So, I’m feeling like crap today and I’m flat on my back watching a couple DVDs.  I’d heard of both of them, but never got the chance to see them, and it’s so rare that I rent two movies and neither of them suck.

The first one is Hard Candy, which takes the whole victim-turns-on-the-creep concept of films like The Accused and I Spit On Your Grave and mixes it with the modern day equivalent, i.e., the “torture porn” of films like Saw, where sadism is used by a psychopath to achieve some warped end of justice.  In this one, a young girl catches a short eyes trawling for chicks in a chat room and instead of calling John Stossel, she takes matters into her own hands.  I’m not going to give away more, but suffice to say it’s a very tough film to watch made tougher by it’s intimacy.  There’s really only two characters in the movie, and most of it is dialog between them.  What made the film really stand out for me is that I couldn’t predict the ending, which is so often my problem when I see a film these days–there’s no real suspense because I figure it out too quickly, even when I don’t try to.  Hollywood (and even indiewood) doesn’t manufacture much subtlety anymore.

Not that Hard Candy is terribly subtle.  It’s brutal, but not explicit; disturbing, but not graphic or crude.  It’s not a film for everyone, but if you like movies that make you think about what should happen to the truly evil people of the world, it’s for you.

The second film is a UK horror movie called, Severance.  (Don’t worry–it’s in English, even if the above posters is not.)  The basic plot is a group of salespeople lost in the woods and they find a cabin and then bad bad things happen.

I’m 2/3 of the way through it and it has managed to take all the typical horror/slasher/splatter conventions and make them interesting.  It’s funny but creepy at the same time.  It’s not ove-the-top funny like Shaun of the Dead, but it’s got a quirky oddness to it.  Like when the stranded group of travellers is hiking through the woods and a random bear crosses their path.  What the hell is that about?  And the interlude where they do a Nosferatu take off is genius.

This movie has kept me highly entertained, as did Hard Candy.

Any of you see these movies?