Bird Box (2018)

For reasons I'm sure you can guess, I've been feeling more inclined to watch vaguely (and explicitly) apocalyptic films, lately. I don't want disease, because... too soon... but zombies and other stuff is fair game. With this in mind, it seemed like a good time to give Bird Box a try, as the initial "meh!" reviews put me off when it first dropped on Netflix. How bad could it be, though? I was still interested enough to chance it.

The first time I heard about this I thought (cw: Harry Potter) "HORROR BOGGART!" and it still stands, to be honest. Directed by Susanne Bier, based on a story by American novelist Josh Malerman (the screenplay by Eric Heisserer) we join the story switching between current day and flashback, meeting Malorie (Sandra Bullock), her sister (criminally under-used Sarah Paulson!) and gradually some other characters in a Dawn of the Dead (2004) type ensemble cast of people stuck together in one location. 

Trope roll call!

• Sexy, tough female
• Tattooed, creepy skinny guy who wants to fuck (it's Machine Gun Kelly but I'm old and don't know who that is *shrug*)
• Grumpy widow (hi, John Malkovich)
• Funny black dude
• Soft-hearted lady who makes dubious decisions
• Competent/kind/hot war veteran

Malorie stands out at the obvious lead here. She's tough, smart, empathetic - and heavily pregnant. She doesn't take shit and doesn't suffer the selfish whims of others gladly. Throughout this flashback we see the incredibly rapid end of the world (as they know it) from weird news stories ("don't worry, it's happening in another country, not here" - gulp!) to people behaving oddly, to full on societal crumble in a matter of minutes.

I am a stone cold sucker for tipping point apocalypse stuff, so this may have been my favourite aspect of Bird Box. The subtlety of the initial weirdness, paving way for the eventual riot and complete destruction of humanity. I dig it, although this stretch of the movie is pretty predictable for anyone remotely aware of the narrative beats of this genre. 

End-of-world ensemble emotions roll call!

• Suspicion
• In-fighting
• Bonding
• Double-crossing
• Loss
• Deception

You know what I'm talking about.

The threat to these characters works well enough; you either lose your mind and commit suicide upon seeing the monsters, or you lose your mind and try to convert others to look at them. There's some not-very-gross-but-still-cool eye effects work, too.

What didn't catch for me were the gigantic leaps in logic and suspension of disbelief required for this story. I've said many times before that when I, Jo, say this, it's a big red flag. I don't usually get this shit stuck in my throat with movies; I'll pick up just about anything you are putting down. However, Bird Box puts down a little too much. Between driving blind from a suburban neighbourhood to a supermarket literally only using the GPS (and said device not functioning the way normal ones do) to lapses in logic when it comes to personal safety when looting... this was a lot for me swallow from a film that was just okay.

It also confirmed something I already knew: I am a horrible person. I turned to my partner and said "I hope one of the kids dies in this". Oops? But I did! I needed something to sink my teeth into! They didn't have the courage to do anything other than mild peril, though.

Speaking of, interestingly (but not surprisingly) the book this was based on had a much more downbeat ending. Malorie reaches her destination, but rather than a paradise of smiling people and a former school for the blind, the book describes a place where the inhabitants have willingly blinded themselves so as not to fall prey to the monsters, and the "sanctuary" offers little more than what the family had already. Points deducted for shaving the sharp edges off of that, Bird Box producers! 

Apocalypse-lite. Streaming on Netflix now.

Stephanie (2017)

This was an interesting one.

We're plonked down seemingly in the middle of Stephanie's story (an impressive performance from young Shree Crooks). Alone in her house and looking after herself while doing perilous things that made even a child-free person like myself wince, she talks to her cuddly turtle as if he were real, but there is clearly another entity here, too. Stephanie doesn't seem shocked about this. Scared, certainly, but not surprised. She goes about her day as normally as possible, reveling in her parent-less existence and also weeping for them to come home, occasionally hiding from a "monster" we only hear as it prowls around the little girl.

Before the story develops fully, there is a palpable sense of this being a traumatic experience told through the lens of a child's understanding and processing of something they can't quite grasp. This is one of the film's strengths, I think. It felt almost storybook at times.

