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

[8 of 13]

BONE TOMAHAWK

(October 2015)

"This is not the time for womanly imaginings.”

Well, this was a dandy surprise! Just dandy!
Writer/director S. Craig Zahler slams it out of the park with his feature debut, Bone Tomahawk, in which trouble comes to the frontier town of Bright Hope (pop. 268).

The dialogue here is sharp and funny, the characters well-written, and the performances (particularly from the lead quartet, Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, and a largely unrecognizable Richard Jenkins) are commendable.

This is the kind of horror film that most graciously reminds you of just how important it is to have protagonists that you can actually care about, instead of the usual stock characters that populate your average movie (scary or otherwise) these days.

And, whilst on the performer front, I should point out that both Sid Haig and David Arquette are in here for a time, and we also get some brief, stealth appearances by Sean Young and Michael Paré.

“They’re a spoiled bloodline of inbred animals who rape and eat their own mothers.”

While Bone Tomahawk may have a running time that clocks in at over 2 hours, it’s also the kind of movie where you wish the plot didn’t have to kick in at all, the experience of just getting to spend time with the characters pleasurable enough.

And of course, also because this is a horror movie, and you just know that once the plot kicks in, the bodies are gonna start to drop in earnest.

In point of fact, there are a couple of instances of harrowing, brutal gore, so be forewarned.

So, saddle up, people.

Bone Tomahawk’s a’waitin!

“Does, uhh, anybody know how to spell ‘troglodytes’?

“For the telegram.”

(Bone Tomahawk OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2016

Candidate #4

BONE TOMAHAWK

(October 2015)

"This is not the time for womanly imaginings.”

Well, this was a dandy surprise! Just dandy!
Writer/director S. Craig Zahler slams it out of the park with his feature debut, Bone Tomahawk, in which trouble comes to the frontier town of Bright Hope (pop. 268).

The dialogue here is sharp and funny, the characters well-written, and the performances (particularly from the lead quartet, Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, and a largely unrecognizable Richard Jenkins) are commendable.

This is the kind of horror film that most graciously reminds you of just how important it is to have protagonists that you can actually care about, instead of the usual stock characters that populate your average movie (scary or otherwise) these days.

And, whilst on the performer front, I should point out that both Sid Haig and David Arquette are in here for a time, and we also get some brief, stealth appearances by Sean Young and Michael Paré.

“They’re a spoiled bloodline of inbred animals who rape and eat their own mothers.”

While Bone Tomahawk may have a running time that clocks in at over 2 hours, it’s also the kind of movie where you wish the plot didn’t have to kick in at all, the experience of just getting to spend time with the characters pleasurable enough.

And of course, also because this is a horror movie, and you just know that once the plot kicks in, the bodies are gonna start to drop in earnest.

In point of fact, there are a couple of instances of harrowing, brutal gore, so be forewarned.

So, saddle up, people.

Bone Tomahawk’s a’waitin!

“Does, uhh, anybody know how to spell ‘troglodytes’?

“For the telegram.”

(Bone Tomahawk OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2014

Candidate #5

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE

(January 2013) 

After having given us Mulberry Street and Stake Land, the dynamic duo of Nick Damici and Jim Mickle--as co-writers, with Mickle in the directorial chair--take on an English-language remake of Jorge Michel Grau’s Somos Lo Que Hay. 
Now, while I was not as enamored of Somos Lo Que Hay as others, I was floored by Mickle and Damici’s take on the material, producing what is, undoubtedly, the best film they’ve crafted thus far.
To call it a remake would quite possibly be misleading though, as it does a whole lot more than simply transplant the narrative from Mexico to the Catskills, but rather, it essentially just takes the core idea (a family of cannibals trying to exist in contemporary society) and then deviates significantly from the original.

Mickle and Damici’s We Are What We Are is an excellently measured piece that takes a look at the collision of religion, tradition, and the always complex and complicated bonds of family, as triggered by the devastating effects of a torrential storm.

It’s a tortured family drama dressed up in one of Buffalo Bill’s cast-off “suits”; there’s the inherent and underlying gruesomeness of the idea that wraps around it, but what really matters is what’s beneath it--the troubled, beating heart of family.

