By the time I was finished with this exercise last year, I was convinced this couldn't be done again. But in the end, I couldn't resist trying. All it took was a few surprising discoveries and I was right back down the rabbit hole. If you want a refresher, here's the first year and this was the second year.
Now that I've finished another list, the question returns - could I ever pull this off again? I spoke too soon last time so I hesitate to say no, but it wouldn't be easy. We've covered a total of 93 different countries at this point. I had leads on movies from Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Libya, Trinidad and Tobago and some others, but I just couldn't find anywhere to watch them. I may yet track them down but another 31? It's hard to imagine right now.
It also might require loosening my criteria. For example, I was excited for a movie that seemed to be about ghosts stalking people in the Algerian desert, only to learn that the movie in question was a French/Moroccan production and filmed entirely in Morocco (if you recall, we covered Morocco last year). Even though it might be nominally about Algeria, it didn't strike me as a true Algerian film. Situations like that come up pretty often. Co-productions aren't disqualifying by any stretch (there have been a lot so far) but they need to be shot at least partially in the country in question and/or involve a native cast and crew.
The well may be getting dry, but that's only for now. I've seen a difference even since I started this. Two years ago, I had a bit of a tough time finding an Indian horror film. Now, probably due to the unexpected success of the action epic RRR, you can find a trove of them on Netflix. I hope more countries take advantage of internet streaming and low budget ingenuity until every nation has had its chance to scare the world.
I've compiled a list on Letterboxd of all the movies that have been part of this activity (you might have to click on "read notes" to see which country each one is from). I won't do another post like this until I have 31 more, but I'll update that list as I find other movies.
1. United Arab Emirates - Djinn (2013)
For the first Emirati horror film, the producers hired none other than Tobe Hooper, the man who made one of the most revered movies of this genre - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hooper had never quite been able to replicate the success of that movie and this was his last feature before his death in 2017, which some critics described as an inauspicious end for such an influential director. On the other hand, the UAE has so much money that they probably could have hired anyone they wanted, so it speaks well of Hooper's legacy decades later that they chose to approach him.
The movie is about a native couple who return home after an extended stay in the United States only to find that their new home was built on a site that was once home to evil spirits. It's a detail quite similar to Hooper's own Poltergeist and a malevolent djinn begins to cause similar chaos. The story falls apart as it nears the end and it's clear that the director didn't have a huge budget to work with, but its unique pedigree makes it interesting to watch regardless. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out to be very popular in the UAE - even the royal family criticized it.
2. Myanmar - A Mhya A Mhya (2019)
Good lord, this was challenging to find. I learned pretty quickly that this country (also known as Burma) does produce a fair amount of movies but they almost never get released in the western world. This particular film is not listed on IMDB or Letterboxd. Those sites are often seen as infallible but they do have their blind spots, which is a pain because I like to corroborate these movies before I list them here. The screenshot up there? I took it myself because nothing turns up on Google (you mostly get a different movie called Mya Mya, which looks interesting but I couldn't find it).Thankfully, there is a very basic Wikipedia page for this one and I was able to find it with subtitles on a website that was all kinds of shady, like some collector wandering a dangerous marketplace in a faraway land searching for treasure. The things I do for you folks.
Anyhow, let's talk about the actual movie. The title refers to a Buddhist chant about spreading good deeds. A young girl named Snow White (seriously) is contacted by a ghost claiming to be her real mother. This ends up exposing her family’s complicated and very melodramatic past, but they still try to make it work despite everything. However, “May May” is determined to get her daughter back. There’s a charming homemade quality to the production but the subtle handling of the ghost’s appearances works pretty well. Unlike many of the movies I've covered, the ghost doesn't seem to bear any connection to the traumatic history of Burma/Myanmar. By the surprising ending, it has become a somewhat harsh admonishment for parents to treat their children well.
3. Georgia - 247° F (2011)
The country, not the state. I've done a lot of second guessing about the eligibility of this one because it was financed by an American studio and features many American actors. However, it takes place in Georgia and was filmed there by a Georgian director and crew. It's also in English, which is a fairly common marketing decision for a lot of these movies regardless of whether or not an English-speaking country was involved in the production. The collaboration feels significant in this case given Georgia's history - it was one of many regions that established itself as an independent nation after the fall of the Soviet Union and after the nonviolent Rose Revolution in 2003, worked to form closer ties with NATO and the western world. Russia retaliated by invading in 2008, peeling off territory in a manner very similar to what's happening in Ukraine now.
