#i decided to do a list of my favorite tropes on horror for october month

[ojerasgigantes]

Favourite horror tropes 2/? - Family will break you down

[callunavulgari]

Year-In-Fic | 2019

How many fics did you write this year? What was your total wordcount?

This year I wrote 41 fics (technically 40 as the last was published today, but I wrote it in December so I’m counting it), for a total of 96,689 words. For even more interesting numbers, of that 96k, a little over 70k of them were written in the month of October alone, so I’m pretty proud of that.

Fic Roundup!

children of dust and ash | Bartimaeus |  Bartimaeus/Kitty(/Nathaniel) | 1,801 words |  Kitty summons Bartimaeus on a chilly fall day in her thirty-eighth year.

sweet music playing in the dark | DBH | 1,102 words | “I noticed some time ago that you seem to have an appreciation for jazz.”

Radio Ga Ga | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 1,143 words | There’s always another party in Hawkins, Indiana. It would be almost boring if it weren’t for Steve Harrington.

Sunlight | Marvel | Loki/Thor | 765 words | They aren’t quite out of the solar system when Loki appears at the arm of Thor’s chair, hair shorn short and a furious snarl on his face.

like the bough of a willow tree | Detroit Become Human | Hank/Connor | 1,214 words | There’s a human lost in his woods.

knocking on heaven’s door | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 1,748 words | “Just, get in the fucking car. I’ll drive you home.” Billy looked at him, very seriously, and said, “What if I don’t want to go home?”

no more dreaming like a ghost | KH | Axel/Roxas | 813 words | He is in the kitchen, the stove top still warm under his thighs, and everything smells of cherries. The pie is cooling on the windowsill, the sun slanting in warm and buttery, and it is like a dream. A memory. A wish.

Cheers | DBH | Hankcon | 6,368 words | “Are you coming in or not?”Connor blinks, jerks his eyes up and away from those hands and-The bartender has blue eyes. They match the spinning LED at his temple perfectly.

bury a friend (try to wake up) | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 1,587 words | Steve digs up Billy’s body on a Tuesday.

won’t be too soon ‘til I say… goodnight moon | KH | Riku/Sora | 4,549 words |  The house was built in the fall of 1882.

you’ll never know what hit you | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 5,379 words | “C’mon, ghost,” Shane urges. “Make all my dreams come true. Fuck me up, fam.”

make this chaos count | EOS 10 | Ryan/Akmazian | 724 words | “You really should stop looking for me,” Akmazian tells him, fingers creeping across Ryan’s ribcage, mapping the architecture of his ribs.

eat you up whole | The Witcher | Geralt/Regis | 2,527 words | “How many mouthfuls do you think I could take from you before it had some effect?” Regis whispers, lips against his throat. Geralt can feel the pinprick of fangs. “Four? Six? Ten? More, even?”

forget the horror here | DBH | Hankcon | 4,390 words | “Hello,” the android says, it’s chest heaving, the gleam of its heart brighter, bluer than before.

summoning demons (and other bad first date ideas) | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 3,868 words | “If I let you out of that circle,” Ryan says, slowly. “Are you going to eat me?”

Itch | The Magnus Archives | Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims | 1,440 words | The boneturner takes from him two ribs - one for him and one for Jon.

the salt water sting | Dishonored | Corvo/Outsider | 2,163 words |  The ship wrecks several hundred miles off of the coast of Karnaca.

a skeleton of something more | SGA | Rodney/John | 3,072 words | “John?” he murmurs, still coasting on the pain. His head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton, if cotton were also made of glass.

in the woods somewhere | Teen Wolf | Derek/Stiles | 4,570 words | Stiles buys a house in Virginia.

Wake Up | The Magnus Archives | Martin/Jon | 550 words | “If you wake up,” Martin tells him, experimentally. “I won’t go through with it. You can tell me what a stupid idea it was, and we can laugh about it, and everything will be normal.”

Pas de Deux | KH | Axel/Roxas | 506 words | Roxas doesn’t remember what the sky looks like anymore.

try to wake up | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 1,226 words | They do not, in fact, bone down and praise Satan.

too late to come on home | LoZ | Gen | 1,391 words | “You look familiar,” the boy says in his strange, haunting voice. “Are you lost?”

patron saint of the lost causes | Harry Potter | Draco/Harry | 4,203 words | “Can’t you just, y’know,” he waves a hand and makes an obscene gesture, his cheeks flaring red. “Shag it out?”

wouldn’t you like to see something strange? | Teen Wolf | Sterek | 1,571 words | “I’d say you make my heart pound, but well…” Stiles nods meaningfully to his chest, where if you look hard enough between the slots of his ribs, you can see the lump of muscle that once was his heart, pointedly not beating. “You know.”

the night is softly, sweetly calling | Teen Wolf | Sterek | 2,938 words | Here’s the thing that Stiles never tells the Hales: his mother was strange too.

Haunt | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 1,486 words |  Ryan couldn’t remember a time when the world didn’t believe in ghosts.

bite my tongue, bide my time | PJO | Nico/Percy(/Annabeth) | 1,376 words | “What’s wrong with you?” Nico asks, cowering when Percy places a gentle kiss on his collarbone.

Bird Song | Raven Cycle | Ronan/Adam, Gen | 1,445 words | On a dreary Sunday in early January, Ronan dreams himself a pair of wings.

kiss me hard until you’re done | Star Wars | Reylo | 3,082 words | He looks up at her from under heavy lids, dark hair sweeping forward to frame his face. “May I have this dance?”

beauty in the dissonance | Marvel | Tony/Loki | 1,411 words |  When Tony dies, it isn’t for forever.

like real people do | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 2,808 words |  “I’ve got the sight, man,” he says with a small shrug. “And look, I feel for you. You’re dead and I’m not, and that sucks, but unless you’re planning on doing something about it, I’d really appreciate it if you could stop feeling me up and let me get back to sleep.���

i’d rather drown in your ocean | Naruto | Itachi/Shisui | 1,630 words |  The Uchihas are an odd sort. Everyone says so.

catch your breath | The Bright Sessions | Mark/Damien/Sam | 2,588 words | Mark had never assumed in a million years that he would ever see Damien again. He hadn’t factored in zombies.

