30 MONEDAS / KATLA

And now, for those of you who may want a viewing commitment more substantial than just a 2 hour-or-so movie (and don’t consider the reading of subtitles an annoyance), this pair of foreign-language TV horror shows get a couple of hearty ¡Qué horror! recommendations.

30 MONEDAS

(30 COINS)

Season 1

(November 2020)

“Do you know the best way to conceal a lie? Inventing a much bigger one.”

“That’s true. It’s par for the course in politics.”

Álex de la Iglesia serves up some pulpy religious horror with 30 Monedas, which, as indicated by its title, has the very coins which were the price of Jesus’ betrayal as the series’ centerpiece.

“We all have something we can’t manage to forget, don’t we, Father? With the Internet, there are no secrets anymore.”

“That really is an invention of the Devil.”

And while the practical make-up/creature effects are much appreciated by yours truly (the huge CGI set piece, not so much), thankfully it isn’t all po-faced horror here.

Fleeting moments of comic lightness stem organically from characters and their interactions with each other so the proceedings don’t inadvertently suffocate us with constant terror-induced anxiety.

“There is a much deeper horror. We live in the midst of a hurricane of lies and deceit. There are no truths, only a furious instinct of destruction and madness, provoked by your God.  I don’t know for what reason. Maybe it’s just for the pleasure of making you suffer.”

And then, for a change of pace…

Strip away the Biblical MacGuffins and the cause-and-effect plot mechanics, swap in a grey ash-laden mood and bleakly creepy atmosphere and a tighter focus on character and emotion, and we have…

KATLA Season 1

(June 2021)

“If you ask me, nothing here seems normal anymore. I know that you scientists don’t believe things unless it can be measured with your fancy equipment, but I can tell you that something is happening that science can unfortunately not explain.”

The eponymous Katla has been in a state of volcanic unrest for a year now, and the small Icelandic community of Vik is all but a ghost town, with most of its inhabitants evacuated, and the remaining few simply “trying to survive.”

But, as if that weren’t already bad enough, some undeniably weird sh!t belatedly hits the fan…

This one revels in its central mystery, one of dread and anticipation, as we (and the forcibly dwindled population of Vik) bear witness to the impossible and inexplicable return of individuals who really shouldn’t be among us, at least, not in the manner in which they’ve returned.

And with that sentence, it should come as no surprise that there are echoes of Les Revenants in Katla, as everyday lives are impacted by the reintroduction of… well… not the dead, exactly, as in Les Revenants*, but certainly, of individuals whose very presence flies in the face of everything we know about existence.

To its credit, Katla doesn’t overly prolong the “Why?” of its mystery.

By its final, eighth episode, it’s made clear why this is all happening. Mileage may vary, however, as to whether any particular audience member will accept the explanations, given how everything shakes out in the end.

At the very least, answers are offered, while leaving matters open for any potential follow-up season.

“Nature regularly reminds us how small we are. How everything we’ve got depends on it.”

* Though there are apparently some of those.

And hey! Lookit! There’s a creepy kid here, too!

(30 Monedas key art courtesy of impawards.com; Katla key art courtesy of twitter.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2016

The Preliminaries

So yeah, you know the drill: another October, another ¡Qué horror! rundown.

I think the most notable thing about this year’s crop is, for the first time in a while, there is no TV entry, which is not to say that there was no good small screen horror in the past 12 months, but rather, that the film entries were simply much more clearly “horror” than the TV Candidates.

Now, while I just did not find the time to give these shows their own Candidate posts (apologies to all involved), I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them here, so, without further ado, please consider these ¡Qué horror! 2016 Candidates #19 through 21…

LES REVENANTS (THE RETURNED)

Season 2

(October 2015)

There was nearly a 3 year gap (!) between the initial airing of the final episode of Les Revenants’ first season, and the premiere of its second season, and though its sophomore run did answer some of the lingering questions, it also had its own fair share of mysteries and ambiguity, all cloaked in the dreary and somber atmosphere the show has always sported.

