Editorials
SCREAMBOX Hidden Gems – 5 Horror Movies to Stream This Week Including ‘The Collector’
The Bloody Disgusting-powered SCREAMBOX is home to a variety of unique horror content, from originals and exclusives to cult classics and documentaries. With such a rapidly-growing library, there are many hidden gems waiting to be discovered.
Here are five recommendations you can stream on SCREAMBOX right now.
If the triumphant return of the Saw franchise has you in the mood for more trap-laden horrors, look no further than The Collector — which was originally conceived as a prequel to Saw that would show Jigsaw’s original story. When producers passed on the idea, writers Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan (Saw IV-VII) reworked it into an original script, which Dunstan directed in 2009.
A slasher/home invasion hybrid for the so-called “torture porn” era, The Collector stars Criminal Minds‘ Josh Stewart as struggling ex-con Arkin. A planned heist at his new employer’s home to repay a debt becomes deadly when he discovers that another criminal has rigged the property with booby traps. Considerable suspension of disbelief is required to accept the labor involved in installing the Rube Goldbergian traps, but once you’re along for the ride it’s a widely entertaining one.
There’s some dynamic camerawork once you get past the ugly, early-aughts aesthetic, but, and killer sports a simple but memorable look: a gnarled black mask with reflective eyes. Bear traps, fish hooks, razor blades, knives, barbed wire, and cockroaches are deployed in the most sadistic ways imaginable with cringe-inducing special effects by Gary J. Tunnicliffe (Candyman, Scream 4).
Recently rescued from obscurity by Terror Vision, 2007’s End of the Line plays like Canada’s answer to The Midnight Meat Train (albeit a year prior) with shades of Prince of Darkness and a hint of C.H.U.D. The underappreciated effort finds a handful of strangers aboard a late-night train being targeted by a religious doomsday cult attempting to kill all non-believers.
The film is a bit dated — the cultists are signaled to begin their ritual via beeper, while the aesthetic screams “early 2000s indie horror” — and the performances are uneven, but writer-director Maurice Devereaux largely overcomes the low-budget trappings and maintains unpredictability with a number of twists and turns. Splashes of practical gore are the icing on the cake.
The synopsis for Footprints (better known as Footprints on the Moon, also known as Primal Impulse) touts it as “the most criminally underseen giallo of the ’70s.” While it’s far from a conventional giallo — the 1975 Italian film is more psychological thriller than murder-mystery, with nary a black-gloved killing — I’m inclined to agree on its criminally underseen status.
Directed by Luigi Bazzoni (The Fifth Cord), the movie centers on Alice Campos (Florinda Bolkan, Don’t Torture a Duckling), a Portuguese woman working as translator in Italy. After discovering she’s lost three days of time (“It’s as if I hadn’t lived them.”), she finds a postcard depicting a hotel in a coastal town called Garma. She heads there for answers, only to find that the locals know her — albeit by a different name, Nicole. The more she learns, the weirder it gets.
Klaus Kinski (Nosferatu the Vampyre) appears as an astronaut in a surreal, recurring dream from which the film gets its name. The impressive supporting cast also includes Lila Kedrova (Torn Curtain), Nicoletta Elmi (Demons), Caterina Boratto (8½), Ida Galli (The Psychic), and Esmeralda Ruspoli (Romeo and Juliet).
Even the best of giallo films often favor style over substance, but Footprints backs up its aesthetic — including striking cinematography by Oscar-winning director of photography Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, Dick Tracy) and a contemplative score composed by another Oscar winner, Nicola Piovani (Life Is Beautiful) — with a gripping mystique. The slow-burn mystery shares more in common with Messiah of Evil (also on SCREAMBOX) and Dead & Buried than the works of Dario Argento.
After helming music videos for the likes of Bring Me the Horizon and Beach House, Alistair Legrand made the jump to features with The Diabolical, a solid supernatural chiller from 2015. The first two acts are fairly standard haunted house fare, but the third act brings a reveal so outlandish that it works.
Ali Larter (Final Destination) carries the film as a single mother willing to risk everything for her kids, who become mysteriously ill when they try to leave the house. The cast includes Arjun Gupta (The Magicians), Merrin Dungey (Big Little Lies), Patrick Fischler (Mulholland Drive), and Mark Steger (Stranger Things), and even the child actors are good. Several early scares fall flat due to subpar CGI, but there are also some great practical effects and a memorable villain.
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe
All twelve Gamera films are on SCREAMBOX, but if you’re looking for a good place to start, I suggest 1995’s Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. While the earlier films are cheesy fun, Guardian of the Universe and its two sequels — 1996’s Gamera 2: Attack of Legion and 1999’s Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris — are not only a high point of the franchise but also one of the best sagas in all of kaiju cinema.
Gamera was originally created in 1965 to cash in on the success of Godzilla. After a lengthy dormancy, Shusuke Kaneko rebooted the franchise with Guardian of the Universe. The trilogy was so impressive that Toho hired Kaneko to direct Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, while special effects director Shinji Higuchi went on to helm Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Attack on Titan.
No longer catering exclusively to monster kids, this is Gamera for a new generation: a cinematic affair with a bigger budget, grander scope, more realistic effects, and mature storytelling. Written by Kazunori Itō (Ghost in the Shell), the film finds the titular turtle-monster protecting humanity from large winged creatures known as Gyaos, culminating in an explosive final battle of epic proportions. Utilizing some digital effects alongside practicals allows for visual spectacles without sacrificing the charm or tactile nature of rubber suits and miniature work.
Visit the SCREAMBOX Hidden Gems archives for more recommendations.
