When you see as many movies as we do – especially horror flicks – taking us places we did not see coming is much appreciated.
Barbarian certainly does that, mashing horror, dark comedy and social commentary to wild and mostly satisfying ends.
Tess (TV vet Georgina Campbell) is in Detroit for a job interview. She books an Airbnb in an unsavory part of town, only to find out Kieth (Bill Skarsgård) booked the same place on HomeAway. What to do?
They talk, flirt a little, and Tess agrees to stay in the bedroom while Keith takes the couch. They’ll sort it out in the morning.
In his feature debut, writer/director Zach Cregger (The Whitest Kids You Know) lulls us with a competent but familiar hook. What’s really going on? Can Keith be trusted? Creeger throws in some creepy camera angles, terrific lighting maneuvers and jump scare fake-outs to build tension.
Then Tess makes her way down to the basement. Yikes.
But even after Tess’s startling discoveries, we’re still feeling like we have a grip on what’s ahead.
And then Cregger takes us to Hollywood, where producer AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) is sacked from his latest project due to allegations of sexual misconduct.
Um…what?
AJ’s story suddenly crosses paths with a tale set in the same house in 1982, this one starring Richard Brake. While that’s often great news for viewers, it is rarely good news for other characters.
What could start to feel disjointed and episodic instead congeals into a bizarre and brutal minefield of surprises. There are times when these surprises hang together with unrealistic decision-making, but Cregger’s sly script overcomes most of its conveniences and missteps.
Not every moment works. Certain choices feel ridiculous and breaks of levity keep the film from being as disturbing as maybe it should be, given the content. But most of that is forgivable, mainly because of the surprises Cregger has for us, and the nimble way he brings them out of hiding.
Colloquialisms being taken to their absolute extremes. A woman struggling to find happiness in solitude. A pleasure-deprived man seeking help from his friends. Body horror ending not in goo and grue, but in dad jokes?!? Tiny Cinema is a comedic genre anthology film that wants to make you laugh and gasp in equal measure with the outrageous storytelling that it contains within. Does it succeed? Mostly.
Tiny Cinema is the latest cinematic endeavor of director/writer/actor extraordinaire Tyler Cornack and his motley crew of performers. If you’ve seen their previous effort, Butt Boy, you’re going to spot a lot of familiar faces across all six segments here. This film largely lacks that one’s Henenlotter-esque weirdness, however. It instead opts for a modern Twilight Zone vibe; offering up situations where ordinary people find their lives turned upside down by strange occurrences that are either tied to everyday problems (i.e. loneliness, sexual dysfunction, dating) or become twisted takes on everyday sayings (i.e. “That’s what she said!” and “Yo momma!”).
The results are mixed. On the positive side of things, there is a great host in the form of the quirky and deeply charismatic Paul Ford. The first three segments are also really entertaining (particularly “Bust!”). Furthermore, what really helps Tiny Cinema along is its cast. The troupe that Cornack has pooled together are all beyond game for whatever delirious nonsense he asks of them and that helps smooth over even the segments that don’t really work. They help to drive his best ideas home and make his films worth seeking out.
It’s in the back half where things begin to wobble, as the other three segments aren’t nearly as strong. Almost all anthology films have weak spots. Unevenness is par for the course with episodic storytelling. The weaker segments here are the slighter ones that just aim for shock value. Unfortunately, with them all filling out the second half of the feature, it means that it starts with a bang and ends with a bit of a whimper.
Tiny Cinema might be a step down from Butt Boy, but it’s a solid indie slice of portmanteau moviemaking. If you’re game for some weird fun, this might just be up your alley.
Would it surprise you to find that the latest from the writer/director behind In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors (as well as the less impressive Wicker Man reboot and others) is a meditation on sexual dynamics, power and agency? That it’s brimming with psychosexual wordplay? That it’s bitter and a bit misguided?
How many times can we disassemble the mating ritual to judge and shame those involved?
