Paramount’s moving forward on its thriller Annihilation, tapping Ex Machina writer-director Alex Garland to adapt the script and direct the project, says Variety.

The studio and Scott Rudin acquired movie rights to Jeff VanderMeer’s “The Southern Reach” trilogy last year. The first book, “Annihilation,” was published in March. It was followed by “Authority” in May and “Acceptance” in September.

Rudin and Eli Bush are producing Annihilation, which “centers on a biologist seeking answers about her husband’s disappearance in an enivironmental disaster areas sealed off by the government for the last 30 years.”

Garland’s writing credits also include 28 Days Later, Dredd and Sunshine.

Ex Machina director Alex Garland looks to have found the star of his next sci-fi film, Annihilation, reports Variety.

Natalie Portman (Black Swan) is in early talks to star in the adaptation of the Jeff VanderMeer novel for Garland and Paramount Pictures. Scott Rudin is producing.

Garland will write and direct the pic that “follows a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply.”

The deal is dependent on production starting no sooner than the beginning of 2016, but sources say it seems like the two sides will settle on a start date soon.

Oscar Isaac, who can be seen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is reteaming with Ex Machina director Alex Garland for Annihilation, which recently cast Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) in the lead.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eightm “Twin Peaks”) also stars with Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls).

The film is an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer novel for Garland and Paramount Pictures, which has Scott Rudin producing.

Garland will write and direct the pic that “follows a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply.“

Here’s a highlight from his work in Garland’s Ex Machina.

[H/T] iMBD

Oscar Isaac, who can be seen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is reteaming with Ex Machina director Alex Garland for Annihilation, which also stars Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan).

Garland writes and directs the pic that “follows a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply.“

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”) also stars with Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls).

Paramount will release it in theaters on February 23, 2018, the same day as CBS Films’ horror pic Winchester.

The film is an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer novel for Garland and Paramount Pictures, which has Scott Rudin producing.

EW shared this first look at Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) in Ex Machina director Alex Garland‘s Annihilation.

Portman plays a scientist named Lena, who is part of an expedition tasked with exploring an area which has been taken over by a mysterious force. “[She] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset,” Garland told the site.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”), Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls) costar as her fellow team members, while Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) plays Portman’s husband.

“It is their first tangible encounter with something strange,” adds Garland, referring to the photo of Portman inspecting an alligator. “The alligator has physical elements to it that should not belong on an alligator. They’re starting to get their heads around how weird the place is.”

Paramount will release it in theaters on February 23, 2018, the same day as CBS Films’ horror pic Winchester.

The film is an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer novel for Garland and Paramount Pictures, which has Scott Rudin producing.

Left to right: Natalie Portman and Tessa Thompson in ANNIHILATION, from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.

We’re about to hit peak nostalgia, although it looks as if Ex Machina director Alex Garland‘s Annihilation is going beyond homage and using classic films for inspiration.

In his new film, Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) plays a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply. “[She] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset,” Garland told EW just yesterday.

The first trailer takes us into this dream-like sci-fi horror nightmare that harkens back to all sorts fo genre films like Jurassic Park, Predator, and even Contact, not to mention touching on “Stranger Things” (see image below the trailer). It looks nothing short of spectacular.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”), Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls) costar as her fellow team members, while Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) plays Portman’s husband.

Paramount will release it in theaters on February 23, 2018, the same day as CBS Films’ horror pic Winchester.

The film is an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer novel for Garland and Paramount Pictures, which has Scott Rudin producing.

We already gushed over the first trailer for Ex Machina director Alex Garland‘s Annihilation, which took us into this dream-like sci-fi horror nightmare that harkens back to all sorts of genre films like Jurassic Park, Predator, and even Contact. The new trailer is even better, revealing a heavy Alien/Aliens inspiration from the set design to weaponry, not to mention the film carrying an alien monster intent on creating destroying everything in its path.

In his new film, Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) plays a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply. “[She] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset,” Garland told EW when initially announced.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”), Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls) costar as her fellow team members, while Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) plays Portman’s husband.

Here’s the brand new trailer that’s as frightening as it is stunning.  Paramount will release it in theaters on February 23, 2018, the same day as CBS Films’ horror pic Winchester.

Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Annihilation from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.

If you’ve been keeping up on our 2017 year-end coverage, then you’re on top of what a tremendous year this has been for horror. But as 2017 is almost over, it’s time to look ahead to what next year will bring. Luckily, it looks as though there’s a lot on the schedule in 2018. From blockbuster summer horror to festival darlings finally seeing release, and surprise reboots to tried-and-true franchise sequels, 2018 might just be another year where horror saves the box office. Again. Here’s what we’re most looking forward to:

Insidious: The Last Key – January 5

Picking up after the events of Insidious: Chapter 3, Elise Rainer (Lin Shaye) moves on to investigate supernatural activity in her former childhood home. Which appears to make this sequel function as a sort of prequel within a prequel, as actresses Ava Kolker and Hana Hayes both portray the franchise heroine at varying ages. This sequel also seems to hint that we’ll get a much deeper dive into the creepy depths of The Further, which has long been a highlight of the series. Outside of Lin Shaye’s butt-kicking Elise, of course. Written by Leigh Whannell, he’s handed the directorial reins over Adam Robitel, who caught audiences off guard with 2014’s The Taking of Deborah Logan.

Mom and Dad – January 19

Written and directed by Brian Taylor (Crank), this horror-comedy is every bit of the over-the-top fast-paced thrill ride you’d come to expect from Taylor’s work. When a strange phenomenon causes parents to turn violently against their own children, Selma Blair and Nicolas Cage become completely unhinged in the best possible way. There’s a ton of humor, the best product placement of a home-improvement tool that I’ve seen in a while, surprising violence, a horror cameo, and superb performances by Cage and Blair. It’s not perfect, but it is a very enjoyable way to spend 83 minutes, especially with a crowd.

Annihilation – February 23

Directed by Alex Garland and adapted for screen from a book by Jeff VanderMeer, the trailer for this sci-fi horror is nothing short of stunning. There’s a surreal, almost dream-like quality about the expedition that Natalie Portman’s character steps into, full of alien creatures with big teeth. I’m not sure I know what’s going on in the trailer, but I know I want to see it.  Strange, monstrous creature encounters, beautiful cinematography, and a very talented cast indicates this might be something special. Of course, VanderMeer’s source novel is the first in his bestselling Southern Reach trilogy, so Annihilation might just be the sneaky first entry in a new franchise.

The Strangers: Prey at Night – March 9

Quite possibly the most anticipated sequel, and one that fans have been asking for since Bryan Bertino’s hit in 2008, we finally get to reunite with Dollface, Pin-up Girl, and Man in the Mask. If the film is half as good as the marketing has been leading up to release, I think we’ll be in for a good time. This time targeting a family in a mobile home, the scale and body count promises to be much higher. Directed by Johannes Roberts, fresh off the success of 47 Meters Down, and starring Bailee Madison, Martin Henderson, Lewis Pullman, and Christina Hendricks, there’s a lot that indicates this sequel might be well worth the wait.

The Endless – Early 2018

If you follow reviews out of the festival circuit, then the latest by filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Resolution, Spring) probably has you salivating. There’s not really a facet of the film untouched by the duo; from writing, directing, producing, and even starring in the film as two brothers returning to the cult they escaped years ago, only to find things may be stranger than they ever believed possible. As Brad described in his review, it is every bit the mind fuck, and the festival reviews are justified. Thanks to Well Go USA, The Endless will finally see a yet to be determined release in early 2018. I recommend you revisit their previous films while you wait.

Revenge – Early 2018

As Julia Ducournau did the previous year with her debut Raw, Coralie Fargeat also makes a bold declaration in the French horror movement with her debut Revenge. The plot set up is simple; when Richard’s friends show up early for their annual hunting trip, they catch him with his mistress. The encounter escalates into a twisted tale of rape-revenge, but Fargeat manages to make it far less exploitive than it sounds while being every bit as violent and bloody as you’d expect from French horror. It’s visceral, leading up to one of the bloodiest finales I’ve seen in a while, and still manages to feel fresh thanks to Fargeat’s perspective. Luckily, Shudder picked this one up for early 2018 release.

Slice -Early 2018

There’s no question A24 puts out some risky stuff; titles like The Witch, Green Room, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and the polarizing It Comes at Night. Which makes any horror release of theirs something worth noting, and Slice definitely invokes curiosity. For one, it stars Chance the Rapper. Two, it follows a pizza delivery driver murdered on the job, who then searches for someone to blame. Three, the footage revealed. Yes, please.  A24 announced dates for two undisclosed horror films: March 16 and April 27. Slice will be one of them.

The New Mutants – April 13

Superhero movie fatigue is a real thing, which makes it difficult to get excited about most of them these days. But if you cast Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, Split), Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things), and Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), and frame this origin story like something out of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, well, that’s enough to get me to take notice. How it plays out is a whole other story, but giving the superhero origin story a horror spin is enough for me to want to give it a shot.

The Nun – July 13

The Nun made quite the appearance in The Conjuring 2, so it’s no surprise that the demon would get its own movie. Like Annabelle: Creation, James Wan and Gary Dauberman opted to set the story in the 1950s, making for a much more interesting setting. That it stars Vera Farmiga’s younger sister Taissa Farmiga isn’t likely a coincidence, though the actress has proven her mettle in horror with American Horror Story. The Conjuring films and its spinoffs have been box office juggernauts, and it won’t be slowing down with this entry, either.

The Predator – August 3

The original Hawkins himself, Shane Black, returns to the franchise, this time as director as well as co-writer with Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad). This alone is what makes the potential for this entry, set to take place between Predator 2 and Predators, so exciting. The interesting cast choices also makes this one stand out; I don’t know that anyone would have expected Keegan-Michael Key, of Key & Peele or Jacob Tremblay (Before I Wake) to face the Predator, and you can bet I want to see how Predator handles suburbia. Pretty well, I’d think.

The Meg – August 10

Jason Statham versus giant megalodon shark. Do we really need any more than that? Sold.

The Little Stranger – August 31

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson and based on a novel by Sarah Waters, this post-WWII set Gothic ghost story will follow a country doctor (Domhnall Gleeson) whose new patient is dealing something far more ominous in their crumbling Hundreds Hall during the hot summer of 1947. Also starring Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, and Charlotte Rampling, this one promises to exude quiet, haunting atmosphere. There’s something about period ghost stories that make them great for dread and mood, and that the source novel got a ringing endorsement from Stephen King makes The Little Stranger one to pay attention to.

The House with a Clock In its Walls – September 21

Based on a gothic horror novel geared toward child readers, originally published in 1973 with illustrations by Edward Gorey, this adaptation stars Cate Blanchett, Kyle MacLachlan, and Jack Black. Black already impressed with his work on Goosebumps, so already this seems like a promising horror fantasy. Most peculiar, though, is that story, which follows a 10-year old who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house with a ticking heart, is being directed by Eli Roth. Interesting cast, and very interesting directorial choice for horror aimed at a younger audience, so color me intrigued.

Halloween – October 19

If there’s any 2018 release more highly anticipated than The Strangers: Prey at Night, it’s this one. The more information trickles in, the stronger the fan reaction grows. From the early announcement of Danny McBride as co-writer, to John Carpenter’s involvement as executive producer, creative consultant, and possibly even partial composer. Toss in the news that this entry is effectively ignoring all sequels past the original, therefore erasing anything Cult of Thorn, Jamie Lloyd, and beyond, and you’ve got polarizing fan buzz. Whatever would entice Jamie Lee Curtis and Carpenter back to the series, though, is enough to make this one a guaranteed hit.

Anna and the Apocalypse – Awaiting distribution/December 2018?

This Christmas-set Scottish, high school zombie musical had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX, and attendees went nuts for it, including our own Trace Thurman (review). Despite the very concept of a high school musical, director John McPhail doesn’t shy away from the gore or the surprising deaths. It also helps that the soundtrack is catchy.  This one still doesn’t have a distributor for release, despite its film festival reception, but I bet that’s more to do with its niche Christmas setting than anything. 2016’s festival favorite Christmas horror Better Watch Out wasn’t acquired until May 2017, with just enough time for holiday release. Look for Anna and the Apocalypse to follow the same pattern.

What are you most looking forward to in 2018?

We already gushed over the first trailer for Ex Machina director Alex Garland‘s Annihilation, which took us into this dream-like sci-fi horror nightmare that harkens back to all sorts of genre films like Jurassic Park, Predator, and even Contact. Now, here’s the film’s official poster that steps into the extraterrestrial plane and exclaims to “fear what’s inside.”

In his new film, Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) plays a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply. “[She] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset,” Garland told EW when initially announced.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”), Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls) costar as her fellow team members, while Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) plays Portman’s husband.

Paramount will release it in theaters on February 23, 2018.

The world is being swallowed by the mysterious and terrifying force known as “The Shimmer” in Alex Garland’s Annihilation, headed to the big screen in just under a month.

What lies inside this bizarre, extraterrestrial plane? We won’t know for sure until next month, but a new featurette video today teases that whatever it is, it isn’t good…

Paramount will release Annihilation on February 23, 2018.

Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) plays a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply. “[She] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset,” Garland told EW when initially announced.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”), Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls) costar as her fellow team members, while Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) plays Portman’s husband.

We already gushed over the first trailer for Ex Machina director Alex Garland‘s Annihilation, which took us into this dream-like sci-fi horror nightmare that harkens back to all sorts of genre films like Jurassic Park, Predator, and even Contact. Now, discovered on the official website is a clip in which Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”) explains to Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) that the “shimmer” is expanding exponentially and will eventually consume cities.

In his new film, Portman plays a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply. “[She] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset,” Garland told EW when initially announced.

Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls) costar, while Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) plays Portman’s husband.

Paramount will release it in theaters on February 23, 2018.

Much like the viral marketing for mother!, Paramount Pictures has been unlocking new footage on the viral website for Alex Garland’s Annihilation, in theaters February 23rd.

In the latest piece of footage,  Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”) tells Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta, Black Swan) that something was brought back from inside the “shimmer”.

Here’s how to watch it: Click on over to http://www.forthosethatfollow.com/ and then input the code that was discovered on Twitter…

Τ⁤⁢h​‍‍e​‍⁤r​‌⁡ｅ​‌⁢ ​‍‌a​‌⁠r‍⁡ｅ​‌­ ​‍‍ｃ​‍​ｅ​‌‌ｒ​‍⁣t‍⁡a​​⁤i​​⁣n​‌­ ​‌⁤ｋ⁡​ｉnｄｓ ｏｆ dｅａｔｈｓ thａｔ onｅ ｓhоulｄ ｎοt ｂe eхｐｅcｔeｄ ｔo re－ｌіｖe．#WhatsInside https://t.co/xHXXBsORrO pic.twitter.com/IByqVfYP7N

— Annihilation (@AnnihilationMov) February 1, 2018

In Garland’s new film, Portman plays a biologist who signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply. “[She] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset,” Garland told EW when initially announced.

Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls) costar, while Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) plays Portman’s husband.

Now in theaters everywhere is Alex Garland‘s (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later) sci-fi thriller Annihilation, which stars Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”),Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls), Gina Rodriguez, and Tuva Novotny.

While it’s in theaters here in the States, the UK (and other countries) will see the film join Netflix’s streaming service on March 12th! Here’s the official UK art and trailer.

Portman stars as Lena, a biologist and former soldier, who joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X – a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscape and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.

One way in. No way out.

Now in theaters everywhere is Alex Garland‘s (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later) sci-fi thriller Annihilation, which stars Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amityville: The Awakening, The Hateful Eight, “Twin Peaks”),Tessa Thompson (Creed, When a Stranger Calls), Gina Rodriguez, and Tuva Novotny.

Portman stars as Lena, a biologist and former soldier, who joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X – a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscape and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.

Bloody Disgusting has a super gross exclusive clip that gives a glimpse of the horrors that await Lena and her crew. When they come across a camera, the footage shows something horrifying – a soldier willingly allows another to cut into his stomach, revealing a massive, slimy worm-like creature that’s moving around in his stomach. Annihilation is looking pretty awesome!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnihilationMovie/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annihilationmovie/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnihilationMov

Update: Shortened headline.

This past weekend, Annihilation, Alex Garland’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Ex Machina was released to an audience still drunk on the juice of purple vibranium flowers (read: Black Panther). Marvel’s newest comic book juggernaut not only topped the box office for the second week in a row, it managed to hold on so well at $108 million that it became the 2nd highest-second weekend ever (behind The Force Awakens). Yes, box office analysts love “records,” however specific they may be. The King of Wakanda wasn’t the only obstacle in Annihilation’s way. There was the new comedy Game Night and the kiddie holdover, controversy-riddled Peter Rabbit (my eyes only roll so far). After the receipts were tallied, Garland’s sci-fi brain melter pulled in around $12 million and settled into the number four spot. Its existence at your local multiplex is likely, itself, to be annihilated after next week.

Why should you give a damn, you may be wondering? The trailers portrayed this as nothing more than another mish-mash of sci-fi and action with some monstrous horror elements thrown in for good measure. Ya know, Aliens? Despite finding the advertising less than captivating, the film was on my radar for a couple of reasons. 1) I stumbled upon a handful of early reviews on Letterboxd claiming the movie was some sort of modern masterpiece. Intrigued. 2) Except for here in the US, Canada, and China the film would not be receiving a theatrical release. A deal was struck with THE streaming platform where difficult Hollywood titles go to “live,” Netflix.

