The Cabin in the Woods
By Steve Newton
The world is a very frightening place right now, what with all the horrific wars and the violent crime and the global warming and whatnot.
Many people seek an escape from the real-life horrors of today by watching scary movies, which means a lot of them are currently scanning the streaming channels, trying to find decent fright flicks.
The bad news is, there’s a lotta lousy ones out there.
So to save you the trouble of searching around, here’s my roundup of the Top 10 horror films currently showing on Apple TV.
These are my original reviews, which were published when the films were first released in North American theatres.
Have a happy, horror-heavy Halloween!
Hereditary (2018, A24)
Hereditary has been generating a lot of buzz lately as the scariest horror flick in years, and I gotta admit that it’s pretty damn frightening in spots. It’s also brutally unsettling throughout, so be warned.
The movie opens with a shot of a typewritten obituary, and the fact that it doesn’t include one positive word about the deceased in its three paragraphs sets the tone for writer-director Ali Aster’s punishing portrait of grief, psychological trauma, and Satanism.
Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense) stars as Annie Graham, a diorama artist working on a project for an upcoming big-city gallery exhibit. Thanks to the exquisite camerawork of cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, we are taken right inside the meticulously crafted rooms of the miniature homes Annie builds—faithful re-creations of the ones in her own house, a beautiful wooden mansion in a forest. (The film was shot in Utah.)
She’s joined in a mostly joyless existence there by dour husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), typical teenage son Peter (My Friend Dahmer’s Alex Wolff), and odd 13-year-old daughter Charlie (enigmatic newcomer Milly Shapiro).
At the funeral for her mother—the subject of the terse obit—Annie reads a harsh eulogy that portrays the matriarch as secretive, eccentric, and anything but the ideal mom. Soon after the dead woman’s grave is desecrated, a tragic and shocking car accident cloaks the family in despair. The Grahams seemed pretty messed up to begin with, but the recent events take things to a whole new level of anguish.
In obvious need of help, Annie is befriended by Joan (Ann Dowd), a woman from the grief-support group she occasionally attends, who raves about the therapeutic benefits of holding a séance to communicate with lost loved ones. But Annie’s guilt-driven attempt to contact the other side only proves that you should never, ever mess with the occult.
With so much real-life emotional torment going on, by the time Hereditary’s supernatural set pieces arrive you’ve already been horrified to the max. The wrath of Satan seems pretty tame compared to the suffering that damaged family members can inflict on one another.
Misery (1990, Columbia Pictures)
Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery is widely regarded by King aficionados as one of his most compelling and consistently terrifying works. The tale of a best-selling author held captive by his “number-one fan”, Misery is all the more frightening because it is real horror—you are left with the impression that it could definitely happen.
The flame-throwing kid from Firestarter or the haunted car in Christine can’t compare with Misery’s mutilating, psychopathic ex-nurse, Annie Wilkes.
When it was announced that Rob Reiner would direct the film version of Misery, King fans had reason to rejoice—especially in light of the wonderful job Reiner did turning King’s novella “The Body” into the smash hit Stand By Me.
Then William Goldman, one of Hollywood’s most admired novelist/screenwriters (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man) was hired to do the screenplay, virtually nixing the possibility of a crummy script ruining the film (as it has in other King projects).
The icing on the cake was the signing of James Caan to play the role of victimized author Paul Sheldon and accomplished stage actress Kathy Bates to portray villainess Wilkes. All the pieces were in place for the kind of horror film that is rare: the kind you remember.
The movie starts out with romance writer Sheldon sheltered in a Colorado hotel, putting the finishing touches on his latest novel—a highly personal one (like King’s own Misery) that he believes will finally win him the critical acclaim his past bodice-rippers haven’t.
After typing “The End”, and cracking a bottle of champagne to celebrate, he sets off down a mountain road to deliver the manuscript to his agent (Lauren Bacall).
But Sheldon drives right into a fierce snowstorm and winds up trapped and injured in his overturned ’65 Mustang. Enter Annie Wilkes, who rescues Sheldon from a snowy grave, pops his dislocated shoulder back into place, puts his broken legs in splints, and hooks him up to the old intravenous.
Sheldon regains consciousness with the belief that he’s been saved by a guardian angel—albeit a rather odd one. He starts to see the real Wilkes after letting her read his unpublished manuscript; she’s not impressed with his use of swear words and freaks right out.
