Movies
[Book Review] Marcus Dunstan and Stephen Romano’s ‘Black Light’
Now in stores from Mulholland Books from Marcus Dunstan (writer of Feast 1-III, Saw 4-7, Piranha 3DD and director of The Collector) and Stephen Romano (“Shock Festival”) is “Black Light“, a new horror novella reviews by Ryan Daley.
“Buck’s got a way with spirits that no one else can match. He was normal, once. Until Something Horrible killed his parents and left him for dead.
Buck has spent years using his gift to trace his family. It’s his only hope of finding out what happened to them-and what made him the way he is.
Now the voices say that something big is coming. Buck already knows what it is-a super high-tech bullet train running express across a stretch of unforgiving desert known for the most deadly paranormal events in history. A place where Buck almost died a few years ago, and where he swore he would never return.
But as the train prepares to rumble down the tracks, Buck knows it can only be the inevitable hand of fate pulling him back to the most harrowing unfinished case of his career at four hundred miles per hour.”
Read Daley’s thoughts on the book inside and pick it up at retailers everywhere.
Is it easier for a novelist to become a screenwriter than it is for a screenwriter to become a novelist? I’m not sure, but the success of novelist-turned-screenwriters like David Benioff (Novel: 25th Hour; Screenplay: Game of Thrones) or Alex Garland (Novel: The Beach; Screenplay: 28 Days Later) seems to indicate that established novelists have an easier time making the transition. But Saw screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (parts IV through VII) do their best to break the mold with Black Light, a well-paced and highly imaginative supernatural thriller, penned with co-writer Stephen Romano. It’s a novel steeped in rich, vivid descriptions–more than a reader could hope to expect from a dialogue-obsessed screenwriters–but the excessive number of peripheral characters makes for a sometimes confusing read.
Buck Carlsbad is a medium on a mission: to ingest evil spirits and put them to rest. Once he discovers an evil spirit, he gulps it down, stores it in his gut for a while, and then regurgitates it into a silver urn, which can be subsequently buried in a graveyard, or burial ground, or what have you. Sometimes he’s forced to carry a spirit for a day or two before finding a release vessel, and carrying around an evil spirit in your belly is apparently hard on interpersonal relationships.
Buck never really knew his parents, only that they were killed somewhere in the Black Triangle, a patch of haunted land in Nevada where a bunch of bad-ass prisoners were executed. When a load of rich dudes decide to run a super train through the Black Triangle, they hire Buck to accompany them on its maiden voyage, to thwart the attacks of any evil spirits that might want to board without the captain’s permission. Buck is into the paid soul eating and everything, but his primary motive is to find out what the fuck happened to his parents. Frankly, he’s not a complex man.
The authors take an earnest approach to the nutty plot, and while the summary may sound like a cheesy TV-movie (Buck Carlsbad: Lonely Soul Eater, perhaps), the novel is written in the confident first-person voice of a hardboiled, pre-war private investigator. Buck is a ghost hunter straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel. I was amazed that three different authors could produce such a singular narrative perspective.
But while the novel can be an action-packed blast, particularly in the latter half, the authors introduce far too many fringe players to the cast list, most of questionable relevancy. There are dozens of named characters in Black Light, from Buck’s support crew, to the handful of bigwigs riding the super train, to the security agents (from varying agencies) who are there to protect them. The first third of the novel is spent introducing all of these characters and the super train/Black Triangle set-up, and the authors seem to hope all of their dangling character sketches will pay off once the action kicks into gear. But the disparate character arcs don’t converge in a way that’s coherent or satisfying; they’re simply tossed into the climax like so much fodder. Black Light moves fast enough to obscure its more prominent weaknesses, but it would be a stronger novel if the authors had culled the expansive herd of supporting characters.
3.5/5 Skulls
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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