Sometimes LaBute does it well—so well that it’s tough not to look forward to whatever he releases. House of Darkness sees the filmmaker again exploring his favorite topic, this time within a horror context.
Justin Long riffs on his nice guy persona, his character Hap actually referring to himself at one point as “one of the good ones.” (Had Hap seen Promising Young Women, he might have had sense enough not to make such a claim.)
Hap’s been lured into the stately gothic manor of the lovely Mina, played with controlled ferocity by Kate Bosworth. Bosworth seems to relish the directness of her character. Mina’s disinterest in accommodating Hap’s insecurities is glorious—a reminder of how casually brutal LaBute’s work can be.
Perhaps because he started his career as a playwright, each of LaBute’s films rise or fall on dialog. House of Darkness is a chamber piece – it could easily be a stage play (though it’s likely a Covid production). Limited performers pepper scenes with double entendres in an awkward dance of “will we or won’t we” sexual politics.
The difference this time around is the genre trapping, a first for the filmmaker. The look is lush and effective, particularly the more fantastical sequences. Long — a genre veteran — delivers a bit of nuance, his Hap never entirely sympathetic but definitely hard to hate.
The story builds effectively enough. It’s just that nothing is ever in question. The genre tropes are more threadbare from use than LaBute’s banter-driven power game. Worse, the point rings hollow, like a disingenuous, cash-grab reversal of In the Company of Men.
Perhaps the most terrifying horror born of neighborly manners is Michael Haneke’s unnerving Funny Games (either his 1997 German-language original or his 2007 English-language remake). Writer/director Duncan Birmingham doesn’t go that far. What he does is walk a tightrope that’s a little goofier, a little less horrifying, but effective nonetheless.
Margo (Melissa Tang) and Adam (Ryan Hansen) throw a housewarming party. Well, Adam throws it. Margo endures it. She doesn’t honestly know what was wrong with their old neighborhood. It doesn’t help that their 5-year-old has had nightmares every night since they arrived.
Adam invites all his colleagues and bosses, hoping to impress without coming off as douchey. He’s upwardly mobile, although the house —which he got at a steal because of that nasty double homicide—might make them look a little higher up than they really are.
Not that Margo and Adam are the only partiers who aren’t what they seem. That really good-looking couple—the two who look like they just came from a really hip funeral—does anyone know who they are?
Maybe Sasha (Perry Mattfeld) and Tom (Timothy Granaderos) are the neighbors, as they say.
But probably not.
What we can say for sure is that they do not want to leave.
What transpires after all the other guests have gone would be a comedy of manners except that it feels pretty clear that something awful lurks underneath the handsome couple’s evasion and gaslighting.
Birmingham’s film is a mystery of sorts, although you’ll have most of that intrigue figured out pretty early. There is also a subplot about Margo’s friends who are babysitting. This goes essentially nowhere. Worse still, Birmingham rushes Act 3 and leaves you feeling short-changed.
However, that 30 minutes or so that Margo and Adam and Sasha and Tom have on their own gets pretty uncomfortable.
Hansen unveils surprising warmth within the needy, insecure Adam. He and Tang take the married couple in surprising and welcome directions. Mattfeld and Granaderos are drolly perfect as the home invaders masquerading as partygoers who just can’t tell it’s time to go.
A tight script wastes little time and manages to surprise even if you figure out the main mysteries early. Who Invited Them isn’t flawless, but it is an anxious bit of fun.
Exciting all MaddWolf Pack episode! Daniel Baldwin, aka The Schlocketeer, and Brandon Thomas join us to talk about a topic we stole from their Twitter conversation: which directors not known for horror made the best horror movies?
Be sure to listen because Daniel and Brandon both bring much knowledge (plus extra movie titles!) to the conversation. But here’s our Top 5:
5. Nosferatu, the Vampire (1979, Werner Herzog)
Sure, it’s another Dracula, but because it’s another Dracula by way of Murnau’s masterpiece Nosferatu, and it’s written and directed by the great Werner Herzog, it’s weird and wonderful.
