Happy Halloween!
We’ve got a lot to get through, so I’ll crack on, but if you want quick recommendations for something to watch tonight, check the bottom of the post and then read the reviews at your leisure.
Stay scary!
Julia’s Eyes (2011, Dir: Guillem Morales)
After the J-horror boom at the turn of the century, fear seekers started looking elsewhere around the globe for the next major source of contemporary horror.
With a few honourable exceptions, it was a fallow time for Hollywood scares. After Wes Craven brought meta-chills and fun with his New Nightmare and later, the Scream movies, we were lumbered with a bunch of lazy clones, then – shiver – Michael Bay bought up the rights to classic 70s and 80s slashers and remade them with twice the gore and a billionth of the wit. By the mid-2000s, torture porn was in full effect, and Hostel and the Saw sequels were ripping through sinews faster than Jeff Bezos can spend your money.
If you were looking for something more affecting, there was only one place to go: Spain. A stream of utterly brilliant horror movies started pouring from the country, helped in large part by (Mexican) Guillermo del Toro’s two masterpieces set during the Spanish Civil War: The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).
We got highlights such as the REC series, one of the few found footage movies that bring something special, and the chilling The Baby’s Room which tapped safely into parental nightmares and threw in some light quantum physics for good measure.
Julia’s Eyes shares its star, Belen Rueda, with The Orphanage, which was successful enough to get noticed by a wider audience than horror nuts. Both are great films, but I got more satisfaction from the melodramatic creep factor of Julia’s Eyes than the more familiar chills of The Orphanage; I was less certain where it would end.
Rueda plays Julia, who shares a degenerative eye disease with her sister, which is worsened by stress. Her sister’s condition is more advanced and when she apparently (no spoilers) kills herself, Julia begins to investigate the circumstances of her death while battling the progression of the disease and trying to remain as calm as possible.
There’s a beautiful romance at the heart of this story, which again walks a fine line between Hitchcockian thriller and biting horror.
Did you like The Silence of the Lambs? If so, chances are that you’ll enjoy this.
I’ve spent some idyllic days on Spanish beaches and some wonderful nights with Spanish filmmakers.
Spoorloos/The Vanishing (1988, Dir: George Sluizer)
How you react to my including this on a horror list depends on how well you know it. If you have any wish to watch this, then stop reading and do it – just be 100% sure you get the original Dutch/French language one, NOT the Hollywood remake from 1993 starring Jeff Bridges and Keifer Sutherland. The remake has plot changes that render it pointless. There’s a mystery at the heart of this film that the original resolves to brilliantly haunting effect and the remake manages about as well as a coked-up cabinet minister making a drunken pass at your mum.
I should say you might have trouble tracking it down. I finally managed to get it on Blu Ray after about 25 years of fruitless searching. I first saw it late night on TV in our old spare TV room in the Nineties, on one of those foreign movie strands on BBC Two, curated by someone like Mark Kermode. if you can’t track it down, and if you know me, I might let you borrow it. If I like you. Awkward.
If you’re still reading for more information, then once again, think of a Silence of the Lambs era serial killer flick. There is no gore. There are no jump scares. There is nothing you would typically associate with a horror film, but it is utterly brilliant. Intrigued? Then go watch it.
Still here?
Okay then… the plot is about a couple touring France. When she disappears, her boyfriend obsessively sets out to find her. In a parallel storyline, we see a bland family man carefully and painstakingly plot an awful crime.
That’s all your getting from me. If you want to know what happens, you’ll have to experience it.
Trick ‘r Treat (2007, Dir: Michael Dougherty)
This is held in high regard and has some high-calibre talent. I felt it was good silly fun, and potentially a good family watch for this time of year, with mature enough teenagers. Brian Cox, Anna Paquin and Dylan Baker are the biggest names in a packed cast, but you’ll recognise other faces, especially if you’re a genre fan.
A sequel is in development, and I’m not surprised. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing it this time next year.
It’s an anthology movie set on Halloween in the typical small American town that features in dozens of horror movies a year. There’s the usual linking factor and a playful attitude to time, place and editing. It’s colourful fun, gory but harmless, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.
