Movies
[Sundance ’14] Hot Horror Titles: ‘The Guest,’ ‘Cooties,’ ‘The Voices,’ and ‘Life After Beth’
While Bloody Disgusting’s Ryan Daley prepares to unleash his onslaught of reviews, I thought it would be a good idea to get you guys excited about the hot horror titles out of the first few days of the ongoing Sundance Film Festival.
We were told leading up to the fest that 2014 was one of the best genre years ever, and early reviews indicate that this is quite true.
Pimping out our V/H/S boys Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, also known for You’re Next and A Horrible Way To Die, the duo is receiving rave reviews for their Snoot-produced thriller The Guest, pictured. “If John Carpenter made The Terminator for Cannon Films in 1987, it would be The Guest,” says Hitfix. “And it would rule.” Quint over at AICN says that”it hit some crazy euphoric movie nerd buttons,” while Variety calls it “A willfully over-the-top, giddily violent exercise landing between slasher horror and ’70s crazy-Vietnam-vet-returns action-thrillers.” You can also read reviews over at THR and Twitch.
Another film receiving high praise is Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott’s zombie film Cooties, starring Elijah Wood and Leigh Whannell. “Gore can only go so far in the service of humor. Fortunately, the team behind Cooties…manage to pit comedy and horror together in a satisfying package,” explains Indiewire, who give the film a B+ rating. Film School Rejects adds that “Cooties is horror comedy done right. It’s laugh out loud funny but never shies away from the gory, violent bits involving adults and children,” while THR adds that the film is “star-stuffed, well paced and very funny, ” and that “Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s debut is closest in commercial terms to 2009’s Zombieland, and should easily connect with auds beyond the genre-buff faithful.”
Then there’s the Ryan Reynolds starrer The Voices, about a schizophrenic worker at a bathtub factory who accidentally kills an attractive woman from accounting. While trying to cover his bloody tracks, Jerry starts taking advice from his talking (and foul-mouthed) cat and dog. raves that the film “navigates the line between the gruesome and the goofy with a step as nimble as a tight-rope walker going over a sea of broken glass. It’s an extraordinarily warm and funny movie about a likable schizophrenic murderer; it’s candy-colored and meticulously composed and yet also shiny with fresh wet blood. It’s weird and funny and perfectly-pitched, and to cap off its catalog of rare feats, it also features an immensely likable performance from Ryan Reynolds.” THR writes that “this thriller-horror-comedy hybrid is among the more eccentric films screening at Sundance,” while adding that, “Reynolds here continues his rather satisfying run of more complex roles in indie films…and impresses with a go-for-broke performance that’s intentionally mannered yet entirely in synch with the film’s shifting tones.”
Lastly, people seem to really enjoy the other zombie film, Life After Beth, starring Aubrey Plaza. THR says the film is the zombie pic “that finds a new metaphoric meaning for zombie tropes, making them about the devastation of grief, and manages to keep us laughing while making that metaphor stick,” while Variety adds: “For those wondering if there’s any fresh meat left to chew on in zombie cinema, relationship comedy Life After Beth answers a resounding yes.” They add, “Lending smart fantasy elements, broad comedy, tender romance and an atypically slow-burning apocalypse, the [film] is charming, thoughtful and laugh-out-loud funny.”
Watch Bloody Disgusting for our own coverage in the coming days.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.