Featuring an all-star cast of familiar household names – well, they were household names thirty years ago – Renegades is a British revenge thriller that sees a group of former soldiers take to the streets of London to get revenge for the murder of former Green Beret Carver (Lee Majors), who was brutally beaten to death in the street by members of a gang of drug dealers all working for Goram (Louis Mandylor). Carver’s daughter Judy (Patsy Kensit) is a local politician and has vowed to clean up these streets, which drug dealers don’t tend to like, and because her father put the strong arm on Goram and paid the price, Carver’s friends and former soldiers Burton (Nick Moran), Harris (Paul Barber), Woody (Billy Murray) and Peck (Ian Ogilvy) set about doing that very thing for her, only not in a very legal way. With a little help from the mysterious Sanchez (Danny Trejo), and the police always two steps behind what is going on, the streets of London are awash with (CGI) blood as the aging vigilantes use their old skills to take out a villain who doesn’t seem too keen on keeping a low profile.
Okay, so Renegades is ridiculous but just look at that cast. Along with other familiar faces such as Stephanie Beacham, Tom ‘Tiny’ Lister (in his final role before his untimely death), Michael Brandon, Michael Paré and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, you could say that it is just The Expendables on a (very tight) budget, with a few Brit TV names and a couple of token Americans thrown in, and you’d be right but there is nothing wrong with that when the cast are as up for it as this bunch, and you cannot help yourself but smile as Paul Barber – best known as Denzil in Only Fools & Horses – struggles to work out how to use his phone when trying to snap one of Goram’s gang; bear in mind, in the previous scene, when the gang of pensioners were gathering together what weapons they had, it was he who produced a hand grenade and a claymore from his duffel bag, so not a man to be messed with, despite his doddery persona.
Over the past few years there has been a growing theme of ‘old people doing silly things to prove they’re still relevant’ movies, such as Space Cowboys, Red, Last Vegas and Rambo: Last Blood (well, it sort of fits), and Danny Trejo himself has joined in the fun with his Bad Ass movies, during which there is a dropped line about being retired from The Expendables, and given his role here is to give Ian Ogilvy information on Goram’s gang – despite the fact that Trejo is clearly not sat at the same table as Ian Ogilvy and is talking to a fake shemp (pay attention to those camera angles and quick edits) – it is possible that there is a shared universe for Sanchez and his unlimited knowledge of everybody in every drugs gang the world over. Despite some clever camera trickery, Trejo is a welcome presence and, along with Ian Ogilvy, give the film some – only some – weight in the credibility department as they clearly seem to know exactly what film they are making and adjust their tone accordingly.
For their part, Paul Barber and Billy Murray seem to be enjoying themselves, but Nick Moran seems to be a little all over the place, his cheeky one-liners all hitting but he offsets those with some dour exchanges with Patsy Kensit, who is taking this all far too seriously – yes, we know she is supposed to be a grieving daughter but, honestly, who wouldn’t laugh at Louis Mandylor and his seemingly endless appetite for chewing scenery? – and the members of Goram’s gang have all the enthusiasm and acting range of some geezers who have just watched a Guy Ritchie movie and thought they’d have a go themselves. Which leaves Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott and Stephanie Beacham to pick up the slack, which they don’t really.
Overall, Renegades is a very enjoyable movie but possibly not for the reasons the filmmakers want you to find it enjoyable, because it is very easy to laugh at it rather than with it. Silly story aside, when our heroes do tool up and go on the rampage it is difficult not to root for them and go along for the ride, and there is plenty of violence in the final act to make it worth sticking with for those who need a fix of gritty action, but the CGI blood and pop gun sound effects do take away the seriousness of what is actually happening onscreen. Nevertheless, a movie that is essentially a mash-up of The Expendables, Death Wish and every Cockney geezer crime movie you have ever seen doesn’t really need to be analysed when it comes to all the technicalities, and if nothing else you will now have a new post-pub favourite to put on and impress your mates with, until the inevitable (and telegraphed) sequel comes along. Just imagine who they’ll dig up for that one…
The fabulously monikered Levi Danube (Justin Benson) moves into a ramshackle Los Angeles apartment and, via nothing more or less than a shared interest in smoking, strikes up a rapport with fellow block dweller John Daniels (Aaron Moorhead). Both appear to be searching for some kind of direction in life – John is attempting to deal with the fallout of a recent divorce, Levi has spent years drifting from place to place – and the discovery of a strange phenomenon in Levi’s new living space inspires the mismatched pair to make a documentary of their ongoing investigations.
As this is a Benson and Moorhead Film, once again featuring Benson and Moorhead as the lead characters, it could be expected that Something In The Dirt (2022) might present itself as a relocated franchise entry in their wider universe. The Endless: Los Angeles if you will. However, the rules and symbols laid down by that movie, and in Resolution before that, serve as sporadic, fun touchstones for fans without ever getting in the way of a story that constantly hints at something far grander in scope, even within the confines of a single location.
The early inclusion of supporting characters discussing the validity of Levi and John’s film, plus a foretaste of a dreadful event which we know will happen at the end of the tale (or do we?) adds a further, mind-melting, meta layer which forces the viewer to consider various points of view – from two narrators whose contradictory behaviour and increasing unreliability give rise to inevitable questions concerning just how much of their reality has been manipulated for the sake of a more involving story.
In this particular scenario, Benson and Moorhead play characters who are thrown together, rather than those with shared pasts and an easy shorthand, which creates suspense all of its own. Their relationship comes to be predicated on the documentary’s progress and as their movie-making experiences become more of a chore and less of an adventure, there’s little warmth between them to fall back on, adding emotional beats and a sense of impending danger as the worst sides of both men begin to emerge. Thankfully, there’s a welcome streak of offbeat humour throughout, which never undercuts either the creepy or dramatic moments, but allows for the audience to take a breather from the admittedly enormous amount of information being presented to them in terms of theory and potential explanations. The fact that Levi and John’s findings take them in various directions and often leave them just as much in the dark as those of us watching gives a feeling of being right alongside them, as does the limited space of Levi’s apartment.
Something In The Dirt is, in many ways, Benson and Moorhead’s most intimate film yet; it’s also by far their most expansive. Our two protagonists take centre stage and dominate the proceedings even as a supporting cast of bewildered or annoyed or concerned (or bewildered, annoyed and concerned) acquaintances swirl around them. In terms of plot, the initial sojourn into an otherworldly area spins off into any number of theoretical directions and investigative cul de sacs, complicated further by our knowledge that Levi and John’s documentary may be sacrificing some of the mundane truth for punchy entertainment purposes.
At a few minutes under two hours, this is a movie that allows its big themes to breathe and, as with the duo’s previous work, allows for sparky, well-written back and forth between its characters as to why we’re here and what happens when we feel that we may not want to be here any longer. Rarely have existential crises been tackled in such an honest, brutally emotional yet thoroughly good-humoured way. An undoubted skill of this writing/directing team is their ability to tap into the ludicrousness of a situation, before flipping the scene on a dime to give the viewer a lump in their throat. Levi and John may not be the most sympathetic of people – and kudos to their creators for making them decidedly unheroic at all times – but they’re identifiably flawed and, come the final act, there’s a genuine sense of worry generated for this strange duo.
