening about that is that what’s being telegraphed is indeed brilliant.  The last twenty or so minutes of SHUTTER ISLAND aren’t just masterful, they’re downright immaculate.  The fact that you saw the revelation is rendered inconsequential by the tragic beauty of it all.  You’ll want to take the trip back to Shutter Island again.  You’ll want to play detective along with DiCaprio all over again.  You’ll want to be ushered through the haunting corridors of the Ashcliffe insane asylum by Robert Richardson’s hypnotic cinematography and Robbie Robertson’s nerve jangling score (which was not actually written originally for the film, but is an assemblage of classical pieces into a sort of Frankenstein score that takes on a dark beauty all its own).

No matter how triumphant the ending is, however, I can’t forget that I began checking my watch a third of the way through.  And that sucks.  It really does.  Instead of falling head over heels for SHUTTER ISLAND, as I’m quite sure I will with subsequent viewings, I’m always going to have that caveat; that part of me that remembers how annoyed I was that the film was beyond predictable an hour into it.  Not to mention how stung I was that the diversion it takes midway through (which would have made for an equally fascinating and even more disturbing outcome) ended up being a red herring.

And again, it’s not the movie’s fault, it’s just how I’m, unfortunately, wired to watch movies these days.  I lose interest in a film when I begin to think the filmmaker thinks I’m an idiot.  When it comes to SHUTTER ISLAND, though, I am an idiot.  I’m the chump that assumed that Kalogridis script, which is quite genius in retrospect, and Scorsese’s guidance of it were trying to be coy and failing when the truth is the reality is corrupted on so many different levels in the mind’s eye of SHUTTER ISLAND that I refused to accept it; I stayed vigilante (and thus ignorant) in my pursuit to figure it all out.  I, like DiCaprio’s character, lacked the perspective to see how truly organic it all is.

And that’s the problem.  THE WOLFMAN needs to be complicated.  There needs to be torment behind those eyes in order for the audience to fear the full moon as much as Talbot does should.  Yet this iteration has no such concerns.  In fact, it’s not so much a creature feature as it is a zombie film.  Johnston and company lurch mindlessly from one obvious plot point to the next as though the whole film were operating on muscle memory and the vague knowledge that at one point in its life it had a higher purpose.  And low the purpose fell, the sets and makeup remained, so all involved went through the motions to deliver a horror movie that is entertaining in spurts but largely forgettable.

Universal’s resurrection of its classic monster is riddled with obvious holes in which to insert blame, but its troubled production is hardly the excuse here.  Even if original director Mark Romanek had stayed on board, audiences would still have Benecio Del Toro, who is about as energetic as a pamphlet on lycanthropy.  It’s astounding how uninvolved his performance is considering his love for the 1941 WOLF MAN is what got the project up and running in the first place.  He exerts zero charisma throughout his non-wolf sequences, in turn giving the audience zero emotional interest in seeing him overcome the monstrous Gypsy curse.

This version of Lawrence Talbot doesn’t want to be a werewolf, obviously, but Del Toro’s level of inner turmoil is on par with getting into a fender bender when late for a meeting.  We should be feeling for this man, we should fear his actions when he succumbs to the wolf, but considering the whole ordeal is expressed as little more than an inconvenience for Talbot, there’s never any gravity attached to his actions.

It’s all set off by a listless chain of events that sublimate the anguish of Talbot for buckets of blood and bodily dismemberment.  And for those who are only interested in seeing a few sequences that give Platinum Dunes’ productions a run for their money, that’s okay.  I’m sure there are plenty of people that will be willing to forgive hollow performances and rushed editing (no doubt spurred along by studio intervention) in exchange for some genuinely badass moments of arterial spray, but even a cynic like me thinks most genuine horror fans aren’t so superficially pleased.

However, those who expect pesky things like character development and thrills that aren’t predicated by a clashing orchestra or a barking dog — if I ever see THE WOLFMAN again, it’ll be to count just how many jump scares it foolishly employs; I might need a calculator — will come away sated but not satisfied.  It’s not a dreadful experience, mind you.  The production design is a treat, particularly during the asylum sequence, Hugo Weaving as the detective investigating Talbot is a refreshing antidote to the infectious lethargy that is Del Toro, and even the dreaded CGI transformations are adequately convincing.  But once it’s all said and done, once you’ve carried the one on how many loud jolts Johsnton tries to throw at the audience (his ideal candidate must not go to horror movies often) versus how great it is to see practical make-up work from Rick Baker again, THE WOLFMAN about breaks even.

