Fuzzy math takes over as we count cast members and celebrate minimalist films that can seep into your nightmares with the help of very few performers. There are some great options, but here are our six favorites films with 1, 2, or 3 people in the cast.
Thanks Fright Clubber Michael for the topic!
6. Hard Candy (2005)
It would be two years before Elliot Paige burst into public
consciousness as the hilarious and pregnant teen in Juno–still a kid
getting herself into trouble, I guess. But the trouble in Hard Candy is
tougher to manage.
Paige is a force of nature, playing off Patrick Wilson in a
cat-and-mouse game where roles are flexible. Director David Slade keeps
tensions ratcheted up to an unbearable level while Brian Nelson (who
collaborated with Spade on the underappreciated vampire flick 30 Days of Night)
twists the knife in a script as sharp and shady as these actors are wily and
hard edged. It’s a breathless exploration of all that’s bad in the world.
5. Buried (2010)
If you’re claustrophobic, you might want to sit this one
out. A tour de force meant to unveil Ryan Reynolds’s skill as an actor, Buried
spends a breathless 95 minutes inside a coffin with the lanky Canadian, who’s
left his quips on the surface.
Writer Chris Spalding stretches credibility as he tries to
keep the crises lively, which is unfortunate because the simple story and
Reynolds’s raw delivery makes this a gut-wrenching experience.
4. Creep (2014)
This true two-man show boasts dark and twisted humor, a
great jump scare, and a truly exceptional mask.
Writer/director Patrick Brice plays Aaron, hapless videographer
seeking work, thrills, maybe even love. He answers an ad to record Josef (Mark
Duplass) at home, and then on the road. The film toys with that inner warning
you hear and then choose to ignore.
Duplass has an incredible aptitude for pushing boundaries just
enough to prick that inner voice but not quite enough to guarantee that you’ll
head for the exit. As red flag after red flag go unheeded, Brice unveils more
and more chilling detail.
3. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
This one is a threesome. Well, not if Howard (a glorious
John Goodman) has anything to say about it.
The feature debut from director Dan Trachtenberg toys with
the idea of an alien invasion (or some kind of chemical warfare), but it keeps
you snugly indoors with Howard and his guests Michelle (Mary Elizabeth
Winstead) and Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.). Guess which one Howard doesn’t
really want around?
The trio of performances compel your attention, even in the
few down moments. This is a tight, taut thrill ride—even if it is confined to
one guy’s basement.
2. Antichrist (2009)
Boy, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe are a one/two
punch in this one. A married couple overcoming the guilt and desperate grief of
their son’s death, the two make some increasingly dreadful decisions.
Alone in their apartment, the two bodies take up much of the
screen. Once we move to the cabin in the woods, the colors become deeper and darker,
the atmosphere denser, and the actors appear almost tiny and insignificant
inside all this throbbing, living nature. Both performances are jarring and
fantastic in a movie quite unlike any other.
1. The Lighthouse (2019)
The one thing you just don’t do as you descend into madness
is spill your beans.
Dafoe again, this time with Robert Pattinson as his wickie
mate in one of the most fascinating examinations of power shifts in horror
history. Gorgeously photographed in black and white and boasting 2019’s best
sound design, The Lighthouse offers these two actors plenty to work
with.
But in the end, it’s the performances that kill you.
Madness!
And please, if you have not sought it out yet, a film that made our Best of 2019 list—Devil to Pay—is finally available. So, while we won’t add it to this year’s list, please do watch it!
In the meantime, here are our picks for the ten best horror films of 2020.
10. His House
A remarkable braiding of human tragedy, global political peril and traditional ghost story, co-writer/director Remi Weekes’s His House was one of 2020’s great surprises. Two powerful lead performances from Sope Dirisu and Lovecraft Country’s Wumni Mosaku pull you into the story of South Sudanese refugees Vol (Dirisu) and Rial (Mosaku). You ache for them as they try to find a way to fit into their new life in London—a life where so many other refugees have failed.
Tension builds quietly but steadily as the two navigate
their new community and the rules good refugees must follow, but worry for them
and their security leaps to new heights as certain horrors bring about risky
behavior. You never know whether you’re more worried that they’ll be sent back
or they’ll have to stay.
Mosaku’s stare is weightier and more powerful than anything else
you’ll encounter in this film, but it’s balanced by the vulnerability Dirisu
brings to Bol. The two deliver an urgent and profound message about guilt,
tragedy and forgiveness.
9. She Dies Tomorrow
She Dies Tomorrow is a horror film that’s one part Coherence, one part The Beach House, one part The Signal (2007, not 2014) and yet somehow entirely its own. It helps that so few people have seen any of those other movies, but the truth is that writer/director Amy Seimetz (creator of The Girlfriend Experience) is simply braiding together themes that have quietly influenced SciFi horror hybrids of late. What she does with these themes is pretty remarkable.
