Charles Burns' Final Cut: An All Too Personal Review
I have waited a long time for the new Charles Burns book. Final Cut is beautifully drawn, but the characters feel like ciphers. On the surface, the horror movie tropes and exploration of the human psyche feel like vintage Burns, and my younger self would have loved it. His connections between cinematic narratives and human connection show how fantasy sometimes separates us. However, Final Cut feels much emptier than Inside Out and less horrific than his best work. The science fiction horrors are only on the screen and in the mind and not realities for the characters as in other Burns stories. Thus, he shows that our disconnections can be more horrific than any fiction. That said, maybe I'm just that far removed from my teenage self and cannot find a connection to any of these characters or their familiar obsessions. As they slip apart, I found myself also withdrawing. Perhaps, that's the point.
