The Core (Sam Zimmerman) Recommendations

"This is my final one because it's really like the convergence of Hooper and Romero. It gets at that sort of madness -- that like boiling point that Hooper nailed in Texas Chainsaw, nailed in The Funhouse. And Romero, who had deep, deep beautiful themes: civil rights, consumerism, all the things that bubble up in Romero's films. Here in Bedeviled, you'll see the madness and you'll also see real, rich conversation about abusing women. It's about people who stand by and watch and how complicit they are, it's brutal, it's terrific, it's deep, it kicks ass."

"Very cool movie from Joel Pyotrykus. It's a film about isolation, about madness, about dark magic, and this features a really great lead performance by Ty Hickson. And the reason I bring that up is that even these days in horror, we're not seeing a ton of great horror with black leads. Obviously Get Out! was huge this year. Ty Hickson puts on an incredible performance here. It's a great little movie. It's creepy. It's weird. And it's deeply about something." -Sam Zimmerman

"I didn't want to talk a lot about zombie films but I did want to talk about what Jeremy Gardner pulls off in The Battery. Because I think what he does is really comparable to what George did, and the Image 10 did when they made Night of the Living Dead. It's a small movie made for $5k. It's about character. It's about humans. And there's wonderful, wonderful zombie work in it. It's a beautiful independent movie and a great success story." -Sam Zimmerman

"Gerald Kargl's Austrian masterpiece: this is an incredible home invasion film with amazing cinematography. This movie is absolutely unreal and one of the only movies that captures the frenzy that Tobe did in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The feeling that a movie is about to absolutely break out of control of everyone on that set. It's a special film. It's a violent film. There's really nothing like it. Much like there's nothing like Chainsaw and there's nothing like Night of the Living Dead." -Sam Zimmerman

"This is an awesome psychedelic-thriller directed by Sophia Takal. It's about two friends who retreat to a cabin for a weekend and find themselves at odds. It, of course, comes in the tradition of Persona and Repulsion. At its heart, it's about female friendship, it's about pressures of your work, and it's about two women who have to confront things they hate in themselves. Things they hate in each other. But it's also a bitchin' psychedelic-thriller." -Sam Zimmerman

"This is a really underrated gem from Australia from the late 80s directed by Ann Turner. It's a really cool film in the vein of Paper House, Pan's Labyrinth, all the dark fairytales. Movies about kids who retreat into themselves because of a tumultuous home life. This one is a bit undiscovered. We're really glad to have it on Shudder. And I hope people really find it: really dig into it. Ann Turner isn't really celebrated but she's a fantastic director and it's revealed in this movie." -Sam Zimmerman

"It's one of my favorite films of the last couple years. It's a stunning independent sci-fi film about a bunch of friends who are having a dinner party. A comet goes over their heads and all the power goes out. When they walk across the street to the house that does have power, they see themselves inside. It's a really fantastic film: mind-bending, doppelgänger-based. But, what it's really about is yourself. Who are you? Who are you meant to be? Who did you want to be? This is a bunch of people confronting themselves. It's a really fantastic drama, and a really fantastic independent sci-fi film. It's awesome." -Sam Zimmerman

"You wanna cry? Beyond the Walls -- this is a Shudder exclusive, three-episode, French mini-series about a young woman who inherits a townhouse. Inside of that townhouse is a man who's been dead for 30 years. She moves in and she finds a metaphysical plane beyond the walls. This is really eerie and really captivating. But, what it becomes is a story about grief, a story about romance, and a story that a lot of our Shudder members have been very proud to admit made them cry." -Sam Zimmerman

"Alice Lowe of Sightseers. A wonderful performer. A wonderful writer. And now, a wonderful director. Her feature debut, Prevenge, is about a woman who is pregnant, and is hearing her child instruct her to kill -- to take some sort of revenge. Now, this is already a great hook, but take away that and what you have is a really excellent look at impending motherhood. All the fears. The anxieties. It's a really funny film. It's a really dark film. And it's really fantastic." -Sam Zimmerman

Zimmerman rolled the summary for both Cropsey and Killer Legends together. (see above)

"Let's talk about Cropsey and Killer Legends. These are two movies from Joshua Zeman. He co-directed Cropsey with Barbara Brancaccio and Killer Legends with Rachel Mills. Both films look at urban legends and kinda what frightened us as kids, the stories we heard, and it follows them to their factual roots. Where did these myths come from? What did these myths attach themselves to? In the case of Cropsey, the legend of Cropsey attached itself to a bunch of child abductions on Staten Island. So they do a really great job at looking at what scared people in their youth and extrapolating that into true adult fears like loss, child child abduction, like grief. They're awesome. They will stick with you, I promise." -Sam Zimmerman

"Noroi is a Japanese film from the director of Sadako vs. Kayako. It's actually from 2005, never released in the US, but it's a Shudder exclusive, we finally brought it to the states. It's really special. It takes that DVD aesthetic and freaks you out as this guy who investigates paranormal instances follows a curse through generations, all the way to its really demonic roots. This is one of the scariest movies of the 21st century and it's totally essential." -Sam Zimmerman

"On the other side of the spectrum is Blind Sun. This is similarly like new-school paranoia, but out, sunburned, sun scorched, on the beach, it's in Greece, there's a guy, he's housesitting, and the people around him are constantly questioning him. They're constantly asking about his immigration status, who he is, and it takes on sort-of some rich themes with regard to immigration and our own biases." -Sam Zimmerman