Herzog uses the imagery Murnau created – in particular, the naked mole rat of a vampire – to turn vampirism into a pestilence to evoke the Black Plague of Europe. Klaus Kinski is that naked mole rat, and he is glorious.
Isabelle Adjani is the pure of heart maiden who is his undoing, but the way Herzog reimagines Jonathan Harker gives the film a cynical twist that feels like a surprise within this dreamlike adaptation. Gorgeous location shooting and an astonishing score help Herzog create a suffocating but captivating atmosphere.
4. The Haunting (1963, Robert Wise)
Coming off the big epics of The Sound of Music and West Side Story, no one would have expected the intimate psychological horror of Robert Wise’s The Haunting.
Shirley Jackson fans have to appreciate the way the film remains true to her vision of horror. Fans of horror have to appreciate Wise’s unbelievable knack for generating terror with sound design and imagination.
Yes, the performances are magnificent – especially Julie Harris, whose bitter Eleanor is picture perfect. But Wise’s mastery of form is what makes this G-rated film a lasting terror.
3. Hour of the Wolf (1968, Ingmar Bergman)
Like all Bergman films, this hypnotic, surreal effort straddles lines of reality and unreality and aches with existential dread. But Bergman and his star, Max von Sydow, cross over into territory of the hallucinatory and grotesque, calling to mind ideas of vampires, insanity and bloodlust as one man confronts repressed desires as he awaits the birth of his child.
As wonderful as von Sydow is as the central figure, a man spiraling toward insanity, it’s the heartbreaking Liv Ullman who owns this movie. Heartbreaking, solid, and the most unusual combination of strength and weakness, her Alma grounds the surreal elements of the movie.
The result is gorgeous, spooky, and so very sad. It’s one of the most underappreciated films of Bergman’s career.
2. The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)
You know who you probably shouldn’t hire to look after your hotel? Jack Nicholson.
A study in atmospheric tension, Kubrick’s vision of the Torrance family collapse at the Overlook Hotel is both visually and aurally meticulous. It opens with that stunning helicopter shot, following Jack Torrance’s little yellow Beetle up the mountainside, the ominous score announcing a foreboding that the film never shakes.
The hypnotic, innocent sound of Danny Torrance’s Big Wheel against the weirdly phallic patterns of the hotel carpet tells so much – about the size of the place, about the monotony of the existence, about hidden perversity. The sound is so lulling that its abrupt ceasing becomes a signal of spookiness afoot.
Nicholson outdoes himself. His early, veiled contempt blossoms into pure homicidal mania, and there’s something so wonderful about watching Nicholson slowly lose his mind. Between writer’s block, isolation, ghosts, alcohol withdrawal, midlife crisis, and “a momentary loss of muscular coordination,” the playfully sadistic creature lurking inside this husband and father emerges.
He’s not the caretaker management expected, but really, was Grady? Like Grady and Lloyd the bartender, Jack Torrance is a fixture here at the Overlook.
1. Silence of the lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)
It’s to director Jonathan Demme’s credit that Silence made that leap from lurid exploitation to art. His masterful composition of muted colors and tense but understated score, his visual focus on the characters rather than their actions, and his subtle but powerful use of camera elevate this story above its exploitative trappings. Of course, the performances didn’t hurt.
Hannibal Lecter ranks as one of cinema’s scariest villains, and that accomplishment owes everything to Anthony Hopkins’s performance. It’s his eerie calm, his measured speaking, his superior grin that give Lecter power. Everything about his performance reminds the viewer that this man is smarter than you and he’ll use that for dangerous ends.
Demme makes sure it’s Lecter that gets under our skin in the way he creates a parallel between Lecter and FBI investigator Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster). It’s Clarice we’re all meant to identify with, and yet Demme suggests that she and Lecter share some similarities, which means that maybe we share some, too.
That was the excellent tag line for Jaume Collet-Serra’s fun 2009 surprise Orphan. Then 12-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman delivered an inspired performance buoyed by the nuanced work of two veteran talents (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard), but it was the climactic shocker that guaranteed the film’s place in horror history.
