With all the horror movies out there, it can be tough to know which ones are worth watching and which we should just skip, so it helps to know a bit about the people behind the movies. In particular, if we know some good directors, we can seek out their movies without worrying quite as much about wasting our time with them. To help out with that, every so often I’m going to highlight a different director and go over a few of their best movies so you have some recommendations to check out now as well as a new name to keep an eye out for in the future.
For this first director spotlight, let’s look at Andre Ovredal, a Norwegian filmmaker who’s directed some of the best hidden gem horror movies of the past ten years. As I’ve discovered more of his work, he’s become one of my favorite directors working today, and after watching the three movies we’ll look at below, he just might become one of your favorites too.
Trollhunter
Trollhunter was the first Andre Ovredal movie I ever saw. It’s a Norwegian film that came out back in 2010, and it’s about a group of documentarians who discover that trolls really exist and that the government is hiding them from the general public. This is a found footage movie, and even though I’m not always a fan of that style, it really works here. It’s not just a gimmick the filmmakers use to help spice up an otherwise uninspired story; rather, it feels appropriate given the whole idea of secret monsters and a government cover-up.
This movie has two great selling points. First, it has a really cool plot. The documentarians find out about the trolls because they come across a secretive man who kills them for the government, and his story is really interesting. As the movie goes on, you learn what his life as a troll hunter is like, and he details some of the hardships he endures as well as some of the terrible things the government has forced him to do to the trolls. It’s all quite fascinating, and it makes the movie feel much more grounded than you would think a movie about fantasy monsters ever could.
Secondly, we have the trolls themselves. As great as the movie’s human drama is, the trolls are the real stars here. Andre Ovredal has created a cool new monster for us to enjoy, one that we’ve never really seen before. Sure, this isn’t the first troll movie ever made, but I’ve never seen them done quite like this. Movie monsters are usually either supernatural creatures, aliens, or one-off anomalies, but these are different. They’re just animals in this movie, and there are actually multiple species of them with vastly different characteristics (like size, temperament, and even number of heads). That gives the movie a cryptozoology kind of vibe, which you don’t find in most horror movies, and I really like it.
So if you’re a fan of monsters, definitely check out Trollhunter. With this movie, Andre Ovredal created some of the coolest new monsters of the 21st century, and he paired it with a gripping story about a government cover-up and its consequences for both the people on the front lines and the trolls themselves. You don’t want to miss it.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe
The Autopsy of Jane Doe was Andre Ovredal’s first English-language movie, and it’s a hell of an introduction to English-speaking audiences. It takes place almost entirely in a coroner’s office, where the police bring the corpse of an unidentified woman found at a brutal crime scene. The body is examined by a widowed coroner and his son, who’s more or less his apprentice, and at first, the body seems normal enough. However, as they examine it further, they realize that this is no normal corpse. Something terrible happened to it, and soon terrible things also begin happening to them.
The best element of this movie is undoubtedly the mystery surrounding Jane Doe. Who is she, and what happened to her? That’s what the main characters are trying to figure out, and as the autopsy goes on, the case becomes weirder and weirder. It eventually becomes a string of WTF moments, and you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat wondering just what in the world could have happened to this poor woman.
On top of a great mystery, the movie also has really good characters. In particular, Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch do a great job of playing the coroner and his son. They make their characters really believable and likeable, so you feel their pain over the loss of the coroner’s wife, and you root for them when they begin to experience a hostile supernatural force that they seem powerless to fight against.
In a nutshell, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is so good because it’s smarter than your average supernatural horror movie. It doesn’t rely solely on tired genre tropes or familiar monsters that we know everything about before we even see the movie. Instead, much like he does in Trollhunter, Andre Ovredal presents us with a new kind of monster that we come to know bit by bit as we learn about it along with the main characters, helping us to identify with them and experience their pain and fear as our own.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is obviously based on the children’s book series of the same name, and as such it’s aimed at a younger audience than most horror movies. But don’t let that fool you. While it doesn’t have the violence or brutality that a lot of horror fans look for, it has plenty of legitimate terror to satiate our thirst.
The books it’s based on were anthologies of short stories, but the movie eschews that format and instead tells a single narrative that includes multiple stories from the books. It does this in a really intelligent way, managing to keep the stories intact (as opposed to something like the Goosebumps movies, which basically just takes characters from the books and puts them into a completely different story) while also telling a larger overall narrative.
And when we do see those stories come to life, they’re great. The monsters look fantastic, and the movie takes its PG-13 rating to the absolute limit of scariness and tension. Admittedly, the larger narrative isn’t the greatest, but it’s not bad either. It’s just good enough that with the awesome monsters and scares, the movie actually ends up being pretty good.
