Review:
This is a collection of ten short horror comics. As I usually do with anthologies, I'll tackle each story separately.
"Little Kingdom"
There's a little island some people moved to in order to start a sort of commune, except that when they had children, something was wrong with them. The kids are gray and strange and never develop speech. The POV character makes a documentary about it, and it's an instant hit. Unable to make anything that popular again, the documentary filmmaker decides to do a sequel. Unfortunately, the situation has changed since the first documentary was made, and things rapidly go wrong.
I had forgotten how disturbing Ellis's horror could occasionally be. It probably helps that creepy children make my skin crawl. This story has them in spades.
"Hello Charlie"
Charlie is alone in his hotel room. He realizes he has his playlist on party mode when some stranger starts adding songs to it. The two of them chat via song titles. Things get a bit flirty, and then a lot creepy.
Spooky stalker vibes, set to max.
"Apple Head"
Three girls have a sleepover. One of them has purchased some fresh fruit for the night, which is forbidden. This confuses one girl in the group, who's new in town, so she's told the story of Apple Head, a serial killer with an odd origin story.
This was simultaneously creepy and absolutely ridiculous. One of the characters even says so. It's like Ellis was daring himself to make the dumbest premise he could think of as spooky as possible.
"Old Machines"
A guy's dead sister communicates with him via a Twitter bot.
This was reasonably spooky, but it didn't quite feel finished. Maybe it stopped too soon? Or not soon enough? Not sure, but this was the first story in the collection to leave me feeling a bit disappointed.
"Sleepwalker"
Two brothers are staying in different rooms at a hostel. The eldest of the two is drunk when he gets back that evening, and has a history of sleepwalking. The younger one wakes up that night to thumping on his door, sees his brother through the peephole, and opts not to open the door. In the morning, he finds out more about what happened.
So, while this was indeed creepy, my suspension of disbelief was broken by the thought that the hostel staff would never have shown the younger brother that footage.
"Rumble Queen"
A couple goes to an art park for their third date and read a pamphlet about the artist and her rich husband, who funded the park but died before it was completed.
Well, this one was kind of insane. And a bit much.
"Don't Look"
This one's about a guy who's haunted by a clown he sees in every mirror around him.
The ending was gruesome and really effective.
"Sunken Express"
There's an urban legend that there's train that will take you to any place and time, no return trip, in exchange for an important sacrifice on your part. A guy does it and finds something unexpected: another passenger, sharing his ride with him.
This one left me with a lot of questions. I think I understood what Ellis was going for, but it was still more confusing than I would have preferred.
"Gospel of the Dead Moon"
All I'll say about this one is that it reminded me of a less insane version of Junji Ito's Remina. In this case, it's all eerie visuals, not much story.
"ReBrand"
A mysterious digital billboard prompts the main character of this story to check out a vlogger with, at first, only one video - surprising, since who'd go to the effort to pay for advertisement when they have so little content to share?
This one was fun, although I couldn't help but wonder how many people would actually be caught by this. Am I the only one who still manually types stuff out?
All in all, I really enjoyed this collection.
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