The growth of Netflix as both a production studio and distributor has been so fast that it’s strange to think that it’s only been five years since the company produced its first show. Since then, the service has delivered an incredible amount of original movie and episodic content, both its own productions and titles that it has bought for exclusive distribution.
That has its benefits–never has so much content been so readily available on one platform, with more titles being added almost daily. But the downside, of course, is that it’s easy to miss stuff, especially when so many movies and shows are being released every month.
Case in point: two of the best horror movies of the past year–Veronica and Ravenous–have made their debut on the service in the past two weeks. Netflix has always been a great place to find modern independent horror, but these releases show that the service is also interested in providing a platform for great horror film to premiere. Both movies picked up impressive festival reviews last year and deliver fresh, exciting spins of well-worn formulas.
SPANISH SCARES
The Spanish-language Veronica is a ghost story, and it comes with an impressive pedigree–director Paco Plaza is one of Spain’s most prominent horror directors, having co-directed the hugely successful [REC] series. Loosely based on real events, it focuses on the titular teenage girl, who makes the unwise decision to contact her dead father via a ouija board during an eclipse. Inevitably, she summons something else from beyond the grave and spends the rest of the movie haunted by a spectral figure.
So far so traditional, but Veronica‘s strengths lie not so much in a storyline that runs back through movies like Insidious and Poltergeist, but more in the characters and Plaza’s ability to deliver scares. Veronica’s mom must work long hours in a neighborhood bar, leaving the older girl to look after her three siblings. What starts as cooking their meals and getting them to school soon becomes a mission to protect them from whatever unseen force is following her.
Plaza imbues a real sense of danger around the children, helped by strong performances from the young actors. He wisely steers clear of much of the overt digital trickery of modern horror, instead using clever lighting, physical effects, and aural tricks to spook the audience rather than bombard them with CGI. It’s a smart and scary movie that also comes with a real emotional charge.
THE QUIET DEAD
Ravenous‘ set-up is just as generic, but the movie is more unusual in its execution. It’s a zombie survival thriller; as an undead virus sweeps across Quebec, a group of survivors come together to travel across the country and stay alive. With the sheer ubiquity of zombies in pop culture over the past decade, primarily through the huge popularity of The Walking Dead, it’s hard to see a way to make the undead scary again. But director Robin Aubert manages it via a series of left field story choices and a strange, unsettling atmosphere.
These aren’t the slow shambling zombies of The Walking Dead or George Romero’s classic horror movies. In part they’re more like the sprinting, snarling creatures of 28 Days Later or Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake. But they are more than that–seemingly possessed with strange intelligence, they communicate through otherworldly shrieks and perform strange rituals, such as stacking chairs into insane wooden towers. And while the more traditional zombie can spend what feels like hours catching up to their victims, the monsters of Ravenous have an unfortunate habit of suddenly appearing unannounced right next to their victims.
Ravenous also scares through its tone. The dialogue is sparse, and Aubert refrains from giving his characters any real backstories. It doesn’t matter either–all we know need to know is that these people want to survive. There are long, silent stretches punctuated by sudden bursts of gore and screaming, plus a weird sense of humor; Ravenous is surely the first zombie movie in which a main character is saved by a woman playing an accordion.
Horror movies have never been more popular than they are right now–the massive mainstream success of both It and Get Out proved that audiences simply can’t enough of the scary stuff. Inevitably that means plenty of flops, rip-offs, and subpar imitations, especially on the streaming platforms. But those services are also the perfect home for horror–the stuff that is perhaps too strange or too challenging for a wide release but will be lapped up horror fans looking for the next cult classic. In previous eras those movies might have gone straight to DVD, but can now be found by an audience far bigger than they would ever have otherwise achieved. Veronica and Ravenous are perfect examples of this, and are a must-watch by lovers of the genre.