More Great New Halloween Staples

Last year, I put out a list of 13 new horror films that can be added to the canon of flicks you turn on every year for Halloween. Now I have a few more. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see a few of the movies I had planned to - namely The Boy and Goodnight Mommy. But maybe I'll get to add those for next year's installment of this, who knows. The picks here are sometimes obvious and sometimes not - maybe you can find some new favorites.

Here they are:

Dead End (2003)

I've known this movie, about a family that gets lost on a long country road at night, for years. It's probably a bit patchy, as the dialogue is often silly and the acting is over the top. It isn't perfect. But what made me put it on this list is the real horror and absurdity of what happens to these people. There are some legitimate scary scenes here and some cool horror tropes - things creeping in the shadows, people acting abnormally. It's a fun, sometimes silly, creepy flick. I still think about this movie whenever I'm driving at night, so that says something.

[REC] (2007)

A lot of people know this by its American remake Quarantine, but this Spanish film from 2007 is a raw, bloody good fucking time. This is a found footage thing that really makes you feel like you're in the middle of this terrifying disease outbreak. That's how the found footage style should be used - to immerse the viewer further into the world. [REC] does that, and it never lets up the frenzied, fast paced chaos. It's a killer movie and I think any fan of fast paced survival horror will enjoy it.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

An insane movie that, for some shady reason, was never actually given a legit release. This is a serial killer film to end all serial killer films, so over the top it starts to seem satirical and hysterical - but it pulls you back and doesn't quite go all the way either, remaining a pretty grisly, gruesome tale. This is a pretty one note movie and isn't particularly clever from a storytelling point of view, but it's put together well, and the whole thing is a sick, gleefully evil good time if you're in the mood for something completely tasteless. It's very low budget, and the potential is oozing from every pore. I'd love to see what these guys could have done with a bigger budget.

Crimson Peak (2015)

Guillermo del Toro's latest foray into horror, and I think this is a better film in that genre than he's had in some time. A period piece set in the late 1800s or early 1900s, this story is about a young girl who marries into a family that perhaps isn't what it seems. The characters and acting are really good in this, and the settings and scenery start out beautiful and slowly slide into horrifying. There are a lot of great gory ghost effects in this, too - killer stuff. The story has been done before, but there's always a place for good re-tellings of a classic styled tale, which Crimson Peak certainly falls under. Bombastic, fun and mournful somehow all at once. A powerful, energized film.

The Canal (2014)

Really brooding, eerie supernatural horror in the "wait, what's REALLY going on?" genre, rife with plot twists and supernatural eerieness you're never sure is actually really there. I loved the setting and visual style of this; there was lots of real seedy, bizarre stuff to look at, and the way the story unfolded just built tension like Lego blocks on top of one another. This is an extremely tense, dark film. The last plot twist wasn't that great, but everything that leads up to it is so good that it doesn't matter. This is just a creepy, weird trip into a dark, fucked up place, and I thought it was pretty awesome.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

An artsy, quiet film about a vampire terrorizing a small Iranian town. It's spooky, weird and kind of touching in a way. The story centers on this vampire who attacks men who disrespect women. It's really well shot and the atmosphere is through the roof. It never really goes for full on blood and guts or even psychological horror - it's more of a subtle, artistic tale. But the black and white color is used effectively and the desolate, run down setting is suitably eerie. Go see this.

Starry Eyes (2014)

I've talked about this before, but Starry Eyes is a first rate new horror movie. It's about an aspiring actress in California working at a shitty job when she gets the offer of a lifetime: a job with a weird director who's actually part of a cult. Part Lynch and part gore-flick like Contracted, this is a bone-chilling, atmospheric and brutal story. The film talks about the ambition of a young wannabe artist and also about disillusionment with being surrounded by a bunch of hipsters who don't do anything - her friends in the movie are all really pretentious douches who talk about making movies but then do nothing but get high. It's a lot of fun. Go watch it.

