There is no shortage of Christmas films. Lifetime, Hallmark Channel, and Netflix have gone all in on producing these heartwarming tales for the holiday season. They’re fun, they’re silly, and they’re all about positivity and joy.
My own take on a holiday film is different.
Imagine an inescapable force haunting society. No one knows for sure how it came to be, but it did. It is real. It is here. It is now and forever.
Now and forever. That’s not a threat; that’s a promise.
The criteria for the list is rather simple. A great musical has to have a great song score. The singing has to be good. The songs have to service the story and the story needs to hit the emotional heights necessary to justify a song. And, most importantly, the film must have released between 2010 and 2019.
No matter what version of It you look at, It is a narrative driven by irrational fears. For example, I fear ever picking up a Stephen King novel that runs more than 800 pages again. It, the novel, is one of those texts that turned me into a fan of Stephen King’s short stories. Contained to a single story in a small format, King limits his ideas and cast of characters into twisted vignettes of life and anxiety defined by past trauma. In a meandering long form novel, he just keeps introducing more characters and more ideas that start to contradict each other until nothing makes sense.
Director André Øvredal broke out in the horror scene almost 10 years ago with Trollhunter. A masterpiece of monster horror, Trollhunter tells the story of a group of young people researching a series of bear murders in the woods. The truth is far more unbelievable: ancient trolls are real and a genuine deadly threat to any human who spots them. Part ensemble comedy, part effects showcase, Øvredal crafts a monster movie driven by believable characters and suggestive use of special effects to make the giant monsters seem real.
