Backrooms (2026) - Parsons
The liminal spaces - a byproduct of the ever progressing, expanding capitalist world - the mall, corporate offices, underground subway stations, hospital wards, suburban cul-de-sacs, innercity public parks, abandoned housing have been the subject or background for numerous films, most notably, the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and J-horror auteurs in the 90s and 2000s, the Berlin School filmmakers of the 2000s - Petzold, Arslan, Schanelec, Köhler. These filmmakers delved into the anxiety of living in the modern world where mundane reality is just as scary as spirits and monsters.
Backrooms creator Kane Parsons, a teen who grabbed and expanded the now famous 4-chan meme of an empty old furniture store with eerie yellow walls and fluorescent overhead lights, made series of contents entirely using Blender and Aftereffects, where endless corridors leads you to nowhere and some unknown creature chasing you. Banking on digital pixel nostalgia and shaky POV camera of the 90s indie boom, Parsons helped create an urban lore where the Gen-Zers can congregate online.
Seeing the potential for the internet liminal horror on social media and videogames cum movie successes (the most recent example would be Skinamarink, Exit 8), A24 gave Kane Parsons, now a 20 years old, 10 million dollars to make a feature film with legit actors - Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. The result is a noble first attempt, albeit an underwhelming one.
Ejiofor plays Clark, who owns a failing furniture store - Captain Clark's Ottoman Empire (its confusing, discordant name is pointed out by his young part-time employees), in a strip mall in suburban southern California. He is an aspiring architect who is unhappy with life's disappointment. He regularly has sessions with his therapist Mary (Reinsve) where he reveals his past - his failure in life turned him into drinking and his wife left him. He has anger issues. In turn, Mary has her own demons, as seen in spurts of flashbacks and nightmares - her mentally unstable mother prevented her from going out and they become shut-ins (newspapers covering the entire windows kind), in their now demolished apartment. She wrote a book about opening windows in life which Clark religiously listens to (as an audio book on a tape).
Clark finds the backrooms by accident while sleeping in his furniture store showroom, when flickering overhead store lights lead him to check the circuit breakers, then discovers a sliver of light beaming through the basement wall. He marks the entrance with a blue painter's tape and recruits his two young employees, armed with a video camera and ropes to investigate the endless labyrinth of the backroom. And it goes horribly wrong.
Mary stops in the furniture store, after Clark misses his appointment and leaves a cryptic message on her phone. She finds Clark has been mapping the labyrinth of backrooms. And he encourages her to explore with him.
There is so much potential in Backrooms. The dizzying labyrinth, much of it actually physically built for the film, is impressive for its originality and surrealism - the impossible angles, strange walkways, ominous dark corners & random piles of furniture. With the help of eerie sound design and score, Backrooms provide some very unsettling vibes. The creature designs give some very scary moments also. And the implication of the creatures and scattered clothes and furniture and absurd landscape that these are our memories of a place, warped over the years by misremembering and misinterpretation, is an intriguing one.
But if Skinamarink was any indication, you can't make a feature film just with the vibe alone, unless it's short, jumbled youtube clips intended to be unnerving, with no need for narrative threads or any coherence. Here, the narratives/character backgrounds are forced and uninteresting. By the time the abrupt ending rolls around, Backroom feels like a missed opportunity - you want more of the backroom explorations, not the underdeveloped, stereotypical characters. The film is a 1990s digital nostalgia, remembered, reimagined by a 20-year-old who didn't live through the timeframe, instead, grew up on the internet and videogames. It's just vibes, distorted and context free, just like the inhabitants of the backrooms. But just like the original digital catnip Parsons created, I want more.
Passenger (2026) - Øvredal
André Øvredal, Norwegian director behind Troll Hunter, Autopsy of Jane Doe and The Last Voyage of Demeter, created a little corner for himself in the American horror film scene with successful modest budget projects over the years. And his latest, Passenger, starring Lou Llobel and Jacob Scipio as a young couple in love, on the road together is a tight, surprisingly good horror film that has plenty of scares.
Tyler (Scipio) and Maddie (Llobel) are city folks embarking on a new life on the road in a bougie Mercedes van. Their whole lives are packed in the van and they are hitting the road. It's the opposite of Nomadland where people are living out of their vans out of economic necessity, but these young couples are what the Winnebago community in a trailer park calls "Air bnb on wheels" folks.
It's Tyler's idea of retiring early and being free on the road, but Maddie is not so sure. It is extra hard to object, when he puts a lot of effort into this new life and thinks their love will be the only thing that they need. The thing is, any way you cut it, they are an adorable couple and we don't want anything bad to happen to them. But things start happening.
While they are on the road, they witness the aftermath of a brutal car crash. Since then, Maddie is seeing a scary figure in the corner of her eyes. There are deep scratch marks on the side of the van, which they later find out that it's a warning sign in a hobo code to be on the lookout for danger.
Their road trip on Route 66 turns out to be less ideal than Tyler anticipated, but downright scary with this 'passenger' attaching itself to them.
The couple learns that the only way to lose this scary ghoul is driving to the creepy abandoned church of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, somewhere off the beaten path in the desert near Grand Junction,CO.
In Passenger, jump scares are plenty and tension building is top notch. Øvredal uses all the tricks in the scary road movie genre tropes - car engine stalling, flat tires in the middle of nowhere, scary parking spaces at night with unreliable, flickering street lights combined with supernatural elements, debunking the American romanticism of hitting the road.
Hokum (2026) - McCarthy
Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy's third outing has all the hallmarks of his two very scary predecessors: everything has to do with an elaborate scheme taking place in one isolated location. Once the mechanics of action are laid out- which takes some time, the film begins to click in its scary ways. And as with Caveat and Oddity, Hokum is scary, good fun.
American writer Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), is visiting Bilberry Woods Hotel for two reasons- to finish the ending of his Conquistador trilogy and scatter his parents ashes in nearby woods, because his parents stayed in the hotel when they were honeymooning. But Ohm is not a friendly fellow. He is arrogant and dismissive. He snaps at the old proprietor (Brendan Conroy) of the inn telling a spooky tale to the local children about how he trapped a witch in his hotel, calling him an old fool believing in superstitions. He admonishes Alby (Will O'Connell), a bell hop who is an aspiring writer, for asking for his autograph, rude to Fiona (Florence Odesh) the barkeep, all at his arrival. He later bonds with Fiona a little bit, because she reminds him of his dead mother.
