The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, February 6, 2017 — 5A

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

ACROSS
1 Most musicals
have two
5 Start to faceted
or purpose
10 Modern
organizers, for
short
14 Countenance
15 In front
16 Wine prefix
17 First chip in the
poker pot
18 Football with
scrums
19 Songwriter
Kristofferson
20 Player who
shoots par
regularly
23 Malted relative
24 Magnolia State
school, familiarly
27 Baseball
misplays
31 Calendar page
32 Floppy disk
backup device
35 Forest official
36 Angsty rock
genre
37 Michelangelo
statue
39 R&B’s __ Hill
40 Changes gears
43 Ballad for a
valentine
46 Start of a Poitier
film title
47 Seek 
ambitiously
48 O. Henry works
50 Mexican dip
54 Virtually zero,
and where the
ends of 20-, 32-
and 43-Across
are literally
situated
58 Slick-talking
60 Jokes and such
61 Cupid
62 Save for binge-
watching, say
63 ’50s nuclear trial
64 Dressed in
65 River of Hades
66 Barcelona
babies
67 Joint commonly
replaced

DOWN
1 Accumulate, as a
fortune
2 Easy-peasy task
3 Aquarium fish
4 Moved stealthily
5 Artist Chagall
6 “Nah”
7 __ Mason:
investment giant
8 No-nos
9 Poem of rustic life
10 Critters hunted
with a hugely
popular 2016
mobile app
11 Heroic exploits
12 Young Darth’s
nickname
13 Distress signal at
sea
21 La. or Dak., once
22 Disaster relief org.
25 Titanic rear end
26 “So what”
shoulder gesture
28 Fabric flaws
29 Egg: Pref.
30 Fishing line
holders
32 Thin citrus peels
33 Words spoken by
a sweater?

34 Plant responsible
for much itching
35 Sitarist Shankar
38 High side
41 Locomotive
furnace
42 Cereal coveted
by a silly rabbit
44 Former “formerly”
45 Seattle football pro
47 Sharp as a tack
49 Wharton’s Frome

51 Chihuahua citrus
fruit
52 Boring lecture, for
example
53 Share the same
opinion
55 Dark clouds,
perhaps
56 Aroma detector
57 Leftover bits
58 Classic sports cars
59 Set fire to

By Jake Braun
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/06/17

02/06/17

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Monday, February 6, 2017

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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SUMMER EMPLOYMENT

Argentinian 
author 
Samanta 

Schweblin’s debut novel “Fever 
Dream” is titled after the vivid, 
hallucinatory 
dreams 
that 

accompany 
an 
illness. 
Except 

“Fever Dream” isn’t a dream. It’s 
a nightmare, one that glows with 
taut, sinister energy.

“They’re like worms,” it begins. 

Amanda lies dying in a hospital 
clinic, speaking to David, the son 
of her friend from her vacation 
hometown. 
He 
questions 
her, 

prodding her to recount her 
experience getting acquainted with 
him. He seems to be searching for 
something, but doesn’t explain 
what the worms mean, nor what 
sparks their importance.

Told entirely in sparse dialogue, 

“Fever Dream” leaks out just 
enough detail needed to invoke 
a sense of dread. Hints of evil 
permeate its pages, but its nature is 
undefined. “Nina!” Amanda often 
calls out for her daughter; “Where 
is Nina?”

There is no answer.
David dodges her questions, and 

tells her there isn’t much time left, 
to keep going, to keep telling the 
story. A sense of urgency pulses 
throughout, keeping the reader in 

a constant state of the unknown. 
“That’s 
not 
important,” 
he 

interrupts. “What happened next? 
What did she say?” Amanda wants 
to stay in her memories, wants to 
tell the story to completion. David 
impatiently shoves her forward, 
and we whip our heads backward 
in confusion, trying to grab hold 
of quickly vanishing details before 
we’re forced to fly on to the next.

Through 
their 
unsettling 

conversations, pieces of the story 
eventually emerge. After drinking 
water from a poisoned stream, 
David falls ill and his mother 
begs a witch healer to transplant 
his soul into another body. She 
warns that though he may survive 
physically, his soul will be split in 
two, leaving something “unknown” 
to fill the void. At David’s urging, 
Amanda recounts how her and her 
daughter, Nina’s lives change after 
encountering the new David.

Amanda 
obsesses 
over 
the 

“rescue distance” between Nina 
and herself, the physical proximity 

she must maintain to protect her 
daughter if something goes awry. 
She describes it as the “invisible 
thread” connecting them, one that 
tightens around her stomach to 
signal danger. It is through charting 
the ever-evolving length of this 
“rescue distance” that we circle 
closer to the truth.

