Remember when you’d go to Old Country Buffet and you’d load
up on lasagna, tater tots and brownies but it was nasty and then you were like,
maybe I should have had the meatloaf, mashed potatoes and trifle? That’s what
it’s like to be a horror movie fan now that streaming is a new normal. The
choices are vast, the quality varies and the choosing is daunting.
اضافة اعلان
This is where I come in. In this column, I’ll provide a
fan’s recommendations of scary movies for people who want to discern the
terrifying from the terrible. First up: demonic possession, traumatic dreams
and killer jeans.
‘Come True’
I swear I saw David Cronenberg peek from behind a doorway in
this ’80s-inspired sci-fi-horror mashup from writer-director Anthony Scott
Burns. Like Cronenberg, Burns is Canadian, and like one of my favorite
Cronenberg films — “Rabid” (1977) — “Come True” uses lurid storytelling and
off-kilter production design to douse the screen in menace.
Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone), a troubled young woman estranged
from her mother, enlists in a sketchy sleep study led by researchers who are
tight-lipped about their objectives. As the experiment continues, tall menacing
figures that haunt Sarah’s nightmares reach the real world, threatening her
waking hours and leading her into the arms of one of her researchers (Landon
Liboiron) for comfort. The story ends with more questions than answers about
Sarah’s terrors, but that mystery is what makes the film so unnerving.
There’s definitely substance here, but the film has style to
spare. The pulsing synth score, creepy institutional locations (nice job,
Edmonton) and rooms lit in vibrant jewel tones are what I’d call dreamy.
‘The Dark and the Wicked’
A demonic presence torments a secluded farm in this macabre
film written and directed by Bryan Bertino (“The Strangers”). Marin Ireland and
Michael Abbott Jr. play siblings who return home to say goodbye to their dying
father. When tragedy befalls their mother, it sets off a chain of supernatural
events that suggest something far more malicious than a dusty wind has whooshed
through the windows.
Bertino nails what too many directors don’t: Still terror is
powerful terror. The scene I can’t get out of my head features a demonic spirit
silently floating in the yard, an image far more chilling than some growling
monster in running shoes. Later, when a girl shows up at the front door and
softly asks, “Do you smell him?,” it ruined my night. It was heaven.
Bertino squeezes even more fright out of such moments by
filming many of them from below, adding to the perception that unseen evil
lurks everywhere. Then comes the coda, and he sets a gruesome, heartbreaking
tableau.
‘The Block Island Sound’
Sometimes a monster and a movie shape-shift
together. That’s the case in this intense horror-thriller that starts off as an
aquatic mystery, then morphs into an alien-abduction fever dream before
concluding as a harrowing drama about mental illness.
Directed by brothers Kevin and Matthew McManus, the film is
set on the strait between Block Island and the coast of Rhode Island, where the
filmmakers grew up. When dead fish start washing up on the beach, a team from
the Environmental Protection Agency arrives to investigate. But then a local
fisherman, Tom (Neville Archambault), dies under strange, hallucinatory
circumstances, and his son, Harry (a terrific Chris Sheffield), starts to lose
his own grip on reality. Soon it becomes clear that science doesn’t stand a
chance against the supernatural forces at play in the water.
Often when a horror film mixes and matches subgenres, it’s
the sign of a disoriented moviemaker. Not here. The McManus brothers smartly
multitask with horror conventions, ultimately delivering a heart-rending story
about what happens when the natural world and one man’s mental stability
crumble in tandem.
‘Slaxx’
This gory satire marries two of my favorite horror
subgenres: the Killer Object (“Rubber”) and the Single Wicked Location (“ATM”).
The film is set at a Uniqlo-like fast-fashion store, where a new line of denim
that adjusts to each wearer’s contours is to be stocked overnight. But the
possessed pants have their own nefarious plans: to frighten the employees and
knock them off in spectacularly bloody ways. I’m not exaggerating when I say
the jeans are so tight that they slay.
The special effects, especially the dancing jeans, are
low-fi silly. But Canadian director Elza Kephart gets clever with cuts and
squirts that splatter fans will find hilarious.
Kephart and her co-writer, Patricia Gomez, aren’t just out
for sicko laughs. They also ask viewers to think — as deeply as possible in a
77-minute movie — about conspicuous consumption, the exploitation of child
labor and the hypocrisy of corporate do-gooderism. Their mayhem has a message.
‘Blood Moon’
When a movie mother locks her child in a cage, it’s usually
a sign that her maternal instincts are on the fritz. That’s not the case in
Emma Tammi’s scary but surprisingly tender film, the finale of the second
season of "Into the Dark," an anthology series from Hulu and
Blumhouse Television.
Esme (Megalyn Echikunwoke) is a single mother who settles in
a small town with her young son, Luna (Yonas Kibreab), after a monstrous
incident forces them on the run. They keep to themselves, and for good reason —
there’s a clue in the circles that mark every full moon on their calendar.
The film is stingy with clear answers about the affliction
that causes Luna to develop a vicious bite and a taste for flesh. But there’s
no question why his mother hides him away.
Some fans might be disappointed at how modestly the monster
manifests itself in the final moments. I thought such restraint was a smart and
visually refreshing departure from the typical evil changeling narrative. It’s
a treat to see a movie that’s more interested in a human story than a showy
one.
.jpg)
.jpg)
