Halloween is just around the corner and although I'd very much like to go to a fancy masquerade ball dressed to the teeth in the most outrageous 17th-century ballgown--powdered wing and all--my bank account can only afford a costume budget of two dollars--nevermind the hundred-plus-dollar admission fee. If you're like me, you probably dream of haunted houses and genre balls but spend most All Hallows' Eves trying to trick-or-treat with the neighborhood kids before a suspicious parent asks you how old you are. To avoid that embarrassing awkwardness this Halloween, skip the trick-or-treating, buy a bag of your favorite candy, and accept that you are now a broke, lonely twenty-something-year-old who can binge watch as many movies as your crappy Wi-Fi will allow.
1. Dogtooth
This drama-cum-psychological thriller is perhaps one of the best cautionary films about helicopter parenting. Although father to adult children, Christos Stergioglou's character who is only referred to as father locks his daughters and son in a perennial state of infancy by keeping them prisoner in the family's gated compound. In part a coming-of-age story, "Dogtooth" also celebrates films and film lovers by presenting cult classics as the only true entertainer and educator of the infantilized adults.
2. Under the Skin
In this bizarre mashup of science fiction and fantasy, a mysterious woman named Laura drives around Scotland luring unsuspecting men into her van and the vampiric floor of a black room. While Laura drives around--sometimes with her silent motorcycle companion--for much of the film, she digs deep to find any trace of humanity in the last 40 minutes. Although her earlier apathy makes her ruthless to us and the men she feeds on, her attempt at empathy is what jeopardizes her own existence.
3. Body Double
Patrick Bateman's favorite video to rent, "Body Double" pays tribute to both trash and cerebral horror. From the loopy prosthetics and numerous body doubles, the film explores sex and violence and the turbulence of being a Hollywood actor as it inspects the boundaries of one man's sanity and morality.
4. Antichrist
If you're particularly squeamish about blood--human or otherwise--or any kind of genital mutilation, you may want to stay away from this one. Exhuming the woods as an aggravator of maternal mourning, this 2009 drama transports us into the dark world of grief and pleasure.
5. Repulsion
Heavy with sexual innuendos, "Repulsion" chronicles one young woman's descent into murder and psychosis after her sister leaves with a lover for a holiday. Barricading herself in the lonely London apartment, Carol hallucinates about greasy men and scarred wooly hands raking over her.
6. Let the Right One In
The better original of the American remake, "Let the Right One In" is part love story part horror. While the androgynous vampiric Eli threatens the adults of a snowy Swedish suburb, she becomes the only friend and protector of a bullied 12-year-old boy named Oskar.
7. The Fly
In this 1958 science fiction horror, a scientist metamorphosizes into a human-sized housefly after a botched attempt to teleport himself. As if the body horror isn't enough, the film also focuses on the young scientist's steady retreat from the human world and his family.
8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
One of the first slasher films which set the foundation for the genre, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has come to define teen road-trip horrors. There to investigate their grandfather's desecrated grave, a young woman, her paraplegic brother, and their friends set out to the infamous farmhouse where they find a cannibalistic family waiting for another meal. Talk about roadkill.
After watching these, you probably won't feel so alone.
