Watch Instantly Day 3

Once again it's laundry day! You know what that means - time for the Roku.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley showed up in NetFlix Watch Instantly recently so of course I had to watch it. I never would have bothered getting a DVD of it to watch, but since it was so easy...well how could I not? Molly's mom goes a bit nuts and tries to kill her to save her before her 18th birthday. Why? Well it seems someone made a deal with the devil, so to speak. This was a fun little movie - not much substance but nothing terrible here.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans also showed up. I went into this one with very low expectations and was very surprised to find a decent, romantic, gothy, slaves vs masters, vampires vs lycans story. It too was short to have a whole lot of fluff and it was interesting to see the backstory of why the vampires and werewolves hate each other so much. I would too, man. I would too. Hello, Michael Sheen & his buff self. Also very nice to look at. Towards the end - totally riveted to the action sword play. Yay for gothy music. Now I feel compelled to watch the others. I know. I am sad.

Black Hole by Charles Burns

I picked up Black Hole by Charles Burns awhile ago because the cover looked interesting and it showed up as an item in my QPB catalog. I thought Steve would enjoy reading it but never really expected to ick it up myself. Then I read an article on MTV's Splash Page that listed it as one of the contributor's favorite horror comics. Well, that put it in a different light altogether. Of course I had to pick it up then.

In Black Hole, the teens in town either have "the bug" or not. "The bug" is an STD that passes from one to the other, causing some mutation or another. Some mutations aren't so bad, maybe an extra small mouth or your skin sheds. Some are really bad - disfiguring the face so much you can't recognize what the person looked like before. Regardless, once you have it, you have it forever.

The stories are sad and lonely, the art is stark black & white with severe shading that only enhances the feeling of separateness felt by the teens. It's horrific- the mutations, the alienation, the rage these kids feel, but I wouldn't consider it horror, at least not in the sense as I define it. It was however terribly good. I highly recommend it.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a haunting, sad, eerie story told with beautiful art