Editorials
Monster Movie ‘Sweetheart’ and the Resurgence of Aquatic Horror
This summer brought Alexandre Aja’s nail-biting alligator thriller Crawl, and this coming January sees the release of deep-sea creature feature Underwater. Smack in between is J.D. Dillard’s Sweetheart, an aquatic horror movie that’s equal parts creature feature and survival horror. Despite positive buzz out of the Sundance Film Festival for its world premiere, including a rave from our own Meredith Borders, the island-set horror movie was quietly released on VOD a couple of days ahead of its October 22 street date. Like Crawl, Sweetheart offers up another solid entry in aquatic horror that makes this writer hopeful for a serious resurgence.
Sweetheart is minimalist horror at its best. It’s a simple story with very little dialogue, but it’s executed well. Think Castaway, for at least a large chunk of the runtime, but without any volleyballs or seagulls for its lead protagonist to befriend.
The opening frame shows Jenn (Kiersey Clemons) waking on the shore of some nondescript island. She finds another washed up person, someone she knows, but he’s got one gnarly chunk of coral lodged in his ribcage. He has about enough energy to mutter, “Did you see it?” before succumbing to his wound, leaving Jenn shipwrecked alone. While the adaptable Jenn quickly sets about trying to survive alone on a small island, she learns soon enough what her fallen comrade meant. She’s not so alone after all.
Every night something prowls the island for food. It’s big and it’s deadly.
For a brisk 82-minute runtime, the film is pretty much void of dialogue for roughly half of that. A lot of it is dedicated to Jenn formulating plans and simply trying to survive. Which isn’t to say that it’s without tension or that nothing interesting is going on- Dillard is adept at knowing when to layer in story clues- but that the minimalism likely won’t be for everyone.
Dillard is also the type of filmmaker that understands how frustrating it can be to show too little or too much of the creature in a creature feature. He also gets that too much ambiguity can be annoying. All of which to say that we get to glimpse the film’s monster in subtle teases, at first, resulting in one breathtaking creature shot for the ages. It gradually increases until we see a climactic showdown that shows artist Neville Page’s creature design in all its glory.
When asked about the film’s title at a recent screening, Dillard simply stated that he wanted to keep audiences in the dark as much as possible to preserve the surprises. The nonexistent marketing does effectively preserve mystery; the only stills available pre-release were of Clemons’ character in the ocean. Odds of unsuspecting viewers stumbling into this movie thinking they’re going to get anything but horror are probably pretty high. Sweetheart deserves a much better fate.
Crawl left viewers on the edge of their seats, using hurricane flooding to unleash a congregation of aggressive alligators upon a trapped father and daughter. The suspense was so taut and consistent that Aja didn’t seem to want viewers to catch their breath. Sweetheart is something wholly different. Dillard uses a pared back story to let his leading lady and the monster she’s forced to battle shine. It’s simple, yet extremely well-shot. It bides its time to pack a powerful punch where it counts in the third act.
While there are still a few months between us and the release of Underwater, all marketing seems to indicate that it’ll be a massive underwater creature feature, popcorn style. If that’s the case, that means a trio of diverse aquatic horror films, all tackling various corners of the subgenre. It’s the beginning of a beautiful new wave of aquatic horror, or at least the potential for one.
Here’s hoping the resurgence continues.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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