Top 10 horror movies of 2016

1  LIGHTS OUT

There were so many great horror films in 2016 that I had to compile a list of its own. These were the ten best ones, and they're all excellent, but I put Lights Out in first place for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's made by a fellow Swede (David F. Sandberg, whose future career I will follow with interest) and the circumstances surrounding its creation are fascinating (Sandberg made a short film that went viral and then got the opportunity to expand upon it with a proper Hollywood budget by none other than horror maestro James Wan). Secondly, Lights Out is a good example of why horror stories can be so special, because the ghost here is very closely connected to mental health issues. What the best horror movies always have in common is psychological or symbolic subtext. Lastly, the ghost itself is so memorable and interesting, a malign spirit called Diana who can't stand the light and can only be seen in the dark. And that's precisely where this film should be seen, in the dark. 

2 THE CONJURING 2

Speaking of James Wan, second place on this list goes to his sequel to The Conjuring (2013), with Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga once again reprising their roles as paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who this time travel to England to check out another haunting (a case which actually occurred, called the Enfield Poltergeist, although in the real world, it naturally turned out to be a hoax). The Conjuring 2 is definitely one of the scariest films on this list, and it is more or less as good as its predecessor, which is highly unusual when it comes to horror. It is scary in the same way that the first film was scary, because it doesn't rely on jump scares but instead creates an atmospheric horror that builds up nicely, at the same time not skimping on the visual effects, but using them in economic and tasteful ways. Its quality is also down to the actors, particularly the girl in the family (played by Madison Wolfe) because nothing says great horror like a scary, possessed little girl.

3 THE WITCH

A young girl is at the centre of this scary movie as well, but she isn't possessed or haunted. Well, without spoiling it, I can say that she at least doesn't seem to be. Anya Taylor-Joy (who recently starred in M. Night Shyamalan's excellent thriller Split) dominates the film as the eldest daughter of a Puritan family in 17th century New England. The supernatural elements are very low-key in Robert Eggers' debut film, which is more about the fear of witches at the time than actual witchcraft. But what really makes The Witch such a remarkable viewing is the very historically realistic dialogue, which I remember reading was actually based on transcripts from witch trials recorded at the time. Of course, it wouldn't be the third best horror film on the list if it didn't also have great acting (so important in horror), cinematography, sound and set design. The potential existence of witches, even in the mists of the distant past, has never been as chilling!

4 DON'T BREATHE

If you ever saw the 2013 remake of classic horror movie The Evil Dead, and loved it as much as I did, you should've been really excited to see Don't Breathe, made by the same director, Fede Alvarez, and also starring Jane Levy, who's turning out to be a proper modern "scream queen." Reacting against the criticism that his version of Evil Dead was too gory (insane criticism, imo), Alvarez decided to make a scary movie without any gore. It also doesn't feature anything supernatural, which really makes it a thriller more than a horror movie, but I just had to include it anyway. I guess it qualifies as a "home invasion" movie, a horror subgenre of sorts. I don't want to spoil it, so I'll just say it's a movie about three young friends who break into a blind old man's house to rob him and get into more weirder danger than they were counting on. Don't Breathe deserves all the mention it can get, it's that entertainingly intense and gripping throughout.   

5 BLAIR WITCH

The Blair Witch Project, whether you like it or not, is debatedly one of the most important horror movies ever made. It sort of created the "found footage" genre, and it set a tone that almost every other horror movie since then has followed. This film, which ignores Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, the despicable attempt at a sequel/spin-off made in 2000, is the logical follow-up, wherein a group of college students, led by the younger brother of one of the documentary filmmakers from the first film, go looking for his sister, who disappeared 15 years ago. They even have the footage recorded by them in the original film. This may not the best horror film on the list, in fact it's kind of so-so for the most part, but the last twenty minutes or so, when they actually find the witch's house, are some of the most terrifying and unforgettable horror movie minutes of the year, and totally excuse the whole film and its annoying shaky selfie filmmaking.

