Editorials
10 Must-See Independent Horror Films of 2016!
The Devil’s Candy (Distributor Unannounced) – TBD
If there is such a thing as a “crowd-pleasing possession film,” Sean Byrne’s (The Loved Ones) The Devil’s Candy would be it. I’ve expressed my annoyance with possession films in the past, but with this and February, 2016 is shaping up to be a sort of “Possession Movie Renaissance” period. In the film, a married couple Ray and Astrid (Ethan Embry & Shiri Appleby) finally move into their dream home with their daughter (Kiara Glasco). After moving in, Ray (Pruitt Taylor Vince), the mentally unstable son of the deceased former owners, appears on the doorstep one night, clutching a red electric guitar and asking to “return home.” It soon becomes clear that Ray and Jesse are both being influenced by the same satanic forces, and that Jesse’s family won’t be safe until they find a way to quiet the Devil himself. It was one of the surprise hits of the festival season and has yet to lock down a distributor, yet out of all the films on this list it’s one that has the most potential to appeal to the masses. It’s a scary film with heart, which is rare to find these days.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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