Our Wives Under the Sea Julia Armfield 2022 ★★★ 03/10/2024

impressions

Grief is a cavernous ocean engulfing those within inky-black depths. Immersed in the all-consuming waters of remembrance, veins clog; lungs straining under the weight of shared history. Limbs grow heavy and heavier still, and you find yourself succumbing to the gravitational pull of all that once was. All that will never be again. Isolation and guilt eddying around the narrative seabed, with tenderness Our Wives Under the Sea, explores the harrowing disintegration of a queer relationship between a pair of thirty-something women. A kaleidoscopic reel of moments shared – drunken pub excursions and films watched – contrast with the slow, painful erosion of losing someone to the throes of the half-known.

Languishing with the scum-encrusted bathtub, blood splashes around unbidden – rising through pores, reddish dots prickling a lunar canvas. Skin grows ever-translucent, distant. Where an eye once existed a globe of water-like substance takes form, until it doesn’t. A primordial transformation ushering in decay pressures Leah’s watery existence to sluice through trembling fingers, dropping into the abyss with a splash.

Visions of nightmarish Lovecraftian leviathans rising from arcane voids instil a primal, vaguely cosmic dread; turning veins to ice and stilling my heart. Seeing distorted, green-tinged footage of the magnapinna’s spindly limbs floating desolately a year or so ago, to the haunting memory of encountering an eerie illustration of an anglerfish’s jagged teeth between the ages of six and eight – though shrouded in a veil of darkness and mystery, the sea and its spectral organisms have long haunted the recesses of my mind. More people have touched down on the surface of the moon than have found themselves submerged within the abyssal nadirs of challenger deep, despite the ocean ostensibly being our very own.

To this end Our Wives Under the Sea merges the horror of deep-sea exploration with the creeping dread of what Leah and her teammates endured for several months. Trapped within the claustrophobic confines of the submarine, unknown voices drift by their ears, the smell of burning flesh ever-present – the sense that something out there is watching, the question of the Centre’s true intentions looming at the back of their minds. It’s dread-inducing, magnetic.

Though the elegiac narrative is split in twain between Miri and Leah’s perspectives, respectively, it’s anchored in Miri grappling with the guilt which arises from being left behind as she contends with unanswered questions and the uncertainty flooding the contours of all that she once knew. As if on autopilot, calls are dutifully made to the Centre – the aloof eye-logoed organization that all but vanishes, disappearing into sea foam, months following the submarine’s supposed retrieval. Their true goal doesn’t seem to matter much when faced with the loss of a loved one.

RP forums dedicated to women fantasizing about husbands lost at space are trawled, inviting users to craft elaborate fantasies regarding the absences of fictious men – which naturally results in Miri filling a glass of wine and angrily slamming it down by her keyboard. This emotional toll is underscored by her ongoing confrontation with the unknown which accompaies Leah’s nightmarish transformation, heightening the novel's exploration of grief, and the disintegration of identity.

Armfield portrays the process of grief coming and going, like waves breaking on the shore. At times its laps gently on the sand, offering a fleeting reprieve, while at other times crashes with a fierce, all-consuming intensity. Our Wives Under the Sea is a haunting work, a marvellous debut touted as a “sapphic aquatic horror and queer gothic fairytale” ensuring Armfield’s career will be followed with great anticipation (her latest work, a reimagining of King Lear, will be gotten around to in time!).

Horror Movie Paul Tremblay 2024 ★ 14/10/2024

impressions

With October settling in all its leaf-speckled awe, cozying up with a delightful and frightful read proved enticing. Toying with nostalgia-driven analogue horror through a premise of an early ‘90s film production marred by misfortune, Horror Movie presented itself as a shining beacon amidst the autumnal gloom. Although what our motley crew quite literally pour their life into regrettably fails to materialize, its sole surviving cast member – Thin Kid – persists in fulfilling a promise to get it made. No matter what it takes.

His untangling what took place beyond the camera’s lens decades later proves to be the work’s most compelling aspect, awkwardly shifting through bureaucratic red tape and dealing with a fervent, and at times intrusive, fandom that has collectively taken to picking apart all matter of gory did-she-say-this did-he-do-that's within the shade of their e-hovels. It is a shame that these sections are afforded less time than anticipated within Horror Movie's tripartite structure, as the work oscillates between that present-day perspective, the film’s script (exhaustive annotations included), and hazy recollections of the original production.

Its structural framework, though ambitious through its plausible construction of a cult classic deserving of years dedicated to avid speculation across the internet’s expanse, feels disjointed. The moment one is swept up in the air of mystery, all but sensing a gust wafting through desolate school corridors ruffle their hair; fingertips tracing the mask’s unsettling contours, they’re flung across time and space. It takes a moment to adjust, but you’re left with the sentiment that all that once felt faint enough to perceive fades away into the autumn night, detracting from the story’s mystique and dismantling the very allure it presumably sought to build.

Ever-tenuous threads weaving together past and present fray with Thin Kid’s culpability called into question, gesturing towards an existential abyss in which the madness of eternity dwells, heightened by frenzied notes scrawled across the script’s margins. The mask he dons serves as a reflection unto which humanity’s sense of cruelty and complicity is reflected, engaging in a critique of those feverishly salivating over atrocities; blood-soaked vestiges serving as fodder for enthusiasts to tear sharp teeth into.

Extending the critique to hypothetical popcorn-munchers calling out for chaos and destruction naturally invites one to think of true crime aficionados and their carelessly dragging out pain, yet of course the movie flounders with its self-serving script and juvenile inferences; every bit the teenage dream through its wry wink at conventions and era-defining apathy. Witnessing carefully curated sequences uploaded on YouTube is enough to draw in a legion of would-be fans, glancing at the sea of lost media and analogue horror devotees. Through the glimpses of what could be, it invites people to collectively erect their own version of the titular horror movie, imprinting their psyche upon the early ‘90s static.

Horror Movie had potential, certainly. Yet reading it proved to be a chore, stopping and starting with annoying frequency and devoting too much time on inconsequential flashbacks. I also wish to forget the last few pages ever happened because really what on earth.