Kampung Kreepy

I confess I was nervous about watching Netflix’s live version of Avatar: The Last Airbender . I liked the animated series on which it’s based, and I had no idea whether Netflix could be true to that. All in all, I thought Netflix did a good job. The animated series aired on Nickelodeon for three seasons (from 2005 to 2008). I particularly liked its storyline, which was influenced by Chinese martial arts and Asian and Native American cultures. If you’re not familiar with it, the series is set in a world where the people of four nations—the Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads and the Water Tribes—have the ability to “bend,” or manipulate, the elements. Peace between the nations is ensured by the Avatar, who is born with the ability to bend all four elements. Aang, a 12-year-old Air Nomad, is the latest Avatar. The Fire Nation exterminates his people as part of an effort to conquer the other nations. He survives, but goes missing for 100 years. When he returns, he befriend...

Television series have a lot in common with books. It’s often the cast of characters that keep their fans loyal. Think of the Winchester brothers and their monster-hunting friends in Supernatural . Or if your tastes run to something more prosaic—the lifeguards of Baywatch . And that’s why I love Netflix’s Stranger Things series. It’s not so much the edge-of-the-seat tension and the scary monsters. It’s the characters. They’re not just interesting and compelling. They also develop and change, as we see in Volume 1 of the latest season. By the way, my apologies for not posting recently. I’ve been hard at work with my latest book, the third installment in my urban fantasy The Geomancer’s Apprentice series. I finished the first draft recently. Yay! My reward was allowing myself a few hours to binge watch Stranger Things 4 . The characters in the series are as familiar as apple pie. There is the not-so-smart jock with the heart of gold; the wisecracking smart kid; the female superhero...

I’m really enjoying Korean zombies. I recently binge-watched  All of Us Are Dead , the new Netflix television series about a group of students whose high school is overrun with reanimated corpses. The series, adapted from a popular webtoon, has everything you would want from a show about zombies. There are jump scares, close-contact situations of peril, close shaves, relatable and sympathetic characters, good makeup, and hordes of terrifying, shambling, hungry zombies. Each episode ended with a cliffhanger that made it hard not to rush to the next installment. There were perhaps too many character tropes in the series. However, that’s par for the course for most programs featuring zombies. Many people in the shows don’t live long enough to show their depth of character or to undergo personal growth. It’s not clear at this point whether there will be a second season. I’ll definitely watch it if there is one. While All of Us are Dead was good, I consider Kingdom —another zombie-c...

It’s three days to Thanksgiving, and I have movie recommendations that will help horror fans enjoy the holiday even more. Watch a movie every night until Turkey Day. Or watch them all on the day itself, right after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Have a great Thanksgiving! Kristy (2014) A college student stays in the dorm while most of her schoolmates go home for Thanksgiving. She is targeted and pursued by a cult of sadistic killers. Does anyone else find empty college campuses creepy? If you do, this is the horror flick for you. The movie is fast-paced and exciting. Kristy can be streamed on the Roku Channel or Tubi. Into the Dark: Pilgrim (2019) A woman invites re-enactors into her home to recreate an authentic Thanksgiving with the pilgrims, in the hope that her family will appreciate the holiday even more. Unfortunately, the actors take their work very, very seriously. Pilgrim is from Season 2 of Hulu’s Into the Dark TV series produced by Blumhouse Production...

Photo: Netflix.com Anyone who has caught Kingdom , the Netflix South Korean television horror series, knows it is addictive. It’s also a must for any fan of the zombie subgenre. The series features fast-paced action and on-the-edge-of-your-seat tension. It has palace intrigue, beautiful and lush settings, good fight scenes, and some amazing costumes. It’s set in the Kingdom of Joseon, Korea’s last dynastic kingdom, which lasted from 1392 to 1897. It’s a turbulent period. The Japanese are a constant threat, while villages at the kingdom’s borders have to make peace with the warring tribes. The best part, of course, are the zombies. These aren’t George Romero’s shambling automatons. The Kingdom zombies are quick, nimble, nasty, single-minded, and very, very hungry. The makeup is superb, and their movements when they awake is creepy as hell. If you’ve seen Train to Busan   (2016), you know Koreans know how to do zombies. Photo: Netflix.com For fans (including myself) eagerly awa...

