Coronavirus has really taken the charm out of 2020 so far, radically changing the world in ways that would have seemed impossible just six months ago. One of the most surprising changes has been that suddenly, we’ve all been given ample reason to stay home and watch a lot of movies and TV. It’s something I’ve fantasized about in the past, and now I’m getting my fill. Be careful what you wish for indeed.
And while some might find comfort in escapism, I personally prefer the catharsis of weird Horror movies that offer specific commentary on the state of things. I’d be willing to bet the next ten years will feature A LOT of horror films inspired by the current crisis, but there’s plenty of stuff out there already that’s uncomfortably keyed in to how everything feels right now. Isolation, paranoia and infection have long been major hallmarks of the horror genre, and here’s a handful of films, easily available on streaming platforms, that you can watch right now.
1. Await Further Instructions
A recent British sci-fi flick about a family that wakes up on Christmas morning to discover they’ve been sealed inside their home by metal panels, with no available information aside from cryptic messages appearing on their television. So, it’s about a group of people stuck inside together, hoping the directions they’re receiving are accurate and helpful. The movie is overtly political, intended as a liberal Brexit commentary (the family is mostly made up of racist conservative jerks, which does make their ultimate fate a little less pressing a concern), but it actually works better as a COVID-19 parable, sort of The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street by way of Black Mirror. After spending the day watching protesters storm capital buildings demanding the right to get a haircut, it’s hard to make the argument that Horror movie characters are behaving too stupidly and viewed through this prism, the family’s contentious dissolution feels almost cathartic.
It’s not a perfect film. The middle sags a bit, and the cast is more OK than it is great. The stand out is probably character actor David Bradley (Mr. Filch from Harry Potter, Walder Frey from Game of Thrones), playing exactly the kind of character you hire David Bradley to play: a horrible old man. But it’s extremely timely, and the third act goes off the rails in a very good way. I’m a fan of giving a movie every chance to succeed, and there will hopefully be no better time to appreciate this film than right now.
(Netflix)
2. Carriers
If, like me, you’ve had the thought in the last few months, ‘Hey, I hope we’re not living through the first hundred pages of The Stand,’ then Carriers is the film for you! This is certainly the most on-the-nose film on this list, set in the near future after an airborne pandemic has eradicated the population. There’s hand washing, quarantined cruise ships, the disinfecting power of bleach, and masks, masks, masks galore! It’s all refreshingly down to earth as well; the virus doesn’t turn anyone into gloopy zombies, it just makes them get sick and die. It tells an engagingly small and immediate story, about four young people driving through an abandoned America, scrounging for gas and trying to stay alive. A Pandemic turned into Apocalypse, essentially.
Made in 2009, it unjustly fell through the cracks upon whatever small release it did receive, and there is no better time for it to make a surprising rebound, as you’re probably not going to find a movie more unsettlingly on point. The cast is all familiar faces, with future stars Chris Pine and Chris Meloni making the biggest impressions. Pine in particular is good, playing a bit of an archetype, the aggro jock dude, but both he and the script find the layers under the skin, and the same can be said for the rest of the talented cast. As a bonus, the brothers-on-a-sad-road-trip plot has just a hint of Pixar’s Onward to it, so that’s fun.
(Netflix)
3. The Bay
There was a glut of Found Footage Horror released about ten years ago (in the wake of the success of Paranormal Activity), much of it released directly to streaming, and like any subgenre, there’s ups and downs. The Bay is one of the better ones, a fairly gruesome, contained story about a bizarre breakout of infectious disease in Chesapeake Bay, or so it seems. It ends up being a bit more disgusting, and despite the real time attempts of an outmatched CDC, The Bay eventually evolves into something (thankfully) less directly comparable to our current situation. If it’s unpleasant, revolting deaths you’re looking for, The Bay obliges, although even still, the implication of what we don’t see remains the scariest aspect.
What does give it a feel of real immediacy is that unlike the usual Found Footage movie, featuring a gang of dudebros toting around cameras, this one utilizes a variety of so-called primary sources. News reports, security footage, webcams, talking head interviews and more are all part of the presentation here, eliminating a lot of the standard artifice. It feels like if something this gruesome were to go down, this is likely the way we’d be hearing about it. This verisimilitude can probably be credited to the fact that The Bay is the only found footage horror film that can claim an Oscar winner for Best Director behind the helm, Rain Man’s Barry Levinson. A wild aberration on his IMDB page, it’s mystifying what attracted him to this project. Pretty fun, though.