Supposedly based on an actual incident in Georgia, this is a movie about four young people who are vacationing there and accidentally get locked inside a sauna. It's one of those situations that's unnerving to even think about and the fact that it's nothing nefarious and just the result of a simple accident makes it feel way more plausible. It can feel grueling and not always in a good way since three of the four main characters are obnoxious even by horror movie standards. There's also a certain "bro" energy that I could have done without but was pretty typical in the early 2010s.
4. Uruguay - Virus: 32 (2022)
This tense, well-made zombie film opens with an impressive ten minute tracking shot that introduces several characters in the same Montevideo apartment complex just before the mysterious outbreak begins. As Iris and her daughter Tata try to elude the zombies inside an empty athletic facility, they realize that after expending a certain amount of energy, the zombies are inactive for a short period of time (32 seconds, in fact). There’s no explanation given for this quirk, but it’s the kind of unique touch that helps when you’re working in such a crowded subgenre.
Like a few other South American countries, Uruguay was ruled by a military dictatorship for much of the Cold War era. It has bounced back strongly in the decades since but it's no secret why zombies would resonate with them - the loss of free will among those infected is a big reason why the idea endures so much. There are a few scenes, including a harrowing sequence involving a newborn baby, that go beyond typical zombie violence and feel informed by real atrocities. It's hard to articulate exactly why, but at the same time it feels unmistakable.
5. Senegal - Saloum (2022)
I'm surprised it took me three years to get Senegal on the master list. It's the country that led Africa into the world of film production in the 1950s and 60s, home of Ousmane Sembene, who is often called "the father of African cinema." Sembene made mostly realistic social dramas rather than horror, but I suspected there must have been something produced in that area that could qualify. Their film scene has slowed down as the country's economic fortune worsened, but movies still occasionally get made there.
This is a genre-bending movie that begins as a Tarantino-esque caper rooted in recent African history. A trio of elite mercenaries escape the September 2003 military coup in Guinea-Bissau and end up in Saloum, a remote region of Senegal. Their scheming goes awry when deadly ancestral spirits descend on the small village they’re hiding out in. The story is quite matter of fact about the supernatural elements but it feels like two movies back to back rather than one cohesive whole. It’s still well worth watching thanks to strong acting, impressive cinematography and its unique vision.
6. Kazakhstan - Sweetie, You Won't Believe It (2021)
The former Soviet countries (along with Russia itself) aren't known for being especially funny. Movies from this part of the world tend to be very bleak and most of the horror I've seen from these places bears that out. That's why this goofy Kazakh farce was such a surprise. Perhaps after being famously befuddled by the mockery of the Borat movies, they decided to lighten up a little.
Dastan is a stressed, cash-strapped guy whose nagging wife Zhanna is pregnant. Desperate for a break, he leaves with two friends for a fishing trip only to run afoul of a gang of criminals and a disfigured lunatic on a murder spree. But none of that frightens him as much as what might happen if Zhanna gives birth and he’s not there. It’s very funny, if occasionally incoherent, and effectively blends splattery violence with “Three Stooges”-esque pratfalls.
7. Latvia - Spider (1991)
Vita is a young Catholic woman recruited by a local artist to be a model for his painting of the Virgin Mary. When she gets a look at the artist’s hedonistic lifestyle, something awakens within her and she starts having visions of being attacked by spiders and other creepy crawlies. She also may have a real demonic stalker. This film was released not long after Latvia gained independence from Russia and it seems they watched a lot of 1970s giallo while they were waiting. Vita is quite similar to the female protagonists of those movies who would be tormented by lust and repression (and usually played by Edwige Fenech). Also like those movies, this is mostly a collection of set pieces with little in the way of plot or character arcs. With some beautiful cinematography and impressive creature effects, it’s the best looking movie in this year's list.
8. Jamaica - Nefarious (2020)
Although it's a small island nation, Jamaica has had a huge cultural impact on the rest of the world. Their unique dialect, a mixture of English and Creole, is instantly recognizable. This bloody film angrily pushes back on the tourist-friendly stereotypes. There’s no dreadlocks or reggae, just a grim story unfolding mostly at night in a neighborhood devastated by crime and violence. An insecure loutish guy named Mark tries to impress his new girlfriend’s brother only to find that the guy is in league with some kind of monstrous entity. There are a lot of regional folk elements that weave in and out of the storyline, which can make it hard to follow for those unfamiliar. Don’t underestimate it just because of its obviously low budget, it’s got some disturbing gore and a truly hideous monster. It’s hard to imagine the cruise ship companies are fans.
