Vengeance for Mr. Sympathy: Killer South Korean Thrillers on Netflix, Revisited

Four film movements over the past several years have kept me optimistic about the direction of bleak cinema. In no particular order, there’s the new-wave of oft-’80s-inspired horror pioneered by Ti West and the like (see: You’re Next, V/H/S/2, House of the Devil, It Follows). Then there’s the existentially bleak bloodbaths on the Outback frontier of Neo-Ozploitation (see: The Rover, Animal Kingdom, The Proposition, Son of a Gun). I’ve also waxed gushy about my fondness for the “country noir” subgenre, highlighted by films like Winter’s Bone, Joe, Mud and Cold in July.

Last but not least, of course, is the most profilic of these movements, and coincidentally the one that Netflix sources most constantly for its streaming catalogue. I’m talking about South Korean revenge-murder thrillers, all recognizable through their dependence on the cultural notion of “han”—perhaps one of the most brutal concepts to ever spawn a cinematic revolution.

American Han Korean Han

Eventually I’ll need to make a comprehensive list of the top films in this subgenre, but for now, suffice it to say that all the following should be watched: I Saw the Devil, The Man from Nowhere, Oldboy, Memories of Murder, The Chaser, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Host, Bedeviled.

If you’re a budding South Korean cinephile like myself, chances are you’ve seen most of the aforementioned titles. Or you’ve read about them on previous posts here. So let me offer forth three lesser-known South Korean flicks I just watched and thoroughly enjoyed. I’m not going to say they’re on the level of I Saw the Devil or Oldboy. They’re also all more fast-paced action-thrillers than what you might expect out of a Park Chan-wook film (i.e., they might be more accessible to those with weaker stomachs and shorter attention spans). Either way, if you have any interest in this movement, here’s a trifecta of very good titles that Netflix streaming currently offers:

A Hard Day
Falling thematically somewhere between Infernal Affairs and Headhunters is director Seong-hoon Kim’s A Hard Day. The Infernal Affairs comparison comes from Hard Day being about a deadly game of cat-and-mouse involving crooked cops. The Headhunters one is mainly because Hard Day is the most nerve-wracking, tension-riddled thriller I’ve seen since that incredible piece of Norwegian cinema.

On the way to his mother’s funeral, homicide detective Go Geon-soo (Sun-kyun Lee) is involved in a deadly hit-and-run. He goes to excruciating levels to cover his tracks, with each of his deceitful moves testing the clock in James Bondian fashion.

“I’m sorry mama!”

As his nightmarish evening continues, internal affairs exposes him and some colleagues for taking bribe money. And so it is that we begin our journey in rooting for a crooked, murderous cop, who somehow ends up being one of the film’s more endearing characters (that’s South Korean cinema for you).

As a multilayered web of duplicitous corruption unravels, our hero finds himself in an all-stakes deathmatch with a cunning psychopath who is essentially the South Korean Michael Myers (I’ll leave it at that to avoid spoilers).

Taking a page from common horror tropes, fast-action thrillers, and even Breaking Bad, A Hard Day is not a film for those suffering from heart problems, onychophagy or trichotillomania (although it may give your cinematic brain an erection lasting longer than four hours). Does it go beyond suspension of disbelief at times? Perhaps. But it’s also one of the most action-packed and entertaining South Korean thrillers I’ve ever seen.

GRADE: B+ / A-
IMDb: 6.7

No Tears for the Dead
So about the title of this post: A main commonality between No Tears for the Dead and A Company Man is that they both follow world-weary assassins who are beginning to give in to a softer side when they’re roused out of bliss/apathy by a very personal offense. (It should be noted that this is a very common theme in “han” films.)

No Tears for the Dead is, after all, director Jeong-beom Lee’s folllow-up to The Man from Nowhere—a slightly superior film about… a world-weary assassin who is beginning to give in to his softer side when he’s roused out of bliss/apathy by a very personal offense. Often these offenses take place in the form of wives or young girls being kidnapped or murdered (happy holidays, by the way!).

Our lead here is Gon, a hitman who has a change of heart after an assignment goes south. As his comically evil bosses press him to take care of a woman he’s beginning to fall for, he decides to go rogue and flip the script on them. What ensues is one of the most action-packed, high-budget thrillers this genre has spawned. Die Hard is channeled in bloody, explosive tower scenes. Flashy, well-choreographed action comes straight from the Jason Bourne playbook. Taken is also an obvious thematic influence.

Min-hee Kim no tears for the dead bloody

Gon’s girl…

No Tears also has some nice side roles from recognizable han-thriller regulars, including the creepy fucker who likes to bowl with human eyes from Man from Nowhere (Hee-won Kim), and the ever-sinister Dana Lee (OK, you might know him more as Mr. Takahashi from Curb Your Enthusiasm)…

As for drawbacks, Jeong-beom Lee lays the melodrama on a little heavy here just as he did in The Man from Nowhere, but I guess that goes with the geo-cinematic territory. Also, as the film attempts to emulate some of the aforementioned American action-thriller classics, there are some hammy performances that unnecessarily rely on actors attempting to say hard-ass things in English when they clearly have no grasp of the language. (As opposed to, say, my immaculate mastery of the Korean tongue.)

Still, production and action-wise, this film accomplishes as much as any American action-thriller blockbuster in recent memory. It might not have the depravity or sophistication of some han classics, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more exhilarating foreign popcorn flick made in the past few years.

GRADE: B+
IMDb: 6.7

A Company Man

While A Company Man is predicated on the not-so-subtle parallel between the dehumanizing realities of Asian corporate servitude and the commitments of a hitman, I’m more interested in recommending it based on it being one helluva bitchin’, kickass action-thriller.