But that’s nothing compared to her reaction when she buys his latest book and discovers that he’s killed off her favourite character, Misery Chastain. She demands that he bring Misery back to life in a new book, and when the wheelchair-ridden Sheldon realizes it’s either write or die, he complies—all the while nurturing his strength for that one shot at escape.
Because its protagonist spends most of his time recuperating in bed, Misery does drag in spots. Since we aren’t taken inside Sheldon’s mind to witness the physical and mental torment he’s suffering—or inside Wilkes’s own twisted psychoses—the psychological terror relayed so well in King’s book has to be conveyed by long, dialogue-intensive scenes.
But Caan and Wilkes are up for it, and their interaction is genuinely disturbing—and often quite funny (although the humour hits a serious low when Wilkes puts her considerable weight behind a well-placed sledgehammer blow).
Horror fans looking for cinematic shocks à la Carrie and The Dead Zone might have trouble with Misery, but those with more subtle tastes should enjoy its sinister, low-key tone. Like Stand By Me, Misery can’t help but broaden the audience for movies based on Stephen King’s work.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Orion Pictures)
In Richard Attenborough’s superb 1978 thriller, Magic, British actor Anthony Hopkins played a struggling ventriloquist who loses touch with reality and transfers the murderous side of his personality into his wooden dummy. Hopkins portrayed the doomed performer as so pitiable that–even while he was knocking off good guys (his agent, played by Burgess Meredith) and creeps (an Ed Lauter-portrayed wife-beater)–you kept hoping he’d somehow snap out of his psychosis and destroy the creepy doll that embodied his madness.
In The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins plays another sick killer with heroic tendencies, the imprisoned psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, and even though Lecter gains his nickname “Hannibal the Cannibal” by chomping on the inner organs of his victims, Hopkins once again manages to portray a sympathetic side to the human monster. He achieves this duality with a chillingly believable performance that even tops that of the always-great Jodie Foster.
Foster portrays FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who’s been chosen by her mentor, agent Frank Crawford (Scott Glenn), to interview Lecter in hopes of gaining some insight into the motivations of a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill”, who kills women and uses their skin to sew dresses. In return for clues and hints about Bill–whose identity Lecter knows–Starling must open up to him about her own tortured past (the death of her policeman father; her horrifying childhood memory of lambs “screaming” before slaughter). The odd psychological interplay between the gutsy, but green, Starling and the deranged, yet fascinating, Lecter provides the basic tone for Jonathan Demme’s well-made, insidious shocker, the same way it did for the Thomas Harris novel on which it’s based.
While the last film made from a Harris thriller (1986’s Manhunter) spent half its time dealing with the technicalities of investigative police work, The Silence of the Lambs forgoes the FBI lab and keeps the camera on Starling as her Lecter-inspired hunches put her hot on the grisly trail of Buffalo Bill, a.k.a. Jamie Gumb (played with giddy, demented relish by Ted Levine). Demme’s passion for vibrant colours and clever pacing makes the film’s few gore sequences–a decapitated head in a jar, a bloody fingernail jutting from a wall–all the more effective.
Following an FBI foul-up, the inexperienced Starling gets in over her head and is forced to take on the killer in a nail-biting showdown, and Demme, known for his quirky, stylish comedies Something Wild and Married to the Mob, leaves things wide open for a sequel. With director Demme and all the principal actors reportedly keen on doing the follow-up that Thomas is currently writing, it shouldn’t be long before thriller fans are lucky enough to see Starling and Lecter in action again.
It Follows (2015, Radius)
Every once in a while a low-budget indie fright flick comes along that makes everything on the major studios’ horror plate look like a pile of steaming crap. It Follows is that film, right now.
Maika Monroe is note-perfect as Jay, a pretty 19-year-old college student getting by in her average Motor City life. But while they’re out on a date, her new boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary), chloroforms her after sex in the back seat of his car and binds her to a wheelchair in her undies in the middle of an abandoned parking structure.
Just when you fear that It Follows might turn into yet another gruelling Hostel-type torture-porn epic, we learn that Hugh has only restrained Jay so that he can explain something very important to her. When she comes to, he wheels her around until they spy a naked woman in the distance, shuffling toward them. “This thing, it’s gonna follow you,” he warns. “Somebody gave it to me, and I passed it to you.”
Hugh tells Jay that she can only rid herself of the “follower” by sleeping with someone, but fails to mention that, while slow-moving, it’s powerful enough to rip her limbs off. The rest of the film is a terrifying portrayal of the goodhearted girl’s ordeal as she tries to save herself from the converging ghouls—visible only to her (and us)—without bringing death to those around her.
