Editorials
The 10 Best Foreign Horror Films of 2018!
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
As 2018 comes to a close, we take a look at the very best foreign horror films that the year has had to offer!
There is so much horror out there—both old and new—that it’s incredibly easy to miss some of the major titles that come out each year. Not only is to difficult to be aware of every upcoming horror film, but not all titles get major releases in every market. Sure, everyone saw Halloween and Hereditary, but here are some brilliant films from across the world that may not yet be on your radar. This year was incredible for domestic horror, but there are lots of exciting horror projects that are brewing outside of North America, too. So here’s a helpful list of some of the more impressive foreign endeavors from 2018!
Revenge
Directed by Coralie Fargeat; France
Revenge goes for the throat and while it can be painful to watch at times, it amounts to an incredibly cathartic revenge story about female empowerment more than anything else. There are plenty of women scorned revenge films and the problem with many of them is that you have to endure so much physical and sexual abuse before the revenge actually begins. Revenge, however, finds a much more comfortable balance and this is very clear about Jen kicking ass, not being beaten down. Part of what makes Revenge such a memorable experience is Matilda Lutz’ performance as Jen. It’s unreal to watch this vicious near-death experience that she goes through essentially lead to her rebirth as a kick-ass Terminator-like force. Lutz sells both sides of the performance and the film turns up the psychological and cat and mouse elements to her rampage rather than reduce it to simply a violent bloodbath. The final showdown with her abuser is also such a visceral and messy fight that boils the film down to its gender binaries in a really moving way.
Luz
Directed by Tilman Singer; Germany
Luz’ plot about a taxi driver who goes to the police after she’s been assaulted is very simple at its surface level, but this is actually a shockingly unique and mysterious way to tell a story of obsession and demon possession. It touches on the lengths that a demon will go to secure their prey in a very unconventional style. The film also puts to use regression therapy and hypnosis as a means to help solve a crime and the mime-like results and impeccable sound design are one of the most creative things that I’ve seen in a movie all year. Luz is deeply confident in its storytelling and nothing is over-explained to the audience. Luz is only 70 minutes long, but it packs a lot into that runtime. It also feels like it’s some kind of lost relic from the ‘70s and carries a very Fulci-esque aesthetic. There is no doubt that this film will surprise you in one way or another.
Family
Directed by Veronica Kedar; Israel/Germany
Veronica Kedar writes, directs, and stars in Family and it’s one of the more jarring looks at a fractured family that you’ll come across (this would actually make for a great double feature with Hereditary). Family explores why Lily would suddenly kill her entire family, but it presents the story in non-linear fashion to keep the audience guessing and generate mystery over this seismic act that she commits. This non-linear nature jumps through Lily’s life to depict various experiences with her family and why she’s grown to resent them to the point of murder. Family delicately handles these glimpses into this family’s past and it’s a strong way to make this story more layered. It also handles the difficult task of humanizing Lily, who begins the film as a monster, but is full of depth and emotion by the end. Family makes for an engrossing character study and psychological puzzle that actually has a lot to say about humanity. It makes certain strong stylistic choices, like how it presents itself almost like a session of therapy or inexplicably turns into a musical that help Family stand out even more.
Field Guide to Evil
Directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, Peter Strickland, Agnieszka Smoczynska, Katrin Gebbe, Can Evrenol, Calvin Reeder, Ashim Ahluwalia, Yannis Veslemes; Austria, Greece, Poland, Germany, Turkey, USA, India, Hungary
Anthology films always wield a lot of potential, especially when they can put a bunch of new filmmakers on your radar or approach a common theme in a creative way. Field Guide to Evil’s approach is to pull from classic pieces of cultural folklore for its inspiration. As a result, the film pushes a gentler more archetypal attitude than a more aggressive horror anthology, but the whole point of this film is to highlight how horror stories from across the world and throughout different cultures still share many similarities. Not all of the eight stories here are winners, but they all tap into the same energy that makes this a fun, unusual anthology experiment, warts and all. These stories want to have fun and push a tradition of the form more than outright terrify their viewers. That being said, the variety in content here and how the movie specifically looks to be globally minded is wonderful. This will likely be your first exposure to many of these directors, even if there are a few slightly bigger names like Veronika Franz (Goodnight Mommy) and Can Evrenol (Baskin, Housewife) on the roster, too.
