The Gore Connoisseurs

The set-up for this low-key 2014 horror flick may seem like a Sinister rip-off, but stick with it and chills will ensue. The opening of The Canal leans into haunted house clichés hard. Mark (Rupert Evans) and his pregnant wife Claire (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) are introduced in the midst of a house viewing . Mark straight up sees a ghost, but still goes ahead with the purchase. Some may argue he deserves what's coming for him. Yet these are patient ghoulies. We flashforward five years to find Mark has discovered through his job as a film archivist that - surprise, surprise - the house boasts a history of gruesome murders. More pressingly, it looks like Claire might be having an affair with a Hot Ponytail Dude. The parallels to Sinister are clear. Mark - like Ethan Hawke's dickish true crime writer - has a job which makes him naturally inclined to deep dive into his new home's dark past. There's a lot of business with old timey film projectors and creepy ar...

The Transfiguration, which recently dropped on Shudder, is part of a wave of movies exploring what "realistic" horror could look like. Milo, the teenage anti-hero of 2016 indie horror  The Transfiguration, judges his impressive collection of vampire VHS via an unusual criteria – is it "realistic"? Martin and Let the Right One In pass; Twilight not so much. Of course, The Transfiguration itself is trying to be a "realistic" vampire movie. Milo is a borderline sociopath who's taken vampire-roleplay to the next level. At regular intervals, he stalks his native Queens and drinks the blood of unfortunate passersby. Milo, then, is not an immortal, undead bloodsucker, just a messed-up teenage mass murderer. Except the film is constantly toying with our expectations, slyly suggesting that Milo's killing spree may have endowed him with supernatural powers. There's that title too, implying Milo is being "transfigured" into somet...

Indie horror flicks like Mon Mon Mon Monsters,   Ravenous and Wildling  are moving away from the idea that monsters are straightforwardly evil. Note: This essay contains minor spoilers for Wildling. Jason Voorhees. Leatherface. Sadako. Though they have tragic backstories, they each function as an unstoppable evil force in their respective movies. The traditional horror icons don't have a sense of interiority. It would be out of the question to feel anything like pity for our favourite slasher killers or supernatural villains. Yet Chinese horror film Mon Mon Mon Monsters (currently streaming on Shudder ) features a flesh-hungry monster with razor sharp teeth and claws as its most sympathetic character.  The purest relationship in the film is between this little monster and her equally monstrous older sister. In a touching early scene, the older monster offers her sister the tastiest morsel from the corpse of an innocent man they've just killed. ...

Get Out may have revolutionised how horror tackles politics, but the genre has a rich history of tacking political messages onto enjoyably shlocky plots. One of my favourite examples is 1989's Society. It was directed by Brian Yuzna (he produced  Re-Animator ) and came off the back of films like The Fly, Videodrome and The Thing which made horror fantastically gloopy. We all like a bit of 80s body horror, but we also like very literal metaphors about how the economic elite are feeding off ordinary people. How, Yuzna undoubtedly pondered, could the two be combined? Enter Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock), your average teen with incredible 80s hair who thinks his parents are out to get him. "I'm not paranoid," he says to his shrink with zero credability. Like most teenagers, Whitney is remarkably horny. There's a semi-acknowledged incest vibe between him and his sister, even when he sees the skin pulse and bulge on her sweat-drenched back when zipping up...

Argentinian horror  Terrified ( Aterrados ) has earnt a clutch of festival gongs and some are calling it the scariest film of the year. But is it any good? It's a Shudder exclusive and caught our eye for its social media buzz and creepy as hell poster. But does Terrified earn a place on your Halloween watchlist?  I rarely see something in any horror movie that I’ve never seen before, but five minutes into #Terrified on @shudder and... Well... Holy fuck. — Ben Rock (@Neptunesalad) October 27, 2018 Just finished #Terrified on @shudder ! Wow!!! pic.twitter.com/QcupQ2jaG2 — Michael “Myers” Aiello (@Michael_Aiello) October 21, 2018 Finally got around to watching ‘Terrified’ @shudder ..... no just no...so creepy it made my eyes water. No sleep tonight 🙈🙈but definitely worth a watch. You cant hide behind a cushion &read subtitles #underthebed #terrified #creepy #nosleep #horror #horrorfan #horrorfam pic.twitter.com/DKMNvXRejU — Wendy (@WendyJP81) O...