In this installment of world-weary South Korean assassins and their moral awakenings, our man Hyeong-Do (So Ji-Sub) works for a company that does ruthless contract killings. Of course, he meets a beautiful lady with a kid and he decides it’s time to hang up his cleats. Of course, this doesn’t work. I honestly have no reason to give you more of a premise, because it’s the exact same thing that was done in No Tears, Man from Nowhere, etc. The thing is, it’s a formula that works, and Hyeong-Do is just as brooding, handsome and homicidally superhuman as any of his cinematic forebears.

The action is especially strong here, including a wall-scaling, bullet-eluding opening sequence that would make both Jackie Chan and Neo from The Matrix proud. And then there’s that Office Space on PCP moment where our man goes to town on a knife-wielding foe with a rolled up office calendar.

“If you could get me those TPS reports, that’d be greeeat…”

The production value and cinematography here are certainly not on par with No Tears or Hard Day, which is why I’d say try one of those first (Hard Day is the best of these three, in my opinion). That said, the action is first-rate, the thrills and kills come a mile a minute, and there’s at least a semblance of something to chew on intellectually here—as opposed to No Tears. If, per chance, you viewed Assault on Wall Street (it was bannered on Netflix for awhile) and deemed it at least somewhat worthwhile, Company Man is basically the same movie. But with much better figurative and literal execution.

GRADE: B / B+
IMDb: 6.7

-Sam Adams

Scream n’ Stream: 11 Netflix Double-Features for Halloween

It’s that time of the year again—a time when Mother Nature sheds her stillborn august growth and icy rains rattle windows in the coal-black night. Swirling winds snake about the skeletal limbs of decaying trees and crunchy auburn leaves turn to pulpy slop underfoot. Mist steals from the quivering forest bracken like an army of tattered ghouls, seeking predatory respite in the warmth of human flesh, and the forlorn laments of the howling departed cast a gray hell across the heavens.

Or perhaps living in Wisconsin and reading too much Cormac McCarthy has finally gotten to me.

The point is that the autumnal hour is nigh to binge on horror flicks (and depraved cinema in general), so I’ve scoured the bowels of Netflix’s streaming catalogue to come up with a gnarly little menu of back-to-back features. Sure, some of them are bigger-name titles you’ve already seen, but if you’re having a horror-a-thon with some folks less acquainted with the genre, a film like Silence of the Lambs is a perfect thematic gateway to something a bit more foreign and bleak, like the Korean revenge-torture fest I Saw the Devil.

So just as you pair your imperial pumpkin ale with a hearty stew, pair these 22 flicks together for one hell of a ravenous All Hallows Eve binge.

Bloodsuckers and the Badasses Who Bludgeon Them
When George Clooney starred alongside Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Keitel in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), he was nothing more than a hunky TV actor (having spent the three years prior in residence on Friends, Sisters and Bodies of Evidence). Then Seth Gecko came along and fucked shit up with a full-scale vamp massacre at the Titty Twister bar just south of the Texas border. You’ve all seen it, so no need to divulge further. But when TMC and AMC are revisting Halloween 1-7, why not queue up the best action vampire movie ever made? Oh yeah, and Salma Hayek as Santánico Pandemónium… Nuff said.

As an encore, Stake Land is a killer treat for any of your movie-night friends who aren’t as well-versed in indie horror. The great Jim Mickle’s vampire road story plays out like a longer and more fully realized Walking Dead episode. That parallel should make it extremely accessible for any viewer with even the faintest interest in horror, and Nick Damici is just one mean muthafuckin’ vamp slayer. (See him also on Netflix in the werewolf tale Late Phases—not as good as Stake Land, but totally worthwhile.)

Stake Land
IMDb: 6.5
GRADE: A-

From Dusk Till Dawn
IMDb: 7.3
GRADE: A / A-

Candid Camera Carnage
I think it’s fair to say at this point that “found footage” has undergone a renaissance over the past several years, moving it from schticky, attention-grabbing, Blair Witch piggybacker to a subgenre with considerable merit and at least a few more avenues to explore. A prime example of this is the “Safe Haven” segment in V/H/S/2, arguably the best 40 minutes of “found footage” ever shot. V/H/S/2‘s other four shorts also hold up admirably, and the visual upgrade to HD from the original V/H/S’ shoddy handheld format creates for a much more fully realized—and less nauseating—horror fest.

I had zero expectations for Devil’s Pass, a film about a documentary crew looking to unearth deathly secrets in Russia’s Ural Mountains. So I was surprisingly pleased with what amounted to essentially the poor-man’s found-footage version of The Descent. Sure, there have been better efforts in the subgenre recently (see: Contracted, Rec, Quarantine), but in terms of what Netflix has to offer, this is a nice diamond in the rough—replete with a healthy mix of gore, “jump scares” and ambitious CGI. (Side note: The Last Podcast on the Left covered the Dylatov Pass Incident rather hilariously, if ye ask me.)

V/H/S/2
IMDb: 6.1
GRADE: B+ / A-

Devil’s Pass
IMDb: 5.7
GRADE: B

Zombie Lockdown
If it weren’t for George Romero, The Walking Dead—and cinematic zombie culture as we know it—would probably be operating out of some cutesy, Twilight-style Christian chastity parable, with Selena Gomez and Zac Efron chewing at one another’s undead lips.

Thanks to Romero, we have unadulterated gore—and the prototype for the haggard, flesh-hungry walker that gave birth to iterations such as 28 Days Later’s rabid, running walker and Dead Snow‘s militaristic Nazi walkers. While Day of the Dead isn’t Romero’s masterpiece (unfortunately Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead aren’t on Netflix, nor is 2007’s much-slept-on Diary of the Dead), it showcases the type of zombie makeup and special effects that infected the entire genre to present day. Sure, the dialogue and acting can be a bit stilted, but when the gates bust loose and the zombie bunker turns into an all-out war zone, Day of the Dead is just as entertaining as its modern-day counterparts.

