Penny Dreadful
Race, gender and an evil wizard – all in a month’s work for SFX’s horror expert
GET IN!
I told you Get Out was going to be good! But let’s talk about what the critical and financial success of this movie means for the genre. This is the directorial debut of Jordan Peele, one half of sketch comedy pair Key and Peele, and it’s an extremely sharp, keenly observed and political horror comedy. Peele knows how to make us laugh, but that was obvious. That he has an excellent working knowledge of the horror genre might be more of a surprise – Get
Out is smart and referential, note-perfect and genuinely frightening. And it’s about “neoracism” or “post-racism” – that kind of faux-liberal racism that’s perhaps more subtle and insidious than the old “rednecks with shotguns” trope. Jordan Peele has said he’s got four more “social thrillers” that he’d like to develop – and I can’t wait. Go see this then, and prove to the execs what we already know. Got something to say? Say it with horror.
PRIVATE DEMONS
Personal Shopper was barely even on my radar as a horror. Turns out it’s dead scary, but don’t expect an easy ride. Kristen Stewart stars as the burnt-out assistant to a Parisian celebrity, touring fashion houses on her moped to ensure her barely-present boss looks impeccable. She’s there, though, in the hopes of contacting the spirit of her dead twin brother. Are the spiritual connections she feels from him, or something malevolent? Are they even real? There’s certainly something wicked following her almost invisible assignations. It’s stylish, sexy and tingling with terror the whole time, but I couldn’t swear to know exactly what happened. Stewart is amazing though, hollow and exhausted, ashamed of her desires – to do the forbidden, to be seen maybe? Or to live without being seen in this world at all? So much to wrestle with. Discuss @sfxpennyd.
LADY PARTS
Prompted by my response to Personal
Shopper, a friend insisted I watch Robert Altman’s 1977 film 3 Women , which from the box art looks nothing like horror but in reality was one the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a long time. Sissy Spacek plays childlike Pinky, a new employee at a health spa, who becomes obsessed with deluded but charismatic Millie (Shelley Duvall), eventually moving in with her and frequenting a bar owned by enigmatic artist Willie (Janice Rule). Sometimes compared to Bergman’s Persona, it’s a tense and distressing trip of morphing identities and female frailty and strength which does at least have a vaguely positive conclusion.
OZ THE GREAT AND HORRIBLE
Ding dong the witch is dead! Or is she? The land of Oz is to become the setting for a new horror film (franchise?) from New Line. It’s based on a pitch by someone called Mike Van Waes and right now we nothing more about it. Let speculation commence! Wicked the musical exists and is much loved so I don’t think anyone wants to see poor old green-gills vilified again. Return To Oz was already the stuff of nightmares with the Wheelers and headswapping Mombi. And the China girl in Oz The Great And Powerful made our heart hurt. So how much more horrible can it get? How about a post-apocalyptic Oz, where one-eyed mercenary Dorothy returns to the emerald city on the bidding of “The Tin Man”, a highly developed assassination-bot who is conflicted because he secretly has the remnants of a heart. He needs Dot to take out the Lion, who’s become a vicious beast, crazed after years of enslavement, forced to compete in gladiatorial fights with faceless Munchkins for the pleasure of the despotic wizard and the baying citizens after Glinda has died of witch flu. Writes itself.