Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Bookmonkey visits Hemlock Grove: Post Three

So then the book became a television series...

On April 19th, 2013, the entire series became available for download on Netlfix.

As a bit of a slow starter - I of course, found my current copy in DVD form at a used bookstore back in July.

So here's what I've got to say about episode one - Directed by horror filmmaker Eli Roth (famous for Cabin Fever, the Hostel franchise, and a movie called Clown one of my coworkers says I have to check out), the pilot for the series, titled "Jellyfish in the Sky" starts very similarly to the book - the narrator is missing, but the opening death sequence surrounding the first victim is incredibly intense, brutal, and pretty darn horrifying.

As with the book, the pilot is swimming in potential leads, in addition to both Peter and Roman, their mothers, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins all make appearances and also fight for screen time, leaving me unsure of which storyline to follow - in general I prefer a show like Lost or Skins when featuring an ensemble cast, focus on one character per episode and give me some time to get to know everyone.

The series looks pretty great however, the colours are lush, the town, which appears to be both a small town, and a previously thriving factory town, looks like a great setting for a horror story, and I quite enjoyed how the pilot acknowledges some of the similarities to Twilight and points out that this is nothing like that.

In the end the pilot had me interested in watching more - so far no werewolves, but a lot of mystery.

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