2020s Horror: Glass Half Empty

I mean it when I say that I was optimistic at the start of the decade. 2020, for as sparse as it was (and maybe because of that), sported an encouragingly solid ratio of good movies to bad movies. It seemed for a hot second that Hollywood might just be the biggest casualty of COVID, but somehow those reptiles survived what was supposed to be the apocalypse, and the only thing rising from the grave this October will be movie theaters.

Looking back on it now, nearly 3 years in, I can say that cinema is headed in an even worse direction than it was at the start of the previous decade. Schlock is getting worse; superhero media is decreasing in quality and increasing in abundance; talented filmmakers are putting out some of their most mediocre work to date. When I took a step back and assessed the past 3 years as a whole, I was pretty shocked by which movies landed in my "top 20" (so far), because some of them are movies that...I didn't like very much.

So, I decided to narrow the scope of the list even more to the one genre that I felt was producing the "best" movies of the decade thus far: horror. Unsurprisingly, some bad movies still cracked my top 10, and half of my top 16 were bad movies. Below you'll find that very list. Half bad, half good, which presents me with a choice: be optimistic or not? See the title of this post for my answer. And in the meantime, here're the horror movies I partly suffered through and partly enjoyed over the past 3 years.    

 The Good

1. The Shadow in the Cloud  

Heavy reliance on CGI drags it down a bit, but it’s unquestionably the best screenplay and soundtrack on this list (it beat Stranger Things to the punch with “Hounds of Love,” but nobody cared). Ultimately, a better movie about misogyny than Promising Young Woman. Punchy pop art done right. 

2. Gretel & Hansel

Barebones plot, consistently creepy visuals, and a musical score befitting October. All in all, a pretty unambitious movie compared to some others that ranked lower on the list, and that’s the biggest takeaway: more filmmakers need to master the ‘rules’ before trying to break them.   

3. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

“Horror/comedy” to put it reductively, which I find is the easiest way to categorize Kaufman’s films. But when you see his name you know what to expect: talkiness, neuroses, and existentialism undercut by self-deprecation. This time, it’s all of that plus a new ingredient: spooky surrealism, making it Kaufman’s freshest outing since Malkovich. Five bags of popcorn. 

4. Nope

The reception of this one fell somewhere between ‘lukewarm’ and ‘polarizing.’ I sympathize with its detractors to an extent, because it’s not the alien movie I wanted, but then again none are. Points for originality, and for making clouds, of all things, suspicious. If nothing else, Jordan Peele gave us that: something new to be wary of. How long’s it been since a horror film did that?   

 

5. Barbarian

More twists than a Twizzler. Structurally it follows the Psycho formula, which is exactly my type of movie, and Justin Long is my definitive Scream King. It falls apart so spectacularly in the final 15 minutes that I was awed by its chutzpah. For better or worse, I’ll remember it. 

6. Candyman

Brutal kills, scary villain, memorable score, overwritten script, and a bad ending. Yup, sounds like Candyman. I haven’t seen all the slasher reboots of late, but this one looks to be the best. 

7. Old

What was that about bad endings? I’m noticing a pattern. This is the third movie in a row to stumble in its finale (and it won’t be the last!). Thankfully, horror is more about the journey than the destination, and this journey is off-beat, funny, horrifying, moving, campy, and profound. An even weirder cocktail than Ending Things.  

8. Men

Sigh. “A day late and a dollar short” describes Alex Garland’s entire filmography. The guy just never quite sticks the landing, does he? But again, I’ll defer to the whole journey/destination thing, though this one’s ‘journey’ is the least rewarding of the Good section. Still, though, great performances and some genuine scares. 

The Bad

9. Malignant

Everyone celebrated this “intentionally bad” schlock when it was spat into theaters. Tells you something about the disdain people have for modern movies. As for the film itself, I’ll just say that a giallo done in the style of a video game adaptation is something I didn’t know I didn’t want. Now I do. 

 

10. Host

One or two spooky moments, but overall an inoffensive “whatever.” It’s not as good as Unfriended, which isn’t a very good movie, yet it managed to crack the top 10. Welcome to the suck.  