Nightmare | The Magnus Archives | Martin/Jonathan | 1,424 words | “All right,” he says, taking Jon’s still outstretched hand. “Let’s give the dream what it wants.”

dreaming of the crash | Gravity Falls | Mabel & Dipper | 484 words | When the end of the world comes, they’re under the bed.

don’t we love it now? | Kingdom Hearts | Sora/Riku/Kairi | 1,784 words |  When Kairi is eleven years old, she gets lost in the woods.

all this, and love too, will ruin us | Star Wars | Reylo | 1,102 words |  Rey is awake to watch the sunrise

open the walls, play with your dolls | Coraline | Coraline/Wybie | 2,886 words | Halloween at the Pink Palace is a lot like any other time of year.

in every golden trace | Queen’s Thief | Costis/Eugenides/Irene | 4,645 words |  For as long as Costis can remember, he’s had two names scored across the skin atop his ribs, one on either side of his rib cage, nearly perfect mirrors to one another.

a different kind of danger in the daylight | Shades of Magic | Lila/Kell/Holland | 6,930 words | Sleeping with Holland was never part of the plan. 

Best story I wrote this year: Probably the night is softly, sweetly calling. I wrote this for the 18th of October, and it’s the much awaited third part of a Teen Wolf/Addams Family fusion that I wrote back in 2014. A lot of people have asked me to continue this series over the years, but I never did because I felt my writing style had changed too much and then I fell out of the Teen Wolf fandom completely. But I’d written another Teen Wolf fic a few days before (more on this later) and I was just... very nostalgic all of a sudden. My style of writing had changed, but to offset the change of tone, I wrote the story from Stiles’s POV instead of Derek’s and it made all the difference. I was pretty pleased with the result, and hope that it made everyone happy.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. patron saint of the lost causes. There were a couple fics that I think I did a really good job writing this year, the one listed above and below included, but I think that this one was my favorite. Writing Drarry was a surreal experience, because even when I was in the Harry Potter fandom I didn’t really write for it (well, I didn’t publish what I’d written for it) and I was surprised by how easily it came to me. I tried to channel a lot of the feeling of men who had mothers when I was writing this one, because it seemed very right. 

Okay, NOW your most popular story. All right, so technically my stats are all messed up this year because when I posted the third part of the Addams/Teen Wolf fusion, I also posted a chapter to Que Sera, Sera since so many people were subscribed to that story. So. From a purely stats standpoint, Que Sera, Sera was the most popular because it has a total of 25,790 hits, 2973 kudos, and 115 comments. BUT, I did not actually write anything new for that one so-

in the woods somewhere was the first fic I’d written for Teen Wolf since I wrote  take me to church in August of 2017. It has over 900 kudos and some 5000+ hits. When I decided to do Dark Month this year, I knew that I wanted to revisit some of my old fandoms, so Teen Wolf was always going to be a given. I wrote take me to church as a cathartic goodbye to the show, the fandom, and of course, Stiles and Derek. It was my soft epilogue for the boys.

in the woods somewhere has a very similar feel to it. It’s post-canon, obviously, and features Stiles buying a house in Virginia and Derek slowly working his way back into his life. It is also very much in the ‘soft epilogue’ genre, leaning heavily into the magical Stiles Stilinski trope while maintaining the FBI agent direction canon was leading us in. Also it has a lot of comfort things for me - judicious descriptions of food, a packed witchy cabin in the woods, and warm shower kisses. Story of mine most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Possibly either won't be too soon 'til I say... goodnight moon or all this, and love too, will ruin us. The first of these two fics is almost 5k of spooky season Riku/Sora that was strongly inspired by Uzumaki-sama’s old fic Goodnight Moon. It was the second day of October and my prompts for the day were moon cycles, nightmare, cage, lookalike, mirrors, and glowing eyes, which was just asking for fic exploring doppelgangers and old haunted houses. I loved writing it, and maybe I should have expected it since Kingdom Hearts is such a quiet fandom nowadays, but it honestly stung that it didn’t get more attention.

The second of those fics was a Reylo fic (yes, yes, I know, it’s an awful ship, etc. etc.) that was very much written to be slow and melancholy and kind of surreal. Sometimes my smallest fics are my favorite, and I really liked this one. But alas, some things were not meant to be.

Most fun story to write: I had a whole lot of fun writing summoning demons (and other bad first date ideas). A lot of the fics I wrote this year, particularly during October, were really fun and easy to write. I missed writing every day. This one in particular though was about 4k of Ryan accidentally summoning Shane (the demon) while Shane was standing right next to him in his human suit. It let me play with a lot of body horror tropes that I don’t explore usually, and Buzzfeed Unsolved is a very fun, fresh fandom to dig around in. This is the second of the three (I think it was three, at least) fics that I wrote for the fandom during October and I had so much fun with it.

Story that could have been better? I don’t know about better, but Sunlight and Bird Song were both supposed to be significantly longer. I wrote Sunlight shortly after watching Endgame, and it was always going to be me working my way through my issues with that movie (Loki not really coming back, weird wonky time travel, Thor leaving his people after his whole arc was him learning how to be a good king) but I got distracted and had to go somewhere that day and just never got back to it.

Bird Song is actually a fic I’ve been meaning to write for years. Ages ago (and we are truly talking ages ago, like September 2015 ages ago), @kaikamahine gave me a prompt for E, 17, and hymnal, which basically balanced out to Ronan, churches, and wings. So day 20 of October was going to be Raven Cycle (with such prompts as stacked deck, darkness, wings, and fight fire with fire, it was begging for it) and I was finally going to write Ronan wingfic. It was going to be great. There was going to be Calla and Ronan interaction and found family themes and there was going to be a church, because obviously, but then I wasn’t doing so well and ran out of time, SO. Definitely could have been better.

Story I wrote to fix things: beauty in the dissonance, the 24th fic of October, was a Tony/Loki flavored story where both Tony and Loki are, in fact, alive. Sunlight was written as a direct response to Endgame, even if it was never finished properly. make this chaos count was the 4th day of October, and written because I’m still not fucking over Ryan and Akmazian. And then knocking on heaven’s door was written just after viewing s3 of Stranger Things. It was uh, less of a fix it fic and more a wallow in your grief fic, but it still applies.

Oh, and a different kind of danger in the daylight was technically fix it fic? I’m generally okay with how Shades of Magic ended, despite my favorite character dying because it came off as a good death. However, the recipient of my Yuletide gift wanted no character death and I wanted to write something post-canon, so presto, fix it fic.

Longest completed fic this year: a different kind of danger in the daylight, followed by Cheers. Both are hovering between 6 and 7k, which isn’t technically long, but since about 90% of my fic this year was written over the course of a day each... I’ll take it.

Fandom you enjoyed writing for most this year: I had a lot of fun with Buzzfeed Unsolved and The Magnus Archives, but I also had fun dipping briefly back into Harry Potter and Teen Wolf.

