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Class of 2023: The Best Horror Movies of the Year

2023 did not produce the same glut of genre riches as the past few years, but it still delivered an intriguing mix of new and established storytellers, helming films that came together through an almost miraculous amount of talent and work from their respective crews. I only list the director and writer of each film, but I will continue to remind myself and others: movies only work because of collaboration, and next time you finish a movie, consider letting it marinate while you read the names in the credits.

Last year saw a daring (and weirdly underrated) new film from Brandon Cronenberg, two original (and wildly different) takes on the possession subgenre (one Argentine, another Australian), a wildly controversial experimental film from Kyle Edward Ball, an outlandishly comic genre-bender from Ari Aster, an emotional Japanese blockbuster, an esoteric study on nature and time, and at least a few excellent directorial debuts.

Read on for my subjective list of last year’s most compelling horror films.

When Evil Lurks (Cuando acecha la maldad)

Director: Demián Rugna
Writer: Demián Rugna

I watched Terrified (Aterrados) on Shudder a few years ago, and it put Argentine writer-director Demián Rugna firmly on my map of notable genre filmmakers. So when his follow-up When Evil Lurks (Cuando acecha la maldad) came out last year I made sure to see it in theaters.

Several key crew members return, including cinematographer Mariano Suárez, editor Lionel Cornistein, and production designer Laura Aguerrebehere; together, they create another supernatural thriller that oozes pure malignance and constructs a handful of the most memorable scenes of the entire year. The story approaches its subgenre with a fresh perspective, and by treating possession as a contagious disease, it unlocks a whole new set of rules—and new layers of subtext that invite discussion about community, bureaucracy, pandemic, and the enduring trope of urban/rural divide. When Evil Lurks is not perfect (the second half falls off a bit) but it conjures some unforgettable imagery and a suffocating sense of malevolence that just won’t quit. You can read my full review here.

Talk to Me

Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Writers: Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman, Daley Pearson

Of all the breakouts in genre filmmaking last year, there is probably none more noteworthy than that of the Philippou brothers. The Australian twins have come a long way from backyard wrestling videos, and now they have leveraged a successful YouTube channel into one of the most talked about horror films of 2023.

Talk to Me explores familiar themes (trauma, family, suicide) with a judicious blend of humor and tension, and at a crisp 94 minutes it feels refreshingly light on its feet (credit to a tight script and the editing of Geoff Lamb). If you are looking for what Talk to Me does right, look no further than its delightful summoning montage—an intoxicating synthesis of imagery and music (Richard Carter’s now-viral “Le Monde” remix briefly and ineffably interacting with Sophie Wilde’s rendition of Piaf’s “La Foule”)—all deftly edited into a sequence that had me smiling from ear to ear. There is an aspect of the identity politics that leaves me feeling ambivalent (Mia as a Black protagonist, unfairly punished for her heartbreak and rash decisions), but I don’t have the time or space to dissect that here. In short, Talk to Me is a fresh and exciting debut, and another genre hit for distributor A24.

Infinity Pool

Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Writer: Brandon Cronenberg

In 2020, the ferocious Possessor topped my yearly wrap-up. It’s a psychedelic, sensual, and brutally violent film that explores a heady sci-fi premise with remarkable self-assurance. Fast forward to 2023, and I’m puzzled by the lukewarm reviews for Brandon Cronenberg’s follow-up: the similarly challenging Infinity Pool, starring Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgård (and beautifully scored by Tim Hecker).

The psychedelia remains, as does the jarring violence—now in a setting that interrogates the relationship between the parasitic nature of wealthy White tourism and the Indigenous culture that it so often exploits. As in Possessor, identity plays an important role: if someone could make a copy of us, which would be the “real” one? Does it matter? Are we the people we think we are? Goth and Skarsgård are undeniable, and I was spellbound by the awful unwinding of a premise that sees, accurately, that power is corrosive, and there are different rules for rich and poor. Even though I wanted something slightly different from its third act, I was entranced by the journey, and left with plenty to ponder.

Huesera: The Bone Woman

Director: Michelle Garza Cervera
Writers: Michelle Garza Cervera, Abia Castillo

I often think of the horror genre as a hermit crab: sneakily utilizing the trappings of other genres to tell stories with heightened stakes and a primally unsettling emotional canvas. As John Carpenter said, “Horror is a reaction, it’s not a genre.” This is why it can be difficult, if not impossible, to neatly corral the genre: just as much as it is a set of tropes, horror is a feeling. Like the cordyceps fungus, horror reanimates the stories we recognize into something similar but frighteningly different—something that taps into our shared and individual traumas.

Huesera: The Bone Woman is the feature debut of Mexican filmmaker Michelle Garza Cervera, and it is a drama about a young woman trying resolutely to fit into the roles that society demands of her. We see, as the film progresses, the parts of her that she has left behind in order to become a wife, a mother, and a daughter. I am a sucker for any story that explores maternal ambivalence—an under-discussed phenomenon felt by many women, whose complicated and sometimes negative feelings about motherhood are compounded by misplaced guilt and shame. Cervera uses her debut to tell a queer story about the violence that is wrought by forcing conformity into a heteronormative culture, and I am thrilled to welcome a new storyteller into the genre.

Birth/Rebirth

Director: Laura Moss
Writers: Laura Moss, Brendan J. O’Brien

Oh, how I love a directorial debut. One of my favorite things about following the horror genre is being there when someone new bursts onto the scene—and appreciating the amount of effort and time it took to get there in the first place. The idea for Birth/Rebirth has existed in the mind of writer-director Laura Moss for over 20 years, planted there by Shelley’s Frankenstein and nurtured over time by Moss and their co-writer Brendan O’Brien.

Marin Ireland co-stars as an antisocial pathologist who rejects traditional femme maternity (and human connection in general), but is obsessed with the science of biological life. A tragic event sparks a collision between her and an unfailingly competent maternity nurse (Judy Reyes), and what unfolds is an old story with new breath in its lungs, and plenty to say about motherhood, femininity, and the ethics of medicine and science. A creepy and tender score by Ariel Marx imbues a haunting and subtle emotionality to a self-assured debut, and one of my favorite horror films of the year.

Godzilla Minus One

Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Writer: Takashi Yamazaki

I do not consider Godzilla Minus One (or any Godzilla film, really) to be a horror movie per se, but it has become a tradition to invite any deserving horror-adjacent films to my year end list. Toho’s surprising blockbuster hit has now surpassed $88 million worldwide (against a modest $15 budget), making it the most financially successful Japanese Godzilla movie of all time. Fans and critics are united in their praise for the film, and from a storytelling perspective it has accomplished what Legendary’s American “MonsterVerse” has so far failed to do: tell the human side of the story with heart and earned emotion.

Godzilla is one of the best and most successful examples of filmic metaphor ever created, and this is why no one will ever be able to tell a Gojira story like the Japanese: they experienced the horrors of nuclear annihilation, and the iconic kaiju will forever be a complex and emotional symbol for a country that had to rebuild (physically and spiritually) following the horrors of the second World War. Besides all the technical things that the film does well (it looks gorgeous on a $15 million budget—take notes, Marvel), its emotional poignancy comes from its depiction of a fractured national psyche, and the scars of a war that take generations to heal. When we are failed and disillusioned by our states (as we continue to be), we must learn how to take care of each other.

