Editorials
Overlooked Indie Horror Films You Should Watch: Volume 4
Time keeps rolling by, and so do outstanding horror films that are getting lost in the crowd of movies being released in theaters, on Blu-ray, and streaming every week. Horror film archaeologists, welcome to Volume Four of Bloody Disgusting’s continuing column digging through the recent past of film releases and featuring worthwhile horror movies that you may have missed the first time around.
Share them with your friends, follow the filmmakers, and be sure to visit our previous installments if you haven’t read them already.
Amusement (2008)
Amusement seems on its face to be a standard slasher-style stalker film. However, it cleverly uses the conceit of a group of friends with a shared secret from their past to create a pseudo-anthology film in which each of the friends deals with a stalker-killer in a slightly different horror subgenre style.
Written by Jake Wade Wall, who also wrote the remakes of When a Stranger Calls and The Hitcher, the film is smarter than its packaging suggests. With a cast boasting Vikings’ Katheryn Winnick, Veep’s Reid Scott, and Gotham’s Jessica Lucas, Amusement is a fun horror movie that is self-aware but not self-indulgent.
Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
From Peter Strickland, director of the taut sexual thriller The Duke of Burgundy, comes the chilling and uncomfortable Berberian Sound Studio. Gilderoy is a British sound engineer hired to work on an Italian horror film. As he dives deeper into his job and the film, he begins to start losing track of fantasy and reality.
Starring Toby Jones, the fantastic character actor normally confined to small roles in films like Captain America and The Hunger Games, the film has a stunning soundscape that insinuates everything you don’t see in an effective and unnerving way. A clear love letter to Italian horror and Argento’s Suspiria in particular, the demented director in the film is played by Cosimo Fusco, who previously acted in Argento’s 2004 film The Card Player.
The Dirties (2013)
The found footage horror answer to films like We Need to Talk About Kevin and Elephant, writer/director/star Matt Johnson created an impressive achievement with The Dirties. The film begins as a documentation of a high school film project from two friends who are unpopular and bullied. The film takes a slow turn when one of the friends, Matt, decides that their film should be about getting back at the bullies, and it should be for real.
Johnson’s performance is a revelation, playing Matt as sympathetic and isolated, but also with clear indications that he isn’t fully stable. Johnson recently wrote and directed the film-oriented conspiracy thriller Operation Avalanche and the TV series Nirvanna the Band the Show. Intimate, humorous, tragic, and disturbing, The Dirties is worth finding.
Entrance (2012)
Entrance is a horror film about isolation in the midst of friends, about the danger that hides itself in plain sight in society. Co-directed by male directors Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath but written by Karen Gorham and Michelle Margolis, the film understands and sympathizes with the numerous indignities and fears that women quietly deal with on a daily basis.
The film about young Suzy navigating life in Los Angeles is a slow burn, building tiny clues into its naturalistic opening hour, only to blow up expectations in the spectacular single-take final act that codifies all of the nightmare possibilities into a terrifying reality. The film is not for everyone, but those who get its tone and style will be fully invested.
Good Neighbours (2010)
Clever and nasty with twists to spare, Good Neighbours is a Canadian horror-thriller that has Hitchcockian suspense with added violence and sexuality that Hitchcock didn’t live long enough to be able to utilize in his work. In the film’s plot, a serial killer terrorizes a Canadian neighborhood, and two neighbors begin to wonder about the new guy who just moved in.
The cast is fantastic, in particular the central trio of Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, and Scott Speedman. Actor Jacob Tierney gets behind the camera for this film and gets the most of his excellent cast and the source material, Chrystine Brouillet’s novel Chère voisine. The film is worth tracking down and watching with a group of like-minded friends and movie watchers.
Editorials
‘Leprechaun Returns’ – The Charm of the Franchise’s Legacy Sequel
The erratic Leprechaun franchise is not known for sticking with a single concept for too long. The namesake (originally played by Warwick Davis) has gone to L.A., Las Vegas, space, and the ‘hood (not once but twice). And after an eleven-year holiday since the Davis era ended, the character received a drastic makeover in a now-unmentionable reboot. The critical failure of said film would have implied it was time to pack away the green top hat and shillelagh, and say goodbye to the nefarious imp. Instead, the Leprechaun series tried its luck again.