The rumor has it, there's a witch who is haunting the place and the honeymoon suite is off limits because of that. You know that the suite is going to be opened up and will be the main location for most of the action taking place later on. Ohm is also carrying the guilt of the accidental death of his mother when he was a child. We see the glimpse of her ghost still haunting him and that he is in a depressive state.
Ohm encounters Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in his van and drinking mushroom laced milk in the woods. Taking Jerry as a quack, Ohm dismisses his telltale stories about the witch and haunting of the hotel.
After Fiona and Alby discovering Ohm hanging from the ceiling, from an apparent suicide attempt, Ohm is hospitalized and recovers few weeks later. When he comes back to the hotel to gather his stuff, Ohm finds the hotel is closing for the season and Fiona has gone missing since Halloween night a couple of weeks back. Jerry is a prime suspect in Fiona's disappearance. Ohm runs into him in the woods again and Jerry suggests breaking in to the hotel after everyone clears out. Jerry is certain that they are keeping Fiona up in the Honeymoon suite.
The rest is pure McCarthy - repetition of the elevator and dumb waiter going up and down, the secret corridors in the basement, isolation and suffocation anxiety, the cat and mouse game with folklore tinged supernatural occurances. Plenty of jumpscare and hallucinogenic imagery- reoccuring rabbit creature references throughout his filmography, all mingle perfectly with the tense atmosphere McCarthy creates (out of little to nothing). Adam Scott playing the world-class asshole also helps with absurd humor. All the creepy details McCarthy puts in - the cherubic sculptures, the creepy rabbit mask, Fiona's rabbit costume, the grandfather clock, etc.
Hokum might not be as scary as Oddity, but it shows what McCarthy is capable of with a bigger budget and a Hollywood actor. I can't wait to see more from McCarthy.
Keeper (2025) - Perkins
As in his other films - Longlegs, Monkey, Grethel and Hansel, Osgood Perkins has a penchant for creating dread with eerie images, this cabin in the woods movie is no exception. From the get-go, even before the ill-fated couple Liz (Tatiana Maslany) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) arrive at the handsome, all-windows-n-angles modern log cabin, we see the glimpse of various women and their eventual fate in a series of striking portraits.
Once we are in the cabin, Liz feels an ominous presence in the dark corners and shadows. Maybe this trip upstate with someone she doesn't know well enough, for a city rat like Liz, wasn't a good idea. There's a cake in a box with smudged fingerprints sitting on the kitchen counter. It's from a caretaker Malcolm says, off-handedly. An unexpected, awkward visit from Malcolm's asshole brother with his Eastern European girlfriend, leaves Liz a little more rattled. After eating the whole chocolate cake in the middle of the night, creepy things start happening and Liz doesn't really know if they are dreams or real.
Malcolm is called off for his job as a doctor into the city, leaving Liz all alone. She is haunted by the vision of the women seen in the beginning of the film as well as feeling that she is not alone in the cabin.
The images Perkins and DP Jeremy Cox (Monkey) are truly unsettling. The creatures are extremely creepy and the competing saturated color palate is beautiful and dark and very effective for the location. Some transition shots are stunning, comparable to that of Park Chanwook even, the king of transition shots. Love his play with background and foreground perspectives also. Keeper develops into a delicious folk horror territory, but not a clearly defined plot. And like other Perkins films, narrative thread is not the selling point, but atmosphere is and unsettling images are. This film has a lot of that.
Maslany, who has one of the most interesting faces in cinema and serves as one of the executive producers of the film, is all game for a small cast and one location, atmospheric horror. Her natural delivery and demeanor, her quick wit is highlighted in basically a one woman show. I can see if it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it.
Weapons (2025) - Cregger
The success of the horror genre over the last decades have been steady, not only at the box office and cost/profit margins, but also in its quality. Even though movie studios still doll out sequels and franchises to grab quick bucks, there have been many good original horror films in recent years that's been giving audiences something new, instead of following the same old fomular with predictable plotlines.
Weapons, the new movie from Zach Cregger (Barbarians), understands the art of conceal. The slow build up of a mysterious disappearance of a group of school children, causing anguish and flinging accusations among adults in a small Pennsilvanian town, blows up to frenzied revelations in chapters seen from different character's point of views of the same event. It's an effective way to get maximum surprises out of the many twists and turns of this horror comedy.
I do not like overly expositional horror movies. The narrative arc and character development in horror aren't really for me. That's why the sequels, franchises, remakes and re-imaginings and TV series based on horror bore me. Over-exposition kills the magic. There's no mystery left. Cregger understands that.
Short on expositions, except maybe for our protagonist Justine (Julia Garner), an alcoholic school teacher, whose entire class of 17 kids (except for one kid, Alex) had gone missing. Thankfully, her less-than-perfect record doesn't really figure in to the meat of the story, except for drawing ire of frustrated parent, Archer (Josh Brolin), whose son went missing along with other kids.
Logic would get in the way of enjoying Weapons' long-winded set up: Why don't they question Alex's parents? Why do authorities not visit his house? But when Cregger finally reveals the origin of mystery, all hell breaks loose and it's a pure joy. It's effectively scary and uproariously funny. I had hots for Amy Madigan for a long time and she is so great in this.
I really hope Cregger is smart enough not to do Weapons 2. Leave it to be a cult classic in the making.
