Whether you’re looking for creepy cults communing on windswept isles, a ran-wild Stephen King adaptation or mutated Scandinoir that’ll break your heart, has it all.
Men
British cinema has a venerable tradition of pagan-fuelled folkloric horror, as fired by the wicked triptych of 1968’s Witchfinder General, 1971’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Wicker Man in 1971. Summoning old, dark magic that courses through the dirt and into the trees, 28 Days Later scribe-turned-director Alex Garland delivers a deeply unnerving contemporary twist in Men. Jessie Buckley’s grieving widow Harper hires a beautiful country house from Rory Kinnear’s casually sexist toff in an attempt to find some solace. But what she actually gets is a creepy man stalking her in the woods and a village full of uncanny figures who might just be concealing an ancient and gruesome secret…
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Men
horror • 2022
horror • 2022
Firebite
Ever since his brilliant but brutal debut feature made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival, has shone a burning torch, illuminating the lasting impact of colonial atrocities inflicted on these lands and the First Nations peoples who tended them for thousands of years. He and Firebite co-creator Brendan Fletcher fictionalise that horror, positing that the British army deliberately brought vampires to these shores, all the better to aid their genocidal ambitions. Flash forward to now, and Rob Collins’ hunter Tyson battles them in the pocked landscape of Coober Pedy.
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Firebite
series • action
MA15+
series • action
MA15+
The Lawnmower Man
Author Stephen King’s name is synonymous with horror of all sorts, from spooky monsters stalking small towns to dystopian battles at the end of the world. Often, he portrays the folly of man as just as dangerous as the demons that lurk in the shadows. That’s the premise of this adaptation of King’s short story that’s so loose he sued to have his name removed from the project. Still, director and co-writer Brett Leonard transforms it into an intriguing cautionary tale about the abuse of technology in which Pierce Brosnan’s virtual-reality-obsessed scientist experiments on Jeff Fahey’s intellectually disabled gardener, leading inevitably to tragedy.
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The Lawnmower Man
horror • Science fiction • 1992
horror • Science fiction • 1992
Lamb
Swedish actor Noomi Rapace voyaged into the terrifying end of science fiction with Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel, Prometheus, then came back down to earth for this absurdly disturbing Icelandic folk horror from director Valdimar Jóhannsson. Taking Scandinoir to the next level, it casts Rapace alongside A White, White Day lead Hilmir Snær Guðnason as farmers in a remote community grieving the death of their daughter. But when a strange hybrid lamb/human kid falls into their care, is it delirium or something much darker?
Lamb is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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Lamb
fantasy • horror • 2021
fantasy • horror • 2021
The Dead Lands
While many First Nations-led historical fictions focus on the colonial scourge, sometimes war is hell between rival tribes. So it is in playwright-turned-director Toa Fraser’s heart-pounding thrill ride, The Dead Lands. Casting Boy lead James Rolleston as young Māori warrior Hongi, he’s set up by corrupt rival chief Wirepa (Te Kohe Tuhaka, Love and Monsters) as a pretext for a fierce battle that leaves his father, Tane (George Henare), dead. Set on vengeance, Hongi heads deep forbidden lands where a mythological monster, the taniwha, is rumoured to hunt down all who trespass, hoping to turn it to his cause. So good it spawned a TV show of the same name.
The Dead Lands is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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The Dead Lands
action • Historical drama • 2014
action • Historical drama • 2014
Goodnight Mommy
Twins are rarely good news in horror movies, as anyone who has freaked out to Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining can attest (another one that made easily cranky author Stephen King mad). Austrian twins Lukas and Elias Schwarz join this nerve-jangling tradition as young lads who suspect the woman claiming to be their mother is an aggressive impostor when she returns from plastic surgery with her face in bandages. But just who is the monster here? Director duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala will keep you guessing in this nail-biting chiller that’s way better than the remake with Naomi Watts.
Goodnight Mommy is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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Goodnight Mommy
horror • thriller • 2014
horror • thriller • 2014
Blood Quantum
Mi’kmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby tragically died of cancer in 2022, but his epically gory sophomore feature, Blood Quantum, leaves an awesome legacy. Debuting in the cult classic-making factory line that is the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness stream, it feeds much-needed originality into the craze for zombie movies/shows. Set on the Red Crow reserve, the First Nations inhabitants are some of the only survivors of a global pandemic. Forced to fight for their lands once more from a horde of ravenous brain-eaters, there’s irony in them harbouring the white Canadians flocking to them for aid.
Blood Quantum is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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Blood Quantum
horror • 2019
horror • 2019
The Red King
Much like The Wickerman set up the fictional Hebridean outcrop Summerisle as the perfect remote setting offering little hope of escape from the arcane ways of its villagers, so too does Welsh crime show with a difference, The Red King. After facing discrimination, Anjli Mohindra’s Newcastle-based cop Grace Narayan is unceremoniously dumped on the (also fictional) Welsh island of St Jory, where she’s tasked with locating a missing kid. Could the pagan pageantry the locals proudly indulge lean closer to creepy cult than harmlessly kooky tradition? What do you think?
The Red King is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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The Red King
series • mystery
MA15+
series • mystery
MA15+
From fright night viewing to sci-fi oddities, explore the at SBS On Demand.
