¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #1

INTO THE DARK

Season 1 Episode 1
THE BODY
(October 2018)

“Yeah, the one that was dressed as, ummm… uhhh… uhhh… Elsa from Frozen?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow! Marie Antoinette, you dipshit! Do you know anything about anything that’s not been made into an action figure?”
“I’m so sorry, Professor. I’m not an expert in Civil War history, okay?”

(Clears throat.)

“It has begun!” he exclaims in his best Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa*-as-Shang Tsung tones.

¡Qué horror! 2019.

And it begins here.

With Into the Dark.

In case you haven’t heard, Into the Dark is the latest horror anthology to hit the scene.

Brought to us by the unholy (but very, very welcome) alliance of Hulu and Blumhouse, what makes Into the Dark different from all the other horror anthologies out there is its structure: it isn’t one story told in serialized form over x number of episodes, but rather, a dozen distinct horror features brought to us over the course of a season.

And they’ve decided to kick off with Paul Davis’ The Body.

“I still can’t believe it’s him.”

“I know. Doesn’t he have like, 20 million Twitter followers?”

“Well… Not anymore.”

Based on his short of the same name, The Body follows a cultured and exacting hitman (Jekyll & Hyde’s Tom Bateman), who’s unfortunately inconvenienced on Halloween night, disrupting his plans of transporting the titular body of his latest victim (an apparently “famous person”) as part of his deal with his client.

Cue horror-comedy shenanigans.

“This is what death looks like, boy.”

But don’t let the word “comedy” fool you.

The Body is still very much a horror film. It just so happens to have some funny lines and some blackly comic situations baked into it.

With brief appearances by Sasha Grey and John Landis** (the Landis connection presumably stemming from Davis’ direction of the Beware the Moon: Remembering ‘An American Werewolf in London’ documentary), The Body’s a great way to kick off the Candidates list for ¡Qué horror! 2019, and if you’ve already checked out the 2018 rundown, then move smoothly onto this title for some awesome Halloween viewing.

“And why couldn’t he just kill like, Elijah Wood or someone small?”

* Who, incidentally enough, plays my hands-down favorite character on The Man in the High Castle, Trade Minister Tagomi.

** Interestingly, Landis’ An American Werewolf in London is a great example of the horror-comedy hybrid.

Parting Shot: Into the Dark presents me with an interesting conundrum. It’s a television series (or, well, “web television”) whose episodes are feature films.

So, in light of the ¡Qué horror! set-up, here’s how I’m planning to solve the conundrum:

I’m going to consider each episode as a feature film, so Into the Dark doesn’t potentially hog the TV Horror slot (since it’s going to have a dozen separate titles vying for that slot, as opposed to any other TV series, which faces the tricky and difficult task of having all the episodes in any particular season tie up into a single solid horror experience).

Considering Into the Dark as “television” here wouldn’t be fair to the other TV horror shows…

(Into the Dark: The Body OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

2018 NOVEMBER KOMIKON ANNOUNCEMENT

We're six weeks and one day out from this year's November Komikon (November 17 & 18), and look!
Announcement!

To help with the promos we're having for all you mighty fine folk this NovKon, you'll find me situated at the Visprint booth for the two-day event.
And that's because we'll be giving away a limited number of copies of some of the Visprint books that I wrote, with purchases of 'Verse and BATHALA comic books!
Yes, giving away.
For FREE!!!

Here's how that's going to work.

If your total comic book purchase comes to 150 to 249 pesos, you'll be getting a free copy of a Penumbra novella (mostly Parman



--which, incidentally enough, directly connects to the 'Verse--though there will be a few stray copies of Takod 



 and Craving available, at least while the supplies last).



If your total comic book purchase comes to 250 to 349 pesos, you'll be getting a free copy of Seroks (either Iteration 1: Mirror Man 

or Iteration 2: Once in a Lifetime).

And if your total comic book purchase comes to 350 pesos and above, you'll be getting two free copies of Seroks (your choice of Iterations, while supplies last).

So, yeah!
Freebies!
(Again, while supplies last.)

I'll be adding links to subsequent NovKon announcements to this post as we get closer to November 17 & 18 (and there will be more announcements in the days to come), so please feel free to come back to the Iguana to check for anything new every now and then.
And please also feel free to spread a link to this post around, so we can get the word out.

Freebies!!!

So there you go.

