horror – Page 3 – The Movie Gourmet

GREEN ROOM: blood and suspense

December 4, 2016May 11, 2016 by movie gourmet

The bloody thriller Green Room is a fresh and satisfying, well, bloody thriller. A vagabond rock band (Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and a couple of others) finds themselves playing a gig at a remote white nationalist compound in the woodsy Northwest. Inadvertently, they witness a murder and the chief skinhead (Patrick Stewart!) needs to eliminate all the witnesses. The band members and a local girl (Imogen Poots) are trapped in a room with just one way out, as the skinheads send in waves of machete- and shotgun-wielding thugs and vicious pit bulls. Who will survive and how?

Director Jeremy Saulnier proves again that he’s the rising master of the genre movie. Saulnier’s writing and directorial debut was 2014’s Blue Ruin, an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. An audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, Blue Ruin didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose. In Blue Ruin, Saulnier was responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue. Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.

In his superb leading performance in Blue Ruin, Macon Blair was believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. In Green Room, Blair plays Gabe, the put-upon middle manager of Patrick Stewart’s compound. Blair is just so interesting an actor. Here, he brings an unusual humanity to his role as a henchman.

The actor who drives the story, however, is Imogen Poots. Her character is very practical – realistic enough to see that the situation is hopeless. At first, she is numbed by the murder of her friend. But when she finally decides that she is going to survive – watch out! Since 2012, Poots has becoming a preferred indie leading lady with Greetings from Tim Buckley, A Late Quartet , The Look of Love, A Country Called Home, Green Room and her most complex role so far in the upcoming Frank & Lola. Here in Green Room, she’s a force of nature.

Once again, Saulnier delivers a very fresh and original genre movie. The total effect is very intense and very violent. If you’re okay with some gory violence, then Green Room is a thrill ride worth taking.

DVD/Stream of the Week: UNFRIENDED – run from your webcams!!!

February 9, 2016 by movie gourmet

In the very satisfying horror film Unfriended, it’s the one-year anniversary of a teenage girl’s suicide, and her bullying peers convene via webcams on social media. But their computers are hijacked by an Unknown Force who starts wreaking revenge. The kids become annoyed, then worried and, finally, panicked for their lives.

Here’s something I’ve never seen before: the entire movie is compiled of the characters’ screenshots. The critic Christy Lemire says that “Unfriended is a gimmick with a ridiculous premise, but damned if it doesn’t work”, and she’s right. Writer Nelson Greaves and Director Levan Gabriadze came up with this device, and their originality pays off with a fun and effective movie.

It’s on both my lists of I Hadn’t Seen This Before and Low Budget, High Quality Horror of 2015. Unfriended is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

2015 at the Movies: low-budget, high quality horror

October 31, 2016December 26, 2015 by movie gourmet

The Movie Gourmet doesn’t watch many horror movies, but 2015 featured some that were unusually inventive, scary and non-gory. It’s great to see young filmmakers bringing some intelligence and surprise (not just shockers) to this genre.

It Follows: Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has created a very scary horror film with an excellent soundtrack and a minimum of makeup, special effects and hardly any blood. 19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a guy who then tells her that he has passed on to her a kind of supernatural infection – a monster will follow her and kill her if she doesn’t pass it on to someone else. The monster shambles along at zombie speed and takes the form of a different human being each time. It Follows is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Unfriended: It’s the one-year anniversary of a teenage girl’s suicide, and her bullying peers convene via webcams on social media – but their computers are hijacked by an Unknown Force who starts wreaking revenge. Here’s a new one: the entire movie is compiled of the characters’ screenshots. Unfriended is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
The House on Pine Street: So here’s the thing with every movie ghost story – either the ghost is real or the protagonist is crazy enough to hallucinate one. The beauty of The House on Pine Street is that the story is right down the middle – ya just don’t know until the end when the story takes us definitively in one direction – and then suddenly lurches right back to the other extreme. I saw The House on Pine Street at Cinequest, and it’s now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

UNFRIENDED: run from your webcams!!

December 22, 2015November 2, 2015 by movie gourmet

Scare Week: FREAKS

October 31, 2015 by movie gourmet

Bad things happen at the circus. And bad things happen in Freaks. This is one of the most unsettling horror films (and the least politically correct), because it was filmed in 1932 with real circus freaks. If you have teenagers jaded by today’s empty horror flicks, this will knock them for a loop. Only 64 minutes.