Lake Mungo (2008)

A dark, sad movie about a family who loses their daughter, and how they deal with it. This is a very slow and quiet tale told in faux-documentary format. There are hints of the supernatural, as the ghost of the dead girl is believed to be there, but the movie subverts the usual tropes and tells a gripping and left-of-center story about grief and moving on. There's a lot more to it, but I feel like telling you too much would be ruining the film. I found this a moving story but also a haunting and chilling one. Equal parts scary and sad, Lake Mungo is a very good film.

The Houses October Built (2014)

Real low budget found-footage stuff about a bunch of friends who go on a road trip in search of the most extreme haunts and haunted houses. The characters in this are actually likable and fun to watch, and the haunted house scenery is a gold mine for the Halloween season, dripping with October atmosphere. The haunted house scenes are fun, the dialogue is witty and the plot descends into real seedy, dark, scary waters later on as the characters search for the most extreme haunted houses they can find in backwoods America. I love this movie, and so will anyone else who's as into haunted houses as I am.

What We Do in the Shadows (2015)

I didn't know if this really belonged on a list of great horror movies, but it's too good for me to leave off. And it's got vampires in it, so fuck it, right? This is really more of a comedy than a horror film, about a bunch of quirky vampires rooming together in a New Zealand flat. The acting is good, the characters are a lot of fun and the story playfully subverts vampire cliche and makes everything fun and quick-witted. The film is clever, too, and has more dimensions than just wacky comedy. It delves into some surprisingly touching moments and ends up a more nuanced film than some other ones of its type. Really entertaining, I highly recommend it.

The Babadook (2014)

Horror should always be about something. When you're making a real serious horror film, it has to have some point, some real life tie-in or metaphor to what's happening. If you want to scare people, you make a horror movie that's actually about real things, because the best horror reflects things in real life that we're worried about or scared of, and builds off that. Because otherwise, you're just making a dumb movie at the end of the day. You can make it as supernatural and absurd as you want, but unless you make it real, it isn't fucking scary.

The Babadook, about a single mother struggling to raise her young son, does that in an exemplary way. This is a chilling, mean movie that keeps you on edge at all times. Everything feels uncomfortable and harsh and cruel. It's an assault on your senses, and the way it slides inconspicuously into madness is excellently done. A well made, blood-curdling terrifyingly good time.

It Follows (2015)

This and The Babadook are the most talked about horror films of the last year, and for good reason. It Follows is a fresh, fun film with one foot in classic 80s horror and the other in a more modern, arthouse-style direction. This movie is about relationships. It's about the journey every young person takes to finding one, and about the confusion and absurdity of it all. Very little in this movie has rules or makes sense, and that's how life feels when you're navigating that time of life. The characters do dumb things when trying to fight the evil thing chasing them, because in real life, most people do dumb things, and most of us wouldn't be able to MacGuyver our ways out of a scary situation. So that was refreshing.

With likable characters, a cool, creepy soundtrack and a bunch of super eerie scenes of things creeping up from far away, this is a great film. This is a scary movie, but it also has a sentimental side to it, and several scenes come off more wistful and even kind of romantic than a lot of genre films would try. With an extremely unique style, an interesting story and a palpable, tangible atmosphere and mood, this is a great horror film, and surely one of the best post-2000 ones.

Who says horror is dead? There are more I didn't even get to this year. Until next year, then!

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

The Best Movies of 2014

This year was tough for me in terms of good movies, because I saw a shitload of them, and there really wasn't a clear 'winner.' I do stand by my Number 1 choice on this list, but really it didn't win by a huge margin. Almost all of these films were neck-and-neck, with the top six or seven of them being nearly equal in terms of quality. It was tough to make this list just because there were so many fucking good movies out this year, and I didn't even see everything I wanted to.

First, though, some runners up. These are the movies that I really enjoyed, though not quite enough to put them on an actual list of the best movies of the year, but enough to mention them anyway out of some kind of impulse to cram more titles into this thing. Don't judge me.

