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Osgood Perkins Says His Planned Adaptation of ‘A Head Full of Ghosts’ is Like a Sister to the Novel

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Osgood Perkins has been a horror director on our radar for years now, and after the 1-2-3 punch of The Blackcoat’s Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and this weekend’s impressive Gretel and Hansel you can damn well bet we’re interested in whatever his next project is going to be.

And it just so happens that his next project may very well be A Head Full of Ghosts, an adaptation of a novel by Paul G. Tremblay about a girl whose father diagnosed her mental illness as a demonic possession. What’s more, the possession will be nationally televised.

“It’s possible,” Perkins told Bloody-Disgusting in a new interview. “It’s certainly a script that I’m happy about. Whether or not that becomes a movie, you know how it goes.”

Although he’s hedging his bets – because we all know how easy it is for even the most promising projects to never get off the ground in Hollywood – he does have his own take on the novel’s story, which he’s adapted to fit his own artistic vision and personal experience.

“What I liked about it is that what I saw in it, which was a change I made both from the novel and from the drafts that existed before I came aboard,” Perkins explained, “was the quality of, I wanted to make sure it was really a movie about the young woman who had suffered a trauma that she was never going to be okay about.”

“She was never going to recover from [the trauma], she was never going to be alright. And I felt like to create a portraiture of someone who had experienced an unimaginable loss, and it connects to my own personal life experience… it was almost like an opportunity to take care of a character who I could understand had been really permanently heartbroken,” Perkins said.

When asked if he would describe his plans for A Head Full of Ghosts as a loose adaptation, Perkins had words of encouragement.

“I would say that the script at this point is sort of looser than not,” Perkins said. “The good news is that the writer is really pleased with what I’ve done and has been kind and generous enough to say so. He calls it a sister. He calls the script and the novel sisters, which I think is great.”

We’ll find out if that’s an apt comparison when, and if, Osgood Perkins’ film version of A Head Full of Ghosts gets off the ground. Until then, we have his new fairy tale/horror hybrid Gretel and Hansel to keep us company. It’s in theaters this weekend.

William Bibbiani writes film criticism in Los Angeles, with bylines at The Wrap, Bloody Disgusting and IGN. He co-hosts three weekly podcasts: Critically Acclaimed (new movie reviews), The Two-Shot (double features of the best/worst movies ever made) and Canceled Too Soon (TV shows that lasted only one season or less). Member LAOFCS, former Movie Trivia Schmoedown World Champion, proud co-parent of two annoying cats.

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‘The Angel of Indian Lake’ Book Review – Stephen Graham Jones Wraps Horror Lit’s Greatest Slasher Trilogy

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Angel of Indian Lake Slasher novel

With The Angel of Indian Lake, author Stephen Graham Jones tackles one of the most daunting tasks in horror: bringing a trilogy to a satisfying close. Making it even more challenging is that the final entry in Jones’ slasher trilogy endcaps two perfect entries in horror lit, with 2021’s My Heart is a Chainsaw recontextualizing the slasher formula and last year’s Don’t Fear the Reaper appropriately escalating the lore and carnage in a way that only an uber-slasher fan like Jones could.

It’s been four years since Jade Daniels stepped foot in Proofrock, Idaho. After saving the town once again and thwarting another deranged killer, Jade took the fall for her best friend and final girl, Letha. She already has a track record, after all, and Letha’s a family woman. Through Letha, Jade winds up in a place she least expected: teaching high school under the judging eyes of Proofrockers, who still blame Jade for not one but two waves of catastrophic slaughter. It doesn’t help that Jade’s return to town heralds a new reign of terror that threatens to destroy Proofrock for good. Between long-running grudges, serial killer cultists, mysterious disappearances, another wave of bizarre deaths, and that pesky Lake Witch, Jade’s return to Proofrock becomes a final stand for the town’s soul.

When the trilogy began, Jade was a troubled, lonely teen who clung to slashers like a life raft. She wore her encyclopedic knowledge of them like armor. But surviving two slashers herself, followed by two separate stints in prison and the stigma that followed, Jade returns to town a woman still navigating past traumas while trying to outgrow her adolescent defense mechanisms. But this is Proofrock, and that horror knowledge quickly proves to be necessary when one of her students goes missing, and the bodies start piling up from there. It helps that Jade’s best friend Letha won’t let her forget her horror roots or that she’s given Jade something to live for, especially where Letha’s daughter and final-girl-in-the-making Adie is concerned. While Jones’ extensive love of horror infuses every page, his heroine takes a bit to reacclimate, especially thanks to the horror she’s missed while serving time. 

The previous two novels have packed in quite a bit of supernatural and reality-based slasher terror and presented a robust suspect list from the outset. Moreover, two novels deep into Proofrock’s history and present means a lot of loose ends to tie up when it comes to its characters. Jones finds ways to deepen character arcs and flesh out Proofrock’s denizens further through nonstop horror action. Here, the red herrings can be as deadly and unhinged as the actual killer. Rampaging bears, forest fires, and supernatural happenings intercut the slasher carnage, and Jones finds creative ways to carve up an even bigger body count than before, complete with narrative twists and breezy, dialectical prose. It’s nonstop horror. Fans of the previous entries will know that’s saying a lot. Taboos get broken straightaway, and Jones continues his streak of killing his darlings; many of the deaths in this novel are devastating.

It’s impressive how Jones wields the horror as connective tissue, juggling so much Proofrock history and horror at once. But it pales in comparison to his final girl, Jade. Letha remains a force of nature, even more so considering her personal stakes here, but it’s Jade’s story. Now three novels deep, Jade has always struggled to see herself as a final girl. It’s a title she’s eager to bestow on women she deems worthy or more fitting of the archetypical role. As savvy and resilient as she is, Proofrock always had a way of blinding Jade to her own potential. The selfless way she’s saved the town over and over while taking all of the bodily damage and blowback with none of the credit is of course inherent to the final girls Jade loves so much. 

The Angel of Indian Lake’s greatest triumph isn’t its satisfying slasher mayhem but the way it proves that Jade was right all along. She’s a scrappy survivor, which by definition puts her in that coveted category of final girls. But she’s so much more than that. Jones closes the loop on so many facets of Proofrock and its characters, evolving Jade’s penchant to crown those she deems worthy of final girl status, reshaping the concept of a final girl in the process. Jade is more than just a final girl. She’s a symbolic mother of final girls, putting her life and body on the line to support others, arming them with the strength and knowledge to unleash their inner final girls. Proofrock has seen a copious amount of bloodshed over three novels, but thanks to Jade, an unprecedented number of final girls have risen to fight back in various ways. The way that The Angel of Indian Lake closes that loop is masterful, solidifying Jade Daniels’ poignant, profound legacy in the slasher realm.

Through Jade, Stephen Graham Jones delivers horror lit’s greatest slasher trilogy of all time.

The Angel of Indian Lake publishes on March 26, 2024.

4.5 out of 5 skulls

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