The film is based on a best-selling trilogy of novels and adapted/directed by a man who’s built up mad street cred in the sci-fi world with films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine. It’s easy to see this appealing to Paramount on paper. That’s not even mentioning the amazing cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and hunk-boat support from Oscar Isaac and David Gyasi. The story of a hardened group of scientists venturing beyond an alien forcefield, braving dangerous mutations in search of answers, seems like an easy sell, too.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time a fairly high profile sci-fi thriller with a modest budget got the dump. Apparently, after less than stellar test screenings, Paramount wanted drastic cuts and changes made to bolster the pic’s mainstream appeal. However, Annihilation’s producer, Scott Rudin (Ladybird, Ex Machina), had the power of final-cut to wield against the studio (which is growing rarer in today’s Hollywood climate). Rudin decided to back his filmmaker, and together, they refused to make the requested changes. Paramount was all like, “Well, fine then!” They pushed their $40 million investment off on Netflix. Point and match.

So, was this a similar situation to The Cloverfield Paradox? Early word stated Paramount felt that film was too intelligent for multiplex audiences. Yeah…it wasn’t. Paradox was just a muddy mess of ideas with a built-in “brainy” safety net to excuse all of its poor narrative choices. The likely truth was they just knew a bomb when they saw it. And, let’s face it, Paramount execs have recently had plenty of experience in that department. Was Annihilation going to be more of the same? I needed to find out for myself. Armed with nothing but my MoviePass and a few spare hours, I trekked to the moviehouse, plopped down in the dark of a sparsely filled auditorium, and experienced cinema. Yes, that last part may seem a sniff pretentious, but it’s apropos for the journey this film puts you through.

Obviously, I want you to go SEE the movie, so I’ll keep this relatively spoiler free. Keep in mind, though, some plot points will be discussed vaguely. So, enough of the preamble. Here’s why you should go out and “experience” Annihilation while it’s still in theaters!

Technical Specs

Film is a visual medium, and Annihilation is brought to life with some of the most gob-smackingly gorgeous visuals. The story unveils itself bit by bit as Portman’s Lena recalls the events leading up to her return from beyond the mysterious forcefield known as “The Shimmer.” She doesn’t remember everything. Details are foggy, and as an unreliable narrator, it’s possible not everything we see is a true representation of what actually happened. One thing Lena says, however, does ring exceptionally true. Some of the mutations beyond The Shimmer were horrifying, yet others were beautiful.

The production design on the film is top notch. What begins as “generic movie forest” morphs into overgrown brush of wildflowers – all different types, growing from the same vine. Some grow together into the form of a human, eerily watching our characters as they pass through this new, strange world. The deeper into The Shimmer, the more dangerous things become. And in turn, the more beautiful and abstract. This is a sumptuous experience that draws you in and practically begs you to search every corner of the screen for hidden details. This is what “the big screen” was made for. Better yet, this world is created with an exceptional blend of digital and practical. It would have been easy to take an entire CG paintbrush to the screen, but the impact would have been far less.

The Monsters

The same can be said of the creature effects. There are certain shots where I wasn’t sure if I was looking at latex or pixels. That’s the most difficult magic trick to pull off in film, and they did it. Make no mistake, though, this isn’t a “monster movie” in the traditional sense. But there are terrifying beasts forming within The Shimmer (that weren’t a part of the original source material). While these animals may not be the focus of the story Garland is trying to tell, they will surely linger in your imagination (or nightmares) long after walking away from the theater.

A specific scene highlighted in the marketing materials is head-on, white-knuckle horror. One of the mutations has taken on the voice of its victim, trapped in the painful final moments before death. If the promise of a screaming, skull-faced bear doesn’t get your ass to the movies, I’m not sure what will.

The Score

Beyond the cinematography and production design, there is a killer score from Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury (both from Ex Machina) that begins with quaint, almost folksy guitar before descending into a maddening wave of droning synth and nails-on-a-chalkboard strings. This is likely the first soundtrack outside of some rando Italian genre picture from the 70s/80s that I will gladly listen to in my car. Though, on second thought, that might not be advisable.

There is a large portion in the final third that plays out with almost no spoken dialogue. The score builds and builds, thrusting the psychedelic images forward. We’re firmly in 2001: A Space Odyssey territory. By the time the lights came up in the auditorium, I was practically stumbling to my car. I felt as if I’d just come out of a deep hypnosis. Powerful filmmaking or binaural beats buried within the film’s score? Maybe both?

Ultimately, I’m not going to call this a masterpiece as many have been quick to label it. I will say, it has the potential to become one. Temper your expectations, as it’s not perfect. Annihilation actually does share one thing in common with The Cloverfield Paradox. They both feature fairly straightforward, catch-all explanations for the overly complicated goings-on of their stories. The difference, in Paradox they use said catch-all as carte blanche to do whatever they want. Here, Garland uses it to open the door to even bigger questions and potential readings of the material. Just like The Shimmer, it can grow and change its meaning over time.

This is bonafide cinematic art on display at your local multiplex. It’s a film that snuck past the head honchos at Paramount, and they’re surely kicking themselves over it now. Show up, and don’t let “dumped to Netflix” become the new direct-to-video! Even if this film weren’t as good as it is, I would still be calling for more people to check it out. It’s important that cinema represents a wide swath of genres and styles.

The truth of the matter is this: Paramount was right! This movie doesn’t belong at “a theater near you!” But, dammit, be glad it’s there, and go buy yourself a ticket. 

Genre films had been soaring at the box office, at least until Black Panther annihilated the competition. MGM’s Eli Roth-directed Death Wish, already disappointing in its debut last weekend, totaled up to $23,875,301 on a reported $30M budget. Without an international to report (yet), it’s looking at a heft loss in the guesstimated $15M+ range. Even with rave reviews, Paramount Pictures’ Annihilation is struggling to find an audience. The genre mashup is sitting at $26M domestic on a $40M budget (with no international reported yet), offering a potential $25M loss. Brutal.

As for newer titles, Aviron’s Strangers: Prey at Night opened to $10.5M, which isn’t necessarily terrible, but also isn’t anything to boast about. There’s no reported budget, but an educated guess would put it around $5M, and depending on the film’s marketing spend, the Johannes Roberts-directed sequel would need about $30M worldwide to hit the profit zone. I expect it to top $20M here in the States, so an international run and sales will be key to its financial success.

Lastly, Rob Cohen’s The Hurricane Heist unsurprisingly bombed horrifically debuting with only $3M on a $35M budget.

There’s plenty more horror to come this year, so hopefully, the genre can quickly regain its footing better than Cohen can direct an action sequence…

If you missed it in theaters, you won’t have to wait much longer to watch Alex Garland’s Annihilation (read our review) at home. Via Paramount Home Media Distribution, Garland’s latest sci-fi masterpiece debuts on Blu-ray + DVD + Digital combo pack and DVD on May 29, 2018. Prior to that, it’s hitting Digital on May 22.

In Annihilation…

“Biologist and former soldier Lena (Natalie Portman) is shocked when her missing husband (Oscar Isaac) comes home near death from a top-secret mission into The Shimmer, a mysterious quarantine zone no one has ever returned from. Now, Lena and her elite team must enter a beautiful, deadly world of mutated landscapes and creatures, to discover how to stop the growing phenomenon that threatens all life on Earth.

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Tuva Novotny also star.

Special Features include:

• Part 1 – SOUTHERN REACH
  • Refractions – See how director Alex Garland created the tone, textures and color palettes for the various film environments on set.
  • For Those That Follow – Listen to the cast’s perspective on their roles and learn why they found the story so intriguing.
• Part 2 – AREA X
  • Shimmer – See how filmmakers transformed real set locations to create the world of Annihilation.
  • Vanished into Havoc – Check out all the action as cast and crew walk you through the mind-blowing stunts and special effects.
• Part 3 – TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
  • Unfathomable Mind – Learn why the visual effects are integral to achieving director Alex Garland’s overall vision for Annihilation.
  • The Last Phase – Listen to the cast and crew share their fondest memories from filming Annihilation.

Check out the combo pack’s cover art below.

Between David Bruckner’s The Ritual and Alex Garland’s Annihilation, this year has already been an INCREDIBLE one for terrifying, wholly unique creature designs. The former film can be found on Netflix, while the latter film, a boldly original near-masterpiece for the sci-fi/horror genre, is available on Digital HD this week ahead of DVD/Blu-ray on May 29.

The majority of Annihilation is set inside “The Shimmer,” an alien-modified realm where nothing is quite as it is in our world. Essentially, the DNA of humans, animals and plants collides inside the shimmer, resulting in mutations that are sometimes beautiful and sometimes completely horrifying. You may, for example, stumble across a field of magical flowers that are from entirely different species but are somehow growing from the same plant, and the serenity may then be shattered by the arrival of A HUNGRY NIGHTMARE BEAR.

The most terrifying scene in Annihilation plays out similarly to the iconic “blood test” scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing, with most of the female leads strapped to chairs as their friend loses her mind and contemplates killing them. And then the aforementioned nightmare bear (nicknamed “Dexter” by the effects team) shows up, turning the terror up to eleven and brutally attacking one of the characters in a kill scene that reminds of the infamous bear attack in The Revenant. But this bear isn’t just any bear. In fact, it’s not entirely a “bear” at all.

Its design inspired by diseased animals, the bear creature in Annihilation is missing large portions of its fur, and a human skull has literally embedded itself into the animal’s head. Again, “The Shimmer” is a place where all kinds of DNA intermingle in simply impossible ways, and the bear seems to be literally absorbing the humans it kills. In addition to the human skull that has incorporated itself into the bear’s own skull, it also emits the death screams of its latest victims, and even has a row of human teeth inside of its mouth.

It’s not okay on any level. Not okay at all.

What we see of the creature in Annihilation is more than enough to send chills up the spine, but if you were hoping to see more of the incredible design, you’ll be happy to know that there’s an entire featurette devoted to the creature’s design and execution on the DVD/Blu-ray. And /Film just got their hands on an exclusive excerpt from that feaurette.

Check out the creature in all its glory below…

Today marks the home video release of Ex Machina director Alex Garland’s Annihilation, now available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Natalie Portman-starring sci-fi/horror film was well received by critics even if it wasn’t a financial success, but it’s unquestionably the sort of movie that’s going to amass a huge fanbase in the years to come.

So then, would Garland ever be interested in returning to The Shimmer for a sequel? Speaking with Indiewire, Garland emphatically drove a stake into the heart of that one.

“I’ve got no objection to someone else doing that, but I’m not interested in the idea of a sequel,” Garland told the site. “I feel like we made this movie and this is the movie we made.”

[Related] Want to See the Nightmarish Monster Bear from ‘Annihilation’ in All Its Glory?

He continued, “When the thing is done, I am done with it. I instantly start moving on, so I don’t even have an opinion on an Annihilation sequel. All the way through I was clear with everyone, from the studio to the cast, I told everyone that I didn’t really see it as part of a franchise. My goal was to make this film and do the best job I can. I didn’t even conceptualize it as the start of a trilogy. Sequels are just not something I’m interested in doing. I just don’t do sequels.”

It’s worth noting that Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel Annihilation, which the movie was based on, was the first novel in a series called The Southern Reach Trilogy.

This time last year horror already had huge successes at the box office with Alien: Covenant, Split, and Get Out, only setting the pace for the second half of the year with massive hits like Happy Death Day, Annabelle: Creation, and It: Chapter One. That’s strictly box office releases, which doesn’t even begin to touch upon the huge indie hits like Raw and The Devil’s Candy and Netflix victories like Gerald’s Game. Clearly, 2017 was a great year for horror.

As we’re quickly approaching the halfway mark of 2018, how is this year’s horror faring compared to last year? We’re only at the beginning of the summer season, with major releases still on the way. We can predict horror is going to close out strong with The Nun, Suspiria, and a little movie called Halloween. But the first half of 2018 was no slouch at all, delivering critical winners to huge box office successes to even sleeper hits on Netflix. While we anticipate the horror that’s still on the way, we look back at the best horror of 2018 so far:

Upgrade

Released on June 1st, Leigh Whannell’s genre mashup stars Logan Marshall-Green as Grey Trace, a technophobe in a technology controlled near future. When a tragic event leaves him paralyzed and broken, an experimental chip called STEM gives him that which he craves most; revenge. Sharing similar DNA of retro ‘80s sci-fi action films like Robocop, but with plenty of gory horror moments and humor woven in, our own Meredith said it best when she called it “a lot of goofy fun.” In other words, Whannell has delivered a true crowd pleaser perfectly at home with the summer blockbuster.

Veronica

Even though Netflix quietly released Paco Plaza’s ([Rec] series) latest at the end of February, it didn’t take long to make waves both in and outside of the horror community. For horror fans, it was a solid horror film worth watching. For everyone else, it was garnering attention as the “scariest film” that many couldn’t even finish. Inspired by true events, Veronica tells of a teen girl in Madrid that’s besieged by an evil presence after playing with an Ouija board with friends during school. Plaza once again proves his knack for atmosphere and scares, and the cast is wholly endearing (Ivan Chavero wins horror’s cutest kid award as the adorable Antonito). Ignoring the hype train, Veronica isn’t the scariest film ever made, but it is a solid entry in 2018’s roster of horror.

Ghost Stories

Released in limited theaters and VOD in April, writer/directors Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson adapted their acclaimed stage play for screen, offering a unique and spooky anthology. Nyman pulls triple duty by also playing the lead, Professor Goodman, a skeptic who makes a living debunking psychics for his TV show. But when he’s tasked with investigating three unsolved supernatural cases, his skepticism and bravery is tested with chilling confrontations from the other side. While how each case ultimately weaves together into the final narrative reveal may be divisive for most, the ride getting there is pure atmospheric British horror with effective chills and scares. Stylish as it is spooky, punctuated with moments of humor, it’ll make you wish each anthology segment could get its own spinoff.

The Ritual

Another Netflix release in February, David Bruckner’s latest (Southbound, The Signal) brought Adam Nevill’s novel to life, giving audiences a rarity these days; a haunting creature feature. Beginning with a horror plot that feels like we’ve been there countless times before, in which a group of long-time friends ventures into the woods for a hiking trip only for it to go horrifically awry, quickly proves to be anything but ordinary. A creepy setting that invokes the eeriness of The Blair Witch Project gives way to bleak monster movie rooted in Norse mythology. It also delivers one hell of a creature design.

The Endless

Opening on March 23 to limited release, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s follow up to Spring brought another genre-bender that Brad rightly labeled as “strange, bizarre, twisted, manipulative and completely original” in his review. Benson and Moorhead also star as two brothers that return to the cult they fled years ago, only to discover the cultists may not be as crazy as they once seemed. A slow burn story that crafts atmosphere and mystery, delivering a compelling mythology that seamlessly ties it into the same universe of their previous work, won’t be for everyone. But for those who like their stories more Lovecraftian in nature with stunning visuals, this is a must see.

Annihilation

Paramount dropped this one into theaters on February 23rd without much fanfare. I can’t really blame them; Alex Garland’s adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name is a tough one to categorize. Natalie Portman stars as Lena, a biologist that joins an all-female team of scientists for an expedition into “the shimmer,” a mysterious zone where the laws of science don’t apply. Visually arresting and compelling in its otherworldly world-building, the story is heavy on the sci-fi and even heavier on the psychological. There’s a lot of horror to be found from unnerving body horror to terrifying hybrids (hello scariest bear ever), but the way it balances the varying genres defies the norm. Annihilation wasn’t a hit, but it should have been, delivering an original, stunning, sci-fi horror mashup.

A Quiet Place

Released in theaters on April 6, co-writer/director John Krasinski’s first foray into horror managed to do what most can’t; keep audiences quiet at the theater. This post-apocalyptic creature feature took the box office by storm, even more impressive considering how very little dialogue is in it. Following a family forced to live in silence while hiding from sound-sensitive killer monsters, A Quiet Place captivates with not only its sound design but its charismatic family dynamic. Tense and emotionally investing, it’s no wonder A Quiet Place smashed records and already earned a sequel.

Hereditary

Opening just this weekend, Ari Aster’s debut easily ranked among the horror’s most anticipated since its festival debut at Sundance earlier this year. A24’s widest release also marked its largest weekend opening by a large margin, but the hype train also means this will continue A24’s streak of being very divisive. Written and directed by Aster, his harrowing portrayal of grief focuses on the Graham family, beginning with the funeral of the family matriarch and compounded by even more tragedy, grief shifts into pure nightmare as terrifying family secrets ooze to the surface. Toni Collette delivers an Oscar-worthy, riveting performance, among a talented cast. Aster nails the dread, subtle horror imagery, and unpredictability building into an insane finale.

Revenge

With a limited theatrical release on May 11, and eventual Shudder exclusive release later this year, Coralie Fargeat’s impressive debut makes for another worthy entry in French extreme horror. Fargeat subverts the rape-revenge sub-genre with a much different protagonist and authentic social commentary before unleashing a bloodbath like no other in a tense cat and mouse came set against a desert backdrop. Stylized and beautiful cinematography that crescendos into an insanely bloody finale, Fargeat’s bold declarations will polarize its audience with her blood-soaked metaphors. Intense, bold, and vicious, eschewing the normal rules of the sub-genre, Revenge is one hell of a debut.

