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

JACK GOES HOME

(March 2016)

"I always thought this house was haunted.”

"Really? Why?”
"I don’t know. Ever since we were kids, it just felt like there was some dark vagina just hovering over this place, waiting to swallow me up.”

“Maybe it was just your latent homosexuality talking, hmmm?”

“Shut up. I’m being serious. I’ve always been scared here, dude.”

For much of its initial section of running time, Thomas Dekker’s Jack Goes Home plays more like a dysfunctional domestic drama than anything else, as the titular Jack Thurlow (Rory Culkin) receives some tragic news that precipitates his--as the film’s title indicates--return to his family home.

But, since this is ¡Qué horror! territory, it’s a safe bet that that’s not what the film is ultimately about.

Or, put another way, maybe it is a dysfunctional domestic drama, but in a really terrible, horror movie way, as we slowly witness Jack uncover some dark family secrets, while gradually questioning his sanity…

Dekker (who also wrote the screenplay, and is perhaps best known as the TV John Connor) ropes in some noteworthy genre names here, including Daveigh Chase, Natasha Lyonne (who appears in a brief, single scene), and Britt Robertson (who’d worked with Dekker previously on the short-lived The Secret Circle).

But the genre coup here is, without a doubt, Lin Shaye, who appears as Jack’s mother, Teresa.

And, oddly enough, while Dekker is also credited as one of the film’s producers, who do we see credited as an Executive Producer but Uwe Boll (!).

Parting Shot:

I honestly did not recognize Daveigh Chase here, until the end credits rolled…

So, yeah, Samantha Darko (Sparkle Motion, go!!!) and Samara, in the house!

And speaking of, 15^th anniversary of Donnie Darko! Huzzah!

(Jack Goes Home OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

SANTA CLARITA DIET
(January 2017)

"... On the other hand, maybe nothin’s impossible. Who would have ever thought an octopus and a kitten could fall in love?
"It’s on YouTube. You gotta see it. It’ll give you hope.”

There’s a select group of actors who, because of a Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show) that they helped shepherd into reality, have got a lifetime Pass from me; they can choose to come out in whatever kind of film or series they want, and I will have no right to look at them askance or criticize them, because I’m eternally grateful for that Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show).

Nicolas Cage immediately comes to mind. Because he produced E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire, I can forgive him for a lot, even (gulp) The Wicker Man remake.

There’s also Drew Barrymore, who now has two lifetime Passes from me: the first, for Donnie Darko (executive producer), and the second, for Santa Clarita Diet (again, executive producer). And she backed both up with her star power by appearing in the cast.

Thanx, Gertie!

“No. Don’t do anything, okay? Just relax.

“I’m dead. It can wait until tomorrow.”

Barrymore and co-star (and co-executive producer) Timothy Olyphant are husband and wife realtors, Sheila and Joel Hammond, doing their best to cope with Sheila’s new titular diet, which is (gasp!) human flesh.

Seriously, I haven’t had this much fun with anything zombie since Shaun of the Dead.

Which is why I’m talking about it here, outside of the ¡Qué horror! rundown, since this isn’t really a horror show, so much as it is a comedy with some horror elements.

“Maybe we should just keep driving. Go home, get some clothes, and just never come back.”

“Well, that’s crazy! We can’t just run away. Where would we go?! Oh, we have so much equity in our house!”

“Ah! I didn’t think about the equity! I’m a monster.”

The beauty of the show though is, as much as it’s about the hijinx that result from Sheila’s zombiefication, it’s just as much about the way a family deals with seismic upheavals, about finding family wherever you can, and embracing the reality that, even if something’s changed, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.

And not only do we have Barrymore as the newly confident and energetic Sheila, and Olyphant as the weed-smoking, occasionally manic Joel, but there’s an excellent supporting cast here too, starting with Liv Hewson (as their headstrong daughter Abby) and Skyler Gisondo (as lovable creeper next door, Eric), and stretching out to the two cops who live on either side of the Hammonds (uh-oh), Richard T. Jones and Ricardo Chavira (who also happens to be the jerkface stepfather to the aforementioned lovable creeper Eric).

