#dark!mike kiernan

[deceitfuldevout]

Happy Purge

Purge AU: Soft!Dark!Mike Kiernan x Student!Reader

Word Count: +2,068

Warning(s): +18, Non con, Stalking, Kidnapping, Power Imbalance, Use of blood as lube, Mild gore, Purge day.

Author's Note(s): I was thinking about this and coincidentally it's kinktober haha!

It's been almost a decade since the first purge. A lot has changed since then. You remember a time when people didn’t have to worry about looking over their shoulder. Even the morning after was gruesome scene. There was an official purge cleanup crew for that reason alone. You couldn’t help but stare at the clock on the wall.

If you could squeeze in just one last assignment, you'll be free for the weekend. Suddenly, you hear your name being called. It breaks you out of your train of thought, turning to your instructor and apologizing, "Yes Professor! S-sorry..." now embarrassed that you've been caught by him. Professor Mike Kiernan

According to his students, Mike was more than an exceptional teacher. Every last one of them adores him. If not, well then he'd have to look out for tonight. You on the other hand, have always felt there was something off about him. As if he were harboring a dark secret. Maybe it was the building nerves. After all, tonight would be the start of the annual Purge Day.

Mike ends class an hour early, giving his students enough time to reach home safely. You on the other hand, take the opportunity to finish up remaining school work. Mr. Kiernan was also in charge of study hall. He notices you're the last student left and approaches your desk, "Forgetting something?"

You look up at him with your pen still in mouth, taking it out to speak. That's when the realization hits. "Oh sh—shoot!" Quickly correcting the slip up. You had completely forgotten. In about thirty minutes the sirens were going to ring, after that the Purge would commence. You lived a little more than half an hour away. How on earth would you make it to home on time?!

Mike notices your fidgeting, poor thing. You were so caught up in school work that you'd completely forgotten. Always so responsible, one of his best students. So kind and generous. You were always a good student, helping anyone that needed it. Was it bad that he wanted to keep it all for himself?

"Do you need a ride home?" he offers, "It's not safe out there, especially not for a young lady like yourself," kind, genuine words. Your phone is almost dead, and you had no point of contact. So you take his offer, "Thank you professor Kiernan, Seriously," You grateful to have someone like him. He walks you to his car parked on the edge of the lot. He takes his time walking to it. You on the other hand, were in a hurry.

You felt almost embarrassed by the way you held the door handle eagerly waiting for him. To unlock it. He chuckles, clicking the button of his keys to open it. You hurry inside, not wasting a second hopping onto the seat. As he began to drive off you could hear the first warning bell. There would only be two more before the final sirens. Your eyes are glued to the red sirens attached to each public building, the blaring makes you feel sick.

When the car makes a sudden turn off the main road, you begin to grow suspicious, "Professor?"

"Yes?"

"This isn't the way to my house..."

"I know, but it's too late for that now," he answers, "The third alarm is about to go off, we won't make it in time," his eyes are still glued to the road. You gather enough courage to speak up again, "Professor....professor where are we going?"

"I live nearby, you're more than welcome to spend the night," he answers, "The last thing I'd want is for those animals to harm a student of mine," he reassures. Mike lives in the more rural side of town. There's a growing feeling you have that something was wrong about all this. But what other choice do you have? It was better than being out there alone on the streets.

As soon as you arrive to Mike's home, he activates the security system. When he first bought the house, the first thing he did was install a Purge-proof security system. He walks into the kitchen, rummaging for something, "Would you like some tea?" he opens the pantry to fetch some herbs. While it boils he gets some jam and toast for it. As soon as he finishes up, he places both cups on the table.

You notice that Mike hadn't taken a sip from his drink. Your eyes widen with fear, "You haven't touched your cup..." there's a pause. Then he realizes his mistake, "Ah, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to make you nervous," he switches the drinks, "Here, have mine," he takes a sip from your cup to insure it hadn't been spiked. It calms your nerves knowing that there was nothing to worry about.

Mike had kept his promise that you would be safe here. It's been a while since he's had anyone over. He tries his best hosting skills, a round of charade, following by a board game. It was honestly one of the best purge experiences you've had yet. A great distraction from the events occurring outside. He insists on watching a movie to kill the time, you agree. Why not? Besides, Mike's company wasn't so bad.

It was during the middle of the movie when you needed to use the restroom. He points you to down the hall. On your way back, you notice a door had been left open. It was most likely the master bedroom. When you reach the knob to close it, you accidentally take a glimpse inside.

That's when you notice what was there. No....there's no way...You enter his room to get a closer look. Mike smiles to himself. To think that he'd been so worried about everything, and for what? You seem to be enjoying his company. He was right all along, there was something more to your relationship.

He hears you rushing down the hallway, there's an angry look on your face, "What the fuck are these?!" you toss the photos on the ground. Pictured in each and every last one of them is you. Some of them were taken while on campus, others were downloaded from social media posts. He smiles, "Now I know what you're thinking, but if you just hear me out--"

"Not a fucking chance!" you back away from him. He's confused, why now were you acting out? It was going so well between the two of you! Can't you see how much he cares?

"Don't you see the love and dedication I have for you?! And you know it too!" he nears, "I know you feel the same way..." his voice sounding more desperate, there's a deranged look in his eyes that doesn't meet his smile, "Tell me you weren't thinking the same thing, when you waited for me after class," he held a hand to his chest, expressing his love for you.

He's finally letting you know how he's felt for a very long time. You were at a loss for words, there's no way he actually thought--between the two of you? He's delusional. To think you and your classmates actually trusted him. You're pissed, "Get it through your fucking head! You're my professor! That's all you'll ever be!"

After hearing that Mike's smile fades. He could feel heart shattering into a million pieces. Maybe it was a mistake, bringing you here on your own terms. If he knew this was how you would react, then he would've just stuck to the original plan. He knows he could get away with it too. After all, it was Purge day.

Usually, he'd go against something like this. But what other choice does he have? It quickly turns into a fight or flight situation. You knew he was stronger than you, so there would be no point in fighting him. What other choice did you have other than running? Mike is much faster than you realize. He's quick to grab you before you've had a chance to alert the security system.

Mike drags you across his home. He stops by a door located on the side of the staircase. He almost rips the hinges off when he pulls you inside. You fought with all your might, scratching, pushing, hitting wherever you possibly could. To him, they felt like nothing. He's dealt with worse. In the struggle, you're sent tumbling down the stairs.

Mike uses his body to shield yours from the fall. He cradles your head against his chest. Yet still, you were fighting him, after everything he's done. You scurry towards the other side of the basement. As far away from him as you could possibly be.

Mike sighs with annoyance, "You have no idea what it's like..." he lifts himself off the floor, his hands now balled up into fists. He doesn't know how much longer he can hold himself back, "You have no idea what it's like seeing you every day, and not being able to do a damn thing!" he charges, slamming you against a wall, he leans his head closer to yours.

Still there was that look of admiration in his eyes, "We could've been so happy together," Mike grabs you by the throat, pulling you into a deep, searing kiss. In retaliation you bit his lip. He winces in pain, "Will you just...stop fighting me?!" his anger gets the best of him as he slams you against the wall. You're left stunned after getting the wind knocked out of your lungs.

Mike is quick to catch you. He panics, "Please! I don't want to hurt you!" He yells over and over again, "I love you! I love you! Please! I love you!" there are tears in his eyes, "Just please...let me love you..." he sighs against your neck, placing a kiss on the bare skin, "Look at what you do to me..." he grinds his bulge against your clothed mound.

You could practically feel how big it was, even through the many layers of clothing. It makes your skin crawl, how he's played the role of a caring professor and community member for so long. Could he even see himself right now?! "Look, whatever you want, a house, a baby, I'll give ya," Mike never knew he even wanted those things, not until he met you. Don't you see? You're all he's ever needed.

You fought him like a trapped animal. His feisty little wildcat. You use both fists to land a few good hits on his face, over and over again. Hitting his nose with a 'crunch' sound. But still, it doesn't stop him. Mike can't seem to understand why you were trying to escape. It was useless fighting him. This would be so much better if you just gave in. Because eventually, he's going to get what he wants. He pulls you into another forceful kiss.

For that, you headbutt in right in the face. Mike winches, pulling away from you with a now bloody nose. He throws you to the ground. Then pounces, caging his body on top of your own. He begins to unbuckle his belt, dragging his boxers down to free his cock. He spits a wad of blood in his palm, that'll do for now. He doesn't want to waste anymore time. Purge would be ending in a few hours, and he'll make sure to use every last minute of it.

He knows how the law works in this area. If a couple lived together for over a year, then it would legally bind them together as husband and wife. Mike doesn't mind that idea at all, 'My wife...you're going to be my wife," he sighs. Your stomach churns after hearing that, "No...no please, this isn't what I want!"

"You don't even know what you want" Mike starts lifting up your skirt, he's eager, almost giddy, "But I do," yanking down the waistband of your panties. He forces his member deep inside, groaning from the sensation of your walls pulsing. You scream from the intrusion. It resembles a cat's howl.

Tears begin to form, now blurring your vision. Your claws sink deep into his chest, as he began thrusting in and out of your channel. He doesn't stop, not until he finishes. He has only one goal on his mind, to plant his seed, leave a legacy behind, "Take it, take it..." he mumbles over and over again.

"Professor?" a student asks, causing Mike to break from his trance. His student asks the question again, "How was your purge?" genuinely curious. What did Professor Mike Kiernan, of all people, do to earn those nasty bruises? He's still wearing his sweater from yesterday, now caked in his own blood. The first thing he did the morning after, was drag himself out of bed and straight to lecture. He couldn't help but grin, "Well, ran into some trouble, but, no worries,"

His students and coworkers felt bad. They all said the same thing, how Mike was the last person who deserved something like this. If only they knew. After a long day of lectures, he finally drives home. He passes by the Purge's official memorial road. There are numerous photos of people who had either lost their lives or went missing.

When he sees your photo, he can't help but smirk. He parks his car on the side of the road, approaching the stand. He pockets the picture for keepsake, smiling to himself as he returns to his car. It's been a long time since Mike has looked forward to coming home.

Perhaps Purge wasn't so bad.

[ilovetoxicfictionalmen]

IGNORANCE WAS BLISS

KINKTOBER DAY 27 - SOMNOPHILIA WITH MIKE KIERNAN

Pairing.| Mike Kiernan x fem!reader

Summary.| Mike makes love to you when you're dead asleep, because that's the only time you'll love him.

Warnings.| Dubcon, noncon, somnophilia, p in v, accidental cream pie, stalking, peeping tom, mike's obsessed.

Word count.| .7k

It was a long, stressful, draining day for Mike. Somehow he ended up at the pub to relieve his tormented mind. A few too many beers later, his mind was completely focused on you. He missed you and needed to be buried deep inside of you, as soon as possible. However, there was one issue. You had broken up a couple of months ago. The chances of getting back together was a cloudy topic, but Mike was in love with you. The completely smitten man was doing everything to prove his devotion to you, but his patience had worn thin recently. 

You still wanted to be with him, he was certain. That’s why you never asked for your key back. Quietly, the key slid perfectly into the lock and the door clicked open. Never did he come here drunk, so Mike didn’t realize how heavy he was breathing or how loud his footsteps were as he stumbled to your bedroom. 

You’ve suffered from insomnia and were prescribed sleeping pills about midway throughout your relationship. So every night, you were out like a light as you held onto Mike like a baby. Mike missed that sensation, he dreamt of it, he craved it immensely. 

The first time, he just watched you, until the sun crept through the curtains. The second time, he laid on the bed beside you and breathed in your sweet scent. It wasn’t until the fifth time that he remembered the touch of your warmth. 

In his defense, he believed that you subconsciously wanted it. You never slept with such easy access, yet now that he secretly visits you, you happen to? A part of you was aware that he was here. A bigger part of you missed him as much as he missed you.  

He fell onto the bed and crawled up beside you. After he placed a couple of sloppy kisses on your cheek, he unbuckled his belt. You only wore a night dress, your cunt completely accessible. After a couple minutes of foreplay with his digits, accompanied by your sweet moans, Mike slipped his member inside of you. 

“Mike…” you murmured. 

You liked to dream of him, that much he knew. 

“It’s me honey” he exhaled in satisfaction as his hips slowly rocked inside of you. 

Your walls clenched in rhythm, similar to the motion of breathing in and out of a paper bag. A kiss would be planted on a new inch of your skin, he had to be careful not to accidentally leave a hickey. You groaned out as his hips snapped in harsher than usual. Mike’s head shot up in fear, the rest of his body completely still, but his heart rate slowed down as you remained unconscious. 

Without a second thought, Mike continued on. The bed creaked in rhythm to his light moans. It was extraordinary with how you’d stay asleep. Especially when he felt you orgasm around him. 

“Mis-h yo-uu Mike” you mumbled your confession into the pillow. 

Another kiss is placed on your jawline. Then he nuzzled his head against yours, hands intertwined with one another. 

“Do you love me?” he whispered softly into your ear. 

“Mhmmm” you hummed, a gentle smile on your lips. Mike smiled widely, his cock twitched against your walls, he was nearly there. “Love you… so much” you purred, which made his eyes widen. It was the first time you had actually said it, he didn’t realize how solacing it would sound. 

In the spur of the moment, Mike’s thrusts rapidly pounded into you until he suddenly stilled. He grunted out as his seed shot deep into your womb, simultaneously to him sucking on your shoulder. Mike mumbled how madly in love he was with you. How he was prepared to do anything for you.  

Mike panted out as his head collapsed onto the pillow. His eyes fluttered as he squeezed your hip. When he shifted his hips back a little bit, Mike froze in fear. The realization crashed over him, he had finished inside of you. Every time he had painted your thighs, that was easy to clean up, to hide his tracks. 

But this would be almost impossible to do without waking you up. He could already feel his cum trickle out of you. Were you even still on birth control? Mike gulped heavily, sobriety ran through him like a train. How the fuck was he supposed to get out of this?

[saintmuses]

❝𝙨𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙚𝙙𝙚𝙣 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙞𝙩 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙙𝙤𝙤𝙧❞

Pairing:

Dark!Mike Kiernan x Neighbor!Reader

Summary:

Mike liked his neighbor a little too much that he was willing to do anything to have her even if it meant destroying her if she didn’t listen.

Warning(s): SMUT. Dub-con. Implied age gap (everybody’s grown). Infidelity. Soft!dark!Mike. Possessive!Mike. Manipulation. Hints of stalking. Blackmail. Technology is involved. Like this is filthy as hell. P in V. Fingering. Oral (f-receiving). Flashbacks in italics as well as phone calls. Minors, dni!

Word Count: 3.3k

Craning his neck, Mike inhaled slowly before exhaling as he tilted his head to the original position to look out the glass panes of his window to her bedroom window across the yard.

She couldn’t see him, but he could see her. She was opting for comfort by wearing a plain t-shirt and black shorts. He could tell she was not wearing a bra underneath which sent a slight shiver down his back ah the idea of getting his hands on her breasts.

He had learned everything about her as much as he could after he noticed her the first time a year ago.

The easiest way to have some sense of connection to her was being such a friendly neighbor with phone numbers exchanged.

“Are you lonely? Is that why you call me?”

He hesitated, “yes.” He murmured, a little white lie slipped from his tongue, using one of his fingers to trace the cord that connected to the receiver from the machine. “After Kasia broke up with me, it’s very quiet around here.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. We wanted different things,” he said truthfully. He had meant what he said, but he did not want them with his former girlfriend. He wanted them with his neighbor. “Apparently she fell in love with her roommate.”

“Ouch.” He could hear her wincing, and he smiled slightly at her next words. “Fine, I’ll be your shoulder for you to cry on.” She said exasperated, but with a smile in her voice.

First photo set of her in red lacy nightgown ended up in his camera roll on his slim device the first time he spotted her standing by the window unintentionally.

Also mentally filing away the fact she had a boyfriend who didn’t appreciate her. Beers and sports parties was his go-to dates with Y/N. He knew he could treat her far better than her boyfriend ever would.

“Just because I said I’ll be willing to lean an ear for you, it means you call me every night?” She huffed into the receiver, and he grinned because he could tell it was without a bite.

“You’re being mean,” he smirked, watching the clear liquid swirling in the glass as he shifted it.

“I’m not being mean.” 

“Oh, but you are.” He said albeit breathlessly.

More photos saved into his camera roll as she wore soft burgundy lacy bra and panties that night.

“I saw you a few weeks ago with your face beaten up…are you okay?”

“Eh, just a misunderstanding. I had to clear it with the schoolboard. Skunk was being bullied by her two neighbors, and I stopped them.” He shrugged although she could not see him. “Guess the girl didn’t like the consequences, conspired with her sister, and accused me of being inappropriate towards her, and their father wasn’t happy with it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

The ringing ended with a click as it was picked up. Her breathing could be heard through the receiver as he waited for her to greet him.

“Hello?”

“Come up to the back patio,” he murmured, an urgency in his tone as he spoke into the receiver.

“Mister Kiern-“

“I know for a fact you are alone with a big bowl of what did you say is your favorite snack?” He inquired as he observed her through his window blinds.

She sighed, letting out a soft laugh that sent his heart into a state of pitter patter. “Puppy Chow,” she said petulantly.

He hummed in acknowledgment; he knew that of course. “And you’re drinking something with Moscato in the biggest wine glass you could find which I do have. So come up to the patio.” He said beguilingly, attempting to convince her.

“I have a boyfriend.”

A grimace flitted across his face. “I know but fuck him.” He said bluntly, irritation coated his tongue as he spoke into the receiver. “It doesn’t hurt to hang with friends. We are friends, aren’t we?”

A long pause then a sigh. “Fine, I’ll be there.” She relented.

He couldn't stop the toothy grin from spreading across his face. “Alright.”

Mike had been filling their wine glasses with her favorite wine twice now since she had been here for forty-five minutes.

He enjoyed being in her presence; however, she had to stop calling him by his last name as if it was going set any boundaries between them.

“Stop calling me mister Kiernan,” he murmured, sucking in his bottom lip, and swiping his tongue across it.

She looked at him in surprise. “What else am I supposed to call you?” She was confused, and he chuckled slightly.

“My name.” He stated the obvious.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

He stared at her. “Say my name.” He leaned in, using his nose to graze the curve of her cheekbone. “Say my name,” he repeated softly.

Her lips parted; his eyes flickered down to them while he was internally smirking. She was almost susceptible to his wiles. Although he was silently begging for her to say his given name.

“Mike.” It was a whisper. A word that bridged the distance between them in a way despite not moving at all.

He tilted his head slightly, observing her facial features. “You’re stunning,” he breathed, staring at her.

She shifted slightly in her seat, clearly, she was uncomfortable with the compliment he gave her. “You’re just lonely and I’m the only one who’s willing to deal with you.”

