Blackmoor Vituperative

Not too long ago, I spent a day watching animated films I’d never seen before on NetFlix, including The Great Mouse Detective, Hercules, The Emperor’s New Groove, and a movie I had never heard of before, A Monster in Paris. While I enjoyed the other three movies well enough, the best of these, to my surprise, was the movie I had never heard of.

In Paris in 1910, during a city-wide flood, four friends experience adventure and discover love when two of them accidentally create a giant monster in a brilliant scientist’s laboratory. I do not wish to tell you any more, because I would like you to discover this wonderful film for yourself.

A Monster In Paris is a beautiful, charming film, with humor and a heart that is too often lacking in American films (most Pixar films being the exceptions). One of the Amazon reviews refers to this an as “undiscovered pearl”, and I couldn’t agree more.

Watched “(Jack Ketchum’s) The Girl Next Door”. It’s based (very loosely) on the true story of a girl who was tortured to death by her guardian and some neighbor children. Netflix called this a “thriller”. It’s not a thriller. It’s not a mystery, or a whodunnit, or a suspense film, either: it’s horror. Unlike most horror, it does not depict evil as smart, strong, sexy, or suave. That kind of evil exists only in fiction. “The Girl Next Door” shows the kind of evil that actually exists in the real world, and it’s utterly banal.

In the real world, evil isn’t Hannibal Lecter. In the real world, evil is a pathetic wretch that abuses children.