The Year in Review: The Best Horror Films of 2015 (Honorable Mentions)

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2015, All Hallows' Eve 2, Best of 2015, cinema, Circle, Deep Dark, Digging Up the Marrow, Extinction, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror movies, Knock Knock, Last Shift, Lost After Dark, Love in the Time of Monsters, Movies, personal opinions, Pod, Spring, Stung, Suburban Gothic, The Gift, The Midnight Swim, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, Zombeavers

Just how good was the “Year in Horror,” circa 2015? It was so good, dear friends and readers, that your humble host had to compile a whole separate listing to contain all of the amazing films that just missed the “Best of” by this much (you can’t see it but it’s about a centimeter, give or take). In any other year, any or every one of these little gems might have made the big list: hell, once all is said and done, I’m sure I’ll second-guess at least a few of these and kick myself, anyway.

With no further ado, then (and in no particular order whatsoever), I present the seventeen runner-ups to Best Horror Films of 2015. If the “Best Ofs” are Rolls Royces, these are Jaguars. In other words, you just can’t go wrong taking any of ’em out for a spin.

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Love in the Time of Monsters — Pure fun from start to finish, this is one of the most unabashed good times I had watching a film all year. Full of endearing, quirky characters, a really great concept (the people who play Sasquatch at a Bigfoot-themed tourist trap are turned into murderous monsters by toxic waste), some great, gory special effects and one of the most kickass finales in some time, this isn’t perfect but it’s pretty darn awesome, nonetheless.

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Pod — Claustrophobic, endlessly tense and with a genuinely smart pay-off, the only thing that holds Pod back from neo-classic status are a set of performances that are slightly too intense and shouty for their own good. When the film is focused on the creeping, oppressive atmosphere and the question of just what, exactly, is down in the basement, there were few films that got under my skin quite like this.

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Last Shift — Full disclosure: I absolutely loathed the last film I saw by writer-director Anthony DiBlasi, the patently terrible Clive Barker adaptation, Dread. Combined with the truly terrible cover art for his newest, Last Shift, I had absolutely no interest in seeing the film whatsoever. Good thing I choked back my bias, however, because Last Shift isn’t just a good film: it’s an absolutely great one. Barring the stereotypical and cliched finale, everything about this film is a master study in minimal effort for maximum unease. Think of it as a ruthlessly slow-burning variant on Assault on Precinct 13 (kinda sorta) and that’ll get you close enough. I’m not to proud to say when I’m wrong: sorry, Anthony D…this was a keeper.

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The Gift — Not strictly a horror film but close enough for government work, actor-writer Joel Edgerton’s directorial debut is, hands-down, one of the subtlest, meanest and most uncompromising films of the year. Based on the idea that we’re only ever a stones’ throw from the sins of our past, The Gift features a trio of razor-sharp performances (Bateman, playing completely against type, is utterly magnificent) and the kind of twist that used to be Shyamalan’s stock in trade. This is psychological horror of the highest caliber and destined for classic status, down the road.

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Knock Knock — This one completely surprised me. While Knock Knock features the usual tonal shifts, inappropriate humor and “thinking bro observations” that are endemic to Eli Roth’s entire filmography, there’s something about this sneaky little gem that sank its hooks into me and wouldn’t let go. Come for the sick head-games, screwy gender politics and shocking level of restraint (suffice to say, this is the first Roth film that doesn’t feature copious gore) but do stay for the scene where poor Keanu discusses, in detail, his inability to turn down free pizza. This should have been completely wretched but, somehow, ended up being pretty good. Surprise, surprise.

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Digging Up the Marrow — In a true gift to genre fans, writer-director Adam Green (the mastermind behind the Hatchet franchise and under-rated “stuck on a ski-lift” epic, Frozen) teamed up with renowned monster illustrator Alex Pardee and the results are some of the flat-out coolest, creepiest and most awe-inspiring, diverse monsters to hit the silver screen since Clive Barker’s Nightbreed took us to Midian. The story, itself, is pretty meta for this type of thing: Green (playing himself) is invited by the always amazing Ray Wise (not playing himself) to check out some honest to goodness monsters. Things, as expected, don’t go well. More monsters on screen would have pushed this into the next echelon but what’s here is pretty damn unforgettable.