Of the stories, I enjoyed the Anna Paquin one the most, but none of them is bad and they all fit together like a neatly carved pumpkin.
The Boys from County Hell (2021, Dir: Chris Baugh)
The most outright fun I had with a horror movie this Halloween.
Bram Stoker (author of Dracula) was an Irishman. The Boys from County Hell postulates that he was inspired as much by local legend as he was by Romanian folk tales and blood-borne disease, then turn it into an OTT and very Irish horror-comedy.
It doesn’t go for easy laughs, but takes time with its characters, building on (admittedly well-worn) themes of generational suspicion between fathers and sons, and it swerves many vampire cliches. It has convincing effects which belie the low budget, it’s well-shot, well-acted, and well-set on bringing you a funny, gory experience.
Not the greatest new vampire experience this Halloween, but close.
The Empty Man (2020, Dir: David Prior)
First of all, I want to shout out both Kristen Howard at Den of Geek and Chris Stuckmann for championing this film which, on the face of it, Disney has tried to bury. It’s on the ‘Star’ branded part of Disney+ right now and was the last official 20th Century Fox release before the studio fell before the all-conquering House of Mouse.
As I’ve done before, I’ll divide this mini-review into increasingly more descriptive sections while trying not to drop any outright spoilers, but if you have any love for horror at all, then do yourself a favour and just go and watch it now without reading any more.
This is a beautifully made film. David Prior has spent a lot of his career working with David Fincher and it shows. However, often when Fincher depicts horror or horrific things (I’m thinking particularly of Se7en and Zodiac), it can be graphic. Aside from one or two scenes (even then, more is left to the imagination), this is not that type of film. It wants to creep under your skin.
What it does share with Fincher is bravura style. One transitional edit, while obviously inspired by The Shining, is simply breathtaking. Prior is sickeningly talented. This is his first feature film, and it has the confidence and swagger of a Marvel movie. He’s currently working on something called ‘Summer of the Shark.’ Colour me excited.
The acting throughout is top class. James Badge Dale plays the protagonist. You’ll be left wondering why he’s not in everything, but you’ll recognise him from that movie you can’t quite place. His familiarity feeds the story in a way that is brilliant casting, in retrospect.
Have I convinced you to watch it yet?
The Fincher comparisons don’t end with style. This is big, ballsy, adult entertainment, with themes and threads that will stick with you. Both those film bloggers I linked to at the top are at pains to point out that this isn’t for everyone. It’s a long, deep film. It stands up, looks you in the eye and demands your love or hate. Those of you that land in the former camp, like me, will want to rewatch it within days. Howard was 100% on the money when she said this had the feel of a viral experience, just like a more famous horror film I’ve already covered during this marathon.
Have I said too much, or do you want more?
There’s a scene that some are describing as the best movie scare in years. There’s an extended cold open that mystifies you before grabbing your throat and dragging you into the depths of the film’s growing mystery.
Still here? I’m going to outline the plot, so last chance to go in cold…
Okay. After that intriguing opening, there’s an audacious change of focus and the apparent development of a ‘creepypasta’ mystery, which are web-borne urban legends. But then…
Interested? Or bored of creepypasta? Or of me asking you irritating f**king questions?
But then… the film delves deeper into the kind of Lovecraftian existential horror that lingers with you for days, just out of sight, just beyond the knowable, like a cat in a box that might not exist, or a tree falling silently, or that shape you swore was there just a moment ago.
There’s more to it than this, a lot more. But I’m not going there. The Empty Man demands an audience. Even if you find it frustrating, you can’t fault its ambition or its craft.
Ghostwatch (1992, Dir: Lesley Manning)
This has almost become an urban legend itself.
On Halloween night in 1992, a Saturday, the BBC broadcast this mock live ghost hunt in a suburban home. Before the broadcast, a continuity announcer clearly said it was fiction and warned of potentially distressing content.
When the programme began though, it was presented as reality, and featured some of the most familiar household names in UK TV at the time: Michael Parkinson, who was a fixture on our screens for three decades; Sarah Greene, who men of a certain age were hopelessly in love with; Mike Smith, who was most famous for being her husband and therefore being unpopular with men of a certain age, and Craig Charles of Red Dwarf and Radio 6 Music fame, a pretty convincing actor who spends the first half of Ghostwatch having a laugh as only a Scouser can.