“Remember when horror was good?” asks one of Vogue‘s writers, who proclaims 2018 void of any good horror movies in an article published this week, yet still works in mentions of Hereditary and A Quiet Place – the latter of which he calls a “thriller”. Sigh.

“We didn’t even get a decent shark movie this year,” he bolsters like that’s some kind of quantifiable statistic over the past 100 years of cinema. (The funny thing is, the fact that we even did get a mega budget shark blockbuster with The Meg actually shows how huge horror is right now.)

The writer then slams Halloween, before he comically tells readers to watch Revenge, which, I hate to break it to him, came out this year. Remember when horror was good? Like, you mean right now? In this very moment we’re living inside of?

Then, Suspiria is removed from the equation. “Suspiria is not forgettable. Nor is it, I hasten to say, much of a horror film, despite being a remake of one.” He suggests that a horror movie isn’t a horror movie unless it has “an element of fun, of dark delight,” and excludes Suspiria because it wasn’t fun nor did he understand the finale. Must be a “thriller,” eh?

Typical for pieces of this sort, the article has no clear point and builds up to nothing; mostly, it’s supported by the writer’s viewing of Winchester, The Nun and Slender Man, three not-so-great films that offer only a fraction of horror that was put on display this year. Of course, as most horror fans are aware, the good has far outweighed the bad in 2018.

(And even the baddest, it’s worth pointing out, have proven quite successful.)

But I digress. This feels like yet another mainstream hit piece, one that perhaps it’s best to give no attention to at all. But it’s hard not to. After all, this is exactly the kind of bullshit we horror fans constantly have to deal with. You see, when horror is having a down year, they’ll write, “Horror is dead.” When it’s hot, like it has been for the past few years, they quantify it and remove films to fit their narrative. We’re low class to them. There’s no way a horror film could be so good that it deserves awards… right?

You just watch… when Toni Collette gets nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Hereditary, and Ari Aster gets nominated for “Best Director” and “Best Original Screenplay”, the mainstream media will start the narrative that Hereditary is not a horror movie. Buckle your seatbelts, cause it’s going to happen. Hell, it already has.

Digressing yet again, I don’t understand how one of the biggest magazines on the planet can allow someone to write a horror hit piece having just seen a small handful of horror films?

Outside of the aforementioned Hereditary, A Quiet Place (a monster movie that’s without question a *horror* movie), Revenge and Suspiria (that’s a lot of great horror right there, no?), there have been dozens of phenomenal genre films released in 2018. So much so that I’m having a difficult time narrowing down the best of the year. While you may debate me on the merits of The Predator or this weekend’s Overlord (both extremely fun genre films), I offer you the following counter: Annihilation, Mandy, The Ritual, The Night Comes For Us, One Cut of the Dead, Apostle, Thoroughbreds, Before I Wake, Ghost Stories, Blue My Mind, What Keeps You Alive, Tumbbad, Lowlife, Possum, Let the Corpses Tan, Terrified, and The Witch In the Window.

I’m sure there’s even more, but let’s not pretend we’re not in the middle of a major horror renaissance. We are. We absolutely are. And true fans of the genre see that clear as day.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*

Previous Year’s Lists: 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017

After a less-than-stellar 2014, the past few years have been sensational for horror. While years prior found me struggling to create a top ten, the past few have forced me to omit some truly deserving films that ended up on the back end of a massive list. Our genre is so potent right now that it’s been carving up big numbers whether it’s in theaters, on VOD, or streaming on Netflix. And whether you know it or not, we are currently in the midst of a true horror renaissance. These past few years are nothing short of special and a time that we’ll look back on fondly. Seriously, take a moment to soak it all in and appreciate the gifts we have been given.

Interestingly, there’s been so much horror content that it’s actually causing a divide. It feels like there’s a micro-war between fans who prefer a trip into nostalgia, those who want popcorn entertainment, and the ones that prefer arthouse. It’s disheartening to this horror fan to see such negative energy and hatred spewed across various social platforms as if there’s a correct answer as to what kind of horror is horror. Why do we have to choose sides? Why can’t we have our cake and eat it too? What the hell is wrong with enjoying a film like Halloween and also basking in the artistic nuances of Hereditary? We’re getting it all right now and I personally can’t consume enough of it.

So without further adieu, here are my picks for the best horror films of 2018.

Honorable Mentions:

• One Cut of the Dead (d. Shin’ichirô Ueda)
• Ghostland (d. Pascal Laugier; Vertical Entertainment)
• Thoroughbreds (d. Cory Finley; Focus Features)
• Before I Wake (d. Mike Flanagan; Netflix)
• The Night Comes for Us (d. Timo Tjahjanto; Netflix)
• Blue My Mind (d.Lisa Brühlmann; Uncork’d Entertainment)

Bonus. Annihilation (d. Alex Garland; Paramount Pictures)

A few years ago I included Gravity in my top 10 and have regretted it ever since. While the horror genre bends into so many different subcategories, it’s hard to really justify including some of these sci-fi thrillers/dramas when there are so many other straight-up horror movies deserving of celebration. Still, these kinds of films deserve a mention; especially Annihilation, which carries very strong accents of horror. Mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and intensely thrilling, Alex Garland‘s film is not only emotional, but also apocalyptic. Featuring gorgeous cinematography and even more stunning visual effects, Annihilation is this generation’s Contact by way of the late H.R. Giger.

10. The Ritual (d. David Bruckner; Netflix)

David Bruckner’s feature-length debut is a solid old school slow burn that ramps up to a ridiculously satisfying conclusion. The creature and accompanying effects work are astounding. The film rides on the back of gorgeous exotic locations that help in creating the brooding atmosphere. Interestingly, The Ritual carries a slight An American Werewolf in London vibe, but more so Blair Witch the anything else. Hailing out of the Toronto International Film Festival, The Ritual was quietly released on Netflix to very little attention, which makes this one of the best hidden gems of the year.

9. The Predator (d. Shane Black; 20th Century Fox)

I had an absolute blast with Shane Black’s The Predator, which was smashed by critics. As much as I love highbrow horror, sometimes I just want to have a good time, and this film delivers in full. Black is specialist when it comes to character development and somehow turned the ultra-vanilla Boyd Holbrook into an extremely likable badass. And even though we already know how great of an actor Sterling K. Brown is, his performance in The Predator is on another level. Save for some rushed shoddily rushed CGI, this film is also extraordinarily bloody and violent, and offers up some wild set pieces. It’s one of the better Predator movies (maybe even second best?) and would be a welcomed conclusion to the franchise if Disney were to bury it for good.

8. Overlord (d. Julius Avery; Paramount Pictures)

While the mythology and potential are never fully realized, Overlord is a ridiculously fun, over-the-top splatterfest that pulls from classics such as Predator, Re-Animator, and even the “Wolfenstein” games. The characters are the film’s anchor, led a by a scene-stealing John Magaro, and followed by charismatic performances by Wyatt Russell and Jovan Adepo. The filmmakers do a sublime job in making the villains extra hateable/unlikable (one spits on a kid’s baseball and tosses it to him), which gives all of the interactions and fight sequences additional punch. The film never quite hits ten, but it’s such an action-packed blast that you never really stop to ask any questions. If anything, let’s hope for a sequel where they can up the ante and build onto the mythology.

7. Mandy (d. Panos Cosmatos; RLJE)

It’s hard not being instantly seduced by the works of Panos Cosmatos, who first enchanted me with his Beyond the Black Rainbow. With his follow up, Mandy, I found myself melting in my chair as I allowed the film’s visuals to wash over me. Mandy is pure nightmare fuel, a surreal hallucination that feels as if Salvador Dali directed Hellraiser. Cosmatos takes his extreme visuals and injects it into this fever dream that allows Nicolas Cage to embrace his crazy side that we’ve all grown to love (Cage fans are going to lose their shit when he hulks out). While the film lives and breathes on Cosmatos’ visual feast that’s akin to stargazing, Mandy is all heart, and much like Hereditary, it really takes the time developing the characters. Cosmatos soaks the film with pain and suffering, and it’s excruciating. While Mandy never quite delivers the high it promises, it still leaves its mark on the indie scene with a unique and impactful experience that’s about as anti-Hollywood as you can get. This is Panos’ nightmarish playground where anything can happen, including a cheddar goblin.

6. Cam (d. Daniel Goldhaber; Netflix)

A metaphor for identity theft, Daniel Goldhaber‘s chilling and haunting Cam is basically a feature-length “Black Mirror” episode that will make the viewer feel as violated and helpless as the victim. Madeline Brewer stars and delivers an exceptional performance that shouldn’t be overlooked. Thoroughly engaging and suspenseful as hell, Cam is one of the year’s biggest surprises that is guaranteed to have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

Up Next: My Top 5 Horror Films of the Year

You’ll have a hard time finding a year-end “best of” list that doesn’t include Alex Garland’s Annihilation, and if you haven’t yet had a chance to head into the Shimmer for yourself, you’ll be happy to hear that the film is hitting Hulu early next year. It’s one of several genre titles that’ll be coming to the streaming service in the first month of the new year.

Here’s all the horror you can expect on Hulu in January 2019…

Arriving January 1st:

• Beetlejuice
• Children of the Corn (2009)
• Cujo
• The Dead Zone (1983)
• Flight 7500
• Graveyard Shift
• Hellraiser
• Mimic
• The Others
• Pet Sematary
• Pet Sematary II
• The Resident
• Silver Bullet
• Teaching Mrs. Tingle
• Thinner
• The Voices

Arriving January 3rd:

• The X-Files: Season 11

Arriving January 5th:

• Annihilation

Arriving January 18th:

• An American Murder Mystery: The Staircase: Complete Season 1 (IDTV)
• Hanger 1: The UFO Files: Complete Season 1&2 (History Channel)
• The Menendez Murders: Erik Tells All: Complete Season 1 (A&E)

Arriving January 20th:

• The Vatican Tapes

Arriving January 25th:

• Siren: Season 2 Premiere (Freeform)

*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*

As 2018 comes to a close, we take a look at the very best monsters from the year’s film, television, video games, or wherever!

2018 was one of the better years for horror. Titles like Halloween, A Quiet Place, and Hereditary showed that outside of the superhero genre, some of the year’s biggest hits were horror titles. Even beyond film, it feels like horror has never been more popular and rampant in popular culture, with television, video games, and comics embracing the genre in new and exciting ways. 2018 delivered lots of new horror classics, but it also unleashed plenty of new monsters on unsuspecting audiences. Accordingly, here’s our breakdown of the year’s most terrifying and impressive monsters, from film, to comics, and beyond.

Pretzel Jack (Channel Zero: The Dream Door)

Channel Zero never fails to create truly terrifying creatures for each of its new stories, but The Dream Door’s season produces the strongest of nightmare fuel with Pretzel Jack. Pretzel Jack is a childhood imaginary friend that’s come to life and he operates with a disturbing level of flexibility and resilience. Better yet, the character’s movements are entirely without CG-assistance and benefit from “Twisty” Troy James’ limberness.

Like some of the best monsters out there, it feels like Pretzel Jack is invincible and The Dream Door’s story nicely evolves to a place where Pretzel Jack’s role as villain and ally is beautifully blurred. All of the monsters on this list are frightening, but Pretzel Jack is the only one whose mannerisms and gesticulations make you feel like you’re lost in some fever dream. He defies physics and horror is always at its best when it makes you go, “How?!” And that’s all to say nothing of the Crayon Kids!

The Shimmer’s Humanoid (Annihilation)

Alex Garland creates an exciting, unique psychological thriller that blends science fiction and horror together in an inspired way that’s not dissimilar from the hybrid DNA experiments that come out of the film. Annihilation sends a team into an unstable area known as “The Shimmer” where DNA blends and acts all wonky. There are lots of bizarre chimera-like creatures throughout the film, but the film’s final set piece that takes place within a cryptic lighthouse is by far the movie’s most unnerving sequence. Natalie Portman’s Lena squares off with a mercury-like humanoid that immediately conjures Virtua Fighter’s Dural to mind. This humanoid entity is attempting to copy and assimilate Lena and she’s forced to defend her existence. It’s a chilling sequence that’s all the more effective because it’s without dialogue and we never know exactly what the “Shimmer’s” goal is other than “creation.”

Paimon (Hereditary)

So granted, Paimon in his pure demon form may not exactly show up here, but the demon’s disciples are heavily pulling the strings to make sure that everything goes in his favor. Paimon himself is intimidating, but the number of devout followers that he has to do his bidding make this entity even more alarming. Ari Aster’s Hereditary is just straight up a scary film and so much of that has to do with the incredible performances from the movie and that it’s just as much a grueling family drama as it is a horror film. There’s also, of course, that scene, which will forever go down as an all-time classic scene in horror.

Hereditary makes Paimon’s slow possession of its host absolutely horrifying. They get no relief, the entire family is at this demon’s mercy, and even you as a viewer feel vulnerable. There is never relief from Paimon’s clutches, which is why the film is such a relentless experience. Hail Paimon, indeed.

The Jötunn (The Ritual)

The Ritual flew under the radar for many people, but this low-budget Netflix horror film from David Bruckner is an absolute gem and features an unforgettable monster. A simple hiking trip into the woods between old friends gradually takes a disturbing turn once The Ritual gets moving. The stripped down horror film juggles dark witchcraft, cults, and sacrifices to a deadly elk-like entity in exchange for immortality. This is also the kind of beast that might even creep out Hannibal’s antler-centric Wendigo. The film doesn’t shy away from showing you this creature, which makes for a welcome change of pace. Not only is the Jötunn strong, fast, and super scary, but it also has the ability to inflict its prey with hallucinations of their deepest insecurities. It’s a hell of a way to psych out your opponent and force them to submission. Jötunn don’t mess around.

The Peaches (Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block)

2018 was a mess for so many reasons, but hey, we got two seasons of Channel Zero this year, so silver linings and all that…

Hallucinations, deep concepts like a disturbing take on sacrifice and the idea of ignorance being bliss. The Peaches, led by Rutger Hauer’s Joseph Peach, are horrible for their manipulative, cannibalistic, eternal ways, but then the series also throws these awful Brood babies and a Meat Servant into the mix. They’re like if Clive Barker and Cabbage Patch Kids did a collaboration. These tiny nightmare warriors that roam outside when it’s dark out add a consistently dreadful tone to the series. Whether the Peaches or their creepy harbingers, there’s never safety. And don’t get me started on the worm-esque entities that muck around in these characters’ brains. Few things have gotten under my skin as much as Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block and its mind-disabling monsters. It’s such a twisted take on mental illness that finds new, nightmarish ways to explore what’s an already tragic topic.

Captain Wafner (Overlord)

Overlord operates like the very best kind of B-movie and plays into its silliness. The film is basically Wolfenstein meets H.P. Lovecraft and the movie’s gruesome monsters are born from a mysterious reanimation serum that’s found under the ground. The Nazis’ use of this serum results in some resilient zombie warriors that also have a habit for raging out and mutating without warning. There are many serum-spurred abominations that keep Private Boyce and company occupied, but the film’s major antagonist, SS Captain Wafner, injects himself with the serum while he’s still alive and the aftermath is gory bliss. Wafner’s exposed jaw and super strength make for such an exaggerated villain that culminates in a Terminator 2 type showdown between two mutated juggernauts. He’s the perfect pulpy monster for their story and Pilou Asbæk delivers such a memorable performance in the role.

Mater Suspiriorum (Suspiria)

Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s horror classic is certainly a patient, methodical film, but by the end of the movie it truly feels like it’s cast a spell over you. For the majority of the film, Mother Suspiriorum works in the shadows, yet her presence is always felt. The dance sequences where her vengeance gets doled out are seriously difficult to watch. Death is one thing, but bones twisting, contorting, and breaking is a lot more painful of an experience, especially with the film’s stellar sound design. Mother Suspiriorum’s “big number” is saved for the film’s conclusion, but it’s one of the most dazzling sequences from out of any film of this year. The witch’s magic is unleashed and the film turns a massacre into a trippy, poetic take on retribution. Suspiria and Mater Suspiriorum’s talons will be sunk in you long after the film is over.

Michael Myers (Halloween)

2018 was an absolutely bonkers year for horror for the sheer fact that not only was there a Suspiria remake, but also a new sequel to Halloween and they were both really freaking good. The newest Halloween film took both the series and Michael Myers back to their roots and it was so extremely satisfying to get a bad-ass version of The Shape wielding the knife once more. Let’s be honest, Halloween is much more a showcase and love letter to Laurie Strode and Jamie Lee Curtis, but this is a fierce, unrepentant version of Michael that hasn’t been present for ages. Busta Rhymes wouldn’t be able to land a single hit on this version of Michael. Halloween succeeds in making Michael Myers scary again and every death in his Haddonfield killing spree feels vicious in a different sort of way. He may not kill a baby, but who cares when he’s stealing people’s teeth and murdering loved ones?

