If you’re anything like me, your stack of unread books is three feet high and rising. Your Netflix queue begs for a flu. And now you’ve got podcasts. To help sort out the latter at least, I’ve decided to run a few podcast review blogs.
First off, The White Vault by Fool & Scholar Productions.
The White Vault follows a multi-national repair team’s mission to a remote Arctic outpost. The story which spans two seasons is told using a found footage style made of cobbled together recordings from their journeys into the ice as well as the messages they sent home.
The basic story is as follows. The team gathers at the outpost and begins their repair mission. All of their unique personalities come out. Strange discoveries are made in the ice. Then a massive storm hits.
The White Vault really hits my sweet spot when it comes to supernatural fiction. For one, I love the Arctic. Also, I love confinement. Throw in some long buried ancient civilizations and I’m ready to go.
One of the reasons I enjoyed The White Vault is that it’s writers don’t try to deviate from what makes Arctic based horror scary. Characters are confined in a hostile environment. That storm hits at just the right time to make the already dangerous surface deadly. Portland based writer K.A. Statz hits the mark right on.
What works in movies like the original version of “The Thing” or in books like HP Lovecraft’s At The Mountains Of Madness work very well here. There has been something of a fan backlash against found footage of late, which is understandable. The style was played to exhaustion about ten years ago.
My issues with The White Vault are quite small. Some of the actor’s performances feel stiff at times. My issues with found footage are that the story really becomes the domain of the assembler of that footage. While The White Vault does nothing to get me over that hump, it’s not a distraction.
The White Vault really is worth the listen though which is why I chose it for my first podcast review. I binged most of the first season in a couple of days, only to find out that I had to wait for Season #2.
Have you checked out The White Vault yet?
Leave a comment below about this podcast, this podcast review, or suggest a supernatural fiction podcast. Meanwhile, check out my book page to see the latest Oregon supernatural mystery I’m working on.
Leave a Reply