Barton Fink (1991)

Sitting here, I can’t help but feel like the titular playwright behind the Coen brothers’ 1991 drama/comedy/horror/film noir masterpiece Barton Fink. I don’t know where to begin this post, and I certainly don’t know where, or how, to end. The film confounds. You see, Barton Fink is a film about process: torturous, consuming, emasculating, arduous process. John Turturro stars as Fink, a celebrated playwright in New York who travels west in the hopes of securing enough capital by writing a “wrestling picture” for Hollywood to continue his dramatic bent towards the “struggles of the common man.” Fink arrives in L.A. and checks in to the decrepit Hotel Earle, wherein he discovers his (philosophically) platonic literary subject in the form of an insurance salesman, Charlie Meadows (John Goodman). This is only the beginning of Fink’s prolonged odyssey through Hollywood. As the playwright turned screenwriter struggles with his own creative vision, he must pass through the crucible of L.A.’s most erratic gatekeepers in the form of producers (the Oscar nominated performance of Jack Lerner) and writers, one of which bears an uncanny resemblance to William Faulkner. The process of “plunging the depths” drives Fink toward absurd and apocalyptic consequences in an unforgettably horrifying ending.

Barton Fink is the Coen brothers’ most allusive and literary film to date. The composition of Hotel Earle eerily resembles that of the Overlook (The Shining), and the continued references to fascism, religion, and the writing process as a whole render the film tantalizingly cryptic. Fink challenges notions of maintaining an objective reality in the face of a singularly subjective pursuit, characterizing the unsettling truth that the existence of a middle ground is not only absent, but disturbingly so. The Coen brothers’ have a knack for journeys, and the interiority and intimacy of Fink proves their own genius at such an early stage of their own.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

This drive-in horror flick from the early '60s begins abruptly with a car race. The viewer is thrown into the action so quickly that I almost wondered if Netflix had cut out a few opening scenes. But the jarring introduction sets the mood for the rest of the film, which can mainly be described as "disorienting." The race ends when the car full of girls falls off a bridge and sinks into a river. Some time after the crash, one girl miraculously climbs ashore. She then moves to a new town and takes a job as a church organist. But in this town, a mysterious man seems to follow her wherever she goes.


This barely financed film is from the same era of horror as the Twilight Zone, and the landmark television program's influence on the film is so staggering that it's arguably plagiarism. In fact, now that I think about it, the basic plot is pretty much exactly the same as one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, "The Hitch-Hiker." The film is so similar that I might recommend watching the episode to get a similar payoff with a much shorter time commitment. That aside, I enjoyed this film for the same reason I enjoy the less "intellectual" episodes of The Twilight Zone. The message is non-existent, the dialogue is awkward, and the twist is so obvious that it feels inaccurate to even refer to it as a twist. But this film succeeds in a major way on two levels.
1) The sound and cinematography combine in an interesting way to create a dreamlike effect that can't be paralleled in big-budget films.
2) It creeps you the fuck out.
One scene in particular encapsulates both of these points quite well. A little over halfway into the film the woman plays a particularly disorienting organ solo in which swirling, dissonant harmonies blur together and get buried beneath each other. As the organ music (which is beautifully used throughout the film, by the way) rises in intensity, the lighting in the church gets darker, and shots of the woman's blankly terrified expression get juxtaposed with nightmarish shots of the church, the moon, the mysterious man, and the activities at the "carnival" of the title.

I wouldn't recommend this film to most people, but there are some people who I would recommend it to without hesitation. If you, like me, are addicted to creepy films that are made creepy because of the sound and cinematography of old-school B-movies, then Carnival of Souls is for you. I would describe this movie as the feeling of the nightmare sequence from Vertigo stretched out over a 70-minute episode of The Twilight Zone. For this reason you may be better off just watching The Twilight Zone and Vertigo. But if you've seen those two and you're hungry for more black and white nightmare imagery, check out this cult classic.

Last House on the Left (1972)

Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) made his writing and directing debut in one of the films that shaped the horror genre for years to come. Arguably the first slasher movie, Last House on the Left is about two teenage girls, Mari and Phyllis, who go downtown for a rock concert against their parents' wishes. On the way, they ask a guy if he knows where they can find some weed, and he takes them into his apartment where he and his criminal friends kidnap the girls. The four psychopaths take the girls into the woods and rape and murder them. Then, the psychopaths wander down the street and stay the night at the last house on the left, which is where one of the girls' parents lives. The parents do some sleuthing and realize that these guys killed their daughter, so, spoiler alert, the parents kill the bad guys. One gets shot, one gets his penis bit off, one gets her throat slit, and one gets murdered in the face with a chainsaw.I would imagine that a review isn't really necessary after a plot description like that. The story is stupid, the characters are totally flat, and the entire purpose of the film is to be shocking for the sake of shocking. Even though I'm not a big fan of slashers, I thought I would check this film out because it is considered one of the classics of the sub-genre, and there have been some more artful slasher films I've enjoyed (The Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 70s versions). But this film was not creative nor did it evoke any emotion besides disgust. The cinematography was really low-budget, which I suppose gives it a quality of realism, but with every other aspect of the film being so poorly done, it just added to the immature feel of the entire project. It's hard to believe that this is the same guy who made some of the best horror films of all time.

