Streaming Bleak This Week, #3: We Are Still Here on Netflix Instant

If you’re in the mood for a low budget haunting-possession flick that doesn’t suffer from said low budget, Ted Gheoghegan’s We Are Still Here is one of the better recent additions to the Netflix canon. It’s also phenomenally cast, with scream queen Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, From Beyond) and Andrew Sensenig (the weird fucker from Upstream Color) playing a husband and wife who’ve relocated to a rural fixer-upper to start fresh after a family tragedy.

we are still here cast featuring Andrew Sensing, Lisa Marie, Larry Fessenden, Barbara Crampton

Marie, Fessenden, Sensenig and Crampton (L to R): a hellishly haunted reunion of b-horror behemoths

Then there’s Lisa Marie as a psychic, hippie friend who comes to visit the couple with her Dude Lebowski-esque husband (Larry Fessenden from Jugface—reuniting with Crampton after he played the sleazy college professor in You’re Next). Add in a creepy local priest and several bumps in the frigid New England night, and a very enjoyable homage to ’70s and ’80s horror ensues. This flick also gets major bonus points for going more the route of old-school special effects in situations where bigger budget films would have lazily turned to CGI.

IMBb: 5.7
GRADE: B

-Sam Adams

LAST WEEK IN THIS SERIES: Bob and the Trees

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

Best of the Bleak: Eighteen Top Lesser-Known Crime, Thriller and Horror Netflix Instant Titles from 2014

Consider this post a witches’ brew. The contents started as a liquid composed of every crime, thriller and horror feature on Netflix Instant. Then I cranked up the heat and gave it a year-long simmer, meticulously skimming away the fat and nasty bits. After that, I spent the next three months tasting and testing till I finally had a small saucepan of the darkest, most delectable demi-glace. I then took that shit and poured it over the finest unicorn liver and paired it with a nice barrel of chianti. And now… Dinner is served, cabrones!

Bon appétit!

Wait. Did you catch all that?

Essentially what I’m saying is that I spent a year combing through Reddit subthreads, countless hours watching every imaginable film and series on Netflix Instant, and three months writing about my favorite lesser-known titles (along with the help of my partner-in-crime, Adam Fox). I’ve now condensed all this research into a list of 18 of the best horror, crime and thriller features that you may have not seen on Netflix Instant.

Are a few things missing? Sure. No list is definitive, and that’s what next year is for. But consider this a damn good menu, with every item coming highly recommended by the chef himself.

Here’s the list, graded and alphabetically ordered, with titles linking back to our initial long-form posts:

MOVIES

Blue Ruin
Bittersweet revenge. That’s what Dwight (Macon Blair), a dumpster-diving hobo, is after when he hears the man who killed his parents is getting out of prison. Blue Ruin delivers as one of the most beautifully shot, darkly comical and poignant films of 2013. If you liked Shotgun Stories or are simply a fan of revenge and vigilante justice flicks, look no further. B+/A-

Fish Tank
A charming Irishman enters the life of a teenage breakdancer who lives with her drunk mom and foul-mouthed sister in the slums of East London. Michael Fassbender (pre-Magneto fame) provides one of his best ever performances as a boozy savior who seems too good to be true. This film creates a riveting wave of suspense, despite being the only title on this list devoid of much action or overt violence. A-

God Bless America
Idiocracy and the 1970 hippie-slaughter-fest Joe meet Network in Bobact Goldthwait’s blacker-than-black satire on American media culture and narcissism. Bill Murray’s brother, Joel, is phenomenal as an everyman who finally hits his breaking point and goes on a monstrous killing spree… inspired by human compassion. B+/A-

Gomorrah
Fucking hell, this is a bleak one. Director Matteo Garrone takes a page from Alejandro González Iñárritu’s book and intertwines four slum tales, using the gang-ridden streets of Naples as his canvas. Ranked by A.O. Scott as the sixth-best film of 2008, I’d highly recommend this to fans of Amores Perros and City of God. B+

Headhunters
This fast-paced Norwegian thriller tells the story of an art thief who gets in over his head by stealing from a special ops manhunter. Said manhunter is Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who brings all his kingslaying charm to what is perhaps the most throughly entertaining movie I watched all year. A-