If you want more of a no-nonsense zombie thriller full of gore and action that’s less of a nostalgic history lesson, the 2009 French film The Horde hits all the right notes. As I wrote in my original post on The Horde, it’s “basically the perfect film for Walking Dead fans who enjoy that show for the zombie-body-count factor.” (Last Walking Dead comparison today, I promise.) The tale of two warring factions—French cops and French thugs—joining forces to plow down zombies in a high-rise is a simple backdrop for an insane amount of lecherously good carnage. This movie isn’t heady. But never is there a dull moment as the body count piles in ways that makes World War Z look yawn-inducing.

Day of the Dead
IMDb: 7.2

The Horde
IMDb: 5.9
GRADE: B

Serial Psychos
Silence of the Lambs isn’t a horror movie, so why am I recommending it around Halloween, ye ask? For starters, it’s the most fucked up movie ever to win an Oscar for Best Picture (and at its time, arguably the best movie to win the award since The Deer Hunter 13 years prior). But more importantly, Anthony Hopkins’ iconic character of Hannibal Lecter (first introduced on celluloid via Brian Cox in Brian DePalma’s gloriously 1980s-as-fuck Manhunter) is one of the best portrayals of a homicidal psycopath in big-screen history (thus the avalanche of sequels). Further, watching Lecter in all his demonic genius for two hours sets the perfect stage for the chianti I’m pairing with these blood-red fava beans: South Korean director Jee-woon Kim’s I Saw the Devil.

In Devil, we meet Kyung-chul (played by Min-sik Choi of Oldboy fame). Choi, it should be noted, is basically the poster child for the bleak and magnificent South Korean torture-revenge thriller movement that includes such classics as Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy (all on Netflix), The Man from Nowhere (also on Netflix) and The Chaser. As the homicidal Kyung-chul torments—and is tormented by—a young cop to whom the mission is quite personal, Devil unfolds as one of the best dark thrillers from any land made in the past few decades. Psycopaths, cannnibalism and mesmerizing, blood-spattered cinematography—they’re all here. The nonstop madness of this film should also quell the complaints of those who “don’t do subtitles.”

Silence of the Lambs
IMDb: 8.6
GRADE: A

I Saw the Devil
IMDb: 7.8
GRADE: A- / A

Campy Carnage Camp
If we’re going the campy, comedic route, options abound on Netflix. Both Dead Snow and Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead are damn fun genre flicks, with the former leaning a little more toward horror and the latter a little heavier on self-parody. Housebound and Grabbers are also totally worth a ride, but for a perfect concoction of gore and guffaws, I’m gonna start with Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and Zombeavers.

Tucker and Dale is pretty much a cult classic at this point. Its tale of two amiable rednecks unwittingly engaging in war with some “dumb college kids” camping in the backwoods is akin to Deliverance and Evil Dead meeting Joe Dirt. I personally liked Tucker and Dale even better than Cabin in the Woods (another film that pokes fun at what happens when dumb college kids go camping), meaning its easily one of my favorite horror comedies of all-time.

As for Zombeavers (also about wilderness-vacationing college kids)… I mean, it’s a movie called fucking Zombeavers. And that’s about as seriously as you should take it. If you come looking for nothing more than redneck jokes, t & a, bad puppet gore and an overload of “beaver” puns, you won’t be let down. This is definitely a movie to watch with a big group of people. My advice: the more booze, the better.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
IMDb: 7.6
GRADE: A- / B+

Zombeavers
IMDb: 4.8
GRADE: B / B-

Slashers and Home Invaders
You’re Next is arguably the coolest movie on this list. It’s got just about everyone in the Ti West crew: West, Joe Swanberg, Adam Wingard (directing), Simon Barrett, Amy Seimetz, Kate Lyn Sheil, etc. Basically, it’s a cast of creatives who could walk into a coffee shop in Paris in the 1920s and fit in like a black-and-white striped shirt. What I’m getting at is that while I used to despise these hipsters for their mumblecore pretention, West and his counterparts are actually at the forefront of making good, modern horror movies that pay stylish homage to the genre’s past. And You’re Next—A home invasion thriller about an Australian survivalist girl who meets her boyfriend’s parents at the dinner party from hell—is arguably the collective’s best piece of work. (The Sacrament, V/H/S/2 and The Guest are all awesome, all from these folks, and all on Netflix, by the way.)

While there are movies from the late, great Wes Craven I much prefer to Scream (namely The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes and The People Under the Stairs), Scream was his biggest commercial success, far outgrossing A Nightmare on Elm Street. It was also one of those things when I was in junior high where if you were the last kid in class who hadn’t seen Scream, someone was bound to shit in your gym shoes. The movie has obviously spawned a host of horrible parodies and lesser sequels, but at least from the vantage point of a ’90s kid, its a slasher OG, and well, I just can’t really think of any slasher movie on Netflix that pairs as nicely with You’re Next. (Heads up: Scream leaves Netflix streaming on 11/1/15.)

You’re Next
IMDb: 6.5
GRADE: B+ / A-

Scream
IMDb: 7.2

People Said His Brain Was Infected by Devils (Possessed)
When I posted my rather comprehensive list of the horror movies to watch on Netflix if you’ve already watched all the best ones, I can say in hindsight that there was one glaring omission: The Canal. Redditors (props) pointed me toward this slow-burn Irish chiller about a film archivist dealing with paranormal home events, and it turned out to be one of the eeriest damn movies I’d seen all year. Like I said, slow, but probably one of the most genuinely frightening movies on this list.