Stephanie's parents (Frank Grillo and Anna Torv, freaking me out with her long, non-Mindhunter hair) seem confused and cagey around their daughter. There's a lot of talk about keeping calm. Stephanie's father is tender towards the girl; her mother less so. She's affectionate but guarded, often retreating a room of medical diagrams and Skyping with army officers. What on earth is going on?

The reveal did not come as a complete shock, to be honest. But it wasn't entirely evident, and it didn't lessen my enjoyment of the movie even so. This is a cool little story that successfully manages to convey a sense of fear and paranoia after a global crisis all while rarely leaving the upper middle class, suburban house. That the narrative ultimately pulls back so far as to leave the planet was... a choice, certainly. It's clear what they intended this to mean but I'm undecided as to how I felt about it after everything being so personal up to that point. Still, I enjoyed my time with Stephanie.

This is a Blumhouse Productions movie, directed by Akiva Goldsman and coming in at a very doable 86mins of runtime. It's streaming on Netflix at time of writing.

Mom and Dad (2017)

Mom and Dad plays like a zombie movie if the undead were swapped for psychotic parents. Seriously stylish, from the beautiful retro opening credits to the expert use of music (satisfyingly Carpenter-like in places) to the rich cinematography, but also rapid and unforgiving in plot (you've got to respect a film that starts by showing a mother leaving her baby in the path of an oncoming train) this packs a hell of a lot of fun into its not even 90mins.

Which, when you realise it was written and directed by Brian Taylor, the writer/director of the Crank franchise, makes perfect sense!

We meet a white middle class household. Mom, dad, big sister and little brother. They're the kind of people who have those motivational/aspiration script-y signs everywhere in their home. The scene looks kind of perfect but quickly we see that, of course, things aren't that way.

Mom (Selma Blair) does a typical white woman "I'm an ally!" move of apologising to her Chinese housekeeper for something she deems offensive said at breakfast, but in the process offends the woman more. Dad (Nicholas Cage) seems close to his son, but at work turns the photo of his kids face down to jack off at his desk before taking a nap and ignoring a call from his wife. He's obsessed with his youth and all the opportunities he missed out on to have the life he does now.

No one is particularly likeable. But that's okay.

One of the best aspects of Mom and Dad is that we see the story unfold from both perspectives in the central family. As things start to go batshit the kids fight to stay alive, but more interestingly, we're shown what mom and dad are doing, too. It's chilling and hilarious how rational all the adults are about trapping and murdering their own children. Everything else about them is the same apart from this sudden, insatiable, specific urge to kill and it's highly entertaining to watch!

This was an excellent find after some false starts one evening. For sure worth checking out if you're in the mood for something blackly comic. Mom and Dad is fast, funny, mean, and streaming on Hulu at time of writing.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

The Poughkeepsie Tapes is on Tubi right now! Tubi comes through again!

After a serial killer leaves a cache of tapes to be discovered by New York murder investigators, we're shown "choice cuts" of the decades of footage; from the disturbing to the horrific, to the downright weird, while context and background are given on those featured.

Ya girl got some spoilers ⬇

We watched this on the brink of my being home alone for a couple of nights, and I'm REALLY pleased I didn't save it for then. And not because of the strange balloon stuff.

At this point, this film had become somewhat infamous to me, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. What I got was a fictitious crime documentary that's often downright uncomfortable to watch. One scene in particular I couldn't get out of my head for a couple of days. Many aspects - including, obviously, the fact that it's found footage - contribute to this feeling very grounded in reality. 

Full of bleak moments and clips of terror and torture, this story is successfully very, very creepy. A thread that runs through it is one particular female victim (Stacy Chbosky as Cheryl Dempsey) and her abduction, imprisonment and forced complicity through physical and mental torture. 

Her interview and the information we're subsequently told about Cheryl is shattering. Hell, her entire story is shattering. This is probably the film's strongest aspect as it gives a heart to the story - even if it ultimately dissects that heart in front of our eyes.

