I watch a lot of movies. More than anything, I watch horror movies. Once in a long while, you uncover a little treasure, something that sneaks up on you with a distinct voice and magical storytelling. Such is the case with Fabián Forte’s Legions.
Antonio (Germán de Silva) recounts his life stories to the other residents in the hospital where he’s being held instead of prison. Some people call him a shaman. He prefers to be called a mediator between worlds. It’s that mediation that landed him in the hospital and caused a likely irreparable rift between him and his daughter, Helena (Lorena Vega).
But the blood moon is coming and with it a demon that will use Helena to bring about the apocalypse. To save his daughter, Argentina, and the world, Antonio has to make his daughter believe in him again.
Forte’s film traverses three different time periods and three distinct tones but the filmmaker masterfully blends them one to the next. Each new era has a different color palette and score to emphasize the change in tone, as Antonio’s stature and the respect he receives from those around him and from his daughter diminish. Finally, with a fully comedic tenor, Antonio finds himself quarantined in his old age.
In this way, Legions bears a passing resemblance to Don Coscarelli’s amazing Bubba Ho-Tep, though the humor at the expense of residents is sometimes patronizing. Still, by having patients mount a stage production of Antonio’s tales strengthens the thread connecting truth and fiction, real-life horror and entertainment, and day-to-day cynicism with faith.
Forte channels not just Coscarelli but, and far more obviously, Sam Raimi. Still, the film feels entirely its own, partly because it glides through different sub-genres so smoothly, and partly because it wears its heart on its sleeve.
At its core, Legions is a fantasy about regaining the respect of your adult children, and because of that, it’s both relatable and touching.
I’ve long felt that pre-film text-on-screen quotes are a cinematic
crutch, often pretentious musings that rarely capture the essence of the film
about to unspool.
Then, over a colorful vista of misty Appalachian mountaintops and plaintive banjo strings I read about the hardy folk populating those peaks, the descendants of criminals and oppressed alike who sought refuge in this inhospitable place.
As shadow creeps across the landscape, the quote:
“They want nothing from you and God help you if you try to
interfere.” – 2010 census worker
Welcome to The Devil to Pay, Lane and Ruckus Skye’s lyrical backwoods epic, grounded in a lived-in world most of us never knew existed.
The tale is anchored with a quietly ferocious turn by Danielle Deadwyler (who also produces) as Lemon, a hardscrabble farmer trying to keep things up and wondering where her husband has been these past days.
Deadwyler’s clear-eyed efficiency is matched with the
hillbilly condescension of one Tommy Runion (Catherine Dyer, flawless), whose
homespun advice and cheer mask a dead-eyed, sadistic sense of right, wrong and
entitlement.
One of the most tightly written thrillers in recent memory, The Devil to Pay peoples those hills with true characters, not a forgettable villain or cliched rube among them. The sense of danger is palpable and Deadwyler’s commitment to communicating Lemon’s low-key tenacity is a thing of beauty.
Hell, the whole film is beautiful, Sherman Johnson’s camera
catching not just the forbidding nature of Appalachia, but also its lush glory.
Yes, the cult that lives just outside the county line does
feel a tad convenient, but again, the Skyes and their outstanding cast carve
out memorable, realistic and terrifying characters.
The Devil to Pay remains true to these fascinating souls, reveling in the well-worn but idiosyncratic nature of their individual relationships—a tone matched by sly performances across the board. And just when you think you’ve settled into a scene or a relationship, The Devil to Pay shocks you with a turn of events that is equal parts surprising and inevitable.
It’s a stunning film and a rare gem that treats Appalachians, not as clichés, but certainly not as people to be messed with.
To some, it’s a lovely spot for a holiday or a proposal or just a little picnic. But we know better. Filmmakers have long taken advantage of the idyllic yet dangerous nature of a lake for horror. Almost always, it’s the irony, of finding death and mayhem exactly where you’re expecting joy and frivolity that makes lakeside horror so compelling.
Here are our favorite horror movies side at a lake.
5. Lake Mungo (2008)
This deceptive slow boil of a documentary is two movies in one: the one you think you’re watching and the one beneath. The obvious film is a clever true-crime bit, constantly introducing new information and fascinating twists, each delivered by incredibly authentic performances.
Alice Palmer drownd. Her parents and brother are having a hard time accepting it, and the noises coming from her bedroom at night promote their skepticism. They investigate, turning up a lot of peculiar intel.
But writer/director Joel Anderson does more than lead you through a surprising mystery. He layers into that the melancholy lonesomeness that any ghost story must have, and the two stories together become one wonderfully sad film.
