My husband has been dragging me down. He’s been ruining my life. When he went away for three weeks to do some kind of nonsense about saving the planet at COP26, dayum I was relieved. Finally… FINALLY … I could get away from the endless Mad Men and Breaking Bad reruns he likes and get down to the real stuff - a sweet 21-day binge on horror films, sometimes two a night.

I kept notes and I’ve got recommendations. Here’s a run down. Apologies if they’re old news to you - I had a lot of catching up to do.

Stone-Cold Classics

Climax (2019). Sod the lukewarmness of Rotten Tomatoes - this is a thing of beauty. It’s about a group of dancers who meet to rehearse a show and their drinks gets spiked with some mad hallucinogen and it all goes horribly wrong. Beautiful bodies, extremely distressed minds, kind of the opposite of a zombie movie. The journey is truly horrific but also wonderful as long as you can keep a little detachment.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014). Art house movie and incredibly slow - I only watched it because my 12-year old son insisted, thinking it would be fun. How wrong we were. So why am I recommending it? Because those slow, slightly hard-going arthouse movies get under your skin like nothing else. It’s a funny one - it’s set in Iran and yet it’s bones, its characters, are American. It’s in a between world that doesn’t exist anywhere. It’s arguably Twilight on acid. I dreamed about it afterwards.

His House (2020). This is horror at its best - giving story to suffering. It’s about refugees from war torn Sudan making a life in the UK. Who is going to watch some earnest drama about that? Not me. But a horror? A dingy green house with peeling wallpaper in which supernatural horrors ensue? Hell yeah! And while you’re at it, gain greater empathy for refugees and insight into their subjective experience (assuming you aren’t one yourself, I suppose you might be) and become a better global citizen.

Excellent

The Mortuary Collection (2019). See tweet below.

Girl on the Third Floor (2019) This has an astonishing 22% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes but I agree with the critics, who give it 84%. it’s about a man decorating a new house in preparation for his wife and the baby they are expecting. The house used to be a brothel and is haunted by the ghosts of the prostitutes who worked there. Very interesting to me as my next novel is set in a brothel. The man is played by wrestler CM Punk and he’s a deeply unsympathetic protagonist - a complete dick basically. Yet it’s a fine performance and I felt so much for the character - I was on the edge of my seat throughout about what he stood to lose. Highly recommended.

The Boy Behind the Door (2020) . I think this may actually belong in the stone-cold classic section. It’s about two boys who are abducted and held in a creepy house where awful things are going to happen to them. One of the boys escapes but stays to rescue the other. Lonnie Chavis plays the rescuer and his performance is out of this world. The friendship between the boys contrasted with the threat they are facing made this one those rare films I was utterly gripped by from start to finish. It’s extremely dark and I did think - jeez, what does it take to entertain me these days? At least the darkness is all suggested, never explicit.

The Lighthouse (2019) . Anything about lighthouses always fascinates me. I blame Moominpapa at Sea (a children’s horror novel if ever there was one, to which Annihalation and the Southern Reach owe a great debt - must blog about it some time). This is a wonderful lighthouse narrative. It’s all about the lead actors Willlem Defoe and Robert Pattinson. Defoe plays a seasoned lighthouse keeper and Pattinsoon the rookie. They meet for a lonely three week shift at the eponymous lighthouse and basically gradually go mad. The PR around it was all about the genuinely uneasy and oppositional relationship of Defoe and Pattinson offscreen, and I don’t know how true that is but hell you feel the salty whiplash of their interactions coming out of the screen at you. Delightful (if you are that way inclined).

Relic (2020) . Tells the story of dementia and ageing as only horror can. It’s about a woman looking after her mum, who seems to be losing her mind. Her daughter - also the granddaughter - joins them and she and grandma gang up against Mum in the middle. As someone who is part of a long line of women myself, I found this unbelievably touching. A beautiful film which speaks truthfully of both the darkness and the sweetness of our mortal condition.

Apostle (2018). Probably the weakest of my excellent choices but still pretty wonderful. It’s about a man trying to determine the fate of his sister after she joined a very wierd and horrible cult. Had one scene I had to fast forward through. It was just very gripping.

Honorable mentions

Candyman 2021. Maybe it’s because nothing can top Get Out, possibly the greatest film of all time of any genre. But pretty fantastic.

Drag me to Hell (2009). This has been roaming around in the back of my mind forever and I finally got to watch it. Would have been a wow to the 14-year-old me, but at the age I find myself now it was a little limited. Still, perfect in its way.

The Perfection (2018) . That scene on the bus is so genuinely unsettling and not like anything you’ve seen before. You REALLY don’t know what’s going on. But totally unravels at the end.

PG: Psycho Goreman (2020). Watched this with my 12-year-old son. Pure entertainment, a complete blast, speaks more truly about the reality of the modern family than any serious film i’ve ever seen. The policeman saddened me though, and still haunts me.

I See You (2019). You’re already uneasy because of Helen Hunt’s much-changed facial appearance. That enough would make this film intriguing. But also great twists. Well worth a watch.

The Vigil (2019). Like The Babadook (grief) or His House (the subjective experience of the refugee) or Relic (ageing and death) this movie tells a serious story through the medium of horror. I’ve kind of forgotten the details but I think it is the immensity of a lapsed Jew’s relationship with his historical inheritance. Didn’t break any new ground but very good.