Beau is Afraid

Director: Ari Aster
Writer: Ari Aster

After the commercial and critical success of both Hereditary and Midsommar, director Ari Aster has achieved “must see” status for many movie fans. But even before the release of Beau is Afraid, the film’s discordant tone and exorbitant runtime had many of us scratching our heads. In a nutshell: Joaquin Phoenix stars as Beau, a haplessly anxious loner thrust into an Odyssean journey towards his deepest and darkest fears (mommy issues chief among them), prompting me to once again wonder what happened in Aster’s childhood to inspire the kind of familial strife we see now in all three of his feature films.

While it is difficult to neatly categorize, Beau is Afraid is a surrealist black comedy with horror elements, and it has inspired plenty of comparisons to the works and legacies of Kafka, Freud, Gilliam, and Kaufman. It’s a riotous, strange, and self-indulgent adventure, and I suspect that out of his three films so far, it will hold up least well to careful and continued scrutiny. But I am only hypothesizing, and have seen it only once (which is not enough to make a “definitive” ruling on a movie with so many moving pieces and big creative swings). What I do know: I laughed loudly at some truly demented sequences, and was seldom bored. This won’t be enough for some, but I feel compelled to reward it for sheer gumption.

Skinamarink

Director: Kyle Edward Ball
Writer: Kyle Edward Ball

Is there another horror film from 2023 as unlikely, and as deliciously polarazing, as Skinamarink? Several people in my screening walked out of the film, no doubt frustrated and perplexed by its obstinate adherence to lo-fi minimalism, and its outright rejection of traditional plotting and normal storytelling conventions.

There is no three act structure, no score, no recognizable story beats, and very little in the way of dialogue. Audiences curious about Skinamarink should know that it is an experimental film that purposefully tests the patience of its viewers by forcing them to slowly dissolve in its singular location: a quietly haunted house that seems to have trapped two children, existing in a dreamlike liminal state where time becomes nearly meaningless, and concrete reality a forgotten memory. The tedium isn’t a bug, but a feature, and the film’s appeal is correspondingly niche. There is something coersively meditative about sticking it out, and I can appreciate the experience of long unnerved boredom, punctuated by just one or two moments of hair-raising dread.

Enys Men

Director: Mark Jenkin
Writer: Mark Jenkin

For better or worse, 2023 seemed to be the year of the experimental horror film. It’s no surprise that these movies left many viewers flummoxed, but such is the territory accepted by the avant-garde. Enys Men was shot on a stony Cornish island over the course of just 21 days, with a scaled back production crew operating during the Covid-19 lockdown. Much of the appeal of the film is in the elemental appreciation of the region’s natural beauty, captured in grainy and organic-feeling 16mm.

I won’t pretend that I was swept away by the experience of watching Enys Men in the moment. The film, and its pointed avoidance of traditional narrative, seems to defy the prerequisites of its medium, and it leads to an achingly esoteric experience. But something about its “ecosophical” ruminations did manage to take root in my brain and expand after I wandered, bemused, into the sunlight.

It made me think about how we are not separate from nature, but intimately a part of it. It echoed the findings of the quantum physicists and Indigenous elders who have recognized our inability to interact with nature without altering it. Our scientific studies must try to account for the fact that we are of nature, and the very act of observation—of nature, of ourselves—changes things. Time, just a construction to help us cope with entropy, practices its steady campaign on the stone house and rusted tools of this small island, and on the mind of the lonely protagonist. The timing of your death doesn’t much matter to the cosmos. To live is to move among death at all times, coping however well or poorly with that fact, hopefully learning that to embrace it is to hold yourself closer to the universe.

January 9, 2024
Review: Thanksgiving (2023)

I saw Grindhouse in a crowded theater in 2007, and let me tell you: that shit played. It didn’t make a lot of money, but the pulpy Rodriguez-Tarantino double feature invited a nearly constant clamor from the audience—and this was no less true during the film’s handful of riotous spoof trailers. Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is now the third of those trailers to be fleshed out into a feature film (following Machete Kills and Hobo with a Shotgun), and it has enjoyed a surprisingly warm reception from both audiences and critics.

I’ve offered this disclaimer before and I will probably continue to do so: in general I am more interested in amplifying good and moving art than I am in negative reviews and takedowns. Many people work on a single movie, and movies are notoriously difficult to create. Making a good one is even harder, and the glee that some critics and audiences get from eviscerating a movie or artist is usually, in my humble opinion, cringe.

That said: I did not like Thanksgiving, and I do not like Eli Roth—as a director or, from what I can tell, as a person. My little review is not going to damage him (or subtract from the $30 million the movie has made so far), and if anything it will serve as a tiny little counterbalance to the film’s success, and the moderate praise it has won from critics and the horror community at large. So yes, I am going to dunk on Thanksgiving, because it is bad and because Roth gives me bad vibes.

The film begins with a farcically chaotic Black Friday at a Plymouth, MA superstore (the kind of outrageous set piece that Roth lives for), which serves as both over-the-top satire and villain-making moment for the mysterious killer that will tear the town apart one year later—donning a creepy John Carver mask and making good on the promise of all those gory kills.

Thanksgiving is ostensibly a throwback to high concept ‘70s exploitation films, but it feels more indebted to ‘90s slasher mysteries like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. The scratchy film grain of the joke trailer is replaced with a much glossier finish, and the movie consciously attempts to position itself as a modern slasher. We see this in the dialogue and setting, as well as the heavy-handed stabs at social satire—or what little there is of it.

As someone hungry for political horror films (subtextual or otherwise), thanksgiving as a cultural event holds so much promise. This is, after all, a holiday founded on a creationist myth of manifest destiny and blatant historical fantasy. I am deeply and morbidly fascinated by the lore of the United States, created quite necessarily to conceal and whitewash the evils of settler colonialism, and the acts of displacement and genocide that make it possible. If the horror genre is so favorably positioned to cast back on us our own culture and history (I think it has proven that it is), then this trojan horse holiday holds so much gooey and transgressive potential.

Now, I am not so naive to think that Eli Roth is (or ever will be) the one to make good on this kind of promise. Roth’s films, from Hostel to Green Inferno, show a disquieting pattern of misogyny, xenophobia, and exploitative male gaze. His filmmaking has matured somewhat (and Thanksgiving is not exploitative in these same ways), but his films tend to fixate on the spectacle of violence, while failing to coherently reckon with the politics they stir up.

Critics generally hated his early films, but for all the wrong reasons. The collective hand-wringing over violence in media is something we see in various forms over the decades, right up to a recent Fox News bit that hypocritically (and hilariously) chides—wouldn’t ya know it—Thanksgiving and holiday slashers like it. What their performative outrage willfully misunderstands is that violence in movies is not the problem; it is the context of the violence, the gender roles it frequently exploits, and a film industry (indeed, a world) with systemic sexism and racism problems.

Roth’s respectability, and the cultural impact of his filmography, is certainly up for debate, but I have trouble seeing his movies as a whole lot more than unfunny and mean-spirited sleaze. It’s not wholly unentertaining, but it’s also not the kind of horror storytelling I feel any urge to amplify. To be clear I’m not siding with the pearl-clutching moralists (I ingest lots of media violence, with relish), but I am saying that Roth’s movies tend to rip off better pictures, while practicing a clumsy and often damaging form of identity politics. Roth clearly loves the genre (and seems to think of himself as a boundary-pushing auteur), but he is very much a producer of derivative schlock, and he has never made a movie that I enjoyed.