6 I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE

Most of the selections here are quite female-centric, which is often the case with horror movies. None more so than I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, which features no one but three women, one of which is the always excellent and intriguing Ruth Wilson (from Showtime's The Affair) who plays a live-in nurse to a sick old mystery writer who lives in a haunted house. Although it falls into that category, and features several obligatory "haunted house" scenes, it's tone is very experimental, at times even quite surreal. The Netflix-distributed film is made by Osgood Perkins, who is the son of Anthony Perkins, a.k.a. Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). In other words, this is made by a man who truly understands horror movies and knows the rules, even enough to break them. It's definitely the most poetic horror movie of the year.

7 UNDER THE SHADOW

Another horror movie about a strong mother and her relationship with her child (like the excellent The Babadook from 2014, and countless others), and another excellent horror movie distributed by Netflix. Teheran in Iran is the backdrop for this supernatural drama, where evil spirits invade a home after an unexploded bomb goes through the roof, and they seem to be very keen on getting hold of the little girl's soul. So her mother has to fight tooth and nail to protect her. An Iranian-American co-production, made by Babak Anvari, who is from Iran but lives in London, Under the Shadow has a very interesting historical and political aspect to it, and a couple of memorable and remarkable scares. Defnitely one of the biggest surprises of the horror year of 2016, for me. 

8  OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL

The first Ouija from 2014 was quite forgettable, but this prequel set in the late 1960's is anything but. It contains some of the creepiest scenes of all the films on this list, once again with a possessed little girl in all of them. Said girl is Doris, daughter of a single mother who fakes seances to scam people with the help of her two daughters. One day, Doris comes across a Ouija board, and invites some pretty scary spirits into their home and ultimately, her body. Apart from the excellent horror effects, atmosphere and make-up, Ouija: Origin of Evil can boast some pretty good acting and spotless production values that makes it really look like it's from the seventies. It also has the vibe and narrative style of the horror films of that time, lovingly recreated with modern skill, and the fact that Henry Thomas (i.e. Elliott from E.T.) has a part adds to the whole retro feel of the film. But don't watch it just before bedtime!

9 TRAIN TO BUSAN

This action-packed, adrenaline-fueled super hit from South Korea has been called "World War Z on a train," and it is certainly the best way to describe it. It turned out to be one of the most profitable films in South Korea ever, and for a very good reason. It's just great! The story, about a father who's been neglecting his daughter and tries to get her to her mother when the zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out, is moving and engaging, with characters that you can root for and even a decent message at its core, a message about kindness. Like all good zombie flicks, it has a layer of social commentary to it as well, concerning how the survivors on the train quickly split up and create a sort of hierarchy where those who consider themselves superior lock out those they consider beneath them. All said, it's a really fun ride from start to finish!

10 THE VOID

In last place is an indie horror brought to you by a team of independent filmmakers who go by the moniker Astron-6, which brings to mind 1980's horror like John Carpenter films and Stephen King novels, while at the same time being a very special homage to the legendary H.P. Lovecraft. Which is fitting, since the 1980s was the golden age for Lovecraftian horror films (like, most well-known, Re-Animator). But though this film, about a group of people who are trapped in a hospital by a murderous cult sporting creepy cowls while something monstruous starts to take over from inside the building, is an homage to said Lovecraftian horror films of the 1980s, its style isn't simply retro. It is a traditional horror movie, in that it features a lot of practical special effects rather than modern CGI effects, which is reminiscent of films by Carpenter, and films based on the writings of Lovecraft, King and Clive Barker. The fact that these horror masters were at the top of their game during the 1980s is just coincidental, for the film is not aesthetically a 1980s tribute film, not really, like for instance Stranger Things. Also nice to see a horror film with a quite psychedelic style to it, which is unfortunately rather underused these days.   

