The Adams Family goes to 'Hell' 🔥, 'Digging Up the Marrow' @ 10👺, Back to School recs, & more!

In a few weeks, summer comes to an end, and we’ll begin to usher in a new season. While the days become shorter, it’s only a matter of time until we usher in Spooky Season and direct our attention to the highly-celebrated holiday of the year (Halloween, duh!).

As a former schoolteacher (I bet almost all of you didn’t know this!), I welcome this time in mid-August as children begin to go back to school or college, freeing the roads, streets and beaches of their loud rap music, terrible driving, and obnoxious behaviors. While I may sound like an old man yelling at the clouds, I’m really not. I’m only celebrating the eventual calm that results in their departures, that’s all. So, where am I going with all of this?

This week, Bee and I were discussing a number of ideas, and began to discuss why we both love the fall season, which also mentioned how the noise around us has begun to die down due to kids leaving or preparing for school. Right there, we knew we had a great idea for this week’s Letterboxd list. So, to all parents and/or caregivers who are celebrating their children heading off to school, we see and hear you, and that’s why this list is dedicated to you.

Stay safe out there!

Issue 012’s Letterboxd list can be found here

There’s Monsters in Them Woods: Digging Up the Marrow Turns 10

Monsters have always existed in one form or another. Literature essentials like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula brought our most frightening nightmares into contextual, tangible ideas. We could actually see and feel our darkest and wildest dreams. For the very first time, it all felt… real. And there was no turning back. Filmmaking gave our night terrors further agency to step directly into our world.

From such groundbreaking productions like 1896’s Le Manoir du Diable (sometimes referred to as The Haunted Castle or The House of the Devil) to other such early works as 1919’s Eerie Tales and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, horror has always been a staple in visual storytelling. There’s something entrancing about our fears coming to life right before our eyes. Our monsters find new ways to terrorize us all over again – and we just can’t get enough.

In its unique fictional landscape, Adam Green’s Digging Up the Marrow suggests that monsters are real. Green gives our nightmares a fresh vehicle through which to worm into our brains, extracting terrible images from artist and horror fan Alex Pardee’s own work. The monsters burrow in tunnels below. Many of them are social outcasts with physical deformities. Their loved ones and friends abandoned them, leaving them to scavenge and find refuge down in the dank, dark walls of the earth. They often wear masks or burlap sacks to hide away their mutated extremities and can only be witnessed after dusk.

Turning 10 this Friday (August 23), Digging Up the Marrow intersects documentary and found footage, blurring the lines between what is real and what is imaginary. Green, who stars as himself, guides the viewer through the making of a documentary about former private detective William Dekker’s (Ray Wise) artwork and claims he’s found actual monsters. He calls their entrance into the underworld The Marrow, a giant hole found out beyond a local cemetery and nestled snuggly in the woods. When he submits some of his findings (mostly journal scribblings and hand-drawn pictures) through Green’s fan club, Green and his cameraman Will Barrat (also starring as himself) decide to interview the guy and see if there is any validity to his claims.

Dekker is a lonely old man, perhaps a bit psychotic. He once had a son but only makes fleeting references to a “him” he hopes to find in the burrows below. Green and Barrat capture his deranged ramblings about monsters boring the earth in great detail. Dekker shares commissioned artwork depicting the monsters – from Vance (who wears a pumpkin-like bag on his head) to Brella (a monster with a woman’s body that carries around an umbrella to hide her hideous face). The images are expertly crafted; there’s no mistaking the care taken with the visual pieces. But Green and Barrat shrug off the illustrations as nothing more than fantastical representations from one man’s demented imagination.

During night one of the group’s trek into the woods, Dekker claims to spy one of the monsters lumbering through the woods. The Marrow stands a few yards away from their hiding spot, but they’re close enough to keep tabs on anything or anyone moving into and out of the hole. Despite a high-tech camera, Barrat can’t make out what the shadows conceal. Only darkness swallows him whole, giving them more ammunition not to believe Dekker’s assertions.