With two unreliable narrators 

acting as the only portal to 
understand 
what 
happened, 

Amanda’s bewilderment and fear 
becomes the reader’s own. How 
much of the story is real, and how 
much of it is Amanda’s imagination? 
David sometimes corrects her, 
moves her to different places. Can 
we trust him? Everything about 
“Fever Dream” is dizzying, with 
the only certainty being the visceral 
need to protect one’s child.

It’s this uncertainty that makes 

“Fever 
Dream” 
so 
horrifying. 

Amanda knows just enough to 
realize that something is terribly 
wrong but cannot fix it. She’s stuck, 
a bystander in history, trapped in 
the sands of her own fate, with 
nothing to do but yield to her terror. 
“Fever Dream” harnesses the power 
of instinct, throwing its characters 
into 
a 
poisoned 
dreamworld, 

dissolving their social pretenses 
in the face of desperation, so that 
what’s left is the primal relationship 
between mother and child.

“Fever Dream”

Samanta Schweblin

Riverhead Books

January 10, 2017

‘Dream’ a vivid nightmare

BOOK REVIEW

VANESSA WONG

Daily Arts Writer

Perhaps more than any other 

sub-par horror movie released 
recently, “Rings” aspires for a 
quality viewing experience. The 
filmmakers behind it are clearly 
passionate about their project, 
and 
while 
that 
enthusiasm 

doesn’t stop the film from being 
mostly forgettable, it makes it 
more digestible than one would 
assume. It’s creepy more often 
than not, and Director F. Javier 
Gutiérrez (“Before the Fall”) 
is skilled at the atmosphere-
building that made “The Ring” 
such a huge hit fifteen years ago.

However, in many ways, this 

competency behind the camera 
makes the reliance on genre 
clichés all the more frustrating. 
The 
atmosphere 

is 
well-conveyed, 

but 
the 
same 

jump 
scares 
and 

pointless 
dream 

sequences 
that 

pervade 
modern 

horror still make 
their 
presence 

known. 
The 
fact 

that it takes the 
more difficult road three times 
out of ten doesn’t make the other 
seven times it takes the easy way 
out any less infuriating.

This frustration applies to 

the story, as well. As with the 
original film, “Rings” feels like 
a horror movie disguised as a 
mystery, and it’s a genuinely 
interesting mystery that only 
becomes more involving as the 
plot moves along — until the end, 
that is (but there’ll be time for 
that calamity later). Its potential 
is squandered as the storytelling 
behind 
“Rings” 
becomes 

progressively more muddled. It 
can’t seem to choose between 
being a reboot or a sequel, and 
it settles for something halfway, 
alternatively 
following 
and 

changing series canon to suit 
the scene.

In addition, the story relies 

on a series of contrivances and 
plot holes to work, especially 
at the beginning. Characters 
frequently make decisions that 
make no sense, but they move 

the plot forward, so audiences 
are expected to accept them 
with 
no 
questions 
asked. 

Almost every moment feels 
manufactured, instead of letting 
the natural fear that drove the 
original do the talking.

With the exception of Johnny 

Galecki (“The Big Bang Theory”) 
playing against type, the cast 
doesn’t do particularly well with 
what they’re given, either. The 
central couple, as portrayed by 
Matilda Lutz (“Summertime”) 
and 
Alex 
Roe 
(“The 
5th 

Wave”), is one of the most self-
righteously pretentious couples 
in recent horror memory. Any 
relationship 
between 
two 

ostensible teenagers — both 
portrayed by twenty-six-year 
olds — that begins with them 
reciting 
the 
Greek 
tragedy 

of Orpheus as a thinly veiled 

metaphor for the 
plot is doomed to 
be 
unbearable, 

and 
Julia 
and 

Holt make this 
rule. They are 
so 
obnoxiously 

self-important 
both 
in 
the 

performances 
and 
in 
their 

relationship 
that 
they 
are 

insufferable. They strive to be 
likeable to such an extreme, 
off-putting extent that they’re 
anything but. The dialogue 
is wooden, sure, but it can’t 
shoulder all the blame.

All of this doesn’t add up 

to a bad movie, though. If 
“Rings” had ended five minutes 
before it does, it would have 
been 
anticlimactic, 
and 
it 

would have left some plot 
threads 
unresolved, 
but 
it 

would have been an average, 
even moderately likeable flick 
with positives to balance out 
its 
negatives. 
Then 
comes 

the “twist,” a lazy possession 
plotline that makes no sense — 
both for what the audience has 
been shown so far and for the 
new “rules” it sets up — and 
which damages the movie the 
longer it lasts. It is the kind of 
lazy, tacked-on non-sequitur 
that buries the merits of the 
film and elevates the flaws, 
ultimately resulting in a film 

more memorable for its failures 
than 
for 
its 
commendable 

ambitions.

