Nacho Vigalondo’s thriller Open Windows is a unique little film that comes off like Rear Window for the digital age as we see a man, Nick, get trapped in a wicked game of cat and mouse when a psychopath named Chord attempts to carry out a plan to hunt down a movie star, all within the screen of a laptop.
Leigh Janiak’s haunting debut, Honeymoon, slowly peels back the layers of a relationship that gets torn apart in terrifying fashion as two newlyweds see their honeymoon descend into chaos after Paul discovers Bea wandering the woods in the middle of the night. Although this marks the first notch in her directorial debut, Janiak shows patience behind the camera as she masterfully builds eerie tension before unleashing a horrifying final act. Honeymoon is a genre bending slice of cinema that will have you guessing until the very end.
Killers comes to us from the twisted minds of Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto, or otherwise known as The Mo Brothers, who have been behind some truly twisted genre offerings like Macabre and last year’s Safe Haven segment in V/H/S 2. They return to the world of horror with Killers, delivering a nerve-shattering look into the mind of a serial killer and the lives he takes along the way. The film centers itself on a man named Nomura, who films himself brutally murdering young women that he has lured into his home. He uploads the videos to a website for anyone with a particularly twisted mind to watch. In doing so, Nomura triggers the dark side of a journalist, Bayu, who had been watching the serial killer’s videos. This leads to them meeting over the Internet, creating a complicated bond that destroys everything around them.
I‘m still trying to wrap my head around James Ward Byrkit’s feature film debut Coherence, so forgive me if this review is a little all over the place. Byrkit somehow created a film of cosmic proportions without ever leaving the small setting of a dinner party, that in itself should be applauded. A simple set-up turns into a mind-bending nightmare as the film takes place on the night of an astronomical anomaly when eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality distorting events. And that’s putting it lightly. Trust me.
Nicholas McCarthy follows up The Pact with another bout with the supernatural in his second feature film At the Devil’s Door. McCarthy clearly knows what he’s doing when it comes to delivering the chills as The Pact was a smart and genuine slice of genre scares. So what happened with At the Devil’s Door? This was a frustrating little film from McCarthy simply because it starts out with such promise only to lose its way right when things start to get good. The film follows a real estate agent, Leigh, who has to sell a house with a sketchy past. After a run-in with a disturbed girl, she becomes entangled with a supernatural force that soon pulls her artist sister Vera into its web—and has sinister plans for both of them.
Jeff Baena had the difficult task of uglying up the wonderful Aubrey Plaza for his zombie-comedy Life After Beth, a charming indie film that stars Dane DeHaan as Zach, who finds out that his deceased girlfriend mysteriously returns from the dead. And although her mind and body are slowly decaying, he takes this opportunity to fall in love with her all over again… until she gets a hunger for human flesh. Baena’s undead take on falling in love creates a charming wrinkle in the zombie genre as it shines a light on a couple with a second chance at love.
Matt Reeves was given the nod to bring Caesar and his army of apes back to the big screen in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and man did he leave one hell of a fingerprint on the franchise once all was said and done. For my money this is one of the best films in the franchise since we saw the beach-covered remains of the Statue of Liberty in 1968. The sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes picks up a decade after the devastating Simian Flu wiped out most of the human race. The human survivors and the growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar try to find peace, but are ultimately brought to the brink of a war.
Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us from Evil blends a cop drama with that of a tale of possession and how demons will latch onto the souls of the innocent and terrorize everyone around them. It makes for a haunting atmosphere as the dirty work of the NYPD is scary enough as it is, but combining that life with the demonic is a fantastic canvas for Derrickson to paint his skin-crawling tale. The film follows NY police officer Ralph Sarchie who joins forces with a priest, schooled in the rituals of exorcism, to rid the city of demonic possession. The heart of the film beats around those that are possessed and eventually leads to the film’s big exorcism scene, but does Derrickson himself deliver the goods? Unfortunately, not quite.
You know a movie leaves quite the impression when you can barely think of the words to describe it, and Jonathan Glazer’s brooding sci-fi slow burn, Under the Skin, did exactly that by the time the credits begin to tick across the screen. While the film is gorgeously shot and successfully weaves an unsettling atmosphere throughout its narrative, Under the Skin also features a whole lot of nothing. The film centers on an alien in human form preying upon the population of Scotland. It’s a simple plot for a simple movie and despite the fact that it’s truly an unsettling experience, I was just too bored to care.
Jordan Barker hits the home invasion genre with his thriller Torment, a film about a newlywed couple trying to survive the night when a sadistic cult-like family takes their little boy. Led by American Mary‘s Katharine Isabelle and Robin Dunne, Torment walks an all too familiar path that never quite sets itself apart other films in the genre. It plays it safe and the result is a by-the-numbers horror flick that we’ve seen time and time again.
