Recommendation list - Balqiis Omar Ali-Hanaf

The Christmas season is the most popular season. Its loved globally – even by the ones who doesn’t celebrate because of the coziness. But is popularity the moral compass? I want to disagree and even bodly state that Halloween is the superior season. The obligation to sit around a boring family dinner? No thanks. Creative costume parties? Yes! Candy? Yes. And in my opinion, saving the best for last: this mix of recommendations of horror films:

Copyright: British Lion Film / Photo: IMDb

The Wicker Man (YouTube, 1973)

To start of this list we have Robin Hardy`s The Wicker Man. And no – it’s not the 2006 remake with Nicholas Cage`s riveting performance (the bees!), but the original from 1973. When a Christian policeman is sent to a closed off island to investigate a young girl`s disappearance, he gets entangled with the people on the island who has abandoned Christianity a long time ago.

The nature of movies based on Christianity and the mystique behind leaving such religion has always a given ending. This movie too. Considering the time it was released, The Wicker Man is bold in implementing humor, sex and claustrophobic horror. Isolation repackaged in what is freedom, from the people on island’s perspective (not spoiling I promise!) is an interesting view, where you as a viewer gets unsure on who you’re supposed to root for.

Copyright: Les Films Jacques Leitienne / Photo: IMDb

Angst (Amazon, 1983)

Let’s continue in the claustrophobic sphere we have entered. The Austrian director Gerald Kregl’s Angst which translates to fear from German to English, throws us in a frenzy (I wanted to add a wordplay here, but I’m humbly going to pass on it). After ten years a convicted killer gets paroled. He starts to roam and end up in a stranger’s home, where an old habit gets picked up.

The escape route is nonexistent in this movie. The camera is handheld, literally shaking, with an intimate close up following our main character on a quest of havoc and chaos.

Cure (BluRay / DVD, 1997)

When the soundtrack used almost throughout the whole movie is real-life-sounds, and the absent of sound, it makes you question the eeriness of everyday life. In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s movie Cure the lack jump scare sets an unease from beginning to end where you almost wish you could have a jump scare and be done with it.

Part thriller and part horror, Detective Takabe gets put in a case to track down identical murders marked with an X. When the murderer is always found nearby the crime scene, it reveals that these killings are committed under bizarre and unsettling circumstances. As the plot unravels the feeling change from, I would never find myself in this type of situation to I would definitely do this. The atmosphere is threatening throughout the movie, where each scene lingers through strong emotions. The movie is patient with the plot – don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a slow movie, but its patient with the story, where it almost feels confrontational in how far the human lust would go.

Copyright: Universal Pictures / Photo: IMDb

As Above So Below (Netflix, 2014)

It’s been a few years since I watched As Above So Below directed by John Erick Dowdle, but I have since then discovered new found love for the movie. The popularity of found footage movies got after The Blair Witch Project in the beginning of the 00s was overwhelming. It could almost give the feel of the hysteria around the fantasy genre (we are not going to dive into this, maybe another time). With waves of mass production of the same content, good ones within the subgenre can be overlooked – like this one.

An exploration group lead by our main character Scarlett through the Catacombs in Paris. In search of the philosopher’s stone, the member of the group encounters supernatural forces that quickly turns into a nightmare. The movie of course uses textbook found footage jump scares, and it’s not arrogant despite the plot seeming heavy the first minutes into the movie, but one thing the plot does elegantly, is that it serves the audience the outcome with all the cliches. When expectations are predictable it allows the movie to “break the rules” it has presented.

Green Room (YouTube, 2015)

To balance our predictable genre, Green Room directed Jeremy Saulnier gives us high level thriller sprinkled with gore and horror. After a punk band learns that members at the venue they’re playing are Nazis, they choose to retaliate which leads to… watch the movie to find out!

This is not your classic horror movie, where demons are flying through walls and your neighbor gets possessed. It’s worse if I could say myself – it invites us into a realistic world most of us has heard about. The scenarios aren’t far-fetched, and the laziness to blame it on supernatural effect isn’t a tool. This uncomfortable movie isn’t focusing on us as an audience but keeps almost hostage where we are forced to see every scene unravel.

Under the Shadow (Netflix / Apple TV, 2016)

Can I be honest for a few seconds? A good poster is what makes you curious, right? Me too. Now that we have that established, lets debunk that and be more open minded. When I first saw the poster for this movie, my immediate thought was no. And what a delighted surprise, not because the expectations weren’t there, but of how good the movie was right from the start. Writer and director Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow tells the story about Shideh and her daughter experiencing Iran-Iraq war in Tehran. All alone with her daughter and her husband working away, they start to deal with jinn.

Seeing a supernatural movie which doesn’t revolve around Christian mystique was uncomfortable. For a lot of us who already are familiar with jinn, it almost feels like you’re inviting the spirit through the screen and into your home. The backdrop off the war intertwined with the supernatural makes the movie feel like a ticking timebomb.

Saint Maud (Viaplay / TV2 Play / Apple TV / YouTube, 2019)

Since we are in the topic of religion. This recommendation list almost seems like a missionary’s dream – but this is third and final horror movie with religious theme. Or to be more precise religious guilt. Saint Maud is Rose Glass’ directorial debut, where I personally think she does precise work on showing the complicated emotions one has while being devoted to a religion.

When the young devoted nurse Maud, gets a new patient which is almost at her death bed, the obsession of saving the patients soul gets out of control. The movie does a good job exploring the shame and guilt delicately without overstepping. Without noticing because the plot goes together so well, it escalates with an intense and natural tempo.

Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (Viaplay / TV2 Play / Apple TV / YouTube, 2022)

We have to end it with my favorite, favorite, favorite category within horror which is: teenagers/young adults locked up in a big house, where one by one gets killed. It is the ultimate horror movie with characteristic everyone is familiar with. The director Hallina Reijn for Bodies, Bodies, Bodies gathers a friend group in the start of their 20s in a mansion. They get stuck in the mansion during a hurricane and decide to play a drinking game, which starts the horrific event of finding a dead body. The question is who in the friend group is behind the ongoing killings.

The movie gained popularity, and rightfully so. It has been classified as a good depiction of how gen-z act. Set aside from the obvious, the movie gives an interesting perspective on how our outsider Bee is treated by the rest of the group. She doesn’t come from a wealthy family; she has an accent and is considered suspicious even from before the killing starts. The humor ease us in what kind of people we are dealing with: rich people we can’t access. The movie is playful, funny and true in its core when it comes to semi-slasher-teenage movies coming to life in this new age.

New week, new recommendations #43 - Halloween 2023