Quint

Kirk Douglas has some brilliantly obscure entries in his filmography, whose connection to his person is beyond reason. Some of my favourites include the sci-fi film Saturn 3 about a murderous, sexually perverted robot, or the bloody, spaghetti western-style pirate film The Light at the Edge of the World. Holocaust 2000 belongs in the same category, and is a great example of how, with a little creativity, you can copy a commercial hit without it being actionable. It's an Anglo-Italian knockoff of the horror film The Omen. So the plot is similar, except this time we know from the start that the son of a wealthy industrialist (Douglas) is the antichrist. What's unusual, however, is the way the main villain wants to wipe out humanity - with nuclear power. The film thus cleverly combines a supernatural threat with a real threat. The combination of satanic horror with a catastrophic techno thriller creates an unusual apocalyptic atmosphere, which Alberto De Martino has also spiced up with a number of unusual surreal moments (see, for example, the dreamlike scene in which a naked Douglas, accompanied by Ennio Morricone's music, watches a nuclear power plant rising out of the sea and turning into a multi-headed monster).

An unjustly overlooked paranormal horror film whose existence I probably wouldn't have known if Tarantino himself hadn't praised it several times. It's both a dreamlike variation on Psycho and a low-budget prequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street. The only difference is that the title character doesn't scare people in his dreams, but in his waking state, using telepathically transmitted hallucinations. Moreover, this is not a slasher with a homicidal maniac at all, but rather a procedural medical drama with an uncontrollable telepathic patient. Smart but at times slow and confusing, the film leaves perhaps too much room for the viewer's imagination, which may be a problem for some. Horror buffs who want to see something unusual, on the other hand, will appreciate the strange dreamlike atmosphere that keeps us wondering the whole time whether what we're seeing is real or not. The film also stands out for some imaginatively staged shots and remarkable use of low-budget effects. Right off the bat, you're stunned by an impressive shot that begins on a large swath of a populated beach, shot from a bird's eye view, and ends on a great close-up of the title character's face underwater. One of the most impressive moments, then, is a hallucinatory explosion during electroshock in a mental hospital that is so surreal and disorienting that you won't immediately erase it from your memory. It's quite surprising how The Sender could fit in so well, and that it was directed by Roger Christian, who would later direct the infamous flop Battlefield Earth, which he supposedly got to direct on Tarantino's recommendation (probably because of this film).

The long-lost low-budget sci-fi film Foes is not only a fine example of visual-effect creativity for a few bob (such as the cult-classic Equinox), but also a very unconventional, surreal horror film about an alien invasion with very strange effects. Essentially an amateur film with no professional actors and no traditional story arc, it's more of a trippy spectacle. Foes is one of the purest space horror films I've seen. You probably haven't seen aliens like the ones here. Their abstract form makes them chillingly elusive creatures beyond human comprehension. The characters don't know the purpose of their visit and have no idea how to interact with them, let alone fight them. The sense of helplessness and hopelessness is then compounded by the minimalist setting – a remote island with a lighthouse, cut off from ambient light by an alien magnetic field. I recommend the shorter, director's cut version, which is a bit darker and tighter than the theatrical release with unnecessary scenes with the army (reshot at the distributor's request), which only break the oppressive atmosphere.

The animal horror film (or rather black-humour psychodrama) Of Unknown Origin is one of the greatest oddities in its subgenre. The protagonist is a typical 80s yuppie, whose desire to succeed financially at any cost is metaphorically reflected in a determined effort to eliminate an overgrown rat that has moved into his apartment, even at the cost of destroying his luxury home and his marriage in the process. The film hauntingly plays out the surreal disintegration of the protagonist's lifestyle and his cathartic return to the primal state of a man struggling for bare survival. If you want to see the live-action horror version of Tom and Jerry from the director of Rambo II, I highly recommend it.

What can happen in a 90-minute film about someone stuck in a deep plunge pool with a crocodile? A surprising number of things. And it's immensely entertaining to watch the ingenuity with which writer-director Ping Lumpraploeng manages to keep the main character at the bottom of the pool and the viewer in constant suspense the entire time. It's astounding the creepy subtlety with which he can continually throw sticks at his hero's feet. The law of causality here gradually escalates to enormously absurd proportions. The hero is constantly offered ways to escape, but then something always goes wrong by accident and he is worse off than before. In this respect, The Pool is perhaps the most vicious film I've ever seen. Or rather the most malicious feature film, because the writers are only this cruel to the villains in cartoons like Road Runner. The Pool is a similarly wacky entertainment in which logic and probability have nothing to do. I confess I guiltily enjoyed it more than this year's crocodile horror The Crawl.