Directing tandem Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die is a film about exactly that, a handful of dead cheerleaders hellbent on getting revenge on their high school football team. A ridiculous premise like that deserves and even more insane execution and McKee and Sivertson mostly hit the mark in that regard. It’s a fun, straight-forward horror comedy that spills plenty of the red stuff while chalking up some genuine laughs here and there.
The King of Monsters makes his long awaited return under the direction of Gareth Edwards, who breathes epic new life into a roaring Godzilla like we’ve never seen before. It raised a few eyebrows when Edwards took the helm behind one of cinema’s most iconic monsters because quite frankly, no one had ever heard of him. With just one film under his belt, Edwards had a lot to prove when his vision of Godzilla came stomping into our lives once again.
Ti West’s latest foray into the world of horror leaves us with The Sacrament, a heavy hitting shocker that takes its sweet time building skin-crawling tension as a world of pure terror slowly unfolds. West isn’t afraid to push the envelope with his wide-eyed thriller as he weaves a slow-burning tale that will truly leave you speechless by the time the credits roll. The film follows two journalists as they set out to document their friend’s journey to find his missing sister. Their journey leads them to Eden Parish, a self-sustained utopia with a mysterious leader known only as Father at the center of it all.
Jeremy Saulnier makes his long awaited return to the director’s chair with his thriller Blue Ruin, a straightforward classic tale of a revenge that takes a simple concept and turns it into pulse-pounding suspense. Sometimes keeping a story simple can go a very long way, and Saulnier’s thriller does just that. The film follows a homeless man whose quiet life is turned upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance, leading to a brutal battle to protect his estranged family.
Zack Parker ventures into the world of psychological horror with Proxy, an often times brutal indie film that highlights just how crazy a mother can be. The narrative that Parker lays out has enough twists and turns to keep you engaged by revealing one plot shake-up after another, however, it all gets hindered by its unbelievable characters and unconvincing execution. Proxy follows a very pregnant Esther Woodhouse who is brutally attacked and disfigured by a hooded assailant. The attack leads her to a support group where her life of sadness and solitude is opened up to friendship, understanding, and even acceptance. However, her new found friendship and understanding are not what they seem.
I knew going into Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman was going to be a strange experience, but I wasn’t expecting it to be a trippy fairytale-like nightmare that was tightly wrapped up in a bizarre story. It’s a very special kind of film that lays on a pitch black atmosphere that never lets you get comfortable, not even for a second. Last year we had Ben Weatley’s A Field in England to turn our brain matter into mush, this year we’ve got a wonderfully weird Borgman. It centers on a man on the run who stumbles into the lives of an arrogant upper-class family, turning their lives into a psychological nightmare.
It sees what it wants you to see. No other sentence hits the very core of Mike Flanagan’s Oculus quite like that one. Flanagan reminds us just how powerful a director’s vision is as he does exactly that—shows us only what he want’s us to see—as he spins a wicked tale that haunts and tricks in equal measure. Smartly written and extremely well executed, Oculus is a powerful horror film that haunts, shocks and delivers a crazy narrative that twists and turns until its final beat.
Jerome Sable brings together two unlikely genres in his musical slasher Stage Fright, a sometimes charming little film that sings its heart out and piles on the body count. And while the film does have moments of pure laughs mixed with plenty of the red stuff, it ultimately misses some major notes. In the film, a starry-eyed teenager, Camilla Swanson, wants to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a Broadway star, but once she lands the leading role in the play all hell breaks loose as she becomes terrorized by a blood-thirsty killer.
Director E.L. Katz—who is a longtime collaborator of You’re Next’s Adam Wingard—makes his feature film debut with Cheap Thrills, a deeply discomforting, nasty piece of cinema that isn’t afraid to push every button in the genre. The film follows Craig, a struggling family man who is on the very edge of losing everything. After running into an old friend at the bar, the two friends are roped into a round of drinks by a charismatic and ridiculously wealthy stranger along with his wife. Together the couple create a series of seemingly innocent dares for the two friends to do in exchange for some quick cash. As the cash reward gets higher and higher, the dares become more and more twisted, showing just how far some people are willing to go for money.
Jeremy Lovering takes psychological terror on the road with his first directorial effort In Fear, a fast paced thriller with genuine scares. It’s a very well crafted, tight thriller that plays on the fear of the things that lurk in the darkness. In Fear centers on a young couple’s fight to make it through the night after they have been trapped in a maze of country roads with only their vehicle for protection. Soon they become terrorized by an unseen tormentor hell-bent on exploiting their worst fears.