Her film weaves in and out of the current moment, delivering a dreamlike structure that suits its trippy premise. Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) believes she is going to die tomorrow. She knows it. She’s sure.
She calls her friend Jane (the always amazing Jane Adams), who senses that Amy is not OK but has this obligation to go to her sister-in-law’s party…whatever, she’ll stop over on her way.
By the time Jane gets to the party, she’s also quite certain she will die tomorrow. It isn’t long before the partygoers sense their own imminent deaths; meanwhile, Amy is spreading her perception contagion elsewhere.
8. Gretel & Hansel
Sophia Lillis (IT) narrates and stars as Gretel, the center of this coming of age story—reasonable, given the change of billing suggested by the film’s title. The witch may still have a tasty meal on her mind, but this is less a cautionary tale than it is a metaphor for agency over obligation.
Alice Krige and her cheekbones strike the perfect mixture of menace and mentorship, while Sammy Leakey’s little Hansel manages to be both adorable and tiresome, as is required for the story to work.
Perkins continues to impress with his talent for visual storytelling and Galo Olivares’s cinematography heightens the film’s folkloric atmosphere.
There’s no escaping this spell. The whole affair feels like an intriguing dream.
7. The Other Lamb
The first step toward freedom is telling your own story.
Writer C.S. McMullen and director Malgorzata Szumowska tell this one really well. Between McMullen’s outrage and the macabre lyricism of Szumowska’s camera, The Other Lamb offers a dark, angry and satisfying coming-of-age tale.
Selah’s (Raffey Cassity) first period and her commune’s migration to a new and more isolated Eden offer the tale some structure. Like many a horror film, The Other Lamb occupies itself with burgeoning womanhood, the end of innocence. Unlike most others in the genre, Szumowska’s film depicts this as a time of finding your own power.
The Other Lamb does not simply suggest you question authority. It demands that you do far more than that, and do it for your own good.
6. The Lodge
Several Fiala and Veronika Franz follow up their creepy Goodnight Mommy with this “white death” horror that sees a future stepmom having a tough time getting to know the kids during a weeklong, snowbound cabin retreat. Riley Keough is riding an impressive run of performances and her work here is slippery and wonderful. As the unwanted new member in the family, she’s sympathetic but also brittle.
Jaeden Martell, a kid who has yet to deliver a less than impressive turn, is the human heartbeat at the center of the mystery in the cabin. His tenderness gives the film a quiet, pleading tragedy. Whether he’s comforting his grieving little sister or begging Grace (Keough) to come in from the snow, his performance aches and you ache with him.
There’s no denying the mounting dread the filmmakers create, and the three central performances are uniquely effective. Thanks to the actors’ commitment and the filmmakers’ skill in atmospheric horror, the movie grips you, makes you cold and uncomfortable, and ends with a memorable slap.
5. The Dark and the Wicked
Bryan Bertino is not a filmmaker to let his audience off the hook—if you’ve seen The Strangers, you know that. Like that effort, TD&TW is a slow burn with nerves fraying inside an isolated farmhouse as noises, shadows, and menacing figures lurk outside.
Bertino and cinematographer Tom Schraeder work the darkness in and around a goat farm to create a lingering, roaming dread. But where Bertino, who also writes, scores extra points is in crafting believable characters.
Too often in horror you find wildly dramatic behavior in the face of the supernatural. One character adamantly denies and defies what is clearly happening while another desperately tries to communicate with “it.” No one would do either, but this is the best way to serve the needed action to come in lesser films.
4. The Wolf of Snow Hollow
Two years ago. Thunder Road was a pretty fantastic breakout for writer/director/star Jim Cummings. A visionary character study with alternating moments of heart and hilarity, it felt like recognizable pieces molded into something bracingly original.
Now, Cummings feels it’s time to throw in some werewolves.
Cummings is officer John Marshall of the Snow Hollow sheriff’s department. John’s father (Robert Forster, in his final role) is the longtime sheriff of the small ski resort town, but Dad’s reached the age and condition where John feels he’s really the one in charge.
John’s also a recovering alcoholic with a hot temper, a bitter ex-wife and a teen daughter who doesn’t like him much. But when a young ski bunny gets slaughtered near the hot tub under a full moon, suddenly John’s got a much bigger, much bloodier problem.
At its core, The Wold of Snow Hollow is a super deluxe re-write of Thunder Road with werewolves. I call that a bloody good time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP2m2pG6Qn4
3. Werewolf
Liberation isn’t always the good time it’s cracked up to be. In his strangely hopeful tale Werewolf, writer/director Adrian Panek offers a different image of social rebuilding.