Worst of all is the awful comedy that cuts in between the disgusting and gratuitous rape scenes. After one particularly brutal scene, we have an even more pointless scene where two police officers meet up with the most racist and stereotypical depiction of a black Southern woman who won't give them a ride to the woods because her truck is weighed down with a bunch of chicken cages. Then we're back in the forest with the rape and the murder.

But despite how terrible the movie is, it may be worth watching from a historical perspective. It's interesting to see what kind of stuff people used to go see in B-movie theaters when the dark side of their consciousness would get the best of them. Plus, you can see how it laid the groundwork for a lot of campy horror that came after it. No monsters, no supernatural forces, no message to think about, just bad people doing bad things for no reason. Plus, the contrast between the mood of the last scene and the end credits is quite possibly the most ridiculous I have ever witnessed, and it could be worth watching just for that final "what the fuck" moment.
All in all, the stupidity of this movie left me baffled, and I can't say I really enjoyed it, but I felt like a more enlightened horror fan after viewing it, and found it interesting to delve into the history of a dark sub-genre.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Roman Polansky's first Hollywood production tells the story of a young woman (Mia Farrow) unknowingly and unwillingly giving birth to the spawn of Satan. Set in a gothic apartment complex in New York, the story follows Rosemary and her aspiring-actor husband (John Cassavettes), their separate relationships with the creepy old neighbors, a suspicious conception, the nightmarish pregnancy, and the birth of Satan's son in the chilling final scene.

This is one of those movies that has come to be defined by the "twist" in the final scene. Much like people think of Carrie as "that movie about the unpopular girl who goes to the prom and kills everyone with telekinesis," many think of Rosemary's Baby as "that movie about the girl who gives birth to the devil." But knowing the ending doesn't cheapen the effect of this truly haunting classic of the horror genre. Even if you aren't scared of the occult and Satan, the real scares in this film come from the imagery, which is bleak and macabre with all the pale colors and gothic settings. The paleness contrasts really effectively with the few devil-oriented scenes to make them especially dark and scary. The score is equally haunting. Based on a brooding theme that prominently features an eerie harpsichord and ghostly female vocals, the music evokes a creepy feeling that matches the setting perfectly. Listening to the music alone is enough to give me nightmares.

This film is one of my favorites of all time, and widely considered to be one of the top horror films ever. For someone who wants to explore the genre more, this is a great introduction to the golden age of horror, when scares were based on cinematography, sound, and other elements that are important to all films, rather than the gore and surprising visuals that make up the cheap scares in modern horror blockbusters.

The Crazies (2010)

While my positive bias for zombie movies and some of the lead actors let me enjoy this movie I can't say it was very good. The acting is pretty good as well as the makeup but the cinematography and editing are a little lax and the story itself, especially the end is pretty weak. I liked the setting of a small town for the zombie flick (a little reference to Night of the Living Dead (1968) perhaps) and the total destruction of the town was pleasing in some small slightly sick way, like any good thriller, but there are a number of parts of the film that have you asking 'how did that work? Wasn't he over there?' and some of the action/characters/motives aren't believable even for a horror movie. The gore is great and plentiful but the religious references were a unnecessary and misplaced. While I liked watching this, unless you enjoy zombie movies or have a soft spot in your heart for Timothy Olyphant, this probably isn't worth wasting your time on and you can definitely find better horror movies on the Queue. (see some of Buggin Out's early reviews if you're looking for a good horror flick)

Let The Right One In (2008)

This Swedish made vampire flick was awesome. A little boy living in a snowy Stockholm suburb befriends a young girl who helps him confront his bullies at school. Oh, and she's a vampire, who happens to be responsible for a string of violent murders in town. Though its without a doubt a horror film, this movie isn't really very scary so much as it is creepy: it's bloody but not too bloody, it moves slowly without jump scenes, and, well come on, the vampire is just a lonely little girl. Aesthetically the movie is breathtaking; a certain swimming pool scene at the very end in particular. Touching and terrifying, I highly recommend it if you want a movie that will tug at your heart strings and still leave you saying "What the fuck...?"