The Skinwalker in the Closet - Chapter 1

Editor's foreword: I spent the day with my 9-year-old granddaughter yesterday, and we wrote the following story together. The creativity and story are entirely hers. I did the typing, some coaching, and implementation (like using details in different places to provide foreshadowing), and editing under her supervision.

Chapter 1: Is it real?  

    I had just arrived at Aunty Melissa’s house, and right away, I slipped quietly up the stairs to Rory’s room, but the lights were off, and the door was ajar.  The sound of talking was coming through the door.  I wasn’t sure if Rory was there or not, if that was her Furby.  

    I knocked, and the door swung open.  It was Bertie, the youngest of my cousins, and she had shoved the door all the way open.

    Bertie was standing in the doorway, and Drew and Rory were sitting on the bed with their eyes closed. 

    “If it touches you, you freeze,” Drew said. “But only if it touches your skin directly.”

    Lincoln was holding Rory’s camera, swiping through the camera roll. 

    “What are you doing?” I asked.

    “I’m looking to see if we got any pictures of the skinwalker.”

    “What’s a skinwalker?” I asked. That’s weird, I thought to myself.

    Rory said, “My brother thinks it’s living in his closet, and we don’t know what to do with it.”

    “Yeah, but is it a skinwalker?” I asked again. They hadn’t answered my question.

    There was a long pause. Finally, Rory said, “It’s the dead white skin of a person, but it can walk. Drew saw one moving in his closet last night.”

    “We are trying to investigate it,” Lincoln said. We snuck into Drew’s room and opened the closet door just a crack, and took pictures through the gap, and then quickly slammed the door closed again so it couldn’t get out.”

    I was still standing in the doorway when Drew jumped out of Rory’s bed, snatched the camera out of Lincoln’s hands, and ran past me into his room. He opened the closet door a little bit and started taking pictures.   Then he dropped the camera and backed away, and before he made it to Rory’s room, Drew froze in place. 

    Rory, Lincoln, Bertie, and I ran into the hallway and dragged Drew, who was rigid, back into Rory’s room. I ran into Drew’s room, picked up the camera, and threw the closet door wide open. I loved my cousins, but I wasn’t sure I believed in skinwalkers.  I stepped into the closet, and something grabbed my arm.  I gasped and yelled, “Guys, help me!”

    I tried to pull away, and my cousins ran into the room and grabbed my other arm and yanked hard, and it let go, and I fell to the floor.  My arm really hurt. I pushed up my sleeve and looked at where the skinwalker had grabbed me, and my arm was red and starting to bruise in the pattern of a hand. I could make out a thumb-shaped bruise and finger marks. 

    I started believing in skinwalkers that day.

--by Cathesa, edited by Cathy B. Weeks

Editor’s note: the thing in the closet may actually be a Windigo rather than a Skinwalker, but in the heat of a terrifying moment in a dark space, it can be hard to tell.

(Stay tuned for Chapter 2: The Labyrinth)

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Sentimental Value

• IMDB link: Sentimental Value
• Tagline: "An intimate exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art."
• My Best Picture Project

    This was a difficult movie to review.  There was so much that was good about it, but the pacing was problematic enough that what could have been a great movie ended up merely OK.  The movie was about 2/3 in Norwegian and 1/3 in English, so we turned on subtitles.

    Let's start with the good:  The acting was great, really great.  I didn't know Stellan Skarsgård was such a good actor. I mean, I've always liked him, and in general, if he's in it, I'm probably going to like the movie. But in this, I felt he brought an amazing depth to his character, a washed-up elderly actor-turned-director who writes a beautiful script that captures all the regrets of a father who was neglectful, knows it, and regrets it, but doesn't know how to fix it.  There's a neat place where a young Gustav appears, and the filmmakers recycled footage from a movie Skarsgård made as a young man.

    The two young women who play his daughters, Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, do a lovely job capturing what it is to be the children of a neglectful artist parent, and the struggles they face with intimacy, trust, and anxiety. Elle Fanning does a great job playing an adopted daughter of sorts, hired by Gustav when his older daughter refuses.

    The cinematography was lovely, and I loved the house where the movie takes place (it's used as a framing device). There's a really cool montage toward the end of the movie, of the faces of the four main characters superimposed over one another, and I liked the movie-within-a-movie, and how the story weaves together scenes from their family history.  I also liked the rather dark Ikea joke which I will not spoil.

