Shudder never ceases to amaze me with their original program, movies they make for that horror streaming platform. A Wounded Fawn could be called art horror. It could be called body horror and mindfuck psychological horror, because it is all that. Co-written and directed by Travis Stevens(producer of ‘Girl On The Third Floor’ and ‘Jakob’s Wife’), this little movie with only two actors most of the time, shows how you can get great movie with little money if the story and idea are alright. Story starts when Bruce(Josh Ruben of ‘Scare Me’ and ‘Werewolves Within’) loses at the auction for eerie statue. He then goes to dinner to a house owned by winner of the auction Kate(Malin Barr of ‘Honeydew’) and we find out Bruce is a serial killer devoted to some pagan deity which compels him to kill. Fast forward, Bruce takes our main character Meredith (Sarah Lind – ‘The Humanity Bureau’) to a house deep in the woods which previously belonged to Kate. Meredith sees women that should not be there, supernatural things start to happen, and then Bruce tries to kill her. End of chapter one. Why? Because then movie totally nicely surprises me turning from boring serial killer chase I thought it would be to mindfuck psychological body folk horror with Bruce paying karma vengeance for his deeds. Some parts are so poetical, so beautiful done with such colors that reminded me of Argento’s Suspiria by its beauty, not story. Also, the ending is so nice, and poetic justice never sounded nicer. Acting and characters could be better, but since this is mostly two characters movie, it doesn’t really matter. Good one indeed!
Hospital is a Chinese horror movie directed and written by Chia-Lin Chu. It’s been a while since I have watched any Asian horror movies, so I decided to see this one, since I am a sucker for abandoned haunted hospitals and stories revolving around them. This one is about two women stricken with grief, one lost her husband in a routine operation in that hospital, another one lost her sister who was a nurse there and killed herself by jumping out of the window. They hire an Tao exorcist and his son to take them there to make them speak with the dead to get kind of closure. As things go in such movies, everything goes wrong and then interesting ghost haunted story turns into mixture of mindfuck psychological horror and haunted vengeful ghost story. Everything is done pretty naive, characters are plastic and you can not get into any of them and wish them to make it out. The twist at the end is already seen thousands of times and made it only worse. Ghosts are okay, there are one or two creepy situations that make your skin crawl, but in all, this is one of the not so good Asian horror movies I have watched and now I wish I chose something better, but next time.
Shudder continues to bring us great horror and thriller movies and I have not seen one bad movie that bears their logo. This one is no exception. This French movie is set in Africa where a trio of mercenaries saved a Mexican drug dealer from military putsch in Guinea Bissau. They travel to remote compound based by Saloum river in Senegal. There they try to recuperate and get gasoline for further escape to Dakar, but things are not what they seem.
Well, this movie is great for three reasons. First, it is filmed beautifully, exteriors are so fantastic, it just looks fantastic. The second are characters which are carefully written and I love the main storyline about mercenaries boss Chaka and his focus on having revenge for the past. Also, the movie touches themes about modern slavery in Africa, child soldiers and child molestation. Third, I love how movies suddenly twists from war torn thriller to Carpenter inspired horror about a group of people trapped in a compound trying to survive and get free being surrounded. The ending is bittersweet, kind of almost poetic but sad in lots of ways. This is a superb movie and possible one of the best Shudder releases that came out this year.
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