Setting aside for a moment the film’s utter lack of interest in substantive political satire (the Wampanoag natives serve as a fleeting punchline and nothing else), the movie works only well enough to serve as low-functioning entertainment for 106 passable minutes. The inciting Black Friday massacre is fun enough, but it feels stuck in the mid-aughts (the capitalist “holiday” has declined since then for a number of reasons). The script, written by Jeff Rendell, struggles to capture the voice of modern teens (there is a distinctly how-do-you-do-fellow-kids quality to the dialogue and depiction of social media), and the whodunit slasher structure was done more deftly by Williamson and Craven in 1996. By the time the killer reveal comes around, it feels like the movie itself has lost interest.

If I have to say something nice (or maybe just passive aggressive), it is this: if you unfocus your eyes a bit and disengage large portions of your brain, this movie is fine. It passes the time, and there are some gory and entertaining set pieces. It goes out of its way to spare the cat, and that was a nice moment. It made me chuckle once. If you want to watch this every year around this time, be my guest. But the way some of you throw around the word “classic” is rhetorically erosive and downright silly, especially when applied to a decidedly mediocre-to-bad slasher that felt dated the moment it arrived in theaters.

Eli Roth recently posted an impassioned Zionist rant to his Instagram, and I am not feeling generous. If so many horror fans can rally around Melissa Barrera after her unjust firing by Spyglass (following pro-Palestine social media posts), then why can’t those same fans make some noise about Roth’s ahistorical diatribe that angrily parrots genocidal talking points from Israeli media? It does not sit well with me that Barrera loses her job, while Roth gets patted on the back (and financially enriched) for a mediocre slasher that exploits a settler holiday. As a director and storyteller, Roth thinks small, and makes small movies. You could feed a small country on the amount of potential left on the table.

December 1, 2023
Review: Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood

Guinea Pig (ギニーピッグ, Ginī Piggu) is a nasty little series of Japanese splatter films, and the second entry (written and directed by manga artist Hideshi Hino) is the most infamous. Unlike Devil’s Experiment (Ginī Piggu: Akuma no Jikken, the first in the series), this does have at least a semblance of a narrative—framed as a recreation of actual events involving the abduction and murder of a woman in an unnamed Japanese city.

More interesting than the movie itself (a grisly and sporadically effective special effects showcase, with just a whiff of poetic rumination) is the collection of urban legends that surround it—apocryphal or not. Charlie Sheen famously mistook a bootleg clip of the film for an actual snuff film before contacting the Motion Picture Association of America (or the FBI, depending on who tells the story). Authorities opened a brief investigation into the claim, before a making-of featurette put the case to bed. A copy of the series’ fourth film (not the second, as has been rumored) was found in the home of Japanese serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, which reignited a recurring conversation about the societal ramifications of violence in media. The film was broadly banned, and one British connoisseur of filth even received a £600 fine for importing a copy.

The subcultural mythology that has grown around this series (and Flower of Flesh and Blood in particular) recalls other notorious films like Faces of Death (an exhibitionist mondo film-turned-series that achieved surprising box office success) and Cannibal Holocaust—the godfather of the found footage film, which depicted authentic and inexcusable displays of animal cruelty (in addition to grotesque but fictional scenes of rape and murder). In many cases, public backlash is the best press a movie could hope for. Deodato’s short-lived murder charges only came about because of his own guerilla marketing for Cannibal Holocaust, and Britain’s infamous “video nasty” label (a reactionary moral response to the home video market of the ’80s) has become a badge of (dis)honor for unscrupulous and low budget splatter films.

Echoing the actions of the British Board of Film Censors in the early ’80s, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government tried to scapegoat the Guinea Pig series after the apprehension of the aforementioned “Otaku Murderer” (Miyazaki). And in the case of the British man fined for importing a copy of the series’ second film (26-year-old Christopher Berthoud), the prosecution argued that the film should classify as snuff, not because it literally is (an opening text in the film specifically declares that it is not), but because of the “impression [of realism] it creates” in the viewer. If we follow the rhetorical logic of their argument, we end up in an ethical quagmire with troubling implications for filmmakers and artists everywhere.

I am not trying to come out as an unequivocal champion for these types of films, and I stress repeatedly that we should view media with a critical and active eye. I don’t idolize filmmakers who abuse their crew, I don’t support films that carry water for colonialist systems, and I do my best to call out films that punch down at marginalized groups or exploit themes like Black trauma or violence against women. I am not recommending Flower of Flesh and Blood to others (who in their right mind watches this stuff?)—but I am defending its right to exist.

The key, I think, is to support, patronize, and take part in a robust arts industry (this is where I want my tax dollars going, rather than imperialist wars abroad), while, as audiences and critics, holding accountable those creators and works of art that might do cultural damage through regressive politics and problematic representation. In a world flooded with misinformation and bad faith propaganda, media literacy becomes a crucial tool in navigating an inherently political world of entertainment.

The appeal of these types of films is decidedly niche, but there is a whole underworld of extreme cinema and faux snuff that will always have an audience of curious weirdos. Am I proud to be a member of that club? Maybe that’s not the right word—but I support the legal right to tell icky and transgressive stories. I don’t blame anyone for skipping entirely the Guinea Pig series or its ilk (the vast majority of people do, as well they should) but at the end of the day this is simulated gore, existing (fairly benignly) in a global system of violent political economies. Let’s not blame the former for the material brutalities of the latter.

November 8, 2023
Review: When Evil Lurks (2023)

Three years ago, I wrote a review for Demián Rugna’s Terrified (Aterrados), a nerve-racking Argentine film about a violent haunting in Buenos Aires. It showed an instinctual knack for atmospheric tension and hair-raising violence, which did a lot to mitigate some uneven pacing and shallow characterization. Despite some flaws, it was one of the scariest films of the year and it left me hungry for more.

Rugna’s newest film moves out of the city and into the Argentine countryside, where two brothers discover a mutilated corpse in the woods before realizing that it is connected to a nearby “rotten”—a person whose body has been taken over by an unborn demon, threatening to be birthed upon the region like a supernatural plague.

In a subgenre haunted by low budget knockoffs and inelegant religious propaganda, When Evil Lurks (Cuando Acecha la Maldad) provides a fresh take on the possession film by rewriting the rules and building a mood wholly awash in corporeal and metaphysical dread. For lack of a better description, this film simply feels evil. Credit to the production design, score, and special effects for conjuring an atmosphere of inescapable malignance, the type of which we have felt before in films like The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and Hereditary. These are lofty comparisons, but it is only because Rugna’s films so far show a similar knack for mise en scène that feels both disturbingly tactile and spiritually poisonous. For insatiable fans of this particular slice of nastiness, this is as high a compliment as can be given.

The already perilous task of exorcising a demon is further complicated here by the unique rules of this rural haunting, and the viral (contagious) dimension of the possession presents a new set of ethical dilemmas. In a world where a coronavirus pandemic hasn’t ended so much as it has settled into a seemingly perpetual “new normal” (which continues to disproportionately harm the most vulnerable), the idea of a contagious evil hits unsettlingly close to home.

Much of the harm incurred in the film stems, directly or indirectly, from the actions of the protagonist (Ezequiel Rodríguez), in his human urge to protect those closest to him. The most horrifying scene in the film (a jaw-dropping sequence of affective horror) comes out of a well-meaning but ill-advised attempt to do just this. The film as a whole could be taken as a disturbing statement on the ramifications of human connection, and our inability to insulate ourselves or each other from unspeakable tragedy.