4. Lake Placid (1999)
Fun! Writer David E. Kelly is known more for his quirky TV series, but he takes the exact same approach –smart, bantering and bickering characters facing a huge challenge – to the big screen with this crocodile hunt.
Veteran horror director Steve Miner (Warlock, House, Friday the 13th parts 2 & 3) delivers thrills and comedy in equal measure, but the film lives and dies with this unbelievable cast.
Betty F. White and Brendan Gleeson! Both! And she tells him to suck her dick!! I don’t know what more you want, but you get Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Bill Pullman and Meredith Salenger in a fun, bloody romp.
3. Friday the 13th (1980)
Before the mask, Sean Cunningham’s 1980 slasher penned by Victor Miller created the splatter-by-numbers blueprint for dozens of horror movies to follow – including 10 of its own sequels. Friday the 13th was a cultural and cinematic turning point that changed horror and the way we thought about summer camp.
With next to no budget but plenty of short shorts, remarkable blood fx by maestro Tom Savini, genuinely original kill sequences, and a masterful twist ending, the film awakened something in moviegoers. It’s been copycatted to death, but upon reinspection, the original is still champion.
2. Funny Games (1997/2007)
A family pulls into their vacation lake home. They are quickly bothered by two young men in white gloves. Things, to put it mildly, deteriorate.
Writer/director/genius Michael Haneke begins this nerve-wracking exercise by treading tensions created through etiquette, toying with subtle social mores and yet building dread so deftly, so authentically, that you begin to clench your teeth long before the first act of true violence.
His 2007 English language remake is a shot-for-shot repeat of the 1997 German language original. In both films, it is the villains who sell the premise. Whether the German actors Arno Frisch and Frank Giering or the Americans Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt, the bored sadism that wafts from these kids is seriously unsettling, as, in turn, is each film.
1. Eden Lake (2008)
The always outstanding Michael Fassbender takes his girl Jenny (Kelly Reilly) to his childhood stomping grounds – a flooded quarry and soon-to-be centerpiece for a grand housing development. He intends to propose, but he’s routinely disrupted, eventually in quite a bloody manner, by a roving band of teenage thugs.
Kids today!
The film expertly mixes liberal guilt with a genuine terror of the lower classes. The acting, particularly from the youngsters, is outstanding. Most impressive, Jack O’Connell’s performance as the young psychopath is chilling.
There’s the slow boil of the cowardly self-righteous. Then there’s this bit with a dog chain. Plus a railroad spike scene that may cause some squeamishness. Well, it’s a grisly mess, but a powerful and provocative one. Excellent performances are deftly handled by the director who would go on to helm The Woman in Black.
It’s a story we all know too well, some of us better than others.
With their monster movie/social justice thriller Take Back the Night, co-writer/director Gia Elliot and co-writer/star Emma Fitzpatrick spin a pointed tale about a specific character. But the universality of this monstrous situation is never in question. There is only one character with a name, and that name is Jane Doe.
This could be anybody.
Jane has a lot to drink because she is celebrating. This is a big day. But something horrific is about to squeeze out any memory of the joy of this day as she finds herself alone in an alley with a malignant force.
What sets Take Back the Night apart from other similar films is that the attack itself is not the point. Neither is the attacker. Rather, Elliot and Fitzpatrick smack you with the trauma of surviving what comes next.
Jane submits to tests and procedures, swabs and scrapes, photos and questions — all of it tough to witness — with the resigned belief that this humiliation and pain will be followed by justice. Or at least a little sympathy.
Instead, of course, she finds judgment, harassment, disbelief and the threat of prosecution.
Interesting as well that men are mainly a non-presence in the film. There’s a brief interlude in the first act, although we barely glimpse the man’s face. Jane is later interviewed by a male police officer, although he’s never seen at all, only heard in voice-over. And then there is the attacker.
What we do see are the women involved: Jane’s sister, the detective on the case, the news reporter. There are friends and fans, a woman at the party. Not one of these women does the right thing.
That’s the focus of Take Back the Night. The actions of men are irrelevant in this world of overcoming the trauma of an attack, the filmmakers seem to say. What will kill you is being abandoned by the people who should know better, who should be able to empathize.
Fitzpatrick’s fiery performance gives the metaphor its heartbeat. Flawed and hostile, her Jane challenges status-quo thinking about how victims should behave, or what makes a woman a victim in the first place. Fitzpatrick delivers something raw and believable, anchoring the fable with realism.
Not every performance is as strong and the film’s microbudget rears its head on more than one occasion. But Take Back the Night and its filmmakers deliver thrills and realizations in equal measure in a memorable feature debut.
Little donkeys are having their moment, aren’t they? EO, the star of Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest, has a lot to live up to if he’s going to shine as bright as The Banshees of Inisherin’s Jenny. Of course, he doesn’t have to share the spotlight quite as much.