Mockingjay

I wanted to mark this down because I hate the idea of splitting a book adaptation into two parts. It's money-grubbing crap and they could have figured out a way to put the entire book into one movie if they wanted to. But you just can't argue with how good this is. Francis Lawrence wields his directorial hammer once again and crafts a masterpiece. This has gorgeous cinematography and visuals, acting so good you feel like even the fantasy-politics they're talking are real, characters you care about and a cool, smart social commentary on how media can be used as a weapon to incite fear and change social opinions. I know a lot of people like to puff themselves up and talk about how this series is just teen crap with love triangles, etc, but it's a lot more than that, and this movie proves it. I'll see the second part too.

Blue Ruin

In my worst movies list, I talked about The Equalizer and why Hollywoodized revenge films portraying revenge as cool and stylish are shit. Blue Ruin is the antithesis to those movies. This is a down-and-dirty, Dennis-Lehane-styled Southern thriller about this little dude who comes home to get revenge for his parents' murders years earlier. I like that this doesn't give you the typical rugged, super-attractive Christian Bale-esque main lead character, the kind of guy who despite being at the end of his rope and half-insane, still manages to brush his hair and put on moisturizer every day. No – the main guy here is this meek, awkward, nervous little guy who seems like he's got a real short fuse. That's realistic and the character is interesting. With a bunch of bloody violence and a fast pace, this movie gets to business quick and remains entertaining throughout. Go see it.

Starry Eyes

Weird, spastic, out-there horror. This evokes Lynch and Kubrick at times and makes for a creepy, imaginative romp. The second half sort of becomes a different movie entirely and explodes into a gala of gore and alien serial-killing and body-metamorphoses. I also enjoyed the sort of commentary on hipster-types saying they're going to do things but usually just being pretentious fops about it and spending their time drinking and doing drugs. It's also a story about acting and the way art eats you alive. Go see it now.

And now for the real heavy-hitters – the actual Top 10 of the year, according to me!

10. The Skeleton Twins

Really raw, powerful and funny dramedy about two twins who reunite in the middle of some personal crises. Powerful performances by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are only part of the appeal, with the rest being the stunning writing – you really get into this story and it affects you. The characters are flawed and human, and it's interesting to watch. You get a very good blend of the drama and the comedy here, and so it's a very complete, professional feeling film that will satisfy every need you have in watching one. Well, maybe not the need for sci-fi action, but even so.

9. Gone Girl

David Fincher returns with an adaptation of mega-hit novel Gone Girl from rising star Gillian Flynn. This story about a marriage gone horribly wrong is delivered with a dark sort of humor just like the book had. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as lead characters Nick and Amy are masterful, and the rest of the supporting cast does awesome, too. There's a lot of commentary here on the media cycle and the way public opinion matters in high profile crime cases, as well as commentary on the way women are treated in modern American relationships – all of this is attacked with a satirical, barbed spear and a dark cynicism and humor. I would probably love this more if I hadn't read the book, as they're almost the same thing with very few differences, but even so, Gone Girl the movie is a masterful, deftly-made piece of art.

8. The Fault in Our Stars

Another great book from the last few years hit the silver screen. This romance story about two teens with cancer is just an all around great film, tugging at your heartstrings, delivering funny moments and setting up a world you can't get enough of. The performances are intense and feel like the characters are real and the story moves along so expertly that you barely notice two hours have gone by. I actually enjoyed Shailene Woodley's portrayal of main character Hazel even more than the character from the source material – this girl deserves an Oscar already. This is just an essential film that anyone can get into.

7. The Babadook

The scariest movie of the year, as well as one of the very best new horror films I've come across. This story about a mother and her child in Australia being stalked by a storybook monster has much more to it than just that, as I've talked about already. This is a story about parenting and the scariest parts of it. The mother's character arc is just chilling and the way the visual setting and tone of the film subtly changes over the course of the film is just masterful. The lighting, camera angles, directing style – all of this comes together and makes The Babadook a chilling fucking experience. The real cincher though is just the pure fear of a parent that might kill her child – that is what makes The Babadook scary as hell.

