‘Huesera: the bone woman’
Stream it on Shudder.
This Spanish-language first feature from Mexican director Michelle Garza Cervera covers familiar horror territory – maternal trauma, folk brujeria – but gives a macabre, feminist refresh to worn-out formulas.
Valeria (Natalia Solián) suffocates, not with a pair of hands or under a pillow, but with her pregnancy. Her husband, Raúl (Alfonso Dosal), is overjoyed to be a father, but her ex-girlfriend Octavia (Mayra Batalla) wonders why the once punk Valeria still wants to be a mother. It doesn’t help that Valeria sees things: a woman jumping off a balcony, a hand grabbing her ankle under the bed.
Valeria finds solace one night in an old stew – an overflowing mosh pit – but then she goes into labor and delivers what the doctor calls her little “princess.” That’s when the horrors in this self-confident, deeply disturbing film go from a slow-burning simmer to a supernatural boiling point. Solián’s centered performance makes a mother’s ambivalence and doubt – not easily conveyed on screen – utterly ominous.
Remember when it felt like a death wish to just go outside during the coronavirus lockdown? A similar paranoia plays a part in the group of neighbors taking shelter in a besieged house in this zombie infestation thriller. Their fear is not that “we’re not coming back from this,” as one character says. It’s that their food supply is dwindling, it’s a snowy Canadian winter outside and a small band of the undead are hungry for meat.
The ensemble story revolves primarily around two people: Derek (Derek Lackenbauer), who we know from the start is hiding a sinister past, and a man who passes Winter (Michael Wurtz), a drifter whom the zombies mysteriously ignore. When bodies pile up in their lane, the assembled parties are forced to fight an evil threat from within the house as well.
Adrian Konstant’s low-budget feature film debut is an intimate and intensely eerie snapshot of our pandemic era and its monsters. Even though the execution and performances are clunky at times, I got hooked from the get-go, thanks to the film’s tight, deliberate pacing and a calibrated script (written with Jason T. Green) that isn’t afraid to leave circumstances unexplained. Konstant made the right choice to bathe real sunlight parts of his film in chilling, naturalistic creepiness.
“Bury the Bride”
Stream it on Tubi.
June (Scout Taylor-Compton) celebrates her upcoming wedding by going on a getaway with her sister, Sadie (Krsy Fox), and three friends: party girl Carmen (Lyndsi LaRose), nerdy Liz (Rachel Brunner) and sensible Betty (Katie Ryan). ). ).
June’s fiancé, David (Dylan Rourke), provides the women with a small, undeveloped cottage, an odd place for a great bachelorette party. Stranger still, none of June’s friends have met or seen David. But then David and his friends show up unexpectedly, including the mousy Puppy (Chaz Bono), and much to the wives’ horror, their male visitors aren’t just bumbling partygoers. They are also vicious vampires who are after young female blood.
That’s the sinister setup in Spider One’s horror action-comedy that, despite some uneven attempts at humor, is filled with enough gross blood-sucking and last-girl fisticuffs to satisfy thrill-seeking horror fans. I wish One and Fox (who co-wrote the script) kept LaRose and her great comedic chops longer; she is funny from beginning to her abrupt end. The final scene delivers a moving message about the effort people will go to to ensure that love never dies.
‘Outpost’
Rent or buy on most major platforms.
After being assaulted by her abusive ex-boyfriend, Kate (Beth Dover) decides to take an unorthodox path to recovery: she voluntarily spends several months alone as a firefighter standing guard at an old lookout tower in rural Idaho. She’s not all alone; she visits her kind neighbor widower (Dylan Baker) and checks in with rangers (Ato Essandoh and Dallas Roberts) who make sure she sticks to her duties and doesn’t go crazy.
One day Kate meets a hiker, Bertha (Becky Ann Baker), and the two forge a friendship that, despite target practice and rabbit hunting, turns into something of a survival relationship. Then comes the afternoon when Kate and Bertha listen to “Them Changes” by Buddy Miles and Bertha suddenly begins to shockingly change – a twist that sends Kate into a life-or-death fight for survival.
The actor Joe Lo Truglio makes his feature film debut with a strange mashup. It’s a story of isolation laced with witty “Evil” melodrama, but peppered with a deadly serious tale of the lingering effects of emotional and physical trauma. The result is a savagely feminist psychological thriller that’s also awkwardly, hard-to-classify funny. I squirmed and smiled, and sometimes I writhed while smiling. Scary, right?
‘Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva’
Stream it on Tubi.
Writer-director Dutch Marich is part of a dynamic new crop of horror filmmakers, including Robbie Banfitch (“The Outwaters”) and Paul Owens (“LandLocked”), who are less concerned with narrative certainty and more concerned with upturning found footage. conventions to intensely scary movie endings. One of my favorite discoveries of 2022 was “Horror in the High Desert,” Marich’s not-so-real documentary about a man who goes missing in rural Nevada.
That’s why I was curious to see how Marich continued in this sequel about two young women, Minerva (Solveig Helene) and Ameliana (Brooke Bradshaw), who also meet their mysterious ends in nowhere in Nevada. This time, Mariah shows the creep factor when he hands the POV to the unseen mumbling lunatic who may be behind the women’s disappearances; the film takes on a disturbing alien character, comparable to performance artist Paul McCarthy’s demented workshop videos. Amelia’s abduction causes a scare, but the film’s unfocused explanation and reserved payout make for too lenient bookends.
Still, I look forward to seeing what this adventurous director scares me with next.