11. Pearl

According to everyone, including the guy who made Kundun, it’s a shocking, disturbing, horrifying, wild experience that you won’t soon forget. I kept waiting for that movie while I was watching it. Instead, what I got was the La La Land of horror movies: a tame, two-dimensional pastiche that wouldn’t turn the heads of anyone who’s ever seen a garden variety slasher. I never watched X, and assuredly won’t now. 

12. Halloween Kills

It deserves the reputation of the Rob Zombie films, and by the looks of it, it’s on track to replace those as everyone’s go-to “worst Michael Myers movie.” But is it really the worst one? Who cares. 

13. The Empty Man

It’s rare to come across an actual ‘cult movie’ these days, but this isn’t a cult I’m interested in joining. There’s probably a pun in there somewhere about the movie’s plot, which I think involves a cult? I don’t remember. 

14. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Marketed as a horror film, but hardly one at all. More like an early 2000s teen mumblecore drama with an atmospheric affectation. There’s a scene where the main character sleeps. 

15. Crimes of the Future

Vivid prose puts images in your head. Prosaic screenwriting puts words in your head. When Cronenberg’s characters speak I feel like I’m listening to a biotechnology audiobook.  

16. Titane

Kind of a “turn your brain off” type of movie, much like Ducournau’s debut. It functions on the same basic, visceral, single-serving level as The Human Centipede, except it never gets gross enough to be truly visceral, so instead you just sit there with your brain turned off.  

Reaction Videos: Filmed By A Home-Studio Audience

   As a kid my predominant pop-culture diet was sitcoms, I'd be in front of the TV every Monday night for CBS' comedy line-up (Two And A Half Men, Still Standing, King Of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond were my faves) and when I went to my Grandparents' house on the weekend I'd binge Nick At Nite's run of The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. Laugh-tracks were reassuring, validating and, for the sake of my naivety, instructive when the more 'adult' jokes went over my head. Of course, the older I got, the more aware I was of how canned the laughter was. I despised it for the obvious phoniness and manipulation but, I realize now, it made me feel lonely. I didn't spend a lot of time with people outside of the idiot box and, when I was around someone for an extended period of time, all I wanted to do was show them my most cherished media so I could watch them watch it; sleepovers meant watching Fear And Loathing for the 30th time while inflicting it on someone for their 1st time - I was constantly chasing my own 1st Time again. That chase was especially difficult during the 2020 Lockdown. Going to the movies was at the top of the list of shit I missed, holed-up in my apartment. I'd had a steady, almost gluttonous diet of movies thanks to my roommate's 2-year stint at our AMC theater; he'd get me in for free so, naturally, I was spoiled. When the pandemic hit...I realized I'd taken all that for granted. I didn't just miss the big screen, the 4k resolution, or the wall-to-wall booming sound; I missed the communal experience.

  Reaction Videos are a lot like laugh-tracks but with a pulse, like the theater experience, but smaller...that is, those that aren't 'canned.' Like anything, it's a Gumpian box-of-chocolates odyssey finding the right ones. The wrong ones:

I've watched these and they're both complete bullshit

  I hate when they're performing. Reactions videos are magical when they're authentic, so, when they seem too aware of the camera and how their audience will perceive them: I scroll past that clickbaity desperation. They're usually overreacting or sitting there with virtually no expression whatsoever - an annoying binary. You can usually tell by their obnoxious Thumbnail Face.

