\n<\/p>\n
Stream it on Tubi<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of last year\u2019s most controversial<\/a> horror movies was the Spanish director Caye Casas\u2019s taboo-breaking psychological drama about the aftermath of an unspeakable act. Now that it\u2019s streaming for free, the faint of heart should steer clear but the brave should buckle up.<\/p>\n The film<\/a> begins as Jes\u00fas (David Pareja), against the wishes of his wife, Mar\u00eda (Estefan\u00eda de los Santos), buys a gaudy coffee table. As if the table being ugly wasn\u2019t enough, when Jes\u00fas installs it in the bickering couple\u2019s living room, it becomes the centerpiece of a sickening act of violence while Maria is at the supermarket. When Maria returns home and visitors arrive, Jes\u00fas is forced to reckon with the ghastly horror in their midst.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll hand it to Casas: He goes there<\/em>, especially at the start and the finale of this sinister and surprisingly comic film. The pacing sags in the middle, when the screenplay (by Casas and Cristina Borobia), slowly treads dread and repetitively underlines issues of postpartum depression and toxic masculinity. Still, \u201cThe Coffee Table\u201d is a welcome shocker at a time when risk-taking horror has become too rare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2019, the German filmmaker Tilman Singer knocked my socks off with \u201cLuz,\u201d<\/a> his nutso experimental possession film. He\u2019s back with a bizarre body horror-meets-bird horror film that\u2019s thematically oblique but is lots of fun to get lost inside.<\/p>\n Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), an American teenager grieving the death of her mother, travels with her father (Marton Csokas) to live with their new family at a remote resort in the Bavarian Alps. There, Gretchen meets a strange doctor, Herr K\u00f6nig (Dan Stevens, sick and slick), with an interest in birds but also in Gretchen\u2019s mute younger half sister, Alma (Mila Lieu).<\/p>\n Singer and his cinematographer, Paul Faltz, vividly capture Gretchen\u2019s subsequent descent into hell with a parade of warped cinematic flourishes: mysterious avian sounds, disorienting camera angles and, best of all, supernatural moments, like a jump scare in which Gretchen is pursued<\/a> one dark night by an entity in fabulous sunglasses.<\/p>\n The finale feels too much like an action film with no direction other than over the top. But after the smoke clears, what\u2019s left is a smart and startling meditation on grief.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A pandemic is sweeping through America. The wealthy survive by escaping to the country, while those who are less well off, including immigrants, fend off sickness any way they can. Battles are waged in legislatures and in newspapers over whether or not people should quarantine and wear masks in public. But this isn\u2019t Covid. It\u2019s the 1918 influenza.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the setup to this horror-adjacent historical satire<\/a> written and directed by Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman. The film stars Billy Magnussen as Jay, a wealthy and hypocritical journalist sheltering with his family at their rural estate, and Peter Sarsgaard as Floyd, a working-class chef with a grifter past who, by the end of this diverting film, turns Jay\u2019s hopes for safe and healthy future into a bloody mess.<\/p>\n The main reason to watch are for the leading actors\u2019 fine tuned performances<\/a> but also for Kristine Nielsen in a supporting role as Jay\u2019s maid. Nielsen, who memorably appeared with Magnussen in Christopher Durang\u2019s 2012 Broadway comedy \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,\u201d imbues her character with the kind of absurdist humor that Durang, the Tony Award-winning satirist who died<\/a> last year, would have adored.<\/p>\n Stream it on Tubi.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m a sucker for any pop culture dark corner that desecrates happy-faced children\u2019s shows, from the demented television series \u201cWonder Showzen\u201d<\/a> to last year\u2019s toxic-father family drama \u201cMr. Crocket.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n That\u2019s why, for fans of low-budget experimental horror, I\u2019m recommending this flawed but twisted fable from the directors Gerald and Michael Crum. MarkAnthony Baca plays a grieving father whose quest to find his missing daughter leads him to \u201cNowhere Land,\u201d a scrappy children\u2019s television show with threadbare puppets who command malicious forces in the real world.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll need patience to weather the barely-there acting, a weakness that almost tanks the film. But the film cranks it to 10 when the actors shut up and the Crums focus on a warped visual vocabulary: analog video, gruesome special effects, taunting puppets and, most especially, Daryll Arellano\u2019s skin-pinching sound. It\u2019s in those moments that the film serves macabre cinematic delights akin to those in \u201cI Saw the TV Glow,\u201d<\/a> another (and superior) film about the grip that television can have on an adult psyche long after a weird but formative show goes off the air.<\/p>\n Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Unlike a lot of horror fans, I have a high tolerance for the recent crop of horror movies that turned Winnie the Pooh<\/a>, the Banana Splits<\/a> and other beloved children\u2019s characters into bloodthirsty evildoers. I\u2019m looking forward to horror films based on Bambi<\/a> and Popeye<\/a> that might come later this year.<\/p>\n Add to the deranged list the \u201cSteamboat Willie\u201d<\/a> version of Mickey Mouse that first appeared in a 1928 Disney animated short film. Taking advantage of the character\u2019s expired copyright protections<\/a>, this Canadian horror comedy transforms Steamboat Willie into a supernatural killer in a sad Mickey Mouse mask<\/a> who butchers this way through a suburban game arcade. (A lengthy title sequence reminds the viewer that Disney \u201chad nothing to do with this film.\u201d)<\/p>\n What the director-cinematographer-editor Jamie Bailey and the writer Simon Phillips lack in slasher film originality they make up for in mild chutzpah. Depending on your appreciation for Steamboat Willie and the Disney canon, watching clips of the mouse\u2019s original short film interspersed with modern-day graphic violence will leave you thrilled or horrified or both. Keep your curiosity high and your expectations low.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Nowhere Land\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Mouse Trap\u2019<\/h2>\n