Frightday Night Film Recommendations: My Top 10 Horror Movies of 2017

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

 

My Top 10 Horror Movies of 2017.

Here’s a list of my favorite horror films from this past year…

Just like last year…

I’m gonna serve ’em up in the order in which I watched them…

I highly recommend each and every one of these films…

Happy New Year…

Hope you enjoy ’em!

 

1) The Devil’s Candy – This is the sophomore effort of Australian director, Sean Byrne…If the name sounds a bit familiar, it’s because he’s the man who brought the instant horror classic The Loved Ones to life…Now technically, this film was completed in 2015…But it wasn’t released until March of this year…The film stars Ethan Embry (Who despite his many roles…To me, he will always be the snotty, little twerp from the movie, Dutch), as a husband/father/painter/metalhead who moves his family into a rural Texas farmhouse…Plagued by not only the voices and imagery that begins to infect his artwork…But also by a clearly deranged former resident of the house he moved his wife and daughter into…That deranged former resident is played by the always freaky Pruitt Taylor Vince…A disturbed man who is also plagued by voices…And only a heavily distorted power chord from a flying V can silence them…This film goes down a road that at first glance appears well-trodden…But after further consideration…The ground it sets you down upon…Feels like nothing you’ve ever felt.

 

2) The Blackcoat’s Daughter – This film, originally titled, February, is the directorial debut of Oz Perkins, the son of Norman Bates…Um, I mean Anthony Perkins…It tells the stories of Kat, a young girl at a Catholic boarding school, who is stuck at there during the February break ,due to her parents not picking her up…And it also tells the story of Joan, a young girl whose motives and back story are slowly revealed in a series of flashbacks…She arrives at a bus station where she receives kindness and assistance from two parents, the eager Bill, and reluctant Linda…And as this film doles out the crucial pieces of information, like medication time at the psych ward…By the time all is revealed…The audience will feel like they’ve flown over the cuckoo’s nest.

 

3) The Girl With All The Gifts – Here is a totally unique addition to the canon of films in the zombie sub-genre…This amazing film has an equally amazing cast, including…Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close, and Paddy Considine…This is a zombie film that shows us a different type of zombie virus…One that stems from a fungal infection…And also a completely different type of zombie…One that craves flesh, but retains their knowledge and memories like a normal human being…Did I forget to mention that these special zombies are all children?…This was hands down the best zombie film that I have seen in quite some time…It was smart…And it had a heart…Check it out.

 

4) The Void  – This twisted little throwback to 80’s classics like The Thing, Hellraiser, The Beyond, and Prince of Darkness…Was written and directed by Jeremy Gillespie, and Steven Kostanski…two-fifths of the creative team known as Astron-6…They are the folks behind one of my 21st Century Cult Classics, Father’s Day…This film tells the story of the night when all of the dark and nefarious things afoot in a small town…Right under the noses of not just the townspeople, but also the police force…Finally come to light…And as this frightening story unfolds…You will see some amazing practical effects that will fill your screen with gruesome gore…You will see outstanding performances from talented Canadian actors, like Aaron Poole…Whose portrayal of Deputy Daniel Carter was both authentic and organic…You will see things that you’ve never seen before…And you might just see a film that will become one of your favorites, too.

 

5) Prevenge – Alice Lowe, who co-wrote and co-starred in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 pitch-black comedy, Sightseers…Takes the controls in this one…She wrote it…She directed…And she stars as, Ruth…A pregnant woman who after the loss of the baby’s father…Begins to take direction from her unborn child…These snarky requests from her thuggish fetus revolve around doing harm to those people who the baby deems responsible for the climbing accident that took her father…This unique slasher film is even more of a pitch-black comedy than Sightseers…And with the hormone-fueled insanity of this main character…She could comfortably stand next to slasher icons of days gone by…In fact…She’d make a guy like the aforementioned Norman Bates seem like a harmless introvert with a mild case of mommy issues.

