Daily Archives: October 28, 2025

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Horror Films (Special Mention) (New Entry) (17) Ready or Not

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Film poster art (fair use)

 

 

(17) READY OR NOT (2019)

 

“In-laws.”

 

Horror comedy film starring Australian actress Samara Weaving as the film’s protagonist, it earns special mention with a sequel to come (as at 2025) in 2026.

Technically, I might have included this in my special mention entry for religious horror but that’s (mostly) just the backdrop for the horror in this film – being hunted to death by your in-laws.

I know the feeling.

On the night of her wedding, Weaving’s protagonist – perhaps ironically named Grace – is asked to participate in her newlywed husband’s eccentric and rich family tradition of playing a board game. Unfortunately for Grace, she draws the wrong card for Hide and Seek. Even then, she doesn’t quite realize the twist to what appears an innocent childhood game – Hide and Seek is euphemism for Hunt and Shoot. Shoot to kill that is, because the hider needs to be dead by dawn if the seekers are to win, as part of a deal with the devil for the family’s wealth.

 

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 Fantasy Books (Special Mention: Cult & Pulp) (13) Sean Stewart – Resurrection Man

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Cover 1995 Ace Books paperback edition – the edition I own

 

 

(13) SEAN STEWART –

RESURRECTION MAN TRILOGY (1995-2000)

 

Stephen King meets Ibsen. Trust me.” – Neal Stephenson.

Contemporary fantasy or magical realism in which magic comes bubbling back into our world as a wild and uncontrollable elemental force, coalescing as beings from the force of Jungian collective unconscious.

And it is very much Jungian collective unconscious, pointed out in exposition by way of a stand-up comedy routine (a device of exposition I have not encountered elsewhere) – as opposed to Freudian, although I would like to have seen a fantasy based on the elemental forces of magic bubbling out of our Freudian unconscious.

Admittedly, I found the world-building more intriguing than the actual story in Resurrection Man, which doles out that world-building in fragments and hints – a world “profoundly altered by WWII and the increasingly monstrous magic it unleashed’, first as golems from the camps and then as minotaurs from the American ghettoes. A world in which China is superpower – not through economics as in our world, but through geomancy or feng shui.

That world formed the setting for two other books by Stewart with more intriguing stories, Night Watch and the World Fantasy Award winning Galveston. In the latter, the Texan city has been isolated and divided by the flood of magic, literally into a normal ‘non-magical’ half, scraping and scavenging its living from the increasingly derelict remnants of science or technology, and Carnival, an endless magical Mardis Gras celebration.

His novel Mockingbird had a similar theme, but on a family rather than world scale.

Sadly, after this creative flurry of novels in the nineties and noughties, Stewart moved from writing novels to writing interactive fiction or games.

RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (New Entry) (10) James MacKillop – Myths & Legends of the Celts

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Cover art of 2006 Penguin Books edition – the edition I own

 

 

(10) JAMES MACKILLOP –

MYTHS & LEGENDS OF THE CELTS (2006)

*

For mine is the grail quest –

round table & siege perilous

fisher king & waste land

bleeding lance & dolorous stroke

adventurous bed & questing beast

 

I find all Celtic mythology fascinating.

The Celtic mythology that survived most in literary form (mostly as recorded by Christian monks) was in Brittany or coastal France, in Britain and above all in Ireland with its various mythological cycles. The Tuatha de Danann or the gods of Ireland. The Ulster Cycle and its great hero Cu Chulainn. The Fenian Cycle as well as its great hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill (sometimes awesomely translated as Finn McCool) and his Fianna warrior band. And the Cycle of Kings of historical legend.

“Myths and Legends of the Celts is a fascinating and wide-ranging introduction to the mythology of the peoples who inhabited the northwestern fringes of Europe—from Britain and the Isle of Man to Gaul and Brittany.”

This book is essentially divided into three parts. The first part looks at the broader themes of Celtic mythology in general reflected in the chapter names – with chapters for the Celtic deities, the remnants of Celtic religion, sacred kingship (in Ireland), the female figures of Celtic mythology (goddesses, warrior queens and saints), calendar feasts, and otherworlds.

The second part looks at the Irish mythological cycles – the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, and the Cycle of Kings.

The third part looks at Welsh and oral myths.

“And it explores in detail the rich variety of Celtic myths: from early legends of King Arthur to the stories of the Welsh Mabinogi, and from tales of heroes including Cúchulainn, Fionn mac Cumhaill, and the warrior queen Medb, to tales of shadowy otherworlds—the homes of spirits and fairies.”

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)