A Gentle Hell
Autumn Christian
Dark Continents Publishing
Digital Format, $2.99
Review by Darkeva

Autumn Christian’s short story collection, A Gentle Hell is a great, chapbook-length sampler of what the author can do.

The first story, “They Promised Dreamless Death,” has a creepy Big Brother post-apocalyptic setup that involves people being hooked up to machines and becoming little better than living zombies, for lack of a better term. These machines seem to live for people, and somehow give them an alternate life with no reason to be unhappy, but it’s not really theirs in a true sense. People who undergo this sleep for five or ten years hooked up to a machine, and when they awaken, all their problems are solved. Kind of an existential piece on re-defining existence with machines. The main character starts having dreams toward the end where it seems that he’s imagining something with a former girlfriend when he’s younger, and she’s trying to reassure them that they’re not going to die. This one definitely had a surprising ending.

In the next offering, “Your Demiurge is Dead,” the setup is that the Triple Goddess shows up to the White House, and Jehovah washes up on the Gulf of Mexico. The main character, Officer Redding, goes on a police investigation to a woman, Mimi’s, house, and she has twelve kids, one of whom has committed suicide. One of the other sisters insists the dead girl didn’t commit suicide, and asks if he’ll marry her under the dogwood tree because it’s what her dead sister wanted. Tuesday, the living sister, says God died this week. The police think someone murdered the dead girl. Meanwhile, the Triple Goddess has drawn up a new nationwide healthcare plan (“now that the demiurge is dead”), and she killed Jehovah. It’s a bit of a weightier story, and more of the children die, and the prophet of the Triple Goddess is implicated in their murders. Again, a creepy story that makes the reader question the notion of what ‘god’ is what it really means. Definitely a morose ending.

“The Dog that Bit Her” is about a regular guy and his wife, June, who is paranoid and has an abandonment complex, but her husband thinks he might have a saviour complex. A dog with rabies bites her and she says “he took my wings,” which I thought was interesting. She becomes paranoid about rabid dogs being everywhere to the point that she has to quit her job. The conclusion to this one is also thought-provoking, as with the rest of the stories.

And last but not least, “The Signing Grass” is a semi-autobiographical tale about a seemingly alien girl. The main character, who directly addresses the reading in an interesting narrative choice, describes falling in love with an artist. As with the first piece, this one is also very much about an existentialist undertone, and I had a bit of trouble “getting” it but it was written well and I enjoyed reading it.

If you’re looking for a morbid, creepy, post-Apocalyptic, existential horror short story collection, you’ll find it in Autumn Christian’s A Gentle Hell.

Edge of Dark Water
Joe R. Lansdale
Mulholland Books, 2012
Hardcover, $25.99, 291pps
Review by Wayne C. Rogers

Okay, this is what happened with Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale.

I’d been waiting for several months to get this new novel by Hisownself and read it. I knew that once I got a couple of pages into the story, I wouldn’t put the sucker down, even if my life depended on it. As time would have it, the day after I got the book in the mail, I got hit with a number of writing projects that needed to be done ASAP.

A magazine sent me back a story they’d purchased so I could correct the galley proofs. Another magazine was interested in a story I’d sent them, but only if I could cut a thousand words from it. The story was 1,300 words above their limit, but they liked it and wanted to buy it, if I could do the necessary cut. A publisher was suddenly interested in an old erotic novel I’d written over a decade ago. If I owned the rights to it, they were willing to publish it after a quick polish on my part.

Needless to say, I stopped reading and started writing like a tornado the size of Texas was on my ass. The only reading I did was during my lunch break at work. I got both short stories completed, and then quickly started the rewrite of my old novel.

Something, however, happened yesterday while I was at work (Thursday). When I was reading Edge of Dark Water in the employee lunch room, I got to the point in the story when Skunk (the most evil villain I’ve ever read about) first attacks the kids on the Sabine River. I knew then I was going to finish this novel come hell or high water. You see the book was pretty good up until that particular scene. Then, it suddenly became GREAT, and I wasn’t going to wait another day to find out what happened to everybody. I needed to know who had bought the farm and who was still kicking. I put the rewrite on hold and then dug in last night for the long haul so I could finish Joe’s book.

The problem is I’m 61, and the pain medication I’m on puts me to sleep after a few hours. So, I managed to read seventy pages before I conked out on the couch and started snoring so loud the neighbors were soon banging on the wall, yelling for me to turn the television down.