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Lost After Dark — In a genre where throwbacks to previous eras have become not only more popular but virtually expected, finding a new horror film that apes a ’70s or ’80s horror film really isn’t that hard. Finding one with the consistent quality, high production values and subtle wit of Lost After Dark, however, isn’t quite so easy. While writer-director Ian Kessner doesn’t do anything radically different, he does manage to nail all of the stylistic quirks of his intended homage, all while conducting things with a modicum more seriousness and less meta tongue-in-cheek than we usually get. If Lost After Dark really were an ’80s film, I’m pretty sure we’d be seeing homages to it right around this time.

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Extinction — Like Lost After Dark, Extinction doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel but, instead, doubles-down on what makes its particular sub-genre (zombie films) such an intrinsic part of our horror-loving culture. The performances are solid (Burn Notice’s Jeffrey Donovan is particularly good), the twists and revelations come across as fairly organic and the whole “zombie outbreak in a frozen wasteland” scenario is explored to good effect. Is this one of the best zombie films ever? Not even close. Was it the best zombie film of 2015? Maybe.

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Stung — Going in, I expected this to be another silly, over-the-top horror-comedy: after all, caterers standing as the last line of defense between a mob of giant, mutant wasps and the sniveling local aristocracy at a posh garden party sounds like the kind of thing that could, troublingly, be dubbed “zany.” Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when Stung turned out to be much more serious than that. Essentially an old-fashioned “giant insect” film with deft touches of pitch-black humor, this was just about a grand slam. Fantastic creature effects (easily in the Top 5 of this year), fun performances (Lance Henriksen gets a nice bit as the elderly, tough-as-nails mayor), some really great setpieces and some genuinely smart tweaks to convention (suffice to say there’s more than a little bit of Cronenbergian body horror here) make this an easy recommendation.

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Zombeavers — In a year with more top-notch horror-comedies than you could shake a funny bone at, Zombeavers wasn’t the creme de la creme but it still held its own. With an intriguingly gonzo premise (mutant, zombified beavers attack partying young people, all hell breaks loose), an all-in cast, some fairly outrageous gore effects and a helluva lot of impolite, politically-incorrect humor (the bit where the “wild girl” doffs her top, for no reason, only to be chided by a stereotypical backwoods yokel for making a spectacle of herself is but one example of the filmmakers biting the hand that feeds), Zombeavers is pretty much the perfect party film. Silly, funny but distinctly horror-minded, Zombeavers is one horror-comedy with real teeth.

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The Midnight Swim — Beautifully made, expertly acted and genuinely unsettling, writer-director Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim was one of the most thought-provoking films I screened all year. This is a subtle film, certainly more sororal relationship drama than hard-core fright film. Look closer, however, and you’ll see that the concepts being discussed here (loss of the self, life after death, the dark mysteries of bottomless bodies of water) are the same sort of things explored in plenty of more “traditional” horror films. While those looking for gore and explosions should keep walking, anyone with a thirst for genuinely smart, evocative cinema should have no problem diving into the deep end.

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Suburban Gothic — Essentially a lesser version of Peter Jackson’s superior The Frighteners or Gerard Johnstone’s far superior Housebound (or a much, much better version of the inept Odd Thomas, if you prefer), Suburban Gothic stars Criminal Minds’ Matthew Gray Gubler as a grown man who moves back into his parents’ house and immediately begins seeing spooky things. Kat Dennings and Gubler make a fairly cute couple, Ray Wise is typically excellent as Gubler’s hateful, racist dad and the whole thing has a light-hearted feel that makes it endlessly breezy and rather pleasant. Barring a few scenes of extraordinarily stupid physical comedy, this was definitely a sleeper.

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Spring — Of the two indie-romance-inspired “guy dates a monster” films that were released in 2015 (the much more problematic Honeymoon being the other), Spring is definitely the better one. Featuring strong performances from both Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker, great use of the picturesque Italian countryside and a decidedly Lovecraftian bent, this metaphor for the joys and terrors of new relationships is appropriately icky, when necessary, while also managing to be genuinely heartfelt and emotionally resonant. Small surprise that this is from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the filmmakers behind the stunning Resolution and two of the most promising new filmmakers out there.

