3 Creepy Criterion Collection Recommendations

[00:00:00]Today on Cody in the Cinema, I have three really creepy get under your skin kind of Criterion Collection recommendations. These aren't necessarily like jump scare movies, but they will leave you feeling unsettled and just kind of just creeped out. Like you just don't feel great. Uh they they definitely get under the skin, especially like one I just watched that I can't quite shake the way it made me feel. And a lot of you have been talking to me lately about this director, Masaki Kobayashi. And you really like this director and I do, too.

[00:00:31]This is called Kwaidan.

[00:00:33]And this is like one of the best anthology films ever made. Uh it's basically like four myths or stories told from Japanese history.

[00:00:43]A quartet of ghost stories as it says on the back.

[00:00:46]Um and I like how it says the director shifted gears dramatically for this stylized quartet after these political dramas he did. And I am currently working my way through The Human Condition. That whole experience. Um of course Harakiri is a great film. Uh featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography. And this like I'm going to tell you something about Kwaidan.

[00:01:15]This film, you know, you you can you can think that in talking about just like different quality of each story, like is it is it the most engaging narrative all the time? I don't know. But as far as like the way the set pieces look and the feeling and the eeriness of the thing and just how masterfully it's shot.

[00:01:31]There's I mean, it's as good as it gets.

[00:01:35]And it really left me feeling like just like I had insects crawling on me at times. The the the there are four stories.

[00:01:45]And my favorite is actually the first one, which isn't always everybody's favorite. It's about this man who leaves his wife for a more lucrative position.

[00:01:53]Uh and he kind of comes back to her and there's some ghosty stuff in there about this like black hair and it's like I don't know the images in that particular one. This is just one of my favorite uh pieces of horror I've ever seen.

[00:02:05]It is that first one. There's one that takes place in the snow. There's like this one where this this guy is kind of communicating with the dead. There's another one where someone sees something in in some tea or water and each of these is just truly awesome and and really connects with that idea of spirituality and ghosts and it's truly creepy.

[00:02:28]It's also, by the way, it is one of my favorite covers. I think this is just so effective.

[00:02:35]Um really nice piece of media.

[00:02:39]And if you have seen other Kobayashi, it's just like you're like, "How did this director also, you know, accomplish this?" Because this is so different from some of his other stuff, but really cool film. It's a long film, 183 minutes.

[00:02:54]Um definitely worth seeing.

[00:02:56]Even if you have to break each of the individual tales off, right? Into like if you do it in the fourths, it's still fine.

[00:03:02]Um another film that I've been back and forth on and I I have found and after having thought about it, um you know, at one point I was considering this might be a one swatch, but the more I've really kind of pondered on it, I really like The Cremator.

[00:03:16]This is a film I've talked about before.

[00:03:19]I was looking at pieces again earlier and I just I don't know, there's something about this that's just like again, under the skin, makes you feel uncomfortable, eerie, creepy, all these things.

[00:03:30]It's a Czech New Wave film.

[00:03:32]Um Director Juraj Herz, and I'm not sure how to say his name there, but um this is the Criterion thinks about it as a darkly comic vision of the horrors of, you know, fascist ideology.

[00:03:46]Um There's this guy playing this crematorium manager.

[00:03:52]I mean, that's a good enough basis right there, right, for a film in Prague in the '30s, and then he gets recruited by Nazis.

[00:04:00]And he, you know, he's just like believes that maybe one of the great reliefs we can have to end human suffering uh, you know, might be death, right? So, the film is jarring. It uses odd camera angles that kind of creepy, eerie black and white cinematography that these films sometimes do, distorted lenses, quick cuts.

[00:04:26]Definitely controversial. This thing has one of the like I'm thinking of a scene where he's like chasing a character that's just like it uh These These are These are hard to talk about today because when you when you're talking about criterions that creep you out and get under your skin like you start losing your articulation.

[00:04:50]You start to lose your, almost like your focus or your ability to reason through what makes films great because you're just kind of going through and replaying the images in your head.

[00:05:03]Um, and The Cremator is certainly one of those films.

[00:05:08]Stringent and disturbing portraits of the banality of evil.

[00:05:12]Yeah.

[00:05:13]Wow.

[00:05:15]What a film, The Cremator.

[00:05:17]But really, I think one of the films that does this you know, quite and of course has supernatural elements. Cremator is fooling around a little bit away from realism entirely in in in the way it's shot.

[00:05:30]But a film that I think sort of is a grandfather to all um, eerie eerie cinema, uncomfortable cinema.

[00:05:38]I usually think of Fritz Lang's M when I think of like where all this came from.

[00:05:46]It has one of the best opening sequences in any movie you'll ever see.

[00:05:51]A simple hunting phrase whistled off screen tells us that a young girl will be killed. Who is the murderer?

[00:05:56]Pleads a nearby placard as serial killer Hans Beckert closes in on Elsie Beckmann.

[00:06:04]It's about a serial killer and getting caught and being running from the police.

[00:06:09]And it just makes you feel like anywhere you walk, like you could get serial murdered, you know? It's It's one of the films that feels light years ahead of its time.

[00:06:21]Um as its director typically does.

[00:06:24]You know, here's a director who was a great director, a great a great actor in contempt with Jean-Luc Godard, but um I think like you know, what what are our roots, right? What are our roots in creepy eerie cinema?

[00:06:36]Well, you have something like Vampire uh the Dreyer film.

[00:06:40]You have this.

[00:06:42]It's still a fascinating watch. It's still an amazing fun watch.

[00:06:48]To this day, it remains the blueprint for the psychological thriller and I agree with that.

[00:06:52]And it asks ethical questions, right?

[00:06:55]Like there's a whole like trial in this that's interesting.

[00:06:58]There's also a a good chase sequence, right? So, it's not just like you know, I think about other serial killer movies, right? I think about Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, great film in a in a way, but it really really has more to do with just like the serial killer avenue.

[00:07:15]I think about the Zodiac.

[00:07:17]The Zodiac, you know, it has a lot of tension and chasing and mystery.

[00:07:21]This film does a lot of those things, right? At once. And um you can see how a film like M influences pretty much anything else.

[00:07:31]And so, I think if you're into that kind of drama, even if or or genre, even if you're not necessarily like first and foremost always um into criterions, this can be a good place to start. But these are three that were on my mind after I watched Kwaidan.

[00:07:48]I picked off my shelf. I was like, "Okay, what are some other films that sort of also got under my skin?" So, Cremator and M were ones I was thinking about, and I'm thinking about giving The Cremator another full watch just to see. So, those are some of the ones I had in my mind today.

[00:08:03]What are some that are on your mind?

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