Horror on Netflix Watch Instantly

Netflix has become the most popular streaming service. With that in mind, I put together a list of the horror films they currently have available through their Watch Instantly streaming service. This is just a list of the films that are worth watching for one reason or another. It may be that the film is particularly creepy or funny, disturbing or thought provoking, had a particular cultural impact or is just plainly well made. It just means that for one reason or another I'd suggest seeing the film. They're only listed in the order I found them, with the exception of sequels or franchise entries, they'll be listed together. I've also included links directly to the films through Netflix. If I've reviewed the film previously, I've also included a link for my original review.

Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009)

Nicolas Winding Refn is a film maker to watch. Of his films that I've seen, The Pusher Trilogy, Bronson (link to my review), and now Valhalla Rising (links to the search results for Google's shopping option), he has proven to have the rare ability to craft films that have the qualities of being both meditative and unpretentiously entertaining. His films have been, in many ways, the other side of the Christopher Nolan coin. Where Christopher Nolan's films have been primarily entertainment, with the kind of serious, meditative undertone, Refn's films have been primarily meditative and serious, without snobbishly turning up his nose at the kind of entertainment "serious" film critics and aficionado's tend to lambaste. 


With Valhalla Rising (links to Netflix Watch Instantly), he's taken that ability to the next level. Where Bronson and The Pusher Trilogy presented those qualities in stark relief, contrasting each other in different moments of each film, Valhalla Rising mixes them together much more organically, and in eliminating the contrast creates an unusually powerful narrative for a film whose content deals so directly with brutal violence, and the nature of people who perpetrate it. The result is a film which takes the best of Terrence Malick's lyricism and the most brutally compelling scenes in Ridley Scott's Gladiator. In it's own strange way, it's in the same spiritual family as Apocalypse Now.


The film begins with a man in chains, surrounded by dour looking Norse warriors. It quickly becomes obvious that these Norse are either using prisoners for entertainment by watching them kill each other or it's their form of a system of justice. This particular man is also extremely adept at killing other slaves and prisoners.

This cold blooded killer quickly escapes and kills his captors, and with a boy named Ayre who had been a slave, finds a group of Vikings, who are headed for Jerusalem to reclaim the Holy Land. They don't end up in the Holy Land though, they end up more or less lost, landing in some unkown place. All is not what it seems, and the rest of the film follows our slave warrior, at this point dubbed "One Eye," through a compelling and engaging journey. The film is broken into three acts, differentiated specifically by title cards, whose titles are interesting if only for the kind of allegory they suggest.

Refn has used Mads Mikkelson in two of the Pusher films, and again here as the protagonist One Eye. American audiences would probably most quickly recognize him as Le Chiffre, the villain from Casino Royale and unfortunately that horrendous, skull crushingly bad remake of Clash of the Titans (link to my review of that steaming turd). It's unfortunate that he's only been given the kind of extremely stereotypical roles common to American blockbusters, because he's a talented actor, with real range and depth, and he's got one of the most interesting faces in contemporary film. Did I mention that One Eye, his character is mute? Through the entire film, the character never says one word. Even with just one eye, his eyes stil say thousands of words. 


The film is beautifully shot, and this adds to the overall lyricism, in combination with the structure of the narrative. There isn't an indoor shot in the entire film, and the wide expanses that surround the actors also add to the feeling of seclusion and in doing so, heighten the feeling that the characters are under threat. The vistas captured by the lense are beautiful and breathtaking. Refn has quite an eye for talent. Having given Tom Hardy the lead role in Bronson, he introduced the world to the kind of searing talent we can expect to be around for a very long time. Cinematographer Morten Soborg has worked on a number of Danish films, including two of Refn's Pusher films, and we should expect to start seeing him getting work here in the States very soon. 


This is a bloody good film. I should have known better than to expect a more straight forward actioner from Refn, and I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it reaches for something much deeper than that, and on the whole, succeeds. 

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)

The White Ribbon is a rumination on ritualized punishment by master film maker Michael Haneke. The film revolves around the residents of a small Austrian village just prior to World War I. Following a series of events both routine and unusually horrific, the peaceful life they've become used to is turned upside down. 

To say that The White Ribbon is an understated film is understated. It's obviously the work of a master film maker specifically for that reason. It takes someone confident enough in an ability they understand to be superior to craft a film as patient, studious and methodical as this film is. In every way, this should probably be a very boring film. This is not a flashy film, with exciting action and events happening every second.

The narrative is built like a mystery, a nearly perfect mystery, and the subtlety of it's construction is only possibly overshadowed by the performances, the dialog, the  script and the cinematography. It's shot in black and white, and so beautiful that there could be a few paragraphs worth of hyperbolic language to describe. I could seriously go on for a very long time about the photography in this film. This alone would be reason to see this film. 

Haneke has managed to create a film which is tightly wound and has a more consistent rhythm than a metronome by keeping things as subtle as he does and by using a decidedly uncinematic cast. That's not to say the performances aren't good, because they are, every single one of them is superb, but none of these actors look like they just stepped off a back lot somewhere in Hollywood or spend long hours devoted to the iconography of the physical image that we cultivate in most of our cinema and television. They aren't your classic Hollywood "pretty people," and whether we want to believe that or not, it makes a difference in how far we're willing to go in suspending our disbelief. When people are so attractive, so perfectly coiffed that it's abnormal, and looks like an effect they're attempting to achieve, we know it, and we don't believe it as willingly as we do people who look like they belong in an early twentieth century Austrian farming community. All of those elements come together to give the film a steady, quiet rhythm that keep it from becoming a boring, slow, preachy snoozefest, and make it engaging, suspenseful, interesting, and ultimately, an example of the power of quality, no frills film making. 

There's a cliche it's really easy to get tired of hearing or reading when you're a film enthusiast. Film makers, actors, producers, everyone invovled in film making and just about every single variety of storytelling in general use it. They say, "I was willing to do it to serve the story,""we really didn't want to do anything but serve the story." It's always about "serving the story." It's something said on a near constant basis, even when it couldn't be further from the truth. With The White Ribbon though, it's absolutely the truth. There is nothing in this movie that doesn't somehow serve the story. There's no extraneous bits and pieces or unecessary scenes, characters, dialog, nothing. It's all actuall there to serve the story, and that is what makes this such an incredible film. The story here has some interesting things to say about the nature of punishment and oppressive social, religious and economic conditions, and suggests some even more interesting things about the role those may have ultimately played in the beginnings and future acceptance of fascism. The source of that punishment and oppression is different in this film, but because of it's lack of sensationalistic tone, it's easy to see the through line from a life like the one depicted in the film, and accepting the kind of oppression fascism would eventually bring. 


The White Ribbon is an artistic accomplishment by a master film maker, which should be seen by anyone with even a passing interest in film on more than a pure entertainment level. I caught it on Netflix Watch Instantly and it's available on DVD.