All in all, maybe the best thing I can say about this movie is that while it’s definitely a kids’ horror movie, it’s also definitely a kids’ horror movie. In other words, yes, this is gateway horror, and yes, it’s made for younger viewers, but it’s not just a kiddy adventure story with monsters. No, the monsters and scares are legit, and the movie has real consequences. Some seriously bad things happen, and they’re not all undone at the end. Make no mistake about it: this is a real horror movie, and it shows once again that very few can match the monster-making skill of Andre Ovredal.
Friday, May 29, 2020
Friday, May 15, 2020
Hidden Gem Recommendation: Oculus
If you haven’t seen Mike Flanagan’s movie Oculus, you’re missing out. It came out pretty quietly in 2014, and while it made decent money, it never got the buzz it deserved. To this day, most people don’t even know about it, but in my opinion it’s one of the best horror movies of the past decade.
Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical when Oculus came out. While the trailers looked good, I noticed that one of the production companies behind it was WWE Studios, and they’re not exactly known for making great movies. But when I finally got a chance to see it, I was very pleasantly surprised. It ended up being my favorite horror movie of the year, and to this day I love popping it into my blu ray player and returning to the crazy, mind-bending story that Mike Flanagan created.
So what’s this movie about? Basically, it’s about a haunted mirror. I know, that’s a tired concept that we’ve seen a million times before, but this time it’s different. Nothing jumps out from the mirror, and it does way more than just make people see things in it that aren’t really there. Instead, the mirror warps people’s perception of the entire world around them. It hijacks all their senses and makes them see, hear, and feel whatever it wants them to.
More specifically, the movie focuses on Tim and Kaylie, two siblings who get their hands on the mirror years after it tore their family apart when they were kids. Tim was sent to a mental institution after their parents were both killed, and the movie picks up the story right when he gets out and sees his sister for the first time in years. Coincidentally, he’s released just after Kaylie finally tracks down the mirror again, so she plans to destroy it with him.
Shortly after their reunion, they bring the mirror to their childhood home, and once there, they begin to argue about whether or not it’s really haunted. Initially, Tim is skeptical because his years of therapy have convinced him that he and his sister simply made up the supernatural stuff, but Kaylie still believes it. In fact, she has done a lot of research about it, and she knows all about the people who had the mirror before her family and how it affected them and ended up killing them. She explains this all to Tim and relates it to their experiences as children, and he provides alternative explanations that his therapists have suggested to him throughout the years.
All this setup takes some time, but it’s worth it because it whets your appetite and makes you really want to see the mirror in action. After hearing so much about it and what it can do, you want to see it for yourself, and once the horror kicks in, the payoff does not disappoint.
The mirror’s strategy against its old rivals is to disorient them so much that they can no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy, and it does a great job of that. As you’re watching it, there are things you think are real that turn out to be illusory, and there are things you think are fake that turn out to be real.
The movie also moves seamlessly between the present day and the siblings’ experiences with the mirror as kids, telling both stories simultaneously, and that just adds to the effect. Not only do you never know what is and isn’t real, but you can never settle in and know exactly where you’ll be from minute to minute either. Right when you think you know for sure that the movie will continue in the present day for a little while, it switches back to the past, and vice versa.
All of this back and forth between real, fake, present, and past really messes with your head. The mirror disorients you just as much as it does Tim and Kaylie, drawing you into the story and making you feel their fear, and the effect lingers on even after the movie is over. When I walked out of the theater after seeing it for the first time, I reached into my pocket and just about freaked out when I felt my ticket stub in there. I forgot that I had put it in that pocket, so for a second I thought it was the mirror messing with my perception of reality. Obviously it wasn’t, but that’s how effective this movie is.
Now, as with any great horror movie, Oculus is more than just scares and disorientation. It’s also a really well-told story. The movie is edited in such a way that even though the back and forth between past and present is disorienting, the two timelines still come across quite clearly. By the time the movie is over, you know exactly what happened to Tim and Kaylie when they were kids, and while you don’t always know if the switches from the present to the past are simply flashbacks or if the mirror is making them relive their childhood experiences, the general flow of what’s happening is clear enough.
Plus, the characters of Tim and Kaylie are very likeable too. They’re well-written and well-acted, and you really come to root for them as the movie goes on. You want them to succeed in their attempt to destroy the mirror in the present, and although you already know how their childhood story ends, the movie still manages to make you worry about their younger selves and wonder just how that part of the story will get to its inevitable conclusion.