I’m not necessarily here to crown an outright classic of horror storytelling. The characters in both Terrified and When Evil Lurks tend to find themselves trapped in odious circumstances beyond their control, kept so busy by the plot and pacing that we see only a portrait of their character before they are annihilated—possibly undermining the emotional impact of their destruction. The internal logic of this metaphysical plague, as intriguing as it is, never feels fully consistent, and the second half of the film struggles to keep apace with its powerful opening act. There are places, emotionally and geographically, that I wanted the film to take us that never materialized—and I am left with a vague and lingering sense of dissatisfaction with the grisly outcome.

I must acknowledge that this frustrating sense of messy circumstance, human failing, and missed opportunities is indeed part of the point. The weakness inherent in our human character and social structures is a crucial part of the text that does work, and I have to give credit to Rugna’s (imperfect) script for utilizing the possession subgenre in a way that feels disturbingly relevant in a time of complex globalized interconnection and never-ending pandemic. We are, still, subject to powerful superstitions and selfish impulses, and in the real world these human flaws are exploited and weaponized by broad socio-political systems that care more about their own continuance than they do the people they are supposed to protect.

I am still working through my feelings for this script and its bleak conclusions (and may adjust my criticisms with time), but this much is undeniable: When Evil Lurks unfolds with a ferocious immediacy that is lacking in many other supernatural dramas, and conjures a sense of profound and inevitable doom that endures beyond the end credits. It is enjoying only a brief and limited theatrical run, but it is well worth the price of admission. If there is any justice in the industry, Rugna will be traumatizing us for years to come.

When Evil Lurks will be streaming on Shudder as of October 27. Trigger warnings for animal harm and violence involving children.

October 25, 2023
Review: Maximum Overdrive (1986)

In Stephen King’s long and prolific career, he has directed exactly one film. When asked why he never directed more, he responded: “Just watch Maximum Overdrive.”

The logline, dreamed up near the zenith of King’s infamous cocaine addiction, is this: when earth drifts through the tail of a passing comet, all machinery on the planet becomes sentient and intensely homicidal.

The mainstream adoption of the internet of things and the onset of generative AI has us thinking about sentience and ethics in new and scary ways, so there is a decidedly retro charm to the awakening of motorized and electrical machinery, still roughly a decade before the internet would revolutionize the world.

There is plenty of campy promise in the film’s nutty first act. An ATM calls King an asshole in an opening scene cameo. A drawbridge causes a multi-car disaster on a river. A psychopathic soda machine takes out a little league team as they run screaming. A blood-covered lawnmower sputters to life to pursue Deke (Holter Graham) down an eerily quiet neighborhood street.

When a collection of human survivors hole up in the Dixie Boy truck stop—besieged by a circling pack of murderous trucks—the momentum of those opening scenes (and the inventive silliness offered by the premise) downshifts into something like King’s The Mist: a psychological chamber piece without much of an idea where to go next.

Political commentary about our destructive interdependence on fossil fuels is right there for the taking, but I’m pretty sure that King mostly wanted an excuse to flatten people with semi-trucks. When you consider King’s ripping substance abuse, his utter lack of directorial know-how, and the language barrier between him and his own DP (Armando Nannuzzi, who would lose an eye in an on-set accident and sue King for $18 million)—it’s no surprise that the production was a steaming mess.

Still, it’s good for some campy mayhem, and it has amassed a modest-yet-loyal cult following. Maximum Overdrive is currently streaming on Pluto TV.

September 25, 2023
Review: Lust for a Vampire (1971)

In the shadows of the (seemingly) deserted Castle Karnstein, a 19th century finishing school for young women is about to experience more than its fair share of titillating drama. Forty years after the events of 1970’s The Vampire Lovers, the vampiric Count and Countess Karnstein resurrect their beautiful daughter Carmilla (Mircalla, played by Yutte Stensgaard), who immediately becomes entangled in the aforementioned finishing school—a place for young women to learn and internalize the etiquette of upper class society.

Lust for a Vampire is the second film in Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy, which I am now—quite by accident—two thirds of the way through, in reverse order. The trilogy uses J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s influential 1872 novella “Carmilla” as its inspiration and source material, but this second film downplays the lesbian themes of the novella and the first film, partially due to the censorship of the notoriously prudish British Board of Film Censors (BBFC).

Of course, Hammer’s passing infatuation with lesbian vampires had much less to do with empowerment and more to do with the prurient (and nearly omnipresent) male gaze of both producers and audiences. An 1830s finishing school (a term I had to look up due to my working class ignorance) is a fitting location for a film—and a broader culture—that finds much comfort and sense of hierarchical order in strict gender essentialism. Indeed, a finishing school proves by its very definition the classist and sexist dimensions of the society in which it exists.

The BBFC initially cut down a love scene between Mircalla and the doomed Amanda, but the greater victory for “traditional” values is won through the script’s pointed emphasis on Mircalla’s romance with Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson). He becomes instantly infatuated with her, and she seems to partially reciprocate, or at least give in to his tenacious courtship.

Although this falls into the storied lesbian vampire subgenre, Lust for a Vampire presents Mircalla as bisexual: a beautiful and emotionally opaque predator whose sexuality exists both cinematically (for her apparent pleasure and, theoretically, as a way of luring human prey), and extra-cinematically (to appease the salacious demands of the audience). Mircalla finds a gruesome and thankless end in the film’s climactic moments, and LeStrange falls conveniently into the arms of the self-assured Jenny Playfair (Suzanna Leigh)—her unrequited love now (seemingly) satisfied by a man who frankly doesn’t deserve her.

This is a fairly uninspired and disappointingly tame entry in Hammer’s canon, but I can imagine a modern remake that might find justice for a misutilized gothic queen: a horny, bisexual vampire drama wielding male and female gaze both, with subtext and plot that finds sympathy for counterculture weirdos, and bloody justice for patriarchal heter0normativity.

September 14, 2023
Review: Sharksploitation (2023)

If Peter Benchley could do it all again, he wouldn’t. Or at least, he’d do it differently. The author of “Jaws” could never have foreseen the massive success of his book and its 1975 blockbuster adaptation, or the robust cottage industry of “sharksploitation” films that followed in its wake. And while Steven Spielberg’s tremendously popular adaptation is not solely responsible for a broad societal fear of sharks and decades of population decline (a popular rumor that ignores years of pre-Jaws industrial overfishing), it does perpetuate the myth of the “rogue shark”—a vindictive monster who develops a taste for human blood and hunts accordingly.

I love shark movies and aquatic horror in general, but every time I review one I feel compelled to reiterate the importance of sharks, and the decimating effect of human activity on their populations. Sharks kill a handful of humans each year, while humans kill around 100 million sharks per year (per the International Fund for Animal Welfare). They aren’t “shark-infested” waters—they’re human-infested, and it’s one part of a much larger extinction event that threatens life as we know it on this planet.

Simply put, the legacy of Jaws (the book and the film), is complicated, and Benchley spent a significant portion of his life advocating for the animals. His wife Wendy continues their efforts towards shark education and conservation.

Sharksploitation tracks the history of shark movies from their blockbuster origins to their modern descendants—both the spendier studio projects and the seemingly innumerable low budget B-movies, many of whom literally start with a grabby absurdist title and work backwards from there (Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf, 3-Headed Shark Attack, Shark Exorcist, etc).