Favorite character you wrote this year: I had way, way too much fun writing Geralt and Regis in eat you up whole. I have literally no idea if it translated into good fic, but it was fun and just shy of porny and I just really like Geralt. I also had a lot of fun writing Lila in the Shades of Magic fic.

Most memorable comment(s) this year: I got two comments from @kaikamahine about a week ago that honestly made my day. @faorism reread one of my older Stranger Things fics and left a comment, which made me reread it, which was just very good. Every single comment I got on the new Teen Wolf fics with some variation of ‘missed you’ or ‘so glad you’re back’ made me fucking melt. The two different comments where the reader wasn’t even familiar with the material, just read and enjoyed because I wrote it. The comment on one of my Stranger Things fics that just reads, “What the FUCK this SLAPPED.” The comment directly above that one that is from one of my favorite writers in the fandom. The several comments on the single PJO fic I wrote this year which were different variations of “oh my gosh it’s you” and “it’s been so long.”

And of course everyone losing their collective shit over some of the grosser October fics. Namely Itch.

Fics you wanted to write but didn’t: For the most part, the fics I wanted to write but didn’t are the same as last year- Sabriel AU, Enjolras/Grantaire fic, found family Dishonored fic, bodyswappying Reylo, Sterek Bioshock and Carmilla AUs which I am likely to post as is sometime next year. 

I still want to finish the Castlevania OT3 fic, the giant canon-divergent Bright Sessions AU where years after the series ends, Mark ends up running into Damien again in a small town in the middle of nowhere only to realize that he has a daughter, a farm, a life, and is just so drawn to it that he keeps coming back. I have the Wolf 359 post-canon fic where everyone has feelings and found family is a general theme and maybe Eiffel smooches an AI. I also have the smuttier Wolf 359 fic that’s been lurking in the back of my head for months where Eiffel and Kepler er, basically eiffel tower Jacobi.

Oh, and I have the Reylo fic where Rey (and Ben, through the bond) sit through General Organa’s funeral and keep coming back to each other afterwards. And that Final Fantasy 15 fic where Dino and Noctis do the nasty. And the Hera & Jacobi fic from October. And uh, the post episode 9 fic that’s been lurking about in my brain.

Oddest story: Probably i’d rather drown in your ocean? It was pretty spot on aesthetically for me, but it was weird to write Itachi and Shisui again, especially in a strange modern day vampire context? Also Itch and Nightmare were both Magnus Archive fics that were super gross (Itch) and just plain spooky and bizarre (Nightmare) but they were so fun to write. Hardest story to do: Cheers gave me some trouble initially but got a lot easier as I went on. I hit writer’s block pretty bad with the Shades of Magic fic too, but that seems to be what happens when I come up on deadlines. Easiest story to write? Most of October’s fics were a blast to write and super easy besides. Basically all of the Kingdom Hearts, Stranger Things, and Teen Wolf fic. And the Buzzfeed Unsolved.

Most mining of your own history in one story: Probably either  open the walls, play with your dolls or no more dreaming like a ghost. Not in any way that really matters, but there are a couple familiar details.

Themes, or absence thereof: Mostly either spooky scary things or fix it fics. Sometimes both.

Where did you publish/archive your stories? Ao3, as per usual. Story I haven’t yet written, but intend to: The only thing that I currently have planned is the post episode 9 fic and a couple things that I’ve had planned for a while that may or may not come out.

Sexiest moment (excerpt): “How many mouthfuls do you think I could take from you before it had some effect?” Regis whispers, lips against his throat. Geralt can feel the pinprick of fangs. “Four? Six? Ten? More, even?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Geralt murmurs, and Regis laughs.

“I would,” he agrees.

“So, why don’t you find out instead of boring me with all the details?”

Regis pulls away from his throat, far enough that Geralt can meet his eyes again. He swallows at what he finds there. Amusement, yes, but also hunger, brighter than the moonlight reflecting in his eyes.

“A taste, first, I think,” Regis says in a low, cool voice, and then closes the space between them.

Geralt had forgotten the blood on his lip, but he remembers it when Regis catches him in an open-mouthed kiss. It’s wet and bruising, and Geralt is responding before he remembers he shouldn’t, fighting back the only way he knows how with the rest of him indisposed. He claws at him, bites at him, and the vampire laughs when Geralt catches his plump lower lip between his teeth and bites down. Regis gives his mouth one last darting swipe of the tongue before he is pulling away.

There’s a flare of color high on Regis’s cheeks and his ears are distinctly more pointed than they were five minutes ago, the sclera of his eyes gone red.

“Can’t say I’ve ever been bitten by a human before,” Regis tells him, leaning close like he’s divulging a secret. “It’s a rather exhilarating experience.”

“I’m all for a repeat experience,” Geralt quips, eyes narrowed. “Lean in just a little and we can see if I can manage to tear off your lips before you rip out my throat.”

.

“Please,” she whispers, and feels herself quiver like a taut bowstring when he touches her mouth gently, with the very tips of his fingers.

He smiles and leads her away, through the demons and goblins and fae that she came here to kill.

They make it as far as the parking lot before he is hitching her up the side of a gleaming Mercedes, hooking her legs around his shoulders, and hiking her skirts up over her thighs so he can duck his head beneath them. His fingers linger for a moment on the silver of the knives strapped securely to her thigh, and then he is reaching in, guiding her underwear to the side and getting his mouth on her, right where she wants it.

She must make some kind of noise, because he chuckles, tongue circling her clit in a slow, languid way that makes her think that he is savoring her, that he likes the taste of her on his tongue.And he must, because she knows what he is. Knows that just as he’s savoring the taste of her, he is eating her, feeding off of her want like the things that she hunts in the dark feed off of blood and marrow and souls. She knows, but it isn’t enough to stop her from tilting her head back, gasping for him, the distant wink of streetlights and stars so far away.

He makes her come with his mouth on her, with his fingers inside her, and even as she’s shaking around him, she knows that it isn’t enough. She wants more, wants to feel the heavy press of him inside around, wants to kiss his lips and taste herself on his tongue.

“Please,” she says, her thighs shaking, and he laughs, pulling away and easing her down, until her legs are looped around his waist instead of her shoulders. He reaches between them, and she knows what’s happening beneath her skirts, knows that he’s getting his cock out of his pants and pressing it against her, can feel it as he sinks slowly into her, the tight fit of it so sweet, so perfect that it makes her ache.

“You’re lovely,” he whispers, kissing her shoulders and fucking into her slow, a teasing stretch that makes her mouth water, makes her twitch.

.

