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10 horror shows to check out on Netflix this Halloween

By Koh Wanzi - 28 Oct 2019

Wounds, Apostle, Gerald's Game, Fractured & Eli

Wounds

Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson star in this Babak Anvari-directed film that's based on Nathan Ballingrud's novel The Visible Filth. Hammer plays New Orleans bartender Will, who works at a cockroach-infested bar called Rosie's. Things start to go south when he takes home a mobile phone left behind by a group of university students. He receives ominous texts and pictures of bloodied teeth, and even starts to get the sense that something has entered his home. Will's girlfriend Carrie, played by Johnson, is affected too, and he comes home one day to find her staring at a picture of a seemingly endless tunnel on her laptop, all while sitting in a puddle of her own urine.

Wounds doesn't excel when it comes to tight storytelling, but its brand of body horror and talented cast are enough to keep it pottering along.

 

Apostle

It's 1905, and Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) is on a journey to a remote Welsh island to rescue his sister, Jennifer (Elen Rhys), who has been kidnapped and held for ransom by a religious cult. The air is heavy with tension and dread in this movie, as Thomas tries to blend in and find out where his sister is being held. He also stumbles upon the cult's unsettling practices, such as routine bloodletting into jars, as the movie takes you on a slow-burn build-up to its pretty epic climax.

Apostle is strange, disturbing, and absorbing, a real treat for those of you who enjoy folklore and religious crazies. It also manages to work in an exploration of the pitfalls of organised religion, if you're looking for slightly more incisive horror fare.

 

Gerald's Game

Here's another Stephen King adaptation, and I'm actually surprised by how good it is. Like In the Tall Grass, it plays out mostly in a single place, this time a bedroom in an isolated lake house in Fairhope, Alabama. Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) are trying to set time aside to fix their marriage, and Gerald decides to enact a stranger rape fantasy and handcuff Jessie to the bedposts. Jessie's protests upset him, and he unfortunately dies of a heart attack after a heated argument. This leaves Jessie handcuffed to the bed, with no one around and seemingly no way to get out. As night falls, she must find a way to survive and battle the things that slither out of the shadows, both real and imaginary.

Gerald's Game provides a look inside an anguished mind as it works through trauma both past and present, all while trying to survive the ongoing crisis. When a wild dog is feasting on your husband's corpse as you lay cuffed to your bed, what do you do? The movie is riveting and tense and replete with gruesome imagery, making for a remarkable adaptation of King's novel.

 

Fractured

Fractured is more psychological horror than supernatural thriller, so expect plenty of crazy. Ray Monroe (Sam Worthington) takes his wife and injured daughter to a hospital emergency room, but the staff seem shifty, and the hospital may not actually be what it seems. When his wife and daughter disappear, he becomes convinced that the hospital is hiding something.

You might see the twist coming from a mile away, but it's still worth watching for the way Ray unravels. If anything, it's a character study into the pathetic.

 

Eli

Eli (Charlie Shotwell) is a young boy suffering from a rare disease that dictates that he must live his life in full protective gear, or risk suffering an intense allergic reaction from simply being exposed to the outside. His parents, played by Kelly Reilly and Max Martini, take him to Dr. Isabella Horn for treatment. Her facility is oddly located in a creepy, secluded mansion, but that's not the worst of Eli's problems. He's soon plagued by ghostly sightings – on his way to his room, he even sees a sinister robbed figure at the end of a dark hallway – eventually becoming convinced that the house is haunted. Along the way, he makes friends with Haley (Sadie Sink), who for some reason hangs around outside the house a lot and is always free to chat with Eli. 

Eli's premise is not particularly novel, but the scares, including the cringe-worthy contortionist kind, are pretty effective. And then there's the sense that there's some sort of conspiracy afoot. What are the doctors doing? Why do the treatments hurt so much and what happened to the other patients? You'll want to finish the movie for the massive twist at the end though, which completely turns the film on its head.

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