And now, as promised, the Netflix Instawatch options. Once again I’ve mixed in some previously-reviewed movies with the new
ones, and given each a Creep Factor on a scale from one to five: one
being good fun and not super scary and five being SLEEP WITH A BASEBALL BAT IN ONE HAND AND A FLASHLIGHT IN THE OTHER.
Audition: 1999 Japanese psychological horror film
directed by Takashi Miike and starring Ryo Ishibashi and Eihi Shiina. Aoyama is a lonely middle-aged widower whose
film-producer friend comes up with the brilliant idea to stage a fake movie
audition to find him a new wife. Aoyama
is immediately taken with Asami, a seemingly sweet and sympathetic young woman. His friend becomes concerned when he can’t
track down any of her references, but Aoyama brushes him off and decides to
pursue her anyway. Cut to Asami waiting
for him to call, intensely concentrating on her phone, sitting near a burlap
sack that contains her latest victim. Bum
bum BUMMMMMM!
Rob Zombie and Eli Roth found it
difficult to watch, if that’s any indication.
It’s toe-curling, pull-a-blanket-up-to-your-chin, nausea-inducing
scary. This link takes you to a brief
video summary from Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments – it contains spoilers
which could ruin the movie for you, but if you can’t get through these three
minutes then the full movie would probably be too much for you. Watch at your own risk.
Creep Factor: 5
Candyman: 1992 horror film directed by Bernard Rose and
starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd and Xander Berkeley. Helen is a spunky grad student researching
urban legends in Chicago, and when she hears about a local boogeyman living in
the Cabrini-Green housing project she decides to check it out. Say Candyman’s name five times while looking
in the mirror, and he’ll appear. And
kill you. So yeah, definitely do that.
This is one
of my favorite horror movies of all time.
It still scares the crap out of me 20 years after I first saw it. The music by Philip Glass is spine-tingling,
Tony Todd’s voice is both alluring and chilling; it’s a frightening film on both
an auditory and visual level. The plot isn’t very surprising, and the
ending is a little hokey, but it’s definitely a good gory scare.
Creep Factor:
4.5
Monsters: 2010 British sci-fi movie
written, shot and directed by Gareth Edwards, and starring Whitney Able and
Scoot McNairy. Yes. Scoot. Areas of northern Mexico have been
quarantined by the U.S. military because aliens crash-landed there, you know
the drill. A dashing and slightly unkempt photojournalist has been
tasked with getting his boss’s daughter through the area and home to marry her
boring fiancé. Think Jurassic Park redux, kind of. I must
say, this + The African Queen + Apocalypse Now = no riverboat
travel for me, thanks all the same. It’s matter-of-fact, good pacing, the
music is nice and low key, and the ending is unexpected and kind of
perfect. It’s a feel-good monster movie without being too
touchy-feely-feel-good. Very “real.” Definitely see it.
Creep
Factor: 1
Battle
Royale: 2000 Japanese thriller
directed by Kinji Fukasaku and starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Taro
Yamamoto and Takeshi Kitano. Think Hunger Games but much darker, funnier
and with a higher body count. The
Japanese government has decided that the youth need to learn fear and respect,
so once a year an unsuspecting class of high school students is taken to an
island where they’re forced to fight to the death.
I really
liked it. It had the humor, wit and
hipness that Hunger Games lacked, but
didn’t quite have that level of unrequited teenage yearning some people prefer
in their Teen Thunderdome movies. So
perhaps it’s not for everyone.
Creep Factor:
2.5
Blood
Creek: 2009 horror film directed
by Joel Schumacher and starring Michael Fassbender, Dominic Purcell, Henry
Cavill and Emma Booth. Evan’s brother
has been missing for a year when he shows up in the middle of the night looking
like Castaway and insisting that his brother gather weapons and help him kill
some family. OKAY! Turns out that the family who had been
keeping him hostage were in turn being held hostage by a former Nazi occult
specialist. Who is now kind of literally
a monster. And has kept them sort of
frozen in time since 1939. It’s actually
a pretty decent horror movie, and it’s not quite as ludicrous as the plot
summary sounds.
Creep Factor:
2.5
Black
Death: 2010 historical horror
movie by Christopher Smith; starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, and Carice van
Houten. Seriously, how did anyone
survive the Middle Ages? Osmund
(Redmayne) is a monk who accompanies a group of soldiers on their journey to
investigate rumors of a village that’s been miraculously untouched by The
Plague. Except of course it can’t be a
miracle, right? Gotta be a witch. Only explanation. They get to the village and things do indeed
get witchy. But is it the pagan
villagers or the Christian soldiers who are in the right? Oooooooh, interesting!
Why wasn’t this a bigger movie? It’s totally good. The accents are awesome, the action scenes
are great, it’s morally ambiguous without getting too serious, and Bean pretty
much has that whole medieval knight thing nailed. Has a Wicker
Man feel to it. But with less naked
singing.
Creep Factor: 2
Transsiberian: 2008 thriller directed by Brad Anderson and
starring Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Kate Mara, and Ben Kingsley. Harrelson and Mortimer play Jessie and Roy,
an American couple on a little adventure through Siberia. Because doesn’t that sound like fun? On the train they befriend Carlos (Eduardo
Noriega) and Abby (Mara), a globetrotting couple that you instantly know will
be trouble. Suddenly people go missing,
there’s an accidental death, and everyone’s being chased by Russian narcotics
officers. It is SO GOOD. Nice to see Mortimer less buttoned-up, like
that episode of 30 Rock when she
drops accent and freaks out on Liz Lemon.
Lots of twists and turns. Also, I
might love Woody Harrelson now. See it.