In Bruges
Like I said, “mostly lesser-known” titles. If you haven’t seen Martin McDonagh’s brilliantly wry flick about a pair of hitmen (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) holidaying in the “fucking fairytale” town of Bruges, consider this a must-watch. For those who have seen it, I cannot urge you strongly enough to seek out The Guard, starring Brendan Gleeson as a Bad Lieutenant-esque Irish cop. (I’m quite eagerly anticipating director John Michael McDonagh’s follow-up, Calvary, which hits Netflix DVD queues on Jan. 6). A-

El Infierno
The best lesser-known movie on Netflix Instant. Period. A Mexican man is deported back home from the States, only to find his nation in ruinous drug violence. So what does he do? Break bad and become a narco hitman, of course. Rarely is sociopolitical commentary as entertaining to watch as in director Luis Estrada’s masterpiece. My top recommendation on this list—which would explain why I wrote a fucking novella on it (see link). A

I Saw the Devil
I didn’t write about Oldboy because if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve seen it thirteen times. I Saw the Devil continues in the tradition of Park Chan-Wook’s gut-wrenchingly violent Vengeance Trilogy and is, with perhaps the exception of Oldboy, the best film made in the landscape of prolific gore-horror that is South Korean cinema. Alongside El Infierno and Tell No One, this rounds out my top three recommendations within this list. A-/A

Let the Right One In
This Swedish kiddie vampire tale makes Twilight look like Sesame Street. If for some reason you haven’t seen this, please do—it’s arguably one of the best horror movies ever made. A

The Man from Nowhere
At what what point do I just give up and dedicate my entire blog to South Korean revenge movies? That’s a question this grim story of a mysterious Asian Jason Bourne putting his life on the line to save a young girl brings to mind. While not quite as devastatingly sinister as The Vengeance Trilogy, director Lee Jeong-beom’s 2010 flick is every bit as good—and much more action-packed. B+/A-

Stake Land
Aside from Let the Right One In, it could be argued that this devilish, little vampire road movie is the best bloodsucker flick since Dusk Till Dawn. It’s basically a much smarter, more artfully crafted and fully realized version of The Walking Dead. Oh, and while we’re on the subject of vamps, do me a fucking favor and skip that hipster trash that hipster critics are raving about, Only Lovers Left Alive. I consider Jim Jarmusch a god among directors, but that was his most pretentious bit of bullshit ever. On a more upbeat note, keep an eye out for the Iranian flick A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which I nominate for best horror-film title of 2014. As for Stake Land… A-

Tell No One
Michael Caine named this 2006 French mystery thriller as one of the top ten movies ever made. While I don’t fully agree, I also wouldn’t call that hyperbole. This story—about a doctor who uncovers a secret about his dead wife—somehow manages the task of being both one of the most beautiful love stories and most action-packed thrillers in recent memory. One of my top three picks on this list. A

The Taking of Deborah Logan
The found-footage genre finds new life in this jump-out-your-seat scary flick about a lady with Alzheimer’s who becomes possessed by demonic forces. While my smug, Masshole co-writer Adam Fox may disagree, I’d easily call this one of the best horror movies of 2014. B+/A-

You’re Next
An Australian survivalist chick winds up at the dinner party from hell as a cast and crew of mumblecore jag-offs redeem themselves by creating one of the best slasher films in years. If there was any justice in this world, Dwight Twilley would win an Oscar for “Looking for the Magic”—which director Adam Wingard uses immaculately here. B+/A-

SERIES

Black Mirror
Did I just give a shout-out to Adam Fox? He’s the guy who’s been writing up Black Mirror for this here site. Charlie Brooker’s series of seven (so far) unrelated stories is a menacingly bleak futuristic take on technology, dystopia and human fallibility. So far we’ve posted on Fifteen Million Merits (B+), a glimpse of what happens when The Running Man meets American Idol in hell; and The National Anthem (A-), which deals with a British prime minister deciding whether he should follow through on a terrorist threat to fuck a pig.