Mike chuckled, seeing how she was attempting to deflect him. “I’ve been wanting to say that since I met you,” he admitted.

She hesitated, eyeing him before reaching for her bag. “This is inappropriate. I…I have to go,” she said quickly, stuttering as she stood up from patio sofa.

His hand snapped around her wrist in a vice grip as she attempted to walk past his legs that were in her way, he tilted his head to the side as he peered up at her. A hint of amusement in the lilt of his smile as if he found her attempting to leave funny.

“I have photos of you in your underwear,” the words were spoken in a calm tone, building the tension towards the threat. “If you leave now, I will gladly send them to your boyfriend.” He said casually, his thumb rubbed absentmindedly across her wrist.

She looked at him with wide eyes. “When did you…?” She trailed off, and he knew she was afraid of the answer.

“Every time you changed by the window. You forgot you had an audience across from you, didn’t you?” His tone went from calm to almost condescending with a hint of rhetorician since they both knew the answer. She had truly no idea she had a peeping tom club of one member.

“You wouldn’t.”

His lips curled to the side in a form of a nasty smirk. “Oh, but I would.” He then chuckled, without a sense of humor in his tone.

“We didn’t do anything, it’s just me changing my clothes by the window.” Her voice was weak, trodden like.

“Well, your boyfriend wouldn’t know that, would he?” He questioned flippantly, almost mockingly as his eyebrows raised. “All I have to do is send him those risqué photos without any context and he would just take it how it is.” 

Her bottom lip trembled as she swallowed, “why are you doing this?” He knew she felt betrayed by him…more of his intentions since they were not true honest to begin with, and she was just figuring that out.

“I’m just tired of not having what I want…” his eyes trailed from her eyes down to her wrist that he held with a precision of a tight grip, “and what I want is you. Now sit next to me, sweetheart.” His tone booked no space for arguments.

His grip on her wrist eased up when she sat down next to him. He heard a slight echo noise when she dropped her bag next to her leg.

He inhaled slowly and deeply as his eyes roved over her body, relieved after all this time he finally got what he wanted.

Mike placed his hand on her knee, right next to her hands, gliding his thumb over her skin.

“I just want you.” He said softly, nudging her hand with his before he grabbed it.

Her breathing turned erratic, as a hot shiver of delight went through him as his hand eased her onto his covered pulsating cock and he began a fluid stroke in her palm, “you feel that?” He rasped into her ear, “that’s what you do to me. You’ve been doing this to me for a year.”

He could tell she was mentally calculating the math of when he had felt this way. “Ever since I moved here?” 

“Even then.” 

He wound his hands into her hair, cradling her head almost reverently, while he hungrily, desperately, violently, met her lips with a savage force.

He knew the circumstances were not idealistic, he knew she did not want him, at least not like this, but he was desperate for her.

His heart raced as she seemed to accept his request. He smiled softly into her lips and moved so that he was sitting on the edge of the furniture, his body pressed against the curve of her thigh as he pulled his glasses off his face and set them on the table beside them.

He leaned away slightly with an intent of reaching out with his hand and gently raising her shirt until the sliver of her breast began to reveal to his hungry eyes.

He then leaned down and started kissing her skin under her breast, lightly licking the flesh as he did so. His lips were teasing, making sure that she enjoyed every moment before slowly building up the intensity.

He was going to make sure she would like it even if she did not want to.

His tongue moved from the skin to the edge of her breast, his tongue slowly kissing along the edge as he pushed the hem of her shirt to reveal more of her breast.

His lips curled slightly when he heard her whimpering, especially when he nipped the curve of her breast before trailing his tongue from the spot to her nipple. 

His lips continued to nibble on her breast while his tongue swirled around her nipple; gently teasing it. His hands moved up to her shirt, quickly removing it completely so that she was shirtless in front of him.

He leaned back, his gaze locked on her body before his fingers slowly traced down the curve of her body, moving from her chest to her hips before placing his hands on them.

He took a second to appreciate her body before his fingers slid into the waistline of her shorts, slowly easing them down her thighs. After he dropped the article of clothing next to the patio furniture, he settled his hands on her ankles.

“Spread your legs for me.” He said breathlessly, almost inaudibly as her legs parted, exposing her thighs to his ravenous gaze.

His hands trailed from her ankles to her thighs, gripping them before he reached for her fabric covered cunt, tracing his index and middle fingers down her slit before pressing into her folds.

She was soaking wet, and he could feel it through the fabric.

He smirked at her soft little pants as she let him touch her clit through her underwear. His eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of her hips shifting, her thighs widening slightly as he traced her sensitive spot. 

He continued sliding his fingers of his other hand along the soft skin of her thighs, his thumb gently teasing the edge of her underwear.

He then leaned back to stand up, removing his shirt in process until he was bare chest. Then he removed his pants, only in his boxer briefs. 

Mike grinned as she watched him remove his shirt and his pants, exposing the shape of his slim muscles and pale chest. Her gaze was roaming over his body before he sat back down in the same spot, leaning forward again. 

Mike’s fingers moved to the edges of her underwear, beginning the process of removing them.

She closed her thighs so he could get the underwear down easily before parting them even wider to expose her vulnerable spot to him.

He smirked at her easy cooperation as she parted her thighs. He had expected her to be a little hesitant and resistant, but she wasn’t making this a challenge. 

His fingers moved her folds apart to reveal her swollen clit after he removed her underwear. 

As she was now exposed to his hungry gaze, Mike leaned down to kiss her spot, lips caressed her folds gently before parting it to let his tongue trail up her cunt, lapping at her wetness. He swallowed it before kissing her spot again, then leaned back to look up at her face, his lips curved into a soft grin as he observed her reaction. 

Her lips parted as her eyelids were closed tightly. Her face was flushed from arousal.

“Such a sensitive girl,” he cooed softly, rumbling softly in his chest.

Opening her eyes, she flushed profusely. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just…I’ve never been touched.” She mumbled.

Mike chuckled, however a thrill shot down his spine at the thought of being the first one to take her, despite having a boyfriend and knowing she used her sex toys to play with herself. 

His chuckle faded, only humming to indicate his understanding before he leaned down to kiss her sensitive spot again. 

“There’s no need to apologize,” he said softly, his lips still on her cunt. “I was just…observing how sensitive you are.”

He kissed her clit again, this time, using his tongue to explore the texture on her sensitive spot, gently kissing and lapping at her cunt some more until her hips began to shift slowly as she parted her thighs even wider.

He then leaned back slightly to grab his phone that was lying on coffee table, and he looked up to see her gaze on him. She was confused, looking at him with a question in her eyes, clearly waiting for an explanation.

“I just need to capture these moments,” he responded softly, a smirk on his lips as she parted her thighs even more, exposing her sensitive cunt to the dimming light of the sky. “I want to remember every moment of you.”

She breathed, looking away shyly before closing her eyes .

He felt her skin as he parted her folds slightly, feeling her hole gaping slightly as he did so then he bit down his bottom lip as he pressed the icon that indicated a photo being taken. 

He parted her folds even more, this time, moving his finger gently into her hole. He felt it tightened slightly around his finger as he took another picture. 

“I need these images of you,” he murmured as he took another picture. More pictures began to pile into his camera roll, more digital prints to jerk himself off to later whenever she was not available.

Mike’s breath grew deeper from the sight of her lips parted and her eyes clamped shut from the soft noises she was letting out as he pushed down on the side of the opening to make it gape wider.

He felt her walls attempting to tighten around his finger as she whimpered, and he took another picture, this time, making sure that the camera captured the up-close position of her cunt.

He smiled softly, eyeing her as she opened her eyes, and he placed his phone aside to her thigh. He took a long look at her, observing her reaction as he withdrew his finger from her cunt.

He then reached for his underwear, pushing them down his hips then his pale thighs. Pushing them off to the side after it reached around his ankles, then he propped himself onto his knees on the cushion between her thighs.

Mike inhaled sharply when he noticed her curious eyes on his cock, he slowly began to hover her, wanting to keep her gaze on it while his eyes were locked on her cunt, his body and demeanor suggesting that he was ready to take her body and make her his for his own enjoyment.

He dragged her thighs until the back of her thighs meets the sides of his legs. Making him almost pressing against her. while he was stroking himself lightly, he only placed the thick tip of his cock against her little hole with no intention of taking her just yet.

His body language was one pure dominance and lust. He had a grip on her thighs, keeping her legs from moving too much so that he could fully enjoy her body however he pleased.

Mike moved her legs as he adjusted the position of his body over her body. He had his device ready once again, the thick tip of his cock placed against her little hole. 

He smirked to himself as he aimed the camera at her cunt, getting the picture he desired.

He then switched over to video format, pressing to record as he used his other hand to use his thumb to stretch the hole lightly, teasing his thick tip with it as it gaped slightly. His throat rumbled with a slight groan as her hole was beginning to stretch by his thumb and the feeling of it felt good against his cock. 

He made her legs part even more as he held her thighs, keeping her in place to ensure that he wouldn’t miss a thing, that the recording wouldn’t miss the sight of it.

He pushed into her opening just very slightly, letting her feel the tip of the thick head of his cock before pulling away slightly and repeating the process.

He was enjoying the expression on her face, seeing how she squeezed her eyes shut and let out soft little whimpers. 

His fingers were firm on her folds, keeping them apart as he continued teasing her hole, pushing his cock in into her cunt slightly and then pulling out as he filmed it.

His eyes then widened as he saw her hands pulling her folds apart to make her little hole gape wide, exposing her sensitive area beautifully to the camera. He groaned a bit at her action and used his thumb to slowly trace her hole as she kept her thighs parted while letting him film it.

Mike pushed his thick tip into her opening with more force this time, the tip slowly slid into her hole. His breathing became deeper, almost ragged as he slowly entered her cunt deeper than before.

He stopped filming it, throwing the phone to the side and gave her a harsh thrust as he slammed the rest of his cock into her, making her cry out.

He let out a grunt as he felt the heat enveloped his girth, “fuck.” He breathed as he gripped her hips tightly. His fingers flexing into her skin as he reared back and thrusted back into her with such force.

She whined loudly, arching her back before he began to drag her along with him as he eased himself onto the cushion, his back pressed against the patio furniture.

She muttered brokenly as she sunk down on his length. “I- “ she was out of breath already, her eyes half lidded as her hands held onto his shoulders.

“Fuck.” His hands grabbed her hips to control her motions, using his hands to guide her up and down. “Taking me so good,” he grunted in her ear before leaning away slightly. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her bouncing on top of his thighs.

[harmslength]

(Mostly) NSFW Headcanons - Part II

Disclaimer: Slight spoilers ahead so be warned. Just covering movies I have seen before or know a decent amount about the character. Overall, just my own personal opinions. This is just for shits and giggles so feel free to disagree. I’m also very aware that I’m being a hater rn.

Red Eye (2005) | Wes Craven - Jackson Rippner

• FREAKY ASS DUDE

• probably would learn everything about you before asking you out

• mean asf, like definitely the type to pick on you and call you a cry baby

• loves, loves, loves roleplay, specifically: CNC (Burglar x Sleeping Victim)

• big on humiliating you, probably the type to hold your head down while giving head. Likes his balls being sucked..

• feral mf, loves to use his teeth (ankle biter energy) and eats pussy like a champ [insert slurping noises]

Perriers Bounty (2009) | Ian Fitzgibbon - Michael McCrea

• top contender for best in bed

• grimey little dude.. but hey, bums know how to lay pipe like it’s their god given purpose

• not attached to any particular fetish or kink just very experimental and kinky

• 3 words: tongue in ass. There I said it. Specifically from the back, he will stick his tongue in places god hasn’t even seen.

Broken (2012) | Rufus Norris - Mike Kiernan

• spontaneous and sensual. Probably an exhibitionist lowkey

• can be a bit selfish at times, but definitely makes it a priority to make you cum.

• could definitely see him having a thing for stockings or thigh highs

Inception (2010) | Christopher Nolan - Robert Fischer

• if a boy was a princess it would be him

• DADDY ISSUES

• all bark no bite, he’s a bottom if I’ve ever seen one. Loves being told what to do and how to take it

• big fan of praise and humiliation

• will dom at times but definitely is not his preference

Watched the Detectives (2007) | Paul Soter - Neil Lewis

• Puppy

• horny teenager vibes, probably would fuck you in his office while your bent over his desk

• loves roleplay but in the vanilla way like: cop x criminal, stepsiblings 🤭, strangers, Bonny and Clyde. Just overall loves recreating cheesy pornos.

• loves when you’re all natural down there

• definitely likes to think he’s the one in charge but you would absolutely wear the pants in the relationship

• whiny asf, likes to whimper and pout. Big on theatrics.

Breakfast on Pluto (2005) | Neil Jordan - Patricia Kitten Braden

• the queen herself 👸

• another top contender for best sexual partner

• pillow princess, loves to be taken care of but will absolutely do the same for you. Definitely giving switch vibes

• super tender and sensual, could definitely see a friends to lovers trope here

• LOVES to tease and loves sexual tension. Wandering hands and subtle glances kind of shit

Sunshine (2007) | Danny Boyle - Robert Capa

• needy little freak but in a subtle way

• you would probably have to make the first move

• would probably zone out during sex ngl

• classic fan of gripping hips and neck kisses, relatively vanilla but open to exploring

• nonchalant lover but good bf overall

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) | Christopher Nolan - Jonathan Crane

• say it with me now— Mommy Issues

• don’t be afraid to join in— daddy issues

• probably grew up with his grandma or two loving parents that he despises deeply

• sick little gremlin, probably into sounding or golden showers

• two words: doggy style 😎

• he’s a switch, but mostly doms because he gets off on the thought that he’s better than you

• big on quickies, hump and dump kind of dude. Casual sex, but not super big on multiple partners

• so repulsed by the thought of sex that either the utter crippling shame of it turns him on so much that he acts like a deranged animal

• or is so repulsed that it hinders him and only does it when absolutely necessary

28 Days Later (2002) | Danny Boyle - Jim

• Jim, Jim, Jim — I love him with my whole heart and my whole pussy

• hear me out.. probably the best sex out of everyone HEAR ME OUT

• this man is DEVOTED okay!! Bro would take out an army base of 20 men just to get a lick of pussy (more so, a gentle sensual kiss, shared between two troubled lovers)

• you know he’ll eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Probably would bring his own bib and cutlery js 🙄

• not overly kinky, in fact probably a bit inexperienced, but satisfaction is guaranteed.

[orchids-library]

FANFIC MASTER LIST

Key: 🤕- Sick Fic, 💌-Fluff, ❤️‍🩹-Hurt/Comfort, 💔- Angst, 🖤- Dark Fic, 🔪- Gore/Death, 🔞-MDNI, 🩸-Blood/Injury, 🩶-Hurt/No comfort, 🩹-Trauma, 🔗- Yandere/Possessive, 🔑-No key available

Here's a compiled list of all the fics I love and their respective authors. Follow the key for categories, all the authors have their own warnings and tags on their work, mine are just for categorization purposes, read their tags and read at your own risk.

*note*- Key icon tags are a link to the original post, be sure to give it some love! The other link is the reblog in the library and my commentary (If you want to read that I guess 😂)

*still adding to this list!*

________________________________________________

Cillian Murphy + Characters

Cillian Murphy

Under the Weather by @cillianmesoftlyyy 💌🤕

Kiss and Make up by @garrison-girl-08 💌

The Last Dance by @garrison-girl-08 💌

And the Oscar goes to... by @ilovetoxicfictionalmen 💌💔

The First Day by @garrison-girl-08 💌

Robert Fischer

It's Time To Go by @hllywdwhre 💔💔💔💔

Spoiled by Robert Fischer by @darlingsfandom 💌

Hidden Scars by @a-nemoiia 💔

Part 2: Sleepover by @mischievouslittlecreature 🩹

Part 13: Here, Kitty Kitty by @mischievouslittlecreature 💌

Part 17: Loved by @mischievouslittlecreature 🩹

Boys like you by @paradiseprincesss 💌💌

Tommy Shelby

Best Man by @garrison-girl-08 💌

The Debt by @zablife 🖤🔪🩸

Daddy's Princess by @garrison-girl-08 💌🤕

Pay the Piper (WIP-Modern Tommy) by @fkmarrycill 🔑

Of Bending and Breaking || Tommy Shelby x Reader By @call-sign-shark ❤️‍🩹

Emmett

A Familiar Pain by @beastofburdenxo 🤕💌

Jonathan Crane

Those Little Things by @mothhball 💌

If There's No End by @mothhball 🖤🔪 🔞 🩶🩸

❝𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙣𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙢𝙮 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙙❞ — 𝐉𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐞 by @saintmuses 🖤🔞

Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby by @cillianhead 💔❤️‍🩹💌

Drabble: yandere!jonathan kidnaps you by @pinguwrites 🔗

Curiosity by @gh0stsp1d3r 🔗

William Killick

Drabble: William fakes a PTSD nightmare by @pinguwrites 🩹🔗

𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐓𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬/Timeless Love pt1 by @viesanterieures / @viesantewrites 💔

Timeless Love Pt2 by @viesantewrites 💔

Jim ( The Delinquent Season)

CPR by @paradiseprincesss 💌

Mike Kiernan

Academic Validation by @cillianmesoftlyyy 💌

Robert Capa

Gravity - Rober Capa x Reader by @system-to-the-madness 💌

Jozef Gabcik

Hope(masterlist) pt1 pt2 pt3 by @lau219 💔(masterlist) pt1💔 pt2💔🩹 pt3🩹💔

Multi

How the therapists react to your "worst" symptoms - Headcanons by @godspeedviper 🩸❤️‍🩹🤕💌

How the doctors handle your sick days by @godspeedviper 🤕💌

How they’d deal with a student with exam stress: Cillian Characters by @aphroditeslover11 💌

Emotionalcadaver's Main Masterlist by @emotionalcadaver 🔞

What are they like with DIY? by @aphroditeslover11 💌

How the Therapists Handle your Suspicions - Headcanons by @godspeedviper 🤕💌❤️‍🩹

[ceirinen]

February 2024

This is all I've read this month. Thank you to the authors for creating all these stories, you're all so talented!

And if you go and check on their stories (which I recommend to do), don't forget to let them know if you liked them.