When filmmakers step in front of the camera, it’s a choice that doesn’t always work out, but that certainly is not the case here. A combination of Covid restrictions and budgetary necessity may have given Benson and Moorhead the decisive nudge to portray the leads, but they never fail to convince and their complementary skills translate to the performances with ease. Pleasingly, character beats that would form major dramatic arcs in other films are used as interesting asides or amusing misdirection here, such is the wealth of detail in Benson’s smart screenplay.
Those looking for a neat conclusion will find little solace in Something In The Dirt’s ultimate reveals, but a quest as rough-hewn and chaotic as this suits an end point that isn’t an end point at all – it’s a doorway to a continued mess of contradictory phenomena, obfuscated by society’s point of view when it comes to the integrity of the two narrators. As such, it’s a fascinating, if not unexpected, method of wrapping up matters and general satisfaction at this will, I suspect, vary wildly. I loved it, but please don’t come for me. For me, Something In The Dirt not only stands up against the impressive, previous body of work from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead but it may very well be the best film they’ve made so far. Taking a pandemic-affected time for movie making and turning it into a piece of work so grounded in grimy reality, yet so ambitious in its plotting, is a cause for celebration. Cerebral without sacrificing accessibility, this is easily one of the best of 2022 for me, still allowing for questions that will linger long after several rewatches; the biggest question of them all being: how will these guys manage to top this?
Something in the Dirt (2022) is available now on Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.
Enthusiastic food fanatic Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) invites Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) on a trip to a once in a lifetime dining experience on a remote island at an exclusive restaurant called Hawthorne, where superstar head chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a multi-stage menu full of surprises and an overarching theme which will reveal itself over the course of the evening.
If the viewer were treated to 106 minutes of mouth-watering shots of molecular gastronomy and sent home with an envy of the type of folks who can pay well over a thousand dollars a head for a meal leaving them feeling just about full enough, there would be a case for calling Searchlight Pictures and asking if their movie could be sent back.
Of course, there’s an instant flavour that signals something is off, further enhanced when the full roster of guests is introduced, including brackish food critic Lillian Bloom (Janet McTeer) and her toadying editor Ted (Paul Adelstein), a movie star (John Leguizamo) clinging on to his last shred of relevance and three belligerent, braying business bros who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
To go into too much detail about what happens next would be to ruin many of the delicious moments served up by Mark Mylod’s movie, but a mere glance at the quality of the cast from soup to nuts should give more than a whiff of the darkly comic fun you’ll have with this as a bunch of awful, entitled folks are given an unexpected side order of harsh lessons – even as they’re presented with some of the most achingly beautiful creations ever to end up as human waste.
As you’d expect, Fiennes and Taylor-Joy are on (Michelin) star form here and their fully loaded confrontations burst with delight, but the movie is stolen by the amazing Hong Chau as the practical, unflappable Elsa, dishing out blunt, hilarious one liners to anyone who gets ideas above their station, in particular the aforementioned business bros. You will come to adore Elsa within seconds of meeting her, I guarantee it.
Leguizamo is, as ever, perfect at sending himself up in a performance with a complete lack of pretence and, along with Judith Light’s long suffering Anne and Aimee Carrero’s uncommonly patient, yet felonious, Felicity, capture at least some essence of sympathy in a melange of mortal dreadfulness.
Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s screenplay cooks up its tensions with a “chuck everything into one pot” approach and the underlying notes of class war cry out for far more finesse, but the escalating nightmare is confidently handled, even when Slowik’s backstory is dropped into the proceedings with all the subtlety of a plate hitting the floor. Still, when the main event is this tasty, there’s much I’ll forgive.
A psychological horror comedy than leans into the horror just enough not to put off the folks who will look at the poster and think “Ooh, that Ralph Fiennes is in this, I like him”, The Menu is fully aware of which side its bread is buttered. This may frustrate hardcore gore gourmands who like their fare more gnarly and bloody but in this case less is certainly more, allowing the queasy humour to dominate rather than wallowing in offal.
Purists may point out that The Menu is neither fish nor fowl as it attempts to please those hungry for social commentary as well as others who are just there for a fast food night out at the flicks, but it does manage to operate on a level which allows for several “eat the rich” barbs without alienating those who don’t fancy sitting down to a lecture about the 1%.
Skewering foodie culture and obscene, disposable wealth without giving you the feeling that Ken Loach is on your shoulder making you feel suicidally terrible about absolutely everything that might give you the tiniest smidgen of joy in life, The Menu is suitably appetising without giving you indigestion. And oh! That cheeseburger. Yeah, it’s a tiny spoiler, but prepare to drool.
There’s no denying that Stephen King reigns supreme when it comes to horror literature. With sixty five novels, two hundred short stories and ninety movie and television adaptations under his belt, Stephen King has been a powerhouse in the horror world for decades. However, there have been many valid criticisms rallied towards the iconic horror author. Many readers feel that his books have gotten stale over the years with repetitive plot points and character types mixed with regressive themes. Yet Stephen King’s books still dominate horror recommendation lists. Readers are hungry for something new.
Thankfully, there is a whole world of horror books that are not affiliated with the Stephen King brand. Compiled here is a comprehensive list of ten horror book recommendations for those who want to branch out from over-saturated books like IT and The Shining. From classic haunted house stories to urban legend inspired slashers, there’s something here to fit every mood and preference. So turn off the lights and settle into your favourite reading spot; your new favourite book is waiting.
Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
Seven year old Christopher’s life is uprooted when he and his mother are forced to relocate to a small town in Pennsylvania to escape his abusive stepfather. After sneaking out of his bedroom and venturing into the nearby woods one night, Christopher befriends a supposedly friendly entity known only as “the Nice Man” that will end up consuming Christopher’s life and shaking the quiet town to its core.
The first attempt at horror by the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Imaginary Friend is an insightful look at what it’s like to cope with trauma as a young child, as well as serving up scares that make it near impossible to pry your eyes from the page. Each character is written with care and compassion making the ending that much more devastating. This is one of those stories that linger in your mind long after you’ve closed the book.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Set in the late 1980s, this nostalgic horror follows inseparable best friends, Abby and Gretchen, as they navigate the trials of high school together After a drunken night of mischief, something changes in Gretchen. She starts acting strangely, becoming crueller, neglecting basic hygiene and becoming distant from even her closest friends. As the rest of their friend group start to turn on her, Abby is determined to save Gretchen from whatever evil force took over her body that night, even if it means battling one of the most powerful demons in Hell.
Any Grady Hendrix book could have easily made it on this list. With creative concepts and witty writing, all his novels are top tier. However, My Best Friend’s Exorcism is undeniably one of his best works. Putting a fresh, but nostalgic spin on the classic possession trope, this book manages to be equal parts horrifying and fun. Channelling the spirit of classic possession horror movies such as The Exorcist as well as cheesy 1980s horror, this witty, creepy book is perfect for fans of Stranger Things.