Further explorations yield nothing substantial… until one night, a bulbous, grey-mattered creature crawls towards them in the leaves and pops into the camera’s eyeline. Green demands Barrat turn on the overhead light, and they capture their first evidence of actual monsters. When Kane Hodder and Green’s video editor parse through the footage, neither believes the footage to be real. It’s all a hoax in their eyes, a trippy fantasy film with great visual and makeup effects.

Digging Up the Marrow burns slowly, methodically dripping wax until there’s nothing left but ghouls and goblins shaking and rattling between the trees. As Green and Barrat delve further into their investigation, the monsters grow restless and more aggressive. The film holds most of the cards until the third act when all hell breaks loose. During a late-night trip to The Marrow entrance, sans Dekker, the pair taunt and aggravate the creatures into emerging from their home. Monsters of all sizes and colors arise – some uncurl in different shapes and others prove to be winged things with a hunger for flesh.

Green tantalizes the viewer. He lures you into the story with the promise of ungodly beasts but keeps you guessing every step of the way. Your eyes dart around the screen, surveying the darkness for any movement, any sign at all that the monsters actually exist. He builds tension by immersing you in midnight blackness. He allows your imagination to run wild, so when the monsters do materialize, you’re blown back. Nothing can prepare you for the jump scares Green has in store.

Digging Up the Marrow deserves more credit in the mockumentary/found footage spaces. It tickles the senses in much the same way many of the genre classics do. Comfortably sitting somewhere between The Tunnel and Deadstream, the 2014 film makes you tremble down to your toes. It stirs both fear and humor into an intoxicating elixir – one that you’re more than happy to gulp down your throat.

10 years later, Digging Up the Marrow remains one of Green’s most terrifying outings. Whether you’ve watched it dozens of times or you’re just now discovering it, it is guaranteed to give you a few sleepless nights. From its mix of reality and fiction – appearances from Tom Holland and Mick Garris certainly help with that – to an unwavering commitment to the creature designs, Marrow slides and slithers under the skin.

As a society, we’ve done a clear disservice to the picture over the years, but that’s what reassessments are for. Now’s the time to give it its due.

Some authors just hit right every time, and Chuck Palahniuk is one of those for me. When I was 15, my parents gifted me every book he’d ever written after becoming completely infatuated by his novel Haunted.

Yes, the segment ‘Guts’ from Haunted is disgusting and will put you off carrots, Palahniuk’s disturbing mind really climaxes in Snuff. A melancholic story about a woman so desperate for infamy that she decides to fuck the most men in one day. As the title suggests, the outcome doesn’t look so hot but what does death matter when you can claim you’ve had the most cocks cum inside you within a 12 hour period. 

It’s raw, it’s brash and it isn’t for the prudish. This is a book that will make you laugh, gag (not the type you’re thinking), and question the morality of the sex industry.

You know summer's coming to an end when stores are selling school supplies at big discounts, or you're seeing U-Hauls and/or packed SUVs filled to the brim with clothing, furniture, and other items.

For us, it's a time to celebrate horror films that show another side to the college/school experience, where students are trying to not only survive their lectures, but with their lives (and limbs intact).

Check out the list on Letterboxd.

The long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot is skipping theaters and heading straight to MAX in October.

Samara Weaving stars in the post-Rapture film Azrael, written by Simon Barrett (The Guest, You’re Next). The film premieres in theaters on September 27th.

Strange Darling, starring Kyle Gallner, hits theaters this Friday, August 23rd. Read Bee’s glowing review of the film here.

The 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days Challenge is back! The event runs from August 1st through October 31st, allowing participants to watch (at least) 100 horror films during this time (and all must be a first-time watch!). Read the guidelines here.

Silver Scream Con, the horror convention that brought 5,000 blood-thirsty movie fans to Boston's North Shore in each of its first two iterations, brings the Three-quel everyone's been dying for to Worcester’s DCU Center on September 13-15, 2024. Tickets and information are available now at silverscreamcon.com.