(I always tag the authors, If you are in this list and don't want to be, please let me know so I can fix it)

ARTHUR SHELBY

Family | Arthur Shelby x fem!Reader by @peakyswritings A slice of us | modern!Peaky Blinders by @call-sign-shark To bark and bite | Arthur Shelby x Reader!OC by @call-sign-shark Loose cannon | modern!Arthur Shelby x Reader by @call-sign-shark Perfect lines | Arthur Shelby x Reader!OC by @call-sign-shark

THOMAS SHELBY

Blessed be the fruit | soft!dark!sergeant!Tommy Shelby x maiden!Reader by @deceitfuldevout Daddy's Princess | Thomas Shelby x Reader by @garrison-girl-08 The neighbour's cat | Tommy Shelby x Reader by @acewritesfics Lost in the rhythm | Tommy Shelby x fem!Reader by @red-riding-wood My hero | Tommy Shelby x fem!Reader by @jomarch-wannabe

ALFIE SOLOMONS

The one with Alfie owning an erotic bakery shop by @justrainandcoffee

Reckless | Emmett x fem!OC by @cillmequick People worth saving | Emmett x fem!Reader by @pedropascallme Imagine Emmett when he realises one of the creatures is nearby by @touchtheinvisiblestars

Suburban House | Mike Kiernan x fem!Reader by @cillianslovebug Happy Purge | soft!dark!Mike Kiernan x student!Reader by @deceitfuldevout

[your-nanas-house]

Cock headcanon part 2

Headcanon created with @mrkdvidal1989

Emmett: Very curved upwards (pointing to the stars type), longer and THICK, 7.5 inches, hairy hairy, grower, uncircumcised, very veiny, dark beige

Tom Buckley: average length and thickness, 5.7 inches, pink tip and balls, a little veiny, straight, perfectly proportional tip, shower, circumcised, shaved

Neil Lewis: Neil's hung like a horse, HUGE, 8.5 inches, it’s all intensely pink, straight, circumcised, grower, fully shaved, veiny

Mike Kiernan: a little longer but average girth, 6.3 inches, straight, pale with beige tip, uncircumcised, shower, groomed but hairy

.

Taglist:

@gabile18 , @mrsfullbuster500 , @rex-ray , @elizamalfoyy, @eovjjj @wife-of-magic-monkeys , @jeremiah-va1eska , @gothamchic16, @rabbiteggz , @dieg0brandos-wife , @rottenecstasy , @lazyexcuse , @teh-vampire-bunny , @lobotomy-lover , @slasher-smasher , @sleepycreativewriter , @mrkdvidal1989

[mickeyswhore]

Welcome!

This is my brand new side blog, so please if you enjoy the vibes follow me!

Fandoms I can write for:

SCREAM FRANCHISE

Billy Loomis

Stu Macher

Mickey Altieri

SLASHERS:

Thomas Hewitt

Michael Meyers

Brahms Heelshire

Bo Sinclair

Vincent Sinclair

Asa Emory (The Collector)

Patrick Bateman

CILLIAN MURPHY VERSE:

Jackson Rippner

Lenny Miller

Michael McCrea

Raymond Leon

Neil Lewis

Robert Fischer

Mike Kiernan

Shivering Soldier (Inception)

Damien O'Donovan

Thomas "Tom" Buckley

Thomas Shelby

THE BOYS:

Billy Butcher

Homelander

Soldier Boy

Hughie Campbell

THE WALKING DEAD:

Rick Grimes

Daryl Dixon

Negan Smith

MARVEL:

Steve Rogers

Bucky Barnes

Thor Odinson

Tony Stark

AUGUST DIEHL VERSE

Dieter Hellstrom (Inglorious Basterds)

Franz Sauer (Munich - The Edge of War)

Mike Krause (Salt)

Alex de Klerks (The Last Vermeer)

Moritz de Vries (Parfum)

Jam Kremfeld (Furia)

JANNIS NIEWÖHNER

Paul von Hartmann (Munich - The Edge of War)

Karl (Je Suis Karl)

DUNE

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen

Paul Atreides

Gurney Halleck

LUCA MARINELLI VERSE

Primo Nizzuto (Trust FX)

Mickey Miranda (A Dangerous Fortune)

Diabolik

LOUIS HOFFMANN

Jonas Kahnwald (Dark)

Werner Pfennig (All the Light We Cannot See)

Ulrich Haussmann (Masters of the Air)

SONS OF ANARCHY

Jax Teller

Opie Winston

Chibs Telford

Juice Ortiz

Tig Trager

RULES:

What I will not write:

Threesomes (I simply suck at it AND not my cup of tea)

Anything involving minors (such as x daughter!Reader)

Complete angst (Please, we need to have some hope even if it's not a happy ending)

[acosmic]

reading/watching/listening, 2021 [pinned]:

books (favourites asterisked):

*Zeroville - Steve Erickson

*The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West

*The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

The Case Against Satan - Ray Russel

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud

The Shining - Stephen King [ugh]

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller

*Surfacing - Margaret Atwood

The Love of the Last Tycoon - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell

The Book of Illusions - Paul Auster

Sandman: Season of Mists - Neil Gaiman

Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley

*House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

Come Closer - Sara Gran

*The Drowning Girl - Caitlin R. Kiernan [killer, haven’t finished it]

*Whipping Girl - Julia Serano

Darryl - Jackie Ess

*Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price

An Unauthorized Fan Treatise - Lauren James (internet novel available here - for now)

honourable mention/large chunks of poetry but not full books: William Carlos Williams, H.D.

movies:

A Place in the Sun (1951) [hate it]

Barton Fink (1991)

Adaptation (2002)

Nosferatu (1922)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

something by neil breen (roommate is evil)

short films: Illusions (1983), Emak Bakia (1926)

unfinished: The Watermelon Woman (1996), Paterson (2016) [horrible]

secondary sources re: assigned literature:

Batman: “The Dark Knight Errant: Power and Authority in Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” - Christopher Bundrick (Riddle Me This, Batman! : Essays on the Universe of the Dark Knight, McFarland, 2011); “Additionality and Cohesion in Transfictional Worlds” - Roberta Pearson, (The Velvet Light Trap, U of Texas, 2017)

House of Leaves: “What’s Beneath the Floorboards: Three Competing Metavoices in the Footnotes of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” - Michael Hemmingson (Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2011); “House of Leaves: Reading the Networked Novel” - Jessica Pressman, (Studies in American Fiction, 2006)

The Day of the Locust: “Artists in Hollywood: Thomas Hart Benton and Nathanael West Picture America’s Dream Dump” - Erika Doss (The Space Between, 2011); “Productive Desires: Materialist Psychoanalysis and the Hollywood Dream Factory in Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust” - Todd Hoffman (Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 2018) [interesting but objectionable]; "The Paintings in the Day of the Locust" - Jeffrey Meyers (Anq, 2009)

Nietzsche [secondary source for Layton assignment, read originals later]: “Apollo and Dionysos in Dialectic” and bits of “The Tragic Moment” - Paul Raimond Daniels (Nietzsche and “The Birth of Tragedy,” Routledge, 2014).

secondary sources not explicitly related to specific assigned literature:

film [assigned]: “The Whiteness of Film Noir” - E. Lott (American Literary History, 1997); “Reading Hollywood” - Jonathan Veitch (Salmagundi, 2000); “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship” - bell hooks (Black Looks: Race and Representation). did a lot of skimming of articles and didn’t finish or thoroughly read many of them! probably missing some. rip.

misc: “The Concept as Ghost: Conceptualization of the Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory” - Anneleen Maschelein (Mosaic [Winnipeg], 2002)

refreshing concepts [not assigned]: chapters 3/“Narrative” and “16/Genre” in The Craft of Criticism: Critical Media Studies in Practice (Routledge, 2018)

short stories, poems:

Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost

Ray Bradbury - There Will Come Soft Rains

T. S. Eliot - The Waste Land

Irving Layton - The Birth of Tragedy; The Fertile Muck

Margaret Atwood - It is Dangerous To Read Newspapers

Leonard Cohen - The Only Tourist in Havana Turns His Thoughts Homewards; A Kite is a Victim

AJM Smith - The Lonely Land

Jillian Weise - Ashley Shew Just Invented The Word Cryborg

Isabel Fall - Helicopter Story

June Martin - I sexually identify as the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” controversy

rest TBA

essays/articles [very, very incomplete]:

A. H. Reaume - Brain fog

Michael Hobbes - Everything you know about obesity is wrong

Charlotte Hyde - We already have a name for that: why “zoom” fatigue is nothing new.

Gretchen Felker-Martin - “I wish there was a world for us”: on the choice to consume small art; What’s the harm in reading?; 

Katie J.M. Baker - The road to terfdom: Mumsnet and the fostering of anti-trans radicalization

Alex V. Green - The Pride flag has a representation problem

Jamie Mackay - The whitewashing of Rome: Colonialism is built on the rubble of a false idea of ancient Rome

Jules Gill-Peterson - A microdose of liberation

David Davis - XVII, Part 3: On genital preference

Marquisele Mercedes - The unbearable whiteness and fatphobia of “anti-diet” dieticians

Sophie Lewis - Collective turn-off

Daniel M. Lavery - Art criticism in a world where museums let you lick the art

re: helicopter story - How Twitter can ruin a life (Emily VanDerWerff); G F-M piece above; Clarkesworld removes Isabel Fall’s story (Mike Glyer); That Twitter thread [on criticism] (Lee Mandelo); The talented victim is not the point (Conor Friedersdorf);

miscellanea:

smaller stuff by more knowledgeable trans than i

a shitton of student presentations, small papers (pretty good), and slides with audio (terrible)

yewchube: corsetry-related videos by costumers, furniture repairs/restoration, recipes/cooking, friend catchup

note: silly formatting meant to aid reading. very, very incomplete. if you want to read any of the books/articles lmk there’s a 90% chance of me still having the file saved.

[aion-rsa]

The Best Horror Movies to Stream

https://ift.tt/36P7Are

Updated for October 2020

The world of streaming horror movies can be an overwhelming place.

Let’s say you’ve got your Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and HBO Max subscriptions all set and ready. Now you want to get terrified with the best horror movies you can find in time for Halloween. But there are so many options! What’s a horror addict to do?

Here you’ll find the master list. That’s right, we’ve hand-selected only the absolute best and most terrifying horror movies available on all the major streaming services and combined them here for your streaming (or screaming) pleasure.

Be sure to let us know if you make it through all 31!

Apostle

Available on: Netflix

Apostle comes from acclaimed The Raid director Gareth Evans and it’s his take on the horror genre. Spoiler alert: it’s a good one.

Dan Stevens stars as Thomas Richardson, a British man in the early 1900s who must rescue his sister, Jennifer, from the clutches of a murderous cult. Thomas successfully infiltrates the cult led by the charismatic Malcom Howe (Michael Sheen) and begins to ingratiate himself with the strange folks obsessed with bloodletting. Thomas soon comes to find that the object of the cult’s religious fervor may be more real than he’d prefer.

Apostle is a wild, atmospheric, and very gory good time.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter

Available on: Netflix

Some kids dream about being left overnight or even a week at certain locations to play, like say a mall or a Chuck E. Cheese. One place that no one wants to be left alone in, however, is a Catholic boarding school.

That’s the situation that Rose (Lucy Boynton) and Kat (Kiernan Shipka) find themselves in in the atmospheric and creepy The Blackcoat’s Daughter. When Rose and Kat’s parents are unable to pick them up for winter break, the two are forced to spend the week at their dingy Catholic boarding school. If that weren’t bad enough, Rose fears that she may be pregnant…oh, and the nuns might all be Satanists.

Read more

Movies

A24 Horror Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

By David Crow and 3 others

Movies

Katharine Isabelle on How Ginger Snaps Explored the Horror of Womanhood

By Rosie Fletcher

The Blackcoat’s Daughter is an excellent debut directorial outing from Oz Perkins and another step on the right horror path for scream queens Shipka and Emma Roberts.

The Cabin in the Woods

Available on: Amazon Prime

A remote cabin in the woods is one of the most frequently occurring settings in all of horror. What better location for teenagers to be tormented by monsters, demons, or murderous hillbillies? Writer/Director Joss Whedon takes that tried and true setting and uses it as a jumping off points for one of the most successful metatextual horror movies in recent memory.

Like you would expect, The Cabin in the Woods features five college friends (all representing certain youthful archetypes, of course) renting a….well, a cabin in the woods. Soon things begin to go awry in a very traditional horror movie way. But then The Cabin in the Woods begins doling out some of the many tricks it has up its sleeve. This is a fascinating, very funny, and yet still creepy breakdown of horror tropes that any horror fan can enjoy.

The Changeling (1980)

Available on: Shudder

A classic haunted house ghost story that frequently makes horror best of lists The Changeling sees a bereaved composer move into a creepy mansion that’s been vacant for 12 years. Vacant that is, except for the spirit of a little boy who met an untimely death…

An unravelling mystery with a sense of intrigue and pathos that draws you into the narrative, all the way to the sad and disturbing final act revelation.

City of the Living Dead

Available on: Amazon Prime

Italian horror director Lucio Fulci kicked off his famous “Gates of Hell” trilogy with this gruesome, crude but surreal 1980 gorefest, in which a reporter (Christopher George) and a psychic (Catriona MacColl) struggle to stop those gates from opening and letting a horde of hungry undead into the world.

Read more

Movies

The Horror Movies That May Owe Their Existence To H.P. Lovecraft

By Don Kaye

Movies

How Relic Explores our Most Primal Fears

By Rosie Fletcher

Fulci loosely based the movie on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, vying for the latter’s brooding atmosphere while indulging in his own trademark splatter. The results are somewhat slapdash but a must-see for Italian horror fans. Followed by the much better The Beyond (1980) and House by the Cemetery (1981).

The Dead Zone

Available on: Amazon Prime

The Dead Zone strangely remains both one of Stephen King’s more underrated movie adaptations as well as one of director David Cronenberg’s more unsung efforts. Yet it ends up being among the best from both author and auteur, while also providing star Christopher Walken with one of his most moving, complex performances to date.

Read more

TV

Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV Shows in Development

By Matthew Byrd and 6 others

Movies

Jason Blum Promises “Faithful” New Adaptation Of Stephen King’s Firestarter

By Don Kaye

Walken’s Johnny Smith awakens from a coma to find out he’s lost five years of his life but gained a frightening talent to touch people and see both their deepest secrets and their future. Whether to use that power to impact the world around him is the choice he must face in this bittersweet, eerie and heartfelt film, which found Cronenberg moving away from his trademark body horror for the first time.

Doctor Sleep

Available on: HBO Max

Let’s be up front about this: Doctor Sleep is not The Shining. For some that fact will make this sequel’s existence unforgivable. Yet there is a stoic beauty and creepy despair just waiting to be experienced by those willing to accept Doctor Sleep on its own terms.

Directed by one of the genre’s modern masters, Mike Flanagan, the movie had the unenviable task of combining one of King’s most disappointing texts with the opposing sensibilities of Stanley Kubrick’s singular The Shining adaptation.

Read more

Movies

Doctor Sleep: Inside the New Overlook Hotel

By John Saavedra

Movies

Doctor Sleep Ending Explained

By John Saavedra

And yet, the result is an effective thriller about lifelong regrets and trauma personified by the ghostly specters of the Overlook Hotel. But they’re far from the only horrors here. Rebecca Ferguson is absolutely chilling as the smiling villain Rose the Hat, and the scene where she and other literal energy vampires descend upon young Jacob Tremblay is the stuff of nightmares. Genuinely, it’s a scene you won’t forget, for better or worse….

The Evil Dead

Available on: Netflix

1981’s The Evil Dead is nothing less than one of the biggest success stories in horror movie history.

Written and directed on a shoestring budget by Sam Raimi, The Evil Dead uses traditional horror tropes to its great advantage, creating a scary, funny, and almost inconceivably bloody story about five college students who encounter a spot of bother in a cabin in the middle of the woods. That spot of bother includes the unwitting release of a legion of demons upon the world.

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Movies

Evil Dead Movies: The Most Soul Sucking Moments

By David Crow

Movies

Living with the Cult Legacy of Evil Dead

By Hannah Bonner

The Evil Dead rightfully made stars of its creator and lead Bruce Campbell. It was also the jumping off point for a successful franchise that includes two sequels, a remake, a TV show, and more.

A Field in England

Available on: Amazon Prime

2013’s A Field in England presents compelling evidence that more horror movies should be shot in black and white.

Directed by British director Ben Wheatley, A Field in England is a kaleidoscope of trippy, cerebral horror. The film takes place in 1648, during the English Civil War. A group of soldiers is taken in by a kindly man, who is soon revealed to be an alchemist. The alchemist takes the soldiers to a vast field of mushrooms where they are subjected to a series of mind-altering, nightmarish visions.

A Field in England is aggressively weird, creative, and best of all clocks in at exactly 90 minutes.

Fright Night

Available on: Amazon Prime

Screenwriter-turned-director Tom Holland lets a jaded, smarmy vampire named Jerry Dandridge loose in suburbia and watches the blood spurt in this beloved ‘80s horror staple.

Chris Sarandon brings a nice combination of amusement and menace to the role of the bloodsucker, while Planet of the Apes veteran Roddy McDowall is endearing as a washed-up horror host recruited into a real-life horror show. Much of Fright Night is teen-oriented and somewhat dated, but it still works as a sort of precursor to later post-modern horror gems like Scream.

Green Room

Available on: Netflix

Green Room is a shockingly conventional horror movie despite not having all of the elements we traditionally associate with them. There are no monsters or the supernatural in Green Room.

Instead all monsters are replaced by vengeful neo-Nazis and the haunted house is replaced by a skinhead punk music club in the middle of nowhere in the Oregon woods. The band The Aint Rights, led by bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) are locked in the green room of club after witnessing a murder and must fight their way out.

Hellraiser (1987)

Available on: Shudder

Directed by Clive Barker based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser is an infernal body horror featuring S&M demons who’ve found a way out of a dark dimension and want to take you back there.

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Movies

Michael Myers vs Pinhead: The Hellraiser/Halloween Crossover That Never Was

By Jack Beresford

Movies

Ranking the Hellraiser Movies

By Jamie Andrew

This is the movie which introduced chief Cenobite Pinhead (played by Doug Bradley) – who would return for seven more Hellraiser sequels. But the first is of course, remains the edgiest and the best. Hellbound: Hellraiser II is also available.

Hereditary

Available on: Amazon Prime

Between Hereditary and The Haunting of Hill House 2018 was a great year for turning familial trauma into horror.

Written and directed by Ari Aster, Hereditary follows the Graham family as they deal with the death of their secretive grandmother. As Annie Graham (Toni Collette) comes to terms with the loss, she begins to realize that she may have inherited a mental illness from her late mother…or something worse.

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Movies

Hereditary: The Real Story of King Paimon

By Tony Sokol

Movies

Hereditary Ending Explained

By David Crow

Hereditary is terrifying because it asks a deceptively simple but truly creepy question: what do we really inherit from our family?

