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Summer holds a special place in the hearts of horror movie fans. Maybe it’s because summer camp is basically a genre, and it looks something like this: Heat makes randy campers sweaty, and that makes them strip off their clothes, and that makes deranged psychopaths extra crazy enough to plunge axes in faces.
Summer is also one of my favorite times of the year to watch horror movies; give me AC and give me death. (Christmas is the other.) New York is a treasure island for horror fans, with robust first-run and repertory calendars at the Quad, IFC Center, Nitehawk, Alamo Drafthouse, Metrograph and other theaters. When it’s too hot to go outside, I’ll turn off the lights in my apartment and watch slasher films until my Tater Tots and wine coolers run out.
Whether you want to be immersed in maniacs for a night or an entire weekend, here’s one horror fan’s guide to films and series you can see in theaters or stream right now. (Just so you know: I don’t care for zombies, and I don’t do sharks.) Some of these picks are for newbies. Others are for the “I’ve-seen-‘Martyrs’”-level aficionados. Most are for folks who like to be scared but still get to sleep at night.
Strangers in the Darkness
The movie on my mind right now is “The Nightingale,” the brutal new revenge film from Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook”). Set in 19th-century Tasmania, the film follows Clare, a young Irish convict, and Billy, an Aboriginal guide, who together seek justice against the lieutenant who subjected her to horrific acts of violence. The movie is dividing audiences over its female director’s depiction of violence and rape, continuing a discussion about sex and the male gaze that the horror genre has been debating since at the very least 1972, when Wes Craven’s “The Last House on the Left” shocked audiences with its depiction of brutality against women. Ms. Kent rejects the revenge and horror labels, instead calling her film “a true recounting of a historical horror.” That’s reason enough why — as tough to watch as it is — her film sits at the top of my list.
Find the biggest screen you can to watch “Midsommar,” Ari Aster’s trippy and terrifying follow-up to “Hereditary” that does for Swedish folk cults what “Leprechaun” did for, well, leprechauns. On Saturday, Aug. 17, Mr. Aster will do a Q. and A. after showing his nearly three-hour director’s cut as part of Scary Movies, Film at Lincoln Center’s smartly curated summer horror series (Aug. 16-21). Also worth a trip to the movie theater is “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” an adaptation of the best-selling young adult horror books produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by André Ovredal, whose “Autopsy of Jane Doe” is a solid choice for a Netflix Plan B if the film is sold out.
For a real shocker, head to the Spectacle, an adventurous micro-cinema in Williamsburg, for its Sunday Blood Brunch, a bimonthly horror matinee where the movie is a surprise. (The next is on Aug. 25.) The Spectacle prides itself on taking deep dives into obscure horror for its out-there monthly programming, so expect to see an outlandish film that probably took a time machine from a 1980s bargain bin.
It’s Coming From Inside the House
If being scared at home is your style, my favorite one-stop shop for streaming content is Shudder, the subscription platform that offers a sweeping library of films and series in almost every category, from aliens to zombies. With most films cataloged by genre (Haunted Habitations) and theme (Queer Horror), Shudder is as close to an old-school video store experience as streaming gets.
For beginners, Shudder offers an essentials list of films like “Halloween” and “Hellraiser.” New this month are the first six movies in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise. “Freddy’s Revenge,” the second film, is a favorite of L.G.B.T.Q.+ horror fans, a population that horror has shamefully ignored stereotypes as villains. There is no gay subtext here. How can there be with an S&M shower scene and a male lead who cavorts in his underwear suppressing an evil secret in him, a.k.a. the murderous spirit of Freddy Krueger? (“Scream, Queen!,” a new documentary about the film and its star, Mark Patton, is on the festival circuit.)
Like Friday nights at Blockbuster back in the day, the pleasure of Shudder is in chancing upon under-the-radar stuff. “Here Comes the Devil” is an utterly bizarre Mexican film about what happens to a boy and his sister when they reappear to their parents after vanishing on a mountain. Intentional or not, the movie’s Dollar Store makeup design, hammy zoom-ins and imperfect effects root the horror in the real world to extra nightmarish effect. I adore it.
Under the title Slashics, Shudder has curated a top-notch group of slasher films, culled from the genre’s Golden Age in the ’70s and early ’80s. The collection includes “Maniac” (1980), about a scalper in seedy New York City; “Pieces” (1982), about a killer who makes puzzles out of human body parts; and “Blood Feast” (1963), a blood-soaked, proto-slasher about a cruel caterer, directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, a 1960s horror pioneer whose shockingly graphic depictions firmly laid the groundwork for grindhouse and sexploitation fare of the 1970s. (All three are also available for streaming elsewhere, including Amazon Prime.)
Killer Serials
When it comes to Shudder’s original programming, my favorite is “Deadwax,” a stylish short-form series starring Hannah Gross as a kind of vinyl detective hired to find a rare record album that’s said to result in gruesome ends for anyone who listens to it. The gory eight-episode series is equal parts neo-noir and sinister David Lynch salute, with a lesbian subplot. At about 15 minutes per episode, it’s a nice on-the-go watch; listen with headphones to get the most out of the macabre ’80s-synth soundscape.
Another binge-worthy series is “Channel Zero,” a beyond-spooky Syfy anthology that brings to life different “creepypastas,” online stories about terrifying legends. In its first, second and fourth seasons, the show uses haunting production and sound design to turn sleepy suburbs into caldrons of eerie psycho-trauma. (I’d skip the third season’s not-quite “American Horror Story” aspirations.) The fourth and final season, “The Dream Door,” is about Pretzel Jack, a towering loose-limbed figure who slaughters anyone who threatens the woman whose imagination birthed him. “Dream Door” is available on the Syfy app; other seasons are on Shudder.
Finally, I can’t shake “The Haunting of Hill House.” Loosely adapted from Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novella of the same name, this Netflix series toggles between decades in the lives of a family terrified by living in a haunted house. Carefully paced and totally harrowing, this one’s for fans of the slow burn who also pray to the horror gods for a gotcha from a demon. Other Netflix series to add to your queue are “Slasher,” a soapy Canadian whodunit about a masked killer, and “Glitch” (from Australia) and “The Returned” (from France), two surprisingly heart-tugging shows about what happens when people return from the dead as humans, not zombies.
Oh, and Netflix is home to my horror guilty pleasure: the hidden-camera show “Scare Tactics.” Think “Candid Camera” with a killer Bigfoot.
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