Jessie insists she’s up for new experiences, but things get too rough too fast after Gerald cuffs her to the bed and starts playing out a rape fantasy she didn’t know he had.
Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood play Jessie and Gerald, a married couple looking to put some zest back in their relationship with a weekend getaway.
This Stephen King adaptation from designated horror hitter Mike Flanagan feels like a scary movie for grown-ups. It also managed to rake in more than $100 million at the global box office, proving it’s a slasher you’ll want to keep revisiting - over and over and over again. This movie is as sweet as it is mean, which adds up to lots of fun, and new face Rachel Matthews is flat-out excellent as the head bitch in charge of the sorority house. In a lesser movie, this Groundhog Day premise could get tired real fast, but Happy Death Day is aware enough of its own absurdity to be in on the jokes, and willing to make them before you do. Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) doesn’t know why she keeps dying and coming back, but she does come to the conclusion that if she wants to move on with her life - or at least see it mercifully end - she has to unmask her killer. That sounds like the opening death in a slasher movie in which said bratty girl will never be heard from again, but in Happy Death Day, it keeps happening over and over and over again. Happy Death DayĪ bratty college girl wakes up in a strange boy’s dorm room on her birthday, does the shame-walk back to her sorority, and gets killed on her way to a rager that night. Directors Julia Ducournau and Alice Lowe made knockout first films as writer-directors, and performances from actresses like Lowe, Carla Gugino, Garance Marillier, Emma Booth, and Catherine Walker demonstrated that the future of the genre is bright, thanks in large part to the fact that it’s looking more and more female every year. (The slate of contenders for best horror of the year was so packed, neither of those worthy efforts even made the final ten.) But as fun as money is, the big stories in horror this year were outstanding debut features and a continued ascent for women in front of and behind the camera. Night Shyamalan’s Split and Andy Muschietti’s reboot of It. Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, Get Out, was both a historically important entry into the suspense-cinema canon, and one of three horror films to break the $200 million mark at the global box office, along with M. While box-office attendance was hit or miss for some of the year’s biggest blockbusters ( you deserved better, Valerian, even if you didn’t, Transformers: The Last Knight), a bumper crop of low-cost, high-quality scary movies generated consistently massive profits in theaters. Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Focus Worldįrom start to finish, 2017 was an excellent year for horror fans.