WHAT'S WRONG WITH A HAPPY ENDING?

A couple of weeks ago circumstances too mundane to recount led me to pick up a copy of Dean Koontz's LIFE EXPECTANCY. Although I was an enormous fan of Koontz's in high school, I bailed during his period of supernatural-events-are-really-covert-government-agencies-with-sinister-agendas novels. And while I admire the man for breaking the habit (it would've been far easier to coast on autopilot and keep churning out the same book), I never really bothered with his recent output.

So it was quite a pleasant surprise to find LIFE EXPECTANCY such an engrossing read; it was almost like I was 14 again, cracking open WATCHERS for the first time. All the trademarks of a classic Koontz novel were there: thoroughly likable characters, a rollicking twist-laden plot that hooked me right away, the straightforward smoothness of the narrative . . . and the uplifting life-affirming ending.

Which, once the book was closed, I felt guilty for enjoying.

And that, my friends, is a strange feeling. It wasn't as though Koontz came about his denouement dishonestly (quite the contrary--he was very fair with the reader throughout, earning every turn of the story), so why did it feel as if liking this ending was some kind of betrayal?

I think it all leads back to a conversation I had years ago with my dear friend Barb. We'd been discussing our fairly disparate tastes in fiction, when Barb explained to me why she preferred Koontz over Stephen King. And it pretty much boiled down to the fact that Koontz could be counted on for a feel-good everyone-you-like-lives ending. King, more often than not, killed off his protagonists--even the ones you like!

(I should probably add a disclaimer here: This was an apples-and-oranges comparison, since Koontz is not a horror writer, nor do the majority of his works fall under that category; nor do I think King writes primarily downbeat endings--CUJO and PET SEMATARY being two obvious exceptions.)

At which point, I expressed one of my guiding philosophies of writing horror: if you're writing an effective story--if you're plumbing the darkest depths of the human condition, sending your characters into grim and horrific territory--it's nearly impossible for things to return to normal at the end. I mean, what if Jack Ketchum had slapped a happy ending onto OFF SEASON? Even if the rest of the text remained as is, it would've been a monumental failure.

I still stand by that statement. Take for example Brian Keene's THE RISING--for all of its controversies, how else was that story going to resolve itself? Could a small child have survived alone in such an environment? Did you think Ob and his minions were going to ignore him? Or what about J.F. Gonzalez's MATERNAL INSTINCT (later expanded into his novel SURVIVOR)? The story he was telling dictated the plotline went where it did (namely, the grimmest goddamn ending in recent memory), and Gonzalez would have been dishonest with both himself as a writer, as well as his audience, if he had ended it on a positive note.

But, the voices of dissent are asking, where's the dilemma? If Koontz isn't a horror writer, and if LIFE EXPECTANCY is a mainstream thriller, why the guilt? Are you such a cynical bastard that you believe any novel involving life-or-death situations must end with the grimmest of fates?

Possibly.

I've long had a dislike for happy, upbeat stories. Don't know exactly what combination of life experience and artistic influence caused me to feel that way, but anything overtly positive will probably go unread or unwatched by me. It's mostly because most of them are intolerably schmaltzy, saccharine, or otherwise aesthetically offensive (that isn't the case with everything; BRING IT ON and 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU are two examples that can be escapist, light-and-fluffy fun without insulting my intelligence or activating my gag reflex); but also my personal belief that often the most effective stories are those that tell us what we don't neccesarily want to hear.

I have, however, been rethinking that opinion.

Earlier this week I finished reading Bentley Little's THE STORE, one of the scariest books I've read in a long time. Seriously, those of you interested in writing horror would do well to study how skillfully Little uses reality to establish a believable backdrop to his proceedings, and then slowly insinuates his own brand of weird terror into the lives of his characters. It was literally one of the most pervasively terrifying books I've encountered and as I burned my way through it I repeatedly told myself there was no way this was going to end well, the situation was far too dire.

But Little proved me wrong.

I won't divulge specifics, but Little did manage to vanquish his titular menace successfully, in a largely positive, dare I say, cheer-worthy fashion. Yes, he does tack on a coda to the epilogue suggesting other horrors to come, and there is some uncertainty as to the fate of one of the protagonist's daughters, but once again, Little wouldn't have been playing fair if he'd allowed everything to turn out rosy.

So, is compromise the name of the game? Let your hero live to fight another day, yet not remain unscathed? That's how it is in real life, isn't it? Sometimes we lose things that are important in order to learn something valuable, to grow as human beings.

