Penny Dreadful
Wicked witches, vulnerable old ladies and Bigfeet. But enough about SFX, what about the horror?
SOMEONE OLD, SOMETHING NEW
This year’s buzzy Sundance debut was a movie called Relic from Australian director Natalie Erika James. Likened to Hereditary and The Babadook, with an ending that really goes all out, it’s a slow-burn family story about a matriarch suffering from dementia who goes missing and when she returns might have brought something back with her… Emily Mortimer, Bella Heathcote and Robyn Nevin star as the three generations of women confronting a malevolent presence in a decrepit old house. Early reviews talk about Relic’s emotional heft as well as its deft scares. It’s due for a physical/digital release over here in October, the same month Saint Maud is now scheduled for theatrical release. If Relic lives up to the hype they could go head to head for the title of 2020’s horror of the year – both films from female first-time directors. When has that ever happened before?
SKIN OF EVIL
A download release I’ve caught up with recently: cheeky low-budget folk horror The
Wretched, which in the States (because of Covid-19) managed to top the box office in its first week of release. It comes from the Pierce brothers, who made 2011’s betterthan-expected zombie comedy Deadheads. The Wretched sees a mysterious forest witch inhabit the skin of those it possesses and make family members forget their kids so that it can feast on them. Atmospheric, with some good use of effects, it’s a slick and likeable horror with John-Paul Howard and Piper Curda ably leading the way as the teen protagonists. Incidentally, The Pierce brothers are the sons of Bart Pierce, who worked on the effects for Sam Raimi’s original 1981 version of The Evil Dead (fun fact: I met him at a party once and he was a really funny guy with some great stories to tell); no wonder, then, that they followed in dad’s footsteps for this woods-based chiller with some good jumpy moments.
LAKE WOEBEGONE DAYS
Binged Marianne and looking for more foreign horror series? The latest one is Italian show
Curon, now on Netflix. It sees a mother and her son-anddaughter twins returning to the town where mum grew up, 17 years after her mother’s suicide, at which time she was banished by her father. When the mother disappears the teenage children must unravel the mystery of the lake, the bell tower and their family history. Less head-poundingly complex than Dark, and less nonchalantly French than The Returned, it blends a supernatural puzzle with gore, doppelgängers and teenage angst.
BIG SHOES TO FILL
Legendary Pictures – the company behind Godzilla and Skull Island – has announced that it’ll be turning Max Brooks’s excellent new Bigfoot novel Devolution into a movie. The story sees the eco-community of Greenloop isolated after a volcanic eruption. That also drives out a family of Bigfoot, who then go head to head with the residents. It’s a survivalist tale and an eco-horror, and also very scary and very realistic. In other Sasquatch news, last year’s The Man Who Killed Hitler… And Then The Bigfoot is now available on Netflix. While delivering on the title, it still manages to be a wistful musing on what it means to have a life well lived.