❝I don't know what you want me to say...❞

− Cheryl Dempsey

As someone who deals with intrusive thoughts about home invasion (and yet watches horror movies and listens to true crime podcasts almost non-stop 👋🏻) the thought that his guy just moved on, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer style, and set up shop elsewhere is terrifying. The audience witnesses him begin, escalate, shatter countless lives through murder, torture and the justice system itself - then simply disappear. The only reason the police ever found the tapes was because he wanted them to.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was shot in a staggering fifteen days, and was written (along with his brother Drew) and directed by John Erick Dowdle (As Above, So Below, Quarantine, Devil). He is also married to Stacy Chbosky. It must have been incredibly intense to direct her in some of these scenes.

If you like your scares stark, this is worth checking out. Not for those seeking buckets of blood; it's understated and implied a lot of the time, views often obscured or distorted so that we're forced to fill in the blanks. Nasty and unforgiving, if you're prone to movies sticking with you, this one just might.

Before I Wake (2016)

Yet another title that's been on my list for some time - I can't remember how I even came to add it? Perhaps because it's Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Hush, Gerald's Game, The Haunting of Hill House series and the forthcoming Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep).  I like Flanagan's "voice" and style - Oculus being the weakest I've seen, and I feel like I'm in the minority there - and was eager to see where this one fell in my personal spectrum of hits and misses of his work.

Some spoilers incoming!

We join Jessie (Kate Bosworth) and Mark (Thomas Jane) as they near the end of an adoption process, after the tragic accidental death of their son. The little boy they bring into their home is named Cody (Jacob Tremblay) and he has a special gift: when he sleeps, his dreams and nightmares manifest as tangible apparitions in the vicinity. 

At first this is something spellbinding, but soon the bogeyman (known as the "Cancker Man") who stalks Cody's nightmares appears, and we learn that it has the power to hurt and kill.

This reads as quite a basic plot, and it is, but there are some little touches to it that kept me invested. Jessie goes through a spell of manipulating Cody's gift in order to see her dead son again; filling his mind with anecdotes and visuals then drinking coffee all night to stay awake in case an apparition appears.

Her decision to give Cody sleeping pills and make excuses to husband Mark how this was helping them was so cold! And Jessie is the one who ultimately survives! Poor Mark (and poor Thomas Jane for having to wear that bad wig, honestly) didn't have much to do but manages to be both common sense and conscience to Jessie, before being startlingly "absorbed" by the "Cancker Man".

Two moments stick out in my mind after watching this. That of a vision of the deceased son Sean, eyes wide, repeating the same words over and over again; and the scene of Cody's previous foster father hugging a vision of his dead wife - only, as the camera shows her face, his voice over explains how Cody was too young to remember (and therefore dream) her correctly. The woman we see is a terrifying facsimile of a human.

Flanagan has a lot to impart about grief, doesn't he? Oculus and ...Hill House were both heavy with sadness along with chills. Before I Wake fits into his oeuvre pretty well, with muted tones of set design and characters listless in beautiful houses that feel too cold and somehow too big for their occupants. 

I did call the reveal about 5mins before it was explained, but the flashback was heartbreaking enough for me not to mind. Maybe because I lost my dad to a terminal illness, I don't know... Adults can barely deal with that reality, so I can't imagine a small child trying to comprehend it. Your mileage may vary on this aspect of the film especially, but I found where it could have lost me with a potentially silly and/or overly sentimental explanation, this was awful in just the right way.

For a movie that comes across a little Conjuring-universe in its marketing, I enjoyed this more than I expected to. There are some moments that lean into the "simple summer blockbuster" horror vibe (as ever, no judgement, it has its place) like jump scares and eyeless ghosts... but there's also an interesting story woven through this. It's a great concept, and even if this didn't reach its full potential, it was still absorbing enough to keep me watching.

Streaming on Netflix at time of writing!

Cherry Tree Lane (2010)

Not NW10...

This is an English movie, even if one variation of the artwork clearly shows an American-style house and a white picket fence. It's actually set in North West London, and was written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams (another of his horror outings was darkly comic The Cottage).

That's... better...?

Cherry Tree Lane reminded me of both Funny Games and Eden Lake, and though it's neither as cerebral as the former nor as devastating as the latter, it still manages to be pretty riveting and successfully create tension with "only" a mostly one-room setting and a lot of dialogue. 