This is not to say that the little grey donkey is alone for the narrative film’s 90 or so minutes. As he meanders across Europe on a grand adventure – well, life – he does come across any number of souls, some of them human (including a priceless cameo from the great Isabelle Huppert).
As we open, EO is a circus performer, beloved partner of the Great Kassandra (Sandra Krzymalska). But protestors shut down the circus, separating the two, and we follow EO.
Back in 2016, Todd Solondz made a profoundly Todd Solondz movie called Weiner-Dogthat followed one dachshund through a number of different owners. Told in vignettes, the film provided a dog’s eye view on a world of pathos and existential dread. It was absurd.
As absurd as EO sounds on paper – a donkey’s perspective on life, more or less – Skolimowski is entirely, often gorgeously serious, and utterly sincere. Our hero – a sweet and good boy if ever there was one – is not anthropomorphized. He’s a donkey, always and only a donkey, but it is his point of view we take nearly the entire tale. The approach generates almost unendurable empathy because things do not always go well for little EO.
Michael Dymek’s camera doesn’t stay strictly with EO’s eye view. At times we soar above the trees with a bird, and there are moments of human interaction that take place just outside of EO’s perspective. These sequences are, above all, stunning to view. Dymek’s cinematography amplifies the danger and joy in freedom with exquisite framing and rapturous movement.
Skolimowski pieces these images together in ways to suggest constant peril as well as beauty. It’s an emotionally exhausting journey, equal parts wonder and pessimism, and it is absolutely unlike any other movie with a dachshund or donkey. It’s unlike any other movie, period.
Neither hero worship nor maudlin tale of objectification, Corsage delivers a daring reimagining of the life of Empress Elisabeth of Hungary, played with mischievous relish by Vicky Krieps.
This is hardly the first fanciful reworking of a historical biopic. Director Pablo Larraín has reconsidered two such lives as tragic cinematic poems – 2021’s Spencer and 2016’s Jackie. Just last year, Andrew Dominik turned America’s most recognizable icon into the object of punishment porn (Blonde). While two of those films are lovely and one is unwatchable, it took filmmaker Marie Kreutzer to reimagine one iconic life without simplifying the tale’s heroine to a tragic beauty to pity.
Kreutzer’s year-in-the-life is fictional, though Empress Elisabeth was certainly real. Her presence clearly influences this picture, but Kreutzer’s fantasy – replete with the most gloriously misplaced modern songs – looks askew at the renowned and misunderstood beauty.
As Sofia Coppola did with her empathetic and under-appreciated portrait Marie Antoinette, Kreutzer and Krieps establish the startling aloneness facing a royal woman, particularly a foreign sovereign married into royalty abroad. Krieps excels in particular during scenes where Elisabeth struggles to leverage what power is available to her. The audacity of Elisabeth’s behavior unveils a fiery joy and brittle vulnerability in Krieps’s performance.
Wonderfully refreshing are the vanity and selfishness that are allowed to creep into the portrait. Corsage’s hero is no saint. She’s a free spirit to be admired, as well as a self-centered brat willing to require the sacrifice from others she’s disinterested in making herself.
Here again, Krieps is a superstar. Elisabeth’s flaws are outrageous, her strengths enviable, her oppression great. In Krieps’s hands, the composite is an endlessly compelling conundrum, as frustrating as she is fascinating.
The film sees power as freedom and acknowledges how little of it there is for women, even women who seem to have it all. In the end, it’s the film’s and Krieps’s humanity that make the final moment of freedom feel earned and victorious rather than fraught with compromise.
Candy Land is a surprise, and it’s not for everyone. This is grim stuff, but writer/director John Swab’s truck stop horror also delivers an unusual story hiding inside some same old, same old.
Remy (Olivia Luccardi) catches the eye of Sadie (Sam Quartin), one of the “lot lizards” selling their carnal wares at a bible belt truck stop. Remy’s part of a religious group here to help Sadie, Riley (Eden Brolin), Liv (Virginia Rand) and Levi (Owen Campbell) find salvation. Instead, Remy – cast out from the cult – finds Sadie, eventually deciding to learn the trade in exchange for a place to live.
Hard-right evangelicals rarely make a positive impression in a horror movie, and sex workers tend to become either heart-tugging martyrs or naked corpses (often both). To his credit, Swab has something else in mind, and while you would not call it pleasant, it’s almost refreshing.
Candy Land avoids preachiness, finding depth and humanity without condescension, both for the evangelicals and the lot lizards. There’s a sense of camaraderie among those on the job, and the naturalistic, terribly human performances sell that.
