Top 10 Ultimate Alternate Universe Films
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the real world, are we? Sundance Channel has the perfect escape on offer: our top ten list of alternate universe movies.
Top 10 Ultimate Alternate Universe Films
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the real world, are we? Sundance Channel has the perfect escape on offer: Some really unreal worlds, alternative universes where hauntings, vampires, time travel, spontaneous combustion and the like are commonplace. However bad things may look right now, they can't possibly compete with discovering that your kid is the spawn of Satan, can it? Here are 10 of our favorite alternate universes on film.
And luckily for you, all of these are airing this month on Sundance Channel!10. AN AMERICAN HAUNTING (2005)
Ah, home sweet home. That place you can always count on for a comfy bed, a good night's rest... well, unless your house is haunted, of course, by a violent spirit with a propensity for attacking young, innocent girls who live there. Based on the "true story" of the Bell Witch (yes, really!), AN AMERICAN HAUNTING spreads the supernatural creepies over two centuries, with girls 200 years apart being tortured by the witch -- and all-too-real sexual abuse by trusted figures. Starring Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek and Rachel Hurd-Wood.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch AN AMERICAN HAUNTING this month, only on Sundance Channel.9. ANGEL HEART (1987)
Set in the mid-'50s, ANGEL HEART is like any good detective story -- but with a totally wicked spin. Angel (a still-young-and-beautiful Mickey Rourke stars; you know, before he busted up his face boxing and then tried to fix it with surgery) is hired by a certain Louis Cyphre (Lu... cifer... get it?) to track down something he rightly owns (a soul, as it turns out). If Cyphre's (Robert De Niro) long, pointy fingernails aren't enough to terrify you, his gradual reveal as the devil surely will. Voodoo and cannibalism aren't even the most disturbing things on the menu in this alternate universe.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch ANGEL HEART this month, only on Sundance Channel.8. THE CRUCIBLE (1996)
This adaptation of Arthur Miller's classic anti-McCarthyism parable would have us believe that back in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, neighbors turned on one another, leveling accusations of heresy and destroying their reputations... though of course, such a thing could never happen in the modern era. Um, right? Oh, yeah, the whole blacklisting thing. This trip into an alternate universe, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder and the sublime Joan Allen, is truly scary because of just how possible it is.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch THE CRUCIBLE this month, only on Sundance Channel.7. ANTICHRIST (2009)
That master of unreality, Lars von Trier, weaves a terrifying tale of a couple's grief over the death of their young son and the mother's subsequent unraveling into a devilishly psychotic otherworld. Starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, this movie has all that you'd expect from the director (and from the title): Creepy, preternaturally aware animals? Check. Rampant misogyny? Check. Disturbingly violent sexuality? Double check.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch ANTICHRIST this month, only on Sundance Channel.6. SPIDER (2002)
Not enough people saw this David Cronenberg psycho-thriller -- and we do mean psycho... Ralph Fiennes stars as a man tortured by the memory of his mother's brutal murder (Miranda Richardson) at the hands of his father (Gabriel Byrne), which caused a mental break so extreme that he's never fully recovered. This becomes readily apparent as his worlds begin to merge: the inner world of traumatized childhood and the "real" adult world. It's a complex web that tangles up memory, familial love and terror, and the innocents who happen to fly into its path.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch SPIDER this month, only on Sundance Channel.5. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992)
Let's lighten things up a bit, shall we? There's still plenty of slaughter and ass-kicking and whatnot here, but BUFFY focuses all the slaying on the blood-sucking baddies -- and does it with a big wallop of funny. Joss Whedon's vision for the high school heroine was certainly futzed with here, but the result was nonetheless a comic-action delight. Kristy Swanson, not Sarah Michelle Gellar, was the original Buffy, and she had a strong supporting cast including Luke Perry, Hilary Swank, Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens -- whose hammy death scene remains one of the most hilariously overwrought ever put to film.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER this month, only on Sundance Channel.4. HIGHLANDER (1986)
Some strange stuff certainly went down in the dark corners of New York in the '80s, but taking a guy's head off with a rare ancient sword still managed to stand out. Of course, when it was at the hands of an immortal Scotsman known as the Highlander -- well, he probably would have fit right in. Christopher Lambert stars as Connor MacLeod, whose epic struggle with another immortal unfolds over centuries (and includes Sean Connery as Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, his mentor), eventually leading to the aforementioned beheading.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch HIGHLANDER this month, only on Sundance Channel.3. VISIONEERS (2008)
Full disclosure: We kind of love all things dystopian. And rarely (if ever) has the concept of spontaneous combustion been handled quite so hilariously as in this quirky comedy. The only way to avoid spontaneous combustion in this alternate universe? Self-brainwashing into numb, unthinking automatons. Zach Galifianakis stars as George Washington Winsterhammerman, an employee of the monolithic Jeffers Corporation, whose logo is a hand flipping the bird. George is torn between his rousing dreams of his nation-founding forefather -- and the fear that his little secret will, y'know, combust him.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch VISIONEERS this month, only on Sundance Channel.2. STARGATE (1994)
Where did the pyramids really come from? Ancient Egyptian engineering, limitless slave labor, blah blah blah -- but wait! What's this? It was actually an alien from a distant planet, whose transportation device was buried by the rebelling labor force in an effort to stop his insidious attempts at immortality? And when a geeky Egyptologist (James Spader) cracks the code, he and his military buddy (Kurt Russell) step through it to discover the pseudo-god still at it? And they have to save the still-enslaved humans -- and planet Earth, as well? Do we even need to answer that question?
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch STARGATE this month, only on Sundance Channel.1. ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)
A sweet young housewife (Mia Farrow) and her aspiring-actor husband (John Cassavetes) move into an odd old building with odd old neighbors; so far so good. But when they decide to make a baby, things take a turn for the weird, as Rosemary is served drugged chocolate mousse, has hazy visions of being raped by the devil with the old neighbors as bystanders, gets seriously questionable gynecological care, suffers terrible pregnancy pains, finally deduces the whole thing isn't all in her head and is knocked out cold while delivering her baby -- who, supposedly, dies. She finally wises up, finds her baby and decides to mother him despite being told that he is, in fact, the spawn of Satan. In other words, an alternate universe that would be a hard sell to any modern woman. But pushy city neighbors all up in your business, telling you how you should raise your kid? Yeah, that part's totally real.
Author: Nina Hämmerling Smith
Click to watch ROSEMARY'S BABY this month, only on Sundance Channel.
