JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
There have been a whole lot of movies this year that had horror fans screaming, like "Obsession," which asked the question - what's scarier than an obsessive, romantic partner?
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OBSESSION")
MICHAEL JOHNSTON: (As Bear) I love you.
INDE NAVARRETTE: (As Nikki, yelling) Scream it (ph).
JOHNSTON: (As Bear, screaming) I love you. I love you.
SUMMERS: Or "Backrooms," which taps into the fear of being lost in strange and unfamiliar places.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BACKROOMS")
CHIWETEL EJIOFOR: (As Clark) It's like a maze. It just goes on and on. Sometimes I'm scared I'll get lost.
RENATE REINSVE: (As Mary) Clark?
SUMMERS: And you've got to have some zombies - brought to life in this year's "Resident Evil."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "RESIDENT EVIL")
PAUL WALTER HAUSER: (As Paul) Everything that has happened in this town transpired in a matter of hours.
SUMMERS: But every time we bring horror critic and director Rebekah McKendry on the show, we learn about the horror movies that are not on everybody's radar, but probably should be. And Rebekah McKendry is back with us now. Welcome.
REBEKAH MCKENDRY: Thank you so much for having me back. I'm always excited to be here and get to talk about horror.
SUMMERS: Oh, yeah. We're so excited to have you. I mean, Rebekah, in the past, we've always asked you, was this a big year for horror at the box office? And the answer is usually a resounding yes. So I'm going to ask you again, is that the case this year, too?
MCKENDRY: It is. Horror is having a great year. We have had a really banner year with a lot of different titles. Horror fans tend to be pretty ravenous in the amount of media that we consume. We want to see everything. We want to constantly be part of the conversation of what people are talking about. We also find that horror is something that works really well in a community setting. It's something that works really well in a theater. So the idea of seeing something opening weekend in kind of a big, more cinematic style with a group of friends, horror just lends itself to that. There is something really fun about going and screaming with your friends.
SUMMERS: (Laughter).
MCKENDRY: So horror works incredibly well in a theater, which keeps it really alive, whereas a lot of films are really struggling theatrically right now.
SUMMERS: Now, we started off this conversation mentioning some breakout horror hits this year, the ones that really seem to resonate with people, that everybody was talking about. Is there something to you that sort of ties together the kind of horror that were part of releases this year, or any themes that you see repeated?
MCKENDRY: There are some very specific groupings that I can kind of put our top performing films into. And the first one would be internet-born concepts, and this is where kind of our "Backrooms" comes out of. So "Backrooms" was a really successful internet phenomenon long before it became a movie, and it ended up becoming one of the top performing movies of the year. Additionally, we saw "Iron Lung," which is based off a video game but was made by a YouTuber, Markiplier, and was made popular through his YouTube channel. That one exploded.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IRON LUNG")
DAVE PETTITT: (As The Father) For what purpose do we remain alone in the dark?
MCKENDRY: We've seen a lot of what I'm going to call subverted franchise sequels. A lot of these long-running series are really kind of bucking whatever their traditional franchise formula it was and really trying something new. So we see "28 Years Later," but we see "28 Years Later: Bone Temple," which goes in a completely different direction with vastly different characters than we've seen.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE")
ARTHUR C CLARKE: (As himself) We may have diseases and barbarism. The whole world will cease to make any sense.
MCKENDRY: Even on the TV show side, we've seen "Carrie," "IT" and "Crystal Lake." Additionally, we've seen a lot of dark comedy horrors. They all are very sharp social commentaries. They have a lot of absurdist humor in them, but they're really kind of saying something about the world that we live in. "Obsession" definitely falls into that camp.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
MCKENDRY: Casper Kelly's "Buddy" - we saw this as well on the TV side with what I consider to be the No. 1 TV horror of the year, "Widow's Bay."
SUMMERS: Love that one.
MCKENDRY: Yeah, it's so fun, and it's accessible because it's a horror comedy. It's just as funny as it is scary, and it's really able to blend those together very cleverly.
SUMMERS: OK, I do have to ask you a question in service of those who are maybe a little too freaked out by scary movies, but they still want to experience something spooky, particularly as we are in Halloween season. There any movies you might suggest worth watching this year that maybe, you know, aren't at the top of the headlines?
MCKENDRY: I'm going to say "Undertone" was one that I really enjoyed. I found it to be pretty creepy, but it's not gory. There's never going to be a point where a demon is going to jump out at the screen and make you scream. It's just not that type of movie. It's about a podcaster who's examining these sound files that she's being sent, and it's definitely creepy. It's definitely unnerving, but it's not so horrifying that I do not think that most people could handle it. And I'm also going to go to the mini series "Below" that just came to Netflix a couple of weeks ago. This is a family drama with a sea monster, but it really roots itself in this small community, and that's where it kind of lives. And so the sea monster stuff is not as scary as you might find in a lot of other movies.
SUMMERS: We've been talking with Rebekah Mckendry. She's a horror director and critic. Rebekah, thank you for giving me so many awesome movies and series to check out.
MCKENDRY: Oh, thank you so much for having me back. Stay spooky.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
