Nato: The Loved Ones/Cabin In The Woods – Hooray For Long Awaited Horror Releases
Don’t you hate reading some fanboy blog who sends a far flung correspondent to a random hole in the wall festival nowhere important, and then reports on finding the next big thing in horror? Sure, reading the news is great, but then comes the crushing realization that the previously mentioned film probably will take upwards of a year to get full distribution, causing nothing but impatient anxiety.
Two major releases this year were on a much bigger scale than independent, and 2012 saw the long-anticipated release of two genre favorites – Cabin In The Woods and The Loved Ones.
There’s a reason these films were #1 and #3 on my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2012 article, and I still to this day can’t understand why such amazing cinematic wonders take what seems like an eternity to reach mainstream fans while the next Saw can be produced and screened in less than a year. Moral of the story – the insufferable wait was worth it for these two, making their dwelling in distribution purgatory painstakingly worth it.
Remy: Kill List – Last Fifteen Minutes
Though there were many amazing horror moments in 2012, the final fifteen minutes of Kill List floored me in a way no horror film has done in a long, long time.
First of all, there was a real sense of uncertainty at that point in the film, because up to the last fifteen minutes, it is pretty much just a hitman film, with some dreadful undertones. But then the last fifteen minutes happen, and even as a hardcore horror fan, I was sitting there slack-jawed. While I obviously am going to hold back on ruining one of the greatest horror films of the year, I can tell you that you NEED to see this film. And you need to stick with it. At times, it just feels like a gritty British crime flick, but you need to trust me when I say there is a great deal more going on here than it initially appears. That last shot of this movie will leave you twisted.
It is also an incredibly violent film, with the hammer to the face scene being one that really stuck with me. I kept expecting the camera to look away, and it didn’t. The whole movie sort of feels like that, come to think of it. Like a hammer to the face.