4 Best Shockingly Art House Horror Movies

In today’s filmic climate, horror movies are often dismissed as trash from casual moviegoers and snubbed by film critics as mindless dreck that only exists for a few scares once in a while.  Honestly, a lot of horror films exist to do exactly that, scare you for an hour and a half and then you move on with your life.  However sometimes a horror film comes along that not only satiates your bloodlust, but comes off as a surprise attempt at artistically driven filmmaking that breaks the boundaries of the medium in order to deliver to the viewer a very specific idea, often times producing weird and enjoyable results.  Sometimes, these art house horror flicks catch you off guard and you end up watching something deep and insightful when you were expecting a mediocre shock film.  These are four movies that totally weren’t what I was expecting, but ended up loving.

1: Hausu (House) Dir: Nobuhiko Obayashi – 1977

What I thought it would be: A fun and ridiculous Japanese horror film that was only as weird as everything else that comes out of Japan.

What Surprised Me: Everything about the film.  I knew going in that it was a little bit off the wall and weird, but I was really unprepared for how beautifully f**ked up the film is.  At the start of the film, it appears that you are in for some kind of horribly written garbage that falls into every single horror film cliché about characterization (boring templates of people as characters) and outdated setups (weird haunted house in the country).  The film then takes you on a two hour tour of complete sensory assault that makes absolutely no sense even after several viewings.  However the interesting thing to note is that it always seems like something is going on under the surface, but you are just barely missing the allegory.  Think of it like one of those puzzles you saw in magazines or on the back of cracker jack boxes when you were a kid where you held the thin piece of cardboard with red plastic over a blurry image to see the real picture.  In this case however, no one gave you a decorder ring, and it’s possible the person who created the puzzle never intended to give you one.

2: Rubber Dir: Quentin Dupieux — 2010

What I thought it would be: An exploitative and ridiculous film about a sentient car tire that kills people with a lot of gore and stupid plot reasons to keep me entertained.

What Surprised Me:  I thought Rubber would be a bad movie.  There I said it.  I was being completely judgmental and the only reason I brought it up on Netflix was because I was super bored at work and thought it would be interesting to see how a tire could kill people.  What I got was a film that wasn’t about a killer tire at all.  It’s about expectations, the role of the audience, and the simplicity of ridiculous storytelling for a consumer base that wants a real and logical explanation for every story driven event that unfolds on screen.  Giving you a fairly interesting deconstruction of the role of the audience with a film, the director appears as if they had a project that was criticized for no reason for being unrealistic at some point in their life.  The response was this film which basically tells the viewer “Look, there is no effingreason why the stuff on screen is happening rather than to move the story along, now shut the hell up and enjoy the film”.

3: Lost Highway Dir: David Lynch — 1997

What I thought it would be: A weird and sexual thriller about identity and a musician with a bad ass soundtrack.

What Surprised Me:  When I first saw the film, I didn’t understand the concept of non linear filmmaking or the reputation of the director as a surrealist filmmaker.  The movie starts out simply enough with the two main leads getting a creepy video in the mail of someone walking into their home and viewing them while they are asleep.  After contacting the police, the couple finds that there isn’t much that can be done and the story moves on, however it’s almost as if Lynch got straight up bored with his linear story and decided to evolve the story down seemingly random paths including a complete role change with the main character.  Nothing in the movie, from emotions to the actions of characters makes any sense at all, and for some reason, we are left with a great movie that has pretty much any meaning attached to it that you feel like giving to it.  It’s completely accessible and inaccessible at the same time, in some kind of weird wonderland of surrealism that forces you to talk about the film after you’ve viewed it.

1: Cemetery Man Dir: Michele Soavi — 1994

What I thought it would be:  a zombie film that is only a little weird.

What Surprised Me:  A zombie flick that is extremely weird and isn’t about zombies or their traditional underlying subtext at all.  The film is about a man who has the job of killing zombies that rise out of their graves in order to send the souls back to rest.  The movie doesn’t really waste time focusing on this aspect though; it subtly and beautifully brings philosophical questions at you from all angles including the very base concept of life or death and the role of a person conflicting with their identity.  It doesn’t help that the leading woman (played by a stunningly gorgeous Anna Falchi) actually plays three different roles in the film, further blurring the line betweenreality and some kind of other metaphysical dream world.  I was absolutely floored by how amazing this film was when I originally saw it, and if you are a fan of strange and beautiful horror films, you need to see this one immediately.