The Monkey (2025) - Perkins
Bespectacled Hal gets bullied around in school, also by his twin brother Bill at home. The twins live with their single mother (Tatiana Maslany). It's the 90s. They find a windup toy monkey left by their absent father (Adam Scott, shown briefly in the beginning, blow torching the monkey). When the monkey gets winded up, people around it die in some horrible accidents. After their mom dies of brain aneurism (because of the monkey), Hal chops up the monkey and throws it away. After the twins get adopted by their aunt and uncle and move to Maine, they find that the monkey has followed them. It doesn't matter why monkey chose them. It just is. Uncle with the impressive lambchop sideburn (played drolly by Perkins himself) dies first, stampeded by band of horses in a sleeping bag while camping, then twenty five years later, aunt dies horribly too. After many more highly inventive kill offs with many of the population in town dead, Bill and Hal need to finish the job of destroying the monkey, if they could. If not, they will need to learn how to live with the monkey.
If Osgood Perkins's Longlegs left you scratching your head in dissatisfaction, as it walked the tight rope between being a psychological horror and a comedy, please give him another chance with The Monkey, an all out horror-comedy that will wipe off your doubts about his talent as a filmmaker-to-watch. Perkins has a very peculiar sense of humor, to say the least. And his take on Stephen King's short story is an unabashedly slap-sticky, full on gore-fest that doesn't take itself too seriously.
Just like Longlegs, the pace of The Monkey is breezy. It progresses too quickly for us to question what's happening or why. And it's a good thing. Soon you realize that the narrative doesn't really matter. It's all just vibes. Theo James, playing both Hal and Bill, is eagerly along for the ride and keeps the serious face the whole time. Maslany hamms it up to match the film's weird vibe. All the peripheral characters - Hal's boss at the hardware store, the rookie priest, Elija Wood's creepy self-help guru, Perkins's uncle Chip and the tiny Asian girl bully all enhances to the truly peculiar vibe of the movie.
The Monkey is not necessarily the movie that we asked for, but the movie we need in these dark times.
Oddity (2024) - Mc Carthy
Horror genre is having a good year with many successful releases. Some of them are very good. But I find most of them overhyped and not at all scary. Irish director Damian Mc Carthy, whose sleeper hit debut Caveat (2020), a 'haunted house' genre, was in my opinion, both original and scary horror film in an ominous remote island setting. He comes up with perhaps the scariest film of the year.
Just like Caveat, the location plays an important part. This time it is a big old remote castle. Dani (Carolyn Bracken) and Ted (Gwylim Lee) are in the process of renovating the property that they just moved in. While Ted is at work (he is a doctor at a mental hospital nearby), Dani has to fend for herself at the big, cold, empty castle. As far as atmospheric horror goes, Mc Carthy is very skilled at creating the feeling that something is off. He is very good at not only jump scares, which there are plenty, but the sense of forbodding with startling images.
After Dani gets brutally murdered in the castle by a masked intruder, her twin sister Darcy, a blind clairvoyant who owns an oddity shop in town stops in at the castle, with a hideous housewarming gift, a wooden life-size mannequin with terrifying expression, for Damian and his new, unsuspecting girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). Darcy suspects it was Ted who arranged Dani's murder. He is doing some insidious stuff in the mental hospital. And he in turn, challenges the notion of supernatural with his daring arrogance: you wanna play with me? I will play with you. Yana finds strange objects in the holes in the creepy manequin's head - a lock of hair, a tooth, a viale of blood and a picture of Dani and Darcy as children. Unexplained things start happening - Yana's car key disappears, the wooden figure changes its positions by itself, Yana gets to see the glimpse of Dani's apparition in the dark. Freaked out, Yana leaves.
Carolyn Bracken has a great presence in her double roles while Gwylim Lee is appropriately creepy as smarmy, insidious villain. There are many truly terrifying moments in Oddity. The sense of unease Mc Carthy creates has no equal. It's his effective filmmaking - unnerving framing, sense of claustrophobia and timing that really pays off. His playing with the expectations of the audiences provide many spine tingling moments. Horror fans, watch this movie!
Starve Acre (2023) - Kokotajlo
Parents' grief manifests into a supernatural horror in Daniel Kokotajlo's moody, slow burn Starve Acre, based on a book by Andrew Michael Hurley who also co-wrote the screenplay.
Richard (Matt Smith) has moved back to his father's estate with his family - his wife Juliette (Morfydd Clark of Saint Maude) and their young son Ewan. He is a lecturer of archeology in nearby university. With his long hair and an outsider status, Richard doesn't really get along with his colleagues and neither does Ewan, who demonstrates violent tendencies. Jules is worried about their child but Richard is not. Richard's distance from his family stems from the physical abuse he received from his father when he was a young boy. He chastises his neighbor Gordon for telling the boy about the local folktale of Jack Grey and an oak tree that can reanimate the dead. Country folks are backward and full of superstitions. But the family can't shake off the feeling that there is something spooky about the nature that surrounds their house.
Ewan suddenly dies from an asthma attack and it pulls Richard and Jules farther apart. Guilt stricken and grieving, Jules can hardly get out of bed and Richard spends much time alone digging through the mud in the yard. Harrie (Erin Richards), Juliette's sister, comes to stay to comfort the grieving mother. It's the séance performed by Mrs. Ford, a neighbor that puts the idea in Jules' head that Ewan's spirit is still around.
Richard experiences a supernatural phenomenon when the bones of a hare he dug up near the oak tree of the old folklore, slowly starts to reanimate Hellraiser style - tissues appearing around the bones, then organs and muscles, eyes and hair. Is he imagining things out of grief or does the folktale about the oak tree and Jack Grey contain some sort of truth? He first hides this ungodly occurrence. But soon enough, a fully reanimated large hare is hopping around in their house. They release the hare to the wild but it comes back, wrecking havoc in the grieving parents' minds. According to Starve Acre, a research book left by Richard's father, they need three sacrifices to finish the ritual.
Smith and Clark are superb as grieving parents who are desperate to hold on to the idea of their dead son coming back, even if it takes a physical form of an animal. Cinematographer Adam Scarth’s expansive landscape shots and tinkling score by Matthew Herbert help accentuate the film’s sodden and moody tone. Grief and the power of folklore make great combination for a creating great unsettling, atmospheric horror. Starve Acre is one of the very fine English folk horror films to come out in recent years.