Oh! And a 2-episode appearance by Grace Zabriskie! So awesome, ‘cause we all know there is No Such Thing As Too Much Grace Zabriskie!

And for another dose of awesome, Portia de Rossi shows up at the tail end of the season (in a role that was apparently written specifically for her).

“Hello.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood.”

“Just saying ‘Hello.’”

“I know your ‘Hello’s, honey, and that one was pouring me a glass of wine.”

If you’ve frequented the Iguana in the past, you’ll know that we’re pretty big here on atypical titles of bone-tired genres, and most everything zombie these days is so SO tired. So I wasn’t going to pass up the chance of trumpeting Santa Clarita Diet just because it wasn’t full-on horror. (Here’s hoping Netflix renews it for a second season.)

I dubbed I Am a Hero “the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.”

I was wrong.

Santa Clarita Diet is the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.

Boom.

“I really don’t think I bit him.”

“But what if you did? And what if that makes him turn, and then he bites someone, and they bite someone and pretty soon, we’re like the biggest a$$holes ever!”

(Santa Clarita Diet OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #4

JACK GOES HOME

(March 2016)

"I always thought this house was haunted.”

"Really? Why?”
"I don’t know. Ever since we were kids, it just felt like there was some dark vagina just hovering over this place, waiting to swallow me up.”

“Maybe it was just your latent homosexuality talking, hmmm?”

“Shut up. I’m being serious. I’ve always been scared here, dude.”

For much of its initial section of running time, Thomas Dekker’s Jack Goes Home plays more like a dysfunctional domestic drama than anything else, as the titular Jack Thurlow (Rory Culkin) receives some tragic news that precipitates his--as the film’s title indicates--return to his family home.

But, since this is ¡Qué horror! territory, it’s a safe bet that that’s not what the film is ultimately about.

Or, put another way, maybe it is a dysfunctional domestic drama, but in a really terrible, horror movie way, as we slowly witness Jack uncover some dark family secrets, while gradually questioning his sanity…

Dekker (who also wrote the screenplay, and is perhaps best known as the TV John Connor) ropes in some noteworthy genre names here, including Daveigh Chase, Natasha Lyonne (who appears in a brief, single scene), and Britt Robertson (who’d worked with Dekker previously on the short-lived The Secret Circle).

But the genre coup here is, without a doubt, Lin Shaye, who appears as Jack’s mother, Teresa.

And, oddly enough, while Dekker is also credited as one of the film’s producers, who do we see credited as an Executive Producer but Uwe Boll (!).

Parting Shot:

I honestly did not recognize Daveigh Chase here, until the end credits rolled…

So, yeah, Samantha Darko (Sparkle Motion, go!!!) and Samara, in the house!

And speaking of, 15^th anniversary of Donnie Darko! Huzzah!

(Jack Goes Home OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

ENTOURAGE
Season 4 Episode 10
“Snow Job”
Written by: Doug Ellin and Ally Musika
Directed by: Ken Whittingham

We return to developments on the Lost in the Clouds adaptation Billy is supposed to be working on.
Dana Gordon freaks when Walsh sends in a script called Silo, which is a futuristic space epic that has absolutely zero to do with Lost in the Clouds. Since E is MIA (more on that later), Ari has Vince read the script himself to see what the problem is. (Besides, Vince is producing.)
Thus begins a crisis as Walsh refuses to write the script the studio paid for (the money already having been spent so he can’t even return it). Ari zooms into Kill Mode and offers up Richard Kelly (who kicked my a$$ into orbit with Donnie Darko) as the new writer/director to replace Walsh. But after reading the script, Vince finds he loves it and wants to do this movie instead of Lost in the Clouds.
Vince even winds up talking to Walsh on the phone, Billy having locked himself into the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey and a gun, since he believed he’d frakked Vince up good with Silo. Of course, Vince loved the script, and the gun wasn’t loaded anyway.
Vince then tells Ari to read the script, and to make it happen.
Ari keeps on going on Kill Mode, bysteps Dana Gordon, and goes directly to her boss, Richard Wimmer (John Heard). What follows is a great scene where Ari Gold, SuperAgent, works his magic, and convinces Wimmer that Silo is the summer tentpole the studio needs to get it out of the red. When Dana is asked for her opinion on the script, she describes it as “Blade Runner meets Field of Dreams,” and Wimmer is sold.
At the end of it all though, Dana’s still pissed and wishes Ari would just die. (I love Dana.)