The Aliens (A Quiet Place)

First Jordan Peele and now John Krasinski; comedic actors are suddenly turning into some of the most prolific new names in horror. Krasinski’s A Quiet Place is a remarkably restrained take on horror and it’s one of the better examples of less being more. The film introduces some deeply upsetting aliens that use their evolved sense of hearing to wipe out anything that they identify. A creature with extraordinary hearing that forces you to operate in unnatural ways in order to survive is already a frightening idea, but these things are also bulletproof. These aliens also look like something that William Birkin from Resident Evil 2 would have cooked up in his lab, but they feature a really inspired design that actually makes sense based on the evolution of the aliens. The film features an extremely tense game of cat and mouse that simultaneously feels like something from out of Jurassic Park and Alien. Everything about these monsters, whether it’s their disturbing look, their tremendous abilities, or the complete lack of information that we have on them, makes them a success.

Andre Toulon’s Puppets (Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich)

The Puppet Master series has been kicking around for nearly three decades, but this year’s Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich set out to be a harsh reboot of the quirky series. The film brings back classic murderous toys, Blade, Pinhead, Tunneler, and Torch, but it also adds plenty of new ones into the mix like the uniquely twisted Happy Amphibian, Mr. Pumper, or Money Lender puppets. The film knows that killer puppets are an inherently silly idea, but S. Craig Zahler’s script makes sure to make these tiny terrors as brutal as possible. Lovers get horribly burned and disfigured, couples are murdered in the middle of sex, and there’s a ridiculous set piece that results in a now-dead man urinating on his own severed head. This reboot features arguably the most extreme deaths in the entire franchise and at one point a puppet bursts through a pregnant woman’s stomach and then runs away with her fetus. These killer puppets do not care about your hang-ups and they do not hold back here.

The “Possum” (Possum)

Matthew Holness creates something special with Possum, an existential psychological horror film that’s practically silent for most of the picture. The film slowly gets under your skin and is a master in atmosphere. Sean Harris delivers an unnerving, tortured performance that stems around this troubled man’s relationship with a totem of trauma that he’s created; a disturbing spider-esque puppet with human characteristics known as the possum. Harris acts utterly terrified of the puppet, even when it’s concealed in a bag, but the reveal does not disappoint once it’s out in the open. A movie like this would fail if the central puppet wasn’t appropriately scary and Possum’s creation exceeds expectations. The fact that the nightmarish toy also involves a Babadook-esque nursery rhyme makes it even creepier.

The Ice Cream Man (Ice Cream Man)

Even if you’re not a comic fan, Image Comics’ Ice Cream Man should be mandatory reading. Each issue presents an entirely new morality play where some poor soul goes through a new version of hell after they encounter the series’ big puppet master, the ice cream man. Every story presented in this eight-issue anthology lands and the demonic ice cream man always finds creative ways to plague his victims. It’s unclear entirely what the ice cream man is (he may even be God…), but the point of these stories is not to defeat this guy. These are his stories and he’s always going to win and they’re a bummer. There’s an especially brilliant issue that presents a triptych of alternate storylines that stem from a single event and the entire thing is done without words. Disturbing images and an unjust universe paired with precise storytelling make Ice Cream Man and its antagonist one of the more creative and sadistic monsters of the year.

Rag Doll (The Flash)

So The Flash definitely isn’t a horror series, but this season’s “All Doll’d Up” episode features a genuinely unsettling “metahuman of the week.” The villain makes for not only one of the most frightening characters to appear on The Flash, but a scary threat in general. This is a villain who has the superpower of contorting their body however they want, which makes them an ideal thief. Rag Doll isn’t a character that The Flash television series created, but their take on the classic DC villain involves an eerie porcelain mask that seriously ups the creep factor as they twist about. It also shouldn’t be surprising to hear that Troy James also plays this character, which means his contortionist game is incredibly on point. Rag Doll is definitely an unexpected source of horror, but a strong one all the same.

Keyface (Insidious: The Last Key)

The fourth film in the Insidious franchise is very problematic and it’s far from a good movie, but damn if it doesn’t feature an incredibly horrifying demon! In fact, “Keyface” has such a great design that it feels like the entire film was predicated off of this one cool element and the rest just couldn’t match it. Keyface is a particularly vengeful demon that feeds off of hatred, has a real penchant for killing nurses, and takes a particular shine to making life difficult for Elise Rainier and her family. However, backstory really isn’t important here because this demon has keys for fingers and he’ll insert them into you! Keyface locks various aspects of his victims away, whether it’s their voice or trapping their soul in The Further. It’s a very visceral image and even if the film doesn’t fully connect, the villain at least doesn’t disappoint.

The Bent-Neck Lady (The Haunting Of Hill House)

Mike Flanagan’s grueling family drama and delicate ghost story deconstruction knocked everyone back this year and throughout the season there was one disturbing ghost at the center of it all, the Bent-Neck Lady. The mystery of who exactly this broken-necked spirit is hangs over the season, but there’s a beautiful, sad story behind this macabre monster. The Bent-Neck Lady looks scary and punctuates many of the season’s more frightening moments, but she’s also a dark portent of what’s to come for this grieving family. This ghost represents the dangers that await us and will surely go down in the ghosts from haunted houses hall of fame, right alongside the Grady Twins from The Shining.  

While all of the above monsters impressed us the most, it was such a strong year for horror that we thought we’d also throw in some Honorable Mentions: The Nun’s Valak, Vampyr’s Jonathan Reid, The Predator’s Super Predator, Mandy’s Demon Bikers, Hell Fest’s The Other, AHS: Apocalypse’s Michael Langdon, and We Happy Few’s Police (they may not be literal monsters, but masks are creepy and we don’t have Strangers: Prey By Night on here, so…)

*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*

Horror films seek to evoke fear in a variety of ways; some opt for creeping dread, some for unbearable mounting tension, and others employ jump scares. And some decide to elicit a primal sense of revulsion, leaving viewers recoiling in their seats from disturbing imagery on screen. While horror tends to be subjective, not even the most hardened of horror fans are usually immune to this tactic. 2018 had no shortage of disturbing moments in horror, rendering audiences uncomfortable by getting up close and personal with taboo-breaking moments that left you feeling shook. From unrelenting torture and extreme horror to humanity at their most depraved, we look back at the year’s 10 most disturbing moments in horror. In case it’s not obvious, there will be spoilers.

Annihilation – Screaming Bear

Everything caught inside the weird alien bubble known as the Shimmer saw its DNA scrambled and rearranged, offering otherworldly combos of floral and fauna in Alex Garland’s Annihilation. Often it was beautiful, as is the case of the human topiaries, but sometimes it was downright terrifying. Such was the case for the scene-stealing bear, nightmarish in its appearance but even more so in sound. The bear first claimed group Cassie (Tuva Novotny), and later came back for a second helping during a tense standoff between the remaining members. Emulating Cassie’s dying screams as bait was off-putting enough, but the slow reveal of its mutated face was pure nightmare fuel. The human skull within skull made even creepier by the humanlike noises the bear made as it stalked its kill. Disturbing.

Suspiria – Olga’s Twisted Dance

For the witches at the dance academy in Luca Guadagnino’s remake, dancing is their primary form of spell casting. It’s something that becomes abundantly clear early on, during an intense sequence that leaves dance student Olga literally bent out of shape. When star pupil Patricia Hingle (Chloe Grace Moretz) goes missing, no one suspects anything is amiss except for her best friend Olga (Elena Fokina). Olga’s defiance against lead choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) finds her trapped in a mirrored room alone. Enter Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), who’s dancing progressively gets more aggressive. The problem for poor Olga, though, is that Susie’s dancing causes Olga’s body to contort in ways it never should. Her mangled body is horrific, but not as horrific as the gleeful witches that drag it away with hooks.

Incident in a Ghostland – Home Invasion Nightmare

Ten years after shocking audiences with Martyrs, writer/director Pascal Laugier puts his morbid spin on home invasion horror. Though most of the runtime is a display of Laugnier’s brand of unrelenting, brutal terror, the most disturbing moment comes early on, when mom and teen daughters Beth and Vera are getting acquainted with the very creepy house they’ve just inherited. It’s interrupted by the arrival of Candy Truck Woman and Fat Man, two vicious criminals that have been on a streak of invading homes to slaughter the parents and torture the kids. Watching Candy Truck Woman and Fat Man in action is downright harrowing, as mom tries in earnest to spare her teen daughters from a grisly fate while succumbing to injuries. Leave it to Laugnier to up the violence in an already violent sub-genre, interweaving ruthless twists along the way. There’s no shortage of pain here.

Hereditary – Floating Decapitation

Ari Aster’s debut has not one, but two shocking decapitations. Both are surprising and visceral, but at least the first one is brief; it’s more focused on the emotional fallout and devastation. It’s the second one in the film’s climax that wins for being more disturbing. Though Annie Graham (Toni Collette) spends most of the movie inadvertently trying to escape her fate, she eventually falls in line with the cult’s plans and her body becomes possessed. Soon after, her son Peter (Alex Wolff) comes home to a dark house, and eventually finds his mother levitating in the attic. Both he and the audience watch in horror as Annie slowly saws her own head off with a piano wire. The sounds it makes is cringe-worthy.

Revenge – Glass Shard in Foot

Writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s debut painted the dessert red with copious amounts of blood. Fargeat put a stylized emphasis on the revenge part of the rape/revenge format by having Jen (Matilda Lutz) survive insurmountable injuries to hunt down her trio of oppressors with intense ferocity. The most squirm-inducing moment of all, though, comes late in the film, during a cat and mouse chase between Jen and Stan on an isolated road. After injuries sustained on both sides, Jen successfully tricks Stan into stepping on a shard of glass, which promptly embeds itself deep in the arch of his foot. He spends what feels like an eternity trying to fish it out of the gaping wound, eliciting viewer sympathy pain in the process. The profuse bleeding doesn’t stop when he does retrieve it; he tries to use this foot to drive his SUV out of the danger zone with painful results.

Apostle – The Heathen’s Stand

Writer/director Gareth Evans spent a lot of time researching medieval torture devices during the creation of Apostle, and it paid off with the traumatic scene in which undeserving Jeremy (Bill Milner) is subjected to a terrible death by way of the Heathen’s Stand. The film’s true villain emerged at this major turning point, framing Jeremy for a crime he didn’t commit and having him strapped down to the wooden stand. His feet, hands, and head are bound by vices, and a hand crank slowly tightens the head vices while a drill winds down into the top of his skull. It’s a measured, excruciating death that Evans’ not only makes us bear witness to, but he puts us in Jeremy’s shoes with a POV shot the moment the blood spools within his skull and clouds the lens.

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich – The Ruthless Money Lender

Craig Zahler wasn’t interested in subtle when penning the script of this reboot; he seeks to offend with his brand of horror and humor. The entire film is filled with off-color jokes and revelry in excessive gore. None of it holds a candle to the introduction of puppet Money Lender, a controversial puppet in appearance alone. Money Lender takes his offensive nature to new lows with the film’s most vicious kill – he attacks a pregnant woman in her hotel bed through her birth canal and emerges from her shredded open stomach with her baby in tow, dragging its corpse away by umbilical cord. There are breaking taboos, and then there’s S. Craig Zahler giving the middle finger to taboo while blowing it to smithereens.

The House that Jack Built – Incident 3

Lars von Trier’s psychological horror film follows serial killer Jack over the course of 12 years, depicting the murders that shaped him. Divided up into Jack’s 5 most formative kills, the entire film is full of heinous murders and ruthless imagery. But the third segment, incident 3, proves the most scandalous. Jack has lured a single mother and her two young boys to a hunting ground, in the guise of demonstrating how doting of a father figure he can be. Except, he quickly drops the façade and makes it clear it’s this family that he’s hunting. Von Trier holds nothing back, either, as Jack uses his hunting rifle to decimate the family in bloody fashion, starting with the youngest first. Jack likes to play with his prey, and the unexpected deaths are then made even more uncomfortable by what he does next.

Climax – Sibling Jealousy

Truthfully, there’s a vast number of moments in Gaspar Noe’s latest competing for a spot on this list. Revolving around a night of partying for a dance troupe that devolves into hellish madness thanks to LSD spiked punch, Noe follows the ensemble through a series of long tracking shots as the night gets more and more depraved. Noe successfully pushes the envelope again and again as the dancers turn on each other, and your jaw will remain on the floor for most of the run-time. But arguably the most disturbing moment of the entire film is that of Taylor (Taylor Kastle) raping Gazelle (Giselle Palmer). Rape is disturbing by any measure, but in Climax it’s incestuous. That’s right; Taylor is the far too protective for comfort brother of Gazelle. It turns out his jealousy over her love life stems from forbidden attraction, much to her (and our) disgust.

Trauma – All of it

Meet this year’s A Serbian Film. Written and directed by Lucio A. Rojas, Trauma is an indictment on the political horrors of Chile’s recent past, specifically the military dictatorship of Pinochet. In other words, it’s a malicious onslaught of extreme horror not for the weak hearted. It’s graphic, it’s sickening, and effectively repugnant. It opens with a boy being forced to have sex with his mother for being a communist. That’s just the opening. Rape, incest, necrophilia, torture, pain, and lots of gore, Rojas unleashes a deep well of pent-up rage on screen. It’s savage and gut-churning.

*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*

When the opportunity to write about the best horror of the year came up, my thoughts immediately turned to Annihilation, which has occupied the top spot on my list of the year’s best films since its release back in February. Check out Bloody Disgusting’s original review here.

It doesn’t matter whether or not the film reads as a “traditional” horror film (for my money, there’s been far too much digital ink spilled this year on semantic discussions about “elevated” and “prestige” horror). Even if you consider Annihilation a work of science fiction, the film features what is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying horror set pieces of the year. I’m talking, of course, about the screaming bear sequence.

Annihilation is based (primarily) on the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. The book follows a quartet of unnamed female scientists as they explore the Shimmer, a strange environmental phenomenon that has physically altered a large geographical area and its residents in strange, alien ways. The women are the latest in a long line of expeditions; the others have either never returned or returned irrevocably different (and inevitably die).

The film adaptation by Alex Garland (Ex Machina) uses the book’s premise as a foundation, but aside from carrying over the characters, Garland radically alters the plot; this results in an adaptation that makes visually explicit some of open-to-interpretation horrific elements without compromising on the source material’s atmosphere of ominous and oppressive dread.

The best example of this occurs at roughly the 75-minute mark of the film. In the book, the women encounter an abstract, ill-defined monster called the Creeper in a submerged well that circles deep underground. Garland’s screenplay eliminates the well and literally visualizes the Creeper; in the film its stand-in is a massive bear whose snout is half skeleton and whose vocal mannerisms mimic the screams and voice of its victims. Nicknamed Homerton (after East London’s “rough-around-the-edges” train station) by visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, the sequence when the creature is finally revealed is a masterclass of tension, effects and horror.

Immediately before Homerton appears, Anya (Gina Rodriguez) ties up her colleagues and holds them at gunpoint. She’s distraught by the suggestion that since entering Area X, their DNA has been changing, as well as the revelation that Lena (Natalie Portman) lied that her husband was a member of a previous expedition. These realizations, as well as her mounting paranoia, prompt Anya to lash out. The threat of human violence is a bait and switch, however; before Anya can harm her colleagues, she is lured outside by the cries of Cass (Tuva Novotny) who was abducted and mauled to death the night before.

Like VanderMeer’s book, what (initially) occurs to Anya is left to the imagination offscreen. Garland wisely keeps the camera trained on Lena, Josie (Tessa Thompson) and Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh)’ faces as the soundtrack is the silence after Anya runs out before it is filled with the roars of something. As they struggle to free themselves from their bonds, the wheezing, screaming creeps closer, until a cut to a medium shot reveals the slow lumber of a massive, mutated bear towards them. Garland cuts back to the same shot as the deformed snout slowly pushes between Lena and Josie, in a shot that evokes countless Xenomorph encounters in the Alien franchise. Meanwhile, the soundtrack is filled with the anguished screams of a woman we know is dead coming from the mouth of a monstrous beast, which creates an uncanny disconnect between sight and sound.

[Related] Horror’s 10 Most Disturbing Moments of 2018!

The slow, deliberate pace of the creature as it first pulls back, then circles around in front of the confined women is unbearable (pun intended). Garland masterfully delays, then delays further the impending attack, drawing out the tension for maximum effect. The fact that the entire scene is lit by a solitary flashlight in the far right corner of the frame, Garland’s judicious lack of editing and the decision to continually focus on close-ups of the women’s shaking, crying faces only serves to ratchet up the fear quotient. Then, following a close up (from Josie’s point of view) of Homerton’s gaping open mouth and a shot-reverse-shot of the bear clamping down on her left shoulder, Anya unexpectedly returns to open fire on the beast (narrowly avoiding her friends in the process).

At this point, the sequence becomes a full-blown action set piece. Homerton is repeatedly struck by gunfire before charging, knocking over Josie and crushing Anya against the wall as she attempts to retreat. At this point, the editing kicks in: there are a number of quick cuts as Lena and Josie try to free themselves, as well as long shots (framed half in shadow) of Anya being mauled. The camera cuts to a vantage point halfway up the stairs while Anya is grabbed by the legs, snapping one of the banisters clean off (a clear, efficient visual shorthand to demonstrate how forcefully Homerton pulls her). Then, in quick succession, she is pounced on and her throat is brutally ripped out.

