Movie Reviews for Writers: Nightbooks
When I saw this one on Netflix, I knew I needed to add it to my list of movies about writers and to the list for this series of reviews. A kid is kidnapped by a classic wicked witch and forced to write scary stories and read them to her — or she’ll make him regret it in classic fairy tale fashion.
The gist of this tale: Writers can be a little different animal, a horse of a different color, as the cliche goes. Sure, some of us function in normal society just fine, but deep down, there’s something just plain weird in us that has us contemplating everything from murders to political coup d’etats to vampiric orgies to art gallery thefts to the seduction of a crowned prince or princess.
There’s a weird, weird world happening beneath our outward expressions. The trick is to own up to it and embrace it.
It’s a point this creepy, cute flick presents admirably. Based on J.A. White’s book, Nightbooks centers around Alex, who at the beginning of the movie, storms into his room and threatens to destroy his notebooks of horror stories he has written. Something has happened to make him second guess writing them, but it’s not revealed until later.
Cue the creepy score.
On his way to the boiler in the basement to hurl his notebooks into the flames, he is tricked into an open apartment, which slams shut and locks him in before the door disappears entirely.
There he meets Yasmine (a fellow captive), Natacha (the witch), and Lenore (Natacha’s sometimes invisible spy-cat). When threatened with… well, a “you’ll wish you were dead” kind of fate… Alex blurts out that he can help the witch by writing scary stories. She’s sold and immediately agrees to spare him — as long as he keeps her entertained with creepy tales.
But fate has other plans. Alex confesses later both to Yasmine and to Natacha that “I’ll never write another story.”
He longs to be more or less normal, and he’s sick of being seen as weird by his friends.
Oddly enough, both his fellow captive and his captor have some helpful advice for him and his predicament.
Says Yasmine: “Well, you are weird. But the thing that makes you weird makes them ordinary. And no one likes to be ordinary. Ordinary sucks. So they’re going to try to take that away from you.”
Says Natacha: “I’m mystified by you, storyteller. This beautiful darkness dances inside your brain and you should celebrate it, but you run from it. Why?”
They’re both right.
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