Werewolf is beautifully shot, inside the crumbling castle, out in the woods, even in the early, jarring nonchalance of the concentration camp’s brutality. Panek hints at supernatural elements afoot, but the magic in his film is less metaphorical than that.
The film is creepy and tense. It speaks of the unspeakable – the level of evil that can only really be understood through images of Nazi horror—but it sees a path back to something unspoiled.
2. Swallow
Putting a relevant twist on the classic “horrific mother” trope, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis uses the rare eating disorder pica to anchor his exploration of gender dynamics and, in particular, control.
Where Mirabella-Davis’s talent for building tension and framing scenes drive the narrative, it’s Bennett’s performance that elevates the film. Serving as executive producer as well as star, Haley Bennett transforms over the course of the film.
When things finally burst, director and star shake off the traditional storytelling, the Yellow Wallpaper or Awakening or even Safe. The filmmaker’s vision and imagery come full circle with a bold conclusion worthy of Bennett’s performance.
1. Possessor
Brandon Cronenberg’s created a gorgeous techno world, its lulling disorientation punctuated by some of the most visceral horror to make it to the screen this year. There is something admirably confident about showing your influences this brazenly.
Credit Cronenberg, too, for the forethought to cast the two leads as females (Jennifer Jason Leigh playing the remarkable Andrea Riseborough’s boss). The theme of the film, if driven by males, would have been passe and obvious. With females, though, it’s not only more relevant and vital, but more of a gut punch when the time comes to cash the check.
Possessor is a meditation on identity, sometimes very obviously so, but the underlying message takes that concept and stabs you in your still-beating heart with it.
We want to thank Cory Metcalf of the Rewatch Podcast for joining us today to look into those meticulous planners who cause so much trouble! They’ve thought of everything! Here are our 5 favorites, but listen in because Cory brought his own list.
5. Muffy, April Fool’s Day (1986)
Evil twins, Eighties icons,
chicanery—this movie has it all. The pseudo-slasher was panned when it came
out. Horror fans felt mocked (plus there’s no gore—not really), and the general
public didn’t seem to get the joke.
But Danilo Bach’s screenplay is a clever
dose of slasher desconstruction. Deborah Foreman (Valley Girl, Waxwork, My
Chauffeur, Grizzly II) is Muffy and/or Buffy, a little weirdo who’s having
some coed guests out to the island for spring break. Amy Steel (Friday the
13th Part 2) will be there, along with a lot of feathered hair
and Biff from Back to the Future, to see what the hostess has planned.
She has definitely done some
planning.
4. Ann, Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
OK, no one’s saying it’s a good movie. But Ann has a real
knack for planning.
This is one of those Eighties horror gems that involves a
traumatic head injury, black outs, and serial murder. And a latex face!
Director J. Lee Thompson had made classics like Cape Fear
and Guns of Navarone (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), but the
Eighties were hard on everyone. Here he is ushering Little House on the
Prairie star Melissa Sue Anderson into scream queen stardom with a ridiculous
slasher.
And yet, when the big reveal comes, audiences couldn’t have
guessed it. They really couldn’t have because the team of screenwriters hadn’t
finished the script until it was time to shoot the end. So they were not good
planners.
That Ann, though…
3. Howard, 10 Cloverfield Lane
(2016)
First of all, John Goodman. He’s always good, absolutely
always, but in this film he is stone cold terrifying.
Not right off the bat, though. Howard (Goodman) had things
all figured out, but then Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) threw a monkey in the
wrench and now there are three people down in Howard’s bunker waiting out the
alien invasion.
Emmett was not part of the plan.
The plan has Howard living out the end of days alone with
Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), whether she wanted to or not. And so
unfolds a fascinating series of well-constructed events that fray your nerves.
2. Ji-Tae Yoo, Oldboy (2003)
Yes, we’ve included this movie on another list. And why not?
How many horror movie characters have the patience to plot out this 15-year-long
revenge? Who else has figured out how exactly to manipulate his foe, to wear him
down, to put him into a situation that makes him realize just how wrong he
might have been?
Only Yoo Ji-Tae (Woo-jin Lee). We’ve given credit many times
over the years to Choi Min-sik (the man can take a beating). But the elegant
and controlled counterpart to Oldboy’s disheveled eruption of humanity is just
as important. He is an eerie calm. His character represents every opposite
thing.
And he’s been planning every detail of this revenge for 15
years.
1. John Doe, Seven (1995)
Who else? He had everything and everyone figured out. He
knew his calling, understood his victims, knew his own weakness, and knew how
to become immortal.
And David Fincher knew how to surprise an audience. We
should have seen it coming. We should have known. But we did not. Sure, that
means we enjoyed the film, its creativity and cleverness startled us and stayed
with us. (Just like those different
crime scenes did. Don’t tell me Sloth didn’t make you jump!)