Daphne by Josh Mellerman
Anxious and unsure about her life after graduation. high school basketball player Kit Lamb is savouring her last summer before senior year. After a big game, her teammates recount a local urban legend about a murderous, seven-foot-tall undead woman known as Daphne .Kit becomes obsessed with the urban legend, questioning her sanity and seeing danger around every corner. As her teammates are mysteriousy being killed off one by one, Kit begins to grow paranoid that the mere thought of Daphne may summon her vengeance.
This urban legend inspired story invokes the feeling of telling ghost stories around a campfire with your high school friends. The spine chilling suspense that carries the story makes for an engrossing edge of your seat read. If you have a fascination with creepypasta and urban legends, Daphne is worth checking out.
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
After the passing of her grandmother, Mouse is tasked with cleaning out her remote family home. This proves to be a difficult undertaking, as her grandmother was an extreme hoarder. When Mouse discovers a journal of seemingly nonsensical ramblings in one of her grandmother’s piles of discarded rubble, she comes to the startling realization that she may not be alone in those woods.
The Twisted Ones is a lore-heavy folk horror that dances the line between horror and fantasy. The story borrows a lot from Celtic Fae mythology while still feeling entirely fresh and modern. The clever plot twists and rich narrative will make you eagerly anticipate the next twist, whilst the gothic southern setting puts a unique spin on the typical folk horror formula. If you like your horror steeped in myth and lore, this book is for you. And don’t worry, the dog doesn’t die.
The Haunting of Ashburn House by Darcy Coates
After the death of a distant relative, Adrienne inherits an isolated gothic mansion that has been rumoured for centuries to be haunted. Broke with nowhere else to go, Adrienne has no choice but to move into the infamous house. When Adriene discovers the house’s ominous secrets etched into the walls and hidden in the surrounding forest, she begins to suspect that something sinister may be lurking in the bowels of the house.
Everyone loves a good old fashioned haunted house story. Like most of Darcy Coates’ work, this book takes the classic haunted house premise to the next level. Each new discovery is unexpected and fun. As overdone as the haunted house trope has been, this book feels unexpectedly fresh and unique. If you want something to read by candlelight on a dark rainy night, this book is for you.
Below by Laurel Hightower
While travelling through the snowy West Virginia mountains, an unnamed protagonist’s car begins to have bizarre electrical problems, leaving her stranded. She is forced to put her trust in a strange truck driver in to get back to civilization. When the unnamed woman and her new truck driver companion find themselves trapped in a complex labyrinth of a cave system, she begins to uncover a series of disturbing truths and realises this stranger she trusted with her life may not be who he says he is.
This gory novel makes great use of the unique cave setting, packing it to the brim with monsters, ghosts, demons and other sinister entities. Each revelation is a gut punch, especially a certain plot point about what the truck driving stranger is really hauling. Along with the shocking twist at the end, this book will not disappoint.
The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp
Despite being a stubborn sceptic, journalist Jack Sparks specializes in the occult. When he stumbles upon a viral video of an exorcism, he makes it his next project to debunk it. While traveling around Europe, Jack encounters many convincing supernatural involvements, but holds fast to his scepticism – that is, until a certain encounter leads to his downfall.
This book is written in a “found footage” format, the story being told through a compilation of emails, video transcripts and journal entries, making it reminiscent of movies such as the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. The protagonist is just unlikeable enough that you get a sick sense of pleasure from his inevitable death, as promised in the title, while still being engaged in the story. The vivid imagery and genuinely scary paranormal encounter makes the Last Days of Jack Sparks worth checking out.
Mind of Winter by Laura Kasischke
On Christmas morning, a vicious snowstorm confines Holly Judge and her fifteen year old adopted daughter Tatty to their home. As the snow piles up outside, Tatty’s behaviour becomes more and more uncharacteristically erratic, causing Holly to reflect on the day she brought Tatty home from Russia. She slowly comes to the horrifying realization that her daughter may not be who she thought she was.
Mind of Winter falls into the rare genre of Christmas horror, the holiday almost being an antagonist in and of itself. The slow-burn looming dread that carries the story creeps up on you. It goes deeper and deeper until the final blow of the reveal at the end. It makes you question if Holly is really experiencing these eerie changes to her daughter or if she has gone insane, making it a perfect use of the unreliable narrator trope. Mind of Winter is one of the best horror novels to read around the holidays.
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
Suzette had given up everything to be a stay at home mom. Her career, her dreams, all sacrificed to care for her seven year old daughter, Hanna. However, Hanna is not a normal child. Mute and disagreeable, Hanna is bent on making her mother’s life a living hell. From setting traps made of thumbtacks to cutting off Suzette’s hair while she sleeps, Hanna is out for blood. As her health worsens, Hanna is manipulating Suzette’s own husband against her. Suzette has no choice but to live in fear of what her psychopathic daughter will inflict on her next.
Children make great horror villains. There’s something deeply disturbing about an evil force that takes the form of something we typically see as innocent in need of protection. The section of the story written from Hanna’s perspective gives us a terrifying look at her inner thoughts and how deep her vicious hatred of her mother really goes. This book gives us a close view of the childhood of a psychopath, in the same vein as books such as We Need to Talk about Kevin. If you’re planning to have children someday, Baby Teeth might make you think twice.
Penpal by Dathan Auerbach
Penpal follows an unnamed man as he pieces together the fragments of his disturbing childhood. From his kindergarten years to the end of high school, a series of seemingly unrelated bizarre incidents and encounters start to come together, leading up to a horrifying conclusion that completely blindsides both the protagonist and the reader.
The less you know about the plot of this book the better. Originally posted online as a creepypasta, this book is dark and disturbing in a realistic and plausible way. No ghosts or demons are to be found here, just real world human monsters. Although this book is extremely engaging and well written, it is not for the faint of heart. Please look up the trigger warnings before picking up Penpal. However, if you can handle the subject matter, this masterpiece of a book is well worth the read.
Concluding Thoughts:
There’s no denying that readers are growing tired of the same few Stephen King books over and over, especially with the wide variety of horror novels out there. This list is just a sample of all the amazing underrated horror books out there. As they live in the shadows of huge, successful authors such as Stephen King, it’s often difficult for smaller horror authors to gain the attention and reader base they deserve. I hope at least one of the books on this list catches your interest and you find a new underrated novel to fall in love with. Happy reading.
Have you noticed that horror movies have been becoming more political these days? With iconic filmmakers such as Jordan Peele and Eli Roth leading the trend, double meanings and social allegories have become more and more prevalent in the horror movies of the past decade. The 2010s were an extremely influential era in social horror. From the commentary on liberal racism in Get Out or the criticism of the upper class in Knives Out, it seems like every 2010s horror had something to say. Here we will explore some of the major social issues of the 2010s and how they were handled in 2010s horror, as well as what the future of the genre has in store.
