A Rundown of the 13 (+1) Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[6 of 13]

BYZANTIUM

(September 2012)

“My story can never be told. I write it over and over, wherever we find shelter. I write of what I cannot speak… The truth.”

So, my Neil Jordan Top Three (The Company of Wolves, The Crying Game, and The Butcher Boy) is now officially Four.

Welcome, Byzantium.

Based on Moira Buffini’s play A Vampire Story (Buffini ably adapts her own work for the screen), Byzantium follows the apparently sixteen-year-old Eleanor Webb (Saoirse Ronan) and her “legal guardian,” Clara (Gemma Arterton), both long-lived immortals who subsist on human blood, and who are both on the run from some looming threat whose exact nature Clara refuses to divulge to Eleanor.

Jordan scores here with an excellent cast (which includes Caleb Landry Jones, Sam Riley, and Jonny Lee Miller), some elegant Gothicism, and some brief, yet powerful phantasmagorical moments.

There’s also some noteworthy cinematography by Sean Bobbitt, as well as a score by Javier Navarrete (who also scored Guillermo del Toro’s El Espinazo del Diablo and El Laberinto del Fauno, the latter of which garnered him a whole slew of award noms, including the Oscar).

(Byzantium OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate #18

BYZANTIUM

(September 2012)

“My story can never be told. I write it over and over, wherever we find shelter. I write of what I cannot speak… The truth.”

So, my Neil Jordan Top Three (The Company of Wolves, The Crying Game, and The Butcher Boy) is now officially Four.

Welcome, Byzantium.

Based on Moira Buffini’s play A Vampire Story (Buffini ably adapts her own work for the screen), Byzantium follows the apparently sixteen-year-old Eleanor Webb (Saoirse Ronan) and her “legal guardian,” Clara (Gemma Arterton), both long-lived immortals who subsist on human blood, and who are both on the run from some looming threat whose exact nature Clara refuses to divulge to Eleanor.

Jordan scores here with an excellent cast (which includes Caleb Landry Jones, Sam Riley, and Jonny Lee Miller), some elegant Gothicism, and some brief, yet powerful phantasmagorical moments.

There’s also some noteworthy cinematography by Sean Bobbitt, as well as a score by Javier Navarrete (who also scored Guillermo del Toro’s El Espinazo del Diablo and El Laberinto del Fauno, the latter of which garnered him a whole slew of award noms, including the Oscar).

(Byzantium OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (2)

2.1 Congratulations to Bong Joon-ho and all involved in the making of Gwoemul (The Host: review in Archive: March 2007), for bagging 4 Asian Film Awards, namely Best Film, Best Actor (Song Kang-ho), Best Cinematographer (Kim Hyung-goo), and Best Visual Effects (to San Fo-based effects house, The Orphanage).

2.2 Likewise, congratulations to Guillermo Del Toro and all involved in the making of El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth: review in Archive: March 2007), for winning in 9 of the dozen categories it was nominated in at this year’s Ariel Awards (Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscars).
The wins were for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Maribel Verdu), Best Cinematography (Guillermo Navarro), Best Art Direction (Eugenio Caballero, Pilar Revuelta, and Ramon Moya), Best Original Score (Javier Navarrete), Best Make Up (David Marti, Jose Quetglas, and Arjen Tuiten), Best Costume Design (Lala Huete and Rocio Redondo), and Best Special Effects (Reyes Abades, Angel Alonso, David Marti, and Montse Ribe).
Interestingly enough, the other major contender this year at the Ariels was 2004’s Cronicas (so I’m not sure how it was nominated in the same year as Laberinto), which has Del Toro and good friend Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) as producers.
Cronicas is a searing look at which is the greater evil: a cruel serial killer, exploitative and sensationalist journalism, or a public with an insatiable hunger for both. It was up for 6 awards and I’ve yet to confirm which categories it won in. (I’ll mention them in a future installment of Afterthoughts.)