Synopsis
After Aisha is traumatized by a stalker, her parents decide to move to a property in the outback.
They say it’s in her best interests.
But they don’t know something dangerous is imprisoned in the subterranean caverns beneath the house.
Something that hungers for freedom. And blood.
When three masked thrill-killers assault the property, they open the wrong doors, and Trog emerges.
Only blood and chaos will be left in his wake, unless Aisha can fight off the intruders, save her family, and survive the night.
Trog – an intense home invasion creature feature from award-nominated Australian author, Zachary Ashford.
Review
Sometimes you just want some fun, good, old-fashioned monster mayhem chockfull of gore and dismemberment. Enter Trog, by Zachary Ashford, a bit of Aussie B-movie schlock in print form from Unnerving Books, a release that would have been right at home in their now-defunct line of yesteryear-tribute Rewind-or-Die novellas.
Fifteen-year-old Aisha and her family have only just moved into their new and deeply secluded home in the outback when they find themselves under assault by a trio of masked maniacs. As if that weren’t enough, there’s all these strange noises coming from below the house, deep beneath a hidden hatchway that leads into an underground cavern. What else are a bunch of thrill killers to do but investigate and make whatever’s left of everybody’s now much-too-short lives an even bigger hell as they unwittingly let a captured beast loose?
Ashford wastes no time in laying waste to, well, everything. We get a brief set-up involving Trog’s capture and confinement to kick things off, and then it’s off to the races for roughly a hundred pages of gnarly violence and bloody slaughter. The premise is streamlined-simple: take The Strangers, mix in some family dynamics, add in a hungry, hungry cryptid, and presto-chango, Trog.
Viewers of The Strangers will recall the chilling reason for that flick’s psychos terrorizing a young couple as “Because you were home.” Ashford covers similar ground with his thrill killers here, who insist their motives boil down to little more than sheer enjoyment. It’s a way for them to cut loose and party hearty, with their de facto leader explaining to his captive audience, “I want to kill you because it’s fun. This isn’t a political statement. It’s entertainment.”
We eventually learn, of course, that this isn’t quite 100% true, but for the vast majority of Trog it’s easy enough to accept this as a mission statement for both the killers and the book itself. In fact, given recent political turmoils on- and offline, the lack of deep, in-your-face politicization in Trog makes for a welcome, and occasionally cathartic, just-in-time escape from the real-world and its multiplying crises. Still, Ashford subtly weaves in a commentary on naturalism versus capitalism and the war between the haves and have-nots, not to mention those caught in the middle. Trog himself is a monster transformed against his will by another’s pursuit of financial excess, and who finds himself torn by memories of a more natural and peaceful existence against his now-insatiable hunger for human flesh. In the end, money makes destructive, and self-destructive, monsters of us all, even moldy Aussie offshoots of Bigfoot.
Granted, for every moment of potential deep reflection, there’s about a dozen instances of splattery, gore-caked violence, brain slurping, and intestines spilling to keep any potential opining about Marxist philosophy far at bay, all of which is nicely wrapped around a young heroine’s story of trauma survival and unlocking her inner badass. This is, after all, entertainment!
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