Also full of “jump scares” and a litany of mysterious chills, I was immensely impressed with the found-footage flick The Taking of Deborah Logan, about an Alzheimer’s patient who falls prey to demonic forces. Definitely in my top five as far as found footage goes, and also worth watching simply for one of the most awesome pieces of CGI imagery in any recent horror film.

The Canal
IMDb: 5.9
GRADE: B+

The Taking of Deborah Logan
IMDb: 6.5
GRADE: B+ / A-

Spawn of Satan
If Roman Polanski and R. Kelly have one thing in common, it’s that… they make great art! (Pedo-what? I said “art”…. Art I said!) Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and Frantic were to thrilling and chilling cinema what, say, 12 Play, Double Up and Black Panties were to landscape of modern gangster R&B.

In all seriousness, I’m throwing Rosemary’s Baby on here because a lot of people see it as one of the greatest horror films of all time, and I ain’t arguin’. Even nearly half a century and a few Swedish extraditions later, Polanski’s classic about the seeds sown by a demonic cult still measures up to the genre’s heavyweights.

As for Starry Eyes, I’m including it here mainly because Netflix just stripped us of House of the Devil (shame on you, Netflix). Still, if you’re in the mood for a little bit of Ol’ Beezlebub getting up your knickers, Starry Eyes is a grotesquely creepy flick about a would-be Hollywood starlet and her quest for fame. The parallel drawn between everyone in Hollywood being a fame whore and devil worship is perhaps a little heavy-handed, but give credit to Alex Essoe for one of the best horror performances this side of Essie Davis in Babadook. Put bluntly, this is some sick, twisted shit—and a pretty fun ride for those who can stomach it.

Rosemary’s Baby
IMDb: 8.0

Starry Eyes
IMDb: 6.0
GRADE: B / B-

Tastes Like Chicken (Cannibals)
My favorite thing about Ravenous is the film’s fever-dream atmosphere, created in large part by Daniel Lindholm’s haunting melody that plays as a bloodied Guy Pearce trudges through the snowy Sierra Nevada wilderness. Part Jack London, part Cormac McCarthy and part Cannibal! the Musical, Ravenous’ admixture of existentialist pioneering, survivalist bloodbaths and tongue-in-cheek historical-fiction comedy create for an extremely fun, weird piece of cannibal folklore. And Guy Pearce (The Proposition, Memento), Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting), Neal McDonough (Band of Brothers) and Jeffrey Jones (The Pest) simply could not have been cast better.

If you want to go back-to-back cannibal (coincidentally Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite coital position) and all you have is Netflix, you’re gonna have to run with We Are What We Are. I say that somewhat disparagingly because yeah, it’s my least favorite movie on this list. The tale of flesh-eating hilljacks preserving an old way of life is as predictable as can be, but… But! It’s directed by the great Jim Mickle (Stake Land, Cold in July), who uses an atmosphere of permanent torrential downpour to tremendous cinematographic effect here. It’s also got side roles from Michael Parks (Tusk, Red State) and Nick Damici (Stake Land, Late Phases), which should pique the interests of any modern horror fan worth their salt.

Ravenous
IMDb: 7.1
GRADE: B+

We Are What We Are
IMDb: 5.8
GRADE: B- / C+

Party in the USA!
Where so many attempt to carve a cult-classic novel with a maniacal protagonist into a a serviceable film, so few succeed. There are exceptions however, such as Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There’s also Mary Harron’s brilliant adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ apathetically savage tale about vapid consumerism and narcissism. Like Fear and Loathing, American Psycho, the movie, can be watched and quoted ad infinitum without it ever growing tired. And Christian Bale simply embodies Ellis’ character of Patrick Bateman in one of the finest antihero performances of all time. (I’ll let the reader judge if Kevin Spacey really deserved that Oscar for American Beauty in 2000).
While reveling in an old favorite is always fun, if you’re a horror fan and haven’t seen American Mary, tripping you are. Katherine Isabelle’s role as a med student who turns to the blackmarket of body modification (all while taking out her vengeance on a seedy underworld of the upper-crust) is arguably the sexiest lead horror performance since… I’m gonna go with Eliza Dushku in Wrong Turn (great movie, by the way). Like American Psycho, Mary is also savagely and stylistically delightful, finding humor in the bleakest blood-spattered corners of our human fabric.

American Psycho
IMDb: 7.6
GRADE: A

American Mary
IMDb: 6.3
GRADE: B / B+

Creature Features
I include Open Water on this list not because it’s horror, but because I’ve never been more genuinely terrified watching a movie on the big screen than I was when I saw this in theaters a decade ago. Through the guerilla lens of shooting at night in actual shark-infested Bahamian waters, director Chris Kentis creates serves up arguably the most viscerally infectious shark movie ever made. It’s not about big fins knifing a b-line through the water at unsuspecting maidens; Open Water‘s dread lies in nibbles on the feet, hazy outlines on an eye-level horizon of eternally foreign sea, and small splashes and flickering tails that all signal the most mindfuckingly awful death this side of what went down in George Sluizer’s 1988 Dutch thriller Spoorloos. This deserves a big screen, pitch black and utter silence.

Want more creature? The Host is another one I was lucky enough to catch on the big screen. I remember this vividly (despite being stoned out of my mind) simply because it had the best creature CGI I’d ever seen. As a mutant river monster wreaks havoc on Seoul, a family struggles with all the hallmarks of South Korean cinema—bitter anguish, bowel-churning pain and a quest for revenge. The story meanders a little toward the end, but it’s worth it for the creature effects alone (which hold up very nicely 15 years later, stoned or not).

Open Water
IMDb: 5.7

The Host
IMDb: 7.0

-Sam Adams

NOTE: I left several films ungraded simply because they weren’t fresh enough in my memory to be subject to such biased scrutiny.

