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Possessor: Uncut (2020)
It was clear from Brandon Cronenberg’s noxious, provocative debut, Antiviral, that he’d inherited the knack for directing from his father. His riveting second feature, Possessor, even further cements that he’s doing his namesake proud, using visions of eye-popping body horror not only to turn the stomach but to give audiences a deeper insight into the psyche of its tortured heroine.
Andrea Riseborough plays a special agent who wears the skin of others to pull off perfect assassinations in which the culprit, motive, and all evidence is accounted for. Her sense of identity crumbles with each hit, and she finds herself so emotionally distant from her family that she nervously rehearses lines of domestic chit-chat in private before coming home. The film is bleak, graphic, and at times strangely beautiful. Cronenberg has something incredibly poignant to say about tech corporations and their hold on our collective consciousness, and like his father, harnesses the power of sci-fi horror to get his ideas across artfully and intentionally.
Evil Dead (2013)
Fede Alvarez took on one hell of a job when he decided to remake Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. Why would anyone do this? The odds of any remake of a classic being received well are slim to none, but Alvarez did it the right way here, using the narrative template from the original as a springboard to make his own horror movie with his own voice. Sure, there are nods to Raimi’s version throughout, but this is a super fun cabin-in-the-woods flick in its own right.
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The best part about Alvarez’s approach is that he doesn’t try to chase Raimi’s tone at all. Even scenes pulled directly from the original play out in a completely different way, with the spookiness turned down a bit and the violence turned way up. As modern reboots go, Evil Dead is one of the best, not because of its reverence for the original, but because it understands and embraces that it exists in a new age, serving a new audience.
I Saw the Devil (2010)
Revenge often compels people to do truly atrocious, dreadful things. I Saw the Devil illustrates in horrifying detail just how far some people will go to avenge their loved ones, and how their actions reveal that pure evil can, in point of fact, spring forth from good people. The film is an enthralling cat-and-mouse pursuit between a government agent (Lee Byung-hun) and the serial killer who brutally murdered his wife (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik), following the men as they leave a trail of blood and misery in the wake of their deadly game.
Lee and Choi’s performances are forces of nature, and director Kim Jee-woon keenly taps into the primal nature of the characters’ rage. The violence on display here is about as hard to watch as it gets, not because of the gore (which is, yes, insanely graphic and puke-inducing), but because of the way things are shot. Every cut, every blow, every cruel act of torture is visceral and feels startlingly real. It’s not a film for the faint of heart. But if you can stomach it, it proves to be a deeply felt cautionary tale that will rattle you to the bone.