And though it did seem to wrap the main narrative up, the second season also left certain questions unanswered. But as to whether there’ll be a third season, that would be anyone’s guess at this point.

Perhaps we need to wait another 3 years to find out…

PENNY DREADFUL

Season 3

(May 2016)

The fact that this third season also wound up being its final one was, perhaps, the biggest surprise for the show’s audience.

It was sad, and certainly sudden, to see that end title card, but those were the narrative choices made, and if the show did have to end, at least it ended on its own terms.

It was also a bummer to have the always welcome Simon Russell Beale downgraded from his Season 2 regular status to two (!) brief appearances.

That loss was partially alleviated with the upgrading of Patti LuPone to regular status, in what was also a cheeky bit of Starbucking.

And then there was Billie Piper, who continued her blazing performance as Lily, giving Eva Green a run for her money.

Sniff.

Penny D, ye shall be missed…

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

Season 1

(June 2016)

“We talked a lot in pre-production about what this was going to be and I was really keen that it wouldn’t be horror. The word we used was eerie.”

It was this quality--summed up by series creator Ashley Pharoah in the above quote--that initially made me waffle on the show’s inclusion here. This wasn’t just “quiet horror” for most of the narrative; more mute or silent horror.

In the end though, the overall tone and mood throughout its half-dozen episodes, the intriguing angles from which the idea of ghosts are approached, plus some key moments where you think, “Oh, well, things will be fine now, won’t they?” when horribly, things don’t turn out fine at all, won the day, and here The Living and the Dead is.

Plus, anything that gets the Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser back in the recording studio needs to be celebrated! (Fraser does the vocals on “She Moves Through the Fair” from episode 1, and “The Lover’s Ghost” from the episode 4 end credits.)

Though I’ve no word on the possibility of a second season, this one ends on an incredulous “Well, they can’t leave it like that now, can they?!” note.

“I was thinking a lot about what hauntings actually are. Are they echoes from the past or something else?”

--Ashley Pharoah

(Les Revenants & Penny Dreadful OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; The Living and the Dead DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

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

[10 of 13]

HANNIBAL Season 2

(February 2014)

So, yeah, in a year that had some strong potential TV horror entries, no one could touch Hannibal.

True, Bryan Fuller’s exquisitely constructed mix tape adaptation of Thomas Harris’ serial killer novels was on its sophomore season, while most of the other TV horror contenders were freshman series, but hey, it managed to tie with Les Revenants for a ¡Qué horror! slot last year, and they were both freshmen shows back then…

As we inch ever closer to a third adaptation of Red Dragon and the tantalizing possibility of a television rendition of The Silence of the Lambs (with Agent Schmarice Schmarling, if MGM can’t be bothered to play nice), Fuller and company continue to stage the most elegantly audacious and horrific serial killer scenarios this side of American network television.

If you haven’t gotten a, ahem, taste of Hannibal, you really ought to…

Parting Shot: Yes, this is a TV series and not a "movie," but ever since Dead Set carved out a ¡Qué horror! slot for itself, television horror just refuses to stay dull and mediocre (as so many Hollywood horror titles turn out to be), so Hannibal gets a slot this year, just as it co-held a slot last year.

If it makes you feel better, just think of it as a multi-part movie...

(Hannibal OS’ courtesy of aintitcool.com and impawards.com.)

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

[11 of 13]

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that the tie in this year's rundown is held by two television shows, but the fact is, there's a lot of really excellent TV going on, and some of it happens to fall into the genre that we celebrate at the Iguana every Halloween, so, just think of these as extra-long movies if you must, so long as you give them a look.
And so, without further ado...

LES REVENANTS

(THE RETURNED)
(November 2012)

I mentioned Robin Campillo’s Les Revenants (They Came Back) ‘round these parts before in passing.

