Smile (2022)
If you saw any movie within the six months leading up to the release ofSmile, you likely saw and were horrified by the trailer for this movie. Telling the story of a psychiatrist who becomes terrorized by people who seem to be smiling at her, the movie follows this woman as she attempts to rid herself of the curse that’s been placed on her by confronting the trauma from her past.
What makesSmileso excellent, though, in addition to how genuinely frightening its conceit is, is that it fully commits to everything that would make this horrifying. Smiles are supposed to be nice, but inSmile, they’re anything but.
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
A horrible, bleak film about a mother who fails to connect with her son and then watches him grow into a sociopath,We Need to Talk About Kevinisn’t exactly filled with jump scares. Nevertheless, the movie, which examines what it would be like to feel terrified by your own child, is a remarkable look at how alienating it can be to be a mother who feels nothing for the child they are supposed to love.
The Flash‘s Ezra Miller and Tilda Swinton are both excellent in their central roles, butWe Need to Talk About Kevinworks because it commits to the horror that is Kevin, and makes us face it head-on.
Lamb (2021)
Definitely freaky but also kind of fun, theA24 horror movieLambtells the story of a couple who discover a strange half-human, half-lamb in their barn and decide to raise it as their own. While that may sound like the stuff of nightmares, that part of the movie is actually fairly sweet.
Things start to get dark, though, when the couple realizes that there are dark forces in the woods surrounding their house who want to take their child back.Lambis definitely on the weirder end of horror, but if you’re willing to ride with its premise, things actually get fairly messed up before the credits roll.
