Post-apocalyptic stories are malleable enough to be transplanted to countless genres including action, romance, drama, and thriller, but there’s something about a horror movie taking place in a barren wasteland that works spectacularly well when pulled off with style – something 2017’s unsung gem Hostile managed masterfully.
A lean, mean, and terrifying machine, writer and director Mathieu Turi’s high concept nightmare only runs for a brief 83 minutes including credits, but it delivers more than enough nail-biting tension and hair-raising scares to compensate for the brevity that will leave you wanting to see more of the haunting world by the time the story draws to a close.
Brittany Ashworth’s Juliet is a scavenger who sets out to find supplies for the small band of survivors she’s made camp with, only to get herself into a car accident. Trapped in the vehicle with a severely injured leg, things go from very bad to exceedingly worse when she realizes there’s a creature laying siege to her overturned jeep in the hopes of securing its prey.
Genre veteran and modern monster icon Javier Botet plays The Reaper, and he once again delivers the good with his contorted body movements and unnerving presence. Hostile is one of those films that deserved to find a larger audience than it did, but hopefully that’s being changed as we speak now that the unsung treasure is making a splash on streaming.
Per FlixPatrol, Hostile has been breaking down the doors of the Google Play Movies global watch-list, and it’s an ideal way to spend less than an hour and a half in the buildup to Halloween, because it shouldn’t be slept on any longer.
Published: Oct 19, 2022 11:19 am