I recently saw Turning Red and loved it for a number of reasons, some more biased than others. It sounds like a simple enough story—thirteen-year-old Mei Lee has her life seemingly figured out as she follows the expectations set out to her by her mother while secretly obsessing over a boyband and crushes with her group of friends. That is, until Mei learns that the women in her family can turn into giant red pandas when they get too excited, a fact that starts to take a toll on her relationship with her mother.
I won’t lie, I was nervous when I started watching Luca. In a group watch with my friends, I saw that Luca was curious about the surface world and that Alberto collected human items, and I worried that the movie was just copying themes from The Little Mermaid (much like how The Good Dinosaur used a lot of similar themes to The Lion King). Luckily Luca becomes its own story—one that focuses on the importance and complexities of friendship above anything else, and one that has quickly become one my favorites.
Luca follows a twelve-year-old sea monster, curious about the surface world but taught to fear it by his overprotective parents. When Luca befriends Alberto, a fellow sea monster who lives on the surface, he encourages Luca to explore the surface. There he learns that when dry, sea monsters appear human, and they resume their scaly appearance when wet. But the fun doesn’t last for Luca. When his parents discover he’s been to the surface, they plan to send him to live with his uncle in the deep sea. Luca and Alberto then run away to the nearby port town of Portorosso. Their main goal is to get a vespa and go on adventures together.
What I adored about Luca was its simple message of friendship. I also enjoyed finding out that Enrico Cassarosa used his own childhood friendship, as well as Studio Ghibli films, as inspiration for the film. The two boys find a friend in each other, and Alberto helps bring sheltered Luca out of his shell by showing him the wonders of the human world he’s been taught to fear. From the knick-knacks he collects in the ocean to gelato and vespas, Alberto shares his interests with Luca and tries to get his friend to stop being afraid.
But, it’s the honest look at friendship that made Luca so special to me. From the start of Luca and Alberto’s friendship, they build their own vespa and then hide in the nearby port town of Portorosso. They have the goal of winning enough prize money to buy a vespa of their own. And then their friendship with Guilia brings conflict, because even the best and strongest of friendships have conflict.
Guilia is not an antagonistic character and doesn’t actively try to stop Luca and Alberto from being friends, but her presence ends up bringing its own trouble. Luca and Alberto befriend Guilia so the three can team up to win the Portorosso Cup and use the prize money to buy the vespa Alberto and Luca yearn for. While both boys are friends with Guilia, it’s Luca that she shares an interest with astronomy and school with. When Alberto sees the friendship between them, not having the shared interest with them makes him feels threatened. Alberto’s goal throughout the movie is to win enough money to buy a vespa and go on adventures with Luca, who he has trusted and devoted himself to after being abandoned by his father. Fearing that abandonment again, Alberto lashes out, being cruel to Luca and Guilia, and eventually reveals himself as a sea monster to Guilia. That leads to Luca’s betrayal as he lies about knowing that Alberto is a sea monster (and that he is as well).
Aside from revealing himself to be a sea monster, Alberto’s fear and anger about possibly losing Luca really resonated with me (and I’m sure resonates with a lot of people). Because who in a group of friends hasn’t felt the way Alberto has? Who hasn’t watched as two friends begin getting closer and you realize you have nothing to contribute to the conversation? Who hasn’t been pushed out because you’re no longer compatible with two friends who now are compatible? Who hasn’t lost a friend because someone better has come along? And even if not everyone has experienced it, we’ve all feared it happening. Even in the closest of friendships that fear of rejection, of losing a best friend, of not being interesting enough or worthy enough to continue being friends with, that feeling exists. I liked that Luca chose to show the ups and downs and complexities of keeping friendships.
But things work out for Alberto, Luca, and Guilia in the end. Luca and Alberto acknowledge how they hurt one another and realize that helping one another reach their goals is more important than not being friends, even if those goals have changed. By the movie’s end, Luca decides to go with Guilia to school, and Alberto finds a home in Portorosso with Guilia’s father. The three remain friends and promise to stay in contact with each other, all of them receiving their happy endings even if they weren’t the happy endings they envisioned at the start.
I also found Luca to be nostalgic in some ways. With everything that’s happened in the past year, my main contact with friends has been virtual. While it’s awesome that we can contact each other digitally during a pandemic (including watching Luca), I’ve missed seeing my friends in person, missed the little adventures we would go on and just getting to hang out and laugh with them, for things to return to normal again. And while the world slowly inches its way to normalcy, or whatever normal will be once the pandemic ends, I’m excited that the chance to see my friends again safely is coming.
Luca is a movie about friendship, and that’s a surprisingly rare theme to find in movies. Even in movies aimed for children, it’s hard to find one that shows the importance of platonic relationships because so much of our media focuses on a happily ever after, which generally comes from a romantic relationship. Luca proves that happy endings can be found through our friends, through our goals and dreams that our friends encourage us to take, and our friends who even far away are always on the sidelines cheering us on.
We’re midway through the first month of 2021 and things have certainly been…interesting. It’s also the time that some of us may have given up on the resolutions we hopefully (or maybe even hesitantly) made for ourselves.
