These date night horror movies all strike different balances between sweet and creepy, hilariously funny and insanely violent. Read through this roundup, mull some cider, and invite over your favorite streaming-service-and-chill partner! 'Tis the season...
1. Let the Right One In
Bullied and isolated, young Oskar falls for Ulli, the new girl in his neighborhood. Except she’s not a girl, and she’s not new: she’s a centuries-old vampire who needs blood to live. Yes, it’s subtitled, but it’s beautifully shot and somehow darkly sweet while also being incredibly creepy. There’s something nostalgic and endearing about seeing an awkward tween confusedly, clumsily experience a first crush. Also, it’s always nice to see bullies get what they deserve.
2. Only Lovers Left Alive
Director Jim Jarmusch is a bona fide cinematic bad-@$$, and this story about two vampire soul mates is moody and atmospheric, entertaining and beautifully shot. It might move a bit slowly for a first date, truth be told; but if you’ve been dating for a while and want something you can talk about while you watch, or afterwards, this one is a treat. Visually luxurious, and about the way life layers on experience after experience, identity after identity, and what it’s really like to meet someone who can cut through all of that to see you for who and what you really are—and delight in sharing it with you, for as long as you both shall live. Or, erm, be undead, together.
3. Death Note
Based on a decades-old Japanese manga of the same name, this film tells the story of a high schooler who goes on something like a vigilante-justice-inspired revenge spree against “all the people that make life miserable, make life dangerous.” All he needs to do in order to take someone down is see their face and then write their name in a special notebook. As you might expect, things begin to escalate.
4. Queen of the Damned
Aaliyah is the real reason to watch, but this is also classic Anne Rice territory: hot vampire-on-vampire lovemaking, a blood-drinking coup d’état, and a human-vampire love story. (Also, did we mention that Aaliyah is the real reason to watch? Because Aaliyah is the real reason to watch.)
5. Evil Dead
There is a recent remake, and it’s probably actually better (and we’re guessing it comes without the super weird and gratuitous sexual-assault-by-forest-foliage scene), but the original is so delightfully campy that nothing will ever really dethrone it as a jump-scare, hilarious, grotesque, melodramatic, creepy, laugh-out-loud ridiculous, great-date horror movie. (Plus, there’s the tacit but universal truth that Bruce Campbell is a gem. He just is.)
6. Scream
This ’90s throwback and Wes Craven gem would probably be classified as a horror-comedy today. Neve Campbell is delightful as an early prototype of the No-Bull$h!t Final Girl. She tells her boyfriend when he’s being creepy, and calls him out when she catches him in lies. She calls the police on people who cross obvious lines, rather than worrying about being “nice” or “understanding”; she puts a bullet through someone’s head when the situation calls for it. It’s also a horror movie about the horror movie genre, a quality that offers moments of comedic relief.
7. Carrie
Chloe Grace Moretz does a fantastic job reprising Sissy Spacek’s original role. Also, since literally every person on earth already knows the plot of this film, it doesn’t seem like a spoiler to say that it can sometimes be a good litmus test for whether you and your date share similar worldviews. Sometimes, for example, some people do not realize upon first viewing that the audience is supposed to find it upsetting—nay, horrifying—that Carrie finally snaps and kills everyone who’s been tormenting her and/or enabling her tormentors for basically her entire life. (Me, OK? It was me. I didn’t realize I was supposed to feel sorry for them. They were terrible people finally getting what they deserved, Brad. Die mad about it.)
8. Warm Bodies
A zombie who clearly used to be a pretty good-looking human dude falls in love with a beautiful still-human chick. And somehow, bafflingly, as his feelings for her develop, he begins to become . . . more human, again? This manages to be a legit zombie flick that’s also about the redemptive powers of love and hope, and it melted a little corner of my cold cold heart, as in, I didn’t even make that much fun of it while we were watching, and I admitted that it was pretty cute. If you’re at the point where you wanna snuggle or hold hands with your date, this one is a keeper. Also, erstwhile Daily Show reporter Rob Cordry is really in his element as someone who grunts and enjoys eating brains.
9. Suburban Gothic
An awkward dude named Raymond gets stuck moving back in with his parents. While living with his folks, he learns to see ghosts again; with help from a smart-mouthed, take-no-s—t bartender named Becca, he begins to help intranquil spirits in the town get what they need in order to finally RIP. Bonus points for the fact that Raymond’s father is played by Ray Wise, who will live in 90s hearts forever as the dad that killed Laura Palmer. And, as an added bonus, if you make it all the way to the very end of the film, you will witness Matthew Gray Gubler kiss Kat Dennings like a wild animal. This may or may not be a fantastic way to set the mood for the post-movie part of your own date, depending upon your feelings about MGG and/or Kat Dennings (and, obvi, your own date).
10. Happy Death Day
Groundhog Day meets I Know Who Killed Me with the supernatural spiritual setup of A Christmas Carol. A sharp-tongued, cold-hearted, super-entitled but somehow endearing sorority brat relives a lot of her mistakes, over and over, in order to become a better person, while also figuring out who wants her dead. She also continues to wake up murdered every morning until she figures it out. It’s a delicious, fluffy red velvet cupcake of a film.
11. Lo
A dude’s girlfriend is kidnapped to hell by a demon, so he summons another demon to help rescue her. The newly summoned demon isn’t exactly cooperative, which is fortunate for us because otherwise there would be no movie. This is a well-done, low-budget indie, filmed inside a single room—one of the best bottle films you’ve seen in a long time. Also, if you want to have a little fun with your date, you can make big doe eyes at him and ask in a breathless but utterly serious voice whether he’d ever summon a demon to save you. If he doesn’t laugh and volley back the repartee immediately, boom! it’ll get really awkward, really fast, and then he won’t call you. You’ve saved yourself the trouble of a second date!
12. Pet
An obsessive, malevolent man stalks a woman who rejects him, then abducts her and imprisons her in a cage. We’re expecting her to break loose eventually and issue us a standard “revenge thriller,” but instead she reveals a few secrets of her own, turning the tables on her captor from inside the cage. We’d rather not say much more than that, for the sake of avoiding spoilers. But the film’s interesting subversion of the “revenge horror” trope will give you and your date something to talk about after you leave the theater.
13. Freaky
A delightfully obnoxious-in-all-the-right-ways reboot of Freaky Friday, except instead of a daughter/mom body swap, it’s Final Girl/masked serial killer body swap. The race is on (at least, a one-sided race) to stop the murders, catch the bad guy, and switch bodies back, all without getting killed. The truth, though, is that it’s mostly terrible people who get killed (including an abusive high school teacher played by Alan Ruck aka Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), so you don’t really have to feel bad about it and can just enjoy the over-the-top hilarity. This is Vince Vaughn’s best physical-comedic performance since Wedding Crashers.
The post 13 Date Night Horror Movies That Won’t Completely Kill The Mood appeared first on The Mother of All Nerds.
13 Date Night Horror Movies That Won’t Completely Kill The Mood
Source: Pinoy Inquirer News
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