I took the novel to work with me today (Friday) so I could squeeze in some fast reads. I still didn’t have enough time to finish it.

This was worse than getting stuck in the eye with a sharp pencil.

I got home, answered my e-mails, and then got comfortable on the couch again to read. Nothing was going to stand in my way this time. I was ready to take on King Kong if necessary to finish this fabulous story of friendship, love, hate, murder, coming of age, racial prejudice, parenting, pure evil in the meanest sense of the word, and anything else Joe could think to include in the story. Then, a pizza man knocked on the door, wanting to know if I was interested in buying a large pepperoni pizza for six bucks. I told him to buzz off before my friends, Hap and Leonard, showed up and stuck that pizza where the sun don’t shine. Of course, truth be told, I didn’t have six dollars, or else I would’ve bought one to eat while I was reading.

Well, I finished the book and here’s the review.

Joe said he thought Edge of Dark Water was probably his best novel to date. I can’t honestly say if it is or isn’t. You see, I’m prejudiced. I’ve long held The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale as the best novel I’ve ever read. It’s certainly Joe’s #1 book to date. There were just so many things in the novel that spoke to my heart as a human being that I didn’t think it could ever be replaced. The thing is, however, Edge of Dark Water is so good that it’s trying to edge right up against The Bottoms like a horny, drunk husband late at night and remove it from its perch at the top of the list.

What’s the Edge of Dark Water about?

Joe Hill (author of Horns and The Heart-Shaped Box) called it a cross between The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Deliverance. He wasn’t far wrong on that description.

When Mae Lyn, the prettiest girl in the county, is found dead in the Sabine River with a Singer sewing machine tied around her ankles, her three closest friends – maybe her only friends – decide to dig up her body, burn it, and take the ashes to Hollywood. This is where Mae Lyn always dreamed of going, hoping she could become famous. Her friends – Sue Ellen, Jinx and Terry – all have their different personalities. Sue Ellen, though pretty, is basically a tomboy. Jinx is black and isn’t afraid to speak her mind, even if it gets her into trouble. Remember, this is taking place during the Great Depression. Terry is a handsome young fellow, but everybody considers him to be a sissy. In the South, during the Depression, being a sissy is considered worse than being black. Still, these kids love each other as close friends usually do, even if they sometimes get on each other’s nerves.

Now, if each of these kids came from a great, loving home or had something to look forward to in their life, the idea of taking Mae Lyn’s ashes to California wouldn’t have grown wings and taken flight so quickly. All of them have little reason to stay and everything to gain by heading out west. To add to the situation, the three kids discover a cache of hidden money stolen from a bank by Mae Lyn’s dead brother. It’s only a thousand dollars, but a lot of people would kill you for a lot less during the Depression.

Stealing a raft, the kids make their way down the river, but with folks after them for the money. No one really cares about the children, but the money is something else entirely. The Shunk, a merciless killer and a legend, is hired to track the kids down and bring back the money. The thing is Shunk loves to kill in the most hideous ways. He always chops the hands off of his victims and keeps them as souvenirs around his neck. The kids don’t believe in him at first, but they soon will.

While the kids make their way down the river to the nearest town, they encounter all sorts of adventures. It doesn’t hurt that they have an unexpected travelling companion with them. It proves to be both a blessing and a curse at the same time.

There’s also the matter of who murdered Mae Lyn.

That question isn’t stared at or mulled over much on the river trip. But when the killer is finally revealed, I think you’ll be just as surprised as I was. It’s not easy to surprise me anymore, but Joe Lansdale still has that solid punch to the gut that can knock the wind out of you.

As I stated earlier, Edge of Dark Water covers many themes and does them poignantly so the reader isn’t beaten over the head with each one like a bongo drum (I’ve been wanting to use that phrase from one of Joe’s books for a over a year). The author portrays life as it was during the thirties and forties. In some ways, much hasn’t changed. People are still people with their good points and their bad ones. Seldom is anything black or white, but rather shades of grey because human beings are complex creatures. Joe understands this and is able to give the reader an underlying view of what makes people tick. This is hard job for any writer, but Joe manages to do it in spades.