Longlegs (2024) - Perkins
In a sodden Oregon town, there lives special Agent Harker (Maika Monroe) who has some sort of psychic abilities. After the death of her newly appointed partner in the field, where she had a premonition, she is assigned to partner up with her superior, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood, who doesn't get roles in films which I do not understand), in pursuit of a serial killer known only as Longlegs because Carter believes Harker, with her abilities, can be of help with the investigation. Longlegs' MO is killing the whole families who have a daughter on the 14th of some months (what month of the year it is is not crucial info so are many things in the film). Coincidentally, Harker's birthday also falls on the 14th, and so is Carter's young daughter's. The killings involve some life-sized creepy doll and fathers of the families going berserk and killing everyone.
Harker constantly talks to her mom (Alicia Witt of Twin Peaks) on the phone who keeps pushing her to say prayers at night to protect herself from Nasties of the world. Longlegs keeps killing. Then Carter remembers that Harker had a scare as a child with some creep at her home with mom. Maybe mom remembers who that man was. She should check that out.
Oz Perkins, director of such films as Blackcoat's Daughter and Gretel and Hansel has a great visual sensibility in creating a sense of dread. He tinkers with all the conventions of police procedural and supernatural horror genres, but floats over all of them, and the film doesn't quite make a solid landing. The symbology, breaking the codes, occultism are all suggested but comes off as an afterthought, not even plot devices. Harker is treated as some kind of genius but her methodology is never shown. It's all in her head, man. She just knows. There are no real surprises in Longlegs. Everything is revealed early on. Nicolas Cage's turn as a glam rock psycho-killer-devil in heavy make-up is already revealed early in the film. It's a simple movie, plotwise.
And yet, the images Perkins presents in Longlegs linger in your head (well, not as impactful as its trailer campaign its distributor Neon put out). His framing, the uneasy atmosphere plus Cage's inspiring, unhinged performance makes this movie worthwhile.
Barnaby Clay's The Seeding mixes and matches The Hills Have Eyes with Woman in the Dunes. But it lacks the grit, fast pacing plot of the Hills and the aesthetic beauty and metaphorical depth in storytelling of the Japanese New Wave classic.
Don't get me wrong, a movie doesn't have to be anything other than what it promises - with the implication of the title and the macabre poster, The Seeding is a horror through and through. Yes, with the first glimpse of the 'strays' (the young cannibals who prey on tourists), you know where exactly the movie is headed.
A photographer (Scott Haze) gets lost in a California desert after documenting a solar eclipse. He then gets lured in by a woman (Kate Lyn Sheil, Kate Plays Christine, She Dies Tomorrow) singing at night. She lives in a shack at what seems to be the bottom of a quarry drained of water, which is only accessible by a rope ladder. For the next one hour and forty minutes, things don't go well for the photographer. After getting stuck down in the quarry with the not-so-talkative woman who wouldn't divulge any useful information for him to escape or call for help, he tries to scale the wall with a pickaxe, only to end up injuring himself. And who are these feral marauding teenagers who at first seem to be helping him but ending up with toying with him and taunt him? The woman is vague about these 'strays' about their origins or their intentions. With an injured leg and without prospects of escaping, the photographer slowly begins to accept his fate and gives in to temptations, after seeing the woman taking sponge baths in front of him night after night. Now that she is pregnant and only food and supplies are from the strays above, by lowering down with a rope, he tries his hands at some farming and engage in pleasant conversations with the woman who doesn't seem to be aware the comfort of the modern world.
Clays sets the tone early on with moody score and a shot of feral child munching on a severed finger. And there are some pretty experimental blot art sequences throughout. But the film's predictable storyline and uninspired dialog will certainly invite a lot of scrutinizing: Why did he climb all the way down the ladder at night in the first place when he could've simply call her from above? Why didn't he forcefully get the story out of the woman in the first place? Why there are no search parties or park rangers to look for him for nine plus months? How can the woman and strays and their ancestors not be noticeable in the national park all these years for generations? Where does the woman get electricity to light the shack and cook meals?
The Seeding features some striking sceneries and sets an impending doom with great sound design but with stilted performances and plot holes, it stops short at delivering an intense psychological survival horror usually associated with 'trapped' narrative.
Candyman (2021) - DaCosta
Nia DaCosta's Candyman pays a great deal of tribute to Bernard Rose's 1992 cult classic and builds upon it for the BLM era with much more agency. She and co-writer/producer Jordan Peele acknowledge the progresses the African Americans have made in the US over decades but also remind us that we still live in a white society and it is important not to forget the past.
The original Candyman was based on a short story by Clive Barker, taking place in East London housing projects. It was brilliantly transposed to Cabrini Green, a real urban housing project in Chicago and based on real-life urban legend mixed with America's racial history. As a horror film, Candyman’s violence and carnage were brutal and gruesome that only Barker could dream of. Some of the film's detractors pointed out that its gothic interracial love story only amplified the stereotypical black male and blond white female trope. But it was the 90s and the class/racial inequalities were addressed only in a skindeep level.
The new Candyman starts with an affluent couple Brianna (Teyonah Parris) and Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Marteen II) in Chicago. They just moved in to a luxury glass skyscraper apartment in downtown. Brianna is an ambitious social climber in the art scene and Anthony, a promising artist. But Anthony is in a rut, unable to get an inspiration for a new piece and the deadline for upcoming group exhibition is approaching. By chance, he hears about Cabrini Green, a projects complex that his luxury building and many others around it have gentrified out of its existence. Then he hears about the legend of Candyman. He is also stung by a bee on his hand while taking pictures in the remnants of Cabrini Green. And the wound is not healing but spreading throughout the half of his body.
Anthony's new art - a bathroom mirror and gruesome paintings inside it with the instructions to summon Candyman, doesn't make a splash at first. But curiosity of white audience in a dare keeps body count rise and so does his viability in the art market.
Writing is sharp and current. One can detect Peele's clever Gen X cultural references throughout. Dacosta and Peele do things right in first introducing Candyman as a creepy man in a yellow jacket with a hook as a hand who gave away candies with razorblades inside them in the 70s, not the original Candyman played by charismatic Tony Todd, suggesting that Candyman is actually Candymen throughout America's ugly racial history, going back before the emancipation. And the film suggests the brutalization and demonization of Black males, from Emmett Till to George Floyd and beyond continues to this day. It was also very telling that the film starts with the logos of the company reversed, like in the mirror. What Anthony is seeing in the mirror is not an affluent and successful African American male today, but a man with his hands cut off with a hook shoved in its place, stung and burned alive centuries ago.
