#adrians edit is specifically based off the second movie

[kanos]

YOU SURVIVED AGAINST THE ODDS, BUT WAS IT ALL WORTH IT?

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[bereft-of-frogs]

If you are ever so inclined - I'd be very interested in your horror recommendations.

This got…probably more involved than you intended. :D It was a good procrastination tool/distraction from A Thing I didn’t want to do though, and I had fun revisiting some of these old trailers.

This ended up really long. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m like this.

“The New Golden Age”

[These are what I’m talking about when I talk about us entering in a new golden age - really genre bending, specifically out to subvert tropes, make social statements, and empower people who have been shut out by horror in the past.]

Jordan Peele - Get Out (2017) and Us (2019)

Ah, Jordan Peele. The master of the comedy to horror turn. Get Out was the most fun I’ve had watching a horror movie in a long time. I love how it really fits itself to classic tropes but subverts them by flipping the genre and race dynamics. (Daniel Kaluuya’s character embodies the ‘Final Girl’ trope.)

Us fucked me up. Like, woke up at 3am thinking about it, couldn’t really look at Lupita Nyong’o for a while. The remix of the song that plays over the trailer literally gives me goosebumps. It freaked me out, so much. That one is a genre bender - you think you’re watching one thing (a classic home-invasion type trope with some weird mystery to it) and then the final scene basically upends everything you thought you were watching. Fucked. Me. Up.

Ari Aster - Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019)

I’ve been talking a bunch about how much I loved Midsommar. It’s gorgeous visually, Ari Aster is so great at just letting things hang and letting tension build and build - and it was the first horror movie I think I’ve ever felt weirdly empowered by. Like, similar to when I saw Captain Marvel, I walked out of the theater like “is this how men feel all the time?” Hereditary is probably a better movie overall, not counting the fact that it was practically made for me. At its core it’s a grief drama, a phenomenal portrait of mourning…and it’s also really fucking scary. Those slow-tension building scenes are really used effectively in Hereditary.

I also think it’s interesting because Ari Aster is keeping pace with Jordan Peele, but did it in the opposite order. Hereditary is the genre-bender - you kind of think it’s a family drama/psychological horror for most of it, and then it takes a hard turn and makes you question everything you were watching. Midsommar is more on-genre norms - it’s essentially the classic ‘bunch of terrible people getting picked off one by one’ trope (I don’t know if there’s a better name for that), but by applying folk horror and really centering female characters as both pro- and an- tagonist, it does a lot of unexpected things.

Robin Aubert - Les Affamés (”The Ravenous”) (2017)

It’s a zombie movie, but it’s more than that. This movie is so layered. I saw it at a festival when it first came out and then we watched it again this year on St. Jean-Baptiste (Québec national holiday) because we wanted to be #OnTheme. (And to celebrate St. Jean-Baptiste without having to interact with crowds) and it kind of clicked what it was doing. It’s really about the absorbing of difference into the dominant, hegemonic culture and the struggle for marginalized individuals to survive. Robin Aubert has a couple others I haven’t seen yet, but have heard good things about and are on my list. I saw a critic call his main brand ‘pastoral terror’ (terreur pastorale) which I absolutely love as a concept.

Alex Garland - Annihilation (2018)

Some people might argue with me if this is horror or not, if it’s sci-fi, but I think it’s body horror. And it’s beautiful body horror! See this is what I’m here for. Body horror is not just gore - there’s not a lot of blood in this movie. Body horror is about distortion and the grotesque. There’s this one scene that still gives me chills when I think about it and Tessa Thompson’s final scene is beautiful body horror at its finest. (There was also a really similar scene in Midsommar, so I clearly know what I like.) The soundtrack is also phenomenal.

[I had a whole rant about the book series, which I hated, here, but it was getting long and derailing so I cut it out. the tldr is I hated the book.]

“Classics I actually Enjoy”

[I don’t always love what appears at the top of the like ‘essential horror’ lists, but these are the ones I think are worth it.]

Dario Argento - Deep Red (1975)

I really, really wanted to like Suspiria more, because the concept and Goblin’s score for Suspiria both appeal to me a lot more. But I had a lot more fun watching Deep Red. So far it’s my favorite of the giallos.

Richard Donner - The Omen (1976)

Classic. It’s so good. “It’s all for you, Damian!” Plus, I love any movie that comes with rumors of a curse.

Alfred Hitchcock - Psycho (1960)

I would classify most of Hitchcock as ‘thriller’ rather than horror, but Psycho is firmly psychological horror, and The Classic.

Stuart Gordon - Re-animator (1985)

I couldn’t really decide if I wanted to put this one. Especially because on a long drive my friend and we basically covered how this was really ripe for a remake because it’s flaws…did not age particularly well, especially re: gender and race. (But it could be so, so good. It could be an amazing commentary about consent and the use of marginalized bodies…but the original …is…not.) But I’m putting this on here because of body horror. They clearly hired dancers or choreographers to do the reanimated movements because they really lean into it and it’s great. It gets…heavily derailed at the end by an absolutely ridiculous gore climax and missing the opportunity to actually have a coherent storyline or a message of any kind…but they got the grotesque movements down.