This is also pure storytelling at its best. Not every writer can tell a good yarn. Joe Lansdale is a master at storytelling. He knows how to weave a good, heart-wrenching tale, creating fully developed characters in such a way that you either love them or hate them, or maybe both at the same time. Heck, you might not even know which emotion is kicking in or being tugged on. I guarantee, however, you’ll get a good look at the dark side of man few other authors are able to tap into. This writer creates a picture of evil as if he’s gone up against it during his lifetime and barely survived.

Last, allow me to add that Joe Lansdale is an author who knows how to deliver on his promises. What do I mean by that? Whenever you buy a novel, the author is promising that you’ll get your money’s worth from the book. Not every author is able to keep that particular promise, but Joe always does. This is why I always look forward to a new book by him. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Go out and get yourself a copy of Edge of Dark Water. After you finish reading it, you’ll want to put it on the bookshelf beside Joe R. Lansdale’s other great novels, The Bottoms, A Fine Dark Line, Sunset and Sawdust, and the Hap/Leonard series. This is one of the top writers in the world today and if you haven’t read his fiction, then shame on you. Highly recommended!

Plague Town: An Ashley Parker Novel
Dana Fredsti
Titan Books
Paperback, 368 pages, $7.99
Review by Sheila M. Merritt

Do you miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Wish that she had specialized in zombies rather than bloodsuckers? In lieu of Ms. Summers, there’s a chick named Ashley Parker who happens to fill the bill. As the feisty heroine of Plague Town, Ashley bears the stamp of the pop culture prototype. And yet she’s also a very enjoyable protagonist in her own right. Author Dana Fredsti has imbued the kickass lass with a freshness that extends beyond the requisite snarky dialogue. Yeah, she’s reminiscent of BTVS and has a variation of the Scooby Gang as her compadres; but she’s less pouty about her role as warrior. In a zombie apocalypse, indulging in self pity is a luxury that costs lives. Fredsti keeps the conversations crisp and the characters accessible as she skillfully reworks the paradigm.

Ashley is a member of a unique clique. Known as Wildcards, this group of individuals weathered a devastating virus with enhanced senses and immunity to certain kinds of zombie assaults; lessening the possibility of contamination. While not possessing the attributes of superheroes, this posse is armed and amped up on adrenaline. Even the meek and mousy get brassy and ballsy during the induction into guerilla warfare. Ashley is not one of the formerly timid: She has a reservoir of inner strength and a wisecracking sensibility that is heightened by the horrific circumstances. Which isn’t to imply emotional detachment; she is highly responsive. A wave of revulsion strikes while observing a makeshift medical ward: “There were a dozen or so cots, all occupied by thrashing people. None of them looked good. Sallow, greenish-yellow skin tone, like jaundice with a bad case of mold. Blood and other fluids leaking from their mouths, noses, and ears. Some had raw wounds on their arms or legs while others had bandages seeping with blood – or in some cases, nasty, foul-smelling blackish ooze. Most of them had restraints strapped across their arms, waists, and legs, along with metal collars around their necks. The straps were totally disturbing, and the collars were strangely decorated with a bunch of rings. It was just plain creepy.”

Where there is “creepy” there are also creeps. The creep factor is personified by a macho military man who crosses the path, and raises the wrath, of Ashley. In this grand depiction, the novel’s author deftly delineates the guy’s testosterone infused posturing: “He stopped at the front of my bed, legs planted firmly apart in what I’m sure he thought was a heroic stance. He had this total middle-aged Charlton Heston thing going on, all craggy features and stern expression.”

More tension between the sexes is played up in two sets of romantic entanglements; the primary one featuring the protagonist and a dude who rubs her the wrong way in all the right places. The secondary contentious coupling concerns an older duo. Their sparks resume flying when they meet again after years of separation, and abstinence from each other’s carnal company.

Dana Fredsti pulls together all the elements of her narrative with great aplomb. Plague Town is a romance, an action-adventure story, a horror novel, and a delight to read. Ashley Parker will return to battle zombies in the next installment of the series. She’s a gal to be reckoned with: And a hoot, to boot.

Daemon of the Dark Wood
Randy Chandler
Comet Press
Trade Paper, 250 pages, $14.95
Review by Sheila M. Merritt

One of horror’s most famous novellas is Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan. It caused quite a scandalous stir when first published in 1890. Randy Chandler has brought back the satyr that spurred the pique. Daemon of the Dark Wood depicts the demigod in all his frenzied pagan glory. Chandler whips up a scary tale of Dionysian debauchery; splendidly evoking infernal upheaval. There is debasement, dismemberment, and cannibalism. Those who follow Pan’s call of the wild become slavishly bestial; translation: Their basic instincts are extremely base. The author deftly handles the disturbing material, producing a very well-written narrative that reads like a guilty pleasure.