The soundtrack is filled solely with Anya’s anguished screams (there is no extradiegetic music), which makes her death scene feel both louder and longer than it is (from Homerton’s charge to the quick overhead shot of her corpse, only 20 seconds has passed). In fact, it is only when lead protagonist Lena is attacked and nearly mauled that the more traditional action movie score kicks in. Shortly thereafter Josie manages to put the bear down with a barrage of gunfire at close range, closing out the roughly two-minute sequence.

As a film, Annihilation is thematically interested in how people evolve and change; the film has been alternately celebrated and criticized for its open-ended narrative and philosophical elements. Since its release, Annihilation has been discussed as a metaphor for the human condition, the uncanny, trauma, depression and cancer. The range and multitude of readings confirms how magnificently nuanced and rich Garland’s second directorial effort is.

The scene with Homerton is emblematic of the film’s many layers and complications. Anya’s initial actions are driven by the revelation that their bodies are literally turning against them, an unsettling notion that also exposes the lack of control she – a soldier struggling with depression – has over her surroundings. Her paranoia is externally manifested when she discovers that she has been lied to by Lena (representing a threat from within the community) before realizing that there is always the threat of outsiders – represented by Homerton. In this way, not only is the scene a stunningly effective piece of mood, tension and horror, it is a microcosm of the film’s many thematic concerns…all wrapped up in one beautifully rendered scare.

Letterboxd kicks off every year by putting together a multi-faceted look at the movies their users collectively rated highest from the previous year, and they break down the films into various categories including genre. Of course, what we care about most is the Highest Rated Horror Films of 2018, as chosen by Letterboxd’s users, and we’ve got the list for ya today.

Not surprisingly, Hereditary is in the #1 spot for 2018, with A Quiet Place and Suspiria not far behind. But the list gets a whole lot less predictable as it goes on, including Good Manners at #5 and November at #6. Both films largely flew under mainstream radars last year, so it’s pretty surprising to see that so many Letterboxd users both watched and loved them.

Here’s the full rundown:

• 1. Hereditary
• 2. A Quiet Place
• 3. Suspiria
• 4. Annihilation
• 5. Good Manners
• 6. November
• 7. Mandy
• 8. The House That Jack Built
• 9. Upgrade
• 10. Revenge

For what it’s worth, the list of Highest Rated Sci-fi Films also includes A Quiet Place, Annihilation and Upgrade, along with definite horror film Overlord and The Endless.

Head over to Letterboxd to see the complete year-in-review roundup!

A meteor crashes to Earth, emits strange colors in the perimeter around the crash, and begins altering the flora and fauna in bizarre ways that defy Earthbound science. In H.P. Lovecraft’s popular short story “The Colour Out of Space”, the strange alien meteorite affects a farm near the coast with “colour,” indescribable globules of color that taints and alters everything around the crash site. In Alex Garland’s Annihilation, the meteor crash near the coast unleashes the “Shimmer,” an iridescent dome of color that has irrevocably changed everything inside it. For Lena (Natalie Portman) and the expedition sent to investigate the Shimmer, their journey is nothing like the horrific decay of the Gardner farm in Lovecraft’s story, but they reach very similar conclusions. And that looming fear of the unknown feels very much in line tonally, as well. Annihilation isn’t based on Lovecraft’s works at all, and yet it feels like the greatest adaptation among his most popular stories; the story that’s garnered more adaptations than any other in Lovecraft’s catalog.

Among Lovecraft’s personal favorites of his work, “The Colour Out of Space” was the first in which he blended sci-fi with horror. Lovecraft’s brand of horror emphasizes the unknowable, usually in the form of indescribable monstrosities, and a whole lot of unanswered questions that leave a lingering feeling of dread. It allows a lot of room for interpretation, and yet Lovecraft’s stories have proven very difficult to adapt. But “The Colour Out of Space” puts its focus on the Gardner family, through the eyes of their neighbor Ammi Pierce, who recounts the colour’s changes of the Gardners to a land surveyor from the city. The story may have referred to the glowing colors of the meteorite as “almost impossible to describe,” but it gets precise with the description of the squirrels, rabbits, woodchuck, cabbages, asters, and other common ecology that are morphed and warped into something horrific. The horror comes from twisting the familiar into something grotesquely unknown, making it hit much closer to home than a lot of his works. It’s the relatability and familiarity that makes “The Colour Out of Space” work, and ripe for consistent adaptations.

The first was 1965’s Die, Monster, Die! Directed by Daniel Haller, this adaptation is very loosely based on Lovecraft’s story and adheres closer to the Edgar Allan Poe film series by Roger Corman that kicked off the decade. Haller served as production designer for many of the Corman produced Poe films, which no doubt played a major factor in his look and feel for Die, Monster, Die! Boris Karloff stars as Nahum Witley, a wheelchair-bound scientist that discovers a radioactive meteorite and keeps it in his basement, using it to mutate the plants and animals in his greenhouse. Save for some of the names, the core effect of the meteorite, and certain character fates, this is furthest removed from Lovecraft’s story.

It took almost twenty years for another cinematic attempt at “The Colour Out of Space” to come along, this time an Italian-American production directed by actor David Keith (An Officer and a Gentleman, Firestarter) and co-produced by Lucio Fulci. Set in the present, The Curse is a much more faithful take on the story, though it does devolve into an insane creature feature by the third act. Starring a young Wil Wheaton and his sister Amy Wheaton as the only two Crane family members not infected by the meteorite that’s crash-landed on their Tennessee farm, they watch in horror as the crops, then livestock, and finally, their family members mutate. It’s a showcase of gory, gooey, ‘80s effects, of which Fulci also contributed, and made enough of an impact to earn an unrelated sequel.

In 2008, Colour from the Dark marked another loose adaptation of the story. Starring Debbie Rochon, this story also followed a farm and its inhabitants as they descend into chaos after a strange color appears from their well. But there’s no meteor crash or cosmic horror in this adaptation, just a supernatural based entity and themes of religious horror.

The most faithful take yet came two years later, with German film The Colour Out of Space, or Die Farbe. The plot has a man traveling to Germany in search of his missing father, and uncovering the secrets of the land where he was stationed after World War II. Save for that setting update, it plays out almost exactly like Lovecraft’s story. With its low budget, director Haun Vu makes an interesting style choice- The Colour Out of Space is in black and white. Though puzzling at first, aside from hiding some of the rougher CG effects, it makes the appearance of the “colour” pop.

These films are just the straightforward feature length adaptations, and doesn’t even touch upon the impact “The Colour Out of Space” played on meteorite-based horror. The Blob, “The Lonesome Death of Jody Verrill” segment of Creepshow, Slither, and many more draw influences from Lovecraft’s story in some capacity. Almost always in more rural settings, all see the alien horror consume and spread across the land, be it creature, radiation, or blight. Annihilation subverts that by turning the alien destruction into a thing of beauty, but the core similarities remain the same. It’s the most well-executed take on Lovecraft’s story yet, but the possibilities are limitless and leave the door wide open for more perspectives on Lovecraft’s cosmic “colour.”

The 91st Academy Awards ceremony has officially come and gone, and with it a whole new slew of upsets, disappointments, and of course, the usual exclusion of the horror genre.

Well, except for that unexpected bright moment in the 2019 In Memoriam segment, in which a chosen clip for actor James Karen was pulled from The Return of the Living Dead!

When the Oscar nominations dropped, we thought it’d be fun to rewrite them with an all horror edition of nominees. Clearly, you all felt the same, as our comment section was filled with your votes and thoughts. We read them all and tallied the results. If there were an all-horror edition of the Oscars, these would be your 2019 winners…

Best Picture:

“Hereditary”
“Mandy”
“Annihilation”
“A Quiet Place”
“The Endless”
“Revenge”
“Halloween”
“Upgrade”

Winner: “Hereditary”

Lead Actor:

Nicolas Cage, “Mandy”
Logan Marshall-Green, “Upgrade”
Dan Stevens, “Apostle”
Matt Dillon, “The House That Jack Built”
Alex Wolff, “Hereditary”

Winner: Nicolas Cage, “Mandy”

Lead Actress:

Toni Collette, “Hereditary”
Madeline Brewer, “Cam”
Jamie Lee Curtis, “Halloween”
Tilda Swinton, “Suspiria”
Mathilda Lutz, “Revenge”

Winner: Toni Collette, “Hereditary”

Supporting Actor:

Linus Roache, “Mandy”
Wyatt Russell, “Overlord”
Vincent Colombe, “Revenge”
Oscar Isaac, “Annihilation”
Dylan McDermott, “The Clovehitch Killer”

Winner: Linus Roache, “Mandy”

Supporting Actress: 

Jennifer Jason Leigh, “Annihilation”
Milly Shapiro, “Hereditary”
Millicent Simmonds, “A Quiet Place”
Andrea Riseborough, “Mandy”
Judy Greer, “Halloween”

Winner: Milly Shapiro, “Hereditary”
Very close runner-up: Millicent Simmonds, “A Quiet Place”

Director:

Ari Aster, “Hereditary”
Panos Cosmatos, “Mandy”
Coralie Fargeat, “Revenge”
Demian Rugna, “Terrified”
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorheard, “The Endless”

Winner: Ari Aster, “Hereditary”

Best Screenplay:

“Hereditary,” Ari Aster
“A Quiet Place,” Bryan Woods & Scott Beck and John Krasinski
“Mandy,” Panos Cosmatos & Aaron Stewart-Ahn
Cam,” Isa Mazzei
“Anna and the Apocalypse,” Alan McDonald, Ryan McHenry

Winner: “Hereditary,” Ari Aster

Cinematography:

“Annihilation,” Rob Hardy
“Revenge,” Robrecht Heyvaert
“The Nun,” Maxime Alexandre
“Overlord,” Laurie Rose, Fabian Wagner
“Tumbbad,” Pankaj Kumar

Winner: “Annihilation,” Rob Hardy

Production Design:

“The Nun,” Jennifer Spence
“Hell Fest,” Michael Perry
“Apostle,” Tom Pearce
“Overlord,” Jon Henson
“The Strangers: Prey at Night,” Freddy Waff

Winner: “Overlord,” Jon Henson

Best Score:

“Mandy,” Jóhann Jóhannsson
“Halloween,” John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies
“Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich,” Fabio Frizzi
“Suspiria,” Thom Yorke
“Hereditary,” Colin Stetson

Winner: “Halloween,” John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies

Makeup FX:

“Suspiria”
“Terrified”
“Halloween”
“The Nun”

Winner: “Suspiria”

Creature FX:

“The Ritual”
“Annihilation”
“The Predator”
“Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich”
“Primal Rage”

Winner: “The Ritual”

Visual Effects:

“Annihilation”
“A Quiet Place”
“Overlord”
“The Predator”
“The House with a Clock in Its Walls”

Winner: “Annihilation”

Which categories would you like to have seen in the All-Horror edition of the Oscars? Are you satisfied with the results? Hereditary swept up a lot of awards this season; do you agree or disagree? Competition was stiff, and 2019 is on track to make the award season even tougher next year!

One of the best movie monsters in recent years was found in Alex Garland’s Annihilation last year, its arrival described by our Joe Lipsett as being one of 2018’s scariest horror moments. In a scene that plays out similarly to the iconic “blood test” scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing, with most of the female leads strapped to chairs as their friend loses her mind and contemplates killing them, a nightmarish bear creature (nicknamed “Dexter” by the effects team) shows up, turning the terror up to eleven and brutally attacking one of the characters.

But this wasn’t just any bear. In fact, it wasn’t entirely a “bear” at all.

I like to call it a “nightmare bear.”

Its design inspired by diseased animals, the bear creature in Annihilation is missing large portions of its fur, and a human skull has literally embedded itself into the animal’s head. “The Shimmer,” where it lives, is a place where all kinds of DNA intermingles in simply impossible ways, and the bear seems to be literally absorbing the humans it kills. In addition to the human skull that has incorporated itself into the bear’s own skull, it also emits the death screams of its latest victims, and even has a row of human teeth inside of its mouth. YIKES.

It’s comforting to think that the bear from Annihilation never actually roamed the Earth, and of course, that exact creature never did. But a newly documented species of hypercarnivore that dates back millions of years is probably the closest real-life monster to ever exist.

As reported by National Geographic (via the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology), 22 million year old skull and jaw bones that were discovered in the ’70s have finally just been properly identified as belonging to the previously undocumented species Simbakubwa kutokaafrika, described as “a giant meat-eating mammal larger than a polar bear.” It’s name literally translates to “big cat” in Swahili, but it’s actually “the oldest known member in a group of extinct mammals called hyaenodonts, named due to their dental resemblance to hyenas.”

The massive beasts were at the top of the food chain in Africa during their time, devouring the competition with THREE pairs of meat-slicing teeth at the back of their heads.

“This animal had lots of blades,” paleontologist Matthew Borths puts it.

Its head as big as a rhino’s and its canines the size of bananas, Simbakubwa was around 8-feet long and 4-feet tall, likely weighing between 2,000 and possibly even over 3,000 pounds!

At this time, nobody is sure why these deadly super-predators ultimately went extinct, but let’s maybe just be glad that we don’t have to share the Earth with them….yeah?

Like the bear from Annihilation, they’d make pretty quick work of us puny humans…

The Avengers have saved the world from robots and aliens, but who do you call when you’ve got serial killers, zombies, vampires or evil mirrors? You also call The Avengers, because most of the cast and crew of the blockbuster franchise have impressive horror pedigrees, and have all fought – or become – the forces of evil in one way or another over the years.

Whether you’re in the mood to watch Iron Man, The Hulk and Mysterio investigate a serial killer, or watch Captain Marvel, Nick Fury and Loki fight giant monsters (or watch Stan Lee complain about comic book deadlines during the middle of a deadly kidnapping spree), there’s something in The Avengers’ collective resumé for just about any kind of horror fan!

Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Chris Hemsworth wasn’t a part of the MCU when Cabin in the Woods started filming, or even when it was finished, but due to post-production delays he was already world famous as the mighty Thor by the time this insidiously clever horror-comedy came out. Co-written by Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon, and directed by Drew Goddard (who later turned Hemsworth in a cult leader in Bad Times at the El Royale), the film is about a bunch of college students who vacation at a cabin in the woods, unaware that they’re being watched by two mysterious bureaucrats who really, really, REALLY need them to die. Unpredictable, gory, and smart.

Under the Skin (2013)

Scarlett Johansson took a break from the MCU to star in this acclaimed arthouse sci-fi horror thriller from director Jonathan Glazer. In the film she plays an alien who takes the form of Scarlett Johansson, and prowls the streets in a creepy van, picking up horny men and luring them to their otherworldly doom. Along the way she becomes fascinated with the idea of her human sexuality, in a film that seems to comment directly on the global obsession with the actor’s appearance. Johansson filmed many of the Under the Skin’s scenes in crowds who didn’t know they were being filmed. Their reactions to her beauty and celebrity are real.

Zodiac (2007)

Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Mysterio himself, Jake Gyllenhaal co-star in a film that, lately, seems likely to go down as David Fincher’s masterpiece. Zodiac tells the horrifyingly true story of the Zodiac Killer, who plagued San Francisco and toyed with the press and police in the 1970s, and who was never brought to justice. The real-life story offers no catharsis so neither does Fincher’s film, which underlines the obsessive qualities of everyone who dedicated their lives to solving the mystery and never accomplished their goals. The murder scenes are few, but frightening, and yet the dread fills every impeccably designed frame.

1408 (2007)

Samuel J. Jackson took a break from running S.H.I.E.L.D. to run the Dolphin Hotel, a luxury destination with a dark secret hidden in room 1408. John Cusack stars as a writer investigating haunted hotels and in Mikael Håfström’s he finally finds one, despite the protestations of Jackson. Our hero spends most of the film in that one room, while Stephen King’s cagey story finds unexpected ways to turn a single location into one of the most breathless and inventive haunted house tales you’ve ever seen.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Before he directed Thor: Ragnarok, and before he co-starred as the rocky gladiator Korg, Taika Waititi was directing or co-directing wonderful New Zealand genre comedies like What We Do in the Shadows. The film co-stars Waititi as one of several vampires who live together in the 21st century, struggling to adapt to new social conventions, and proving themselves just as lovably neurotic as any of the all-time great comedy characters. Co-written, co-directed and co-starring Jemaine Clement, What We Do in the Shadows plays with every vampire genre trope and somehow, amidst all that nuts-and-bolts cleverness, never loses sight of the characters’ (demonic) humanity.

Annihilation (2018)

MCU alumni Natalie Portman and Tessa Thompson co-star in Alex Garland’s visually and thematically ambitious sci-fi/horror thriller, about an inexplicable alien “shimmer” that keeps growing and infecting everything it touches. It’s up to a team of scientists, led by Jennifer Jason Leigh, to step inside the foreboding zone and find a way to save the planet. Once inside they are besieged by shocking monstrosities, but the real terror may be growing inside of them already. Benedict Wong shows up as well, as the scientist to whom this ominous tale is being told.