But it also means that John Doe isn’t the only meticulous
planner. Andrew Kevin Walker knew how to create a character who’s meticulous
nature allowed him to outthink the police, but David Fincher’s eye for detail
and instinct for mood is the reason Se7en still compels attention and horror 25
years later.
Well there’s an uncomfortable topic! Of course, that’s what makes it so perfect for horror. Any idea that automatically induces a wince or a grimace, anything you want instinctively to turn away from, immediately creates the kind of discomfort that only horror can truly manipulate.
It’s been used for lurid ends in films like Flowers in the Attic, and has become the source of comedy in others – Tromeo and Juliet springs to mind. But often, it creates a particular kind of tension that drives a film in truly horrific directions: Jug Face, Crimson Peak, Pin, Angel Heart, The Crazies.
Here are the films we think handle the topic best. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
6. 100 Bloody Acres (2012)
A testament to the entrepreneurial spirit and the bonds of family, 100 Bloody Acres is Australia’s answer to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Same body count and more blood, but a far sweeter disposition and loads more laughs.
Brothers Reg (Damon Herriman) and Lindsay (Angus Sampson) sell organic fertilizer. Business is good. Too good. Demand is driving the brothers to more and more extreme measures to gather ingredients.
Interesting the way writing/directing brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes explore sibling rivalry, but the film’s strength is in its humor: silly enough to make even the most repugnant bits enjoyable. (I’m looking at you, Aunt Nancy. Oh, no! Why did I look?!)
5. The Woman (2011)
There’s something not quite right about Chris Cleese (an unsettlingly cherubic Sean Bridgers), and his family’s uber-wholesomeness is clearly suspect. This becomes evident once Chris hunts down a feral woman (an awesome Pollyanna McIntosh), chains her, and invites the family to help him “civilize” her.
The film rethinks family – well, patriarchy, anyway. You know from the opening, sunshiny segment that nothing is as lovely as it seems, but what lurks underneath this wholesome facade begins with some obvious ugliness—abuse, incest—but where it leads is diabolical.
Nothing happens in this film by accident – not even the innocent seeming baking of cookies – nor does it ever happen solely to titillate. It’s a dark and disturbing adventure that finds something unsavory in our primal nature and even worse in our quest to civilize. Don’t even ask about what it finds in the dog pen.
4. Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
Writer/director Rolf de Heer’s astonishing film is horribly marred by the fact that a cat is, in fact, killed on camera, so buyer beware. For most people, that will be reason enough to miss this one. But that just makes the director’s choice that much more tragic, because this is a really good movie.
Nicholas Hope is astonishing as the titular Bubby, a 30-year-old manchild who’s never, ever left the room he keeps with his mum.
Remember the Oscar-winning indie film Room? Remember how tragedy is somehow skirted because of the courageous love of a mother for her son? Well, this was not Bubby’s mum. Bad things are happening in that room, and once Bubby is finally free to explore the world, his adventure is equal parts deranged and soul-crushing. Hope is so frustratingly empathetic in the lead that no matter what he does, you root for him. You root for friends who will love him, for someone who will care for him, but it’s the resigned cheerfulness with which he faces any kind of abuse that really just kills you.
This taboo-shattering film is so wrong in so many ways, and yet it’s also lovely, optimistic, sweet, and funny. And just so, so fucked up.
3. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Director John McNaughton’s picture offers a uniquely unemotional telling – no swelling strings to warn us danger is afoot and no hero to speak of to balance the ugliness. He confuses viewers because the characters you identify with are evil, and even when you think you might be seeing this to understand the origins of the ugliness, he pulls the rug out from under you again by creating an untrustworthy narrative voice. His film is so nonjudgmental, so flatly unemotional, that it’s honestly hard to watch.
What’s diabolically fascinating, though, is the workaday, white trash camaraderie of the psychopath relationship in this film, and the grey areas where one crazy killer feels the other has crossed some line of decency.
Rooker’s performance unsettles to the bone, flashing glimpses of an almost sympathetic beast now and again, but there’s never a question that he will do the worst things every time, more out of boredom than anything.
It’s a uniquely awful, absolutely compelling piece of filmmaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcM5L-ZBmXk
2. The Loved Ones (2009)
Writer/director/Tasmanian Sean Byrne upends high school clichés and deftly maneuvers between gritty drama and glittery carnage in a story that borrows from other horror flicks but absolutely tells its own story.
Brent (Xavier Samuel) is dealing with guilt and tragedy in his own way, and his girlfriend Holly tries to be patient with him. Oblivious to all this, Lola (a gloriously wrong-minded Robin McLeavy) asks Brent to the end of school dance. He politely declines, which proves to be probably a poor decision.
