Editorials
The Best Horror Movies Released in the First Half of 2019!
The last few years, at least as far as the box office is concerned, have felt like a bit of a horror renaissance due to the wave of strong studio films. Both in quality and quantity. Now that we’re halfway through the year, how does 2019 compare? Let’s dig in.
Nearly all studio released films have proven extremely divisive so far, though the returns have been healthy regardless. But there’s far more to horror than theatrical releases, and there’s no shortage of limited and indie releases that are delivering the goods. While the decade is looking to close out strong with Crawl, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, It Chapter Two, Doctor Sleep, and more, beginning with Midsommar, we look back at the best horror 2019 has unleashed so far.
Happy Death Day 2U
Christopher Landon’s follow up to Happy Death Day took a step back from the inventive slasher setup to expand the mythology behind the time loops in an epic love letter to the ‘80s. Of course, that departure from more traditional horror meant this sequel wasn’t quite as universally embraced as its predecessor, but it delivered on what was most important: more Tree Gelbman. Jessica Rothe once again stole the show and ran as Tree’s emotional journey brought the laughs and tears in equal measure.
The Hole in the Ground
Between The Prodigy, Pet Sematary, and Brightburn, the year might belong to the creepy kid. But so far, the best of the bunch is Irish creeper The Hole in the Ground. After moving to the countryside, a single mother begins to worry her son might not be her son anymore after he disappears into the forest with a mysterious sinkhole and returns hours later. More than just interesting folklore, The Hole in the Ground delivers on unnerving atmosphere.
Climax
Arguably Gaspar Noé’s most accessible film to date, Climax is both a visual feast and an extremely uncomfortable watch. A group of dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to dance the night away, but it all goes horrifically awry when someone spikes the punch with LSD. Under a neon haze, the dancers most hellish nightmares become reality as Noé breaks taboo after taboo with ease. It’s depraved.
Us
Jordan Peele’s highly anticipated follow up to Get Out brought doppelganger horror back into the spotlight. A fun summer vacation for the Wilson family turns into a terrifying fight for survival when their doppelgangers show up to claim their lives as their own. Peele balances the humor with the scares, but above all Us boasts a captivating, immeasurably talented cast. Lupita Nyong’o’s dual performance as Adelaide Wilson/Red is both heartbreaking and chilling, ensuring our wrath at her inevitable Oscar exclusion, but Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex are all equally exceptional.
Knife + Heart
Set in the Paris summer of 1979, Vanessa Paradis starts as Anne, a producer of low budget gay porn. When her lover, who happens to also be her film editor, leaves her, she strikes out to make her most ambitious film yet in attempt to win her back. The only problem is that a masked killer is picking off her cast and crew one by one in the most brutal fashion. Yann Gonzalez’ film is a gorgeous giallo through and through, complete with all the familiar trademarks and tropes. The masked killer is unsettling, and those kills are downright vicious. If you love giallo movies, this one is not to be missed.
Piercing
Based on the novel of the same name by Ryu Murakami (author of Audition), Piercing presents another twisted love story of sorts. Facing the stresses of dealing with a newborn, family man Reed (Christopher Abbott) checks himself into a hotel on business. But he’s really plotting to murder an escort that he’s ordered to his room. Reed didn’t factor Jackie (Mia Wasikowska) into his plans, though, and a violent cat and mouse game ensues. Directed by Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother, Grudge), this is a stylish chamber piece unafraid to get weird and bloody.
Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror
From D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation to the future of horror, this documentary catalogs the history of black horror adapted from Robin R. Means Coleman’s nonfiction novel. Assembling a slew of horror directors, actors, critics, and scholars, Horror Noire takes aim at black representation in horror through thoughtful analysis, passion, and humor. This engaging crash course will leave you wanting to learn more.
St. Agatha
Director Darren Lynn Bousman revives nunsploitation horror with 1950s set St. Agatha. A young pregnant woman (fittingly named Mary) is accepted into an isolated home for unwed mothers run by nuns. The clues that something is seriously amiss with the home begins in subtle fashion, but eventually crescendos into utter perverse madness. Bousman established himself with the Saw series, and his trademark use of suspense and violence carry over well here. It’s torture and terror aplenty in St. Agatha; these nuns mean business.
Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse
Hagazussa manages to make The Witch look like an action-packed thrill ride in terms of pacing. So, clearly it won’t be for everyone. But for those who don’t mind slow-burn horror, this 15th century European character study depicts a brutal life of isolation, paranoia, and superstition. And it’s easily one of the most gorgeous looking films of the year. Perhaps most impressive of all is that this is writer/director Lukas Feigelfeld’s student thesis film. What a debut.
Editor’s Note: Alongside Doppelgänger Releasing, Bloody Disgusting released Hagazussa earlier this year.
I Trapped the Devil
Writer/director Josh Lobo’s Christmas set film is a haunting portrayal of grief and familial guilt. When Steve’s brother and sister-in-law unexpectedly show up at his door to celebrate the holidays, they’re alarmed to discover he has a man locked in his basement. One that he insists is actually the devil. Paranoia and psychological terror carried deftly on the shoulders of its three leads, this is brooding yuletide horror at its best.
The Perfection
This Netflix gem feels more like a few different subgenres rolled into one twisty horror thriller, and that unpredictability makes for a wild ride. The setup is simple; former music prodigy Charlotte (Get Out’s Allison Williams) returns to her past school and befriends new star pupil Elizabeth (Logan Browning), and it sends both down a path of shocking destruction. A little bit Martyrs, Oldboy, and more, The Perfection is another one of 2019’s pleasant surprises.
Child’s Play
“This is for Tupac!” The biggest surprise of the year, so far, is just how much fun the reboot that no one wanted turned out to be. It’s Amblin Entertainment meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. While hardly perfect, the E.T.-like take on the killer doll and the ultra-elaborate death sequences made a strong case as to why we go to the movies for horror; it’s a crowd-pleasing good time. It’s also so very different from the original franchise that it seems as though there’s plenty of room for both. Now bring on Don Mancini’s Child’s Play TV series!
Annabelle Comes Home
Keeping with that same sense of fun that Child’s Play unboxed a week prior, this third entry in the Annabelle series feels like a spooky trip in a carnival haunted house in the best possible way. What began as a tedious spin-off movie has since transformed into a perfect companion series to the heart and scares of The Conjuring. Mckenna Grace carries the torch well as Judith Warren, and we don’t even mind that this sequel unleashes a hole cadre of potential spinoff entities. I’d sign up for a Ferryman movie.
Midsommar
Though technically released in the second half of the year, it’s so close we’re counting it anyway. Ari Aster’s highly anticipated follow up to Hereditary is no doubt another polarizing entry, but it’s one hell of a head trip no matter how you come out of this 2.5 hour journey. It’ll be difficult to imagine any one can top the riveting performance of Florence Pugh, either, as lead protagonist Dani. For the men that journey to that remote village in Sweden, this film plays like a familiar entry in folk horror. But for Dani, it’s every bit the twisted fairy tale Aster promised. From head trauma to insidious rituals, and a whole lot of humor too, Midsommar makes for a surprisingly cathartic time at the movies.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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