A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year
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THE DEVIL'S CANDY

(September 2015)

"We've come to the place where we joke about the idea of the Devil. With the horns and the tail and all that. But that is Satan’s Lie. To distract us from the reality of who He is.”

Writer/director Sean Byrne was last ‘round these parts when his feature debut, The Loved Ones, nabbed the Aussie Horror Runner-Up slot on the ¡Qué horror! 2011 rundown.

He’s back (and no longer a blood-spattered bridesmaid!), with his brutally metal follow-up, The Devil’s Candy.

Here, Byrne takes the “a family’s hopes for a new life are shattered when they encounter the darkness that comes along with the new house they just bought” set-up and serves up a disturbing look at a world where evil is insidiously ubiquitous, where a prominent art gallery is called Belial (as in “Now that you’re being represented by Belial, it’s time for you to start getting used to nice things.”) and has an employee named Mara (as per the Buddhist demon).

Byrne gathers an interestingly effective cast here, which includes Shiri Appleby (who’s come a long way from Roswell’s Liz), Ethan Embry (who’s come an even longer way from Empire Records’ lovable goofus Mark), and the creeptastic Pruitt Taylor Vince.

There are also brief, but memorable appearances by Leland Orser (whose Father David Gideon lays on the film’s central thesis via a “Thought for the Day”) and Tony Amendola (taking a break from playing Once Upon a Time’s Geppetto to embody Leonard of Belial).

So, yeah, let’s all raise those horns and savor The Devil’s Candy, as Sean Byrne continues to show us just how wickedly serious he is about his horror…

“I have to feed Him children… ‘cause children are His candy.”

(The Devil’s Candy OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

The Preliminaries

"It is happening again."
The time of year for another ¡Qué horror! rundown.

Before we get to the main list, a number of titles (film and television) that, for one reason or another, did not quite cross the line into “horror,” but were nonetheless noteworthy pieces that I felt needed to be acknowledged here.

SPLIT

(September 2016)

“Rejoice!

“The broken are the more evolved.

“Rejoice.”

This one straddled the thriller/horror line, and was ultimately a slam bang run-up to the already on-its-way Glass.

(Though don’t get me started on how this, coupled with Unbreakable, seems to point to Shyamalan echoing Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run just a bit too closely.)

BATES MOTEL

(February 2017)

While Bates Motel’s final season initially seemed to indicate that it was finally going to crack into the main rundown, at long last firmly crossing the thriller/horror line, shortly after the sly and gutsy inversion of episode 6, “Marion,” the show settled into tragic, dysfunctional family drama mode.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved this final season (which is why it’s getting a mention here), but, once again and for the final time, Bates Motel stared knowingly at the thriller/horror line, and pointedly declined to cross it.

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN

(May 2017)

Now this was something I’d never really imagined happening, but I’m so, so glad it did.

And, as with most of David Lynch’s oeuvre, while there are streaks and dollops of horror running through it, it’s a piece that really can’t be classified as “horror” (and I’m almost certain Mr. Lynch wouldn’t think of it as that, either).

And just as he did on Twin Peaks’ original ABC run, Lynch not only pushes the television envelope here, he tears it to shreds.

The a tad over 40 minute journey we take in episode 8, in which we meet the “Woodsman” (AKA Mr. “Got-a-Light?”) is the most harrowing 40 minutes of television I have ever seen.

After over a quarter of a century, Twin Peaks still remains the Best Television Show I have been blessed to have experienced, and The Return is a blistering and thoroughly welcome third season addition to it.

Oh, and good on the Roadhouse, for upping their game with the musicians they’ve invited onto their stage…

“… I don’t even know what to call it… this piece of art or… ‘cause I feel like calling it a television show… it aired on television, but it doesn’t feel like a television show for all the best possible reasons…”

--Damon Lindelof, on Twin Peaks: The Return

(Split & Twin Peaks: The Return OS’ courtesy of bloody-disguting.com; Bates Motel OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #17

A DARK SONG

(July 2016)

"This is a serious undertakin'. It's not fuckin’ astral projection or runes. This is real stuff we’re playin’ with.

“Real angels, real demons.”

Writer/director Liam Gavin’s feature debut, A Dark Song, is a vastly impressive piece that sees Sophia (Dark Touch’s Catherine Walker) hire Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram from TV’s Glue and The Living and the Dead) to help her with a heavy-duty occult ritual.

Isolated along with the pair in a house in the Welsh countryside, we watch as they gradually move through the varying stages of the ritual, moving inexorably towards its culmination.

“Science describes the least of things. The least of what something is.

“Religion, magick… bows to the endless in everything. The mystery.”

This isn’t some Dr. Strange fancy-hand-gestures-with-spinning-CGI-sparklers-as-background magic, mind.