NOTE 2: IMDb ratings for horror movies are criminally low. If it’s above a 6 and isn’t a critical darling (Babadook, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) or a blockbuster (Oculus), it will most likely be better than 90 percent of the movies nominated for an Oscar this year.

Scraping the Barrel: 10 modern horror films on Netflix Instant worth watching

If you’re wondering why I’m making a “worth-watching” list and not a “best of” one, the reasons are thus: This is not a clickbait site, and more importantly, horror is a genre which—let’s be honest—shits the bed more often than it has us fearfully checking underneath it.

Another main reason is that anyone who reads this site has probably made it through all of the well-regarded horror flicks on Netflix Instant, and it’s my job to point you in the direction of lesser-known treasures. Before we continue, here’s a list of modern movies on Netflix I’m assuming you’ve seen if you’re a horror fan—all of which you should watch if you haven’t (links back to our original reviews):

—A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
—House of the Devil
—I Saw the Devil
—Let the Right One In
—Sacrament
—Stake Land
—The Babadook
—The Guest
—The Host
—The Taking of Deborah Logan
—Troll Hunter
—Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
—V/H/S/2
—You’re Next

As for the list below, it’s for those nights when you’re endlessly browsing through Netflix’s horror section, wondering which loud-title parked between Sharknado and Leprechaun in the Hood is actually going to be a film that some motherfucker put a modicum of original thought into. Because it’s horror—a genre in which roughly 98 percent of films suck, while the other 2 percent are what us junkies live for. So here ya go…

American Mary

If there’s one thing that grinds my fucking gears, it’s movie titles that begin with the prefix “American.” With American Psycho, it made sense. But over the past few decades, it’s simply become a marketing scheme. Want to make an Oscar-bait movie? American Sniper, American Beauty, American Hustle, American Gangster, etc. Want to make a horror movie/show that will ride the coattails of American Psycho? Enter American Horror Story, An American Haunting, An American Ghost Story, etc. Point being that the word “American” is about as indicative of what a film is about as the word “the”. It’s the Hollywood version of clickbait, and it needs to be locked in a dark cabin and split open with various medical instruments in some remote swamp area near Carcosa.

It all makes me want to write a script titled American America that stars Bradley Cooper as a down-and-out boxer who returns home to Southie Boston from Vietnam in the ’70s and has to overcome the odds while steering clear of a bellbottom-clad coke dealer (Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg, Jeremy Renner, etc.) and winning back his smaht-talking sweethaht (Jennifer Lawrence or Amy Adams). … You’re welcome, Shawn, Marlon and Keenon Ivory.

Horror-wise, I’d just do this:

Coming this fall from visionary blogger Sam Adams…

So anyways, it was a long time before I gave American Mary the time of day. And yeah, the title does kind of make sense, what with it being an arguably feminist revision of American Psycho. The premise: Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle from Ginger Snaps) is a brilliant med student trying to make ends meet so that she can pay her way through school. When things go south during a desperate audition at a strip club, her surgical skills come in handy and prove to be exceedingly lucrative on the blackmarket. As she works her way into the upper crust of surgical culture, she gets invited to a doctor’s party. Bad things ensue, and all of a sudden Mary—the undercover body modification surgeon—starts moonlighting as a scalpel-armed revenge assassin.

In the vein of both Tusk and the great wave of South Korean revenge thrillers, American Mary is a surprisingly entertaining look into the twisted underworld of body modification and mutilation. It’s also hard to take your eyes off Isabelle, who offers up one of the hottest PG-13 strip dances this side of Salma Hayek in Dusk Till Dawn or Jessica Alba in Sin City. Needless to say, Isabelle is right up there in the fanboy ranks of campy-modern-horror goddesses like Eliza Dushku and Elisha Cuthbert.

Katherine Isabelle striptease American Mary

American Striptease…

In less talented hands, her role of the smokin’ hot med school nerd turned mutilator would come off as wholly unbelievable. Fortunately, Isabelle is a seasoned horror vet who knows exactly what she’s doing here. All said, American Mary is a fun and gory revenge horror flick with quite a bit of style and sass.

GRADE: B / B+
IMDb: 6.3

The Den

I know “found footage” is a pretty damn taboo subject among some horror fans, but between V/H/S/2, Afflicted, The Taking of Deborah Logan and a few others, I’ve been warming up to it over the past few years. The Den’s spin on the subgenre comes in the form of webcam chatting. Hottie and PhD student Elizabeth Benton (Melanie Papalia) is a webcam junkie who’s just received a university grant to do a study on a Facebook-meets-Skype web-chatting site called The Den (sorry, I’m too much of a luddite for a more specific comparison).

Her interactions with random strangers start innocently enough. Sure, there’s some pervs swinging their dicks around on the live site, but she also has some “meaningful interactions.” As she builds her data pool, an anonymous user starts sharing snuff films with her and hacking into her account. From here, her virtual reality and personal life merge as a living hell. There’s some corny acting and the typical horror cliche of inept authorities, but overall The Den brings a refreshing twist to the found-footage wave. And unlike many films in the subgenre and their supernaturally enigmatic endings, here we get some brutally chilling resolution.

GRADE: B
IMDb: 6.1

Devil’s Pass

Somewhere between The Descent and an even more far-fetched science fiction tale rests Devil’s Pass, a quasi-found-footage horror flick about a documentary crew trying to solve the mystery of a Russian expedition that went missing in the Ural mountains in 1959. The Descent is, of course, a thematic comparison only. Devil’s Pass in no way lives up to that standard. Still, it holds a current of strongly captivating suspense throughout its brief runtime, and offers at least a semi-innovative concept into the realm of sci-fi horror. This movie also gets major points for finding a reason to film a found-footage-style flick in HD. Hopefully this and Afflicted will be the final deathblows to those nausea-inducing, shaky handcam flicks of yore.