The format here is consistent with Shudder’s other documentary features: talking head interviews interspersed with film clips, with some graphics to help keep our place in the historical timeline. There is certainly nothing groundbreaking about the structure, but it constructs a satisfying blend of horror nostalgia and behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

What brings it home for me—emotionally and politically—is the doc’s final moments, when the collection of interviewees (from both entertainment and conservation spheres) get a chance to gush over their love for sharks, and the importance of keeping their populations alive and thriving. It underscores a brighter side of the “Jaws effect” that is often overlooked: the way the novel and the film created an entire generation of shark lovers, who have been able to see past the dangerous “rogue shark” myth and find a fascinating creature that is not a monster but, sadly, so often a victim of human industry and fearful misunderstanding.

As go our oceans, so goes our planet—and our apex predators play an irreplaceable role in that ecological balance. If Peter Benchley could leave us with anything, I’m sure it would be that.

Sharksploitation is currently streaming on Shudder.

September 1, 2023
Class of 2022: Top 10 Horror Movies of the Year
We are closing the books on 2022, and one thing is clear: horror movies are mainstream. This can and often does come with its own problems (just look at comic movie fandom), but overall it would seem to be good news for horror fans and filmmakers.

Genre films continue to show impressive box office resilience in a streaming-friendly distribution landscape, and the indie appeal of the horror genre makes it somewhat better-equipped to weather the often stultifying effects of rampant studio monopolization. Most of the biggest horror franchises aren’t represented on this list, but nonetheless they did a lot to uplift the box office in a year of high highs and prolonged lulls. Movie exhibition is in a precarious place, but horror isn’t going anywhere.

As always, I qualify my yearly “Best Of” article as a fun and subjective exercise in highlighting those new genre films that I found to be the most impactful to me personally—I didn’t watch everything (Bones and All is a notable absence), but I watched a lot. All of these films shushed the ego part of my brain, at least for a little while, and showed me something memorable and new.

X

Director: Ti West
Distributor: A24

2022 might be called the year of Mia Goth (or more precisely, the year of the West-Goth team up). Director Ti West (who hadn’t directed a true horror film since 2013’s The Sacrament) partnered with A24 for not one but two new horror movies: both part of a filmic universe that salutes Classical Hollywood while giving Mia Goth a platform for arguably the most impressive acting performances of the year.

X is a triumphant return to form for West, and for horror fans, a delightfully clever and gruesome homage to the American slasher. The DNA of Texas Chain Saw Massacre runs strong in these veins, but West and Goth aren’t just cashing in on nostalgia. This is the genre evolving right in front of our eyes: smartly acknowledging what came before, while composing a new story about American exceptionalism, the pains of getting older, and what it means to be exploited.

NOPE

Director: Jordan Peele
Distributor: Universal Pictures

In 2017, Jordan Peele spearheaded a monster year for the horror genre with his politically ferocious smash debut Get Out. His sophomore effort two years later (the class-conscious Us, starring the brilliant Lupita Nyong’o) lacked the trenchant clarity of his debut, but proved (again) Peele’s grasp of darkly comedic timing and ambitions for searing social commentary.

Nope is Peele’s biggest movie yet, both in budget and in scope—and this sense of nearly impossible scale is very much the point. Inspired by his well-earned creative leeway and the realities of an entertainment industry shifting towards home streaming, Peele & Co dared viewers to leave the home and bask in audacious, larger-than-life mystery (best appreciated in IMAX) . Nope is a thrilling and gleefully cinematic alien invasion film that self-reflexively questions our societal urge to control and exploit whatever we can—the bigger the spectacle, the better.

BARBARIAN

Director: Zach Cregger
Distributor: 20th Century Studios

Zach Cregger is known primarily as one of the founding members of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’ Know, but that may be changing. Barbarian marks his debut as a writer-director, and the electrifying and darkly funny thriller earned ten times its $4.5 million budget by way of positive reviews and some excellent word of mouth.

Cregger has said that he filmed Barbarian without an outline, and it shows; the film is a structural anomaly, and the unpredictable narrative layout leads to at least two wildly disorienting transitions. Would this be a better movie with more deliberate plotting? Possibly. But that might neuter a story that has found success specifically because it does such a good job of keeping audiences on their heels. You can only watch Barbarian for the first time once, so enjoy it.

YOU WON’T BE ALONE

Director: Goran Stolevski
Distributors: Focus Features, Universal Pictures

This is a terribly personal comparison, but Goran Stolevski’s witchy debut You Won’t Be Alone feels a bit like this year’s Sator—not because they share any cast or crew (they are tonally quite different), but because both of them are indie festival hits that prioritize haunting atmosphere over conventional plotting or crowd-friendly pacing (translation: this is a slow burn, so come prepared).

You Won’t Be Alone follows the journey of a naive 19th-century witch in Macedonia, and her bid to find meaning and intimacy as a cultural and societal outsider. Mark Bradshaw’s lush score and Sara Klimoska’s hushed voiceover imbue the folkloric tale with an aching poetry (I was reminded of Malick’s meditative epic The Tree of Life), and its melancholic beauty illustrates the emotional range of the horror genre. It forces us to re-examine our relationship with the natural world, and appreciate anew what it means to be (and to become) human—with all the pain, love, and loss that defines the experience.

THE MENU

Director: Mark Mylod
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Foodie culture has gone too far. What was once a budding American culture of genuine culinary appreciation has become a pageant of “conspicuous consumption”—an increasingly exclusive club of elitist critics and grotesquely wealthy patrons, positioned further and further up their own asses as the previously universal enjoyment of food becomes something reserved for those with the status and vernacular to enjoy it properly. The joy of eating (and making) food is cynically commodified, and becomes subject to all the exploitative forces of the corrupting system. Welcome to capitalism!

There is plenty more nuance (and optimism) to be had in the conversation about foodie culture, but The Menu’s satirical edges have been sharpened by the considerable amount of truth in the above summary. Writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy are clearly having fun skewering the most cynical elements of the gourmet restaurant industry, and underneath the film’s sly intellectualism and impeccable production design is a barely restrained silliness. It may be presented as elevated dining, but for fans of class-conscious black comedy, this is comfort food.

THE INNOCENTS

Director: Eskil Vogt
Distributor: IFC Midnight

Norwegian filmmaker Eskil Vogt has had a hell of a year. He debuted two films at Cannes in 2021: the captivating dramedy The Worst Person in the World (which he co-wrote with director Joachim Trier), and his spellbinding horror-drama The Innocents, set at a Nordic apartment complex at the height of summer.

The plot and characterization centers on a group of children forming new bonds and navigating fraught moral decisions as they begin to assert their presence in the world; this relatable coming of age scenario finds a new and profound wrinkle when they begin to discover that each of them possess unique supernatural powers. The Innocents achieves nerve-wracking suspense in broad daylight, accomplished through a smart (and effects-light) script and tremendous acting from its child stars. It’s a dramatic and nail-biting slow burn that gives full credit to the intelligence and interior lives of children in a psychic battleground, unbeknownst to the unwitting adults around them. But be warned: it contains one of the most upsetting animal deaths I’ve seen in a movie.

PEARL

Director: Ti West
Distributor: A24

What began as a character-building exercise between Ti West and Mia Goth during production of X quickly turned into a full-blown prequel script: Pearl, the origin story of the titular would-be starlet (played with barn-burning relish by Goth, who picked up both writing and executive producing credits for her central role in the project). The third film in the trilogy (titled MaXXXine) is already in development.

