Netflix drops the ball on October
October is the best month of the year for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is the plethora of horror content that the entertainment industry pumps out. For fans of the scary stuff, it doesn't quite matter that AMC runs the same highly-edited cuts of Halloween sequels all month long; if they're on, we're going to watch them.
When R-rated horror was still a cash cow, film studios would crank them out yearly and make a killing; budgets were low and slashers didn't require a marquee name to get teenagers into theater seats. As the Eighties gave way to a different breed of consumers and increased bottom lines, horror fell by the wayside (with a few notable exceptions through the years) until the most recent new wave of indie horror filmmakers brought the creative and kinetic energy back to the genre.
So, what does all that have to do with Netflix? Not much, but I felt the need to say it. The ubiquitous film and TV streaming service recently released its perpetually anticipated release schedule for October, and...sorry Mom, but it's weak as fuck. When Queen Of The Damned and The Uninvited are the "best" horror you're offering in October, you're being outdone by every cable channel out there.
Queen Of The Damned is especially unnerving, as it may be one of the worst studio pictures of the last twenty years. Here's a refresher: Stuart Townsend is nu-metal Lestat and wakes up queen vampire Aaliyah with his second-rate Marilyn Manson songs, then everybody speaks with terrible accents until the end. Full disclosure: I've never seen the end of Queen Of The Damned because I'm not a complete masochist. Throwing a bunch of MTV visual cues at a vampire movie doesn't do it any favors.
The face you make when someone says they like Queen Of The Damned.
The Uninvited is slightly better, but ultimately pointless as it's based on the superior 2003 Korean film Janghwa Hongryeon (A Tale Of Two Sisters). Emily Browning is a decent if middling actress, and it's fun to watch Elizabeth Banks camp it up as the cruel stepmother villain, but really, why bother? Jee-woon Kim's original is already a modern classic of suspense, with beautiful cinematography to boot.
Now that we've got the title down, for those that can appreciate truly old-school horror, The Uninvited(1944) is considered to be one of the best ghost stories committed to celluloid during Hollywood's first Golden Age. Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend, Dial M For Murder) and Ruth Hussey (The Philadelphia Story) play a brother and sister that buy an abandoned castle on the English coast, only to discover it's haunted. The movie takes several unexpected turns and was more complex than most of the horror/thrillers of the era. In 2013 Criterion released it on DVD/Blu-Ray with an excellent 2K restoration.
Another disclosure: I have no idea how Netflix selects the content they stream, what deals they have with which studios, etc. But it's safe to assume that, judging by their other offerings, they've licensed movie rights from just about every major production company. So what's the issue? If the Sci-Fi Channel (the only way I'll ever spell that) can pump out a Nightmare On Elm Street marathon, can't the most popular movie service snag something better than Zombeavers or Killer Mermaid? Asking for a friend.
