Psychological Head Trip Horror

The Gorge (2025)

So many genres, so little time.

When the creative team in charge of a film project gets carried away trying to please each and every imagined audience member, the results are usually a load of crap.

The Gorge, written by Zach Dean and directed by Scott Derrickson, seemingly utilizes this kitchen-sink approach, tossing a zesty, messy melange of romance, action, horror, and conspiracy theory that’s a just a tad over two hours in length.

And somehow it works pretty damn well as a super-engaging popcorn flick!

Levi (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) are two highly trained snipers from different countries assigned guard duty at opposite watch towers on either side of the enormous and mysterious titular gorge.

The mercenaries are armed to the hilt and instructed not to contact each other, but the need for company proves too much for Levi and Drasa, and soon they’re flirtatiously firing rounds, demonstrating their skill and accuracy, while a Ramones record plays.

“I guess this qualifies as a Meet Cute,” I whisper to Mrs. Sharky.

Though separated by a chasm that occasionally spits out monstrous hybrid humanoids called Hollow Men, the hired guns overcome logistical challenges and use a zip line to hook up and become not just a couple, but an elite and capable survival team.

This comes in handy when their military handler (Sigourney Weaver) decides they can no longer be trusted.

Once the protagonists figure out that this version of the future has no future, their decision to join forces is logical and inevitable. Besides, they’re a hot couple, and Drasa is clearly the aggressor, eventually rescuing Levi from an unexpected plummet into the abyss.

Through waves of decent monster attacks and fabulous fire fights, we actually grow fairly attached to Levi and especially the badass Drasa, which helps keep the viewer grounded during the mood shifts and infrequent talky interludes.

The Gorge is also a very impressive example of world-building, an important component to any successful popcorn operation. The mise-en scene has been carefully considered providing a foundation of future realism that looks like it was designed by the prison industrial complex.

No wonder no one want to hang around!

Ouija: Origin Of Evil (2016)

Prolific genre dynamo Mike Flanagan (Haunting of Hill House, Oculus, Dr. Sleep) created this prequel to Ouija (2014), and consensus opinion holds that Ouija: Origin of Evil, is far superior to its predecessor, though that may have more to do with the “meh” quality of the original material, rather than an auteur’s magic wand.

We travel back to the year 1967, where widowed mother Alice (Elizabeth Reaser) makes a modest living as a phony fortune teller, aided in her deceptive practices by daughters Lina (Annalise Basso) and Doris (Lulu Wilson).

Alice and eldest daughter Lina consider adding a Ouija board to their seance shtick, but all too quickly this occult stepping stone gets a grip on Doris, the youngest, resulting in a once-innocent child playing host to a number of spiritual entities, good and bad, including her late father (good) and a fiendish Nazi doctor (bad).

Flanagan and cowriter Jeff Howard weave together enough plot points for seven sweaters, but don’t sweat the details. Ouija: Origin of Evil is trademark Flanagan territory, as a fractured family faces a perilous paranormal presence coming from inside the house.

The technicians Flanagan puts to work on his projects are first-rate, intuitively establishing the tone, time, and terroir in which his particular domestic terror can take hold of hearts and spines.

Here, art director Alberto Gonzalez-Reyna and cinematographer Michael Fimognari mute the sunny ’60s California scenery in dark shades of green and gold, so wardrobe colors appear especially vivid and blooming—a keen counterpoint to the carnage being carried on behind closed doors at the local fortune teller’s house!

Despite being a minor entry in Mike Flanagan’s filmography, Ouija: Origin of Evil is a compelling and highly watchable film in its own right, and needn’t be seen in the company of any other Ouija entries in the hopes of additional illumination.

Abandoned (2022)

I’ve spent enough hours surfing for movie options that I can read a plot summary in about three seconds flat.

Thanks to several years of immersive research, I can now safely testify that approximately 70 percent of ALL horror entertainment must include a struggling couple with kids (living or recently deceased) relocating to a house of questionable repute in search of a fresh start.

