Editorials
The 10 Best International Horror Films of 2020
2020 has been an absolute beast of a year in every capacity.
The movie industry faced unprecedented upheaval and solutions are still being found on how to best release movies. This year has still featured some big movies, but there are a number of highly anticipated horror releases like Candyman, Halloween Kills, and Spiral: The Book of Saw that have all been pushed to the indefinite future. Horror fans are anxiously anticipating the upcoming releases of these big genre films, but there are a number of horror movies from across the world that did get released this year.
As the year comes to an end, we take a look at the very best international horror films that 2020 has had to offer.
Sputnik
Directed by Egor Abramenko; Russia
If the movie Alien were to lay eggs in Silence of the Lambs, the creature that would burst out of its chest would be Sputnik. Sci-fi/horror hybrids can sometimes feel exhausting or like they’re not bringing anything new to the genre, but Sputnik presents a genuinely original story that makes for an extremely promising directorial debut from Egor Abramenko. Sputnik is the type of movie where it’s an asset to go in blind, but its story revolves around a psychiatrist who gets brought in by the military to examine a cosmonaut that’s returned from space a very changed man.
Sputnik is patient and while it contains a fantastic creature design and some well executed violence and gore, it’s much more a powerful character study. Sputnik‘s leads, Oksana Akinshina and Fyodor Bondarchuk, have electric chemistry, which brings out the personal nature of this heightened premise. Sputnik tells a powerful and claustrophobic story that only benefits from the Cold War fear and dread that the film’s Russian perspective brings forward. It will make you want to seek out other Russian horror films.
Anything for Jackson
Directed by Justin G. Dyck; Canada
Grief makes people do awful things and there are many horror films that use this as their catalyst. Anything for Jackson looks at an elderly couple, Audrey and Henry, who have recently lost their grandson and attempt to invoke black magick to resurrect him through a pregnant woman’s baby-to-be. At face value Anything for Jackson sounds like a standard exorcism or possession story, but it continually subverts expectations every chance that it gets. It cannot be stressed enough how exceptional the chemistry is between Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings as Audrey and Henry. They feel like desperate people who are out of options, not some evil team, which makes it all the worse when their plans continue to spiral out of control. It’s chilling to watch brutal acts get juxtaposed with their sweet acts of long-term marital warmth.
When all hell breaks loose in Anything for Jackson the movie becomes legitimately frightening. There are some brilliantly conceived set pieces and a litany of renegade spirits that are all nightmare fuel. There’s a “Flossing Demon” that perpetually loses teeth that’s one of the scariest things that I’ve seen in a long time and it would easily be getting its own spin-off film if it were a part of The Conjuring universe. Canada may be a stretch when it comes to “foreign” films, but Anything for Jackson is such a satisfying and surprising ride that it deserves some attention.
The Platform
Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia; Spain
The Platform is the simple, yet effective kind of premise that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of The Twilight Zone. People wake up in a mysterious vertical prison that consists of 333 floors. Every day a platform descends that provides the prison’s food supply, with the people at the bottom’s meals being dependent on those above them not eating more than their share. What transpires is a fascinating experiment that’s like a more socially minded version of Cube. The Platform asks enlightening questions about the distribution of power and the dangers of capitalism in a tight and engaging film. The Platform actually has something to say, but it’s also full of tense encounters and a wry sense of humor about the twisted situation that’s befallen these characters.
The Wolf House
Directed by Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León; Chile, Germany
There’s no way that you’re ready for The Wolf House. It’s a nightmarish fairy tale about a frail girl’s struggle to rebuild herself that’s as if David Lynch directed Pan’s Labyrinth, but decided to do it all as stop-motion and focus on Pinochet’s repressive rule over Chile. Incredible things have been achieved with stop-motion and puppetry in the past few years, but The Wolf House still feels wholly unique as it presents an unflinching examination of young Maria’s PTSD. The Wolf House is depressing juggernaut of a tale, but that only strengthens the feeling of escapism that Maria tries to achieve. At a lean 75 minutes, The Wolf House is hard to deny. Even those that are unmoved by the film’s story will be left in marvel of the artistry of the visuals. It’s a movie where every frame is a work of art and blinking feels like a sin.
