Editorials
5 Brutal Foreign Horror Movies To Play At Christmas To Scare Your Family Away!
By: Remy Carreiro. The good news is, it’s Christmas time. Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men, and all that crap. The bad news is, this may be the first year you are holding the Christmas celebration at your house. You have already decided from decorating to all the cooking that is required, you never want to have to go through this again. So what do you do to ensure that Christmas is never again thrown at your place of residence? I have a rather simple solution, and it even incorporates the most disturbing horror movies ever made. Also, note this is not another movie list about all the classic Christmas horror movies (Black Christmas, Silent Night, Deadly Night). Put those on and most people would just laugh. No, these are the movies you put on and the people in the room flee in genuine terror and disgust. Honestly, is there a better way to introduce myself to the Bloody Disgusting readership than this? No, there really isn’t. These are five brutal, foreign horror movies you play at Christmas to scare your family away.
Quick excuse when family begins to freak out: Relax guys, it’s a Christmas movie.
Inside is a Christmas movie, but only in the sense that it takes place on Christmas eve. Outside of that, the Christmas theme is only set in place to make the whole experience feel more bleak and hopeless.
Inside is film from the French extreme movement about a pregnant woman who is home alone on Christmas eve and she gets a visitor. A woman claiming she broke down and needs help. Obviously you all know horror well enough to know that the woman may have some nefarious intentions. In this case, this stranger wants this woman’s unborn baby. I won’t spoil any reasons why, but trust me when I say, this is NOT a family film. Inside would remain on for about twenty minutes before everyone walks out.
Quick excuse when family freaks out: It is a movie about God and religion, and who’s birthday is it today?
Anyone who has seen this movie is laughing as they read this, trying to imagine how their grandmother and religious aunt (come on, we all have one) would react. Just keep telling your family it is an art-house movie. The reality is Martys is a move that you may initially think is about revenge, but the tone changes quickly. Many call Martyrs one of the most vile and upsetting horror films out there, but I also see it as one of the best.
A film about a fevered cult who think that girls can talk to God if they experience enough pain, Martyrs is ruthless and relentless in its brutality. The perfect movie to play when you want to scare your guests away and have them never come back. You would get about seven minutes into Martyrs before you found yourself, standing alone on Christmas.
Quick excuse when family freaks out: Listen, sometimes at Christmas we need to acknowledge the bad so we can truly be grateful for how lucky we are.
You knew there had to be a Gaspar Noe film on this list somewhere, right? Irreversible is the kind of movie that could totally ruin you if you sit down to watch it and know nothing about it. A big part of that is the rape scene that accentuates the middle of the story. Just think how well rape scenes go over at Christmas and you know why this is on the list.
The whole concept of this movie is that your life can pretty much change for the worse in a single day and there is little you can about it. The thing you also need to keep in mind about Irreversible is that it plays in reverse, and opens up with the ending. A harsh scene that you may need to watch again later to realize that it may have not played out like you thought it did. The long and the short is that Gasper Noe doesn’t really believe in happy endings, even when they happen at the beginning.
Seriously, play this movie at Christmas and your family may never look at you the same way. Consider yourself warned. Expect your family to leave about three minutes into this film.
Excuse when family begins to freak out: You know this director has won an Oscar, right?
Keep in mind, there is an American remake of this film by the same director, and it is shot-for-shot, so if you are burnt out on the subtitles by now, that is a viable option. I think of all the films you put on so far, this is the one that may keep people around the longest. Why? Because it feels almost like a slow-burn, and compared to the others on the list, there is NO blood at all. But Funny Games does something other horror movies don’t do. It holds the audience accountable. It looks at you and while doing horrible things, it asks: this is what you wanted, right? This is why you are watching, isn’t it? In those moment, it goes from being a film, to being a harrowing, gut-wrenching experience, all centered around one family and one family dynamic. Funny Games is one of those horror movies that is exhausting that, by the time it ends, you feel like you could sob.
In other words, a perfect family Christmas movie! You may actually get about thirty minutes or so into Funny Games before your family realizes these games aren’t very funny.
Excuse when family begins to freak out: Maybe on all days, it is Christmas when we need to realize how lucky we are, and how many injustices are going on in other countries that we don’t even know about.
Quick warning, depending on how far your family gets into this movie, they very well may disown you. I did a rather long write-up of Serbian Film and its many, um, virtues, over at my own site awhile back. I really, genuinely believe that this is the most disturbing movie ever made, and pushes the boundaries in horror that most would not even dare approach. But over time, I have understood more and more why this film was made. Yes, it is unforgivably brutal, but in the same breath, this stuff really goes on over in Serbia, and maybe we all need to know that. Or maybe we don’t, actually. But I digress, lest this turns into some political diatribe.
But I can say this with all confidence: this movie ruins people. Serbian Film is about a former porn star who takes one more job to make the money he needs to get his family out of Serbia, only to find out it is the sickest of all the snuff films ever made. Honestly, there are scenes in this film you would not show an enemy (newborn porn) so the act of showing it to your family could get you disowned. I am not kidding.
Yes, it is THAT hardcore. So bust out Serbian Film only in extreme emergency and if the other four films had no effect.
So while some families may gather around the table eating Christmas dinner and watching Christmas Story, take comfort in knowing your family will be rushing out of your house, gagging, from the movies you chose to put on. Hey look, I just saved your Christmas. You’re welcome. Sorry about the “your family hates you now” thing, but that will pass in time. I am living proof of that.
By the way, can’t believe I just wrote my first Bloody Disgusting article. You all have no idea how honored I am to be here. Thanks so much for reading, and please feel free to pop over to my site, and then hit me up on my Facebook page. This is beginning of a beautiful relationship. -Remy Carreiro
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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