Usually for such an egregious error in judgment, the hopefully healing family gets placed in a potentially paranormal hot seat, somehow stemming from one of the parent’s festering trauma.

Abandoned, which benefits from a thoroughly committed Emma Roberts as a new mom with a vicious case of postpartum depression, is another such film. Director Spencer Squire digs deep into the tortured psyche of Sara (Roberts), but doesn’t find anything new or interesting to report.

Sara and husband Alex (John Gallagher Jr) get a sweet deal on some rural acreage that comes with a bonus room that the previous owner only used for murder and suicide.

Their infant son Liam spends most of his screen (scream?) time lustily crying his lungs out, so we definitely sympathize with the rapidly disintegrating Sara.

The fragile lass gets saddled with a wailing infant all damn day, and has nothing better to do than figure out the dark history of the house while suffering a nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile, her veterinarian hubby is facing his own challenges putting down a pen of infected pigs, necessitating many hours spent out of the house, leaving Sara and little Liam to deal with a creepy neighbor (Michael Shannon), voices in the walls, and a bunch of missing toys (resulting in even more loud lamentations).

Alex euthanizing sickly swine is supposed to provide some kind of narrative parallel to Sara’s mentally unstable parenting style, but in the end, she accepts her crybaby and bravely snatches the little nipper back from a pair of feral kids.

Or maybe they’re ghosts, I dunno.

Even with Roberts giving it her deranged best, Abandoned never rises above the level of reheated leftovers, sadly lacking in flavor and originality. But if you’re not in a hurry it might inspire memories of better meals. I mean, movies.

Preferably ones not ruined by the presence of shrieking children.

The Visit (2015)

As someone rapidly approaching senior citizen status, I get why old people are perceived as weird and scary.

The aging mind is undependable, and at times downright incomprehensible. With life expectancy continuing to rise, the question becomes: What do we do with all these crazy old coots?

It’s clearly something that occupies the mind of speculative filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, as he addresses the issue in The Visit, as well as in Old (2021). Let’s call it Golden Age Anxiety.

Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her rap-happy kid brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are spending a week with their grandparents on the family farm.

So far, so good.

Mom (Katherine Hahn) has been estranged from her conservative parents for many years, so the teen travelers have never actually met Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), and have no idea what’s in store for them.

An aspiring documentarian, Becca brings along a couple of cameras to commemorate the reconciliation of a fractured family, and provide the found footage foundation of Shyamalan’s feature.

Suffice to say that The Visit doesn’t go as planned. As Becca and Tyler try their best to get better acquainted with the kinfolk, the latter just keep turning up the freaky to a point that becomes impossible to ignore.

They are given a 9:30 curfew, and instructed to stay in their rooms, lest they witness Nana screaming and vomiting in the nude, or Pop Pop taking another trip out to his locked shed.

Being inquisitive kids, Becca and Tyler investigate further, discussing their discoveries with Mom over Skype, rightfully concluding that something is strangely amiss.

As the cuckoo grandparents, Peter McRobbie and Deanna Dunagan are captivating, both in terms of their gamut of lunacy, and increasingly failing attempts to conceal the craziness.

Often funny, a little sweet, and madly unpredictable, The Visit culminates in a 100 percent slasher movie ending, that should feed those hungry for mayhem after numerous attempts at domestic bonding.

Not the most creative solution, but a satisfying one.

Shyamalan doesn’t always hit what he’s aiming for, but he capitalizes on the singular terror experienced by kids upon meeting batshit relations for the first time—and realizing that they’re trapped with them.

Recommended.

Shining Vale (2022-23)

When I was a wee sprout, and the family hive mind turned to televisual entertainment options, I invariably lobbied for something “scary” or something “funny.”

My conservative-leaning, middle-class family would not have tolerated a moment of Shining Vale, and, truth be told, most of the adult humor would have been lost on me.