6. Interstellar

Christopher Nolan is back with his best film in years. He directed, wrote and produced this, so I guess it's more of a personal project than something like The Dark Knight Rises, and you can tell. This is a story about space exploration and a dying world, but it's also a story about the old American pioneer spirit – and what it means for the world. There's a lot of talk here about the consequences of exploration as opposed to practicality, dealing with the world as it is, and the film weighs both sides pretty equally.

Matthew McConaghuey is the lead and he does a good job, and his daughter played by Jessica Chastain is outstanding. Like the best Nolan films, this combines conceptual sci-fi ideas with a sort of raw, intense, focused emotion – here being the father-daughter love and all the buried emotions beneath that. Visually this is also the most interesting film of the year, with some really amazing looking outer-space landscapes that will just floor you. I mean they're seriously just awesome. The visuals combined with good characters and a thought-provoking story about where mankind is going makes Interstellar one of the year's finest.

5. Men, Women and Children

I feel like a lot of Jason Reitman films don't really appeal to the sort of college-aged crowd that really obsesses over and talks about movies all the time. They're very much about characters who you don't like all THAT much and who represent the sort of mainstream, regular Americans that said college-aged crowd doesn't gel with. This is a movie about very regular, average people who you wouldn't care about in an individual film, dealing with the repercussions of the Internet in middle-class America. It's an anthology-type of story and when combined together, they form a very powerful statement. This is a movie unlike most others out right now, because it's about something very current and important to almost everyone who would come across it. No, it doesn't tackle people with the most serious or grave of problems, but it does talk about very real things.

The fact that it's about the Internet and shows people of all ages using it is fascinating because the Internet is still evolving as we speak – every day we write history and forage into new territory with it, and rather than wait 30 years and then make a historical fiction film about the early 2010s, Reitman chose to do it now. That's important. This is maybe not for everyone in terms of sheer enjoyment, but in terms of scope and dynamic and social relevance, this is one of the most important films of the year, as it talks about the Right-Now, in very candid, blunt language – showing us a mirror of ourselves and what our Internet culture does to us. It's also Reitman's most mature work to date.

4. Boyhood

This is a much-talked-about film and for good reason. Filmed over the course of 12 years with the same cast, the film was then compiled into a coming of age epic about, well – boyhood. It's a stripped down, unpretentious film and works well to show a very down-to-Earth story. There's really nothing Hollywood about it – no adornments, no dramatic flourishes, very little “witty” dialogue...it's very much like what you'd see in real life. Some people go to movies to get away from real life, but this movie pretty much just shows life how it is, complete with great acting and a lot of memorable scenes. It's a long movie that doesn't bore you – instead there are just that many more great moments to choose from.

There's a beauty to the simplicity of this and a real appeal to how genuine and detailed this all is – I guess that's a product of 12 years of filmmaking. Even if this weren't a top-10 movie for the year though, it would deserve accolades for the sheer effort and scope of it. 12 years of filmmaking is a long-ass time and the effort shows here very clearly. This is a monument to the power of film, and what it can accomplish in its most creative and long-form styles. Brilliant work.

3. Obvious Child

A very low-key sort of indie comedy about a comedienne who gets an abortion after a one-night stand with a guy. I really like this just for the way it humanizes a hot-button topic like abortion. Made by less-talented folks, this would be a propaganda film that demonized antiabortion folks and had some sort of domineering religious parent and a chief “bad guy” in some sort of Christian fundamentalist character who would try and block the main character in everything she did. But as this is a movie made by adults, instead we get a subtle, very interesting comedy with great characters telling great jokes that don't at all diminish the serious undertones of a character getting an abortion. It takes a lot of talent to balance comedy and drama this well, but Obvious Child pulls it off.