    I did like the ending, which shows the filming of the movie that Gustav has been trying to get made throughout the actual movie

    I like slow-paced movies that take their time and bring the audience for the ride, allowing the acting and scenery to take precedence over the action and special effects. But there's an extraordinarily fine line between interesting and boring when the movie's pacing is slow.  Unlike Train Dreams, which was slow-paced and kind of mesmerizing, this movie was slow-paced and a little boring. It wasn't without compelling scenes, but I did find myself glancing at the time more than I like.  The movie was like a long string of ellipses punctuated with exclamation points and question marks until ending on a high note: 

  .....?.....!.....!?......!.....""""

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 5, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. One Battle After Another (Daddy-Daughter Revolution; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
5. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris: 5)
6. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaning; Cathy: 7, Chris: 6)
7. Sentimental Value (Slow-paced movie about a family of actors; Cathy: 6, Chris: 7)

• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

Banana brown sugar ice cream with peanut brittle chunks

    This was just such a revelation, I decided to share the glory that is fresh banana ice cream. It's wonderfully smooth and delicious, and tastes like bananas and not like yellow Laffy-Taffy. 

I adapted Dana Cree's Banana Ice Cream in Hello, My Name is Ice Cream, but used my own techniques and substituted brown sugar for regular sugar. I got the idea for the flavor from Ice Creams, sorbets, and Gelati: The Definitive Guide, but I didn't follow their recipe.

Ingredients:

• 4 very ripe bananas, peeled and cut into 1" chunks
• 2 cups cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 6 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup liquid sugar (tapioca syrup, glucose, corn syrup)
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1.5 cups of peanut brittle, broken into small pieces (see below for recipe)

Instructions:

1. Peel and slice the bananas and set aside.
2. Place cream, milk, yolks, and sugars in a saucepan with a cooking thermometer.
3. Stirring frequently/constantly, raise the custard to 175-180F. Remove from heat immediately upon reaching 180. 
4. Quickly add the banana chunks, and weigh them down with a plate or lid, to keep them submerged.
5. Cover and let steep for at least two hours, but up to overnight.  If leaving for more than 2-3 hours, place custard in the refrigerator after 2 hours.  Give custard a jiggle every so often.
6. Using a slotted spoon, remove the banana chunks, or pour custard through a mesh strainer.  Add vanilla and salt.
7. Freeze ice cream according to manufacturer's instructions. 
8. Add peanut brittle at the end of the churn.
9. Enjoy!

    Bananas: Once you remove them from the custard, you might consider making them into banana bread, or cut them smaller and add to pancakes.

    Peanut brittle: You can use any recipe that you like. Break enough of it into small pieces to make 1.5 cups. The remaining should be devoured because it's delicious when it's fresh.   I made a half recipe of Spruce Eats Old Fashioned Peanut Brittle. 

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - One Battle After Another

• IMDB link: One Battle After Another
• Tagline: "When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own."  
• My Best Picture Project

    At its heart, this movie is a really excellent action/chase movie with a lot of tension, great acting, and engaging characters, and I liked it wildly more than the last Leonardo DiCaprio movie I saw (Killers of the Flower Moon).  It's full of dark humor and is a wonderful thrill ride.

    But.

    It is not without flaws. The immigration theme is a thin veneer that forms a backdrop to the movie, but it's not well integrated into the story. You can swap out ICE agents for Zombies, tweak a few details, and it would work just as well.  Or you could use the story as the basis for another Ocean's Eleven movie (one in which things go really, really wrong).  Immigration is a theme, but it's not what it's about.  

    Because the ICE/Revolutionary conflict is just a backdrop, that theme ends up feeling kind of performative and shallow. And what is the message? If I had to guess, it's "Pro-ICErs are ruthless, evil, and violent, and Anti-ICErs are stupid, paranoid, and violent."  

    And boy, are they stupid at times. The protagonists take unbelievably stupid risks for no gain, usually for laughs (stopping for sex when they should be escaping, or monologuing while walking on countertops), but these things didn't feel like something revolutionaries would actually do.  I would imagine they are more businesslike.   Even worse, they rat out their friends just unbelievably easily, yet we are supposed to believe that a completely paranoid organization wouldn't practice information hygiene to protect against that?  Every person who is caught knows WAY more about their friends than they should, and they endanger each other repeatedly.

    

    One of my favorite characters was Col. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn.  He did a fabulous job creating a character that was Inspector Javert (but without the heart) mixed with Norman Bates or perhaps Travis Bickle. He walks weirdly, is a racist who fetishizes black women, and he's just ... off.   He was too weird even for the movie's Klan group (in a delightfully sly, ironic moment, Lockjaw is awarded the Bedford Forrest prize for excellence). Another neat parallel: the movie's two main villains are both played by Jewish men, echoing the casting and the actors' intent in Casablanca.