Campbell (X, My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To), in particular, shines with a turn so full of tenderness, playfulness and optimism that you hold your breath every time he’s onscreen- lest something awful happens to him.
It does. In fact, at the risk of spoiling anything but in favor of helping viewers avoid triggers, Campbell’s Levi is subjected to an especially brutal and troubling rape sequence that’s part and parcel of a film loaded with graphic sexuality and violence, often side by side. But never once is the victimization filmed to titillate, if that helps.
For its many successes, the film often feels like a rather superficial exercise in brutality if only because none of the characters have real arcs. Things end for each character essentially where they began. A provocative but undercooked B-story involving a perversely paternal police officer (William Baldwin, with his most interesting performance in years) doesn’t help.
Candy Land is a tough film to recommend for a number of reasons, but it’s worthwhile viewing if only because Swab upends every expectation, instead taking us inside a horror grounded in something surprisingly human.
What a treat we have for this episode! Producer Alok Mishra and actor Naomi Grossman join us to talk about the ghost of Peter Lawford, grand theft auto, Jessica Lange, the obstacles facing independent filming and the best apartment-based horror movies. Let’s hit it!
5. 1BR (2019)
Written and directed by David Marmor and clearly inspired by Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy,” this film is an unnerving experiment in neighborliness. And that’s even without post-lockdown trauma.
Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom) just wants to strike out on her own. Yes, she’s nervous, but maybe that’s why this new apartment building feels so right. It’s a real community where people look out for each other.
But they are not keen on pets.
Marmor and a sharp cast move through one surprising door after another. Shifting tones never throw the film off-kilter. Rather, each widens the ripple effect of horror.
4. Rec (2007)
[Rec] shares one cameraman’s footage of the night he and a reporter tagged along with a local fire department. The small news crew and two firefighters respond to a call from an urban apartment building. An elderly woman, locked inside her flat, has been screaming. Two officers are already on the scene. Bad, bad things will happen.
Just about the time the first responders realize they’re screwed, the building is completely sealed off from the outside by government forces. Power to the building is cut, leaving everyone without cell reception, cable, and finally, light. Suddenly we’re trapped inside the building with about fifteen people, some of them ill, some of them bleeding, some of them biting.
Filmmakers Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza make excellent use of their found footage approach, first by way of the news report, then because of the need to use the camera to see once power’s been cut. They play the claustrophobic nature of the quarantine to excellent effect, creating a kind of funhouse of horror that refuses to let you relax. The American reboot Quarantine is another excellent choice, but our vote has to go with the original.
3. Candyman (2021)
We return to Chicago’s now-gentrified Cabrini Green housing project with up-and-coming artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), whose works have taken a very dark turn since he learned of the Candyman legend from laundromat manager William Burke (Colman Domingo).
DaCosta’s savvy storytelling is angry without being self-righteous. Great horror often holds a mirror to society, and DaCosta works mirrors into nearly every single scene in the film. Her grasp of the visual here is stunning—macabre, horrifying, and elegant. She takes cues from the art world her tale populates, unveiling truly artful bloodletting and framing sequences with grotesque but undeniable beauty.
2. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Rosemary’s Baby remains a disturbing, elegant, and fascinating tale, and Mia Farrow’s embodiment of defenselessness joins forces with William Fraker’s skillful camerawork to cast a spell. Along with Repulsion (1965) and The Tenant (1976), Rosemary’s Baby is part of Polanski’s “apartment trilogy” – disturbing films of tension and horror in which metropolitan life and nosey neighbors conspire to drive a person mad.
Working from Ira Levin’s novel, Polanski takes all the glamour out of Satanism – with a huge assist from Ruth Gordon, who won an Oscar for her turn as the highly rouged busybody Minnie Castevet. By now we all know what happens to poor Rosemary Woodhouse, but back in’69, thanks much to Mia Farrow’s vulnerable performance, the film boiled over with paranoid tension. Was Rosemary losing it, or was she utterly helpless and in evil hands?
1. Under the Shadow (2016)
First-time feature filmmaker, Iranian Babak Anvari, treads familiar ground yet manages to shift focus entirely and create the profound and unsettling Under the Shadow.
The tale is set in Tehran circa 1988, at the height of the Iran/Iraq war and just a few years into the “Cultural Revolution” that enforced fundamentalist ideologies. Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) shelter in their apartment as missiles rain on Tehran.
Frazzled, impatient, judged and constrained from all sides, Shideh’s nerve is hit with this threat. And as external and internal anxieties build, she’s no longer sure what she’s seeing, what she’s thinking, or what the hell to do about it. The fact that this menacing presence – a djinn, or wind spirit – takes the shape of a flapping, floating burka is no random choice. Shideh’s failure in this moment will determine her daughter’s entire future.