9. Nepal - Kagbeni (2008)
This adaptation of “The Monkey’s Paw” was seen as a landmark film for Nepal due to the sophistication of the cinematography and production design, to the point where the phrase "post-Kagbeni" is sometimes used to describe Nepali movies that have come out the years since. A young brewer named Ramesh is unable to propose to the girl of his dreams Tara because of her father’s disapproval. One night, he and a friend offer shelter to a mysterious old traveler who rewards them with a monkey’s paw that can grant wishes. Ramesh only half-seriously wishes for a chance to marry Tara but sets in motion a gradual series of unintended consequences that could destroy his life.
While the movie takes place in the present day, the village the main characters live in feels extremely provincial. The women don't have any say in who they end up with and there's one scene where a boy is beaten with a stick by his teacher for not doing homework. The script doesn't endorse or condemn this stuff, it's just treated as the way things are...which makes sense, if you think about it. European countries probably feel the same way when they see American movies about people who can't afford to see a doctor. The horror of the original "Monkey's Paw" story is rooted in good intentions gone terribly wrong, which is a very universal fear. It just means that we get to see beautiful shots of the Himalayas during this retelling. If I was filming a movie near the world's highest mountains, I would do the same.
10. Malta - Machination (2022)
Malta is a small island country in the Mediterranean Sea whose economy depends in large part on tourism. The whole world was terrorized by the COVID-19 plague, but countries that rely on attracting visitors were hit with another layer of pressure when everyone was afraid to fly anywhere. Most of the horror movies inspired by Covid used the catastrophe as an interesting backdrop for a ghost story or some other supernatural tale. This film goes straight for the horror of isolation and mental illness, transporting its audience to a time we would all prefer to forget. Maria is an extreme germophobe afraid to set foot outside after the onset of Covid, leaving her alone in a small house with her demons. It’s far too realistic for comfort as Steffi Thake’s intense performance can convince a viewer that they are really watching someone lose their mind. In one highly relatable scene, Maria smashes her phone after getting sick of hearing from her annoying boss and conspiracy theorist brother.
11. Bolivia - Blood Red Ox (2021)
This disturbing and personal film begins when Amir returns home with his boyfriend Amat to visit his friend Amancaya. While driving to the rainforest, they see an injured ox on the side of the road and Amancaya decides to end its misery with a shot to the head. Shortly afterward, Amat begins having bloody hallucinations. Amir is worried, but something’s not quite right with him either. There’s a lot going on here in terms of themes - environmental destruction, Incan mythology and ritual, and especially mental illness, which is about the only thing the audience has left to cling to after the movie piles on a tiring series of twists and rug pulls. There are still a lot of beautifully filmed scenes, with one involving shadows and car headlights being particularly striking.
I doubt this will be the last LBGT-themed horror film out of Bolivia given that it's been a major issue there in recent years. The government passed some very progressive legislation protecting their rights, but the population is still very divided. People in that community are murdered there with alarming regularity and the police often decline to investigate these incidents. Similar to other parts of the world, younger people are more committed to justice for everyone and will likely carry the day in time.
12. Bahrain - Dead Sands (2013)
A messy, goofy, but charming zombie movie that follows an ensemble cast of characters out on the town for an evening when an undead outbreak begins. They alternate between speaking Arabic and English to each other, which is interesting even if some of the actors have a tough time selling the dialogue in what's obviously a second language. The movie aims for the Romero approach to zombie stories, even moving the characters to a mall for the final act, that highlight human selfishness in the midst of a deadly threat. The depiction of societal unwillingness to take the deadly contagion seriously, as well as the numerous scenes of characters letting petty grievances endanger everyone else, turned out to be quite prescient given what we've all lived through in the past few years.
13. Kyrgyzstan - Albarsty (2017)
I don't think I'll ever be able to spell the name of this country without checking a map first, but I was pretty impressed by the first movie I'd seen from there, horror or otherwise. It opens with a heartbreaking scene of the pregnant Ainura losing her baby. Afterwards, she and her husband Tamir adopt a quiet little boy named Ulan and the house is targeted by the “albarsty,” an evil spirit with origins in Central Asian folklore. At first it seems like we’re dealing with the tired trope of parents taking home an evil orphan, but that’s not quite what’s going on. In the midst of an increasingly muddled storyline, it helps to know that the albarsty was typically considered a manifestation of guilt. This is primarily a story about the horror of miscarriage, trauma that doesn’t necessarily heal after an adoption or another pregnancy. The entity rarely appears on screen, but it’s rendered with effects that are simple yet very effective.
