Terrified (2017)

I think we need to take a minute to appreciate what streaming services have provided to us genre fans over the past year. Hulu debuted a new horror anthology series based on the Stephen King universe, Castle Rock. Netflix premiered notable films such as Cargo, Apostle, Hold the Dark and The Ritual (one of my absolute favorites from this year) among others, as well as a new television adaptation of Shirley Jackson's spine-tingling classic, The Haunting of Hill House. And Shudder... well, Shudder has been busy doing the dark lord's work. They've been giving a home to horror since their inception and this year has easily been their best year yet with showcasing original films like Revenge, Hell House LLC II and Satan's Slaves. They also provided a home for the SYFY channel's creepypasta anthology show Channel Zero (season two, No-End House, is now up and I can't WAIT) and hosted the return of cult icon Joe Bob Briggs and his Last Drive-In show in the form of a 24-hour horror movie marathon. It's no wonder that horror hounds flock to this streaming service in droves.

Shudder released a new film this past Friday called Terrified (aka Aterrados) and a LOT of buzz has been flying around the internet a few days prior to its release. Most notably Birth.Movies.Death. ran a piece entitled, "Horror Fans: It is Your Moral Imperative to Watch TERRIFIED on Shudder this Weekend". This excited me as well as took me by surprise and the following thoughts immediately flooded my head:

• Birth.Movies.Death. is a publication that I trust when it comes to their genre recommendations.
• Wait, this is the "first" paranormal film to come out of Argentina? GIVE IT TO ME NOW.
• Have I ever seen a film from Argentina? No? Challenge accepted.
• Is it lunch time yet?
• Also, how have I never heard of this before?

The original language festival poster.

My fingers are usually kept pretty close to the pulse of the horror community and upon a cursory Google search I found that other internet publications are declaring that this is one of the scariest movies in modern times, a true gem and, as one site puts it, "scary and cool AF". Now, we've all heard these phrases tossed around before, like a few months ago with the premiere of  Hereditary or, if we go further back into the year, with A Quiet Place. Hell, I heard it again earlier this week with the new film Antrum, which is being touted as "the deadliest film ever made". But, if I'm going to be honest, that's all I really need to hear to sell me on a new horror movie. Just the promise of something unique and different is more than enough to get me going and what can do that better than a foreign horror film that everyone is suddenly raving about?

And yeah, sure, just because a horror film is foreign doesn't excuse it from being terrible, but different cultures can provide new insight and context into well worn tropes (I'm thinking of films like Veronica, The Wailing or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night). And it's this shakeup of modern horror tropes where Demián Rugna's Terrified truly shines. We usually see evil in the form of hauntings as rooted to one specific area, usually a house or a manor, and once your outside (or at least off the property) you're safe. In Terrified, the evil is infectious enough that it can spread, in this case to a couple of close-knit houses located in small neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Each house has its own particular haunting: a couple's life is turned upside down when one of them beings to hear whispering inside her kitchen sink, next door a man is terrified by an elongated man who unfurls from underneath his bed at night, and across the street a mother's sorrow is exacerbated when her recently deceased son returns home and knocks over a glass of milk. 

Fuck that milk ayyy

Enter a team of elderly paranormal researchers. Along with a local police officer, the three members each seclude themselves to one of the houses with the intent to solve, soothe and fix what troubles and ails each home. Each localized bit of horror brings with it different elements to create something ultimately captivating and new: possession, reanimation and voyeurism. The film deepens its lore by stating that looking a certain way will unveil things that are usually hidden by the naked eye. Here, angles are everything and will absolutely determine whether you live or die. We see this through one our characters who view things outside a window differently depending on where they are standing or when our police officer is trying to rescue someone from inside a cabinet. Things get really Lovecraftian from here on out and Stuart Gordon's From Beyond  and Silent Hill is one of the many films that popped into my head while watching this. It's all great fun until, unfortunately, it isn't.

While the first two acts are genuinely very creepy it all begins to unfold by the third act. Perhaps juggling all these different ideas became too much to handle? Too many loose threads? While ambiguity is something I thoroughly enjoy in films Terrified does so in a way that's much like a fire being doused with a bucket of water. It just... kind of ends. There's no real explanation to why this is all happening outside of some inconsequential mumblings about tap water. Characters do stupid things like sit in front of gigantic cracks in walls where clearly something will come crawling out of. New situations arise from our character's actions, like when a little boy records his dead friend sitting at a kitchen table, but nothing comes of it.