The family living at the supposedly haunted house seemed to be based closely on the Hodgsons, the alleged victims of the Enfield poltergeist. Remember them?
The show had a paranormal investigator in the studio with Parkinson, an American sceptic on a satellite link-up, and calls coming in live from members of the public.
Of course, the whole thing had been filmed weeks before the supposedly live broadcast. In 1992 the UK had a total of four terrestrial channels and satellite TV had only launched two years earlier. Even VCR recorders were still not a guaranteed fixture in many homes. It was always common with broadcast television to miss a few minutes at the start. Across the country, plenty of people tuned in late to what seemed like a live, light-hearted seasonal ghost hunt.
And then shit got real.
Ghostly noises could be explained away initially as central heating pipes expanding and contracting, but as the programme progressed and more inexplicable things happened, Mike Smith in the studio got increasingly concerned for his wife, who was broadcasting from the house. Callers began to report seeing distressing things on the video feed. An unpleasant history was discovered.
When I was growing up, the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles was legendary for causing mass panic in America. Disappointingly, more modern research shows that much of this reaction was exaggerated, mainly confined to calls to local police forces and newspapers to confirm or deny what was happening.
After Ghostwatch, the BBC reported 30,000 such calls, including from Parkinson’s mother. A young man took his own life. His parents said he was obsessed with the programme and the Broadcasting Standards Commission found it was ‘excessively distressing and graphic.’
Ironically, that night I was drinking beer in a graveyard. A pub where I lived at the time was on the grounds of a church. I was, ahem, 18. It was a Saturday night. The last place I’d be then was in front of a TV set. How times change.
But here’s the thing: at the time this was buried. I remember a few freaked out friends and acquaintances at college the following week, but after the reaction, and especially after that desperately tragic suicide, the BBC wanted no further part of this. It took 10 years before it was released as a VHS and DVD.
There’s an argument that it’s poor taste to release it at all under those circumstances, but that leads to censorship. If we’re going to start banning films and books because of the deaths they cause, then you’d best start by burning your Bible.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987, Dir: Chuck Russell)
Right, I promised you trash, and here it is.
I’ll level with you right away; I was a bit scared of watching this. Every generation has their horror bogeyman and ours was Freddy Krueger, the child killer who invades dreams to inflict awful revenge on the vigilante parents who killed his corporeal body.
At the time, I was way more into the Friday the 13th franchise (I still think the sixth Friday, “Jason Lives” is some of the most unashamedly dumb fun you can have with a horror movie). I even made my own Jason hockey mask. Eminem got all his best moves from me. Anyway, both are trashy, the Fridays arguably more so. The first Nightmare is a smart film (in comparison, at least) and I like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare very much.
But sequels in a franchise like this must always increase the shock factor to keep people coming back. At the time I admit I was freaked out by classmates whispered descriptions of the gruesome, bloody kills. I feared being grossed out. I was scared of being scared.
When Mark Kermode reviewed the original Hostel, he argued that it was fine from the point of view of the audience. When you’re young, the endurance test of how much gore you can take is a game. That never fully goes away. Fair enough, I’m likely to get mocked by friends for confessing here that I wimped out on these movies as a kid. But screw it, the whole point of horror films is to find something that scares you, right? Which is why I span this up, albeit 30 odd years too late.
This, the third film in the franchise is regarded as the best of the original sequels. Patricia Arquette stars, making her second appearance this marathon and I was surprised also to see Morpheus himself, Laurence Fishburne. It’s directed by Chuck Russell, who also did the Eighties remake of The Blob, for which I have a soft (squishy, corrosive) spot.
You know what? It’s actually pretty good. Yes, it’s trash, 100% and it’s nasty, too. The kills are grim, the story has some gross elements and it’s all very, very silly. But the effects have aged well, and the villain is such a gleefully hateful bastard it’s hard not to get carried along with the rush to finish him off, even if we always knew it would last only as far as the next sequel.
