Short Reviews of Horror Films I Have Watched This Year (2024)
I don’t have a personal LetterBoxd account, save for one for logging children’s horror discussed on my long-running podcast with Ren Wednesday. I find the quippy, smarmy review style that tends to dominate there irritating compared to the rather more staid, considered reviews you tend to get on Mubi.*
I have longer, more substantial blog posts fermenting in my mind - one on a BAE Systems event at my school that I hope will not get me in any trouble with my employer; one on my personal theological issues with Heretic - but hopefully if you’re in the mood for more of my words on horror, these will suffice for a little while. Star rating are out of five.
*Not to say that you don’t get earnest and thoughtful reviews on LetterBoxd, they just tend not to get upvoted!
A Place Without Fear (Susanne Deeken, 2023)
4.5 stars. An alchemical playschool of personal horrors. I believe there were moments of actual magic within. Would pair brilliantly with 'The Wolf House' (surely an influence?) and Gazelle Twin's 'Black Dog' album. I could have wandered lost in this four hours.
Heretic (Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, 2024)
3.55 stars. The problem with writing a pompous Richard Dawkins blowhard as a serial killer is that the audience has to listen to the bastard philosophise! Grant does sterling work with the character, but I wish he'd been weirder like that Lovecraftian neurotic Jordan Peterson! The film opened many bags of worms, but largely left them undissected. For instance, why even bother mentioning 'The Landlord's Game' if you're not going to explain that it functioned as a socialist critique of the very impetus 'Monopoly' would later embody through its localised editions?
Deadstream (Joseph and Venessa Winter, 2022)
2.9 stars. Daft as heck but a good bunch of laffs all the same! It's about the best realisation possible of this concept (which is inherently a limited one, requiring you to spend a lot of time with an irritating fictional YouTuber). The knowledge that this is made by a husband and wife team makes it all the more enjoyable!
The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024)
4.4 stars. "Long life the new flesh!" my brain fist-pumped as I ended the film! Like 'Requiem for a Drea' for Instagram addicts but way more fun! I grinned like a loon through the entire last half hour. I love how much the Mubi community seems to have largely had a blast too! I thoroughly recommend reading Terry White’s stunning account of the film.
Alison’s Birthday (Ian Coughlan, 1981)
2.6 stars. Really naff, but I still rather liked it for all that. Coughlan's direction is workman-like and unremarkable, but its plotting reminded me of Celia Fremlin's domestic low-key ghost stories with its sad sense of inevitability leading towards a pessimistic conclusion. It's a curio not a classic, but I'm glad I made some time for it.
Speak No Evil (James Watkins, 2024)
3.75 stars. Remaking a dour Scandi horror film to include lots of daft jokes is a bankable, though perverse approach, but pays dividends when the cast is so committed and you get 'Eternal Flame' //and// 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' on the soundtrack. James McAvoy possibly has altogether too much fun!
The Keep (Michael Mann, 1983)
3.4 stars. While 'The Keep' is filled with shonky special effects and poor pacing due to studio edits, it has a surprising amount of heart and thoughtfulness. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack combines with Mann's direction and Alex Thomson's cinematography to create a dreamy atmosphere.
Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
3.65 stars. I appreciate the enigmatic chilliness but I was glad that an ex-partner once read the book and explained the plot to me because otherwise the ESP stuff would have been completely confounding! I had seen too many clips, sadly, to find it as terrifying as it must have been upon release. The perfect medium for the novel's adaptation would, of course, have been a haunted PS1 game.
I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)
3.7 stars. Almost too painfully earnest for me (which is saying a lot!) However, its woozy and enchanted exploration of the intersection of fandom, gender dysphoria and psychosis is singular, gorgeous and deeply felt. As a cis guy with mental health issues, I found the ending pretty devestating... if I were trans, frankly I doubt I would have had tears left to shed. It's simultaneously more ambitious and more scattered than 'We're All Going', but that is typical of a sophomore feature. Jane Schoenbrun remains one of the Millenial directors (along with Rose Glass) I'm most excited by.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 2024)
2.7 stars. Not without madcap moments that recall the charm of early Burton. Monica Bellucci's role shows Burton's unapologetic horniness for zombie women continues unabashed! Is a remake of 'Return of the Living Dead 3' on the cards?
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, 2021)
4.1 stars. #relatablecontent Finally the peace offering of a shared platform where disaffected Millenials and Zoomers can finally understand each other! So, born in '87, my experience of the internet had considerably more MIDI music, Geocities and abandonware websites than creepypasta ARGs, making it closer to Hypnospace Outlaw than what we get here, but the experience of being a deeply lonely and anxious teenager trying to find connection online is perfectly captured. Also, like the work of Jonas Mekas, it's filled with little luminous moments. I'm really impressed.
