Looking for a new horror film for Halloween and beyond? Here are three supernatural thrillers that rely on dread, thrills and scares rather than explicit blood and gore.
The Conjuring (2013) follows real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), who are called to examine the strange goings-on in an old farmhouse bought by Roger and Carolyn Perron (Ron Livingston and Lily Taylor) and their five daughters. The Conjuring is an old-school haunted house story that has an eerie vibe that is punctuated by old-fashioned – but still effective – scares that will make you jump out your seat.
Mama (2013) stars Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Annabel and Lucas, who are caring for Victoria and Lilly, two feral sisters who were found living in a remote cabin in the woods after the death of their parents (Lucas’s brother) several years before. Annabel wonders how the girls survived, only to find out that Mama, the spirit of the girls’ mother, has been watching over them and wants them to join her in the afterlife. Mama is an original, atmospheric horror story with lots of twists and turns, and Chastain is great as the reluctant caretaker for the creepy little girls.
Sinister (2012) features Ethan Hawke as Ellison Oswald, a true-crime writer who moves his family (unbeknownst to them) into a house where a brutal murder took place, as inspiration for his next book. In the attic he finds a box of home movies that turn out to be snuff films that show gruesome murders that are inextricably linked to one another. Hawke is fantastic as an author and husband who is slowly but steadily losing his mind, and the snuff films, while not explicitly graphic, provides enough nightmarish imagery to scare you to bits.
Need more than an hour and a half of scares? Stay tuned for next week’s column, where we’ll look at some horror TV series.
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