It never truly reaches heights of being scary (or at least, it didn't for me) but home invasion is always going to be unsettling... and here the invaders are not dramatic, masked, silent ghouls of unknown motive; they are loud kids with bad attitudes, little empathy, and when it comes to leader Rian (Jumayn Hunter, who actually starred in Eden Lake also) a real streak of cruelty.

The plot couldn't get much simpler; married couple Christine and Mike (Rachael Blake and Tom Butcher) settle down for an evening in - if I had one complaint, it was that the setting up of their dislike for one another was done so painstakingly, we were led to believe something would happen later to explain this, but it doesn't - and while they're eating dinner, a group of teens ring the doorbell and push their way into the house, taking the pair hostage. They say they want to speak to Sebastian, Christine and Mike's son. He's due home within the hour and they're going to wait. They assault Mike to subdue him and tie both up with gaffer tape.

What follows is a slow, stressful climb in unease as time passes, tempers fray and cruelties heighten. Much is done with off-screen violence, using the classic "we'll just have you hear what's happening and imagining far worse than we could ever show/afford to show" to great effect. Screaming and thumping reverberate through the house on a couple of occasions, and it makes up the nastier moments of the film as both the audience and other characters grimace and think about what's happening.

Even though this is a white middle-class couple up against working class kids, it never particularly feels like A Statement On Class. Honestly it feels more straightforward than that. It feels real in the sense that you can imagine Sebastian (whom we wait the entire runtime to see and barely catch a real glimpse of, a touch that I liked) is a mouthy little shit who acts like he's a big deal and got caught saying the wrong thing about the wrong person. I have known people like this - I think we all have. 

As nasty as Cherry Tree Lane gets, it never feels over the top. There are also some stand-out singular moments and shot compositions; watching one of the gang browse the DVD shelf in slow motion, tossing them aside, and the appearance of Christine in the foreground towards the end.

This one was a bit of a grower, but ultimately it left me feeling satisfied that I'd checked it out. I've been feeling pretty uninspired by horror movies of late... or locked into a perpetual scroll of streaming services through fear of wasting time on something shitty. There's so much shit out there! This piqued my interest - the clincher being it runs less than 90mins - and I'm glad it did. Oh, and anyone remember UNKLE? They did the music!

Cherry Tree Lane is currently streaming on Tubi! Honestly, Tubi is making me re-evaluate some life choices. It's free, their catalogue is MASSIVE and even if you have to wade through some crap, they have gems hidden in there too. 

I'd recommend giving this a spin if you want a short, sharp, English take on home invasion.*

*I feel I ought to say, however, CW: sexual assault. It's handled without exploitation, or lingering on the abuse like many movies tend to, but heads up that it happens here. 

Brightburn (2019)

Brightburn is clunky with exposition, light on character development, and even if jump scares catch me out occasionally, they still make me roll my eyes... but this movie is still hugely fun and worth your time.

While never reaching heights of what I'd call a "great" horror movie, it has enough wallop where it counts; notably with its gore and willingness to go further than you're probably expecting it to.

Us (2019)

 

❝We're Americans.❞

Hi! So I know I don't tend to review new stuff. This is because I feel a weird kind of self-imposed pressure for having an opinion that's somewhat topical...! Buuut I wanted to get some thoughts down about Us. This kind of starting writing itself without me making a conscious decision. So here we are :)

Okay firstly, let's talk about this fact from the IMDb trivia page:

Jordan Peele gave the cast ten horror films to watch so they would have "a shared language" when filming: Dead Again (1991), The Shining (1980), The Babadook (2014), It Follows (2014), A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Birds (1963), Funny Games (1997), Martyrs (2008), Let the Right One In (2008), and The Sixth Sense (1999).

This list does two things: reminds me that I need to see Dead Again, again, (it was a taped off the TV favourite of mine, back in the day) and it gives some clue as to the calibre of storytelling and overall atmosphere that Us was reaching for - and in my opinion, succeeds in capturing.

And honestly, those film choices simply make my horror/thriller nerd heart happy. Pun intended: Peele is clearly one of us.

