By Keri O’Shea
It’s a funny thing: whenever people are asked, or take it upon themselves to generate a ‘Best Of’ list like this one, the default response seems to be disappointment. This year doesn’t seem as good as last year, this year’s films have been disappointing, and so on and so forth – except that this reaction seems to occur every year, and good films are of course still being made all the time. Dig a little deeper, and it seems to me that each year is indeed much like the year which came before it, in that there are a always a range of movies, some good, some bad and some indifferent. Importantly, there’s always plenty to love. My issue this year hasn’t been so much with a dearth of films to enjoy, but with severe limitations on what I’ve been able to get to see. In fact, I’m fairly confident that a few films missing from my list would have made it on there, had circumstances been different.
But still – there has been much that I have enjoyed, so here’s five of my favourites from 2013.
5) The Purge
As someone all too familiar with getting to see brilliant, innovative indies which seem to sink without trace, let alone decent distribution, I’m often slightly suspicious of horrors which arrive on the scene as loud and proud as The Purge did, and I can only grasp at the politics which render one film the smash hit of the summer whilst another gets nowhere. That said, I liked The Purge. Whilst in its execution it wasn’t perfect, it had ideas and it wasn’t afraid to run with them, painting a picture of a deeply flawed, superficial America which could boast of plummeting crime rates because of the phenomenon of ‘the purge’, a period of one day per year where any criminality is not only legal, but encouraged. It’s an idea which has been examined elsewhere, sure, but The Purge had a good balance of plausibility and violent fantasy, doing what good dystopian films do; taking an element or elements which we recognise and allowing this to flourish into something unsettling through its possible proximity.
4) The Battery
Not everyone was sold on The Battery, and it’s entirely possible that seeing the film with a very enthusiastic festival audience may have coloured my reception to an extent (hey, nothing happens in a vacuum), but to me this is a real gem. The zombie has become the most ubiquitous horror archetype of our times, and when we live in a world which has seen its first zombie blockbuster in World War Z, it’s evident that there’s no stopping the shambling (or possible sprinting) dead in their tracks. However, The battery uses zombies more or less as a contextualising factor. They provide the pressure cooker which keeps two unlikely travelling companions together under duress, creating some brilliant, naturalistic, highly funny content along the way, and yeah, there’s even a dash of pathos before the end. Real-life friends Jeremy Gardner (playing Ben) and Adam Cronheim (Mickey) created this film from the ground up, with Gardner directing and writing the project too; it’s testament to the sort of commitment which the smaller players have to show, in order to get original content made, and it’s to their credit. You can check out my full review here.
3) The Seasoning House
On paper, The Seasoning House is everything I’d typically avoid in a film. Young girls being trafficked into prostitution? Torture, torment, human misery? These aren’t plot devices I’d seek out, least of all if this necessarily includes people being tied to chairs. However, I was dead wrong about The Seasoning House. Yes, it’s the darkest entry on this list, but as well as strong performances and the distinct, decidedly welcome impression that this topic was not chosen to be played out for exploitative or shocking reasons (though shocking it undoubtedly is), The Seasoning House is ultimately redemptive without being saccharin. It also tempers its viciousness with a certain dreamlike quality, as Deaf inmate of the ‘seasoning house’, Angel (the brilliant Rosie Day) moves between the crawlspaces and walls of the eponymous house, surpassing its capabilities as a prison, and ultimately surpassing the cruelties of its keepers as the loss of a friend causes her to take redemptive action. You can check out my full review here.
2) Mon Ami
There have been some truly brilliant horror-comedies in recent years – Some Guy Who Kills People and Tucker and Dale Vs Evil, to name just two – so much so, that it’s made me reconsider my standard opinion that horror-comedies typically fail both as horrors, then again as comedies. Still, it’s nice to be proved wrong sometimes, isn’t it? Mon Ami is one of those films which is sadly lacking the attention it so richly deserves, and I hope that more people get to see it, as it is note-perfect; ostensibly a buddy movie, this comedy of grisly errors moves from the sublime to the ridiculous as friends Teddy and Cal design the world’s stupidest get-rich-quick scheme, deciding in their wisdom to kidnap their boss’s daughter for a ransom. Yep. So that goes well. As their day goes from bad to worse, Teddy and Cal’s friendship is put through the wringer in a series of excruciating, laugh-out-loud ways. You can check out my full review here.
1) Jug Face
Last but certainly not least, we have a slab of Deep Southern Gothic in the form of Jug Face; Jug Face is, for me, the finest horror movie of 2013 bar none. Here we have a film which has the nous to develop, in a series of deft moves, its own horrific mythos. Although there are some Lovecraftian hints at play, HPL doesn’t quite have the monopoly on the unfathomable, unseeable and unknowable, and the entity or entities of ‘the pit’ function in a series of interesting ways; village elder, moral compass, and executioner, ‘the pit’ protects the tiny, isolated community which lives near to it, but at a price – and when a young girl named Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) decides to try and cheat its will, she precipitates a disaster for herself and for her people. With stellar performances from the likes of Sean Bridgers, Larry Fessenden and Sean Young (devastating as the matriarchal monster Loriss), a palpable sense of dread matched only by the sense of stifling heat emanating from the screen and – finally – the courage to go out as bleakly as it came in, Jug Face is a superb piece of work. You can read my full review here. And just remember – the pit wants what it wants…