The Weekly MUBI Digest | 27th October 2018

David Farnor | On 27, Oct 2018

MUBI gets into the spooky seasonal spirit this week with a whole host of hand-picked horrors lined up, from John Carpeter to Jennifer Kent. And, for those who prefer their fears more theological, the subscription service’s exclusive acquisition The Apparition is also available to stream. Real life horror, meanwhile, can be found in UTØYA – JULY 22, tackling the tragic events of that fateful day in Norway – available to watch at participating cinema for free with MUBI UK.

What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:

This week on MUBI

Halloween Horrors: Village of the Damned – 27th October

John Carpenter reinterprets a classic of genre in this 1995 remake. An American village is visited by some unknown life form which leaves the women of the village pregnant. Nine months later, the babies are born, and they all look normal, but it doesn’t take the “parents” long to realise that the kids are not human or humane.

Halloween Horrors: We Are What We Are – 28th October

This loose reinterpretation of Mexican horror film Somos lo que hay reset to upstate New York focuses on a demented patriarch and his family to tell a tale of evil of immeasurable proportions. Overwhelming dread guides this slow churn of gothic horror and familial bonds to an unforgettable finale.

Halloween Horrors: Season of the Witch (1972) – 30th October

Best known for ushering in the modern idea of zombies, the late George A. Romero applied an incisive level of social commentary in his underrated—even forgotten—non-undead films. Thus, the stellar Season of the Witch takes aim at the nuclear family and invokes witchcraft as an attractive answer.

Halloween Horrors: The Babadook – 31st October

Jennifer Kent’s film astutely unites the wry, modern storybook incarnation with the genre’s disturbing past. The result is one of the horror movies of recent years.

Other new releases on MUBI

Halloween Horrors: It Follows

Imagine someone walking towards you. Not very scary, is it? Wait until you see It Follows. David Robert Mitchell’s horror thriller follows Jay (Maika Monroe), who finds herself on a date gone terrifyingly wrong, when she wakes up post-sex strapped to a chair and is told that something is going to try and kill her. Why? We don’t know. Who? We don’t know that either. What we do know is that this entity will continue following her until it catches her and shuffles her off her mortal coil. It’s clever. It’s unconventional. And it’s very, very creepy. Read our full review

Halloween Horrors: The Curse of Frankenstein

Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing unite for this Hammer Studios interpretation of the Promethean tale of reanimation. Refocusing towards the moral failings of Frankenstein’s experiment, Curse immerses one fully in the existential failure and dread of Mary Shelley’s masterwork.

MUBI Exclusive: The Apparition

After the success of Marguerite, Xavier Giannoli returns in top form for a gripping religious thriller meets Vatican exposé that sinuously delves into the mystery of faith. Vincent Lindon—in glorious Bogart mode—gives a miraculous performance as a man of reason confronting the elusiveness of truth. Read our full review

In the City of Sylvia

30 years after Buñuel’s last work, his fellow countryman José Luis Guerín comes up with a new, acclaimed, sensual film also about “that obscure object of desire”, as a young painter arrives in Strasbourg in search of a woman who bewitched him six years earlier.

Episode of the Sea

A document of a contemporary North Sea fishery and the fishermen’s struggle with a changed public perception, fluctuating regulations, and excessive global competition, while parallels are drawn between fishing and filmmaking.

Gomorrah

Without a hint of romanticism or sentimentality, Matteo Garrone brings together a large ensemble of characters to build a broad panorama of the cause and effects of criminal life in Naples.

The Wolf House

With echoes of animation giants Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers, this gothic Chilean oddity is as nightmarish as cinema gets. Sinuously connecting Nazism and Pinochet, La Casa Lobo subverts the logic of fairy tales and the idea of home, to deliver a phantasmagoric allegory of terrifying beauty.

Winchester ’73

In Winchester ’73, the first of the Mann-Stewart westerns, Stewart is driven anti-hero Lin McAdam, out to avenge the heinous murder of his father — and, in a parallel pursuit, to recover a much-coveted stolen rifle, now passing from hand to hand.