But breaking even just isn’t good enough, now is it?  Part of me wishes it at least committed to one side or the other, that it would either be a complete disaster or an underdog triumph.  But it’s neither.  THE WOLFMAN is just there, lurking in the shadows like its eponymous creature, waiting not to convert, but to occupy your time with a bit of “Have you ever seen Victorian England this gory?” logic.  At least the breathless, blood-lubricated pace means the run time races by.

The French Canadian film had its world premiere last week at the Sundance Film Festival and starting today it will be available via the Sundance Selects program across a number of cable provider’s OnDemand platforms. And while saying 7 Days got under the skin of a hardened horror movie fan sounds like the highest of compliments, I hesitate to consider that grounds for recommendation. Yes, it is difficult to watch. Yes, it is disturbing. Yes, it is made with the utmost craft. Yet I feel it prudent to point out that, while those are qualities we all can agree define a good horror movie, this is absolutely a film not for everyone.

On the surface, it’s the story of a doctor who uses a cabin in the woods to methodically exact revenge on the man the police have accused of raping and murdering his eight-year old daughter. But beyond the torture is a harrowing journey into what happens to otherwise healthy relationships when they’re sundered by the unimaginable. This isn’t a tale of revenge in the Death Sentence tradition. This is an unflinching magnifying glass on what it means to lose everything. It spends as much time lingering on the physical torture as it does the mental; a combination that often times becomes almost unbearable to watch.

Read the rest of my review at HorrorSquad.

The nicest thing I can say about Legion is that it’s conventional.  All of the elements and characters you’d expect from a siege movie are here — a remote location (deserts work best), a stranger with a past, a single mom, a bickering married couple, a wise black guy, a local bohunk who can’t live up to his full potential as long as he stays in this dead-end town, and a dude that shows up out of nowhere and starts barking orders because he’s the only one that knows exactly what’s going on.  You even get the “don’t open that door or we’re all dead” scene several times, which, in all honesty, kind of loses its impact after the first time when they don’t end up “all dead”.

What sets Legion apart is its faithful devotion to spiritual hooey.  The gist is that God is fed up with “all the bullshit” (as explained to us in Adrienne Palicki’s voiceover at the start of the film and repeated verbatim at the end, for those of us who can’t remember things that happened ninety minutes ago).  He sends the archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) down to a greasy-spoon diner to kill the unborn baby of Palicki’s character, Charlie, for no specific reason (Some lip service is paid to Charlie’s baby being the thing that will save mankind, whatever that means.  This movie doesn’t like dealing in specifics).  Michael changes his mind, decides to save the baby, and basically screws things up for the whole world — causing an unstoppable horde of angel-possessed human monsters and rival archangel Gabriel (Kevin Durand, most famous for playing lunkheads) to try and finish the job.

The first angel-possessed person appears as a kindly old granny before spitting out a couple of unexpected f-bombs and scampering up the ceiling like a bug in a lunatic scene that provides about ten seconds worth of consideration that the movie might actually be entertaining.  When that attack is followed by one from an ice cream man, I started to wonder if the film would continue presenting goody-goody archetypes one-after-the-other only to shock you with the revelation that they were indeed monsters in disguise.  I was right.  The next attack featured a pretty little girl with a sundress and a balloon.  The one after that had an adorable toddler with an Eight is Enough Adam Rich bowl cut.

They do break things up a bit by having a demolition derby car crammed with punk rockers get theirs at the end of a machine gun wielded by the Stranger with a Past (Tyrese Gibson), an image that defines Legion’s retarded sensibilities.  The whole movie is that nonsensical,trying to force siege movie cliches to marry something that resembles Constantine, if Constantine was being retold to you by a grade schooler.  Nothing is ever explained in a worthwhile fashion, nothing ever pays off, nothing ever excites.  Director Scott Stewart’s idea of an action scene consists entirely of someone firing a gun in every direction.