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Available on: Shudder

Wes Craven’s 1977 cult classic sees an extended family become stranded in the desert when their trailer breaks down and they start to get picked off by cannibals living in the hills. It’s brutally violent but it also has things to say about the nature of violence, as the seemingly civilized Carter family turn feral. The film was remade in 2006 but the original is still the best.

Horror of Dracula

Available on: HBO Max

Replacing Bela Lugosi as Dracula was not easily done in 1958. It’s still not easily done now. Which makes the fact that Christopher Lee turned Bram Stoker’s vampire into his own screen legend in Horror of Dracula all the more remarkable. Filmed in vivid color by director Terence Fisher, Horror of Dracula brought gushing bright red to the movie vampire, which up until then had been mostly relegated to black and white shadows.

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Movies

Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Seduction of Old School Movie Magic

By David Crow

TV

BBC/Netflix Dracula’s Behind-the-Scenes Set Secrets

By Louisa Mellor

With its penchant for gore and heaving bosoms, Horror of Dracula set the template for what became Hammer Film Productions’ singular brand of horror iconography, but it’s also done rather tastefully the first time out here, not least of all because of Lee bring this aggressively cold-blooded version of Stoker’s monster to life. It’s all business with this guy.

Conversely, Abraham Van Helsing was never more dashing than when played by Peter Cushing in this movie. The film turned both into genre stars, and paved the way for a career of doing this dance time and again.

The House of the Devil

Available on: Amazon Prime

Indie horror auteur Ti West’s low-budget creepfest is a homage to 1980s horror yet plays it straight; he sets out to make a movie with the feel of genre films from that era without making self-aware in-jokes and references — and he mostly succeeds.

But The House of the Devil is also the definition of a “slow burn”: very little happens for much of the first hour (save a jolt here and there) and then the third act explodes into a paroxysm of murder, gore and Satanic horror. That makes the film feel a little off-balance, although in the end it all becomes quite unnerving.

House on Haunted Hill

Available on: Amazon Prime

What would you do for $10,000? How about surviving a night in a mansion haunted by murder victims and owned by a psychotic millionaire? Seems like a party trick until people actually start dying.

Vincent Price is the master and mastermind of a house that suddenly makes everyone homicidal—but the real pièce de résistance is what dances out of a vat of flesh-eating acid.

Some vintage horror never dies, and this 1959 classic is immortal.

Hush

Available on: Netflix

In his follow-up to the cult classic Oculus, Mike Flanagan makes one of the cleverer horror movies on this list. Hush is a thrilling game of cat-and-mouse with the typical nightmare of a home invasion occurring, yet it also turns conventions of that familiar terror on its head. For instance, the savvy angle about this movie is Kate Siegel (who co-wrote the movie with Flanagan) plays Maddie, a deaf and mute woman living in the woods alone. Like Audrey Hepburn’s blind woman from the progenitor of home invasion stories, Wait Until Dark (1967), Maddie is completely isolated when she is marked for death by a menacing monster in human flesh.

Further, like the masked villains of so many more generic home invasion movies (we’re looking square at you, Strangers), John Gallagher Jr.’s “Man” wears a mask as he sneaks into her house. However, the functions of this story are laid bare since we actually keep an eye on what the “Man” is doing at all times, and how he is getting or not getting into the house in any given scene. He is not aided by filmmakers who’ve given him faux-supernatural and omnipotent abilities like other versions of these stories, and he’s not an “Other;” he is a man who does take his mask off, and his lust for murder is not so much fetishized as shown for the repulsive behavior that it is. And still, Maddie proves to be both resourceful and painfully ill-equipped to take him on in this tense battle of wills.

The Invitation

Available on: Netflix

Seeing your ex is always uncomfortable, but imagine if your ex-wife invited you to a dinner party with her new husband? That is just about the least creepy thing in this new, taut thriller nestled in the Hollywood Hills. Indeed, in The Invitation Logan Marshall-Green’s Will is invited by his estranged wife (Tammy Blanchard) for dinner with her new hubby David (Michael Huisman of Game of Thrones). David apparently wanted to extend the bread-breaking offer personally since he has something he wants to invite both Will and all his other guests into joining. And it isn’t a game of Scrabble…

Intense, strange, and not what you expect, this is one of the more inventive thrillers of 2016.

Midsommar

Available on: Amazon Prime

It’s hard to categorize Midsommar, Ari Aster’s follow-up to his absolutely terrifying horror debut, Hereditary. Part straight up horror, part The Wicker Man, and part anthropological study, Midsommar seems to occupy many genres all at once. Aster himself called it a “break up” movie. But whatever genre Midsommar is, it is a brilliant, and at times deeply disturbing film.

Florence Pugh stars as Dani, a young woman trying to heal in the wake of an enormous tragedy. Dani follows her boyfriend, Christian, and his annoying friends to an important midsummer festival deep in the heart of Sweden. Christian and company are there partly to get high and have fun and also partly to study the unique, isolated culture for their respective theses. To say that they get more than they bargained for is an understatement. But Dani may just end up getting exactly what she needs.

Night of the Living Dead

Available on: Amazon Prime, HBO Max

George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie classic The Night of the Living Dead messed up the minds of late ’60s moviegoers as much as it messed with every horror movie that followed. Shot on gritty black and white stock, the film captures the desperate urgency of a documentary shot at the end of the world. It is a tale of survival, an allegory for the Vietnam War and racism and suspenseful as hell freezing over.

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TV

The Walking Dead vs. Real-Life Survivalists: How to Prep for The Zombie Apocalypse

By Ron Hogan

Movies

Night of the Living Dead: The Many Sequels, Remakes, and Spinoffs

By Alex Carter

Night of the Living Dead set a new standard for gore, even though you could tell some of the bones the zombies were munching came from a local butcher shop. But what grabs at you are the unexpected shocks. Long before The Walking Dead, Romero caught the terror that could erupt from any character, at any time.

They’re coming to get you. There’s one of them now!

Nosferatu

Available on: Amazon Prime

Nothing beats a classic, and that’s exactly what Nosferatu is. As the unofficial 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this German Expressionist masterpiece was almost lost to the ages when the filmmakers lost a copyright lawsuit with Stoker’s widow (who had a point). As a result, most copies were destroyed…but a precious few survived

This definitive horror movie from F.W. Murnau might be a silent picture, but it’s a haunting one where vampirism is used as a metaphor for plague and the Black Death sweeping across Europe. When Count Orlock comes to Berlin, he brings rivers of rats with him and the most repellent visage ever presented by a cinematic bloodsucker.

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TV

13 Essential Dracula Performances in Movies and TV

By Tony Sokol

Culture

The Bleeding Heart of Dracula

By David Crow

The sexy vampires would come later, starting with 1931’s more polished vision of Count Dracula as legendarily played by Bela Lugosi, but Max Schreck is buried under gobs of makeup in Nosferatu making him resemble an emaciated cadaver. Murnau plays with shadow and light to create an intoxicating environment of fever dream repressions. But he also creates the most haunting cinematic image of a vampire yet put on screen.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Available on: Amazon, Hulu

After the classic Stephen King novel of the same name and Mary Lambert’s 1989 movie, what could there possibly be left to say about Pet Sematary? Quite a lot actually! Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer breathe new life into this old tale…not unlike a certain “sematary” itself.

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Movies

Pet Sematary Ending Explained

By John Saavedra

Movies

On the Set with Pet Sematary’s Producer

By Nick Morgulis

Jason Clarke stars as Louis Creed, an ER doctor from Boston who moves his family to rural Ludlow, Maine to live a quieter life. Shortly into their stay, Louis and his wife Rachel (Amy Semeitz) experience an unthinkable tragedy. That’s ok though as neighbor Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) knows a very peculiar place that can help.

Phantasm

Available on: Amazon Prime

Director and writer Don Coscarelli has said that this 1979 cult classic was inspired by a recurring dream — and we believe him, since Phantasm has the surreal, not-quite-there feel of an inescapable nightmare from start to finish.

With its bizarre plot about a funeral parlor acting as a front to send undead slave labor to another dimension, the iconic image of the Tall Man, killer dwarves and those deadly silver spheres, Phantasm was and is like no other movie of its era.

Poltergeist

Available on: Netflix

Before there was Insidious, The Conjuring, or a myriad of other “suburban family vs. haunted house” movies, there was Poltergeist. Taking ghost stories out of the Gothic setting of ancient castles or decrepit mansions and hotels, Poltergeist moved the spirits into the middle class American heartland of the 1980s. With a smart screenplay by no less than Steven Spielberg (and, according to some, his ghost direction), Poltergeist finds the Freeling family privy to a disquieting fact about their new home: It’s built on top of a cemetery!

You probably know the story, and if you don’t you can guess it after decades of copycats that followed, but this special effects-laden spectacle still holds up, especially as a thriller that can be enjoyed by the whole family. Fair warning though, if your kids have a tree outside their window or a clown doll under their bed, we don’t take responsibility for the years of therapy bills this may inflict!

Ready or Not

Available on: HBO Max

The surprise horror joy of 2019, Ready or Not was a wicked breath of fresh air from the creative team Radio Silence. With a star-making lead turn by Samara Weaving, the movie is essentially a reworking of The Most Dangerous Game where a bride is being hunted by her groom’s entire wedding party on the night of their nuptials.

It’s a nutty premise that has a delicious (and broad) satirical subtext about the indulgences and eccentricities of the rich, as the would-be extended family of Grace (Weaving) is only pursuing her because they’re convinced a grandfather made a deal with the Devil for their wealth–and to keep it they must step on those beneath them every generation. Well step, shoot, stab, and ritualistically sacrifice in this cruelest game of hide and seek ever. Come for the gonzo high-concept and stay for the supremely satisfying ending.

Sweetheart

Available on: Netflix

Don’t let the name fool you, Sweetheart is very much a horror movie. What kind of horror movie, you ask? Well, after a boat sinks during a storm, young Jennifer Remming (Kiersey Clemons) is the only survivor. She washes ashore a small island and gets to work burying her friends, creating shelter, and foraging for food. You know: deserted island stuff.

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Movies

Dog Soldiers: The Wild History of the Most Action Packed Werewolf Movie Ever Made

By Mike Cecchini

Movies

The WNUF Halloween Special: The Making of the Most Fun Found Footage Horror Movie Ever

By Gavin Jasper

Soon, however, Jenn will come to find that the island is not as deserted as she previously thought. There’s something out there – something big, dangerous, and hungry. Sweetheart is like Castaway meets Predator and it’s another indie horror hit for Blumhouse.

The Tenant

Available on: Amazon Prime

Roman Polanski, in addition to being a creep and outright sex criminal, has a grand fascination with apartments, directing an unofficial “Apartment Trilogy” with Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant. And it’s not hard to see why. There is something a little strange about dozens if not hundreds of relative strangers all calling the same place “home.”

1976’s The Tenant is the culmination of Polanski’s obsession with communal living and in some ways is the creepiest. Polanski stars as Trelkovsky, a paranoid young file clerk who is on the verge of succumbing to the constant dread he feels. Things are exacerbated when Trelkovsky moves into a Parisian apartment and discovers the previous occupant killed herself. What follows is a tense and trippy exploration of fear itself.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Available on: Shudder

You’ve probably seen this one already, but this founding father of the slasher genre is a bit of a fairy tale when glimpsed at the right light. Some dumb kids wander into the wilderness, far away from the safety of civilization, on a trip to their grandparents’ home.

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Movies

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: How Low-budget Filmmaking Created a Classic

By Ryan Lambie

Movies

The Real Texas Chainsaw Massacre: How Ed Gein Inspired Classic Horror Movies

By Tony Sokol

But instead of reaching their destination, they wind up on the dinner table for the “Other,” who in this case is a redneck family of cannibals with a crossdressing serial killer who’s weapon of choice has an electric motor that makes a sweet hum as its blades tear into your flesh. When viewed like that, it might be worth seeing all over again, eh?

Under the Shadow

Available on: Netflix

This recent 2016 effort could not possibly be more timely as it sympathizes, and terrorizes, an Iranian single mother and child in 1980s Tehran. Like a draconian travel ban, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her son Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) are malevolently targeted by a force of supreme evil.

This occurs after Dorsa’s father, a doctor, is called away to serve the Iranian army in post-revolution and war-torn Iran. In his absence evil seeps in… as does a quality horror movie with heightened emotional weight.

Underworld

Available on: Netflix

No one is going to mistake Underworld for high art. That obvious fact makes the lofty pretensions of these movies all the more endearing. With a cast of high-minded British theatrical actors, many trained in the Royal Shakespeare Company, at least the early movies in this Gothic horror/action mash-up series were overflowing with histrionic self-importance and grandiosity.

Take the first and best in the series. In the margins you have Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen portraying the patriarchs of warring factions of vampires and werewolves, and a love story caught between their violence that’s shamelessly modeled on Romeo and Juliet. It’s ridiculous, especially with Scott Speedman playing one party. But when the other is the oft-underrated Kate Beckinsale it doesn’t matter.

The movie’s bombast becomes its first virtue, and Len Wiseman’s penchant for glossy slick visuals, which would look at home in the sexiest Eurotrash graphic novel at the bookstore, is its other. Combined they make this a guilty good time. Though we recommend not venturing past the second or third movie.

Us

Available on: HBO Max

Jordan Peele’s debut feature Get Out was a near instant horror classic so anticipation was high for his follow-up. Thanks to an excellent script, Peele’s deep appreciation of pop culture, and some stellar performances, Us more than lives up to the hype.

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Movies

Us: How Jeremiah 11:11 Fits in Jordan Peele Movie

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

Us: Jordan Peele’s References and Influences

By David Crow

Us tells the story of the Wilson family from Santa Cruz. After a seemingly normal trip to a summer home and the beach, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two kids are confronted by their own doppelgangers, are weird, barely verbal, and wearing red. That’s just the beginning of the horror at play for the Wilsons and the world. Fittingly, Us feels like a feature length Twilight Zone concept done right.

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The post The Best Horror Movies to Stream appeared first on Den of Geek.

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1hey are u bored at home, wanna chill and netflix....... but just can’t find some thing nice to watch? here’s a list of movies for u watch

A Ghost Story (2017)

Director David Lowery (Pete's Dragon) conceived this dazzling, dreamy meditation on the afterlife during the off-hours on a Disney blockbuster, making the revelations within even more awe-inspiring. After a fatal accident, a musician (Casey Affleck) finds himself as a sheet-draped spirit, wandering the halls of his former home, haunting/longing for his widowed wife (Rooney Mara). With stylistic quirks, enough winks to resist pretension (a scene where Mara devours a pie in one five-minute, uncut take is both tragic and cheeky), and a soundscape culled from the space-time continuum, A Ghost Story connects the dots between romantic love, the places we call home, and time -- a ghost's worst enemy.

Airplane! (1980)

This is one of the funniest movie of all time. Devised by the jokesters behind The Naked Gun, this disaster movie spoof stuffs every second of runtime with a physical gag (The nun slapping a hysterical woman!), dimwitted wordplay ("Don't call me, Shirley"), an uncomfortable moment of odd behavior ("Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?"), or some other asinine bit. The rare comedy that demands repeat viewings, just to catch every micro-sized joke and memorize every line.

A24

American Honey (2016)

Writer/director Andrea Arnold lets you sit shotgun for the travels of a group of wayward youth in American Honey, a seductive drama about a "mag crew" selling subscriptions and falling in and out of love with each other on the road. Seen through the eyes of Star, played by Sasha Lane, life on the Midwest highway proves to be directionless, filled with a stream of partying and steamy hookups in the backs of cars and on the side of the road, especially when she starts to develop feelings for Shia LaBeouf’s rebellious Jake. It’s an honest look at a group of disenfranchised young people who are often cast aside, and it’s blazing with energy. You’ll buy what they're selling.

Anna Karenina (2012)

Adapted by renowned playwright Tom Stoppard, this take on Leo Tolstoy's classic Russian novel is anything but stuffy, historical drama. Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander are all overflowing with passion and desire, heating up the chilly backdrop of St. Petersburg. But it's director Joe Wright's unique staging -- full of dance, lush costuming, fourth-wall-breaking antics, and other theatrical touches -- that reinvent the story for more daring audiences.

NETFLIX

Apostle (2018)

For his follow-up to his two action epics, The Raid and The Raid 2, director Gareth Evans dials back the hand-to-hand combat but still keeps a few buckets of blood handy in this grisly supernatural horror tale. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas Richardson, an early 20th century opium addict traveling to a cloudy island controlled by a secretive cult that's fallen on hard times. The religious group is led by a bearded scold named Father Malcolm (Michael Sheen) who may or may not be leading his people astray. Beyond a few bursts of kinetic violence and some crank-filled torture sequences, Evans plays this story relatively down-the-middle, allowing the performances, the lofty themes, and the windswept vistas to do the talking. It's a cult movie that earns your devotion slowly, then all at once.

Back to the Future (1985)

Buckle into Doc's DeLorean and head to the 1950s by way of 1985 with the seminal time-travel series that made Michael J. Fox a household name. It's always a joy watching Marty McFly's race against the clock way-back-when to ensure history runs its course and he can get back to the present. Netflix also has follow-up Parts II and III, which all add up to a perfect rainy afternoon marathon.

NETFLIX

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

The Coen brothers gave some big-name-director cred to Netflix by releasing their six-part Western anthology on the streaming service, and while it's not necessarily their best work, Buster Scruggs is clearly a cut above most Netflix originals. Featuring star turns from Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, and more, the film takes advantage of Netflix's willingness to experiment by composing a sort of death fugue that unfolds across the harsh realities of life in Manifest Destiny America. Not only does it revel in the massive, sweeping landscapes of the American West, but it's a thoughtful meditation on death that will reveal layer after layer long after you finish.

Barbershop (2002)

If you've been sleeping on the merits of the Barbershop movies, the good news is it's never too late to get caught up. Revisit the 2002 installment that started Ice Cube's smack-talking franchise so you can bask in Cedric the Entertainer's hilarious wisdom, enjoy Eve's acting debut, and admire this joyful ode to community.

NETFLIX

Barry (2016)

In 1981, Barack Obama touched down in New York City to begin work at Columbia University. As Barry imagines, just days after settling into his civics class, a white classmate confronts the Barry with an argument one will find in the future president's Twitter @-mentions: "Why does everything always got to be about slavery?" Exaltation is cinematic danger, especially when bringing the life of a then-sitting president to screen. Barry avoids hagiography by staying in the moment, weighing race issues of a modern age and quieting down for the audience to draw its own conclusions. Devon Terrell is key, steadying his character as smooth-operating, socially active, contemplative fellow stuck in an interracial divide. Barry could be any half-black, half-white kid from the '80s. But in this case, he's haunted by past, present, and future.

