Tristan Shaw
- Nov 24, 2017

The Shudder Weekend Watchlist

Yes, Halloween is over, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop binge watching horror movies.

Two weeks ago, I decided to subscribe to Shudder, a streaming service dedicated to horror and thrillers. The selection is a bit small, but it’s diverse and impressive. Browsing through the collection, you can find campy ‘80s trash, classic Universal monster flicks, giallos, Korean revenge thrillers, New French Extremity, modern indie horror, and plenty of obscure gems you’d never expect to see on a streaming service. Here are four movies- three of them great and one of them terrible- I’ve watched on Shudder in the past week.

Best Worst Movie (2009)- “They’re eating her.. And then they’re going to eat me... Oh my Goooooooood!” The immensely quotable Trolls 2 (1990) is one of the best bad horror movies around. The plot makes absolutely no sense, the actors include a dentist (George Hardy) who had no prior acting experience, and there’s not a single troll in the entire movie. It’s awful, yet so funny and strange you can’t help but love it. Best Worst Movie is a documentary that looks at the movie’s crew and fandom nearly twenty years later. As a fan of the subject matter, I thought Best Worst Movie was pretty neat, and it also left me convinced that George Hardy is the world’s nicest bad actor/dentist.

Angst (1983)- Here’s one of those obscure gems I was talking about. Angst was so controversial on its original release that it was banned in some countries, and the director, Gerald Kargl, never made another movie again. Taking place over the course of a day or so, a psychopath fresh out of jail goes looking for his next batch of victims. It’s a simple premise, but the acting and execution (no pun intended) are phenomenal. The weird camerawork, full of hand-held shots and high angles, also gives the movie a unique, experimental look.

Mother (2010)- Not to be confused with the Darren Aronofsky movie with the exclamation point, Mother is a crime drama from Bong Joon-ho, the Korean director whose Okja (2017) premiered on Netflix back in June. The nameless mother of the title is a poor acupuncturist who lives with her mentally challenged son, Do-joon. After Do-joon goes out drinking one night, a local girl is found dead on a rooftop, and Do-joon becomes the prime suspect. It’s a great mix of comedy and mystery, and pretty creepy at points too.

Sadako vs Kayako (2016)- A Shudder exclusive and a very, very unnecessary crossover between the Ju-on and Ring series. If you’ve seen any of the earlier Ring movies, you’ll know the drill here: a group of people watch a cursed video tape, but this time have only two days before a ghost girl named Sadako kills them. After a disastrous exorcism, Kayako from Ju-on gets thrown into the mix too, and you can pretty much guess the movie from there. Granted, I was expecting this to be bad, but in a fun way. Instead, it’s just dull and uninteresting, offering nothing we didn’t see in the originals.