Writer-director David Robert Mitchell takes the puzzling premise of It Follows and runs it straight into your nightmares. He’s aided by a standout cast of young actors whose naturalistic performances play out against an eerie-as-hell soundtrack by Disasterpeace that echoes the spooky ’70s-style synth work used in drive-in movies by the likes of Goblin, Tangerine Dream, and John Carpenter.
Depressing footage of a decaying Detroit heightens the sense of hopelessness that fuels the engine of fear propelling It Follows, which ultimately leaves you heavy with dread and the notion that it’s the finest horror flick you’ve seen in years.
Get Out (2017, Universal Pictures)
If you only see one horror movie this year, let it be Get Out. And if you only see one movie of any kind this year, same thing. It’s about as entertaining as celluloid gets.
The film opens with a young black man wandering an upscale suburban neighbourhood at night, talking on his cell, expressing mild fear that he’s out of his inner-city element. Then a white car with an unknown quantity of passengers starts stalking him and doesn’t let up until he turns around to head back where he came from.
But before he gets far a tall figure in a knight’s helmet sprints from the shadows and chokes him unconscious, drags him back to the car, stuffs him in the trunk, and drives off.
So what unspeakable evil awaits the innocent captive, you ask? Hell if I’m gonna tell. I have way too much respect for writer-director Jordan Peele’s brilliant, bar-raising horror flick to ruin it for anyone. That’s exactly how I felt about 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods, the last fright flick to leave me totally slayed by its blackly comic commentary on the evil that men do.
Speaking of TCITW, that film also featured ace weasel-portrayer Bradley Whitford, who this time plays surgeon Dean Armitage, a self-proclaimed liberal who likes to brag that he would have voted for Obama for a third term. He and his laidback psychologist wife Missy (the consistently strong Katherine Keener) have invited their beloved daughter Rose (Allison Williams of HBO’s Girls) to their mansion in the woods so they can meet her new photographer boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya). He’s worried because she hasn’t yet told them that he’s black, and in Breitbart-era America, that can be cause for concern. But Chris is just a nice, easygoing guy who cares so much for her that he decides their love can trump any hate.
He’s wrong.
When the two lovebirds arrive they do their best to ride out the tide of awkward conversation and racially motivated tension, which is upped by the Armitage’s habit of employing black servants, and the freakiness ratio multiplies when Rose’s protective brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) shows up. Having honed his skills playing warped hick Caleb in 2010’s underrated The Last Exorcism, the scarily pale Jones brings just the right amount of casual creepiness and simmering anger to get the film rolling on its jolly nightmare-making way.
And what a ride it is! Who knew that Peele–best known for the edgy comedy skits of TV’s Key & Peele–would prove so adept at creating tone and building tension. And the top-notch performances he coaxes from all involved–including The Purge: Election Year‘s Betty Gabriel as weird smiley/teary servant Georgina and Stephen Root as twisted art-dealer Jim Hudson–keep you ever interested.
Peele no doubt had the most fun crafting LilRel Howery’s wiseass TSA agent Rod, Chris’s best friend, who could easily be one of his more outgoing Key & Peele homies. But Rod’s feisty comical presence doesn’t dumb down the movie the way it surely could have.
There’s hardly a moment during the keenly edited Get Out that isn’t either funny, touching, thought-provoking, or scary as hell. I’ve been reviewing horror movies professionally sans bullshit since 1988–although I wound up writing this one just for fun–and I can honestly say that it’s in my top 10 of all time.
Bravo, Mr. Peele. Bravo.
Is The Babadook a slow-burning, Repulsion-style psychodrama depicting a lonely woman’s paranoid descent into madness? Or is it more of a flat-out horror show that introduces a freaky new being—the titular pitch-black, long-taloned, top-hat-wearing demon thingie—to the fearscape?
Who cares? Fact is, it’s the most moving and memorable fright flick of the year!
Aussie writer-director Jennifer Kent’s impressive debut feature follows the day-to-day routine of nursing-home worker Amelia (Essie Davis) as she struggles to raise her intense six-year-old son, Samuel (the remarkable Noah Wiseman). Sam is a hard-to-control kid with a wild imagination who’s obsessed with devising ways to protect himself and his mom from the “monster” he thinks is coming for them.
He rigs homemade weapons that wind up either breaking windows or getting him in trouble at school. “This monster thing has got to stop!” declares his beside-herself mom, but of course it’s only starting.
