Horror cinema has come a long way since The Exorcist with some pretty big tumbles and pitfalls along the way. While we have had terrible disasters at the execution of this genre, there have been some achieving productions in the past decade as well. The selective fanbase of the horror genre with its sick, twisted tastes are well aware of the classics such as the aforementioned 1973 supernatural horror film and A Nightmare on Elm Street and Evil Dead franchises to the contemporaries like The Conjuring, Insidious and The Grudge. With The Blair Witch Project setting wheels to the ‘found footage’ style of horror movies and up and coming directors giving preference to creative plots and scares over senseless violence, here are four movies you might have missed as an ardent horror fan in the making:
SINISTER:
THE LAST EXORCISM:
GRAVE ENCOUNTERS:
The crew of a ghost-hunting reality television show, ‘Grave Encounters’, hosted by Lance Preston decides to shoot an episode inside the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where unexplained occurrences have been reported for years. They voluntarily lock themselves inside the building for one night to carry out a paranormal investigation butsoon realize that the building is not just haunted by the ghosts of its former patients but is an altogether separate terrorizing entity which refuses to let them leave. A ‘found footage’ horror flick made with equal distribution of gore, creep and genuinebatshit crazy has found a cult following despite receiving mixed reviews. Never in the history of horror cinema has the trope ‘don’t-go-near-the-bathtub-in-which-a-mental-old-lady-died’ has been so terrifyingly executed than Grave Encounters. Aplenty with shocking jump scares that are capable of profoundly disturbing your whole molecular structure, the film also successfully maintains the theme of bewilderment and paranoia as every door marked ‘Exit’ leads into another hallway and the fact that the windows remain blackened with darkness even when it’s 07:00 in the morning.
OCULUS:
Ten years before the present narrative picks up, the Russell family was struck by tragedy resulting in the murders of Alan and Marie Russell, the death of the former at the hands of their teenaged son, Tim. Now incarcerated, Tim reunites with his older sister, Kaylie who is still haunted by the events of that fateful night and is convinced that a malevolent supernatural force residing in an antique mirror, called the Lasser Glass, was responsible for their parents’ death. While Tim wants to put the past behind him, Kaylie, determined to prove her brother’s innocence, tracks down the mirror and the siblings find themselves losing their grip on what’s real as the mysterious entity of the Lasser Glass exerts its destructive influence.
Completely negating the necessity of shock value to impress and terrify viewers, Oculus weaves an ominous and disturbing tale of slow-dawning insanity that stealthily creeps up from behind your shoulder to softly whisper: “Exacting revenge on an eternally pissed supernatural entity is really stupid.” The mirror induces hallucinations and exercises complete mind control on its victims, its terror palpable in one particular instance in which the siblings run outside the house only to see their doppelgangers through the window standing before an anchor operated by an automatic kill switch which was originally installed by Kalie to smash the mirror. “It’s a trick to get us back inside,” Tim contends, with Kaylie responding, “What if it’s a trick to keep us standing there?”
By Mahima Verma