A History of the Societal Monster
Horror has been a vehicle for social commentary since its inception. Old Hollywood horror movies, for example, embody many of the societal fears of the 1950s. Cold War nuclear panic dominated this era of horror, particularly in the flourishing monster movie genre. The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and the iconic Godzilla (1956) deal with the catastrophic effects of nuclear radiation and the potential monsters that this may create. Sci-fi horrors such as When Worlds Collide (1951) and War of the Worlds (1953) Tackle the fears of an impending nuclear apocalypse through science fiction allegories. 1950s Horror also often explore themes of science gone awry. The Fly (1958) and Bride of the Monster (1955) feature scientists who are incompetent, irresponsible, or just plain evil, reflecting both the fears of the atomic age and societal anxieties around the rapidly developing technology of the era.
The 1970s brought in a new era of social commentary in horror. The forerunners of the slasher genre such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978) were brought on by increased cultural awareness of violent crime and inspired by highly sensationalised serial killers of the time, such as Ted Bundy and Son of Sam. 1970s horror also satirised the long-standing gender roles that had begun to unravel. The Stepford Wives (1972) explores seemingly perfect suburbia where women are programmed like robots to be perfect housewives. This reflected the shifting societal attitudes towards the “perfect housewife” archetype of past decades, which was becoming increasingly stale and outdated as more and more women entered the workforce.
The Carrier
With the 1980s came a new horror sweeping through society: the AIDs crisis. Many of the quintessential 80s horror movies involve a virus or botched science experiment that results in disfigurement or invasion of the body. In John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing, a group of scientists unearths a creature that can take over its victim’s body and assume its identity. The Thing can appear in anyone and go unnoticed in everyday society, much like the AIDs virus itself. The Carrier (1988) follows a protagonist who contracts an unidentifiable disease that has no visible effect on him. Any object he touches becomes infected and absorbs the bodies of any person that comes into contact with it. This is a much more direct allegory of the AIDs virus than previous examples. In short, horror movies have always held up a mirror to the social fears and anxieties of their time. This legacy has carried on well into the twenty-first century and into the modern age.
Societal Monsters of The 2010s
The legacy of the societal ills that inspired the horror movies of past decades continued well into the twenty-first century. While the AIDS crisis and nuclear panic were distant memories in the eyes of the movie-watching public, some of the themes remained. Themes of wealth inequality, feminism, and environmentalism are just as prominent in 2010s horror as they were in the mid-twentieth century, but with a fresh, modern spin. New themes emerged from this decade as well, such as social media. With rapidly developing technology and growing political and social unrest, the 2010s had no shortage of sociality fears to manifest in our horror movies. Here are three examples of modern social issues tackled in 2010s horror movies.
The Monstrous Elites
Following the 2008 financial crisis, the general public has been becoming increasingly aware of class devices and wealth inequality. As with previous decades, this shift in societal awareness made its way into our horror movies. These movies often involved corrupt elite, violently wreaking chaos on the lower classes or, more profoundly, a vengeful lower class forcing us to examine our privilege and reflect on how our actions may have impacted the less fortunate.
Ready or Not (2019) This horror comedy follows Grace, a former foster child engaged to the son of an ultra-wealthy business owner. Upon meeting her fiancé’s family she discovers they have an odd tradition of playing a game on wedding nights. The movie devolves into a deadly ritual game of hide and seek where Grace has to kill or be killed to avoid being sacrificed to a Satanic deity. This movie contains commentary about the wealthy causing harm to the lower classes for personal gain. Grace, coming from a disadvantaged situation such as foster care, makes her vulnerable to exploitation. The inclusion of the Satanic ritual plotting is an allegory of how the ultra-wealthy “sacrifice” the underprivileged for their selfish gain.
US (2019) US is the second film written and directed by the then-up-and-coming Jordan Peele. Following in the footsteps of Peele’s debut film Get Out, US is rife with allegories and social commentary. The story follows Adelaide, her husband, and her two teenage children as they vacation in California. When a horde of murderous doppelgangers known as the Tethered rise up from underground tunnels and terrorise their above-ground counterparts, Adelaide is forced to confront her mysterious past. US is a bit different from other examples of class commentary in horror. Instead of aiming at the ultra-wealthy elite, it holds up a mirror to the average middle-class American. The Tethered represent the poor and underprivileged class of America. They look and feel just like we do, but are forced to spend their lives without the basic comforts and necessities we take for granted. They are also expected to stay hidden away from the view of the average person, leaving them in wilful ignorance. By the big reveal at the end of the movie, you are left unsure of who the real villain is. Is it the disadvantaged Tethered or the middle-class citizens who refuse to see their struggles? US makes you reflect upon your own privileged life and empathise with those who may be less fortunate than you.
Political Monsters
The 2010s was a decade rife with political turmoil. Whether it was LGBTQ+ rights, separation of church and state, or the extremely divisive 2016 election, there was always some political issue at the forefront of the minds of the public. Not only that, but with the rise of social media and clear biases in our news cycles, people were becoming increasingly aware of the corruption and greed running rampant in our political spheres. People felt that they could no longer trust their government. As with every deep-seated societal fear, the horror of the time reflected that. More and more 2010s horror movies included themes of insidious politicians and other people in positions of authority as well as satirising fatal flaws in even seemingly progressive political ideologies.
Red State (2011) Red State is an independent film following three teenage boys as they meet up with a woman they met online hoping for a sexual encounter, only to get taken by an extremist Christian cult that kidnaps those they view as immoral or undesirable; their victims are then tortured and killed as punishment for their perceived “sins”. The cult in this movie, though fictional, shows obvious parallels to real-life extremist religious groups such as the Westbro Baspist church, which drew in a lot of media attention for protesting at LGBTQ+ events during the fight to legalise same-sex marriage in the early to mid-2010s. However, there are also deeper themes in this movie about the separation of church and state and the corruption of religion. The leader of the cult in Red State is a charismatic, manipulative preacher, not unlike some of the religious leaders and politicians of real life.
Red State
Get Out (2017) Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, Get Out follows a black man named Chris going to meet his white girlfriend’s parents on a weekend getaway. Upon arrival, Chris notices something strange about his girlfriend’s family and their estate. Her parents seem extremely accommodating and go out of their way to assure Chris that they are not racist, but as Chris discovers more and more of the family’s disturbing secrets, he discovers that they are transplanting a white person’s consciousness into the bodies of black people to possess their desired physical characteristics. Chris must now fight to escape the estate and keep his bodily anatomy intact. Get Out is, in essence, a critique of white liberal racism. The white family portrayed in the movie pride themselves on not being racist, even going out of their way to praise black people for their accomplishments. However, this is all a façade. The white family in Get Out subscribe to the racist notion that black bodies are physically superior and wish to use them for their benefit, such as real-life white liberals using black people as tools to further their political causes. Transplanting white consciousness into black bodies itself is an allegory for black people’s strength being used for the benefit of white people, portrayed in gruesome and solemn detail.
The Monster of Climate Change
Climate change has been one of the most contentious issues of the twenty-first century. With global temperatures rising rapidly and ice caps melting at an alarming rate, raising awareness is more important than ever. These 2010s horror movies serve as a dire warning of what will become of the earth if we don’t take drastic action.