Candyman is a great film and emblemizes the saying that there is no black horror because black history is already a horror.
The Beach House (2020) - Brown
Jeffrey A. Brown's low budget debut feature, The Beach House, is a fast moving, effective Lovecraftian horror. It's heavy on mood and light on exposition, which is the best kind of horror in my opinion. An ominous deep-sea underwater sequence with active hypothermal vents releasing plumes of black smoke and heat, even before the title, sets the tone nicely, signaling what's in store for us.
A young attractive couple, Emily (Liana Liberato) and Randall (Noah Le Gros), hoping to reconnect, arrives at a remote beach house that belongs to Randall's family. Emily is unsure about Randall's plan of just crashing at the house unannounced. But he insists that they will be alone and undisturbed. Soon they find out that there is an older couple, family friends, Mitch (Jake Weber) and Jane (Maryann Nagle), already staying there. But they are kind enough to accompany the two young lovebirds' sharing the house, only if they are OK with it.
It is revealed that Jane is seriously ill and it is kind of a last hurrah for her and Mitch being there at the beach house. While chatting over dinner, Emily is revealed that she is a beauty with the brain, as she is finishing her degree in Organic Chemistry and planning to continue her study in Astrobiology in Grad school, unlike Randall, who has but all dropped out of college. She corrects Mitch on astrobiology that it is less to do with outer space but more about how organisms can survive in extreme environment, on earth. That there's still so much we don't know about the mother earth. But even after all that primordial soup discussion, Emily refuses to slurp down oysters. It's an acquired taste, others quip. That night, they find organic, gooey phosphorus substances have overtaken trees in the surrounding area, glowing blue, both beautiful and otherworldly yet creepy. Is it edibles they have taken together acting up or is it something else?
The next morning, Emily discovers Jane being in a bad shape and Mitch missing. Randall's stomach is acting up too, probably from oysters. Mitch shows up next to Emily on the beach says some creepy stuff and walks into the sea. Emily goes after him only to step on slithery, moving organic creatures strewn about the shoreline. They seem like pods of some kind with tentacles stretching out. Emily freaks out as one of them infects the bottom of her foot. Jane, in the process of turning into something else, is now a crawling mess, and attacks Randall. Those things are in the water system too. Then, a mysterious fog engulfs the area, rendering everyone into a zombie like, crawling creatures in transition. Emily desperately needs to find a vehicle to drive away.
The Beach House keeps moving things along, giving the audience no time for dwelling on why or how and it is better for it. It builds on our preconceptions about the Cthulian myth and other creature horrors we grew up with and leaves it to us to make connections. With countless eco-disasters on the news in our daily lives- global warming, arctic melting, offshore drilling, hurricanes, massive forest fires, unfortunately, it is not hard to accept what's happening in The Beach House is entirely possible.
Liana Liberato, with her raised eyebrows and great athleticism, has a great potential to be a next great scream queen. It's also good to see always great Jake Weber (Snyder's Dawn of the Dead) being in the film.
With 'we come from the sea, we go back to the sea' theme, The Beach House is a top rate gross creature-feature and welcome addition to Lovecraft inspired horror we hold dear.
The Beach House Comes out in the US, Canada, UK & Ireland on AMC's horror streaming platform Shudder on 7/9.
Midsommar (2019) - Aster
Yet again, Ari Aster confuses that grief/guilt automatically equals psychological horror. Yet again, he confuses that visceral shock of seeing something so violent and grotesque equals good scare. Yet again, he thinks a hysterical woman equals great acting.
Midsommar, like Hereditary, is a crass, thrill free movie with extremely annoying characters (all of them) running around in a Wes Anderson-eque make-believe world that doesn't amount to anything. It's an empty shell of a movie with its surface flaking off in the wind to nothingness.
Us (2019) - Peele
Jordan Peele's follow up to Get Out is not what I expected. It is still cartoonish in its horror tropes with pop culture references, but it's far more sophisticated than the no justice, no peace poverty porn of the 90s gangsta movies. While the inner city/rural poverty and systematic racism of the powers that be vastly remains in America, it is also true that so called middle class in this country can afford material goods and convenience of the smart phones and cable TV.
Peele, a comedian with his middle class upbringing and films that reflects post-Obama cool nerd sensibility, puts the middle class, African-American Wilson family at the film's center. The film clues you in with the title card in the beginning, saying that there are vast network of underground tunnels in America. It segues into 1986 when MJ still ruled and Hands Across America campaign (one of those celebrity fed kumbaya session to end poverty campaign) adorned the TV tube (if it was We Are the World instead, Us would've been a very different movie).
It's present day. Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) and her goofy husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two children Zora and Jason start their Summer vacation at their Summer home near Santa Cruz. Adelaide is uneasy about jogging through her childhood memory - she got lost in a Santa Cruz pier in 86', ended up in a haunted house attraction and saw her double in the mirror room. She tells her husband that the experience haunted her whole life and believes her double is still out their to get her. Soon after that, a heavily back-lit family in the manner of Hands Across America style appears at their front yard. And Us becomes a home invasion movie with the doppelgangers trying to kill the Wilsons.
It turns out only Adelaide's double can speak, albeit stuttering, out of breath fashion, telling her that it is a reckoning long in the making. After they manage to get away, they find their friends, more affluent white family, also had been attacked and murdered by their doubles. The spotty TV signal tells that it's a nationwide phenom. This is where Us fails to be more relevant.
Smart and quick witted, Peele knows when he needs to be obvious - title Us also doubles as US, as above so below/mirror image concept, a guy holding Jeremiah 11:11 sign, NWA's Fuck da Police blasts from Alexa like device (Police is 14 minutes away) in a pivotal moment, and when to be subtle - ok, not really. There are clever moments like Adelaide telling her white friends that black people don't have time to do frivolous shit (I forget what the conversation was about), suggesting the larger context that black movies can't afford melodramas because that would be a luxury. Or Gabe impulsively buy a used boat which is named B-yacht'chy. Also liked that Peele didn't overlit his actors, especially Nyong'o whose very dark complexion gives her more time to act with her expressive eyes.