I'll say no more other than what's already out there with regards to plot: the Wilson family are on holiday when doppelgängers of themselves wearing red overalls invade their summer home, intent on forcing them to take part in some kind of ritual called "the untethering".

This film just kept turning down avenues I wasn't expecting and, as ever, that's truly the best way to experience it.

Worthy of mention though are the performances from the central four: Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide, Winston Duke as dad Gabe, and Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex as their children, Zora and Jason. 

Instantaneously I believed in this family dynamic and all their superbly drawn little idiosyncrasies. From Winston's amusingly (and adorably) feckless father-figure, eliciting eye rolls; Wright Joseph's bored teen; Evan Alex as the "weird" little brother still into masks and magic tricks, and finally the force that is Nyong'o, whose performances are quite simply fantastic.

Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker also star as the delightfully loathsome bougie family "friends", the Tylers. They have twin teen daughters, to further the doubling/doppelgänger weirdness. Moss doesn't have much to do, but that's fine; she has a tonne of fun as Kitty Tyler, a sloppy WASP who clearly can't stand her husband or kids. The later scenes with this family are a great blend of humour and violence.

The more Us unfolded, the more I loved it. And yes, okay, I guessed a beat or two, but that didn't stop any of the gut-punch-like enjoyment as this peeled back to a story that is both brutally simple and simply brutal.

There's nothing like a shattering final shot in a horror movie, so enjoy this one while never being able to hear "Les Fleurs" the same way again.

And join me, won't you, in obsessing over the "untethered" mix of "I Got 5 On It"...




Us is in theatres now and hopefully smashing records and expectations all over the place. I recommend you go and see it, and then go see it again ✄✄✄


Argh, there's so much I haven't covered here! Partly through fear of spoilers, plus the need to sit with some of the epic themes or see this film again to fully be able to process it all. I may do a follow-up post exploring things a bit more - or at least giving links to further reading from voices better placed to comment than mine.

Bonus Jo-went-to-sleep-thinking-about-this content:

The Devil's Candy (2015)

The Devil's Candy was pretty much buried on Netflix, and it's only because I regularly make a pass through the horror section that its artwork caught my eye (see above - how could it not?). So I read the blurb, took a swift look at the IMDB and Letterboxd pages (more to see what its average user rating was than anything else) and that was enough. Onto the list it went.

This was written and directed by Sean Byrne, whose only other horror credit seems to be The Loved Ones. The plot revolves around a close family of three (mum, dad, daughter) moving into a new house and strange, dark forces at work both inside and out of their new home. 

Daughter and father metalheads 

The house seems to speak to those with an open enough mind to hear it, including dad Jesse (Ethan Embry - who has come a LONG way since Empire Records) and Raymond (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a troubled individual who used to live there.

Jesse is a struggling artist and takes over the garage/barn area of the new place to paint. However, even for a metal fan, what ends up being committed to his canvas in this new studio takes an extremely dark turn.

Going into rapture-like states to create these images, Jesse loses all track of time, painting solidly for hours on end and failing to pick up his daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco) from school on more than one occasion.

The images he creates are frightening. The reason he's creating them, we learn eventually, is extremely tragic.

Taking place during an unnaturally hot Texas summer, this feels oppressive and intense. Jesse most of all is seen sweating and/or shirtless, a panicked and pained expression permanently on his face as he tries to make sense of what is threatening his family. 

❝He's no mask in a Halloween store, he's not what you see in the movies. He is an active, violent, anti-God personal reality. And as much as we refuse to admit it, he lives through us.❞
− TV Preacher

An "active, violent, anti-God personal reality" is a perfect description of the villain in this movie.

I could not shake how much Raymond looked like Harvey Weinstein, too. Just to add another layer of evil repulsiveness on top of an already detestable character.

It's not just in atmosphere that this film succeeds; stylistically too, The Devil's Candy knows what it's doing. Watch for the use of light in the final shot, and for the scene with cross-cutting between paint hitting the canvas and blood spilling from a murder. There really isn't much gore to be had in general here, with the more brutal stuff happening off camera, but the glimpses of a bathtub dismemberment are more than enough to unsettle. 

