Men of the people: Wolf Creek 2 (2013), The Sacrament (2014).

Wolf Creek 2 (2013)
Slasher movie villains are typically depicted as unstoppable forces of nature, but Wolf Creek 2 takes a new tack. It reimagines Mick Taylor, John Jarratt's iconic outback butcher, as a deranged nativist, purging Australia of foreigners one dismembered corpse at a time. This is inspired: Australia has become one of the premier nations for horror, and in Wolf Creek 2 Mick Taylor represents the idea of Australia as forbidding territory becoming conscious of itself, actively seeking to purify the homeland and create an Australia "for Australians." It's a wicked, mercilessly clever revision of the first film, offering a portrait of rugged individualism taken to pathological extremes. (In one scene, Taylor is recast as the Marlboro Man himself, riding nobly out of the sunset.) But for all the film's social comment, McLean doesn't skimp on chills and thrills, maintaining the first film's chokehold right through the surprising final showdown. Here's hoping McLean and Jarratt come back to complete the trilogy—perhaps by showing us Taylor's outsider campaign for Prime Minister?

The Sacrament (2014)
In what may be Ti West's scariest film yet, The Sacrament offers a thinly fictionalized retelling of the fate of Jim Jones' People's Temple, where the congregants committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978 by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. Jonestown has long since become a universal point of reference, even for people (like myself) who weren't even born yet when it happened; how often do you hear a reference to "drinking the Kool Aid"? The great strength of West's film is that it drives home the sheer visceral ugliness of the event: a sermon delivered over loudspeakers promising transcendent glory and divine sacrifice while people died in agony, their bodies sprawled out on the grass as they tried to crawl away. The notion of framing the film as a Vice documentary was also kind of brilliant, giving it a sense of verisimilitude and freshness beyond the usual handheld horror. While The Sacrament is fictionalized, a great many of the details are true to the actual events—and for anyone who's heard the ghastly audio recording of the event (what can I say, it's been sampled by punk and metal bands for years), it's eerie how closely much of the final sermon echoes what's heard there. And Gene Jones (who you might remember as the gas station owner in No Country For Old Men—call it, friendo) is excellent as "Father." The Sacrament probably won't get much recognition outside of horror circles, but remind me to scoff when Ti West's next movie catapults him out of the horror ghetto and people who look down their nose at genre cinema start talking about what a great director he is.

Also: while The Sacrament loses none of the enormity and horror of the real events, it ironically understates them: the film's final death toll is revealed in an epilogue card as 167; at Jonestown, it was 909.

It came from Netflix: Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010), Resolution (2012), Cabin in the Woods (2012).

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
The suffocating debut film from writer/director Panos Cosmatos tells the story of Elena, a girl with fearsome telepathic powers held captive by a deranged psychologist. To some, Beyond the Black Rainbow is a Tarkovskyan masterpiece of glacial dread; to others, it's 110 interminable minutes of pretentious audience torture. I think it's a little of both, actually. The best thing about the movie is Michael Rogers, who plays the villainous Dr. Nyle as a kind of evil Carl Sagan, contemptuously hissing his dialogue like Agent Smith from The Matrix. The core idea—drippy Boomer acid spirituality rotting into a slow-motion Kenneth Anger nightmare—is rock solid, and at times (especially in the second half) you can just make out the great horror hidden behind a thick haze of obscuring pastiche. That's the worst thing about Beyond the Black Rainbow: too often, it feels more like a checklist of references than an actual movie. Still worth a look for those with properly attuned psyches and fully loaded bongs, and I wouldn't rule out Cosmatos doing great work in the future. Hilarious trivia: the film was financed with DVD residuals from Tombstone, which was directed by Cosmatos' father—who also made Rambo: First Blood Part II!

Resolution (2012)
At a remote cabin, Michael (Peter Cilella) tries to help his best friend (Vinny Curran) kick his methamphetamine habit by handcuffing him to a pipe. As withdrawal sets in and Michael has to fend off curious locals, he begins to suspect that someone else is watching them. Resolution creates a fantastic sense of skin-crawling eeriness without any of the usual tricks (gore, jump scares), making it a perfect film for viewers who think that all modern horror is torture porn and found footage. Resolution has been compared to Cabin in the Woods, but it's a much more subtle and provocative film, with an even more effective metacomment on the genre. It actually reminded me a lot of Lovely Molly, capturing the same numinous sense of helplessness as something uncanny and terrible descends on you. Special recognition is due to Bill Oberst, Jr., for a brief but profoundly unsettling part as an eccentric French hermit who may or may not know what's happening.

Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Cabin in the Woods is the ultimate horror movie for people who don't like horror movies: a snarky satire that gives people who look down on the genre permission to enjoy it. But the premise is a fun one, with a sinister control room (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, giving new meaning to the banality of evil) watching as a group of teens fall victim to a carefully arranged horror movie scenario. Unfortunately, the youth segment of the cast (including a de-Thor'd Chris Hemsworth, handsomely wooden as ever) leaves a lot to be desired—and the notion that they're "supposed" to be forgettable victims is a bullshit cop-out. I guess it just goes to show: they can't all be Scoobies. There's also one visual early on that totally spoils what could've been a terrific shock later in the movie; this bugged me in the theater and it still bugs me now. Despite these problems, Cabin in the Woods is a lot of fun—and ironically, viewers who already know their deadites from their cenobites are the ones who'll get the most out of it.

True crime: Longford (2006), The Snowtown Murders (2011), Heavenly Creatures (1994).

Longford (2006)
The notorious "Moors murders" committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in the 1960s have been immortalized in books, songs, and even modern art. But it wasn't until 2006 that Britain saw the story on film (and there were actually two that year, the other being See No Evil, which covered the crimes themselves). Directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), Longford is about the attempts by devout Christian conservative Lord Longford (Jim Broadbent) to secure the release of Hindley (Samantha Morton), and his gradual realization that she may not be the model of reform and repentance she appears to be. Focusing on this facet of the story was an inspired choice: instead of a familiar police procedural or courtroom drama, Longford is a queasy, slow-burning portrait of sociopathy. Broadbent captures Longford's essential decency and Christian compassion—which make him into an easy mark for Morton's Hindley, as manipulative and insidious as the snake in the Garden of Eden. Watch for Andy Serkis (best known for playing Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings) in a brief cameo as Brady. The DVD is only $6.99 on Amazon.

The Snowtown Murders (2011)
The Snowtown Murders is based on the most notorious serial murder case in Australian history, where a charismatic psychopath named John Bunting talked a group of friends and relatives into helping him kill eleven people, mostly by claiming that they were pedophiles. The film (originally titled simply Snowtown, as Australian audiences didn't need to be told what it was about) is a haunting depiction of how easy it is for regular people to be drawn into committing previously unimaginable crimes. It reminds me a lot of Larry Clark's Bully: aside from the plot similarities, the warm, naturalistic look of Snowtown recalls Clark's visual language going all the way back to Tulsa, and both films depict relaxed suburban idylls splintered by cruelty, violence, and terror. At the core of the film's expanding nightmare is Daniel Henshall, whose Bunting moves through the film with the cold, dead-eyed menace of a great white shark. Snowtown isn't always easy to watch, but it's a masterpiece of Australian cinema, and an uncompromising vision of evil.

Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Set in 1950s New Zealand, Heavenly Creatures tells the true story of Pauline Rieper and Juliet Hulme (Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet), two teenage girls whose obsessive relationship leads them to brutally murder Pauline's mother for trying to keep them apart. In the wrong hands this could've ended up a dryly fascinating period piece, but Jackson gives the proceedings a crackling, hallucinatory energy, with Parker and Hulme's vivid fantasy world blooming into life around them. The film's strongest asset are its two leads: Lynskey is a bundle of sullen teen resentment and frustrated longing, while Winslet (in her film debut!) rips into her part with manic, hormonal fury. It's a classic homicidal dyad that's firmly rooted in its time and place (conservative, postwar New Zealand), but also oddly timeless. Still my favorite Peter Jackson film, and a treasure of true crime storytelling. One detail left out of the postscript is that after being released from prison, Hulme became celebrated mystery author Anne Perry!

Enemies foreign and domestic: The Unknown Known (2014), Excision (2012), and The Raid 2 (2014).

Click the titles to watch a trailer!

The Unknown Known (2014)
The main conclusion I took from Errol Morris' documentary on Donald Rumsfeld is that he's a true product of the Nixon administration, because nearly everything he says in the film can be reduced to "mistakes were made." As with his famously convoluted explanation for the paucity of WMD evidence in Iraq (from which the film takes its title), Rumsfeld explains himself with circuitous, pedantic constructions that have a superficial appearance of logic, but reveal absolutely nothing. One topic the film probes is Rumsfeld's disappointment at never becoming President himself, and he demonstrates an adeptness at evading responsibility that may have served him well in the Oval Office. The Unknown Known is very slickly produced, with cool graphics emulating scrolling microfiche and satellite photography—but viewers hoping for a real explanation (let alone an admission of guilt) for the disastrous Iraq War will have to keep waiting.

