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

[13 of 13]

+1

(March 2013)

“So. I have many surprises in store for us tonight. Enjoy the festivities.”

Director Dennis Iliadis storms back into ¡Qué horror! territory with +1, where David (Rhys Wakefield) and his friends find themselves at the strangest party ever.

Bill Gullo pens the screenplay here, from a story by Iliadis, and it isn’t really spoiling much to say that the film takes an intriguing angle on the idea of the doppelgänger (you’ll gather as much from both the trailer and the blurb--courtesy of Evan Dickson of bloody-disgusting.com--on the one sheet).

Layered and disturbing like a particularly excellent Twilight Zone tale, +1 is another solid title from Iliadis.

“May your good health be twofold.”

(+1 OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

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

[12 of 13]

JUG FACE

(January 2013)

Chad Crawford Kinkle’s feature debut, Jug Face, walks firmly and comfortably in the fine horror tradition of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, where a secluded community harbors a long and dark tradition steeped in sacrifice.

Here, Lauren Ashley Carter is the luckless Ada, whose desperate need to keep her shameful secret safe upsets the unsettling status quo of her small backwoods community; Carter was one of the voice talents on Antoine Charreyron’s The Prodigies, and also appeared in Lucky McKee’s The Woman (McKee executive produces on Jug Face).

Other familiar genre faces, Sean Young and Larry Fessenden (hurrah!), are also in here as Ada’s parents.

This is certainly not your standard Hollywood horror affair, and it’s all the better for it!

(Jug Face OS courtesy of 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.)

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

[10 of 13]

AKU NO KYÔTEN

(LESSON OF THE EVIL)
(November 2012)

“And the shark, it has teeth,

And it wears them in its face,

And a knife, has Mackie Messer,

Of the knife, one sees no trace”

Based on the novel by Yûsuke Kishi, Takashi Miike’s Aku No Kyôten reunites the director with his Sukiyaki Western Django star, Hideaki Itô, who here, essays the role of the charming, psychopathic high school teacher, Seiji Hasumi.

Centered around and grounded by Itô’s commendable performance, Miike effectively highlights the terror of inexplicable violence and the horror of betrayal by a trusted figure of authority.

His familiar flourishes of violence offset by bizarre notes of odd humour will be found here, and props should also go out to him as well, for excellent usage of “The Ballad of Mack the Knife”/“Die Moritat von Mackie Messer.”

Given that we are treated to a “To Be Continued” by film’s end, I can only hope that Miike returns for the sequel.

As I’ve said before concerning Miike, I may not like all of his films, but there’s always something interesting going on in each of them, and in Aku No Kyôten, he brings his innate Miike-ness to the table, ensuring that the narrative content (basically a psycho who gets his bugf*ck crazy on with his students) is kept involving and occasionally, rather bizarro.

Which is what we really need, if we’re to keep this story going in any possible sequel…

For those unfamiliar with the more ultraviolent entries of Miike’s oeuvre, be advised that Aku No Kyôten becomes a rather difficult watch by the time we hit the third act, particularly in light of the current climate of school violence in countries like the United States.

You have been warned…

(Aku No Kyôten OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & twitchfilm.com.)

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

[9 of 13]

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ROSALIND LEIGH

(October 2012)

After making a name for himself with the magazine Rue Morgue, and then scooping up a number of awards for his short films like “The Demonology of Desire,” Rodrigo Gudiño takes on the feature film with the impressively creeptastic The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh.

Essentially a one-man show, TLWaToRL features Aaron Poole (who can also be seen in fellow ¡Qué horror! 2013 title, The Conspiracy), as the estranged son of the titular Rosalind, who returns to his mother’s home in the wake of her passing, only to experience some slow-burn and creepily ambiguous horror. A disembodied Vanessa Redgrave--providing voice-over as the deceased Rosalind--adds a lot to the proceedings with merely the use of her pipes.

