It’s Friday…
Ahem…
I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…
This Frightday’s theme is…
‘Til Death Do Us Part…
Anyone who has ever been in a relationship…
Whether it ended up being a good one…
Or a bad one…
Knows that the act of being in a relationship…
Takes a lot of work…
Especially…
If your relationship happens to exist…
Within the confines…
Of a horror movie…
Just look at Ol’ Seth and Ronnie up there…
All hot and heavy…
And falling in love…
But…
Seth and Ronnie would agree…
That the act of being in a relationship takes a lot of work…
Especially…
When your counterpart starts losing appendages…
Climbing the walls…
And vomit-burping on their Krispy Kreme donuts before eating them…
And you will find a similar difficulty…
In full effect…
Throughout all of the films that I am recommending to you on this list…
Because…
Even though no one ever said that relationships are easy…
They should surely be a shit-ton easier than this…
So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, ‘Til Death Do Us Part Movies…In the years following David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
Dead Calm (1989) – This taut little nail-biter was based on a story that Orson Welles had planned on adapting for the big screen back in the 60’s but it never panned out…Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill play the Ingrams…A couple who are on a sailing trip to help them process their grief, following a tragic accident…They discover a boat adrift…And the one surviving passenger left alive has rowed over and wants to come aboard…That lone survivor is played by…Billy Zane…And once he is on board, everything changes for both Ingrams…Great performances all around in this one…Especially from the villainous Zane…This is one of those intense thrillers, that is even more intense due to the trapped environment of a sailboat on an endless sea…Nothing like a side order of claustrophobia to go with this film’s murderous main course.
Transsiberian (2008) – From Brad Anderson, the man behind such delights as, Session 9…The Machinist…And Vanishing on 7th Street…Comes this dark-as-night, edge-of-your-seat thriller…It’s about an American couple taking a scenic trip home on the Transsiberian Railway, after a stint, volunteering in China…Woody Harrelson (Zombieland) and Emily Mortimer (Harry Brown) play the couple whose lives get mixed up with a shady couple sharing the train ride with them, played by, Kate Mara (Morgan) and Eduardo Noriega (The Devil’s Backbone)…The sticky entangled mess that is created…Is the celluloid version of a spider’s web…And…It keeps the audience uncomfortable, unsure, and unhinged…It is cold, tense, and full of surprises…And over a decade later…This film has really stayed with me…And is still…One of the best and most original thrillers I’ve seen in a long time.
Sightseers (2012) – Ben Wheatley (Kill List) created this darkly comic horror film about a couple on a camping caravan holiday…Chris and Tina travel the countryside and with each mile under them…With each rest stop…With each overnight stay…This couple goes further down a horrifying rabbit-hole…And at the same time…Grows further and further apart…Complimenting Wheatley’s incredibly adept hand as a director, are the two incredible lead actors…Steve Oram plays Chris, and has shown up in numerous horror efforts like The Canal, and A Dark Song…And in the role of his wife, Tina…Alice Lowe who went on to write, direct and star in…The unique and bat-shit crazy film about a homicidal unborn fetus, Prevenge…The pair display a deliciously deranged detachment to the horrors that occur in this film…This provides a level of uncomfortable humor that follows them all the way to the end credits.
Spring (2014) – In between their two interconnected films, Resolution and The Endless…Justin Benson, and Aaron Moorhead brought us this tale of a young couple played by Lou Taylor Pucci (Evil Dead) and Nadia Hilker (The Walking Dead)…Who are falling in love in Italy…Despite more obstacles than those experienced by that Montague boy who fell for that Capulet girl…And the fact that she initially rejects him…Louise become romantically involved with American tourist, Evan…And the things that Evan doesn’t know about her could (and possibly have) fill the pages of an ancient tome…This is a body-horror film…This is a romantic film…And both of these genres work independently and surprisingly in coalition with each other…The end result is a believable horror film…That contains within it…A believable romance.