    I want to call out three actors who played small but important roles.  The first was Kevin Tighe who played paramedic Roy DeSoto in Emergency!  In this, he played a delightfully cantankerous elderly grand-dragon-type character. The other was Eric Schweig, who played Uncas in Last of the Mohicans.  In One Battle, he played a far less noble character, a Native American bounty hunter who works for the very people who hold him in contempt.   The last one is James Raterman who plays the ICE interrogator throughout the movie. He isn't (usually) a professional actor. He is a security consultant and former Homeland Security Investigator. He did a great job portraying an entirely competent agent. His character wasn't the slightest bit clownish, and ended up being one of the most frightening because of it.

    Finally, a note about politics.  The movie-makers were careful not to tie the movie to any specific POTUS in either of its two time periods, fifteen years apart. It could take place during any presidency starting with George W. Bush (ICE was formed in 2003), but it ended up feeling a little mistimed, given the real-life ICE conflicts happening right now.  For 15 of the last 22 years, I've lived an hour outside the Twin Cities. I'm still in Minnesota, but a little farther away now, and the situation in Minneapolis is incredibly tense, no matter which side of the conflict you are on, and for me, seeing a movie that uses that tension for frivolous entertainment value is a bit like poking a bruise.  The movie was made and released before Operation Metro Surge, but it hit awfully close to home.

    So, yeah, I really liked the movie—it was funny, tense, fast-paced, well-acted, and utterly engaging—and I definitely recommend it.  But you should go into it understanding that it reflects current events more than you might like.

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 5, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. One Battle After Another (Daddy-Daughter Revolution; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
5. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris 5)
6. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaning; Cathy: 6, Chris: 6)

• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Frankenstein

• IMDB link: Frankenstein
• Tagline: "Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation."
• My Best Picture Project

    I have something of a complicated relationship with Frankenstein.  I admire it as the spiritual mother of science fiction, and when I was 19, I read it in one sitting for a literature class in college and loved it, but now, at 56, not so much.  Damn novel reads like it was written by a dramatic, emo teenager, which, I suppose, it was.  

    So far, my favorite rendition of Frankenstein is Frankenstein - Playing with Fire by Barbara Field, which I saw at the Guthrie Theater in 2018.  And after seeing the Guillermo del Toro exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art a few years ago and his lifelong obsession with Frankenstein, I expected to like this movie.  Don't get me wrong: this version is by far the best movie adaptation I've seen and the truest (though not entirely true) to the source material. It's simply gorgeous, but del Toro couldn't resist tinkering with the story in ways that didn't improve it.

    Note: I'm assuming you know the story, and will be discussing spoilers. If you don't, you should probably stop reading now.

   

    Let's start with Elizabeth. I liked that she has more to say in this version, but directors just can't just seem to leave poor Elizabeth alone. In the Kenneth Branagh version, Victor turns Elizabeth into a bride for the monster (whut?), and in this version, Victor accidentally shoots her (again, whut?) when she is about to marry his brother (third whut).  In the book, Elizabeth and Victor were childhood sweethearts and the Monster kills her on their wedding night.   Seriously, that is more of a gut punch than the weird love triangle in this movie.

 

    The book makes it clear that Victor's creation was quite brutal, killing children (Victor's brother William) and women (Elizabeth) just to punish Victor. A Sesame Street monster, he was not. So when Mary Shelley shows you that Victor is even worse, well, she's really saying something.  On the other hand, del Toro softens the monster, limiting his violence to moments of self-defense. He doesn't hesitate to kill people who are trying to kill him, but he is tender and protective of innocents and those with sympathy toward him (like Elizabeth).  

    

    While softening the Monster, del Toro dials up Victor's monstrousness.   He loses the oh-me-oh-my-WhatHaveIDone of the book (which, to be honest, got a little tiresome at times) and makes him selfish, crazy, and just plain mean.  He outright beats the monster before abandoning him to burn to death in a rather spectacular crescendo of fiery destruction (I liked that part, actually).  In the book, Victor was young, maybe 20 or 22, and you can chalk his lack of wisdom to his still being a kid.  This Victor was in his 40s, and he just came across as a deranged asshole.

    In this version, William, who in this version is allowed to grow up and become Victor's office manager, informs his brother in what del Toro clearly intended to be A PIVOTAL SCENE, "You are the monster, Victor."  No shit, Sherlock.  It was the most bald example of directorial condescension I've ever seen.  Del Toro was .... monster-'splaining.  

    To be fair, the acting was excellent, the storytelling and cinematography, sets, and costumes were amazing, but I think Oscar Isaac was miscast, and I wish the director had stayed closer to Mary Shelley's version.

