A friend of ours bought this journal for her child.
Her child thought the journal was scary. Now it’s ours.
Look familiar?
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Month: March 2014
Categories
Movies: “Good Neighbours”
by Samantha Reeve, from the Great White North
Good Neighbors
Set in 1995 Montreal, our tale focuses on three people that inhabit an apartment building. Victor, the new arrival, is a teacher who has returned from a stay in China. He befriends Louise, a waitress, and Spencer, a man left crippled and wheelchair-bound after an accident. A serial killer has been preying on the young women of the area, but the trio soon discovers that none of them are who they seem and one of them may be tied to the deaths.
Now without giving too much away, I’m going to say that the strongest, most unsettling thing in Good Neighbours is the characters. From the get-go they seem like mostly agreeable people, but their flaws and potentials as suspects are slowly revealed: Victor is the seemingly friendly guy who creates a fantasy relationship between himself and Louise, and goes so far as to tell others they’re engaged. Louise, with her affection for her cats, first comes off as a kind animal-lover – but one who only cares for animals. Last we have Spencer, the handsome man who was dealt a cruel hand, but who harbours some very dark secrets. With no one to root for, it’s a strange but satisfying story to watch.
One of my only gripes with this film is the choice to set it in 1995. While there was some added tension with the backdrop being the 1995 referendum (in which Quebecers voted to not separate from Canada), the costumers and production designers did little (if nothing) to make this look like the 90’s. Nit-picking, I know, but it felt kind of lazy that there were three lines of dialogue that were meant to completely transport us back in time.
Griping aside, I recommend this film to anyone with a penchant for smarter, less action and murder-packed horror. Be warned, though, that watching the trailers will actually kill much of the mystery – so if you’ve yet to see it, steer clear and take my word for it. You’ll be in for a better ride.
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Nightmare #347: Assassination Attempt
(Female, 50s) This nightmare had a very realistic feeling, which made it even more confusing. I mean, assassination? Really?
My husband recently passed away, but in the dream he was still alive. The weird thing was we were in bed sleeping in the dream, and then we heard noises on the stairs coming up to the bedroom. We both woke up and I whispered, “Do you hear that?” He said it was probably our adult son, who lives at home, although it would be strange for him to come up to our room in the middle of the night.
Then someone jumped into the room. It was a guy who I knew back when he was a little kid, but he was grown up now. He was dressed in camouflage and carrying a gun. He laughed a crazy laugh and said, “I’m a hit man, and I’m here to kill you both! The best part of my job is telling people who hired me to kill them! Guess who hired me?” My husband and I were stunned. The assassin said, “It was your son!” and he laughed again.
“I don’t like to watch people I know dying,” he said, “so I’m going to put my hat on before I do it.” The guy pulled out a ski mask, which was more like a hood and pulled it down over his face. Now he really couldn’t see us as all, but he took aim with his gun.
My husband leaped out of bed and knocked the guy down, knocking him down the stairs, and they landed at the bottom with a big crunching noise, with my husband on top of the guy. My husband stood up and said, “Give me the pottery!” — which is strange because we don’t have any pottery in our bedroom. However, I turned to a shelf full of ceramic urns and vases, and I started to hand them one by one to my husband, who smashed them over the unconscious assassin lying at the bottom of the stairs.
I woke up feeling very odd. It was strange to dream about loved ones who were both protecting me and putting me in danger. I wanted to tell my son about the dream, but I thought about leaving out the part about who hired the assassin. Dreams are weird, aren’t they?
(Female, 60) In this nightmare, I was at the home of an acquaintance. Susan is a bit bossy and demanding in real life and can even be a little bit scary because she’s so self-assured, but nothing as extreme as dream-Susan! I’ve really been to her house, which is a large modern house on the outskirts of town, and again, it was nothing like where I was in the dream.
The dream started in the garden. I actually met Susan through a community gardening project, but in this dream, that garden was in her huge backyard, surrounded by a high brick wall. A group of people from the gardening project were meeting there to work in the garden, but unbeknownst to us, Susan had hired a group of professionals to come in and tend the garden first.
The people she’d hired were supposed to remove the weeds, but instead they’d completely destroyed the garden. They had dug up all the plants and moved them into design of four plants in a row: four roses, four carrots, four horseradish, four corn stalks, etc. The landscapers had done this to the whole garden! They’d thrown out all of the other plants. Talk about a nightmare, from a gardener’s point of view!
Then things got weirder. My husband showed up, and he and I went into her house, which was a huge rambling Victorian building in really excellent condition. We walked through the house and discovered that Susan had a crew of orphans working for her. There were dozens of children in Victorian factory-like conditions doing laundry, working looms, and manufacturing parts in a spotless tool and dye shop. It was ridiculous.
My husband discovered a storage space that had a window which opened on a room with a conveyer belt. Items were stored on the belt, and when the controls were operated, the items moved passed the window where you could grab them. I think he was just playing with the controls, figuring out how they worked, when we spied something odd– was that a severed head that just went by?
What kind of person was Susan anyway? The kind who destroyed a garden and kept enslaved orphans working in her basement, who had a severed head in her storage closet? We were obviously in danger.
Now he had to work the controls faster to get the long long conveyer belt to circle around and come back. He had to do it quickly before we were discovered. And then we heard Susan’s footsteps upon the stair.