Freaks is often televised around Halloween. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

Scare Week: IT FOLLOWS

October 30, 2015 by movie gourmet

The Movie Gourmet doesn’t watch many horror movies, but I really liked the inventive, scary and non-gory It Follows. 19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a guy who then tells her that he has passed on to her a kind of supernatural infection – a monster will follow her and kill her if she doesn’t pass it on to someone else. The monster shambles along at zombie speed and takes the form of a different human being each time. It’s terrifying – there’s a constant sense of dread and a convulsive shock every time It appears.

Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has created a very scary horror film with an excellent soundtrack and a minimum of makeup, special effects and hardly any blood. It’s even more frightening that she’s being stalked by something that usually looks normal.

Before the screening, I had to sit through several trailers from the horror genre. There was NOTHING in those trailers that I hadn’t seen before in The Shining, The Exorcist or a multitude of less elevated films. I have to note the contrast with It Follows, which is definitely something that you haven’t seen before.

The very talented actress Maika Monroe is almost always on-screen and she proves that she can carry a movie. I first noticed her in At Any Price , where she played the son ‘s girlfriend. That role was especially well-written – beginning as a simple teen from a broken family looking for some fun, her journey takes several surprising turn – and Monroe’s performance was memorable. Until fairly recently, Monroe was pursuing a professional career in freestyle kite surfing.

All the acting is good in It Follows, but Keir Gilchrist is especially good at portraying the ACHING sexual frustration of a teenage boy.

It Follows has a wonderful sense of place. It is set and was shot in the Detroit suburbs, the rural lakefront and the decaying inner city. The extraordinary High Lift Building in Detroit’s Water Works Park serves as the exterior for the climactic set piece.

But the key to It Follows is its originality – without expensive f/x or disgusting gore – it’s likely the best horror movie of the year. It Follows is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Scare Week: WITCHING AND BITCHING

October 28, 2015 by movie gourmet

The rockin’ Witching and Bitching (Las brujas de Zugarramurdi), by Spanish cult director Alex de la Iglesia, features a gang of robbers – one is dressed as a silver Jesus on the cross and another as a Green Army Guy – on the lam rocketing into an occult nightmare. They run smack dab into a coven of witches – the full-out Macbeth-stir-the-cauldron kind of witches. This film has the feel of an early Almodovar madcap comedy – if Almodovar were into goth horror. It’s all rapid-pulsed fun – and surprisingly smart.

The underlying theme is misogyny. The male characters grouse about the stereotypical complaints about women – all while themselves exemplifying the worst of the stereotypical male flaws. For example, one guy complains that his ex won’t consent to joint custody on the grounds of his irresponsibility – yet he brings their seven-year-old along on an armed robbery. One underlying joke is that the men see women as bitches, but it’s the men who spend the whole movie bitching. Another is that the men become trapped by REAL witches whose ball busting far exceeds the men’s most negative misogynistic fantasies.

These Spanish actors are wonderful, including the great Carmen Maura (Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Volver) and appropriately named hottie Carolina Bang. They’re very adept at the deadpan delivery of lines like this:

Driver: This village is damned. They hold witches sabbaths.
Boy: What’s that?
Robber: Like a kegger but medieval.

De la Iglesia maintains a deliciously frantic pace throughout. The final orgiastic ritual goes on a long time but maintains audience engagement.

This was the first de la Iglesia movie that I’d seen, but I’m definitely going to check out more of his work. Speaking of which, he nicely sets up a sequel. But go ahead and watch Witching and Bitching now – streaming in Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.

Scare Week: THE CONJURING

October 27, 2015 by movie gourmet

Just right for Halloween week, the satisfying shocker The Conjuring begins in a familiar way. In 1971, a couple (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) moves into an old, isolated farmhouse with their five daughters. The youngest kid finds a creepy old music box, the dog refuses to come inside the house, all the clocks stop at 3:07 AM, the house is always chilly and there’s a boarded-up cellar. If you’ve ever seen a scary movie, you know that THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED. Soon, the family desperately seeks the help of husband and wife ghostbusters (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson).

Interestingly, the story is based on a real occurrence. The real ghost experts soon afterward took on the notorious house in Amityville, Long Island.

What makes The Conjuring work so well? First, the performances of Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor elevate the material. Each is gifted with the capacity to mix passion, inner strength and fragility.

Director James Wan superbly paces the action, letting our sense of dread build and build until we jump in our seats. He uses a handheld (but not jumpy) camera to provide cool angles and a point of view that helps us relate to the characters.

And there is no gore. There are a few scary images, but The Conjuring relies on good, old-fashioned surprises and our discomfort with the occult to supply the fright.