It's just a delight of a film. The lead played by Jenny Slate is just awesome and Slate just does such a fucking good job at delivering her lines and making you like the character – she's funny, sympathetic, tough, vulnerable, etc. The other leads are all good too. The way the story is told just draws you in instantly and keeps you hooked, despite its rather simple plot. The decision she makes to get the abortion doesn't feel too easy or too hard and the film doesn't moralize on you or try to take a stand – it just humanizes a really complex issue. In these incredibly polarized times politically, I think that's really, really important. That's why this one gets the #3 spot.

2. Nightcrawler

One of the most intelligent, ruthless and creative films of the year. Jake Gyllenhaal gives probably the performance of his career so far as a guy with extremely wide eyes who wants to get into crime journalism's seedy underbelly – i.e. basically going around in the middle of the night filming bloody crash sites and shit. This is an incredibly nuanced and complex film. Through its darkly comedic lenses it satirizes the 24/7 media cycle and the desensitization of modern society to violence. It also has this quite underplayed riffing on the start-up business culture our generation has cultivated. There's one scene where Gyllenhaal and his sidekick are running away from a murder scene and Gyllenhaal is lecturing the other dude the whole time about how he needs to prioritize his work, etc – it's so fucked up, but it's brilliant, and that sums up most of the movie. This is satire with a black wit and genius intelligence, and I love the hell out of it.

1. Birdman

This is simply the most artful, passionate, weird and wonderful movie of the year. Michael Keaton delivers the greatest acting of 2014 – he's just amazing in this, stealing every scene he's in. The directing is madcap-insane, with these huge stretches with no cuts or breaks, often delving into close-ups of the main characters and showing all their flaws and fears and insecurities. That's what Birdman is about – acting as an art and a lifestyle, and how the public opinion and expectations eats you alive. There is just so much in here, so much complexity and meaning, that I could never do it justice in this little blurb.

There's a reason Keaton appears in a few scenes in nothing but his underwear, is all I can say – it's about revealing one's bare soul and darkest secrets and most embarrassing moments. That's what this movie is about. Anyone who dabbles in any kind of art – acting, music, writing, whatever – will find this a treasure. Birdman is movie of the year and if you haven't seen it yet, you're missing out.

Images copyright of their original owners, I own none of them.

STOCKING STUFFERS: The Babadook and Starry Eyes (2014)

Tomorrow is Christmas finally! Hooray! And for those of you who were concerned that I would just miss the point of this holiday forever, well, fear not: I have stocking stuffers for you.

New great horror films don't come around every day anymore, if they ever did – these days, we're lucky to get one or two good horror movies in a year, with most of the rest saturated with remakes and shitty Sam Raimi-produced ghost stories. But there is life in this stagnant genre yet.

Director: Jennifer Kent

Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman

IMDb

The Babadook is an Australian flick about a mother and her young son preyed upon by, apparently, a storybook creature in a book. That isn't really what's going on here, though, as the film gets pretty weird on us later. One of the reasons this is so good is that it sort of quietly creeps up on you as to what the movie is really about. Sure, you get a few shock moments where the monster pops up, and that points the movie in one direction. But it's really not just a goofy monster movie. This is a movie about parenthood. It's a weird grotesque tale about a stressed-out mother, and really just uses the storybook monster plot as a way to visualize that stress, anxiety, fear and ultimately madness that the main character goes through.

It's tough to really describe this without spoiling what happens in it. The film just does such a good job of scaring the shit out of you. The directing is a big part of that as it sort of pulls the rug out from under your feet halfway through – it's like waking up from a very deep dream with a jolt, the way the film plays it. It sort of subtly eases you into the clues of what's going on, and then drops you in like a parent throwing his kid into water and shouting at him to swim.

