The best Horror films on Netflix Instant

I would love it and recommend that you visit your local independent video store and rent a physical dvd from a real person….wait don’t walk away! I promise to stop guilt tripping you and instead point you at ten of my favorite Horror movies on Netflix instant that maybe you haven’t seen. Sure they have The Exorcist and Scream, but I would assume you’ve seen those.
It is the time of year everyone wants spooky movies and there are some real turds out there, and if thats what you like you are in luck. But if you want to seek out some gems, start here. Everything here is either great, weird or scary (some are a combination of all three). I’ve reviewed almost all of these, so feel free to click the links below the titles for more of my valuable opinions.

1. Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
Review Here

2. Deep Red (1975)
Review Here

3. House of the Devil (2009)
Review Here

4. House on Haunted Hill (1959)

5. Night Watch (2004)
Review Here

6. Dunwich Horror (1970)

Review Here

7. Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Review Here

8. Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Review Here

9. Them (2006)
Review Here

10. Let Me In (2010)
I’ve never reviewed this here, but for an American remake of a popular European vampire film it has no business being as good as it is.

Wolf Creek (2005)

A fairly standard slasher film, this one set in the Australian outback. Three early-20somethings (Liz, Kristie and Ben) are on a road trip and drive hours and hours into the middle of fucking nowhere to see the worlds largest crater and when they get back to the car it wont start.

They sit in the car as the sun goes down wondering what to do, and a truck approaches. A man (whatever the Australian version of a hick would be) wants to help them out, it can’t be fixed quickly and offers to tow them back to his garage where he can fix em up and get them back on the road.

Hours of being towed even further into nowhere and they arrive at his garage next to an old abandoned mine. The young folks and the Aussie sit around a fire and have awkward conversations for a bit while he drugs them, starts work on their car, and they all doze off.

When Liz wakes up she is ziptied up in a locked room and can hear Kristie screaming, their car has been stripped of all its vital parts. She then needs to quickly figure out how she is going to rescue Kristie and escape. Ben is nowhere to be found.

Now, this is really gruesome stuff. The kills and torture sequences are really unpleasant, and I’m no fan of the “torture film” as a genre. Thematically I would this is a bit of a combination of Deliverance and High Tension. I’m a seasoned gorehound and it made me squirm a bit. The bad guy Mick Taylor is a great villain. Greasy hair, loads of guns with an absolutely CLASSIC cliché mass-murderer lair with newspaper clippings and the belongings of his long gone victims.

I absolutely love a clichéd serial killer lair. When a character looks at all the pictures collaged together and think “OH MY GOD, THIS DUDE IS INSANE!” I’m not kidding, I giggle every time. Except in the Friday the 13th reboot, that was fucking stupid.

I would say this is a good example of not reinventing the wheel, but building a decent tire.

House of the Devil (2009)

Samantha is a young college student in 1983 who desperately needs to move out of the dorms and away from her over sexed slob of a roommate, and as luck would have it she finds the perfect house. The problem is she doesn’t have the money for the down payment, but with a few days to scrounge it up she doesn’t tell the landlord that and takes a babysitting gig way out in the county for some people who seem a little creepy. She will be done “shortly after midnight”, both equally desperate: they for a babysitter and she for the cash. Perfect, right?

Did I mention that it’s happening on a Lunar eclipse, or that the family she is babysitting for is a lot more than a little creepy?

Upon arrival she is informed by her contact Mr. Ullman (Tom Noonan who was Frankenstein in Monster Squad/Tooth Fairy in Manhunter) that she will actually be watching over his Mother In-Law and is willing to pay her quite a bit more for her inconvenience. His wife is played by Mary Wonorov (who performs and looks fantastic at 67) who makes some very menacing comments on how attractive Samantha must be to the boys around campus. Assuring her that the Mother will be no trouble and “she probably wont even see her” and telling her multiple times to order a pizza, they exit.

In grand 80′s fashion, while left alone she dances around the house while wearing a bulky walkman and begins snooping around. When she finds a pictures of a very different family living in the house, things quickly get quite dark. It becomes clear that we are dealing with Satanist who need her from some sort of infernal Lunar Ritual.

This film was really fun, and I was surprised it actually worked: A horror film set in the 80′s filmed in an authentic 80′s style (16mm film stock, minimal cuts, deliberate pacing), but without being gimmicky. Recommended. Also, it worth informing younger folks and forgetful adults: In the 1980s Motherfuckers actually believed that Satanists were everywhere and killing without hesitation. Not kidding, “Satanic Panic” was a real thing.

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

The opening scene of Jacob’s Ladder is set in Vietnam, where a group of men too old to pass for the 19 yr olds they are playing are seen passing around a joint and making fun of each other dicks. Included in this scene are Ving Rhames, Eric La Salle, Pruitt Vince (Deadwood, JFK, Wild at Heart) among other familiar faces. Quickly guns begin going off and the men start having convulsions and seizures. Blood and chaos.