Top 10 films of 2016

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

I'd like to imagine that when the screenwriters Tony Gilroy and Chris Weitz sat down to write the first ever Star Wars spin-off, they said, "I always found the plot hole in Star Wars IV A New Hope so annoying, y'know, the whole thing about why the Empire would put an easily accessible vent on the Death Star through which Luke Skywalker could shoot and blow up the whole thing - what if we explain why it's there?" That's obviously not anywhere close to what happened, but without spoiling the movie, I can definitely say that Rogue One does deliver a very satisfactory explanation to said plot hole. It also delivers much more than that of course. Rogue One is a rollicking good time, an action movie that just flies by, and the first since the original trilogy that can truly be classified as first-rate matinée entertainment (and I mean that in the best possible way). The director is Gareth Edwards, the Englishman who brought us the wonderful reboot of Godzilla some two years ago, and the cast is a great collection of international actors as disparate characters who must work together to steal the plans for the newly constructed intergalactic weapon of mass destruction known as the Death Star. Although the film may lack somewhat in character development, you won't find the adventure to be lacking in any other department. Plus you'll get some surprise cameos along the way that should make you cream yourself if you're a fan of the franchise. I am, and the first trailer for Star Wars VII The Force Awakens brought tears to my eyes, which the previews for Rogue One did not, unsurprisingly. Simply because by now, the cat's out of the back, so to speak, and we all know that the current Star Wars franchise is going to be excellent, come what may. But this may very well turn out to be one of the best when all is said and done, at least when it comes to heroic Rebels and galactic spaceship battles, even if it is a stand-alone feature.

THE HANDMAIDEN

2016 was a very good year for some of cinema's greatest auteurs, as my selection will prove. Of course, as always, my list does not cover even a small part of the best films of the year, but it's meant to be somewhat of a representation, with as many different examples as possible, a sort of multi-faceted cherry-picking. That said, Park Chan-Wook's latest feast for the eyes and the mind, The Handmaiden, would merit a mention on any criteria, being without a doubt one of the greatest treats of the year and a true work of genius. After his disappointing English-language thriller Stoker in 2013, Mr. Park has returned to South Korea, bringing with him an English novel, the hit Victorian crime thriller Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which he has translated to his native country, and turned the clock forward to the 1920's, a time when Korea was a Japanese colony. The film's reputation for explicit lesbian sex is slightly exaggerated, in fact it's almost modest compared to Blue Is the Warmest Colour, but it's undeniably good advertisement. The film is actually at its sexiest when the tension between the handmaiden (who is really a pickpocket) and her mistress (who also has her fair share of secrets) is not acted upon, except for dressing and washing with heavy breathing and slight skin contact. For the most part, The Handmaiden is an intelligently sexy puzzle, full of twists and tricks, that reveals its fiendish plot piece by piece through multiple perspectives.

PATERSON

Paterson is in many ways the complete opposite of The Handmaiden, because, like many of Jim Jarmusch's films, it is more or less devoid of plot. Yet it is utterly beautiful, compelling, at times laugh out loud funny and kind of mysterious as well, albeit without any mystery. The USA that Jarmusch depicts in most of his films is exactly the kind of USA I'd like to live in, a world where the sudden appearance of a gun is a frightening and unusual sight, even if it's a toy gun, where every conversation on the bus is fun to eavesdrop on, where everybody likes poetry and where your beautiful wife is a whirlwind of creativity. Adam Driver is at his best here, playing an ordinary working class guy, a bus driver who lives a life of repetitive routine and writes lovely poetry in his "secret notebook." Yet, like Jarmusch himself, he is a man who finds the extraordinary in the ordinary, and the surreal in the real. And Driver often hints ever so slightly at the man's hidden depths and deep emotional issues, which is something of a forte of his (just look at his Kylo Ren in Star Wars VII The Force Awakens). However, if you're completely turned off by poetry, this simply isn't for you.