Allow me now to expound on that film further…

Unleashed in 2004--about a year and a half after Danny Boyle and Alex Garland gave us 28 Days Later, and just two months after A) Zack Snyder managed to get the brilliant Sarah Polley in a zombie movie and inadvertently ignited the slow vs. fast zombie debate with his impressive debut, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and B) Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost kicked off their Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with Shaun of the Dead--Campillo’s Les Revenants emerged in the very early days of what would eventually develop into an unlikely revival of zombie cinema.

Even back then, Les Revenants felt, at least to me, like a breath of fresh air, a radically different approach to the idea of the dead returning to walk the earth.

Here, in a narrative co-written by Campillo with Brigitte Tijou, there were no rotting, shambling corpses intent on ripping into warm human flesh. Instead, there were the recently deceased (within the past decade), who suddenly appear, whole and seemingly unharmed, wanting only to return to the lives they’d been rudely evicted from by their deaths.

Here, Campillo focused on the living as well, those left behind, who now have to suddenly adjust to the reality that what they might have prayed for--the return of their departed loved ones--had, quite unbelievably, come to pass.

Flash forward to November of last year, and in the eight and a half years since Les Revenants, zombies had moved into the mainstream and become the monster du jour of horror, with an American zombie cable television show perennially breaking ratings records with seeming impunity.

Zombie, you’ve come a long way, baby…

It’s into this strange new world that Canal+’s television adaptation of Les Revenants emerges, and once again, we’re given an atypical depiction of the zombie phenomenon, one needed now more than ever, with so many bland and derivative entries in zombie cinema littering the sidewalks and the cineplexes.

Expanded into an eight-episode first season (with a second season that’s expected to debut early next year), the TV version of Les Revenants employs the same subtle creep and dread of Campillo’s original, eschewing a portion of the art house ambiguity of the film for some more traditional drama of the serialized sort, as well as some more overtly supernatural goings-on (though the exact nature of those aren’t really explained either).

And though the TV show’s narrative does not really follow the film’s (save for the central conceit of the dead returning and how that event impacts on the living), there is one major cast member carry-over: Frédéric Pierrot, playing different characters in either iteration, of course.   

The last time I put a TV series into the ¡Qué horror! milieu was Dead Set. But just as that show rightly deserved its ¡Qué horror! spot, so does this one. (Just imagine you’re watching an 8-hour long movie, with a sequel waiting in the wings…)

Plus, Mogwai scored the damned thing, so hey, one more reason to check it out!

Parting Shot 1: It should be noted that AbbottVision and FremantleMedia Enterprises have purchased the English-language remake rights, and intend to produce a show under the title, They Came Back, so I’d advise you to hunt down the French original before then.

This show should not be confused with ABC’s mid-season title, Resurrection, which is based on the novel, The Returned, by Jason Mott. (Though honestly, Mott’s novel, to be released in August, has a central conceit that’s pretty much the one in Campillo’s original. As Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “A family gets caught up in a worldwide event in which loved ones return from the dead exactly as they last were in life.” Hurm.)

Parting Shot 2: Also, if the atypical zombie’s your thing, then you should check out the 3 episode BBC show In The Flesh, which might have gotten this ¡Qué horror! slot, but it’s particularly less “horror” than Les Revenants, so…

Still, it’s worth your while, if you want more from your zombies than AMC’s The Walking Dead can give you…

(Les Revenants OS' courtesy of impawards.com; They Came Back DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; Les Revenants OST sleeve art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

HANNIBAL

(April 2013)

For the record, I love Bryan Fuller’s TV work (though the Mockingbird Lane pilot did leave me wanting), and the show of his I really, truly, and completely loved was Wonderfalls.

So the fact that Caroline Dhavernas is part of the cast of Fuller’s adaptation of Hannibal is all sorts of awesome.

Of course, that’s not the reason why Hannibal has tied with Les Revenants for a ¡Qué horror! slot this year; Dhavernas is many things, but a “horror” she most certainly is not.

Hannibal is here because this is a solid adaptation of Thomas Harris’ serial killer novels featuring Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter.

Ostensibly, Red Dragon is the main source material for the show, a novel which has already been adapted to film twice, in 1986 by Michael Mann under the title Manhunter, and in 2002, by Brett Ratner.

