1) Prevenge
I’ve known since September of 2016 that Prevenge would rank highly on my year-end horror recap in 2017. First watched during my festival stay in Toronto, then again as soon as Shudder released it for streaming. A concept so fresh and well-nurtured, a director so comfortable with pushing the envelope. I mean, who better to direct/star as a pregnant slasher than an actual expecting mother? Fierce doesn’t even begin to describe this female-forward genre bombshell – mommy certainly knows best.
Of course, to describe Prevenge as a simple slasher would be incorrect. Renaissance woman Alice Lowe holds nothing back when confronting motherhood fears, nor does her revenge subplot leave expectations disregarded. Feature film debuts are rarely this confident, and that’s what makes Prevenge an unmistakable gender-inferno masterpiece of the horror genre. The whole “DJ Dan” sequence is worth Shudder’s subscription price alone – and that’s just one mere morsel of Lowe’s proportional madness. It is…something best seen for yourself. So do just that.