Being John Malkovich (1999)

You can't doubt the audacity of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anomalisa), whose first produced screenplay hinged on attracting the title actor to a script that has office drones discovering a portal into his mind. John Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Cameron Diaz combine to create an atmosphere of desperate, egomaniacal darkness, and by the end you'll feel confused and maybe a little slimy about the times you've participated in celebrity gawking.

A24

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2017)

Two young women are left behind at school during break... and all sorts of hell breaks loose. This cool, stylish thriller goes off in some strange directions (and even offers a seemingly unrelated subplot about a mysterious hitchhiker) but it all pays off in the end, thanks in large part to the three leads -- Emma Roberts, Lucy Boynton, and Kiernan Shipka -- and director Oz Perkins' artful approach to what could have been just another occult-based gore-fest.

Bloodsport (1988)

Jean-Claude Van Damme made a career out of good-not-great fluff. Universal Soldier is serviceable spectacle, Hard Target is a living cartoon, Lionheart is his half-baked take on On the Waterfront. Bloodsport, which owes everything to the legacy of Bruce Lee, edges out his Die Hard riff Sudden Death for his best effort, thanks to muscles-on-top-of-muscles-on-top-of-muscles fighting and Stan Bush's "Fight to Survive." Magic Mike has nothing on Van Damme's chiseled backside in Bloodsport, which flexes its way through a slow-motion karate-chop gauntlet. In his final face-off, Van Damme, blinded by arena dust, rage-screams his way to victory. The amount of adrenaline bursting out of Bloodsport demands a splash zone.

Blue Ruin (2013)

Before he went punk with 2016's siege thriller Green Room, director Jeremy Saulnier delivered this low-budget, darkly comic hillbilly noir. When Dwight Evans (Macon Blair) discovers that the man who killed his parents is being released from prison, he returns home to Virginia to claims his revenge and things quickly spin out of control. Like the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, this wise-ass morality tale will make you squirm.

WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMEN

Burning (2018)

Some mysteries simmer; this one smolders. In his adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story, writer and director Lee Chang-dong includes many elements of the acclaimed author's slyly mischievous style -- cats, jazz, cooking, and an alienated male writer protagonist all pop up -- but he also invests the material with his own dark humor, stray references to contemporary news, and an unyielding sense of curiosity. We follow aimless aspiring novelist Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) as he reconnects with Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a young woman he grew up with, but the movie never lets you get too comfortable in one scene or setting. When Steven Yeun's Ben, a handsome rich guy with a beautiful apartment and a passion for burning down greenhouses, appears, the film shifts to an even more tremulous register. Can Ben be trusted? Yeun's performance is perfectly calibrated to entice and confuse, like he's a suave, pyromaniac version of Tyler Durden. Each frame keeps you guessing.

Cam (2018)

Unlike the Unfriended films or this summer's indie hit Searching, this web thriller from director Daniel Goldhaber and screenwriter Isa Mazzei isn't locked into the visual confines of a computer screen. Though there's plenty of online screen time, allowing for subtle bits of commentary and satire, the looser style allows the filmmakers to really explore the life and work conditions of their protagonist, rising cam girl Alice (Madeline Brewer). We meet her friends, her family, and her customers. That type of immersion in the granular details makes the scarier bits -- like an unnerving confrontation in the finale between Alice and her evil doppelganger -- pop even more.

THE ORCHARD

Creep (2014)

Patrick Brice's found-footage movie is a no-budget answer to a certain brand of horror, but saying more would give away its sinister turns. Just know that the man behind the camera answered a Craigslist ad to create a "day in the life" video diary for Josef (Mark Duplass), who really loves life. Creep proves that found footage, the indie world's no-budget genre solution, still has life, as long as you have a performer like Duplass willing to go all the way.

The Death of Stalin (2017)

Armando Iannucci, the brilliant Veep creator, set his sights on Russia with this savage political satire. Based on a graphic novel, the film dramatizes the madcap, maniacal plots of the men jostling for power after their leader, Joseph Stalin, keels over. From there, backstabbing, furious insults, and general chaos unfolds. Anchored by performances from Shakespearean great Simon Russell Beale and American icon Steve Buscemi, it's a pleasure to see what the rest of the cast -- from Star Trek: Discovery's Jason Isaacs to Homeland's Rupert Friend -- do with Iannucci's eloquently brittle text.

Den of Thieves (2018)

If there's one thing you've probably heard about this often ridiculous bank robbery epic, it's that it steals shamelessly from Michael Mann's crime saga Heat. The broad plot elements are similar: There's a team of highly-efficient criminals led by a former Marine (Pablo Schreiber) and they must contend with a obsessive, possibly unhinged cop (Gerard Butler) over the movie's lengthy 140 minute runtime.  A screenwriter helming a feature for the first time, director Christian Gudegast is not in the same league as Mann as a filmmaker and Butler, sporting unflattering tattoos and a barrel-like gut, is hardly Al Pacino. But everyone is really going for it here, attempting to squeeze every ounce of Muscle Milk from the bottle.

NETFLIX

Divines (2016)

Thrillers don't come much more propulsive or elegant than Houda Benyamina's Divines, a heartwarming French drama about female friendship that spirals into a pulse-pounding crime saga. Rambunctious teenager Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and her best friend Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) begin the film as low-level shoplifters and thieves, but once they fall into the orbit of a slightly older, seasoned drug dealer named Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda), they're on a Goodfellas-like trajectory. Benyamina offsets the violent, gritty genre elements with lyrical passages where Dounia watches her ballet-dancer crush rehearse his routines from afar, and kinetic scenes of the young girls goofing off on social media. It's a cautionary tale told with joy, empathy, and an eye for beauty.

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Eddie Murphy has been waiting years to get this movie about comedian and blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore made, and you can feel his joy in finally getting to play this role every second he's on screen. The film, directed by Hustle & Flow's Craig Brewer, charts how Moore rose from record store employee, to successful underground comedian, to making his now-cult classic feature Dolemite by sheer force of passion. It's thrilling (and hilarious) to watch Murphy adopt Moore's Dolemite persona, a swaggering pimp, but it's just as satisfying to see the former SNL star capture his character at his lowest points. He's surrounded by an ensemble that matches his infectious energy.

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

As romanticized as adolescence can be, it’s hard being young. Following the high school experience of troubled, overdramatic Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), The Edge of Seventeen portrays the woes of adolescence with a tender, yet appropriately cheeky tone. As if junior year isn’t hellish enough, the universe essentially bursts into flames when Nadine finds out her best friend is dating her brother; their friendship begins to dissolve, and she finds the only return on young love is embarrassment and pain. That may all sound like a miserable premise for a young-adult movie, except it’s all painfully accurate, making it endearingly hilarious -- and there’s so much to love about Steinfeld’s self-aware performance.

FOCUS FEATURES

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Romance and love are nothing without the potential for loss and pain, but most of us would probably still consider cutting away all the worst memories of the latter. Given the option to eradicate memories of their busted relationship, Jim Carrey's Joel and Kate Winslet's Clementine go through with the procedure, only to find themselves unable to totally let go. Science fiction naturally lends itself to clockwork mechanisms, but director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman never lose the human touch as they toy with the kaleidoscope of their characters' hearts and minds.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Before Bruce Campbell's Ash was wielding his chainsaw-arm in Army of Darkness and on Starz's Ash Vs. Evil Dead, he was just a good looking guy hoping to spend a nice, quiet vacation in a cabin with some friends. Unfortunately, the book of the dead had other plans for him. With this low-budget horror classic, director Sam Raimi brings a surprising degree of technical ingenuity to bear on the splatter-film, sending his camera zooming around the woods with wonder and glee. While the sequels double-downed on laughs, the original Evil Dead still knows how to scare.

The Firm (1993)

The '90s were a golden era of sleek, movie-star-packed legal thrillers, and they don't get much better than director Sydney Pollack's The Firm. This John Grisham adaptation has a little bit of everything -- tax paperwork, sneering mobsters, and Garey Busey, for starters -- but there's one reason to watch this movie: the weirdness of Tom Cruise. He does a backflip in this movie. What else do you need to know?

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The Florida Project (2017)

Sean Baker's The Florida Project nuzzles into the swirling, sunny, strapped-for-cash populace of a mauve motel just within orbit of Walt Disney World. His eyes are Moonee, a 6-year-old who adventures through abandoned condos, along strip mall-encrusted highway, and across verdant fields of overgrown brush like Max in Where the Wild Things Are. But as gorgeous as the everything appears -- and The Florida Project looks stunning -- the world around here is falling apart, beginning with her mother, an ex-stripper turning to prostitution. The juxtaposition, and down-to-earth style, reconsiders modern America in the most electrifying way imaginable.

Frances Ha (2012)

Before winning hearts and Oscar nominations with her coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig starred in the perfect companion film, about an aimless 27-year-old who hops from New York City to her hometown of Sacramento to Paris to Poughkeepsie and eventually back to New York in hopes of stumbling into the perfect job, the perfect relationship, and the perfect life. Directed by Noah Baumbach (The Meyerowitz Stories), and co-written by both, Frances Ha is a measured look at adult-ish life captured the kind of intoxicating black and white world we dream of living in.

NETFLIX

Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2019)

Everyone's favorite disaster of a festival received not one, but two streaming documentaries in the same week. Netflix's version has rightly faced some criticism over its willingness to let marketing company Fuck Jerry off the hook (Jerry Media produced the doc), but that doesn't take away from the overall picture it portrays of the festival's haphazard planning and the addiction to grift from which Fyre's founder, Billy McFarland, apparently suffers. It's schadenfreude at its best.

Gerald's Game (2017)

Like his previous low-budget Netflix-released horror release, Hush, a captivity thriller about a deaf woman fighting off a masked intruder, Mike Flanagan's Stephen King adaptation of Gerald's Game wrings big scares from a small location. Sticking close to the grisly plot details of King's seemingly "unfilmable" novel, the movie chronicles the painstaking struggles of Jessie Burlingame (Carla Gugino) after she finds herself handcuffed to a bed in an isolated vacation home when her husband, the titular Gerald, dies from a heart attack while enacting his kinky sexual fantasies. She's trapped -- and that's it. The premise is clearly challenging to sustain for a whole movie, but Flanagan and Gugino turn the potentially one-note set-up into a forceful, thoughtful meditation on trauma, memory, and resilience in the face of near-certain doom.

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Good Time (2017)

In this greasy, cruel thriller from Uncut Gems directors the Safdie brothers, Robert Pattinson stars as Connie, a bank robber who races through Queens to find enough money to bail out his mentally disabled brother, who's locked up for their last botched job. Each suffocating second of Good Time, blistered by the neon backgrounds of Queens, New York and propelled by warped heartbeat of Oneothrix Point Never's synth score, finds Connie evading authorities by tripping into an even stickier situation.

Green Room (2015)

Green Room is a throaty, thrashing, spit-slinging punk tune belted through an invasion-movie microphone at max volume. It's nasty -- and near-perfect. As a band of 20-something rockstars recklessly defend against a neo-Nazi battalion equipped with machetes, shotguns, and snarling guard dogs, the movie blossoms into a savage coming-of-age tale, an Almost Famous for John Carpenter nuts. Anyone looking for similar mayhem should check out director Jeremy Saulnier's previous movie, the low-budget, darkly comic hillbilly noir, Blue Ruin, also streaming on Netflix.

The Guest (2014)

After writer-director Adam Wingard notched a semi-sleeper horror hit with 2011's You're Next, he'd earned a certain degree of goodwill among genre faithful and, apparently, with studio brass. How else to explain distribution for his atypical thriller The Guest through Time Warner subsidiary Picturehouse? Headlined by soon-to-be megastar Dan Stevens and kindred flick It Follows' lead scream queen Maika Monroe, The Guest introduces itself as a subtextual impostor drama, abruptly spins through a blender of '80s teen tropes, and ultimately reveals its true identity as an expertly self-conscious straight-to-video shoot 'em up, before finally circling back on itself with a well-earned wink. To say anymore about the hell that Stevens' "David" unleashes on a small New Mexico town would not only spoil the fun, but possibly get you killed.

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The Hateful Eight (2015)

Quentin Tarantino has something to say about race, violence, and American life, and it's going to ruffle feathers. Like Django Unchained, the writer-director reflects modern times on the Old West, but with more scalpel-sliced dialogue, profane poetry, and gore. Stewed from bits of Agatha Christie, David Mamet, and Sam Peckinpah, The Hateful Eight traps a cast of blowhards (including Samuel L. Jackson as a Civil War veteran, Kurt Russell as a bounty hunter known as "The Hangman," and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a psychopathic gang member) in a blizzard-enveloped supply station. Tarantino ups the tension by shooting his suffocating space in "glorious 70mm." Treachery and moral compromise never looked so good.

High Flying Bird (2019)

High Flying Bird is a basketball film that has little to do with the sport itself, instead focusing on the behind-the-scenes power dynamics that play out during an NBA lockout. At the center of the Steven Soderbergh movie -- shot on an iPhone, because that's what he does now -- is André Holland's Ray Burke, a sports agent trying to protect his client's interests while also disrupting a corrupt system. It's not an easy tightrope to walk, and, as you might expect, the conditions of the labor stoppage constantly change the playing field. With his iPhone mirroring the NBA's social media-heavy culture, and appearances from actual NBA stars lending the narrative heft, Soderbergh experiments with Netflix's carte blanche and produces a unique film that adds to the streaming service's growing list of original critical hits.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese hit pause on mob violence and Rolling Stones singles to deliver one of the greatest kid-centric films in eons. Following Hugo (Asa Butterfield) as he traces his own origin story through cryptic automaton clues and early 20th-century movie history, the grand vision wowed in 3-D and still packs a punch at home.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)

A meditative horror flick that's more unsettling than outright frightening, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House follows the demise of Lily, a live-in nurse (Ruth Wilson) who's caring for an ailing horror author. As Lily discovers the truth about the writer's fiction and home, the lines between the physical realm and the afterlife blur. The movie's slow pacing and muted escalation might frustrate viewers craving showy jump-scares, but writer-director Oz Perkins is worth keeping tabs on. He brings a beautiful eeriness to every scene, and his story will captivate patient streamers. Fans should be sure to check out his directorial debut, The Blackcoat's Daughter.

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I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)

In this maniacal mystery, Ruth (Melanie Lynskey), a nurse, and her rattail-sporting, weapon-obsessed neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) hunt down a local burglar. Part Cormac McCarthy thriller, part wacky, Will Ferrell-esque comedy, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a cathartic neo-noir about everyday troubles. Director Macon Blair's not the first person to find existential enlightenment at the end of an amateur detective tale, but he might be the first to piece one together from cussing octogenarians, ninja stars, Google montages, gallons of Big Red soda, upper-deckers, friendly raccoons, exploding body parts, and the idiocy of humanity.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

With a bullwhip, a leather jacket, and an "only Harrison Ford can pull this off" fedora, director Steven Spielberg invented the modern Hollywood action film by doing what he does best: looking backward. As obsessed as his movie-brat pal and collaborator George Lucas with the action movie serials of their youth, the director mined James Bond, Humphrey Bogart, Westerns, and his hatred of Nazis to create an adventure classic. To watch Raiders of the Lost Ark now is to marvel at the ingenuity of specific sequences (the boulder! The truck scene! The face-melting!) and simply groove to the self-deprecating comic tone (snakes! Karen Allen! That swordsman Indy shoots!). The past has never felt so alive.

Inside Man (2006)

Denzel Washington is at his wily, sharp, and sharply dressed best as he teams up once again with Spike Lee for this wildly entertaining heist thriller. He's an NYPD hostage negotiator who discovers a whole bunch of drama when a crew of robbers (led by Clive Owen) takes a bank hostage during a 24-hour period. Jodie Foster also appears as an interested party with uncertain motivations. You'll have to figure out what's going on several times over before the truth outs.

DRAFTHOUSE FILMS

The Invitation (2015)

This slow-burn horror-thriller preys on your social anxiety. The film's first half-hour, which finds Quarry's Logan Marshall-Green arriving at his ex-wife's house to meet her new husband, plays like a Sundance dramedy about 30-something yuppies and their relationship woes. As the minutes go by, director Karyn Kusama (Jennifer's Body) burrows deeper into the awkward dinner party, finding tension in unwelcome glances, miscommunication, and the possibility that Marshall-Green's character might be misreading a bizarre situation as a dangerous one. We won't spoil what happens, but let's just say this is a party you'll be telling your friends about.

Ip Man (2008)

There aren't many biopics that also pass for decent action movies. Somehow, Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen and director Wilson Yip made Ip Man (and three sequels!) based on the life of Chinese martial arts master Yip Kai-man, who famously trained Bruce Lee. What's their trick to keeping this series fresh? Play fast and loose with the facts, up the melodrama with each film, and, when in doubt, cast Mike Tyson as an evil property developer. The fights are incredible, and Yen's portrayal of the aging master still has the power to draw a few tears from even the most grizzled tough guy.

NETFLIX

The Irishman (2019)

Opening with a tracking shot through the halls of a drab nursing home, where we meet a feeble old man telling tall tales from his wheelchair, The Irishman delights in undercutting its own grandiosity. All the pageantry a $150 million check from Netflix can buy -- the digital de-aging effects, the massive crowd scenes, the shiny rings passed between men -- is on full display. Everything looks tremendous. But, like with 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street, the characters can't escape the fundamental spiritual emptiness of their pursuits. In telling the story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a World War II veteran and truck driver turned mob enforcer and friend to labor leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian construct an underworld-set counter-narrative of late 20th century American life. Even with a 209 minute runtime, every second counts.

It Comes at Night (2017)

In this post-apocalyptic nightmare-and-a-half, the horrors of humanity, the strain of chaotic emotions pent up in the name of survival, bleed out through wary eyes and weathered hands. The setup is blockbuster-sized -- reverts mankind to the days of the American frontier, every sole survivor fights to protect their families and themselves -- but the drama is mano-a-mano. Barricaded in a haunted-house-worthy cabin in the woods, Paul (Edgerton) takes in Will (Abbott) and his family, knowing full well they could threaten his family's existence. All the while, Paul's son, Trevor, battles bloody visions of (or induced by?) the contagion. Shults directs the hell out of every slow-push frame of this psychological thriller, and the less we know, the more confusion feels like a noose around our necks, the scarier his observations become.

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending is one of those "bad" movies that might genuinely be quite good. Yes, Channing Tatum is a man-wolf and Mila Kunis is the princess of space and bees don't sting space royalty and Eddie Redmayne hollers his little head off about "harvesting" people -- but what makes this movie great is how all of those things make total, absolute sense in the context of the story. The world the Wachowskis (yes, the Wachowskis!) created is so vibrant and strange and exciting, you almost can't help but get drawn in, even when Redmayne vamps so hard you're afraid he's about to pull a muscle. (And if you're a ballet fan, we have some good news for you.)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Perhaps the only movie that ever truly deserved a conversion to a theme-park ride, Steven Spielberg's thrilling adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel brought long-extinct creatures back to life in more ways than one. Benevolent Netflix gives us more than just the franchise starter, too: The Lost World and JP3 sequels are also available, so you can make a marathon of it.