According to Fuller’s roadmap of the show though, Hannibal Season 4 would be the adaptation proper of Red Dragon, while, if the stars align, we may actually see a television adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs,* envisioned as Season 5 of the show, should we get that far.

And if the level of creative quality remains constant (or hopefully, actually increases), then that’s a future I’d very much like to see. 

In Season 1 alone, we’ve got some heavy directorial hitters like David Slade (whose excellent Awake Pilot was one of last season’s TV highlights), Michael Rymer (who solidified his geek cred with his work on Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica), and 75-year-old Peter Medak (who scarred many an audience member with the chilling quiet horror of 1980’s The Changeling).

Then there’s Guillermo Navarro, frequent cinematographer for Guillermo del Toro (including the 2 hours and 11 minutes of awesome kaiju madness that is Pacific Rim), who won a whole slew of awards--including the Oscar--for his work on El Laberinto del Fauno. Navarro had previously worked with Fuller as DP on the Mockingbird Lane pilot, and here, he directs a trio of episodes (as do both Slade and Rymer, taking a lion’s share of the season between the three of them).

Some Twin Peaks episode helmers are also in here: James Foley (who also brought us the big screen adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross) and Tim Hunter (no, not the Books of Magic kid).

All that livewire creativity and talent behind the camera, and we haven’t even gotten to the excellent cast.

The cold, clinical detachment Mads Mikkelsen brings to his Hannibal is a fine offset to the twitchy, tortured nature of Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham. And, you know, Mikkelsen had to walk in the intimidating footsteps of both Brian Cox and Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Plus, there are those guest star turns:

Gillian Anderson, who enters at the midpoint of the season, under the beautifully unlikely name of Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier;

Fellow Chris Carter alumnus, Lance Henriksen;

And other past Fuller collaborators: Raúl Esparza, Eddie Izzard, Ellen Greene, and Ellen Muth (but that was a pretty evil way to wrap up her guest starring stint, Mr. Fuller, an evil way…).

So with both Dhavernas and Muth having made their appearances, all we need are either Lee Pace or Anna Friel (or both) to enter Hannibal’s world, and we’ll complete the Past Fuller Leads Trifecta.

Hurrah!

In a world where TV procedurals have reached well beyond saturation point, one of the things that saves Hannibal from the potential pitfall of becoming just another one of those “serial killer of the week” shows is the serialized nature of its narrative.

Coming into the show with a general idea of the overarching narrative (from the Harris novels and the previous film adaptations of the material), the audience is hooked. They want to see how the cards fall, they can’t wait for the other shoe to drop, for Graham and company to discover exactly what kind of a monster Lecter really is.

It’s the same approach to story that was successfully utilized in Smallville (at least, for the first few seasons), and more recently, in Bates Motel.
We all know Clark Kent eventually becomes Superman, we all know Norman Bates eventually kills his mother and a whole string of unfortunate motel guests, we all know Hannibal Lecter eventually ends up in the loonybin where he gets to play cat and mouse with Clarice Starling.
Part of the fun lies in watching how we get there.

And thus far, this is some morbid, gruesome “fun.” (Network television is getting away with a lot these days…)

If I could ask for something though, I’d ask for a bit more psychopathology; the show doesn’t really bother to explain the whys of their killers. We meet them fully (mal)formed, without any significant idea of how these sick puppies got so ill, without knowing the twisted road they walked to get here.

It’s almost as if Fuller and company are saying, serial killers really are inexplicable.

It’s almost like they’re saying, there is no “Why.” Serial killers simply are.

And that’s a truly horrifying thought…

* A possibility that both intrigues me (because there were some bits of the novel that were dropped in Jonathan Demme’s adaptation; among them, Jack Crawford’s turmoil, the seeds of which, have already been planted by Fuller and company in Season 1) and terrifies me (because The Silence of the Lambs is one of those brilliant lightning in a bottle moments in cinema, where everything seemed to align exquisitely).

