Editorials
Ten Noteworthy Genre Movies You Can Stream at Home in January 2023
Happy New Year! 2023 hits the ground running with rare horror gems, brand-new releases, and catchup titles from last year. If this is a sign of what’s to come, we might be in for another stellar year of horror. As always, we’ll be on the front lines each and every day.
Here are ten noteworthy horror titles available for streaming in January 2023 on some of the most popular streaming services, along with when/where you can watch them.
The Menu – HBO Max
Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy in the film THE MENU. Photo by Eric Zachanowich. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
An ensemble of affluent patrons gathers at the exclusive Hawthorne Island for a dining experience run by prestigious Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). The guests soon realize what devious, deadly dishes the Chef intends to serve. The Menu may have gathered a fine cast for this delectable culinary nightmare, but the film belongs to Fiennes. Fiennes’ performance as the obsessed Chef, whose unwillingness to relinquish control despite his pursuit of perfection pushes him past the brink, is masterful. It’s a tormented artist’s story by way of epicurean pretension.
Possession – Shudder (January 5)
Andrzej Żuławski’s psychological horror film remains as captivating as it is confusing. A strangely told narrative about an international spy and his intense relationship with his wife, it’s a haunting dissection of the dissolution of a relationship and the strange love affair the wife develops with a tentacle creature. Leads Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani devote every fiber of their being to their roles, and I don’t know that anyone has so fully committed themselves to their role as Adjani since. Disturbing, unnerving, and confusing, Possession is more of an emotional experience than a linear narrative, and there’s nothing else like it.
The Pale Blue Eye – Netflix (January 6)
The Pale Blue Eye. Christian Bale as Augustus Landor in The Pale Blue Eye. Cr. Scott Garfield/Netflix © 2022
Director Scott Cooper’s The Pale Blue Eye, an adaptation of Louis Bayard’s novel, crafts a fictional Gothic whodunnit around Poe’s tenure as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. The languid Gothic murder mystery is more interested in examining how Poe’s life experiences may have influenced his work, resulting in a quiet, meditative mood piece. Thanks to impeccable craftsmanship and a riveting performance by Harry Melling, this fictional tale does enough to do right by Poe.
House of Darkness – Hulu (January 7)
Justin Long (Barbarian, Tusk) and Kate Bosworth (Black Rock, Before I Wake) star in this horror-comedy by director Neil LaBute (The Wicker Man). In the film, “Driving home to her secluded estate after meeting at a local bar, a player out to score thinks his beautiful, mysterious date will be another casual hook-up. While getting acquainted, their flirtation turns playful, sexy, and sinister. Hoping to get lucky, his luck may have just run out.” Go in blind for this charming and darkly comedic chamber piece.
Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes – Shudder (January 9)
An unhappy woman and her irritable husband have just inherited a rundown mansion, but reality and time cease to hold meaning the longer they stay and realize something is amiss with the place. Kevin Kopacka directs a sumptuous visual feast, channeling the likes of Mario Bava and capturing a psychedelic, ’70s Italian occult aesthetic. What begins as a bizarre, disjointed movie that favors style over coherent story quickly gives way to something far more unexpected and extensive in scope. In other words, it’s a gorgeous, ethereal movie full of surprising twists that deftly shift genres.
Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow – Screambox (January 13)
This horror documentary arrives on streaming for the first time. The informative horror doc chronicles the making of Stephen King and George A. Romero’s 1982 horror anthology classic from conception through completion.
Sorry About the Demon – Shudder (January 19)
Writer/Director Emily Hagins (Pathogen, My Sucky Teen Romance, Scare Package) is back with another horror-comedy. Sorry About the Demon follows a broken-hearted man discovering that restless spirits inhabit his new place. Hagins has a knack for creating charming characters and insightful observations on horror through humor and wit, so we can likely expect that to continue here.
Signal 100 – SCREAMBOX (January 24)
In the grand, violent tradition of Battle Royale, Signal 100 sees high school students forced into a lethal game. The students are hypnotized to commit suicide on an unknown command, but their teacher only informs them of a few triggers, leaving them to band together to avoid their fate. Signal 100 is loosely based on the manga of the same name by Arata Miyatsuki and Shigure Kondo.
Teen Wolf: The Movie – Paramount+ (January 26)
It’s a massive month for fans of the MTV series, thanks to a spinoff series and a brand new movie. In Teen Wolf: The Movie, written and produced by Jeff Davis, “a full moon rises in Beacon Hills, and with it, a terrifying evil emerges. The wolves are howling once again, calling for the return of banshees, werecoyotes, hellhounds, kitsunes, and every other shapeshifter in the night.”
Dawning – SCREAMBOX (January 31)
A trauma therapist is forced to confront her family’s dark history when she returns to her family home to comfort her sister after a breakup. Explorations of mental health and trauma combine with supernatural chills. Dawning marks the feature directorial debut of Young Min Kim, the visual effects artist behind films like The Batman, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Midsommar.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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