Crawl (2019) This nature horror follows a competitive swimmer named Haley who gets an urgent phone call from her sister alerting her to a category five hurricane headed to her Florida home. Against police advice, Haley goes to check on her estranged father. As the storm rages on, Haley’s father’s home is flooding rapidly. Haley then takes her dog and stuffs herself into a crawl space for safety only to be trapped and hunted by prehistoric alligators. As climate change progresses, natural disasters – such as the hurricane portrayed in this movie – are only going to become more common. Crawl portrays the devastating effects of such natural disasters in realistic and gritty detail. The movie even invoked imagery of real natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. The alligators represent an ancient primal danger brought forth by our deteriorating environment; it’s an ominous warning to the viewer that, unless drastic action is taken, we too will be at the mercy of the earth’s rage.
Annihilation (2018) This psychological horror follows an army veteran and biologist named Lena. When her previously missing husband starts convulsing as soon as he reappears in her life, Lena calls an ambulance for him, only for it to be directed to a secret government facility. Lena comes to find that her husband had contracted a disease from researching a mysterious zone called “Shimmer”. Created from a fallen meteorite, Shimmer has been rapidly expanding for three years. When her husband falls into a coma, Lena decides to join a team of scientists on an expedition to study Shimmer. As they venture further, they uncover a mysterious alien fungus that mutates the body of its host until it resembles an entirely different creature. Annihilation plays heavily into the “nature takes its revenge” trope that has grown in popularity in both the eco-horror subgenre and mainstream horror in the late 2010s. Like Crawl, Annihilation shows the potentially catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change, if in a more metaphorical way.
The Legacy of 2010s Social Horror: into the 2020s and Beyond
Now that we’re two years into the 2020s, what’s in store for the dreaded societal monster? What form will it take next? Here are a few predictions for what’s in store for the next decade.
Horror in Quarantine
In March 2020, the world was blindsided by the COVID-19 pandemic. People were confined to their homes, living in fear of the disease. COVID-19 drastically changed the world, impacting the lives of millions. This undoubtedly will have a monumental effect on the horror movies of the next decade. Like the AIDs epidemic of the 80s, we may see a boom of body invasion, possession, and involuntary transformation stories in horror, mimicking the experience of contracting the disease. The 2020 film The Host features a demonic entity processing a group of friends through Zoom, taking over their bodies and taking control of their lives just like the virus itself. We may also see a return of the classic zombie plague trope, drawing obvious parallels to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2021 Taiwanese body horror film The Sadness follows a couple trying to survive a mysterious flu-like virus that quickly morphs into something much more sinister. Virus allegories in general are predicted to rise in popularity in the next decade.
The 2020 Election
No matter what your opinion is on the former president, there is no denying the impact time Donald Trump’s time in office has had on the media and American culture as a whole, Horror movies are no exception. The black comedy movie The Hint (released just before the 2020 election) portrays a world where political divides are so severe that both sides have no qualms about systematically murdering each other, a clear allegory for the turmoil around the election. We may see more movies addressing the deepening political divide or possibly even satires of the former president himself.
The Age of Social Media
Technology has been advancing rapidly in the past decade, particularly in the area of social media. Statistics show Gen Z spends an average of 7.3 hours a day on social media. Apps like Instagram and TikTok have become a crucial part of the lives of many young people. Much like the science gone wrong trope of the 1950s, the social media boom is rife with potential for social commentary. The 2022 movie We’re All Going to the World’s Fair follows an isolated teenage girl whose activity on social media leads to her gruesome downfall, no doubt a theme that will become more prevalent in horror movies as social media grows more popular.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Final Thoughts
Since the beginning of the genre, horror has been a vehicle to satirise and reflect society’s fears. The 2010s is a perfect example of this. Class inequality, political divisions, and environmentalism were some of the social issues portrayed by 2010s horror movies. The influence of these movies will be felt long after the decade has ended. The horror films of the 2020s will carry on this legacy, as well as offer up fresh commentary on nuanced issues of the future.
Kicking off the new year in explosive style, Arrow Video’s latest addition to their catalogue is 1973’s Dillinger, the directorial debut of John Milius, a filmmaker not known for exploring his sensitive feminine side on the screen. Milius had a hand in several violent movies in the early 1970s, including such macho features as Dirty Harry and its sequel Magnum Force, as well as helming Arnold Schwarzenegger’s breakthrough fantasy adventure Conan the Barbarian, so you should know what to expect going in to a Milius movie about a bank robber and his gang.
John Dillinger was a notorious gangster during America’s Great Depression of the 1930s, robbing banks and courting the press, who viewed him as some sort of Robin Hood-like figure, whenever he got caught. In this movie, Dillinger is played by Warren Oates, who does bear an uncanny resemblance to the real-life Dillinger, and he is joined by several familiar faces in his gang – including Geoffrey Lewis (as Harry Pierpont), John P. Ryan (as Charles Mackley), Harry Dean Stanton (as Homer Van Meter), Richard Dreyfuss (as Babby Face Nelson) and Frank McRae (as Reed Youngblood) – as they go on a robbing spree across America’s Midwest, chasing, kidnapping, shooting and (occasionally, if they have to) killing in order to escape.
However, the gang are being pursued by determined FBI G-Man Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson) who will stop at nothing to bring down Dillinger and his band of merry men, despite the press and the general public heralding the criminal as some sort of folk hero.
As a story, Dillinger does stick fairly closely to events that actually happened back in the 1930s, although if it’s a more nuanced character piece you’re after, then Michael Mann’s 2009 movie Public Enemies might be more to your liking because John Milius is less concerned with details and more concerned with creating exciting, entertaining and overtly violent set pieces that certainly get the blood pumping – both metaphorically and, judging by the amount of squibs they must have gotten through, literally – if not the editing scissors, because after nearly 110 minutes of serviceable shoot-outs, car chases and some admittedly beautiful cinematography, you do start to wonder if anybody had dared to suggest to John Milius that maybe he should try and pace it out a bit better.
But if you come to gangster movies for dogged detectives, charming antiheroes and screeching female characters there to make the main characters look more manly, then Dillinger delivers, offering up similar insights into historical American figures as Arthur Penn’s 1967 classic Bonnie and Clyde or even the more modern(ish) Young Guns (except the cast of Dillinger aren’t exactly pin-up material). The Sam Peckinpah-esque action scenes add a little more edge than a standard mainstream picture from the era would normally exhibit – and John Milius does not hold back on the blood and pyrotechnic effects as Oates, Lewis, Stanton et al deliver stellar performances, despite some lopsided dialogue – but for sheer adrenaline and manly men doing manly men things then Dillinger is as good a movie as you would need to scratch that particular itch. Double it up with, say, John Boorman’s Deliverance and the amount of testosterone coming through your TV screen could probably encourage beard growth as you watched.
Dillinger (1973) is available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video. For more details, please click here.