GRADE: B
IMDb: 5.7

The Horde

There is both nothing new and nothing boring about the 2009 French zombie flick La Horde (The Horde). The film opens with a cop family grieving the loss of one of their own and vowing to take vengeance on the gangsters who put him down. Shortly after, said coppers are running a special-ops-style mission in a rundown tower apartment where their foes reside. As a bloodbath ensues, so too does the zombie apocalypse. Naturally, blood rivals must team up in order to make it out of the building alive.

Horde’s undead are of the 28 Days Later, fast-running rabid variety. And the CGI / makeup here brings them to life just as well as any zombie flick in recent memory. As for narrative, it doesn’t go much farther than a bunch of gun-toting frogs trying to shoot their way out of a zombie-infested building. The Horde is basically the perfect film for Walking Dead fans who enjoy that show for the zombie-body-count factor. In fact, there are probably more zombies killed in Horde’s 90 minutes than in any single season of Walking Dead.

And while the film is pretty dry story-wise, it’s high on loud and bloody style—and fortunately not in the Tarantino-jocking, groan-inducingly campy form of, say, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead. So is The Horde a great or original zombie movie? Nope. But an incredibly entertaining one for fans of the walker subgenre? Without a doubt.

GRADE: B
IMDb: 5.9

Housebound

While it’s not my favorite film on this list, Kiwi director Gerard Johnstone’s Housebound is arguably the best. It’s also one of the strongest horror comedies since Cabin in the Woods. Needless to say, I’m not a huge fan of self-effacing, tongue-in-cheek horror films, which is probably why I’m one of the few people on Earth who was severely underwhelmed by… Cabin in the Woods.

Housebound introduces Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly), a brooding amateur criminal and druggie who’s put on house arrest after a botched ATM-heist. This means that she has to spend eight months with her demented chatty-Cathy, hoarder of a mother (played by Rima Te Wiata, who showcases some masterful facial expressiveness here).

Soon, things start going bump in the night, and Housebound turns into an atypical haunting movie that shares several thematic similarities with both The Babadook and Wes Craven’s classic People Under the Stairs. Speaking of which:
So why am I not raving about this movie and writing a novel on it? Basically because it’s the kind of horror movie for folks who love that tongue-in-cheek horror nerdism branded by Sam Raimi and more recently incarnated in films like Shaun of the Dead and that cabin movie everybody loved. (Personally, I tend to like my horror much more sinister and depraved.)

Still, Housebound is a flawlessly executed horror-comedy that does provide its fair share of “jump scares.” It’s also highlighted by a superbly colorful cast of characters and a fun curveball of an ending. If you’re not a cinematic sadist like me, or are simply looking for a horror movie to watch with your 12-year-old niece/nephew, you really couldn’t ask for much more.

GRADE: B+
IMDb: 6.8

Late Phases

Like We Are What We Are, director Adrián García Bogliano’s Late Phases operates on the premise of a tried-and-true but also tired concept (werewolves) in what amounts to a very standard, predictable horror film. But wait! … It also stars Nick Damici, one of the most badass horror actors of the past decade (recognizable from every project the extremely talented Jim Mickle has ever directed).

Damici carries this film as a grizzled Vietnam vet who, despite being blind, is still handy with his heavy arsenal of firearms. Imagine Clint Eastwood’s character from Gran Torino being sightless and having to defend a gated elderly community from a horde of werewolves, and you’ve got the premise of Late Phases.

There are also some interesting side roles here. Tom Noonan from Manhunter and House of the Devil (and also one of the creepiest fucking actors alive) plays the part of a chainsmoking priest who looks to shepherd Damici’s ornery, widowed character back toward the light. And Ethan Embry (what the fuck happened to him?) does a fine job as Damici’s jaded and somewhat-estranged son.

The creature makeup here is a little corny, but the action shots and fight scenes involving the moon-howlers don’t disappoint. Some of the sequences reminded me of Descent-director Neil Marshall’s fantastic debut feature Dog Soldiers. And while Late Phases isn’t anything groundbreaking, it arguably amounts to the best werewolf flick since Marshall’s 2002 cult classic.

GRADE: B / B+
IMDb: 5.9

Starry Eyes

The premise of Starry Eyes is familiar enough: Sarah (Alex Essoe) is a struggling young actress looking for her big break in Hollywood. By night, she and her group of hipster, industry friends get drunk and have resume-based dick-measuring contests about their trajectories toward stardom. By day, they wallow in the reality of being deadbeat, burger-slinging wannabes. But Sarah knows she’s different. And when the role of a lifetime comes her way, she’s determined to do absolutely anything required to land it. Anything, of course, turns into a lot more than she could have imagined in her wildest nightmares…

“Eat the hipster, Anna Mae!”

The film—a veritable hybrid between A Serbian Film, Kill List and House of the Devil—is certainly one of the goriest and most stomach-churning on this list. Despite the generic set up, its first half carries a highly engrossing air of mystery. Unfortunately, the second half just kind of devolves into a heavily prolonged clusterfuck of degradation, wrapped up with a mind-numbingly contrived conclusion that’s already been done in at least two classic horror movies (which I’ll avoid mentioning so as not to play spoiler). To the film’s credit, Essoe’s dramatic range and overall performance rank up there alongside the best the genre has seen in the last few years. Starry Eyes could have been really, really good—but do we need yet another metaphor for the depraved vanity that defines Hollywood’s slimy underbelly? You be the judge. Either way, it’s loads better than the similarly themed Contracted.

