Shut In

Sci-Fi and Horror tend to be the genres with some of the best flicks that go unseen. Shut In (sometimes known as “Intruders”) is no exception.
This horror centers around Anna, a tormented girl lamenting the loss of her father and her struggles with agoraphobia. On the day of the funeral, Anna ends up being unable to overcome her agoraphobia and attend, and meets 3 intruders attempting to rob her house.
What starts as a scared damsel hiding from three big bad wolves, turns into a torture horror you won’t see coming (even after reading this).
It’s a great standard stuck in a house with some murders classic horror that really delivers.

Great one if you liked The Strangers, Funny Games, Last House on the Left, Vacancy, You’re Next (to be featured here soon).

**Alert** I’ve included the trailer below, somewhat against my better judgment.  It’s a bit spoiler-y, be forewarned…

Attack the Block

If you’ve heard me say “bruv” (and if you know me, you have), Attack the Block is the flick that got me saying it. This British sci fi follows a street gang in Brixton that stumbles across and kills an alien creature that pops out from a meteorite. Preparing for fame, they scoop up their creature to bring to “Hi-Hatz,” their weed dealer in their building. Things go “awry” when more meteorites land, dropping black, hairy, scary aliens that terrorize their surroundings.

John Boyega kills it in his feature debut as Moses, the gang’s leader. It’s a fun picture of British street gang life, and an unbelievable version of the “we’re under attack, what do we do?” trope.

This flick is so much fun and has a very cool “trapped in a tenement” sort of vibe with varying types of “rooms” that we liked in flicks like Snowpiercer (never heard of it? It’s coming up) and the book World War Z.

This is a great film if you liked: Kingsman: The Secret Service, any zombie movie, The Raid, Dredd3D

So you liked “Making a Murderer”…

Making a Murderer is all the rage right now. The true crime doc Netflix series is tearing up the bandwidth of seemingly everyone on social media.

But you blew through the 10 short episodes on new years day and you’re looking for more.

I got you covered with these true crime docs you probably haven’t seen.

The Staircase

If there’s one thing I learned in law school, it’s that The Staircase is a pretty solid documentary.  This 8 part doc by Academy Award winning Jean-Xavier De Lestrade, follows the high profile murder trial of Michael Peterson.  Peterson is accused of murdering his wife after she is found lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of their home’s staircase. If you thought the twists in Making a Murderer were good, oooh wait ’til you hear about the e-mails!

 

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

 

This is the first part of a trilogy, which also includes Paradise Lost 2: Revelations and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.

This doc/ these docs chronicle the trial of the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin for the horrific murders of three children in West Memphis, Arkansas.

Much like our pal, Steven Avery, the West Memphis Three assert their innocence and this is another instance where the justice system appears to fail an accused.  The “townspeople” interviews are just as bone chilling as the interrogations from Making a Murderer.  This high profile case was also the subject of West of Memphis, a documentary released at Sundance 2012, and the subject of the 2013 drama, Devil’s Knot starring Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth which tells the story from one of the victim’s mother’s POV.

Fun Facts, the first instance of Metallica allowing their music to be in a movie, and Johnny Depp is pals with Damien Echols.

The Central Park 5

This 2012 documentary by Ken and Sara Burns chronicles the story of 5 black and latino teenagers who are convicted of the rape of a woman in Central Park.  The 5 spent years in prison before another man confessed to the crime.  Another tale of the miscarriage of justice and the motivation to skewer those accused for a sensational news story.

 

 

 

Happy viewing.