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

[12 of 13]

SOME KIND OF HATE

(May 2015)

"Why are we f*cking waiting in the greenhouse?

"This is f*ckin’ bullshit.”

Bullied loner Lincoln (Ronen Rubinstein) is sent to the Mind’s Eye Academy, a place to “reset,” where troubled youth can work through their issues, so as to “destroy the impulses” that brought them there in the first place.

But since this is a horror film and not some After School Special, it’s safe to say things do not go to plan.

The feature debut of director (and co-writer) Adam Egypt Mortimer, Some Kind of Hate is a brutal depiction of how petty and cruel the youth can be. While I’ll avoid getting into exactly what the film is about, I will say it plays like a wicked, vicious inversion of fellow ¡Qué Horror! 2015 title Jamie Marks Is Dead (in which Rubinstein also, incidentally enough, appears).

As an aside, familiar genre face Noah Segan shows up here in a supporting role, and doubles as an Executive Producer.

This one isn’t inclined to pull punches, so be warned…

Parting Shot: I also highly recommend Mortimer’s comic book, the whacked-out science fiction opus, Ballistic, with art by Darick Robertson.

(Some Kind of Hate OS courtesy of twitchfilm.com.)

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

[3 of 13]

JAMIE MARKS IS DEAD

(January 2014)

It's been six years since Carter Smith's debut feature, The Ruins (which wound up on the ¡Qué Horror! 2008 list), and he returns to these parts with another adaptation, Jamie Marks Is Dead, based on Christopher Barzak’s Locus nominated One For Sorrow.

Opening with the discovery of the corpse of the titular Jamie Marks (Noah Silver), it takes a while for the supernatural creeps to fully kick in, and when they do (at around the 20 minute mark), they’re pretty low key and actually have a lot of longing and aching poignancy in the mix.

But this in no way diminishes their unsettling and disturbing potency. (Note that the trailer is a tad misleading, seeming to suggest a fairly typical Hollywood ghost story, when the actual film is most definitely an atypical tale of the restless dead.)

Shot with a wintry melancholy by Darren Lew (his first feature work) and with Penny Dreadful’s John Logan as one of its executive producers, Jamie Marks Is Dead may not even register as “horror” for some, but there’s a gripping sadness here beneath the otherworldly elements that’s rooted in the horrors of existence and memory, of the need to belong and to be wanted, wrenching emotions that, sadly, even the quick are all too familiar with.

(Jamie Marks Is Dead OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2015

Candidate #14

SOME KIND OF HATE

(May 2015)

"Why are we f*cking waiting in the greenhouse?

"This is f*ckin’ bullshit.”

Bullied loner Lincoln (Ronen Rubinstein) is sent to the Mind’s Eye Academy, a place to “reset,” where troubled youth can work through their issues, so as to “destroy the impulses” that brought them there in the first place.

But since this is a horror film and not some After School Special, it’s safe to say things do not go to plan.

The feature debut of director (and co-writer) Adam Egypt Mortimer, Some Kind of Hate is a brutal depiction of how petty and cruel the youth can be. While I’ll avoid getting into exactly what the film is about, I will say it plays like a wicked, vicious inversion of fellow ¡Qué horror! 2015 candidate Jamie Marks Is Dead (in which Rubinstein also, incidentally enough, appears).

As an aside, familiar genre face Noah Segan shows up here in a supporting role, and doubles as an Executive Producer.

This one isn’t inclined to pull punches, so be warned…

Parting Shot: I also highly recommend Mortimer’s comic book, the whacked-out science fiction opus, Ballistic, with art by Darick Robertson.

(Some Kind of Hate OS courtesy of twitchfilm.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2015

Candidate #5

JAMIE MARKS IS DEAD

(January 2014)

It's been six years since Carter Smith's debut feature, The Ruins (which wound up on the ¡Qué horror! 2008 list), and he returns to these parts with another adaptation, Jamie Marks Is Dead, based on Christopher Barzak’s Locus nominated One For Sorrow.

Opening with the discovery of the corpse of the titular Jamie Marks (Noah Silver), it takes a while for the supernatural creeps to fully kick in, and when they do (at around the 20 minute mark), they’re pretty low key and actually have a lot of longing and aching poignancy in the mix.

But this in no way diminishes their unsettling and disturbing potency. (Note that the trailer is a tad misleading, seeming to suggest a fairly typical Hollywood ghost story, when the actual film is most definitely an atypical tale of the restless dead.)

Shot with a wintry melancholy by Darren Lew (his first feature work) and with Penny Dreadful’s John Logan as one of its executive producers, Jamie Marks Is Dead may not even register as “horror” for some, but there’s a gripping sadness here beneath the otherworldly elements that’s rooted in the horrors of existence and memory, of the need to belong and to be wanted, wrenching emotions that, sadly, even the quick are all too familiar with.

(Jamie Marks Is Dead OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)