Here are the realest reaction channels on YouTube:

  The first 'Reactor' I'd gotten into, courtesy of Jake, was
BigQuintIndeed

   It's spring 2015 and the new Kendrick Lamar album had come out. Jake emphatically turned me onto it and then suggested I check out BigQuint's reaction to it. At first I was, weirdly, insulted that he wanted to me watch it; I grew up in the 2000s, the heyday of trashy Reality TV, and at the time when 'reaction videos' took off, they were roped in as Reality TV. Some culture writer had claimed that people would be 'in a reality show where they watched reality shows' and, despite how Charlie Kaufman that description was, my interest was nil. Eventually, though, my misgivings withered and curiosity took hold. I've now seen his reaction to To Pimp A Butterfly so much that Jake and I still quote it to this day. Aside from being quick-witted, blunt, and charismatic, I appreciate Quint because, whether he's dancing, shouting, laughing, crying, tossing out killer one-liners, or accidentally breaking his chair getting rowdy - he gets lost in the content. There's nothing performative about his infectious energy: this is how he'd be even if the camera was off. His channel is the example of what a Reaction Channel should be. He doesn't have consistent output, unfortunately*, but he's one of the most entertaining and influential to ever do it.

  Notable Reactions: The Life Of Pablo, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, Run The Jewels 2, BLONDE, The Big Day, To Pimp A Butterfly

*I guess it's fortunate because he's not reacting to shit he doesn't care about so he's never going to force something fake. I respect the process even if I miss his presence.

LM Reactions

   Since I missed out on LOST and Sopranos when they aired, Breaking Bad was my first appointment television obsession and it became part of my personality that I LIKE BREAKING BAD, YOU SHOULD WATCH IT. Now it's one of the biggest non-anime series with First Time reaction videos - which makes sense, it's a clinic on shock-and-awe television. Rewatching BrBa by myself is still great but there's something about watching others experience it. Most notably, I got to feel the same rush of goosebumps that Walt's "Run." gave me at the end of Half Measures 12 years ago when I see it have the exact same effect on this couple in Serbia. More than that, though, the one in white--Lola--offers insights that enrich my own rewatches; she's perceptive while Milena is intensely expressive and visceral. They're a great mix and, when they both lose their collective shit, it's sublime.

  Notable Reactions: Breaking Bad, El Camino, Better Call Saul

 The Normies

  Their videos made me feel the least-lonely during the pandemic; a roomful of enthusiasm and thunderous laughter from a tight-knit collective of friends and family. Also, Community is my favorite show but I live on an island with it; no one I know personally, outside of these parasocial relationships, watch it/enjoy it. The Normies adore it and it's a fucking joy watching them fall for it like I did, it gets some of their biggest laughs and they're so in tune with its absurdity.

  Notable Reactions: Community, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, LOST, Halloween Kills

 

Brandon Likes Movies

  It took me a while, but... I adore Brandon. I used to find him lame and would hate-watch his videos. But then it hit me that he's like a character on Joe Pera Talks With You: inoffensive, well-meaning, wholesome, and, most importantly, honest. Like Joe Pera, he's kinda got a Bob Ross/Mr. Rogers vibe going; He never cusses, he points out the obvious, and his voice almost reaches ASMR levels of whispery. Even when he finds something especially funny or shocking, he barely raises his voice - it's like his parents are sleeping in the next room. His lack of cynicism took me from ironic mockery to outright endearment: he truly wants to enjoy everything he watches, there's no prejudging. But he is discerning: when he doesn't like the filmmaking in a movie, he doesn't hesitate to critique. That said, sometimes he's hilariously naive and maybe I ironically enjoy him being kinda dopey. Either way, he's worth checking out and maybe falling for, like I did.

  Notable Reactions: It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Death Proof, Bone Tomahawk, Brawl In Cell Block 99, Mulholland Drive, The Exorcist, Breaking Bad, Uncut Gems

Red Letter Media

   The best channel on YouTube. I could write a post for each one of them: Mike, Rich, Jay, Jack, Josh, Jessi, Jim, Colin, Freddie Williams. Macaulay Culkin, Patton Oswalt, Len Kabasinski. They watch shitty old VHS tapes ranging from genre to genre - notably horror, sci-fi, and action movies - like a more cynical, grounded, and sometimes drunk version of MST3K/RiffTrax. There are even training videos, self-help tapes, children's videos, after-school specials, workout videos, senior living video brochures, and the dreaded seminars. Or they'll unearth scams, schemes, and cons for get-rich-quick endeavors that rightfully faded to time. My favorites are self-made clout-chasing Barney The Purple Dinosaur wannabes who never made it big (clowns, magicians, or crude mascots with shitty moralizing). RLM unearths this awful shit and endure it for us.