Late Night with the Devil (Cameron and Colin Cairnes, 2023)
2.7 stars. Conflicted on this one. It's a neat idea, but the verisimilitude is not as high as others have stated (possibly due to the cinematography not being as strictly restricted as necessary, possibly due to the incidental use of AI-generated graphic design) and it shows its hand way too early to be properly scary. I'd definitely recommend the 'Inside No. 9' episode 'The Devil of Christmas' for a more hauntological take on cursed British television of the same period.
Caveat (Damian McCarthy, 2020)
2.8 stars. A low-budget escape room with the mankiest rabbit you ever did see! Charitably the dialogue is Pinteresque; less charitably, it's pretty clunky, though thankfully spare. Yet, while limited in its thematic concerns, watched with headphones in a dark room with all its gasping, creaking, scrabbling noises echoing in your head, it is very tense experience and sometimes frightening. Not bad for a Shudder released indie horror in the style of an early '00s puzzle box film.
Demons (Lamberto Bava, 1985)
3.35 stars. Some incredibly naff acting and dubbing redeemed by some delectably gooey practical effects and a pounding, guitar-shredding '80s score. The last 15 minutes are especially fucking awesome!
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)
3.7 stars. Longer than it needs to be, but also far sadder than I would have expected. Davis acts up a storm here, but there's fine and sympathetic work going on behind her melodrama. How many of us live in the shadows of our childhood dreams?
Cuckoo (Tilman Singer, 2024)
3.1 stars. The first half is like watching Enid from 'Ghost World' dropped into a David Lynch film. The second half has a shootout sequence that would have been far more at home in Dan Stevens' 'The Guest' from a decade back. Such are the tonal curiosities of many (non-Blumhouse) horror films in the 2020s! I felt like Singer has come up with a neat monster design and central metaphor and then awkwardly stiched a plot around both. The film has twitchy, twittery rhythms interspersed with stillness, almost reflecting the body language of the central cuckoos themselves. A curate's egg!
Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024)
3.65 stars. Malarky malarky malarky! Shyamalan at his most Hitchcockian and uncharacteristically amoral (despite moments of sincere sentimentality). It's also just a bloody weird gift for a director father to give to his daughter (who is a decent singer and an even better actor). The film's first half is an unsettlingly accurate depiction of what it feels like to suffer from intrusive thoughts OCD on a daily basis if you switch the video footage to intrusive thoughts/ images. As my brother says, Shyamalan doesn't tend to stick the landing with his endings, but I was entertained throughout.
The Exorcist III: Legion (William Peter Blatty, 1990)
3.7 stars. I was expecting many things... but among them was not a 'Spaceballs' reference. Blatty takes faith seriously and expects us, as an audience, to do so too. However, in 1971, when he wrote 'The Exorcist', he could count on a much higher number of believers. By 1990 he knows he is potentially dealing with an ambivalent audience and, as such, is much more confrontational, even pugilistic, about addressing man's incomprehension in the face of evil. However, this is expressed through flinty patter and mountingly hystrionic visuals rather than icy nihilism, which suited me just fine!
The Exorcist II: The Heretic (John Boorman, 1977)
2.7 stars. Somehow a simultaneously fascinating and boring film! I found it a slog to get through but it also contains some hypnotic imagery. A lack of horror set pieces and atmospheric music are part of the problem, but largely the screenplay is inert. Boorman directs the long dialogue scenes competently, even elegantly, but I was always waiting for the dream sequences, just wanting to be immersed in them alone. There's an almost avant-garde use of superimposition near the start of the film, but it's the scenes in Africa that dash the viewer's left hemisphere to bits on the rocks of analysis!
Psycho II (Richard Franklin , 1983)
2.7 stars. Somehow a simultaneously fascinating and boring film! I found it a slog to get through but it also contains some hypnotic imagery. A lack of horror set pieces and atmospheric music are part of the problem, but largely the screenplay is inert. Boorman directs the long dialogue scenes competently, even elegantly, but I was always waiting for the dream sequences, just wanting to be immersed in them alone. There's an almost avant-garde use of superimposition near the start of the film, but it's the scenes in Africa that dash the viewer's left hemisphere to bits on the rocks of analysis!
Piranha (Joe Dante, 1978)
2.65 stars. Cheeky references to Jaws and gleeful cynicism about Big Piranha (aka the military–industrial complex!) lets you know this is a Dante film! He hasn't secured his craft yet, but he ensures that the ride is a lot more fun than your regular B-movie exploitation flick. I always enjoy Dante's goofiness. The results aren't especially scary, but I don't really want that from his films more: thrills, light social commentary and daft jokes, plus some odd sound effects. Piranha delivered on that score! The number of shots of boobs was gratuitous but I'll survive.
