10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[9 of 10]

ANNIHILATION

(February 2018)

"Isn't self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?”

Alex Garland’s Annihilation (based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer) is heady, horror-tinged science fiction, the kind we need far more than the N^th iteration of some tired SF franchise.

And while some may wonder at its inclusion here, I think it’s quite clear to those who frequent the Iguana that my definition of “horror” has always been very broad, allowing for diverse moods and tastes, from quiet elegance to raucous bombast.

Think of Annihilation as the horror of science, of nature gone horribly awry.

And not in the ‘70’s “animals go wild, nature vs man” schlock cinema sense (though there are flitting shades of that sensibility here), but rather in the sense of the horror of chaos, of the terrible, maddening possibility of having everything we take for granted twisted into unnatural and terrifying shapes.

Garland captures a grotesque beauty here, the awful majesty of seeing the mundane transfigured into the bizarre and the alien, his vision helped along tremendously by the soundscape laid down by Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow (the duo also scored Garland’s Ex Machina and Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire”).

Plus, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Natalie Portman.

Need I say more?

(Annihilation OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
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The TV Horror Slot

And it's a tie!!!

CHANNEL ZERO: NO-END HOUSE

(September 2017)

"God! I keep... waiting for one of you to understand how magnificent this place is!

"All the gifts that it can give you! Because memory is a disease!

“And then this house is the cure! How can you not see that?!”

One of the most amazing things about Channel Zero’s sophomore season is that, though it still fundamentally feels like a Channel Zero story (in so much as the Channel Zero logo doesn’t look out of place in the opening credits), it does so despite the fact that it has a different kind of horror at its core, compared to the horror of Candle Cove.

With its central themes of memory and loss and instinct and co-dependency, No-End House is also surprisingly moving, balancing out the horror with genuine emotion, thanks in no small part to a commendable cast, which includes the excellent John Carroll Lynch.

CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

With both No-End House and Butcher’s Block making the cut this year, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best of current television horror can be found.

“You were so scared of losing your mind and then you just gave it away…”

With the insidious spectre of mental illness and the desolation of sacrifice zones some of its preoccupations, Butcher’s Block is “… particularly inspired by Argento films, by Candyman, by Nicolas Roeg films” (in the words of Channel Zero’s creator and showrunner, Nick Antosca).

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson (who brought Lynch to the, ahem, table), Butcher’s Block makes it three for three for Channel Zero, and, once again, the ante is upped for its next season, The Dream Door, directed by E.L. Katz, no stranger to these parts due to Cheap Thrills.*

With reversals, a motley crew of protagonists, and a steady, occasionally hallucinatory build to a Grand Guignol climax, Antosca, Stevenson, and company have brought us a “… particularly bizarre flavor” of horror in Butcher’s Block.

Oh, and did I forget to mention?

Rutger flippin’ Hauer is in this one!

“You know, if you don’t eat enough protein, the body just starts to eat itself. Yeah, I read that in a Reader’s Digest.

“You just get so hungry, your heart will just up and eat itself! And then it moves on to your brain, and then it goes down to your spine, and suddenly, you’re just dead!

“Happens to vegetarians all the time.”

(Channel Zero: No-End House OS courtesy of impawards.com; Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block OS courtesy of dreadcentral.com.)

*Katz also directed “A is for Amateur” for ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, ABCs of Death 2, and was an associate producer on Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die, one of the Serial Killer Thriller runners-up on the 2012 rundown.

He was also co-producer on the non-¡Qué horror! title, The Aggression Scale, so, yeah… Katz has been ‘round these parts a lot, even when he wasn’t fronting a film.

Here’s hoping he comes back for The Dream Door…

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
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THEY REMAIN

(January 2018)

"History is so full of shadow.”

Opening with a quote from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Hypnos” (“Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed.”), Philip Gelatt’s They Remain deploys two elements from the horror arsenal--isolation and inexplicability--to excellent and unnerving effect.

Following a two-person, three month research mission to find a “… previously uncharacterized element--genetic, environmental or otherwise--one that might change the way we view our relationship to the natural world,” the film (based on the novella “—30—” by Laird Barron) is a slow burn descent that relies more on mood and atmosphere than narrative cause and effect, a refreshing change from Hollywood horror’s tendency to over-explicate, as if horror were made up of mere plot points in dire need of tedious exposition.

Gelatt made it onto the Candidates list for ¡Qué horror! 2012, for his feature directorial debut, The Bleeding House.

And now he's cracked into the main rundown.
Well-deserved applause all around...

“The world is large and unknowable.

“No one ever really knows anything.”

(They Remain OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
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HEREDITARY

(January 2018)

"My mother was a very secretive and private woman. She had private rituals, private friends, private anxieties.”

Annie (the always amazing Toni Collette) reads the above as part of the eulogy for her mother, Ellen.

The fact that

A) this takes place less than 5 minutes into Hereditary’s running time, and

B) the film actually opens with Ellen’s obituary

should be a clear sign that one of the movie’s main themes is the desolation of familial loss.