Happy Valley
If you haven’t watched Happy Valley yet, perhaps it’s for some of the same reasons that it took me so long to get around to it: The marquee image on Netflix displays an unknown, middle-aged actress in a British cop uniform. Meanwhile, there are several other British series plastered on the same page containing well-known actors in their prime, like Idris Elba, Cillian Murphy and Benedict Cumbertwat. So why should you choose Happy Valley, a show about a small-town detective who gets involved in a high-stakes kidnapping case? Let the record state that I am not comparing it to Breaking Bad… but it is the best show I’ve seen since the best show ever made ended. That’s why. A

The Fall: Season One
The Fall is perhaps one of the most intelligent cop shows on TV this side of True Detective, and now that Rust and Marty are out of the picture, Gillian Anderson’s lead as icy investigator Stella Gibson is perhaps the best character in the genre. The only downfall of this first season—which trails a sadistic Belfast serial killer—is that it left us with an asshole of a cliffhanger. Quit dicking around, BBC—deliver the goods! A-

Peaky Blinders: Season One
“When you walk through the garden…”. That was the line that Tom Waits opened episodes of The Wire with. “Take a little walk to the other side of the tracks” is the line Nick Cave opens Peaky Blinders with, and his “Red Right Hand” is the best intro song to any show since David Simon’s deservedly heralded series. There’s also a lot of other awesome shit happening here, like Cillian Murphy—as the leader of a Birmingham street gang—slashing people’s faces with razor-embedded scally caps. Blinders isn’t the most highbrow fare, but its first season is one of the most entertaining pieces of television I’ve seen in years. The second season falls a little short, but that’s another story for another time. A-

-Sam Adams

NOTE: A big year-end thanks to everyone who’s patronized this site, commented on it and given their support over the past three months. It means the fucking world. Also, a huge thanks to my man Adam Fox for helping me keep the ship afloat. We’ve got much more in store for 2015!

The best of Netflix Instant if bleak, thrilling cinema is your ASMR: Part III

For many Americans, 24-hour marathons of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story are the holiest of holiday traditions. That’s all fine and good, but some of us are more partial to the non-stop gore fests that populate channels like AMC and FX in the days leading up to Halloween. It’s a perfect time to kick back on the couch, inhale candy corn, and get bleary-eyed on pumpkin beer as you reacquaint yourself with the innumerable Michael Myers sequels and offshoots.

Alas, my days of paying for cable have ceased. And honestly, there are much better things to watch out there than the Busta-Rhymes-Tyra-Banks vehicle Halloween: Resurrection. Freddy Krueger brought nightmares to life. Halloween: Resurrection was a fucking nightmare in my life.

I got my fix this Halloween through some great Netflix Instant titles. And through this service, the soul-crushing depression that sets in when the 24-hour horror bloodbaths end on Nov. 1 can easily be bypassed.

Whether you be a fan of slashers or ghouls, there’s a bevy of great options to stream via Netflix. Here are a few recent personal favorites.

You’re Next

Requisite bloody-faced protagonist shot

For fans of modern horror, calling You’re Next a hidden gem is tantamount to saying, “They made a Texas Chainsaw movie before the Jessica Biel one?” If you’ve seen it, go ahead and skip to the next title (which you probably haven’t seen). However, if you haven’t seen this—or are just a fan of my wayward rants—keep reading, and consider it one of the top slasher films of the past decade, as well as a must-see for anyone with any interest in the genre.

You’re Next is a good, old-fashioned home-invasion gore fest. “Old-fashioned” is key here, because the film pays homage to a lot of ’80s and ’90s tropes (and yeah, that was a long fucking time ago in my book). The brilliant opening sequence starts in typical Scream fashion. A really hot chick (the underused Kate Lynn Sheil from House of Cards) and her scumbag boyfriend have a knifey, little run in with a masked man.

Kate Lyn Sheil, aka the indie fanboy’s new Zooey Deschanel

But before we get to the meat of the plot, something more needs to be said about this opening sequence. In particular, that Dwight Twilley song. My last post in this series included Blue Ruin, a film that paired a song and a scene in a way that I’d call among the year’s best audiovisual sequences.

Likewise, that opening sequence of You’re Next pulls an obscure pop hit and transforms it into one of the most tantalizing aspects of a great narrative. The song in question is Dwight Twilley’s “Looking for the Magic.” No, I had no idea who Dwight Twilley was before this movie. Yes, I’ve been getting weird looks the past few months while driving around town with this song playing on repeat. It’s infectious. It’s haunting. It’s usage embodies the mystique and grim humor that make You’re Next a brilliantly chilling and morbidly comic slasher flick.