Inside Lola’s house, we’re privy to the weirdest, darkest image of a spoiled princess and her daddy. The daddy/daughter bonding over power tool related tasks is – well – I’m not sure touching is the right word for it.
The Loved Ones is a cleverly written, unique piece of filmmaking that benefits from McLeavy’s inspired performance as much as it does its filmmaker’s sly handling of subject matter.
1.Oldboy (2003)
This is the one that’s utterly spoiled by the upfront knowledge of incest. It’s also easily the best example of the topic’s handling in a horror film, plus the movie is 17 years old, so we went ahead and included it. Sue us. You were warned.
A guy passes out after a hard night of drinking. It’s his daughter’s birthday, and that helps us see that this guy is a dick. He wakes up a prisoner in a weird, apartment-like cell. Here he stays for years and years.
The guy is Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi). The film is Oldboy, director Chan-wook Park’s masterpiece of subversive brutality and serious wrongdoing.
Choi is unforgettable as the film’s anti-hero, and his disheveled explosion of emotion is perfectly balanced by the elegantly evil Ji-tae Yu.
Choi takes you with him through a brutal, original, startling and difficult to watch mystery. You will want to look away, but don’t do it! What you witness will no doubt shake and disturb you, but missing it would be the bigger mistake.
In horror, it’s often what you hear—not what you see—that terrifies you. Who can send chills of terror or thrills of another kind with just a whisper? We talk about the best voices in horror.
5. William Marshall
Effortlessly elegant, William Marshall commands respect even before he speaks. It’s impossible to imagine him playing Bar Patron #2. This is the man who tells you what to do, and you listen. You comply. And you hope he keeps talking.
4. Keith David
A classically trained singer, Keith David uses his voice like a tool of his trade. Voice over work, stage acting, song, drama, horror—his buttery baritone leaves an impression everywhere.
3. Christopher Lee
Like another great British actor with another unforgettable voice, Boris Karloff, Lee gained fame playing characters who barely (if ever) spoke. But soon enough, he was lending his saucy baritone to literally hundreds of projects from film to voice overs, theater to music. His elegant growl brought terror to The Lord of the Rings films, but long before that, it graced Anthony Shaffer’s The Wicker Man screenplay with perhaps the greatest delivery it could have hoped for.
2. Tony Todd
Todd’s physical presence guaranteed that he be noticed in a scene, but that voice made sure no one else would be. Seductive and sinister, tender and terrifying, the voice alone made you believe that Helen (or anybody else, for that matter) could be seduced regardless of the known danger.
1. Mercedes McCambridge
Like Nick Mancuso in Black Christmas and Teresa Wright in The Exorcist III, Mercedes McCambridge offered a show stopping, horror classic performance without even having to show up to the set.
The Oscar winner deepened her already gravelly voice with cigarettes and liquor to conjure a sound so sinister, it gives you chills.
Thrilled to be asked by Nightmares Film Festival to interview filmmaker Natalie James. The Relic director talks about the transition from shorts—like her NFF winning Creswick—to features.
Cartoons can be scary. Scooby Doo knew it. You can paint a nightmare in a way that no amount of CGI or practical effects can really execute. Animation frees a filmmaker from the constraints of the concrete world, allowing for more imaginative storytelling. Here are our favorite animated horror gems.
5. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)
Feature length, R-rated anime is so often a simple excuse for fantasy fulfillment aimed at stunted adolescents of all ages. Director Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s 1987 film Wicked City certainly is that.
But in 2000, working from a story based on Hideyuki Kikuchi’s novel, Kawajiri executed the near-impossible. He made a sequel that was better than its much beloved predecessor (1985’s Vampire Hunter D).
Gothic and futuristic, beautifully drawn and nicely paced without losing the energy of the genre, Bloodlust delivers a gorgeous, bloody time.
4. Perfect Blue (1997)
This psychosexual thriller might feel garden variety if it had been made into a live action film. A young woman trades in her innocent image to take on more suggestive roles as an actress, only to find her fans turning on her in violent ways. Or is it an internal conflict over the way men and the media need to sexualize her that’s fragmenting her own mind?
In director Satoshi Kon’s anime vision, those familiar thriller tropes take on an unseemly dreamy quality. The animation style suggests more about the way mass media consumes a sexualized idea of innocence than any live action film could muster, and the hallucinatory quality achieved in the film would never have played this well in any other style.
3. Seoul Station (2016)
An animated side story to writer/director Sang-ho Yeon’s blistering zombie flick Train to Busan, Seoul Station gives us a chance to see what’s happening in other parts of Korea while Soo-an and her dad try to make it off the train alive.
A gripping story of people on the fringe, Seoul Station also boasts some incredibly imaginative animation. Scenes teem with slaughter, salvation, and social anxiety in a film that takes anime into reaches unsought before.
2. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Tim Burton penned and produced, directed by Henry Selick (Coraline), this tale of the Halloweentown/Christmastown mash up became an instant and unbreakable Goth favorite. Jack Skellington (“What’s happenin’, bone daddy?”) just doesn’t feel the same kind of love for Halloween that’s kept him motivated lo these many years. A little melancholy, he heads into the woods, only to take a wrong turn and find himself in the land of Christmas. Naturally, he and his fellow ghouls – meaning no real harm, you see – decide to kidnap Santa and run Christmas themselves… just this once.
The story, the music (by Danny Elfman, natch), the inspired stop-action style animation, and that sweetly macabre sensibility that Burton brings to every project spoke to the Nineties generation and continues to speak to outsiders, monsters, and lovers of animation everywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3xTgBED5cQ
1. Fear(s) of the Dark (2007)
A French import perfectly suited to a dark and stormy Halloween night, the film brings together some of the top graphic artists in Europe and America to present six animated vignettes that showcase some of the mind’s deepest fears.
The human mind is always more capable of true horror than any teenage slasher movie, and that is what this film is interested in exploring. shorts delve into social anxiety, sexual insecurity, sociopathic tendencies, needles, dismemberment and the good old fashioned fear of the dark to achieve an overall feel of impending doom. You’ll get goosebumps without really knowing why.
We haven’t been able to leave home in months, which means that home has kind of turned into its own horror show. For us, that’s Ohio, so we figured, why not celebrate?! In honor of our own home grown horror show, we dug into the best horror movies set right here in OH-IO!
5. Scream 2 (1997): Windsor College, OH
Updating his celebratory meta-analysis of genre clichés, Craven checked back in on Sydney Prescott (Neve Campell) and crew a couple years later, as the surviving members of the Woodsboro murders settled into a new semester in the little Ohio liberal arts school of Windsor College. The movie Stab, based on the horrors Sydney and posse survived (well, some didn’t survive) just two years ago is already out and screening on campus, but has it inspired copycat killers?
Craven, working again from a screenplay by Kevin Williamson, goes even more meta, using the film-within-a-film technique while simultaneously poking fun at horror sequel clichés in his own horror sequel.
And in the same way Scream subverted horror tropes while employing them to joyous results, the sequel – funny, tense, scary, smart, and fun – manages to find freshness by digging through what should be stale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG0oUO4mK4A&t=29s
4. Tragedy Girls (2017): Rosedale, OH
Heathers meets Scream in the savvy horror comedy that mines social media culture to truly entertaining effect.
Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and McKayla (Alexandra Shipp) are looking for more followers to improve their brand, and they have been doing a lot of research to make their content more compelling. The Tragedy Girls plumb their small Ohio town’s surprising death toll with more insight than the local police seem to have. Where do they get their knowledge?
Provocative.
Hildebrand and Shipp (both X-Men; Hildebrand was the moody Negasonic in Deadpool while Shipp plays young Storm in the franchise proper) nail their characters’ natural narcissism. Is it just the expectedly shallow, self-centeredness of the teenage years, or are they sociopaths? Who can tell these days?
3. The Faculty (1998): Herrington, OH
The film exaggerates (one hopes) the social order of a typical
Ohio high school to propose that it wouldn’t be so terrible if all the teachers
and most of the students died violently, or at least underwent such a horrific
trauma that a revision of the social order became appealing.
Indeed, in this film, conformity equals a communicable disease.
Adults aren’t to be trusted; high school is a sadistic machine grinding us into
sausage; outcasts are the only true individuals and, therefore, the only people
worth saving. Director Robert Rodriguez pulls the thing off with panache, all
the while exploring the terrifying truth that we subject our children to a very
real and reinforced helplessness every school day.
Interestingly, the infected teachers and students don’t turn into
superficial, Stepford-style versions of themselves. For the most part, they
indeed become better, stronger, more self-actualized (ironically enough)
versions, which is interestingly creepy. It’s as if humanity – at least the
version of it we find in a typical American high school – really isn’t worth
saving.
2. Trick ‘r Treat (2007): Warren Valley, OH
Columbus, Ohio native Michael Dougherty outdid himself as writer/director of this anthology of interconnected Halloween shorts. Every brief tale set in sleepy Warren Valley, Ohio compels attention with sinister storytelling, the occasional wicked bit of humor and great performances, but it’s the look of the film that sets it far above the others of its ilk.
Dougherty takes the “scary” comic approach to the film—the kind you find in Creepshow and other Tales from the Crypt types—but nothing looks as macabrely gorgeous as this movie. The lighting, the color, the costumes and the way live action bleeds into the perfectly placed and articulated moments of graphic artwork—all of it creates a giddy holiday mood that benefits the film immeasurably.
