10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[4 of 10]

THE RITUAL

(September 2017)

"Makes you feel insignificant, right?"

"Speak for yourself.”

“Come on, man, where’s your soul? These mountains were smashed out by Nordic gods with big bastard hammers!”

David Bruckner’s The Ritual is the latest in the long and (un)hallowed line of horror films that warn us that man was not meant to traipse through the deep, dark woods.

You may recognize Bruckner as a ¡Qué horror! regular, having been on the rundown three previous times--in 2008, on the inaugural online ¡Qué horror! list (for his “transmission” in The Signal); in 2012 (for his contribution to V/H/S, “Amateur Night”); and in 2016 (for his contribution to Southbound, “The Accident”*).

So if you’re keeping tabs, then it becomes quite clear that The Ritual is Bruckner’s first feature film that’s landed a ¡Qué horror! slot, and a solid title it is.

Working with a script by Joe Barton (who’s written for Humans), based in turn on the novel by Adam Nevill, Bruckner gives us a tense nailbiter that follows four friends from university, as they hike Kungsleden (“King’s Trail”), running between Sweden and Norway, a vacation that turns out to be a terrible decision, as indicated by the tagline displayed on the quad above.

Bruckner and company** kill it with this one…

“Well, this is clearly the house we get murdered in.”

* Or, alternately, “Accident”. (Even on the official Dark Sky Films website, it’s referred to by both titles…)

** Amongst the film’s executive producers, the one and only Andy Serkis.

(The Ritual UK quad courtesy of empireonline.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #3

THE RITUAL

(September 2017)

"Makes you feel insignificant, right?"

"Speak for yourself.”

“Come on, man, where’s your soul? These mountains were smashed out by Nordic gods with big bastard hammers!”

David Bruckner’s The Ritual is the latest in the long and (un)hallowed line of horror films that warn us that man was not meant to traipse through the deep, dark woods.

You may recognize Bruckner as a ¡Qué horror! regular, having been on the rundown three previous times--in 2008, on the inaugural online ¡Qué horror! list (for his “transmission” in The Signal); in 2012 (for his contribution to V/H/S, “Amateur Night”); and in 2016 (for his contribution to Southbound, “The Accident”*).

So if you’re keeping tabs, then it becomes quite clear that The Ritual is Bruckner’s first feature film that’s in the running for a ¡Qué horror! slot, and a solid title it is.

Working with a script by Joe Barton (who’s written for Humans), based in turn on the novel by Adam Nevill, Bruckner gives us a tense nailbiter that follows four friends from university, as they hike Kungsleden (“King’s Trail”), running between Sweden and Norway, a vacation that turns out to be a terrible decision, as indicated by the tagline displayed on the quad above.

Bruckner and company** kill it with this one…

“Well, this is clearly the house we get murdered in.”

* Or, alternately, “Accident”. (Even on the official Dark Sky Films website, it’s referred to by both titles…)

** Amongst the film’s executive producers, the one and only Andy Serkis.

(The Ritual UK quad courtesy of empireonline.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[4 of 13]
The Anthology Slot

The first of three ties this year...

TALES OF HALLOWEEN

(July 2015)

"Do you know what would perk up this candy-ass display?

“Some motherf*ckin’ blood!”

With ten stories in its 97-minute running time, The October Society’s Tales of Halloween* has a pretty darn good batting average for a horror anthology, in that--at least as far as I’m concerned--there really isn’t any segment in here that’s a particular stinker.

Naturally, you will like some stories more than others, but it’s a pretty good bet that you’ll come out of this thinking, “Sh!t, yeah, that was fun!”

And that’s what Tales of Halloween is, really.

From the “SNL sketch as directed by old school splatter Peter Jackson” insanity of Mike Mendez’s “Friday the 31^st” to the stylized horror of Lucky McKee’s “Ding Dong” (with Pollyanna McIntosh!), from the blackly comedic commentary of the ultimately pointless debate between old school horror and the more modern black metal splatterpunk aesthetic in John Skipp and Andrew Kasch’s “This Means War” (with James Duval!) to the bizarro horror of Neil Marshall’s “Bad Seed” (with Pat Healy as “Forensic Bob”!), Tales of Halloween is some awesomely fun Halloween horror viewing.

“Are you kidding me?! My nuts were viciously assaulted by a monster, dude!”

Plus, there’s a whole bunch of familiar genre faces in here, including Greg Grunberg, Lin Shaye, Noah Segan, Sam Witwer, John Landis, Adam Green, and Joe Dante.

Alex Essoe (from ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, Starry Eyes) and Drew Struzan (as “Rembrandt”) are in here, too, along with Adrienne Barbeau, who basically echoes her Stevie Wayne character from The Fog as the very loose bridging element of “The Radio DJ”.

Originating from an idea by Axelle Carolyn (who also happens to be Neil Marshall’s wife), Tales of Halloween is a mighty fine addition to the ranks of horror anthologies out there.

So be sure and stuff this one into your Halloween candy sack!

“Go bag me some of those horror freaks!”