14. Zimbabwe - Nevanji (2021)
A low-budget film about two parents, Lillian and Terrance, struggling to care for their son Nashe with a mysterious illness. While babysitting, the boy’s aunt brings in a shamanic healer against the wishes of the parents. Nashe seems to be getting better but he’s also been possessed by the spirit of a malevolent ancestor. There’s the common theme of tradition versus modernity, but this film doesn’t especially side with one or the other, it’s more interested in making the point that either can be compromised by human deception and error. The acting is a little spotty, but most people will be able to identify with how fearful and stressed the parents are at their son’s condition. Some things are just universal.
I might be the first person to ever log this movie on Letterboxd, although it's hard to be certain. I was a little surprised by that, since you can rent it on Amazon Prime (as of this writing) and much of it is in English. Zimbabwe was once part of the British colony of Rhodesia so many people there speak the language. In this case, it's similar to Nefarious given that the characters speak a dialect that mixes English with the native Shona language.
15. Portugal - Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)
Zombie movies from this era are really interesting because although Night of the Living Dead had already changed the horror genre forever, the familiar tropes associated with the walking dead hadn't been totally established yet. This leads to interesting variations on the idea, like in this film about two old friends who reunite unexpectedly while on vacation. The relationship between the two women is actually quite interesting, but the proper story begins when they encounter the reanimated corpses of heretics executed in medieval times. While hanging on the gallows, their eyes were pecked out by crows, which means they have to hunt by sound.
The combination of the gorgeous shooting locations and the unique design of the zombies is often striking. It has its excesses, including what seems like a very inefficient method of ritual sacrifice, but the slow motion shots of hooded figures riding horses through the night remained unique and effective even as hundreds of other zombie movies have been released in the decades since. At the time of its release, it was subjected to intense censorship, including by American distributors who inexplicably wanted to re-edit it into a “Planet of the Apes” film.
16. Ecuador - The Swamp of the Ravens (1974)
A distinctly 1970s take on Dr. Frankenstein that follows the evil Dr. Frosta, who believes he can restore the dead to life. Expelled by his colleagues, he continues his research in a shack deep in the swamps of Ecuador. His procedure only works within 8 minutes of death, but Frosta has no problem resorting to extremely unethical means of getting fresh corpses. The swamp is actually full of buzzards, but “ravens” must have sounded more menacing. This film has some notoriety in bad movie circles (Rifftrax even took a pass at it), which is likely due to the hammy English dub and a bizarre scene where the whole thing stops so one character can sing about being in love with a robot. That may set the wrong kind of expectations - it’s crude and poorly written, but it’s not a Troll 2 or a Plan 9 From Outer Space.
17. Slovakia - Nightsiren (2022)
A lot of the scariest things I've seen in horror movies are things that could really happen, and the shocking first scene of this movie definitely applies. Sarlota runs away from her abusive mother but causes a terrible accident in the process. She returns as an adult (never a good idea) and learns that the disappearance of her and her sister was blamed on a reclusive woman accused of witchcraft. It isn't long before she runs afoul of the intolerable men who run the village through intimidation. The place feels so primitive in its mindset that the occasional glimpse of modernity, like a TV set or a cell phone, feels totally out of place. But that's the point. The primitive superstitions about women and witchcraft are being compared to the more modern "witch hunts" of this era. It's reluctant to fully embrace its folk horror elements, but it does get very surreal and weird by the end.
18. Slovenia - Killbillies (2015)
I put these two countries together to hopefully avoid confusion. They are in fact two separate places. The original title of this movie was Idyll until some savvy distributor changed the name to Killbillies. The poster also reads "The hills are alive with the sound of SLAUGHTER," which is delightful. The main character is Zina, a model doing a fashion shoot in the wilderness with a photographer and a younger model that she can barely tolerate. The glamour gets rudely interrupted when the group is attacked by crazed yokels. It borrows heavily from backwoods horror like Deliverance or Wrong Turn, but the premise of leaving a big city to encounter raw savagery in the country is quite effective when you're talking about a developed country with a high quality of life. Most of these movies make the viewer want to stay far away from wherever they were filmed, but the climactic chase through a mountain forest might have you looking up tickets to Slovenia...although you will probably avoid any homemade liquor.
