¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #12

MUSE

(October 2017)

“The saddest of all stages for the saddest of all endings.”

One year after a personal tragedy, Professor Samuel Salomon (Da Vinci’s Demons’ Elliot Cowan, currently appearing on Krypton) has a premonitory dream of a ritual murder, and faster than you can say “Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here,” the hijinx of an occult investigation ensue.

Based on José Carlos Somoza’s novel, La dama número trece, Muse is Jaume Balagueró’s latest, and for those of you who frequent the Iguana, you’ll be familiar with my long-standing yen for Señor Balagueró’s work.  

Delving the way it does into the supernatural potency of words (with a brief aside to the explosive potential of Neruda), Muse plays almost like a love letter to poetry, but in the form of a dark fantasy/horror movie.

Anyone who favors the structures and conventions of a traditional occult tale will also find a lot to love in Muse…

Plus, Franka Potente, Christopher Lloyd, and Joanne Whalley are in this too, so, yeah, give this one a look-see!

“The end of this story has already been written.”

(Muse OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; Musa Spanish OS courtesy of screenanarchy.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #11

CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

No, you haven’t experienced a time slip.

There are indeed two seasons of a TV show that have staked out Candidate slots in the same year, a ¡Qué horror! first!

With Butcher’s Block, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best of current television horror can be found.

“You were so scared of losing your mind and then you just gave it away…”

With the insidious spectre of mental illness and the desolation of sacrifice zones some of its preoccupations, Butcher’s Block is “… particularly inspired by Argento films, by Candyman, by Nicolas Roeg films” (in the words of Channel Zero’s creator and showrunner, Nick Antosca).

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson (who brought Lynch to the, ahem, table), Butcher’s Block makes it three for three for Channel Zero, and, once again, the ante is upped for its next season, The Dream Door, directed by E.L. Katz, no stranger to these parts due to Cheap Thrills.*

With reversals, a motley crew of protagonists, and a steady, occasionally hallucinatory build to a Grand Guignol climax, Antosca, Stevenson, and company have brought us a “… particularly bizarre flavor” of horror in Butcher’s Block.

Oh, and did I forget to mention?

Rutger flippin’ Hauer is in this one!

“You know, if you don’t eat enough protein, the body just starts to eat itself. Yeah, I read that in a Reader’s Digest.

“You just get so hungry, your heart will just up and eat itself! And then it moves on to your brain, and then it goes down to your spine, and suddenly, you’re just dead!

“Happens to vegetarians all the time.”

(Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block OS courtesy of dreadcentral.com.)

*Katz also directed “A is for Amateur” for ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, ABCs of Death 2, and was an associate producer on Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die, one of the Serial Killer Thriller runners-up on the 2012 rundown.

He was also co-producer on the non-¡Qué horror! title, The Aggression Scale, so, yeah… Katz has been ‘round these parts a lot, even when he wasn’t fronting a film.

Here’s hoping he comes back for The Dream Door…