“Is this what you wanted?” Hank jeers, one finger circling the rim of Connor’s hole. There’s a flush of angry blue across his cheeks. His hair is coming loose from its usually immaculate tail, curling against his forehead. His eyes are blue. His LED is not. “To lay back and take it? From a fucking machine?”

Connor whines, back arching as Hank dips the tip of his thumb inside, just enough to hold him open.

“That is it, isn’t it?” Hanks says softly. There’s a touch of triumph to his gaze as he fucks Connor open on his thumb. Something mean, too. Disdain, slowly unfurling in the curve of his lips. He shakes his head. “All this time, coming to this bar. Talking to me like you thought I was some kind of human, and you just wanted something like me to hold you up and take you apart.”

“No,” Connor gasps, but can’t help the twist of his hips when Hank adds another finger.

“No?” Hank says with a laugh. “Look at you.”

Connor’s cock jerks against his belly as Hank drags his pants the rest of the way down his thighs. They make it as far as his knees before they tangle, stuck on his shoes. His cheeks feel hot, and he- god, he wants to protest. Wants to say that Hank’s got it all wrong, that this is more. That he’s more.

But then Hank is flipping him over, until the arm of the couch is digging firmly into his belly, his ass high in the air. Hank pulls his fingers out, then leans over and spits, the cool slippery slide of the saliva trailing down the curve of his ass.

“All right, Connor,” he says. “This what you want? I’ll give it to you.”

No, Connor should say. It isn’t like that.

Instead, he says, “Please.”

Crackiest moment (excerpt):

“Did you just sneak into my house?” Stiles breathes, absurdly charmed.

Derek’s in his human disguise, everything dangerous about him hidden away from view, lurking just under the surface. He gives Stiles a look, and says, “Don’t be weird about it.”

He shuts the door behind him.

“I’ve got a nice monster knocking on my door just before the witching hour,” Stiles tells him playfully, making room for Derek to take a seat next to him. “How am I not supposed to be weird about that?”

Derek does something akin to rolling his eyes, the flames doing a little shimmy around the circumference of his eye sockets. He leans back against Stiles’s headboard, seemingly unconcerned that their sides are pressed together. Derek’s skin is very warm, human warm, and Stiles is all bones. He sucks up the warmth greedily.

“I’d say you make my heart pound, but well…” Stiles nods meaningfully to his chest, where if you look hard enough between the slots of his ribs, you can see the lump of muscle that once was his heart, pointedly not beating. “You know.”

.

“What’s the local legend about this thing?” Shane asks, hopping up onto the throne easily and spreading out, eyes on the night sky. He looks good. He always looks good, but Ryan likes him best like this, out here with the moonlight shining down on them and the camera catching all his best angles.

As Ryan watches, he blinks, and turns to look at Ryan, puzzled. “Ryan?”

Ryan clears his throat. “The locals say that if you make a wish while sitting on her throne, the witch will grant it.”

Shane gives him a wicked smile and hums a few bars of Genie in a Bottle. Ryan chokes out a laugh, crossing the space between them until he’s leaning up against the side of the throne himself.

Shane closes his eyes. “I wish, I wish with all my might, please dear god, let there be ghosts here this night.”

Ryan holds his breath.

“C’mon, ghost,” Shane urges. “Make all my dreams come true. Fuck me up, fam.”

All around them, the world is still.

Shane cracks an eye open and squints at him. “Did it work?”

.

“Jon?” someone asks, and Jon blinks.

Martin is standing before him. He’s wearing something out of another time, a costume of silken breeches with a well-cut waistcoat of a rich, opalescent blue. There’s a puffy cravat hugging his neck, and polished buckled shoes on his feet. Jon almost expects him to be wearing a wig, but his hair is the one thing that’s been left untouched, hanging loose around his chin.

“Martin?” Jon asks.

Martin seems to take him in, his eyes running slowly down Jon’s body, lingering at his wrists, his waist, his thighs. It’s a bold sort of move, one that Martin would never be half so blatant about if he were awake.

“You, er. Look nice,” Martin says, and Jon glances down at himself.

He’s sure that moments ago he’d been wearing the same thing he’d worn to the office, shabby coat, mostly clean shirt, a pair of nondescript trousers that didn’t have any stains. But now, he finds himself in a dress. The gown is long and brilliantly red, the skirts heavy around his thighs. There are embroidered patterns reminiscent of roses along the bodice and down the front of his petticoat.

“Well, shit,” he mutters, still staring. Experimentally, he moves his hips, and finds that the skirts swish obligingly with the movement.

“Yes, well,” Martin murmurs, cheeks flushing horribly. “You always did look rather good in red.”

“In red-” Jon repeats in horror. “Martin, I’m in a gown.”

Favorite dialogue (excerpt):

“Are you ever going to stop looking for me?” Akmazian asks him one night.

Ryan is tired. Akmazian is a shadowed figure in the dark that he tries not to look at too closely, because if he does, Akmazian will be gone.

“Maybe,” Ryan tells him, and turns over onto his side. Away from the shadow, the ghost.

The bed dips under the weight of a person who isn’t really there, and Ryan can feel Akmazian’s breath on the back of his neck, warm and damp.

“Don’t touch me,” Ryan says, and means, I don't want this to end yet.

“Wasn’t plannin’ on it, darlin',” Akmazian murmurs back, then drags his lips over the back of his neck anyway, just to be contrary. Ryan swallows, his throat dry, tongue thick in his mouth. He clenches his fingers in the sheets, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that his vision stains red behind his eyelids.

“Please,” Ryan says.

“You really should stop looking for me,” Akmazian tells him, fingers creeping across Ryan’s ribcage, mapping the architecture of his ribs.

“I know.”

“You’re never going to find me.”

Ryan laughs. “Never say never.”

There is silence behind him and then, “Ryan. Please. You’re hurting yourself.”

Ryan trembles a little when a hand lands on his hip, just this side of too solid.

“Don’t care.”

“You’re hurting the stars.”

Ryan is silent for a moment. Then, “I just miss you.”

A sigh.

“I know,” Akmazian murmurs, and leans over to place a kiss on Ryan’s forehead. “I miss you too.”

Ryan opens his eyes, turns to look, and like always, Akmazian is gone.

.

“Look,” Potter says, audibly slurring. “I’ve had an idea.”

Draco crosses his arms. “And what, pray tell, is this idea of yours, Potter?”

Potter leans forward, using a hand to prop himself up, until he’s well into Draco’s personal space. He smells like beer and whiskey, and his cheeks and jaw are more beard than stubble.

“Break your curse with me,” he breathes, a hand settling atop Draco’s blanket-clad knee.

Draco swallows. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“No, look,” Potter says, leaning in even closer, eyes a bit wild. “We can just… you know.”

