Rebecca (2020) Review

Ah, Rebecca, who doesn't like a movie where a new bride is unwelcome in her husband's home and is continuously haunted by his dead first wife and manipulated by her creepy housekeeper.

In 2020, Netflix released its newest thriller movie, Rebecca, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 take on Daphne du Maurier's gothic novel. The movie received mixed reviews as some thought the movie was "campy" and "in some ways, gets closer to the narrative shape of the original novel than the Hitchcock film, which rather truncated the third act" according to The Guardian. However, most critics believed that Armie Hammer (Maxim DeWinter) was too attractive and that he was not cold or closed off enough for the role. Lily James' (Mrs. DeWinter) portrayal was not crucified, however, critics also thought that she was too done up and that her relationship with Maxim was too sexual and romantic, rather than the fast courtship it was.

To clarify, in the movie, Maxim DeWinter, a wealthy aristocrat, meets a woman working for another wealthy woman as a companion at a resort in Monte Carlo and is soon engaged to her. He then takes his new bride, who never gets a name, to his estate Manderley in southern England. There his new bride is gaslit and manipulated by the head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who is obsessed with keeping Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, at the forefront of everyone's mind. The constant presence of Rebecca makes Maxim's new wife insecure and self-conscious about her every action and makes her jealous of her husband's late wife. That combined with the mysteriousness of Rebecca's death makes the new wife question everything in her new world.

The movie did a good job of making the suspense of who Rebecca really was and who Mrs. Danvers makes her out to be. The pull between the wife's relationship with Maxim and her relationship with the deceased Rebecca is visible in the movie because Mrs. Danvers' almost sexual obsession with the late Rebecca makes her seem like an almost fleshed-out character even though she has been dead. I also liked the evolution of Maxim's wife from a meek and mousy woman to a woman more confident in herself and confident in her husband's loyalties.

What I did not enjoy in the movie was that it seemed that Maxim DeWinter was a character that was underdeveloped and not as powerful as Mrs. Danvers or Mrs. DeWinter. Mr. DeWinter was not as cold and high-brow as he should have been portrayed and was too direct in his acting when Mr. DeWinter should have been more secretive about his late wife.

I chose to review this movie because I thought that du Maurier's novel had a certain gothic feel to it, that horror stories should have more of. The suspense and the mystery of what happened to Rebecca in her "boating accident" made me enjoy the movie overall, and I hope to read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca soon.

Mystery Monday

This past week, Kutztown University was on Spring Break. This gave me the opportunity to kick back and relax, while doing the one thing I haven't done in a while-- open a new book. While I have been doing readings for my classes, that is not the same thing as reading for pleasure. Pleasure is exactly what I found when I read Mary Kubica's Local Woman Missing.

Local Woman Missing was about the disappearances of Shelby Tebow, and a few days later Meredith Dickey and her daughter Delilah. The fast-paced vanishing of both woman and a child created a sense of distrust and unease throughout their sharing neighborhood, causing friends to turn on each other and loved ones to question each other. 11 years later a girl, calling herself Delilah Dickey stumbles back into the small town that was the site of her disappearance. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for the truth.

Local Woman Missing was the exact mystery I was looking for to get myself back into the mystery genre. It had suspense, guessing games, and one shocking twist that I am still not 100% over. The emotion and shock that came through this novel are why it is one of my all-time favorites.

Kubica gave the novel multiple points of view that gave the novel new angles that rounded out each of the characters. The character of Leo Dickey made me sad because of all the trauma he experienced from losing his mother and sister, the character of Delilah gave the suspense of the novel from her escape, next, the character Kate gave the important POV of the outsider trying to help, and the character Meredith Dickey gave the readers sympathy over her the cause of her disappearance and the shock of how it all went down.

The only thing that I wished the author had included in the novel was a longer epilogue that explained what happened to the characters a few years after the resolution. I want to know what happened to Leo and how he is faring and if he and his father have worked things out between them. I want to know how Kate is coping with her loss and if she has moved on. And I want to know about Carly and Delilah and how their lives have changed for the better or for the worse.