    Notable Reactions: Every episode of The Best Of The Worst

TwinsthenewTrend

  As we saw with the gatekeeping of Metallica and Kate Bush from older Stranger Things fans, there's a weird, entitled, almost possessive impulse by old people to 'protect' their nerd shit. My mantra is: leave the kids alone. Why get in the way of them discovering shit on their own, even from a TV show? TwinsthenewTrend's channel proves just how beautiful that can be. Yeah, I said beautiful. Watching young people get goosebumps from old-head shit is downright infectious and I can't remember the last time In The Air Tonight gave me chills like it does watching these two get lost in it. They clearly have a deep love for music and I cherish this shit.

  Notable Reactions: Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight, Dolly Parton - Jolene, Queen - Don't Stop Me Now, Nina Simone - Feelin' Good, Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

PLANET VULTERN

 

PEARL is a Mia Goth showcase

  When I read reviews as a kid there was a lot I didn't relate to, or even understand, really. When critics would say things like "this actor disappears into the role" I lacked the capacity to really know what that meant because all I saw were my favorite actors devoid of the characters they were playing (no matter who he played, Bill Paxton was always just Bill Paxton to me). It wasn't until I saw Charlize Theron in MONSTER that I got it. There's a point in that movie where all I saw was Aileen Wuornos, Theron had literally disappeared before my eyes. I distinctly remember that giving me goosebumps and I wanted to turn the movie off - in fact, that's all I remember about it. Mia Goth, who also looks and acts a lot like Wuornos, brought back that tingle in my spine with PEARL.

  No one screams quite like Goth, she's both a Scream Queen and an absolute fucking banshee of a horror villain; In SUSPIRIA her wailing is agonizing and painful but in PEARL her shrieks are terrifying. It got to a point where I was anxious that she was gonna raise her voice again and, when she did, I couldn't wait for her to stop. But she also has a whispery, weepy last act monologue that's creepy, tragic, haunting, and darkly funny. Along with everything leading up to it, this makes for the best horror performance since Toni Collette in HEREDITARY. She is absolutely unhinged in this movie, a manic-pixie-nightmare of desperation, loneliness, resentment, and delusional hope that leads to disturbing cheeriness.

  What's also impressive is how quickly it followed X. You rarely see movies--especially [horror] sequels--get made quickly and still come out really fucking good. Red Letter Media talked about this: You can have it cheap and good, but it's not gonna happen fast (just look to Halloween 5 and Child's Play 3 for notoriously awful rush-jobs). Ti West was stuck in a 2-week pandemic lockdown after wrapping X in New Zealand so he and Goth wisely spent their time coming up with a backstory for Pearl and her eponymous prequel was born.

  As a character study this not only enriches a movie as lukewarm as X but operates on its own as a scary, tense, horny, funny, mean, and immensely sad portrait of psychopathy. That said, it's shot like a Golden Age Hollywood epic with lots of bright colors, sweeping landscape vistas, and warm lighting - it works to emphasize the brutality because, in Pearl's world, she wouldn't want it dark an' dreary.

 A

Amazing Grace...how sweet the sound

Music. Ships. Ships! Ships!

Jack Finney's 1954 novel is a story that has been adapted four times during four different decades. First in 1956. Then in 1978. Abel Ferrera took a crack at it in 1993. The fourth version was on 2007. Why do we keep returning to this story? The 50s were a time of the McCarthy hearings and the Red Scare. The 70's pod people were a stand-in for new age group think. The 90's version was about military authoritarianism. The 00's one...well, the less said about that one the better. Ignoring that one, we have three directors fully capable of crafting an effective thriller: Don Siegel, Philip Kaufman and Abel Ferrera. Siegel and Ferrera worked in genre pictures before and after their take on the body snatcher story. What makes Kaufman such an interesting choice is that he didn't really have genre cred leading up to or after his film. We got The Right Stuff and should all be grateful for the one-two punch. 

