This year has been widely considered a bumper year for scary movies worldwide. Tracking the numbers, The New York Times labelled 2017 “the biggest box office year ever for horror”, led by the runaway successes of It and Get Out. Critics also came out in support of a range of films that gave us the heebie-jeebies, lavishing many with gushing reviews.
But, cutting through the hyperbole, did 2017’s most critically acclaimed scary movies live up to their exalted reputations? Many were over-praised and underwhelming, while for others the hype was justified. I put ten of the year’s best-reviewed scary movies to the test, finding a handful from each camp: five titles that live up to the hype and five that do not.
A Ghost Story
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 90%
Does it live up to the hype? Yes
The premise of writer/director David Lowery’s oddly affecting cosmic journey, which bursts through time and space without a calendar or an atlas, suggests a self-indulgent experiment committed with the pretense of exploring the ‘human condition’. A man (Casey Affleck) dies in an automobile accident but comes back as a bed sheet-clad ghost, observing his former lover and purposelessly wandering the streets.
It is somewhat of a surprise that this gimmicky sounding premise evolved into a hypnotic existential curio, contemplating the nature and limitations of memory and the simple but profound knowledge that life continues after death. In A Ghost Story, time runs forwards and backwards and the universe is thrillingly full of possibilities. It is also a universe limited, at least in terms of comprehension, by our own constructs and symbols – thus the cliché get-up worn by the ghost.
Raw
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 90%
Does it live up to the hype? No
It was a guilty year for film-loving carnivores, with the great Korean director Bong Joon-ho serving up a plate of anti-meat propaganda in Okja, and French writer/director Julia Ducournau comparing meat eaters to cannibals in Raw. Desperate to fit in at veterinary school, vegetarian Justine (Garance Marillier) eats rabbit during an initiation routine and discovers this is a slippery slope, soon munching on human fingers.
Ducournau’s cameras keep their distance, unwilling to throw viewers into the protagonist’s turbulent state of mind – unlike Brian DePalma’s classic 1976 coming-of-age horror Carrie, which was obviously an inspiration. Filmmakers sometimes bung on a ‘point’ to give an empty film the illusion of depth; here it is the mundane message that human beings (like any other animals) are essentially raw slabs of meat.
The Devil’s Candy
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 90%
Does it live up to the hype? Yes
Australian writer/director Sean Byrne’s follow-up to his torture-porn-on-prom-night 2012 debut, The Loved Ones, is another punch-packing horror-thriller with a sardonic kick to it, satirizing the Christian fear that satan is the ultimate author of dark art.
In The Devil’s Candy, painter and heavy metal enthusiast (Ethan Embry) creates the best work of his life while plagued by demonic visions. In a tight and pressure-packed 80 minute running time, Byrne leaps hell-for-leather through a grab bag of genres, including haunted house, psychological thriller, kidnap drama, and finally, into something more hysterical and less conventional: a kind of apocalyptic, flame-grilled jam session.
Personal Shopper
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 80%
Does it live up to the hype? No
There is a lofty, steely soullessness in French director Olivier Assay’s story about a medium and ‘personal shopper’ (a person who buys things for rich people). The film’s scaled-back colour scheme and impersonal cinematography brings a lusterless, uniform aesthetic, making even very different locations (i.e. a train station and a fancy clothes shop) feel like the same place.
Working in Paris, protagonist Maureen (Kristen Stewart) tries to make contact with her recently deceased twin brother, while puzzling over a mysterious series of phone messages. The former results in the protagonist having conversations with a house, and the latter – like many things in Assay’s undisciplined film – in little of consequence or tangibility. Personal Shopper’s greatest virtue by far is a wretched Kristen Stewart, whose starved sad-eyed beauty and somnolent performance quietly affects.
Get Out
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 99%
Does it live up to the hype? Yes
Many films depict white people nervously contemplating black ghettos; far fewer show black people dealing with upper class white neighbourhoods. Racism in such communities – like the posh Obama-voting homestead Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) visits with his girlfriend in Get Out –is ingrained in power and affluence, says the writer/director Jordan Peele.
Crafting a horror-comedy and social satire for the ages, Peele augments insidious racism and backhanded generosity of the white elite with a depiction of the fear people of colour experience by living in their world. If the racism commentary is hammer-on-the-head in its subtlety, the film can be appreciated on other levels, some universal – including as a gallows humour meditation on meeting the parents.
It Comes at Night
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 88%
Does it live up to the hype? No
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults’ slow-moving mood piece plays like a classier, loftier version of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village – but without the novelty surprise ending, or even any ending at all. Joel Edgerton is the patriarch of a panicked family holed up in a fortified house in the mountains, who dine on plates of peas and carrots and exchange funeral glances
There has been an apocalypse of some sort, but Shults is cagey with the details. It Comes At Night is one of those Awfully Important Films where even basic questions remain unanswered, in service of pseudo intellectual ambiguity. It is also yet another fend-for-yourself, ruined-future thriller where the Real Evil Comes From Inside The House.
Hounds of Love
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 89%
Does it live up to the hype? Yes
Debut Perth-born writer/director Ben Young’s intoxicating horror-thriller builds a scuzzy, blood-soaked lounge room vibe (Dogs in Space meets Snowtown meets Natural Born Killers) with a foul psychological energy that clings like a rash. A couple of married psychopaths (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) abduct a teenage girl (Ashleigh Cummings) in a story about subjugation of women and male-inflicted abuse.
Young’s direction oozes style and his cast are immaculate. An against-type Stephen Curry augments his performance as the goofy Dale Kerrigan in The Castle with a rather…different vision of a working class simpleton.
It
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 85%
Does it live up to the hype? No
The tone of director Andy Muschietti’s grotesquely superficial adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a murderous clown is rock-heavy, smothering prosaic elements that were understated in the 1990 TV mini-series: such as a paper boat floating down the street and a bright yellow children’s raincoat.
Muschietti generates bed-wetting atmospheric intensity, but to what end? The director removes the core message of the book and the previous adaptation – that the fears we fail to conquer as children return to haunt us in adulthood – which makes his gore fest hollow and gratuitous.
Better Watch Out
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 88%
Does it live up to the hype? Yes
The primary antagonist in director Chris Peckover’s twisty, pressure-packed, home-invasion-with-a-twist thriller reminded me of Brandon (John Dall) from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 classic Rope: a classy but despicable creature who believes he is morally entitled to commit murder.
The true colours of this razor sharp, largely single setting film about bored youth and white privilege are revealed after a fakeout opening act. The familiar setup of a pair of home alone teenagers being terrorised evolves into something quite different. Working within a heavily codified genre structure, Peckover finds ways to keep his film lively and interesting.
The Beguiled
Rotten Tomatoes approval rating: 78%
Does it live up to the hype? No
The point of Sofia Coppola’s Southern Gothic thriller could not be clearer: the hot-blooded hetro man is endlessly destructive with his libidinous instincts, stealing the bodies and minds of beautiful women without compunction. A wounded Union soldier (Colin Farrell) during the Civil War stumbles upon a girl’s boarding school, where Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning wait to play scorned lovers.
The pace is slow and plodding and the tone drab, despite Philippe Le Sourd’s willowy cinematography. The film is beautiful in a phoned-in kind of way; Le Sourd and Coppola would have had to work hard not to make The Beguiled look poetic, given the lush woody settings, grand candle-lit house and period costumes. The central location is memorably captured, but Coppola’s gilded storyline is full of empty posturing.