(Amazon)
4. The Wind
And now for a change a pace, a spare Horror Western that has nothing to do with Infection and everything to do with Isolation. Set in the middle of a desolate wilderness, this tells the grim story of a frontier woman, left to her own devices while her husband is away, who begins to feel a demonic presence emanating from the howling prairie winds that surround her, especially at night. This film is, to be fair, a bit of a challenge for most Horror fans, as it’s the very slowest of burns, presented out of linear order (without much help getting your bearings as the temporal jumps occur), and is less about a grand payoff than it is about atmosphere and implication. But for a populace currently feeling like they’re starting to lose their minds stuck at home, it offers a unique flavor of uncomfortable dread.
This is capital A Art House, for fans of the recent spate of elevated horror (it certainly brings to mind The Witch, though even that gives you a lot more in the way of traditional scares). And as it progresses, the oddly spaced time jumps begin to take on a dreamlike quality, where objective reality feels more and more elusive, and stuff you may have thought occurred in the past actually hasn’t happened yet. Beyond that, as a movie written by, directed by and starring women, it offers a distinct female perspective into a distinctly female story, although that really takes a backseat to the escalating sense of unease. Exactly the kind of movie that’ll give you something to think about all night, it deserves to be watched in the dark, in a silent house with the cellphones turned off.
(Streaming through Showtime, rental on Amazon)
5. Color Out of Space
Released near the beginning of the year, Color Out of Space got good reviews and it seems the horror community embraced it, but I suspect it’s still not that well seen. Like Await Further Instructions, it’s about a family getting put through the wringer. In this case, the family in question is a lot more likable, regular types that seem to get along pretty well for the most part, which makes their escalating disintegration all the more horrific. The great Nicholas Cage plays Dad, who brought his family out to a remote farmhouse in the woods, hoping to raise alpacas, only to find their relative familial bliss shattered by a meteor landing on their property. It proceeds to fundamentally change everything in its vicinity, from the nearby flora and fauna to the family itself. One of better attempts to bring HP Lovecraft’s cosmic and unknowable horror to the screen, and plenty grisly to boot.
What makes it resonate a bit more now is the unknowable nature of what we’re up against. Even as more and more information comes out, coronavirus remains somewhat mysterious, with many of us wondering if we’ve already been infected or not. Strange new symptoms keep getting reported, such as the loss of our ability to smell or taste, unusually vivid dreams or even the new, creepy ‘Covid Toes’, and that uncertainty is well portrayed here. How bad are things going to get? In Color Out of Space, things get very bad, probably worse than you might expect.
(Amazon)
6. The Masque of the Red Death
Here’s an older film that deserves to be seen by new audiences, and that also places our current shelter-at-home situation in a historical context. One of the best entries in the Poe Cycle, Roger Corman’s series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations from the 1960s, this one grants Vincent Price one of his juiciest villain roles, which is really what you want him doing, and also offers an angry takedown of the callous inhumanity of the 1%. Set during a medieval plague (the titular Red Death), this follows Price as a snide libertine who throws a masquerade ball for all his wealthy friends, while the common people die in the streets. But despite all their efforts to wait out the pandemic in a haze of drunken hedonism, the plague manages to find its way inside. Poe’s point is typically morbid, that death comes for the rich and the poor alike, but as we watch the talking heads on TV debate how many deaths are acceptable losses, Red Death’s low key eat-the-rich message shines through.
If you’re not familiar with the Corman/Poe films, this is an excellent place to start, and Vincent Price is at his best here. He’s playing a flat out Satan worshipper, and having an absolute blast being droll and villainous. The movie folds a lesser known Poe story named Hop Frog in to its narrative (the original story isn’t quite enough for a film), and while this plotline doesn’t reflect the current COVID-19 mess, it does reinforce the larger theme of the have-nots taking their revenge. Probably the most purely fun film listed here.
(Amazon)
And that’s just the lesser known titles. What better a time to revisit the great horror films that traffic in themes of Isolation, Paranoia and Infection? You’ve got the most dramatic shelter-at-home film ever made, Night of the Living Dead. Or if you want a movie about looking at someone and wondering if they’re infected, John Carpenter’s The Thing is right there, just like always. Still great! Or if you’re starting to feel the onset of cabin fever, wondering why you’re not making better use of your time, and your wife and weird kid are starting to really get under your skin, why not watch The Shining for the fiftieth time? It just keeps getting better! And it doesn’t reflect on coronavirus per se, but Doctor Sleep was pretty good too! Watch it all! What have you got to lose?
There’s a million little horror films out there, some terrific parables for a worldwide pandemic, some that are just good otherwise, and lots that are garbage! Discuss them below, or in the forums.