Greek mythology infiltrates a community in Georgia when the horned and perpetually horny man-beast comes to town. Exerting an overpowering sexuality, he is a goat from the waist down – except for one important anatomical endowment. And in that, he looms large indeed. His psychological and physical enslavement of the vicinity’s womenfolk perpetuates a panic. Resistance is futile; even a bi-polar chick, whose lithium treatment initially spares her crossing to the down and dirty side, eventually succumbs: “The forbidden territory of her psyche was always well within reach, ever tempting her to breach its ephemeral gates, follow skewed pathways into the outer world and partake of prohibited delights and sweet terrors of the flesh – to wallow in her inherent wantonness. That such indulgence might be fatal only served to sweeten the sexual pot and raise the spiritual stakes.”

Bacchanalian anarchy isn’t new to the area. In 1866, some beyond uppity womenfolk took on the characteristics of mythical maenads; berserk females who killed, tore apart, and ate the local men. The ancient feral picnic was an inebriated tribute to Pan; often equated with the dark side of Dionysus, the god of wine. Its 19th Century manifestation was also heavy on male fatalities. A cover-up story was concocted: The guys were The Civil War casualties. The truth about the events, known as The Helling, was buried along with the remains of the victims.

An anthropologist, digging up the dirt regarding the covert history, unearths more than folklore. Logical and scientific in orientation, he possesses an adventurous streak: “He was a man of science, but he still had a boy’s love of science-fiction and the fantastic. He had never outgrown his love of the amazing tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft and the like. That same love had led him into the fields of anthropology and archaeology in the first place. Moreover, he believed it was important that he maintain a youthful sense of adventure in his work.”

The scholar’s expectations are exceeded when the rational gets trumped by the supernatural. Like most of the fellows in the yarn, he gets bitch-slapped into acknowledging that there is only one alpha male.

Sex and violence are played up to the hilt in the book; aberrations are pervasive. The subject matter certainly can’t be classified as “delicate.” Randy Chandler writes with apt audaciousness. He seems truly fond of the salacious wenches he has created. Daemon of the Dark Wood deals with loss of control, but the novel’s author is in masterly command.

Animosity
James Newman
Necessary Evil Press, 2011, Signed & Limited, $45.00, 235pp
Artwork by Alex McVey
Introduction by Ray Garton
Review by Wayne C. Rogers

If you want to know what it’s like to be a horror writer, then you need to read Animosity by James Newman (author of Midnight Train and The Wicked), plus its introduction by Ray Garton. Though most authors won’t experience the trauma Ray Garton did, or the lead character in Animosity does when a child is found murdered in his neighborhood, I guarantee you’ll get a strange look from the person standing in front of you when the same old question is asked and you answer it.

“You’re an author, huh? What do you write?”

“I write horror short stories and novels.”

You would think by now that penning horror stories and novels would be an acceptable way to make a living, what with Stephen King having been at it for thirty-five years. I can remember The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and The Other hitting the bestseller lists when they were first published during the seventies.

Someone was definitely buying them and someone had to have written them for the books to have existed. I wonder if William Peter Blatty and Ira Levine and Thomas Tryon got strange looks when they went to the bank to deposit their big royalty checks.
You can write anything you want, except for horror and erotica, and be accepted by the people in your neighborhood. There’s a reason why Thomas Harris (the author of Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal) keeps such a low profile and refuses to do interviews or have his picture taken. People, even the normal ones, are as crazy as bed bugs. They sometimes look for anything they can use in order to put another person down … especially with regards to writers of horror fiction. Stephen King has won all kinds of awards and is probably worth a hundred million dollars or more, yet the literary community pans his fiction like there’s no tomorrow.

Why?

Because even today what King writes is still basically horror.

