Top 10 Films That Will Scare The Politics Out Of You
There aren’t many movies that explicitly mix election-year issues with horror-picture tropes, but there are plenty of movies on the Sundance Channel this month that will scare the ever-loving politics out of you, at least for a couple of hours.
Top 10 Films That Will Scare the Politics Out of You
Election Day's proximity to Halloween is more than a boon for manufacturers of freakish looking rubber Romney and Obama masks; it's an opportunity to reflect on all manner of partisan terrors. There aren't many movies that explicitly mix election-year issues with horror-picture tropes, but there are plenty of movies on Sundance Channel this month that will scare the ever-loving politics out of you, at least for a couple of hours.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!10. THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (2005)
Aaron Eckhart can be scary as your neighborhood misogynist or as a dude who has two faces and decides he hates Batman, but in THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, he redirects his intensity into a full-bore charm offensive as Nick Naylor, a Big Tobacco spin-man happy to tell you that studies haven't found any links between cigarettes and lung cancer. Eckhart himself won't freak you out; how much you like him, and the ways his pro-cigarette patter (no worse, he posits, than alcohol or cholesterol-rich foods or cheese) start to sound convincing, might.
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!9. THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON (2006)
Occupy-style rants about the government suppressing protestors are often dismissed with an eye-roll, but this documentary about the former Beatle details the U.S. government and CIA's desire to silence prominent anti-war voices in the early seventies -- culminating with an attempted deportation of the rock and roll legend. Richard Nixon paying this much mind to a popular singer and songwriter seems like a scary allocation of resources, doesn't it?
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!8. RESCUE DAWN (2006)
Werner Herzog's harrowing survival story, in which Vietnam War pilot Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale) plots to eventually free himself from torture and imprisonment, isn't especially political, nor, on the face of it, particularly scary -- it's actually one of those triumph-of-human-spirit things, albeit with minimal treacle and occasional dark humor from Herzog, who seems to view Dengler with a kind of thunderstruck awe (not just for his heroism but his stubborn defiance of odds). The scary part comes from watching Bale waste away onscreen again, living off handfuls of rice in his prison camp, and refusing to sign documents condemning America. This, in turn, may waste away a viewer's own feelings that war is anything but insane hell, requiring insane tenacity to escape it.
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch RESCUE DAWN, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!7. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (2004)
In this 2004 remake of the 1962 classic, Denzel Washington plays a Gulf War hero who finds himself in the midst of a plot to assassinate a presidential candidate, and install a brainwashed Vice President in his place. This story has endured for the past bunch of decades not just because of general Cold War-inspired paranoia, but because, be honest, the idea of a brainwashable VP will probably seem scarily plausible to members of either party. Who hasn't imagined Dan Quayle bumbling into a cult meeting thinking it was a town hall, or Joe Biden enthusiastically jumping into the back of an unmarked van? Bonus horror: you can scare fans of the excellent original by talking about how this Jonathan Demme version is a pretty solid remake!
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!6. AN AMERICAN HAUNTING (2006)
Yes, this movie is more of a traditional horror than any sort of political thriller: the nineteenth century portion of the story is set in motion when John Bell (Donald Sutherland), convicted of stealing a woman's land by overcharging her for interest, is freed because the damage to his name (or, if you will, brand) seems punishment enough. Sound familiar? Yes, this is basically the housing crisis -- with ghosts! If that's not enough to freak out even the staunchest capitalist, the movie has additional horribleness up its sleeve.
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch AN AMERICAN HAUNTING, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!5. W. (2008)
I can relate my personal horror story with Oliver Stone's portrait of the second George Bush: I was a little scared (and also impressed) by the way it made me empathize with such a maligned figure. Stone isn't one to keep his political views in the voting booth, yet his portrait of George W. Bush is far from a hatchet job; the man comes off less malicious or even dim than simply out of his depth and desperate to prove himself. All presidents should get biographies this scarily human.
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch W., this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!4. ELECTION (2005)
Not the Alexander Payne movie of the same name, mind, but the Johnnie To picture about a "campaign" that makes U.S. electoral contests seem downright civil. Two candidates and their supporters vow for the position of chairman of Wo Shing Wo, a Chinese triad; it's not the sort of position where you can make nasty implications in campaign ads so, instead, murder! Actually, the Payne ELECTION may inspire a similarly adverse reaction to political machinations, but To's movie makes Payne's portraits of self-deception seem downright peachy.
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch ELECTION, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!3. THE FLY (1986)
Even the most dedicated proponents of scientific experimentation may find themselves repulsed and terrified by the results of Jeff Goldblum's experiments in David Cronenberg's freaky re-do of THE FLY -- possibly the best distillation of Cronenberg's ghoulish body horror. Much of THE FLY plays out as a two-hander between Goldblum and Geena Davis, playing his reporter girlfriend, and it's the movie's intimacy that renders Goldblum's transformation -- a result of his scientific tinkering -- all the more terrifying.
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch THE FLY, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!2. ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)
On the what-if flipside of THE FLY's wonderful bastardization of scientific progress, there's Roman Polanski's extreme version of an unwanted pregnancy. Few debates inspire more passion, rancor, and discomfort than the issue of abortion, and ROSEMARY'S BABY isn't really about the right to life or the right to choose so much as a sense of creeping dread, but the possibility that Rosemary (Mia Farrow) carries a demon spawn does, on the side, resemble a nightmare scenario concocted to scare the pro-life instincts away from the deeply religious. At very least, ROSEMARY'S BABY suggests a modification to pro-life legislative language: "…except in cases of Satan."
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch ROSEMARY'S BABY, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!1. THE CRUCIBLE (1996)
Some selected historical revisionists have tried to make a case for Senator Joe McCarthy, but no one has dared reach back and mount a defense of the Salem Witch Trials, which Arthur Miller repurposed for a McCarthy-era allegory about persecution. In the 1996 film adaptation, Daniel Day-Lewis and Joan Allen play the central couple, with Winona Ryder as the girl who accuses them of witchcraft in desperation -- though much of the town becomes complicit in the ensuing hysteria. The movie and play are about witch-hunting; though no witches materialize, this is very much a political horror story, and bone-chilling in its way.
Author: Jesse Hassenger
Watch THE CRUCIBLE, this month on Sundance Channel.
Don't miss any of the frightening films airing this month! Take a look at the SCARY POLITICS film schedule, and set your DVR!