This one may be my favourite new discovery so far this month. Simple, satanic, stylish, and streaming on Netflix now. At 1hr19mins it's definitely worth the time commitment.

Verónica (2017)

There seems to have been an annoying tradition over the past couple of years, where a new horror film will come out to headlines of "This Is The Scariest Movie Ever!" or "Netflix Users Can't Finish This Movie!". As I recall, Verónica was one of the films that got this treatment.

And I get it. It creates a buzz around the new release and one way or another - through people seeking a scare, or to prove they can handle it, or just plain curious - it gets viewers. The problem I find though is that this buzz kind of infiltrates my brain and creates hype where there wasn't any (and wasn't any needed) before. It's like going to the cinema and right before going into the screen, someone tells you the film you're about to watch is the best film ever! How can it possibly live up to that?

Obvious observation time: Verónica is not the scariest film ever, and it's easy to get through it without having to turn off in fright. It kind of reminded me of [REC] which, I learned later, made perfect sense as it's from Paco Plaza, the same director. It's reminiscent in places, rather than in any way similar; way less visceral, more contemplative and creepy. It's the quieter teenage sibling of Plaza's breakout film.

Based on a true police report, this depicts the alarming supernatural occurrences that take place after Madrid teen Verónica (Sandra Escacena) and two schoolfriends dabble with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse.

This is not a standard tale of possession, rather, it's the pursuit of a young woman by dark forces that she never intended to invite into her life. Verónica was trying to contact her deceased father but instead is caught in a week-long struggle against faceless humanoid demon figures stalking her house, threatening to harm her and her three young siblings.

Apart from teachers and nuns, their lives are rather adult-less, with their single mother working hard at a bar every evening and weekend. Verónica as the oldest is caretaker to her sisters and brother, and every weekday is a repeat of the one before: getting everyone ready and walking to school (established early on as a responsibility she takes seriously, so when we see it gradually break down, we know that shit is going wrong).

It must be mentioned that the kids in this film are one of its strongest points; their acting is so natural and the bond between Verónica and her siblings is warm and very apparent. They are cute, good kids - which makes the looming shadow over their existence all the more worrying.

Likewise, Escacena is amazing as Verónica (or "Vero" as she's known), charting the decline from normal 15 year old - old beyond her years nonetheless, due to circumstance - complete with fickle and catty friends who very much reminded me of the pain of being that age; to a bruised, isolated and exhausted husk of her former self. 

There's a couple of really interesting scenes where Verónica watches a girl in an apartment across the way from her, and it's clear this girl is meant to be her mirror image, a representation of everything Vero is not. She's seen dancing carefree to music (at the same time Vero is loading a washing machine with urine-soaked bedding from her little brother), talking affectionately with her father and having a love life. Verónica has none of these things, and the likelihood of her ever getting them becomes slimmer as events progress.

It's been a while since I've seen [Rec], so I can't remember how artistic Plaza was able to get with that found footage nerve shredder, but this had several moments of creative touches I wasn't expecting, including an incredible transition as Vero gets out of bed and walks across her room that was so cool I had to rewind to see it again. Others are not quite as flawless, but still effective.

This probably isn't going to give genre fans sleepless nights, but it is a very decent telling of a very chilling, supernatural story. It's streaming on Netflix now.

Dead End (2003)

If you'd have told me this was an episode from the 1995-2002 run of The Outer Limits series I would have totally believed you. 

That's not meant in any way to disrespect Dead End - for one, I loved The Outer Limits! - but it's just that in its 1hr25min runtime it's so simple in premise and so restrained, almost coy in its gruesomeness, reminiscent of such TV-friendly horror back in the day. And it feels delightfully nineties, too, mainly due to daughter Marion's style (those highlights and that lilac palette!) and a passing mention of Marilyn Manson.

Alexandra Holden, Ray Wise as daughter and dad, Marion and Frank.

However, Dead End is indeed its own movie. Written and directed by French natives Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa, it's technically a French movie, even though it was filmed in the US, and all dialogue spoken is in English by a majority American cast.

The plot: It's Christmas Eve, and the Harringtons are driving to visit family when dad Frank (Ray Wise, always a delight to watch) decides to take a shortcut. What they encounter as a result is actually the opposite of a "dead end" in the literal sense, as for the rest of the movie they find themselves on a seemingly neverending road through a forest.

