The Ring (2002)

There is no such thing as watching too many movies. I know that since my family and I have enacted social distancing, the amount of movies we’ve watched has skyrocketed. And if there can be a silver lining in the messiness and ugliness of the situation we’re all in right now, it’s that we have an opportunity to watch a lot of the movies that we’ve been meaning to watch and re-watch a lot of the movies that we’ve been meaning to re-watch. I know the other day I was looking through my Blu-ray collection and picked out the 1933 King Kong, a movie I’ve owned for about a year but never watched. It’s one of those movies I always said to myself, “Not now, I’ll watch it another time.” But because we’re stuck indoors with nothing to do, I finally said, “Screw it, it’s time to watch King Kong!” And I loved it!

With the popularity of my previous list (you can check it out here), I wanted to recommend another 19 movies for people to check out across Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Hulu. So here you are; go watch some movies! You can’t really go wrong with any of them.

1 | Apocalypse Now (1979) | Amazon Prime

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

Malignant, directed by James Wan and written by Akela Cooper with a story from James Wan, Ingrid Bisu, and Akela Cooper, tells the story of Madison (Annabelle Wallis), a woman who has horrifying visions of a string of murders, propelling her into a journey of self-discovery and self-worth.

Malignant build moments of genuine fright through utilizing every aspect of the frame to grab our attention. In scenes reminiscent of the style of horror found in supernatural films, the cinematography, and set design work guide us through the eyes of the characters.

A refrigerator door opening and the almost blink-and-you-miss-it rise of a couch cushion burrow into your brain, no matter how small the moment may feel. The film builds horror well through what might seem as mundane actions by latching onto the small, simple things we fear in real life.