Scary new horror movies to watch in the dark
suitable if you like being spooked!
*The original version of this post was published on Patreon on June 8, 2022. Thanks to Adrian Rennix for editing! You can check out Adrian's terrific (and free) newsletter about immigration policy here.
I haven’t been reading much lately. I don’t really know why. If I look at my life I can find some obvious culprits—work, exhaustion, the State of Everything, my new dog who likes to cuddle on my lap and makes reading difficult, my old cats who like to cuddle on my face and also make reading difficult. If I do get any spare time and energy for entertainment, I usually just set up my laptop, flip on a horror movie, and let the animals snuggle how they may.
Radar loves horror movies. Okay he doesn’t *really*, because he is a dog, and doesn’t know what they are. But when the screen is dark he can see himself in the glass, and I think he thinks he sees into another world, where there exists someone like himself, but a little bit different. That may be the scariest horror movie premise, or arguably every horror movie premise—but Radar’s personality is composed of pure sunlight, and I don’t think he’s capable of perceiving evil. Anyway, he and I have been watching a lot of horror movies.
Many of these movies are bad—specifically, a lot of them are disturbing and atmospheric for the first two acts, but then they hit the third act twist and completely implode. The reason for this is actually explained by my grand unified theory of plot, which holds that stories are built around mystery rather than conflict. Most horror movies develop a solid sense of mystery for an hour or so, based on lots of Strange Happenings and Creepy Images. And then, usually around the third act or so, a terrible secret is revealed!!! but that secret had better be larger, more mysterious, and more compelling than its manifestations have been, or else it flattens them. A bad horror movie really ends here, at the hour mark, and yet we’re usually faced with another forty-five minutes or so of the protagonist trying to kill or exorcize the Bad Entity, which is rarely interesting–because again, mere conflict is not actually what makes a story interesting.
So instead of a bad horror movie, here are some good ones. Specifically, here are three that live up to the promise of their mystery, that extend and continue it all the way through the film, and sometimes even after it. They’re all also about the lives of women—this may be due to selection bias on my part, but also many horror movies are about the lives of women (probably because our lives are scary).
Two quick caveats:
All three movies are quite frightening and gross! They are definitely NSFR (Not Safe for Rennix). Our beloved Rennix does not like blood and guts (or spiders).
Horror movies are hard to describe without giving away their central mystery, so rather than explain the plots (“here is the setting and the characters, and then some Odd Things begin to happen, the reasons for which will SHOCK YOU”) I am just going to give you a couple atmospheric words.
The Relic (2020)
Australia! Three generations: mother, adult daughter, grandmother. Aging, dementia, love, frustration, suppressed rage. A house (of course it’s set in a fucking house). Body horror, claustrophobia. The house is a body. The hallways are veins. You will think about the ending until you die.
The Wind (2018)
Loneliness! Manifest destiny, discovery, abandonment, emptiness, the 19th century. Wind, lots of wind, and silence. Prairie demons, shadows, long fingers in the dark. The Horror of Heterosexuality. Guns, secret books, hidden lust, hidden graves. Is he a demon? Are you?
You Won’t Be Alone (2022)
Witches!!!!!! Piles of guts! Witches stealing bodies and lives, witches changing gender at will. Witches just doin it for themselves. Macedonian peasant outfits (yes), Macedonian peasant misogyny (no). Did I mention guts? Did I mention this excellent review by Eileen G’Sell (you can read it either before or after you watch the movie, have I mentioned that you should watch this movie?)