The bigger surprise might be to make a prequel 13 years later with the same lead. Furhman, now in her twenties, reprises her role as the orphan you do not want to adopt.
In director William Brent Bell’s episode, we go back in time to meet up with our wee villain in an Estonian facility. It’s a fun, bloody start to Esther’s adventure and an early reminder (it has been 13 years) that if you wonder whether Esther’s evil, F around and find out.
That, of course, is one of the obstacles writer David Coggeshall needs to overcome. We already know Esther’s big secret and we already know what she’s capable of. What surprises are left?
Plenty!
Orphan: First Kill goes in unexpected places, many of them an absolute hoot. Bell’s film walks an impressive line between tension, horror and laughs. It works because of a tight script, but mostly because of rock-solid performances from Fuhrman and Julia Stiles.
Stiles is Esther’s new mommy, a wealthy helicopter parent with an artist husband and a teenage son. She’s magnificent.
Able support work surrounds the pair, and Coggeshall’s screenplay meshes the expected with the unexpected.
I had no idea Bell—whose previous work includes the unintentionally funny The Boy andBrahms: The Boy II—had this in him. Yes, Orphan: First Kill may have benefitted from low expectations: a heretofore weak director, a 25-year-old trying to convince the audience she’s 12, a franchise none of us thought needed a sequel. Still, there’s no denying it entertains.
The film is no masterpiece and Fuhrman’s age does take you out of the fantasy now and again. But it is sly fun.
Just when you think you know where director Vincent Grashaw’s Southern Gothic What Josiah Saw is going, you meet Eli.
One at a time, Grashaw introduces us to the Graham children. At first, it’s poor Tommy (Scott Haze), a simple fella living at home with Graham patriarch, Josiah (Robert Patrick). Josiah doesn’t think much of Tommy. He doesn’t think much of God, either, but he’s having a change of heart.
Then Grashaw switches gears and introduces us to Tommy’s brother Eli (Nick Stahl), who lives hard. He’s run afoul of some bad people (including Jake Weber in a welcome cameo) and is in some pretty desperate straits. Finally, we meet sister Mary (Kelli Garner), whose trauma sits far nearer the surface and strengthens our unease about the inevitable family reunion.
The Grahams reunite, drawn by the lure of oil money: the Devlin corporation hopes to drill on their land. The money could mean a fresh start for everyone. But some details need to be handled first.
Moving from story to story, What Josiah Saw keeps you on your toes. Grashaw glides easily from one style to the next, although Eli’s gritty thriller storyline is the most intriguing. It feels more complete, less bait and switch, and benefits from Stahl’s naturalistic, resigned performance.
Not every episode works as well. The stones left unturned and strings left untied from one tale to the next, though, give the film a rich, dark present-day. From the outset it’s clear there’s a traumatic backstory waiting to be revealed, so it’s to Grashaw and writer Robert Alan Dilts’s credit that the messy present keeps pulling our interest.
Patrick delivers a strong turn, mean-spirited and commanding. He’s at the center of the mystery, the center of everybody’s trauma in a film mainly concerned with how you live with the marks left by your childhood.
Ambiguity in the third act is becoming a theme in horror this year. Alex Garland’s Men, the recent stalker horror Resurrection, and now, What Josiah Saw. Sometimes it’s brave to let the audience own the experience and make the call. More often, it feels indecisive or muddy. I’m not sure all the clues are here to help make the determination for What Josiah Saw, but even without proper closure, Grashaw paints a creepy picture.
In today’s episode, we celebrate Hope’s novel ROOST, plus the brand spanking new audiobook, recorded by George himself. ROOST is the story of twins in a small Midwestern town during the satanic panic of the 1980s.
To properly put us in the mood, we will run through the best smalltown horror. There is a lot! Partly because small towns come equipped with small police forces. So, in addition to this fuzzy math list, we recommend: The Mist, Children of the Corn, Tremors, Dead and Buried, The Fog, The Birds, The Blob, We Are Still Here, Something Wicked This Way Comes,The Wolf of Snow Hollow, and Brotherhood of Satan (which always makes Hope think of her hometown).