This is the exacting, torturous world of ritual magick we’ve stepped into, where tiny and seemingly innocuous signs are meant to be interpreted as supernatural portents of massive weight and undeniable gravity, manifestations of the divine (or the infernal).

A world where everything comes at a steep price.

And Gavin places us right in the middle of this occult crucible, compelled to watch as Sophia suffers the rite’s rigors, as she burns with the righteous flame of her personal desire.

“This is the price of our rage. Embrace it, don’t fear it. It’s you and it’s me.

“Poor us.”

(A Dark Song OS’ courtesy of comingsoon.net & screenanarchy.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #16

IT COMES AT NIGHT

(April 2017)

Writer/director Trey Edward Shults' second feature film, It Comes at Night, sets us down in the middle of yet another post-apocalyptic scenario. To the film’s benefit, the narrative doesn’t play out as per your usual post-apocalypse de rigueur.

We don’t witness the catastrophe that triggers the collapse (and specific details are never really offered). All we really know is the unfortunate can become sick, and when that happens, drastic measures need to be taken.
Instead, the story’s focus is Paul (Joel Edgerton, also the film’s Executive Producer) and his family (wife, teen-aged son, and father-in-law’s dog, Stanley) living far away from the city.

Shults tells his story at a very slow and deliberate pace, and some may even wonder if this is actually a “horror movie.”

Since it’s in the running for a ¡Qué horror! 2017 slot, it’s safe to assume I believe it qualifies. Because, while the journey is a slow, low-key one, the ultimate destination is a harrowingly brutal gut punch, the horror, the kind that underscores the tragic hollowness of that most banal and grotesque of platitudes uttered in the face of mind-numbing, soul-crushing disaster: “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

(It Comes at Night OS’ courtesy of aintitcool.com & bloody-disgusting.com.)

So we've gone from Imminent to November 2017.

It's called Silver Like Dust, and we hope to see all you mighty fine folk at the November Komikon to help celebrate Maskarado’s 25^th anniversary.

Updates when we've got 'em.
 

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #15

GET OUT

(January 2017)

"Fairer skin has been in favor for the past, what, couple of hundreds of years? But now the pendulum has swung back.
"Black is in fashion.”

Anyone who’s passingly familiar with my writing or has been to the Iguana more than once would, in all likelihood, have noticed my preference for genre pieces that have something to say.

That’s the kind of genre material I’m deeply interested in, the ones that use the tropes and the conventions and the form as a platform to delve into important, vital matters. The kind of material that says something to its audience about the world they live in.

And if you’ve seen the trailer for Jordan Peele’s feature directorial debut, Get Out (which Peele also wrote the screenplay for), it should be fairly obvious that the film is about race, and its ugly, bigoted offspring, racism.

“Chris, you gotta get the f*ck up outta there, man! You in some Eyes Wide Shut situation. Leave, motherfu--”

The Fades’ and Black Mirror’s Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris Washington, who is being introduced to--and spending the weekend with--his girlfriend’s parents (played by the always marvelous Catherine Keener and a vaguely unrecognizable Bradley Whitford).

And when that happens in a Blumhouse film, you just know things are gonna get ug-leeee…

To say anything more is not really my style here at the Iguana; it would also be a frank disservice to the extraordinary piece Peele and company have brought to the screen.

Suffice it to say that if you, like me, have a taste for horror with a brain, then Get Out.

Now!

“I mean, I told you not to go in that house…”

Parting Shot:

For those who know Jordan Peele as half of the comedy sketch duo Key & Peele, note that at the age of 13, he knew he wanted to be a horror film director.

Apparently, the whole comedy thing was a huge detour, but he’s managed to find his way back to the dream.

A few more things to look forward to from Peele:

The 4 other “social thrillers” (his term) that he plans to work on, of which he has this to say: “The best and scariest monsters in the world are human beings and what we are capable of especially when we get together. I’ve been working on these premises about these different social demons, these innately human monsters that are woven into the fabric of how we think and how we interact, and each one of my movies is going to be about a different one of these social demons.”

He’s also teamed up with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot to adapt Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country for HBO (it’s been given a straight-to-series order).

Amazon.com has this to say about Lovecraft Country: [Ruff] makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.

Yes, please. Some more of that…

(Get Out OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

Yeah. So that's totally a thing.

An imminent thing.

But is it:

A) A collaboration between the mighty fine Reno Maniquis and yours truly

B) A cross-dimensional team-up of Maskarado and Dakila

C) A humbling honor for me as I pitch in to help Reno celebrate Maskarado’s 25^th anniversary by telling a story

D) All of the above

It is, of course, all of the above, people!

All.

Of.

The.

Above.

Boom.

Updates when we’ve got ‘em.