Editorials
‘Boys in the Trees’: Celebrating Halloween with Bittersweet Magic
‘Tis the Night…
The Night of the graves’ delight…
Nicholas Verso’s 2016 Boys in the Trees (available on Netflix) is a beautiful film and a really unique addition to your Halloween viewing. It captures the essence of the season and uses it in an entirely new way to tell its story. Rather than a full-on frightfest or creature feature, it harnesses that energy and uses it to tell a bittersweet coming of age tale about how friendships can bend, break, and be reforged in the throes of adolescence.
Set in an Australian suburb in the late 1990s, the film opens on the afternoon of Halloween. In Australia, this means that school is just getting out for the summer, and after exams have passed, our protagonist, Corey (Toby Wallace), will be entering into adulthood with no real idea of what he wants to do with himself. He has dreams of going to New York to study photography. His father wants him to stay close and study something more practical, and his gang of trouble-making, miscreant friends want him to join them in simply continue living as if their teen years will last forever.
As Corey and his friends hang out at the local skate park, their leader, Jango (Justin Holborow) spies classmate, Jonah (Gulliver McGrath) among the small crowd. Jonah is a solitary boy. Small and quiet, he makes an easy target for Jango and his pack, and they do not hesitate to pounce. Jango approaches Jonah and orders him out of the park, pushing him down onto the concrete. Corey snaps a photo of Jonah in that moment, as the bullied boy looks up with shame and defeat in his eyes. Corey has little interest in Jango’s cruel torments, but he wants more than anything to run with the crowd. So he says nothing, offers no aid to Jonah, and follows the group out of the park and on to their evening of Halloween pranks.
As Corey tires of his friends’ antics, he wanders back to the skate park where he once again encounters Jonah. The smaller boy has fallen off of his board and cracked his head on the concrete. Corey rushes to his side, and though Jonah appears okay, he convinces Corey to walk him home.
“You owe me, old pal.” he says, as the two walk off together. You see, Jonah and Corey are not vaguely familiar faces that pass each other in the hallway. The two have a history. A childhood friendship that spanned all of reality and into the world of make-believe. As the two walk, they begin to once again embrace that world. The remember songs they once sang, stories they held dear, and a game of imagination that they would inhabit as children, but has long since been forgotten as adulthood has crept ever closer.
Over the course of Halloween night, as the pair wanders around town, reminiscing, reconnecting and trying to overcome the gap that has come between them over the years, Verso uses his story to illustrate the ways in which the simple act of growing up can pull us apart. We all have people who were our best friends in childhood, but whose names we can barely remember now. Life takes us in different directions, but what this film points out, is that it happens earlier than we ever expect it will. Childhood fantasies and bonds become nothing more than distant memories in the blink of an eye, and the worlds that we create together become simply fairytales.
Halloween is a magical night. It is an evening that carries its own sense of mystery and wonder and a magic that cannot be found on any other day of the year. This film harnesses that magic and uses it to tap into childhood fantasies. So even though the film isn’t scary, it does have that air about it. That mysterious nature that the walls between the world of reality and everything beyond have been thinned for just a few hours. On that night, our dreams, fantasies and memories are all more readily accessible, along with our fears. Boys in the Trees is a film that reminds us of that magic and uses it to tell a bittersweet tale of friendship and growing up.
Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
You must be logged in to post a comment.