Take a good look at the best horror movies on Netflix, and you will find some gory and sexy selections. Bone Lake is the big premiere for Netflix this month. The Bleeker Street release made waves when it was released, as it is an erotic psychological horror film that doesn't come around that often these days. Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room, which comes with some really brutal violence as well as some great punk rock, will amp up the tension.
Zach Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is part of this month's selections, and it's never a bad time to revisit it. It's a propulsive, nerve-wracking, and emotional take on the George Romero classic that has its share of macabre humor courtesy of James Gunn's ace script. You'll never think of target practice quite the same way after you watch the game that one lone survivor and Ving Rhames' character play to while away the hours.
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Becky
BECKY (Credit: IMDB) Lulu Wilson, Kevin James, and Joel McHale star in the story of a very dangerous and capable 13-year-old girl, Becky, who defends herself and her family from a group of Neo-Nazis who invade her family's lake house. The film was released during 2020, so it had a limited release on Video on Demand, streaming services and in drive in theaters and is known for Kevin James playing against type as a Neo-Nazi, in a role that was originally cast with Simon Pegg, and the gruesome kills.
Co-directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, the film was successful and a sequel, Wrath of Becky, was released in 2023.
Bone Lake
BONE LAKE. (Credit: Bleecker Street) This erotic psychological horror film starts with two couples finding themselves double-booked at a lakeside home and deciding to make the best of the weekend by staying there together. Directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan (Spoonful of Sugar), it stars Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe, Andra Nechita, and Marco Pigossi.
The weekend starts pleasantly, but slowly, the second couple, Will and Cin, start to manipulate the first couple, Sage and Diego, and reveal that the lake was a dumping ground for a serial killer. As Will and Cin's behavior begins pushing the envelope and Sage and Diego begin to believe they have sinister intent, the weekend explodes into lust and violence.
Dawn of the Dead
DAWN OF THE DEAD (Credit: Universal Studios) Director Zach Snyder's crowd-pleasing remake, which was his feature directorial debut, of George Romero's zombie apocalypse masterpiece, is one of the director's best films and boasts a great screenplay from James Gunn. While the film isn't centered on sociopolitical themes, it focuses on human relationships and great gore, especially a throwaway moment of a janitor found in a bathroom eating someone. *Shivers*
The film, which stars a great cast including Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Phifer, with Scott Reiniger, Tom Savini, and Ken Foree from the original film, has an all-time classic of a pre-credit sequence, which was put on YouTube and stoked interest in the movie before it was released. Wisely, the movie didn't try to recreate Romero's film, and made Sarah Polley's character Ana the center of the story, with her tendency to grab the keys a central plot device that shows how tough and smart she is, even under the worst pressure.
The Following
THE FOLLOWING (Credit: Fox Broadcasting Co.) The Following is a television series that ran for three seasons, created by Kevin Williamson. Kevin Bacon plays an FBI agent, Ryan Hardy, pursuing a serial killer, Joe Carroll, played by James Purefoy, who has a killer cult that does his bidding in the first season. Shawn Ashmore, Natalie Zea, Connie Nielsen, Sam Underwood, and Valorie Curry also star in the series.
The idea for the series came out of Williamson's first draft for Scream 3, which he later developed into a television pitch, after the draft and its ideas were discarded by Miramax.
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call
GHOSTBUSTERS: ANSWER THE CALL (Credit: IMDB) The third film in the Ghostbusters series, a reboot directed by Paul Feig, stars Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, and Chris Hemsworth, with an all-new and gender flipped cast. It was actually the studio's choice to recast this reboot after Harold Ramis' death, and because Bill Murray would not say yes to the project, members of the original cast did make cameos as a tribute to the original movie.
The team of paranormal investigators goes all in on ghost hunting after a video of their first encounter with a phantom goes viral, and they are fired from their jobs. They hire a hunky male receptionist and are joined by an MTA employee who believes in them. When an occultist, Rowan North, hatches his evil plan to create a dimensional vortex, it is up the the team to stop him before he starts the apocalypse.
Green Room
GREEN ROOM (Credit: IMDB) Writer and director Jeremy Saulnier's utterly terrifying and gruesome story of a punk band who end up trapped in a “green room” by a group of Neo Nazis who have committed a brutal murder that one of the band members, Sam, accidentally witnesses. The film is a real-life horror that is all too plausible and seems to have been prophetic. Seriously, the violence is particularly brutal, which is one of Saulnier's strengths, as is his understanding of human frailties.
Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Macon Blair, David W. Thompson, and Patrick Stewart, in a bone-chilling role against type as the leader of the Neo Nazi skinheads.
Hellboy
HELLBOY (Credit: IMDB) Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of the Dark Horse Comics series Hellboy is a gorgeous live-action film that shows del Toro's style and his love of monsters. Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Karel Roden, Rupert Evans, Doug Jones, and John Hurt star in the film as Hellboy's allies and enemies in this tale of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense's war, aided by Hellboy, against Nazis trying to conquer the world since World War II.
Originally, the film was conceived as a Ray Harryhausen-style stop-motion film, and it is based, loosely, on the first comic book in the series, Hellboy: Seed of Destruction.
