Tag: horror

Fragments of Obsession IV | The Criminologist

Some time ago I began writing Fragments of Obsession, brief glimpses into a private world of desire and distance. These new pieces pick up where the last ones left off, but they explore a darker area: the world of a criminologist.

I can’t sit at his desk or walk with him into the places he inhabits. All I have are fragments, imagined through the silence between us. They’re not about the crimes themselves but rather the places around them: his desk, the crime scene, and the interrogation room.

What interests me is not the evidence he gathers, but the burden that persists afterward. These pieces are how I watch from the outside and write about things I’ll never see. They belong to the same map of longing I began tracing in the first three Fragments of Obsession — part 1, part 2, part 3. 

The Desk

I never stood in front of it, but I know it like I’ve touched its surface a thousand times in my mind. A desk that holds the stories that no one wants to tell, and even fewer want to hear. Its top is scratched, probably from years of people dropping folders, forgotten coffee cups, and constant shuffles of pens and clips. Sturdy but with scars like him.

On one side, there is an uneven stack of papers threatening to tumble. Case notes, autopsy reports, and transcripts of late-night interviews with men who lie easily and women who have given up on getting justice. I imagine the edges fading from being read too often, held in worn hands. Underneath them, photographs turned face down, and the victim’s eyes still burning even when hidden. 

The other side is neater. A computer. A notebook with a page full of his neat, small handwriting. His pen would sometimes rest diagonally across it, with ink smudges on the margins where he applied pressure too hard. I imagine him hesitating mid-thought, his brows furrowing. 

There must be a hidden gun nearby. Cold, clinical, and within his reach. The barrel pointing nowhere, a constant reminder of how violence is always a part of his life. My people never lived with guns except for the ones that were passed down to us. My grandfather’s shotgun passed to my father and now to my eldest brother. A hunting tool, not for murder. Unloaded but heavy with potential, lingering like a sinister presence at the periphery of every thought. 

I can see his hand, with raised veins and long fingers, tracing the tabletop absentmindedly when fatigue creeps in. A gesture that seems almost loving, as if he were anchoring himself. He’s a man who has read too many lies in too many statements. He doesn’t stop. He keeps returning to this desk, like a man returning to his menua, the land he was born in, where his roots are waiting for him, no matter how far he has gone.

I’ll never sit across from him there. I only know it through imagination. This distance allows me to observe things that others may overlook: the silence around him, the way the desk has become an extension of his body, his determination, and his solitude. 

The Crime Scene

I picture it as the opposite of his desk. No order, no familiar scratches, no steady ground. There was chaos sealed off by yellow tape. It’s a place where a life has ended and everything normal—shoes by the door, a half-empty cup on the table, a curtain in the wind—suddenly feels obscene. 

The air is thick with things that can’t be cleaned. The iron tang of blood and the sour staleness of fear. A house where someone used to laugh is now silent. He goes through it methodically, but I know he notices everything. The scattered belongings. How things look wrong when they aren’t where they belong. The imprint of violence that remains like smoke after a fire. 

He kneels by the details others step over. A broken clasp. Mud tracked across the tiles. Fibers snagged on a nail. His hand hovers above them, never in a hurry or careless. He bends down low to collect evidence. I imagine how his eyes narrow as he gathers pieces that the rest of us can’t see. 

Somewhere close, a camera flashes, officers talk, and someone fills in a logbook. He moves like none of them are there. The scene is speaking to him. It tells him what to look for, what to doubt, and what doesn’t belong. 

And maybe he thinks of the victim too. Not just as a body drawn in chalk, but as a person who went barefoot over this floor and brushed their teeth at that sink. He’s seen too many of them. Each scene digs into him like a thumbnail. 

According to my people, when someone dies tragically, the place becomes restless. You don’t linger there long unless you want to carry that darkness home. He has to stay. He lets the silence seep into him and the darkness push against his skin. This is the only way to read what the dead left behind. The chaos doesn’t stay behind when he finally steps back over the tape. It follows him and becomes the real evidence he can never log. 

