APRIL 21 — It’s pretty satisfying to see a new horror film dominating conversations pretty much everywhere it is being released, even in Malaysia.
What’s extra special is when that horror flick is of the quiet and thoughtful kind instead of those that use typical shock and awe tactics.
That film is of course A Quiet Place, a pretty astounding piece of suspense-building that’s comparable to Don’t Breathe in its nerve-destroying scare tactics, but with the added bonus of giving the audience an engaging family to care about.
Made on a relatively small budget (for a US studio film) of US$17 million (RM66.1 million), it has so far grossed almost US$163 million worldwide, and is surely destined to become one of the most profitable films of the year, at least until the next Blumhouse blockbuster comes to stake that claim later in the year.
Like I’ve always said here, when it comes to horror, small budgets have never been too much of a hindrance which is why indie horror is always the best place to look for great new discoveries.
Here are three that I’ve managed to stumble onto in the past few weeks.
Pyewacket
Written and directed by Adam MacDonald, a Canadian actor who started to make his mark as a horror director with his debut feature Backcountry a few years back, I did not expect to be this enamoured with his new film.
But enamoured I really was with this tale of teenage angst, heavy metal and witchcraft that, like his debut Backcountry, takes its own sweet time building the necessary emotional deck of cards needed to make the eventual fall as devastating as the film needed it to be.
It tells the story of a teenage girl named Leah, who’s become a bit of a metalhead after her dad’s passing, and her daily struggles with her mother, who’s even more devastated by her husband’s death, so much so that one fine day she just decided to sell the family home and move into the woods, therefore uprooting Leah.
Upset by all this, and provoked by a nasty remark, Leah stupidly performs an occult ritual to invoke a witch called Pyewacket to kill her mother.
A touching and ultimately devastating exploration of mother-and-teenage-daughter dynamics, I have a feeling that Pyewacket will end up on a lot of horror fans’ best-of list come the end of the year.
Terrifier
A sort of expansion of a short film that can be found in the horror anthology film All Hallows’ Eve, Damien Leone’s proudly low budget gore fest (released by Dread Central, no less!) is destined to have passionate haters and defenders by virtue of having really strong strengths and really weak weaknesses.
Its main weakness is the plot — there’s basically none. It’s just about a few girls out on Halloween who end up getting terrorised by a creepy clown on their way back home, and that’s all there is to it.
But its trump card is the tormentor or terrifier, the clown himself. Art the clown is so sick, so scary and so terrifying (that smile alone is worth a thousand nightmares) that some people have even said that he makes Pennywise look like Krusty, and that is not an exaggeration.
This film lives and dies on the effectiveness of its villain to creep the crap out of us, and by the looks of it we might have just witnessed the birth of a new horror icon and franchise if Leone plays his cards right the next time he makes a new Art the clown movie.
Caught
A cleverly designed low-budget horror picture with just one location and a total of only seven actors (one of them being a baby), Caught is a pretty ambitious attempt to blend the standard home invasion horror movie (e.g. The Strangers, Funny Games, Jackals etc.) with elements of sci-fi.
It tells the story of a married journalist couple who gets a visit from an odd-looking couple calling themselves Mr and Mrs Blair who claim to be from a military base that the journalist couple have been trying to write a story on.
Deliberately building the mood by establishing the increasingly weird behaviour of the Blairs, a stunning act of violence tips the movie into home invasion mode but with question marks forming on whether the Blairs are even human.
And if they’re not human, then what are they, and what do they want with the journalists? That is essentially the mystery and hook of the film, and despite its deliberate pace and minimalist setting, I have to admit that the film still managed to keep my interest throughout thanks to the wonderfully weird and committed performances of the actors who play the Blairs.
Not an entirely satisfying meal, but still quite a memorable one in its odd little way.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