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

In 2016 we were also treated to an entirely different fantastical and magical USA, this one courtesy of J.K. Rowling. In its best moments, Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them brings to mind the wonderful cozy feeling of magic that the first Harry Potter film had, but which the others lacked, in my opinion. The fun of seeing the familiar old wands and spells in the hands of adults cannot be overstated, and Eddie Redmayne gives his finest performance to date as the oddball Newt Scamander. He's abetted by perfectly cast supporting actors and some topnotch sets and costume design (which rightly earned the old Tim Burton collaborator Colleen Atwood her fourth Academy Award). The fact that Rowling's wizardry world is framed by all the socio-political aspects of New York City during the Depression, with prohibition, racism and religious fanaticism all taking place in the fringes of the magic story, only hightens the film's quality as far as I'm concerned, seeing as how that background is always interesting and, arguably, even relevant in today's climate. Happily, Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them has since turned out to be the beginning of a beautiful franchise.     

ELLE

Very cool to see that the old fox Paul Verhoeven, who's nearly eighty, is still going strong and still got it! Elle is just the kind of weird and entertaining thriller that only Verhoeven can pull off, and luckily it's French, a country that is open to a film with this kind of controversial content. Isabelle Huppert is of course perfect for the part of Michèle, a rape victim who develops a strange cat-and-mouse game with her assailant after she starts to seek revenge for what happens to her at the beginning of the film. Another great aspect of Elle is that despite its subject matter, it's very funny, in a tasteful way. Even the violence, formidable as it is, is presented rather tastefully. Elle is in fact many things, and one of them is undeniably and simply an incredible movie! 

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS

There was no shortage of brilliant family entertainment in 2016, among the best being Disney's Moana, Pixar's Finding Dory, Illumination's The Secret Life of Pets and Spielberg's Roald Dahl adaptation The BFG. My favourite, however, was Laika's Kubo and the Two Strings, from the stop-motion animation studio that brought us the now classic Coraline (together with ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls). As a huge fan of anime and Japanese culture in general, it is no surprise that it won me over. Aside from the jaw-dropping art, it has a story that is honestly heartbreaking and heartwarming. And after hearing Matthew McConaughey's fine deep voice once again in Sing, I'm convinced he could successfully stick with voice acting from now on. Here he voices a beetle-human-hybrid Samurai who is brought to life to help Kubo, the hero of the story, and Kubo's friend, a talking snow monkey, on their quest to find Kubo's father's armour, which he will need to battle the Moon King, who stole his eye when he was a baby and is now coming for his other eye. The plot is better on screen that what it sounds like when described like this, particularly since I'm rubbish at conveying film plots. The film is also unusually deep and spiritual for an American children's film, though children who aren't old enough should stay away, they might get scared every now and again.

 
HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE

There are enough films out there about grumpy old men who warm up once they meet and spend some time with unusual children (or similar uplifting partners) to warrant a genre of its own. I guess those types of films already fall into the category of "buddy comedies," but the kiwi masterpiece Hunt for the Wilderpeople is so much more than a simple buddy comedy. The newly coined word "adorkable" is a word that always springs to mind in relation to the works of Taika Waititi, particularly his breakthrough Eagle vs. Shark, but also to some degree with his sophomore effort, the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows. This is so far his best piece, thanks to a very imaginative script, some trippy '80's music on the soundtrack and the beautiful chemistry between veteran (and often underrated) actor Sam Neill and newcomer Julian Dennison, who become targets of a manhunt after a misunderstanding and end up in hiding out in the jungles of New Zealand. A true feel-good movie and one of the sweetest and most unique films of the year.