Again, for the record, Demme’s Silence is, thus far, the only Harris film adaptation that I’ve been completely floored by. All the others--from Mann’s Manhunter, through until Peter Webber’s Hannibal Rising--haven’t come even close.

Here’s hoping Fuller’s Hannibal can ultimately succeed where all those others failed…

(Hannibal OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate #11

LES REVENANTS

(THE RETURNED)
(November 2012)

I mentioned Robin Campillo’s Les Revenants (They Came Back) ‘round these parts before in passing.

Allow me now to expound on that film further…

Unleashed in 2004--about a year and a half after Danny Boyle and Alex Garland gave us 28 Days Later, and just two months after A) Zack Snyder managed to get the brilliant Sarah Polley in a zombie movie and inadvertently ignited the slow vs. fast zombie debate with his impressive debut, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and B) Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost kicked off their Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with Shaun of the Dead--Campillo’s Les Revenants emerged in the very early days of what would eventually develop into an unlikely revival of zombie cinema.

Even back then, Les Revenants felt, at least to me, like a breath of fresh air, a radically different approach to the idea of the dead returning to walk the earth.

Here, in a narrative co-written by Campillo with Brigitte Tijou, there were no rotting, shambling corpses intent on ripping into warm human flesh. Instead, there were the recently deceased (within the past decade), who suddenly appear, whole and seemingly unharmed, wanting only to return to the lives they’d been rudely evicted from by their deaths.

Here, Campillo focused on the living as well, those left behind, who now have to suddenly adjust to the reality that what they might have prayed for--the return of their departed loved ones--had, quite unbelievably, come to pass.

Flash forward to November of last year, and in the eight and a half years since Les Revenants, zombies had moved into the mainstream and become the monster du jour of horror, with an American zombie cable television show perennially breaking ratings records with seeming impunity.

Zombie, you’ve come a long way, baby…

It’s into this strange new world that Canal+’s television adaptation of Les Revenants emerges, and once again, we’re given an atypical depiction of the zombie phenomenon, one needed now more than ever, with so many bland and derivative entries in zombie cinema littering the sidewalks and the cineplexes.

Expanded into an eight-episode first season (with a second season that’s expected to debut early next year), the TV version of Les Revenants employs the same subtle creep and dread of Campillo’s original, eschewing a portion of the art house ambiguity of the film for some more traditional drama of the serialized sort, as well as some more overtly supernatural goings-on (though the exact nature of those aren’t really explained either).

And though the TV show’s narrative does not really follow the film’s (save for the central conceit of the dead returning and how that event impacts on the living), there is one major cast member carry-over: Frédéric Pierrot, playing different characters in either iteration, of course.   

The last time I put a TV series into the ¡Qué horror! milieu was Dead Set. But just as that show rightly deserved its ¡Qué horror! spot, so does this one. (Just imagine you’re watching an 8-hour long movie, with a sequel waiting in the wings…)

Plus, Mogwai scored the damned thing, so hey, one more reason to check it out!

Parting Shot 1: It should be noted that AbbottVision and FremantleMedia Enterprises have purchased the English-language remake rights, and intend to produce a show under the title, They Came Back, so I’d advise you to hunt down the French original before then.

This show should not be confused with ABC’s mid-season title, Resurrection, which is based on the novel, The Returned, by Jason Mott. (Though honestly, Mott’s novel, to be released in August, has a central conceit that’s pretty much the one in Campillo’s original. As Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “A family gets caught up in a worldwide event in which loved ones return from the dead exactly as they last were in life.” Hurm.)

Parting Shot 2: Also, if the atypical zombie’s your thing, then you should check out the 3 episode BBC show In The Flesh, which might have gotten this ¡Qué horror! slot, but it’s particularly less “horror” than Les Revenants, so…

Still, it’s worth your while, if you want more from your zombies than AMC’s The Walking Dead can give you…

(Les Revenants OS' courtesy of impawards.com; They Came Back DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; Les Revenants OST sleeve art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (14)
“The Attack of the Living Dead Afterthought”
(A Companion Piece to “Revelations”)

If you haven’t read “Revelations” (Archive: July 2007), please do so, so as to give this installment of Afterthoughts a proper context.