Can’t say I’m filled with an overwhelming desire to watch the rest of the series, but who knows? For the next Halloween, perhaps I’ll do this and Friday the 13th back-to-back, albeit I’ll probably end up with what’s left of my brains leaking out of my ear.
Train to Busan (2016, Dir: Sang-ho Yeon)
Good grief. Blimey. Bloody hell.
Look, we all know we’ve had way too many zombie movies in recent years, not to mention The Walking Dead TV series and about 58 billion spin-offs. But this? It’s the best one I’ve seen since 28 Days Later.
I say that advisedly, having hugely enjoyed things like REC, REC 2 and The Girl with All the Gifts, they’re all excellent films. I also enjoyed World War Z, but it never quite managed to live up to the awesome scenes of people being overwhelmed by hordes of undead. Well, Train to Busan is like one of those scenes, but extended to an entire film. I haven’t checked my smartwatch, but the chances are my pulse rate spent the entire run time at dangerous levels.
With the films of Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer, The Host), horror films like The Wailing and A Tale of Two Sisters and, of course, Squid Game becoming Netflix’s most successful programme ever, Korean cinema and TV has been getting a lot of attention recently.
Oldboy has a lot to do with it, I think. After it hammered its way into our consciousness in 2003 the Korean film industry has gone from strength to strength. Oldboy is brilliantly horrifying, but it’s a tough watch. Train to Busan has an emotional intensity in some scenes which come close to that film, but it’s more accessible in terms of what’s on-screen. There’s none of the stomach-churning stuff that Oldboy has.
The plot is simple. A father and daughter board a train from Seoul to Busan just as, unknown to them or the other passengers, the zombie apocalypse begins. One of the infected gets on board…
Two hours of propulsive, intense, claustrophobic action-horror ensues and because of some great, loveable characters and fine acting, you are dragged along with the train at increasingly high speed. There is social commentary and some hateful villains.
Train to Busan is just fantastic entertainment.
Thank God I didn’t have popcorn:
Oculus (2013, Dir: Mike Flanagan)
Doctor Sleep (2019 Dir: Mike Flanagan)
Midnight Mass (2021, Dir: Mike Flanagan)
Here we go, this is where I start fangasming all over the damn page.
The list of genuinely great horror directors is short. Some have made spectacular single horror films, like William Friedkin (The Exorcist) and Stanley Kubrick (The Shining). Some have a strong brand associated with them, like the ‘slap gore’ of Sam Raimi or the body horror of David Cronenberg. There are very few who become generationally defining. James Whale perhaps? John Carpenter? For sure.
John Carpenter has made brilliant horror across multiple sub-genres, from science fiction (The Thing) to slasher (Halloween –I’m not much of a fan of this, but it did create the whole slasher genre that dominated the Eighties), to Lovecraftian (In the Mouth of Madness).
Well, now there’s another. Mike Flanagan, who is still only 43, can stand shoulder to shoulder with Carpenter already as one of the greatest horror film-makers of all time. He is prolific, driven by some inner fire to keep delivering the chills year after year, but the quality of his work is staggering. There is no bad film on his CV. Even Carpenter can’t honestly say that. Who can? Kubrick? Nolan? That’s the level we’re talking about here, except every one of his films and TV series is horror.
He’s got The Midnight Club coming to Netflix next year and has also announced that he’ll be bringing work based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe to our screens soon.
I mentioned him when I reviewed The Haunting of Bly Manor last year but as it’s Halloween I wanted to look again at some of his work and he also dropped something new, personal and, in my opinion, utterly, utterly bloody brilliant.
Oculus
The Oculus I’m talking about here is a film, not a VR headset. We’ve seen loads of haunted mirror stories, whether it’s Candyman, the Bloody Mary legend or the Kiefer Sutherland movie Mirrors. If you’re going to do it again, you need to do something different.
This film, the biggest stars of which are Karen Gillan, Katee Sackhoff and Kate Siegel, follows a young man being released from a psychiatric hospital following traumatic events in his childhood and an apparently delusional belief in an old, haunted mirror, called the Lasser Glass. No sooner is he set free than his sister (Gillan) confronts him with the mirror and a chance to tackle his demons.
