Evil Eyes by Tom Arbino

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kailhofer
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Evil Eyes by Tom Arbino

Post by kailhofer »

Horror fiction is not my bag--it always seems to lack the appearance of truth to me.<br><br>Perhaps it was all those terrible 50's horror movie reruns I used to watch with Dad on Saturday afternoons. Slasher movies in the 80's were not much better. I was the ghoul laughing my rear end off in the back of the cheap theater at how rediculous it was.<br><br>Then again, I love cats. I've been around them my whole life. That didn't help me find this as scary, either.<br><br>Still, I wanted to be fair, so I looked online, trying to find out more about reviewing horror fiction. I couldn't find anything that gave the standards as any different from the rest of speculative fiction.<br><br><br>I thought the detail in this story needed work. The only thing well described is the supernaturally-animated half-eaten rats, and frankly, I could have done without them. I don't think they were needed, even for shock/gross-out value. The cat could still have been terrifying as it relentlessly persued Alice.<br><br>The cat could have been more described, as well as the transformation process it induced in the characters. That would have made it more scary. The Horus symbol was good. That was unusual, and just mysterious enough to make me wonder if it was a red herring or not.<br><br>Moreover, a twenties-style bathroom looks like what? This was a missed opportunity to flood-detail the cat trying to get, bringing out terror in minute particulars. <br><br>A main character needs to be likeable or engaging for the reader to care what happens to him or her (or it). The time-tested method of this is to reveal the protagonist's major flaw, which creates sympathy in the reader. Alice is scared of things she ought to be scared of; the back half of rats should not be moving about one's room and cats should not have the power to transform you against your will. Now, if she had a pathological fear of the small spaces, like twenties-style bathrooms, perhaps I'd care more that she had to take refuge there.<br><br>I felt the plot lacked credibility. If this was a movie, as the bio-blurb indicated as important to the author, I'd probably get kicked out for all the noise I'd be making. Sorry. <br><br>This story is not horrifying because it is all external. Things happen outside of Alice and she reacts to them. Nowhere do we get to see inside Alice's psyche (beyond that she's scared)--and that's where the horror would be revealed. (Wasn't it director John Ford who chastised John Wayne to act with his eyes, not with his body?)<br><br>To give an example, my favorite ghost story is The Golden Arm, which is spooky because a thing from the grave comes back for the arm. It is horrifying because the husband chooses to steal his dead wife's golden arm after he promised that he would let her keep it forever, and while he is wracked with guilt over doing what he knew was wrong, he discovers that she is coming back for it. The wind carries her call, "Where is my golden arm?" and his mind echoes it for us, making it seem to come from all corners of the house. He had his chance to turn back, and now the dead wife, Elvira, has come for the arm. The ending is just his scream.<br><br>In future, I'd suggest revealing the horror from the inside, not the outside.<br><br>Nate
Last edited by kailhofer on October 18, 2004, 11:04:50 PM, edited 1 time in total.
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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Evil Eyes by Tom Arbino

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

... Well, overall I think the story did what it set out to do:  it presented a terrifying and unexplained situation, with nightmarish details, and hit us over the head with it until we were ready to drop.  Or piss.  (Defecating usually involves voiding of solid waste, not liquid, doesn't it?)<br><br>There were some recurring grammatical oddities -- not errors per se, but awkward constructions ('being' this and 'being' that, ...).  Not a deal-breaker, but not helpful to the cause, either.<br><br>Meg seemed to appear out of nowhere; at first I thought Mr. Arbino had accidentally used the wrong name for one of the two girls already introduced.  She seemed to have been thrown in as an afterthought to give Alice someone to talk to and to protect after Beth's transformation.  None of the girls ever seemed to have much in the way of distinct personalities; they were there, then they were terrified, then they were cats.<br><br>To work as a story, I think this needed more than starting AND ending 'in medias res'; the whos and whys needed to be filled in somehow.  As it is, we see the events, and are horrified -- or not.<br><br>Still, Mr. Arbino may have a future in movie-making; the bits that mattered (the grisly image of the impossibly mobile mangled rats) worked for me, if not for Nate; the details of the furnishings, etc., would be handled by the set designer in a flick with a non-zero budget, and would be 'whatever the place we borrow looks like' in a do-it-yourself project.<br><br>Robert M.
Last edited by Robert_Moriyama on November 05, 2004, 04:29:48 PM, edited 1 time in total.
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