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All Hallows’ Eve 2 — One of the biggest surprises of the whole year for me, All Hallows’ Eve 2 was the equivalent of finding a golden ticket in my Wonka Bar. While I genuinely liked and respected the ultra-gory, no budget original film, nothing about this more polished and expensive follow-up inspired early confidence. Turns out I was wrong, however, since this modest little anthology ended up being one of the best I’ve seen in the past few years. While nowhere near the feral insanity of the original, this is still a rock-solid horror film with plenty of good ideas and no shortage of red stuff for the gorehounds. It’s no Trick ‘r Treat, mind you, but really…what is?

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Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead — Gleefully bonkers, this outrageous splatter film manages to deliver just what the cover promises: Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead. Detailing one badass mofo’s trek across the zombie-ravaged Australian Outback, in search of his sister (kidnapped by mad scientists), while wearing homemade armor, there really aren’t a lot of films like this out there. Although the film is frequently quite funny (Leon Burchill provides excellent comic support as the sassy Aborigine sidekick), it’s actually more of a straight-forward horror/action flick than the synopsis might make it sound. While the exterior scenes provide plenty of tension, it’s the sweaty, claustrophobic sequences in the scientist’s lair that pack the biggest punch.

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Circle — With a simple concept, obviously low budget, largely unknown cast and lack of unnecessary backstory, Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione’s Circle instantly recalls another sci-fi sleeper: Vincenzo Natali’s classic Cube. Like Cube, Circle is a film that purposely keeps the audience off balance, wondering just what the hell is happening onscreen. By the time we get the full story, the film is already rolling the final credits, which is just the way it should be. Smart, economical and legitimately fascinating, I have a sneaking suspicion that Circle will enjoy the same favored status as Cube in the next decade or so. I went in expecting nothing and was completely blown away: that’s the definition of a nice surprise.

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Deep Dark — This year saw the release of two excellent films about sad sack losers receiving life advice from holes in their grimy apartment walls (if this baffles you, we obviously don’t run in the same circles): we’ll get to Motivational Growth later (I know, I know…”spoiler alert”)…Deep Dark is the other one. Although I prefer the batshit insanity of Motivational Growth, that has less to do with the quality of Michael Medaglia’s Deep Dark than it does with my personal sensibilities. Needless to say, if Motivational Growth wouldn’t have dropped this year, I’m pretty sure that Deep Dark would’ve got called up to the majors. This dark fable of a starving artist who seeks inspiration from a strange, fleshy hole in his apartment wall features blood-spraying art mobiles, man-on-wall sex and that all important warning: be careful what you wish for. Indeed.

 

7/6/15: Cthulhian Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

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Aaron Scott Moorhead, Americans abroad, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, dramas, film reviews, films, Francesco Carnelutti, genetic research, horror films, immortality, Jeremy Gardner, Jimmy Lavalle, Jonathan Silvestri, Justin Benson, Lou Taylor Pucci, love story, Lovecraftian, Monsters, Movies, mutations, Nadia Hilker, nature, Nick Nevern, relationships, Resolution, romantic films, self-sacrifice, set in Italy, Spring, true love, twists, writer-director-cinematographer-editor

Despite what rom-coms, TV commercials and the greeting card industry might say, true love is actually a pretty ugly business. Once the initial pie-in-the-sky phase of any relationship is over, couples actually have to get down to the nitty-gritty of living with each other, warts and all. We all have aspects of our personalities that we shield from the world at large (call ’em “dark sides” but do it with a sinister glare, for effect), aspects which our significant others tend to get the brunt of, for better or worse. When everyone else has gone home, when the TV is silent and the phones are off, when there’s nothing between you and another human being but the skin you were born with and the neuroses you picked up along the way…well…that’s amore, my friends.

The trick in any new relationship, of course, is to try to see through the cotton candy and unicorns into whatever “monsters” might be lurking in the background: we’re all damaged goods, to one degree or another, but the amount of damage varies from individual to individual. Accepting our partners at their absolute worst, just as we accept them at their absolute best, is one of the key tenets of being in love: you can like people, lust after them, respect the hell out of them or any combination of the three. You can’t truly love someone, however, unless you’re willing to also love their dark side, as well.

Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s Spring (2014) is about this duality of romance, in ways both symbolic and much more explicit. At its core, the film is about the stirrings of new romance, the courtship and subtle dance that unites two complete strangers via their commingled heartstrings. It’s about the feelings (and thoughts) that rush to one’s cerebellum after the blood has finished rushing to points south, the questions and concerns that extend beyond “What now?” into “What next?.” Spring is about the eternal need for companionship, the primeval drive to continue the bloodline and find a sympathetic audience for our own endless tics, quirks and delusions. It’s about what happens when the person you love displays monstrous qualities…when they might be, in fact, a literal monster. Does love really conquer all or are our individual biologies really the unmitigated masters of our destinies?

When we first meet him, Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) is in a bit of what might best be described as a complete and total tailspin into oblivion. His beloved mother has just died after a long, drawn-out illness, he’s relentlessly angry and the world at large is just one big fight waiting to happen. While drowning his sorrows with his buddy, Tommy (fellow indie writer-director Jeremy Gardner), in the same dive bar where he works, Evan gets picked on by a meat-headed moron who’s looking to tussle. Evan cleans his clock righteously (for a small guy, he fights like a wolverine) and gets fired, on the spot, for his trouble. He also ends up in the crosshairs of the vengeance-seeking jerk and his buddies, as well as the local cops: weighing his options, Evan decides to bid a not-so-fond farewell to the U.S. of A and hightail it for the beauty and grandeur of Italy.

As the American ex-pat triapses about his newly adopted homeland, he meets a couple of assholish backpackers (Nick Nevern and Jonathan Silvestri), as well as a kind-hearted old farmer, Angelo (Francesco Carnelutti), who sets Evan up with honest, hard work, as well as room and board. Just when it seems that Evan might, successfully, slip into anonymity, he lays eyes on the alluring Louise (Nadia Hilker). The rest, as they might say, could be history.

Louise is an intriguing character: a smart, droll student studying evolutionary genetics who also happens to be a vegetarian (although she admits to “craving meat” occasionally), Louise speaks several languages, raises the rabbits that she rescues from medical trials as her pets and seems but one quirky Vespa away from your standard “manic pixie girl” in a rom-com meet-cute. As mentioned previously, however, Louise has a dark side that she keeps carefully hidden from the world at large: she’s constantly injecting herself with mysterious fluids, like some sort of cyberpunk drug addict, refuses to see Evan after dark and has a tendency to turn into a slimy, reptilian, Cthulhian monster, from time to time. In other words: pretty much your usual relationship baggage.

As Evan continues to fall madly in love with Louise, she struggles with telling him too much about her own, unique genetic background: it’s hard enough not farting around your loved one…try not turning into a monster and see how it goes! For his part, Evan discovers one of Louise’s discarded needles and makes the natural assumption (no, not the monster one, silly) that his dream girl might have one foot firmly in nightmare territory. “I need to know if you’re the kind of crazy I can handle,” Evan says, at one point, a slightly goofy grin on his face. Suffice to say, Evan will have his answer before too long…whether he likes it or not.

Writer-director team Moorhead and Benson first hit my radar thanks to their astounding debut, the impossibly clever, thought-provoking and radical Resolution (2012), a film that manages to completely upend conventional notions of horror by getting all meta with the very basics of story/narrative construction. Resolution was a helluva film, by any definition, and my level of anticipation was through the roof for their full-length follow-up (their V/H/S Viral (2014) segment was tasty but not much more than an appetizer). While Spring is nowhere near the achievement that Resolution was (to be honest, few modern films are), it nonetheless finds Moorhead and Benson polishing up their craft, moving ever farther afield from the ultra lo-fi approach of their debut.

As far as mysteries go, the secret of Louise’s dual nature is pretty much dead on arrival: between the various posters, one-sheets, trailers and synopses floating around, I find it hard to believe that any semi-aware audience member would find this to be surprising in the slightest. This, of course, is never the film’s intent: Spring is much more interested in Evan and Louise’s tangled romance than it is in pulling another tired “twist” on the audience. Moorhead and Benson spill the beans approximately a third of the way into the film, leaving the remaining two-thirds as fall-out, as it were. This isn’t a film about a man who ends up falling in love with a woman who’s revealed to be part monster: it’s a film about a man who falls in love with a woman who just so happens to be part monster…it’s a subtle difference but a major one and it forms the crux for everything we see.