If you geek out on “The Magic,” check out this article about its origins in the film. I love the part where Twilley’s wife tells the director, “You want ‘Looking for the Magic,’ but you can’t afford the fuckin’ magic!”

It’s also priceless that the album it came off of was called Twilley Don’t Mind. If I recorded a coked-up, Donovan-meets-classic-pop-rock album it would certainly be called Adams Don’t Mind. Anyway, here’s an old recording of Jim Morrison lookalike Dwight Twilley (and yes, that’s a young Tom Petty rocking out on backup guitar).

But back to the murder at hand. A rich kid and his Aussie girlfriend (Sharni Vinson) road trip to spend a weekend with his family at their secluded mansion in the woods. It turns out that the beau’s family are a bunch of psychotic WASPs who generally hate each other. Then there’s a bloodbath wreaked by killers in cute animal masks.

Watching uppity WASPs get axed to bits by cutesy lamb-masked villains is holiday fun for the whole family—and the type you won’t find in It’s a Wonderful Life. Speaking of Jimmy Stewart, they should do a You’re Next-style remake of Harvey where the imaginary friend is a bunny who fucks shit up. Oh yeah, Donnie Darko…

Coming soon to a theater near you…

We find out that the Aussie protagonist (and only likable person in the movie—outside of Kate Lyn Sheil, of course, who can do no wrong), also has a background as an Outback survivalist. This comes in handy.

You’re Next‘s only fault is that it enlists some noted mumblecore directors as actors. What is mumblecore, you ask? Unfortunately, it’s not the drunken cousin of a Harry Potter wizard. In my limited research, it seems to be a cinematic platform for hipsters to wallow in their hipsterishly hipster despair (see: previous scathing rant on Drinking Buddies, et al). Put bluntly, it’s one of the worst things since Cinema Verité and the French New Wave movement. As the great Werner Herzog put it, “By dint of declaration, the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.” In the same vein, mumblecore reaches a merely superficial truth—the truth that self-important, coffee shop filmmakers project as the truth.

Anyway, perhaps this isn’t much of a fault, because we get to see said mumblecore whiners brutally massacred. When the masks are off and the final axe is swung,You’re Next is a movie about a lot more than Dwight Twilley’s career revival and killing the shit out of hipsters and WASPs. But those reasons alone are good enough for me.

GRADE: B+ / A-
IMDb: 6.5

The Taking of Deborah Logan
Full disclosure: Despite my love of horror films, I tend to steer clear of anything involving ghosts, exorcisms or paranormal activities. The reason being that these tales involve a suspension of disbelief tied to the plausibility of a supernatural realm. I do not believe in that realm. So asking me to sit through such a flick is kind of like taking an atheist to mass. Sure, the message will be conveyed loud and clear, but an inherent disbelief in the underpinnings of such a message will make every word ring hollow.

An army of blind, albino cave-dwelling evolutionary anomalies? Plausible. Ghosts? Not so much.

Point being, it takes a lot to get me interested in any of the 5,000 Exorcist rehashings that Hollywood spews forth every year. So essentially, me telling horror fans that they have to watch The Taking of Deborah Logan is like our atheist friend saying to his atheist bros, “You gotta check out that mass—it was unbelievable!”

The film begins with a camera crew attempting to document the mental decline of an Alzheimer’s patient. As the patient weakens, eerie shit starts happening. As we all know, demons from the depths of hell are prone to preying on the weak and old, so it’s only natural that they’d possess our titular character.

“Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”

The Taking relies heavily on the found-footage / hidden camera blueprint of Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity. I’d argue that it supersedes both of these. For one, unlike Blair Witch, this film actually has an ending. It also has camerawork not done by someone with a bad case of the DTs. Furthermore, there’s a palatable depth to this story, thanks to some fine acting by Jill Larson and Anne Ramsay as the mother and daughter caught between a fatal disease and another form of hell on Earth.

And even for someone who’s all but sworn off supernatural flicks, this movie is downright, jump-out-your-seat scary as hell. In terms of this genre, I’d rank The Taking right alongside James Wan’s more mature efforts, like The Conjuring and Insidious (no, not Insidious: Chapter 2—that sucked. Bring me Insidious 3 and the return of the Darth Maul demon!).