No less than Clive Barker gave this one his thumbs-up, so you would do well to check it out…

(The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

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

[8 of 13]

THE CONSPIRACY

(September 2012)

“That’s… that’s the genius of these rulers, that they’ve… they’ve created this society that’s conditioned to deny what’s right in front of its eyes.”

“Which is what?”

“That we’re slaves.”

Aaron (The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh’s Aaron Poole, who also executive produces) and Jim (Saw VI’s James Gilbert) are filmmakers shooting a documentary about conspiracies, and, in the process, fall into the deep, dark rabbit hole themselves.

It’s a simple enough premise, but writer/director Christopher MacBride (in his feature debut) presents us with a riveting faux doc that straddles that fine thriller/horror line with deftness and precision.

And though the horror here is largely more subtle and grounded than some of the other ¡Qué horror! titles this year, it’s still very much there.

The horror of conspiracy, or, more to the point, the horror of the possibility that all those nutty conspiracy theorists may actually be right after all…    

“We will fight for our freedom, because we know what freedom feels like, and this is not it! This is not it!”

(The Conspiracy OS’ courtesy of impawards.com)

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

[7 of 13]

THE BAY

(September 2012)

“My name is Donna Thompson. For three years, I and a few others have been trying to speak out about what happened in Claridge, Maryland, on July Fourth, 2009. But sometimes, words have no impact.

“But now, with the help of a website called govleaks.org, all of the digital information that was recorded that day has been obtained. All of the digital information that was confiscated.

“Now, I don’t know if anyone is gonna be watching this. I don’t know if anything is gonna happen to me as a result of me putting this out there, but I do know that I… can’t move on with my life until this story is told.”

I love Barry Levinson for having given me both Diner and Wag the Dog. He’s also brought us Rain Man, Good Morning, Vietnam, Bugsy, and The Natural, to name just a few more.

So when news broke that he was doing a horror film titled Isopod, I knew I needed to pay attention. And I kept track of this baby, watching its title morph into The Bay, all the while wondering whether Levinson could deliver the scares.

Now, the closest Levinson ever came to the weird sh!t in the past was probably Sphere, and that was certainly not a horror film. Or at least, not a horror film in the way The Bay most certainly is.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Levinson was asked if he was interested in doing a documentary about the “40% dead” Chesapeake Bay.

But after realizing there were already well-made documentaries on the subject, Levinson instead took the scientific facts and placed them in a fictional context. With the help of writer Michael Wallach, what came of this creative choice, is the wildly disturbing ecological horror of The Bay.

“The term now is ‘found footage’ but it never occurred to me. I wasn't thinking that way, I guess.  I thought, if something catastrophic like this happened in a small town and there was no media, what was going on?  Then you say, this is the first generation that records every intimate moment.  They've got cell phones, they text, email, Skype and this is the very first time you get an intimate look at the people, basically, at the core of where a catastrophe is going on around them.  I thought it was a cool idea--I could tell multiple stories and a lot of people won't have an overview because they don't know what's going on.  So, that was kind of scary, too.” *

Told across a broad spectrum of today’s varied means of communication--Skype, FaceTime, cell phones, email, text messages--as well as through video and audio recordings, The Bay has elements of both the found footage and viral outbreak genres, but in the end, isn’t really either.

In the end, what Levinson and company have given us is a terribly effective chiller with one of the ookiest parasites ever brought to the screen, a parasite that just happens to actually exist in real life.

Sure, Levinson’s isopod is a mutated version of the real thing, but still, they do occur in nature, so you really gotta wonder…

Definitely one of the freakiest and most viscerally disturbing of the ¡Qué horror! 2013 titles, The Bay is a gruesomely welcome surprise from the 70-year old Levinson, and a solid piece that should nestle comfortably with its fellow eco-horror titles.

* Barry Levinson, from an interview with shocktillyoudrop.com

(The Bay OS courtesy of impawards.com)