So begins an ambitious dual narrative descent into madness and horror.
It’s probably Flanagan’s darkest work. There are some unforgettable moments, and it manages to breathe new life into a well-worn idea.
Doctor Sleep
Doctor Sleep is his film version of the 2013 Stephen King book, which in turn is his sequel to The Shining, asked for by fans. I’d seen it before, but this time I watched the Director’s Cut, which is a genuine upgrade. Either way, this is a fantastic film. I’ve got an idea for a post rattling around in my head about a ‘golden age of sequels’ and this is one of the reasons. King famously dislikes Kubrick’s film of The Shining, which makes major changes to the novel. I, like Joey in Friends, never finished the novel, being too freaked out by it at the time (I was young, and I was going through a lot, I need to try it again). But the film never had anything like that effect. I really like the film, I can see why it has the status it does, and I watch it pretty often because I get something more from it every time. But I’m mystified as to why it regularly tops lists of the scariest films ever made. Like Halloween, it just doesn’t frighten me, or chill me or anything like it.
So, by taking on Doctor Sleep, Flanagan was adapting a sequel to a revered book and film, each of which has a wildly different ending, with a living author who intensely dislikes the original movie. That’s challenging enough. He then decided to rebuild the set of the Overlook Hotel from the Kubrick film and incorporate the original movie into story changes for his adaptation. And Stephen King frigging loves it.
On top of all that, yes, this film is scary. There is one moment of genuinely horrifying horror (extended to almost unbearable levels in the Director’s Cut). It was almost enough to make me dislike Rebecca Ferguson, who plays the main villain, Rose the Hat.
Ewen McGregor plays the lead and Kyliegh Curran is spectacular as the child with the shine this time around.
This is top tier filmmaking and criminally underseen. Watch it, particularly if you’re a King fan.
Midnight Mass
Finally, Midnight Mass, which dropped in September this year.
Talking of King, this Netflix series feels like his imagination has transferred directly from his brain to the screen, despite being conceived and written by Flanagan.
It’s his most personal work. When I reviewed Stigmata the other day, I said “The plot could be an interesting take-down of organised religion versus real faith.” Well, this succeeds where Stigmata failed. It has themes of addiction and is obsessed with death. Yet despite that, it gives (particularly in one monologue) some of the most profoundly uplifting and hopeful feelings I’ve experienced from a work of fiction.
Briefly and as non-spoilery as possible, this story is centred on a small, religious island community. As a man with a tragic past returns home, so also a young charismatic priest arrives. Relationships are tested, old conflicts return. And then, miracles begin to happen.
Like The Empty Man, this won’t be for everyone. It’s very King-like, with an obsession with character, lots of rumination. In fact, I remember him saying once his ideal TV series would be a soap opera where everything ran along normally for a long time before suddenly introducing a monster. While that is not what happens here, we do spend a lot of time getting to know these folks before…
Well, check it out. Flanagan is the best horror has to offer at the moment, you won’t be disappointed. Just imagine what he could have done with ‘It’.
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That’s it, folks, thanks for sticking around and I hope you found something you liked. If you want final recommendations for something to watch tonight, I’d say this:
· If you really want fear, and if after 20 years it still hasn’t been spoilt for you, then watch Ring or The Ring (I saw both these on Blu Ray, but they are both on Amazon Prime).
· If it’s fun you’re after, then The Boys from County Hell or Trick ‘r Treat is the way to go (Again, both are on Prime).
· For intensity, if you can watch the whole thing uninterrupted in one sitting, then it must be either Frozen or Train to Busan (Train to Busan is on Prime, Frozen is on Google Play).
· If you want to be creeped out and challenged, go for The Empty Man (Disney+ Star).
· And if you want the best modern horror has to offer, then watch anything by Mike Flanagan (most of his stuff is on Netflix, but Doctor Sleep is on Prime and Oculus is on Chili).
Me? Well, tonight I’ll be watching the Director’s Cut of Donnie Darko. Not a horror, but it’s set around Halloween and I’m pretty sure I’ve put the horror hours in for this year!
Next year I’d like to do another marathon – if you have suggestions let me know.
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Thanks for reading!
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