Killer curb appeal

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This article was published 12/08/2023 (1114 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A haunted house. An ancient blood pact. Toxic masculinity run as wild as the darkest dreams of the greediest of land developers. The almighty power of the algorithm.

These are some of the materials used to craft The Handyman Method, a gruesome and grisly new novel from Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan. Built on the foundation laid by The Amityville Horror, The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining, among others, this new collaboration between rising stars of the horror genre taps into time-honoured tropes while capturing the zeitgeist as well.

The Handyman Method tears out of the gates and doesn’t let up much as things go from bad to worse to somehow worse still for the Saban family and a few others who happen to fall within their orbit. The pace is relentless, few of the characters are likable and some suffer horrible fates that play out in grisly detail. The vibe throughout is one of unsettling, mounting dread that rarely falters — in other words, a heck of a lotta fun.

Trent Saban arrives at his new home, the first — and ominously, only — among a proposed sprawling new subdivision far outside the city’s outer limits. He’s ready to start a fresh life after taking an extended stress leave from his job, which, it turns out, he was never very good at to begin with.

Almost immediately, the house proves not to be what Saban was led to believe, with cracks popping up in the darnedest places. Soon Saban discovers a YouTuber by the name of Handyman Hank whose seemingly endless series of videos promises to help fix any old household problem. Just like that, Saban has fallen under the sway of a malicious DIY demon, making near-daily trips to the local Home Depot.

Meanwhile, Saban’s young son Milo has stumbled onto a YouTube channel of his own, featuring a beguiling puppet by the name of Little Boy Blue, who begins imploring Milo to build increasingly bizarre and elaborate contraptions, or to dig deep in the earth around the property and in the deep dark woods beyond.

Before long, both are enthralled by the pervasive power the home, or something within it, is exerting. At the same time Rita (Trent’s wife, Milo’s mother) is highly uneasy within their new home, but is unwilling — or unable — to do much about it… yet.

Fans of Cutter (the genre-specific pseudonym of Craig Davidson, a bestselling author in his own right) and Sullivan will no doubt enjoy this collaboration, as it both plays to their strengths as storytellers, while synthesizing those talents into something strange and refreshingly disturbed. The theme of development coming at an all-too-human cost is one The Handyman Method shares with Sullivan’s latest, The Marigold, though each text explores that theme in different, though not uncomplementary, manners. In each case, when greed is left unchecked, people pay the price.

The role of the algorithm (and the supernatural force that finds a way to manipulate it) in influencing human behaviour and the subconscious is another key theme of The Handyman Method, and perhaps the most unsettling. As our experiences are digitally curated, who’s to say the formula behind that curation actually has our best interests at heart, and not those of its programmers — or its own? Ghoulish as the idea plays out here, it may not be all that far removed from, or even as bad as, our current reality.

While The Handyman Method may be too a little far out there for casual readers, horror fans are sure to appreciate its subtle nods to classics of the genre, as well as the direction Cutter and Sullivan take their dark tale of home improvement gone horribly awry. Regardless, readers may find themselves more than a little uneasy the next time they stroll the aisles at Home Depot.

Sheldon Birnie is a Winnipeg reporter and the author of the forthcoming collection of weird fiction, Where the Pavement Turns to Sand, coming this October.