It doesn’t help either of them that little Sam was born the day his father died driving Mom to the hospital. While the frazzled Amelia still deals with the tragedy of losing her much-loved husband—“It’ll be seven years!” proclaims her judgmental sister Claire. “Isn’t it time you moved on?”—Sam blames himself, thanks in no small part to insensitive taunts from kids on the playground.
Even before the Babadook shows up to spook the shit outta you—seemingly coming to life from the ominous pages of a children’s pop-up book—the offhand cruelty of tiny humans ramps the tension meter up to 10.
With her own family seemingly against her—along with her demanding boss, Sam’s strict teacher, and the snooping child services—the sleep-deprived Amelia’s shaky mental state crumbles in time with the Babadook gaining strength and making its move from the depth of her (and the now-sedated Sam’s) nightmares. Forget Insidious and its ilk, The Babadook is where it’s at for supernatural horror in the home.
The Cabin in the Woods is crammed with so many twists and turns that the mere thought of reviewing it and ruining the fun for others is scary in and of itself. But I don’t feel bad about revealing at least one huge surprise: it’s the best horror flick ever made in Vancouver.
A gaggle of attractive young victims-to-be head out for some weekend fun in what looks like your typical Friday the 13th–style slaughterfest, but for some reason the group’s every move is being tracked by a shadowy team using state-of-the-art gadgetry. The operation is overseen in a NASA-like control room by a pair of total dickheads—brilliantly played by Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) and Bradley Whitford (TV’s The West Wing)—whose manipulations drive the action once the human lab rats arrive at the titular location.
Why, exactly, these two assholes subject their innocent prey to deadly torment won’t be exposed here, but the hoops the victims are forced to jump through in order to survive (if they’re lucky) makes for some of the most exhilarating horror action since Scream revitalized the genre back in 1996.
Working from an idea of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Joss Whedon, cowriter and director Drew Goddard goes hilariously nutzoid, testing people’s preconceptions of scary movies while at the same time questioning humanity itself. Things just keep getting wilder and more intense as the shocks and bodies pile up, but the entertainment level never wavers.
The Cabin in the Woods really is the most fun you can have at the movies with your clothes on.
The Descent (2005, Pathé Distribution)
A few weeks ago, we went camping at a lake near Powell River, and by camping I mean sleeping in a camper. I chose to crash at the very back of the rig, against the wall in the little bunk above the truck cab. Maybe it was the mixture of hot dogs, Pilsner, and smores, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a freaky feeling. I felt trapped and had to get out of that cubbyhole quick. It was the first time in my life that I’ve experienced claustrophobia, and it wasn’t pretty.
The uncomfortable vibe returned last weekend, even in the spacious atmosphere of SilverCity Metropolis. It came while watching The Descent‘s six thrill-seeking girlfriends, on a weekend caving expedition in the Appalachians, squeeze themselves between tiny passageways of water and rock. Writer-director Neil Marshall, who’d previously impressed genre fans with his 2002 soldiers-versus-werewolves saga, Dog Soldiers, does a brilliant job of preying on people’s natural fear of physical confinement.
The Descent is a regular Das Boot for the horror crowd.
Mind you, the Second World War German U-boat crew of that film only had Axis torpedoes to worry about. Here, the six chicks run into a race of humanoid creatures with faces that resemble the batlike vampire from Salem’s Lot but who have much nastier dispositions. These blind but ferocious beings like nothing more than to rip open the tender necks and torsos of underground adventurers, but they find worthy opponents in this gaggle of adrenaline junkies, which include a blond Brit (Shauna Macdonald) who’s already survived the worst hell a wife and mother could endure.
The Descent is from Maple Pictures, the take-no-prisoners studio responsible for such gruesome terror titles as High Tension, the Saw films, and the ultra-disgusting torture epic, Hostel. So it goes without saying that the blood in this movie flows like an underground river; at one point, characters are actually submerged in it.
But the most disturbing scenes don’t involve the subterranean beasties getting their milky-white skulls impaled by climbing tools or their gooey eye sockets skewered by female fingers. Most of the audience’s squeals and squirms are reserved for the sight of a severely broken leg, the type that occurs on the world’s roadways and sports fields every single day.
It’s this skillful juxtaposition of the unreal and the common–along with believable performances, sharp editing, and crafty suspense–that makes The Descent a big winner. Although I wouldn’t quite agree with the joblo.com writer who claims it’s “the best horror-thriller since Alien”, I dare say that it’s in the running with The Hills Have Eyes as top horror flick of the year.
