¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #1

INTO THE DARK

Season 1 Episode 1
THE BODY
(October 2018)

“Yeah, the one that was dressed as, ummm… uhhh… uhhh… Elsa from Frozen?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow! Marie Antoinette, you dipshit! Do you know anything about anything that’s not been made into an action figure?”
“I’m so sorry, Professor. I’m not an expert in Civil War history, okay?”

(Clears throat.)

“It has begun!” he exclaims in his best Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa*-as-Shang Tsung tones.

¡Qué horror! 2019.

And it begins here.

With Into the Dark.

In case you haven’t heard, Into the Dark is the latest horror anthology to hit the scene.

Brought to us by the unholy (but very, very welcome) alliance of Hulu and Blumhouse, what makes Into the Dark different from all the other horror anthologies out there is its structure: it isn’t one story told in serialized form over x number of episodes, but rather, a dozen distinct horror features brought to us over the course of a season.

And they’ve decided to kick off with Paul Davis’ The Body.

“I still can’t believe it’s him.”

“I know. Doesn’t he have like, 20 million Twitter followers?”

“Well… Not anymore.”

Based on his short of the same name, The Body follows a cultured and exacting hitman (Jekyll & Hyde’s Tom Bateman), who’s unfortunately inconvenienced on Halloween night, disrupting his plans of transporting the titular body of his latest victim (an apparently “famous person”) as part of his deal with his client.

Cue horror-comedy shenanigans.

“This is what death looks like, boy.”

But don’t let the word “comedy” fool you.

The Body is still very much a horror film. It just so happens to have some funny lines and some blackly comic situations baked into it.

With brief appearances by Sasha Grey and John Landis** (the Landis connection presumably stemming from Davis’ direction of the Beware the Moon: Remembering ‘An American Werewolf in London’ documentary), The Body’s a great way to kick off the Candidates list for ¡Qué horror! 2019, and if you’ve already checked out the 2018 rundown, then move smoothly onto this title for some awesome Halloween viewing.

“And why couldn’t he just kill like, Elijah Wood or someone small?”

* Who, incidentally enough, plays my hands-down favorite character on The Man in the High Castle, Trade Minister Tagomi.

** Interestingly, Landis’ An American Werewolf in London is a great example of the horror-comedy hybrid.

Parting Shot: Into the Dark presents me with an interesting conundrum. It’s a television series (or, well, “web television”) whose episodes are feature films.

So, in light of the ¡Qué horror! set-up, here’s how I’m planning to solve the conundrum:

I’m going to consider each episode as a feature film, so Into the Dark doesn’t potentially hog the TV Horror slot (since it’s going to have a dozen separate titles vying for that slot, as opposed to any other TV series, which faces the tricky and difficult task of having all the episodes in any particular season tie up into a single solid horror experience).

Considering Into the Dark as “television” here wouldn’t be fair to the other TV horror shows…

(Into the Dark: The Body OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2012

Candidate # 22

JUAN DE LOS MUERTOS

(JUAN OF THE DEAD)

(September 2011)

I think the last time I encountered a horror-comedy that worked this well was, appropriately enough, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead.

Alejandro Brugués’ Juan de los Muertos sees the zombie apocalypse explode on the streets of Havana. It’s rude and satirical and funny and yes, actually moving in a couple of spots. It also says a lot about living in a country that’s so distant and removed from the First World Western living experience that it may as well be on another planet instead of 228 miles away from Miami.

It’s also got a killer end title sequence, some nods to Jaws, [REC], and Braindead/Dead Alive (to name a few), and a noteworthy use of the Sex Pistols. And, like fellow ¡Qué Horror! 2012 candidate, Kalevet, Juan de los Muertos is touted as the first horror movie from its country of origin (though strictly speaking, this is a co-production between Cuba, Mexico, and Spain, and, unlike Kalevet, there's a whole lot of funny here).

You really shouldn’t need any more recommendation than that…

(Juan de los Muertos OS courtesy of cineol.net.)

BLACK SHEEP
(Review)

Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) returns to the sheep farm he half-owns fifteen years after the misfortunate confluence of a tasteless practical joke and a family tragedy caused him to develop ovinophobia, the irrational fear of sheep. What Henry doesn’t know is that his brother Angus (Peter Feeney) has been conducting genetic experiments on the livestock.
Soon, there’s a massive flock of killer sheep, and Henry receives some hard therapy to get over his phobia.

Black Sheep, written and directed by Jonathan King, is B-movie horror/comedy by way of New Zealand. Think of it as the spiritual successor to Peter Jackson’s early low budget efforts like Dead Alive.
Appropriately enough, Jackson’s Weta Workshop executes the creature and make up effects for Black Sheep, which involves lots of old school, practical effects that make the film a fun, little bloody romp through the rolling hills and woods of New Zealand farm country.

Though the film does get some laughs at the expense of new age thinking and environmentalists, the narrative does address filial legacies and sibling rivalries; in its own B-movie way, of course. It also affords Henry a neat little character arc as he must come to terms with his ovinophobia, and all the underlying issues that the fear is a symptom of.

Granted, Black Sheep does lack a little something that keeps it from the wildly entertaining heights of recent B-movie horror/comedies like Slither and Feast, it is nonetheless a solid entry in the genre, fun, and funny—and naughty—when it needs to be.
It also plays a lot better than the mad cows of Ireland’s Dead Meat, so if B-movies are your thing, you should seriously check out Black Sheep.

(Black Sheep OS courtesy of postergeek.com.)

DEAD MEAT
(Review)

Mad cow disease has mutated in the Irish countryside, and now, not only are infected cattle attacking humans, but they’re passing on a virus that turns anyone bitten into a zombie!

Yup, it’s another zombie movie.

Written, edited, and directed by Conor McMahon, Dead Meat is the sort of low-budget horror movie that lives and dies by its gore, the sort of over-the-top, fairly ludicrous school of schlock seen in early Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. This is the kind of movie where eyeballs are sucked out by hoovers, and shovels and high-heeled shoes become deadly weapons when hurled just so.

Sadly, this is nowhere near as horrific as The Evil Dead, nor as ridiculously entertaining as Dead Alive. Save for some passably effective bits once night falls on our erstwhile heroine Helena (Marian Araujo) and her fellow uninfected, most of Dead Meat just lies there, much as its title suggests, rotting under the merciless gaze of seasoned horror geek eyes and the shadow of far better horror/comedy efforts from the past.
Admittedly, Dead Meat is perhaps a better watch than, say, Dead And Breakfast, but it’s still far from a good way to spend an hour and some twenty minutes.
As ridiculous as the song that plays during the end credits roll is (“Dead Meat,” written, composed, and performed by David Muyllaert, who also plays local gravedigger and male lead Desmond), it does signal an end to the less-than-stellar proceedings, and that’s always a good thing.

(Dead Meat DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)