The best horror movies of 2020: Streaming, festival, and VOD edition – The A.V. Club

Clockwise from top left: Imptetigore (Screengrab); We Summon The Darkness (Photo: Saban Films); The Beach House (Photo: Shudder)

This weeks Push The Envelope isnt all Horrors Week-themed (weve got our Random Roles interview with Mark Strong for you to enjoy), but we wanted to get into the spirit by having our resident horror experts Katie Rife and Alex McLevy stop by the podcast to share their favorite genre films of the year from the festival and streaming/VOD worlds.

You can keep on reading for a few highlights of McLevys streaming/VOD options, and can hear the whole podcast episode here.

This is very much in the sort of horror comedy vein. It stars Alexandra Daddario and its directed by Marc Myers, who I think probably most people know for his film, My Friend Dahmer. But if you like that film, do not go into this expecting a similar tone. This is a much wider, much goofier film. Its three young, twenty-something metalhead women on their way to a concert. They go and they meet up with a few guys, and decide itd would be fun to keep partying after the concert. So they go back to Alexandra Daddarios, her characters househer parents house. And needless to say, from there, the night does not go quite as they expect. I dont want to say too much about it, but its very fun. Katies seen it, I know, and also likes it. Its got a great twist, a great plot. Some goofy stuff happens, but its definitely a good movie if somebody is looking for something thats still in the horror genre but doesnt really feel like getting too scared.

Available on Netflix

This is a movie was made by director Jeffrey Brown. Its his first feature film. You wouldnt know it, though, by seeing it, because its a wonderfully shot, a little slice of horror, sort of combination. It starts off H.P. Lovecraft style-meets-body horror, thats kind of the best way to describe it. A young couple arrives at exactly the title place, a beach house, to sort of work on their relationshipits owned by his parents. Its sort of a classic situation: He and his girlfriend are sort of slowly moving in different directions in life. But what happens is a friend of his fathers, another couple, ends up actually being in the house at the same time. And so they end up sharing it for the night and having dinner together. And while theyre doing this, and spending this evening together, this strange sort of fog with eerie lights in it sort of drifts over to the mainland. And as anybody whos ever seen a horror movie knows, thats never a good thing. And so, very quickly, things start to happen to them. They wake up not feeling quite the same in the morning and things go very, very south very quickly. Its gross. Its grisly. Its artfully constructed. Its everything you could want in a in a creepy little nasty slice of slice of horror.

Available on Shudder

This is an Indonesian film, and the reason I was excited to check it out in the first place is because the director, Joko Anwar, did a film that made a big splash internationally a couple of years agoit was a remake of Satans Slaves, which was a 1982 film, but he remade it. And Katie and I both actually saw it, I think at the same time, maybe at the Apocalypse Film Festival here in Chicagoand we thought it was great. So this is his newest horror film. And hes hes got a very sort of great grand, old-school, classical [feel,] very much in the tradition of Val Lewton. I think of him almost maybe a sort of the Indonesian James Wan in some ways. This one, its another very simple, classic, traditional horror setup. This young woman who never knew her parents, she finds this old photograph that suggests that they were in fact rich and have this old house in the village where she was born. And so she travels back to see if maybe she owns this house and could get some money, solve all our money woes, so her and a friend go. And when they get to the town, very quickly its apparent that something isnt quite right. There are no children to be seen anywhere, except for these three strange girls that she continually catches at the edge of her field of vision. And so they start to explore her connection to this town and why her family had this big house here. And it unspools from there in a very sort of classical tradition, its very grand. You know, its almost Spielbergian at times in terms of Anwars command of cinematic language. Its great. Id call it a four-quadrant crowdpleaser in the horror genre.

Available on Shudder

To hear Rifes thoughts on festival standoutsas well as her lively discussion with McLevy about the moment Indonesian horror is currently having, and the Mark Strong interviewsubscribe to Push The Envelope wherever you get your podcasts. If youre a fan, remember to rate, comment, and subscribe to get the episodes as soon as theyre live.

New episodes of Push The Envelope are released every Thursday.

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The best horror movies of 2020: Streaming, festival, and VOD edition - The A.V. Club