Event Horizon (1997, Paramount Pictures)
I’ve been a die-hard horror fan for most of my life, and the film that first got me hooked on the genre, when I was about eight, was a 1958 B-movie called It! The Terror From Beyond Space. It was about a spaceship that gets boarded by a vicious alien in the form of a guy in a rubber suit with a zipper down the back, but it scared the crap out of me.
As cheesy as It! was, it still became one of the prime influences for Ridley Scott’s excellent Alien—and a raft of other, not so swift, creature-in-space flicks. Because of the transcendent effect of my early sci-fi/horror viewing, I’m still a sucker for most of those films, and when I saw the teaser ads for Event Horizon, I was hooked. An endangered spaceship? Dead bodies floating around? Bring on the monster!
There is no monster in Event Horizon. But the good news is that it’s still a very scary, well-made, and engrossing film that should appeal to anyone who’s had enough of tongue-in-cheek sci-fi thrillers like Independence Day, Mars Attacks!, and Men in Black. The overall tone of Event Horizon is very dark, like a black hole.
This one’s definitely not for eight-year-olds.
Set in 2047, the film concerns a mission to salvage the Event Horizon, a prototype spacecraft that’s been missing for the past seven years. The seven-person rescue force is led by a no-nonsense captain, played by the always impressive Laurence Fishburne, and joined by the brilliant but troubled scientist who designed the craft (Sam Neill). As described by some technical mumbo-jumbo that puts the fi into sci-fi, the Event Horizon has been outfitted with a revolutionary “gravity drive” engineering process that allows it to travel faster than the speed of light.
Unfortunately for its deceased crew—seen ripping each other apart on a video log—it also wound up in another dimension, a place of “pure evil”. Now the spaceship itself is possessed, and the would-be rescuers are forced to confront their greatest fears in all manner of gruesome visions and horrendous assaults.
What saves Event Horizon from becoming some hokey Amityville Horror in space is the realistic performances of the cast—including Joely Richardson (Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter) and Apollo 13’s Kathleen Quinlan—and the strong element of psychological horror built into the script by first-time screenwriter Philip Eisner.
Director Paul Anderson (Mortal Kombat) knows precisely when to insert action elements to beef up the film’s terror quotient, and its atmospheric art direction and meticulous production design—which is on a par with that of the great-looking Alien films—makes the spooks-in-space idea frighteningly believable.
Eschewing the predictable plotting and happy endings of recent big-budget sci-fi productions, Event Horizon emerges as a truly twisted, nightmarish summer shocker.
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010, Paramount Pictures)
Wes Craven’s putrid My Soul to Take notwithstanding, the horror scene is looking pretty good these days. Buried offered real-time claustrophobic chills; Devil was better than any antichrist-in-an-elevator flick should be; and The Last Exorcism wrung unholy suspense out of a possessed-teen premise. But none of those films touches Paranormal Activity 2 for sheer jolt-you-in-your-seat terror.
It’s the scariest movie in years.
PA2 is, technically, a prequel to 2007’s extremely low-budget ($11,000) documentary-style hit about a couple whose daily routine takes a horrifying turn when they start videotaping unexplained goings-on in their house. There was only one camera running in Paranormal Activity, though, whereas in the follow-up, a mysterious break-in causes concerned couple Kristi and Daniel (Sprague Grayden and Brian Boland) to install surveillance cameras throughout their spacious California home.
Even when nothing’s happening you can’t help intently scanning the screen, trying to detect some semblance of movement through the static security lens. It’s an unsettling experience, especially when you are viewing the besieged family’s nursery, where toddler Hunter lolls in his crib.
Attention new parents! Get your nightmares here!
The Door in the Floor director Tod Williams skillfully orchestrates a vibe of mundane domesticity in the first 30 minutes, but just before your tedium detector goes off he starts injecting mild doses of dread. An insidious supernatural force invades the peaceful home like ghostly termites, gnawing at universal comfort zones before Williams shocks you to the core with a cooking pot or some cupboard doors.
Things get a little too much like Blair Witch near the end, shaky camera–wise, but it’s a minor quibble. Every single performance rings true, and the plot tie-in from the first film works seamlessly. The makers of Paranormal Activity 2 rejected the opportunity to rip off and cash in on its worthy predecessor, and thanks to them I feel proud to be a horror fan again.
Go here to read more than 350 of my reviews of horror movies released theatrically in North America between 1988 and 2018.