JANUARY 28 — Unless we’re talking about Oscar bait movies, January’s traditionally a pretty slow month when it comes to good movies.
This was before everything changed with the pandemic. Covid-19 basically changed the way the world consumes new movies, and what was deemed unthinkable back then (eliminating the usually 60 — to 90-day window between a movie playing in cinemas and hitting home video) is more or less the norm nowadays, with plenty of high-profile movies now being simultaneously released in cinemas and on VOD platforms.
This change in consumption patterns has no doubt resulted in studios and VOD platforms treating January less as a dumping ground.
Gone are the days where if a movie receives a January release, it more or less means that it’s going to be a bad/underwhelming one.
So, for me to come across two or three excellent horror flicks in January is no longer something strange, thanks to the increased competition between the various streaming platforms to debut good original content throughout the year in order to attract new subscribers and keep current ones.
So if you have a Shudder or Peacock subscription, give the ones I’m recommending below a spin!
Sick
A Peacock original movie directed by John Hyams (who made the glorious DTV movies Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning and Universal Soldier: Regeneration and also the excellent thriller Alone) and written by Kevin Williamson (of the Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise), I was genuinely surprised at how awesome this slasher flick turned out to be.
Opening with a classic Williamson cold open, in which a guy is stalked from a supermarket and of course murdered in his own home, the film then begins its main story in 2020, when Covid-19 was beginning to hit and people had to go into quarantine.
Our main characters are two college students who decide to quarantine together at a lake house owned by the family of one of the girls.
This being a slasher film, of course the two will find themselves terrorised by the killer from the opening scene, and while the film’s structure is definitely nothing new and is basically your classic slasher formula, it’s the energetic direction by Hyams that will keep the audience glued to the screen and gripping their armchairs.
His early days making DTV action movies have certainly helped Hyams to have effortless control over the staging and editing of the film’s many suspense set-pieces, but it’s his ability to create and maintain suspense, with the film’s many payoffs executed very elegantly that surprises me most, leading me to believe that we might just have a budding new master of suspense on our hands here.
The whole reason behind the mayhem will, of course, be Covid-19 related, and might cause the audience to groan or snigger, but the film’s expertly staged thrills and muscular energy more than makes up for it, resulting in what is already one of the most pleasant cinematic surprises of 2023.
Sorry About The Demon
From the muscular thrills of Sick, we go straight into the more open-hearted delights of Sorry About The Demon, the latest film from former child prodigy Emily Hagins (who directed her first film Pathogen, a zombie movie, when she was 12 and followed that up with festival favourite My Sucky Teen Romance when she was 17), which you can stream on Shudder.
A horror comedy that’s got more heart and empathy than anyone would ever expect from a horror comedy, the story centres on a kind-hearted loser named Will, who was finally dumped by his girlfriend after missing her promotion celebration.
He moves out of their shared home and into a big old house available for cheap, which turns out to have a demon named Deomenous who’s looking for a vessel to possess.
What Hagins does with this simple setup, I think it’s better for you to find out for yourself.
Let’s just say that, like all good horror movies, the demons/ghosts involved are more often than not allegories for the kind of mental/physical hurdles that the protagonist needs to get through in order to move on with his/her life.
In the case of Will, whose life is filled with one failed scheme after another (one of these, involving a disgusting toothpaste, pays off hilariously during the film’s finale) in his attempt to better his life and prove to himself that he’s worthy of his girlfriend, it’s the acceptance of who he is deep down inside and how to make the best of it in real life.
Yes, things can go a bit silly as the movie progresses (it is a comedy, after all), but Hagins has a lot of fun upending audience expectations and horror movie cliches, gifting us with a sweet, funny and at times even scary film that has just the right balance of humour and heart.
Deceptively slight, irresistible and bound to leave you with a big grin on your face, this is really lovely stuff.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