And while all this drama is going on, E is on his first day on the job as Anna Faris’ manager, at a photo shoot way up in the hills where cellular reception is nonexistent.
At the shoot, E meets Anna’s boyfriend, Dave (CSI: NY’s A.J. Buckley), who’s been hanging around Anna of late, since the CW passed on his pilot.
Dave is opinionated, ultra-critical, and jealous that E may have a thing for Anna (which of course, he does). Dave winds up making a complete a$$ of himself, and Anna dumps him.
E arrives as the boys, Ari, and Billy are toasting to Silo. Demanding to know what went down, E is tossed the script, and when he flips it open, asks, “Where’s the snow?”


As with the previous episode, this one’s a great half-hour, as we slide back into Hollywood mode and see Vince’s new project coming together. We also see E getting in deeper with Anna Faris, and not being available for Vince and Ari when the whole Silo thing exploded. It should be interesting to see if (or when) Vince will call E out about his responsibilities.

(Images courtesy of hbo.com.)

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Season 3 Episode 19 (WARNING:SPOILERS)
“Crossroads, Part 1”

As if to waste no time getting to Baltar’s trial, we get no opening credits sequence this time out (missed the Gayatri Mantra), and let me tell you, the trial gets ugly.
I’ve never been a part of the Col. Tigh fan club, but you’d have to be totally unfeeling not to think what went down between Tigh and Ellen back on New Caprica was frakking heartbreaking.
And all that stuff comes out.
On the witness stand.
I mean, to have to admit under oath that you killed your wife because you were the leader of the resistance and she was a collaborator. That’s bad enough. But to know (and further admit) that she did it because she truly loved you and was forced into doing it to keep you out of jail…
I may not really like Tigh, but that’s tough. (And that’s the understatement of the century.)
In a fleet of walking wounded, Tigh is hemorrhaging. He returned from New Caprica not so much a different person, but as a Tigh that was broken somehow (something that he shared with, ironically enough, Starbuck).
And now the poor guy’s deep in his cups and hearing a damned song! It’s a scary, unsettling sight, and seeing him with that mad, sick gleam in his remaining eye at episode’s end was truly disturbing.
And apparently, Sam’s hearing the same song too! And what is up with Tory?
Meanwhile, the Adamas continue to tear into each other like mad dogs, and Apollo has crossed the line from flawed hero to a$$hole.
To cross-examine the President the way he did, to see him hurt her the way he did, all in the name of his beloved system…
A$$hole.
It was one of those Pyrrhic victories to see his face when he gets shafted by hearing Roslin tell him exactly why she was taking the chamalla extract again. Take that, a$$hole!
And power to Dee! It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a real person there, and her packing it in had, again, Pyrrhus written all over it. She needed to do that, not just for herself, but to prove something to Lee too. Of course, something tells me that could very well have been the straw that breaks Lee the Idiot Camel’s back…
And crap. Let’s get back to Roslin.
Crap.
I love Mary McDonnell. She was one of the biggest draws for me to sit down and watch the BSG mini-series. There’s this sensitivity there that’s always a joy to watch onscreen (and she was marvelous in Donnie Darko). So I sat down to watch the mini-series largely because she was in the cast, and I haven’t looked back.
Understandably, when they saved her from the cancer, I was massively relieved. And now it’s…
Crap.
This sucks. (There better be some way to get around that whole prophecy thing about Roslin not living to see the Promised Land…)
And whilst we’re talking religion, Baltar is being treated by some as divinity. He has been looking very Jesus-y lately… Of course, this is also the sleazoid who not only slept with the enemy, but collaborated with them as well, right?
Oh, and have I mentioned? The Cylons have returned! Granted, the fleet is trying to shake the toasters off their tail, but Helo does the whole doomsayer thing and refers not-so-cryptically to “a storm coming.”
We can see where this is going, right?
Season end cliffhanger, people…

(Image courtesy of spacecast.com.)