One of the best ways to enjoy the movie theater experience is watching a horror movie with a full crowd. If done correctly, the movie pulls the audience in and doesn’t let go until the credits roll — meanwhile, we get to collectively share in the emotional rollercoaster a film can be.
This summer, we have a few horror or horror-adjacent films in cinemas that range from big-budget thrills to quiet dread.
Mia Goth is unhinged in MaXXXine
When director Ti West entered the filmmaking world, he gave us the batty films The Roost and the 70’s slowburn House Of The Devil. In 2022, he introduced us to a trilogy that kicks off with X, the story of a burgeoning 70’s porn starlet Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) lost in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque murder spree. A year later in Pearl, we learned the unhinged backstory of Pearl (Mia Goth, again) an elderly woman who died in X. Now, with the final installment of the trilogy, MaXXXine, we catch up with Goth’s character from X in a horror-tinged crime thriller set in colorful 1985. This time, Miss Minx has moved to California, her porn star career has flourished, but her desire to be a big bright shining star with her name in lights has grown. (Sound familiar, Pearl?) Just after nailing an audition for a slasher sequel, people in Maxine’s circle start getting killed. Is it the night stalker that the LAPD’s searching for? Is it a coke-addled fan? A jealous co-star? A group of satanists? A skeezy detective played by Kevin Bacon? Ti West said MaXXXine “transports you back to a sleazier Hollywood — which is still very much the Hollywood we know and love today.”
A Quiet Place: Day One
In this prequel to the Quiet Place films, naturally, we’re taken to the very first day the Death Angels descended on Earth and began their eradication of the human race. Terminally ill cancer patient, Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), lives in a hospice facility with her cat, Frodo. While watching an outdoor marionette show, meteors descend from the sky and, before too long, the insect-like beings start attacking. Like the movies from before, our heroine and a band of survivors try to quietly traverse the ruins of New York City as the blind predators listen for their prey. There’s a feline involved in the proceedings to give crazy cat people (like yours truly) something to become extra-emotionally invested in, as big budget destruction intermingles with human drama. This time, creator/director John Krasinski handed the reins to Michael Sarnoski, the director of the woefully underseen, off-kilter drama Pig, starring Nicolas Cage.
Nicolas Cage creeps in Longlegs
Speaking of Mr. Cage, have you heard about this new movie he’s in called Longlegs? Of course you have. Thanks to some savvy marketing, it’s been almost unavoidable. The first of three acts takes place in the 70’s, as a little girl meets a creeper outside her house. Years later, that young girl has become a reserved FBI agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe of It Follows fame), who may possibly have some clairvoyant abilities. That aforementioned creeper, played by Cage, turns out to be a satanic serial killer that goes by the name Longlegs. Lee Harker’s obsession with finding the serial killer and the connection to a series of familial murder-suicides brings her down a path that harkens to classics like Seven and Silence Of The Lambs with echoes of the Zodiac killer case. Much like those films, Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs finds its horror via nightmare-ish visuals and a creeping dread that never lets go.
Shocking family secrets in Cuckoo
Following their release of Longlegs, NEON studios brings us on Aug. 9 the story of Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), a seventeen year old girl who has just moved to a resort in the German Alps to live with her father and his new family. While there, she begins to notice that things just seem off with their seemingly peaceful surroundings. It doesn’t help that her dad’s boss (Dan Stevens) seems to have a sinister vibe to him, or that she keeps hearing random weird things and seeing a menacing woman. If it’s anything like his previous cinematic effort, Luz, Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo promises abstract, potentially gruesome visuals and unsettling tension throughout.
Alien Romulus: Slasher set in space
A week later on Aug. 16, we get to see everyone’s favorite H.R. Giger creation, the xenomorph, terrorize the big screen once again in the seventh film in the Alien franchise (not including the Alien Vs. Predator movies). Taking place between Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/ horror classic, Alien, and James Cameron’s sci-fi/action/horror classic, Aliens, this interquel follows a group of young space colonizers scavenging a deserted space station. Spoilers — there’s a murderous life form on the station that will likely impregnate someone and waste the majority of them. What sounds like it may be a slasher movie set in space will likely be elevated by director Fede Alvarez’s (The Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) penchant for grody horror and nerve-shattering tension.
What movies are you looking forward to?
Let us know at arts@charlestoncitypaper.com.
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