Editorials
The Best Horror Movies You Should Be Streaming On Halloween
The annual holy day is upon us, and you know what that means – binging lots and lots of horror movies. With so many dozens of different channels and physical media and streaming services out there, narrowing down one’s choices during the festivities of Samhain can be a bit overwhelming, but fear not. Below is a list of some of the best and most exciting genre films available, and they’re all sure to create a cozy, blood-soaked night for two, or even serve as a proper background aesthetic for a loud party lit by the warm glow of a dozen jack-o-lanterns.
NETFLIX
Gerald’s Game
With the threat of the the dissolution of their marriage at hand, Jessie agrees to Gerald’s little game, the one where he ties to her to the bed with steel handcuffs and lets him carry out his wildest sexual fantasies. Despite being complicit at first, Jessie soon becomes deeply uncomfortable and picks a fight, only to find herself strapped to the bed with Gerald dead on the floor, and no one around for miles to hear her screams. Now, with no help in sight and time quickly ticking away, Jessie will have to overcome her worst fears and find a way out of this bed, before the cold claws of death come for her once and for all.
Cult of Chucky
He goes by Charles, but you can call him Chucky, and he lives within the confines of a small, mass-produced children’s toy. He says he’s your friend till the end, but what he really means is, he’s your friend until his murderous tendencies kick into high gear and he’s forced to let the serial killer within come to the surface and take you out while you’re sleeping. The latest in a long line of Chucky movies, Cult of Chucky is a fun take on the talking doll, with a wildly unpredictable ending to boot.
The Babysitter
Bee is the babysitter every young boy dreams of having watch him while his parents are away. She’s beautiful, full of life, and happens to on occasion spill the blood of the innocent in the name of the Dark Lord and carrying out his biddings. Don’t double cross her, because this babysitter won’t call your parents, she’ll just sacrifice you to Satan and make it look like an accident – but at least she lets you stay up late without ratting you out.
Raw
It’s only her first year at veterinary school, but already, Justine has discovered herself growing up in new and exciting ways she never thought possible. She’s thriving in all of her classes, getting along with her new roommate, and oh yeah, she’s realized that she has an unquenchable lust for blood.
Baskin
If you’re looking for something ferocious and bloody on this most holiest of horror-fueled days, look no further than Can Evrenol’s Baskin, the wicked crimson stained descent into pure Hell. Like a fever dream played out in real time, a group of policemen answer a call coming from an abandoned warehouse, but once they arrive on the scene, all they find is terror beyond anything they could’ve possibly imagined. Only the bravest will survive this sickening exercise in gore and wildly imaginative mayhem and debauchery.
HULU
Colossal
Down on her luck and recently dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Gloria heads back to her quant hometown, where she picks up a job at the local bar, reunites with old friends and discovers a strange ability to control a giant kaiju monster terrorizing the streets of Seoul, South Korea. Learning how to curve her drinking is one thing, but this newfound challenge in controlling the fates of the masses proves to be the greatest lesson Gloria has ever learned, along with not allowing the men around her to control her, for they prove to be just as toxic as the alcohol she nightly pours into her veins.
Hounds of Love
Here’s a heavier horror title for those who are looking for something a little more meaningful to watch on All Hallows Eve. Possibly based on some real life Australian murderers, Hounds of Love tells the heartbreaking tale of a little girl snatched off the streets and tortured in the dark dungeon of a serial killer couple’s guest room, but soon, it will be revealed that this unfortunate teen isn’t the only victim in this house.
The Blob
A remake of the 1958 classic, Chuck Russell, director of Dream Warriors, one of the best Nightmare on Elm Street entries, proves once again that he knows how to make a fun horror movie, and one that stands the test of time as it boosts some of the best practical effects to ever appear onscreen.
The Faculty
Many people are quick to forget the movie that holds up as one of Robert Rodriguez’s best, but no matter how many times this riff on the old Invasion of the Body Snatchers classic plays, it only grows to be more fun and hilarious with each viewing. It’s perfect for a group looking for a good time on Halloween.
Ghoulies
This is undoubtedly one of the goofiest movies ever made, but it’s hard to think of a better time at the movies than Luca Bercovici’s Ghoulies, the strange and sinister account of a man who becomes possessed by the desire to control demons upon his moving into a brand new apartment complex with his sweet little girlfriend.
AMAZON PRIME
I Bury the Living
Make sure that cemetery man Robert Kraft doesn’t mark your plot with a black pin on the map in his office, or you may be the next body to wind up six feet under on his property. He can’t quite explain it, but every single time Mr. Kraft claims a spot on the tedious representation of his graveyard, the person whose name he pinned soon finds themselves experiencing the big sleep, and if you’re not careful, you could be next.
Society
It’s hard not to feel like an outsider in a world that openly boasts the rich and the famous, but Bill has his own reasons for feeling like he doesn’t belong in this high-class society. He doesn’t seem to look like his parents, or resemble anyone in his family for that matter, especially when they form into a giant hybrid of human flesh and monstrous desire – but that’s what it takes to join the elite rankings of this exclusive club, and if he wants to belong, he’ll have to comply.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
What more do you need in a horror movie than a re-animated decapitated head that won’t stop flapping its jaw? Not much, as Dr. Bill Cortner soon discovers, just as he discovers the key to conducting successful transplants through the trial and error of keeping his lovely girlfriend’s noggin alive long after severing her spinal cord. Now, all he needs is a body to fit the brains.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
This year was a rough one for horror fans, but you can honor the great Tobe Hooper’s legacy with one of his best, and one of the greatest horror films of all time, about a small Texas town and how the peace was disrupted on a quiet evening out in the woods when a lone man with a chainsaw set out to terrorize a group of teens and leave no one standing in his wake.
SHUDDER
Blood Rage
Okay, so technically, this is a horror film that feels more at home on Thanksgiving rather than Halloween, but who can deny the pure power of the wholly ridiculous and delightfully malevolent Blood Rage? Just wait until you hear the line about cranberry sauce.
Count Dracula
Believe it or not, despite the fact that Christopher Lee played Dracula more than any other actor in the history of film, he actually didn’t approve of the most of the incarnations of his famous monster. Witness one of the rare occasions where he actually feels proud of his performance, and watch one of the lesser-known accounts of the legendary creature of the night in Jess Franco’s 1970 flick Count Dracula.
Nightmare City
It’s been a little over a week since we lost master filmmaker Umberto Lenzi. Much of his wonderful work is hard to find, but thanks to Shudder, you can stream one of his very best within seconds.
Almost Human
Like a mash-up of Fire in the Sky and The Terminator, this account of a man being beamed up into the heavens and spat out onto the dusty earth again plays as one of the most thrilling sci-fi action films in quite some time. Mark Fisher may have left this plane as a humble earthling, but what he comes back as doesn’t quite measure up to human. Turn up the volume and throw back a shot for this one.
The Blood Spattered Bride
Newlywed Susan is shocked and saddened to learn that her newfound husband’s sexual games aren’t quite what she had in mind, nor what she deems comfortable bedroom advances. Lost and unsure of how to handle this problem, Susan seeks out the aid of a long deceased partner in crime – Carmilla, the spirit of a woman who killed her husband many years ago in this very same manor.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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