Excision (2012)
Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord) is a seventeen year old aspiring surgeon—but her bloody, sexually charged dreams (exquisitely staged grotesqueries reminiscent of Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle) suggest darker motives. The film belongs totally to McCord, who vanishes so completely into Pauline's weird, perverse world that even Daniel Day Lewis would be intimidated. Her mix of eccentric charisma and vulnerability is a bit reminiscent of Jason Schwartzman's star turn in Rushmore, but Excision has none of Wes Anderson's quirky cuteness to soften its hard edges, and by the finish it more than earns its horror designation. Credit's also due to Traci Lords(!) in a terrific turn as Pauline's mother, and Modern Family's Ariel Winter, who plays a little sister afflicted with cystic fibrosis. (And yes, that's John Waters as a priest.) I saw Excision when it came out, but I think it's a film that just gets better every time you see it. One of the best of the last decade, easy.

The Raid 2 (2014)
The Raid: Redemption delivered brutal, visceral action in an era of tedious CGI wank and reheated superhero garbage, winning fans all over the world in the process (including yours truly). Moments after the end of the original Raid, our hero Rama (Iko Uwais) goes undercover in order to bring down Jakarta's reigning crime family, ingratiating himself with a crown prince whose ambitions are beginning to outstrip his loyalty to his father. While the story is a familiar one (bearing more than a slight resemblance to Eastern Promises and The Departed/Internal Affairs), the story of one good cop who's in too deep has never been told with such terrifying intensity. This is a blistering, furious mushroom cloud of a film, but it's also a master class in pacing, investing every smashed face and shattered bone with dramatic weight. There are too many set pieces to count, from the dazzling prison riot near the beginning to a jaw-droppingly brutal subway car melee that makes Quentin Tarantino look like Nora Ephron. And Rama's final showdown with a fearsome pencak silat master (known only as "The Assassin") makes a strong claim on being the greatest fight scene ever filmed. It's easily the best action movie since Terminator 2—maybe the best ever. And guess what? There's going to be a third one.

Who's the fairest? Oculus, Contracted, and Megan Is Missing.

Oculus (2014)
Oculus is a ghost story built on the fallibility of our perceptions, with two siblings seeking to shatter the malevolent haunted mirror that destroyed their family when they were children. It also scores major points for having a truly great heroine in Kaylie (Karen Gillan), who is orders of magnitude smarter and gutsier than anyone who's ever appeared in a Paranormal Activity film. This is honestly really refreshing, and I suspect it's a big part of the warm critical reception the film has received: it's hard not to be impressed with the rigorous and thoughtful way that Kaylie researches the mirror and plans to confront and destroy it, rather than just setting up some cameras and hoping for the best. As the film goes on, past and present blur into a surreal nightmare, but the story hangs together through the ending (which I really want to say something about but won't for fear of spoilers). And it's awesome seeing Katee Sackhoff, here playing a role that couldn't be more different than her stint as Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica. Highly recommended.

Contracted (2013)
After being date raped at a party, Samantha (a terrific Najarra Townsend) finds herself coming down with the mother of all STDs. Contracted is deceptive, though: it's a horror film that's big on metaphor, but the metaphor at work here probably isn't the one you're expecting. What really makes the film work isn't the squirmy body horror, but the way we slowly unravel the truth about Samantha's relationships; without giving anything away, there's a reason why a lot of them feel strained. Contracted is more than just Cronenberg for the hook-up era (although that would've been enough), and it even has a clever final twist that manages to tweak a pop culture cliche while also deepening the film's own themes. Not bad, right? (I also liked the fact that Samantha lives with her mom, which is a nice nod to the economic shit sandwich being fed to her generation.) It's on Netflix, so check it out.

Megan is Missing (2011)
Megan is Missing is sort of like Thirteen meets Irreversible or Martyrs, with teenagers behaving badly shading into sledgehammer shock tactics. Ironically, the best part is actually the first half, with a believably profane depiction of teenage life that carries some uncomfortable echoes of recent news items like the Steubenville rape case. Amy and Megan (Amber Perkins and Rachel Quinn) are a good girl/bad girl odd couple: proper Amy admires uninhibited Megan's confidence and independence, while Megan looks up to Amy for her basic decency and kindness. They're believable and sympathetic, which makes the film's last half hour all the more agonizing: it's a master class in cinematic cruelty, with some of the gnarliest audience abuse since Audition. Even some horror veterans may find themselves squirming (I did). But the movie also has a really subtle and wicked sense of black humor, as seen in the bit where a TV news crew solemnly interviews the airheads filming a dramatic reenactment of Megan's kidnapping. Director Michael Goi is also the director of photography for American Horror Story.