“coffee table”
Stream it on Tubi.
One of last year's most controversial horror films was Spanish director Kay Casas' taboo-smashing psychological drama about the aftermath of an unspeakable act. Now streaming for free, the faint of heart should avoid it, but the brave should buckle up.
The film begins with Jesús (David Pareja) buying a fancy coffee table against the wishes of his wife Maria (Estefanía de los Santos). As if the ugly table wasn't enough, when Jesus sets up a table in the living room of a bickering couple, it becomes the center of a sickening act of violence while Maria is at the supermarket. When María returns home and the visitors arrive, Jesus is forced to think about the terrible fear within them.
Pass it to Casas. He goes there, especially at the beginning and end of this wicked and surprisingly comical movie. The pacing slows down in the middle, with the screenplay (Casas and Cristina Borobia) slowly creeping into horror, repeatedly highlighting issues of postpartum depression and toxic masculinity. Still, Coffee Table is a welcome shocker at a time when high-stakes horror has become rare.
In 2019, German director Tillman Singer knocked my socks off with his overly experimental possession film Luz. He's back with a horror movie that combines bizarre bodies and bird horror. It's a bit askew thematically, but it's a lot of fun to get lost inside.
Gretchen (Hunter Schaefer), an American teenager grieving the death of her mother, travels with her father (Marton Csokas) to live with a new family at a remote resort in the Bavarian Alps. There, Gretchen meets Herr Koenig (Dan Stevens, sickly and wise), a strange doctor who is interested in birds, but also Gretchen's mute half-sister Alma (Mira Liu). meet.
Singer and cinematographer Paul Falz vividly capture Gretchen's subsequent descent into hell with a parade of twisted cinematic flourishes. Mysterious bird calls, disorienting camera angles, and most of all, the jump-scare paranormal moments as Gretchen is cornered in the dark. Night by beings wearing amazing sunglasses.
The finale feels like an action movie with no direction other than going overboard. But what remains after the smoke clears is a wise and surprising meditation on grief.
A pandemic is sweeping across America. Wealthy people survive by fleeing to the countryside, while less wealthy people, including immigrants, avoid the disease in any way they can. There has been debate in parliament and in newspapers over whether people should be quarantined and wear masks in public. But this is not Covid. The 1918 influenza.
That's the setting for this historical satire that borders on horror, written and directed by Austin Stark and Joseph Schumann. The film stars Billy Magnussen as Jay, a wealthy and hypocritical journalist who takes shelter with his family in a country mansion, and Peter Sarsgaard as Floyd, a working-class chef with a tragic past. By the end of the movie, Jay's wishes change. To turn a safe and healthy future into bloody chaos.
The main reason for the attention is not only the sophisticated acting of the lead actors, but also Kristin Nielsen, who plays a supporting role as Jay's maid. Nielsen, who co-starred with Magnussen in Christopher Duran's Broadway comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in 2012, brings the kind of absurdist humor that Duran, the Tony Award-winning satirist who died last year, would have admired, to her. He is imbued with his role.
“Nowhereland”
Stream it on Tubi.
I hate the dark corners of pop culture that desecrate happy-faced children's shows, from the dementia TV series Wondershozen to last year's toxic family drama Mr. Shozen. Croquet. ”
That's why I recommend this flawed but twisted fable from directors Gerald and Michael Crumb to fans of low-budget experimental horror. Marc-Anthony Baca plays a grieving father who, in search of his missing daughter, ends up on Nowhereland, a shoddy children's TV show about crummy dolls who command malevolent forces in the real world. .
It takes patience to get past the last-minute acting, the weaknesses that almost ruin this movie. But in this film, when the actors are silent and the Crumbs focus on a distorted visual vocabulary of analog video, gruesome special effects, mocking puppets, and, above all, the sound of Daryl Arellano's skin pinching, , the rating increases to 10 points. This film provides such moments. There's an eerie cinematic fun to it, like the “I Saw the TV Glow” movies. This is another (and better) film about the effects of television on the adult psyche, long after the strange but formative show has gone off the air. air.
“Mousetrap”
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
Unlike many horror fans, I have a high tolerance for recent horror films that have turned Winnie the Pooh, Banana Splits, and other beloved characters by children into bloodthirsty villains. I'm looking forward to a horror movie based on Bambi and Popeye that might be released later this year.
Add to the list of insanity the “Steamboat Willie” version of Mickey Mouse, who first appeared in a 1928 Disney animated short film. This Canadian horror-comedy takes advantage of the character's expired copyright protection to transform Steamboat Willie into a supernatural killer in a sad Mickey Mouse mask who takes control of a suburban arcade arcade. I will slaughter it. (A lengthy title sequence reminds viewers that Disney “has nothing to do with this film.”)
What director/cinematographer/editor Jamie Bailey and screenwriter Simon Phillips lack in slasher originality, they make up for in light drivel. Depending on your opinion of Steamboat Willie and the Disney canon, you'll be thrilled, horrified, or both as you watch clips from Mouse's original short film sprinkled with modern-day graphic violence. You'll feel it. Keep your curiosity high and your expectations low.