* The film is dedicated to the memory of Ben Woolf, who recently appeared as Meep in American Horror Story: Freak Show.

SOUTHBOUND

(September 2015)

"Well, this next one is for you. All you lost souls racin’ down that long road to redemption, and all you sinners runnin’ from your past, but headin’ straight into that pit o’ darkness up ahead.”

The contemporary horror anthology film continues to tread the kicka$$ territories completely alien to the bland Hollywood horror that currently clutters up the multiplexes, this time, in the form of Southbound.

Bloody Disgusting’s Brad Miska--who also brought us the V/H/S anthologies--has his paw prints all over this one too, a collection of interconnected tales brought to us by the likes of David Bruckner (¡Qué horror! 2008 title, The Signal and the V/H/S segment, “Amateur Night”) and Radio Silence (“10/31/98” from ¡Qué horror! 2012 title, V/H/S).

Not really much more I can say without spoiling the surprises, so just get out there and hunt this down!

“We’re all on the same endless highway, the one with no name and no exits, lookin’ for a way out of tonight and inta tomorrow.

“Well, they’re gonna try to stop you, but you gotta say, “F*ckin’ keep movin’,” because this is your highway, and tonight might just be the night you finally outrun those wicked demons once and for all…”

Parting Shot 1: The one and only Larry Fessenden has his presence known here, as “The D.J.” (I guess the radio DJ as a horror anthology bridging element in now officially a thing...)

Parting Shot 2: I have mixed feelings about Siren, the upcoming feature-length adaptation of “Amateur Night.”

While I’m curious to see how it’ll play as a feature, I am wondering why Gregg Bishop is directing, and not Bruckner, who helmed the original short.

It doesn’t help that I wasn’t overly fond of “Dante the Great,” Bishop’s segment in V/H/S Viral, either…

(Tales of Halloween OS’ courtesy of aintitcool.com & bloody-disgusting.com; Southbound OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2016

Candidate #5

SOUTHBOUND

(September 2015)

"Well, this next one is for you. All you lost souls racin’ down that long road to redemption, and all you sinners runnin’ from your past, but headin’ straight into that pit o’ darkness up ahead.”

The contemporary horror anthology film continues to tread the kicka$$ territories completely alien to the bland Hollywood horror that currently clutters up the multiplexes, this time, in the form of Southbound.

Bloody Disgusting’s Brad Miska--who also brought us the V/H/S anthologies--has his paw prints all over this one too, a collection of interconnected tales brought to us by the likes of David Bruckner (¡Qué horror! 2008 title, The Signal and the V/H/S segment, “Amateur Night”) and Radio Silence (“10/31/98” from ¡Qué horror! 2012 title, V/H/S).

Not really much more I can say without spoiling the surprises, so just get out there and hunt this down!

“We’re all on the same endless highway, the one with no name and no exits, lookin’ for a way out of tonight and inta tomorrow.

“Well, they’re gonna try to stop you, but you gotta say, “F*ckin’ keep movin’,” because this is your highway, and tonight might just be the night you finally outrun those wicked demons once and for all…”

Parting Shot 1: The one and only Larry Fessenden has his presence known here, as “The D.J.”

Parting Shot 2: I have mixed feelings about Siren, the upcoming feature-length adaptation of “Amateur Night.”

While I’m curious to see how it’ll play as a feature, I am wondering why Gregg Bishop is directing, and not Bruckner, who helmed the original short.

It doesn’t help that I wasn’t overly fond of “Dante the Great,” Bishop’s segment in V/H/S Viral, either…

(Southbound OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2012

Candidate # 29

V/H/S

(January 2012)

Brought to us by a crowd of familiar genre names (most of whom are also quite at home on the ¡Qué Horror! front) and tied together by a concept from Bloody Disgusting’s Brad Miska, V/H/S takes on two standard horror sub-genres, one (found footage) currently more popular in the mainstream than the other (horror anthology), and does both of them exceedingly proud.

Surrounded by the preponderance of mediocre and derivative found footage titles in this day and age, V/H/S crashes the party and kicks all of the bland and terribly unimaginative pretenders in the ‘nads, planting a decisive flag to prove that the form isn’t just a way for Hollywood to make a quick profit from a low production cost, but can also take the audience to some really strange and interesting places. (Even when you may guess where the story’s headed--which happened to me a number of times--the end result is still worth seeing and still holds some startling moments.)

The segments are, to wit:

“Tape 56,” directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett, who brought us fellow ¡Qué Horror! 2012 candidate, A Horrible Way To Die, and who also both appear in the fragmented segment which acts as the connective tissue of the anthology;

“Amateur Night,” helmed by one-third of The Signal directing team, David Bruckner, and written by Bruckner and Nicholas Tecosky;

“Second Honeymoon,” written and directed by Ti West, who brought us past ¡Qué Horror! title, The House of the Devil, as well as current contender The Innkeepers (which I’ve already seen but have yet to write about here at the Iguana). This one stars Joe Swanberg, from A Horrible Way To Die, who also directs another V/H/S segment (see below);

“Tuesday the 17^th,” written and directed by Glenn McQuaid, who brought us I Sell the Dead, a previous effort I must confess, I wasn’t too overly fond of;

“The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger,” directed by Joe Swanberg and written by Simon Barrett;

and “10/31/98,” written and directed by the Radio Silence collective of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, and Chad Villella, who also appear in the segment.