There's a genuine sense of unease from the get go. The first example being the priest (Robert Duvall in an awesome cameo) on the swing. Michael Chapman's cinematography lends a pseudo-documentary feeling to the film. We see a man running in the background while Elizabeth (Karen Allen) is walking down the street. Background characters are seen staring at the main characters. The sense of disorientation is overwhelming. In fact, the first two thirds play out almost as a conspiracy thriller. Something in line with the likes of what Alan Pakula was doing during this time. When the sci-fi elements do start getting introduced, it makes it all the more palpable and frightening. 

The scene in question comes during the 3rd act. Where Matthew and Elizabeth see a ship and hear Amazing Grace, a song about hope and rebirth. The song selection is outright sinister. "What happens to us?" Elizabeth asks in an earlier scene. Dr. David Kibner responds "You'll be born again into an untroubled world. Free of anxiety, fear." as he injects her with a needle. A means of sedation so the process can be quick and painless. Now I don't know if a pod accidentally left it on, but I'd like to imagine they put Amazing Grace on on purpose. To not only give a sense a false hope for anyone who hasn't been taken over yet, but to recontextualize the meaning of the song to suit their beliefs. This isn't the end. It's just the end of living a body racked with fear and anxiety. 

 

It's a sense of hopelessness that pervades the rest of the film and is only punctuated with an exclamation point from a gaping, screaming mouth. 

At the Reels of Madness: HorrorFest 2022

This time we will be summoning the Old Ones. Dagon, Yog- Sothoth, Shoggoth, Azathoth, and Cthulhu will all be gathered around the table for a festival of films set to satiate their appetites. 

Cosmic horror is a subgenre that's made me feel some type of way for a long time. For this season in particular, I will be checking out films that I haven't seen: The Void, The Color Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror. Along with old favorites like In the Mouth of Madness and The Mist. This 'theme' isn't meant to encompass the whole season. It's a throughline. In the broader scheme of things, I will be taking a 31 New to Me Horror Films Challenge. 

TOMES OF TERROR

I will forever be chasing that feeling of dread when watching a movie or reading a book. What I've noticed is I find it more in books than films nowadays. Movies rarely scare me. Accordingly, I've set aside a handful of works of fiction that promise to get under my skin. That's what the blurbs on the dust jackets say at least. 

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

I never fully read the book my favorite horror movie is based on. I plan on rectifying this in October. 

The Troop by Nick Cutter

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of kids into the Canadian wilderness for a three day camping trip. What starts off as good natured tradition turns into outright horror when a shockingly thin and voraciously hungry man stumbles into their campsite. 

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

A 1976 Oliver Reed starring movie was made from this. While I'm not a big fan, I hear the source material is much better. A classic haunted house story that was an influence on King's The Shining. 

The Auctioneer by Joan Samson

The story of John Moore, his wife Mim and his mother, it is a tale of a small town being quietly overrun by auctioneer Pearly Dunsmore. Stephen King named it as an influence on Needful Things. 

To Be Devoured by Sarah Tantlinger

Andi has an insatiable desire to taste dead flesh. The vultures circling outside her home taunt her to come to understand the secrets hiding in their banquet of decay. Her girlfriend  tries to help Andi battle her inner darkness. This is a novella and I've heard nothing but good things about it. 

Gone to See the River Man by Kristofer Triana

Follows a serial killer fanatic on her quest to meet Edmund Cox. Edmund tells her she must go to his cabin in the woods and retrieve a key to deliver to a mysterious figure known only as the River Man. 

Negative Space by BR Yeager

Four teens in a small New Hampshire town abuse a hallucinogenic drug called WHORL to cope with a suicide epidemic. 

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories by HP Lovecraft

HP Lovecraft is a name so synonymous with the subgenre of Cosmic Horror that it's been decribed as Lovecraftian Horror. As such, I will be tackling several of his short stories. 

The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti

Ligotti blew me away the first time I came across his work. This was a holy grail find for me earlier this year. It compiles 45 of his stories written from 1981 to 1996.  

The Dark Descent

As with the last two spooky seasons, I will continue to read some stories from this compendium.