“No, Potter,” Draco tells him. “I don’t know.”

But he does. He really does.

“You know,” Potter says again. “Shag it out.”

“I think that you’re confusing things again,” Draco says tiredly. He sets the book on the nightstand next to him. “Remember the terms of the curse? Love, Potter. Not sex.”

Potter’s nose wrinkles. “But sex is part of love. Usually, anyway. It’ll work, I know it.”

“It won’t,” Draco insists, slapping Potter’s hand away when it begins to wander up his thigh. “Do you really think that I didn’t shag my wife before she left me? Because I did. We tried for years. Years, Potter. Trust me, if the curse were going to break because of a fuck, it would have happened well before now.”

Potter blinks at him, his eyes wide. There’s a ruddy flush on his cheeks, and Draco’s not sure if he likes it.

“We could at least try,” Potter says, almost gently. He doesn’t touch Draco again, but he looks like he wants to, hand trembling where it lays on the bedspread.

It feels like there’s glass in Draco’s throat. He is so, so tempted. Here is what he wanted - or at least part of it - Potter in his bed begging to fuck him, and he’s going to have to send him away.

“I think you should leave,” he tells him, and Potter’s mouth shuts with a click.

Favorite lines (excerpt):

“Relax,” he croons, stroking her fingers before he pulls away. “Your secret is safe with me. Most of this crowd knows that I’m not on speaking terms with that side of my family. They won’t suspect you because of me.”

Her face is flushed, either from rage or humiliation. Possibly both.

“So you-”

“Yes,” he says, fingers dropping to caress the fabric of her gown, swirling a thumb around the sweeping petals of an embroidered rose. His gaze is sly, a bit predatory when he glances back up at her. “I know what you have under this pretty skirt of yours.”

Rey’s breath catches, and she feels something- a slow trickle of heat seeping in to pool around her navel. She shifts, thighs sliding together, and hopes that he can’t smell her.

“Just as I know exactly what you’re doing right now,” she tells him in a hard whisper, jerking away from his grip on her elbow.

His eyes widen, affecting a look of innocence - a ‘who me?’ - that isn’t quite as effective when his lips are also curling up into a slow, pleased smirk.

“And what exactly am I doing?” he asks, his eyes laughing at her.

She glares at him. That seems to be enough of a reply, because he chuckles before taking possession of her arm again and pulling her smoothly towards the dance floor. Once they’ve reached the edge of it, he stops, dropping her elbow in favor of dipping into a low, courtly bow.

He looks up at her from under heavy lids, his hair sweeping forward to frame his face. “May I have this dance?”

The dance floor is crowded, full to the brim of masked people sweeping by in jewel-bright dresses and dark suits. She knows not to - knows that this place is a lot like fae courts of old. You don’t eat the food, you don’t drink the wine, and you definitely don’t dance.

But she’s already drank the wine, so she might as well dance.

.

The ship wrecks several hundred miles off of the coast of Karnaca. The storm that ends them is a rare sort, fiercer than most, a huge bank of dark clouds that seems to come from the void itself, blooming on the horizon like a warning. The lightning cracks the world asunder, thunder deafening, but it's the wind and waves that will always be a ship’s downfall.

Corvo watched the wave approach, saw its frothing white caps and the way it had stretched, higher and higher, until it loomed over the ship.

They never had a chance, and by the time the wave came crashing down, Corvo was already holding his breath.

Much of what he remembers after are mere snippets: the gulping suck of the water around him, broken pieces of the ship spinning by along with those of the crew who were unlucky enough to be caught by the ship’s pull, sucked down into the void, devoured by the whale god himself. He remembers his first gasp of air once he’d surfaced, the tang of brine and salt heavy on his tongue as wave after wave battered his body.

He doesn’t think that most of the crew survived the first few minutes much less the whole night, and he is certainly alone when the sun blossoms on the horizon hours later, clinging to a piece of ship the size of his torso and kicking relentlessly towards the dawn.

Corvo grew up on the coast, his hair stiff with salt from the ocean breeze. He grew up in and out of the water, hauling cargo or gutting fish on the docks. He’s familiar with the ocean - how the pull of the tides work, which days its best to avoid the dock, how to escape the sea’s wrath when a riptide or an undercurrent tries its damndest to drown you.

So he knows that his chances of making it to land are slim. But Corvo has always been stubborn, his legs have always been strong, and his story is far from finished.

.

Stiles buys a house in Virginia. It’s a modest thing close to Quantico, but not too close, tucked away into the heart of the wooded Appalachians. The bones of the house is all stonework and sturdy dark wood, a rickety wraparound porch bracketing the house on all sides. The first thing that he’d bought for it were two overpriced rocking chairs he’d gotten from the nearest Cracker Barrel.

Over the course of a year, he fills the house with things. A soft, dark gray sofa. Several solid end tables. A pair of emerald lamps he gets from an antique shop. A moss-green throw that is warm as a hug when it’s wrapped around his shoulders in the dead of winter. His living room is a bit too mountain man chic, but he likes the way that it looks when he’s coming home from a long day at the academy, warm and inviting.

He gets his bed set from a woodworker a couple dozen miles down the road, a man with a gruff bristled gray face and a warm smile, who trades Stiles the custom set for some warding and a couple bottles of what he calls, ‘miracle elixir.’ The set is sturdy mahogany, a pair of wolves carved across the top of the curving headboard, runes filling the gaps between them. The chest of drawers and dresser are just as solid, and Stiles has to hire movers to help him get everything back to the house.

The bulky rednecks decked out in worn flannel that help him with it carefully avoid looking at the runes of the headboard, their eyes skittering away from the carvings like frightened rabbits. They exchange apprehensive looks when they see the herbs drying over the sink in his kitchen, but to their credit, stay quiet and hightail it out of the place when he pays them. Here in the Appalachian backwoods, no one talks about magic, but everyone knows it exists.

Stiles has people over every once in a while - flies his dad and Scott in from California, has Lydia drive down from Boston, or Kira from North Carolina - but mostly, he’s alone. It’s a strange thing to get used to, the silence of the nights out here, where the night sky is bright and clear enough to see the stars above him, not a hint of light pollution to be seen, and the trees rustling in a quiet wind is almost louder than the hoots and hollers of the local wildlife.

He’d thought it would be lonely, and to be fair, sometimes it is.

Some nights he comes home and collapses back onto his sofa, and would do anything to be right down the road from Scott and Melissa and his dad again. He has days where he craves Melissa’s pozole or his dad’s meatloaf so badly that he can taste the heat of it on his tongue.

But mostly, the quiet is nice.