The Conjuring is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

Scare Week: BORGMAN

October 26, 2015 by movie gourmet

Technically, the Dutch thriller Borgman is a horror film, but it’s horror for adults, without the gore and with lots of wit. The shock doesn’t come from monsters unexpectedly lurching out of nowhere. The entertainment comes from the OMG moments of the “don’t ask the weird guy into your house!” and “don’t let the sinister guys watch your kids!” variety.

The setting is the architecturally striking and well-tended home of an affluent Dutch family and their Danish nanny. The husband is an aggro corporate schemer who is a real scumbag – selfish, racist and chauvinistic, with the capacity for a violent rage. His wife Marina is repressed and neurotic. But they are highly functional until a homeless guy, Camiel Borgman, happens by and circumstances compel them to put him up. Borgman feels entitled to more and more outrageous impositions – and soon it’s apparent that he’s even more sinister than he is obnoxious.

What if Charles Manson wasn’t a drug addled hoodlum and instead used his deranged charisma with remarkable skill? Borgman leads a crew of normal looking but murderous henchmen, who operate with the ruthless efficiency of Navy Seals. (Watch for the scar near the younger woman’s shoulder-blade.) Vaguely gifted with mind control, he can apparently create dreams by squatting naked gargoyle-like above Marina while she slumbers with her husband. There is violence aplenty, but it tends to come through a bonk on the head or some poison in a glass.

Dark comedy stems from the matter-of-factness of the murders and body disposal (as in tossing corpses into a lake and then diving in for a relaxing swim). Every once in a while, there’s a hilariously sinister moment, like the supremely random appearance of some whippets that seem more like hellhounds.

The acting is uniformly excellent, including the kids, but Jan Bijvoet as Borgman and Hadewych Minis as Marina are stellar.

Some questions are never answered (who are those three guys at the beginning and why are they hunting the homeless guys?). Is this a cult or aliens or what? The audience needs to accept some ambiguity. But the overall story arc is clear – no good is going to come of these people once they meet Camiel Borgman and his friends.

There is a subtext here: is this family so bourgeois that it deserves its fate? Fortunately, this subtext isn’t as in-your-face as in some recent self-loathing Eurocrap like Happy Days or Finsterworld, so it’s not at all off-putting. But Borgman can be enjoyed without going there at all.

Borgman is superbly written and directed by Alex van Warmerdam, a 62-year-old Dutch actor with only a handful of writing and directing credits.

I don’t often recommend a horror movie, but I’m all in on Borgman. Take it from me – you haven’t seen this movie before, and it’s endlessly entertaining. Borgman is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

It’s Scare Week at The Movie Gourmet

October 25, 2015 by movie gourmet

PEEPING TOM, coming up on Turner Classic Movies and better than PSYCHO — PEEPING TOM – even better than PSYCHO

Just for Halloween, The Movie Gourmet is presenting a special SCARE WEEK. It’s all horror, all of the time. But even folks who normally avoid the horror genre will find someone to enjoy here. I don’t like Gore Horror, so there’s relatively little blood and guts in this international program. Here’s the lineup.

Monday: Borgman (2014 – Netherlands). This is horror for adults, without the gore and with lots of wit. Borgman is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Tuesday: The Conjuring (2013 – US). Based on true events, The Conjuring scares without ANY gore. There are a few scary images, but The Conjuring relies on good, old-fashioned surprises and our discomfort with the occult to supply the fright. Women, in particular, who avoid this genre will relate to the performances of Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor. The Conjuring is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

Wednesday: Witching and Bitching (2014 – Spain). Witching and Bitching is a witty comment on misogyny inside a rockin’ horror spoof. Witching and Bitching is now streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.

Thursday: Peeping Tom (1960 – UK). This is the best-ever psycho serial killer movie, better than its contemporary Psycho. It’s so scary and unsettling that it ruined the career of its storied director Michael Powell. It’s undoubtedly the best movie in The Movie Gourmet’s Scare Week program. You can also find it on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Friday: It Follows (2015 – US). The key to It Follows is its originality – without expensive f/x or disgusting gore – it’s likely the best horror movie of this year. It Follows is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Also Friday: My Movies to See Right Now will include the ultra-campy The Tingler with Vincent Price.

Saturday: Freaks (1932 – UK) with real circus freaks. If you have teenagers jaded by today’s empty horror flicks, this will knock them for a loop. Only 64 minutes. Freaks is often televised around Halloween. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

So enjoy – and don’t go alone into the darkened basement to investigate that strange sound!