It Follows (2012)

I know, it's a rare thing I'm writing about books here, but sometimes I feel it's needed. We're all brainwashed fans of "video violence" and trashy movies dealing with every immoral subject there is in the world, but what's better than a good book where we can use our own sick imagination to create these sick fucking worlds inside us? I recently bought Joe Bannerman's It Follows, a collection of short stories I would never know about if it wasn't for Twitter - so take that Twitter-haters! I love Twitter (and here's Bannerman's Twitter), except those days I hate it more than I hate Facebook. My love for short stories is almost bigger than my love for Biblical melodramatic epics starring Stephen Boyd, so this was a must read for me.

Full Tank is the perfect beginning, a action-packed invasion movie. Zombies? No. Aliens? I don't think so. Demons? I doubt it. Instead there's some freaky grey ultra-fast monsters reminding the main character about his grandmother who suddenly appears and starts killing everyone in sight. Together with his blind friend and a aggressive redneck he flees by car, and the rest of the story is a classic tale of survival. This is good shit, this is close to a masterpiece. No, not close. This is a masterpiece, one of the finest monster stories I've read in a long while.

Next up is Poseidon Rising, a poetic, intimate Lovecraftian story about sacrifice and sea monsters. It's drastically different compared with Full Tank and it's a good choice to relax the readers with emotional action rather than physical one. This one gave me goosebumps and it echoes of Bradbury, Dahl and the above mentioned Lovecraft.

The third story is Does It Ever Get This Cold In Paris?, a darkly humorous story set from the perspective of the zombies in an upcoming zombie-invasion. It's solely based on dialogue, on a wittiness that's directly from one of those old horror comics - or Creepshow, you know the deal. It's dark but never mean-spirited and somehow, weird enough, very human in it's macabre setting.

Fourth man out is the very disturbing Hello, Lovely. The set-up is a couple of guys staking out a house in the suburbs, but what seems to be a very simple job suddenly turns out to be something very different. I don't want to say so much about this one, but it has a fantastic gallery of characters and both a mystery and just plain out horror. I could easily see this as an episode of Tales from the Crypt or some other similar TV-show.

The last one is Salad Days, which begins like every normal social-realistic drama set in kitchen but soon transforms to something way more complicated. Also very well-written with amazingly real characters, and also something you should read to experience to the fullest.

After reading this ninety pages long collection, well worth every penny, it feel I want to read more. I want to have more of Bannerman's stories, I would love to see him make a full-blown novel from at least Full Tank. Salad Days could also be the beginning of something much longer, it SO good. Usually I try to give some constructive criticism, but I can't honestly find anything to complain about. Here we have five excellent, intelligent stories about humans - not some not so human - how faces pure terror.

I think you should go to this place and buy a copy of It Follows. It cost me 17 dollars including shipping to Sweden, which is a steal if you want to read something good and also support a great author. 

IT FOLLOWS from Daily Grindhouse on Vimeo.