We are then dropped into the present day (1990) nightmare world of Jacob Singer, a divorced Vietnam War veteran/Postman with horrific (but vague) flashbacks of his near death experience in the War and visions of demons in the present. If that’s not enough He also is haunted by the failure of his first marriage and the accidental death of his son Macaulay Culkin.

Jacob’s reality begins to unravel and when he tries to seek out his old doctor, and no one seems to know anything about him until Jacob finally is informed that he died in a mysterious car explosion. Which, really has there ever been an actually mysterious car explosion ever in history? He is shortly thereafter contacted by Pruitt Vince from the opening who wants to talk about that fateful day, he also informs Jacob that sees demons and is sure he is going to Hell. Hey guess what? Right after they say goodbye his car explodes!

At the funeral all of the other survivors of the opening sequence are present (now looking the appropriate ages) and they begin comparing notes and decide that the Government definitely is keeping secrets about what happened to them. So they get George Costanza on the case, but that is short-lived as the Government has no record of any of them ever serving in the War, and Jacob’s old Veteran buddies suddenly get cold feet. Meanwhile his hallucinations get worse (way worse in a real Hellraiser kinda way), his girlfriend gets mean and his Gaurdian Angle/Physical Therapist Danny Aielo is nowhere to be found.

The performances are solid all around the and direction is pretty solid too, provided here by Adrian Lyne. This is easily Lynes best film, it is also a pretty odd duck sitting next to Fatal Attraction, the terrible version of Lolita and 9 1/2 Weeks.

The mystery government-conspiracy angle working with the pitchblack nightmarescape works really well. The bouncing back and forth gets a little tedious, occasionally at the cost of some of the scares, but the film doesn’t overstay its welcome. It is an unpleasant film, but recommended. I found it as creepy now as I did back in 1990.

Changing the rules, and a top ten of 2006-2010

Well, I started this blog four years ago this month. Over on the myspace it was, the idea being that I would engage myself with the films I was watching and not simply glaze over as the glowing screen flickered away. I had recently quit working in video stores and movie theaters (after a solid decade of doing so) and noticed: no one was asking my opinion on films anymore.
Also, I wanted enhance my critical analysis of film, figure out what worked for me (and didn’t) and why.

That and to improve my writing.

Over the course of almost 400 reviews: I feel like I’ve done that and its time to move on.
From here on, I’ll post only when I feel like it. No more assignments for now.
I will be posting photos of my day to day life over at www.brahbrahg.wordpress.com if you are interested and as I mentioned: still post here from time to time.

And because you’re dying to know: my ten favorite movies I saw in the last four years.

Das Weisse Band (2009)   http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/das-weisse-band-eine-deutsche-kindergeschichte-2009/

There Will Be Blood (2007)   http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/there-will-be-blood-2007/

The Tenant (1976)  http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/the-tenant-1976/

Holy Mountain (1973)  http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/the-holy-mountain-1973/

The Innocents (1961)  http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/the-innocents-1961/

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)  http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/valerie-and-her-week-of-wonders-1970/

Aguirre The Wrath of God (1972)  http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2007/11/24/aguirre-der-zorn-gottes-1972/

Zodiac (7007)  http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/zodiac-2007/

Children Of Men (2006) http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/children-of-men-2006/

The Road (2009)  http://merchbot2000.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/the-road-2009/

Hard to carve it down to ten, A great many could’ve been honorable mentions.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

And Then There Were None (1945)

A few weeks ago I wanted to see a very specific kind of movie, a movie where a group of people are in a house together and begin to die… ONE BY ONE.

If you type “Whodunit” into imdb and sort by rating this comes up pretty high up the list and for good reason. It is exactly what I wanted! Eight people are invited to a  secluded island where there are two servants waiting for them at a mansion. They are addressed via gramophone that they are all responsible for the death of someone and that they will all die before the boat (that brought them there) returns for them in three days time.

And they do die. One by one. It is quite bleak even by todays standards.

Leave it to Agatha Christie to really swing for the fences when it comes to classic mystery storylines. This is about as classic as it comes,  it has been ripped off, readapted and rehashed (by many including Mario Bava)…  and for good reason. The story is tight as a drum and super entertaining today and while there are moments of humor and light-it remains a fairly grim tale.

In the public domain, so a quick googling will get to somewhere you can watch this fantastic film right now.  http://www.archive.org/details/AndThenThereWereNone

I also watched Bavas version “Five Dolls For an August Moon” it is a lesser work, but a bonkers one with a fantastic soundtrack..

