It’s Friday…
Ahem…I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…
Religion Is Scary AF.
In 1976…
Richard Donner directed a film…
That exposed some of the shit found in the Catholic religion…
That is scary as fuck…
That film…
Was The Omen…
And although this was the first film that frightened me with Catholic imagery…
To be fair…
Catholic imagery has been scaring the shit outta me…
Since the first time my parents dragged me into a church…
Scary imagery?
Like what? You might ask…
Okay…
How about the crucifixion for starters?
What a great idea…
Let’s take our small children…
Every single Sunday morning…
To a place…
Where there is a horrific and blood-soaked life-size statue…
Of a man nailed to a wooden cross with six-inch iron spikes…
It is a statue that captures the snapshot moment…
Of this man’s brutally abusive death…
And…
It is on display…
At the front of the fucking room…
These statues are more of an example of torture porn…
Than any boycotted 70’s Italian Giallo film…
Or an 80’s slasher labeled a Video Nasty…
Hey…
Here’s another one for ya…
How about the image of an altar boy kneeling in front of a priest?
What does that image brings to mind for you?
I’d ask Father John Geoghan, former priest at St. Andrews in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts for his opinion on the subject…
But…
Somebody shanked that pedophile piece of shit in prison…
Or is it shivved?
I’m never quite sure…
Anyway…
The films that I am recommending to you…
Will make you more scared…
Than a masturbating Catholic.
So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, scariest, and possibly even unknown to you, Religion Is Scary AF Films…In the years following The Omen.
Prince of Darkness (1987) – One of my all-time favorite John Carpenter films here…And also…In my not-so-humble opinion…The best film about the devil ever made…Here’s why I feel that way…The cast in this one is primarily made of up some very scientific-minded scholars…They are tasked with the job of ascertaining the answers to a mystery buried beneath a church…That mystery…Coupled with some pretty bizarre supernatural activity…Pushes the skeptical scientists to their limits…What makes having them as main characters so freakin cool, is…Their skepticism mirrors that of the audience…So when the group…One by one, experience by experience…Begins to believe the demonic elements of this story…We the audience begin to suspend our disbelief, as well…Oh, and for an extra treat…Look out for Alice Cooper, who stars in this film, as a demonic homeless person.
The Prophecy (1995) – I’m sorry…But I fucking love Elias Koteas…He had me at his performance of the skin-headed punk in Some Kind of Wonderful…In this one, he plays Thomas Daggett…A cat, who while studying to become a priest, bails on seminary school…And eventually becomes an L.A. police detective…He is thrown head first into the deep-end of his lost faith pool…And has to doggy-paddle his way into a cosmic power struggle of biblical proportions…Featuring none other than the archangel Gabriel…Skillfully played by the perpetually creepy Christopher Walken…Gabriel has decided to take matters into his own hands to try and win a secret war against a rogue faction of angels…But as he starts to fuck shit up royally…His ever-decreasingly secret plan not only gets discovered by Daggett…But also gets noticed by a darker and more powerful force…That’s right…The Devil himself…And it is one of the better portrayals of Ol’ Scratch that I have seen…This time around he is played by…Viggo Mortensen.
Frailty (2001) – Oh man…Do I miss me some Bill Paxton…This film marked his directorial debut…And even though he only helmed two films in his lifetime…This dark-as-sackcloth thriller is one of my all-time favorite scary films about religion…And on a side note…One night while working in my basement video store…On the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury Street…In Boston’s Back Bay…This one, along with the film, Frequency…Was recommended to me by the man, the myth, the legend…Stephen King…It tells the story of the bizarre relationship between two sons, Fenton (Matt O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter), and their uber-religious, and most likely insane father, played by the aforementioned Paxton…The film plays into the established belief that religious extremism accounts for the majority of life’s problems…But then…Out of left field…The film tosses those beliefs, and many others…Into a reality wood-chipper…And as the chips come flying out the other side…This film will have taken you on a trip…That will keep you guessing…Keep you uncomfortable…And most of all…Keep you entertained.
REC (2007) – This is the Spanish film that inspired an almost immediate remake here in the states with the movie, Quarantine…But the one thing that was lost in the adaptation…Was the religious element in the original…In the original…The virus that spreads throughout the building is some sort of contagious version of demonic possession…This is found footage done right, folks…For me, found footage has to make at least some sense…You know what I mean?…When you’re sitting there saying – “Why the hell is he or she still filming?” It just doesn’t make sense, and then it pulls you out of the film…So in this one, it’s a reporter and a cameraman who are documenting the outbreak…And for me, that makes sense…A cameraman will keep filming…They will keep viewing the world through that lens of theirs…It’s what they do.
