Sunday, November 23, 2008

Sam gets scary

Hulu Awards Panelist Sam Christopher lets us inside his head as he deliberates about which Horror Movie is deserving of the ultimate accolade-- a Hulu Award!

Read Sam's full post here to get his take on all of this week's open categories.

Best Horror Movie:
This was the toughest finalist category. Once the obvious loser, When a Stranger Calls, was thrown out I was left with four pretty worthy candidates. Naked Lunch went next as I didn’t really find it scary so much as strange, followed by Christine which is all right but nothing special. So it came down, as I thought it would when I first saw this category, to John Carpenter’s The Thing and 28 Days Later. The Thing is a classic story with a masterful director who uses modern—in 1982—sfx to provide a visceral feel along with a truly terrifying premise that has a very Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe that is undeniably powerful in this age of ever-growing governmental obstruction and assimilation of the individual into a collectivist consciousness (I truly believe this is the reason for the rise of zombie films of late). 28 Days Later has almost the same vibe, along with a verve The Thing doesn’t have—an oddity here because I usually describe Carpenter’s films in terms of the verve he brings to often otherwise lackluster productions—and ruthless logic and sense of impending doom that accompanies the best of the Romero Dead series to me. At every turn in both these films one is never sure what’s going to happen to who, truly the mark of great horror, but I went with the edgier of the two:

28 Days Later
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