The way Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” shall be remembered henceforth

Jill Larson’s transformation from Miss Daisy to a vessel of the eternally damned is pulled off with a subtly mounting air of terror, climaxing in a terrifying finish that includes one of the most magnificently unsettling images in recent cinema. This is probably one of the most underrated new titles on Netflix Instant. Don’t sleep on it, and once you’ve seen it, don’t expect any decent form of sleep.

GRADE: B+ / A-
IMDb: 6.5

Other must-watch BONUS PICKS to keep the Netflix Instant horror marathon raging: Stake Land, Trollhunter, Let The Right One In

Note on IMDb scores: For whatever reason, horror films typically rank much lower on IMDb than their equally good, non-horror counterparts. Consider anything above a 6.2 probably worth your time. (I’ll unveil my foolproof “IMDb credibility system” at a later date.)

-Sam Adams

The best of Netflix Instant if bleak, thrilling cinema is your ASMR: Part II

There are times when an ordinary man needs to take matters into his hands, and more often than not, those hands end up soaked in blood. While us level-headed civilians may not partake in or even advocate for vigilante justice, the vicarious thrill of watching Joe Citizen exact revenge on the big screen is undeniable. (There’s a reason why the great Charlie Bronson was able to rattle off four Death Wish sequels.)

These films can be even more intriguing when the protagonist isn’t, say, a gun-savvy war vet (see: Clint Eastwood’s incredible performance in the otherwise-misguided Gran Torino), but rather a timid, everyday man who’s been trampled into submission by forces he’s always seen as omnipotent and beyond his control. When the switch turns for that guy, we want to know what unfolds. After all, you recognize him, don’t you?

Blue Ruin
Quentin Tarantino has made a career of dusting off forgotten pop hits and pairing them with film sequences that, in some parallel universe, they were no doubt recorded for. This brand of audiovisual synergy is a formula that most likely has Lars Von Trier and adherents of the Dogme movement screaming, “Go make a fucking music video, already!”

My two cents would be that a great scene paired with a great song is simply a way of elevating the artform and increasing its potency, thus further satisfying the beholder. Consider the scene a drug like ecstasy, and consider the song as getting head. They’re both dandy on their own, but when you’re rolling, are you really gonna turn down that added stimulation? It’s called a heightened fucking experience, amigo.

What does this have to do with Blue Ruin, one might ask? Well, alongside that Dwight Twilley song in You’re Next, I’d argue that writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s use of Little Willie John’s “No Regrets” is among this year’s best audiovisual sequences. Maybe you should watch the movie yourself and then listen to the song, but since I’ve spent this much time waxing poetic, here’s some aural ecstasy (sans oral ecstasy):

To avoid spoilers, I won’t address why this song works so beautifully in Blue Ruin. So let’s start from the top. The film opens by introducing a skittish, hobo-bearded fellow who breaks into homes to take baths, eats leftovers out of trash bins near the Delaware shore and “lives” out of his car. I say “lives,” because it’s clear from the get-go that Dwight (Macon Blair) is more dwelling in the shadow of some dark past than actually spending any time interacting with the present. As he tells his sister in an early scene with very sparse dialogue, “I’m not used to talking this much.” To be fair, if there’s anything Wayne’s World taught us, it’s that there’s not a whole lot to be said about The Diamond State…

We soon find out what dark secret Dwight is dwelling on and, of course, facing it head-on is his only means of moving forward, regardless of the bloodshed involved. Suffice it to say that Saulnier wastes no time in getting the mayhem underway.

What’s refreshing about this revenge tale is that it doesn’t merely settle for the template set by great films like Deliverance or Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, wherein the meek man becomes the he-man. The transformation in Dwight is more subtle, and often a product of dumb luck rather than heroics (look for a great side role from Devin Ratray as a gun-loving, metalhead survivalist).

Blue Ruin, aka that movie where Nathan Lane goes apeshit.

When the buckets of blood have finally washed away, Blue Ruin is a bittersweet symphony about loss and redemption via vigilante justice. It also has a wonderfully grim sense of humor, specifically when that Little Willie John song comes into play.

GRADE: B+ / A-
IMDb: 7.1

God Bless America

There will be blood, and lots of it.