No romance works unless we buy into the lovers, however, which is one reason that Spring has no problem pulling off its particular hat-trick: not only are Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker completely comfortable in their roles, the pair have genuine romantic chemistry…we actually believe that they do (or could, as it were) love each other, which makes it a lot easier to empathize with everything else that happens. One of my primary concerns with “meet-cutes” is that they often feel so forced: we’re told that Quirky Girl A and Square Dude B are perfect for each other because the story requires it. Spring overcomes this obstacle by making the “falling in love” portion of the film feel like something out of a Linklater opus. There’s a genuine sense of tragedy to the proceedings because we see what a great couple Evan and Louise might be under any circumstances other than the ones they’re given.

While Pucci (who also featured prominently in the recent Evil Dead (2014) remake, as well as Richard Kelly’s nutty Southland Tales (2006)) walks a fairly predictable route as Evan, Hilker does much more interesting things with her performance as Louise. Despite this being the German actress’ first big-screen role, she absolutely owns every inch of the frame: the character of Louise is an intoxicating combination of eldritch biology, innate urges, human femininity and misplaced mothering instincts, a combination which Hilker handles with aplomb. One of the film’s biggest coups is that Louise is such a sympathetic creation: by keeping our empathy high, Moorhead and Benson allow us to slowly become as enrapt with her as Evan is.

While the filmmaking duo gets nice supporting work from a good cast (although I can’t help but wish Gardner had much more screen time than he does), this is Evan and Louise’s movie, through and through, meaning that it’s also Pucci and Hilker’s film, through and through. In many ways, it’s not a radical departure from what Leigh Janiak did in the recent Honeymoon (2014) (or even what Andrezj Zulawski did much earlier in Possession (1981)), but Moorhead and Benson’s star-crossed lovers are much more sympathetic than either Janiak or Zulawski’s protagonists. When we’re going to be spending nearly two hours with a couple of young lovers, they damn well better be interesting and Evan and Louise are anything but dull.

From a production standpoint, Spring looks gorgeous, certainly much more so than its predecessor (which was much more of a found-footage film). Aaron Moorhead’s cinematography (he also edited and produced the film, along with Benson) makes terrific use of some truly beautiful Italian scenery, taking us into picturesque old towns, lovely grottos and lush countryside in ways that split the difference between travelogue and old-world mystery. One of the most eye-popping aspects of Spring’s camerawork is the numerous crane and helicopter shots that pop up throughout: aside from giving a thoroughly awe-inspiring view of the surroundings, the cinematography also instills a proper sense of scope and scale to the narrative. When set against the backdrop of such ancient beauty and serene nature, the body-horror aspect of Spring becomes even more pronounced and grotesque, a streak of brain matter on an otherwise pristine wall.

Despite how well made Spring is, however, I couldn’t help but be a bit disappointed by the whole thing. While Moorhead and Benson handle this occasionally musty material with plenty of energy and wit, there’s almost no comparison to the unhinged brilliance of Resolution. In many ways, Resolution was much closer to the mind-fuck cinema of Nacho Vigalondo or even Darren Aronofsky: there was a genuine sense that absolutely anything could happen and any easy sense of narrative continuity or logic was effectively thrown from the penthouse window. Resolution was an inherently tricky film but it wasn’t a gimmicky film: rather, it used the conventions of narrative filmmaking (and even narration, itself) to make particularly incisive comments on the ways humans create.

For its part, Spring is a much more straight-forward, streamlined film: in many ways, this is just your typical indie love story, albeit one with a foot firmly set in H.R. Giger’s nocturnal dream-world. While the film is undeniable well made and entertaining, I kept expecting it to develop into something trickier and deeper, developments which never really happened. Aside from an atypically sunny ending (all things considered), there are very few genuine surprises to be found here, although there’s also a decided lack of tone-deaf or eye-rolling moments, either. If anything, Spring feels like a way for Moorhead and Benson to announce themselves to the world at large, an employment ad, if you will: “Available for thought-provoking puzzlers, multiplex popcorn fare or any combination of the two.”

Even though Spring is a solid step-down from Resolution, it’s still one of the more evocative, atmospheric and interesting films of the year: if Moorhead and Benson can just find a way to effortlessly meld the aesthetics of their two full-lengths (the anything-goes intellectual swirl of Resolution with the top-notch production values of Spring), I have a feeling that they’ll be virtually unstoppable.