Oculus (2013)

Mike Flanagan’s breakout horror film stars Nebula herself, Karen Gillan, as a young woman whose past has been haunted – quite literally – by a cursed mirror. Oculus weaves back and forth between her childhood and her present, when she plans to finally destroy the mirror once and for all. The mirror has other plans, and fear, madness and a truly repulsive scene with a lightbulb ensue. Oculus plays by odd rules but Gillan’s excellent performance and Flanagan’s boundless energy make it a scary, unusual treat.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly, Shea Whigham and even Terry Notary, who provides the motion capture for Groot, co-star in this satisfying big budget creature feature. Larson plays a photographer trying to expose military secrets, who stumbles into the biggest secret of all: a clandestine mission to Skull Island, home of fearsome giant beasts and – of course – their king, Kong. Inventive creature designs and a grand sense of scale lift Kong: Skull Island out of its rather obvious Vietnam War allegories, and highlight just how incredible this MonsterVerse can be.

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

Before she got trapped in the Quantum Realm, Michelle Pfeiffer had Satan’s baby. And it was hilarious. Susan Sarandon and Cher co-star as small-town witches who accidentally summon a horny devil into their midst, and one-by-one they fall prey to his sleazy and charismatic charms. And of course, there’s no actor who does “sleazy and charismatic” better than Jack Nicholson, who mugs his way through George Miller’s classic horror comedy, having the time of his life. The impeccable cast and sharp writing keep The Witches of Eastwick grounded in pointed social commentary, telling an entertainingly dark tale of women who are trapped in a magically abusive relationship and fight their way out.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Elizabeth Olsen plays the title character, a young woman roped into a cult led by the slippery John Hawkes, who escapes and moves in with her sister’s family, only to find them unsettlingly unsympathetic. The horrors of Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene are largely psychological, but the threat of real violence is everywhere. Emotional isolation leads to gross manipulation leads to perpetual paranoia. Escape is temporary. Fear is a permanent scar.

Pitch Black (2000)

The only thing worse than crash-landing on a planet full of nocturnal man-eaters just before a solar eclipse that will last for days, is landing on that planet with Richard B. Riddick. Vin Diesel plays the intergalactic criminal, one of the most wanted men in the universe, who toys with his fellow survivors like Hannibal Lecter, until they have no idea who to trust. David Twohy directs this low-budget sci-fi monster flick with all the grimy panache of a filmmaker with nothing to lose, giving the world of Riddick so much detail that a franchise soon followed. Diesel himself has rarely given a better performance: only he seems to know if Riddick is a despicable murderer, or just a survivor who isn’t afraid to make terrible choices.

The Covenant (2006)

“Good” is a word with a lot of definitions. Renny Harlin’s sexy warlock thriller The Covenant is cheesy and ridiculous, but it doesn’t seem to want to be anything else. Although it failed to find an audience on its original release, it’s steadily been gaining traction as a cult oddity in the years that followed. That’s thanks in small part to Sebastian Stan, who in the film’s barn-busting climax gets to float around screaming all kinds of over the top warlock stuff, including a particularly amusing cry of “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh WITCHYYYYYYYY!” The Covenant offers undeniable pleasures. Who cares if they’re ironic or sincere?

The Ambulance (1990)

To comics lovers, Stan Lee was a celebrity decades before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was spawned. He even played himself in multiple films, like Kevin Smith’s Mallrats and – more to the point – Larry Cohen’s pulpy thriller The Ambulance. The film stars Eric Roberts as a Marvel comics artist who sees a woman picked up by an ambulance, only to discover that she wasn’t taken to any hospital. He tries, and mostly fails, to convince the authorities that an ambulance is driving around New York killing people, leading to one thrill after another (some o them goofy, some of the great). And sadly our hero’s boss, Stan Lee, is of absolutely no help whatsoever.

Grindhouse (2007)

The Avengers wouldn’t have much of a film without a villain, and Thanos is certainly their greatest adversary to date. Josh Brolin is no stranger to threatening roles. In the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse, Brolin plays an abusive doctor who gets wrapped up in a grotesque zombie uprising, and tracks down his long-suffering wife to make sure she won’t live without him. Rodriguez’s installment, Planet Terror, is the broadest of the two Grindhouse installments but Brolin’s unnerving performance feels all too real.

Honorable Mention: The Walking Dead (2010-???)

This is an overview of the best horror movies starring one or more of The Avengers, but we have to make an exception for one TV show. “The Walking Dead” has helped transform public perception of the zombie genre, and turn undead thrills into one of the most profitable enterprises on television. And one of the most indelible characters in the sprawling series-turned-franchise is Danai Gurira‘s Michonne, the samurai sword-wielding post-apocalyptic survivor who finds a grotesque way to “tame” zombies. Over the course of multiple seasons she’s repeatedly proven herself to be one of the most interesting characters in horror TV history.

Let’s be honest here: everybody loves a good, old-fashioned practical effects monster. Films like John Carpenter’s The Thing feature effects so detailed, so tactile, so gooey and strange that they look infinitely more real than their expensive, CGI reboots. And even cheesier films like the majority of the original Godzilla flicks have a homemade quality that makes them, arguably, more inviting than their big budget Hollywood counterparts.

But CGI technology has evolved over the years. The remake of The Lion King is pushing photo-realism to new heights (even if it’s not doing the actual story any favors), and the trailer for Tom Hooper’s Cats is, frankly, the scariest thing on the internet in a long time. There are, by now, quite a lot of damn good, very scary CGI monsters in movies.

So, although we’ll always have a special place in our hearts for practical effects, it’s time to give credit where credit is due, and hail the following films for scaring the crap out of us with a series of ones and zeros!

(Note: We’ve focused on films that feature scary monsters, biological in origin. Monsters are eligible whether or not the films are firmly in the horror genre, and although many of these monsters are created using a combination of practical and CG effects we are only highlighting the creatures which use a significant amount of CG throughout their presence on-screen.)

Annihilation (2018)

Alex Garland’s acclaimed sci-fi/horror thriller, about a team of scientists who venture into an extraterrestrial singularity where evolution has gone haywire, is chock full of nightmare imagery, and picking only one monster is a fool’s errand. The doppelgänger at the end of the film is an eerie creation, unlike just about anything else we’ve seen, and the bear with a skull face that screams like a person is an absolute terror.

Beowulf (2007)

Robert Zemeckis spent years trying to perfect motion-capture animation technology, and the results were decidedly mixed. One of the better films he directed in the medium, Beowulf, was a mature fantasy epic based on the classic tale, and features one of the scariest CG-creatures around. Grendel, played by Crispin Glover and brought to mutated and grotesque life by the animation team, is a tragic but violent creature who just wants his neighbors to shut up and will absolutely destroy them to get some peace and quiet.

Cats (2019)

Look, we haven’t seen Tom Hooper’s Cats yet, but the trailer is one of the most off-putting previews we’ve seen in years. Famous actors, covered in only 50% convincing CG, transformed into weird cat monsters, with physiology that makes no sense and a scale that makes them look even tinier than real cats. If you saw these things running around your house you would lose your damn mind, and no one could blame you.

Harry Potter (2001-Present)

The Harry Potter movies have featured a lot of CGI creatures, including giant spiders and centaurs and dragons and cat leviathans, and some have been more convincing than others. But although your mileage might vary across the whole series, certainly the Dementors are iconically creepy creations. These floating reaper monsters, which violently suck away your capacity to feel anything but misery, are one of the biggest “big bads” of the whole franchise, and every time they show up it’s a spooky thrill.

The Host (2006)

We’re not sure how, exactly, dumping formaldehyde into a river led to a giant fish monster, but that’s science for you. Anyway, Bong Joon-ho’s The Host tells the story of just such a creature, about the size of a van, which terrorizes Korea and looks damned scary doing it. Although not the most convincing CGI ever, Bong Joon-ho has confidence in the creature, and lets the audience get nice long looks at it in the daylight, which makes its existence all the more surreal.

Jurassic Park (1993-Present)

It’s easy to overlook the fact that, although the Jurassic Park movies are mega blockbusters for the whole family, they’re also obviously monster movies. Mad scientists on a remote island play God, create man-eating monstrosities which – what a shock! – run amok and eat man. The special effects in the original film, which also incorporated some practical effects, are still extraordinarily convincing, and the sequels have always tried to top the original with more killer dinos to make audiences shriek.

The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s dream of a beautiful Middle Earth was always undercut, at least a little, by how many terrifying monsters there were in it. Orcs, trolls, dragons, wargs, wraiths, you name it, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies had it, and they were all intimidating creations. And yet none of those towering creatures were quite as scary as Gollum, a Hobbit mutated into a monster by exposure to the One Ring, played with troubled inhumanity and insidious menace by Andy Serkis; and, of course, a team of talented CG animators.

Mortal Engines (2018)

Audiences slept on Christian Rivers’ Mortal Engines, and that’s their loss. Christian Rivers’ sci-fi epic may have had a formulaic plot but it was rife with visual wonders, including thrilling car chases where entire cities were the cars, chase scenes through metropolises getting demolished by giant buzzsaws, and of course Shrike, one of the most unsettling movie villains in recent memory. A cybernetic corpse, Shrike pursues the movie’s hero to prove his love for her by turning her into an undead monster just like himself. Shrike is played by Stephen Lang, and a team of animators, who infuse the character with disturbingly unnatural movements and a grim, frightening glare.

The Mist (2007)

Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s harrowing story only made The Mist more frightening. A group of people get trapped in a grocery store as a mysterious mist fills their small town, and inside there are all kinds of unbelievable monsters, ranging from killer insects to Lovecraftian behemoths that stagger the imagination. It’s their world now. We only live in it… while we can.

A Quiet Place (2018)

The acclaimed monster movie A Quiet Place features novel beasts that attack and brutally slay anyone who makes any kind of sound, forcing our heroes to live in absolute silence for fear of instant death. It’s such a scary concept that director John Krasinski probably could have gotten away with not showing them at all, but when they do appear they are unusually freaky creatures with segmented heads and razor-sharp teeth, and they absolutely live up to the movie’s hype.

The Ritual (2017)

We don’t want to go into too much detail about this one, since it’s a relatively recent film and the monster isn’t in a lot of it, but David Bruckner’s excellent horror film The Ritual – about a group of hikers who get trapped in the woods with a cult – features a grotesque image of a monster that comes back into play later on, in a most unexpected and surprising reveal that’s hard to describe and way creepier to discover on your own. It’s one of the most disturbing CGI monsters of its kind.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

The classic version of Godzilla, walking around and punching monsters like an old-fashioned bouncer, is so familiar now that he’s more beloved than scary. But the impressively smart reboot Shin Godzilla made him horrifying again. Godzilla emerges from the water half-formed, a giant fish-eyed writhing monstrosity that doesn’t move like any Godzilla you’ve ever seen before, and as it rapidly evolves into something a little more familiar, that shocking introduction sticks in your head, making him more unnatural than ever before.

Starship Troopers (1997)

Paul Verhoeven’s epic sci-fi/blockbuster satire, which uses fascist propaganda storytelling tropes to subvert our whole understanding of the action genre, features some of the most monstrous creatures imaginable: giant, killer bugs. The film’s outlandish violence makes these alien insects seem huge and dangerous, so much so that you have to look closely at the film’s subtext to realize that they’re not the oppressors, they’re the noble resistance fighters who are being dehumanized by filmmakers with an agenda. They’re scary, but only because we’re buying into the film’s disturbing meta-narrative. Impeccable VFX, in one of the most daring big budget films in history.

As I wrote earlier this week, Alien Isolation was a perfect example of adapting a movie to the video game medium. Not only was the game strong in terms of quality, but it also managed to accurately capture the tone and feel of the source material. Even some of the best licensed games have trouble truly feeling like the source material, rather providing a good experience with a specific coat of paint. This got me thinking, what properties deserve an Alien Isolation-style of adaptation?

TERMINATOR

This was the first franchise I thought of when thinking about applying lessons learned in Alien Isolation. I know there’s a new Terminator game on the horizon, but it looks like it’s aiming to go a more video game-y route by dropping you into an action-packed fight for the future. What I envision is something that almost mimics Alien Isolation in mechanics as well as fidelity to the source material. 

Imagine a version of the game that closely replicates that feeling of the original film, dropping you in with no resources and nothing but a name to look for. Right off the bat, you’re in a race to find Sarah Connor (or maybe even someone else) before the Terminator finds and kills her. Since the first film is very much a chase movie that doesn’t deal with the overall plot the way the sequels do, it would be cool for a video game to be very stripped down, giving you a possibly procedurally-generated open world that gives you a different version of this conflict every time. 

Ripping out the page from the phone book, tracking down Sarah, slowly finding ways to arm yourself and ultimately defeating the Terminator would all be thrilling to do in a Hitman-style open world with an Alien Isolation-style Terminator hunting you down. While it may not be a high-octane shooter that the upcoming Terminator game hopes to be, I think this would be a much more accurate and interesting pitch for a Terminator game. 

HAPPY DEATH DAY

“Babyface” in “Happy Death Day 2U,” written and directed by Christopher Landon.

Time loop video games are having a bit of a moment right now. Games like Minit, The Sexy Brutale, and this year’s indie hit Outer Wilds have all played around with the concept in one way or another. Why not take everyone’s favorite time loop movie Happy Death Day and turn it into a video game. While the movie is known for being carried by the wonderful performance from Jessica Rothe, the premise of the story would make a great basis for a game even without her presence. 

Solving a mystery in a video game is always such a satisfying feeling, and the setup of Happy Death Day gives you a great one to solve. As you piece together more clues, more environments could be made available for you to investigate as you get closer and closer to narrowing down who is trying to kill you. This would give the game a bit of a Metroidvania-style structure, unlocking new areas and maybe even allowing the player to fast forward to certain moments or locations in order to properly investigate a new clue. 

ANNIHILATION

When I saw Annihilation, I remember thinking to myself, this would make a perfect setting for a video game. Video games thrive on player discovery, and everything about the strange world contained in the Shimmer inspired simultaneous feelings of wonder and horror in me. To me, it feels like a good place to set something that plays a bit like Resident Evil 2 Remake, but with Dark Souls-style world-building. 

Imagine replacing the claustrophobia of Alien Isolation or RE2 Remake with a small squad and a more open, outdoor environment that lets you dictate your encounters a bit more as a way of conserving resources. Your team is there with limited supplies, so you could try to coordinate to gain the advantage over the monstrous mutants you fight. Losing party members at certain story moments would also be a great way to ratchet up the tension, making things more desperate as the story builds.

The way the movie doles out information also closely follows Dark Souls or Bioshock-like world building, with most information acquired from the remnants of the previous expedition. Exploring the world of the Shimmer would also be a great experience, with the world shifts around you to create a wonderful sense of place while never giving you the opportunity to fully find your feet. I love the idea of setting up a bonfire-like place to camp at night, only to wake up the next morning in a completely different area. This would capture the moment from the movie, but also disorient you like the infamous Hypogean Gaol moment from Bloodborne. The world and tone of Annihilation are so rife with possibilities. 

Adapting a game is really about finding the core of what makes the original property tick and finding ways to design the mechanics of the game around these principles. What Alien Isolation did so well five years ago should be an inspiration to developers. Pitches like these make me excited about the possibilities of licensed games, as long as they are not forced into simple structures that don’t line up with the core of the property. 

Hideo Kojima’s cinematic eye has been critical to his work. Metal Gear Solid not only redefined what developers could do with their games, but also elevated the emotional potential that games could deliver. 

That cinematic quality has grown with each new game of Kojima’s – it comes as no surprise then that Death Stranding is his most sophisticated work to date. 

In my hours playing Death Stranding, I couldn’t help but notice the intricacies that made up the gameplay. The hardcore Kojima fans of the world know the guy loves movies and how much they’ve influenced his games. With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to speak to the cinematic elements of Death Stranding, referencing several film directors and their works. Please keep in mind that these points are of my own opinion and are only meant to provoke a fun dialogue.

In other reviews I’ve read regarding Death Stranding, there has been a couple of mentions of the late Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky, known for incredible films like Ivan’s Childhood and Solaris, was known for his drawn out takes; the camera work in his films would linger on a subject, creating a meditative focus. I agree that the spirit of Tarkovsky’s work is felt throughout Death Stranding. The way the camera tracks Sam’s journey, forcing the player to be present in his every laborious movement, feels like something Tarkovsky would setup to keep his audience engaged. 

Death Stranding’s meditative nature also feels reminiscent to that of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. The world of Death Stranding exudes emotion and meaning throughout its land. Along with the game’s excellent soundtrack and auditory serenity, Death Stranding’s still moments give off an elegant balance of calm and unease. Nolan’s work in Interstellar offers an emotional backdrop for the characters, similar to how the player may feel when taking in the barren America before Sam. 

When it comes to the stealth sections and BTs encounters, I actually think of Stanley Kubrick. In these scenarios, Kojima shifts to a tight focus on Sam. These moments are full of tension and anxiety, drawing parallels to Kubrick’s work. In particular, I am reminded of The Shining; many of the film’s shots are tight, claustrophobic, and exhibit careful plotting. Kubrick was relentless in his delivery of detail, and Kojima demonstrates the same level of care. With BB detecting the nearby BTs, the player has to tread carefully among the otherworldly beings.

Making matters more difficult, the player’s BT encounter may take place on a mountainside that is full of rocky terrain. In these cases, movement becomes even more anxiety-provoking. The manner in which Kojima plots out paths for his players, putting them through emotional, even physical stress, would make Kubrick proud.