Martyrs (2008) – This French film is sort of a classic, in my opinion…It’s already been re-made here in the states…And…Well…As far as the remake goes…I recommend that you skip the American version and dive right into this modern French horror classic…The film opens with a young girl named Lucie escaping torture at a very young age…She is sent to an orphanage, where she makes a friend so loyal, that she’d be willing to do anything for her…Flash forward to when the young girls are grown…We find Lucie and her friend Anna…Breaking into a home that Lucie believes is the home of one of her former torturers…Seems normal enough, right?…Straight up revenge-flick, right?…But wait…It’s only like twenty minutes into the film…Yep, you’re right…This ain’t the climax, folks…That’s right…It’s only the beginning.
Red State (2011) – Kevin Smith began dabbling with horror movies with this film…He stuck his toe even further into those murky waters with a trilogy of Canadian themed horror-comedies…But with this one…He went after the folks like those from the Westboro Baptist Church…The people that have protesting his films since he first blasphemed his fucking ass off with 1999’s Dogma…In this film…Doing his best Fred Phelps impression, is Michael Parks…His portrayal of Pastor Abin Cooper is as deranged as it could possibly be…This film takes us inside the walls…And shows us…The inner workings of religious extremism…It isn’t always of foreign origins…Sometimes these archaic and violent acts are perpetrated by folks who live right down the street from us…And the dark thoughts that are born in their brainwashed, narrow minds…Will never be changed…And are dangerous as hell.
Deliver Us From Evil (2014) – Following his film, Sinister, which contained a collection of the freakiest home movies I’ve ever seen…Scott Derrickson gave us this film which sort of smells like a straight up cop procedural at first…But slowly…This film shrugs off the uniform and becomes a dark and disturbing tale of supernatural possession unlike anything that I have ever seen…When I say that this film goes to some pretty dark places…I’m not kidding…I mean…The sight of a mother hurling her own toddler into the lion enclosure at the Bronx Zoo…Was enough to convince me…Anyway…The basic story here is about a cop, played by Eric Bana, who discovers a series of bizarrely related and supremely supernatural events that are linked to a group of Marines that unearthed something decidedly evil from a cavern in Iraq…Playing the antagonist in this film is the uber-creepy Sean Harris…Whose work I have been following since he starred in Christopher Smith’s 2004 debut, Creep…And in this one…The creepy fuck does it once again…His performance in this one…Sends frightening shock waves through anyone who watches it.
Let Us Prey (2014) – In this dark and twisted little nugget that brings together characters from two of my favorite television shows…First…You’ve got my boy, Liam Cunningham, Also known as Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones…As a mysterious stranger who wanders into a small village in Scotland…Carrying nothing but a list of names…He winds up in the local police station…As the prickly briar patch of a story begins to unravel…We start to discover not only the motivation of the stranger, but also the dark, secret corners of the lives of those he seems to be toying with…Thus bringing me to the second one…Jadis, former Queen of the Trash-People in The Walking Dead, Pollyanna McIntosh…Who portrays the one character in particular that this mysterious stranger wants to bat around like a kitten with a ball of yarn…She feels like the moral compass navigating the viewer through a choppy sea that is sorely lacking in anything that resembles morality…This was a truly unique film…And the originality is one of the things that drew me in…The performances of the actors, and the rancid underbelly where they performed…Is what kept me enthralled for an hour and a half…This one was groovy…And I dug it…A lot.
He Never Died (2016) – I just love this film…And you know what…It’s all Henry Rollins’ fault…This film is the sophomore effort of Jason Krawczyk…And it tells the story of Jack…A man whose regimented routine of a life has been designed to distract him from an overwhelming desire to consume the flesh of humans…As we delve deeper and deeper into Jack’s world…We try to understand exactly what kind of monster he might be…And in the darkened recesses of his life’s rabbit hole…We discover that he is an immortal being…One whose origin story was ripped from the pages of The Bible…And as we discover this origin…The things he does…The man he is…All come into focus…Just in time…To blow our fucking minds…Just a heads up…If you end up becoming a fan of this film…Just like I did…Then the following tidbit of news will tickle you…Krawczyk penned the script for a sequel…It is called She Never Died…And it is currently in post-production from horror director, Audrey Cummings.
The Nun (2018) – Okay…I know what you’re thinking…How did this poorly received branch on the Conjuring tree get on this list…Well…Quite simply…Because I enjoyed it…I go into reboots, remakes, sequels, and prequels the same way every time…With a low bar…For what it is…This film feels like a Gothic horror film that could have come from the Hammer canon of films…It also has that matinee horror vibe that just might be the reason why I give the sagging plot a pass…But here’s what it got right…The director Corin Hardy, created some very dark, and atmospheric visuals…Similar to the ones found in his debut, The Hallow…The performances of Demián Bichir, and Taissa Farmiga were spot on…And let’s be honest…The Conjuring universe created a movie monster that was equal parts original, and frightening…And you know what…These positives…Far outweigh the negatives…Giving me a fun ride…Right into a dark, and foreign place…A place where the religion was scary AF.
The Video Store Clerk 