Synopsis:
“Keep the door locked night and day…”
It’s been forty years since Becky Sharp’s mother vanished without a trace. Becky has given up all hope of finding her, until she makes a strange discovery that may hold the key to solving her mother’s disappearance.
Three unmarked videotapes, hidden in the wall of her childhood home. And as Becky watches the tapes, she finds herself drawn into a horrific mystery far greater than she could possibly have imagined.
For Becky has unwittingly summoned a long-forgotten nightmare — a creature that threatens the lives and sanity of all around her. Rotten Tommy has come to play… and nothing on Earth can sate his diabolical bloodlust.
Review:
“Rotten Tommy,” is David Sodergren’s latest stomach-churning fever dream, and is set for release on May 6th. Far from a scenic stroll down memory lane, Sodergren completely pulverizes any semblance of childhood innocence and nostalgia, replacing it with pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel. From cursed VHS tapes to sausage-guzzling puppets (not a euphemism) everything Sodergren writes is steeped in intense body horror and a strange allure that propels the reader further and further into the darkness. If you’re ready to visit the strange town of Rumplejack, take a deep breath in, steel your nerves, and press on.
We follow Becky Sharp, an autistic screen-writer, who with the help of her plush penguin Grumpus, is simply trying to navigate life. Stuck in an unhappy marriage, with a cheating husband (John) , and overwhelmed by the construction work being done in her home, when three mysterious VHS tapes are discovered in her wall, it’s exactly the distraction she needs. Her mother, esteemed actress Meredith Sharp (who has been missing for 40 years) is deemed one of Scotland’s greatest mysteries, and when she appears in an unusual (understatement of the year) role in the low-budget children’s TV show found on the tapes, Becky is dragged further into a worm-hole of madness and violence. Meredith co-stars alongside bizarre characters such as Stickemup, The Sausage King, and a mysterious figure lurking in the background. Watching these tapes, which were hidden for a reason, rouses “Rotten Tommy” from his slumber, and he will not rest until he gets you…
As you can imagine, Tommy is an excellent adversary. He is a primal threat, whose presence looms over the narrative from beginning to the end. A towering figure, armed with a meat tenderizer and a mean right hand, those unfortunate enough to stumble across him won’t forget Rotten Tommy until the day they die… which typically is rather imminent. This slasher-esque antagonist leaves plenty of room for body-horror, some passages of which are permanently burnt into my eyes. That being said, he’s far more scary than your bog-standard Ghost-face, with his “doughy,” visage, and very own chilling rhyme… his silence and absence are just as scary as when he’s lopping off genitalia and ransacking police stations.
Despite his terrifying and merciless nature, Tommy serves as a catalyst for Becky’s self-discovery. In her quest to find Rumplejack and her mother, Becky makes unexpected allies, including a Jason Statham doppelganger, and ultimately finds acceptance and validation.
I learnt after reading Steve Stred’s review, that “Rumplejack,” the children’s show Becky discovers on the VHS tapes, is based upon a real TV series, “Blizzard Island,” from 1988. The show fell victim to budget cuts, and remains unfinished but has since been edited together to form a movie, “The Argon Quest.” I watched the first episode on Youtube, and it’s pretty darn weird. This knowledge (for me anyway) elevates “Rumplejack,” from just scary, to absolutely terrifying. The setting, home to “The Sausage King,” a sentient canine puppet, and “Stickemup,” the town’s sheriff (who also happens to be a horse) is one of the novel’s highlights. It has an inexplicable abandoned theme-park feel, as probably most derelict children’s TV sets do when there are no cute characters, songs or dances to distract from the fact something is very wrong.
The mysterious Rylak corporation definitely brought another layer of intrigue and allure to this party. For full disclosure, we’re not given any satisfying answer to who the corporation is, and their motivations… but I’ve been assured by David it’s not the last we’ll see of them. Consider my interest PIQUED.
In case it isn’t glaringly obvious already, Sodergren is one of my favorite writers, whose work I could rave about for hours on end. I can’t say that “Rotten Tommy,” has usurped “The Haar,” from my number 1 spot, but it certainly makes a compelling case. With its spine-chilling narrative, and relentless tension, “Rotten Tommy,” is testament to Sodergren’s back-catalog, but is certainly more fever-dreamish and fantastical than titles such as “Dead Girl Blues” and “The Navajo Nightmare.”
In conclusion, “Rotten Tommy,” is a harrowing descent into madness, in which (with a twinkle in his eye) Sodergren dismantles the nostalgia of children’s TV, replacing it with a grotesque onslaught of blood, guts and gore. Through his masterful storytelling, David invites his readers to confront the darkness lurking beneath the innocence, naturally, in the form of a blood-soaked fever-dream. It’s ultimately a reminder that sometimes the most unsettling of horrors belong not in the shadows, but in our pasts.
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