The Babadook (2014)

I’m a big fan of Australian horror. From Lake Mungo and The Babadook to Relic, Talk to Me, and Bring Her Back, Australia’s take on the genre has never disappointed me. The Australian filmmakers always bring something new and distinctively their own to the horror landscape. After watching Leviticus, that impressive streak clearly continues.

Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus is a beautiful, poignant, enraging, gut-wrenching, and heartbreaking film about the trauma and harm conversion therapy inflicts on young queer people. Even though its classification as horror holds, the emotional bond between the two main characters, Naim and Ryan, elevates the story into a realistic romantic drama on par with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

When it comes the horror genre, I am VERY hard to please or impress, much less scare. Coming from a current mindset of appreciation for chilling, unsettling, tension-inducing efforts such as "Hereditary", "The Conjuring" (ONLY the first one to date, mind you), "Lights Out", "The Babadook", "Midsommar", "Talk To Me", "Oddity", "Bring Her Back", and the like, this Summer sequel offered low expectations for me other than to end up providing what I more so anticipated...a good laugh.

So. You’ve been quarantined. For many of us in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, we find ourselves locked in our houses, with not much to do. We can’t report to our jobs, or our jobs are being done remotely, or our ability to work is vastly restricted. And with all of this free time we have on our hands now, this is the perfect time to catch up on all of those movies we’ve been continuously putting off for a “rainy day.” Well folks, it’s pouring outside, so let’s watch some movies!

These picks are all based on my own subjective opinion, but I’ve compiled a list of different films of different genres across Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, and Hulu that I think everyone should watch. If you’ve already seen them, watch them again! These are the movies that, in my opinion, can’t steer you wrong.

1 | Alien (1979) | Amazon Prime 

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Hear me out. It’s easy to write off Keanu as a silly comedy about a kitten, especially in comparison to Get Out, when the latter is one of the most impactful and intelligent movies about race and the Black experience that ever existed. But with Keanu, Jordan Peele — along with long-time collaborator Keegan Michael-Key — paved the way for his fanbase to be ready to see him as someone who has a valuable voice in the dialogue about racial makeup and the identity woes that come with it. He also gave us hints early on about his predilection for the horror genre. In turn, this allowed Get Out to have massive success and critical acclaim. The exploration of Black identity and of the horror genre is apparent all throughout Keanu, and prior to that, on Key & Peele.

As two biracial writers and performers, Key and Peele often explore their own Blackness through their art and the unique perspective of being biracial in the Obama-era.

This sketch sums it up pretty well:

Greetings horror fans and avid moviegoers.

It has been 7 months since the last time I set foot in a movie theater, as I’m sure is the case for many of you. That is a long time for someone who is used to attending at least twice per month, though I’m sure my waistline thanked me for the significant decline in popcorn consumption. There is something very special about seeing a horror movie in an environment that is designed to immerse you in the story, so when I saw the chilling trailer for Come Play I jumped at the chance to head to our local Cineplex. For the experience — totally not for the popcorn…

First of all, much like Lights Out, this feature was based on a short film that was then expanded into a full-length movie. When I watched the 5-minutes 21-second horror short, I certainly saw the appeal. The sound design alone was cleverly done, building suspense in the right moments. While the creature movement was slightly hokey, the silhouette was very impactful and the timing of the editing also lent a hand to the creep factor.

The film has many positive points, my favorite being young Azhy Robertson, who absolutely nails his performance as Oliver, a child who has autism. This could have been made even better if they had been able to find a young person with autism to play the role. I feel as if this can be forgiven due to the fact that Director Jacob Chase’s wife works with children on the spectrum and he wanted to do justice to the story without compensating on realism. I hope it works in their favor towards raising awareness.

The acting as a whole was well done, which in my opinion, is one of the problems with the majority of horror films. If the performance isn’t believable, the immersion stops and I start checking my watch. I can only imagine the struggles of a family that is trying to navigate a world that seems to condemn differences. Gillian Jacobs brought her A-Game as a strong, yet vulnerable lead, showcasing the fierce nature that is the mother-son relationship and the sacrifices we make for our family members to keep them safe.

Despite our youth-obsessed society, growing old is a privilege afforded mostly to first-world countries. Even then, aging well-staying physically and mentally fit — remains out of reach for many. The loss of control over one’s own body and mind can be frightening, and for those watching it happen to loved ones, it can be a horror show. This fear then leads to one of the last stands of prejudice in many western societies: agism.

Nothing causes fear quite like a loss of control, and nothing causes loss of control quite like the process of aging. Relic (2020, Prime Video) runs with this idea to create a modern masterpiece of quiet horror where the only monsters are that of mental and physical breakdown. The domestic sphere of house and home are already linked to womanhood, and in the case of Relic that link becomes literal.