Halloooooooooooooooooooo!
We have arrived at the creepy season in which I get to share with you some of the spookiest films I've seen this year to
hopefully enhance your
Halloween viewing! I'm so excited!!
As you may remember, for the annual Halloween Sampler, I supplement our usual
1 - 5 rating scale with the additional bonus scary/intense rating system of 1 - 5 exclamation points, where ! = not at all scary, and !!!!! = so scary!
Because I watched a whole bunch of scary movies this year, I have decided to do an EXTENDO Halloween Sampler, now with TEN movies instead of our usual five!
GOBS OF MORTIFYING MOVIES.
FAR MORE FRIGHTENING FLICKS.
OODLES MORE FREAKY FILMS.
ETC.
Away we go!
So first of all, let's not forget that I already covered one awesome scary movie I saw this year:
"Under the Shadow" (2016).
I gave it a 4, and would give it a !!! scary rating.
And now, for this year's never-before-reviewed-here movies!
"The Beguiled" (2017)
Rating: 2 Scary Rating: !
Honestly? I struggled through this one. Which is annoying, because I love Colin Farrell for his roles in
"The Lobster" (2015) and the exquisite
"In Bruges" (2008). Kirsten Dunst is goddamned magical in
"Drop Dead Gorgeous" (1999). Nicole Kidman gave me
"The Others" (2001), one of my favorite horror movies of all time. But despite all that high caliber talent, the only characters with any goddamned sense are children. Why??
Also, because the only scary bits are scary because of behavior resulting from
toxic masculinity, which pervades so much of everything already, the moments of fear in this otherwise pretty limp movie are more triggering than fun-scary. Maybe skip this one? Instead, watch:
"My Cousin Rachel" (2017)
Rating: 4 Scary Rating: !!
Interesting, surprising, deeply and hauntingly atmospheric and psychological, this is a pretty great movie. You likely won't walk out of it feeling great, as there are definitely some shared themes between "My Cousin Rachel" and "The Beguiled." They are both period-y pieces rife with dark sexual tension brought on by the introduction of a mysterious and only-understood-when-it's-too-late character. However, where "The Beguiled" falls sadly flat, "My Cousin Rachel" unsettles and ultimately delivers through the course of its twists and turns.
"Alien: Covenant" (2017)
Rating: 2 Scary Rating: !!!
One of this year's two sci-fi offerings!
There is at least one upside of being
badly burned by the gigantic Noomi Rapace-squandering disappointment that was "Prometheus" (2012), and that is going into "Alien: Covenant" with expectations set, realistically, extremely low. That might be the main reason this film earned a rating above a 1. It was honestly pretty terrible, including one particularly unforgivable Fassbender-squared scene in which Fassbender 1 teaches Fassbender 2 to play the flute.
 |
| Why? |
That aside, there is admittedly some great art direction, the usual "Alien"-y sampling of disturbing stuff, and an occasional jump scare. If you want to unintended-laugh your way through an occasionally scary movie about creepy aliens and robots, this is definitely your film!
If you're not down to kind of waste your time, instead watch:
"The Girl with all the Gifts" (2016)
Rating: 4 Scary Rating: !!
Based on
a seriously fun book of the same name, this film is a great and fresh-feeling take on the somewhat past-its-moment zombie movie. Sennia Nanua is absolutely lovely as Melanie, the titular girl with all the (at times dubious) gifts. Given how much I enjoyed its source material, I was concerned about its status as a direct-to-home-release film. I was therefore very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the production and effects. They even recruited Glenn Close for a central character! Okay, no aliens or space stuff, but the science fiction elements make this film a great replacement for that "Covenant" crap.
"Mommy Dead and Dearest" (2017)
Rating: 4.5 Scary Rating: !!
This fascinating film follows a deeply twisted story I first learned about when I was noodling around on Buzzfeed late one insomniac night over a year ago. Given that I was trying to tune out enough that I could fall asleep again, I made the possibly ill-informed decision to read
this excellent article covering the murder of Dee Dee Blancharde. While not exactly terrifying in a jump-out-of-your-seat way, it is definitely a chilling tale.
"There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane" (2011)
Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!
This year's second documentary offering! While not at all a conventionally scary movie, the event centered in this film--a lethal, horrifying, and unexplained wrong-way car crash that killed four children, three adults in another vehicle, and 36-year-old Diane Schuler--leaves a pit in my stomach even now when I think about it, months after watching. It is an exhaustively researched and haunting study in the incomprehensibility of life's worst moments.