Shining Vale ran for two seasons on Starz, and was created by Jeff Astrof (The New Adventures of Old Christine, S#!* My Dad Says) and Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe, Bad Sisters). Over the course of 16 half-hour episodes, we get cozy with the Phelps family, possibly the most dysfunctional brood since the Bundys showed up on Fox in 1987.

Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) is in a dark place. She wrote a tawdry, best-selling lady porn novel 14 years before, but the follow-up hasn’t been forthcoming, and her agent Kam (Merrin Dungey) is giving her an ultimatum: deliver the book or return the advance money.

When Pat has a torrid affair with a handyman, her stubbornly optimistic husband Terry (Greg Kinnear) packs the whole family off to a huge haunted house in rural Connecticut for a fresh start, much to the dismay of teenaged daughter Gaynor (Gus Birney).

“Mom boned some rando and now we have to move,” she grumbles. Though a freewheeling sexpot herself, Gaynor becomes the unwilling head of the household, after Mom and Dad lose their marbles.

Her younger brother Jake, a plus-sized introvert, is mostly concerned with gaining levels in his Virtual Reality game, and is slow to realize that change is afoot.

“Why did we move to a hotel?” he asks, upon arrival at the dilapidated Victorian mansion they will now call home.

Jake is also the butt of (fairly benign) fat kid jokes, but gets comic revenge by farting most foul at the worst possible moments. Seemingly an innocent, he gets his own demon adversary courtesy of VR.

Once the family is settled, Pat makes instant contact with the spirit of Rosemary (Mira Sorvino), the former owner of the house who went mad and hacked up her own family with an axe.

Rosemary does a little ghost-writing on Pat’s unfinished manuscript, and an uneasy partnership is formed when Kam digs the new, darker direction the book is taking.

This is all just tip of the iceberg stuff, as Pat, Terry, and the kids go through individual transformations of various magnitudes, while dealing with ghosts, cults, demonic possession, hereditary mental illness, and infidelity in a weird little town that features homegrown businesses like The Lucky Wiccan.

As for the title of the series, yes, there are many references to The Shining. For crying out loud, it’s about a writer trying her best not to chop everyone up with an axe.

For my money, Shining Vale is the funniest and finest-written domestic horror series since The Addams Family. The cast is flawless. You’re welcome.

But what happened to Season 3?

The Damned (2024)

Cinema doesn’t get more international than The Damned, a UK-Belgium-France-Iceland coproduction, filmed in the furthest reaches of Iceland’s Westfjord’s region, as convincing a frozen hellscape as you’re likely to find this side of Ice Station Zebra.

The Damned takes place in the latter part of the 19th century in a remote arctic fishing camp, where a small but determined band of anglers grind out a meager existence wrangling fish from the unforgiving sea.

The recently widowed Eva (Odessa Young), the owner of the fishing boat (and possible Vermeer model), calls the shots around the camp, though she often appears lost and childlike in the presence of her crusty crew.

One particular day, they spy a ship foundering on the rocks, and after some debate, decide that they can’t rescue survivors due to their own lack of food and supplies.

It’s this weighty decision that places the crew in metaphysical danger, as superstitions about vengeful drowned sailors take root in the hearts and minds of the simple fisher folk.

Devotees of the winter horror sub-genre will be right at home amongst the wind, snow, and angry tides, as reason gives way to fear and guilt in the face of powerful elemental forces, all captured by Eli Arenson’s breathtaking cinematography. Skating effortlessly between warm firelight intimacy and the brutal splendor of the Icelandic tundra, the camerawork underscores nature’s icy indifference to human ambition.

Director Thordur Palsson allows the chilly isolation to exacerbate the dread that haunts the crew until something has to give—in this case, sanity. The Damned delivers demons that we didn’t expect, in a winter wonderland of lost souls on thin ice.

