‘The sadness’
Stream it on Shudder.
This ultra-violent apocalypse movie is an unhinged joyride through genre craze that will shake your guts and your brain. That’s a no-brainer warning and an enthusiastic recommendation.
Jim (Berant Zhu) and his girlfriend, Kat (Regina Lei), wake up one morning to see a bloodstained woman on a nearby rooftop, one of many ominous clues that a virus is about to overwhelm Taipei. Before long, their fellow citizens turn into grinning, flesh-hungry fiends, including a creepy elderly businessman (Tzu-Chiang Wang) who becomes one of the film’s many blemish-spitting, socket-seeking sexual attackers.
When Kat finds herself in a hospital under siege, she encounters a demented virologist who finds her afflicted with how bad men – misogynists, corrupt politicians, virus deniers – successfully undermine a good society. “Everything has to be politicized,” he explains. “There can be no more truth.”
When Canadian writer-director-editor Rob Jabbaz showed it at Fantasia, a genre festival not for lightweights, it featured a rare trigger warning. If that sounds like a cross-border badge of honor, your name will be on it in this fearless, feminist, furious film.
Clementine (Susan Priver) is a medium with real clairvoyant powers, a skill that comes in handy in her job at a paranormal hotline. One night while on a phone call with a masked man with a hoarse voice, she has a vision of him violently beating a woman down – sure enough, he goes and does it.
As the masked maniac sneaks up on Clementine in her dreams and personally, his identity comes into focus and her powers become a blessing and a curse as she tries to end his horrific depravities.
This wonderfully grisly film from writer-director Chad Ferrin is such a brazen throwback to 1970s exploitation cinema and 1980s golden age slashers, you can almost smell the grindhouse. Ferrin’s fondness for psychosexual horror, particularly Brian De Palma’s films, saturates his cleverly constructed narrative, although some people may not like the cross-dressing aspects of the killer’s backstory that recall De Palma’s “Dressed to Kill.”
Thumbs up to Kyle McConaghy, the director of photography, for making a grainy film that looks like he’s recovered it from a long-locked projection booth in the sleaze-era Times Square.
‘A ghost awaits’
Stream it on Shudder.
So far, it’s been wall-to-wall grotesqueries in this column. This endearing romantic horror comedy comes to the rescue.
Jack (MacLeod Andrews, so poignant in “They Look Like People”) gets a job cleaning up a house whose residents suddenly left. He decides to sleep there and there he meets Muriel (Natalie Walker), a ghost and star employee at a house-haunting agency. As much as Muriel tries to scare him, Jack isn’t scared. In fact, he courts her with questions about the existence of God (she doesn’t know) and whether Johnny Cash is a ghost (she doesn’t know who that is).
This doesn’t sit well with Muriel’s boss, who sends a replacement ghost — or spectral agent, as they’re called — to make Jack leave the house. But she’s no match for Jack and Muriel’s thriving connection.
Adam Stovall’s eccentric film is an analog charmer, thanks to finely tuned performances and a surprisingly moving script; it reminded me of “Lace Crater”, another lo-fi meet-cute ghost story. Madeline Winters’ scary makeup design is downright mesmerizing.
‘The hunt’
Stream it on Amazon Freevee.
Craig Zobel’s scathing, pitch-black horror comedy about wealthy elites tracking down and killing “deplorables” is now free on the streaming service formerly known as IMDb TV.
A group of Americans – from red areas like Wyoming and Staten Island – wake up gagged and set to work in an open field with a stash of weapons (and a pig). As they rush to find out why they’re there, they’re brutally picked by killers who turn out to be liberals after the blood of people who don’t get their news from NPR.
What these privileged killers don’t know is that Crystal is one of the hunted, a car rental agent and vet from Afghanistan, played with unyielding determination by Betty Gilpin. With mercenaries like suburban mom Rambo, she makes her way to the home of Athena (Hilary Swank), the group’s wealthy mastermind, for a hand-to-hand combat to the death.
Fans of “Squid Game” and other manhunt movies will get a kick out of this shockingly comedic (and controversial) film. Don’t feel comfortable with the characters or the politics: Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof’s script is full of twists and turns that denounce the left and the right, but also, as Crystal puts it, anyone in power who is “a smart thing to do.” like they’re idiots or idiots pretending to be smart.”
I have to admit that I’m not sure what happened at the end of this character-driven psychological horror film from writer-director Sebastian Godwin. But during the efficiently scary 71 minutes, I was stuck with it.
Richard (Tom Goodman-Hill) takes his new wife, Holly (Aisling Loftus), to his ex-wife’s rural home, where he introduces Holly to his three children, including the young birthday girl Anna (Raffiella Chapman).
But right away, Holly suspects that something isn’t right. Anna’s brooding older siblings, Lucia (Hattie Gotobed) and Ralph (Lukas Rolfe), give her a stinky face and the creeps. And what makes those noises from behind the cellar door? Why are Lucia and Ralph playing so rough in the pool? Where is Richard’s ex-wife? And who exactly is Richard?
Godwin leaves you guessing as, with the help of Sergi Vilanova’s sinister cinematography, he signals that evil is on the way. While some critics found the film weak, I found it elliptical and creepy. Horror fans who like stories that leave clues, not answers, will enjoy walking this puzzling path.