Honeymoon (2014) – This haunting film takes us to a location that on its own…Is already a recipe for disaster…That’s right…It’s the cabin in the woods…But as a honeymoon location…It might be even worse…Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones) plays Bea…Who takes her new groom, Paul, played by Harry Treadaway (Mr. Mercedes), to a remote and apparently from what she thinks, romantic getaway for their honeymoon…Once there…The weird factor gets turned up to eleven…And doesn’t dial down for a single second…Despite the lines between what is real or imagined being blurred beyond belief…Paul tries to love her through this horrific honeymoon from Hell…But much to the chagrin of Huey Lewis and the News…The Power of Love…Well sometimes…That shit ain’t stronger and harder than a bad girl’s dream…And this movie proves it.
Crimson Peak (2015) – In this technicolored Gothic horror story from the master himself, Guillermo del Toro…Gives unto us…A twisted, tangled tale of a love-trapezoid…Young Edith, played by Mia Wasikowska…Is pursued by Charlie Hunnam’s character, Dr. McMichael…But instead…Falls for Thomas Sharpe, a mystery man, played by, Tom Hiddleston…Who has a rather odd, and increasingly amorphous relationship with his sister, Lucille, played by Jessica Chastain…Following the marriage of Thomas and Edith, the two settle in (with his twisted sister, of course) at Allerdale Hall…A dilapidated family mansion that is slowly sinking into the red clay mine upon which it was built…Once there…The mysteries within can barely contain themselves…In fact…They begin to hurl frightening revelations in the general direction of the newly arrived Lady of the House…And how she responds to these revelations…Will ultimately determine her fate.
Wildling (2018) – This film spins a yarn about Anna, a mysterious adolescent with an even more mysterious past…During her formative years…Anna was raised by a man that she calls Daddy…But Daddy, played by the legendary Brad Dourif, is neither her father, nor a nice enough guy to even bear the name, Daddy…And all of the secrets and the trauma of her upbringing begin to unfold…When she is taken in by a local cop, played by Liv Tyler…And her teenage son, Ray…The two teens begin to catch feelings for each other…And those feelings stir up a side of Anna’s personality that had been surreptitiously kept dormant for her entire life…And as she begins to…Well…For lack of a better term…Evolve…The changes that she undergoes put her and her puppy love for Ray to the ultimate test…Let me tell ya, folks…This was a highly original tale that took me by surprise…Check it out.
The Domestics (2018) – Now here’s a fun little romp into an apocalyptic nightmare…One that shows a more tribal response to the end of the world…People have joined gangs and for the most part…It is all out war between them…With the exception of The Domestics…These are the people who have chosen not to clan up and join one of these marauding bands of bloodthirsty maniacs…But instead have chosen to try to live a peaceful life as prey and playthings to the aforementioned packs of playful predators…Tyler Hoechlin (a guy who has played Superman) and Kate Bosworth (a girl who has played Lois Lane)…Are a married couple who are trying to sort out their own bullshit, while at the same time fighting for their lives across the vast wasteland that used to be a place called home…This was the feature film debut for director Mike P. Nelson…The man tasked with rebooting the Wrong Turn franchise…And after seeing this, his ambitious first effort…Color me totally intrigued to see what he does with Wrong Turn.
What Keeps You Alive (2018) – Following It Stains The Sand Red, his unique take on the zombie genre…Writer/Director, Colin Minihan joins forces once again with actress, Brittany Allen…Who in this film, plays Jules, a character that is almost unrecognizable when compared to the character she played in his first effort…Jules has accompanied her enigmatic wife to her remote family cabin…Hannah Emily Anderson (Jigsaw), plays her wife, Jackie…Or is it Megan? Oh, well…Either way…She begins to shed her enigmatic chrysalis and spread wings that are radiant with colorful revelations…Jules is confronted with each and every one of these revelations…Which is not an easy pill to swallow, considering that they are about a woman that she loves and trusts implicitly…And from them…She receives a crash course in the dangers and vulnerabilty that walk hand-in-hand with both love and trust…The two leads do an outstanding job acting their way through a blood-soaked dysfunctional relationship…This was an incredibly intense horror film that kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire running time…And I will be keeping an eye on this filmmaker…I like what I’ve seen so far…And I’m looking forward to seeing more.
The Video Store Clerk 