Stoke the fire and get another blanket in case of the shivers.

The Substance (2024)

Your attention horror shoppers!

The Substance should be seen, full stop.

Nominated for five Oscars including best actress for Demi Moore? As it should be.

French writer-director Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) turns up the rage to Nova, and opens the taps at the blood bank in a body horror spectacle that will likely leave a bruise on your soul. It’s definitely worth the uncomfortable moments.

Fargeat gives us the impression that The Substance is another tale of dashed dreams in the Hollywood meat grinder, and it certainly is. In fact, the meat grinding has never been portrayed in such glaring and grotesque detail.

Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a beloved fitness guru who has gotten too long in the tooth to pump up sponsor sales. She is unceremoniously dumped by the venal head of the network (Dennis Quaid), who announces his plan to find a younger model, while angrily taking a pee.

Fearing for her fading career, Sparkle takes a chance on a miracle rejuvenation drug called The Substance, which promises a “a younger, better version” of yourself.

Her decision to join the program, which includes a grumpy operator, a squalid post office box, hellish injection regimen, and the gradual draining of her own vitality, is the trap springing shut.

It’s only proper that a trouper like Demi Moore has enough presence and pathos to make her vainglorious plight extremely moving, as she’s forced to grapple with her younger, better self (Margaret Qualley) for limited consciousness.

Of course, things get worse, and by the time the finale rolls around, with a mutated star trying to host a live New Year’s Eve special, it’s a straight-up Frankenstein heartbreaker, with an angry mob in pursuit.

Each time Coralie Fargeat reaches a narrative turning point in The Substance, she amps up the gore to the point of anguish, and I admire that audaciousness in the telling of this particular story.

Fargeat never delivers half measures or wimps out in any way, and in Demi Moore she has the perfect vehicle to bring home a brutal point.

“Women are bloody,” my wife reminds me. “Birth, menstruation, it’s gross.”

I get the picture, and so will you.

Heretic (2024)

This is a different Hugh Grant, though there is a passing resemblance to the rom-com Don Juan with the aw-shucks manner.

Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic is another film set during a storm that makes the most of its few sets and small cast. Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) are young Mormon missionaries on bicycles visiting the home of Mr. Reed (Grant), a seemingly absent-minded scholar with an interest in religion and spiritual knowledge.

An approaching deluge induces the girls to accept Mr. Reed’s hospitality and enter his surprisingly roomy cottage. He mentions that his wife is in the kitchen making blueberry pie!

The front door closes and the camera backtracks down the foot path that approaches the house. It seems like a long way from the road.

Trap sprung.

Mr. Reed proves to be a highly intelligent and extremely well-read individual, who goes from asking questions about Mormonism to lecturing the girls on his own personal quest for the “one true religion.”

At times, he is a professor impressively expounding on several subjects at once to a class of freshmen, and Barnes and Paxton soon find themselves in over their heads as the subject matter becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

The time passes in conversation and the smell of blueberry pie fills a cozy sitting room that begins to look suspiciously normal.

Beck and Woods do a masterful job of gradually goosing up the tension without turning Mr. Reed into Dracula. Can this old duffer even be considered a physical threat?

Reed mostly remains reasonable, but the red flags are starting to pile up. Cell phones don’t work and the front door is on a time lock that won’t open till morning (!), so if the girls want to leave (and they’re always welcome to), they’ll have to exit through the back of the house.

Credit must be given to Chloe West and Sophie Thatcher for instilling their characters with brains and backbones, the ability to think and reason even when their situation hits nightmare territory.

As for Grant, the charmingly awkward Brit with the hots for Andie McDowell is a faded lobby poster, but he can still badger and beguile a captive audience. The ingratiating tendencies and ability to spin complex thoughts into amusing, provocative word bubbles remains intact in Heretic, and Grant digs deep to reach a rich vein of menace.

In A Violent Nature (2024)

There’s quite a bit more here than meets the eye.

