Title: Five Miles Out Of Black Creek
Author: Neil Shooter
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: December 30, 2016
Genres: Horror, LGBTQ+, Contemporary
Length:13 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 3 Stars
Blurb:
Dean Rand is in a bit of a slump, and needs to sell a story fast. Can this one save his bacon? Dr. Chang’s dirty white farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Well, in the middle of Hamilton County, five miles out of Black Creek. Sure, the view is great, but it’s so isolated. Why would a scientist want to live here? Or work here?
Content Warning: Blood.
Review:
Not every farm is a tranquil getaway from city life.
Let’s see how much I can say about the antagonists of this piece without giving away too many clues about who or what they are. This means that my review may feel a little mysterious, but I’d rather allow other readers to discover for themselves what’s going on than to know ahead of time what to expect. What I can say about the antagonists is that they had good reasons for behaving the way that they did and that they provided plenty of conflict for Dean to work through during his visit. There’s definitely something to be said for that! I also appreciated how unusual some of them were. That is to say, they didn’t exactly conform to mainstream ideas of what should be attempting to harm the protagonist in this genre, and that’s a good thing.
It would have been more helpful to have additional plot development. I knew what the twist in the end probably would be by the time I read the first scene, and unfortunately this was the sort of tale that, in my opinion, works better if one doesn’t know what to expect in advance. The character development was sufficient for something of this length, so it was really just the depth of the plot that held me back from choosing a higher rating.
With that being said, I do enjoy rural horror. Sometimes other genres glamorize this setting in ways that make me uncomfortable as someone who grew up in various rural places and intimately knows both the negative and positive aspects of that environment, so it was refreshing to see a character drive out to the middle of nowhere and be genuinely taken aback by what he found there. I also appreciated the way the story played around with the trope of a highly educated city slicker arriving at a farm and realizing there are still things about life he doesn’t know. This is something that happens to all sorts of people when they find themselves in cultures or places they’re unfamiliar with, after all, and it was well used here.
Five Miles Out Of Black Creek made me shudder.