Truly exceptional work from all concerned, and I, for one, am excited to see what all these gentlemen have up their sleeves next…

(V/H/S OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best, Most Recent Horror Movies I’ve Seen
[3 of 13]
THE SIGNAL (January 2007)


In an age where the information stream has become a veritable deluge—where television continues to blare out what we need to buy and how we need to look; where the latest celebrity meltdown (and its attendant freight of all-too-real human misery) is considered news; where the ubiquity of the Internet, with its digital morass of truth, emotion, rancour, rumour, and outright lie churning 25/8—The Signal as a whole is also a potent metaphor for how man as a species struggles daily to process all that stimuli; how we, as a people, exist under the post-millennial burden of maintaining our mental health while under incessant media assault.

Read the entire review here.

(The Signal OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Mammoth Advertising].)

THE SIGNAL
(Review)

“Anna, I don’t know if you know this, but there is some seriously insane sh!t going on out there right now. People are losing their minds.
“There’s a bad sector in the electromagnetic spectrum which is causing a rift in logical thinking. Rational behaviour has given way to primordial action.
“We’ve reached a critical juncture in the consistency of everyday living. Societal norms are being completely abandoned. Anarchy has replaced etiquette. Chaos is the ruling class of this civilization.”


It’s New Year’s Eve in Terminus, and a strange signal of unknown origin is broadcast over TV, the phone lines, cellular networks, and radio, a signal that causes anyone exposed to it to suddenly behave irrationally, and more often than not, violently.
That’s the sweet and simple premise of The Signal, a sharp, ballsy, and terribly smart addition to the burgeoning ranks of apocalypse cinema.


The Signal is told in three sections (or “transmissions,” as they’re called) which ultimately tell one story, chronicling the effects of the eponymous signal on civilization in microcosm, as it impacts on the lives of husband and wife Lewis and Mya Denton (AJ Bowen and Anessa Ramsey) and Mya’s lover, Ben (Justin Welborn).
It’s an ambitious narrative structure, tackled by three writer/directors, David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry, and Dan Bush.


Aside from the seamless manner in which one transmission flows into the next while folding back in on themselves over the course of the film’s running time (ala Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction), what is particularly audacious about The Signal is that one of its transmissions—Gentry’s Trans: 2.0, “The Jealousy Monster”—not only takes a comedic bent to the material, but also serves as an effective metaphor for the intrusion of the signal on society’s equilibrium, as we enter the confines of a house in the midst of preparations for a New Year’s Eve party.


As I’ve mentioned before ‘round these parts, horror and comedy don’t always make a good marriage, but in Gentry’s transmission, they not only get on like gangbusters, but “The Jealousy Monster,” laughs and all, also works in concert with the other transmissions—Bruckner’s “Crazy in Love” and Bush’s “Escape From Terminus”—giving the audience a slight tonal reprieve from the grim scenario of The Signal, while simultaneously pushing the narrative forward and doing that metaphor thing.
And hey, it’s got the most effed-up New Year’s Eve party on film. Ever.
If that doesn’t seal the deal, I don’t know what else could.


The performances by the three principals, as well as those of Scott Poythress and Cheri Christian (who we both meet in “The Jealousy Monster”), are also uniformly excellent, the actors getting to the emotional core of the material even as they’re slathered in fake blood and doing some pretty brutal things to each other.
And of course, aside from the actors and directors, the scripts are also spot-on, with Bush’s “Escape From Terminus” boasting some tricky—and at times, cruel—reversals.
A cover of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere,” by Ola Podrida, is also used to fantastically moving effect, so that should be a plus, yes?


In an age where the information stream has become a veritable deluge—where television continues to blare out what we need to buy and how we need to look; where the latest celebrity meltdown (and its attendant freight of all-too-real human misery) is considered news; where the ubiquity of the Internet, with its digital morass of truth, emotion, rancour, rumour, and outright lie churning 25/8—The Signal as a whole is also a potent metaphor for how man as a species struggles daily to process all that stimuli; how we, as a people, exist under the post-millennial burden of maintaining our mental health while under incessant media assault.
These are all the bits and pieces that we absorb, that influence our personal mindset, and ultimately shape our worldview. And they come at us in dizzying volumes and speed, whether we’re able to cope or not.


The awful truth is, the signal has already been broadcast; it’s already out there. It’s pulsing right now, even as you read this review.
Worse, this review is part of the signal.
We’ve all been exposed, have been for a very long time.
The question is, what are we gonna do about it?


Parting shot: Bruckner, Gentry, and Welborn all previously worked together on the interesting curiosity which is Psychopathia Sexualis; Bruckner was the film’s cinematographer, while Gentry and Welborn were actors on the production.

(The Signal OS courtesy of impawards.com; selected images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; The Signal wallpaper courtesy of signalmovie.com.)