“Rings”

Rave Cinemas, 

Goodrich Quality 

16

Paramount 

Pictures

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM

Daily Arts Writer

‘Rings’ is abruptly uneven

NETFLIX

Drew Barrymore stars in “Santa Clarita Diet”

Marriage is messy — especially 

when mom has an insatiable 
hunger for human flesh and dad 
is trying hard to rock the suburbia 
lifestyle. At least, this is what 
“The Santa Clarita Diet” reminds 
us when real-estate agents Sheila 
(Drew Barrymore, “Blended”) 
and Joel (Timothy Olyphant, 
“Justified”) 
navigate 
a 
new 

normal as Sheila makes a sudden 
departure from the land of the 
living.

In a time when most couples 

face the demons of menopause 
and the infamous midlife crisis, 
Sheila seems to experience the 
opposite — her sex drive has 
tripled, she’s less uptight about 
parenting and she begins to 
experience the joys of clubbing. 
After all, the show is a satirical 
look at the zombie phenomenon. 
Where zombies drag themselves 
aimlessly, Sheila is excitable, 
rejuvenated with the newfound 
energy that accompanied her 
sudden death. Her complete one-
eighty in regards to personality is 
what makes a zombie, ultimately, 
a 
zombie. 
This 
phenomenon 

is noticed most by her teenage 
daughter Abby (Liv Hewson, 
“Before I Fall”), who notes the 
transformation 
on 
multiple 

occasions.

Where Sheila once worried 

about her daughter’s SAT scores, 
she now couldn’t care less if Abby 
were to drop out of high school 

altogether. Though at first she 
enjoys the more carefree side to 
her mom, as the series progresses, 
Abby’s distress regarding the 
current situation continues to 
grow. Her tough-girl exterior 
around neighbor and resident geek 
Eric (Skyler Gisondo, “Vacation”) 
slowly begins to shatter when she 
comes to realize the true extent 
of her mother’s condition. While 
they’re all eating spaghetti, mom 
is eating human brains. Hewson 
does 
remarkable 

work 
in 
the 

emotional baggage 
department, 
balancing acts of 
badassery 
with 

background 
depression as her 
cries for normalcy 
begin 
to 
make 

cracks in her stony exterior.

At the same time, as Sheila 

slurps 
on 
her 
blood-flavored 

protein shake, Joel just manages 
to keep it together. A former jock 
who has never fully adjusted 
into the suburban lifestyle, Joel 
struggles even harder to find 
balance when his wife joins the 
ranks of the undead. Perhaps it’s 
because of his insecurities that 
he chooses love over ethos, but 
Joel’s inability to get over the past 
is what ultimately drives him to 
agree to harvest people for food. 
As high school sweethearts, he 
can’t imagine, nor function, in a 
world without Sheila. Extremely 
protective, 
he 
spends 
most 

episodes desperately searching 
for 
a 
cure 
whilst 
dragging 

his 
sweetheart 
off 
hapless 

pedestrians. When neighbor and 
police officer Carlos (Ricardo 
Antonio 
Chavira, 
“Desperate 

Housewives”) 
becomes 

suspicious, 
Joel 
pushes 
the 

nervous smiles and half-thought 
out excuses with a fervor.

At times, however, Olyphant’s 

performance can feel forced and a 
tad overplayed, as his normal role 
as the Hollywood villain is tossed 
aside for the nervous and obedient 

husband. However, 
his 
chemistry 

with 
Barrymore 

is more believable 
than 
most 

on-screen couples. 
Practically picture-
perfect, the two 
complement 
one 
another 
in 

a manner that evens out their 
polarized 
personalities 
well, 

an aspect that many network 
shows spend episodes to even 
out. With the chemistry of the 
show constantly shifting from one 
episode to the next, “The Santa 
Clarita Diet” is a show that, though 
not binge-worthy material, will 
keep viewers coming back for 
the satirical sarcasm. Once the 
initial overkill, both literal and 
figurative, of the pilot passes, the 
series develops a steady rhythm 
accentuated by a passionate cast 
and the irresistible draw of brain 
smoothies.

The first season of “The 

Santa Clarita Diet” is currently 
streaming on Netflix in its 
entirety.

‘Diet’ revives zombie tale

MEGAN MITCHELL

Daily Arts Writer

Barrymore’s new series proves watchable, not binge-worthy

TV REVIEW

FILM REVIEW

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Gutiérrez’s ruins potential in disappontingly sporadic film

“Santa Clarita 

Diet”

All episodes 
streaming on 

Netflix