Though I’m small time, I inevitably will get that peculiar look from someone every now and again, even from writers of other genres. I have a friend at work who’s a writer of thrillers. He will happily read any suspense or thriller fiction I write, but he strangely draws the line at my horror stories. Why? I don’t think even he has an answer to the question. I believe it’s something buried deep inside the subconscious and people aren’t even aware it’s there, until the right circumstances arise.
In Animosity, the lead character of Andrew Holland is a bestselling writer of horror fiction, and he finds out rather quickly how thin the veil of decency and neighborly love is when he happens upon the body of an eleven-year-old girl who’s been raped and strangled. It doesn’t matter that Andy has known his neighbors for years. Everything changes for the worse the moment he reports the crime to the police.

Of course, it doesn’t help matters that Andy was arrested and served time for statuary rape when he was twenty. He had a one-night stand with a girl he met on the campus of his college, but the female turned out to be sixteen years old. Let’s face it, a lot of sixteen year olds look eighteen or older. Unless you ask for a drivers license, you may not discover their age until it’s too late to do anything but pray for mercy.

Just ask Hank Mooney in the hit Showtime television series, Californication. He got himself into the same mess.

Once Andy’s good neighbors get wind of the arrest record, they quickly add two plus two and get five. They assume because of the arrest record and the fact he writes strange stuff, Andy must also be the murderer of the young girl. It doesn’t matter if the local police don’t consider him a suspect in the crime, the neighbors have their own beliefs and feelings about the present circumstances. Everybody else must be wrong. Needless to say, they start harassing Andy with small things at first like writing names on his front door, banging up his mailbox, slashing the tires on his SUV, and killing his dog. I bet Dean Koontz would’ve gone berserk if someone hurt his dog. Gradually, everything escalates to where Andy has to fight for his life and resort to murder in order to save those he loves.

That’s a neighborhood I want to stay a hundred miles away from.

Yeah, Andy’s once caring neighbors show him what real horror is … what monsters human beings can turn into with little provocation. I mean how many good Germans turned into Nazis during World War II? Look at what we did to the Japanese living in California during the same war. Man has a long history of intolerance. It doesn’t take much for him to bust a cap and start shooting randomly at anybody who moves.

It’s the last page of Chapter Thirty-three in Animosity, however, that really shakes your faith in mankind and starts you pondering on the general relationships you have with people and what they’re really thinking in the darkest regions of their minds. Sometimes no reason is needed to hurt another, other than the fact they’re in some way different.

Animosity by James Newman is certainly a novel every potential horror writer should read before the journey’s begun. The book might cause you to take a closer look at your chosen endeavor and to decide another occupation would be better. The regular readers out there will want to read this book so they can get a better perspective of the horror that lies just beneath the smiles of friendliness they get from their friends and neighbors. It’s a type of horror I find infinitely more frightening that anything I could read in a novel. Vampires, zombies and ghosts don’t scare me, but regular people do.

Man’s inhumanity to his fellow brother.

Yeah, that’s what scares me. It certainly isn’t the horror fiction I write, but the reality of what life is and how quickly it can change on you in a heartbeat.

Author, James Newman, connected with something intrinsic in all of us with his novel about a writer who has to fight for his life because of the prejudices held unconsciously by his neighbors. For that I’m eternally grateful. It doesn’t hurt that Animosity is also a damn good read! This should become a mandatory read for all new horror writers.

Nightfall
Stephen Leather
47 North
Trade Paper, 439 pages, $14.95
Review by Sheila M. Merritt

Turning 30 can be crisis inducing. For Jack Nightingale, however, it’s his upcoming 33rd birthday that causes anxiety. He’s recently discovered that the date brings with it substantial baggage instead of a barrage of presents. For when Jack turns 33 his life will no longer be his own; more precisely, a debt is due. With the impending natal anniversary, Jack’s soul becomes the property of an extremely evil demon. To say Nightingale’s life is not a lark is an understatement. And author Stephen Leather adroitly puts the protagonist through the ringer in this thoroughly entertaining novel. Can Jack beat the clock, and evade the brimstone? Or will the second book in the series be set in a much warmer climate than England?

Skills as a private eye can have limitations within the supernatural noir subgenre. Jack, though, has an additional ability: Prior to a coerced resignation from the police force, he was a well-respected negotiator in the department. Now a P.I. with an incredibly resourceful girl Friday, Nightingale again employs his gift for glib bargaining. There is, nonetheless, collateral damage; innocents who have an association with him have a tendency to dramatically die. The intricately lethal scheme is orchestrated by a rather arresting character. Like the other personages in the narrative, said evildoer is very well delineated. Cunning and cute as hell, the fiend is unscrupulous and impish.