Twice delayed by the pandemic, Antlers has likely been on the radar for many horror fans for some time, thanks in no small part to the involvement of producer Guillermo del Toro and the promise of the kind of magic creature horror that he is so well known for. Those looking for that del Toro stamp here may be left wanting, with a feature that falls short of the richness expected.
“Don’t take what isn’t yours” is a major preoccupation of Antlers, with that ranging from what humans take from one another, from nature and how this impacts the world around it. This places it within a context of other recent release films that, perhaps understandably given climate concerns, have sought to reflect the earth returning to wrest control from the humans that have damaged it. The threats are multiple within Antlers, with the focus of the mining town resulting in poor jobs, poor finances, plus pervasive addiction and abuse issues that scar everyone. The film’s shifting focus from this wider, global concern to something more intimate and small-scale across two families ultimately serves it well, allowing it to do less than if it had to explore the entire town.
The use of spiritual entities that form the belief system of marginalised cultures in mainstream film is, understandably, a thorny issue. As a white woman based in the UK, I can’t offer too much comment in how respectful or accurate the portrayal is here, or in Nick Antosca’s original short story The Quiet Boy that forms the basis for this story. Having done some reading and viewed the Comic Con at Home 2020 panel for the film released ahead of the film’s release, it seems that First Nations consultants (including Grace L. Dillon and Chris Eyre) were afforded a say in the role of the entity, especially in terms of educating director Scott Cooper on its deeply held importance. It is something of a shame, then, that the bulk of the story is focused on non-Indigenous characters. Aside from Warren Stokes (Graham Greene bringing suitable gravitas) who appears to provide an explanation and grave warning, we primarily focus on Julia (Keri Russell), sheriff Paul (Jesse Plemons) and Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas).
Keri Russell gives an engaging performance as Julia although there are moments where the film uses shorthand that leaves her with little to do. For example, her alcoholism is showcased almost exclusively by her looking sadly at bottles in the local shop, but never feels like it represents a significant enough threat to impact the rest of the narrative. More interesting is the shared abusive history she shares with brother Paul and the way this becomes the source of tension and miscommunication between the pair. Plemons is ever reliable and while this is hardly a role to stretch him, he brings a necessary presence and a good chemistry for the strains with Russell’s character. The echoes from their past are carefully positioned within the narrative but never quite overcome the repression that would arguably free them from it. The real star of the piece is Jeremy Thomas who, despite his youth, turns in an impressively nuanced performance, perfectly embodying Lucas as a young boy ill at ease in the world and within his own skin.
The location provides a beautiful, if ominous setting for the story to unfold – the lake lending it a remoteness and the woodland shrouding it in darkness for much of the time. That reliance on woodland extends into homes, the wood often left bare and unwelcoming (especially as it finds itself with a layer of blood and viscera). The elements of the location suitably become part of the entity design too, lending the film a sense of cohesion and connection to the source of that belief system. The area feels all-encompassing, encasing the characters in an oppressive cycle that draws them all to darker impulses. As already referenced, however, Julia’s struggle with alcoholism is dominated by her almost instant maternal instinct towards Lucas who she notices struggling in the classes she teaches so some of this darkness is reserved for other characters who are not needed to drive the plot.
Despite its mainstream positioning, Antlers does not feel like a blockbuster horror offering and that may well hurt it with some audiences. The scares escalate in the third act, including an excellently timed jump scare that proves Cooper’s ability to deliver on that style as much as the quieter building of tension and menace, but this follows a longer time period of mood-setting. The gorier elements too, especially when coupled with the downbeat tone hardly makes this a fun night at the multiplex, so it is refreshing in that sense to see something like this given further attention. In addition, there are vital beats of the film that thrive on characters making ill-advised decisions, which while always a part of horror particularly stand out within the confines of a relatively small cast. Despite the emotional weight the film aims for and the misery it indulges in for much of the runtime, so much of the narrative feels like a foregone conclusion that you almost resign yourself to that in early scenes and by the end, despite that final burst of energy, you’re left with relatively little to hold on to.
Antlers released in UK cinemas on October 29thand screened as part of the Celluloid Screams film festival in Sheffield,UK. You can check out more of Caitlyn’s writing here.
The Fantasia 2021 Radical Spirits shorts block showcases six films that focus on belief systems and ancestral connections, using genre as a gateway to the unique nature of spirituality and ritual. Often complex and frequently contested, these films all offer powerful representations of concepts frequently difficult to put into words.
First in the line up is A Sip Of Water, an animated piece from filmmaker Cho Hyuna which seeks to explore the role of Shamanism (and by extension, the Shaman) in Korean culture. While the beauty of the animation more than justifies its place, it is notable here in the closing moments of the film that explains how the voice and images of Shamans were not used in the film because they are regarded as unlucky within Korean culture. This lends the animation further power as the world of the Shaman becomes an ultra-colourful, liminal space in which it is possible to step into the metaphorical shoes of otherworldly figures. The separation from the Shaman from the muted every day experience highlights how they exist on the edges of society, a watchful, protective yet excluded presence.
That sense of figures existing outside of the everyday, but able to directly aid people continues in At Last, The Sea. Ana Karen Alva Medina’s short opens on a horrific scene, set in the 1700s, in which a woman is held against her will. Seemingly temporarily saved from sexual violence by the arrival of her period, the film is a powerful representation of ancestral strength and comfort. Matriarchal power is framed as elemental, embodied through water as the prisoner finds an inner strength. The water motif throughout builds, balanced between the potential for care, restoration and destruction in a short that contains a quiet, but nonetheless potent power of the flow of generational knowledge and trauma.
In a similar way to A Sip Of Water, the next film, Nicholas Tory’s Lifeblood uses animation to detail what it cannot show in live action. In this case, it concerns the exploration of Aboriginal spirituality and connection to the land, sky and trees. The short carefully sets out that this is not representative of the belief of all First Nations people, acknowledging the variety of practices and viewpoints, narrowing its approach to the area of Bourke in New South Wales. It’s a meditative, sweeping journey that offers a view of an evolving landscape, serving as a portrait of the connection between people, the land and the intersection of the modern world. Nardi Simpson’s delicate tour guide-like reading over the images really allows the beauty of the work and its importance to take centre stage.
Mergen is a film from Kazakhstan that foregrounds that sense of identity immediately, utilising a piercing soundscape set against a snowy setting. The film foregrounds its protagonist, a young boy forced to defend his family when his warrior father leaves home and features a sympathetic and assured performance that impresses. Counteracting moments of tension, well-timed choreography with soul-searching, emotive material, there is a lot to fit in, even with the film’s runtime almost reaching 30 minutes. The clear identity and absorption into a situation that sustains a sense of threat throughout is a real strength.
The last film in the block takes things full circle with another, more abstract view of a Korean Shaman. This is an energetic, dialogue-free representation of the Gud rite with a focus on colour that evokes the rhythms of ritual, infused with a thumping soundtrack. Taking on the qualities of a frenetic sketch rather than a narrative format, this is six minutes of enthusiastic and compelling mark-making and shape-shifting that is difficult to look away from.