There’s an excellent cast here, which includes Michael Parks, Bill Sage, Wyatt Russell (son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn) and Stake Land alumna Kelly McGillis, with a brief appearance by Larry Fessenden (yay!).

The central performances that need to be highlighted though, are those by Martha Marcy May Marlene’s Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers, who bring a haunted, wan translucency to the Parker girls, poor unfortunates burdened with the responsibilities of tradition that they may not want in the first place.

 “It’s a family drama with horrific backdrop. But I don’t think of it as a horror movie, and I hate that we have to classify things or put things in specific genres in order for it to be seen as something. So for marketing purposes, I hope people see it as a horror film and then when they see it go, ‘That wasn’t really a horror movie.’”

--Jim Mickle

Parting Shot: What’s interesting in the wake of We Are What We Are are the discussions for a prequel and a sequel, the latter to be handled by Jorge Michel Grau.

Now that sounds, errr… yummy…

(We Are What We Are OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

DEATH PROOF
(Review)

So April March’s “Chick Habit” is jangling around in my head, and it’s one of the things I’m taking away from Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof.
Originally Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse, Death Proof has apparently taken on the role of favoured son, having its script released in book form, and having driven its way to Cannes, leaving Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror abandoned by the side of the road.
Much has been made of Grindhouse’s failure at the American box office (a discussion of the whys and wherefores of which would take up an article or three), but now that the two features have been split for their international and DVD releases, what we’re looking at here is to address the question, So is Death Proof any good?
And the answer is (he says rather coyly)…

Just as Grindhouse was split neatly in two, Death Proof itself is basically two vignettes of serial killer Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), as he terrorizes sweet young things with his car.
Said young things include Sin City’s Rosario Dawson, CSI: NY’s Vanessa Ferlito, Scream’s Rose McGowan, Cabin Fever’s Jordan Ladd, and Kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell (as herself!).
So there are some car stunts, gruesome deaths, and a lap dance. Oh, and talking. A whole lotta talking.
Of course, we all know Tarantino loves his Chatty Patties, and Death Proof is chock-a-block, wall-to-wall, pedal to the metal yadda yadda. Which is fine, actually, but when each vignette is basically one long, protracted discussion, topped by a car chase and violence, there isn’t much to warrant the feature-length treatment.
If only Tarantino had fueled Death Proof with a little more Kill Bill (the momentum of the moving image as narrative engine) and less Jackie Brown, this might have been a far more enjoyable ride.

Having said that, Death Proof does have its moments (and I did end up liking it more than Jackie Brown).
There’s Eli Roth and Nicky Katt in small roles, there’s Three Kicks to the Head Part Three, there’s the Ship’s Mast gone wrong sequence, there’s the moment the second vignette bursts into glorious, eye-popping Technicolor, there’s Zoe Bell as herself.
And then of course, there are the Kill Bill nods. (And sure, one of them was pure expository device, but it was an entertaining expository device nonetheless.)

Ultimately, Death Proof is fun—provided you can enjoy the lo-fi, no-budget grindhouse aesthetic the production adopts—but would have been far more effective at a shorter running time.
Ironically, perhaps the best place for Death Proof may have been within the confines of a grindhouse-themed anthology (as opposed to the double bill approach Grindhouse took), where it would have been freed of the burden of a feature length running time. As it stands, this just feels like a short story that’s been padded, force-grown into a novel.
Maybe if Tarantino had filled in the time with more narrative nuts and bolts from the School of Cause-and-Effect Plot Action instead of all that blather, we could have enjoyed a top-down, wind-in-your-hair, radio-blasting-“Chick Habit” ride down the freeway rather than the erratic, fluctuating, stuttering trip we’re taken on.

Parting shot: Before Dimension does the double-dip (and I can only assume that giving Grindhouse the proper DVD treatment is somewhere in the cards), where do the faux trailers get their chance to grace TV screens?

(Death Proof OS courtesy of aintitcool.com; UK quad courtesy of empireonline.com; script book cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)