Lazarus: The Real Sense

I'm a big Harlan Coben fan -- I've given rave reviews here on this blog to 8 of Coben's streaming series since 2017 -- so of course I was going to watch his latest, Lazarus (on Amazon Prime Video) -- and I talked my wife into watching it, too.

Lazarus is somewhat different from Coben's other works.   Like them, it's a great whodunnit, that keeps you guessing until the very end about who has killed whom.  And the story is so intriguing, that I enjoyed it immensely, even though I half-guessed who one of the worst culprits was.   So, in what way was Lazarus different?

Well, the main character, Dr. Joel Lazarus (a psychiatrist, powerfully played by Sam Claflin, who was memorable is Season 5 of Peaky Blinders), sees dead people, aka ghosts.  Indeed, one of the other characters (Seth, a detective, well played by David Finn) references the signature line from The Sixth Sense, "I see dead people," as he ridicules Lazarus about his interactions with dead people.  This at the very least makes Lazarus an ideal narrative to be released around Halloween.

But -- and this is the closest I'll come to a spoiler -- Lazarus is not really seeing ghosts, he's interacting with these dead people in his head.   As we come to learn, Lazarus for a variety of reasons is himself a troubled person, and his character is also an emblem of physician heal thyself.

A real high point of the six-episode limited series is Bill Nighy playing another Lazarus -- Dr. Jonathan Lazarus, also a psychiatrist, Joel's father.   Nighy is someone who never disappoints in his acting, and he again comes through with a sterling performance.

As does Harlan Coben once again.  I consider him a 100% watch-on-sight creator of great streaming television, and I look forward to seeing his next venture.

See my reviews of other Harlan Coben streaming series: No Second Chance ... Safe ... The Stranger ... The Five ... The Innocent ... Shelter ... Fool Me Once ... Missing You

The Case Against Halloween

Fist and foremost, Halloween is dangerous.  As a parent, you want to protect your children.   What could be worse than putting them at the mercy of who knows what strangers put in their candy?  Yeah, I know you usually go calling on friends and neighbors for your trick or treating, but even so.   Why risk that someone next door who was a good person yesterday had some kind of psychotic breakdown overnight, leaving your kids holding the perilous bag.

But let's say the treats are what they're supposed to be:  good, wholesome candy.   The problem is that there is no such thing.   Everyone agrees that refined sugars are bad for you.   Sure, you can tolerate some.   But you and your children are better of eating more complex sugars - such as those found in fruit - and even less of that, if you can.   Instead, Halloween trains your kids in the worst possible eating habit: binging on sweets.

And the fundamental logic of the holiday is off kilter, too.   What does trick or treat teach children?  That, if someone doesn't reward you, your proper recourse is to mess them up?  And in the case of Halloween, the so-called reward - again, candy, which is no good for you - is in no sense justified.  You're not getting it because you did something out of the ordinary, or even just because you performed some task well, or did someone a favor.   Instead, you're in effect demanding the reward - because, again, it's Halloween.

Being a parent - our kids are now in their late twenties - I know it's not easy to say no to Halloween.  Kids, understandably, feel a sense of entitlement to Halloween and its candies, and resent not being allowed to reap what they see as justified bounty.   But life's not a piece a cake, and sometimes you have to stand up and refuse to go along with a tradition that's just stupid and dangerous.   Better not to demand cake and sweets from strangers on this or any other day.

Rob Zombie's Halloween

I admit that my favorite horror movies go back to when I was a teenager - 14, 15, 16. If I could get a girl to go with me to the Allerton Theater in the Bronx, and it was to a horror movie, there was a pretty good chance she would cuddle close during the scary scenes ... Hey, I was a kid ...

Among my favorites back then were The Blob - a science fiction horror movie about a big amoeba - and Vincent Price in The Tingler. That one featured a skeleton that rolled out of the screen right at the audience on a rope ... Like I said, I was just a kid ...

More recent horror movies play with your mind as well as your adrenalin, and Halloween is at the top of the list. That tinkling piano music alone is enough to make you run for cover, which you can never find.

John Carpenter's Halloween was a masterpiece in 1978. What can Rob Zombie's remake bring to it?

I would look for the special effects. They've progressed a lot since 1978. Indeed, I would say that horror movies are the best genres for remakes. Bela Lugosi's Dracula was a 1931 masterpiece - but so was the Christopher Lee in 1958 (I saw that one in the Allerton Theater, too...) Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956 was a great movie - but the special effects in the 1978 version were unbelievable (that shot of the dog with a man's head)...

So I'm looking forward to powerful sequences in Rob Zombie's Halloween the movie, driven by the explosive magic of today's special effects. Here's a taste in this trailer ...



Oh yeah, Rob Zombie kept in that tingling piano in his Halloween the movie. It opens August 31. Just what I needed to hear at eleven o'clock tonight, on a sultry summer evening...