Editorials
The 5 Most Polarizing Horror Films of 2017
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
No one said all movies had to be easy to watch. 2017 was a landmark year for the horror genre, filled with critical darlings (Get Out, It, Gerald’s Game, Raw) and box office winners (It, Get Out, Split, Annabelle: Creation). There were a handful of films, however, that proved to be more controversial. Loved by some and loathed by many (or vice versa), these films were truly love-it-or-hate-it experiences. In no particular order, these are the 5 most polarizing horror films of 2017.
1. It Comes at Night
Plot – Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man (Joel Edgerton) has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife (Carmen Ejogo) and son (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Then a desperate young family (Christopher Abbott, Riley Keough and Griffin Robert Faulkner) arrives seeking refuge.
CinemaScore – D
Rotten Tomatoes Score – 88%
MetaCritic Score – 78
Production Budget – $2,400,000
Box Office (Domestic) – $13,985,117
Box Office (Foreign) – $5,295,814
What Made It So Polarizing? – This is a classic case of mis-marketing. It Comes at Night was advertised as a horror movie about people locked in a house so as to protect themselves from whatever it is that comes at night. The movie is actually a slow burn paranoia drama with horror elements. If your movie title tells people that something comes at night and then the movie doesn’t tell you what that is, it’s not going to go over well. Of course, the “it” of the title is up to interpretation, but it isn’t a physical entity. It Comes at Night is essentially an arthouse film that was marketed as a mainstream horror film, and people felt cheated when they walked out of the theater. Make no mistake: it is a great film, but make sure you go in with your expectations in check.
2. mother!
Plot – Darren Aronofsky’s film follows a young woman (Jennifer Lawrence) whose tranquil life with her husband (Javier Bardem) at their country home is disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious couple (Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris). Their personal family drama spills over into the house leading to the death of their son (Brian Gleeson) and a memorial service held at their house. After the guests leave, the couple who own the house end up at the center of a cult that turns their home into a warzone.
CinemaScore – F
Rotten Tomatoes Score – 68%
MetaCritic Score – 74
Production Budget – $30,000,000
Box Office (Domestic) – $17,800,004
Box Office (Foreign) – $26,716,995
What Made It So Polarizing? – Much like It Comes at Night, Darren Aronofsky’s mother! was marketed as a home invasion-type horror film. Add to that the star power of Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer (who is on a roll this year) and Ed Harris, and you’ve got a major box office draw of a film. Unfortunately, mother! is not an easy film to watch so extremely negative word of mouth caused the film to flop (domestically, anyway). While many of the events that take place in the film are horrifying, it’s not your average horror film. Essentially an allegory for the Bible (this is my favorite interpretation of the film’s plot), mother! is a film filled with random occurrences that Aronofsky offers no explanation for. Of course, if you buy into the aforementioned allegory then it all makes sense, but it appears that many viewers still weren’t fond of the film (hence that F CinemaScore). The final 20 minutes are filled to the brim with such grotesque imagery and brutal violence that many viewers expecting a more straightforward horror film may have found a bit too disturbing. Is it genius? Or is it pretentious dreck? That is up for you to decide, but there is no right or wrong answer.
3. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Plot – A cardiac surgeon (Colin Farrell) secretly befriends a teenage boy (Barry Keoghan). He introduces the boy to his family (Nicole Kidman, Raffey Cassiddy and Sunny Suljic), who then fall mysteriously ill. The boy reveals that this is revenge for the doctor killing his father on the operating table three years earlier and it will only end with the death of a family member, a decision he must make.
CinemaScore – N/A
Rotten Tomatoes Score – 79%
MetaCritic Score – 73
Production Budget – N/A
Box Office (Domestic) – $2,141,430 (as of November 30, 2017)
Box Office (Foreign) – N/A
What Made It So Polarizing? – Probably the film’s lack of explanation and the overall surreality of the film. The world in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a peculiar one. The way the characters talk and react to things lead you to believe that this isn’t the “real” world, but rather one of Lanthimos’ design. This is apparently a trait from all of his films (The Killing of a Sacred Deer was my introduction to Lanthimos, so I can’t say for sure), but if you don’t know that going in then you may be taken aback. Also, no explanation is given for the seemingly supernatural events in the film. Things just…..happen. As mentioned above, audiences want to know why things are happening. If you don’t give them that, they will walk out frustrated. The film is splitting audiences right down the middle (even us at Bloody Disgusting were divided, as evidenced by my glowing review and Benedict Seal’s scathing one), but one thing it also does is demand discussion. Whether you love it or hate it, you will want to talk about it the second you walk out of the theater.
4. We Are the Flesh
Plot – After wandering a ruined city for years in search of food and shelter, two siblings (Mariía Evoli and Diego Gamaliel) find their way into one of the last remaining buildings. Inside, they find a man (Noé Hernández) who will make them a dangerous offer to survive the outside world.
CinemaScore – N/A
Rotten Tomatoes Score – 75%
MetaCritic Score – 62
Production Budget – N/A
Box Office (Domestic) – $8,438
Box Office (Foreign) – N/A
What Made It So Polarizing? – Besides the fact that it’s basically porn, Emiliano Rocha Minter’s debut feature We Are the Flesh (review) is quite possibly the most difficult film to digest this year. The film is primarily interested in breaking a plethora of societal taboos, including but not limited to incest, pornography the ingestion of period blood. It can’t be denied that Minter has filmmaking talent (sound design is one of the highlights here), but whether or not you like what he puts on screen is another matter entirely. We Are the Flesh will try your patience in a way almost no other film will.
5. Alien: Covenant
Plot – In Ridley Scott’s second Alien prequel, he crew of a colony ship, bound for a remote planet, discover an uncharted paradise with a threat beyond their imagination, and must attempt a harrowing escape.
CinemaScore – B
Rotten Tomatoes Score – 68%
MetaCritic Score – 65
Budget – $97,000,000
Box Office (Domestic) – $74,262,031
Box Office (Foreign) – $166,483,733
What Made It So Polarizing? – This was a case of a film having an identity crisis. It was trying to please too many people at once. You see, after the mixed reaction to Prometheus, 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott decided that the sequel (and Alien prequel) needed to feature more xenomorph action. That meant that much of what happens directly after Prometheus had to be abbreviated significantly. So basically an entire film (featuring Elizabeth Shaw’s journey to the engineers’ planet) was condensed into a quick 5-minute flashback sequence. This was both a huge disservice to the Shaw character as well as fans of Prometheus, because despite the mixed reception of Prometheus, it does have its fans. Had the remainder of the film been more original it might have had won over more people (I gave it a middling review), but even the xenomorph action is a retread of multiple moments from the previous Alien films (that underwhelming climax included). Still, Alien: Covenant did also have its fans. The problem Fox has now is that half of their audience wants to see a sequel more like Covenant, while the other half wants the series to go back to a style like Prometheus. They need to pick one route to go and commit to it.
Which films did you find to be the most polarizing of 2017? Let us know in the comments below!
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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