GRADE: B / B-
IMDb: 6.0

13 Sins

An amalgam of every Saw movie and that Michael Douglas flick The Game, German director Daniel Stamm’s 13 Sins is essentially the torture porn version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Mark Webber plays Elliot Brindle, a New Orleans man in desperate financial straits. After being fired from his job, Brindle receives a phone call from an anonymous man who invites him to play a cash game that involves 13 feats. The first one is innocent—swat a fly for $1,000. As each task gets more and more insane, so does Brindle’s greed and bloodlust. A remake of the 2006 Thai flick 13 Beloved, 13 Sins is a fast-paced and exhilarating—if slightly lowbrow—gore-horror thriller. If the Saw and Hostel franchises are your brand of mindless guilty pleasure, you’ll definitely be at home here.

GRADE: B-
IMDb: 6.3

We Are What We Are

Director Jim Mickle has made two of the best atmospheric dark films of the past half-decade: Stake Land (2010), a vampire road movie, and Cold in July (2014), a Western-noir thriller featuring one of Don Johnson’s best-ever roles.

Why he sandwiched this canned story about a cannibal family living in the Catskill Mountains between the two is beyond me. I guess my main issue with this movie is that everything about it (including the title) just loudly screams “uninventive direct-to-DVD cannibal movie.” Which is weird, because the script comes from the talented trio of Mickle, cult-horror hero Nick Damici (Stake Land, Late Phases), and author Joe R. Lansdale (who penned both this and Cold in July as original novels).

Michael Parks in Tusk: “I Think the real savage animals are the humans.”

So what are the saving graces of this film that make it worth a look? The most pronounced would be Mickle’s deft hand with atmospheric cinematography—a quality that oozed from his two much-better recent films. His vision of the Catskills in a perpetual downpour here feels more like the setting for Winter’s Bone than it does some B-horror movie. The film also has strong acting, including a role from the great character actor Michael Parks (Tusk, Red State, From Dusk Till Dawn) and a cameo from Damici.

All said, I wouldn’t highly recommend We Are What We Are, but I’d say it’s worth a gander for fans of dark cinema simply because Jim Mickle is one of the most exciting, up-and-coming directors of thrillers/horror in the game.

GRADE: B- / C+
IMDb: 5.8

Wolf Creek 2

Rarely does a horror sequel live up to its predecessor. Recent cases-in-point would be The Descent 2, Insidious 2, Jeepers Creepers 2 and The Hills Have Eyes 2. But when the original was just an above-average, gore-horror thriller with a memorable antagonist that didn’t ask too much of its audience, the recipe shouldn’t be that hard to duplicate. Directed by Greg Mclean (who also directed Wolf Creek and the killer-crocodile Ozploitation flick Rogue), Wolf Creek 2 gets points for knowing exactly what it is, and exactly what its fans want from it.

Mick Taylor (John Jarrat) returns as everyone’s favorite xenophobic, catchphrase-spewing, Outback serial killer. His prey in this installment are a pair of German outbackers and a British bloke who all happen to find themselves near the barren, titular area where Taylor prowls at night in his highbeam-adorned pickup. While the film relies on the same lowbrow, torture-porn fear factor of the first, Mclean does a nice job of showcasing the qualities that made the original such a hit: the Outback setting, and more importantly, the unforgettable Mick Taylor and his maniacally hilarious dialogue.

I fully understand that everything about this movie is about as accurate a representation of Aussie culture as a Foster’s add. Still, “the kangaroo scene” is arguably one of the funniest sequences a horror movie has delivered in years (and is certainly the most memorable use of kangaroos in film this side of Wake in Fright). If you didn’t like Wolf Creek, there is absolutely no reason to watch its sequel. If you don’t like frivolous gore (albeit with a sense of humor), you also shouldn’t watch this. But if you liked the original, I’d venture to say that Wolf Creek 2 is at the very least as good, if not a slight improvement both in terms of its comedic dialogue and Outback cinematography.

GRADE: B
IMDb: 6.1

-SAM ADAMS

V/H/S and V/H/S/2 on Netflix Instant: Found footage not to be frowned upon

“Found footage” has grown to carry a rather negative connotation amongst horror fans. Much of this is for good reason, what with the innumerable low-budget, low-quality and utterly braindead derivatives of Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity (including several of the half-assed Paranormal sequels themselves). But recent strides have shown that there’s still sustenance waiting to be milked from this zombie-cow of a sub-genre.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980): The grandaddy of found footage and one of the most gruesomely warped movies of all time.

Highlights among these modern additions include REC, the great George Romero’s Diary of the Dead, Trollhunter and 2014’s The Taking of Deborah Logan (the last two of which are available on Netflix Instant). Bigger-budget films like Chronicle and Cloverfield were also impressive, although I’d file them more under sci-fi-suspense than horror.

The psychology—not economics—behind why found footage films have become so successful is rather simple. On one level, we live in a culture that is unhealthily obsessed with voyeurism. On another, I would argue that this sub-genre caters to horror fans who, like myself, have trouble suspending their disbelief (e.g., I don’t believe in ghosts, so it’s hard for me to take exorcism or haunting stories seriously unless they get really damn creative.)

Watching a horrific tale unfold in what appears to be a more organic way works—at the very least—as a device that heightens the plausibility of such stories for viewers. Or put more plainly, the lifelike stylization of a movie within a movie overwhelms my ape brain, enabling it to quickly succumb to ideas I might have previously scoffed at. … At least that’s my two cents.

Zombie rabies: somehow much more believable when shot with a shaky handcam on night vision.

So as a horror lover who believes found footage is by no means an exhausted fad, one might ask what took me so long to get toV/H/S and V/H/S/2. The answer, quite simply, is that they have absolute shit scores on IMDb. The first installment carries a lousy 5.8, and the second is just slightly higher with a 6.1.

