Editorials
‘Banshee Chapter’ Director Selects “5 Awesome Conspiracy Horror Films”!
Blair Erickson’s conspiracy horror Banshee Chapter, which stars Katia Winter (Showtime’s “Dexter”, “Sleepy Hollow”), Michael McMillian (HBO’s “True Blood”) and Ted Levin (Silence of the Lambs), opens limited theaters on January 10 XLrator Media.
“The pic centers on a young, female journalist (Winter) who follows the mysterious trail of a missing friend (McMillian) that had been experimenting with mind-altering chemicals developed in secret government drug tests. Levine plays the role of a rogue counter-culture novelist with a penchant for substance abuse and firearms who leads the journalist into the mystery of dangerous chemical research. A fast-paced blend of fact and fiction, the film is based on real documents, actual test subject testimony, and uncovered secrets about covert programs run by the CIA.”
Also available on VOD, Bloody Disgusting caught up with Erickson who chatted a bit about conspiracies, while also sharing his picks for “5 Awesome Conspiracy Horror Films”!
“How do you have a violent, unstoppable haunting in a newly constructed cookie-cutter suburban development of a California neighborhood?
That’s the question most wonder when they first begin watching 1982’s horror classic “Poltergeist.” Somewhere in the story you get so wrapped up in the evil clowns under the bed and tree arms grabbing through the window that you almost forget that there’s almost no logical reason for the newly built housing development to be haunted in the first place. Almost none… Then in the last act, the suburban father finally uncovers a banal conspiracy of capitalist corruption at his own real estate company that’s so obvious it defies doubt.
When the real estate agent father finally realizes the terrible cost-saving scheme the Cuesta Verde development company pulled on him and the other neighborhood families, it’s too late. The corpses they built the homes on top of are already ripping through the floor. He grabs his soon-to-be-ex-boss and screams “You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn’t you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! Why!? Why!?”
As delightfully morbid plot twists go, it works perfectly. Especially since Spielberg’s story makes sure to thoroughly setup the ruthlessly profitable 1980’s era real estate development business and the oily salesmen running it in the background of the entire tale.”
“John Carpenter’s blood-stained love letter to H.P. Lovecraft is one of my favorites in his impressive collection of work. A truly imaginative and vivid journey full of mind-bending insanity, great performances, and tentacled monsters.
The always enjoyable Sam Neil delivers a colorful performance as an insurance investigator on the trail of a vanished hit horror writer. Was it faked? Suicide? Murder? Or something beyond comprehension. The conspiracy takes him from axe-wielding book fans in New York to a town full of demonic children that doesn’t seem to exist. And as each and every fascinating Lovecraftian horror surfaces (I’m still dying to know what exactly “The Hobbs End Horror” is) the story rips apart more and more until our poor protagonist is left babbling like a lunatic at the end of the world.
The most meta line of dialog in the film is the moment where Neil tries to warn his editor that Sutter Cane has somehow written a novel called “In the Mouth of Madness” literally designed to induce paranoid schizophrenia in readers. ‘This book is going to drive people absolutely mad!’ Without missing a beat, his editor ironically snaps back, ‘Let’s hope so… the movie comes out next month.'”
“It’s been called “The Citizen Kane of Horror Movies” by some critics. A movie so weird and bloodless, it almost shouldn’t even work. Yet the setup and payoff work so incredibly well together the film retains a kind of power rarely matched. Forty years later horror fans still talk about it. (Please everyone forget the ill-advised Neil Labute remake with a shouty Nicolas Cage in a bear suit punching ladies) The original still works because it has a kind of strange creepy magic of it’s era that isn’t easily replicated.
The story follows a buttoned up Christian policeman in England who investigates a missing child on an island of bizarre bee farmers. As he slowly unravels the conspiracy of the child they claim never existed, he starts to realize that he’s among an entire population of pagan worshipping psychos who plot human sacrifices for their harvest. The final images of the film are so cinematically beautiful and terrifying at the same time, the film burns itself into your brain as the flames slowly wind their way up the Wicker Man.
Come for the loopy naked dance rituals of the pagans, stay for the delightfully creepy performance of Christopher Lee as the sinister village patriarch, Lord Summerisle.”
“For the first time since ‘Scream’ a horror movie had the brains to intelligently play with their audience by taking the old conventional horror setup of teens lined up for killing at a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and then twisting it into a lunatic global conspiracy of the evil unleashed from an anonymous military facility. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have a blast venting all of their entertainment industry angst into a hilarious script with one of the most applause-inducing bloodbaths ever placed in a horror movie.
Sweet innocent young folks are going to be carved up, but here the slaughter is all being supervised by cynical middle managers part of some mysterious organization. They bitch about co-workers, complain about foreign offices, and make office pools wagering on the gruesome death of these innocents. It’s the little touches that make the horror take on the shape of something more.
When you realize these young people are being sacrificed for a bloodthirsty audience watching quietly in the dark… Could it be the film is saying something about our entertainment and our values as a society? Why do these unseen creepy audience members need to watch “the whore” die gruesomely and painfully, but not before first seeing her nude? Why do these tired desk jockeys executing people from the comfort of Staples swivel chairs and watching mass killing on video monitors seem so familiar to us?
As a twisted commentary on our own perverse desires and social structure, this is one hell of a ride. When ‘The Director’ finally shows up to justify the conspiracy, you finally realize how elegantly the film has slit the throats of so many slasher films of days past, while lovingly tipping its hat to them. And like the best crazy horror tales, you get glimpses of an incredible universe lurking in the shadows that leaves you dying to know more.”
“Here’s a masterpiece of film that defies genre categorization. Is it a horror film about a Vietnam veteran who was the subject of a terrible military experiment? Or is it a drama about a man putting his life together as the horrors of war still haunt his daily life? Like the scene in which Jacob Singer is dunked into the ice bath as his rising fever threatens to boil his brain, there’s no easy answers here. And no easy escape. We never know any more than Jacob does about who or what was done to him during the wary. But the film is unique and breathtaking.
One of the rare other horror films to deal with the MK-ULTRA chemical experiments, This film was very near and dear to my heart when I created ‘Banshee Chapter.’ Bruce Joel Rubin’s brilliant script walks a fine line between a tale of nightmarish demons, tragedy, and Vietnam military horror. What works so amazingly well in this film is the absolute fever nightmare feeling it exudes as it flickers wildly between moments in a life torn apart by war and creepy government chemicals. It could’ve easily seemed silly, but Adrian Lyne masterfully exercises one of horror’s best weapons: restraint.
The result is a film that creates haunting imagery and powerful moments of emotion as you watch one man’s hauntingly lonely descent into the U.S. military’s chemical nightmare. It’s impossible to forget those faceless doctors waiting to operate as Jacob screams “I’m not dead!” in the blood stained back rooms of the veteran’s hospital in hell.”
Editorials
Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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