The Silver Scream

Like most nerds, I’m a massive movie fan, undoubtedly spending too much of my precious time slobbing out on the sofa in front of the latest films. My particular penchant, as regular followers will know, is horror movies (and TV series) – preferably, although not limited to, atmospheric ghost stories rather than crazy slasher flicks. I realised the other day that I’ve started to binge on horror movies of late, old and new, and because I’m a huge fan of the genre I’ve decided to start publishing short reviews on the blog.

Reviews are really subjective, and I certainly won’t be doing star ratings, but hopefully you’ll find my musings useful, especially if you like the same sorts of movies as me. For a quick primer on what I consider to be great horror, check out a previousblog post on the subject here. One of the things I find interesting about the horror genre is that it usually gets a lower critical rating overall when compared to other genres – on IMDB for example, the best horror struggles to reach a 7.0 rating, while the poorest superhero movie will easily surpass that. This leads to specialist horror movie reviewers giving their genre a bit of an easy ride, whereas actually in some cases horror really needs to up its game and steer away from formulaic tropes in order to be, well, scarier!

To get up-to-date on my watch list, I’m going to kick off with three mini-reviews.

The Void

In a nutshell, this much-hyped movie is a mash-up of Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing, which are about the finest influences a pseudo-80s horror flick could have. Here we have a bunch of misfits trapped in a hospital, with knife-wielding cultists outside, and something horrendous inside. The movie has a great look and feel, from the design of the cultist robes (pictured) to the Lovecraftian horrors we encounter in the basement of the hospital. The body horror moments are well handled, the practical effects impressive, and the performances are generally solid.

Where The Void falls down is that it wears its influences too readily on its sleeve. There is the germ of a really cool story here, about dark magic helping humans to the next stage of evolution. But it gets a little lost in the blood and gore, which starts very early and doesn’t really let up. Too much of the emotional connection between protagonist Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) and his nurse ex-girlfriend Allison (Kathleen Munroe) seems forced and contrived, lacking the time required to grow our attachment for these characters organically.

This movie wants really badly to be John Carpenter’s The Thing, but lacks the character studies, nuance and sense of paranoia it needs to pull that feat off. It’s a worthy effort, and well worth a look, but I doubt it’ll stand the test of time half as well as its inspiration.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

I was inspired to check this one out on the recommendation of horror maestro Adam Nevill, which is certainly enough for me. The last time I checked out a movie he recommended it was the Taking of Deborah Logan, which I really enjoyed. But I digress.

‘Autopsy’ revolves around a mysterious body – a ‘Jane Doe’ – that is brought to a coroner (the excellent Brian Cox) and his assistant son (the slightly less excellent Emile Hirsch) to identify. The setup is really effective – it’s a remote location, after hours, the father is a stickler for procedure, the son just wants to go catch a movie with his girlfriend but agrees to stay. The body is a real enigma, showing signs of internal trauma and burning simply not possible for its flawless external condition, and having a suppleness that a long-dead corpse really shouldn’t have.

When the really weird stuff starts happening, we’re embroiled in a tense, panicky battle with dark forces, witchcraft and the walking dead. Unfortunately, that’s when the movie also starts getting a bit silly. There’s no real rhyme or reason to Jane Doe’s vendetta against the two coroners, and no real explanation of the extent (or limitations) of her powers. So what follows is really a collection of excellent horror set-pieces that don’t quite gel. There are a few annoying plot holes and inconsistencies, including one obvious error that had me shouting at the screen, but for all its faults Autopsy remains one of the best horror movies of the year. Well worth a watch.

Jordskott (TV series)

Part Scandi-noir crime, part folkloric horror, part environmental think-piece, Jordskott is a really unusual piece of television, and one of the weirdest and most absorbing things I’ve watched in a long time.

Detective Inspector Eva Thörnblad (Moa Gammel) returns to Silver Height seven years after her daughter Josefine disappeared by a lake in the woods. The body was never found and the girl was believed to have drowned. Now a boy has vanished without a trace and Thörnblad wants to find out if there is a link to her daughter's disappearance. That in itself might be intriguing, but when you throw in a corporate conspiracy spanning decades, the monsters who live in the woods (some in human form), and a sinister hitman with a vendetta against said monsters, you have a recipe for a wild ride.

The writing and acting in Jordskott is uniformly excellent, although quite often character points will be dragged out for far too long for little reason other than that the narrative requires it. The characters are well-rounded – even minor characters get a chance to shine, and all have believable backstories. There does come a point where the show could very easily tip into superhero territory, but it just about manages to tread that particular tightropes without becoming ridiculous. And the ending… well, as a crime drama, it wraps up nicely, but the deeper mystery about the titular Jordskott is left open. Lucky they’ve announced season 2 already…

That’s all for now. Let me know if you like this sort of content, and if so I’ll try to make it a little more frequent. In the meantime, don’t have nightmares…