"This film is a really vivid look at mental illness and your perception of reality. It has these insane dream sequences with a pitch black background. It gets under your skin. It's ultra-low-budget but what they pull off is genuinely creepy. I think you're gonna dig this. I think it's gonna f*ck you up a little bit." -Sam Zimmerman

"Now, Grand Piano. It's so much fun. It's so cheeky and it's beautiful. Elija Woods plays a concert pianist. He has to play every note correctly or he will die. It rules! And again, someone's caught up in something bigger -- there's something else at play, here. And the movie just plays. It has so much fin with itself, with it's actors (you've got Alex Winter from Bill & Ted and The Lost Boys), I think you're gonna have so much fun with this." -Sam Zimmerman

"Now we're gonna go to Spain, for one of my favorite movies of the last couple years, Shrew's Nest. This is a great thriller, actually produced by Alex de la Iglesia of "Day of the Beast" and "Witching and Bitching" fame. So this is this really stunning period thriller about a woman who is agoraphobic and overbearing. She takes care of her younger sister and their neighbor falls down the stairs. She takes him inside and there's little shades of Misery when she brings him in. Is she half taking care of him, half keeping him hostage? So what you have is this tense, amazing movie where three people are stuck in this apartment and they all have to maneuver around each other. There's like Rope in there, there's Rear Window in there, and it spills over into such a bloody, (unintelligible), operatic piece of work. I love it so much; I think you will, too." -Sam Zimmerman

"The best. This is similar because we've got someone caught up in something bigger than themselves: one of those great Hitchcock motifs. This is a bit more of a conspiracy thriller, but it's fun and it teases you out the whole way and again, you're starting to see the flair and the flourish of someone like Argento inject into what is otherwise a classical thriller. It's awesome." -Sam Zimmerman

"The Godfather of Italian horror, and really the progenitor of the Giallo. Evil Eye is the first Giallo. It's alternate title is The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a direct riff on Hitchcock. And it's just this fun, black and white, elegant thriller about a girl who loves crime books, she loves pulp, and she gets caught up in a murder mystery herself. There's great foot-chases. There's great twists. There's everything you want in that sort of world as the Italian style starts to establish itself." -Sam Zimmerman

"We have a movie on Shudder called Can't Take It Back. It's a Shudder exclusive and it's a real teen scream. So, it's sorta about these social media anxieties, right? It's about these girls who are terrible to each other on Facebook and terrible to a dead girl on Facebook and they regret this decision; they can't take it back. So, here's this girl, she's in class, she's taking a test. It's like that white sheet of paper -- black aerial font -- super mundane. So you're reading the questions, and then one of them says, "Why are you such a whore?" And it's like, because it's so mundane, it freaks you out, it freaks *her* out, but also, it kinda gets to that fear of being in high school and embarrassed and ostracized and having everyone turn against you. It's a really cool scene. It's a really fun movie, and I think it's gonna freak you out." -Sam Zimmerman

"It's Kim Jee-woon; he did I Saw the Devil. But this is so much more fairytale-like. Right? I Saw the Devil is like this charge/revenge/badass movie. A Tale of Two Sisters has the wicked stepmother, it has color everywhere in the house, and it has really one of the most masterful scares, really I think in modern horror." -Sam Zimmerman

"Another beautiful type of jump-scare I want to talk about is the slow-burn. And you think about films with *one* great scare, a film that builds and it builds and it builds and you can't take it anymore and then it explodes, and I love that. I think it takes a lot of talent, especially to keep you engaged while the film is building. So, I want to talk about Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl. This is a movie we have on Shudder; it's a Shudder exclusive. I love this film. It's a very beautiful 70s period piece set in New England so it has the perfect autumn atmosphere. It's about a young girl -- she's taking care of her sick aunt and it preys on your fear of family. Who are your family? Especially if you don't know them that well. So there's a scene where Adelle has a mirror and she's looking in at her sick aunt under the door and when it hits... it's one of the only recent times I remember someone scream bloody murder in a movie theater. I have a feeling a lot of people were doing that at home when they watched this." -Sam Zimmerman

"One of the scariest movies of maybe, ever. It's perfect. It's wonderful. It's found footage. It's from Spain. It's by Jaume Balaguerô and Paco Plaza. What [rec] does so well is something I think about as like a "fun house scare." It really preys on being scared of the dark: I'm in a room. Is something in here with me? Something *is* in here with me. That's the whole movie; it's relentless." -Sam Zimmerman

"Next up, and finally, an achievement of makeup effects with Bob Keen in Hellraiser. So, based on Clive Barker's novella, the best horror films not only of the 80s but probably of all time, the introduction of an icon in Pinhead, who's really only in the movie for like 6 minutes but has such a striking look. Designed by Clive Barker and Bob Keen and applied by Bob Keen onto Doug Bradley. It's unmissable. It's still nightmarish. It's one of the greatest bits of movie mustard you'll ever see." -Sam Zimmerman

"A lot of people are always saying where have all the makeup effects gone, right? Deathgasm. A film out of New Zealand, this is heavy metal horror and its director, Jason Lei Howden, comes from Weta Workshop, which a lot of people know mainly through Peter Jackson's films. So, they think of Lord of the Rings; they think of heavy visual effects. Weta was founded when Peter Jackson was working on films like Dead Alive, Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles. All those guys, they don't get to do a lot of bloody stuff anymore, right? Deathgasm beings those dudes into the fold, because Jason Lei Howden comes from that family, and it's old-school, it's Sam Raimi-styled, and it's cool as hell." -Sam Zimmerman