In frightening succession, horrible, urban legend-worthy things start to happen: they pick up a woman in white, standing dazed at the roadside clutching her baby; Marion's boyfriend Brad is seen being driven off in a hearse (hammering at the rear window, clearly still very much alive and terrified); son/brother/horny brat Richard meets a sticky end, and they pass a sign for a town that seems perpetually unreachable. The road never turns - cue some really lovely shots of endless trees and their little station wagon trucking along - and yet they keep coming back to landmarks from earlier on.

When the family begins to get picked off, some of the remaining members have a hard time holding it together, and it's these scenes above anything else that I found unsettling. Genre pillar Lin Shaye as the mother makes your skin crawl as she grapples with what's going on, reverting to a childlike insanity that is at once so horrible and very darkly funny (see: eating an entire pie, saying she's fine and then a quick cut to her puking in the background of shot).

The moments of the Harringtons just struggling, arguing and trying to remain calm are written brilliantly. Coming from a family not without its own dysfunction, I really enjoyed the dynamic of underlying love with a sheen of passive aggressive and irritated attitude. Just because you are all facing certain death together doesn't mean you're all suddenly going to get along!

I want to call this one "quirky" but I mean that in the best way. It's so odd at times but it all works together to make a solid, dark, entertaining film, right through to its "shock" ending - which also feels quite television script-y. Again, not a complaint! 

It's streaming on Shudder right now so check it out - and make sure to watch to the end of the credits.

The Children (2008)

I'd seen this before but mind-bogglingly never reviewed it. I really enjoy The Children so was excited to see it pop up on (you guessed it) Shudder recently. Definitely getting my money's worth from that service so far!

This is written and directed by Tom Shankland, and is a gutsy little horror story of two families together for the Christmas and the new year holiday. Two sets of parents, four small children and one surly teen all together in a huge house in the English countryside when one by one the kids fall ill to a mysterious virus and become distant, (even more) badly behaved... and homicidal!

This film works well for three reasons:

1. It keeps things simple
2. The violent set-pieces chug along nicely once things turn sour
3. It isn't afraid to boldly cross the line of basing a story on killer kids

The writing is solid - even if no one is shown as especially sympathetic! In fact one set of parents are particularly self-satisfied, boho-bullshit white middle class arseholes; with the obligatory passive-aggressive contest about whose kids are better/smarter, plus quiet competition over who is doing the better job at parenting. This all establishes a restrained tension in the house, even before things go seriously wrong.

The first act also perfectly captures (from my limited experience) the chaotic nature of children of a certain age. How, as adults, it's almost impossible to carry on a conversation without an interruption or scream/whine/cry for attention. The Children takes this very ordinary, real fact and plays with it: the natural naughtiness of kids takes on a sinister turn. Their normal boundary pushing involves more than just refusing to go to bed at a decent hour, it also has them picking up knives and slicing at the adults.

And let's not forget that the dynamic of kiddie killers is scary on a few levels. For one thing, the parents are going to take ages, if ever, to come around to the fact that they need to stop trying to protect, defend or reason with their offspring. They need to strike back against them, and that's often too little too late.

Then there's the repercussions of these horrors in the greater scheme of things: if this condition isn't widespread - which to be fair, in this film we're led to believe it is - anyone who manages to survive murderous children has probably had to take out a few in self defense. This is literally like a zombie movie, but the zombies are adorable little four-year-olds. So to make it out alive you must become one of the ultimate "evil" taboos yourself: a killer of children. It casts an interesting unpleasantness over the entire film, I think.

Shankland uses the young actors wisely, never making them do too much in the way of unnatural, "scary" acting (which can so easily come off as amusingly cheesy) instead choosing close-ups and quick, jarring cuts to make all the gruesome action make sense.

On top of all this, it looks stunning. Blood-splattered snow is rarely a miss, and like Last House On The Left (2009) there are some gorgeous tableau-like establishing shots in there.

It's streaming on Shudder at time of writing, but wherever or however you get your hands on it, I highly recommend that you do.