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The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019) – UGGGH

Released: 5th April
Seen: 6th November

When we look through history for the point when certain eras ended, we tend to look for major events that were turning points. It can be argued that the 60s, the era of free love, ended on August 9th 1969 when actress Sharon Tate and four of her friends were brutally murdered by the Manson Family (who I shall henceforth refer to as as “that pack of murdering assholes” because I’m the one typing this and I get to be as petty as I want!). The vile crime was historic in how shocking it was and the man who inspired it (now dead, YAY) was instantly recognized as the face of true evil. It’s a tragedy that people keep revisiting in film, to varied results. It’s usually incredibly tasteless, focusing on that pack of murdering assholes and they never have good acting. The one time I can think of when someone did something good with the entire horrific affair was earlier this year when Once Upon A Time In Hollywood did a “What If?” story where Sharon never even had to know who that pack of murdering assholes was… so, naturally, in the same year we get the best possible version of a retelling of the Sharon Tate murders we also have to get the absolute worst version because we live in a hellscape and everything is awful.

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47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) – A Sinking Feeling

Released: 31st October
Seen: 5th November

In 2017 a low budget horror film called 47 Meters Down hit cinemas. With a budget of only $5 Million, it ended up bringing in over $60 million worldwide. It wasn’t exactly Jaws but it was a fun little horror film with a simple premise, a pair of main characters who were intelligent and likable and a simple set of stakes that made it easy to get sucked in and enjoy the mostly mindless fun. While not a classic, it was enjoyable and would easily do the job on any scary movie night if you needed something to add to a mini-marathon… and then someone decided to do a sequel, but with all the good ideas taken out and replaced with dumb ones, because that always works well.

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Cut (2000) – A Little Dull

A few months ago I talked about a movie called Porno, a comedy movie about a cursed porno film that summons a demon when played. It’s a brilliant idea that was just not quite done right so naturally I wanted to see if someone had done a serious version of this idea and it turns out that back in 2000, someone did the “Character from a film comes to life to kill people” idea in a little Australian slasher film called Cut. The film came out in 2000 and boasts an alarming 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, at the time barely making a half million at the Australian box office. This is partially due to bad marketing and just bad timing since a comedy slasher film in the year 2000 wasn’t exactly rare. This was also the point in the horror genre where we were up to the third Scream movie, self-aware horror had kind of been wrung dry and Cut got lost in the shuffle. It only just recently got re-released in a 4K restoration and that’s what I got to see so… does it get better with age? Not really, but I can appreciate its cheese a lot more.

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Rabid (2019) – I’m Infected

Released: 12th October
Seen: 1st November

Out of all the directors whose work I never thought would be remade, David Cronenberg is up the top of the list. How could you remake anything he did? His work is so influential that it’s credited with the popularization of the body horror genre with his early work like Videodrome, Scanners and The Fly. His work is so strange and visceral that the idea that someone would even consider remaking any of them feels like a recipe for disaster. Enter the Soska Sisters who took the risk and remade one of Cronenberg’s earliest films, the epidemic-driven horror film Rabid.

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The Furies (2019) – Beauty And The Deceased

Released: 7th November
Seen: 31st October (Monsterfest Film Festival)

The slasher genre is a very recent creation, really only starting in the 60s with the Italian Giallo films and, of course, the immortal Psycho. It reached a golden age in the late 70’s when it became THE genre for budding filmmakers to grab onto since all you needed were some young unknown actors, a sharp object, a bottle of liquid latex and some fake blood to make a film. While it’s never been mainstream, the Slashers have always had an audience that followed it from the early days of Halloween to the straight-to-video era through to the post-modern classics like Scream until the genre entered a slump in the early 2010’s thanks to a deluge of remakes and the rise of films like Paranormal Activity which proved anyone could make a film, even if they didn’t know how to operate a camera and only had bits of string to handle the effects work. Slashers recently have started having a bit of a revival though, with TV series like American Horror Story finally tackling the genre this year and an actual TV series called Slasher, plus the return of genre favourite Halloween. Now we’re entering a period where we can maybe do even more interesting takes on the Slasher genre, which leads to me explaining why The Furies is a gem of a slasher film that will slide right in along the fun goofy films the genre is known for.