Honorable Mentions: The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, *sigh* Cannibal Holocaust (like…I don’t actually recommend anyone watch it. I’m glad I did, because it’s really important for how the ‘found footage’ genre developed, so it’s a piece of film history but like. Don’t actually watch it.), The House on Haunted Hill

“Random Others In Between”

Adrian Lyne - Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

You might recognize Jacob’s Ladder as the movie that more heavily inspired the first chapter of ‘dark underground//violent sky’ more than I had originally thought. I had originally been basing a lot of the tone and style on current trends in horror TV, but then I happened to watch Jacob’s Ladder while I was in the middle of writing the second half and was like…oh. Like, I knew I had been heavily influenced by Jacob’s Ladder and the ending, but I had forgotten about how the film differentiates between ‘reality’ and ‘dream’ - in that it doesn’t! And that was an effect I was specifically striving for when I was writing ‘dark underground’. It’s also just a really weird, trippy late-80s/early-90s movie set in New York when New York was still really dirty and that’s fun.

Hideo Nakata - Dark Water (2002)

This is my favorite Japanese horror film. I think it gets a little bit looked over in favor of some others (Ringu, Ju-on, Audition), but it’s my favorite. (Has a terrible American remake, so be sure to avoid that one. It comes up first when you google. -_-)

James Wan - The Conjuring (2013)

I did really like this first entry - the sequels are kind of aggressively meh.

Scott Derrickson - Sinister (2012)

THE DANGER IS IN THE VIEWING!

Honorable Mentions: Session 9, Se7en, The Ritual, It Follows, The Descent, The Hills Have Eyes (I just really like bright horror movies), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (for fun bonus pretension, you can also watch Requiem, and then when people ask you if you’ve seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose, you get to be like “Yeah, have you seen the German original?” though, technically, it’s that they’re both based off of the same true-story. it’s still fun to say), Hard Candy, Ils (Them), THE VVITCH (should only ever be pronounced ‘The Va-Vitch’ lol)

“The Parody Films”

[What is there to say? They’re great, so much fun.]

Joss Whedon - Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Remember back in 2012 when Avengers 1 came out, and then Cabin in the Woods came out, like, immediately afterwards, and we all loved Joss Whedon? We were so innocent back then.

Eli Craig - Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

This movie is so pure. I love how they both play into and subvert the rural hillbilly tropes with the two main characters. They just want a vacation home! These kids keep killing themselves on their property!

Honorable Mentions: Shaun of the Dead, I was googling to confirm the year of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and I saw What We Do In The Shadows listed as horror paraody, but I would count that more as a Gothic mockumentary, but I listed it here because I love it so much.

“Documentaries”

Xavier Burgin - Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019)

This movie was so interesting! Highly recommend. I think Shudder is planning on producing more of these documentaries, about marginalized groups in horror, and I am Here For It.

Honorable Mentions: Cropsey/Killer Legends, Best Worst Movie

I think I’ll stop here and maybe someday do a separate one for books. And maybe TV series, but I’m having a hard time teasing out the line between mystery and horror because of how popular and kind of unique Nordic Noir is right now. It’s just hard to draw the line for TV.

But I’ll end by summarizing reading thoughts (in a more disorganized manner):

-I have two separate ‘complete tales and poems’ editions of Edgar Allen Poe - one to look pretty and one to annotate.

-If you come for my girl Mary Shelley I will come @ you. Once a kind of asshole-y friend once was like ‘Frankenstein is terrible because it was written by a teenage girl’ and, I swear to God, I almost fought him right there in the bar. The Last Man is also great.

-I also almost forgot how much I loved Dracula. The Harkers especially. (I once tried to read League of Extraordinary Gentleman and gave up with a rage-headache 15 pages in because of what they did to Mina.) (Ah yes, let’s make her a “Strong Female Character ™” by having her divorce Jonathan and almost be raped in the first 15 pages.) (Couldn’t deal with it.) (I’m sure I would in general like that series but I just had too much attachment to Mina Harker to get over it.)

-I physically cannot get through Lovecraft. I can’t do it. I’ve tried so many times, I know how important it is but I just. Can’t. Don’t want to. Won’t. Sorry.

-A lot of adapted books I tend to prefer the books they were based on. Some are kind of obvious, like I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which is a way, way better book than the movie. (They changed the ending which undercut the actual message.) But others are still decent movies, I just tend to prefer the book. Like, everyone always puts Let the Right One In on ‘essential horror’ lists, but I actually liked the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist a lot better.

-Similarly, you may have noticed I put no Stephen King movies on this list - there are a few I really like, but I think they work better as complements to the novels. Misery and the original Pet Sematary (haven’t seen the new one yet) are my two favorite movies-based-on-king. The Shining is visually stunning by character-wise, wildly disappointing, so point to the novel for this one. (King also hated the adaptation for what Kubrick did to Wendy.) My general King recommendations are: Carrie, Misery, The Shining, The Mist, Insomnia

I’m having a bit of an issue with how male-dominated this list is. It’s partially my problem that I’m working on correcting (I’m at the point where I’m actively trying not to read horror books by white men anymore) and partially a general problem in the industry. It’s hard to get into an industry that for a long time unquestioningly based itself on violence against women and other marginalized peoples’ bodies. -_-  But yeah, I have a list of contemporary horror novels by women that I’m working my way through, and I’m trying to catch up on some older staples like Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, and Octavia Butler.

UPDATE: After I finished compiling this list, I googled ‘Horror movies directed by women’ and there are a couple that I would recommend, I think they’re just not as visible. (Did not realize they’d been directed by women until this Google.):

Mary Lambert - Pet Sematary (1989)

Karen Kusama - Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Mary Harron - American Psycho (2000)

Lynne Ramsay - We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) (though I liked the book better)

This list was probably incomplete and I’ve probably forgotten a bunch of things I really like! It’s also only made up of things I’ve already seen/read (though it’s not comprehensive). If something’s not on here and you think it should be, lmk! It may be that I haven’t seen it yet and I’ll add it to my to-watch list. Always taking suggestions, especially for more horror (films or books) from underrepresented groups.