 

6) Dig Two Graves – Now this was a strange, dark, and ethereal film…It was produced by one of the horror gods himself, Larry Fessenden…And stars Buffalo Bill himself, Ted Levine…Who plays the protagonist in both of the time periods that this film takes place in…In the 40’s…He’s Deputy Waterhouse…And he is dealing with a corrupt sheriff and his morally bankrupt dealings with a rural family of gypsies…In the 70’s…He’s Sheriff Waterhouse…And he is trying to protect his granddaughter from becoming the unwitting tool of revenge in this rural supernatural thriller…The uncredited hero of the cast is the setting…It was filmed in the historically rich…Temporally frozen…And utterly breathtaking section of Southern Illinois known as Little Egypt…This backdrop suits both timelines with ease…And fills each frame with an eerie and ominous tone that will force me to keep my eye on filmmaker Hunter Adams…The man who captured it.

 

7) The Belko Experiment – This film sprang from the brain of James Gunn (Slither) …After writing the screenplay and getting a studio greenlight…Gunn took some time off due to his recent divorce…The studio eventually reached out and got the ball rolling again…The directing baton passed from Gunn to Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) and the production was off and running…John Gallagher Jr. who was in two of my favorite films from last year, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Hush…Stars as Mike Milch…A regular joe who works in an American office building in Columbia…One day, after going through a new series of security checkpoints, he and the rest of the staff of Belko Industries enter the building to start their work day…Everything changes when a voice announces over the loudspeaker that these office workers must start killing each other in order to survive a threat of imminent death from whoever is behind this experiment…Gallagher is incredible in this, and once again shows his range…And it’s a fast-paced, gory, frightenening look at who we really are…When it really counts.

 

8) Get Out – In Jordan Peele’s directorial debut…He creates a film that carries with it…An immense sense of dread…This overwhelming fear that is palpably felt…Partially from the emotionally charged and outstanding performance of British actor, Daniel Kaluuya…And partially from the frightening feeling of losing ones self completely…This feeling is also part of the underlying message in this horror film that is smothered in social commentary…It is a feeling one might experience as a victim of enslavement, subjugation, or gentrification…A complete and total loss of identity…This is a superb socio-political scary movie that shines a light on a subject that should already be illuminated, as Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacists still march down our streets…And I am glad Peele had the guts to tackle it…And at the same time the man crafted an amazing horror film…And I hope he makes more.

 

9) It Comes at Night – This film was the sophomore effort of  Trey Edward Shults…Who made his debut with the dark, sadly sardonic, and painfully personal film, Krisha…In this one, he hones his ability to make his audience uncomfortable, as they reside in a space that is permeated with tension…The perpetually incredible Joel Edgerton leads the cast through a bizarre, seamingly post-apocalypctic landscape full of unanswered questions…It is a slow burn…Ladened with mindfuckery…But…You know…In a good way…The film kept me guessing and wondering and sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time…If you are looking for a straight-up, mindless gore-fest (not that there’s anything wrong with that)…This is not your film…But…If you are looking for a tense, thought-provoking nail-biter…Then please give this one a try.

 

10) IT – Those in the know…Know that my obsession with Stephen King is real…Especially with some truly incredible, recent adaptations of his work rekindling that obsession…This film is the penultimate example of that…Some people have held the 1990 TV mini-series in high regard, based solely on the stellar performance of Tim Curry as Pennywise The Dancing Clown…Because…And, let’s be honest here…That was the one true redeeming quality…Those people were resistant to this reimagining (it is not a reboot, or a remake, this story never made it to the big screen before this) of Stephen King’s immense, terryfing novel…But not me…I was there…Opening weekend…With bells on…And I loved every freakin’ minute of it…Um, I mean IT…The film is currently on demand, and the blu-ray is available on the 9th of January…And I can’t wait to watch it again and again…The cast of kids that make up the Loser’s Club are incredible actors, who gave top-notch performances…The story that is told (this time around) takes place during the 80’s and will be followed up by a present day second chapter…Which I simply cannot wait for…I give credit to not only Andy Muschietti for creating a nearly perfect adaptation…But I gotta hand it to Bill Skarsgård, who took a memorable character who was already both loved and feared…And created a version that isn’t just all his own…But is also both loved and feared.