It’s a difficult film to get through, particularly if you’ve slogged through that brutally vicious type of grief yourself.

But of course, what writer/director Ari Aster does in his feature debut is to use that emotional wrack and ruin to delve into the secrets that gradually accrete onto any family tree, all the unspoken and repressed feelings that only manage to fester and insidiously poison if kept in the darkness of silence.

And all that is made even worse if some of those secrets are, let’s just say, not your run-of-the-mill garden variety domestic dramas…

So long as you’re prepared for the tragic and emotionally gut-wrenching aspect of Hereditary, you’ll find this to be an astoundingly solid feature debut by Aster, with a killer cast; Collette is joined by Gabriel Byrne (both of whom double up and executive produce as well) and Ann Dowd.

Plus, Alex Wolff and newcomer Milly Shapiro (who play Annie’s children) acquit themselves commendably in the shadow of that intimidating acting trio…

And how messed up is it that even after that mondo bizarro third act (which manages to capture the unsettling nightmare idea of waking up to find the sanctity of home transmogrified into a perverse charnel house, all that rot finally blooming into a pervasive malignance), I still ended up snuffling when “Both Sides Now” (the original Judy Collins recording) plays over the end titles?

Man, this movie…

“But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads,
They say I've changed,
But something's lost, but something's gained, in living every day…”

--“Both Sides Now”

(Written by Joni Mitchell)

Parting Shot:

So looking forward to Aster’s follow-up, Midsommar…

(Hereditary OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
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MUSE

(October 2017)

“The saddest of all stages for the saddest of all endings.”

One year after a personal tragedy, Professor Samuel Salomon (Da Vinci’s Demons’ Elliot Cowan, currently appearing on Krypton) has a premonitory dream of a ritual murder, and faster than you can say “Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here,” the hijinx of an occult investigation ensue.

Based on José Carlos Somoza’s novel, La dama número trece, Muse is Jaume Balagueró’s latest, and for those of you who frequent the Iguana, you’ll be familiar with my long-standing yen for Señor Balagueró’s work.  

Delving the way it does into the supernatural potency of words (with a brief aside to the explosive potential of Neruda), Muse plays almost like a love letter to poetry, but in the form of a dark fantasy/horror movie.

Anyone who favors the structures and conventions of a traditional occult tale will also find a lot to love in Muse…

Plus, Franka Potente, Christopher Lloyd, and Joanne Whalley are in this too, so, yeah, give this one a look-see!

“The end of this story has already been written.”

(Muse OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; Musa Spanish OS courtesy of screenanarchy.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[4 of 10]

THE RITUAL

(September 2017)

"Makes you feel insignificant, right?"

"Speak for yourself.”

“Come on, man, where’s your soul? These mountains were smashed out by Nordic gods with big bastard hammers!”

David Bruckner’s The Ritual is the latest in the long and (un)hallowed line of horror films that warn us that man was not meant to traipse through the deep, dark woods.

You may recognize Bruckner as a ¡Qué horror! regular, having been on the rundown three previous times--in 2008, on the inaugural online ¡Qué horror! list (for his “transmission” in The Signal); in 2012 (for his contribution to V/H/S, “Amateur Night”); and in 2016 (for his contribution to Southbound, “The Accident”*).

So if you’re keeping tabs, then it becomes quite clear that The Ritual is Bruckner’s first feature film that’s landed a ¡Qué horror! slot, and a solid title it is.

Working with a script by Joe Barton (who’s written for Humans), based in turn on the novel by Adam Nevill, Bruckner gives us a tense nailbiter that follows four friends from university, as they hike Kungsleden (“King’s Trail”), running between Sweden and Norway, a vacation that turns out to be a terrible decision, as indicated by the tagline displayed on the quad above.

Bruckner and company** kill it with this one…

“Well, this is clearly the house we get murdered in.”

* Or, alternately, “Accident”. (Even on the official Dark Sky Films website, it’s referred to by both titles…)

** Amongst the film’s executive producers, the one and only Andy Serkis.

(The Ritual UK quad courtesy of empireonline.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
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THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER

(May 2017)

While Yorgos Lanthimos' Kynodontas (Dogtooth) was a ¡Qué horror! Auxiliary in 2011, his latest, The Killing of a Sacred Deer (again co-written with Efthimis Filippou) pointedly veers into psychological horror territory, as we bear disquieting witness to all the horrible things we are capable of doing, not just behind the backs of the ones we love, but to the ones we love as well.

As with Kynodontas, there is an odd sense of absurd logic and terrible inevitability to the proceedings, as the privileged Murphys, led by Steven and Anna (Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman) become prey to machinations that threaten to tear their family apart.

There is much here that is uncomfortable and disturbing to watch, but if your horror veers away from your standard Hollywood creepy set pieces and jump scares, then The Killing of a Sacred Deer comes with a sparkling ¡Qué horror! recommendation.

 

XS: For any Clueless fans out there, a borderline unrecognizable Alicia Silverstone is excellent here in her brief appearance.

(The Killing of a Sacred Deer OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)