Old (M. Night Shyamalan, 2021)
2.75 stars. I imagine that the nature of the comics medium with its necessary elisions makes the aging both smoother and more startling. If this was made today, stable diffusion would be used to paper over the seams created by makeup, actor swaps and subjective POV shots. Otherwise, I think the film woul have worked better as a six-episode mini-series, with half-a-decade of aging for each hour-long episode, say. I thought the moments of body horror were genuinely toe-curling in a pleasurable way and I will admit to wishing there had been more of them! It also prompted decent after-film chat.
Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974)
3.5 stars. Exceptional performances, but the film is so loving that is has less parodic distance than needed to be consistently funny. It's an easy film to enjoy, probably Brooks' most good-natured. However, there are less gags than expected, with the best ones often being sight gags (that are sometimes needlessly explained!) That said, I probably would have loved it as a child, which is when I wish I had watched it.
Longlegs (Oz Perkin, 2024)
3.6 stars. I'm a little unconvinced of its merits. I felt like it drew inspiration from a range of genuinely strange films and television shows (Uncle Boonmee! Lost Highway! Twin Peaks: The Return!) without being authentically weird itself. Admittedly I've never loved Silence of the Lambs, which this is nakedly riffing off, but geared towards people who love true crime podcasts about cults. The mix of affect-less and affected performances with sub-Kubrickian direction is genuinely dread inducing, but to what end? Cage is mesmerising, though I'm tired of androgyny being used for squick.
The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (Bert Williams, 1965)
The sweatiest, stinkiest film I have ever seen and the film, bar none, I have found the hardest to give a star rating to. Like a Tennessee Williams play written by a fucking wendigo baby! It contains small moments of the weirdest/ most inept editing imaginable, but moments where everything comes together to transcend the creators' technical ineptitute to achieve a Nightmarish beauty. Must be watched on the most humid night possible.
Maxxxine (Ti West, 2024)
3.65 stars. Ti West is the missing link between the video shop post-modernism of Tarantino and the geeky meta-modernism of Edgar Wright (despite being a full decade younger than the latter). He has the editing chops of both and has doubtlessly assembled some flawless mixtapes for past girlfriends. Like both, his films are exercises in style over substance, with their thematic concerns explored in greater depth by less cheerfully adolescent directors (namely Lynch and Anger here). Mia Goth kills it as the ruthless Maxine, though I'd love to see her in more psychologically nuanced work.
Pearl (Ti West, 2022)
3.7 stars. I'm still not quite gelling with Ti West's mean-spirited humanism, but this is a pretty special film, due to sheer commitment to its period-specific vision. The costuming and location scouting are exemplary, with Mia Goth achieving a perfect balance between being winsome, pitiful and disturbing, not least in her ending monologue (which represents Ti's best writing in the film). I'd argue that until the last fifteen minutes or so it operates more as a gothic melodrama than a horror, but that works fine! There's nae psychological depth to it but it's entertaining enough not to matter.
X (Ti West, 2022)
3.6 stars. I'd put off watching it since release because I had assumed it would just be pervy and gratuitous... and, of course, it is both of those things to a degree, but also smart and playful enough to portray its shallow, self-interested characters sympathetically (on both sides of the implied ideological divide!) As with 'The Innkeepers' I felt like West was more interested in aping a certain cinematic style than in truly exploring his screenplay's thematic concerns, but West's film tastes align more with my own that, say, Tarantino's, and I like how his regular DP shoots locations.
Jaws 2 (Jeannot Szwarc, 1978)
2.3 stars. More of a naff slasher than a committed sequel to the masterfully crafted original. Not that the screenplay or acting is so very much worse... rather, the utterly pedestrian direction highlights how much cinematic haute cuisine Spielberg can serve up when working with boil-in-the-end ingredients. I've read Benchley's original novel and it really isn't much better than 'Jaws 2' - indeed, some of the shots of women in beachware and insipid teen talk capture the book with greater accuracy than Spielberg's film! The last twenty minutes at least included a helicopter.
Koko-Di Koko-Da (Johannes Nyholm, 2019)
3.6 stars. Never quite became the masterpiece I was hoping it'd become, but it had heart-in-mouth sound design and two brilliantly lived-in main performances. It would be //unbearably terrifying// as a piece of immersive theatre in the woods - which it would also suit down to the ground since to its (presumably coincidental?) similarity to 'In Yer Face' British theatre of the '90s. Due an English-language remake by Philip Ridley?