19. Azerbaijan - Aporia (2019)
This was marketed as a zombie movie but is actually about the terror of survivor’s guilt and living under oppression. The residents of a small village are abducted by a military organization, injected with mysterious drugs, and then executed en masse. The only two survivors are stuck in a muddy pit alongside some of the corpses. The majority of the movie is a survival story with the brief zombie elements showing up near the end, and horror fans are likely to feel cheated by the bait and switch. There is still a bitterness, unmistakably a product of real-life trauma, that leaves a mark and the ending is just plain mean. The unnamed military group likely represents the authoritarian regime of the Aliyev family, who have ruled Azerbaijan since the 1990s.
Unfortunately, the only version of this movie I could find had a terrible English dub attached to it. I didn't even think this sort of thing happened anymore - I'd expect it for a 70s film like The Swamp of the Ravens, but not for a film less than five years old. I tried my best not to hold that against the movie - I'm sure this dialogue sounded a lot better in its intended language.
20. Venezuela - Infection (2019)
A zombie film that was swiftly banned in its home country. An outbreak begins as a result of a contaminated heroin needle and soon the walking dead (the fast variant) are rampaging across the nation. Atypically for this subgenre, the human characters are mostly on their best behavior and cooperate with one another. Other than that, it’s a very straightforward 2000s zombie film, although the story behind it could make for an interesting movie on its own.
It was suppressed not for violence, but for subtle and allegorical shots at Hugo Chavez and his adherents that didn’t go unnoticed. As one example, there's a brief shot where blood splatters on a television that happens to be running a propaganda piece about the success of the Bolivarian Revolution that put Chavez and later Nicolas Maduro in power. The filmmakers defied the ban in early 2020 and showed the film in several Venezuelan cities. I couldn't find any information on what happened afterwards but given the timing, the onset of Covid probably rendered the issue irrelevant. It's original release was around the time that the Zika virus broke out in Venezuela and with Covid following shortly after, there were several added layers of topicality.
21. San Marino - The Last Days of Earth (2017)
This is the smallest country I've covered so far, so it makes sense that it comes with the smallest movie. There have been a lot of low budget movies as part of this activity, but this is a whole other level - an experimental film done in the style of the silent era, shot in muddy black and white and featuring only one actor. The English translation of the intertitles is riddled with grammatical errors, which reminded me of the infamous movie Ax 'Em....but don't worry, it's much better than that one. It lifts the premise of the Lars Von Trier movie Melancholia about another planet about to collide with Earth and wipe out all life (the planet is even named “Melancholia” in both films). One unnamed man struggles to cope with the reality and imagines what might come afterwards. That’s about all there is to it but it generally works. If anything, it’s a demonstration of the power of music - the droning, moody, almost industrial score adds tons of atmosphere to footage of cityscapes and amusement parks that would otherwise be boring.
22. Barbados - The Barbados Project (2022)
The title could describe both the storyline of this found footage film as well as the work that went into making it. A local news crew investigates reports of a large creature prowling the island and learns that it has some connection to a mysterious government organization called “Building Six.” There’s a very homemade feel to it but the filmmakers have good instincts, using analog and digital filters to make the CGI look more convincing. The story also goes into unexpected places, leaving the central characters behind for the third act, which features archive footage from the 1980s and a Tiktok-style video from the year 2030. The ambition behind this is off the charts and it’s hard not to be impressed.
Like a lot of countries in the Caribbean, Barbados was once a British colony. In 2021, they rewrote their constitution and became a fully independent republic, no longer considering the Queen of England as their head of state. Not even Canada has done that yet. Between that and making basically a kaiju film with very limited resources, this is a nation eager to prove itself. Seems to be going pretty well.
23. Lithuania - Anarchy Parlor (2015)
This bloody movie arrived to the torture party several years too late. It's about a group of young Americans who party recklessly until they end up in the clutches of an affably evil tattoo artist. Most of the plot is lifted wholesale from Hostel, but I suppose they figured if people are making money off depicting Eastern Europe as a savage land of strip clubs and torture chambers, it might as well be the Eastern Europeans themselves. The dialogue is often laughably bad and Robert LaSardo as the villain is the only cast member who gives a credible performance.
