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A review by justinkhchen
We Need to Do Something by Max Booth III
5.0
5 stars
A bleak single-location horror novella that fully utilized its limited scope for grandeur, my favorite type of horror stories often involve degradation of the human psyche, and We Need to Do Something is immediately up my street from page one, by introducing a dysfunctional family that is already hanging on by a thread, even before they are being terrorized by their increasingly desperate situation. We Need to Do Something strikes the perfect balance of ambiguity vs. clarity; the immediate outcome of the family members is clear, but the happening in the world beyond their confined space is completely open to interpretation. Depending on how one interpret the more surreal elements (which are all disturbing in the best way possible), this can be a straightforward survival story gone wrong, or something more outlandish and sinister.
Perfectly paced and no holding back on ugliness of all kinds, We Need to Do Something is not a 'fun' horror, it's emotionally draining, stressful, and hopeless, but at the same time so perfectly captured. Definitely read the author's afterword at the end — 2020 was a hard year for a lot of people, and I can see writing this novella during that time must've been a cathartic exercise.
A bleak single-location horror novella that fully utilized its limited scope for grandeur, my favorite type of horror stories often involve degradation of the human psyche, and We Need to Do Something is immediately up my street from page one, by introducing a dysfunctional family that is already hanging on by a thread, even before they are being terrorized by their increasingly desperate situation. We Need to Do Something strikes the perfect balance of ambiguity vs. clarity; the immediate outcome of the family members is clear, but the happening in the world beyond their confined space is completely open to interpretation. Depending on how one interpret the more surreal elements (which are all disturbing in the best way possible), this can be a straightforward survival story gone wrong, or something more outlandish and sinister.
Perfectly paced and no holding back on ugliness of all kinds, We Need to Do Something is not a 'fun' horror, it's emotionally draining, stressful, and hopeless, but at the same time so perfectly captured. Definitely read the author's afterword at the end — 2020 was a hard year for a lot of people, and I can see writing this novella during that time must've been a cathartic exercise.