Like some of his previous games, Death Stranding involves moments of fourth wall breaks. When looking at how Death Stranding delivers its winks and nods to the audience, I think of Spike Jonze’s use of fourth wall breaks. Both his films Being John Malkovich and Adaptation play out to a tongue-in-cheek cleverness. Kojima might be a little more forward, but his level of self-awareness is similar to Jonze. Kojima is in on all the jokes with the player. He acknowledges the goofiness of certain interactions, understanding that players will be both caught off guard and engaged.

On a non-technical note, there are many works of science fiction that one could point to regarding Death Stranding’s themes. Having completed the game, there are two films that come to mind I feel share thematic similarities – Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and Alex Garland’s Annihilation.

Children of Men takes place in a world facing extinction. With children no longer being born and growing tensions, people are left in a state of despair. One thing leads to another when the film’s protagonist discovers a woman who is pregnant; from there, he accompanies her on a journey to protect and deliver her to safety. While the two post-apocalyptic worlds may look different at face value, I would argue that Death Stranding emits a similar somber tone. After the cataclysmic destruction brought on by the Death Stranding event, America is left torn apart. People struggle for resources, communities are isolated. Throughout the protagonist’s journey in Children of Men, he eventually comes to discover hope and the possibility of a future; this reminds me of Sam, who overtime begins to see the possibility of people coming together and making America whole again.

In Annihilation, our protagonist joins a group who investigates a supernatural presence called “the Shimmer”. While the film takes place on Earth, the environment within the Shimmer is warped; the DNA of various life forms mix together, creating unique hybrids of life. This concept of a supernatural environment feels similar to that of the different environmental elements that make up Death Stranding (i.e. BTs, void outs, and Timefall). However, there is another idea that makes for a strong comparison between the two stories – Annihilation’s exploration of violence and relationships.

The film ponders such notions as how people react to something unknown; how we process our fight or flight instincts; how a limited understanding of the world may hold us back from a greater sense of compassion.

Throughout Death Stranding, many of the characters reflect upon their interactions with others. Both Death Stranding and Annihilation involve themes surrounding “relationships;” whereas the former is about creating bonds, the latter is more of an effort to examine how we conduct ourselves. While both stories look at relationships in different manners, the craft put into these explorations is well done and intriguing. Just like Annihilation utilizes surreal science fiction to present a thought-provoking dialogue, Death Stranding uses its fantastical components to convey a rich and emotional story.

While opinions may vary, there is no denying that Death Stranding is a fascinating experience. With no restraints on his creativity, Kojima is able to present a vision that is his to the core. His passion for cinema is felt and seen throughout Death Stranding. From the technical aspects to the narrative themes, Kojima has made an experience that is immersive and emotional, all while expanding upon the medium of video games.

What do you think of the filmmaking points that I picked up on and discuss in this article? Are there are other cinematic qualities you noticed? How do you feel Death Stranding reflects Kojima’s growth as an artist?

*Keep up with our ongoing end of the decade coverage here*

Of all the many reasons we adore horror, spectacular character deaths rank high among them. One solid, gruesome kill can go a long way in a horror movie. It’s an art form perfected by the slasher, but all horror movies embrace the art of grisly and elaborate death sequences.

It’s been one hell of a decade for horror, not just in emerging new voices and box office records, but in memorable moments of gore. We’re closing out the decade by celebrating the best kills horror had to offer. The most creative, most outlandish, most jaw-dropping kills that seared into our horror-loving skulls.

These are the top 10!

10. Upgrade – Kitchen Killer

If there’s one thing horror has taught us, it’s that anything within grasp can make for a decent weapon. When Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) breaks into the home of one of the assailants that left him paralyzed, a battle breaks out. Grey’s no fighter, though, so he finally gives STEM permission to take over. The fight takes over the small kitchen, and STEM grabs anything and everything he can to use against his opponent. The dishes get destroyed in the mayhem. Then STEM grabs a kitchen knife. A typical stabbing would’ve sufficed, but STEM decides maybe his opponent could use a bigger mouth.

9. Annihilation – Not Your Average Bear Mauling

Everything inside the Shimmer is weird; the alien environment absorbs flora and fauna and mutates it in often unnerving ways. The most terrifying of which is the screaming bear. Its ghastly appearance rivals the haunting way in which it steals the voice of its last victim. It first attacked the base camp and mauled Cass to death off-screen, her mutilated corpse found later. But the bear tracks the core group, following them to strike again. This time it mauls Anya to death, and we get to see every excruciating second. It doesn’t end pretty.

8. Final Destination 5 – Gymnastics Pretzel

The entire Final Destination franchise centers around creative kills made even more visceral by the unbearable tension that builds while we try to guess the how and when. The death of gymnast Candice is an absolute series highlight. The suspense winds tighter and tighter as we watch Candice avoid potential death over and over again during her practice. A sharp screw on the balance beam. A puddle of water on the mat next to a power cord on the fritz. Eventually, all of the ill omens become an unfortunate chain of events that leaves Candice in bone-splitting pretzel form after an unfortunate dismount from the high bar. Brutal.

7. Hatchet II – Swamp Bifurcation

The Hatchet series boasts no shortage of crowd-pleasing kills at the hands of swamp boogeyman Victor Crowley. Yet it’s the final major death of the 2010 sequel that earns a spot on this list. A showdown between Crowley and Rev. Zombie (Tony Todd) results in Zombie getting severed in half. Crowley has always been on to revel in excess, of course, and so he grabs the exposed spine from Zombie’s torso and yanks, effectively skinning him alive. Zombie might have had it coming, but ouch.

6. Apostle – Purification Ritual

Gareth Evans’ 1905-set folk horror tale brings the bloodshed and violence in gratifying ways. The crowning achievement of horrific deaths is the mean-spirited purification ritual of poor Jeremy, who’d just witnessed the aftermath of his lover’s death by forced abortion at the hands of her father. The girl’s father captures Jeremy and straps him to a torture table to perform a soul-cleansing rite in front of the congregation. What makes this one so noteworthy is the way Evans puts the viewer in Jeremy’s perspective as the clamps squeeze his skull so tight that we see blood vessels burst and hear the painful crunch. Then a hand-cranked drill graphically carves out a hole in the crown of his head. It’s unflinching and oh so painfully slow.

5. Hereditary – Self-Decapitation

Ari Aster’s debut offered not one, but two shocking decapitations. For pure shock value, Charlie’s death by telephone pole is the more memorable of the two, bolstered by a glimpse of the decayed aftermath. But it’s the self-garroting demise of Annie that’s far more chilling and vicious. Possessed, Annie hovers in the air, staring her son down as she seesaws piano wire back and forth against her throat. Slowly, at first, growing faster as the flesh gives way. The visual of it would be enough, with her frozen expression and blood spurts, but it’s the repulsive sound that it makes that gets under your skin.

4. Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich – Money Lender 

By design, this reboot aims to offend and assault the senses with a slew of endless gory deaths. Many of which plead their case for earning a spot on this list. From the beheading into the toilet bowl to the puppet that carves out his human-sized vehicle to puppeteer, the creativity of kills is a raucous highlight. But none hold a candle to the taboo-shattering death of a pregnant woman by Money Lender. The evil puppet claws his way into her womb and tears its way out of her stomach with her fetus in tow. Killing children, let alone babies, is one of the biggest cinematic taboos, and Puppet Master gave it a blood-splattered middle finger.

3. Saw 3D: The Final Chapter – Reverse Bear Trap

From the very first Saw, the Reverse Bear Trap captured our attention. The cruel nature of it, and the equally punishing way in which Amanda Young escaped it. Jigsaw created endless traps and puzzles for his victims; all brought severe levels of pain and suffering. Yet it was the Reverse Bear Trap that kept popping up again and again, including a harrowing moment in Saw VI that had Detective Hoffman barely escaping it, and not without injury. Finally, in the series’ seventh outing, we got to see the trap claim its first on-screen kill. Poor Jill Tuck didn’t deserve to die that way, if at all, but man was it a seriously satisfying payoff after being teased with this trap for six movies.

2. Evil Dead – Chainsaw meets Abomination

The climactic showdown between Mia and the Abomination is a bloodbath for the ages. Literally. A downpour of blood marks the Abomination’s arrival, and it doesn’t relent for a single second of Mia’s fight for survival against the Taker of Souls in Mia form. It’s an epic battle that sees limbs lopped off with chainsaws and Mia ripping her own hand off to free herself, and it all culminates in Mia taking a chainsaw to the Abomination’s face, slicing it into two. This kill is an insanely bloody and impressive conclusion to one of the decade’s goriest films. Bravo, Mia.

1. Bone Tomahawk -Troglodyte Nutcracker

For much of the runtime, S. Craig Zahler’s feature debut plays like a standard western. Until the cruel final act, that is. No one was prepared for how brutal the cannibalistic troglodyte clan was until they’re captured and made witness to the decade’s most shocking demise of all. To summarize: poor Deputy Nick is pulled from his cage, naked, and scalped. They hammer his scalp into his throat through his mouth. Held upside down with legs spread open, the savages slowly chop away at him from the crotch to the abdomen. He’s pulled apart, like cracking pistachios. All the while, his muffled screams of pain signal that he’s still conscious for most of this.

Honorable Mention: The Collection – Blood Rave

Sorry, Saw franchise, but Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton just decimated your death count with this insane opening kill. The Collector rigged several traps in the club full of unsuspecting partygoers, which are triggered in quick succession. Massive rotating blades mow down the dance floor, while everyone else is maimed or crushed by other traps. It’s excessively bloody, with limbs and viscera splattering the walls and floors. At least 70 people slaughtered in one fell swoop. And to think, this is just the opening scene of the film!

With the inaugural season of Lovecraft Country well underway and Color Out of Space now available on Shudder, the Year of Lovecraft remains in full swing.

H.P. Lovecraft‘s works tapped into the fear of the unknowable, of horrors vast and incomprehensible. His brand of cosmic horror made humans look so frail and obsolete by comparison. In a present where the future seems so unknowable and dangerous, it makes perfect sense that filmmakers would tap into those fears, now more than ever.

Still, Lovecraft’s influence on the genre has long been seen and felt. These ten movies movies draw from the author’s work, either directly or indirectly, using it as inspiration to deliver memorable tales of terror…

Re-Animator

When you think of Lovecraftian horror, it’s near impossible for Stuart Gordon’s seminal horror comedy not to pop in mind. In a loose adaptation of “Herbert West-Reanimator,” Jeffrey Combs steals the entire film as the eccentric medical student with a reanimating reagent that unleashes complete chaos at Miskatonic University. Gordon adds his voice to the Lovecraft story, turning Herbert West’s tale into a full-on splatstick horror-comedy that paints the walls red.

Castle Freak

Drawing from the short story “The Outsider,” Castle Freak marks the third Lovecraftian partnership between director Stuart Gordon and actors Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. The second being From Beyond. Castle Freak is arguably the most mature of the three. Combs plays John Reilly, a man looking to make amends with his wife Susan (Crampton) after a devastating accident left their son dead and teen daughter blind. After inheriting a castle, they travel there to stay until the estate can be liquidated. Of course, they’re unaware a deranged, disfigured beast inhabits it. Castle Freak is dark and disturbing, but with heartfelt themes of love and redemption.

The Resurrected

From The Return of the Living Dead and Alien’s Dan O’Bannon comes an adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Charles Dexter Ward (Chris Sarandon) has been behaving so strangely, holed up in his carriage house performing chemical experiments, that his wife hires a private investigator to uncover what he’s up to and why he abandoned her. The more they discover about Charles’s family history and his experiments, the more disturbing things get. The Resurrected is a fairly faithful adaptation of its source material, just set in a modern period. That means it can be a little slow to build, but it explodes in a delightful creature heavy final act.

Necronomicon

Jeffrey Combs, resembling Bruce Campbell with his prosthetic chin, plays H.P. Lovecraft in this anthology’s wraparound story that sees the prolific horror writer copying stories from the Necronomicon in the middle of an old library guarded by monks. He lets loose a trio of Lovecraftian tales of horror and gore, each progressively weirder than the preceding segment. The segments are based on “The Rats in the Walls,” “Cool Air,” and the novella The Whisperer in the Darkness. With Brian Yuzna as the producer and director for half of the film, expect things to get goopy and gory.

Annihilation

Annihilation might be based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer, but there’s a whole lot of “The Colour Out of Space” in its DNA. It follows an expedition into a mysterious zone where the rules of nature no longer apply, told by the expedition’s sole survivor. That zone is dubbed “the Shimmer” for its iridescent color. As the group gets further into the site and encounters disturbing sights, they realize the Shimmer is changing flora and fauna. Its origins of the extraterrestrial variety crash-landed on Earth. Just like the Lovecraft story. Of course, the narrative diverges from there, but it’s still a tense slice of sci-fi cinema. 

Banshee Chapter

After her friend’s sudden disappearance, journalist Anne Roland (Katia Winter) discovers the strange and horrifying links between her friend, a government conspiracy involving a research drug, and an eerie radio broadcast of otherworldly origin. Drawing inspiration from actual government hallucinogenic drug experiments and H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond,” Blair Erickson’s feature debut is as creepy as mysterious and engaging. Look for The Silence of the Lambs‘s Ted Levine to steal every scene he’s in, but more than that, be ready for some great scares. Where From Beyond went for practical effects-driven spectacle, Banshee Chapter opts for a quiet, menacing atmosphere. It’s effectively creepy.

Dark Waters

After her father’s death, Elizabeth travels to a remote island to discover why her father funded the convent there. She finds it inhabited exclusively by nuns who perform bizarre rituals in the catacombs underneath the convent. The nuns harbor many dark secrets, including something inhuman lurking below. Directed by Mariano Baino, Dark Waters favors mood and style over a fully coherent narrative, making it feel like an Italian horror by way of Lovecraft. It’s ambiguous, atmospheric, and gorgeous. 

The Beyond

One of Lucio Fulci’s most beloved horror films, and the second entry in his unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy, The Beyond is also the director’s most influential. Set in Louisiana, a young woman inherits a hotel and discovers it was built over one of the gates to Hell. Bleak, surreal, and dreamlike in its storytelling, The Beyond toes the line between beauty and horror. Essentially, The Beyond is what happens when you cross Fulci with H.P. Lovecraft. The hotel is a gateway, essentially a portal to another world full of horrors. The Book of Eibon could easily be a stand-in for the Necronomicon. The foreboding tone of it all is Fulci channeling one of his favorite authors.

The Mist

Frank Darabont’s bleak 2007 horror film may have been an adaptation of Stephen King’s novella, but both channeled Lovecraft for this gnarly tale. A severe storm seems to trigger a strange, thick mist that crosses over a lake and town and envelopes it. And that fog brings all sorts of bloodthirsty and deadly creatures, trapping survivors inside a supermarket to fight for their lives. The monsters themselves, especially the massive ones, feel right out of a Lovecraft story; but so do the characters. Faced with unknowable horrors lurking in the mist, some of the supermarket inhabitants turn to religious fanaticism. Some are driven insane. Many of them die in grotesque ways. Above all, The Mist offers a grim feeling of hopelessness.

In the Mouth of Madness

Do you read Sutter Cane? Of course you do. Written by Michael De Luca and directed by John Carpenter, this descent into madness isn’t directly lifted from any of Lovecraft’s works. Its influences are plain as day, though, with references and themes woven into every fiber of the film. Sam Neill plays John Trent, an insurance investigator hired to look for a missing bestselling author whose books affect his fans in brutal ways. Of course, the further into the investigation John gets, the more surreal and dangerous things become. Hobb’s End is an insidious little town full of insanity, creatures, and death. In the Mouth of Madness closes out Carpenter’s apocalypse trilogy, each film equipped with a bit of Lovecraft.

Few subgenres evoke revulsion and cringe-inducing terror quite like body horror. Becoming a stranger in your own body as it mutates or transforms in grotesque ways is inherently terrifying. But, as horror masters David Lynch and David Cronenberg have established repeatedly, body horror often serves as a metaphor for the human condition beyond flesh and skin. Lynch’s Eraserhead made the fears of becoming a parent a visceral experience, while Cronenberg’s The Brood served as a personal exploration of divorce, for example.

The resurgence of body horror brings with it fascinating new evolutions of the subgenre, particularly in the way that eco-horror has fully embraced the subgenre. The latest among them is Gaia, an eco-horror feature that sees an injured forest ranger saved by two off-the-grid survivalists while on a routine mission. The boy and his father follow their own religion deeply tied to nature, which triggers suspicion. But when their cabin is attacked by strange, post-human beings one night, she learns that there is a more significant threat in this emergent wilderness. Jaco Bouwer’s South African genre movie, written by Tertius Kapp, marries body horror to eco-horror, with nature causing alarming and gnarly changes for unlucky humans.

Monique Rockman, Carel Nel, Alex van Dyk, and Anthony Oseyemi star.

After last week’s limited theatrical run, Gaia will be released On Demand on June 25. In anticipation, we look at other horror films that mark the return of body horror at the hands of mother nature.