The Interrogation Room

I can see it clearly, even though I’ve never been inside. The walls are bare and dull gray with faint finger prints on the paint from palms dragged in terror, boredom, or defiance. A single table in the center with uneven legs. One chair on each side but only one feels in charge. 

I imagine the air stale with breath and the absence of sunlight. There are no windows to the outside world. Only a dark pane of glass on one wall. He knows they’re watching. He doesn’t care. His focus is always here. This is a space where people stall, spin, crack, or burn. 

He sits across from them. Calm. Still like the river at dusk before swallowing the last light. He doesn’t raise his voice. He waits and lets them fill the silence with their own guilt. Lets them fidget, lie, and repeat themselves. Lets them feel uncomfortable about what they said. 

There’s always a file in front of him. Sometimes it’s closed. Sometimes it’s open to a photo or a sentence scribbled in red. He doesn’t look at it much. He stares at them, watches how their jaw moves, how they scratch their nose, and how their eyes dart to the door when they think no one’s watching. 

I wonder if he thinks of the victim while he listens. If he remembers the angle of the neck, the bruise on the cheek, and the time of death. If he keeps those pieces in his pockets like charms, reminding him of who he’s really speaking for. 

In my people’s old way of life, truth wasn’t pried out in rooms like these. We invoked Ini Andan, the goddess of justice, and waited for signs. Now there are only fluorescent lights and CCTV. The ritual remains the same. Watching. Listening. Putting the soul on a scale. 

He doesn’t need to catch them lying. They’ll hand it over eventually. Little by little, like decaying meat falling apart in their hands. 

Note:

I’m still working through two more fragments—The Victims and The Walk. They’ll come when they’re ready, and together they’ll complete this small sequence of obsession.

Copyright © Olivia JD 2025

All Rights Reserved.
I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.

A Review of The Earthquake Bird Movie Adaptation | The Book vs The Movie

After reading Susanna Jones’ novel The Earthquake Bird, I felt compelled to rewatch the 2019 Netflix adaptation. The film, directed by Wash Westmoreland and starring Alicia Vikander, Riley Keough, and Naoki Kobayashi, takes creative liberties with its source material while maintaining its dark, melancholic atmosphere. Despite some changes, I found the directors’ ability to capture the story’s haunting atmosphere impressive. However, the ending deviates radically from the book, providing viewers with the closure that the author purposefully denies. Despite the clean conclusion, I couldn’t help but believe that the book’s emotional ambiguity was more fitting. However, the film still provides an intriguing representation of Jones’ writing.

Watching it again provided me a new perspective on how the film adapted certain key components and departed from the original.

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Lucy: A Different Lucy, A Different Background

The most noticeable distinction in the movie is Lucy’s nationality. Lucy Fly, the novel’s protagonist, is a British expat living in Tokyo. Lucy in the film is Swedish. Alicia Vikander’s portrayal of Lucy is captivating, capturing the character’s subdued and brooding qualities as envisioned in the book. That part seemed to be tailor-made for Vikander, who portrays Lucy as cold but fiercely vulnerable. She is the film’s foundation, and no one else could have played the character as convincingly.

Teiji: A Beautiful Mystery with a Dark Side

In the movie, Naoki Kobayashi plays Lucy’s love interest, the intriguing photographer Teiji Matsuda. Kobayashi’s Teiji is colder and more detached from the one in the book. His calm demeanor conceals a mild but unmistakable hostility, which adds tension to his interactions with Lucy. He is more indifferent to Lucy in the movie, which makes it plain that she is little more than a muse and a physical comfort to him. Where the novel’s Teiji shows glimmers of tenderness, the film removes those layers, exposing a man who is equally compelling and creepy.