Ghost Mask: Scar
Directed by Takeshi Sone; South Korea, Japan
Ghost Mask: Scar plays in the world of plastic surgery and facial reconstruction, which can be a delightfully eerie field when in the right context. Ghost Mask: Scar looks at Miyu, who travels to Seoul in order to find her missing sister. Miyu doesn’t find her sister, but she does run into someone who certainly looks a lot like her and just like that the film begins to touch on areas of mistaken identity and wanting to be someone else. Ghost Mask: Scar is a very slow burn, but its final ten minutes go completely off the rails in psychotic lunacy and justify the entire picture. The film isn’t perfect, but the metamorphosis that these characters go through and the heavy things that are said about family and identity will stick with you just as much as the bloodshed.
Holiday
Directed by Isabella Eklöfl; Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey
Holiday is almost the antithesis to Revenge. It’s incredibly violent, features one of the most brutal, extreme rape scenes this side of Irreversible, and it was said to be the darkest film to come out of Sundance this year. Holiday is an exercise in endurance to get through, but it’s a film that’s worth it due to the complex character of Sascha and the tragic story that’s she caught in. Sascha is the trophy girlfriend to an abusive drug lord and she basically receives pain wherever she turns. However, Sascha learns to accept this abuse as the price of being this kingpin’s girlfriend and a crushing case of Stockholm Syndrome develops. It’s devastating to see Sascha turn down her possible escapes from this lifestyle and the film wants the viewer to ask if she’s even complicit in all of this. Holiday isn’t for everyone, but it still manages to subvert the typical expectations for this variety of revenge story. It’s an unflinching, fearless film and it’s clear that the film’s female director, Isabella Eklöfl, wants the audience to stew in that tension and trauma.
Terrified
Directed by Demián Rugna; Argentina
Terrified is the perfect kind of disturbing ghost story that gets under your skin and stays there for the rest of the film. This is easily one of the scariest movies to come out of this year and Rugna’s film is a masterpiece in tones and genuine scares. What’s even better is that nothing in Terrified is exactly new. All of this has been done before in one sense or another, but the film still makes it work and creates a tense, unnerving experience in the process. Terrified also deserves points for rather than making its focus a haunted house, it makes it a whole haunted neighborhood. It’s a fun twist on the typical supernatural idea and allows much fuel for the film’s many scares. Demián Rugna is definitely someone to keep your eye on.
Cold Skin
Directed by Xavier Gens; Spain/France
Frontier(s) filmmaker, Xavier Gens, returns with a much more methodical picture that attempts to dip its toe into the Lovecraftian pool with a delicate story about who the real monsters are. A man ventures to a secluded island that’s inhabited with a bizarre fish-like humanoid race. Cold Skin is a little clunky in its execution and at times does feel like a watered down take on The Shape of Water, but the movie boasts gorgeous cinematography and Gens still creates something beautiful here, even if it isn’t as deep as it thinks it is. If you can connect to the humanity within the film’s monsters then Cold Skin should work for you.
Ravenous
Directed by Robin Aubert; (Quebec) Canada
Ravenous manages to do the seemingly impossible and finds a way to make a new zombie film that feels different and challenging. Zombies are such an overdone genre that have been pushed in every extreme at this point, but the film’s intimate story of a small Quebec village that’s attacked by zombies is an immensely thrilling experience. The film doesn’t try to weave an overly complicated plot and instead falls back on sympathetic characters and the juxtaposition of peace and silence with mayhem. The film carries a relaxed attitude at times, but terror can strike at any moment and it’s this balance that makes Ravenous feel so unique, even if it’s built off of old ideas. It’s easy to see why Netflix jumped on this film for international distribution.
House of Sweat and Tears
Directed by Sonia Escolano; Spain
House of Sweat and Tears focuses on “She,” the leader of a twisted cult, however, the film notably takes place at a point where “She” begins to lose control of her followers. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure plagues the dreams of the cult members and it looks like this unseen force may gain favor and push “She” out of control. More than anything, House of Sweat and Tears really speaks to the horrors and brainwashing ability of cults that will completely erase a person’s identity. There’s one scene in the film that involves slapping that’s no different than anything seen in The Master. There’s also a devastating act of penance that involves glass in shoes that’s extremely hard to watch. It’s a testament to the powers of the film’s sound design, but it also really boils down what this film is about – commitment and sacrifice. A character also gets freaking crucified in this movie, so there is no shortage of disturbing images here, even if it does operate with a quiet intensity for the most part.
Honorable Mentions: Pascal Laugier’s Incident In A Ghost Land, Tower. A Bright Day, Possum, Ghost Stories, as well as Veronica and Cold Hell, which we included on last year’s list, but have now finally seen wider releases
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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