The Hallow

This dark fairytale is part creature feature, part body horror, and all Irish folktale. It follows a British plant conservationist and his family as they discover the hard way not to ignore warning signs and invade the territory of fairies, banshees, and changelings. It’s the latter that proves most troublesome for the family, as the changelings descend to steal away their baby. Dad gets stabbed in the eye by one, starting his transformation into a creature of the forest. Corin Hardy’s feature debut gives eco-horror a dark fairy tale twist.

The Girl with All the Gifts

Based on the novel by Mike Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts is set in a near-future where a parasitic fungus has ravaged the world. Those infected turn into mindless “hungries.” Only a small group of children seem immune; they still hunger for flesh but retain the ability to learn and think. Among them is Melanie (Sennia Nanua), the most intelligent and remarkable of all. When the military base holding the children captive falls, Melanie embarks on a quest with her teacher and the survivors, discovering her new place in the world. The body horror isn’t the focal point in this zombie feature, but it’s unavoidable. The fungal spread effectively plunged the world into a dystopian nightmare, and the protagonists eventually discover what the late-stage infection looks like- not unlike the affected in Gaia.

Unearth

Directed by John C. Lyons and Dorota Swies, this indie feature bides its time getting acquainted with two families nestled deep in America’s heartland as they struggle financially against the corporate greed that’s crowded out local businesses. When one of the families leases their land to an oil and gas company, the subsequent drilling unleashes something long-dormant from the deep below. This slow-burn horror builds to a body horror-heavy final act, with nature reclaiming the land with a gruesome vengeance. 

Sea Fever

A West of Ireland trawler captain defies the coast guard’s orders to steer clear of an exclusion zone, unbeknownst to his crew and passengers. As a result, the boat runs into a strange object that leaves them stranded and their water supply contaminated by an unidentified parasite. It causes some of the crew to get infected, leading to some gag-worthy symptoms and severe eye trauma. For the most part, Sea Fever’s body horror is more understated as it focuses on the paranoia that spreads among the crew. Still, what it does have packs a punch.

Annihilation

Alex Garland’s adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel introduced endless nightmare imagery thanks to a strange bubble where the laws of nature don’t apply. A scientific expedition gets sent into an anomalous zone known as the “Shimmer,” a coastal area irrevocably altered by a meteoroid that crashed into a lighthouse. The team encounters mutated flora and fauna and eventually realizes that the Shimmer is altering their DNA. While the root cause of the dramatic ecological shift is extraterrestrial, how it drastically changes everything familiar about biology is potent. From the screaming bear to the haunting moments captured on camera from the previous expedition, Annihilation manages to offer both elegant beauty and pure nightmare fuel when it comes to body horror.

The Beach House

Two troubled college sweethearts set out for a romantic weekend at the family beach house. It turns into a fight for survival when unexpected guests and the surrounding environment show bizarre signs of a mysterious infection. The Beach House starts slowly on the body horror then dives into the deep end. While the third act goes hard on slimy transformations, look for one unforgettable moment involving a foot injury and a worm-like creature nestled within the open wound. Much like the films mentioned above, The Beach House drives home that mother nature got tired of the abuse and angrily took the earth back from humanity.

Now in limited theaters, look for Gaia on VOD platforms on June 25.

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Cocaine Bear is being unleashed in movie theaters this weekend and we’re all very excited. Who doesn’t want to see a killer bear do hardcore drugs and go on a murderous rampage? It’s the Catalina Wine Mixer of all movie synopses! Entertainment feels guaranteed, but it doesn’t appear as though Cocaine Bear is aiming to scare us silly with its killer bear.

Leave that to the bear attacks in these other movies…

THE REVENANT

Leonardo DiCaprio goes from “Oh, hey. A bear” to “I am currently being ripped apart by a bear” faster than Blumhouse could greenlight a M3GAN sequel.

The moment DiCaprio’s character, Hugh Glass, spots the mama bear’s cubs it’s already over. She barrels toward him and open paw smacks him into a tree like it was a turnbuckle at WrestleMania In the Woods (I’d watch it) then begins ripping flesh off his body with every effortless movement. She then drools a little on his face for just that extra little smidge of disrespect before nosing around his body and private parts. Hilariously, the stunt man using motion capture to play the bear actually had to put his head in Leonardo DiCaprio’s butt during the scene. Glenn Ennis told Global News, “My face was in Leo’s butt for a fair bit of time. I can see how that’s someone’s fantasy, but it wasn’t mine!”

The bear leaves him alone for a minute and nonchalantly ho-hums over to her cubs as if to say “Hey, you should check this out I’m about to eat this dude’s soul!” before Glass is able to take a shot at her with his rifle. This does about as much good as trying to mow your backyard with a fork. The bear with one quick credit card swipe slashes his throat with her claw. When Glass protests by lifting an arm, she tears it apart and removes his (checks notes) entire shoulder.

The bear (who is clearly a smoker) needs another break before the final lunge where Glass is able to stab it in the neck multiple times. The two roll down a hill where as luck would have it the bear, who is the size of a Jeep Liberty, rolls right on top of him. He miraculously survives but the injuries are so extensive the movie has to last two hours and thirty six minutes for him to adequately recover.

This is undoubtedly the most technically sound and awe inspiring bear attack of all. They used CGI and motion capture but you’ve got to do some squinting to tell it’s not real.

ANNIHILATION

Look, there’s more to unpack in this scene than a U-Haul fresh from the set of a Hoarders episode so let’s just focus on the bear attack itself. Three women tied to a chair (one of them Natalie Portman) are being interrogated in a mysterious “Upside Down” type place called “The Shimmer.” Their interrogator hears a friend screaming for help outside and goes to rescue her. Except it is not her friend. It is this “mutated” bear with no flesh on its skull that screams and speaks in the human wails of its victims.

The bear is an abomination against all that is holy, righteous and good in this world and I’m not talking about in the movie. I’m talking about even in fiction. Complete with a mixture of both human and bear teeth, a human skull embedded on the side of its face and a growl that sounds like the kid from The Babadook was given steroids derived from the veins of Satan himself after a three day coke bender.

It screams its human/demon-like scream so close to their helpless faces that if he has pink eye they are definitely getting it. It even puts some of their body parts in its mouth. Just to taunt them. This thing will have you sitting on and not in your seat. The unholy monster rips off part of a victim’s neck and most of her entire jaw in a moment so grotesque and evil you barely notice its mostly computer generated. This was too gnarly a moment for even CGI to tame.

After a very large machine gun is fired into its hairless double demon skull ear hole, it lets out one last human screech to haunt your dreams. This one probably didn’t go to mutant bear heaven.

BACKCOUNTRY

This 2014 film, based loosely (are they ever based tightly?) on a true story, spends the first hour of its running time dealing with the relationship struggles of an urban couple out hiking in the woods. Then Sting drops down from the rafters and puts a scorpion death drop on your soul.

The couple are inside the tent doing adult Valentine’s Day stuff to each other when they hear twigs breaking outside. They check it out and think they scared off whatever it was and go back in the tent. They wake up the next morning and unzip the tent to see a gigantic bear being all cute and laying outside the tent just waiting for them to wake up so he can snuggle (murder) them.

What follows is so realistic and intense that I’ve only seen it once when the film came out and had to actually mentally prepare myself before watching it again.

They decide to hide in the tent quietly and the bear taunts them. Poking around the outside of the tent before sticking his head in the entrance and literally screaming at them. They are trapped with nowhere to go and no breath mints when the bear starts to claw at them. He rips Jenn’s arm open like a bag of Twizzlers and then starts on Alex, gnawing at his leg and ripping most of the meat off from the shin down. Jenn grabs a bottle of pepper spray which would have been very useful TWO MINUTES AGO and sprays the bear who mercifully runs off. They are safe for the moment and we can all calm down until BAHGOD THAT’S SMOKEY THE BEAR’S MUSIC! The bear comes back with a vengeance moments later and drags Alex out of the tent.

We can now hear the bear ruthlessly attacking and eating Alex but thankfully they spare us from seeing it. Until they don’t. The practical FX work on Alex getting his face torn off is some of the best I’ve ever seen. If you watch closely and maybe even pause it at the right time, you can see some pretty intense stuff. What? You know you’re going to. Don’t judge.

THE EDGE 

In The Edge, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Hopkins and Harold Perrineau’s characters are involved in a plane crash and stranded in the woods of Alaska with a very smart and pissed off bear hunting them down. The greatest bear attack film of all time, The Edge carries with it an amazing script and intriguing subplots but we’re gathered here today to talk about bears eating some folks. So, let’s get down to business.

The smell of blood is in the air after Stephen (Perrineau) badly injures himself in the most enraging way possible (he survives a plane crash only to stab his own leg trying to make a spear).

Later that evening, Stephen sits bleeding during a spooky night-time storm and sees something up ahead in the darkness. He leans over to get a closer look when a gigantic grizzly heaving towards him comes into focus. The bear (a real-life trained bear named Bart) reaches him instantly, leans around his body and growls in his face as a little extra “fuck you, buddy”; then the bear picks him up by the leg, dangling him in front of his friends. The bear then toys with and destroys him as his friends watch helplessly.

You know it’s over when, with one creepily playful bite-down and pull-back movement, Stephen’s awful screams instantly stop. The silence is deafening.

PROPHECY 

The hazardous environmental waste of a paper mill causes some of the local wilderness to mutate – including, of course, a huge bear. Maggie (Talia Shire) and a camp of others come across some mutant bear cubs (which are not cute in case you’re wondering). The mama mutant bear then shows up at the camp like Patrick Bateman in his whitey-tighties wielding a chain-saw going absolutely berserker on the entire camp.

The ensuing pandemonium is a little hard to keep track of because of the wild editing but the bear/monster smacks down a few folks, causes a huge fire and then chases the survivors through the woods. This is all frightening because of the presentation of the monstrosity.

One side of her is just a good ole’ angry bear and the other a nasty, lumpy, bunch of goo, skin and various obscenities that you can never really get your eyes to settle on. What’s really frightening is the way the bear moves. Imagine the camera effect they used in Evil Dead for the Kandarian demon and the way it glides around. Now imagine it going backwards with a giant goo bear staring at you. It’s simply unnatural. Sure, the effects here are quite dated as the film was made in 1979 but it’s very impressive and creative for the time.

Cocaine Bear is in theaters February 24. May we all enjoy it as much as bears clearly enjoy us.

The post Before ‘Cocaine Bear’: Five of the Most Horrifying Bear Attack Movie Moments appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Refraction action.

After closing out April with a look at the hagsploitation classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, we kicked off May with a deathly serious look at Gus Van Sant’s pseudo-Columbine adaptation Elephant. Now we continue the month with a look at Alex Garland’s dense and trippy 2018 film Annihilation.

Annihilation sees Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist and former soldier, join a mission to uncover what happened to her husband (Oscar Isaac) inside Area X — a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Alongside a team of four other women comprised of paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson), psychologist Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and geomorphologist Cass (Tuva Novotny), Lena discovers a world of mutated landscapes and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 231: Annihilation (2018)

Get ready to mutate because we’re heading into the weird, wonderful and terrifying world of Alex Garland’s Annihilation (2018)! Joining us for the conversation are Alma and Dalia of the Nightmare on 5th Street podcast!

Join us as we try our best to analyze this admittedly dense film, with discussions on how it works as an adaptation, the casting controversy, the likability of certain characters and (of course) that weird as hell climax.

Plus: refraction action, horrifying mutated bears, cancer metaphors and one giant soap bubble.

Cross out Annihilation!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re checking out the ridiculous camp of the 1994 dinosaur romance Tammy and the T-Rex!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 243 hours of additional content! This month we’re going all in on Evil Dead with an episode on  Evil Dead Rise, our thoughts on the whole Evil Dead franchise, and an audio commentary on the original 1981 film.  Plus: we’ll have episodes on Amazon Prime’s queer as fuck Dead Ringers series, and the Lulu Wilson-starring The Wrath of Becky.

The post Lady Scientists and a Mutant Bear in Alex Garland’s ‘Annihilation’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The various versions of Annihilation and Stalker have always been a huge creative inspiration to me. The idea of venturing into a place where the rules of reality breakdown is one of the most unsettling ideas I can imagine, and it’s a vibe I’m always chasing when consuming media. When The Zone, a play-to-lose tabletop RPG from designer Raph D’Amico, hit Kickstarter last year, it looked like exactly the type of game I needed to bring to my RPG group. The crowdfunding campaign was a huge success, and now a little over a year later I finally got my hands on the finished product, and it was exactly what I was looking for.

The Zone varies greatly from what you may traditionally know of the tabletop RPG space. It’s meant specifically for one-shot play, it’s not a power fantasy where your characters get stronger as they overcome obstacles, none of the players are the game master, and there’s no dice involved. Instead, you all collaboratively tell a story about a doomed expedition into a surreal and shifting environment that mutates everything and everyone it comes into contact with. Throughout the course of your journey, all but one of you will die before reaching the center of the Zone itself, where the final survivor will be granted a wish. To help facilitate the story, the narrative prompts for every element of the game are delivered through combinations of cards, as are your character builds.

Instead of worrying about stats or skills, your character consists of three elements that are provided by cards. At the beginning of the game, you’re dealt a number of Archetype and Motivation cards for you to choose from to provide inspiration for your character. Your archetype is your official role, like soldier or scientist, that will help you come up with a backstory and inform your approach to situations. The motivation cards have two elements to them: obsession and phobia. You’ll need to pick one motivation card to be your obsession, what drives your character into the Zone, and another to be your phobia, a fear that the Zone will prey on to test and challenge you. It’s a very simple system, but it provides you with enough information to make a compelling doomed explorer that you can move towards their horrible fate.

In order to lay out the path that you will explore, you draw from a separate deck of location cards. There are a few locations that will be fixed constants for all games, like the observation facility or border of the Zone, but everything else will be determined by the luck of the draw. Each of these location cards has three options for how that space presents itself in your game, and it’s up to the players to decide together the details of what it looks like. The game aims to create an immersive and thematic setting around the table, so you’re asked to arrange the cards in a spiral that leads towards your final destination in the center. These cards have a sleek holographic finish to them that gives the game a level of polish, making for an extremely atmospheric and attractive setup.

Players take turns acting as the director of the game scene by scene. When you’re the director, you draw a scene card from the deck and read it out loud to the other players, facilitating the setup of the sequence. These prompts are brief but impactful, with some questions that can help you get the creative juices flowing if you’re stumped. Everyone is in charge of painting the details of the scene while also talking about how their character reacts to the strange events. Narration continues until someone decides that the action described needs to be decided by the “Not So Easy” deck, the game’s form of randomized conflict resolution. These always have the format of ‘yes/no’ and ‘and/but’ along with some details or questions that often give you a narrative prompt for the resolution that ties to your phobia or obsession. Sometimes the card also forces your character to undergo a mutation, physically marking the effects of the Zone on their body. The mixture of all these cards help push you and your characters to an interesting narrative effortlessly, while still giving you the space to make it your own.

Characters cannot die from a standard Not So Easy card; instead they have to wait until their Fate card is drawn. Each player has a callsign associated with their character, and each of the latter locations has a Fate card placed on top of it that matches a callsign. Meeting your fate is not meant to be a loss in this game, since you’re going in with the play-to-lose mindset, so the game gives you full narrative control when your time is up, allowing you to craft your own tragic ending. Once you get to the center of the Zone, there’s a procedure to follow for resolving the surviving player’s wish, one which gives more narrative power to the player with the most Not So Easy cards drawn throughout the game. It’s a smart way to incentivize people to put their characters at risk by drawing those cards, encouraging you to embrace the themes of the game in play.

This may sound like a lot to take in, especially if you’re used to more traditional RPGs with more in-depth character sheets and complicated dice rolls, but The Zone is one of the most beginner-friendly RPG books I’ve ever read. During setup, the books should be passed from player to player to read each section, walking you through every element of how the game is played while keeping the whole group engaged. Early scenes in the game are specifically constructed to get players used to The Zone’s form of collaborative storytelling with a subtle and unobtrusive tutorial. There’s a wealth of advice within about how to deal with getting stuck creatively. Understanding the rules is one of the biggest hurdles of getting into tabletop RPGs, so it’s refreshing to see a book that’s so dedicated to onboarding players.

There are a couple extra books that can be purchased alongside the main game, either in print or digital formats. One is a book of mutations, with inspiration for the effects the Zone can have on the player, along with some random table to roll on if you want the dice to decide your fate. This book is another great tool to help spark inspiration, full of clever ideas that I would not have come to on my own. The second book is a collection of scenarios that take the format of the game and add new themes or mechanics. The setups range from following up on a disastrous experiment to see if we live in a simulation to exploring an apartment complex engulfed in a mutating black mold. All of these scenarios come with gorgeous artwork that helps convey the tone of each, complimenting the already beautiful artwork in the base game.

Top to bottom, The Zone is a great package for those new to the hobby or seasoned players looking to explore new tabletop RPG systems. Its heavy emphasis on improvisation combined with its evocative setting and prompts get the stories flowing easily at the table without getting bogged down in complex rules. There’s just enough structure to allow you to keep things moving, guiding you through a satisfying one shot in about three hours. If you’re curious and want to try it out, there’s a full online version you can play to test it out that walks you through the game step by step like the book. Surreal and creepy, The Zone is a standout tabletop RPG that creates a memorable night at the table that requires no preparation.

The Zone can be purchased at Laughing Kaiju’s website.

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