The A to Z Challenge's Here. A...

I can't believe how fast the years is going, already April!! And what a month it will be. My first A to Z Challenge ever. So, my plan is simple, I write mostly horror and I love the genre so I'll share with you a movie and a book based on the letter of the day. Now, I'll try to stay away from the classic movies and books that show up on every list. The idea is to help those of you interested in the genre to find a few new pieces you might haven't come across before. Please, do share your own favorites as I'm always looking for things to read and watch.


Here. We. Go. (drum roll, please)...

LETTER A

Movie.


The Abandoned (2006)
Director: Nacho Cerda
Country: Spain/UK/Bulgaria



Blurb: An American woman searching for her birth parents learns she has inherited a house in the middle of a forest in a remote area of Russia. It is the house where she was born. Abandoned and uninhabited for 40 years, it stands in total disrepair and neglect. What she finds is more than an old house. She meets a mysterious man who claims to be her brother, a twin she never knew. Together they find the house holds secrets to a past they don't remember. Soon they are haunted by ghastly apparitions as they're forced to confront a tragic family secret and a destiny they cannot escape.


Review: This movie is beautifully filmed, the photograph is amazing and eerie in such a way that I couldn't turn my head away from the TV even though I was thoroughly confused through most of the movie. The story is not linear, hence very confusing when watching it for the first time, however, mystery surrounds everything, the ghosts are so disturbing and incredibly scary, and then there's the pay off of a very intelligent ending. I promise you will be flabbergasted with the final twist. On second view, the story is clearly a lot more logic, though there are a few gaps that I couldn't really explain. But who cares, right? This is a movie completely off the traditional path, haunting, super creepy, intelligent, and well done. Definitively a must see for all horror lovers.


Book.


American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
Published: 1991 by Vintage Books.

Blurb: Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.


Review: Though I haven't read this book, it has been highly recommended to me by several well trusted friends and connoisseurs of the genre. This book is, by all means, a modern classic that scares us because we have actually seen this kind of violence-for-no-reason type of people really exist. They are well adapted and can very well live in that pretty blue house next to yours. You'd never know it until he's killed you or the police knocks on your door to ask for what you might have seen over the past decade. What can be scarier than that?


Well, there you go. I hope you liked this recommendations, can't wait to read your thoughts. And remember to keep hopping!