Tons of horror movies come out weekly and it's hard to keep up. It certainly is one of, if not the, highest volume film genre. It's great to see smart, budget-conscious (I won't say "cheap" cause that implies they're tacky, home-made little projects) horror films released amidst all the hackneyed movies that fill up the Netflix 'Horror' genre listings.
Two new-ish jewels that came out recently are from the UK area, and tell both intimate and larger-scale stories of various kinds of horror.
The Girl with All the Gifts (see above trailer) is of the "macro" kind, a somewhat small story encased in a larger, epic environment of global collapse after a zombie virus. In a militarized UK, a collection of hybrid, second generation children are incarcerated and used as test subjects for curing the virus.
Glenn Close stars as the head scientist who sees the cure as the shiny goal, whereas the children are all expendable specimens. The children's teacher Helen (Gemma Arterton) is the more empathetic heroine, and her favorite student is the titular character, the whip-smart Melanie (Sennia Nanua).
After an attack on their base, the core group of survivors make a run for it and it becomes a road zombie movie, in the vein of 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead. The effects are smart, small, and subtle. Aside from fallen city landscapes, any CGI nonsense is smartly kept to a minimum.
The Girl succeeds on its small team-focus in a larger world narrative, whittling it down to the main players fight for survival. It's tense, savvy, and still finds a new angle or two in the overdone zombie genre.
A Dark Song is another UK isles (in this case Ireland) horror/thriller but is much smaller in scale, a micro two-person story about loss and the lengths people will go to hold on to their loved ones.
Sophia (Catherine Walker) mourning the loss of her dead son, rents a house in the Welsh countryside and hires an occult "expert" Solomon (Steve Oram) to make contact with her son and find out the identity of his killers so she can seek revenge.
The dilapidated mansion itself becomes a third character as the length of time of their stay grows from days to weeks, and seemingly months as they "train" and study for this ritualistic seance to connect with the dead child.
Almost like a filmed stage play, the two go from curiosity to anger and hatred as their rituals slowly spin out of control. Like in The Girl, the CG is tasteful and used smartly. Budget constraints, and maybe a good old fashioned dose of British reserve holds A Dark Song back from becoming a ridiculous, by-the-numbers Hollywood schlockfest.
The pay-offs are simple and small and the amount of dour suffering in the film is not for the weak-hearted.
It's interesting how something as seemingly crowd-pleasing and larger scale as The Girl with a name actor (Close) could have such a tiny, direct-to-streaming release. Who knows what the intricacies are in Hollywood studioland where one seemingly sure-fire hit is subjugated to "direct to..." status, while another horror movie is chosen as the one that will probably "break through."
It is always a blessing though, for horror movie fans, when someone has done the thankless work of pushing the "good" films towards the light through a sea of noise, grabbing them before they slip through the cracks.
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