The general consensus for the Leprechaun films was never positive, and the darker yet blander Leprechaun: Origins certainly did not sway opinions. Just because the 2014 installment took itself seriously did not mean viewers would. After all, creator Mark Jones conceived a gruesome horror-comedy back in the early nineties, and that format is what was expected of any future ventures. So as horror legacy sequels (“legacyquels”) became more common in the 2010s, Leprechaun Returns followed suit while also going back to what made the ‘93 film work. This eighth entry echoed Halloween (2018) by ignoring all the previous sequels as well as being a direct continuation of the original. Even ardent fans can surely understand the decision to wipe the slate clean, so to speak.
Leprechaun Returns “continued the [franchise’s] trend of not being consistent by deciding to be consistent.” The retconning of Steven Kostanski and Suzanne Keilly’s film was met with little to no pushback from the fandom, who had already become accustomed to seeing something new and different with every chapter. Only now the “new and different” was familiar. With the severe route of Origins a mere speck in the rearview mirror, director Kotanski implemented a “back to basics” approach that garnered better reception than Zach Lipovsky’s own undertaking. The one-two punch of preposterous humor and grisly horror was in full force again.
With Warwick Davis sitting this film out — his own choice — there was the foremost challenge of finding his replacement. Returns found Davis’ successor in Linden Porco, who admirably filled those blood-stained, buckled shoes. And what would a legacy sequel be without a returning character? Jennifer Aniston obviously did not reprise her final girl role of Tory Redding. So, the film did the next best thing and fetched another of Lubdan’s past victims: Ozzie, the likable oaf played by Mark Holton. Returns also created an extension of Tory’s character by giving her a teenage daughter, Lila (Taylor Spreitler).
It has been twenty-five years since the events of the ‘93 film. The incident is unknown to all but its survivors. Interested in her late mother’s history there in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, Lila transferred to the local university and pledged a sorority — really the only one on campus — whose few members now reside in Tory Redding’s old home. The farmhouse-turned-sorority-house is still a work in progress; Lila’s fellow Alpha Epsilon sisters were in the midst of renovating the place when a ghost of the past found its way into the present.
The Psycho Goreman and The Void director’s penchant for visceral special effects is noted early on as the Leprechaun tears not only into the modern age, but also through poor Ozzie’s abdomen. The portal from 1993 to 2018 is soaked with blood and guts as the Leprechaun forces his way into the story. Davis’ iconic depiction of the wee antagonist is missed, however, Linden Porco is not simply keeping the seat warm in case his predecessor ever resumes the part. His enthusiastic performance is accentuated by a rotten-looking mug that adds to his innate menace.
The obligatory fodder is mostly young this time around. Apart from one luckless postman and Ozzie — the premature passing of the latter character removed the chance of caring about anyone in the film — the Leprechaun’s potential prey are all college aged. Lila is this story’s token trauma kid with caregiver baggage; her mother thought “monsters were always trying to get her.” Lila’s habit of mentioning Tory’s mental health problem does not make a good first impression with the resident mean girl and apparent alcoholic of the sorority, Meredith (Emily Reid). Then there are the nicer but no less cursorily written of the Alpha Epsilon gals: eco-conscious and ex-obsessive Katie (Pepi Sonuga), and uptight overachiever Rose (Sai Bennett). Rounding out the main cast are a pair of destined-to-die bros (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins, Ben McGregor). Lila and her peers range from disposable to plain irritating, so rooting for any one of them is next to impossible. Even so, their overstated personalities make their inevitable fates more satisfying.
Where Returns excels is its death sequences. Unlike Jones’ film, this one is not afraid of killing off members of the main cast. Lila, admittedly, wears too much plot armor, yet with her mother’s spirit looming over her and the whole story — comedian Heather McDonald put her bang-on Aniston impersonation to good use as well as provided a surprisingly emotional moment in the film — her immunity can be overlooked. Still, the other characters’ brutal demises make up for Lila’s imperviousness. The Leprechaun’s killer set-pieces also happen to demonstrate the time period, seeing as he uses solar panels and a drone in several supporting characters’ executions. A premortem selfie and the antagonist’s snarky mention of global warming additionally add to this film’s particular timestamp.
Critics were quick to say Leprechaun Returns did not break new ground. Sure, there is no one jetting off to space, or the wacky notion of Lubdan becoming a record producer. This reset, however, is still quite charming and entertaining despite its lack of risk-taking. And with yet another reboot in the works, who knows where the most wicked Leprechaun ever to exist will end up next.
Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.
The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.
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