Overall, I believe the author did an impressive job depicting each of the characters and their mindsets, and I hope to read another one of Mary Kubica's works. I heard that Just the Nicest Couple is another best-seller of Kubica's, so I will need to check it out.

Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site

Edgar Allan Poe spent six years of his life in a little house in Philadelphia where he created the famous works "The Tell-Tale-Heart" and "The Black Cat".

Early in the morning on March 17, 2023, my father and I made the drive into the city where we found Allan's former home. After a single knock at the door, a guard allowed us inside and gave us a tour of Poe's three-story home. The home was open to tourists and gave some insight into what Poe's life must have been like for Poe's family. The house was small, and comfortable, and was left with no furniture. However, there were tapestries in each room depicting what furniture might have looked like in the room. There was even a small video for tourists to look at which gave a summary of what Poe's life was like in Philadelphia.

The tour started on the ground floor in the parlor, then to the kitchen, and upstairs. The upstairs consisted of the master bedroom and a study. The third floor seemed to have an extra room and a room where it is theorized that Poe's wife, Virginia, stayed in because of her bouts with Tuberculosis. After the tour, we were able to see the outside of the house and look at the former entrance that Poe's home had. The three stories were visible from the outside of the house, and it is rumored that at night, two glowing yellow eyes can be visible in the third-story window.

I think that what I learned from being inside the Poe family's house and seeing some of Edgar Allan Poe's works on display is that his family was very intersected in what he was writing at the time. In the video that was shown to us, it was theorized that Poe wrote "The Tell-Tale Heart" after his wife Virginia died of Tuberculosis. "Poe’s tale of murder and terror, told by a nameless homicidal madman, influenced later stream-of-consciousness fiction and helped secure the author’s reputation as master of the macabre" stated by Britannica

Poe's Parlor on the first floor.

The staircase to the second floor.

A bedroom on the third floor.

The outside garden next to Poe's home.

The side entrance to the house.

The cellar of Poe's house which is credited for inspiring his short story, "The Black Cat".

Jack the Ripper and the London Press

Jack the Ripper and the London Press by Lionel Curtis and L. Perry Curtis is a Ripper text that I have never seen before. Instead of mindlessly listing the dark deeds of the infamous Ripper, Curtis took a different angle for the book and wrote about how the Ripper murders were depicted in the press, and how that coverage reveals the repression of the late 1800s society.  "Filling a perceived gap in "Ripperature," Curtis examines how 14 London newspapers covered the Whitechapel murders attributed to Jack the Ripper in 1888. Curtis (history, emeritus, Brown) begins with a brief account of the crimes and a description of the impoverished East End of London, where the murders occurred. He then devotes three chapters to the state of Victorian journalism, with emphasis on how murders and other sensational news were reported" says the Library Journal. It was the chapter Victorian Murder News that caught my attention right away.

This chapter really went underway in describing the way Victorian England reacted to murder. This interested me because murder mysteries only began back in the 18th century, and were most likely inspired by Jack the Ripper. Since Jack was never caught, that only added to the mystery and allure. It is my opinion that because Victorians were so repressed in their freedoms and daily lives that they "treated murder like a form of "popular entertainment, a spectator sport. However upset they might be by the actual event, readers seemed to relish both the gruesome details of the crime and "the moment of truth" when the jury returned a verdict of guilty and the judge imposed the familiar sentence of death by hanging." These people were so stunted and bored in their everyday lives that looked forward to seeing someone deserving to be put to death. Of course, this sensational news had to be written with a certain aesthetic to it. Grisly murders had to be judged, "just as they would treat "a picture, statue, or other work of art."" These mysteries were the only entertainment most had, especially for the upper class. These mysteries put a certain mystery to their otherwise privileged lives and they were excited by the idea that there were men and women out there that would engage in forbidden pastimes, then kill to cover it up. These are the same snobs that Dame Agatha Christie would usually write off in her novels.

