In ten years or so, the American producer Jason Blum and his company Blumhouse have established themselves as a benchmark in genre cinema, but also and above all have imposed a low budget model for big hits, like films that have become franchises. The Blair Witch Project, Insidious or American Nightmare. He even managed to attract writers like M. Night Shyamalan (The Visit, Split) or Jordan Peele (the Oscar winner Get out), or to recover and relaunch cult films like Halloween, of which the continuation Halloween kills hits theaters on Wednesday.
No screen, large or small, escapes him with also a presence on the platforms, including the anthology of films Welcome to the Blumhouse on Amazon Prime Video. Four films had been proposed for Halloween 2020 around love and family, and where
Black box and its history of experimental treatment for amnesia stood out. This year, four new films explore institutional horrors and personal phobias, and feature under-represented characters in the genre.
“Bingo Hell”, the bingo of hell
Lupita, a Mexican in her sixties, takes a dim view of the takeover of the local bingo hall, especially since her friends and neighbors win the jackpot there… before dying in excruciating pain! She decides to take up arms to protect her beloved neighborhood from an evil force, and no, it’s not about gentrification. Finally, yes, for the metaphor. Schoolboy and gore comedy, Bingo Hell would dream in Bubba Ho-tep, but shows its length, where a sketch of Tales from the Crypt would have been enough.
“The Manor”, the EHPAD from hell
After suffering a mild stroke, Judith Albright reluctantly moves into a nursing home steeped in history where she begins to believe that a supernatural force is killing the residents there. And two, two films starring an elderly woman, here played by none other than Barbara Hershey, 73, famous for Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ or Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Woman. She delivers a performance on edge in a story of a haunted (retirement) house after all classic, but in which the filmmaker Axelle Carolyn breathes enough life, and death, to make the difference. And afraid.
“Madres”, the community of hell
Awaiting their first child, a Latin American couple move to a farming community in 1970s California, where wife Anita is soon beset with terrifying visions and curious symptoms. Jordan Peele proved with Get out, Us and even the recent one Candyman that gender and horror are roundabout ways of dealing with racism in Hollywood. Madres by Ryan Zaragoza is a new representative, effective if not original, to whom it is possible to prefer the series Them – Them about a black family moving to a white residential neighborhood in the 1950s, also available on Amazon Prime Video.
“Black as Night”, the vampires of hell
A resourceful, revenge-driven teenager spends her summer in her hometown of New Orleans fighting vampires alongside her friends. Buffy, is that you ? No, her name is Shawna (Asjha Cooper), but she’s just as cool and badass, and director Maritte Lee Go manages to make Black as Night both a pure teen movie fantastic and a social commentary on the post-Katrina era, without the two interfering with each other. We have perhaps the best Blumhouse of this Halloween 2021.