Consider writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait’s maniacally dark God Bless America as a hybrid of Ned Judge’s Idiocracy and the 1970 hippie slaughter-fest Joe (no, not David Gordon Green’s mesmerizing Nicolas Cage flick, which we’ll discuss soon enough). Then throw in a healthy dose of Taxi Driver for good measure.

But wait, did you say “writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait”? Yes, the voice behind the foul-mouthed sock puppet who cleared the road for Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog is indeed behind the lens here. And Goldthwait’s prior reputation is by no means a discredit. The film relies heavily on a brilliant sense of black humor, used to riff on pretty much everything that is wrong with modern American vanity and pop culture.

We learn early on that Frank (Joel Murray) is a guy who’s simply fed up with the lack of decency in modern society. His voice first pops up as his his whitetrash neighbors are yelling through the walls about a Michael Jackson story they’re watching on a shitty news channel. “I hate my neighbors. The constant cacophony of stupidity that pours from their apartment is absolutely soul-crushing.”

Thus begins the first in a whirlwind of cynically brilliant monologues from Joel Murray, one of those character actors who you’ll probably recognize (his turn as the barstool mailman Freddie Jackson in Shameless was one of the best parts of that show). Murray’s work is by far the crowning achievement of this movie. He channels both the wry, deadpan self-deprecation that his older brother—yeah, Bill muthafuckin’ Murray—finessed in Rushmore and the moral outrage of Peter Finch in Network.

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not keeping up with the Kardashians anymore!”

His disgust with everything from American Idol judges laughing at mentally challenged contestants to gay-bashing right-wingers finally comes to a breaking point when his pathetic life hits rock bottom. First, he’s fired from work on sexual harassment charges for sending flowers to a sick coworker. (And this might sound grandiose, but I’d argue that Goldthwait’s hyperbole here is a vital riff on the personal insensitivity in modern work environments.) Then his schmuck of a doctor tells him he has a brain tumor.

After a twist of fate rules out suicide, Frank goes on a killing spree with a hit list of pretty much any person who is “unkind or indecent.” And you side with the guy because at heart, he’s a teddy bear who cares about the goodness in people, and just happens to wield an AK-47. (Apropos of my note on Eastwood, Frank actually is a gun-savvy war vet, but that doesn’t really matter—it’s a comedy, and he certainly fits the mold of Joe Citizen.)

The only thing that irks me about this movie is that it does have a touch of Diablo Cody-esque, nagging self-awareness. I bring this up because Frank’s annoying sidekick, Roxy, is used more as platform to convey Goldthwait’s strong opinions than as an actual character (see: every character ever written by Diablo Cody). This shtick would get unbearable if it weren’t for the fact that, unlike Hollywood’s favorite no-talent ass-clown of a screenwriter, Goldthwait is not trying to show off how ironically cool his personal opinions are. Instead, he’s using this tool to outline the hideous, vain minutiae that, when compacted, is the face of our warped society.

Diablo Cody, aka the worst thing to happen to keyboards since Chuck Palahniuk and Tucker Max.

I did almost punch the screen when Roxy went off on a tangent about why Alice Cooper was the god of everything (like Ellen Page vocally jerking off to Daria Argento via Diablo Cody), but Frank saves the day just in time:

Frank: “Are you ADD, Juno?”

And Roxy redeems herself with this: “That’s who we should kill next. Fucking Diablo Cody. She’s the only stripper who suffers from too much self esteem.”

This tongue-in-cheek self-awareness that’s aware of its self-awareness is the only part of God Bless America that really doesn’t make sense to me. Perhaps Goldthwait is trying to tear down a horrible mechanism with the very same tools it was built with … but that might be reaching. And I really can’t stand Roxy’s character. This said, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better take on the most trashy and heartless elements of our modern society, and aided by Murray’s stellar performance, Goldthwait delivers a film that is as vicariously thrilling and hilarious as it is sociopolitically relevant.

GRADE: B+
IMDb: 7.3

-Sam Adams

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A site dedicated to cinema—in its bleakest, most gruesome and viscerally glorious forms. put bluntly, we just want to recommend and discuss some (mostly) lesser-known titles to lovers of thrillers, crime and horror.

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