6. I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
Billy O’Brien (Isolation) finds a new vision for the tired serial killer formula with his wry, understated indie horror I Am Not a Serial Killer.
An outsider in a small Minnesota town, John (Max Records) works in his mom’s morgue, writes all his school papers on serial killers, and generally creeps out the whole of his high school. But when townsfolk start turning up in gory pieces, John turns his keen insights on the case.
Records, who melted me as young Max in Spike Jonze’s 2009 masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are, serves up an extraordinarily confident, restrained performance. His onscreen chemistry with the nice old man across the street – Back to the Future’s Christopher Lloyd – generates thrills enough to offset the movie’s slow pace.
For his part, Lloyd is in turns tender, heartbreaking and terrifying.
Bursts of driest humor keep the film engaging as the story cleverly inverts the age-old “catch a killer” cliché and toys with your expectations as it does.
5. 30 Days of Night (2007)
If vampires can only come out at night, wouldn’t it make sense for them to head to the parts of the globe that remain under cover of darkness for weeks on end? Like the Arctic circle?
The first potential downfall here is that Josh Hartnett plays our lead, the small town sheriff whose ‘burg goes haywire just after the last flight for a month leaves town. A drifter blows into town. Dogs die viciously. Vehicles are disabled. Power is disrupted. You know what that means…the hunt’s begun.
Much of the film’s success is due to the always spectacular Danny Huston as the leader of the bloodsuckers. His whole gang takes a novel, unwholesome approach to the idea of vampires, and it works marvelously.
4. It (2017)
The Derry, Maine “losers club” finds itself in 1988 in this adaptation, an era that not only brings the possibility of Part 2 much closer to present day, but it gives the pre-teen adventures a nostalgic and familiar quality.
Bill Skarsgård has the unenviable task of following a letter-perfect Tim Curry in the role of Pennywise. Those are some big clown shoes to fill, but Skarsgård is up to the challenge. His Pennywise is more theatrical, more of an exploitation of all that’s inherently macabre and grotesque about clowns.
Director Andy Muschietti shows great instinct for taking advantage of foreground, background and sound. Yes, It relies heavily on jump scares, but Muschietti’s approach to plumbing your fear has more depth than that and he manages your rising terror expertly.
3. The Wailing (2016)
“Why are you troubled?” Jesus asked, “And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see — for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
Though the true meaning of this quote won’t take hold until the final act, it presents many questions. Is this film supernatural? Demonic? Or, given the corporeal nature of the quote, is it rooted in the human flesh?
Yes.
That’s what makes the quote so perfect. Writer/director Hong-jin Na meshes everything together in this small town horror where superstition and religion blend. The film echoes with misery, as the title suggests. The filmmaker throws every grisly thing at you – zombies, pustules, demonic possession, police procedural, multiple homicides – and yet keeps it all slippery with overt comedy.
2. Halloween (1978)
No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.
From the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Carpenter develops anxiety like nobody else, and plants it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.
Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is scary. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. Just add John Carpenter’s spare score to ratchet up the anxiety. Perfect.
1. Jaws (1975)
A big city cop moves to tiny Amity, where one man can make a difference. Unfortunately, that one man is Mayor Vaughn.
Steven Spielberg cemented his legacy with this blockbuster masterpiece. The interplay among the grizzled and possibly insane sea captain Quint (Robert Shaw), the wealthy young upstart marine biologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and the decent lawman/endearing everyman Brody (Roy Scheider) helps the film transcend horror to become simply a great movie.
Spielberg achieved one of those rare cinematic feats: he bettered the source material. Though Peter Benchley’s nautical novel attracted droves of fans, Spielberg streamlined the text and surpassed its climax to craft a sleek terror tale.