In A Violent Nature is not, as I had been told, a slasher movie told from the killer’s point of view.

Instead, writer-director Chris Nash dials up a multitude of perspectives, as if the doomed campers were being chased through a high-tech forest equipped with dozens of surveillance angles to choose from.

Stupid, soon-to-be-deceased college students rent a cabin in the woods. While hiking they disturb a memorial to Johnny, a mentally challenged boy who got bullied to death 70 years before.

Straight away we witness a now monstrous Johnny rise from the grave to seek revenge, and we spend considerable time riding shotgun alongside this unstoppable fiend as he makes an inspired mess out of the clueless kids.

Sometimes the murders are super gory, (the girl doing yoga gets some major stretching bodywork done) and some happen at a distance in the blink of an eye, as when a comely swimmer disappears below the waterline with a yelp from across the lake.

Nash keeps refreshing the views. He employs a static wilderness cam that dispassionately records long shots of the killer walking from one side of the frame to another. Next thing you know, we’re sitting on his shoulder, then a bird’s eye view, then a worm’s eye view.

With a string of cameras at his disposal, Nash asks us to consider the single-minded plight of a creative mutilator, in this case one that wears an old-time fireman’s mask, giving him the appearance of a predatory insect.

When Johnny occasionally pauses in his gruesome quest, we can get inside his horrible head and watch the wheels turn as he considers how best to maximize his menace, though he does remove his mask to play with a toy car at one point, a tragic reminder that this thing was once a happy child.

The undead death dealer featured in In A Violent Nature isn’t a killing machine, however. He wordlessly seems to enjoy the hunt and clearly takes pride in his victim-stalking and construction of murderous tableaux.

Johnny is obviously an artist, inviting us along to spy on his process. Now there’s a view you won’t see every day.

The Resident (2011)

It’s Hammer Time!

A release from the revived (and revered) Hammer Films imprint, The Resident traces its ancestry from gothic mysteries, slasher cinema, erotic thrillers, and Hitchcock’s Psycho.

It’s even got Christopher Lee in a supporting role! Doesn’t get more Hammer than that.

Oscar winner Hilary Swank portrays Juliet, a frazzled ER doctor on the fly from a failed relationship. In search of new lodgings, she chances upon an old building with a spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge, owned by Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a charming landlord who resides on the premises with his ailing grandfather August (Christopher Lee).

When Juliet flirts with and kisses Max, it seems perfectly natural. He and Juliet are both attractive and successful people, their mutual interest is a given. She’s also lonely and drinks too much wine.

Finnish writer-director Antti Jokinen infuses the standard melodrama in The Resident, with a willingness to get uncomfortably close to his characters. Juliet isn’t sleeping well and can’t shake the feeling that someone is invading her space.

It’s not much of a mystery, as we learn that Max, the guy who owns the building, is indeed a highly disturbed individual, but perhaps not unreasonably so. It could be argued that Juliet’s reckless behavior with the heart of an unstable suitor is the cause of all the misery.

“You kissed me first,” he reminds her. And when Juliet has the nerve to get back together with her asshole ex, the wheels really come off.

Jokinen’s use of floating and flying camerawork is absorbing, making a mostly single-set apartment appear to be filled with more passages and secret doors than the Vatican.

The Resident is better than it has a right to be, largely thanks to Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s impressively layered performance as Max, a tortured soul who maybe just wanted to meet a nice girl. And a doctor to boot!

Morgan isn’t shy about delving the creepier depths of Max’s obsession, whether it’s licking Juliet’s hand from beneath her bed while she sleeps, or having a little cuddle party with her clothes, he’s clearly an actor unafraid of committing to a role.

Anyone expecting an arrogant and antagonistic villain in the vein of The Walking Dead’s Negan will, I thnk, be surprised by Morgan’s ability to generate menace, revulsion, and sympathy—right up until the bloody nail-gun finale.