circa 1963: British film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) poses with a seagull and a raven … [+]
Right in time for Halloween, Lupita Nyong’o shared an Instagram Reel of the films producer Jordan Peele suggested she watch prior to filming 2019’s horror thriller Us.
The films range from classics like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds to newer levels of introspective terror in Let The Right One In, a 2008 adaptation of a Swedish novel focusing on the romance-horror relationship between a bullied kid and his vampire next-door-neighbor.
The other films in the lineup include The Shining, Dead Again, The Sixth Sense, A Tale of Two Sisters, Funny Games, Martyrs, It Follows and art-horror’s newest cult classic The Babadook.
Each of these films are standouts in the genre of modern horror paired with psychological thriller. A Tale of Two Sisters, for example, was the first South Korean film to be screened in American theaters. Director Kim Jee-Woon won major accolades for the Joseon Dynasty-era folktale about two sisters, one of whom was hospitalized in a mental institution and came home to discover a step-mother was abusing her sister. (There are twists of course, but no spoilers here.) At one time, it was lauded for being South Korea’s highest-grossing horror film. It’s also oft-
Jack Nicholson peering through axed in door in lobby card for the film ‘The Shining’, 1980. (Photo … [+]
lauded as one of the top ten horror films to come out of the nation.
On the other side of things, The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick and adapted by Diane Johnson from a novel of the same name by Stephen King, remains one of the most-watched psych-horror films of all time. In 2018, the United States National Film Registry, which is part of the Library of Congress, selected The Shining to be preserved forevermore due it being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The films aren’t for everyone though, as many viewers of 2007’s Funny Games, a film about the casual torture of a nice family who let the wrong neighbors in while on vacation in the country, oft attest. The film smashes storytelling conventions and is one that leaves some people unable to finish the viewing due to the subject matter, but again, no spoilers.
What’s interesting here is that Peele didn’t recommend your typical scary slasher films or typical monster films or typical ghost stories that bring in the most money at the box office. Each of these films listed is scary not solely because of a monster or a ghost. They are fearsome thrillers because a character’s humanity – and sometimes their soul – is challenged. And most times, it’s the human on film that is the scariest character of all. Sounds like Us, doesn’t it?
Adrienne Gibbs, Contributor
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