But I don't believe allegory and horror genre are enough to tell the whole story of racial AND economic injustice in this country. And I don't think whatever the elevation the genre has been garnering as high art, it can't express the corruption of humanity by capitalism wholely.
I always thought if there was a shake up in social order in this country, it would be borne out of the racial injustices, not the economic one. Have we passed that stage of overcoming racism already? Is it really possible that Bernie's populism has a real chance to win because he combines that rare racial, cultural social class divide? Or am I just still a pessimistic old man overly cautious? Us isn't a masterpiece. Peele taps into the zeitgeist and makes it entertaining, but his films still stays as a Twilight Zone level, safe entertainment.
Suspiria (2018) - Guadagnino
*Adendum:
I take back everything I said below. Suspiria, as Guadagnino imagined, has a long lasting power than I ever dreamed of. And I too hastily judged upon its initial viewing. The delicate details of the period, the mood which is quite different from the original, has it's own place and power. Even have grown to love the Thom Yorke soundtrack. The ending I hated at first, but upon repeated viewing, it has certain operatic grandeur to it as Susie fully embraces her role as the Mother. Sodden, grotesque and beautiful.
It's a mess. It's sad that this is the state of what passes as arthouse cinema nowadays. I didn't like Guadagnino's much phrased I am Love. Had no desire to see his remake of Le Picine, Bigger Splash, or Call Me by Your Name. This overwrought, over-serious and over-long take on Dario Argento's chinzy classic of the same name gets almost everything wrong.
We get to know Susie Banyon (Dakota Johnson) fresh from Ohio farmland as she travels to always rainy, still divided Berlin, to audition for a Martha Grahamesque modern dance school. It is 1977, same year as the initial release year of the original. But this doesn't mean that they have to contextualize anything- and they do the hell out of it- Baader Meinhoff, RAF terrorists bombings and hijacking of the airplane and all that - both on the street and on TV and radio. But only on the surface level though. AND BECAUSE IT'S GERMANY, you have to have a concentration camp story. So Ohio and Mennonites background gets lost in the shuffle, even though Susie is supposed to be the chosen one. And because Guadagnino is buddy buddy with Tilda Swinton, she has to play two very different roles unnecessarily.
Thai cinematographer/Weerasethakul's regular Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's sudden zoom-ins and busy camera movement are a total mismatch. Worse are distracting editing and terrible in camera effects. Worst is Thom Yorke's soundtrack which comes across as completely inappropriate for the material. Too bad because Johnson, Mia Goth and Swinton are all wonderful in their respective roles. There are some great visual moments -especially the eerie dream sequences and dance numbers. But the ending resembles later period Argento level of terribleness. I mean, it's From Dusk 'til Dawn bad. Wow, I mean, terrible. Guadagnino is not the knight of Shining Armour for the future of arthouse cinema. Get that in to your head.
Hereditary (2018) - Aster
Grief has been a common theme in horror movies for a long time. Lately, it's been the loss of a child as 'the worst thing that could happen to a family'. It's become so goddamn pervasive, I've grown to avoid films that deal with it whenever I read synopses while browsing. Hereditary, like many of recent horrors, stabs at this theme and twists until it bleeds for the sake of a scare or two, leaving very bad taste in my mouth. One should ask actors involved in the project - why did you sign up for this when there is no empathy written for your characters whatsoever, that they are tools to be dispensed to support the flimsy ending? Cold and sadistic, Hereditary recalls the brutality of Ben Wheatley's Kill List. Well let me correct that: Kill List's characters are driven, have a confidence in themselves but get thwarted unexpectedly. The characters here are blubbering mess the whole time, like crying babes in the woods ready to be preyed on.
There are elements of Hereditary that would make a dozen features. Ari Aster, however technically apt he is at filmmaking, sacrifices these narrative and emotional potentials for the end that doesn't deserve them. There are so many questions one could ask - why the miniature artist? Why does she look funny? Why is he so timid? Why the sudden point of view change and what does that signify? In fact, is this a family? Where is a shred of indication of that? Its scares are built upon sadism and hollow, grotesque images. Then again, it's a horror movie. So who needs an emotional depth? Very disappointing.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mario Bava's horror classic Kill, Baby...Kill! New York's newly renovated Quad Cinema has organized a near-complete retrospective of the highly influential Italian horror maestro's filmography.
But the main draw here is the world premiere and full theatrical run of the 2K restored (courtesy of Kino Lorber) Kill, Baby...Kill!, a gothic masterwork that influenced Fellini, Lynch, Argento, del Toro, J-horror and countless others.
A young woman in a medieval-looking Transylvanian village runs up to the ruins in fear. She, as if in a trance, throws herself onto the iron fence and impales herself to death. So begins this hallucinatory ghost story.
Eswai (Giacomo Rossi Stewart), a young, impossibly coiffed doctor is called in to perform the autopsy with the help of a fetching blonde, Monica (Erika Blanc). He discovers a coin shoved in the victim's heart. The superstitious townsfolk, it turns out, in order to ease the evil spirit, placed the coins themselves in all the dead who met their untimely demise.
killbabykill1.jpgEswai soon finds that most of the townspeople are not only unwilling to cooperate, but afraid of a spirit of a dead child named Melissa, who was accidentally trampled to death by a horse carriage.
Preceded by an iconic red ball bouncing down the stairs and rolling down the corridors, Melissa, the blonde child ghost, marks you for death. Then you are gripped by an uncontrollable urge to kill yourself, usually with sharp, piercing objects.
As the dead bodies pile up, in order to fight the supernatural, Eswai, the man of science, must resort to the help of a beautiful sorceress named Ruth (Fabienne Dali).
