Hello everyone, Matthew here with another new entry for our Book Reviews. Adrian Roe is someone that isn't new to the horror genre. They have had a series of books that have chronicled the decades of the Horror Genre - The Final Scream (70s), First Scream To The Last (80s), and Second Scream (90s). These books are jam packed with discussions on the movies of those times as well as interviews with some of the people involved with them. Each of these books were something that I was quick to add to my Kindle backlog. I'm sure there's some hidden gems in there that I may have never seen before.
Then I had heard over on Twitter from Adrian that there was a new book coming out, Screams For A New Millennium. This book was going to be chronicling the movies of the 00s. For me, that's pretty great. Honestly, things have been pretty awesome in terms of getting books for the Horror Genre. I mean let's look at what we have so far - Crystal Lake Memories, Never Sleep Again, Slashing Titans, the Taking Shape series, the Phantasm Exhumed books, and another coming that will chronicle the Black Christmas franchise. If I would have told younger me that was a huge fan of hearing the Behind the Scenes stories regarding films that this was going to happen, he would have laughed. Then he probably would have went back to watching a behind the scenes extra from Scream or something.
So I went on the interwebs and Twitter, I reached out to Adrian . I was honestly pretty nervous. At this point, it's been a bit of a roller coaster in terms of me reaching out and getting a response. I mean there's been two interviews that kind of fell to the wayside due to different circumstances. Surprisingly enough to me, Adrian responded back and was so awesome. They were 100 percent on board and willing to work with me. And funny enough by that point, I hadn't put two and two together that this was the same author of those fantastic books I mentioned earlier.
Screams for a New Millennium is fantastic. It is a book that is a bit in-depth in terms of covering the 00s. There were some movies that were mentioned that I had honestly forgotten all about (Hollow Man, yeah I forgot about this one) and some that I hadn't heard of yet (Session 9, Long Time Dead, and Deathwatch are a few examples). There are some fantastic interviews in this collection as well. Jamie Blanks talks about his work on Urban Legend and Valentine. Joe Lynch discusses his time working on Wrong Turn 2. Jonathan Craven discusses his time working with his father, Wes, on the script for The Hills Have Eyes 2. This was something I had never heard of before and is pretty awesome. Author Daniel Kraus dives into his thoughts on Romero's back half of his Living Dead films (Land/Diary/Survival). Honestly, it added a new perspective for me regarding Survival of the Dead. I'm sure that I'll give it a rewatch soon. These are just a few of the interviews in Screams for a New Millennium. Roe also managed to remind just how much the 00s really were the 'Decade of the Remakes'.
If you are someone that truly appreciates cinema and would like something to chronicle those years of films, this is definitely for you. It's also a pretty fantastic time capsule in a way. For me, it just took me back to where I was in life when those films were released. And honestly, it also showed how important film was to me in those days as I had leaned into them to cope with my parents' divorce. So it just hit like a comfort blanket in a way.
If this book managed to do that, I am so thrilled to take a look at the other entries in this series. It's also pretty evident just how much of a labor of love for Roe, these books have been. Screams for a New Millennium can be found over on Amazon.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Follow Adrian Roe on Twitter
Follow BlazinBlue's Horror Review on Facebook and Twitter.
If you'd like to receive updates as they drop, subscribe.
No comments:
Post a Comment