NOSFERATU (1922, dir. F. W. Murnau)
Available on Amazon Prime and Netflix
Let’s kick off our mini-festival of frights with a film that still manages to unsettle viewers more than 90 years after its initial release in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. With a central performance from Max Schreck as the titular vampire that really has never been eclipsed (only equaled) in its other worldliness and a sense of the macabre and foreboding that few movies have ever had the gumption to match, this is a movie whose historical status is richly earned. An unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a court order following a lawsuit from Stoker’s heirs demanded the destruction of all extant copies. Luckily for us, one print survived and audiences remain transfixed and unsettled by Murnau’s spooky vision ever since.
YOU’RE NEXT (2013, dir. Adam Wingard)
Available on Netflix and Amazon Prime
You’re Next made my runners-up list for the best movies of 2013 but has only grown in my estimation in the interim, firmly planting its flag as one of the best genre films of the entire year. It had made its first splash on the festival circuit in 2011 and then languished without release for a couple of years which perhaps built up its legend to the point where the actual film couldn’t eclipse what people imagined it to be, but Adam Wingard (and Simon Barrett) deliver a rock solid home invasion film here. The film shifts from horror to more of an action/thriller as it ramps up towards its conclusion (in fact, the finale kind of joyously shifts into an R-Rated Home Alone variant), but efficient character work in the early-going that establishes this dysfunctional family before it’s terrorized by a gang of animal-masked invaders help make the early stages of the film all the more disquieting. It’s also worth mentioning that this film has a delightfully nasty sense of humor that will appeal to the damaged amongst us. It’s expertly crafted visceral entertainment that deserved far better than the paltry pre-Halloween release it received last year – a similar fate seems to be befalling their newest collaboration, The Guest, currently out in two local theaters and similarly unpublicized.
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (1986, dir. Fred Dekker)
Available on Netflix
If you’re programming a personal horror festival, you better break up the monotony of agony with a horror-comedy at some point, and if you’re programming a personal horror festival, then you’re aware just how frequently horror-comedies succeed in being neither funny nor scary. Luckily films like Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps exist – a combination zombie/alien invasion/slasher picture that manages to be both hilarious and horrifying. Dekker is perhaps better known for his other cult classic The Monster Squad (co-written by Shane Black), but I feel very safe in telling you that this is his best work. Mostly taking place on the night of a formal dance, as a group of college kids and a grizzled, chain-smoking detective (Tom Atkins, never better) have to work together to fight off a horde of slug-brained zombies. Unjustly forgotten over time, Night of the Creeps deftly balances the B-Movie aesthetic with humor and horror in an ever-so-rare perfect blend. This is the perfect change of pace to bust out mid-marathon, so sit back and let this delightful film thrill you.
Available on Netflix and Amazon Prime
Let me be clear about this upfront – Shakma is not a particularly good movie but as an experience to be had, it’s hard to beat. The premise alone suggests that it might be the greatest movie ever made. A group of science students, along with their professor (played by Roddy McDowell!) and an inexplicably present teenage girl are LARPing (live action role-playing) in their medical facility after hours, playing a large scale version of dungeons and dragons with scrolls and faux-amulets waiting in certain unlocked offices and laboratories on each floor. Unfortunately for them, a scientifically-altered baboon also roams the hallways with a thirst for violence that cannot be quenched. The combination of LARPing and baboon attacks is just as irreconcilable as it sounds, but the film unfortunately can’t quite live up to the idea of itself. The film is mostly composed of sequences of our young dumb leads hiding behind doors as the baboon violently thrashes against them (the filmmakers placed a female baboon in heat behind these doors to achieve the desired effect of Shakma looking like he’s lost his mind), or talking into walkie talkies about their position on the fantasy game’s map. But the dissonant combination of role-playing nerds and a genetically-mutated baboon is too appealing to pass up, with the added bonus of the movie being particularly ruthless in dispatching its characters. Perhaps invent a drinking game to power through, and enjoy the face-flaying baboon attacks as they come.
Available on Amazon Prime and Netflix
We started with the classic original tale of cinematic vampirism, so let’s finish with a recent masterpiece of the genre in Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In. This Swedish vampire flick captures the gothic romance aspect of many great vampire tales in its story of young social outcast Oskar who meets Eli, a young girl who moved in next door in their apartment complex. A tentative friendship/non-sexual romance develops between the two, as they bond over shared dark tendencies and attempt to help Oskar overcome the traumatic bullying he is so frequently subjected to. Alfredson has a way of framing exquisitely intense sequences in a way that make them look as stunning as the best work of the Flemish masters, imbuing a very violent and disturbing story with a poetic sense of gothic beauty that is simply stunning to behold. Forget the horror genre, this is one of the very best movies to have been released in the past two decades and is appointment viewing if you have yet to catch it.