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Killing Them Softly (2012)

Brad Pitt doesn't make conventional blockbusters anymore -- even World War Z had epidemic-movie ambitions -- so it's not surprising that this crime thriller is a little out there. Set during the financial crisis and presidential election of 2008, the film follows Pitt's hitman character as he makes sense of a poker heist gone wrong, leaving a trail of bodies and one-liners along the way. Mixed in with the carnage, you get lots of musings about the economy and American exceptionalism. It's not subtle -- there's a scene where Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn do heroin while the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" plays -- but, like a blunt object to the head, it gets the job done.

Lady Bird (2017)

The dizzying, frustrating, exhilarating rite of passage that is senior year of high school is the focus of actress Greta Gerwig's first directorial effort, the story of girl named Lady Bird (her given name, in that "it’s given to me, by me") who rebels against everyday Sacramento, California life to obtain whatever it is "freedom" turns out to be. Laurie Metcalf is an understated powerhouse as Lady Bird's mother, a constant source of contention who doggedly pushes her daughter to be successful in the face of the family's dwindling economic resources. It's a tragic note in total complement to Gerwig's hysterical love letter to home, high school, and the history of ourselves.

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The Lobster (2016)

Greek style master Yorgos Lanthimos' dystopian allegory against romance sees Colin Farrell forced to choose a partner in 45 days or he'll be turned into an animal of his choice, which is a lobster. Stuck in a group home with similarly unlucky singles, Farrell's David decides to bust out and join other renegades in a kind of anti-love terror cell that lives in the woods. It's part comedy of manners, part futuristic thriller, and it looks absolutely beautiful -- Lanthimos handles the bizarre premise with grace and a naturalistic eye that reminds the viewer that humans remain one of the most interesting animals to exist on this planet.

Mad Max (1979)

Before Tom Hardy was grunting his way through the desert and crushing tiny two-headed reptiles as Max Rockatansky, there was Mel Gibson. George Miller's 1979 original introduces the iconic character and paints the maximum force of his dystopian mythology in a somewhat more grounded light -- Australian police factions, communities, and glimmers of hope still in existence. Badass homemade vehicles and chase scenes abound in this taut, 88-minute romp. It's aged just fine.

Magic Mike (2012)

Steven Soderbergh's story of a Tampa exotic dancer with a heart of gold (Channing Tatum) has body-rolled its way to Netflix. Sexy dance routines aside, Mike's story is just gritty enough to be subversive. Did we mention Matthew McConaughey shows up in a pair of ass-less chaps?

The Master (2012)

Loosely inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard -- Dianetics buffs, we strongly recommend Alex Gibney's Going Clear documentary as a companion piece -- The Master boasts one of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s finest performances, as the enigmatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd. Joaquin Phoenix burns just as brightly as his emotionally stunted, loose-cannon protege Freddie Quell, who has a taste for homemade liquor. Paul Thomas Anderson’s cerebral epic lends itself to many different readings; it’s a cult story, it's a love story, it's a story about post-war disillusionment and the American dream, it's a story of individualism and the desire to belong. But the auteur's popping visuals and heady thematic currents will still sweep you away, even if you’re not quite sure where the tide is taking you.

NETFLIX

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

When Danny (Adam Sandler), Matthew (Ben Stiller) and Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), three half-siblings from three different mothers, gather at their family brownstone in New York to tend to their ailing father (Dustin Hoffman), a lifetime of familial politics explode out of every minute of conversation. Their narcissistic sculptor dad didn't have time for Danny. Matthew was the golden child. Jean was weird… or maybe disturbed by memories no one ever knew. Expertly sketched by writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) this memoir-like portrait of lives half-lived is the kind of bittersweet, dimensional character comedy we're now used to seeing told in three seasons of prestige television. Baumbach gives us the whole package in two hours.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

The legendary British comedy troupe took the legend of King Arthur and offered a characteristically irreverent take on it in their second feature film. It's rare for comedy to hold up this well, but the timelessness of lines like, "I fart in your general direction!" "It's just a flesh wound," and "Run away!" makes this a movie worth watching again and again.

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Moonlight (2016)

Chronicling the boyhood years, teenage stretch, and muted adult life of Chiron, a black gay man making it in Miami, this triptych altarpiece is at once hyper-specific and cosmically universal. Director Barry Jenkins roots each moment in the last; Chiron's desire for a lost lover can't burn in a diner booth over a bottle of wine without his beachside identity crisis years prior, blurred and violent, or encounters from deeper in his past, when glimpses of his mother's drug addiction, or the mentoring acts of her crack supplier, felt like secrets delivered in code. Panging colors, sounds, and the delicate movements of its perfect cast like the notes of a symphony, Moonlight is the real deal, a movie that will only grow and complicate as you wrestle with it.

Mudbound (2017)

The South's post-slavery existence is, for Hollywood, mostly uncharted territory. Rees rectifies the overlooked stretch of history with this novelistic drama about two Mississippi families working a rain-drenched farm in 1941. The white McAllans settle on a muddy patch of land to realize their dreams. The Jacksons, a family of black sharecroppers working the land, have their own hopes, which their neighbors manage to nurture and curtail. To capture a multitude of perspectives, Mudbound weaves together specific scenes of daily life, vivid and memory-like, with family member reflections, recorded in whispered voice-over. The epic patchwork stretches from the Jackson family dinner table, where the youngest daughter dreams of becoming a stenographer, to the vistas of Mississippi, where incoming storms threaten an essential batch of crops, to the battlefields of World War II Germany, a harrowing scene that will affect both families. Confronting race, class, war, and the possibility of unity, Mudbound spellbinding drama reckons with the past to understand the present.

NETFLIX

My Happy Family (2017)

At 52, Manana (Ia Shughliashvili) packs a bag and walks out on her husband, son, daughter, daughter's live-in boyfriend, and elderly mother and father, all of whom live together in a single apartment. The family is cantankerous and blustery, asking everything of Manana, who spends her days teaching better-behaved teenagers about literature. But as Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß's striking character study unfolds, the motivation behind Manana's departure is a deeper strain of frustration, despite what her brother, aunts, uncles, and anyone else who can cram themselves into the situation would like us to think. Anchored by Ia Shughliashvili's stunningly internal performance, and punctured by a dark sense of humor akin to Darren Aronofsky's mother! (which would have been the perfect alternate title), My Happy Family is both delicate and brutal in its portrayal of independence, and should get under the skin of anyone with their own family drama.

The Naked Gun (1988)

The short-lived Dragnet TV spoof Police Squad! found a second life as The Naked Gun action-comedy movie franchise, and the first installment goes all in on Airplane! co-star Leslie Nielsen's brand of straight-laced dementia. Trying to explain The Naked Gun only makes the stupid sound stupider, but keen viewers will find jokes on top of jokes on top of jokes. It's the kind of movie that can crack "nice beaver," then pass a stuffed beaver through the frame and actually get away with it. Nielsen has everything to do with it; his Frank Drebin continues the grand Inspector Clouseau tradition in oh-so-'80s style.

The Notebook (2004)

"If you’re a bird, I’m a bird." It's a simple statement and a declaration of devotion that captures the staying power of this Nicholas Sparks classic. The film made Ryan Gosling a certified heartthrob, charting his working class character Noah's lovelorn romance with Rachel McAdam's wealthy character Allie. The star-crossed lovers narrative is enough to make even the most cynical among us swoon, but given that their story is told through an elderly man reading (you guessed it!) a notebook to a woman with dementia, it hits all of the tragic romance benchmarks to make you melt. Noah's commitment to following his heart -- and that passionate kiss in the rain -- make this a love story for the ages.

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Okja (2017)

This wild ride, part action heist, part Miyazaki-like travelogue, and part scathing satire, is fueled by fairy tale whimsy -- but the Grimm kind, where there are smiles and spilled blood. Ahn Seo-hyun plays Mija, the young keeper of a "super-pig," bred by a food manufacturer to be the next step in human-consumption evolution. When the corporate overlords come for her roly-poly pal, Mija hightails it from the farm to the big city to break him out, crossing environmental terrorists, a zany Steve Irwin-type (Gyllenhaal), and the icy psychos at the top of the food chain (including Swinton's childlike CEO) along the way. Okja won't pluck your heartstrings like E.T., but there's grandeur in its frenzy, and the film's cross-species friendship will strike up every other emotion with its empathetic, eco-friendly, and eccentric observations.

On Body and Soul (2017)

This Hungarian film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, and it's easy to see why. The sparse love story begins when two slaughterhouse employees discover they have the same dream at night, in which they're both deer searching the winter forest for food. Endre, a longtime executive at the slaughterhouse, has a physically damaged arm, whereas Maria is a temporary replacement who seems to be on the autism spectrum. If the setup sounds a bit on-the-nose, the moving performances and the unflinching direction save On Body and Soul from turning into a Thomas Aquinas 101 class, resulting in the kind of bleak beauty you can find in a dead winter forest.

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The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

Don't go into Orson Welles' final film expecting it to be an easy watch. The Other Side of the Wind, which follows fictional veteran Hollywood director Jake Hannaford (tooootally not modeled after Welles himself) and his protegé (also tooootally not a surrogate for Welles' own friend and mentee Peter Bogdanovich, who also plays the character) as they attend a party in celebration of Hannaford's latest film and are beset on all sides by Hannaford's friends, enemies, and everyone in between. The film, which Welles hoped would be his big comeback to Hollywood, was left famously unfinished for decades after his death in 1985. Thanks to Bogdanovich and producer Frank Marshall, it was finally completed in 2018, and the result is a vibrant and bizarre throwback to Welles' own experimental 1970s style, made even more resonant if you know how intertwined the movie is with its own backstory. If you want to dive even deeper, Netflix also released a documentary about the restoration and completion of the film, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, which delves into Welles' own complicated and tragic relationship with Hollywood and the craft of moviemaking.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Guillermo Del Toro’s dark odyssey Pan’s Labyrinth takes a fantasy setting to mirror the horrible political realities of the human realm. Set in 1940s Falangist Spain, the film documents the hero’s journey of a young girl and stepdaughter of a ruthless Spanish army officer as she seeks an escape from her war-occupied world. When a fairy informs her that her true destiny may be as the princess of the underworld, she seizes her chance. Like Alice in Wonderland if Alice had gone to Hell instead of down the rabbit hole, the Academy Award-winning film is a wondrous, frightening fairy tale where that depicts how perilous the human-created monster of war can be.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

This documentary-style film budgeted at a mere $15,000 made millions at the box office and went on to inspire a number of sequels, all because of how well its scrappiness lent to capturing what feels like a terrifying haunted reality. Centered on a young couple who is convinced an evil spirit is lurking in their home, the two attempt to capture its activity on camera, which, obviously, only makes their supernatural matters worse. It leans on found footage horror tropes made popular by The Blair Witch Project and as it tessellates between showing the viewer what’s captured on their camcorders and the characters’ perspectives, it’s easy to get lost in this disorienting supernatural thriller.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Poltergeist (1982)

If you saw Poltergeist growing up, chances are you’re probably equally as haunted by Heather O’Rourke as she is in the film, playing a little girl tormented by ghosts in her family home. This Steven Spielberg-penned, Tobe Hooper-directed (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) paranormal flick is a certified cult classic and one of the best horror films of all time, coming from a simple premise about a couple whose home is infested with spirits obsessed with reclaiming the space and kidnapping their daughter. Poltergeist made rearranged furniture freaky, and you may remember a particularly iconic scene with a fuzzed out vintage television set. It’s may be nearly 40 years old, but the creepiness holds up.

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Taking Jane Austen's literary classic and tricking it out with gorgeous long takes, director Joe Wright turns this tale of manners into a visceral, luminescent portrait of passion and desire. While Succession's Matthew MacFadyen might not make you forget Colin Firth from 1995's BBC adaptation, Keira Knightley is a revelation as the tough, nervy Lizzie Bennett. With fun supporting turns from Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Pike, and Judi Dench, it's a sumptuous period romance that transports you from the couch to the ballroom of your dreams -- without changing out of sweatpants.

NETFLIX

Private Life (2018)

Over a decade since the release of her last dark comedy, The Savages, writer and director Tamara Jenkins returned with a sprawling movie in the same vein: more hyper-verbal jerks you can't help but love. Richard (Paul Giamatti) and Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) are a Manhattan-dwelling couple who have spent the last few years attempting to have a baby with little success. When we meet them, they're already in the grips of fertility mania, willing to try almost anything to secure the offspring they think they desire. With all the details about injections, side effects, and pricey medical procedures, the movie functions as a taxonomy of modern pregnancy anxieties, and Hahn brings each part of the process to glorious life.

The Ritual (2018)

The Ritual, a horror film where a group of middle-aged men embark on a hiking trip in honor of a dead friend, understands the tension between natural beauty of the outdoors and the unsettling panic of the unknown. The group's de facto leader Luke (an understated Rafe Spall) attempts to keep the adventure from spiralling out of control, but the forest has other plans. (Maybe brush up on your Scandinavian mythology before viewing.) Like a backpacking variation on Neil Marshall's 2005 cave spelunking classic The Descent, The Ritual deftly explores inter-personal dynamics while delivering jolts of other-worldly terror. It'll have you rethinking that weekend getaway on your calendar.

NETFLIX

Roma (2018)

All those billions Netflix spent paid off in the form of several Oscar nominations for Roma, including one for Best Picture and a win for Best Director. Whether experienced in the hushed reverence of a theater, watched on the glowing screen of a laptop, or, as Netflix executive Ted Sarandos has suggested, binged on the perilous surface of a phone, Alfonso Cuarón's black-and-white passion project seeks to stun. A technical craftsman of the highest order, the Children of Men and Gravity director has an aesthetic that aims to overwhelm -- with the amount of extras, the sense of despair, and the constant whir of exhilaration -- and this autobiographical portrait of kind-hearted maid Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) caring for a family in the early 1970s has been staged on a staggering, mind-boggling scale.

Schindler's List (1993)

A passion project for Steven Spielberg, who shot it back-to-back with another masterpiece, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who reportedly saved over 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Frank, honest, and stark in its depiction of Nazi violence, the three-hour historical drama is a haunting reminder of the world's past, every frame a relic, every lost voice channeled through Itzhak Perlman's mourning violin.

A Serious Man (2009)

This dramedy from the Coen brothers stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern physics professor who just can't catch a break, whether it's with his wife, his boss, or his rabbi. (Seriously, if you're having a bad day, this airy flick gives you ample time to brood and then come to the realization that your life isn't as shitty as you think.) Meditating on the spiritual and the temporal, Gopnik's improbable run of bad luck is a smart modern retelling of the Book of Job, with more irony and fewer plagues and pestilences. But not much fewer.

WELL GO USA

Shadow (2019)

In Shadow, the visually stunning action epic from Hero and House of Flying Daggers wuxia master Zhang Yimou, parasols are more than helpful sun-blockers: They can be turned into deadly weapons, shooting boomerang-like blades of steel at oncoming attackers and transforming into protective sleds for traveling through the slick streets. These devices are one of many imaginative leaps made in telling this Shakespearean saga of palace intrigue, vengeance, and secret doppelgangers set in China's Three Kingdoms period. This is a martial arts epic where the dense plotting is as tricky as the often balletic fight scenes. If the battles in Game of Thrones left you frustrated, Shadow provides a thrilling alternative.

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

Before checking out Spike Lee's Netflix original series of the same name, be sure to catch up with where it all began. Nola (Tracy Camilla Johns) juggles three men during her sexual pinnacle, and it's all working out until they discover one another. She's Gotta Have It takes some dark turns, but each revelation speaks volumes about what real romantic independence is all about.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The late director Jonathan Demme's 1991 film is the touchstone for virtually every serial killer film and television show that came after. The iconic closeup shots of an icy, confident Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) as he and FBI newbie Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) engage in their "quid pro quo" interrogation sessions create almost unbearable tension as Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) remains on the loose, killing more victims. Hopkins delivers the more memorable lines, and Buffalo Bill's dance is the stuff of nerve-wracking anxiety nightmares, but it's Foster's nuanced performance as a scared, determined, smart-yet-hesitant agent that sets Silence of the Lambs apart from the rest of the serial killer pack.

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and David O. Russell’s first collaboration -- and the film that turned J-Law into a bona fide golden girl -- is a romantic comedy/dramedy/dance-flick that bounces across its tonal shifts. A love story between Pat (Cooper), a man struggling with bipolar disease and a history of violent outbursts, and Tiffany (Lawrence), a widow grappling with depression, who come together while rehearsing for an amateur dance competition, Silver Linings balances an emotionally realistic depiction of mental illness with some of the best twirls and dips this side of Step Up. Even if you're allergic to rom-coms, Lawrence and Cooper’s winning chemistry will win you over, as will this sweet little gem of a film: a feel-good, affecting love story that doesn’t feel contrived or treacly.

Sin City (2005)

Frank Miller enlisted Robert Rodriguez as co-director to translate the former's wildly popular series of the same name to the big screen, and with some added directorial work from Quentin Tarantino, the result became a watershed moment in the visual history of film. The signature black-and-white palette with splashes of color provided a grim backdrop to the sensational violence of the miniaturized plotlines -- this is perhaps the movie that feels more like a comic than any other movie you'll ever see.

Sinister (2012)

Horror-movie lesson #32: If you move into a creepy new house, do not read the dusty book, listen to the decaying cassette tapes, or watch the Super 8 reels you find in the attic -- they will inevitably lead to your demise. In Sinister, a true-crime author (played by Ethan Hawke) makes the final mistake, losing his mind to home movies haunted by the "Bughuul."

NETFLIX

Small Crimes (2017)

It's always a little discombobulating to see your favorite Game of Thrones actors in movies that don't call on them to fight dragons, swing swords, or at least wear some armor. But that shouldn't stop you from checking out Small Crimes, a carefully paced thriller starring the Kingslayer Jaime Lannister himself, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. As Joe Denton, a crooked cop turned ex-con, Coster-Waldau plays yet another character with a twisted moral compass, but here he's not part of some mythical narrative. He's just another conniving, scheming dirtbag in director E.L. Katz's Coen brothers-like moral universe. While some of the plot details are confusing -- Katz and co-writer Macon Blair skimp on the exposition so much that some of the dialogue can feel incomprehensible -- the mood of Midwestern dread and Coster-Waldau's patient, lived-in performance make this one worth checking out. Despite the lack of dragons.