Well if you’ve trashed those resolutions or maybe are having a hard time sticking to them, look at these five Disney Pixar movies to help motivate and inspire your 2021!
For years whenever the Christmas carol “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” played on the radio, I was confused by the lyrics “there’ll be scary ghost stories.” It seemed out of place for a Christmas song until I read an article many years later that explained that reading ghost stories on Christmas Eve used to be a tradition in the Victorian era.
‘Tis the season of pumpkin spice, candy, and overall spookiness, and I know I’ve been enjoying my fill of all three. I recently binge-watched Mike Flannigan’s newest horror series The Haunting of Bly Manor, and it got me thinking of how haunted house stories are making a comeback, so it only made sense to recommend some of my favorite haunted house books that would be perfect reads for the spooky season!
1. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
If you’re going into this book thinking it will be exactly like Mike Flannigan’s Netflix series, you would be wrong because he took some great creative liberties when making the show. But just because the book and tv series differ from each other doesn’t mean the book is any less enjoyable.
Jackson’s novel is often looked at as the haunted house story, and you’re missing out on a lot by not reading it.
The novel follows occult scholar Dr. Montague who is looking for solid evidence of a haunting at the infamous Hill House. In order to run his experiment, he seeks the help of Theodora, a psychic, Eleanor Vance, a lonely and reclusive young woman who was once haunted by poltergeists, and Luke Sanderson, the future heir of Hill House.
At first, their stay seems ordinary for an old and awkwardly built house, but things take a terrifying turn when the house chooses one of its guests to take . . . forever.
2. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
If you’re like me and you’ve been bingeing Flannigan’s newest series The Haunting of Bly Manor, why not look at its source material?
While Bly Manor also takes liberties from the original novel by using inspiration from James’s other novellas and short stories, The Turn of the Screw is a classic gothic horror that needs to be on your reading list.
A young woman takes her first job as a governess for two beautiful but strange children. Miles and Flora live in their lonely and haunted estate. Strange figures hide in the tower and windows who linger and come closer and closer to the living members of the house.
As the horrors continue, the governess realizes that slowly the ghosts of the estate want Miles and Flora and are slowly taking possession of their bodies, minds, and eventually their souls. The governess wants to save them, but do the children feel the same?
3. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
If you’re looking for a cult classic, House of Leaves is where it’s at.
A postmodern novel and a story within a story, House of Leaves might look intimidating, but it’s worth diving into.
The book follows Johnny Truant who finds a strange manuscript in his dead neighbour Zampano’s apartment. The manuscript seems to be a thesis about a documentary called The Navidson Record. It tells the story of a Pultizer winning photographer, his actress wife, and their children who move into a house and discover it’s bigger on the inside than the outside.
(I know it sounds like the TARDIS, but this house is MUCH MORE TERRIFYING AND NO DOCTORS LIVE INSIDE IT.)
But Johnny soon learns that neither the film nor the people in the film exist, but that doesn’t stop him from reading it.
Made up of The Navidson Record, Johnny Truant’s autobiographical footnotes, interviews, brief notes from the editors and so much more, House of Leaves is an unforgettable and truly haunted book that will stay with you long after you’ve finished it.
4. The Grip of It by Jac Jemc
If you like you’re looking for an eerie and atmospheric story then The Grip of It is the perfect read for you.
Married couple Julie and James are ready for a fresh start. They move into a house in a small town that sits between the ocean and forest. The couple tries to settle in the house . . . but the house seems to have other plans. It becomes claustrophobic, and hidden rooms appearing within rooms. Strange stains and drawings appearing on the walls. Dark bruises start appearing over Julie’s body and whenever James tries to drink from the tap mold spores appear in the water.
James and Julie must work together and investigate the town they now live in and their strange neighbours to discover what is happening with their house. The Grip of It is full of tension and thrills.
5. Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
Do you like your horror with a dash of humour? How about less haunted houses and more haunted IKEAs?
Then Horrorstör is the book for you!
Whenever the employees of the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio come into work they find something interesting. There are some broken Kjering bookshelves, Liripip wardrobes, and shattered Glans water goblets.
Sales have never been worse, and the security footage shows nothing amiss. But, well, we and the characters know better.
With the store managers panicking, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. They investigate the strange destruction that’s been happening when the store is closed and, well…we’ll leave it at that!
Now that Midnight Sun has been released and Stephenie Meyer has announced that she’s writing two new Twilight books, it’s official: vampires are in again. Bring on the capes and fangs; it’s time to celebrate our favorite bloodsuckers!
When I was in university, I wrote an article for my school paper on books that should be adapted into TV shows. One of the books I chose was Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events which, a few months later, was picked up by Netflix and became a wonderful adaption of a beloved book series. Am I psychic? Possibly. But it’s more probable that the entertainment industry had just started becoming aware of the potential of book to TV adaptions.
The YA genre owes so much to Stephenie Meyer. Most of us will deny this. We’d rather give the credit to Harry Potter which, while building a readership in children in the early 2000s, didn’t touch what Twilight did.
