It's time for HMC's traditional 'Best of Year' list (now in its twelfth year!). As usual the rules are that the film has to have had a release in 2023 for the first time - either at the cinema, at a festival, or on Blu-ray. Big budget widely-released studio successes (like BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER, two films that made the biggest splashes of the year) don't get a look in because you already know about them. Instead what I'm presenting here is a list of films that are all highly worthy of attention but which even seasoned film fans may have either missed or don't even know exist. It should also be pointed out that despite my best efforts, the arrival of Magnus the Utterly Splendid Brindle Staffordshire Bull Terrier at HMC has meant I haven't been able to catch all the new releases or all the festival films, so if your favourite of the year isn't on here it may well be because I haven't seen it yet. Ready? Ok here we go!
10 My Mother's Eyes
The new film from WOMAN OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS writer-director Takeshi Kushida, which received its UK premiere at this year's Frightfest. Combining mad science, maternal guilt and cellos, the latest film from Kushida feels like the next natural step in what is promising to become a fascinating oeuvre. A woman suffering from retinitis pigmentosa is going slowly blind. During an episode of blindness she crashes her car and renders her young daughter paralysed from the neck down. A revolutionary new contact lens allows her to see again, and linking it to a VR headset allows her daughter to live through her eyes. But the scientist has his own reasons for having created the device. Perhaps needless to say, none of this ends well, Stylish, moving and (eventually) blood drenched, this is one that's going to reward repeat viewings.
9 Another Day to Live Through
Satu (Lene Kqiku), a young woman hiking through forestland, meets the much older Lauri (Timo Torikka) who directs her to the cabin she is seeking. The next thing she knows she is waking up in bed with Lauri attending her, with no memory of how she got there. The longer she stays in the cabin the more time seems to be distorting and folding in on itself. Sidney Salkow's 1964 THE LAST MAN ON EARTH plays constantly on the television in the lounge, and eventually Satu ends up parroting dialogue from it. Lauri seems to drift in and out of her reality as the days blur one into another. She sometimes eats breakfast on the cabin's veranda while the dead body of someone lies just beyond the cabin's steps. Eventually all the pieces fall into place. Or do they? That in essence is the appeal (and likely also the turn off for some) of writer-director Peter Simmons' film, because by the end you'll be asking all sorts of questions, ruminating on all sorts of possibilities and, if you've been in what can best be described as a 'Jess Franco state of mind' you'll be wanting to watch it again. Finland is having a great year in horror and this is another unexpected surprise, and a must-see if you love weird art-house fractured narrative 1970s-style EuroHorror. Released on digital in the UK from Reel 2 Reel Films.
8 Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives
Another UK Frightfest premiere, and a somewhat unwieldy title (presumably to help distinguish it from the plethora of other HOME SWEET HOME movies out there) for this German production that turned out to be an unexpected highlight of the festival. Shot in one take, that was actually something of an unnecessary gimmick in the telling of a supremely creepy ghost story. As the sun sets a pregnant woman arrives at the remote country house of her husband's family. It's deserted and as she starts to wander round she discovers a secret room filled with African artefacts and a diary that describes a terrible event in the past. Some great scary moments as well as a gradually building atmosphere of dread and inevitability leading to a final shot that's just right all made this one a winner.
7 Good Boy
The old-fashioned tale of girl meets boy, girl discovers boy is millionaire and girl goes out with millionaire, is given a gleefully perverse spin in GOOD BOY, which was another (along with THE KNOCKING) of this year's Frightfest offerings from Finland. Sigrid believes she's met the perfect man in rich, handsome young Christian, except for one thing: his dog Frank, or rather the fact that Frank is actually a man in a dog costume who, according to Christian, wants to be treated as a dog at all times. There's more going on, of course, but it's unlikely you'll guess exactly where this one is going by the decidedly kinky and over the top climax. A bit like a lengthy and especially odd episode of Inside No.9, (they could have called it Furry Shades of Grey - thanks Mrs Probert!) GOOD BOY is the kind of off-kilter, disturbing, well-made low budget horror fare that Frightfest was designed to showcase. After the end credits have rolled you'll still be wondering about the horrible possible reasons for the final shot.
6 Mother May I?
Released by Vertigo on Digital in the UK, MOTHER MAY I is the story of Emmett (Kyle Gallner) who inherits his mother's remote house in rural Connecticut. Once he arrives there with his fiancé it transpires that Emmett is harbouring deep resentment towards his deceased mother because of, it seems, abandonment issues. Anya fancies herself as an amateur psychoanalyst (we learn her mother is a real one) and tries to get Emmett to open up about his feelings. However, everything gets complicated when one morning Emmett wakes up to find Anya has taken on the persona of his mother. Is she embarking on a potentially dangerous attempt at psychotherapy? Or has Emmett's mother actually taken possession of her? As well as a carefully thought out script that's acted well, the film benefits immensely from some stunning visual compositions, making the most of the lush countryside that surrounds the house and inserting blurred, ghostly, Jamesian images into it for maximum effect. One overhead shot of a boat on a lake looks like a white eye staring out of a sea of darkness so if you want it there are cosmic horror allusions, too.