Snowpiercer (2013)

Did people go overboard in praising Snowpiercer when it came out? Maybe. But it's important to remember that the movie arrived in the sweaty dog days of summer, hitting critics and sci-fi lovers like a welcome blast of icy water from a hose. The film's simple, almost video game-like plot -- get to the front of the train, or die trying -- allowed visionary South Korean director Bong Joon-ho to fill the screen with excitement, absurdity, and radical politics. Chris Evans never looked more alive, Tilda Swinton never stole more scenes, and mainstream blockbuster filmmaking never felt so tepid in comparison. Come on, ride the train!

The Social Network (2010)

After making films like Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and Zodiac, director David Fincher left behind the world of scumbags and crime for a fantastical, historical epic in 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The Social Network was another swerve, but yielded his greatest film. There's no murder on screen, but Fincher treats Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg like a dorky, socially awkward mob boss operating on an operatic scale. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire, screwball-like dialogue burns with a moral indignation that Fincher's watchful, steady-handed camera chills with an icy distance. It's the rare biopic that's not begging you to smash the "like" button.

SONY PICTURES RELEASING

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

In this shrewd twist on the superhero genre, the audience's familiarity with the origin story of your friendly neighborhood web-slinger -- the character has already starred in three different blockbuster franchises, in addition to countless comics and cartoon TV adaptations -- is used as an asset instead of a liability. The relatively straight-forward coming-of-age tale of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a Brooklyn teenager who takes on the powers and responsibilities of Spider-Man following the death of Peter Parker, gets a remix built around an increasingly absurd parallel dimension plotline that introduces a cast of other Spider-Heroes like Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glen), and, most ridiculously, Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a talking pig in a Spider-Suit. The convoluted set-up is mostly an excuse to cram the movie with rapid-fire jokes, comic book allusions, and dream-like imagery that puts the rubbery CGI of most contemporary animated films to shame.

Spotlight (2015)

Tom McCarthy stretches the drama taut as he renders Boston Globe's 2000 Catholic Church sex scandal investigation into a Hollywood vehicle. McCarthy's notable cast members crank like gears as they uncover evidence and reflect on a horrifying discovery of which they shoulder partial blame. Spotlight was the cardigan of 2015's Oscar nominees, but even cardigans look sharp when Mark Ruffalo is involved.

The Squid and the Whale (2005)

No movie captures the prolonged pain of divorce quite like Noah Baumbach's brutal Brooklyn-based comedy The Squid and the Whale. While the performances from Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as bitter writers going through a separation are top-notch, the film truly belongs to the kids, played by Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, who you watch struggle in the face of their parents' mounting immaturity and pettiness. That Baumbach is able to wring big, cathartic laughs from such emotionally raw material is a testament to his gifts as a writer -- and an observer of human cruelty.

SONY PICTURES RELEASING

Starship Troopers (1997)

Paul Verhoeven is undoubtedly the master of the sly sci-fi satire. With RoboCop, he laid waste to the police state with wicked, trigger-happy glee. He took on evil corporations with Total Recall. And with Starship Troopers, a bouncy, bloody war picture, he skewered the chest-thumping theatrics of pro-military propaganda, offering up a pitch-perfect parody of the post-9/11 Bush presidency years before troops set foot in Iraq or Afghanistan. Come for the exploding alien guts, but stay for the winking comedy -- or stay for both! Bug guts have their charms, too.

Swiss Army Man (2016)

You might think a movie that opens with a suicidal man riding a farting corpse like a Jet Ski wears thin after the fourth or fifth flatulence gag. You would be wrong. Brimming with imagination and expression, the directorial debut of Adult Swim auteurs "The Daniels" wields sophomoric humor to speak to friendship. As Radcliffe's dead body springs back to life -- through karate-chopping, water-vomiting, and wind-breaking -- he becomes the id to Dano's struggling everyman, who is also lost in the woods. If your childhood backyard adventures took the shape of The Revenant, it would look something like Swiss Army Man, and be pure bliss.

NETFLIX

Tallulah (2016)

From Orange Is the New Black writer Sian Heder, Tallulah follows the title character (played by Ellen Page) after she inadvertently "kidnaps" a toddler from an alcoholic rich woman and passes the child off as her own to appeal to her run-out boyfriend's mother (Allison Janney). A messy knot of familial woes and wayward instincts, Heder's directorial debut achieves the same kind of balancing act as her hit Netflix series -- frank social drama with just the right amount of humorous hijinks. As Tallulah grows into a mother figure, her on-the-lam parenting course only makes her more and more of a criminal in the eyes of... just about everyone. You want to root for her, but that would be too easy.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Travis Bickle (a young Bobby De Niro) comes back from the Vietnam War and, having some trouble acclimating to daily life, slowly unravels while fending off brutal insomnia by picking up work as a... taxi driver... in New York City. Eventually he snaps, shaves his hair into a mohawk and goes on a murderous rampage while still managing to squeeze in one of the most New York lines ever captured on film ("You talkin' to me?"). It's not exactly a heartwarmer -- Jodie Foster plays a 12-year-old prostitute -- but Martin Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver is a movie in the cinematic canon that you'd be legitimately missing out on if you didn't watch it.

FOCUS FEATURES

The Theory of Everything (2014)

In his Oscar-winning performance, Eddie Redmayne portrays famed physicist Stephen Hawking -- though The Theory of Everything is less of a biopic than it is a beautiful, sweet film about his lifelong relationship with his wife, Jane (Felicity Jones). Covering his days as a young cosmology student ahead of his diagnosis of ALS at 21, through his struggle with the illness and rise as a theoretical scientist, this film illustrates the trying romance through it all. While it may be written in the cosmos, this James Marsh-directed film that weaves in and out of love will have you experience everything there is to feel.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson found modern American greed in the pages of Upton Sinclair's depression-era novel, Oil!. Daniel Day-Lewis found the role of a lifetime behind the bushy mustache of Daniel Plainview, thunderous entrepreneur. Paul Dano found his milkshake drunk up. Their discoveries are our reward -- There Will Be Blood is a stark vision of tycoon terror.

Time to Hunt (2020)

Unrelenting in its pursuit of scenarios where guys point big guns at each other in sparsely lit empty hallways, the South Korean thriller Time to Hunt knows exactly what stylistic register it's playing in. A group of four friends, including Parasite and Train to Busan break-out Choi Woo-shik, knock over a gambling house, stealing a hefty bag of money and a set of even more valuable hard-drives, and then find themselves targeted by a ruthless contract killer (Park Hae-soo) who moves like the T-1000 and shoots like a henchmen in a Michael Mann movie. There are dystopian elements to the world -- protests play out in the streets, the police wage a tech-savvy war on citizens, automatic rifles are readily available to all potential buyers -- but they all serve the simmering tension and elevate the pounding set-pieces instead of feeling like unnecessary allegorical padding. Even with its long runtime, this movie moves.

STUDIOCANAL

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

If a season of 24 took place in the smoky, well-tailored underground of British intelligence crica 1973, it might look a little like this precision-made John le Carré adaptation from Let the Right One In director Tomas Alfredson. Even if you can't follow terse and tightly-woven mystery, the search for Soviet mole led by retired operative George Smiley (Gary Oldman), the ice-cold frames and stellar cast will suck you into the intrigue. It's very possible Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch are reading pages of the British phone book, but egad, it's absorbing. A movie that rewards your full concentration.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)

Of all the entries in the rom-com revival, this one is heavier on the rom than the com. But even though it won't make your sides hurt, it will make your heart flutter. The plot is ripe with high school movie hijinks that arise when the love letters of Lara Jean Covey (the wonderful Lana Condor) accidentally get mailed to her crushes, namely the contractual faux relationship she starts with heartthrob Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). Like its heroine, it's big-hearted but skeptical in all the right places.

Total Recall (1990)

Skip the completely forgettable Colin Farrell remake from 2012. This Arnold Schwarzenegger-powered, action-filled sci-fi movie is the one to go with. Working from a short story by writer Philip K. Dick, director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) uses a brain-teasing premise -- you can buy "fake" vacation memories from a mysterious company called Rekall -- to stage one of his hyper-violent, winkingly absurd cartoons. The bizarre images of life on Mars and silly one-liners from Arnold fly so fast that you'll begin to think the whole movie was designed to be implanted in your mind.

NETFLIX

Tramps (2017)

There are heists pulled off by slick gentlemen in suits, then there are heists pulled off by two wayward 20-somethings rambling along on a steamy, summer day in New York City. This dog-day crime-romance stages the latter, pairing a lanky Russian kid (Callum Tanner) who ditches his fast-food register job for a one-off thieving gig, with his driver, an aloof strip club waitress (Grace Van Patten) looking for the cash to restart her life. When a briefcase handoff goes awry, the pair head upstate to track down the missing package, where train rides and curbside walks force them to open up. With a laid-back, '70s soul, Tramps is the rare doe-eyed relationship movie where playing third-wheel is a joy.

Uncut Gems (2019)

In Uncut Gems, the immersive crime film from sibling director duo Josh and Benny Safdie, gambling is a matter of faith. Whether he's placing a bet on the Boston Celtics, attempting to rig an auction, or outrunning debt-collecting goons at his daughter's high school play, the movie's jeweler protagonist Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) believes in his ability to beat the odds. Does that mean he always succeeds? No, that would be absurd, undercutting the character's Job-like status, which Sandler imbues with an endearing weariness that holds the story together. But every financial setback, emotional humbling, and spiritual humiliation he suffers gets interpreted by Howard as a sign that his circumstances might be turning around. After all, a big score could be right around the corner.

Velvet Buzzsaw (2018)

Nightcrawler filmmaker Dan Gilroy teams up with Jake Gyllenhaal again to create another piece of cinematic art, this time a satirical horror film about the exclusive, over-the-top LA art scene. The movie centers around a greedy group of art buyers who come into the possession of stolen paintings that, unbeknownst to them, turn out to be haunted, making their luxurious lives of wheeling and dealing overpriced paintings a living hell. Also featuring the likes of John Malkovich, Toni Collette, Billy Magnussen, and others, Velvet Buzzsaw looks like Netflix’s next great original.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

Oscar-baiting, musician biopics became so cookie-cutter by the mid-'00s that it was easy for John C. Reilly, Judd Apatow, and writer-director Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) to knot them all together for the ultimate spoof. Dewey Cox is part Johnny Cash, part Bob Dylan, part Ray Charles, part John Lennon, part anyone-you-can-think-of, rising with hit singles, rubbing shoulders with greats of many eras, stumbling with eight-too-many drug addictions, then rising once again. When it comes to relentless wisecracking, Walk Hard is like a Greatest Hits compilation -- every second is gold.

The Witch (2015)

The Witch delivers everything we don't see in horror today. The backdrop, a farm in 17th-century New England, is pure misty, macabre mood. The circumstance, a Puritanical family making it on the fringe of society because they're too religious, bubbles with terror. And the question, whether devil-worshipping is hocus pocus or true black magic, keeps each character on their toes, and begging God for answers. The Witch tests its audience with its (nearly impenetrable) old English dialogue and the (anxiety-inducing) trials of early American life, but the payoff will keep your mind racing, and your face hiding under the covers, for days.

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

Before taking us to space with Gravity, director Alfonso Cuarón steamed up screens with this provocative, comedic drama about two teenage boys (Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal) road-trippin' it with an older woman. Like a sunbaked Jules and Jim, the movie makes nimble use of its central love triangle, setting up conflicts between the characters as they move through the complicated political and social realities of Mexican life. It's a confident, relaxed film that's got an equal amount of brains and sex appeal. Watch this one with a friend -- or two.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Zodiac (2007)

David Fincher's period drama is for obsessives. In telling the story of the Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer who captured the public imagination by sending letters and puzzles to the Bay Area press, the famously meticulous director zeroes in on the cops, journalists, and amateur code-breakers who made identifying the criminal their life's work. With Jake Gyllenhaal's cartoonist-turned-gumshoe Robert Graysmith at the center, and Robert Downey Jr.'s barfly reporter Paul Avery stumbling around the margins, the film stretches across time and space, becoming a rich study of how people search for meaning in life. Zodiac is a procedural thriller that makes digging through old manilla folders feel like a cosmic quest.

13th (2016)

Selma director Ava DuVernay snuck away from the Hollywood spotlight to direct this sweeping documentary on the state of race in America. DuVernay's focus is the country's growing incarceration rates and an imbalance in the way black men and women are sentenced based on their crimes. Throughout the exploration, 13th dives into post-Emancipation migration, systemic racism that built in the early 20th century, and moments of modern political history that continue to spin a broken gear in our well-oiled national machine. You'll be blown away by what DuVernay uncovers in her interview-heavy research.

20th Century Women (2016)

If there's such thing as an epistolary movie, 20th Century Women is it. Touring 1970s Santa Barbara through a living flipbook, Mike Mills's semi-autobiographical film transcends documentation with a cast of wayward souls and Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), an impressionable young teenager. Annette Bening plays his mother, and the matriarch of a ragtag family, who gather together for safety, dance to music when the moment strikes, and teach Jamie the important lesson of What Women Want, which ranges from feminist theory to love-making techniques. The kid soaks it up like a sponge. Through Mills's caring direction, and characters we feel extending infinitely through past and present, so do we.

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[deceitfuldevout]

Deceitfuldevout's Cillian Murphy Masterlist:

❤️ = Fluff

🔞 = Spicy/Nsfw

🖤 = Dark

❌ = No warnings/Sfw

One-Shots:

Highest Bidder - Dark!Robert Fishcher x Sugarbaby!Reader: 🔞🖤https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/728906757005606912/highest-bidder?source=share

Naughty Little Thief - Dark!Jackson Rippner x Theif!Reader: 🔞🖤https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/729562829842186240/naughty-little-thief?source=share

Happy Purge - Purge AU: Soft!Dark!Mike Kiernan x Student!Reader: 🔞🖤https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/730288962181136384/happy-purge?source=share

Scream - Ghostface!Neil Lewis x Reader: 🔞🖤https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/730746273137819648/scream?source=share

Struggle - Soft!Dark!Neil Lewis x BestFriend!Reader: 🔞🖤https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/732171656283471872/struggle?source=share

Blessed Be The Fruit - Soft!Dark!Sergeant!Tommy Shelby x Maiden!Reader: 🔞🖤https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/735516775906705408/blessed-be-the-fruit?source=share

First and Last - Dark!Tom (The Party 2017) x ExWife!Reader: https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/737440069578866688/first-and-last?source=share🔞🖤

Series:

Hidden Treasure - Arranged Marriage AU: Dark!Tommy Shelby x Wife!Reader: 🔞🖤https://www.tumblr.com/deceitfuldevout/707809508943151104/hidden-treasure-masterlist?source=share

[brokehorrorfan]

Best New Horror Movies on Netflix: Winter 2018

There’s an overwhelming amount of horror films and TV shows to sift through on Netflix, so I’ve decided to take out some of the legwork by compiling a list of the season’s best new genre titles available on Netflix’s instant streaming service.

Please feel free to leave a comment with any I may have missed and share your thoughts on the films you watch. You can also peruse past installments of Best New Horror Moves on Netflix for more suggestions.

1. The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House is, quite simply, some of the best long-form horror storytelling of all time. Based on - but not a strict adaptation of - Shirley Jackson's influential gothic horror novel of the same name, the series is created and directed by Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil). Told through two timelines, with clever transitions between the past and present, the story concerns five siblings and how an alleged haunting they experienced as kids affects them as adults. The cast includes Henry Thomas (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), Carla Gugino (Watchmen), Michiel Huisman (Treme), Elizabeth Reaser (Ouija: Origin of Evil), Kate Siegel (Hush), Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People), and Lulu Wilson (Annabelle: Creation). It is admirably character-driven, which makes the horror elements hit even harder, and a spooky atmosphere is present throughout all 10 episodes.

2. Green Room

Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier achieves the impossible by matching - and perhaps even surpassing - the unbridled intensity of his previous film, Blue Ruin, with Green Room. The exercise in white-knuckle suspense finds a scrappy punk band trapped in a skinhead club after unwittingly walking in on a crime. The late Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) delivers one of the best performances of his tragically short career as the de facto leader of the band. In a bit of inspired casting, Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation) is chilling as the conniving, white supremacist venue owner. Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), Joe Cole (Skins), and Callum Turner (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) round out the band, while Imogen Poots (28 Weeks Later) is also wrapped up in the brutal fight for survival. Akin to Don't Breathe, the tension on screen is enough to induce anxiety, and Saulnier nails the punk rock DIY spirit to boot.

3. Cam

Cam stars Madeline Brewer (The Handmaid's Tale) as a cam girl - one who performs pornographic acts live on camera for paying viewers - who is desperate to gain popularity. Produced by Blumhouse, this is not your typical "seedy underbelly of the sex industry" movie, although there is some of that; instead, it goes in a refreshing, unpredictable direction. Reminiscent of a neon-soaked episode of Black Mirror, Cam is a suspenseful and compelling mystery-thriller with a sci-fi twist and horror undertones. Brewer is spectacular in her fearless performance, while director Daniel Goldhaber makes a powerful feature debut.

4. The Night Comes for Us

The Night Comes for Us is an unrelenting action thriller in the vein of The Raid, John Wick, and Dredd. In fact, the Indonesian film reunites The Raid's Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais. Taslim leads as a man who goes rogue from a dangerous crime syndicate. A variety of deadly individuals (Uwais among them) are out to get him, but he has some tough allies as well. It all culminates in an incredible final battle in which the viewer feels every blow. The blend of brutal, graphic violence and impressively choreographed fight scenes is written and directed by by Timo Tjahjanto (whose V/H/S/2 segment is a highlight of the franchise).

5. Apostle

Forget that Nicolas Cage abomination; Apostle is the Wicker Man reboot we deserve. The Netflix original film is reminiscent of the 1973 occult horror classic not only in plot but also in tone, style, and pacing. Set in 1905 London, a feral Dan Stevens (The Guest) stars as a man whose sister is kidnapped by a religious cult on a secluded island, which he must infiltrate to save her. Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon) serves as the cult's charismatic leader, while Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody) plays his daughter. The slow-burn is quite a change of pace for writer-director Gareth Evans (The Raid franchise) and his regular cinematographer, Matt Flannery, but they handle it beautifully.

6. May the Devil Take You

May the Devil Take You feels like The Evil Dead's Sam Raimi directing an installment in The Conjuring universe. The Indonesian horror film is not a scrappy splatterfest; it's elegantly directed by Timo Tjahjanto (V/H/S/2). He culls from modern supernatural tropes to craft fine horror set pieces, spooky imagery, a good atmosphere, and strong production value. Chelsea Islan (Headshot) earns to be mentioned in the same breath as Bruce Campbell in her lead role as a daughter who investigates her estranged father's past to uncover the truth behind his coma and her haunting visions. It's a tad overlong at 110 minutes, which is particularly felt during the last act, but there's enough kinetic energy to keep it moving forward.

