Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Is nothing sacred? They’re cancelling Hallowe’en! No trick-or-treating, no candy, and no parties. I get it, it’s a pandemic. But it’s still Hallowe’en. So, to fight the COVID blues you might try watching scary movies at home.

This week I’m looking at three new horror movies, all violent, gory and sure to keep you up at night. There’s zombies in South Korea, a time warp in the Confederate deep south; and Satanic retirees in Southern Ontario.

Peninsula

Dir: Sang-ho Yeon

Jung Seok (Gang Dong-Won) is a former soldier living in Hong Kong. He’s a refugee, one of the last to escape the Korean peninsula before all other countries closed their gates to them. A pandemic, caused by a lethal virus created in a biotech laboratory, infected the entire population, turning them all into jerky, writhing zombies that feast on human flesh. The few, uninfected survivors – like Jung Seok and his brother in law Chul-min (Kim Do-Yoon) – are despised and feared. So when shady Hongkong gangsters offer them a deal, they take it. The job? Return to the zombie-infested peninsula to recover an armoured car full of US dollars, and drive it to the Port of Incheon to board a waiting tanker. If they survive, they keep a share of the spoils and can restart their ruined lives. Easier said than done.

Turns out, there’s not just zombies there. Chul-min is captured inside the money truck by crazed former soldiers from a rogue army base. Chul-min is forced to fight against zombies in a make-shift stadium for the soldiers’ entertainment. Jung Seok, on the ther hand, is rescued by two baby drivers, little kids who mow down zombies on the street for fun. They take him back to their family – their mom Min Jung (Jung-hyun Lee) and a deranged grandpa who thinks he’s communicating by radio with a “GI Jane” who will come to rescue them. Can Jung Seok and his newfound family rescue Chul-min, find the cash and drive it to Incheon in time?

Peninsula is a gripping, action thriller set in a dystopian futuristic Korea. It’s a sequel to Train to Busan, the hit zombie movie from a few years back.  It  incorporates themes from movies like Mad Max, Hunger Games and The Walking Dead – good people forced to live in distorted versions of their world in order to stay alive. It follows the rules of the zombie genre – Zombies are blind at night, attracted to light and loud noises, travel in packs – but there are enough new situations and human characters to keep it interesting. Peninsula is pretty good.

Antebellum

Wri/Dir: Gerard Bush, Christopher Renz

Dr Veronica Henley (Janelle Monáe) is a writer, academic and activist who is famous for her appearances on cable news panels. She specializes in the intersectionality of race, class and gender as a roadmap for revolution. She’s off to a prestigious conference where she’s giving a speech. But she is troubled by horrible recurring nightmares where she’s trapped as a slave in pre-civil war America. One day, she receives a puzzling call from an unidentified southern white woman (Jena Malone) whose voice is laden with sinister white-supremacist undertones. Veronica dismisses her as another crank.  But after a girl’s night out with her best friends (including Gabourey Sidibe), she is kidnapped and knocked out. When she awakens, she’s caught in her own terrifying dream: trapped in a southern plantation run by Confederate soldiers. She’s forced by overseers on horseback to pick cotton by day, and is sexually assaulted at night. She and the others are robbed of their freedom, identity, their bodies and even their names, and are forbidden from talking to one another on pain of death. What hell is this? Is it time travel, or just another dream? And can she ever escape? 

Antebellum is a very scary movie where the horrific world of American slavery serves as the ultimate horror setting for contemporary Black characters. It also adds subtle references to the rise of modern-day white supremacists  — Confederate soldiers march with torches just like the alt-right in Charlottesville. Janelle Monáe is great as the modern-day heroine trapped in a disgusting simulacrum of plantation slavery. But the movie suffers from editing problems – it depends on a twist ending (no spoilers) that doesn’t fit right with the supposed “magic” and time travel elements. But maybe I’m analyzing it too much. If you’re in the mood for extreme horror, violence (and some satisfying revenge  sequences) you’ll like Antebellum.

Anything for Jackson

Dir: Justin G Dyck

Wri: Keith Cooper

Audrey and Henry (Sheila McCarthy, Julian Richings) are an older, married couple in a small Canadian city. He’s a family doctor and she takes care of their home. Once a week they meet a group of unusual hobbyists at their local library. What’s unusual about their group? They are a Satanic coven. And what do they want from Satan? They want their little grandson Jackson back (he died in a car crash) and they’ll do anything to make it happen. So they kidnap a pregnant woman Shannon (Konstantina Mantelos) and lock her in a soundproof basement room. They don’t want to hurt her – Audrey keeps saying “Sorry!” and crochets little handcuff cozies so Shannon’s wrists don’t chafe – they just want Jackson’s soul to possess her foetus. Let’s not make this unpleasant, Audrey says.

And they have a thousand-year-old guidebook to tell them what to do. But their fool-proof plan starts to unravel. Rory, who shovels their snow, keeps turning up at the wrong time. A police woman drops by to investigate a missing person. And Ian (Josh Cruddas), a super-creepy ginger-bearded devil-worshipper from their coven, discovers their secret and tries to take over. Worse than all of them, supernatural demons begin to haunt their home. Will they ever see their grandson again? Or have they let loose horrible creatures from hell?

Anything for Jackson is a great horror movie about ordinary, kindly Canadians doing awful things. While it starts as a dark comedy, it soon becomes a scary horror movie powered by monsters, ghosts and demons. Sort of a supernatural Fargo, or Rosemary’s Baby but from the point of view of the Satanists. The special effects are on the cheap side, but the acting and story are quite good.

I like this movie.

Anything for Jackson is premiering at Blood in the Snow, Canada’s horror, genre and underground film festival on right now; you can watch Antebellum on disc and VOD; and Peninsula is also available to rent or to own.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.