A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[8 of 13]


RED WHITE & BLUE
(January 2010)


Simon Rumley’s The Living and the Dead made quite the impression on me (unearth the review from the Archive), so much so that when I first got a whiff of Red White & Blue, I kept track of its development and production, knowing I was eventually going to check it out.
And while this is a different sort of cinematic animal from The Living and the Dead, it’s got the same kind of jarring disquiet in its onscreen action, action that also takes place in that viciously desolate wasteland where psychology and tragedy collide. But just as Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles had its volume jacked up in the U.S.-set Volume Two, Rumley’s narrative sensibilities are likewise amped to better reflect the tone and atmosphere of this American tale of love and isolation, of desperation and revenge.
The performances (by Noah Taylor, Amanda Fuller, and Marc Senter) are raw and unpolished, the editing jarring, the narrative’s trajectory and propulsion coloured by its staccato rhythms.
This is sordid stuff and it’s interesting how Rumley and his cast can make an audience involved and invested in a tale whose characters are not especially likable.
Now I’m even more excited to see Rumley’s contribution to the upcoming horror anthology, Little Deaths.

Speaking of…

Another Simon Rumley Must-See:
“Bitch,” contained in
LITTLE DEATHS (February 2011)


Multi-contributor anthologies are always a tricky proposition.
Given that there are X number of stories by X number of contributors, there’ll always be a variance in the quality of the collected tales.
There’s also the distinct possibility that, for whatever reason, some stories may work for some of the audience, while others may not, and that’s perhaps more to do with the subjectivity of art than the actual pieces themselves.

The horror anthology Little Deaths is a rarity in that all three stories are excellent, without a real weak link in the lot.
Still, as much as Sean Hogan’s “House and Home” (which kicks off the anthology) is a well-made little bit of sex and grue, it’s still overshadowed by the truly mondo bizarro “Mutant Tool” by Andrew Parkinson, and Simon Rumley’s “Bitch,” where the power and dominance games played in a very atypical sexual relationship reaches a dangerous tipping point.

As made readily apparent by its title (which it shares with an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow), Little Deaths is a showcase for erotic horror, and what’s on display in the contributions of Parkinson and Rumley is rather disturbing and unsettling and not for the squeamish nor prudish.
You’ve been suitably warned…

(Red White & Blue OS courtesy of impawards.com; Little Deaths OS courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[7 of 13]


THE VIOLENT KIND
(January 2010)


“… it’s been a really weird night…”

By the time the sh*t hit the fan in The Violent Kind’s climax and “Lights in the Sky” began to play over the end titles crawl, I knew that, once again, from out of the clear blue, The Butcher Brothers (AKA as Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) had just whacked me on the side of the head with some kicka$$ cinema.
I came into The Violent Kind knowing nothing more than, this was the new film by the same people who’d notched a pretty high point in After Dark’s very first Horrorfest with The Hamiltons, and that’s pretty much the way you should go into it as well. Any attempt at a synopsis will just spoil things.
Suffice it to say that there are shades of David Lynch in The Violent Kind, which features some familiar faces from The Hamiltons; let’s leave it at that.

Parting shot: A review of The Hamiltons can be found lurking in the Archive.

(The Violent Kind OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[6 of 13]


YELLOWBRICKROAD
(January 2010)


One morning in 1940, the entire population of Friar, NH, walked north up an unmarked trail into the wilderness.
Some were later found frozen to death. Others were mysteriously slaughtered. Most, however, were never found.

This is the mystery that lies at the heart of Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland’s feature film debut, Yellowbrickroad, where a team led by Teddy Barnes (Michael Laurino) walks the very same trail in an attempt to uncover the truth beneath the legend.
It’s a truly excellent piece of distinct unease, of oblique and inexplicable horror, brought to us with the help of Smallville’s own Tess Mercer, Cassidy Freeman, who’s an executive producer on this, along with her rather appropriately named brother, Clark. (The Freeman siblings also appear as Erin and Daryl Luger.)
If you can enjoy your horror without the requisite zombies, vampires, masked slashers, or shambling monsters, then Yellowbrickroad is for you.

(Yellowbrickroad quad courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[5 of 13]


BURIED
(January 2010)


There isn’t much more you need to know about Rodrigo Cortés’ Buried other than that it’s a cracklingly intense bit of film-making that, unlike other recent examples of “experiential horror” (like Devil, or Frozen, or Altitude), never once leaves the environs of the protagonist’s circumscribed agony; we spend the entire running time of approximately 95 minutes trapped in a coffin alongside Ryan Reynolds.
And here, as in John August’s The Nines, we really do realize that Reynolds can honest-to-goodness act, as opposed to playing Ryan Reynolds on camera, which, sadly, he seems to do most of the time.
From its great Saul Bass-inspired opening title credits (by Spain’s Royal Cow Studios), on through to that final, telling shot, this is tense, claustrophobic cinema executed with dollops of skill, talent, and bravura.


Parting shot: As I’ve mentioned ‘round these parts before, Buried won last year’s Méliès d'Or Award for Best European Fantastic Film.
Do yourself a favour and see why…

Experiential Horror Runner-up:
FROZEN (January 2010)


Imagine being stranded on a ski lift, without anyone knowing you were there. Trapped way above the snow, in the dark, and the cold…
That’s the wickedly taut scenario writer-director Adam Green invites us to, not so much view, as actually partake in, in Frozen.
I’ve seen the term “experiential horror” being used to describe Frozen, and a bunch of other recent titles (like Buried and Devil), and that’s about as good a term as any. These are the sort of films that attempt to place the viewer in the situation they’re watching from the normally safe remove of their seats, films that strive to break the fourth wall by putting us alongside the narrative’s protagonists, to share their panic and terror. (All this without tacking on a few extra bits to the ticket price with that new-fangled whatchallit, 3D. Is that right? “Three-dee”?)