7. Hold the Dark

Hold the Dark is not quite as strong as Jeremy Saulnier's previous efforts (Green Room, Blue Ruin), but his mastery of tension remains unparalleled. Jeffrey Wright (Westworld) stars as a wolf expert who's convinced by an Alaskan woman (Riley Keough, Max Mad: Fury Road) to hunt a wolf that took her young son, only to get wrapped up in a murder plot. Meanwhile, the boy's soldier father (Alexander Skarsgård, True Blood) returns home from duty in the Middle East unhinged. The screenplay is written by Macon Blair (I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore), based on the book of the same name by William Giraldi. As viewers have come to expect from Saulnier, the violence is as unrelenting as the suspense.

8. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Riverdale), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is not your TGIF version of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Its aesthetically similar to the Archie Comics title on which its based, embracing the rich Gothic horror atmosphere, but the story veers more into teen drama territory. The result is like a mash-up of Riverdale, The Witch, and Harry Potter. It may take a few episodes to become invested, plus to get used to the distracting shallow depth of field style (which is thankfully used less as the season progresses), but it's eventually rather addicting. The midsection becomes something of a monster-of-the-week series, but it never loses sight of the overall story arc. Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men) is charming as the titular witch, and the main cast also includes Ross Lynch (My Friend Dahmer), Lucy Davis (Shaun of the Dead), Miranda Otto (The Lord of the Rings), and Michelle Gomez (Doctor Who).

9. Into the Forest

Into the Forest is a post-apocalyptic tale of sorts, but it's a grounded take on the subject matter that largely functions as a drama. Ellen Page (Inception) and Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld) star as sisters who live with their father (Callum Keith Rennie, Battlestar Galactica) in a secluded, woodland home. Directed by Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park), the movie follows the family in their fight for survival in the months after electricity is lost throughout the world. Although it drags in spots, Page, who produced the film after falling in love with Jean Hegland's novel on which it's based, is in top form.

10. In Darkness

In Darkness stars Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones) as a blind pianist who hears her upstairs neighbor (Emily Ratajkowski, Gone Girl) get murdered, drawing her into London's seedy underworld, where she meets Ed Skrein (Deadpool) and Joely Richardson (Event Horizon). With shades of Wait Until Dark, the thriller offers some solid suspense and tension, plus superb sound design and cinematography. The setup is gripping, though the plot later becomes too convoluted for its own good. Dormer is fantastic in the lead, and she also produced and co-wrote the script with director Anthony Byrne (Peaky Blinders).

11. Don't Watch This

Don't Watch This is listed on Netflix as a season, but it's simply five unrelated horror shorts, ranging between 2 and 9 minutes in length. There's body horror, killer kids, urban explorers, and Queer Eye's Antoni Porowski parodying American Psycho. In addition to a few clever setups and strong horror set pieces, they boast quality production value, cinematography, and special features (both practical and digital). Shorts usually struggle to find an audience on YouTube, so it's great to see them showcased on a platform as powerful as Netflix.

Bonus: De Palma

De Palma is a documentary on filmmaker Brian De Palma (Carrie, Scarface, Mission: Impossible, Blow Out, Phantom of the Paradise, et al.). The septuagenarian himself - with no other talking heads - discusses and reflects on his oeuvre, going movie by movie (plus a handful of unmade projects) in chronological order, accompanied by clips and stills. Co-directed by Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) and Jake Paltrow (Young Ones), the candid nature of the interviews prevent the film from feeling like a mere DVD special feature. It moves briskly, leaving you wanting more even at 110 minutes.

[rabbittstewcomics]

Episode 320

Comic Reviews:

Are You Afraid of Darkseid? by Elliott Kalan, Mike Norton, Allen Passalaqua, Kenny Porter, Max Dunbar, Luis Guerrero, Calvin Kasulke, Rob Guillory, Dave Wielgosz, Pablo Collar, Wil Quintana, Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, Jesus Hervas, Eva De La Cruz, Ed Brisson, Christopher Mitten, ToWe Hny Avina, Terry Blas, Garry Brown, Marissa Louise, Jeremy Haun, Tony Akins, Moritat

Wonder Woman 80th Anniversary 100-age Super Spectacular by Michael Conrad, Becky Cloonan, Jim Cheung, Marcelo Maiolo, Jordie Bellaire, Paulina Ganucheau, Kendall Goode, Amy Reeder, Marissa Louise, Mark Waid, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Tom King, Doc Shaner, Vita Ayala, Isaac Goodhart, Jeremy Lawson, Steve Orlando, Laura Braga, Romulo Fajardo Jr, Stephanie Phillips, Marcio Takara, G. Willow Wilson, Meghan Hetrick

Arkham City: Order of the World 1 by Dan Watters, Dani, Dave Stewart

DC Horror Presents: Soul Plumber 1 by Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, PJ Holden, John McCrea, Mike Spicer

Amazing Spider-Man 75 by Zeb Wells, Patrick Gleason, Marcio Menyz, Kelly Thompson, Travel Foreman, Jim Campbell, Ivan Fiorelli, Edgar Delgado

Eternals Celestia by Kieron Gillen, Kei Zama, Matthew Wilson

Ghost Rider Kushala Infinity Comic 1 by Taboo, Guillermo Sanna, Jordie Bellaire

We Have Demons 1 by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, Dave McCaig

Righteous Thirst For Vengeance 1 by Rick Remender, Andre Lima Araujo, Chris O'Halloran

Cruel Biology by Christopher Sebela, Brian Churilla

Jennifer Blood 1 by Fred Van Lente, Vincenzo Federici

Chicken Devil 1 by Brian Buccellato, Hayden Sherman, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

Out 1 by Rob Williams, Will Conrad, Marco Lesko

Dirtbag Rapture 1 by Christopher Sebela, Kendall Goode, Gab Contreras

Party & Prey GN by Steve Orlando, Steve Foxe, Alex Sanchez, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

Squad GN by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Lisa Sterle

Primordial GN by Bruce Zick

Stars, Hide Your Fires GN by Kel McDonald, Jose Pimienta

Minnie Mouse: Big Dreams GN by Brooke Vitale, Artful Doodlers

Additional Reviews: Star Wars Terrifying Tales, Bodyguard, Snowman, Basketful of Heads, Unfinished Corner, Muppets Haunted Mansion

Longbox of Horror: Spider-Man Disassembled by Paul Jenkins, Humberto Ramos, Paco Medina, Michael Ryan

News: ND Stevenson transition and substack, Bunn brings back Dragonring through Kickstarter, Flanagan does House of Usher, Letitia Wright nonsense, Bat Family Webtoon gets YouTube live action adaptation, Agatha Harkness TV show, Pinhead cast for Hulu series, Bat/Cat special delayed, Astro City/Autumnlands/Arrowsmith and new series from Kurt Busiek at Image, Cillian Murphy stars in next Nolan movie as Oppenheimer, Saga returns in January, Kiernan Shipka bringing Sabrina to Riverdale, Who returns on Halloween, more Tom Taylor nonsense, Jon Kent, Disney gets a new Chief Creative Officer, Devil's Reign Tie-Ins, NYCC thoughts, Gamergate show

Halloween Question

Trailers: Game of Thrones prequel, Peacemaker, Hypnotic, Resident Evil, Robin Robin

Comics Countdown:

Nice House On The Lake 5 by James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez Bueno

The Me You Love In The Dark 3 by Skottie Young, Jorge Corona, Jean-Francois Beaulieu

We Have Demons 1 by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, Dave McCaig

Bountiful Garden 2 by Ivy Noelle Weir, Kelly Williams, Giorgio Spalleta

Star Trek: Year Five 25 by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Jody Houser, Brandon Easton, Jim McCann, Paul Cornell, Angel Hernandez, Silvia Califano, Stephen Thompson

Arkham City: Order of the World 1 by Dan Watters, Dani, Dave Stewart

Dark Ages 2 by Tom Taylor, Iban Coello, Brian Reber

Fire Power 16 by Robert Kirkman, Chris Samnee, Matthew Wilson

Savage Avengers 25 by Gerry Duggan, Patrick Zircher, Javier Tartaglia

Crush and Lobo 5 by Mariko Tamaki, Amancay Nahuelpan, Tamra Bonvillain

Check out this episode!

[biostudents]

MY TOP 5 FAVORITE TV SHOWS/SERIES ON NETFLIX

1. Stranger Things

This thrilling Netflix original drama stars Golden Globe-winning actress Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, who lives in a small Indiana town in 1983 -- inspired by a time when tales of science fiction captivated audiences. When Joyce's 12-year-old son, Will, goes missing, she launches a terrifying investigation into his disappearance with local authorities. As they search for answers, they unravel a series of extraordinary mysteries involving secret government experiments, unnerving supernatural forces, and a very unusual little girl.

Ratings: 10/10

I can't wait for the next season. Ito yung isa sa mga tv series na hinihintay ko mag-release ng next season. Sobrang ganda nito.

2. Lucifer

Based on characters created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg, this series follows Lucifer, the original fallen angel, who has become dissatisfied with his life in hell. After abandoning his throne and retiring to Los Angeles, Lucifer indulges in his favorite things (women, wine and song) -- until a murder takes place outside of his upscale nightclub. For the first time in billions of years, the murder awakens something unfamiliar in Lucifer's soul that is eerily similar to compassion and sympathy. Lucifer is faced with another surprise when he meets an intriguing homicide detective named Chloe, who appears to possess an inherent goodness -- unlike the worst of humanity, to which he is accustomed. Suddenly, Lucifer starts to wonder if there is hope for his soul.

Rating: 8/10

Pinapanood ko parin siya 'till now. I stopped watching this noong holy week kasi feeling ko nagkakasala ako for watching dark movies/series (just kidding!) Ni-recommend ito sakin nung friend ko. The fallen angel is too hot to handle.

3. Chilling Adventure of Sabrina

This adaptation of the "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" tale is a dark coming-of-age story that traffics in horror and the occult. In the reimagined origin story, Sabrina Spellman wrestles to reconcile her dual nature -- half-witch, half-mortal -- while standing against the evil forces that threaten her, her family -- including aunts Hilda and Zelda -- and the daylight world humans inhabit. Kiernan Shipka ("Mad Men") leads the cast in the titular role of the show that is based on a comic series of the same name.

Rating: 10/10

Still waiting for the next season! Sobrang love ko lahat ng characters dito. If you're a fan of dark fantasy, watch it.

4. American Horror Story

An anthology series centering on different characters and locations, including a house with a murderous past, an insane asylum, a witch coven, a freak show, a hotel, a possessed farmhouse, a cult, and the apocalypse.

Rating: 8/10

Sobrang disturbing nito sakin. To the point, nasasama sa panaginip ko yung ibang scenes hahaha pero maganda naman. Kinikilabutan ako kapag manonood ako nito. Hindi ko natapos yung ibang season kasi natakot ako pero still nasa list ko parin ito. I just don't have enough time, maybe on summer...

5. Rick and Morty

After having been missing for nearly 20 years, Rick Sanchez suddenly arrives at daughter Beth's doorstep to move in with her and her family. Although Beth welcomes Rick into her home, her husband, Jerry, isn't as happy about the family reunion. Jerry is concerned about Rick, a sociopathic scientist, using the garage as his personal laboratory. In the lab, Rick works on a number of sci-fi gadgets, some of which could be considered dangerous. But that's not all Rick does that concerns Jerry. He also goes on adventures across the universe that often involve his grandchildren, Morty and Summer.

Rating: 9.5/10

One of my favorite dark-comedy animated series. I love all the episodes kahit na maraming cuss words and sometimes, violent yung scenes. Astig ito. P.S sorry sa gif 'yan yung nahanap ko na hindi fanmade.

---

So ayun guys, kung mapapansin niyo, more on dark, thrilling, adventure, fantasy, horror kasi ito mostly yung favorite genre ko. Mas gusto ko yung medyo badass yung datingan plus may kasamang gore ganun. I-recommend ko ito sa inyo na panoorin niyo, it's worth watching naman.

[thegloober]

10 Shows to Watch This Fall

by Brian Tallerico

September 24, 2018   |  

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For almost two decades now, I’ve used this time of year to pick out the best of the new offerings from the broadcast networks, adhering to the tradition of the standard “Fall Preview” that one would find in magazines like Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide. Part of it was being old-fashioned, but another part was that the broadcasts still adhere to a September/October launch schedule for a great deal of their returning and new programming, making a look at their entire slates easier than a company like FX or AMC, who sprinkle debuts throughout the year. Well, we all know that the broadcast nets don’t mean what they used to—the fact that no regular primetime show on them won an Emmy last week may be the final nail in this particular coffin—and the 2018-19 new shows just aren’t worth writing about at length. Trust me. So we’re mixing it up this year. With so much to watch across all the cable and streaming services, what should you pay attention to? What do you want to pick out from the crowd?

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10. Something on Network TV?

Odds are there will be at least one hit in the crop from CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and The CW. Last year it was “The Good Doctor”; the year before it was “This is Us.” People will probably watch “Magnum P.I.” but not feel good about it. On CBS, “FBI” has the chance to breakout as it’s very much in the model of the “NCIS” procedural that has done so well for the network. The CBS sitcoms (“The Neighborhood,” “Happy Together”) are atrocious, but so are the FOX ones (“The Cool Kids,” “REL”). For a sitcom hit you might like, ABC offers “The Kids Are Alright” and “Single Parents” both ensemble comedies in the ABC Family Sitcom mold—and I don’t mean that as an insult as shows like “The Goldbergs,” “The Middle,” and “Black-ish” have found fresh material within it. Having only seen one episode of each, they’re impossible to judge as a whole but are two of the few shows on the nets I want to watch again. NBC’s “I Feel Bad” is halfway decent, but again, too soon to tell. “Manifest” is not the “LOST” clone you’re hoping for and “New Amsterdam” is smug nonsense. Speaking of smug, “A Million Little Things” really wants to be your new “This is Us” and the cast is strong enough to possibly make it so, but this is a daytime soap masquerading as something more profound. So, to recap, maybe ABC’s “Single Parents” & “The Kids Are Alright” and CBS’s “FBI.” That’s all I got.

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9. Big Mouth (Netflix, 10/5)

Netflix has suddenly become an adult animation powerhouse with hits like “Bojack Horseman” and “Disenchantment,” but my favorite is this Nick Kroll and John Mulaney odyssey into teen hormones. The first season was ridiculously raunchy and hysterical, featuring a fantastic voice cast that includes Kroll, Mulaney, Jenny Slate, Fred Armisen, Jason Mantzoukas, and a show-stealing Maya Rudolph. It’s incredibly for adults only but also truthful about adolescence in ways that most shows aren’t.

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8. Into the Dark (Hulu, 10/5)

Shows like “Black Mirror” and “Sherlock” have stretched the definition of a limited series, actually winning the “TV Movie” Emmys in recent years, but this feels like what could more honestly be called a series of films for television than anything else. Jason Blum produces a series of horror flicks for Hulu, premiering one a month, and each offering is a horror tale inspired by the holiday of the month in which it premieres. So the October premiere, “The Body,” has a Halloween feel; November’s “Flesh & Blood” will be set at Thanksgiving. Could be fascinating. Could be just a bad straight-to-video horror a month under a neat banner. We’ll see.

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7. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix, 10/26)

Kiernan Shipka seems born to play the title role in this adaptation of the hit comic series of the same name, a dark reimagining of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” I may have been more skeptical before “Riverdale,” which shares a creator with this series and remains one of the most consistently interesting shows on network TV. (Yes, I’m serious. It’s much better than you think it is.) There are also rumors that this is going to be honestly dark—not just CW Dark—as the series was reportedly inspired by ‘70s horror, including “The Exorcist” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” Sign us up.

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6. Forever (Amazon Prime, on now)

There aren’t enough people talking about this excellent streaming dramedy, probably because Amazon made it so hard for critics to do so before it airs. I’ll avoid complete spoilers, but the cuffs are off a little bit now that it’s on the air, and I think it would actually draw people to know that this is more “The Good Place” than a standard relationship drama. It’s smart, funny, and insightful about modern marriage. And it contains Maya Rudolph’s career-best work to date. Our Allison Shoemaker has already reviewed this excellent show.

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5. Camping (HBO, 10/14)

We can all forgive Jennifer Garner for that “Peppermint” nonsense if this new HBO comedy ends up being half as good as it could be. Surprisingly low on buzz given it premieres in a couple weeks, this Garner vehicle was created by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner and co-stars David Tennant, Janicza Bravo, Brett Gelman, Juliette Lewis, and Ione Skye. Garner plays a perfectionist who takes her husband, played by Tennant, on a camping trip for his 45th birthday. Chaos ensues. Plus, bears.

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4. Homecoming (Amazon Prime, 11/2)

This thriller from the creator of “Mr. Robot” got a lot of buzz after premiering a few episodes at TIFF this year and it’s easy to see why. Look at that cast—Julia Roberts, Stephan James, Bobby Cannavale, Shea Wigham, Alex Karpovsky, Dermot Mulroney, Hong Chau, Jeremy Allen White, Sydney Poitier, and Sissy Spacek star in a show about “a caseworker at a secret government facility, and a soldier eager to rejoin civilian life.” Amazon took another step this year with its first series Emmy win for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Could this be its second?

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3. The Romanoffs (Amazon Prime, 10/12)

Matthew Weiner’s first show since “Mad Men” sounds like a fascinating experiment, billed as an anthology series that will follow multiple characters who may have a shared ancestry in the Russian royal family. Of course, everyone wanted to work with Weiner, which means another ludicrously stacked TV cast. This one includes Aaron Eckhart, Corey Stoll, Noah Wyle, Christina Hendricks, Isabelle Huppert, Jack Huston, Amanda Peet, John Slattery, Diane Lane, Ron Livingston, Radha Mitchell, Griffin Dunne, and Kathryn Hahn.

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2. The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix, 10/12)

Mike Flanagan has become one of the hottest young horror directors with films like “Hush” and “Gerald’s Game,” and he’s going back to a holy text in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, already adapted twice as feature films called simply “The Haunting” (the first one rules, the second one not so much). With the room to expand on his style and storytelling skill in a series, this could easily be one of the best shows of the Fall.

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1. Maniac (Netflix, on now)

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I’ve already made it clear how strongly I feel about Cary Joji Fukunaga’s daring mind f**k of a TV series, and it’s been fascinating to see how people are responding to it now that it’s available. As I suspected, there are people who think it’s just about the best thing on television, and just as many who think it’s just about the worst. And I love it. The most memorable shows are often the ones that create the most conversation and people are talking about “Maniac.” And I suspect they will be all season long.

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