Rule no. 1: Stay away from weird cracks.

I really wanted to like Terrified a lot more than I did. Which isn't to say that I don't. The first two acts are genuinely really creepy and unsettling. The hauntings presented here are very unique and horrifying in their own right. But much like this years Ghost Stories, it just didn't fully land on its own two feet by the end. It has less to do with the performances or atmosphere than it does with the script: it just ran out of gas. Still, if you're horror fan whose seen it all or just someone wanting to expand their Halloween palette with more foreign affairs, then I would absolutely recommend checking Terrified out.

Demon Wind (1990)

The current health and cultural resurgence of genre cinema is reliant on many things, but none so heavily as nostalgia. Though much has been said about the culture surrounding "toxic nostalgia", particularly in our instant gratification informational age, nostalgia has also done a whole lot of good for the genre film. The signs are everywhere. A cursory glance at what is on slate for 2018's genre offerings highlights films such as the ethereal and transcendent Mandy, throwbacks such as Summer of 84 and Let the Corpses Tan, and new iterations of horror mainstays like Suspiria, Hellraiser and Halloween. Hell, even the upcoming film, Death Kiss, worships nostalgia so much that they cast a man who looks almost identical to the late Charles Bronson (though if that's a benefit really depends on who you're asking). And it's not just filmmakers solely benefiting from this. Enough time has passed that a whole new generation of historians are adjusting their rose-tinted glasses and putting out essential tomes dedicated to the field's more esoteric bits, like Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks from Hell or Michael Gingold's upcoming Ad Nauseam: Newsprint Nightmares from the 1980s (which debuts early next month). And with these new set of eyes comes new reevaluations of forgotten and overlooked films.

Enter the physical media distributors, who are the true champions of this realm. For without them, many of these titles would remain semi-lost or forgotten forever. I'm talking about labels like Arrow Video, Scream Factory, Vinegar Syndrome and many, many more. By offering second chances to films almost lost by time, many of these new scans eventually make their way to the theatrical circuit, much like Suspiria's critically lauded 4K scan from famed company Synapse Films did last year. (Though Suspiria has left enough of a cultural mark that it's unlikely it'll ever become forgotten, much less lost.) While labels like Scream Factory and Arrow Video offer a lot of fan favorites, it's companies like Vinegar Syndrome, it's subsidiary Intervision Picture Corp, Bleeding Skull and more that are truly paving the way in offering genre fans a look at the deeper cuts.

And in this case it's all thanks to the good folks over at Vinegar Syndrome, a company so dedicated and passionate that they even fund their own scans at their homebase (check out this great interview with co-owner Joe Rubin!). Whenever VS drop a new title it's time for a celebration. Aside from the painstakingly new transfers and boatload of bonus content included in the overall package, they also provide our revival/repertory culture with a new film to foam over. Sometimes the films are great and prove to be essential viewing. Sometimes they're just okay. And other times they're a whole lot of fun, much like Charles Philip Moore'd Demon Wind.

Demon Wind is essentially a riff/homage of Evil Dead/Night of the Demons mixed with the gross-out attention to detail seen in the films of the great gore maestro, Lucio Fulci. I mean, really, there's some disgusting pus/bile bubbling out one character's mouth within the first five minutes of the movie. The setup is familiar: a young man is "called" via dreams to come to an old farmhouse where his grandparents mysteriously died and his father committed suicide in while accompanied with enough friends to offer enough victim fodder to keep the viewer happy.  And that's basically it. You have your mad gas station attendant who tries to ward off the young group, you have your incantations written in Latin smeared across the walls, and... wait, a woman who turns into a baby doll that erupts into flames? An old woman who drops a snow globe which results in her house exploding in a great big ball of fire? A weird, tongue-like tentacle unfurling from the mouth of a cow's skull? How has nobody been talking about this?

Released on home video on VHS but entirely missing during the DVD boom, Demon Wind finally finds it new home and audience with this VS Blu-Ray release. As for the movie? It's okay. Definitely not essential viewing but also not worth missing out on. For those fans who have seen it all, I would recommend seeking this one out. It has enough practical effects and fun characters to keep you entertained and would be a great addition to anyone's month-long Halloween binge that is just around the corner.