Rodrigo Cortes: Buried

Ryan Rodney Reynolds delivers one of his career’s best turns in this thriller about a truck driver in Iraq who wakes up to find himself buried alive. With nothing but a lighter and a mobile phone, his attempt to escape is cleverly written to last the 95 minutes, while director Rodrigo Cortes does innovative things with his tiny space. Grippingly claustrophobic stuff.

Rodrigo Cortes: Red Lights

Psychologist Margaret Matheson and her assistant specialise in debunking those claiming to possess paranormal psychic powers. When Tom decides to re-open the case of notorious blind psychic Simon Silver, Margaret cautions him against the idea. Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro and Cillian Murphy star in Rodrigo Cortes’ ambitious mystery thriller.

London Film Festival: Theatre of War

Multi-disciplinary artist Lola Arias’ first documentary is a striking experiment: an exploration of war trauma that reflects on the possibilities of artifice to activate memory and revisit History through storytelling.

London Film Festival: The Glorious Acceptance of Nicolas Chauvin

This original short by maverick American artist Benjamin Crotty, gorgeously shot by Sean Price Williams (Good Time, Listen Up Philip), is clever, silly, political, hilarious and bizarre.

London Film Festival: Yours in Sisterhood

More than looking for one definition of feminism, Irene Lusztig’s deceptively simple, wonderfully polyhedral doc embraces all feminisms. Building a bridge between the 70s and today’s world, this modern take on the epistolary genre is an affecting celebration of womanhood and the act of listening.

London Film Festival: Trees Down Here

To close MUBI’s LFF series, and direct from their visionary Experimenta sidebar, is a new work by UK artist Ben Rivers. Shot on 16mm and co-produced by MUBI, it playfully captures the delicate balance not just between past design and new innovation, but also between human creation and that of nature.

Antiviral

The directorial debut of Brandon Cronenberg, set in a scathingly satirical future where fans buy celebrities’ illnesses to be closer to their idols, feels a lot like something his dad would make. In this case, that’s no bad thing. Read our full review.

Hitchcock Classics: Frenzy

MUBI moves to the Master of Suspense’s natal London for its season finale. Wickedly violent and perversely funny, Frenzy is a self-referential, serial killer thriller variation on the wrongly accused man theme. Hitch does it again: he has us at the edge of our seats, and fully aware of his genius.

Crimes of Passion

Ken Russell’s second Hollywood film is a deliriously demented erotic thriller with Kathleeen Turner as the ballsy hooker playing dangerous games with two unstable clients. One is a guilt-tormented private detective while the other is a deeply disturbed preacher wielding a weaponised vibrator.

Kevin Everson: Spicebush

MUBI concludes its close-up on Everson’s distinctive work with his feature debut. Melding different registers and types of footage, an episodic, expansive view on black America emerges breathing with poetic and political pulse. A mysterious little girl is a leitmotiv, the chorus of this composition.

Kevin Everson: Ears, Nose and Throat

During an extensive, ear, nose and throat examination, Shadeena Brooks recounts a horrible event she eye-witnessed on a street in Mansfield, Ohio.

Kevin Everson: Cinnamon

In his debut film, a multi-faceted exploration of drag racing in the Midwest, Kevin Jerome Everson fully encompasses the community, ecstasy, and expertise of this unusual sport. Gently drifting between fiction and reality, Cinnamon is an eloquent expression of black unity and excellence.

Kevin Everson: Three Quarters

Under the interrupted gaze of cinema, Kevin Jerome Everson offers us two magic tricks in this minimal tribute to the craft of street magic. An aptly mysterious object, Three Quarters at once expands Everson’s project of expressing dextrous skills while also abstracting them in further enigma.

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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

Antiviral
Available until end of: 27th October

10,000km
Available until end of: 28th October

Marnie
Available until end of: 29th October

Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers
Available until end of: 30th October

In the House
Available until end of: 31st October

I Love You Phillip Morris
Available until end of: 1st November

Quality Control
Available until end of: 2nd November