If you look carefully at “Revelations (Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema),” the article is more a focus on then-current zombie cinema than of apocalypse cinema in general. I took that tack (and chose that title) though, since I thought it would be an easier sell to my editor, as the mainstream movie-going audience at that time (2004) would most likely have known the doomsday scenarios of Armageddon and Deep Impact more readily than they would George Romero’s Dead films.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised though, if an out-and-out article on zombie cinema would get the greenlight today without much trouble.
And that’s because a lot’s happened since 2004, events that have brought the rotting, flesh-hungry hordes into the bright spotlight of media attention. Zombies are one of the hot trends of horror du jour, and our recently-returned dearly departed are making the most of their Moment in the sun.

With the box-office success of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, studios big and small hopped on the zombie bandwagon and brought us such excellent entries in zombie cinema as Edgar Wright‘s hilarious Shaun of the Dead and Andrew Currie‘s interesting boy-and-his-zombie tale, Fido. On the downside, we’ve also been saddled with the dead on arrival attempts at zomcoms, Dead and Breakfast, Boy Eats Girl, and Plane Dead.
Undisputed Zombie King George Romero returned to the apocalyptic world that made his career with Land of the Dead, Robert Rodriguez brought us to Planet Terror as his half of Grindhouse, and the French gave us Robin Campillo‘s Les Revenants (They Came Back), the only arthouse zombie film I’ve ever come across. Boyle also made his own return trip by producing the lacerating and explosive follow-up, 28 Weeks Later.

Meanwhile, trudging towards us from the horizon are Steve Miner’s remake of Romero’s Day of the Dead (with Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames as Capt. Rhodes, the brother that Rhames’ Kenneth from the Dawn of the Dead remake refers to; I’m going to have to assume they’re supposed to be twins), as well as Romero’s Diary of the Dead, where some college students shooting a horror movie encounter some real zombies and decide to go cinema verite.
There’s also Zack Snyder’s zombie epic, Army of the Dead (though this may not come at us for quite a while, as Snyder’s currently knee-deep in his Watchmen adaptation). In it, a father struggles to save his daughter’s life from the ravenous zombie hordes in a quarantined Las Vegas.

But what was perhaps the most intriguing zombie development didn’t quite get out the gate: CBS got a pilot together for something called Babylon Fields, a “sardonic, apocalyptic American comedy-drama where the dead are rising and, as a result, lives are regained, families restored and old wounds reopened.” Michael Cuesta (of Six Feet Under and Dexter) was set as executive producer, and directed the pilot.
Sounding like a blackly comic spin on Les Revenants, I was pretty stoked about this, but sadly, CBS chose not to pick Babylon Fields up as a series.*
I mean, am I the only one who wanted to see zombies represent themselves on the small screen? There are vampires aplenty: on the lamentable Blood Ties, and the upcoming Moonlight (yet another vampire PI) and from Alan Ball, True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire books, so why not zombies?

But I guess the networks aren’t ready to release them onto the TV screen on a weekly basis just yet. Oh well…
I suppose we’ll just have to content ourselves with seeing them mill about the multiplexes. Don’t forget to buy extra buckets of popcorn. You never know. They could be persuaded to eat something else other than your brain…

* Then again, who knows? Maybe Cuesta can pull a Mulholland Drive and turn Babylon Fields into a feature film. Here’s hoping…

Parting shot: There are also “vampire zombies” (whatever those are exactly) on the way in John Moore’s upcoming Virulents, based on the Virgin Comics title.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Boy Eats Girl, Plane Dead, 28 Weeks Later, Dexter, and Blood Ties can be found in the Archive.

(Shaun of the Dead, Fido, Land of the Dead, and Day of the Dead OS’s courtesy of impawards.com; Les Revenants DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)