Movies
Best & Worst ’10: MR. DISGUSTING’S TOP 10 OF 2010
I’ve been pretty fortunate over the years as I’ve been able to attend many film festivals, and see a hefty amount of flicks before they receive distribution. If we’re to continue to be the #1 source for horror, we need to stay ahead of the curve. While the best & worst lists of Bloody Disgusting contributors mainly focus on films already released in theaters/DVD/Blu-ray/VOD, my list carries quite a few titles you’ve yet to see. Keeping constant to my previous lists, inside you’ll find my top 10 films that I saw in a theater this year. Based on my picks, I can’t pretend that I’m not concerned about the state of our genre. With the exception of Overture Films, the studios came up extremely short this year. Sigh.
MR. DISGUSTING’S TOP 10 OF 2010
I’m a pretty big fan of the Dowdle brothers – having enjoyed both The Poughkeepsie Tapes and Quarantine quite a bit – but my nerves were shot when I learned that M. Night Shyamalan would be producing their thriller Devil. After such dumpers as The Last Airbender and The Lady in the Water, it’s hard to get behind anything Shyamalan does. With that said, I’ve always thought Shyamalan could be an amazing producer, which he put on display with Devil. The scope of the low budget studio pic was enormous, considering the crux of the film takes place inside of an elevator. As the title might indicate, Devil is heavily doused in religious themes, but never spits it in your face. Even the twist felt unforced and complimented the lessons and themes of the duration of the flick. Devil carried some solid scares, and was suspenseful enough to keep me engaged from the first to the very last frame.
The director of Saw and Dead Silence is back with yet another in-your-face horror film that’s guaranteed to stand the test of time. James Wan reteams with writer/star Leigh Whannell on this haunted house pic that takes some bold moves and risks everything in the wake of a truly bizarre finale. Carried solely on colorful and unique imagery you’ve come to expect from a James Wan film, the Australian director has cemented himself as a horror legend. Whether you think Insidious is good or bad, it’s a movie you’ll revisit countless times in the next 20 years. Even with disturbing imagery giving the film its momentum, Insidious carries quite a few impressive scares and asks the viewer to be a little forgiving with their suspension of disbelief. If you can hop on board, it’s a ride you’ll never forget.
I struggled with putting Rubber on my top ten list, solely because it’s an experiment in filmmaking. It’s not quite horror, and to be frank, it’s not quite a movie either. But it does scream “f*ck Hollywood”, and says quite a bit about cinema by today’s standards. Any movie that has a set of balls this big deserves some serious praise.
What can I say about A Serbian Film that hasn’t already been spewed across the web. You either get it or you don’t. You’re either willing to accept it or you’re not. It’s a harsh, brash, dark feature that has already lost 99% of its viewers. (Most of the SXSW audience stormed out of the premiere.) But beyond the shocks, there’s a politically charged theme, and the filmmaking itself is something stunning to behold. As I stated in my review, A Serbian Film is this year’s “dark” version of “Alice in Wonderland”, a film that takes the viewer down the rabbit hole so far that their psyche will never be the same. If you want to feel something in the theaters again, A Serbian Film will bring out every emotion.
Director Adam Green moves from his fun ‘80s slasher Hatchet to Frozen, an adult horror film that deserved way more attention than Anchor Bay gave it. The Sundance Film Festival selection proved that Adam Green is capable of serious cinema, and that he can be an elite filmmaker. It’s hands down one of the most suspenseful films of the past few years; it had me biting my knuckles quite a few times. And knowing that Green opted to shoot the film in the freezing cold Park City, Utah is beyond commendable (even though psychotic).
A Japanese horror comedy that channels the great Takashi Miike, Cold Fish is a serial killer thriller that has so many twists and turns that it’s impossible to guess what’s going to happen next. It’s bloody, violent, funny and exquisitely dark; the lengthy runtime feels like minutes as director Sion Sono takes you on the craziest ride of your life. Don’t let this one pass you by, make an effort to track it down and see it.
It’s rare when a quality anthology comes along – it’s even more rare when a solid Thai horror film is released. Walking into a screening of Phobia 2 at the FanTasia Film Festival I expected to walk out after 20 minutes, only I found myself with my jaw on the floor when the closing credits began to crawl. While each segment has its flaws, the wrap-around story is so magnificent that I wish it were its own movie. Not since Scream have I seen such a brilliant take on our genre – but what makes Phobia 2 so intriguing is it’s reflection on Asian horror. The finale of the anthology is nothing short of brilliant and will earn a bold place in your Asian horror collection.
This family drama is tonally similar to Let the Right One In and tells a sad, dark tale about a family of cannibals fighting to survive after the loss of their father/leader. Guaranteed to split audiences, this Mexican horror film doesn’t carry much blood or violence, but it’s hard to ignore just how well made it is. I think many of you will be pleasantly surprised, with the rest of you sending me luscious hate mail that I’ll quickly delete 😉
I think my review said it all: “I could talk for hours about I Saw the Devil, but nothing I can say will ever do it justice. The film is an experience; it’s something that will have you emotionally invested in the characters, while also covering your eyes at the extreme violence.“
I cannot speak highly enough of Matt Reeves’ English-language version of “Let the Right One In”. I know there are a few “remake” haters in the audience, but it’s hard to ignore how Reeves took the same story and made it 50x more chilling. It would take me pages for me to explain just how good Let Me In is, which is why I implore you to read my review. It’s my favorite movie of the year (Stephen King’s too), and I’m quite proud of my review.
Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan would have landed #2 on my list had it not ended up being more of a drama than horror. Without giving anything away, the finale sort of changes how the film should have been covered here on BD. CAV and 1428 Films’ Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy could have easily landed in my top 3 picks, only it’s a straight-to-video release. This could quite possibly be the single best horror movie documentary ever assembled. Ever. EVER. I struggled at keeping Breck Eisner’s The Crazies remake off of my top 10 list. It really deserved to be on there, even though the replay value isn’t as strong as I had hoped. It was also odd for me to keep a Saw film off my list, considering Saw V might have been the only one NOT to make a list. Saw 3D was a great way to end the franchise and was an hour and a half of bloody tongue-in-cheek fun. I’d also like to give some props to Twentieth Century Fox’s Predators for not sucking, and to Warner Bros. Pictures’ Splice for doing something so incredibly daring.
Editorials
Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’
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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