Are horror movies bad again?

Kia ora koutou

While I’ve spent the week watching older horror films, I’d be remiss not to mention that there are always new horror films coming out. Acknowledging the exceptions (Terror-Fi is always a bright-point in the calendar), It hasn’t felt like a particularly interesting year for horror.

The only great 2024 horror film I’ve seen so far is I Saw the TV Glow and that’s so disinterested in genre conventions that I feel weird recommending it here. There are a few still to hit screens though and while I have no interest in Smile 2 or Terrifier 3, I’m looking forward to Strange Darling, Heretic, Nosferatu 2000, Red Rooms and, of course, Wellington Film Society’s screening of Possession. I may also reactivate my Shudder subscription to check out V/H/S/Beyond and In A Violent Nature.

Other than that, I was pleasantly surprised by Grafted, Longlegs, A Quiet Place Minus One, The First Omen and Sleep. I thought Maxxxine and The Substance were both pretty stupid even if the latter has impressive-enough performances and body horror to distract from its tepid gender politics. I want to say something positive about Lovely, Dark, and Deep but I’m so irritated by the use of the Oxford comma in its title that I had to take a walk around the block to cool down after I typed it out.

I have a lot of time for the Ridley Scott-directed Alien films (my parents went on one of their first dates to the original) but avoided Romulus out of principle when I heard that the true horror happened in post. Similarly, I thought that remaking Speak No Evil without Dutch people was like remaking Jaws without the shark and gave it a miss.

Let me know if there’s anything I’m overlooking because from where I’m sitting, the state of horror after the ‘elevated horror’ boom of the last decade or so has made me feel perfectly smug about spending the month catching up on older films. Speaking of which, most of what I watched last week was really good:

• Day 22 - The Fly (1958) - deserves to be mentioned alongside its namesake
• Day 23 - New Mr. Vampire (1987) - does not deserve to be mentioned alongside its namesake
• Day 24 - Tales from the Hood (1995) - maybe the best horror anthology of the `90s
• Day 25 - House of Usher (1960) - Vincent Price plays David Seymour
• Day 26 - Ghostwatch (1992) - at once a masterpiece and a great litmus test for the gullible
• Day 27 - The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) - a shitty depiction of Haiti pretending to be a progressive one
• Day 28 - The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) - proof that great body horror was being made before Cronenberg

Three more days of October and then I’ll start writing about Wellington City Council or whatever motivated youse to subscribe in the first place.

Ngā mihi

Johnny