His House
Directed by Remi Weekes; United Kingdom
His House may be a UK production, but its story centers around the difficulties that Sudanese refugees face and a more global perspective is baked into the film. His House is absolutely gutting and the very best kind of slow burn horror. It begins with Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) as they attempt to acclimate to their new home in the UK as they face rampant racism and criticism. As His House continues, Bol and Rial learn that something more sinister has its sights set on them and that they’re the targets for a vengeful “apeth.” It’s devastating to see this “night witch” pick apart at Bol and Rial’s happiness and leave them in such a destabilized place. His House creates strong characters and upsetting scares, not to mention a fantastic twist, all of which point to a bright career ahead for debut filmmaker Remi Weekes.
#Alive
Directed by Cho Il-hyung; South Korea
Just when it feels that the zombie genre has become completely oversaturated, there are movies like #Alive that come out and breathe new life into the flailing genre. #Alive features a zombie outbreak in Seoul, but it’s all filtered through a video game live streamer, who holes himself up in his apartment. What’s so unique about #Alive is that it takes an epic disaster and strips it down to a solo character in a cramped apartment. It becomes just as much an examination of character as Park Shin-hye becomes subject to his own impulses as the social media driven gamer is forced to isolate himself. It becomes an oddly appropriate film for the current times, but not for the same reasons as any other outbreak horror movie. #Alive isn’t as groundbreaking as last year’s One Cut of the Dead, but it’s still a worthwhile and innovative addition to the crowded zombie genre.
Impetigore
Directed by Joko Anwar; Indonesia
Impetigore is a slow descent into terror and the movie feels like it gradually strangles the audience as tension builds and never gets an opportunity to release. A woman, Maya (Tara Basro), relocates to a secluded village in the forest to claim her family’s house, but the community becomes a magnet for paranormal activity. It’s truly upsetting to watch an entire community come up against one person and the sense of helplessness that builds inside of her. Impetigore is a more confident horror film than Anwar’s previous movie, Satan’s Slaves, and it holds off from cheap jump scares in favor of a deep lore and mystery. It sometimes gets a little lost in its own mythology, but some of Impetigore’s best scenes also involve the curse that’s consumed Maya. Impetigore is a haunting folk tale that operates with an unnerving magical realism that leads to some powerful visuals that will linger with the audience.
La Llorona
Directed by Jayro Bustamante; Guatemala
The subpar reception to The Conjuring Universe’s Curse of La Llorona looked like it had soured any interest on this classical Latin American urban legend. For this reason people may be skeptical to dig into another La Llorona-based offering, but this new release is exactly everything that the previous movie should have been. Bustamante’s La Llorona isn’t aggressive with its scares, but instead focuses on tension and atmosphere, which makes this feel even more like a piece of haunted folklore. This take on the La Llorona legend is improved by how it makes a corrupt dictator its lead character and presents a deeper message about responsibility and abuses of power. This social message makes La Llorona’s vengeance hit harder and it’s the proper way to get introduced to the legend of the Weeping Woman.
The Pool
Directed by Ping Lumpraploeng; Thailand
A man gets stuck in a near-empty swimming pool with hungry crocodiles nearby. That’s it. The Pool is either going to instantly click with audiences or immediately have them rolling their eyes. The Pool is aware of how ridiculous it is and there’s a self-aware sense of humor that assists the contrived twists that continue to develop. However, none of that really matters because it’s an animal horror film about a guy stuck in a swimming pool with a crocodile. The Pool is able to stretch out this premise just far enough without making this ambitious experiment a chore. It leaps from one tense set piece to the next and somehow makes all of this work. It makes for the very best double feature alongside The Shallows.
The Call
Directed by Lee Chung-hyun; South Korea
If the Scream movies ever crossed over with The Lake House then the end product might look something like The Call. The South Korean horror film begins innocently enough with two girls who begin to communicate with each other over the phone, only to learn that they’re 20 years apart in time. The girls use this time difference to help each other out and retroactively change their fates. However, the kindhearted plan leads to one of these girls becoming a serial killer and a dangerous chain of events plays out as a result. The Call benefits from its compelling story that transforms something tender into something dangerous and the careful things that it has to say about the way in which people and events can affect others in life.
Honorable Mentions: Darkness, The Swerve, Peninsula, Amulet, Don’t Listen (Voices), May The Devil Take You Too, Blood Quantum, as well as Koko-Di Koko Da and Sea Fever, which were included on last year’s list, but have now finally seen wider releases.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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