In my opinion, Jack the Ripper and the London Press is an impressive book. It gives a lot of information about the background of Victorian England and the class divides that murder engaged in. Curtis even found the most exclusive Keywords that most of the daily papers would use for their publishing. For example, prostitutes that were murdered by Jack the Ripper were termed "unfortunates", rape was called an "outrage", and masturbation was keyed as "self-pollution" and "the secret sin". Curtis also gave descriptions of different murders that made headlines like the "St. Giles Murder 1845" and "The Whitechapel Murder 1874-75". There were also descriptions of different types of murderers that were making the rounds like "The Roadside Murder 1860" and "Poisonous Physicians".

Curtis made it clear that the time when these murders occurred highly influenced the general public and the outcome of the investigations. While I did enjoy most of the chapter, it seemed to me that this book was for academics as it was not a light read. In order to understand some of the wording, I needed to read it over and over again. There was a lot of information to go over, and in my opinion, some of it stayed from the original concept. For example, the author wrote about author Oscar Wilde's own interpretation of writing about murder and included some of his writing in the chapter. However, all in all, I appreciated the book and the insight it gave into the Victorian era's view of murder.

Library Scavenger Hunt

In the scavenger hunt assignment that was assigned, we had to find different sources for each of our blog topics. We could pick three challenges out of the five to do, so I chose challenges 1, 2, and 4. The 1st was to find a real book in the library, the 2nd was to find an e-book and print out a vital section, and the 4th was to find a relevant book on our topics, on the WorldCat database, and if the book was not in Kutztown's catalog, to request an interlibrary loan.

I found that challenge 1 was probably the easiest for me to accomplish because I only had to go onto the library's database and search for an Agatha Christie title, which was not difficult since she is a famous author. I then quickly found the book I was looking for in Kutztown's database and collected the book from the shelves.

Challenge number 2 was a little bit difficult as I had to find an E-book that was available on the Kutztown database and print out the important parts that would be of value to my project. I found a book on Jack the Ripper that had a lot of interesting content on crime in the Victorian era. I found a chapter that was based on crime in the newspapers, and that was a helpful tool. The keywords Crime, 1800's, and Victorian era helped me focus in on one work of non-fiction.

Challenge number 4 was probably the hardest of the challenges for me because I had to go onto a different database and see which titles were available in the Kutztown database as well. I found a "handbook" about Sherlock Holmes and the start of the detective genre. Luckily, I found two chapters that were easy to print out because Sherlock Holmes is not unpopular. The chapters were about the Daily Lives and hierarchy in Victorian England.

In the end, I ended up with one autobiography about Agatha Christie, one e-book about Victorian Crimes in Print, with pages printed out, and one special e-book source about Sherlock Holmes' background that was printed out into two sections, Daily Life and Crimes in the Victorian era.

Author, Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Guest List, The Hunting Party, and the Paris Apartment. Lucy Foley "studied English liter­ature at Durham University and University College London and worked for several years as a fiction edi­tor in the publishing industry" reports HarperCollins. She currently lives in London.

While there is not a lot of information about Ms. Foley, her work is especially important to me because both The Guest List and The Hunting Party are novels that I have read and loved by Lucy Foley. The twists and turns kept me invested in the novel, and are why I read them in such a short time. The complex characters and scenarios left me reeling after the novel was finished and had me shouting out loud when the killer was revealed. It's obvious now that The Guest List is one of my favorite murder mystery novels. I'm secretly not so secretly hoping for a sequel.

I will definitely be staying tuned for when Ms. Foley's next novel comes out.

Throwback Thriller

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson was one of the first murder-mystery thrillers that I fell in love with. The novel follows a high school senior, Pippa Fitz-Amobi, trying to solve a murder that upended her small town 5 years before, for a school project. However, the truths that come out find the alleged "killer" more innocent and the victim of the case more suspicious as time goes on. One this is for sure, someone out there doesn't want Pippa to find out what really happened...

I recommend this series to anyone who has an inkling for puzzles and a desire to solve a crime.