DOCTOR STRANGE

2016 was the year when magic in blockbusters once again became a thing, as some of my previous choices on this list and now this, the fourteenth film of the Marvel movies, testifies to. It was also the year when Eastern philosophies and culture was appropriated in Hollywood entertainment, as it has often been before in film history (which Netflix's Iron Fist is also proof of). Unlike most critics and moviegoers, I am of the opinion that this was a very good year for the superhero franchises; in my eyes Captain America Civil War, Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice, X-Men Apocalypse and Suicide Squad were all great. But the best was undeniably Doctor Strange, with the always agreeable Benedict Cumberbatch as the cynic and self-obsessed star surgeon Stephen Strange, who comes into contact with magical forces in Nepal after losing his hands in a car accident and turns into a superhero-wielder of magic powers. Neither did I have a problem with seeing a Caucasian white woman in the role of the Ancient One, in fact I thought it was pretty cool that she was a Celtic mystic rather than the more stereotypical old Asian master we've seen before. The only letdown was Mads Mikkelsen's villain, whose role was much too brief and underdeveloped, because a good superhero is only as good as its archenemy. But of course Doctor Strange's unique selling point is the unbelievable visuals effects, some truly trippy far-out hallucinogenics influenced by kaleidoscopic Hindu art.

GREEN ROOM

You could say that indie films are overly represented on this list, and you would be right, because here comes another one. But that is only because there were so many remarkable ones this year that they very nearly merited a list entirely of their own (which is the case with the horror films, a list that is coming soon). The highlights for me, apart from the ones mentioned here, were The Lobster, Swiss Army Man and I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, all films of true originality. Another one was Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room, about a struggling punk rock band who find themselves having to fight for their lives after they accidentally witness a murder backstage at a Neo-Nazi club. The casting choice of Patrick Stewart as the Nazi leader is genious, and he is truly chilling in the role. The fact that lead actor Anton Yelchin died in a tragic and bizarre accident outside his home not long after the film was released also adds another layer of creepiness to the viewing experience of Green Room. It's also very unusual to see an American film that so vividly and brutally manages to convey how fucking horrible violence actually is, which is perfectly personified by the film's Neo-Nazis, a group of people whose very existence, like terrorists, is defined by violence.  

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE 

In the time of "preppers" and survivalists, Dan Trachtenberg's spiritual successor to Matt Reeves' found footage monster movie Cloverfield is great timing indeed. 10 Cloverfield Lane started out as an entirely different movie altogether, but was for some reason tied into what has now become a franchise, when in fact it bears little resemblance to said alien invasion film, apart from its last ten minutes of screen time. The rest of the film plays out like a claustrophobic kidnapping drama with only three people, played with great chemistry by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr. It's taut and unpredictable, well-written and all in all, a great sci-fi or thriller or both. And it has an indie feel to it as well, although it's produced by J.J. Abrams.

Top 10 TV shows of 2016

STRANGER THINGS

2016 had a lot of good stuff to offer on TV online, but the most exciting new thing was Netflix's Stranger Things. The Duffer Brothers' homage to Spielberg (there's a little bit of E.T. in there, a little bit of Poltergeist and a lot of The Goonies) is a passionate love letter to the 1980s in general, but it's more than just nostalgia. In its own right, it has terrific acting and writing, and it's atmospheric and brilliantly paced, with an excellent synthesizer soundtrack and perfect characters. When a boy in Indiana goes missing after coming across a monster, his three friends hop on their bikes to go out and search for him, and cross paths with a mysterious girl with supernatural abilities who is hunted by secret agents. Meanwhile, the boy's anxious mother begins to imagine that she's communicating with him through the lights in their house. These eight fantastic episodes were the absolute highlight of the year in television entertainment, and although a second season is already on the way, I hope they have the good taste to let the show end before it goes on for too long. Some things are better when they come in smaller doses.