Dylan Baker (returning to the uptight and evil bastard he perfected for his fearless performance in Happiness) leads a whip-smart cast that includes impressive turns from Brian Cox, Anna Pacquin, Leslie Bibb and Brett Kelly (Thurman Merman, everybody!).
And it’s all connected with that adorable menace, Sam. Perfect.
1. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): Springwood, OH
Teens in suburban Ohio share nightmares, and one by one, these teens are not waking up. Not that their disbelieving parents care. When Tina woke one night, her nightgown shredded by Freddie’s razor fingers, her super-classy mother admonished, “Tina, hon, you gotta cut your fingernails or you gotta stop that kind of dreamin’. One or the other.”
Depositing a boogieman in your dreams to create nightmares that will truly kill you was a genius concept by writer/director/Clevelander Craven because you can only stay awake for so long. It took everyone’s fear of nightmares to a more concrete level.
The film was sequeled to death, it suffers slightly from a low budget and even more from weak FX that date it, but it’s still an effective shocker. That face that stretches through the wall is cool, the stretched out arms behind Tina are still scary. The nightmare images are apt, and the hopscotch chant and the vision of Freddie himself were not only refreshingly original but wildly creepy.
What were we looking for? Reboots/remakes that are superior to the original. There are more than you think. In the podcast, we run through eight horror reboots that are superior to the original, kick around another handful that are Even Stevens, and argue about several that could maybe go either way (depending on which one of us you’re talking to). So, you know, have a listen.
5. Dawn of the Dead
Zack Snyder would go on to success with vastly overrated movies, but his one truly fine piece of filmmaking updated Romero’s Dead sequel with the high octane horror. The result may be less cerebral and political than Romero’s original, but it is a thrill ride through hell and it is not to be missed.
The flick begins strong with one of the best “things seem fine but then they don’t” openings in film. And finally! A strong female lead (Sarah Polley). Polley’s beleaguered nurse Ana leads us through the aftermath of the dawn of the dead, fleeing her rabid husband and neighbors and winding up with a rag tag team of survivors hunkered down inside a mall.
In Romero’s version, themes of capitalism, greed, and mindless consumerism run through the narrative. Snyder, though affectionate to the source material, focuses more on survival, humanity, and thrills. (He also has a wickedly clever soundtrack.) It’s more visceral and more fun. His feature is gripping, breathlessly paced, well developed and genuinely terrifying.
4. Suspiria
Luca Guadagnino continues to be a master film craftsman. Much as he draped Call Me by Your Name in waves of dreamy romance, here he establishes a consistent mood of nightmarish goth. Macabre visions dart in and out like a video that will kill you in 7 days while sudden, extreme zooms, precise sound design and a vivid score from Thom Yorke help cement the homage to another era.
But even when this new Suspiria—a “cover version” of Dario Argento’s 1977 giallo classic—is tipping its hat, Guadagnino leaves no doubt he is making his own confident statement. The color scheme is intentionally muted, and you’ll find no men in this dance troupe, serving immediate notice that superficialities are not the endgame here.
3. The Ring/Ringu
Gore Verbinski’s film The Ring – thanks in large part to the creepy clever premise created by Koji Suzuki, who wrote the novel Ringu – is superior to its source material principally due to the imagination and edge of the fledgling director. Verbinski’s film is visually arresting, quietly atmospheric, and creepy as hell.
From cherubic image of plump cheeked innocence to a mess of ghastly flesh and disjointed bones climbing out of the well and into your life, the character of Samara is brilliantly created.
Hideo Nakata’s original was saddled with an unlikeable ex-husband and a screechy supernatural/psychic storyline that didn’t travel well. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger did a nice job of re-focusing the mystery.
Sure, it amounts to an immediately dated musing on technology. (VHS? They went out with the powdered wig!) But still, there’s that last moment when wee Aidan (a weirdly perfect David Dorfman) asks his mom, “What about the people we show it to? What happens to them?”
At this point we realize he means us, the audience.
We watched the tape! We’re screwed!
2. The Thing/The Thing From Another World
The 1951 original The Thing From Another World is a scifi classic, and every inch of it screams 1950s. The good guys are good, the monsters are monsters. Everything has its place. It’s reassuring.
John Carpenter’s remake upends all that with a thoroughly spectacular tale of icy isolation, contamination, and mutation.
A beard-tastic cast portrays a team of scientists on expedition in the Arctic who take in a dog. The dog is not a dog, though. Not really. And soon, in an isolated wasteland with barely enough interior room to hold all the facial hair, folks are getting jumpy because there’s no knowing who’s not really himself anymore.
This is an amped up body snatcher movie benefitting from some of Carpenter’s most cinema-fluent and crafty direction: wide shots when we need to see the vastness of the unruly wilds; tight shots to remind us of the close quarters with parasitic death inside.