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern gothic vampires sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 4, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris 4)
5. Frankenstein (Monster-'splaining; Cathy: 5, Chris: 5)

• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Train Dreams (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Bugonia

• IMDB link: Bugonia
• Tagline: "Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth."
• My Best Picture Project

    I kinda hated this movie.  My husband and daughter loved it, so maybe I'm being unfair, but just as the heart loves what the heart loves, it also hates what it hates. But there were things I loved about it, too.  Going into it, I was disposed to like it because I loved another Yorgos Lanthimos collaboration with Emma Stone (the delightfully obscene Poor Things), so it surprised me when I didn't like it.  But there are some rather shocking events in the last half, and because I refuse to spoil the movie, this review must be neutered by definition.

     The acting was spectacularly good, particularly by the three main characters.  (Note: the character of Don was played by newcomer Aidan Delbis, who is neurodivergent in real life).  The cinematography was great. Except for the pacing, which had some problems, storytelling was very good.  The production design did a great job carrying visual motifs throughout the movie (there are honeycomb motifs all over the place). The movie is going to haunt me for a long time.

    From a movie-making perspective, the only real problem is the aforementioned pacing.  The first half of the movie was slow and kind of boring; the second half was like a train speeding toward a crescendo of weirdness.  The second half is worth the wait, though.  It is also described as darkly comedic, but I almost never found it funny.   

    Given what I said above, it seems odd to hate it, but hate it I did.   I have a quirk - I don't like stories where no one is likable, where I can't identify with the characters.  Okay, Don, the sweet, easily manipulatable character, was decent, but I don't identify with him. Michelle, the CEO, was ... rich, scornful, paying lip service to employee rights (ok, her wishy-washy suggestion that her people leave at 5:30 was kind of funny), and Teddy was a deranged, violent manipulator.

    I quit reading Cormac McCarthy's gorgeous Blood Meridian halfway through for the same reason -- it is filled with people with no redeeming characteristics at all.  I don't require stories be populated with saints -- I just need for them to have characters I can identify with, if only a little.   In my opinion, 

The best stories have complex heroes and villains who are, at the core, regular people.  Where the main difference between them is the path they chose to take. With Bugonia, I never felt like I was watching regular people.

    Note: because the movie doesn't explain it, the title refers to the ancient Greek concept of bees spontaneously emerging from animal carcasses.

 

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern Gothic Vampires Sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Bugonia (Alien-hunting Conspiracy theorists; Cathy: 4, Chris: 2)
3. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
4. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris 4)

• Frankenstein (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.

2026 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Train Dreams

• IMDB link: Train Dreams
• Tagline: "Based on Denis Johnson's beloved novella, Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century."
• My Best Picture Project

    This movie reminds me a lot of A River Runs Through It, but slower-paced. Lovely places, interesting people, and more ... dreamy, and given the title, that makes sense.  It is also more tragic, but I don't want to spoil the movie.  I haven't read the novella, so I can't speak to how well the movie adapted the source material.

    The movie is about an orphan who becomes a logger, and eventually marries, has a child, and he encounters a lot of strange people and strange events.  He witnesses the anti-Chinese racism of the early 1900s and encounters loggers of all ages.  At the start of the movie, he is young and notices the old loggers; later, he becomes an old logger and is taught to use early chainsaws by the young loggers.

    There was also a hint of Rip Van Winkle in the story - he occasionally comes out of the woods to see how the world is changing.  He sees TVs for the first time on one of those jaunts and finds out men have gone to outer space.  Another time, he rides in an airplane, and he ponders how everything is connected.

    I don't exactly identify with the main character - he's a logger, and I'm not. But he likes his cabin in the woods, and given the chaotic political events happening right now, I totally get that.   He's also a genuinely good man, and such people are rarely depicted on screen, perhaps because they aren't especially interesting. The movie makes up for that by making everything around him weird.

    

    The acting is excellent. William H. Macy played an old demolition expert in a standout, funny, and sad performance.  Cinematography is also great - the woods of the Pacific Northwest are almost a character in their own right.  

    It's a good movie, and I do recommend it, but expect the strange and tragic odyssey.

(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):

1. Sinners (Southern Gothic Vampires Sing the Blues; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
2. Train Dreams (Dreamy old logger survives ... life; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)
3. F1: The Movie (Mesmerizing Top Gun for Formula 1 Fans; Cathy: 3, Chris 3)

• Bugonia (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Frankenstein (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Hamnet (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Marty Supreme (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• One Battle After Another (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• The Secret Agent (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Sentimental Value (Cathy: x, Chris: x)
• Train Dreams (Cathy: x, Chris: x)

* Rankings can change.