West acknowledges the heavy inspirations of Tobe Hooper and Mario Bava in the tone and theme of X, but Pearl strikes quite a different style (what West likens to a “demented Disney movie”). Despite the tonal contrast, Pearl goes even deeper into X’s audit of American exceptionalism, and the brittleness of the American dream when faced with bitter reality and more than a touch of unhinged psychopathy festering in a repressive society. Pearl is a Technicolor showcase for the talent and work ethic of the magnetic Mia Goth, and a ticking time bomb homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

MEN

Director: Alex Garland
Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors

There may not be a more controversial 2022 horror film than Alex Garland’s third feature, which stars Jessie Buckley as a traumatized widow seeking a respite in the English countryside—before being unfairly re-traumatized by the men of the rural village (all played with wicked relish by an elastic Rory Kinnear). Men has been accused of being tone-deaf, heavy-handed, overwrought and unnecessarily gross, and prompted some to ask: just how seriously should we take the opinions of cishet men in the conversation about misogyny and gendered abuse? When do stories about sexist violence become exploitative or counterproductive?

The question of authorship has come into sharp focus especially since the onset of the #MeToo movement, and Garland has defended his right to tell the stories he chooses (and has asserted that he does so from a place of respect and collaboration). Needless to say, this is a debate that will continue on. While I feel conflicted about the implied gender essentialism that leads to the story’s philosophical dead end, I can say with confidence that this is a downright scary movie, with some of the most gorgeous and disturbing imagery of the year—beautifully captured by DP Rob Hardy and thoughtfully scored by Salisbury and Barrow. Some viewers simply will not have the emotional space for another story about traumatized women, and I respect that—but the ambition and artistry on display in Men is undeniable.

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR

Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Distributor: Utopia

Jane Schoenbrun knows what it feels like to struggle with imposter syndrome. Schoenbrun’s transition as trans and non-binary happened in conjunction with the writing of their second film (the first being an archival documentary about the creepypasta phenomenon known as Slenderman) and their experience of shame and dysphoria crept into the story—informing the film’s haunting sense of loneliness while staying submerged in the subtext.

The plot, such as it is: Casey is a lonely teenager who decides to take part in the viral “World’s Fair Challenge,” and surrender herself to whatever physical or psychic changes might happen as a result. It’s more important to feel and experience the mood of World’s Fair than it is to “figure out” its thesis or takeaway—the film is a distinctly modern curio, one born of internet subculture and the uniquely contemporary experience of losing yourself (and building yourself) in its obscure places. Its slow pacing and abstruse nature makes it a conditional recommendation, but for those willing to dissolve into its melancholic glow, it will leave an eerie and tender impression.

THE HOUSE

Directors: Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza
Distributor: Netflix

The House is a uniquely collaborative project that brings together a group of first-time directors telling three discrete (but conceptually interconnected) stories, each of them written by Irish playwright Enda Walsh. The common factor is an imposing Georgian-style house, inhabited in three acts by separate groups of characters, each trying (and failing) to impose their will on the stubborn edifice.

The gorgeous animation was done mostly without greenscreen or digital compositing, and the stop-motion artistry imparts a level of tangible detail that is by turns eerie, absorbing, and entrancingly whimsical. Emotionally, The House defies easy categorization. Part I (And heard within, a lie is spun) strikes a fantastically creepy chord unmatched by almost anything else I’ve seen this year, while the third segment ends on a surprisingly uplifting note. It is in the anthology’s narrative threads where we find an important congruity, and an urgent warning: if we don’t unmoor ourselves from the violence of amoral materialism, we will drown in the coming storms.
Table of Contents
X
NOPE
BARBARIAN
YOU WON’T BE ALONE
THE MENU
THE INNOCENTS
PEARL
MEN
WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR
THE HOUSE
January 4, 2023
Review: Prey (2022)

In the newest entry into the Predator franchise, Comanche warrior-to-be Naru (Amber Midthunder) must outwit and survive a frighteningly advanced predator—a solitary Yautja, plopped down into her North Plains territory for a weekend of invigorating sport hunting.

But before Naru could embark on her kühtaamia (a rite of passage for presumptive Comanche hunters), Prey had to survive a similarly harrowing gauntlet: a $71 billion corporate acquisition.

It was sometime during the writing and production of Prey that Disney gobbled up 21st Century Fox like No-Face at a country buffet—just another giant media acquisition coinciding with the official sunsetting of the Paramount Consent Decrees, which have governed distribution and exhibition rules in the film industry for over 70 years. Basically, the seismic antitrust regulations that effectively ended the Hollywood studio system are now kaput, and this comes at a time when theaters are already dangerously enfeebled by the ascension of streaming and the long term realities of the Covid pandemic.

The reason that Prey skipped theaters for a streaming debut on Hulu (or Disney+, depending on your location) is purely because of corporate maneuvering in the wake of that aforementioned acquisition. In short, Prey would have been grandfathered into a post-theater streaming deal with HBO Max—and that didn’t sit well with its new owner. Instead, Disney opted to nix theatrical distribution to bolster the Hulu library (where it owns a majority stake).

The Yautja. Prey (2022). Hulu.

It’s probably bad form to hijack my own review with the stultifying machinations of soulless corporate behemoths, but I am morbidly fascinated by the greedy re-monopolization of the film industry and the precipitous state of theatrical moviegoing (Maureen Lee Lenker of Entertainment Weekly argues that the current streaming landscape is just a digital form of opt-in block booking).

In any case, these board room decisions are completely detached from the creative and artistic side of filmmaking, yet they dramatically affect the livelihood of so many in the film and television industries, as well as the production and distribution of myriad projects—Prey included.

If director Dan Trachtenberg is bitter about any of this, he hides it well, focusing instead on the creative opportunities allowed by his film’s stripped down premise. Prey sheds some of the series’ canonical baggage while getting back to the primal appeal of the 1987 original, casting it onto a new canvas: the Great Plains territory of 18th century Comanche Natives.

Together, Trachtenberg and DP Jeff Cutter bring the same cinematographic panache they brought to 10 Cloverfield Lane—this time in a setting that allows for (indeed, calls for) an impressive cinematic sweep. The film was shot in Alberta, Canada, on Stoney Nakoda land, and DP Cutter does a good job of letting the jaw-dropping landscape “speak for itself,” using naturalistic lighting and large format anamorphic lenses for a sense of scale (and what Cutter calls their “Sergio Leone Western standoff shots”). Prey is a beautiful movie, and it’s a shame that profit-motivated fuckery robbed us of the big screen experience.

A Sergio Leone standoff. Prey (2022). Hulu.

In terms of cast and setting, much has been made of its representation of gender and Indigenous culture—mostly for the right and good reasons, and in some cases for the inanely stupid. Indigenous actors comprise much of its cast, and Amber Midthunder makes history by playing the first Indigenous female action hero (a flawed but intelligent would-be hunter, neither Pocahontas nor Mary Sue).

The efficacy of Prey as colonialist allegory is in its simplicity, obvious but not encumbering. Before Naru runs head first into the invasive presence of French trappers, she mistakes their brutal handiwork for the sport of the mysterious predator. The parallel between colonizer and off-world hunter isn’t hard to parse, and the enthusiastic bloodletting still gives franchise fans what they came for (while exacting a measure of karmic justice).

Producer Jhane Myers belongs to both the Comanche and Blackfeet tribes, and her presence is felt in the attention paid to the history and culture that underpins the story and its characters. The surprisingly emotional score by Sarah Schachner is at times both personal and expansive, and it is enhanced by the percussion and wind instruments of Pueblo musician Robert Mirabal. In short, Prey approaches the historical Indigenous experience with respect and care—a prerequisite that Hollywood has long neglected.