I think that this blog is super interesting. I haven't gotten started on the Last of Us tv show yet, however, it is on my list. I've never played the videogame, but from what I've heard it's a great adaptation of the game. I guess a connection I could make between my blog and this one is that they both deal with dead people, or the infected, and there are people who are doing everything they can to stop it. Mine is more detective while yours is more sci-fi in that aspect. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this! I wonder, are you watching the show as you post more?

Introduction

This blog is exploring deeper into the world of the Last of Us and where it originated from rather than just the TV show. The Last of Us released as a video game June 2013, and was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony computer entertainment. The games genre is categorized as an action adventure game, and carries a rather interesting plot line throughout the campaign. According to Wikipedia, “The Last of Us is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective.[1] The player traverses post-apocalyptic environments such as towns, buildings, forests, and sewers to advance the story. The player can use firearms, improvised weapons, hand-to-hand combat, and stealth to defend against hostile humans and cannibalistic creatures infected by a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus.” Although the fungus is not their only enemy, there are also firefly groups, which are a rebellion group in the new world, as well as the military which owns the Quarantine zones. 

[Source]

The game begins with Sarah buying Joel a watch for his birthday, and watching a movie together as they fall asleep. The fungus starts to spread as infected begin turning aggressive and begin multiplying by spreading to other areas. Joel locks Sarah inside as an infected runs into their door trying to get in. This is Sarah’s first encounter with an infected and she is scared as Joel must kill it in order to protect the both of them. They then wait for Tommy, Joel’s brother, to come and get them out of their state and hopefully away from the infected area. You proceed to drive through a city being burned and destroyed as infected run all around. Eventually, the car gets hit and Joel must carry Sarah away from infected. Joel and Sarah are confronted by a Military soldier who received orders to shoot on sight. The soldier got one shot off before being killed by Tommy trying to help them. Sarah was struck by the stray bullet from the soldier and dies in her Joel’s arms. 

Introduction to Murder

When you think about it, murder mysteries haven't been around for a long time. They were around for the time of Prohibition and both World Wars, but their origin only began around the time of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was the start of the American class systems and the end of agricultural and urban living. In came the cities, as well as the mystery and intrigue of writers. One such writer, Edgar Allan Poe captured the attention of the public and his fellow artists.

While Poe himself was known for being a drunken eccentric, his work only spoke for itself as masterful and consuming. Poe's short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is considered one of the first detective stories out there, and according to Katherine Kuiper of Britannica, "In its presentation of an amateur detective who uses “ratiocination” to solve an apparently inexplicable mystery, the story shaped a new genre of fiction.." according to Britannica. Poe's work would highlight the murder mystery genre in parlor rooms all over cities, including the game of Wink Murder, a game where a secretly selected player is able to "kill" others by winking at them, while the surviving players try to identify the killer.

But most shockingly, and only discovered now is Poe's almost feminist view of women that The Murders in the Rue Morgue brought forth. Joan Dyan theorized that, "Poe is after nothing less than an exhumation of the lived, but disavowed or suppressed experiences of women in his society.... he lays bare the mechanics of cultural control in the Anglo-American experience" in To Make Venus Vanish. However, Edgar Allen Poe wasn't the only author to dive into the murder mystery world and impact feminism.

Agatha Christie is well known as the "Queen of Mystery" and "World's Best-Selling Novelist". Christie was educated by her mother, and against her mother's wishes learned to read and write. This changed when "finding herself in bed with influenza, her mother suggested she write down the stories she was so fond of telling. And so a lifelong passion began" tells Agatha Christie, an Agatha Christie website dedicated to her life. Christie's family revealed that she would observe family and friends for inspiration, and find it in the most unsuspecting of places. Agatha Christie was an inquiring and immensely talented woman that took the world of mysteries and murder by storm and became a brilliant writer who is still mentioned and admired to this day.

I have not finished either Christie's or Poe's works, but I do intend to. And Then There Were None is right on my shelf in front of me waiting to be picked up. While neither of their works are finished by me, that doesn’t mean murder is off the table. Along with my posts about Poe, Christie, and everything in between, I do intend to tell whoever is reading about what I am reading. Although it happens to be nothing right now. Stay tuned!