There's a lot of playing around with perception here – like early on, the little kid in the movie is constantly screaming and crying and being as annoying as possible. However, after a barely-perceptible tone shift halfway through, he suddenly starts to seem more like a regular kid – really it was just the mother's ugly perception of him that was making him seem so annoying early on. That's fucking brilliant, and I wish more movies would try stuff like that. Most mainstream movies don't like to try this kind of stuff as it makes it too hard for a lot of viewers to understand, but The Babadook takes some fucking risks, doesn't treat its audience like morons, and is so much better for it.

Another thing I really liked about the film was just the weird carnivalesque silliness it had to it at times. While The Babadook is one of the scariest films I've seen from the 2010s, it isn't all stone-faced serious – I'll put it this way: the climax features toy guns and Home Alone-esque traps. And it works. So many horror movies are almost afraid of being kitschy or cheesy, thinking it's “just dated old 80s stuff” or some such, but really trying TOO hard to be serious usually just results in something much worse, because those movies lack strong direction or writing, which you're really solely relying on when you make something so stripped of theatricality.

The Babadook isn't afraid to throw a few goofy scenes at you, and they're played in a way that enhances the scares and makes the whole thing more theatrical. The fast camera movements, the rushes of wind, the over the top sounds and expressions – it all really makes the movie scarier and more entertaining, because it catches your attention. If a movie can't grab hold of your attention like a vicegrip, what chance does it have of actually scaring you? I'm guessing not much.

I can't say too much more, it would give too much away, and I hate that I have to be so vague – but this is a movie you really have to fucking see to believe. It's seriously some of the most macabre, evil, dark shit around, and I have not been this scared of a movie in ages. I don't say that lightly. Go see it!

Director: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer

Starring: Alex Essoe, Louis Dezseran, Amanda Fuller

IMDb

Starry Eyes is a very weird, dark flick that knows its influences. Watching this, the first thing that came to mind was Mulholland Drive – those sunny, upper-class California visuals, the plot about an actress trying to break into the business. It's all very Lynchian. Add in some weird cult-like plots and characters in black robes, and I'm suddenly reminded of Eyes Wide Shut. Both of those are two of my favorite movies! Great! While unfortunately Starry Eyes isn't as proficient as those, it's still good and I'd be crazy not to give it huge props anyway. After all it isn't like failing to live up to Kubrick and Lynch is some kind of damnable offense.

What Starry Eyes is, is a cool, energized take on the genre with an actually original plot and execution. The movie is about our main character's attempts to break into acting and anxiety about following her dreams. She gets offered a part in a horror movie called Silver Scream, which is very shady and mysterious, with the casting directors acting weird and making her do weird things. She's also surrounded by a bunch of pretentious hipster “friends” who sort of undermine her attempts and mostly seem interested in doing drugs and having sex instead.

The film plays with these themes with a lot of paranoia and weird intrigue, much like the aforementioned Mulholland Drive, showing the lead character's insecurities about herself reflected in everything that happens. The film's themes include talking about doing something as opposed to actually doing it and just the general stress and trapped-in-a-box feel of working some shit dead-end job when you really want to be doing something else. Acting is a tough profession, and Starry Eyes portrays that in a very creepy, off-kilter way – manifesting the lead character's stress physically as she decays throughout the film, both in body and mind.

The last half of the movie sort of just explodes on you and becomes a total gore-fest, which is a lot of fun and definitely wasn't what I expected. At this point, the film started to remind me of Contracted, which I talked about before, and which is another one of my favorite newer horror films – very similar idea here by taking a common every-day fear and splattering gore and blood and stuff all over it, although in this one we get Satanic cults added in for extra fun.

This one wasn't perfect and I do think it got a bit over-eager – maybe it could have paced itself more and had more atmosphere like Mulholland Drive or Eyes Wide Shut, and been better for it. But there's just such a palpable energy behind this...it's infectiously fun, and you can tell everyone had a good time making it. For that I really do think it's worth a viewing, even if it isn't perfect or anything.

Images copyright of their original owners, I own none of them.