It’s John Williams’s iconic score; it’s Bill Butler’s camera, capturing all the majesty and the terror, but never too much of the shark; it’s Spielberg’s cinematic eye. The film’s second pivotal threesome works, together with very fine performances, to mine for a primal terror of the unknown, of the natural order of predator and prey.
There are some truly frightening moments in Nope. Some revolve around things you may think you know based on the trailer. Others feature a bloody monkey in a party hat.
All these and more are tucked inside the kind of patient and expansive brand of storytelling you might not expect from writer/director/producer Jordan Peele. Where the filmmaker’s first two exceptional features explored wildly different styles of horror, his third effort, though scary, taps much more into Sci-Fi.
And Nope has plenty to say about Black cowboys, the arrogance of spectacle, and getting that elusive perfect shot.
OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) work under their father Otis, Sr. (Keith David) at the only Black-owned horse training business in Hollywood. The Haywood lineage dates back to the very first “assembly of photographs to create a motion picture,” and Haywood’s Hollywood Horses serves various TV and film productions out of a remote California ranch.
But recently, OJ has also been doing business with Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star who runs a nearby tourist attraction. Some amazing things have been happening there, and Ricky seems to need more and more horses to keep the people amazed.
Toss in Brandon Perea as a dangerously curious tech store worker and the inimitable Michael Wincott as an esteemed and disenchanted cinematographer and you have a remarkable set of oddball characters, each brought to life with peculiar but sympathetic performances.
Peele’s direction and writing effortlessly mine comedic moments, but Nope is no comedy. He unravels a mystery before your eyes, and his shot-making has never been so on point. The way he splashes color and motion across this arid landscape is stunning. His visual cues—often executed with macabre humor and panache—amplify the film’s themes while inducing anxiety.
Palmer and Kaluuya are a fantastic pair, sharing an uneasy, lived-in familial tension. Their battling energy—OJ is slow-moving and soft-spoken to Em’s live wire—contributes to the film’s discombobulating feel. Yeun delivers a surprise turn as a man still trading on past glories at a theme park. But everyone here has a relationship to the dangerous, life-altering, perhaps idiotic act of filming, of entertainment, of spectacle.
It feels a bit like Peele is saying that making a movie will kill you, if you’re lucky. But opening a film with a Biblical passage is no accident, and on a grander scale, Peele has crafted a genre-loving ode to a comeuppance tempted by grandiose delusions.
Nope is a tense, gorgeous, funny, insightful and ambitious thrill ride, which updates the filmmaker’s scorecard to three for three. And while Peele may still feel like he’s chasing perfection, here’s hoping he just keeps chasing.
A bog is a nice spot for horror, eh? You think you’re walking along a lovely field when suddenly, you’re sucked in. Like quicksand, only mossier.
Betriek (Sallie Harmsen) and her daughter Hanna (Noor van der Velden) live with Hanna’s grandparents on the edge of one such Dutch mire in Nico van den Brink’s Moloch. A body just turned up out there, perfectly preserved for maybe hundreds of years.
And then another appears. And another. And another—each a female from a different era. The discoveries trigger other unusual behaviors, all of it corresponding with the town’s celebration of an unsavory history.
It sounds a little contrived, a little familiar, but van den Brink’s naturalistic approach to the story offsets any hokeyness. Harmsen’s spooked but reasonable lead makes for a clear-eyed hero, one who rails against her lot in life quietly but surely. Her choices sometimes feel erratic but never unnatural, and the cast around her shares a lovely and reasonably strained chemistry.
All performances are more raw than polished, which amplifies an authenticity struggling to anchor the supernatural elements.
Because scary stories are scarier if you believe them.
Not that the film ignores its spectral side. Ringing bells, musical interludes, moments in an aquarium and other highlights of the film’s sound design lend Moloch a supernatural eeriness that deepens its dread.
Van der Velden shows keen instincts for allowing his tale to unravel in its own time. Close attention to detail allows a rich understanding of the story Moloch tells. Whether you devote that kind of attention to the film or not, Moloch gets its point across.