The thin line between prey and hunter. Prey (2022). Hulu.

While I loathe to give the mouth breathers any oxygen whatsoever, I will say this about Prey’s minor social media backlash (that you may or may not have noticed depending on what corners of the internet you inhabit). In fact, I’ll speak directly to the guilty parties as slowly and clearly as I can: if you use “woke” as a reactionary pejorative, you are entering the cultural conversation disingenuously, and your hee-haw takes are almost entirely worthless. Go have a seat at the kids table, the adults are trying to talk.

Anyway.

Prey is not without its faults. The combination of practical effects and VFX works pretty well in regards to the predator (Dane DiLiegro, embodying the beautifully redesigned hunter) but scenes of other CG animals tend to disrupt the narrative immersion. And while the attention to period detail is thoughtfully done, aspects of the art direction and costume design don’t feel as “lived in” as they might—the production design is at times almost too slick for its own good, stopping just short of fully inhabited verisimilitude.

As for plotting and character, the representation is refreshing but the characterization feels familiar. The central self-realization of Naru is satisfying but predictable (her triumphal arc is never seriously in doubt), and the script in general has its clumsy moments.

Naru (Amber Midthunder). Prey (2022). Hulu.

In other words, Prey breaks new ground while feeling simultaneously conventional in its bones. Audiences have responded favorably to Naru and her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) not because they aren’t archetypes (they are) but because here—finally—are underdogs in a place traditionally reserved for someone else (if not White and male then certainly not Native and female). The script is not terribly elegant, but it understands the assignment: the most dangerous game, experienced through a new perspective.

Lest it go unsaid, the kills here fucking rip, and that does a lot to iron out some of the narrative wrinkles. For some, that alone will be enough.

A final word on the flaws and strengths of Hulu’s new biggest ever premiere: another way that Prey made history is in its first ever full Comanche dub, recorded by its Native cast. The English language version of the movie is inferior for two important reasons. First, the clumsiest lines of English dialogue are significantly smoothed over by the Comanche dub, and secondly (this is a big one) it seems deeply and uniquely self-sabotaging to tell a triumphantly Native story in the language of the colonizer.

Linguistic imperialism has been a destructive force in the Native American diasporic experience for hundreds of years, and while an English script may be more palatable to some viewers, it also threatens to fracture a diegesis that otherwise attempts (successfully, it seems) to do right by its Indigenous cast and culture. The Comanche dub is the next best thing to a full Native script, and undoubtedly the best way to experience the biggest streaming horror hit of the summer.

August 12, 2022
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Past, Present & Future of a Lost Franchise

I am sitting down today to write about horror movies and finding it hard to get started. The world seems caught in a cataclysmic shitstorm of patriarchal White supremacist fascism and capitalist-fueled climate collapse. The pandemic death toll continues to rise as a vocal minority of bigots and science-deniers defend their right to be indefensible fuckwits. Meanwhile, the internet and news media are more than happy to pump every heartbreaking moment into our overworked brains, woefully unevolved for this constant onslaught of appalling violence.

And I sit here with my little movie review and ache for the world and wonder (because compartmentalization is a survival mechanism): what would a 2022 Tobe Hooper Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like?

While puzzling over the shortcomings of Netflix’s recent legacy sequel (directed by David Blue Garcia), I’ve found it impossible not to return to Hooper’s original film. What was it exactly that it did so well? Why does a once-shocking property now feel so insubstantial? What would it take to get this franchise back on track?

The Past

After all, the black humor and naked pessimism of Hooper’s 1974 horror classic was a direct response to a different time of global and national tumult. The doomed Vietnam War was finally winding down after two decades of catastrophic human loss and governmental deceit. Nixon had resigned and finally released the subpoenaed Watergate tapes to the public. Serial murderer and rapist Elmer Wayne Henley had been committed to six consecutive 99-year sentences after a highly publicized trial in San Antonio. The American Dream was dead or dying, and its demise was televised.

These real-life influences aren’t explicitly mentioned in ‘74’s narrative (although the hellish commercial meat industry emphatically is)—Hooper’s bleak vision of the American South is instead reflective of the disillusionment and cynicism arising from both the politics and news media of the time. These elements aren’t overt: they’re baked into the landscape, rotting in the 100 degree Texas heat.

Farewell remarks by President Richard Nixon, 1974. Wikimedia Commons CC 2.0.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is of course not the only film to grapple (however indirectly) with the harsh reality that set in during and after the long slow death of the American Dream (a fitting moniker for a national ideal that tried willfully to ignore its debt to genocide, slavery and terrorism).

It is in this same figurative landscape that we find George Romero’s politically anxious indie classic Night of the Living Dead (1968), released six years before Hooper’s film. The legacy of that black and white zombie hit proved to be both cultural and economic: it gave indie filmmakers a blueprint for achievable box office success, while portraying an image of post-Vietnam America mired in racial paranoia and existential horror.

Here we find also Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, a 1969 road movie that chronicled with depressing certitude the fate of ’60s American counterculture. Later, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers would jettison the McCarthyism of Siegel’s original for a paranoid autopsy of a country that could no longer pretend that it was on the right track.

It is not in Texas but in Las Vegas where Hunter Thompson said that you could see exactly where the “high and beautiful wave” of American optimism broke, and rolled back again. It is in the cracked soil of that disillusionment where The Texas Chain Saw Massacre lives.

The illusion of freedom in Easy Rider (1969). Columbia Pictures.

It’s not just cultural context that gives TCM ‘74 its singular appeal. Hooper’s original still hits the way it does because of its limitations, and the narrow band of its scope. It’s the grain of the low-speed 16mm film, the unobtrusive casting, the jarring disregard for predictable character arcs or recognizable structure—TCM ‘74 is often called cinéma vérité because it slides so naturally into its demented anarchy. When those kids cross the threshold of that farmhouse, their doom comes quickly, unhindered by convention or plot armor.

I will risk disrupting the flow of my thought to offer a disclaimer. Appreciating the artfulness and legacy of a film like TCM ’74 is not the same as condoning the methods by which it was made. In his book about the production, Joseph Lanza describes the ’74 set as “intolerably putrid,” and the crew recounts a horror show of dangerous and exploitative conditions. This, as much as the film itself, is part of the messy legacy of TCM. Support workers’ rights in all industries!

The Present

Fast-forward to 2022. Horror is more popular than ever, and it has been a bankable asset throughout this tumultuous (and ongoing) pandemic era. Movies like A Quiet Place Part II, Halloween Kills, Candyman and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It have proved to be surprisingly resilient at the box office. This new horror heyday overlaps (and intertwines with) the simultaneous nostalgia gold rush: studios and streamers happy to capitalize on recognizable IP while updating it with a fancy new legacy tag. Best case scenario, it captures multiple generations of fans by passing the torch from old to new.

This newest legacy sequel (titled simply Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as is the fashion) was shot in Bulgaria and plopped onto Netflix in early February 2022, with little to no marketing (and a trailer that caught some heat for its “cringey” nod to so-called cancel culture). According to Netflix, it has done some decent streaming numbers, and might garner a sequel of its own.

What is curious about this new generation of TCM is how explicit everything has become. The ‘74 original was informed by the politics and culture of its time, but TCM ‘22 hangs everything out in the open. The plot revolves around a group of rich young gentrifiers (“gentri-fuckers,” if you’re the local gas station attendant) intent on developing a dusty Texas town into a vaguely liberal utopia. A run-in at the gas station with a gun-toting Texan truck driver (Moe Dunford) affirms what we gleaned from that “cancel culture” line in the trailer: where the politics of ‘74 were subtextual, here they are right out in the open.