The Watchers (Ishana Night Shyamalan, 2024)
2.8 stars. Fitfully entertaining gubbins that seems shonkier the longer you think about it. Would have fared better as a first-person adventure/ puzzle game, especially with the Professor's exposition videos. I like the ever-serious Dakota Fanning, but she is ill-served by the screenplay's stilted dialogue. "Bring me my bird!" indeed.
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016)
3.4 stars. Do you enjoy that specific feeling of falling in love a person in a dream and then waking up and realising that they don't exist? If so, you'll enjoy this film, I think. I'd be interested to know the degree to which Stewart's elusive and vaguely aloof performance style determined the tone of the film or vice versa.
Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass, 2024)
3.9 stars. A lesbian couple made out all the way through the movie in the row next to mine without pausing. While I would normally be annoyed, this also seemed fair enough, despite Ed Harris being the most aggressively unsexy I have ever seen him be. Kristen Stewart gives a wonderfully lived-in performance. Also, features a good choice of unconventional bangers, though I must admit to missing Bronski Beat from the trailer.
The First Omen (Arkasha Stevenson, 2024)
4 stars. A wild, quirky ride at the movies! Pretty damn 'orrible in places for a '15' rated film. I found it riveting even at its most ludicrous. I loved the abstract flourishes, chirruping noises and all of the people cast with interesting faces. I really want Stevenson to do a Robert Aickman adaptation now.
Gerorisuto (Shozin Fukui, 1990)
2.8 stars. Infantile, bratty and incredibly punk! I remember trying to make a similar film with my best friend when we were teenagers and now I wish we'd committed to it! Watched from the vantage point of 2024 it risks looking at times like a low-res Eric André skit, but it must have been startling watched in Japan in 1990 for the small number of people who had the (dubious!) pleasure of seeing it.
Lamb (Valdimar Johannsson, 2021)
2.8 stars. Usually I like straight-faced absurdity ("Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams...") or stories that take a metaphor, literalise it and then work through the uneasy implications (like Robert Aickman was the master at doing) but I was left rather indifferent by 'Lamb'. Partly, I think, Jóhannsson and Arenson often seem to mistake silence and stillness for profundity; but more importantly, I'm not convinced the film follows its own internal logic, while not being enchanted enough to work as magic realism.
Immaculate (Michael Mohan, 2024)
3.2 stars. It has the look of an elevated horror but the heart and soul of a scuzzy exploitation flick. Personally I'd rather the reverse, but with the Catholic church still having a cultural stranglehold over much of the globe, I'm in favour of a giallo-inspired piece of cinematic blasphemy!
Junk Head (Takahide Hori, 2017)
3.55 stars. A remarkable accomplishment for a single animator. There are lots of parallels here with Phil Tippett's 'Mad God' (2021) and I find it interesting to think of Hori and Tippett simultaneously tinkering away at their hellish dioramas on other sides of the globe. Like Tippett's work, you have the sense that the creator had a living world and its creatures inside his head, with any storytelling a somewhat arbitrary or haphazard way into exploring that world. The industrial dieselpunk aesthetic is not a personal favourite, though fans of Chris Cunningham and David Firth should love this.
Visitation (Suzan Pitt, 2013)
3.8 stars. A revelatory exhumation of theosophical pessimism! I would greedily devour a feature-length film of Pitt's style of animation here, which would be a perfect alchemical match for the music of David Tibet/ Current 93.
Lisa Frankenstein (Zelda Williams, 2024)
3.7 stars. I really liked this and if it'd been released when I was a teenager I would have //adored// it. A goofy slice of day-glo goth cream pie. Its rhythms are erratic and there is nothing remarkable about the Williams' direction per se, but she understands that a Diablo Cody screenplay does not require visual bombast - indeed, often needs to be left to sing and occasionally yell riot grrrl style by itself! I did, however, think the film was unnecessarily mean to the character of Taffy, but that was a minor misstep.
Take away from the new releases: Women in horror are killing it over the last couple of years. The films by Zelda Williams, Arkasha Stevenson, Rose Glass, Jane Schoenbrun, Coralie Fargeat and Susanne Deeken were more vital, visceral and thought-provoking - lingering long in the mind and the gut - that almost anything released by male directors this year. I don’t know if there is any sociological reason for this (the ascendency of male autocrats across Europe and America might feel even grimmer as a woman and it seems like there is a lot of urgent body horror being made in the wake of the repeal of Roe Vs. Wade) but it’s personally given me a lot of future releases to anticipate!
Take away from older watches: I don’t enjoy pastiche as much as I thought I did and sequels used to be a lot worse than they are now, but did take some weird risks.