5 Monolith
Deservedly playing a number of UK festivals this year including Frightfest and Abertoir, MONOLITH is a fine science fiction piece from Australia, set in a single location and with only a single actress (Lily Sullivan from EVIL DEAD RISE) onscreen. A disgraced reporter chances across a story regarding something people can only describe as a black brick. A few telephone calls and interviews later and it sounds as if various people across the world have received mysterious black bricks that have changed their lives. Then it's revealed that internal scans of the bricks' structures have revealed mysterious symbols folded in on themselves, each different for every brick / person. Combining a strong allegory for how we deal with guilt with a mounting sense of dread, cosmic horror & possible alien invasion, MONOLITH is a riveting and fascinating watch.
4 Sick of Myself
Writer-Director Kristoffer Borgli was in UK cinemas recently with the Nicolas Cage-starring DREAM SCENARIO. Released on Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome earlier in the year was this, his previous effort and one well worth seeking out. SICK OF MYSELF is a razor sharp satire on the nature of modern narcissism starring Kristine Kujath Thorp as Signe, a young woman so self-obsessed that she goes to increasingly horrific lengths to get the attention she craves, from trying to get dogs to bite her, to ingesting large quantities of pills known to have severely disfiguring side effects. Her artist boyfriend is almost as bad, and her sexual fantasies are fuelled by who she imagines might come to her funeral (and who would be refused entry). As her condition worsens and she becomes both the subject of front page newspaper articles and the poster girl for a fashion house one wonders where it will all end. By turns horrific and hilarious, and often both at the same time. DREAM SCENARIO is good but SICK OF MYSELF is great.
3 Red Rooms
Pascal Plante's RED ROOMS uses the courtroom drama to provide a searing commentary on true crime obsession while also being a tense and grim thriller in its own right. Fashion model Kelly-Anne is obsessed with the trial of alleged serial killer Ludovic Chevalier, accused of chopping up three teenagers and filming their deaths as a live broadcast to a 'Red Room' on the dark web. But the video of the final murder, the one that might either clear or condemn Chevalier, is yet to be found. Should she go looking for it? Or just carry on spending her nights sleeping outside the courtroom to make sure she gets a good seat at the trial every morning? RED ROOMS is a real surprise - well directed, cleverly written and sensitively performed. You never see a drop of blood but this might just be the most horrifying film of the year.
2 The Moor
25 years after a series of child abductions in a small Yorkshire village one father is still determined to locate the body of his missing son, and he's prepared to go to supernatural lengths to do so if necessary. Needless to say it all goes horribly wrong. There's much of Machen (stone circles, petroglyphs, something possibly lurking beneath the land) in Chris Cronin's excellent THE MOOR, a film that drops you into the location of the title (in the case the Yorkshire moors) and proceeds to scare you silly. Cronin really knows how to make an already pretty forbidding landscape seem all the more brooding, and despite all that wide open space this is splendidly claustrophobic when it needs to be. One of the best of the year and deserving of a cinema release to experience all that panoramic grimness on the big screen. We'll see if gets one in 2024
1 Godzilla Minus One
At a recent ComicCon writer-director Takashi Yamazaki was challenged about the alleged $15 million budget of GODZILLA MINUS ONE, only to reply that he wished they had actually had that much money to spend. Which just makes its success all the sweeter and all the more impressive. GODZILLA MINUS ONE is jaw-droppingly marvellous, blew me away, and was the best time I've had at the cinema since LAST NIGHT IN SOHO almost exactly two years ago. After several of years of trying hard to like major Hollywood studio fantasy movies I had almost forgotten what it was like to watch something as good as this. Quite possibly a candidate for best Godzilla film ever, and one that's worth watching on a great big screen with an excellent sound system and a full audience. The pin-drop silence during the (fantastic) climax may well end up as one of my favourite cinema-going moments of all time. As I write this the film is still on general release in over 400 screens in the UK and is No.2 at the box office. Well done to everyone concerned.
OK! Somehow I manage to keep putting together this list, even though with the event of Magnus I didn't expect to see enough great films to warrant a top ten this year. In the end I didn't even have space to include PEARL (Ti West's best film by far in a somewhat chequered career) or WHEN EVIL LURKS (from the talented Argentinian team who made the equally recommended TERRIFIED, but both of those are very much worth watching, as is EVIL DEAD RISE, the surprisingly successful (and far superior) follow up to 2013's EVIL DEAD reboot. Normally this is where I sign off for the year but Eli Roth's THANKSGIVING is getting a UK digital release on New Year's Day so this year it will be Eli who will be getting the final post. However I will take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has read and enjoyed the reviews this year. I never expected the site to last this long & I already have five films waiting to be written about here on my desk for 2024. So until the next time be nice to each other & I'll see you all again soon.
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