The gentrifiers of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022). Netflix.

The problem with the film’s politics is not necessarily that they are overt (although this might correlate with the general clumsiness of the script), but that they are incoherent. The script utilizes political flash points—gun violence, gentrification, racism—for purposes of plot and characterization, and then lets the conversation fizzle once the violence starts.

The “final girl” is the survivor of a school shooting but what is the lesson here? That you should arm yourself in case of another massacre? Or at least learn how to turn off the safety? Who is this even made for? Conservatives who decry it as “woke” seem not to have noticed that if anything, the movie validates the paranoia of the open carry gun nuts of the world. TCM ‘22 is filled with buzz words and manufactured political friction but it’s all surface level. There are no takeaways because the movie isn’t interested in those, or doesn’t have the wherewithal to find them.

The explicit nature of the film’s politics is consistent with the violence: we see every snapped bone and severed intestine in lovingly graphic detail. A blue-tinted party bus massacre is among the most grisly scenes in the franchise, and it’s probably not a hot take to suggest that this gleeful blood-letting—not the clumsy politics—is the whole point. And while I love gore as much as the next horror fan, it does feel that even on this element TCM ‘22 (and, indeed, most of the franchise) is somewhat missing the mark.

Elsie Fisher in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022). Netflix.

Despite the censorship and overall reputation of TCM ‘74, it was surprisingly bloodless. As funny as it may sound now, Tobe Hooper tried (and failed) for a PG rating with his original film, because the point was never the graphic depiction of physical violence. The murder of those clueless kids was sudden and senseless, but besides poor Sally (who survived physically if not emotionally intact) it was not a protracted or exceptionally graphic affair.

Part of the indelible appeal of the original is that it feels so brutal despite the fact that its violence happens often just off camera. The violence of the original is profound and lasting not because we see all the gooey bits but because we are shocked by a script that doesn’t give half a fuck about pacing or structure.

The violence we barely see is ironically more visceral than anything found in the TCM descendants because it seems almost real. It’s a vérité nightmare that finds true, soul-shaking disquiet in its persistent nihilism and morbid playfulness. May we never forget that TCM ‘74 is in fact wonderfully goofy. The ‘saw family scrapes together a helter-skelter existence that feels somehow in line with the worldview of the most cynical character of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen: “Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.”

Teri McMinn in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Bryanston Distributing Company.

This is the legacy of Hooper’s TCM. It’s the play of casual malice acted out on a bedrock of violent nihilism. This same desert-parched display of human cruelty can be found three years later in Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes. Its anarchic disregard for predictable pacing can be found in Jeremy Saulnier’s backwoods siege movie Green Room. Bryan Bertino’s 2008 home invasion thriller The Strangers echoes the same chilling lawlessness when Liv Tyler’s character asks a masked assailant why they are terrorizing her. They respond simply, “Because you were home.”

In 1974, it just so happened that the ‘saw family was home; the gruesome fate of the intruding kids was decided by nothing more or less than that. For the sake of clarity: I’m not trying to suggest that TCM as a franchise should not be explicitly bloody (let’s give the makeup and effects crew of TCM ’22 their deserved flowers), but there is a distinction between gore and violence. The original knew this. The rest? I’m not so sure.

The Future

Perhaps the worst thing I can say about this new era of TCM (besides its irresponsible handling of real politics) is that it feels indistinct from the rest of the major horror franchises. In 2022, Olwen Fouéré wins the fairly thankless role of Sally Hardesty, traumatized from—and ultimately defined by—her previous run-in with Leatherface and his twisted family. The handling of her character in relation to past trauma is so similar to the role of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy that some have graciously suggested that it’s a form of parody.

Leatherface similarly has never been closer in style to iconic slasher villains like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, but he doesn’t belong with them. TCM has always been the black sheep of the main slasher franchises in part because it’s a family affair. Leatherface is (or was) the “baby” of the family, always holding the short end of the power dynamic—a Lennie Small type berated into meanness by his demented patriarchal family. Leatherface was never meant to be an eternal monolith of symbolic evil, like Carpenter’s mysterious Shape. We don’t need another inscrutable juggernaut: we need the gonzo cannibal family back.

The ‘saw family of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Bryanston Distributing Company.

I am not arguing that we should be clinging to some unchangeable model. Even if we could recreate the ‘74 original, why would we want to? The world has changed since then, and Tobe Hooper himself had no qualms about adapting his ‘saw family into something wholly stranger and more comical than the source material.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 wasn’t something Hooper had to be talked into; he had the audacity to expand upon his treasured original before there existed a film Twitter to voice their shrill outrage at the very thought. Clearly, Hooper didn’t consider his ‘74 exploitation hit as some kind of sacrosanct artifact. The sequel came out a full 12 years after the original, and the dismayed disillusionment of the ‘70s had blossomed into the grotesque neoliberalism of the ‘80s.

“There was Reaganomics, affluence, Ferris Bueller . . . looking back, it’s one of those strange films, where you wonder how it ever got made. You don’t know why it exists . . . which I liked a lot.”
—Tobe Hooper

By Hooper’s own admission, TCM2 is a bizarre and unnecessary sequel packed to the eyeballs with ‘80s excess, informed by the moral bankruptcy of Reagan’s merciless corporatocracy. Lieutenant “Lefty” Enright (Dennis Hopper, playing the vengeful uncle of Sally and Franklin Hardesty) aligns himself against the ‘saw family, but strip away the context and he is as crazy as they are: another maniac wielding not one but two chainsaws, intent on burying the whole damned clown show even if it means self-destruction.

The chainsaw battle between Lefty and Leatherface perfectly exemplifies the wild self-parodying exorbitance of TCM2, and the dogged determination of Hooper to convince audiences that these are, in fact, comedies. When considering the state of TCM today, we might find some inspiration in Hooper’s refusal to hold anything (even his own work) as sacred or untouchable.

Dennis Hopper in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). Cannon Releasing.

The irreverent and mutable quality of this franchise provides both a challenge and an opportunity for future entries. We don’t need another mythic killer à la Michael or Jason. And we already have enough grim metaphors for trauma and grief. TCM is more “zeitgeisty” than these other tentpole properties, and it must be allowed to change with the times. Garcia’s TCM ‘22 clumsily modernizes the language of the franchise, but the tone and infrastructure do nothing to shake us loose. Our world feels more fractured and chaotic than ever, but this formula feels too safe to reflect it.

The safe bet legacy model is at odds with a franchise like TCM, which should be allowed to take big swings and creative risks. TCM ‘74 was cynical in its story, but this corporate monetization of nostalgia is cynical in a real and damaging way. It may take a producer or director with sizable clout and a distinct vision to break this franchise out of its decades-long identity crisis.

I want a Texas Chainsaw Massacre that is willing to piss off fans and executives alike. I want the jester king of franchise horror, holding up a funhouse mirror to a capitalist society hellbent on grinding us down to bonemeal. I want to see this franchise burn it all down and frolic on the smoldering wreckage. If we’re going to make poor Leatherface dance for us time and again, let’s give him something to celebrate.

Asking for a fresh take on shocksploitation that can harness the howling evil of today’s world-destroying oligarchies is admittedly a tall order, but here I am asking for it anyway.

February 26, 2022