Holed up: Hollywood Horror Films to Watch During the Lockdown
Publish date: 2024-05-02
Hollywood has always been a sucker for the cabin in the woods brand of horror. The kind where you get isolated from the civilisation thanks to some drastic event or just for some alone time and some unexplained scary happenings ruin your plans big time. Since we’re all cooped up here during the coronavirus lockdown, here’s taking a look at some of these classic scare fests that will help you pass the time. More importantly, you’ll be so scared you won’t venture outside...1. It Comes At Night (2017)
You don’t need to be in your face about horror. Sometimes, what you don’t show can be horrific too. It comes at night shows a post-apocalyptic world limping to normalcy after a contagious outbreak has ravaged the planet. The film opens with the members of a family killing the grandfather as he’s been infected. They later burn his corpse as well. Another family tries to sneak inside their remote home and the two families agree to live together in these difficult times. All seems to be okay but a set of mysterious happenings occurring in the night turn the members upon each other. The film had a bare-bones approach to horror, relying on the viewer’s imagination to deliver the thrills.
2. Maggie (2015)
Directed by Henry Hobson and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin, the film takes us to a world which is stumbling to normalcy after a zombie pandemic. The infected turn into cannibals but the process is gradual. Wade (Arnold Schwarzenegger) gets a message from his daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) that she has been infected and he shouldn’t search for her. He finds her in a remote hospital and takes her home, wanting to be with her during her suffering. She slowly degenerates but retains enough of her sanity not to harm her father. She meets with a childhood crush, who himself is infected and who tells her of the horrible things done to the infected when they are quarantined. Wade can give her poison or shoot her and she begs him to choose one of the options before she wholly turns.
3. The Babadook (2014)
This is one of those films whose memory you’ll cherish for a long-long time. It combines classic horror tropes with strains of psychological and slasher horror. A woman lives alone with her young son in Adelaide. She has been distraught by the death of her husband, the perils of her profession and the increasingly erratic behaviour of her son. They discover a pop-up storybook called Mister Babadook and are repulsed by the disturbing themes in it. Her son claims a monster has emerged from the book and has begun to stalk them. Initially, it’s only him that sees the entity but later, she sees it as well. She seeks help but begins believing that the monster’s reach is everywhere. In the end, mother and son combine to combat and subdue the monster. The film doesn’t make clear whether the monster is real or a product of the psychological scars suffered by the mother and the son, letting the audience draw their own conclusions.
4. Quarantine (2008)
This found footage film is a copy of the Spanish film REC. A reporter and cameraman for a late-night show called Night Shift are shadowing a group of firefighters in Los Angeles. An emergency call takes them all to an apartment building. They soon find out that some residents of the building have been infected by a rapidly mutating rabies virus which jumps from victim to victim. Now, it’s a fight for survival for the trapped media persons and the fire crew, as well as healthy residents, as police quarantine off the premises.
5. Cabin Fever (2002)
Directed by Eli Roth, the film is said to be based on a real-life experience of the director when he developed a skin infection while on a trip. A group of friends want to spend their spring break at a remote cabin in the woods. They encounter a hermit who asks for help but they ignore him. He’s been infected with a flesh-eating virus and when he’s accidentally killed and his body is dumped in a reservoir, the youngsters too begin to get it because of contaminated water. It was a mix of psychological horror combined with plenty of gory killings. The end shows children selling lemonade made out of the same water, leaving the viewer with a whole bunch of possibilities.
SHOW COMMENTS
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7p7XLpp2aqpVjsLC5jp%2Bcmqylp7K0e8eoo56cXaq9brTOpaOyr5%2BksW60zqupqKpdm7atudJmq6hlp5bBpLSMnayroZ6cerW0xGajqJubmby4uoxscHFwaWO1tbnL