Editorials
[BEST & WORST ’11] David Harley’s List of the Best Horror Films of 2011!
Like my worst-of list, my best-of compilation was really easy to put together. There was quite a bit I liked this year and, unfortunately, six of the films below haven’t been released stateside yet – The Divide and Kill List are around the corner, though. Every year, I toy with the idea of not including unreleased films because it leaves little room for discussion once it’s posted, but in the end, I just wouldn’t be happy with the list- for purely selfish reasons, it’s a little easier to do it like this since I wouldn’t have to hold off on (and possibly forget to use since I saw it so long ago) films like The Loved Ones, which I used last year.
Out of the thirteen films on this list (including three honorable mentions), more than half are foreign, six are performed in a foreign language (seven if you count hood slang), one received a perfect score from me, and zero are remakes, sequels, reboots, or prequels.
Best Horror of 2011: David Harley
Micah (Best/Worst) | Lonmonster (Best/Worst) | Evan Dickson (Best/Worst) | Lauren Taylor (Best/Worst)
Posters (Best/Worst) | Trailers (Best/Worst) | Performances (Best)
It does everything Scream 4 does, but better and with a time-traveling bear.
Atmospherically shot by frequent collaborator Pablo Rosso, Sleep Tight shows a lot of growth for Balaguero, who up until now had a terrible track record for solo efforts. Marini’s script might be built upon a simple, familiar premise but the characterization is excellent, giving Tosar the ammunition needed to create one hell of a creepy villain.
Sean Durkin’s Polanski-ish tale of reintegration, family and paranoia is an intelligent slow-burn with a great vague ending. Elizabeth Olsen is fantastic as the confused and mentally-unbalanced Martha, whose reality bounces back and forth from the disturbing memories she has of living in a commune, and being under the care and supervision of her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson). The way the film functions, leaping from dreams and memories to “reality” is well done, and the relationships Martha has with her Lucy – who functions as her sister and mother – and Patrick (John Hawkes), a smooth talking cult leader who brainwashed her with a false sense of security and belonging, are intense and give way to some memorable intimate moments.
I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am for The Wicker Tree next year, but Kill List definitely left my folksy, religious horror appetite satisfied in the meantime. Ben Wheatley’s follow-up to Down Terrace boasts incredibly intense performances by stars Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley, and features a doozy of an ending that will unhinge even the most hardened of genre fans.
The Divide is a terrifying and bleak vision of the future whose performances and images will stick with you for days after you watch it. Xavier Gens’ direction and Laurent Barès cinematography create a moody, claustrophobic atmosphere that never feels stale despite its closed-quarters setting. The tone is vile and the characters devolve into sickening states of being (Ventimiglia and Eklund are really fantastic at being gross cavemen), but the reality-based approach to Gens’ end of days is enough to make it the best apocalyptic tale this year.
Home invasion films traditionally don’t leave you feeling good after the credits start rolling, even if there’s some sort of resolution. We like to think we’re safe in our homes, so the scenario is bleak, frightening, and kind of joyless, but You’re Next takes that expectancy and throws it out the window. Writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard managed to make a bunch of guys laying siege to a house feel fresh, all thanks to some great humor and wit.
Livid is a haunted house movie about a bunch of kids that try to rob the wrong woman and it functions in that sense; it’s just that everything else has a very lucid quality to it. Rooms appear and disappear out of thin air, ghosts show up in one scene and never make their presence known again, and things that have no business being in the same movie are thrown together, but the concoction of del Toro, William Castle, Hammer, and European splatter rationale is surprisingly solid.
Pedro Almodovar skillfully throws in everything and the kitchen sink in his perverse take on Georges Franju’s controversial Eyes Without A Face without it self-combusting. Intelligent and provocative, The Skin I Live In is a beautiful, funny, weird, and shocking experiment done right.
The transition of Attack The Block‘s anti-heroes into traditional heroes is well done, the humor is spot on, and the creature design is creative and nifty. Joe Cornish’s script does a great job at reinvigorating the “kids fuck stuff up” genre, but it also gives a dose of heavy – and interesting – commentary when Moses thinks out loud about the government corruption; it’s hard out there and nobody’s making it easier. That’s one introspective kid.
Kim Jee-Woon is one of the best directors of the last decade, creating noteworthy films like A Tale Of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life and The Good, The Bad, The Weird, so it should come as no surprise that I Saw The Devil is an incredible serial killer opus that is without a single boring moment. Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik give compelling performances as two men consumed with revenge anger and the story is as thrilling as they come, but if there’s one thing that stuck out to me, it’s the mind-blowing (and sure to be iconic) in-car fight sequence.
If you ever wondered what the really bizarre Japanese cousin of Fargo was like, Cold Fish is for you.
TrollHunter‘s tone isn’t quite straight-faced and isn’t super silly, striking a balance between the faux-realism set up by the cinema verite style and rules, and the low-budget CGI and parody of bureaucracy – a topic not explored this well since Brazil. Adding that extra layer of playfulness with the Jurassic Park references is only the icing on the cake.
Melancholia isn’t quite the rush that Anti-Christ was (there’s no “Chaos Reigns” equivalent to be found), but it is a great companion piece, continuing von Trier’s exploration of depression. Some people found Melancholia to be uplifting and a beacon of hope, but Kirsten Dunst sells her chronic condition so well that I fell into this daze afterwards. It’s a powerful performance, and easily her best since Virgin Suicides.
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
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