The filmmakers altered Teiji’s backstory, having him raised by an aunt instead of his mother. This change adds a layer of mystery to his character, but it’s an easy element to overlook amid Teiji’s ambiguous personality.

Lily Bridges: A Scene-Stealer

Riley Keough as Lily Bridges steals the scene. Lily in the movie is flirty and outgoing but slightly needy. At one point, she even suggested she slept in between Teiji and Lucy, a moment that perfectly captures her brazen personality. Keough brings Lily to life in a way that matches how I envisioned her in the book: vibrant, needy, and ultimately tragic. Her presence adds a volatile energy to the story, and her dynamic with Lucy and Teiji is one of the more compelling aspects of the film.

A Cinematic Key Moments

The film’s cinematic storytelling enhances some passages from the book while layering the tension and beauty. One such moment comes when Lucy realizes that Teiji’s love has turned toward Lily during their time on Sado Island. The shift is slight but devastating, and the filmmakers pull it off with precision. The cinematography nicely captures Lucy’s mounting discomfort and the way it frames her isolation against the backdrop of Japan’s breathtaking landscape.

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The other standout element in the film is Teiji’s apartment. Unlike the novel’s minimalist description, the film makes his living space a dingy and cluttered space mirroring his mysterious character. The apartment is almost a character in its own right, its junkyard atmosphere and eerie photographs lining the walls contributing to the film’s noir aesthetic.

The Earthquake Bird: A Haunting Force

One thing does get heightened in the movie: the titular “earthquake bird” reference. The bird is more vaguely referenced in the book, but the movie brings it to life, its haunting bird calls punctuating the moments of silence that follow an earthquake. That auditory detail adds another layer of unease, making the story’s themes of guilt and displacement all the more tangible.

Cinematography and the Haunting Soundtrack

The movie’s cinematography is breathtaking. It manages to capture the beauty of 80s Japan while also infusing it with a sense of foreboding. With such a subdued color palette and reserved framing, there’s even a noir-like feel to the film that works for its psychological aspects. Whether it is the bustling streets of Tokyo or the silent, windy fields of Sado Island, every shot seems meticulously crafted.

A special mention should also go to the haunting soundtrack. Composed by Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross, and Claudia Sarne, the music heightens the tension and melancholy of the story, settling into your head long after the last credits roll. It’s the kind of score that amplifies the emotional weight of every scene, transforming the movie into an immersive experience.

The Ending

The most significant departure from the book is the ending. The novel leaves a lot of questions unaddressed, requiring readers to contend with the ambiguity of Lucy’s guilt and the motives behind Teiji’s actions, but the movie prefers a more definite resolution. Without giving too much away, the movie does a good job of resolving some things and giving viewers a sense of closure. I admire the clarity, but I did find myself yearning for the unresolved tension of the book’s ending. That uncertainty seemed truer to the story’s themes.

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Final Thoughts

The Earthquake Bird movie is a rich, visually deep, and emotionally haunting adaptation of Susanna Jones’s novel. While it diverges from the novel in some ways, it opens the story in new directions that could not have happened in the book. Alicia Vikander shines as Lucy. She succeeded in capturing the character’s multifaceted nature with ease and intensity. Naoki Kobayashi and Riley Keough deliver equally compelling performances. While some changes, such as Lucy’s nationality or Teiji’s backstory, seemed inconsequential, others, like the ending, significantly changed the tone of the story. The film’s portrayal of Teiji as a slightly colder character brought a darker edge to the story too. These differences notwithstanding, the movie stays true to the original novel’s exploration of guilt, obsession, and identity.

If you’ve read the book, the film is an intriguing reinterpretation of the story. If you haven’t, the film is still a tense and tight psychological thriller that stands on its own. Either way, it’s worth watching it for its breathtaking cinematography, haunting soundtrack, and outstanding performances. It felt like when I watched the movie, it was like a different perspective on the novel—familiar but different, unsettling but beautiful. It’s a story I’ll carry with me, in both its written and cinematic forms.