Truthfully, I don't know what place "happy endings," if any, has in horror fiction. I suppose the only way to find out is to keep reading, to experiment in my own work, keeping an open mind for possibilities.

And if I find any, you'll be the first to know.

HOW "LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD" LOST ME AFTER ONE REEL

One of the many perks of working at a movie theater is being able to sample movies without investing $7.50 and 2 hours on a complete bombfest. Case in point: LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD.

I was a bit disheartened to learn of a fourth sequel to DIE HARD, my all-time favorite action movie and arguably the best action flick in the last 20 years. I was not at all impressed to learn the studio was leaning toward a PG-13 rating for broader appeal (how much more appeal do you need?). But it wasn't until I discovered the movie was being directed by Len Wiseman (responsible for UNDERWORLD and its sequel) that I truly despaired.

I decided to give it a chance. So last night during the final set of my shift, I pulled a stool next to the projector, fired it up, and hoped for the best.

Disappointment came roughly three minutes after the opening credits.

It all starts when we meet up again with John McClane, rescuing his daughter from the hormonal advances of her not-boyfriend. Father and daughter argue without actually saying anything--she's pissed at him, without really giving any idea as to why--before storming off, reminding John that her last name isn't McClane, it's Gennero. (Gee, that's familiar.)

And while I'm thinking about it, why is it that when the hero of an action film needs to save a relative, usually a child, the rescuee is introduced as such an utter shit? Can't filmmakers present us with someone we'd actually like to see rescued? If you've seen the trailer, you know McClane's daughter is kidnapped by the bad guys, but from what I could see, they were doing the guy a favor.

The plot gets set in motion when McClane is dispatched to New Jersey to pick up a computer hacker for questioning. What he doesn't realize is that the hacker is under surveillance by a team of assassins, the high-tech kind you used to find in Dean Koontz books. This sets up the first action setpiece of the movie, and the beginning of my contempt.

The assassins open fire, and McClane responds in kind as they try to escape the building. Waiting for an elevator as the gunmen are approaching from around the corner, McClane pulls a fire extinguisher from the wall. Now, if I were in a similar predicament, I'd wait for the bad guys to come around the corner, shoot them, and be on my merry way.

This is why I'm not an action star.

Because apparently the proper thing to do is to roll the fire extinguisher down the hallway, and, in a perfect choreography of timing and marksmanship, shoot it just as it reaches the gunmen. The resulting blast will throw them through a window, where they of course land on a conveniently-parked car.

Great, I'm thinking, they just shoehorned John McClane into a shitty video game.

But the stupidity has yet to kick into high gear, because McClane and the hacker are then cornered by one of the high-tech assassins in the hacker's apartment.

Now, I'm not a hired killer, but if I were, I imagine I'd wait until I had my target in sight, draw a bead on him, and take him out with a single shot.

This is why I'm not a paid gunman.

Because apparently the thing to do is thrust the barrel of your gun into approximately the same room as your target, and sweep the place with gunfire and until you eventually kill someone or run out of ammo, whichever comes first. Usually the latter, giving the hero ample time to pop up and put one through your forebrain as you attempt to reload.

By this point in the flick I'm seriously contemplating finding something more constructive, like dusting projector lenses or organizing the pissy e-mails Disney's been sending us (more on that later).

I decide on this course of action when one of the high-tech assassins begins chasing McClane in a manner more suited to Mario in a Donkey Kong game, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, descending toward the ground by dropping from one fire escape to another in complete disregard for the laws of physics and the human anatomy.

Don't get me wrong, movies--especially blow-'em-up action flicks--require a suspension of disbelief. Of course I don't believe this shit's really possible, but cut me some slack, will ya? (This mentality of "We're a huge summer blockbuster so everything has to be big-big-BIG, logic be damned" is also what caused me to bail on OCEANS 13 at the mid-point.)

What made the first DIE HARD so effective was that the action scenes grew organically out of the situation and McClane's surroundings. Yes, there were spectacular set-pieces and some moments are far-fetched (the elevator shaft sequence, for example), but the script and direction worked hard to earn that suspension of disbelief. They delivered the thrills required for a big-budget action movie, yet kept it realistic enough to avoid insulting its audience, and gave us characters were more than cardboard villains and sounding boards for Bruce Willis's quips.

And don't even get me started on EVAN ALMIGHTY.

Yippy-ki-yay, motherfuckers.