Five Must-See Indie Horror Films 2016: Part 1

We can all admit that last year wasn’t the most enthralling on terms of horror films, nether-the-less there were some belters hidden deep within the cracked floorboards. Fortunately it doesn’t look like we’ll need to splinter our fingers in order to uncover some impeccably placed horror films this time around. We’ve already been braced by the likes of The Witch, 10 Cloverfield Lane & Hush, and the next seven months look amazingly horrific too…

The Blackout Experiments

As someone with a penchant for experiencing real-life horror rather than constraining myself to fiction only after being exposed to the infamous McKamey Manor and indulging in the UK’s take on it, Cracked, this film looks to hit a nerve. It’s easy for me to see how one could immerse themselves within this almost taboo realm so much so that it begins to manifest into an unhealthy obsession with constantly living out your darkest fears.

The Blackout Experiments from Rich Fox is a documentary that follows those in pursuit of borderline mental abuse by repeatedly participating in the well-known scare attraction that is Blackout. Until you’ve personally felt the flush of rising panic as you leave your safety in a strangers hands whilst they suffocate you with liquids, it’s hard to describe how anyone could ever become overwhelmed with the need of such a feeling. Although this documentary won’t submerge you into your own mind’s idea of Hell, you might begin to understand what the fascination is.

February

Horror connoisseurs Bloody Disgusting have dubbed February as a masterpiece, which is good enough for me to pen it down as something I cannot die without seeing. Possession films are hardly rare to come by these days, with nearly every mainstream release including “The Possession of…” or “Exorcism of…” in the title, yet every damned one stumbles through each hurdle leaving us with an abundance of pubescent teens in dire need of demonology qualified priests.

Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton descend into demonic tenancy as they entwine their own chilling abandonment stories together, culminating in a collision course of beautiful bastardy. Slow burners often offer much more in terms of realism and portraying the supernatural under a tangible aura and February certainly brings to life the Devil in an underlying human way. Who says that he has to dwell as something enraging and obvious? Maybe a possession is more about the sinister acts in which isolation from existence would eventually accomplish.

Sadako vs. Kayako

Japanese horror never fails to outstand and disturb me, with mind-bending paranormal activity that leads to unrelenting deaths completely obscure to anything I’ve seen elsewhere. If there’s one country that has the go-to for freak out factor then it’s these guys, not only that but they also know how to push the extremity boundaries and penetrate your mind in places you didn’t think were possible.

Unleashing two horrors on the audience at once, we’re about the witness The Grudge go head-to-head with The Ring. Something that both intrigues and perturbs me to no end; why on Earth would you want to relinquish these two monstrosities and allow them to brace the screens at the same time? Morbid curiosity out of who is truly the worser evil or the potential to make cinema goers squirm and reel even more than we did when hearing that nightmare inducing guttural sound.

The Woods

Every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you. Although the popular Police song is meant to be a love ballad, we can all agree it’s creepy as fuck. So when I saw the trailer for my current film bae’s latest endeavour, The Woods, featuring this song, the beginnings of an intense climax were bestowed upon me.

The Independent have dubbed Adam Wingard as the saviour of horror, which I’m definitely in agreement with. The premise sounds like your standard trope of any scary flick, a group of teenagers camping in the woods that find they’re not alone, however Wingard has a way of playing everything down until you actually live the fear and realise he’s once again made you shit yourself. Expect to ruin all hopes of ever enjoying a family camping trip again after witnessing the brutally unnerving ordeal that features in The Woods.

Baskin

Sometimes we rely too heavily on the need for a substantial plot with hidden undertones and meanings that awaken our soul, when really a memorable horror film can be purely based on digressing our minds into a tenaciously ghastly dreamscape. Turkish film Baskin certainly looks as if it’s encompassed the very soul of fright by dragging us unwillingly through a rotting visceral laden abyss where Silent Hill’s most wanted merely look like the Easter Bunny when compared.

An ensemble of police officers are drenched in hellish surrealism as they respond to a call from a rumoured town, where they are infiltrated and violently forced to proceed in Black Mass alongside a cult of deranged worshippers. Never have I so badly yearned to manically saturate myself with sacrificed animal’s blood and watch a film, but after seeing the trailer for Baskin it became apparent that this is something that requires serious involvement and potentially the suffering of one’s remaining soul and pure mind to embrace the treachery that’s about to be endorsed.