He cooks himself soups that simmer in the slow cooker while he’s at the academy and roasts that he makes on the weekends. He experiments with food the way he never used to back in Beacon Hills, where he had his dad’s heart to worry about if he made anything, and fast food which was easier to grab when he didn’t. He takes a world tour through his kitchen - homemade pierogi, hearty paella, steaming pirozhki, spicy-smelling curries, and hand rolled sushi. The first time that he makes his own bread in the ancient oven that came with the house, the smell of it coming fresh out of the oven is so good that he nearly cries.

It’s three winters into living there before he hears a scratching at his door in the middle of the night, and when he goes to investigate, finds a large black wolf on his doorstep.

It’s favoring one of its paws, dark fur matted on one side of its head where he can dimly make out a sluggishly bleeding gash. It blinks at him, eyes glowing a bright, familiar blue, and Stiles spends a minute watching it before he smiles and steps aside.

Fic goals: Hey Heather, it was only 800 words, but you did technically write something original. Now, let’s do something original that’s a little longer. And while we’re at it, let’s do something novel length. 

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 10/8/21 - NO TIME TO DIE, THE RESCUE, MASS, LAMB, NIGHTSTREAM, and More

It's a very special week here at the Weekend Warrior because October 10 will be my 20th (!!) anniversary as a film critic and the 20th anniversary of me doing a weekly movie preview column, mostly about box office but also with reviews and other stuff. Pretty cool, huh? (I’m celebrating this occasion by writing this column to the music of Public Enemy’s Apocalypse 91 which is 30 years old this month.)

Of course, this column wasn't called The Weekend Warrior in the early days, as I was instead doing "Half-Assed Analysis” at a long-gone Hollywood Stock Exchange fan site called HSJ.org. But then, it was a conversation with Mirko P. from ComingSoon.net (R.I.P.) that got me on the track of changing the name to "The Weekend Warrior" even though it would be a year before I would actually bring it to ComingSoon for 12 ½ wonderful years. The column has gone through a number of transformations and evolutions and iterations over the years, sometimes it being called something different just 'cause I didn't want to go through the ordeal of explaining to one of my bosses at a website that "The Weekend Warrior” is my own, and if I leave, it goes with me.

Anyway, I have taken a few weeks off over the years, particularly earlier this year when it just didn't seem a good time to be trying to predict box office, and I was starting to get burnt out on reviews. Now, the column is kind of back to being mostly about box office but with a few reviews, which is how I've always intended it.

Who knows if I'm going to continue this on that much longer, because honestly, there's no money and very little reward, and it does take a lot of time to write this up each week, especially with all the work I have to do for Below the Line. Anyway, for now, I'm going to keep it going, and we'll see how it goes. But Happy 20th Anniversary to me, and I can promise you… there won't be 20 more. NO FUCKING WAY.

Before we get to this week’s theatrical releases, I feel the need to mention the first of a bunch of October horror film festivals, as NIGHTSTREAM will begin on Thursday and run through Oct. 13. This is an amazing streaming horror/genre film festival that was instituted last year by four festivals, the Boston Underground Film Festival, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, the North Bend Film Festival, and the Overlook Film Festival when all four were cancelled due to COVID. Some of these are still happening this year as physical in-person festivals but Nighstream continues on. Some of the guests at this year’s Nightstream are The Green Knight director David Lowery; Akela Cooper, who wrote the recent James Wan horror film, Malignant; horror and special make-up FX legend Greg Nicotero, who is also the showrunner on the Creepshow anthology series, and more.

There are so many movies and events going on in the week of Nightstream but some of the highlights include the World Premiere of Jefferson Moneo’s Cosmic Dawn, Scott Friend’s feature debut, To the Moon, and the Virtual Premiere of Scott Barber’s doc, This is Gwar, as well as much more.

You can see the full list of movies here and learn how to get a pass at the official site.

Let’s get to some other movies hitting theaters...

Obviously, the big release of the weekend and maybe the month is the 25th James Bond movie, NO TIME TO DIE (MGM), once again starring Daniel Craig in his final outing as 007, his fifth movie in a run that started with Casino Royale in 2006 and 15 years later, it’s coming to an end.

Obviously, this being Craig’s last stint as Bond is a big draw for the movie, but there are other interesting things to note First, it’s directed by True Detective’s Emmy-winning director Cary Joji Fukunaga, who is making his biggest budget movie to date, having started with smaller films like Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre, and then getting more attention for his festival favorite, Beast of No Nations, starring Idris Elba, who for a while, people seemed to want to play the NEXT Bond.

Much of Bond’s colleagues and friends from past movies are back including Naomi Harris as Moneypenny, Ralph Fiennes as M, Ben Whishaw as Q, but it also brings back Jeffrey Wright, who was introduced as Felix Leitner in Craig’s first film, Casino Royale, and also a few people from the last Bond movie, Spectre, which wasn’t received as well as the previous one, Skyfall. (More on those things in a bit.) Christoph Waltz played Blofeld in Spectre (for better or worse), and he’s back, as is Léa Seydoux, who played Bond's love interest, and actually she continues said role but brings more to the plot.

The new cast is pretty significant, starting with Oscar winner Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) as the new arch-villain, Safin, and actually, there’s also a new 007 in Lashana Lynch, who replaced Bond after he retired from MI6. There’s another “Bond Girl” (if you don’t mind the outdated trope) in Ana de Armas, who previously starred with Craig in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, which feels like it was made 500 years ago but actually has a sequel shooting as we speak. In fact, Armas seems to be getting the best notices from everyone who writes about the movie, even though her section probably isn’t more than 15 minutes long.

I’m not going to say more about the plot. You either don’t need to know it in advance cause you’re seeing it anyway or you don’t WANT to know anything, and good for MGM for being able to keep the plot and lots of stuff secret despite the movie being delayed for 18 months due to COVID.

That’s right. No Time to Die was probably one of the first movies delayed due to COVID, and it definitely wasn’t the last, but MGM (and EON Productions) really stuck to their guns, and didn’t allow a streamer to come forward with millions and millions of dollars to put James Bond on streaming. (Granted, Amazon did come forward and ended up buying MGM outright earlier this year, and we’ve yet to see how and when that will come to fruition. As far as I know, Amazon has nothing to do with MGM’s 2021 releases, of which there are a few still to come.)