WESTWORLD

Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy's update of an old sci-fi film penned by Michael Crichton was one of the most talked about new shows in 2016. But the hype was justified. HBO's new flagship is really smart, quite complex, thereby inviting repeated viewing, and so much more than just the sex and violence that HBO is otherwise most known for. In this Western-themed amusement park, staffed with incredibly lifelike androids, in the far off future, some strange things are beginning to happen and the robots seem to become self-aware. As viewers, we are not introduced to this world in any way, we're simply thrown into it headfirst. And our first meeting is not with the guests, i.e. people, but with the "hosts," which is what the robots are called, so it's clear where our sympathies are supposed to lie. The incredible thing about Westworld is that every avenue that this concept has to offer is explored, every possible angle is covered. Another great thing is that the show is confident, on the verge of being arrogant, because it knows it's quality, it knows it's good and sexy and intelligent and luxurious. But it also makes you think about things, like what it means to be human and what consciousness is, and it also addresses some real moral dilemmas when it comes to artificial intelligence, issues that I am so grateful I will never personally have to deal with in my life. 

PREACHER

Another much talked about newcomer was based on a cult comic book, which I must confess I had never read and had only heard spoken of in awed and excited terms. So there will be very little comment on the TV version's faithfulness to the source material, other than to say that the original graphic novels were created by Irish guys I believe, which kind of explains the weirdness of it, the almost sacrilegious content and humor and the unusual view of the US, the southern states at least. The preacher is Jesse Custer, a reformed bank robber now tending his late father's flock who, after becoming possessed by an invisible and very powerful entity which is both angelic and demonic at the same time, goes on a quest to find God, literally. With him on his quest are his two best friends, an angry and crazy Irishman (who just happens to be a vampire) called Cassidy and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, the badass Tulip O'Hare. That is just the tip of the iceberg of this bizarre, violent and very funny show, brought to us courtesy of Sam Catlin, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. Having seen This Is The End and Sausage Party before this, I'm now quite convinced that Seth Rogen's forte is religious satire. Also, huge applause for one of the greatest first season finales I've ever seen.  

LUKE CAGE

So after the very successful and popular Netflix and Marvel collaborations Daredevil and Jessica Jones, it was no surprise that the third addition to the Marvel TV universe, Luke Cage, would be the subject of some pretty high expectations. Luckily, it is every bit as good as its brother and sister shows, and manages to maintain the dark and serious tone of those two while having a flavor all of its own. Done very tastefully like an homage to blaxploitation, which is of course fitting and feels entirely natural to the show and not at all like a thing they've done to appeal to a black audience (although, who am I to say?). The bullet and fire proof Luke Cage is a very charming and likeable hero, and the villains Cottonmouth, Diamondback and Black Mariah, are all first rate characters with their own believable motivations and personalities. So far, it looks like Netflix and Marvel are able to maintain the same level of quality throughout, which is a good sign for the upcoming series Iron Fist and later the crossover series The Defenders.    

THE NIGHT MANAGER

You can't really go wrong with a John le Carré story, they pretty much always translate into top notch entertainment. This time, it's Academy Award-winning Danish director Susanne Bier who've turned over a BBC miniseries in which le Carré's story has been updated from Central America in the early 1990s, to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa after the Arab Spring of 2011. Tom Hiddleston plays the hotel concierge, secretly an ex-soldier with some high ideals, who becomes involved in an international multi-billion dollar weapons trade conspiracy between the governments of the world and a very suave and evil British gentleman called Richard Roper, played with greedy delight by Hugh Laurie. These six intense and thrilling episodes deliver everything you need for your spy fiction.    

WAR & PEACE 

Miniseries are not usually included here, because they are sort of one-off things, not made to last for very long, but this year had a couple that were just too good to overlook. Another one from the BBC was this new adaptation of Tolstoy's legendary epic saga of love and death during the Napoleonic war in Russia, early 1800s. This version of War & Peace does not have the big budget grandiosity of Bondarchuk's classic four-part cinema adaptation from the 1960s, and naturally the long story has been shortened to fit into six episodes. But as it is written by Andrew Davies, easily the best at adapting 19th century literature for television (take his Pride & Prejudice, Bleak House, Middlemarch and Little Dorrit, just to name a few), this turned out to be one of the best adaptations of the novel ever made, if not the most faithful. Which is also down to the mostly excellent casting, particularly Paul Dano as Pierre, that can really do justice to the fine screenplay and some lush BBC production values. Although, like I said, this version has had to remove a lot of the over one thousand pages of the original material, for instance many of the war scenes that make up a third or so of the novel, this is interestingly the first adaptation that features Pierre's controversial conversion to the Freemasons.