Now, if the best horror is meant to unsettle and disturb, then experiential horror ups that ante considerably, making the cinematic experience more horribly intimate by confining us in a circumscribed space, forcing us to undergo the suffering.
In Frozen, Green has a superbly crafted and distressingly disturbing film, whose young cast (Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore, and Emma Bell, who was subsequently seen on the first season of The Walking Dead) hits all the right beats, from the casual to the tension-filled.

(Buried & Frozen OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; Buried UK quad courtesy of empireonline.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[4 of 13]


THE CLINIC
(November 2009)


There are some horror films that you simply don’t show expectant mothers, films like Fruit Chan’s Dumplings or Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s À l'intérieur or Paul Solet’s Grace. Based on the one sheet above, I think it’s clear that James Rabbitts’ The Clinic is another of those films.
If you can get past the unsettling aspects of the material, The Clinic is an absorbing and interesting look at maternal instincts, at just how far a mother is willing to go to protect her child. It also cleverly plays with genre expectations, giving the audience a cinematic experience that may have familiar elements, but nonetheless feels like something we’ve not quite seen before.
For Gabriel or Spartacus fans out there, this one’s also got the late Andy Whitfield in it.

Aussie Horror Runner-up:
THE LOVED ONES (September 2009)


Aussie horror plants a very decisive flag with Sean Byrne’s feature debut, The Loved Ones, a film for all those iconoclasts who ever thought that prom was just some antiquated tradition best left by the cultural wayside.
“Prom is Hell”? In The Loved Ones, that truly is the case, as we bear witness to the Worst Prom Date captured on film since Sissy Spacek got all dolled up just to take a shower in pig’s blood.

Writer/director Byrne triumphs on a number of fronts with The Loved Ones, beginning with the fact that he’s able to counterpoint the blood and brutality with genuine emotional pain and mental anguish (and not just from the film’s main protagonist, played by Xavier Samuel).
Also, The Loved Ones isn’t just about the teen-agers. There’s a significant adult presence in the film, as we’re shown the strained dynamic between parents who no longer seem to understand their rebellious offspring, and children who feel a complex welter of emotion towards these estranged dinosaurs who sired and raised them, when the truth is, that both sides are reeling from the same pain.
There’s also a disturbing parent-child relationship here that, unsettling though it admittedly is, is still grounded in a sick and twisted sort of love.

So Byrne not only delivers the shock and the gore, he also populates the narrative with characters with actual thoughts and feelings, as opposed to the one-dimensional sketches we sometimes see in horror films.
All that, while establishing that not all the “weirdoes” and “losers” we know (regardless of age) share the same sort of scars; some could very well be psychopathic, that’s always a possibility, but some will really be just troubled and traumatized individuals, trying to numb the pain the best way they know how…

(The Clinic OS courtesy of wrongsideoftheart.com; The Loved Ones OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[3 of 13]


LA HORDE (THE HORDE)
(August 2009)


Guns and drugs, blood and guts, adorn Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher’s La Horde, where the unfolding scenario interrupted by the latest zombie apocalypse is a violent vendetta.
And as the running, ravening undead lay siege to a decrepit, condemned building, enemies must enter an uneasy truce to survive the ordeal.
With Alain Figlarz as stunt coordinator (Figlarz also choreographed the fight scenes in Babylon A.D. and Chrysalis and worked on Aurélien Poitrimoult’s Green Hornet short), this one’s a kick-ass, adrenalized ride. Things move so quickly and decisively, that there’s precious little time afforded to question why the dead are coming back to animated life and why their bites are contagious. Of course, given that the main characters of La Horde are cops and crooks, we really shouldn’t expect any lengthy bouts of circumspection regarding the situation they all find themselves in.

Parting shot: A review of Chrysalis can be found lurking in the Archive.

(La Horde OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[2 of 13]


THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES
(April 2007)


“I’ll tell you one place we’ll be watching. If this documentary thing you’re making ever gets to the theatres, he won’t be able to help himself. He’ll see this movie as many times as he can. We’ll keep an eye on as many screenings as we can because he’ll be there.”
-- Leonard Schway, FBI Field Agent

Though this was the film that brought the Dowdle brothers (John Erick and Drew) to the attention of Hollywood, to date, it’s languished in releasing limbo (more on that later). Thus, it’s actually the latest film of theirs I’ve seen, getting to lay eyes on Quarantine and Devil first, two gigs they got on the strength of the faux doc, The Poughkeepsie Tapes.
Like former ¡Qué Horror! title, Lake Mungo, The Poughkeepsie Tapes plays like a documentary you might catch on cable, this time, about a serial killer’s depradations, culled from 2400 hours of video tape-- the eponymous Tapes-- he left behind for the authorities to discover.
This is a convincing piece that plays the faux doc card all the way through the end credits, not even naming the actors who appear in it (one or two who may look familiar to film geeks out there). The disturbing nature of the low-fi video clips are also effectively disquieting, without needing to resort to loads of on-screen violence; like Lake Mungo, The Poughkeepsie Tapes gets a lot of mileage from minimalism.
It’s clear to see why Hollywood has knocked on the Dowdles’ door.


Parting shot: The Poughkeepsie Tapes had its festival debut at Tribeca in 2007, but hasn’t yet seen the light of releasing day because of the recent bankruptcy troubles of MGM, which has also kept Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods in limbo, and delayed the productions of The Hobbit films (to the point where Guillermo del Toro had to back out of the director’s chair) and the next James Bond movie…

(The Poughkeepsie Tapes OS’ courtesy of moviemaze.de & bloody-disgusting.com [Tribeca OS].)