"The Blackcoat's Daughter" (2015)
Rating: 4 Scary Rating: !!!!
I really enjoyed this almost exclusively lady-dominated horror movie. It's a brooding, thoughtfully paced slow-burning character study that builds to a pretty horrifying crescendo, carried creepily along by the very well-partnered performances of
Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka and
American Horror Story's Emma Roberts. It's not the world's most perfect narrative in that the film tips its hand with its major twist pretty clearly if you ask me, but it's worth watching nevertheless.
"Personal Shopper" (2016)
Rating: 4 Scary Rating: !!!!
Disclosure time: I was originally ambivalent about seeing "Personal Shopper" because of Kristen Stewart's participation in some pretty bad movies, including
"Into the Wild" (2007) and the abysmally terrible, abusive-relationship-celebrating "Twilight" movie series. "Personal Shopper" has shown me that I might need to save my resentful disdain for
Robert Pattinson, because she was GREAT in this film. It artfully combines real-world psychological and violent terror with haunting, unsettling supernatural elements, creating a really interesting and well-executed yet subtle film that leaves many unnerving questions lingering unanswered.
"It" (2017)
Rating: 4.5 Scary Rating: !!!!!
So I've never read Stephen King's "It", nor have I seen the
original version of the movie, which might skew my reaction to what for many people is a major horror touchstone.
Sidenote: So It loses his power if no one fears him, huh?
So our horrifying monster is basically a hellish
Tinker Bell?
Interesting...
All that aside, I nevertheless found 2017's remake an extremely satisfying and intense good-scary time. The movie frighteningly captures the helplessness and desperation of a town refusing to see its most vulnerable citizens are being preyed upon. The imagery and mood are terrifying before the credits even begin, and the fear is skillfully sustained through the length of the film. The acting excellent across each of the film's young stars, although I particularly loved Sophia Lillis as Bev for her sweetness and vulnerability balanced against worldliness and an iron-clad will to survive. I was so invested in the story and genuinely pent up with tension that at one jump-scare I spontaneously exclaimed a curse word in the theater--but luckily everyone else in the audience was reacting so loudly my "SHIT!" got drowned out.
Best of all, however, is Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise as he takes breakneck turns between giggle-inducing zaniness, growling predation, unnatrually swift pursuit, and pointy-teethed ravenousness.
I mean what the hell is that??
And finally, by far my very favorite scary movie of the last year:
"Get Out" (2017)
Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!!!!
GUYS YOU HAVE TO SEE "GET OUT". It is all the things I want in a horror movie. It is inventive, smart, beautifully and affectingly shot, and surprisingly and compellingly told. Daniel Kaluuya beautifully slides from a discreetly discerning watchfulness into sheer, frozen terror, pulling us right along with him. Seeing "Get Out" in theaters shortly after it opened was some of the most fun I've had watching a movie in a long time--people screamed, laughed, and perched at the edges of our seats through every minute. Walking out of the theater, everyone was winded and exhilarated like we were unloading from an amazing rollercoaster.
In addition to all the great things there are to be said about "Get Out", it very clearly joins the pantheon of what are, in my opinion, truly great horror movies: movies that actively grapple with the true horrors of human existence. As I noted in previous discussions of
my love of zombie movies, horror is an excellent genre in which to explore darker aspects of human nature by pitting our angels and demons against each other.
"Under the Shadow" and pretty much all the movies covered in
last year's Halloween Sampler actively contend with the horrors women endure as consequences of sexism and misogyny, at times in the form of djinns, witchcraft, or the devil himself, and at others in the forms of oppressive governments, bombardments of war, crooked justice systems, and murderous men.
"Get Out" is very much a study in the horrors of racism. Without spoiling things, we watch Daniel Kaluuya's Chris contend with unduly suspicious cops, otherizing scrutiny and tone deaf comments from white people, and finally much darker manifestations of our nation's racist history and present that morph into decidedly sinister forces. To pull that off so beautifully while still forging a sense of thrill in its audience is illustrative of pretty superlative filmmaking, which makes me extremely excited to see
what else director Jordan Peele will accomplish.
Happy Haunting this glorious Halloween, dear readers!
{Heart}