Spiral staircases, cobwebs, a labyrinthine, Escherian mansion, and outdoor swing POV shots all mix in with a hint of Bava's psychosexual thrillers to come. Kill, Baby...Kill! is a true masterpiece from the father of both gialli and slasher films.
More than anything, the film is first and foremost an audacious technical marvel. Bava's ingenious, agressive camera work is fully on display, as well as his amazing mise-en-scene, both interior and exterior. His background as a special effects technician and cinematographer serves him well here with deep focus, crazy zoom-in crane shots and claustrophobic sets.
I remember seeing the film in a murky VHS version. The restored version is just beautiful to look at: colors pop, film grains are visible in the shadows and blemishes on the negatives are all but cleaned up. The restoration makes the film truly the most gorgeous and elegant among all of Bava's films.
Mondo Bava, Mario Bava's retrospective at Quad Cinema, will showcase 21 of his films, including Black Sunday, Bay of Blood, Lisa and the Devil, Planet of Vampires, Danger: Diabolik, Blood and Black Lace, along with his foray into Westerns, sword and sandal epics and sex comedies, many of them on 35mm prints imported from Italy for the occasion.
The 2K restored version of Kill, Baby...Kill has a world premiere on Friday, July 7 at Quad Cinema and Mondo Bava, a near complete retrospective, continues through July 23.
Get Out (2017) - Peele
It's a long overdue to point out and verbalize awkward race relations in this country. The Obama presidency was supposed to be a pivoting moment to usher us into more harmonious, color-blind society (or so we wished). Now we find out that the racism and bigotry hasn't diminished since the Civil Rights era by one iota, but now with the hate-filled orange blob as our prez, that show of racism and bigotry is more out in the open than ever before - just over last week, I saw a news that a white man from North Carolina came up to New York to kill black men.
Get Out seems to be coming out at the right time and place to visualize this awkward, shaky race relationship almost at a tipping point of all out civil war we have got going. Success of it at the box office is completely justified. This is not some Wayans Bros' buffoonery of the 90s. Jordan Peele is a little more sophisticated than that. He wisely taps into horror genre where he can be more subversive (more like Romero's Night of the Living Dead and less like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and get away with killing white people in various ways. His comedic sensibility helps too. Loved Peele rehashing the idea of a generation collectively hypnotized by TV screen (think of Halloween II, Poltergeist, They Live, Videodrome, etc). Definitely the scariest part of the movie is the scene pictured above.
Not perfect or complete by any means, but Get Out touches upon a lot of issues this country is suffering and give them a voice. Unfortunately, it remains urban/Northeast movie that would never make an impact in flyover states.
I've been thinking of compiling list of some great, underrated, underseen horror movies for Halloween for the longest time. But I never got around to it. This year, before October is over, I decided on accomplishing this task, even if it takes my precious weekend or two. So without further a do:
Pontypool (2008) - McDonald
Pontypool gets played more than any other film in my household. A virus in the language is making people get stuck in the loop and turning them violent. It has great, always watchable Stephen McHattie (poor man's Peter Weller or vice versa) as Grant Mazzy, a redneck shockjock in Pontypool, some snowy north nowhere up in Ontario, holed up in his radio station with his producer Sidney (McHattie's real life partner Lisa Houle) and their young assistant. They have to figure out how to stop the outbreak before hordes of infected break in to the station. Snappy dialog, claustrophobic setting and plenty of great humor, Pontypool is a great example of what can be achieved with very little. It's so much fun!
Wolfen (1981) - Wadleigh
A surprisingly elegant urban legend film. Drawing a parallel btwn gentrification and territorial war, Wolfen is a very well done atmospheric supernatural horror. A lot of great 80s actors- Al Finney (cop), Tom Noonan (zoologist), Gregory Hines (coroner), young Diane Venora(looking like a brunette nastassja kinski and not annoying for a change), and Edward James Olmos (sexy Native American construction worker) all take parts in the plot with a strong environmental message. It also has a lot of great visual details and gritty NY settings. The Bronx looked like a war zone back then, victim of years of neglect, drugs and landlords intentionally burning down tenement buildings for insurance money. And there are spectacular shots of Manhattan skyline from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge. With lots of dusk and morning shots, New York looks all very empty and lonely. And how they managed to wrangle all these real wolves in Battery Park is anyone's guess. Pretty awesome movie.
Mulberry St (2006) - Mickle
Nowadays I find surprises and originality in low budget horror movies more often than not. I hate movies which I can guess where it's going within 5 minutes. Just like this year's some of my favorites, Mulberry Street surprised me. It is shot in such a way even snobs would find pleasing: natural lights, minimal showyness and meandering tracking shots. Unknown actors look like they came off the set of a new Carlos Reygadas movie with a dash of New York ugly realism. And they are all very good.
Mulberry St concerns a group of working class families in a tenement house about to get evicted because of a big time developer. Rats are gone crazy and start attacking people and turning them into a ravenous rat zombies! Sounds ludicrous I know and the sappy ending was disappointing but it has a lot in it that you don't see in movies much these days. I recommend this.
As Above, So Below (2014) - Dowdle
The concept of As Above, So Below poses a metaphorical quandary- dig deep and you will find a personal hell, deeper still then, you will find your way out. All the genre trappings and stupidities aside (a token black dude, attractive 20 something professionals with multiple Ph.Ds, the Philosopher's Stone, etc.), the film is an effective and creepy horror thanks largely to its narrow, snug, claustrophobia inducing underground tunnel setting.
Phase IV (1974) - Bass
The planets' unusual alignment in the solar system causes ants in New Mexico desert to gather collective intelligence and advance their territories, killing off all the other animals around them. From a shiny, teched-out bio-dome, Dr. Hubbs (Nigel Davenport, sort of workingman's James Mason) and his reluctant, number inclined assistant James (Michael Murphy) are trying to gather information on these super ants. Hubbs is a determined man and he will stop at nothing, even if it means sacrificing other humans around him. And soon they find that they are no match for these pesky creatures.
After being (accidentally) orphaned, a young, horse-riding, luminous country girl (Lynne Frederick) from the nearby ranch, also becomes marooned inside the dome and under attack.