Like the first one, not quite a typical shark horror film, which again takes place deep underwater. This time in the ruins of a flooded Mayan city, a visually refreshing element, but unfortunately also the film's biggest weakness. It spends most of its time just wandering cluelessly in the murky underwater caves, and instead of evoking a sense of dread of sharks lurking in the dark, it spends most of its time focusing on the main characters' (indistinguishable in their diving masks) efforts to get out. The sharks are blind this time, and so the tension should logically come from whether the characters can be sufficiently “quiet” in their presence. Surprisingly, the film doesn't work with this very consistently. The shark attacks are often unrelated to how much anyone moves, and are staged more in the form of random scares. The tension only slightly kicks in at the action-packed conclusion, when we move to the open sea and the still-slow sharks pick up full speed. But then it becomes a typical shark horror movie. So the attempt to make a shark version of The Descent didn't really work.

A convincingly claustrophobic and evocative minimalist horror film that is stunning in the way it makes the viewer feel what the characters feel, trapped and lost in the dark cramped cave passages. But the film works on multiple levels. Mainly because of the relationships between the characters. It's not so much about their confrontation with the cave monsters, but rather how they begin to relate to each other during it. The story also metaphors the main character's uncomfortable overcoming of grief after the death of her husband. But I can't help it - there's almost nothing to see in this film. And sometimes it's hard to tell the characters apart in the darkness. It doesn't help that all of them are wearing helmets most of the time, and they get progressively dirtier and bloodier.

A hallucinatory neo-noir that pokes fun at audiences who revel in solving unsolvable movie puzzles, conspiracy theories and the internet generation's unhealthy obsession with pop culture. How much you enjoy it or get bored with it depends on how much you accept its absurd logic. It's reminiscent of the logic of the old adventure video games from the 80s and 90s, in which you as the player explored different locations collecting various items and had to figure out how to combine them to progress further. The way you combined them was often illogical, which drove you insane with an obsessive urge to constantly combine everything with everything (“is this old magazine a regular magazine, or can it be used for something important?”). But you didn't rest until you found out, for example, that if you scratched the James Dean statue, the King of the Homeless would appear and lead you to a mysterious underground. So does the protagonist of Under the Silver Lake, whose search for a missing neighbor leads him to unravel a pop culture super-conspiracy behind the curtain of picturesque Los Angeles. After he starts discovering coded clues all around him (in commercials, songs, and movies), he can't help feeling that everything is connected. David Robert Mitchell, the director, deliberately frustrates his audience with the aforementioned absurd logic, but manages to reward them with an immersive atmosphere and an entertaining play on audience expectations and genre conventions.

At first, I wondered what all could be going on in a heist series about one big heist that happens right at the beginning. In a typical heist movie, we are usually first introduced to the plan, then we watch the recruitment of the team members, then the preparations, and finally the heist itself. We're left wondering if everything will go according to plan, and if something doesn't, we know it. But here, we're not sure of anything until the last moment. The robbery begins and the whole (months in the making) plan is revealed to us step by step in flashbacks. Not only are we tense all the time, wondering if everything will go according to plan, but we are also constantly surprised by parts of the plan. We like that the criminals don't actually steal from anyone. It's not a robbery per se. Their goal is to spend as much time as possible in the mint and print as many bills as possible. Meanwhile, the hostages are trying to get out, and the police want to get in. Throughout the heist, everyone has plenty of time to get to know each other and become intimate, so there's no escaping a bit of melodrama. But the tension doesn't let up for a moment and it's a very decent adrenaline ride from start to finish. It's like watching a thrilling game of chess with the fact that sometimes we don't even know which player we're supposed to be rooting for. The robbers? The police? The hostages? The idea of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys is constantly changing. Everyone has a plan, and we're constantly on edge about who's gonna make the next move. Situations and relationships are constantly escalating and there’s no episode that will leave you at ease. The whole plot is a bit far-fetched and not without occasional lapses in logic, but it's told and performed with such energy that you won't be able to tear yourself away. Money Heist is probably the most addictive series of our time, and I'm not at all surprised that it's the most watched non-English language series on Netflix.

Cat and mouse thrillers in closed locations are one of my favourite subgenres. I always enjoy seeing what the writers can come up with in terms of action in a limited space. P2 may not be an outright masterpiece in that regard, but there's certainly something to watch. And I don't just mean Rachel Nichols, who spends most of the film running around clad only in a wet negligee. The confines of the enclosed multi-storey car park are a great location for a minimalist psychological chase and are used to the max (staircases, different levels, elevator, security cameras, guard dog... there's even a car chase). The fact that the main character thinks very rationally and the logic generally works here is also gratifying, something not very common in films like this. Wes Bentley may not be typecast as the lonely sleazeball who picks up women by literally packing them into a suitcase, but he thoroughly enjoys it.