Actually, the fact that MGM is releasing this one on its own is an interesting point in itself, because it’s been almost 20 years since the studio has done that with Pierce Brosnan’s last Bond film, Die Another Day. In the time since then, MGM has been co-distributing its films with other studios until fairly recently -- the last four Bond movies were released by Sony Pictures. I’m not gonna throw shade at MGM, because they’ve been doing a fantastic job with No Time To Die, essentially marketing the movie once back in early 2020 and then again for its final release spot this Friday. In between, the movie has moved a number of times as COVID just kept ambushing its planned release date. Any weaker studio (like, say Sony) would have just sold the movie off (as Sony has done many times over the past 18 months until finally having a theatrical hit with Venom). Interesting how that works out, huh? MGM took over Bond, and now it’s releasing the new Bond a week after Sony’s biggest 2021 hit, essentially killing its chances at having a decent second weekend.

Others are seeing how well Venom did and are assuming that the box office is back, and that Bond can do even BIGGER numbers, but you need to take a few things into account, including something called REALITY. And it comes from the wonderful box office archive site, The-Numbers.com, which I have been using for those 20 years mentioned above.

Up until Daniel Craig took over the role, the biggest opening for a Bond movie (not accounting for inflation) was Brosnan’s Die Another Day with $47 million. Casino Royale opened with just $40 million in 2006, but it proved to have significant holiday legs as more people discovered it and decided that the new direction of tougher and grittier and more violent action was for them. It made $167 million domestically and $594 million globally. A few years later, Quantum of Solace had a much bigger opening of $67.5 million but made almost the exact same amount domestically -- the reason? People didn’t like it as much as Casino Royale, so it was more frontloaded.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes took over the 50th anniversary Bond movie, Skyfall, four years later, and that was generally as well received as Casino Royale, so that it set a new opening record for the franchise with $88.3 million and OVER A BILLION worldwide. Woo! Three years later, Spectre was going to introduce two classic Bond villains, Blofeld and Jaws (played by David Bautista) but it once again wasn't received that well, and it opened lower with $70 million and “only” made $200 million domestically vs. the $300 million of Skyfall. It still made over $879 million globally, but a final movie for Craig was always going to happen.

Now I’m going to talk about why I don’t think No Time to Die is going to break the opening record set by Skyfall, and believe it or not, it's not because of COVID. This is the thing. Bond clearly peaked with Skyfall and then it dropped down with Spectre, and that movie wasn't that well-received either by critics or fans with 63% from the former on Rotten Tomatoes and 61% from audiences. That is basically Quantum of Solace numbers and down from Skyfall's 92% and 86%. You take that disappointment and then you add six years, which is how long it's been between Bond movies, and you have a lot fewer people interested in shelling out money to see another Daniel Craig movie. There's no way around the fact that people are just burnt out on Craig and maybe Bond himself, and it really would take a huge wave of positive reviews to get them back.

Also, and unlike Venom, Bond is about as white as you can get in terms of a fanbase. I'm sure there's some African-Americans and LatinX movie fans who enjoy the action and stuff, but do you think you would see the entire James Bond collection in their Bluray libraries? I'm sure there are some, but they may be outliers, because Bond is the kind of Baby Boomer anti-woke un-PC franchise that the Millennials have been warning you about for years. It also doesn't have as big a female fanbase as other franchises (like Marvel) so that's another audience that might not rush out to see the movie. Sure, some changes have been made, including additions like Lashana Lynch or as she's better known, "WHO?!?!?", and de Armas, as well, but it's still the same old James Bond. Fukunaga just didn't try hard enough to make the necessary changes, or maybe he wasn't allowed to, because EON's Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. WIlson still hold very tight reins on the Bond films. Whatever has been done may not just be enough and who knows how many will want to see No Time to Die just to give Craig a glorious send-off? There's also the matter of No Time to Die being almost an hour longer than Venom -- longer run time, less screenings, less money per screen. It's simple math.

I already reviewed the movie for Below the Line -- I liked it but had some issues -- and it’s sitting pretty at 83% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good sign for getting the interest of fans to return to theaters for a movie that won’t be available on streaming on VOD for quite some time, I’d imagine.

I’m feeling generally bullish (or is it bearish?) on No Time To Die, especially with how much better Venom: Let There Be Carnage did last weekend compared to my prediction (OUCH!) but I’m also keeping track of that REALITY I mentioned before. Not just COVID on this one, but also opening the movie earlier overseas where the movie can be easily bootlegged and put on piracy sites for people who just don’t want to chance it at movie theaters yet. (I’m going to be writing more about this soon, but I have seen probably 100 movies or more in theaters since they reopened in NYC, and I get tested regularly. I have not tested positive for COVID once.)

The movie has done very well overseas, scoring $121.3 million in its first weekend, but I still don’t think it will open over $80 million in North America. But I do think it will be close, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it opens somewhere between $75 and 80 million.

Without knowing if any of the movies below might be going wider (but highly doubting it), here’s what the weekend Top 10 might look like. Actually, let’s make that the top 8 cause last week’s #9 and 10 were so odd and I have no idea if anything is expanding wider, as I write this:

1. No Time to Die (MGM) - $76.5 million N/A

2. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $31.5 million -65%

3. The Addams Family II (MGM/UA Releasing) - $9.3 million -45%

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $ 3.5 million -43%

5. The Many Saints of Newark (New Line/WB) - $2.1 million -55%

6. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $1.3 million -45%

7. Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) - $1.1 million -57%

8. Candyman (Universal) - $700,000 -47%

I think there are just way too many great movies to pick just one "Chosen One,” but since I probably should decide, I'm going with Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's new documentary THE RESCUE (National Geographic). You may remember Jimmy and Chai from when they won the Oscar for Free Solo, and their latest is just as good. The rescue in the title refers to the 2018 rescue of an 11-kid Thai soccer team called the Wild Boars and their coach when they became trapped in the Tham Luang caves in Northern Thailand, as the annual monsoon season hits early, flooding the caves in which they’re exploring.

To fully understand how they got trapped, you have to have some idea of the structure of this underground cave system, and this film does a great job explaining how the monsoons create flooding in the caves and how much harder it is to get someone out of them when the rain just won’t stop. Two British cave divers, John Volanthen and Richard Standton, are called in to survey the situation and figure out if there’s a way to get the dozen trapped out alive, as time keeps passing until it seems like those kids are trapped without food longer than any human can survive. Seemingly, thousands of locals and foreigners come to the caves in hopes of helping, whether it’s trying to pump out water or dig new tunnels to try to find where the kids are trapped (which is a difficult task in itself).

There’s a good chance you were watching the news and you know the results of this elaborate and daring cave diving rescue, but you definitely don’t know how the plan was developed and pulled off until you actually watch it as it’s taking place. The underwater and cavern footage of the kids and their saviors is absolutely second to none, and it’s hard not to get emotional in the way Chin and Vasarhleyi assemble the footage with the music.

