The Keeper (2006) - Sarah Langan

If you are a horror fan and have yet to discover the incredible novels of Sarah Langan, then you really need to do so immediately. Langan is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated writers I’ve ever read, not just in the horror genre, but in literature in general. Part of this is perhaps down to her failure, for most of the time since her debut anyway, to really adhere to a traditional publishing schedule. Her first three novels came out over a four year period in the early 2000s and then she kind of disappeared for a dozen years before she came back with a fourth novel in 2021. There’s a reason a lot of “household names” among writers tend to churn out a book, if not more, a year; Langan didn’t do that after her initial few years and I think that has led to her being an overlooked author. But she absolutely should not be slept on.

In The Keeper, her debut novel, she begins exploring themes that she will return to again and again: toxic community, collective guilt & shame and the way the rebellious cancers of a community grow within the system and then bring it down. In The Keeper, the community is the sickening, possibly cursed town of Bedford, Maine, which has been dying a long, slow death since its paper mill closed down in the aftermath of a tragic fire years ago. The rebellious cancer at the heart of this dying town is Susan Marley; once upon a time, she was the town darling, the beautiful homecoming queen; now she ekes out a pained living as a haggard sex worker and the town as a whole seems transfixed by the horror of her transformation and her fall. Out of this very simple set-up, Langan creates a book that is genuinely, deeply scary and incredibly creepy. It’s a book that creates real atmosphere; you can feel the sick emptiness of Bedford and if you’re a fan of horror video games, you’ll recognize that The Keeper has much the same feel as the best games in the Silent Hill franchise. The characters are well-sketched and compelling and the book is overcast with dread from its very opening pages. As the book continues and the horror becomes more concrete, the dread gives way to real terror; a strange encounter in the deserted woods outside town is one of the scariest sequences I’ve ever read in a horror novel. And, as we know it will, everything builds to a cathartic reckoning with an absolutely fantastic ending.

Since Langan’s return to writing in 2021, her work has ranged more toward the thriller than the horror genre, so we shouldn’t let those first three books slip away. As excellent a thriller writer as she is, it’s her first three novels that really chill the bones and make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. She’s an incredible writer and The Keeper is a great novel made even more astonishing by the fact that it was her debut. As a horror aficionado, I’ll just say it; The Keeper is really something special. I’d call it a must read. Just buckle up; things get spooky. In all the best ways. 4 stars.

tl;dr – debut horror novel from one of an incredibly underrated writer is bone-chilling, atmospheric, bleak and, end of the day, just deeply scary; a true must-read for horror fans. 4 stars.

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Stray (2020) - Elizabeth Lo

In Stray, documentarian Elizabeth Lo turns her attention to the massive population of stray dogs that call Istanbul home. I was somewhat expecting this movie to be reminiscent of Kedi, a fantastic documentary from 2016, about the massive population of stray cats that call Istanbul home. As it turns out, it’s a very different film, but a very good one. Kedi was a kind of feel-good movie about the way we deepen our humanity by opening our lives to animals. Stray, on the other hand, is a story about the ways in which a society begins to lose its humanity when it refuses to open itself with empathy to living beings of both the animal and the human variety. These aren’t exactly flip sides of the same coin, because I wouldn’t say that they are that diametrically opposed; there are moments of tenderness and kindness to be found in Stray, even if the overall tone is darker.

A large part of that darker tone is down to the fact that the dog we spend the most time with, Zeytin, at one point finds himself taken in as an erstwhile companion by a group of young Syrian refugees who themselves live on the street. The movie makes a lot out of the way the lives of the stray dogs and the Syrian refugees mirror each other. Both groups have been left to survive on their own with no resources by a society that sees them as second-class citizens at best and, more often, as non-citizens. There are scenes of both the dogs and the refugees being given food by charitable Turks, but there are also scenes of both the dogs and the refugees being driven away from food and shelter by the authorities, angry residents of Istanbul and even tourists. It’s the old idea of judging a society based on how it treats its least powerful members, in this case refugees and stray animals. This, of course, isn’t the first movie to draw parallels between the way society treats marginalized groups of humans and animals and it won’t be the last either unfortunately.

I don’t want to give the impression that this movie is an ultra-bleak slog, because it isn’t. There are, as I said above, a lot of nice moments of kindness and connection. A small black-and-white puppy named Kartal gets a lot of screen time and she always brings the cuteness. And then there’s also just a philosophical pragmatism to the attitudes of the “strays,” both human and animal, that we see here. They just go on, if you know what I mean. In the face of hardship and difficulties, they just go about their lives as best they can, finding moments of kindness where and when they can. The film treats these individuals without much in the way of sentimentality or overt tugging of the heart-strings. These beings aren’t being captured on film so they can be pitied, but so they can be seen. Much of the emotion of the film runs under the surface, but by the time you get to the ending, you will be moved. The final scene of the movie is a shot that the filmmakers’ have clearly carefully chosen. As dusk falls over the city, we hear a muezzin in the distance making the call to prayer; in the foreground, a dog howls along with the sound. It’s the perfect final shot for a movie that is itself a prayer for all the forgotten ones. 3 ½ stars.

tl;dr – documentary about Istanbul’s stray dog population also has political points to make about refugees and the need for justice for all of God’s most powerless creations. 3 ½ stars.  

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