10. “The Devil’s Candy”
For Sean Byrne‘s sophomore feature he traded the Australian suburbs for the equally wild setting of small town Texas and instead of everyday psychological unrest he opted for out-and-out demonic possession. Ethan Embry plays a struggling painter who, along with his wife (Shiri Appleby) and young child, moves into a house with a tortured past (there has been, of course, a horrifying murder). Eventually Embry starts to come under its demonic spell, while having to battle the murderer that lived there before (an especially freaky Pruitt Taylor Vince). While that might seem fairly paint-by-numbers, what makes “The Devil’s Candy” so much fun is its reliance on heavy metal music as both a plot device (Embry plays a former rocker and an iconic guitar serves as a murder weapon) and narrative engine (the soundtrack features ear-shattering contributions from Sun O)))). This is a movie that the concerned mothers of 1980’s America, combining their irrational fear of heavy metal and occultism, would have loved to hate, with its fountains of blood and screeching soundtrack. Byrne combines all of this artfully, showing that the promise of “The Loved Ones” was not misplaced. He’s the real, gore-drenched deal.
9. “The Lure”
Almost indescribably odd, this Polish film is nevertheless one of the most delightful horror confections in recent memory. Agnieszka Smoczynska’s film occasionally feels like the spiritual successor to Brian De Palma‘s beloved cult sensation “Phantom of the Paradise.” Both films mash genres together with gleeful abandon and take their cues from old Hollywood musicals and both seem destined, upon initial release, for immortality on the midnight movie circuit. In “The Lure,” a pair of mermaids (named Golden and Silver) come under the spell of a local rock band and begins performing (and stripping) in a seedy Polish club. From there begins a wacky tale of murder, music and sexual identity, all lit by the garish neon glow of the 1980’s setting. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s original “The Little Mermaid,” music videos and god knows what else, and given contemporary context with Smoczynska’s declaration that the mermaids’ story could double for an immigrant tale (also the sexual politics are very now), “The Lure” is unlike anything in cinema. While much of it works under a cloud of glittery abstraction, with the metaphoric meeting the autobiographical at every turn, the movie has also some very real thrills that helps to ground the narrative. Yes, it’s weird as hell, but it’s also tragic, moving, and hypnotic.
8. “The Untamed”
Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante winning the Cannes Best Director prize for “Heli” is an understandable achievement: the film was a raw and excoiating portrait of cartel culture and violence in his homeland. But Escalante picking up the Best Director gong in Venice for “The Untamed” is a much weirder choice, because “The Untamed” is a much, much weirder film. A wildly ambitious, never-wholly-satisfying-but-maybe-that’s-the-point film that can be probably classified as horror only because Lord knows where else to put it, it’s the freaky, graphically kinky story of a octopus-like alien that lives in a barn and grants extreme orgasmic pleasure — but not to everyone. Sitting slighty at odds, though provocatively so, alongside this sexy sci-fi angle, is the social realism for which Escalante is better known, with mostly newcomer actors playing the young family nearby who are brought into the creature’s orbit. There are swipes at the machismo of Latin American culture (the closeted homosexuality of one of the male characters is a plot point) but it’s also a film unusually interested in female sexual expression and exploration. And while it remains firmly in an inexplicable and uncanny register and never wholly resolves into anythng as blunt as a manifesto, the questions it raises about our relationship to the dark, repressed side of our sexual psyches are infinitely interesting and complicated. It may have a literal monster (brilliantly rendered in some grotesque but also beautiful CG) but it’s about the horrors inside us all, the ones that gain all their dark power from how much we deny them.
7. “It Comes At Night”
Trey Edwards Shults’ striking, powerful debut feature “Krisha” wasn’t a horror film as such, but you could definitely see that the director would have some capacity for the genre, such was the stomach-lurch feeling it induced. But we weren’t prepared for his sophomore picture, a bleak, apocalyptic movie that’s a horror picture in the same way that, say, Haneke’s “Time Of The Wolf” or “The Road” are horror pictures. Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo and excellent newcomer Kelvin Harrison Jr play a family living out in the woods after an apocalyptic outbreak who take in another family (Christopher Abbott and Riley Keough), initially forming a bond that breaks down into mistrust and violence with tragic consequences. In the age of “The Walking Dead” et al, some might argue that we don’t need many more stories like this, but Shults’ feel for family, the textured world he creates (that never feels one-note bleak), his command of tone and the fine performances all make the film feel necessary rather than redundant. And as a horror movie, it’s our favorite kind: one that eschews jump scares and gore for an all-encompassing feeling of dread.
6. “Gerald’s Game”
Previously thought of as unfilmable, Stephen King‘s darkly comic thriller about a woman who finds herself handcuffed to a bed after a kinky sex game with her husband goes horribly wrong, wound up being one of the year’s very best films (horror or otherwise). Writer-director Mike Flanagan, coming off a hot streak that included last year’s nifty home invasion thriller “Hush,” wisely condenses King’s novel while maintaining all of the elements that made it such a sick kick to begin with. Carla Gugino plays Jessie, the woman who finds up shackled to the bed, and it’s one of the greatest tour de force performances of 2017 – not only is she contending with the memory of her manipulative ex-husband (a ghoulish Bruce Greenwood) but, desperate and alone, she is also faced with secrets from her past. By the time the instantly infamous “de-gloving” sequence happens, you’ve already been on a harrowing emotional journey that one of the greatest gross-outs in recent memory seems par for the course. In a year when victimized women have stood up and fought back, it’s perfect to see one do the same in remarkably condensed and heightened scenario. “It” might have gotten all of the box office glory this year, but it’s this more nuanced King adaptation that was, far and away, the greater accomplishment.
