Five-Legged Iguana

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

The Preliminaries

So it's October 1 once again, and ‘round these parts, that means 3 things.

1) The window for ¡Qué horror! 2019 candidacy has officially closed;

2) The window for ¡Qué horror! 2020 candidacy has officially opened, and will stay open till September 30, 2020; and

3) The ¡Qué horror! 2019 main rundown will start today and continue over the next few days.

Before we get to that though, a “Sniff. R.I.P.” must go out to two Netflix shows that were brutally cancelled in the past few months… (Why you gotta be that way, Netflix?)

Santa Clarita Diet and

The OA

I ask again: Why you gotta be that way, Netflix?

Sigh.

Okay.

One more thing before the main rundown kicks off.

STARFISH

(September 2018)

“Wanna know the saddest thing about everybody being gone? Everybody being dead, I mean.

“The lost stories.

“People are gonna die anyways but… their stories don’t have to.”

There’s a shot early on in Starfish: a key on the palm of a hand, joined by a tear, and then a drop of blood.

It’s a striking image in a singular film about love, guilt, and the Apocalypse.

Written, directed and scored by A.T. White, Starfish (his feature debut*) sees Aubrey Parker (Virginia Gardner**) struggle with loss and grief, as well as what could be the end of the world.

With a narrative that transforms a private, personal apocalypse (the death of a loved one) into a public, global apocalypse, and back again, Starfish is a film that, while featuring horror elements, ultimately doesn’t play like a horror film, thus its mention here, outside of the main ¡Qué horror! rundown.

And while it may not have enough “horror” for some, it should nonetheless be lauded for sprinkling the Apocalypse with a bunch of interesting needle drops***.

If one must endure the end of the world, then it may as well be an Apocalypse with excellent taste in music…

“I’m alone at last with every other me…”

--The Notwist, “Gloomy Planets”

* Among the short films White has directed in the past: Spider-Man: Eclipse.

** Gardner should be familiar to comic book geeks from Hulu’s Runaways, and to horror geeks from ¡Qué horror! 2019 Candidate Halloween.

*** WHY?, The Notwist, and Grandaddy--whose “Stray Dog and the Chocolate Shake” underscores the “raiding the empty grocery for supplies” scene oh-so-painfully familiar to aficionados of apocalypse cinema--are some of the acts that accompany this particular end of the world…

And there we have it.

Preliminaries all done.

Main rundown about to start in 3.

2.

1.

(Santa Clarita Diet & The OA OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; Starfish OS’ courtesy of screenanarchy.com & impawards.com.)