Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - La Maison des damnés

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

La Maison des damnés by Richard Matheson

9 reviews

eliya95's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

It was written well. The premise was fine. The pacing was fine. It wasn’t scary. It really was just like a man read the haunting of hill house and got pissed off that it was a sapphic tale of love and repression and decided he was gonna rewrite it with sex and drugs and shock. But even the most shocking thing wasn’t shocking. Nothing was nearly as scary as the hand holding in the dark in hill house. Nothing was nearly as shocking as the unseen terror of Theodora in the woods. It just…didn’t hit…and all the sexual assault and punishing of women for existing and therefor being inherently sexual and asking for it…gave off bad vibes but not in the way a horror novel should.

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candaceonline's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

Hell House by Richard Matheson is a classic in the horror genre. A rich old man is dying of terminal cancer and wants to know if there is life after death. He pays a physicist and two mediums to investigate the infamous Belasco House, also know as Hell House. Other groups have gone in and most of them have not made it out alive. The entity in the house does not like having company and it quickly makes that known. I have strong feelings toward this book. It was written in the 70s and you can certainly tell. It did not age well when it comes to gender equality and discrimination, among other things. This book goes all in on the awful. It is violent, and uses sexual assault as a consistent shock factor. The way that the women in this book are sexualized and abused from the beginning to the end is disgusting. An undercurrent of blatant homophobia runs throughout the whole story. Apparently being a lesbian would be the worst thing in the world. The characters aren’t the most endearing. Barrett in particular loves to mansplain to anyone who can hear his voice. I wanted to give this the benefit of a doubt because it is such a lauded book and author within the horror world, but I can’t look past all the bad. I would not read this again and I won’t recommend it. There are better haunted house stories available to read. The scariest part about this book was how grossly the women were treated. The plot sucks, as well. Add in the gratuitous animal abuse and this is a big no. 1/5 stars.

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mainereading's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Over all, the book was good, and it could have been a five-star read if there wasn't so much unnecessary sexual crap going on. Literally, the ghost was sexually assaulting/harassing people more than killing.

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elysianbud's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

More gross than it is scary, but with enough creepy moments to keep reading. The ending felt rushed.

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brookey8888's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I did enjoy this more than I thought I was going to. I got this as a blind date with a book, so I didn’t know what is was(I wasn’t happy with it to be honest). It’s like the hunting of hill house, but I enjoyed this more because there was a lot of action. I was never scared, but I was disgusted. I don’t know why most horror has to have such gross sexual content in it. Honestly I would probably skip this, but it wasn’t horrible.

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childofmongreldogs's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Took me a bit to think about how I feel about this one, but I have to say that I don't think I particularly liked it.

The writing was good. I love Richard Matheson's short fiction so it wasn't a problem with the actual quality of the prose itself which has me feeling a certain kind of way about this novel. I will also say that the actual storyline itself was good as well. The twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat. This feels like the definition of a genre. The ultimate kind of haunted house story.

The way I was on edge throughout the story was next level. Not really terrifying but I think that a lot of the tension was well done. I think that Matheson was an absolutely phenomenal writer.

I just can't jive with horror novels from this era, I think. There's too much that is bad writing to me because it fundamentally misunderstands certain people. I know that that is a controversial opinion to have: I don't like this novel because it's depiction of women is bad and it's depiction of the LGBT group is bad and it's depiction of people other than white straight men is bad, but it is what it is.

There's always a lot of handwringing and excuses for it being a different time so having an indigenous man's spirit talk like a cave man, a possible lesbian be a lesbian because she was sexually molested, and have women be generally overly emotional and easy to control (among other things like in other novels) is just something we have to forgive, just a quirk of the time, instead of being seen as a legitimate problem in the writing.

Is this the worst offender of these issues? Probably not. I'm currently reading one that's even worse, really, from a fundamental level. The problem though is that being slightly better or on the lighter end of awful for the time period isn't enough for me to forgive that form of writing. I think there's a place for making things uncomfortable for the reader, but it was lazy even then to make it uncomfortable for women by simply filling the story with violent rape of the female characters.

I can see that there's some aspects of this novel that are really good and interesting. It doesn't make up for the "problematic" nature of the novel in other ways for me.

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