Creep Factor:
2
Red White
& Blue: 2010 thriller directed by
Simon Rumley and starring with Amanda Fuller, Noah Taylor, and Marc Senter. I’m having a hard time trying to figure out
how to describe this without giving anything away. It’s a brilliant, fucking scary, totally messed up thriller, and
if you like scary movies then you should
absolutely see it. Just be
prepared: the music is really intense,
and within the first ten minutes you’ll see the main character sleep with five
guys and take two I-hate-myself showers--there’s a point to it, it perfectly
sets the tone of the movie and the character, trust me. It’s violent, but not overly gory . . . well,
you’re spared the moment of impact anyway.
At least until the climax. No one
is a good guy.
Creep Factor:
4
Tucker
& Dale vs. Evil: 2010
Canadian horror/comedy directed by Eli Craig and starring Alan Tudyk, Tyler
Labine, and Katrina Bowden. Tudyk and
Labine are Tucker and Dale, two buddies working on their vacation cabin in West
Virginia. A group of college kids decide
to camp nearby and due to a series of mishaps, coincidences, and perhaps seeing
Deliverance a time too many, the kids
start to believe that Tucker and Dale are backwoods psychos intent on murdering
them all. This theory is reinforced when
they start dying off in freak accidents.
Think Shawn of the Dead, but
with hillbillies instead of zombies. I’m
sorry, that’s insensitive. I believe we
prefer the term “yokel.” It was
hilarious, definitely see it.
Creep Factor:
0.5
 |
| This isn't what it looks like. |
The Last
Exorcism: 2010 “found footage”
horror film directed by Daniel Stamm and starring Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell,
Louis Herthum, and Caleb Landry Jones.
Reverend Cotton Marcus is a slick, charming preacher who used to perform
exorcisms, and is now on a mission to debunk them. He and his film crew travel to a remote area
of Louisiana to document how he heals a supposedly possessed girl by tricking
her with lights and sound effects and sleights of hand into thinking she’s
being cured. But could she actually be
possessed? And if not, can his
smoke-and-mirrors routine really help her?
I liked this
immediately. It’s clever, and even though
we’re all past the Blair Witch found
footage crap I didn’t mind it at all. It
should be noted that I do not scare easily.
I jump in my seat now and then, but it takes a hell of a movie to really
freak me out, and this definitely did.
Right up until the WTF ending, that is, which was so hokey and stupid that
it killed the mood so carefully set by the first hour and a half of the
movie. That being said, had it not taken that route, I would probably
avoid rural areas and farms and woods and the dark for a long time.
Creep Factor:
4
Trollhunter: 2010 Norwegian fantasy “found footage”
horror-ish film directed by Andre Ovredal and starring Otto Jespersen, Hans
Morten Hansen, Tomas Alf Larsen, and Johanna Morck. A group of students are trying to make a documentary
about a man they think is a bear poacher, when they fall into the world of the
Troll Security Service, a secret government agency protecting humans from
trolls and vice-versa. HOLY SHIT LET’S
VISIT NORWAY! I’ll be honest, I spent
much of the movie distracted by the amazing landscapes. It's really good, I just wish the trolls were less cartoonish.
Creep Factor:
1.5
The
Faculty: 1998 sci fi horror film
directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring a brilliantly diverse cast: Josh
Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Bebe Neuwirth, Piper
Laurie (the mom from Carrie), Famke
Janssen, Usher, Salma Hayek and Jon Stewart.
Outstanding.
A Breakfast Club-like group of teenagers
think a weird little creature they found on the football field is somehow
turning everyone into pod people. And so
the intelligent misfit, the prom queen, the nerd, the misanthropic jock, the
sweet Southern-belle new girl and the goth chick will have to work together to
save their town from the alien invaders.
It’s
suspenseful, not really scary. I mostly
love it for the cramazing casting, the humor and slight campiness.
Creep Factor:
1.5
Demon
Knight: 1995 Tales from the Crypt horror film directed by Ernest Dickerson and
starring Billy Zane, Jada Pinkett Smith, Thomas Haden Church, William Sadler
and CCH Pounder. A drifter rolls into a
boarding house in a remote town, with a dashing demon hot on his trail. Soon the residents are caught in a stand-off
between the drifter, who is actually a servant of God, and an army of demonic
creatures.
This isn’t a
good movie, really. I just watched it a
lot in high school and it sort of stuck with me. It’s gory and ridiculous and not scary, but
it’s a funny little something to watch around the holiday.
Creep Factor:
2, mostly for the gore.
Killer
Clowns From Outer Space: 1988
comedy/horror movie by the Chiodo Brothers, starring Grant Cramer and Suzanne
Snyder. Clown-aliens come to Earth and
start killing off the population of a small town by, like, wrapping them in
cotton candy. It’s ludicrous, funny, the
acting is campy and over the top. I
would recommend it for a laugh.
Creep Factor:
0.5, unless you’re coulrophobic.
Dracula 2000: 2000 horror film directed by Patrick
Lussier. Check the line-up and tell me
you’re not intrigued: Christopher
Plummer, Jennifer Esposito, Gerard Butler, Jonny Lee Miller, Omar Epps, Jeri
Ryan and VITAMIN FREAKING C. Vitamin C
is in this movie. Fun fact: Vitamin C
also starred in the original Hairspray
as Amber Von Tussle, the bratty nemesis of Tracy Turnblad. Crazy, right?
Anyway,
yes, the plot: it’s Dracula. But in the year 2000. He’s returned after a long imprisonment to
stalk some depressed chick who works at a Virgin Megastore. Sure, there’s a decent amount of action and
an interesting biblical twist that slightly redeems it. But really it’s completely ridiculous and
silly and one of my favorite guilty-pleasure Halloween movies.
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