I’m really excited – so close to the finish line! I’ve enjoyed all the films in this next 10. This has honestly been a good challenge so far this year. When/if I do get to 100 I’ll make a post with my highlights!
I’ve really liked exploring world cinema again, and I’ve seen films by lots of new-to-me directors as well as added new-to-me countries to my Horror Padlet. I’ll get around to adding these as well eventually, but at the moment I’m just adding any new-to-me countries.
71) Rabbit (2017) dir. Luke Shanahan. Australian creepy psychic twins film that is as much about the sibling bond and family grief as it is the paranormal side of things. It was a bit underwhelming for me over all, but there were loads of things I liked about the family drama side of things, and the concept kept me interested.
72) México bárbaro / Barbarous Mexico (2014) dirs. Lex Ortega, Jorge Michel Grau, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Ulises Guzmán Reyes, Aarón Soto, Isaac Ezban, Laurette Flores, Edgar Nito. This was a good film anthology – TW for rape in a few segments. I liked a lot of the takes on folklore and legends though. No framed narrative here, just a collection of different tales bound by the theme of fucked up folklore/urban legends. The warning is in the title.
73) Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016) dir. Jared Cohn. I’ve been wanting to watch this one for a while, so I saved it for the challenge. It’s on my Red Riding Hood in cinema list. I was not disappointed. I really liked Eric Balfour in Haven, so I knew I’d like his performance in this. I really loved the concept, where the red-caped forest guardians have powers from the grave. It was pretty fun, there was some nice worldbuilding, and it felt like a fairy tale version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Underworld on a very low budget.
74) El Amarre (2021) dir. Tamae Garateguy. This is one for the women who never got out, I guess. It’s about an abusive relationship, where a woman asks for a love spell to get her crush to love her. It works – but it turns out he’s an abusive, violent bastard, and his ex quickly calls and tries to warn her. Unfortunately, now she can’t get rid of him, and she’s bound him to her even after death. It’s pretty bleak, honestly. I would be interested to see more films by this director.
75) Pabrik Gula / Sugar Mill (2025) dir. Awi Suryadi. I like Suryadi’s films, and this one is pretty good. I really enjoyed it. I really liked the story and the mystery aspect, and the ghosts were great. I always enjoy melodramatic storylines and this one delivered.
76) Trinil: Kembalikan Tubuhku / Trinil (2024) dir. Hanung Bramantyo. Apparently this was based on a 1980s radio play? I really enjoyed it. Trinil was a great character. It was an absolute rollercoaster. I felt so bad for her with the backstory, and because I didn’t know where it was going, I really enjoyed the ride.
77) Sinners (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler. I’m glad I saved this one for the challenge, and it was on limited offer in UK Prime to rent for £1.99! Really enjoyed this, although the weird Irish vampire line about their colonisers bringing them the Lord’s Prayer threw me off. I think the vampire was either lying to trying to persuade Sammy by saying they had a shared history of colonial violence and identity-theft/imposition of religion, or it was a mix-up around the Plantations, as the version of the Lord’s Prayer they said together lacked the last 3 lines, which is a kind of shibboleth, but that would be the wrong way around? I’m glad I read around the discourse on the film before I watched it, as obviously a lot of the cultural references didn’t translate. It was definitely a rich film with a lot to it. This had strong Saloum vibes for me in terms of set up and the switch to the supernatural; I really loved the characters, the Black American history you don’t get to see in mainstream cinema so much, at least not here (UK).
78) 신체모음.zip / Body Parts (2022) dirs. Kim Jang-mi, Wally Seo, G’sam, Lee Gwang-jin, Jeon Byeong-deok, Choe Won-kyung. I loved the framed narrative for this anthology of films. Deeply sinister! I do love weird esoteric cults, in any religious tradition, and this one is mixed with body horror and trauma. Delicious. Also: such a refreshing thing to see an exorcism attempt in one of the anthology segments that’s in a Christian tradition that is not in some weird, USian Evangelical Protestant-culture fantasy version of Catholicism. I think those films are interesting enough for how USian Evangelical Christianity looks and thinks about other Christian traditions (spoiler: not a lot), but films like that get a bit wearing after a while.
79) ບໍ່ມີວັນຈາກ / The Long Walk (2019) dir. Mattie Do. I loved this one. I think I preferred it to Dear Sister, the other film of Do’s I’ve seen. It’s an amazing genre-bending film, about a little boy who finds a fatally injured woman in the jungle and stays with her until she dies. She becomes a ghost who sticks around on the road where she was killed, and can bridge the gap of time between the boy as a boy, and the boy as an old man. I love this concept. The ghost and the main character are friends throughout his life, and he is able to use her time-travelling powers to interact with, and to help, his childhood self. I also really liked the:
(Click for Spoiler)
…way that the ghost’s friendship and help was only possible because she was left unburied. She had no resting place, and her distraught mother was unable to bury her. When the mum approached the boy to ask if he had seen her daughter, he lied, and the ghost approved. She knew that if she was laid to rest, she wouldn’t be able to help him anymore, and they had been together for 50 years, although the boy didn’t know it. So she allowed her mother to grieve in the absence of closure, to keep that trauma open, so that she could look after the isolated child.
Also, the part where the boy’s mother dies, eased instead of agonised, helped along by the older version of himself and the ghost’s support, and the boy is so upset he orders them both to leave because he doesn’t yet understand that this is the only help his mother could get, is just so heartbreaking.
I think this is a really lovely way of exploring trauma and loneliness, and the theme of Haunted by the Past. Genuinely one of my favourites from the challenge so far, I think.
80) Вурдалаки/Vamps (2017) dir. Sergey Ginzburg. Russian Dracula with Sommers’ Van Helsing vibes. I actually laughed out loud when it turned out the Master’s servant was a Turk? And the Master had a lot of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in the costuming… Genuinely the castle was amazing. The three swivelling bookcases. The Hammer Horror décor. Plus, it’s always good to see an Orthodox version.
Countries A-Z Films 71-80
Australia
Indonesia
Laos
Mexico
Russia
South Korea
United States of America
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