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Joe Dante occupies a strange space in Hollywood. He has directed some surefire Hits. Family Hits, the biggest kind there are. The kind that people revisit over and over again, but he also is massively dorky and subversive. Filling his movies full of cultural references at a speed that only the very dorky and literate will catch.

This has often been his downfall (but his flops are often his best shit, see Matinee if you haven’t yet).  This was certainly the case for this one.

Gremlins 2 is a sort of parody of the first film  (which didn’t really take itself too seriously to begin with), mostly it fucks with how popular it got. The phenomenon of Gremlins. We catch up with the two main characters of the first one  Billy and Kate (played by Zack Galligan and Phoebe Cates) who both now live in NYC in the same super futuristic building (he an illustrator and she a tour guide), and when Gizmo comes a knocking the inevitable shit hits the fan. It is quickly that he gets covered in water and then everyone gets fed after midnight and you get the idea.

Shots are made at  Gremlins pt 1, Die Hard, Rambo, Dr. Quatermass, Phantom of the Opera, Marathon Man, Loony Toons, Christopher Lee sends up his whole career playing a Mad Scientist. It is way over the top.

There are some terrible and regrettable moments as well. Gedde Watanabe pulls another “Long Duck Dong” in this as an Asian Tourist covered in cameras. However the rest of the cast is a real who’s who of Joe Dante regulars: Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph, Belinda Balaski, Paul Bartel, Rick Ducommun, among other familiar faces.

But overall, this movie just doesn’t give a fuck. It wants to fuck with its own image and its mainstream access and succeeds. Fingers crossed the rumors of a part 3 are TRUE.

Trivia bonus! Written by Charles S. Haas who scripted the classic “Over the Edge”!

Magnolia (1999)

In the wake of watching There Will Be Blood for a second time and just being so completely blown away by it, I wanted to revisit this one. I watched, or tried to watch Magnolia when it came out on dvd in 2000 or 2001 and turned it off about two-thirds of the way through. I thought it was silly film, emotionally manipulative and not a deep as it thought it was. I really didn’t understand the fuss, especially as it followed the brilliant (almost flawless) Boogie Nights.

Watching it ten years later I still see all the things I didn’t like the first time around, but could get past them and enjoy the film. Ignore the missed marks and see the triumphs:the cinematography and editing are about as sharp as anything the 90′s ever produced and  you get to see Tom Cruise actually acting (and he is good).

The film follows a group of people in Los Angeles whose lives intersect in various ways, peripherally or directly. A little bit like Altmans Short Cuts. The primary storyline that worked for me is the Patriarch of a splintered family (Jason Robards) is dying in bed and his nurse (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) tries to track down is estranged son (Tom Cruise who plays a misogynist self help guru falsifying his past) to get him to visit him before he slips away.Their story and revelations of their past is touching far beyond anything else in the film. These three performances along with Julianne Moore (Robards drugged and damaged wife) are the four best and far and away the centerpiece of the film.

There are about five other storylines, any of which couldve been their own movie and perhaps shouldve been. I found myself wanting each one to get it own attention and the connection between them to be sometimes unnecessary. Like it wouldve been a great miniseries. The usual PT Anderson crew are here and all turn in fantastic performances (John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, Luis Guzman, Phillip Baker Hall, and a great cameo from one of my favorite character actors: Henry Gibson).

Paul Thomas Anderson has been better, but if this is my least favorite moment of his: He is still one of the best directors in the world right now. Kudos.

Cop Out (2010)

It seems that the way that dark indie film makers recently reinvented the Western genre, now Hollywood is flipping the Buddy-cop genre to grind out some new product. “The Other Guys” with Will Farrell looks promising, as did this: Cop Out. Grizzled White Cop (Bruce Willis) and wacky Black Cop (Tracey Morgan) have their badges and guns revoked due to some over the top stunts that the Chief just CAN NOT STAND FOR! And there is some bullshit about trying to hock a baseball card to pay for White Cops daughters dream wedding, but it gets stolen by a baseball fan drug lord.

Not very good, mediocre. It is directed but not written by Kevin Smith. Which meant that I actually sat through a whole Kevin Smith movie without saying “What the fuck?! No ONE TALKS LIKE THIS…and for a REASON!” I absolutely hate his dialog. And while I’ve enjoyed a few of his movies, I’ve never really understood the hoopla. Props for his “uber-nerd infiltrates Hollywood” status, though.

It never really seems to take off plot-wise and the ending is a massive dud. But the cameos are good: Rashida Jones, Kevin Pollack, Guillermo Diaz, Adam Brody,  and Jason Lee among others. Others including Sean William Scott (Stiffler) whose humor and style I dislike greatly turns his most tolerable performance since Old School cameo.

Maybe like 2 1/2 stars? I would recommend this to those staying home sick.