His horror scenes are equally incomprehensible.  In one, a character is not just crucified upside-down (what?), but he’s covered in computer-generated throbbing boils that eventually explode, causing another character’s back to be wounded to the point where his spine is completely exposed.  It’s a “huh, cool” gore moment that also makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Legion’s other problem is its chemistry-free cast.  Adrienne Palicki, the least well-known member of the cast, is also about the only one who doesn’t come across as completely awful.  Lucas Black, on the other hand, gives a career-worst performance as that local bohunk I mentioned earlier.  He’s earnest — oh, so very earnest –delivering his every twangy line with a furrowed brow and his very best intense stare.  Charles S. Dutton (as the wise black guy), usually reliable, overshoots his acting, turning drama into melodrama.  Dennis Quaid (playing Black’s dad) gives the kind of performance you’d expect from someone who sees themselves as better than the material.  Bettany is completely out of his element as a B-movie action hero, too stuffy to be having a lick of fun, too self-important to be the slightest bit self-aware.

Ultimately, Legion doesn’t work for the exact same reasons.  It doesn’t seem to be aware that its following in the footsteps of a couple dozen similar (and better) films.  By giving the siege movie a religious spin, it wants to be taken as deadly serious and geek chic cool.  I would never describe Legion as fun (it needed way more scenes like the one with granny; less scenes of Durand and Bettany waxing philosophical on the wants and needs of an angry God), but I would describe it as dumb.  I don’t think that’s what they were going for.

The trailers for THE BOOK OF ELI did nothing for me.  It looked like an over-stylized yet still monotone vision of the future banking on Denzel Washington’s inherently badass attitude and a number of quickly cut together action scenes.  Plus, it’s been 8 years since the Hughes Brothers made a movie, so buzzing the production as the latest film from the Hughes Brothers is meaningless to me.  It is with great relief, then, that I’m happy to report, to my own surprise, I liked THE BOOK OF ELI.  Truth is, I almost even loved it.

Don’t let the marketing fool you.  The Hughes Brothers have delivered a unique meditation on life after the end of times that does its best to be the polar opposite of everything the trailer looked like.  Denzel Washington plays the titular character (Eli, not the book), a man who has dedicated his life to walking west on a mission, a mission I will be touching upon below.  I’m not going to be spoiling anything huge (or non-obvious), but if you know next to nothing about THE BOOK OF ELI and want to keep it that way, I leave you here with a simple verdict: Yes, it’s worth a trip to the theater.

The world has gone to shit.  Gary Whitta’s script doesn’t spell out the particulars of what brought about Armageddon, but the severe lack of population density and decimated landscape looks like every nation in the world with the means to do so pressed the button.  Minuscule pockets of people managed to survive the apocalypse, however, and the story follows our hero, Eli, and his often fatal interactions with other wasteland wanderers on his slow, west-bound trek across total desolation.  He encounters a man named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who runs a small town that has access to trickles of precious H2O.  Carnegie, it is established, is looking for an unnamed book that he calls “a weapon”…

The movie doesn’t tell you right away, but you’d have to be not only blind but completely ignorant not to figure out that the mysterious leather-bound book that Eli spends every night reading and every day protecting like its the water purification chip for Vault 13 or the Garden of Eden Creation Kit is, in fact, the Bible.  But before you assume that Warner Brothers has put out a movie with a message that says only God can save all of mankind, let me dispel that assumption.  THE BOOK OF ELI is not advocating any religion.  It’s not saying the world needs Christianity to function.  Its only commentary is on faith; on how simply believing in something – anything – can motivate the mind beyond the body’s ravaged limitations.  One of the (many) things I like about the Hughes Brothers’ film and Whitta’s script is that it’s still not that simple.

To talk about why it’s not that simple would indeed be revealing things a review shouldn’t, but regardless of which side of the ideological fence the film ultimately teeters on to (and there’s little question where it falls), it’s still an interesting premise that the Hughes Brothers leverage to give the film extra dimensions worth further examination.  But let’s not forget that this site is called Horror’s Not Dead, so I’ll step away from the ideas the film rolls around with and talk about why it should appeal to anyone reading a site called Horror’s Not Dead.