The Rescue is an amazing movie, maybe as good as the duo’s previous one, Free Solo, and it may be the best recapturing/documentation of an important news event that I’ve seen in recent memory.

I was seriously close to having multiple "Chosen Ones” this week, because there are a few other very good movies, including Fran Kranz’s directorial debut MASS (Bleecker Street), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and deservedly received mass praise and stellar reviews. I don't want to say too much about the movie, because its emotional power may lay in not knowing too much about it in advance. The simplest plot is that it involves two couples meeting in the room of a church to have an important face-to-face about a difficult subject, one that needs resolution and absolution from both parties. If you like great writing and amazing performances, than the work of Reed Birney and Anne Dowd (as one couple) and Jason Isaacs and Martha Plympton (as the other) will make this movie a can't miss.

Again, without getting too deep into what the couples discuss, Mass is written and directed similar to one might do a 90-minue one-act play, but it begins with us seeing the people who work at the church trying to set up the room where this eventful tete a tete will take place. It’s surprisingly witty and even elicits a few laughs from Breeda Wool, who is so nervous and awkward about the meeting that’s about to happen.

When the two couples arrives, that’s where we really get into it, but it still starts out slow, a re-aquaintance phase between the two couples, who clearly have a difficult past, try to get through the niceties before getting into the serious conversation at hand. And here is where I’m gonna put a HUGE SPOILER IN HERE FOR THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.

As with so many movies, Mass deals with gun violence and the survivors of the types of school shootings we’ve seen far too many times in the last two decades. Isaacs and Plympton’s son was killed by the other couple’s son, who turned the gun on himself. It creates this dynamic where both couples have lost a son they loved, but Dowd and Birney are put in a spot where they have to try to explain their son’s behavior and if they saw that he was capable of such violence before the shooting took place.

The actors are all terrific, and while you might think a dialogue-heavy movie with four actors sitting at a table might not do much for you… well, first of all, you can go see No Time to Die if that’s more your speed … but Kranz’s direction is more than just getting these emotional performances out of his actors but also capturing it on film and editing it to best effect. There’s even an imperfection to the camera work, sometimes focusing on one actor while another is talking, that makes this long conversation feel even more authentic, as if you’re a fly on the wall in that room.

Again, the writing and performances and direction of Mass makes it one of the most powerful dramatic works this year. I’d love to see any of the four main actors get awards attention, but especially Dowd and Isaacs, who have been so deserving of awards love for a very, very long time.

Icelandic filmmaker Valdimar Jóhansson's LAMB (A24) is a very different movie, this one starring Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason as Maria and Ingvar, a couple living on a sheep farm (or rather, a lamb farm -- I honestly don't know the difference) who make an incredible discovery when a lamb gives birth to a child they decide to raise as their own. Invar's brother Pétur is not only not impressed but he thinks they’ve gone crazy, but there’s a lot of far more nefarious things going on in and around their remote and isolated farm.

This is a really fascinating film, one that’s fairly subdued but Johansson and his cinematographer (Eli Arenson) beautifully capture the vast landscapes of Iceland and gives us a real idea of how remote and isolated the farm where it mostly takes place is. He also does a great job building on the mystery of this child and the tension that surrounds where it came from, and yet, I’m not sure I’d consider Lamb to be horror, even if A24 is maybe marketing it in that direction. Really, it’s more magical fantasy mixed with character drama, and Rapace is just great as always, really impressing me with her skills delivering baby animals and driving a tractor.

If you dig a bit deeper, you’ll discover that Jóhansson wrote the screenplay with one “Sjón,” an author who has contributed to Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (one of my favorite musical movies) and also wrote The Northman, Robert Eggers next movie.

This is a terrific debut by Jóhansson -- I have an interview with the director over at Below the Line, too -- and it will be highly interesting to see where he goes from here.

I was hoping to watch and review SOUTH OF HEAVEN (RLJEfilms), the new movie from Aharon Keshales, the co-director of the fantastic Israeli thriller, Big Bad Wolves, which stars Jason Sudeikis, Evangeline Lilly, Mike Colter, and Shea Whigham, but I fell foul of a lousy screener and just didn't have tie to watch it before writing this week's column. Sudeikis plays Jimmy, a convict who has served 12 years for armed robbery who gets early parole, and he swears to give his childhood love Annie (Lilly), who is dying from cancer, the best final year of her life.

I also didn't get a chance to watch Russian filmmaker Evgeny Ruman's comedy GOLDEN VOICES (Music Box Films), which opens in New York and L.A. this weekend. It stars Maria Belkin and Vladimir Friedman as Raya and Victor, the Soviet Union’s popular film dubbers who have been translating film classics into Russian for decades. When the country collapses in 1990, the Jewish couple decides to move to Israel in hopes of finding employment. When she answers a help wanted ad looking for “pleasant voices,” she ends up working as a phone sex operator catering to the Russian community in Israel while he falls in with black market film pirates.

I also just haven't gotten around to JUSTIN BIEBER: OUR WORLD (Amazon), directed by Michael D. Ratner, which seems like the fourth or fifth documentary about the global superstar, this one that goes into the making of his 2020 New Year's Eve concert after a three-year hiatus atop the Beverly Hills Hilton for 240 invited guests and millions via livestream. It will stream on Amazon Prime Video this Friday.

A couple horror movies streaming this week are THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE (Netflix), the new movie from Patrick Brice (Creep), which hits Netflix and involves a masked assailant targetting a high school graduating class to expose the darkest secret of each victim, forcing a group of misfits to band together to stop the killings.

Shudder gets V/H/S 94 (Shudder), the latest anthology horror movie made up of five installments, directed by Simon Barrett, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, and Timo Tjahjanto. I haven't watched it yet but that's quite a rogue's gallery of horror/genre filmmakers there.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video are the next two installments of this year's batch of Welcome to the Blumhouse movies, Axelle Carolyn's The Manor, an eerie tale set in a retirement home and starring the legendary Barbara Hershey, and Ryan Zarazoga’s Madres about a young Mexican-American couple having their first child in ‘70s California where he’s sent to work on a farm where the wife finds a talisman and a box with belongings of the former resident. Both of them debut on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, too. Also, you can read my interview with Ms. Carolyn over at Below the Line.

Other movies that just didn't fit into my schedule this week include:

ASCENSION (MTV Documentary Films) VENGEANCE IS MINE (Vertical) PHARMA BRO (1091) KNOCKING (Yellow Veil Pictures)

Next week’s wide release is David Gordon Green’s horror sequel, HALLOWEEN KILLS!