Phase IV is a fascinating film. It's like Jaws but instead of one shark, you got thousands of ants trying to outsmart you. With effective extreme closeups and unexpectedly gorgeous visuals and the 70s pseudo science wtf-ness, it is a thoroughly enjoyable film.
Parasomnia (2008) - Malone
A creepy 90s throwback of a movie in terms of tone and look, Parasomnia is an all together a different, fresh horror film compared with the current, too-clever-for-its own-good horror trend. While visiting his friend at the hospital, art student Danny falls for Laura (Cherilyn Wilson), a virginal sleeping beauty who suffers from a medical condition which makes her sleep away most of her life, only waking up for short period. Determined to 'save' her, Danny sneaks her out of the hospital into his pad, only to find out that she is under the spell of mass murderer and mesmerist Volpe, who is chained and gagged in the same hospital she's been staying at. Bloody murders are happening around Danny and Laura even attacks him in her sleep state. And cops are looking for Laura and the murderer. Danny has only one way to save Laura, kill Volpe!
Part Nightmare on Elm St., part deranged Tim Burton movie charting almost Clive Barker territory, Parasomnia is a totally above average horror/fantasy flick. Willam Malone's imagination is up there with early Bernard Rose (Paper House, Candy Man) in my book. Oh, horror great Jeffrey Combs shows up as a cop.
Starry Eyes (2014) - Kolsch, Widmyer
Perhaps the best satire on Hollywood since Mulholland Dr. Alex Essoe kills it as Sarah, an aspiring actress dreaming a big break while working at Tatertots (fictional equivalent of Hooters) and sharing a bungalow apartment with other twenty something dreamers who spend their time talking about making it near the pool. It's a life of daily humiliations and heartbreaks. Lanky and awkward, Sarah suffers from anxiety attacks where she distorts her long body and pulls her hair out. She auditions for a mysterious horror project, Silver Scream. The audition doesn't go well, but a scary lady who was at the audition witnessing Sarah's fit in the bathroom gives her a second chance. She has a meeting with a sleazy, old producer of the project. He wants her to bare it all, body and soul. He wants her to go all the way and she gets scared and runs away.
Starry Eyes is part body horror, part devil worshiping cult and part boulevard of broken dreams movie. Essoe's pretty amazing in a demanding role with unusual vulnerability and ferocity. She is our new Barbara Steele. A superb horror.
Eddie, The Sleepwalking Cannibal (2012) - Rodriguez
A once famous Danish painter Lars (Thure Lindhardt) gets a job in some snowy art college in a small town Canada. His intention is pure - he wants to teach and maybe start working on a new project ten years after his initial success in a tranquil, solitary environment. The town's suspicious inhabitants are hostile and the college folks are eager to use him as a savior as the school is in need of cash. In order to make good with the folks at college, he agrees to take care of Eddie, a big mute manchild whose aunt had been a sole funder for the school. There is one problem though. Eddie has a tendency to sleepwalk in his underwear and eat small animals in the woods.
Lars finds his new friend's appalling habit but also compelled by the carnage the sleepwalker leaves behind. He finds an inspiration for blood and gore for his new painting, just like he broke out in the art scene ten years ago after experiencing a catastrophic accident. In order to pump out new paintings, he needs to encourage Eddie to sleepwalk and ...kill. The great Stephen McHatty and his Pontypool co-star Georgina Reilly make an appearance. Another fun,wry horror comedy from Canada.
Triangle(2009) - Smith
Jess (Melissa George) is having a bad day. She is invited to take a day trip with a group of people on a yacht by Greg who frequents the restaurant she works at. But by the time she gets to the harbor, she is exhausted by taking care of her autistic son at home. Not long after they set sail, a freaky electrical storm capsizes the boat, the crew gets on board of a giant, empty ocean liner that appears out of nowhere. For Jess, everything seems so familiar. She is experiencing nightmarish deja vu.
A talented Brit Chris Smith (Creep, Black Death) directs this tightly done mindfuck of a movie, reminiscent of Time Crimes and Memento. The logic and moral of the movie are highly questionable if you think about it too hard, but while watching it, it's great shameless fun. Aussie George is fast becoming my favorite scream queen, ever since her appearance in Mulholland Dr. as the freaky 'it' girl.
Goodnight Mommy (2014) - Franz, Fiala
As far as creepy twins movies go, Goodnight Mommy tops it all. Impeccably executed and acted, this Austrian chiller rubs shoulders with Funny Games on cringy inducing level. It is no surprise then that the film is directed by the wife and the nephew of Ulrich Seidl. It's quite an achievement what they pulled out from the young real twin brothers Lukas and Elias Schwarz.
We are introduced to preteen twins, Lukas and Elias, playing in the corn field, then near the lake. Colors are lush and vibrant you can almost smell the warm Summer surroundings. Something dark and sinister is hiding just around the corner. You can feel it. Then there is mom (brave Susan Wuest), whose face is bandaged like a mummy. She is cold and distant and barks orders at Elias and doesn't seem to acknowledge Lukas's presence. It becomes pretty clear that Lukas doesn't really exist and that something terrible has happened before. But there is scarcely any dialog for the first half of the film. They are in the hiding in the ultra modern house in the country, away from Vienna. Lukas is feeding his brother some unspeakable thoughts: our mother isn't really our mother. We need to find out where our mother is from that woman who is not her. From then on, Goodnight Mommy slowly slips into very dark, dark territory.
Franz and Fiala really know how to build tension without the help of music or dialog. Goodnight Mommy is quite a feat for visual storytelling. Images, shots and editing matters. Not quite formalist approach of Seidl but the images have power in this film.
The liminal spaces - a byproduct of the ever progressing, expanding capitalist world - the mall, corporate offices, underground subway stations, hospital wards, suburban cul-de-sacs, innercity public parks, abandoned housing have been the subject or background for numerous films, most notably, the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and J-horror auteurs in the 90s and 2000s, the Berlin School filmmakers of the 2000s - Petzold, Arslan, Schanelec, Köhler. These filmmakers delved into the anxiety of living in the modern world where mundane reality is just as scary as spirits and monsters.