For starters, death rarely looks this striking on the big screen.  I’m not talking about just the people, though they are often dispatched in the most glorious ways by a convincingly hardcore Denzel Washington wielding a long, lethal machete.  The whole package is a magnificent portrait of what happens when everything kicks the bucket.  People, animals, buildings, dreams…all of civilization.  The directing pair do a fantastic job of convincing us everything we know now has been laid waste.  An accomplishment made possible by hiring not just great actors – Washington and Oldman are great, but the supporting cast of Ray Stevenson, Michael Gambon, Tom Waits, and even Mila Kunis are all up to the bar set by the film’s leads – and not just with an outstanding sense of visual style, but by delivering a sound design so strong that even non-audiophiles should pick up on its vivid purpose.

The main thing holding THE BOOK OF ELI back from being an outright excellent film is a waffling final act that’s capped off with a poorly executed ending.  The actual resolution of the story isn’t a problem, but how the ending treats certain characters is just plain poor.  And that’s unfortunate, because everything leading up to it is really something special.  The action choreography is top notch throughout and is even, at times, a thing of dark, blood-spilling beauty.  Acting is everything you expect from the big names and even more from the littler ones.  The cinematography will swallow you up in damn near every shot.  The vigilant sound design heightens every layer of the experience.  And all of this is in service of interesting ideas that will,  flaws and all, render THE BOOK OF ELI a topic worth talking about anytime post-apocalyptic movies are brought up.

I had an interest in the Swamp Thing television show when I was in high school, based on my enjoyment of the 1982 Wes Craven film which used to be a cable mainstay in the early-80’s when I was a kid. My high school friend, Craig, wasn’t really that much into comics, but it was the early-90’s — everyone was buying them. Somehow Craig ended up with a Swamp Thing: Love and Death trade paperback and, probably finding it way too weird, gave it to me. He knew I watched the TV show, and he knew I was open to DC books (A lot of kids, and I’m sure this continues today, were strictly Marvel only. Then, Marvel and Image only.)

My mind was blown. Within these pages were nightmare visions of hell, leering demons, supernatural heroes, funky aliens, and psychedelic vegetable sex. The language was more poetic than anything I’d read in a comic book before; the images more grotesque than my imagination allowed. This comic book scared me.

First of all, and there’s no avoiding it, Steve Bisette’s art is truly unpleasant. There’s a little bit of cartoonish, re-assuring Mike Ploog in the collection, and some Bernie Wrightson too, but most of the book is Bisette’s unnerving line work. Bisette is primal. It took me a little while to appreciate his toothy humans and busy, fractured panels, but the marriage of Bisette’s organic psychedelia and just plain 100% pure horror with Moore’s truly disturbing concepts is one of the greatest pairings of writer and artist in the history of comics. Bisette’s work is sometimes beautiful, but almost always uncomfortable to look at. It’s easy to see how the genius of the man was never intended for mainstream comic work.

The main story in Love and Death is the tale of Swamp Thing’s descent into hell to save the soul of his beloved Abby Arcane, dragged there by her dead uncle (and Swamp Thing arch-nemesis) Anton Arcane. Within that story, Moore gets to play with the spookier heroes of the DCU — Deadman, The Phantom Stranger, and The Demon — as they assist Swamp Thing on his journey to find Abby and restore her soul to her dead body on Earth. Growing up, I was never a fan of the supernatural heroes from either company, but Moore’s approach was unlike anything I’d seen before. Swamp Thing’s journey was spiritual in a way that rang true — fueled by love, through things no man should witness.

The scene where Swamp Thing discovers Anton Arcane’s punishment in hell still gets to me, the old villain’s body stuffed with constantly-hatching insect eggs. Arcane assumes he’s only been in Hell for a couple of hours and screams in agony when he discovers that he’s actually been suffering the torment for several days. One scene like this would be enough to make any comic memorable. Swamp Thing: Love and Death has enough of them to fuel a lifetime of night terrors.

This collection is a must-have. I don’t just mean Swamp Thing Vol. 2 is a must-have; I mean every volume in this collection is a must-have. DC may only be up to Volume 2, but their plan is to collect all of the Moore Swamp Thing work in the hardcover format. If your only exposure to Alan Moore is Watchmen, pick this up. If you truly love horror as an artistic craft — the art of creating something with the intent to engage you emotionally enough to disturb — pick this up. If you can read, pick this up.