“What Was It?” (1859)

Fitz-James O’Brien was among the earliest writers of horror stories but died in the US Civil War at the age of 34 and didn’t leave many stories behind. I found this one in The Dark Descent, where editor David G. Hartwell is typically effusive, calling O’Brien the heir apparent to Edgar Allan Poe. And it’s a pretty good story—I like O’Brien’s clean and straightforward language (for the 19th century). A couple problems, the first of which is foreshadowed in Hartwell’s intro, and that is that it is rotten with explanation. It’s also a typical early horror story in that it doesn’t try hard to scare and it does try hard to soothe. That is, merely mentioning strange supernatural details is considered sufficient to provoke anxiety. We are all generally more corrupted by now and need more effects to goose us up such as jump-scares. I thought the story’s most interesting point was the invisibility of the phenomenon, whether ghost or extra-dimensional creature or whatever. The idea was popular in the late 19th century, with Ambrose Bierce, Guy de Maupassant, and others chipping in their versions. As an effect, interest in it seemed to be done by the early 20th century, perhaps marked by H.G. Wells’s 1897 novel The Invisible Man (and the 1930s Universal movie based on it). As a kid, I ranked invisibility high among my desired superpowers, but the impulse was (and probably would be still) voyeuristic. As for encountering some invisible thing, yes, as described here, it would certainly be creepy and disturbing. But I can’t say it’s ever been the stuff of my nightmares, sleeping or waking. “What Was It?” covers most of its bases pretty well, but I thought O’Brien missed a trick by not using flour to make the thing more visible. Instead, they used the bedsheets to get a general idea of what they were dealing with, and later plaster for more specific details. I guess that works too. Hartwell also identifies O’Brien as a pioneer in science fiction at least as much as horror, and in many ways this story does feel closer to SF. My problem with taking it as horror is the whole invisibility thing. It’s just not something that seems very effective to me. In fact, the story reminds me a lot of Maupassant’s “Horla” stories, equally weak sauce or more so. “What Was It?” is probably the best of the invisibility-themed stories I’ve read so far—I still need to get to the Wells—and I think it may be the earliest of them all. Is invisibility as a horror idea all played out now or is that me? It’s hard to think of examples after about 1910. I don’t think H.P. Lovecraft even tried it.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Read story online.
Listen to story online.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024)

There are a number of things about On Becoming a Guinea Fowl that I’m not sure I understand, notably the title and some of the details in the opening scene. For me the picture falls into a genre of “film festival movies,” proved out by the awards it has won from Cannes, Chicago, London, and other film festivals. The opening scene is vividly, self-consciously visual: Shula (Susan Chardy) is returning home at night from a costume party. She wears a spangled helmet with dark glasses and an outfit that looks like inflated parachute fabric. She notices a body lying in the deserted and lonely highway. It is her Uncle Fred and he’s dead. Then Shula’s cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela) shows up. She appears drunk, knocking at the window of Shula’s car, but Shula ignores her. Lots of activity and visuals here, but the point of the movie has little to do with how Uncle Fred died on that highway, something we never learn. Instead, what we learn is that Uncle Fred was a rapist who preyed on female members of his extended family, often when they were underage. Guinea Fowl affirms how universal this type of domestic abuse is, reaching into Zambia, Africa, in much the same way that Women Talking witnessed it in a Mennonite community in Bolivia. It’s not just Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein in the US—it’s everywhere. Some of the reasons it continues are shown in Guinea Fowl. The women of the extended family, all the aunties, blame Uncle Fred’s widow because she would not cook for him. It makes no sense, but that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Thus, director and writer Rungano Nyoni offers a panoramic view of these crimes and family responses. Shula knows better than the aunties that it is Uncle Fred who is responsible for what he has done and no one else. But she’s in the minority. As the movie goes along, more and more victims come forward with their stories. One of the girls, Bupe (Esther Sangini), tries to tell her mother in a video she records on her phone what Uncle Fred did to her, but her mother doesn’t want to hear it or believe it. For that generation, the sole tragedy here is that Uncle Fred has died. As for Bupe: “He’s dead now,” she says. “So it’s OK.” On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is marred slightly by distractions such as the opening scene that I don’t really see as necessary. But it has a familiar (and depressing) story to tell, it sticks close to the truths of sexual abuse, and the performances are great across the board, a winning ensemble. The picture won awards from film festivals because it deserves them even if it’s not the most artfully written screenplay. Check it out if it makes your local film festival. It’s also on HBO Max.