Editorials
The 10 Best & Worst Enemies of ‘Alan Wake’
The Good: Mr. Scratch
I wasn’t surprised when the mischievous Mr. Scratch was introduced as Wake’s doppelganger, but I was surprised when I realized how much I liked him over the real thing. This is a man I can respect. He’s a man who isn’t afraid to take what he thinks he deserves, and like the narcissist I aspire to be one day, he’s not ashamed to spend countless hours recording videos of himself talking into a camera.
The Bad: Darkness Sludge
I don’t hate, or even dislike, the shiny black liquid that’s been sprinkled about the town of Bright Falls. If I wasn’t so afraid that it’d enslave my feeble mind, I might’ve even taken one as a pet. This stupid goop is so useless I can’t even use it to reach my goal of becoming the Unholy God-King of Sinister Sludge. You’re dead to me, goop.
That’s all of it. I promise I haven’t held anything back. Go ahead, count them and you’ll see ten there. I wouldn’t lie to you, except to protect you, but you don’t need protection right now, so you can be sure I’m being honest. Before you go, the celebration doesn’t need to end here. We can keep it going in the comments section. Consider it the after party. I’ll bring the nachos and you can bring your own opinions to supplement my own. It’ll be fun!
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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