In particular, the actress who plays young Kaylie, Annalise Basso, deserves special mention. She manages to convey a feeling of absolute terror while also having to be brave for her brother, and I think this performance would have made her a star if more people had seen the movie.
All in all, if you’ve never seen Oculus, I highly recommend that you check it out. In my opinion, it’s one of the best horror movies of the 2010’s, and it introduced me to a filmmaker that I still follow today. Any time I hear about a new project that Mike Flanagan is working on, I always get really excited because I know he’s going to turn out quality work, and it’s all thanks to a great first impression he made back in 2014.
Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical when Oculus came out. While the trailers looked good, I noticed that one of the production companies behind it was WWE Studios, and they’re not exactly known for making great movies. But when I finally got a chance to see it, I was very pleasantly surprised. It ended up being my favorite horror movie of the year, and to this day I love popping it into my blu ray player and returning to the crazy, mind-bending story that Mike Flanagan created.
So what’s this movie about? Basically, it’s about a haunted mirror. I know, that’s a tired concept that we’ve seen a million times before, but this time it’s different. Nothing jumps out from the mirror, and it does way more than just make people see things in it that aren’t really there. Instead, the mirror warps people’s perception of the entire world around them. It hijacks all their senses and makes them see, hear, and feel whatever it wants them to.
More specifically, the movie focuses on Tim and Kaylie, two siblings who get their hands on the mirror years after it tore their family apart when they were kids. Tim was sent to a mental institution after their parents were both killed, and the movie picks up the story right when he gets out and sees his sister for the first time in years. Coincidentally, he’s released just after Kaylie finally tracks down the mirror again, so she plans to destroy it with him.
Shortly after their reunion, they bring the mirror to their childhood home, and once there, they begin to argue about whether or not it’s really haunted. Initially, Tim is skeptical because his years of therapy have convinced him that he and his sister simply made up the supernatural stuff, but Kaylie still believes it. In fact, she has done a lot of research about it, and she knows all about the people who had the mirror before her family and how it affected them and ended up killing them. She explains this all to Tim and relates it to their experiences as children, and he provides alternative explanations that his therapists have suggested to him throughout the years.
All this setup takes some time, but it’s worth it because it whets your appetite and makes you really want to see the mirror in action. After hearing so much about it and what it can do, you want to see it for yourself, and once the horror kicks in, the payoff does not disappoint.
The mirror’s strategy against its old rivals is to disorient them so much that they can no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy, and it does a great job of that. As you’re watching it, there are things you think are real that turn out to be illusory, and there are things you think are fake that turn out to be real.
The movie also moves seamlessly between the present day and the siblings’ experiences with the mirror as kids, telling both stories simultaneously, and that just adds to the effect. Not only do you never know what is and isn’t real, but you can never settle in and know exactly where you’ll be from minute to minute either. Right when you think you know for sure that the movie will continue in the present day for a little while, it switches back to the past, and vice versa.
All of this back and forth between real, fake, present, and past really messes with your head. The mirror disorients you just as much as it does Tim and Kaylie, drawing you into the story and making you feel their fear, and the effect lingers on even after the movie is over. When I walked out of the theater after seeing it for the first time, I reached into my pocket and just about freaked out when I felt my ticket stub in there. I forgot that I had put it in that pocket, so for a second I thought it was the mirror messing with my perception of reality. Obviously it wasn’t, but that’s how effective this movie is.
Now, as with any great horror movie, Oculus is more than just scares and disorientation. It’s also a really well-told story. The movie is edited in such a way that even though the back and forth between past and present is disorienting, the two timelines still come across quite clearly. By the time the movie is over, you know exactly what happened to Tim and Kaylie when they were kids, and while you don’t always know if the switches from the present to the past are simply flashbacks or if the mirror is making them relive their childhood experiences, the general flow of what’s happening is clear enough.
Plus, the characters of Tim and Kaylie are very likeable too. They’re well-written and well-acted, and you really come to root for them as the movie goes on. You want them to succeed in their attempt to destroy the mirror in the present, and although you already know how their childhood story ends, the movie still manages to make you worry about their younger selves and wonder just how that part of the story will get to its inevitable conclusion.
In particular, the actress who plays young Kaylie, Annalise Basso, deserves special mention. She manages to convey a feeling of absolute terror while also having to be brave for her brother, and I think this performance would have made her a star if more people had seen the movie.
All in all, if you’ve never seen Oculus, I highly recommend that you check it out. In my opinion, it’s one of the best horror movies of the 2010’s, and it introduced me to a filmmaker that I still follow today. Any time I hear about a new project that Mike Flanagan is working on, I always get really excited because I know he’s going to turn out quality work, and it’s all thanks to a great first impression he made back in 2014.
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