I’ve warned readers several times that horror scores on IMDb are usually at least a point below what a non-horror movie of equal caliber would draw. Still… I can only think of a handful of movies that ever ranked at a 6 or below that were worth my while (Here’s to you, Beer League). So why did these two really good horror flicks score so low? Chalk it up to moral outrage from non-horror fans translating into IMDb lowballing. Which is a good segue for a more specific look at our first recommended film in this post:

V/H/S

V/H/S opens through the lens of a group of hipster jackasses going around and filming themselves in acts of torment and destruction. Their first “prank” is a pseudo-rapey act in which they attack a couple in a parking garage.

I’m fairly sure quite a few of those negative scores on IMDb came from viewers who couldn’t make it through the first 20 minutes of the movie. While the actions of these small-time goons is certainly morally reprehensible, the shoddy, shaky, handheld recording quality of the film in the opening sequences is even more of an affront to the general public. It makes Blair Witch look like it was shot by the great Emmanuel Lubezki.

Emmanuel Lubezki Children of Men six minute shot

The brains behind Children of Men‘s famous uninterrupted six-minute action shot, Emmanuel Lubezki also killed it with Birdman and Gravity. Too bad he wasn’t available for V/H/S…

For those who can exercise a bit of patience, V/H/S quickly takes a turn for the better as the criminals get a cash offer to break into a house and recover a video tape of unknown origin. As the baddies start popping movies into VHS players, they realize they’ve stumbled on a treasure trove of what are mainly supernatural snuff flicks.

Here, V/H/S begins its anthology format, diving into five shorts by five different directors. Thankfully, the earlier narrative goes largely by the wayside, and we’re treated to a series of immensely harrowing found footage tales, all shot in at least slightly superior quality to that barely watchable intro.

V/H/S isn’t the first horror movie to embrace the anthology format (Creepshow and Three… Extremes immediately come to mind), but it is a novel idea for the found footage genre. It’s particularly refreshing when pitted against all that Paranormal Activity jive in which we typically have to wait through about an hour of cabinets banging, chandeliers rattling and lights going on and off before we actually get to see the shit hit the fan.

Paranormal Activity: Proof that you can make hundreds of millions by screening footage of people sleeping.

If you’ve ever been irked by comedies that are hilarious for the first 45 minutes and then fizzle out due to that whole “narrative thing,” V/H/S is exactly the antidote, except in horror form. The first short, “Amateur Night,” introduces us to more rapey dudes who go bar hopping and bring some drunk girls back to their hotel. Of course, said bros are looking for love in all the wrong places, and date rape quickly turns into a date with destiny.

“Amateur Night” is the strongest of the five shorts in V/H/S, but the other stories—about a couple being stalked on a honeymoon in the Grand Canyon; a demonic backwoods retreat; a Skype chat gone wrong; and a Halloween party from hell—are all intensely creepy shorts.

V/H/S may not be reinventing the wheel, but outside of come choppy camerawork, it’s about as entertaining throughout as a horror film could be. And it also gets some kudos for being the predecessor to one of the best found footage movies ever…

GRADE: B / B+
IMDb: 5.8

V/H/S/2

The recipe for V/H/S/2 is essentially that of its prequel: gallons of blood, lots of boobs and an ever-present nobody-walks theme. However, it’s as if the directors came back and fixed every kink. For one, the main narrative—a dickhead private dick and his sexy sidekick looking for a lost kid and stumbling on more VHS tapes—actually weaves through the films shorts in a way that makes it more than just a castaway excuse for an anthology film.

V/H/S/2 would also probably be more aptly titled H/D/CAMCORDER, as all of its sequences are shot in much higher definition than the original—lending some strong visual appeal to the horrific bleakness of each. And the second installation is a bit more concise than the first, with four shorts instead of five, and 22 minutes less of run time. (Note to indie filmmakers: Editing is not your enemy!)

I see dead people… in HD.

V/H/S/2 also has the crowning achievement of creating what’s at least debatably the best half hour of found footage work ever made. Directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans, the third sequence in the film, “Safe Haven,” is far and away the pinnacle of both V/H/S films.

The (comparably longer) short begins with a documentary crew filming a notorious Indonesian cult leader. Eventually, they persuade the sinister guru to let them bring cameras into his lockdown camp to expose the truth. Seeing as Ti West and Joe Swanberg have a heavy hand in both V/H/S films, it’s worth noting that this initial set up is eerily similar to that of The Sacrament, West’s 2013 found footage riff on the Jonestown Massacre, which stars Swanberg. (The Sacrament is on Netflix Instant, and is a totally worthwhile horror flick.)

“Drink the Kool-Aid, motherfuckers.”

But where The Sacrament leaves your typical doomsday cult scenario, “Safe Haven” takes it a giant, cloven-footed step further. The end result is simply one of the most gloriously gory and innovative executions that modern horror has to show for itself.

The other three segments in this blood-red mosaic don’t disappoint either—both in terms of execution and innovation. Adam Wingard’s “Phase I Clinical Trials” is viewed literally through the eye of a guy with an ocular implant that records his surroundings and allows him a closer connection to the paranormal; “A Ride in the Park,” by Blair Witch alums Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez uses a GoPro to capture a carnival of carnage in a quiet forest; and arguably the second-best short in this film, Jason Eisener’s “Slumber Party Alien Abduction,” well, the title is kinda self explanatory.

A PSA from “Slumber Party Alien Abduction”: Dear Signs, you sucked.

In all, V/H/S/2 delivers more shocks and excitement over its 96-minute run time than the entire Paranormal Activity saga combined. It’s not only one of the best found footage movies of all time, but also arguably one of the best and most creative horror flicks of the past decade.

GRADE: B+ / A-
IMDb: 6.1

-Sam Adams

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V/H/S and V/H/S/2 on Netflix Instant: Found footage not to be frowned upon