Image: Netflix.com Trese , a brand-new Netflix animated series from the Philippines, has fast-paced action, good animation, a strong female lead, and interesting monsters. I binge-watched all six episodes in one sitting. There are a few plot holes, but I enjoyed Season 1 and I can’t wait for Season 2. There is a lot of bloodshed and gore, so you may not want your young children watching this. Netflix released the series June 10 in the United States. It is based on popular Filipino comic books featuring Alexandra Trese, a detective who investigates supernatural crimes. In the Netflix series, Trese is a lakan, an enforcer of peace accords between supernatural beings and humans. The police consult her on crimes that have a paranormal angle. Image: Netflix.com The series starts with her being called in on a case where a subway car is found blood-splattered and its passengers missing. She also looks into the murder of a ghost who was the one-time mistress of the mayor of Manila. During ...

Have you heard of Richard Matheson? You should have if you’re a fan of horror and science fiction novels and movies. Matheson’s book I Am Legend spawned three movie adaptations: The Last Man on Earth  (1964), The Omega Man  (1971) and I Am Legend  (2007) starring Will Smith. Other Matheson books/short stories that were made into movies: Duel— Duel   (1971) A Stir of Echoes— Stir of Echoes (1999) Hell House— The Legend of Hell House (1973) Steel— Real Steel (2011) Button, Button— The Box (2009) What Dreams May Come— What Dreams May Come   (1998) Bid Time Return— Somewhere in Time (1980) Matheson also wrote screenplays for The Twilight Zone , Star Trek and Amazing Stories . His short story Nightmare at 20,000 Feet was the Twilight Zone episode in which a man on a flight looks out the window and sees a monster clambering on the airplane's wing. How about the iconic Zuni fetish doll who comes alive in the 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror ? The one...

Scooby-Doo, Where are You!  was my all-time favorite cartoon when I was a child. I wanted so badly to be one of the gang investigating haunted houses and other mysteries. That wonderful, cowardly dog and his friends sowed the seeds of my love for the horror genre. So you can imagine my trepidation when I starting watching Scoob! , the first 3D animated film for the cartoon franchise. Well, the renditions of the main characters weren’t bad. I liked the re-imagined Fred, Daphne and Velma. I loved the Mystery Machine, which was a 1960s-era van in the cartoon. There wasn’t much change to Shaggy. As for Scooby, he talked way too much compared to his cartoon self. But after a while, I was fine with it. However, I found the movie a little too frenetic and incoherent. One-third of it revolves around how Shaggy, Scooby and the rest of the Mystery Gang find each other. After that it’s a mishmash of robotic killer drones, the Blue Falcon’s backstory, and Greek mythology. The movie also fea...

I’m a big fan of the movies in the Conjuring Universe, and I was reminded why after watching The Conjuring 2 recently. It was my second time watching the movie, but I was still as terrified as the Hodgson family when they discover their Enfield house is haunted. Kudos to director James Wan. He did a great job ratcheting up the tension, and used the dreary London weather and 1970s-era dim lighting to good effect. Photo: Netflix.com On a side note, the haunting at Enfield, a suburb in London, allegedly occurred between 1977 to 1979. The Enfield poltergeist was well covered by the media at the time. It’s been the subject of several documentaries, movies and television programs. See, for example, this British TV mini-series from 2015: The Enfield Haunting . Netflix is currently streaming The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 . So what makes the Conjuring movies so successful? Like any good franchise, you can count on the quality of the movies. The acting and scripts are good. The movi...

Supernatural The final season for Supernatural wrapped up last year (Season 15), and I wish the series would start up again. I can’t imagine life without the Winchester brothers. You can watch Supernatural reruns only so many times on Netflix . Okay, the show was getting a little stale and the actors sometimes appeared to be phoning it in for the final season. But when it was good, it was really good. Mind you, I wasn’t fond of the overarching plots. I liked it best when it was just Dean and Sam hunting monsters. Many of those episodes were genuinely scary. Photo: Netflix.com One especially memorable episode was when the brothers were tricked into attending a Supernatural  convention (Season 5, Episode 9). It’s hilarious how they interact with the cosplayers, some of whom are dressed as them. And don’t worry—real ghosts actually turn up. Another memorable episode (Season 13, Episode 16): Dean and Sam are sucked into an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where are You? Two of my favorite...

South Korean television producers have created another addictive horror series in “ The Guest ,” now streaming on Netflix . The 16-episode drama has brooding atmosphere, exciting twists and turns, edge-of-the-seat moments, beautiful scenery and relatable, albeit tragic, characters. The show revolves around a demonic spirit known as “the guest” who also goes by the name Park Il-do. Twenty years ago, the demon visits a small seaside village. This results in terrible loss for three children, one of whom comes from a family of shamans and has special psychic abilities. Fast forward to today. The children are all grown up. One is a taxi driver, another is a priest and the third is a cop. The taxi driver, the boy from the shaman family, has made it his life quest to hunt down the demon. The other two are roped in when the demon and its minions possess people and spark off a killing spree. The three must stop the demon before more bodies pile up. Photo: Netflix.com What I particularly like...