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Editorials
The Lovecraftian Behemoth in ‘Underwater’ Remains One of the Coolest Modern Monster Reveals
One of the most important elements of delivering a memorable movie monster is the reveal. It’s a pivotal moment that finally sees the threat reveal itself in full to its prey, often heralding the final climactic confrontation, which can make or break a movie monster. It’s not just the creature effects and craftmanship laid bare; a monster’s reveal means the horror is no longer up to the viewer’s imagination.
When to reveal the monstrous threat is just as important as HOW, and few contemporary creature features have delivered a monster reveal as surprising or as cool as 2020’s Underwater.
The Setup
Director William Eubank’s aquatic creature feature, written by Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You) and Adam Cozad (The Legend of Tarzan), is set around a deep water research and drilling facility, Kepler 822, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, sometime in the future. Almost straight away, a seemingly strong earthquake devastates the facility, creating lethal destruction and catastrophic system failures that force a handful of survivors to trek across the sea floor to reach safety. But their harrowing survival odds get compounded when the group realizes they’re under siege by a mysterious aquatic threat.
The group is comprised of mechanical engineer Norah Price (Kristen Stewart), Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel), biologist Emily (Jessica Henwick), Emily’s engineer boyfriend Liam (John Gallagher Jr.), and crewmates Paul (T.J. Miller) and Rodrigo (Mamadou Athie).
Eubank toggles between survival horror and creature feature, with the survivors constantly facing new harrowing obstacles in their urgent bid to find an escape pod to the surface. The slow, arduous one-mile trek between Kepler 822 and Roebuck 641 comes with oxygen worries, extreme water pressure that crushes in an instant, and the startling discovery of a new aquatic humanoid species- one that happens to like feasting on human corpses. Considering the imploding research station, the Mariana Trench just opened a human buffet.
The Monster Reveal
For two-thirds of Underwater’s runtime, Eubank delivers a nonstop ticking time bomb of extreme survival horror as everything attempts to prevent the survivors from reaching their destination. That includes the increasingly pesky monster problem. Eubank shows these creatures piecemeal, borrowing a page from Alien by giving glimpses of its smaller form first, then quick flashes of its mature state in the pitch-black darkness of the deep ocean.
The third act arrives just as Norah reaches the Roebuck, but not before she must trudge through a dense tunnel of sleeping humanoids. Eubank treats this like a full monster reveal, with Stewart’s Norah facing an intense gauntlet of hungry creatures. She’s even partially swallowed and forced to channel her inner Ellen Ripley to make it through and inside to safety.
Yet, it’s not the true monster reveal here. It’s only once the potential for safety is finally in sight that Eubank pulls the curtain back to reveal the cause behind the entire nightmare: the winged Behemoth, Cthulhu. Suddenly, the tunnel of humanoid creatures moves away, revealing itself to be an appendage for a gargantuan creature. Norah sends a flare into the distance, briefly lighting the tentacled face of an ancient entity.
It’s not just the overwhelming vision of this massive, Lovecraftian entity that makes its reveal so memorable, but the retroactive story implications it creates. Cthulhu’s emerging presence, awakened by the relentless drilling at the deepest depths of the ocean, was behind the initial destruction that destroyed Kepler 822. More importantly, Eubank confirmed that the Behemoth is indeed Cthulhu, which means that the humanoid creatures stalking the survivors are Deep Ones. What makes this even more fascinating is that the choice to give the Big Bad Behemoth a Lovecraftian identity wasn’t part of the script. Eubank revealed in an older interview with Bloody Disgusting how the creature quietly evolved into Cthulhu.
The Death Toll
Just how deadly is Cthulhu? Well, that depends. Most of the on-screen deaths in Underwater are environmental, with implosions and water pressure taking out most of the characters we meet. The Deep Ones are first discovered munching on the corpse of an unidentified crew member, and soon after, kill and eat Paul in a gruesome fashion. Lucien gets dragged out into the open depths by a Deep One in a group attack but sacrifices himself via his pressurized suit to save his team from getting devoured.
The on-screen kill count at the hands of this movie monster and its minions is pretty minimal, but the news article clippings shown over the end credits do hint toward the larger impact. Two large deepsea stations were eviscerated by the emergence of Cthulhu, causing an undisclosed countless number of deaths right at the start of the film.
Norah gives her life to stop Cthulhu and save her remaining crewmates, but the Great Old One isn’t so easily vanquished. While the Behemoth may not have slaughtered many on screen here, his off-screen kill count through sheer destruction is likely impressive.
But the takeaway here is that Underwater ends in such a way that the Lovecraftian deity may only be at the start of a new reign of terror now that he’s awake.
The Impact
Neither Underwater or Cthulhu overstay their welcome here. Eubank shows just enough of his Behemoth to leave a lasting impression, without showing too much to ruin the mystery. The nonstop sense of urgency and survival complications only further the fast-paced thrills.
The result is a movie monster we’d love to see more from, and for horror fans, there’s no greater compliment than that.
Where to Watch
Underwater is currently available to stream on Tubi and FX Now.
It’s also available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
In television, “Monster of the Week” refers to the one-off monster antagonists featured in a single episode of a genre series. The popular trope was originally coined by the writers of 1963’s The Outer Limits and is commonly employed in The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so much more. Pitting a series’ protagonists against featured creatures offered endless creative potential, even if it didn’t move the serialized storytelling forward in huge ways. Considering the vast sea of inventive monsters, ghouls, and creatures in horror film and TV, we’re borrowing the term to spotlight horror’s best on a weekly basis.
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