My personal favourite of the block came in the form of Snake Trail, a deeply emotive portrayal of finding security in superstition when society doesn’t offer a space for you. Yuan’er Chen plays Mona, a grief-stricken young girl forced to confront her illegitimacy after her mother passes away. From her helpless position, she clings to the powerful conviction that her mother should be buried within seven days. Superstition dictates that this allows the deceased to return to the home. The importance of this event leads Mona to work with her elderly grandmother on an alternative solution. The film unfolds into an enormously touching experience, full of beautiful sentiment, using animation in some sections to help visualise the concepts.
Even if you aren’t a believer yourself, the Radical Spirits selection offers an eye-opening portrayal of ritual, belief and how they can bring comfort and strength to those who do believe. The mix of the otherworldly as well as past and present tensions make this a fascinating block that offers insight into how people adapt stories, including oral traditions into their daily lives and particularly in times of hardship. These shorts all find the human experience within the context of the fantastic, offering lessons and insight along the way.
You can find out more about the Radical Spirits block at the Fantasia webpage.
Many thanks to Caitlyn Downs for this feature. You can read more of Caitlyn’s work at her own page here or check out her contributions to Horrified Magazine here.
Every so often a movie breaks through the barriers of genre, dares you to question what you think you know and threatens to make you think differently about horror movies and how they can challenge and defy social norms. Road Head (2020) isn’t that movie, mainly because at its core it’s a slasher with a twisted sense of humour, but thanks to a few key elements, it could be one of the freshest takes on a familiar format we’ve seen in a while.
In proper The Hills Have Eyes/The Texas Chain Saw Massacre style Road Head sees a van with three friends contained within travelling to Lake Isola in the Mohave desert. Why are they going there? Because one of the group, Bryan (Clayton Farris), went there as a child and wants to return to take pictures as he is now a photographer. Who are these people? Well, Bryan owns the van, his boyfriend Alex (Damian Joseph Quinn) has come along as he thought he and Bryan would have a romantic break together, but on the backseat is Stephanie (Elizabeth Grullon), a friend of Bryan’s who has a rather antagonistic relationship with Alex and has just split with her boyfriend David, who makes appearances throughout the movie thanks to Stephanie’s drug-induced hallucinations.
So far, so standard fare, but when the trio gets to the lake they discover that the water dried up years ago, leaving the area a barren wasteland, but, unperturbed, Bryan still wants to take some photos while Stephanie crashes out in the van. All well and good until a chainmail-wearing behemoth of a man wielding a broadsword enters the scene and the movie becomes a fight for survival as friendships are tested, quips are fired out like bullets and some of the weirdest antagonists in recent horror history are introduced. Safety and glory, indeed.
Promoted as a LGBTQ horror comedy, Road Head is rammed with camp humour right from the off as Bryan, Alex and Stephanie make their way across the desert in their Scooby van, and immediately these are characters that are so likeable and pitched perfectly that the witty dialogue feels completely natural. In fact, the first few minutes of them bickering in the van sets them up so well that when the first attack comes, the violence – despite being gloriously gory and completely silly (in a good way) – threatens to shift the tone a little too much. It doesn’t, mainly thanks to an electrifying performance from Elizabeth Grullon as the feisty Stephanie, but as the movie approaches its second act it feels like it could fall apart any moment if the threat from the villain is taken too seriously.
Luckily, Hellraiser: Judgment’s Paul T. Taylor is on hand to add the necessary whimsy to this movie’s equivalent of Texas Chainsaw’s Sawyer family in a scene that could have come straight from a British sit-com from 30 years ago with one or two linguistic twists (and two words have never been as funny when repeated as “Safety and glory” in a movie for a long time – it really has to be seen). The finale comes round fairly quickly and the filmmakers remind you that this is supposed to be a ‘horror’ comedy and so throw in some more gratuitous Shogun Assassin-style gore to end on a high note just before the inevitable slasher movie kicker; oh yes, Road Head hasn’t forgotten its influences and anybody with a knowledge of slasher/backwoods movies will have seen it all before, but when it is done with this much love you’d be upset if it didn’t go there.
Let’s get this straight – Road Head is not a game-changer nor is it ever going to be labelled as a classic. However, it is tremendous fun and is clearly poking at the corpse of the classic slasher genre to try and tease a bit more life out of it. It mostly works thanks to the strong performances, sparkling script and lightness of touch to the direction that means it never gets bogged down or comes to a standstill like so many similarly-themed movies do. The tonal differences threaten to clash every now and then, but the actors seem to be clued into what they are doing and handle the material with apparent ease, and although the horror elements are a little past their sell-by date and not exactly scary it doesn’t matter, as Road Head is hugely entertaining and basically a good laugh throughout. Safety and glory!
Despite professing to not be a political film maker, William Friedkin demonstrated his social conscience at the very beginning of his directorial career. The People Vs Paul Crump was Friedkin’s 1962 debut and follows the story of the titular Crump, sentenced to death by electric chair for his part in a bungled armed robbery in which a security guard was shot dead. Friedkin, not yet 30 years old at the time, had only just begun a career in television. Having watched Citizen Kane at the age of 21 and first felt the call toward a career in film, so it was that having met Crump and being convinced of his innocence, he and cinematographer Bill Butler took up their cameras in the name of justice.
The governor of Illinois eventually saw the film and was so moved by it that he commuted Crump’s term from the death penalty to 199 years’ incarceration (Crump was eventually released on parole in 1993 before being returned to prison on less serious charges). The governor’s decision convinced Friedkin of the power of cinema. Then he went to Hollywood and was, in his own words, ‘completely dispelled of that notion.’ Within ten years of The People Vs Paul Crump he directed The French Connection and The Exorcist, two cinematic classics and as devastating a directorial one-two punch as you could wish to see. The legend of William Friedkin was established.
Friedkin Uncut is built around a coffee-fuelled interview at
the home of the venerable director and features the input of a fairly
staggering array of talent from the cinematic world, including Francis Ford
Coppola, Quentin Tarantino and Dario Argento, as well as others who have worked
beneath him such as Ellen Burstyn, Matthew McConaughey and Willem Dafoe.
Despite this assemblage of heavyweights, Friedkin is characteristically
forthright about his own work and harbours no ideas of artistic grandeur
relating to his own contribution, despite taking the directorial helm on a
couple of bona fide classics and a handful of less critically regarded, but still
highly notable efforts such as Sorcerer, To Live And Die In L.A and his most
recent full length Killer Joe. Regarding his craft as a profession and not an
art, Friedkin is a director who eschews philosophising and fabrication in
favour of the rawness of spontaneity and poignancy of the unvarnished truth.
This liking for an approach aligned with the Cinéma vérité tradition
was apparent in 1972’s French Connection, where Friedkin shadowed police
officers, even going so far as to clap the cuffs on a triple murder suspect, in
a bid to absorb as much of the reality of law enforcement on the streets of
Brooklyn as he possibly could. We learn of the shooting of the film’s famous
car chase, a sequence Friedkin admits would not be possible to shoot on today’s
health and safety conscious film sets. The director left his team in no doubt
that they had not performed adequately thus far and that this take simply had
to be the one.