HORACE AND PETE

Well, it has always been said that there is a fine line between comedy and tragedy. Or that the difference between comedy and tragedy is time. That said, Louis C.K.'s new show, which he made and released in secret, completely independently from any television network and only available via his own website, is a tragedy interspersed with moments of darkest comedy. Who knew there was a fully-fledged playwright inside that stand-up comedian? Louis C.K. had a productive year, co-producing Zach Galifinakis' brilliant clown show Baskets and Pamela Adlon's Better Things on FX (which also broadcasts his own show Louie). But this was something new. Unique, you might say. Filmed as if it were a sitcom, Horace and Pete is a really depressing play, taking place almost entirely in and around a Brooklyn bar, which has been passed down from generation to generation for a hundred years, always run by a guy called Horace and a guy called Pete. The ten-part show has more in common with Becket, or Tennessee Williams, or Ibsen, than say, Cheers, and ranges from totally embarrassing to very sad, although it is sometimes quite hilarious, but that is always just by the bye. Don't say we didn't warn you. 

OUTCAST

There were times in Robert Kirkman's Cinemax adaptation of his own comic book Outcast, that I almost gave up on it. But then something totally unexpected happened, the drama took a completely different turn from where I thought it was going, that I couldn't help returning to it again. Thinking back on it now, six months later, it stands out as an excellent horror drama about demonic possessions in a small town. It is dark and depressing, partly because it touches on real tragic themes like rape, childhood abuse and grief, and therein lies its strength. Without those serious subject matters, it would just be demons taking over with a secret agenda that remains unanswered at the end of ten slowly simmering episodes. All we know for certain is that there is one guy in this small town in West Virginia that seems to have a natural born ability to stop the demons, and where the show will go from here is anybody's guess. Wherever it is, I for one will be waiting to catch up with it once more of it comes around.

THE X FILES

This six-part revival of one of the most classic TV shows ever made may not have been very strong in content, but the nostalgia factor of seeing our favorite FBI agents Scully and Mulder together again on screen after fourteen years was so unbelievably high that it sustained my interest at least for the short time it aired. There's not much to be said of the miniseries in itself, which technically speaking is the tenth season of The X Files, because most of the episodes, apart from the first two and the last, were quite neglectable. But sometimes a TV show's value is not in the content, but the fact that it's even happening at all. So, despite the bad reviews, I still hope there'll be more, and if we're lucky enough to get that, I hope it's better as well. Just a little better would be enough. We all know it could be, there's enough quality on television today to warrant that hope. So, in other words, "I Still Believe"...

HAP AND LEONARD

If you're a fan of Cormac McCarthy, or the Coen brothers, you'll probably like Joe R. Lansdale as well, a writer who likes to mix absurd comedy with hard-boiled crime and violence. He has also written a story in which Elvis is still alive and in a retirement home which becomes haunted by an ancient Egyptian mummy. But that's a story for another time. In Hap and Leonard, one of the nicest surprises of the year in television, political agitators in Texas during hard unemployment times in Reagan's America enter a dangerous world full of psychos and gangsters when they try to sell drugs in order to fund their anarchic protest plans. Unluckily, best friends Hap and Leonard (played with delightful chemistry by James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams) manage to get mixed up in the drama thanks to Hap's ex-wife Trudy (Christina Hendricks). Made by the same director and writer who adapted Lansdale's story Cold in July into a movie back in 2014, which I also strongly recommend.