Occult practitioners abound, and Jack’s exchanges with them are simultaneously intense and amusing. Gallows’ humor is pervasive in the tale; often used as a defense mechanism by the hardboiled detective. When past transgressions come home to roost, laughter seems to be the only antidote to the bleakness of it all. Although in a séance sequence, Nightingale has the tables turned on him. He is the brunt of a joke, and the segment is delightful in how it establishes the relationship of longtime friends.

Relationships with family are more problematic for Jack, as the sins of the father converge with a vengeance. The concept of familial deception is beautifully set up at the beginning of the book. The backstory begins two years earlier, providing the history of Nightingale’s career change. Jack, then the negotiator, attempts to stop the suicide of a little girl: a victim of incest; the ultimate parental betrayal. The abuse and its consequences continue to haunt Jack in the intervening period. And later remind him that parents can mislead and mistreat.

Nightfall concludes with promising more adventure to come. Stephen Leather writes intriguing characters, who entice the reader to come back for the next installment. There are still unresolved issues to be dealt with; loose ends that cry out to be tied. Leather, like Jack Nightingale, has a talent for persuasion. Stay tuned for Book Two.

Panic Button
Frazer Lee
Paperback, Kindle
Review by Matthew Tait

Based on a recent British Horror film of the same name, Panic Button is the kind of excursion that taps into every nuance and trope of modern horror cinema. Thankfully this fictitious outing can be just as harrowing – taking the theme of contemporary social media and hammering home our fears and insecurities concerning the medium until the reader feels frantic with it.

As a reviewer I’m always looking for something different: uncharted waters to critique – a novel based on a semi-successful film I have yet to view seemed to fit that bill. After the reading experience I could go back to the tales genesis on screen and see how well the author lifted its contents … much like an excavator will slowly brush away the dirt to reveal a fossil.

Our story is simple but compelling: four young people win the trip of a lifetime to New York, courtesy of the world famous social networking site All2gethr.com. On board their private jet, they are invited to take part in some in-flight entertainment – a new online gaming experience. But this is a unique game. Trapped at 30,000 feet they are forced to play for their lives and the lives of their loved ones by a mysterious captor who bears the social network insignia – and they are about to learn that having an online profile exposed to the whole world can have deadly consequences…

Here we go back to my first paragraph: this is definitely reminiscent of many recent horror outings. We have the Saw franchise; we also have films like Cube and the tacit terrors produced by fare such as Final Destination, Red Eye, and the original Twlight Zone. But what we also have on offer is the potential for a beautiful character study … one that’s mined to such great effect in films like The Hole (2001) and Hard Candy. Most of all the appealing thing here is the theme itself: at its beating heart Panic Button seems to be a book about a subject barely touched in the annals of cinema … social networking.

The team is heralded. There’s Jo Scott the recovering alcoholic. She’s left her daughter at home in the care of her mother to experience this chance at freedom. Max Nichols – a man as mysterious as his online persona would suggest. Gwen has the ‘hippy chick’ aura but more than a few of her own demons. And rounding out the small cabal is Dave … a sly and obnoxious joker that the others will have to watch like a dormant snake. Proceedings take hold and we are then lifted into the air with the four toasting their lucky success. But for the next few hours their only companion will be the grinning alligator facade of the All2gethr mascot … and it isn’t long before he lets the games begin: a harrowing series of brutal psychological questionaries that will pit each contestant against each other in a series of dares where the losing price is death. Not only for them but for those on the ground who mourn their departure.

This is not exactly a ground breaking book … but Frazer Lee does an excellent job pulling out all the stops when they are needed. The games induced by Alligator are subtle yet equally horrific: I daresay you’ll want to keep reading with morbid fascination as each of our contestants lives are exposed with fascinating clarity. You’ll also see yourselves in these people: seemingly ordinary individuals but each with a plethora of secrets and demons just waiting to tapped and brought bubbling to the surface. The real horror, when it arrives, more than competes with anything the original creators of Saw could dream up. And underlying it all, of course, are the social and ethical questions we as a society have come to ask ourselves on a daily basis: just what WILL be the price of social networking? We now live in an age that would have been unthinkable merely decades ago. There are always dues … and the price of this one – when it arrives – could be almost too much to bear.

Now, to watch the film.