I was pleasantly surprised when I watched Netflix’s " Sweet Home ." I didn't expect to be so riveted. The Korean drama had quite a few heart-pounding moments as well as parts that tugged at the heartstrings. The 10-episode TV series revolves around monsters, but it’s ultimately about how people can rise to the heights—or sink to the depths—of humanity when faced with unimaginable horror. And sometimes, the ugliest monsters turn out to be the noblest of superheroes. The drama centers on the residents of a decrepit block of apartments. One day out of the blue, they find themselves locked in the block. When they attempt to break out, they discover that the world outside is filled with savage monsters. Even worse, some of the monsters are locked in with them. They have to find a way to work together and survive. Photo: Netflix.com The monsters are a mashup between the horrors from Resident Evil and stuff from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft. For example, one monster resembles a g...

I’m spending more time watching television and movies, as I’m sure others have because of the pandemic. I’m about to watch “The Little Stranger,” the 2018 movie based on Sarah Waters’s 2009 gothic novel about a haunted mansion set in 1940s post-war Britain. I liked the novel when I read it some years ago. If my memory serves me right, it’s slow, measured and atmospheric, not exactly something that’s easy to translate into film. The book was as much about Britain’s class system as it was a ghost story. My to-watch list also includes “The Ghost Bride,” a Netflix series based on Yangsze Choo’s 2013 book of the same name. I loved the book, even more so because it’s set in Malaya, the country in which my parents and grandparents were born. Photo: Netflix's "The Ghost Bride" webpage Given that many of my favorite horror novels have been made into movies, I’d like to suggest two more: “ Soon ,” by Lois Murphy, and “ The Fifth House of the Heart ,” by Ben Tripp. Both book...

“ Paranormal ,” Netflix’s first Egyptian television series, has hints of Indiana Jones and “The Mummy,” with a touch of “The Ring.” The series is based on the late Egyptian novelist Ahmed Khaled Tawfik’s best-selling books. It is set in 1960s Cairo and its protagonist, a hematologist named Refaat Ismail, is a gloomy, chain-smoking pessimist who is incapable of saying what he really means. He lives by a set of “laws” and believes in science over the supernatural. Photo: Netflix.com Refaat’s love life is a mess. We learn that his first love was a ghost girl who tried to lure him to his death. Decades later, he has a fiancee but continues to carry a blazing torch for his former colleague, Maggie Mckillop. Maggie suddenly returns to Cairo after a 15-year absence. Her appearance roils Refaat’s heart and coincides with a spate of paranormal events. Among other adventures, Refaat and his loved ones are stalked by the ghost girl. He also is pursued by a mummy, and goes on the hunt for an ex...

Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, “The Haunting of Hill House,” blew me away with its first paragraph. I was especially chilled by the paragraph’s very last line: “silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” It was wonderful writing, and what a great way to introduce, and end, a horror story. It gave me goosebumps. I finally watched Netflix's  television program based on the novel. How does the Netflix production stack up against the novel? Jackson fans may be disappointed to hear that the series’ plot bears very little resemblance to the book. In the novel, Eleanor Vance (Nell) joins a paranormal investigation at Hill House mounted by one Dr. John Montague. The other members of the investigation are Theodora and Luke Sanderson, who will inherit the house when his aunt dies. Much of the novel focuses on Eleanor’s inner landscape, and how she views her fellow participants and the strange events that befall them. Among oth...

I just binge-watched Netflix’s “The School Nurse Files.” The South Korean horror/comedy series revolves around a nurse at a high school who battles against negative energies that are preying on the students.  Spoiler alert: the school was built over an old pond in which many people committed suicide. The energies seeping out of the pond sometimes look like jelly, or take on creature- and plant-like forms. The nurse is the only one who can see the energies. She destroys them with the help of a toy sword and a BB gun that shoots green, plastic BBs. Photo: Netflix.com Based on the trailer, I expected the series to be juvenile and silly. It turned out to be surprisingly watchable, with quality production and special effects. It had the campy feel of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" with manga overtones. The first episode ended in a cliffhanger where students are about to be sucked down the throat of a gigantic, mutant toad. Of course I had to keep watching after that. The actors were...