Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

You’re Next, And Other Little Horror Films Off The Radar

I know, I’m about three or four years late, but I just saw You’re Next this weekend. Horror movie. Kind of a slasher film meets Straw Dogs — a wealthy family convenes at their big-ass vacation home in the middle of nowhere, and a group of animal masked weirdos attempt to kill them one by one. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is a damn good one — and one that does some nice things with narrative structure. The film features some twists — not epic jerk-the-wheel twists like you find in Cabin the Woods (a movie I love more for its moxie than for its execution), but twists that pivot the story but never change what the story is.

I recommend the hell out of it and I wish I’d watched it sooner.

(Was it Sunil who recommended it to me most recently? Sunil? Maybe?)

We’re at a point where a lot of the big budget horror stuff is just kinda junky. Maybe it always was. Some of the more popular horror films released to theaters recently start off scary but quickly devolve into a similar pattern — they drift from horror into something approaching fantasy. (Or at least something silly.) And that’s not bad, always, but it’s not usually what I’m looking for. And then there’s the fact they’re remaking Poltergeist. I’m not sure why anybody would want to remake a movie that still holds up. You remake movies: a) that had potential but did not live up to that potential b) were awesome but are really showing their age or c) are movies to which you can really bring something new to the table. (Ghostbusters falls into that last category, I think.)

Anyway.

Point is, a lot of really cool, kick-ass, weird, wonderful, scary horror is being done in the margins — direct-to-video, indie, small film releases.

So: here I am, hanging out a sign.

The sign is dripping with blood.

I’m taking recommendations.

Good, small, even edge-case horror.

Double points if it’s available on Netflix streaming.

Let’s hear your recs, folks. I showed you mine, you show me yours.