The story remains taut beginning to end, and there’s rarely any telling just who is and who is not infected by the last reel. You’re as baffled and confined as the scientists.
1. The Fly
As endearing and fascinating as we find Kurt Neumann’s 1958 Vincent Price vehicle, it just doesn’t quite have the same impact once you’ve seen Jeff Goldblum peel off his fingernails.
Not because it’s gross—and it is gross AF—but because he’s fascinated by the process itself. It’s the scientist in him.
David Cronenberg knows how to properly make a mad scientist film, especially if that madness wreaks corporeal havoc. But it’s not just Cronenberg’s disturbed genius for images and ideas that makes The Fly fly; it’s the performance he draws from Goldblum.
Goldblum is an absolute gift to this film, so endearing in his pre-Brundlefly nerdiness. He’s the picture’s heartbeat, and it’s more than the fact that we like his character so much. The actor also performs heroically under all those prosthetics.
Aside from maybe the musical, there is no genre in film more dependent on sound for audience response. From the creaks, groans and jangling chains of old fashioned haunted house pics to the hiss and slither of modern monster movies, things can hardly go bump in the night if you can’t hear the bump. So George sat down and determined the best examples of sound design in horror.
That’s right, George is driving. Did Hope recommend any movies to consider when thinking through the best use of sound in horror? She did. Did any make the list?
They did not.
Well, turnabout is fair play and sound is definitely George’s jam. So here, friends and Fright Clubbers, are George’s picks for the best sound design in horrorl
5. It Follows (2014)
Like A Quiet Place and Us, It Follows
is a perfect example of how modern filmmakers are molding the soundtrack with
sound effects and even score to create the sound experience.
Writer/director David Robert Mitchell, working with
Disasterpeace on a score that incorporated music, ambient sound and sound
effects, develops an immersive, nightmarish environment for the imagination to
flourish. The synths reflect the film’s difficult-to-pin-down time period,
simultaneously reflecting a recent past as well as a currency. Meanwhile,
creaky doors and blowing wind call to mind old fashioned scares.
The score almost doesn’t sound like a score, and the sound
sets a different mood every time the different demon appears. Few films are
this masterful in the way it brings together sound track and sound effects.
Together they create an inescapable mood.
4. The Haunting (1963)
Director Robert Wise obviously knew the importance of sound
coming into this film, sitting, as it does, between his two biggest efforts, West
Side Story and The Sound of Music. But musicals are not the only
films that really deserve close attention to sound. What you hear is even more
important than what you see in a good old fashioned ghost story.
We wanted to make sure the list included at least one
example of old school Foley-style sound. Wise worked with AW Watkins, 4-time
Oscar nominee for sound design (Doctor Zhivago, Libel, Knights of the Round
Table, Goodbye Mr. Chips).
This is a great example of old time Foley sound effects used
to create the mood, making things you can’t see scary.
3. The Lighthouse (2019)
The atmosphere is thick and brisk
as sea fog, immersing you early with Jarin Blasche’s chilly black and white
cinematography and a Damian Volpe sound design echoing of loss and one
persistent, ominous foghorn.
For
everything Eggers brings to bear, from the Bergmanesque lighting and spiritual
undertones to the haunting score to the scrupulous set design to images
suitable for framing in a maritime museum – not to mention the script itself
– The Lighthouse works because of two
breathtaking performances.
But what a world Eggers and crew create for Robert Pattinson
and Willem Dafoe.
2. Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Madman Peter Strickland (In Fabric) made an entire film
about sound, and it gets so much right. Not just about sound—about the era, the
equipment, giallo sensibilities and moviemaking.
Strickland, working with a sound department of 34, creates a
psychological experience through sound almost exclusively. The amazing Toby
Jones plays Gilderoy, flown in specifically to helm the sound in a horror
movie.
“This isn’t a horror movie. This is a Santini movie!”
Gilderoy’s arc is profound, and sound is our only window
into what is changing him. We don’t see what he sees, only his reaction to it
and the sound of it that makes his psychological breakdown believable.
1. Alien (1979)
The great soundman Ben Burtt, with an impressive team and
the direction of Ridley Scott, uses silence as another instrument in the
terrifying sound design for this film.
Given the tag line, that powerful use of silence is more
than evocative, it’s required. But layered in, Burtt offers plenty of aural
evidence that this spaceship is not like those we were used to seeing onscreen.
The Nostromo is no sleek vehicle. Creeks and chains, water leaks and thudding
echoes depict a dilapidated bucket of bolts, giving Alien a creaky old
house atmosphere.
From the chest bursting, Ash’s unattached vocal cord
gurgling to the hissing sound the creature makes as he announces his presence,
the sounds in this film have been copied and retooled as often as its storyline
and look. But there is only one first time.