Set the dates: November 17 & 18, at the Bayanihan Center on Pioneer.
Look for me (and the freebies) at the Visprint booth!

#komikonph

Hope to see all you mighty fine folk at NovKon!

you can’t drink just six,

Dave

More Links! More Announcements!

Announcement #2 - New Comic Book Release

Announcement #3 - Discounted Compilation & Artist Alert

Announcement #4 - New 'Verse Comic Book Release & Discounted Packets

Parman excerpt

Craving excerpt

Takod excerpt

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

The Wrap-Up

And there we are, this year’s 10(+1) titles.

I can only hope that the next 12 months will result in enough Candidates to give us back our usual 13 slots.

In the meantime, those titles that I watched in the past 12 months that didn’t quite cross completely over into “horror” territory, but nevertheless deserve your attention.

THOROUGHBREDS

(January 2017)

“First it was borderline personality, then severe depression, now she thinks I'm antisocial with schizoid tendencies. She's basically just flipping to random pages of the DSM and throwing medications at me.

“But at the end of the day, I have a perfectly healthy brain. It just doesn't contain feelings. And that doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. It just means I have to work a little harder than everybody else to be good.”

Think of this black comedy as the brainier, more class-conscious cousin to Tragedy Girls.

It’s a laudable debut by writer/director Cory Finley, who’s got quite the cast here: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Anton Yelchin (R.I.P.).

MOTHER!

(September 2017)

“I’ll just… get started on the apocalypse.”

Aronofsky examines the deep, fundamental differences between men and women… by going totally nuts on domesticity!

(And that’s just one of the things this film is about!)

!

MINDHUNTER

(October 2017)

“If what we’re doing doesn’t get under your skin, you’re either more screwed up than I thought, or you’re kidding yourself.”

Diving deep into the toxicity of insanity and violence, Mindhunter is an excellent companion piece to Fincher’s masterpiece, Zodiac.

SANTA CLARITA DIET Season 2

(March 2018)

So.

Many.

Good.

Quotes!

But let’s go with this one: “If you f*ckers try to leave me somewhere I will track you down and give you so much sh!t it will make the time you didn’t take me to see One Direction feel like a walk in the godd*mn park.”

O, Season 3, where art thou?

SLICE

(September 2018)

“… once some people get an idea in their head, they just can’t shake it. Frankly, I still believe cats can speak English. They just choose not to.

“Heh. Clever sons’a b!tches.”

Delivered (har!) to us by writer/director AustinVesely, Slice posits a world where ghosts and humans co-exist (if by “co-exist” we mean, relocating all the ghosts to “fifteen city blocks of abandoned homes and businesses”--thereafter known as Ghost Town--all in the name of “beautification”).

Plus, werewolves, witches, and demons, too!

Vesely also gets plus points for unexpectedly sneaking in David Lynch; guaranteed to get my attention!

And so it goes.

Another October, another ¡Qué horror! rundown.

Let’s all have a Happy Halloween, yeah?

And if you’re in the mood for some Halloween viewing, feel free to check out this year’s batch.

(Thoroughbreds, Mother!, Santa Clarita Diet Season 2, Slice OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; Mindhunter OS courtesy of avoir-alire.com.)

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

A QUIET PLACE

(March 2018)

If you've seen the trailer, then you know the set-up: there are savage and lethal things that are attracted to noise, threatening to annihilate the human race.

To quote Elmer Fudd: “Be vewy vewy quiet.”

A Quiet Place, John Krasinski’s third directorial feature, ropes in Krasinski’s real-life spouse, Emily Blunt, as the pair portray the Abbotts, Lee and Evelyn, trying to keep their children safe and (heh) sound in this taut, tense, and at times relentless crackerjack title.

As finely crafted a horror film as this is though, what breathes life into the scenario is the cast--which includes the deaf Millicent Simmonds--who all need to convey emotion largely through expression and (subtitled) sign language.

So that’s a huge part of the draw.

Oh, and of course, the creepy-a$$ creature design by ILM.

In the words of co-screenwriter Bryan Woods, A Quiet Place was partially born from a desire “… to do a modern-day silent film that lived in the suspense genre.”

Well, sir, mission accomplished.

With a sequel currently in development, there’s no better time like the present to catch this one.

(A Quiet Place OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

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
[8 of 10]
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
[7 of 10]

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.)