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3 From Hell (2019) – Go To Hell

Released: 31st October
Seen: 31st October

Rob Zombie is probably one of the most fascinating people working in horror today. Even if you don’t like his films, he’s got a style that is unmistakably his own that he manages to maintain in every film, no matter what the film is about. Even the two Halloween remakes he did are so obviously Rob Zombie films, he has such a distinctive style and tone that you either love him or hate him. I tend to bounce between love and hate for each of his movies. I enjoyed House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, thought 31 had a good idea but a middling execution and the rest are just different kinds of bad. Unique, but bad. So when I heard there was another film in the series that began with House of 1000 Corpses I was excited, it’s the one set of movies that Rob has done that I’ve kind of enjoyed every single time he’s come back to the adventures of the Firefly family. I was so ready for this one to be a fun little trip, I found it screening at a local horror film festival (I saw three other films, I’ll talk about them in the coming days) so I bought myself a ticket and I sat down… and spent the next two hours alternating between boredom and annoyance.

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Doctor Sleep (2019) – Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Released: 7th November
Seen: 3rd November (Advance Screening)

In 1977, Stephen King released his third novel. The Shining told the tale of Jack Torrence, an alcoholic in recovery who takes a job as the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. While he’s taking care of that hotel a bunch of ghosts basically push Jack off the wagon of sobriety and send him insane, leading to him trying to kill his wife and child. That child, Danny, has a special telepathic power that gives the book its title. The book went on to be a massive success, effectively confirming that Stephen King was the king of the horror novel and was such a huge hit that it wasn’t long before it was adapted into a film that is widely considered one of the best horror films of all time.

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Cats (2019) – No, not that one.

Released: 24th October
Seen: 28th October

Later on this year, we’re all going to get to experience the wonder and majesty that is Cats. Cats, the Andrew Lloyd Weber monstrosity, is turning into a live-action film where everyone looks like they were born directly in the centre of the uncanny valley and everything about it both horrifies and delights me. Like, we’re all aware that Cats is basically a suicide musical right? It’s literally a musical about which cat gets to kill themselves in order to come back as another cat and someone gave Tom Hooper millions of dollars and several major celebrities in order to make the film version of the suicidal cat musical. It’s going to be nuts, I can’t wait… I apparently couldn’t wait so much that the second my local cinema said it was showing a movie called Cats I had to see it, I need to be the person who saw two different Cats movies in cinemas… because I’m a sad person, please give me pity.

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Dolemite Is My Name (2019) – Brilliant

Released: 25th October
Seen: 26th October

The 1970s was the era of the blaxploitation film. If you look up a list of blaxploitation movies they will list every year of the 70s with milestone movies like Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song and Coffy. While these movies often featured racial stereotypes that might be termed problematic today, they’re also a subgenre of film that features an entirely black cast and often featured black directors and writers trying to make films for black audiences of the day. It was also a genre that made worldwide stars out of people like Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree and the subject of the newest Netflix biopic Rudy Ray White.

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Wounds (2019) – It Hurts

Released: 18th October
Seen: 26th October

The end of October is a great time to put out every horror movie, no matter what the content or style is. It’s a time when the slashers, the zombies, the vampires and just the flat out weird as hell horror films have their time in the sun. You could release pretty much anything horror related during October and it’d be appropriate. You can release great horror films and even awful horror films, bad movie nights are a thing and a bad horror movie around Halloween is a gift for people wanting something gloriously stupid to laugh at… and then there’s Wounds, a bland horror movie that tries its hardest to be creepy and weird and never fully gets there, though not for a lack of trying.

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