Aside from the results of this scene – as kinetic and
perilous and as ‘on the edge’ as any cinematic chase – this method of
extracting the essential aliveness of the moment became a modus operandi for
Friedkin, a self-confessed ‘one take guy’ who preferred to direct his actors
with spontaneity rather than perfection as his watchword. Matthew McConaughey,
who’s turn as Joe in 2011’s Killer Joe lead directly to his winning the role of
Rustin Cohle in the brilliant first season of True Detective, speaks of the way
being told to shoot in one take was a way of freeing up the actors, for whom
the way forward was suddenly simple –
leave everything on the table, now. Indeed whether it was dropping his
trousers on set to help actress Juno Temple feel more comfortable with a nude
scene in Killer Joe, or telling the studio that he would walk if Jason Miller
was not given the role of Father Karras over the original choice of Stacy
Keach, Friedkin is unapologetic about his methods in always striving for the
utmost professionalism in the telling of a story.
Friedkin tells a great yarn and indeed has many a great yarn told about him. If a man could be judged in any way by the respect of his peers, the list of contributors to this documentary should tell its own tale. For someone who came from the era where, as Ford Coppola puts it ‘to shoot something incredible you had to do something incredible’, Friedkin is unpretentious, modest and yet at the same time unmistakably passionate about art – whether or not he sees his work as a demonstration of artistry or, perhaps instead the building of a platform that allows art to be expressed upon it. Either way, Friedkin Uncut is an essential document of one of cinema’s most enduring figures, who’s legacy is forever woven into the fabric of contemporary mythology.
Friedkin Uncut will screen as part of the Raindance Film Festival on Monday, September 23rd 2019. For more information, please click here.
At first glance, Certain Kind of Silence has the whiff of a certain kind of Stepford: vague parallels could be drawn between the classic 70s sci-fi The Stepford Wives and Czech director Michal Hogenauer’s tale of a young au pair slowly but inexorably drawn into an oppressive cult environment against her better instincts, resulting in the destruction of her initially independent and thoughtful personality. In this case, substitute for the uncanny US-based valley of Stepford and its inhabitants a small, smothering cult set in a wealthy suburban community in an unidentified and unidentifiable part of western Europe. It’s all a long way from sci-fi or even satire though, as the film’s final frames show. But we’ll get to that later.
Misha, a young Czech woman, is recruited as an au pair for the young son of a wealthy European family, whose household is best described as a mixture of top-to-toe dull as ditchwater, colourless Scandinavian aesthetics and an obvious preoccupation with control. At first it’s weird, but ultimately harmless rules about which colour dishcloths can be used to wash which colour dishes, which the now renamed ‘Mia’ (first sign of trouble there as Misha loses her first marker of her real identity) mocks behind the family’s back via Skype to her boyfriend back in Prague. She easily resists the father’s early requests to keep her passport and valuables. She has no issue saying ‘no’ to requests she finds distasteful. She shows she’s no easy mark for manipulation and resists the family’s first attempt to induce her to physically punish the son she’s employed to care for ‘for his own good’ and she abruptly quits and leaves in a state of distress at what she has witnessed to that point. We learn that beyond dishcloths and colour codes, the main rule of the house is total obedience, backed by a sinister maxim regarding the necessity of pain in achieving any desired outcome.
Alas, things happen, as things always do in this kind of film, to force her return to the family and eventual capitulation to what is demanded of her. Soon it appears that she has renounced independent thought, draped herself in beige, and become a fully signed-up member of what is revealed to be some kind of bizarre if unnamed family cult. Part of this involves a very brief sex scene which is as oddly colourless and devoid of life and passion as the furnishings, as Misha/Mia appears to succumb to a request to produce another cult member fresh out of the oven, so to speak. The family seem to be well on their way to turning Misha/Mia into an fantastically obedient robot for the cause, whatever the cause is, which is never really made clear, perhaps because it doesn’t really matter. A cult is a cult is a cult is a cult, as Gertrude Stein memorably never wrote.
Cut early into the narrative are brief scenes of Misha/Mia in her final form as beige-clad, dull-haired, dull-eyed cult member undergoing a police interrogation about the household which signals that things will get very, very dark. Which they do, although there’s little on offer in terms of gore, extreme violence or even raised voices. A significant act of violence takes place entirely off-camera. The worst horror is simply suggested by a character’s sudden absence, and a brutishly dismissive answer to a query into his whereabouts. It is entirely left to the viewer to imagine his fate. There are no sudden thrills or jump cuts, no blaring soundtrack or anything designed to make the viewer jump out of their skin. A Certain Kind of Silence instead provides a gnawing, low-level tension and a kind of slowly burgeoning moral horror. Fittingly, despite the psychological and physical torments heaped upon the viewer and certain characters, a preternatural sense of calm reigns throughout, even in the closing moments with the law closing in on the cult.
The film seems to offer an allegory on the dangers of conformity, the amorality of a go-along-to-get-along culture, or perhaps corporatism; again and again, the intense but quietly-spoken parents justify physical abuses on the grounds they are designed to render the abused individual obedient and thus successful in society. At other points it almost comes across as a treatise on how the rich may treat domestic employees as replaceable units rather than human individuals. It certainly explores the wider issue of how flexible a once upright individual’s moral compass can become in the right or rather wrong environment, where compliance with dubious requests is both praised and rewarded materially, while resistance produces less emotionally rewarding outcomes. Certainly we can all think of easy historical examples of this outside of a classic cult environment, anything from WW2 horrors to the US college prison experiments of the 1970s, so it’s not such a reach to interpret the film as reaching for a variety of wider issues than simply how cults operate. It seems odd to contemplate this precise scenario could be going on in nice neighbourhoods in western Europe, with such ostensibly ‘normal’, presentable (if dull) and successful people behind it.
That’s where I was wrong, as the final frames provide context that turn any perception of this as even a uncomfortable satire on its head and acknowledges a real life event that took place in Germany in 2013 as the basis of the storyline. Sobering stuff indeed. I did appreciate the filmmaker’s decision to leave this information until the final moments, as it allows the viewer a wider interpretation of the material than they might have otherwise if concentrating on it as a ‘based on true events!’ kind of show.
It’s certainly a very confident outing, with Hogenauer never once giving in to the demands of smash-bang, turn-it-up-loud mainstream entertainment values. The limited colour palette he uses throughout; the dreary grey skies, leaden oceans, the drab decor and drabber clothing of the faithful, creates a stronger sense of a group of people in the grip of an ideology to which they are required to subsume their entire identities and personal preferences, more than any amount of emotional flailing, bloodletting or noise could. The lack – of colour, of music and human passions, even of an identifiable location is what lends such an oppressive atmosphere and lingers in the mind long after watching. Highly recommended, with a semi-serious warning that you may never contemplate Scandi chic and beige v-neck cardigans in the same way again.
Certain Kind of Silence will screen at the Raindance Film Festival on 24th September 2019. For more details, please click here.