24. Switzerland - Sennentuntschi (2010)
There are many European horror films out there that were financed with Swiss money, but it's a little harder to find one that's an authentic product of Switzerland. This is a feminist film inspired by an old folk tale of a woman made out of rags and straw who comes to life. A young girl discovers a skeleton buried in the woods and the movie flashes back to 1975, when a mysterious mute woman wanders into an Alpine village. The story then flashes back again to a few days earlier at a remote cabin occupied by three men who believe she is the incarnation of the doll they made. It’s probably longer and more complicated than it needed to be, but this movie has a lot of ambition.
We've gone through a lot of folk horror in the process of compiling this list, and most of them have reverence for the tales of olden times. This one ultimately wants to discredit them as products of religious hysteria and men blaming women for their own moral failings. So it’s actually a little bit funny that the beautiful mountain scenery gives the film such a fairy tale quality.
25. Ghana - Diabolo (1992)
Ghana has one of the most prolific film industries in Africa, but their films are tough to find in the western world. This one is a pretty goofy story about an evil man who lures women into his clutches only to turn into a snake and attack them. I had plenty of deja vu for the Nigerian movie Karishika during this - the same muddy VHS footage and upbeat music that's very much at odds with the subject matter, but this one is a good deal more entertaining. There's very little dialogue and a good sense of visual storytelling, with the scenes featuring the real-life snake being particularly well-staged. The cast must have nerves of steel.
26. Croatia - The Rat Savior (1977)
Like Leptirica last year, this was a Yugoslavian film that is now claimed by the region it was made in. Croatia cites this twist on Invasion of the Body Snatchers as one of the greatest films in their country’s history. The homeless Ivan searches for shelter underground only to stumble on a group of wealthy humanoid rats that can pass themselves off as regular people. Now he has to try and figure out what’s happening while slowly going mad from paranoia about how many of them are nearby at any given time.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers was deeply rooted in American political anxieties of the 1950s - this is a commentary on class that is more broadly applicable but was especially potent in the 1970s as Yugoslavia dealt with a severe economic crisis. Despite the low budget, the rat makeup is quite effective in its subtlety.
27. Cyprus - The Ghosts of Monday (2022)
Despite the title, this film is less about ghosts and more about a cult, with a touch of cosmic horror thrown in. A film crew has arrived to shoot a pilot for a new paranormal reality show in the storied Grand Hotel Gula and most of the first half is arguments about creative direction between the showrunner Eric and the host Bruce, who also happens to be his father in law. The horror elements come very suddenly and while it’s not exactly what you might call graceful, there is some creativity - one scene inside a glass elevator looks like something Dario Argento might have done. It also has the distinction of being one of the final roles of Julian Sands before he disappeared into the mountains of Southern California.
If I've counted correctly, this is the sixth movie since I started this project to have a cast of primarily English-speaking characters despite the setting. At least it has some thematic sense this time - the supernatural occurrences are placed in the context of the UK's acrimonious history with Cyprus, from the invasion of Richard the Lionhearted during the crusades to the occupation by the British Empire after World War I. Naturally the one native Cypriot in the cast is the one most attuned to it.
28. Hungary - Post-Mortem (2020)
Speaking of World War I, the role it played in shaping horror films can't be overstated. I've mentioned this before, while discussing Germany in the first year of this exercise, and the impact was quite similar in Hungary - apocalyptic death and destruction, nearly an entire generation wiped out, the fall of an empire, and decades of violence and unrest afterwards.
The main character in this film is Tomas, a young man still traumatized by his near death experience in the Great War. He now works in the realm of post mortem photography, the art of taking pictures of the recently deceased for the sake of their surviving long ones. This was very much a real thing back then and the scenes of him arranging the corpses for their close-ups are just as disturbing as anything else in the movie. While working in a small village devastated by both the war and the deadly 1918 flu, Tomas and a sweet little girl realize that a shadowy figure is appearing in all of the photos (it periodically feels like an old-timey prequel to Shutter). It can sometimes feel like two mismatched films trying to co-exist, a quietly arresting drama about national trauma and a swing for the fences horror story where people get dragged around as thundering music blares. Messy as it can be, it mostly works thanks to the thematic strength of its setting - a village in mourning overrun by ghosts is as powerful a symbol for the aftermath of the Great War as anything else I've seen.
29. Dominican Republic - The Devil's Hole (2012)
I got this one from a website run by someone with access to thousands of rare DVDs who will send you a digital copy of one if you pay. I'm not totally sure it's legal so I'm not going to give a link, but it ended up being quite helpful...to a point. The subtitles were extremely spotty, only translating some of the dialogue and being downright questionable at times. A character is struck by a car early in the film and the subtitles read "I shit in the area," which I don't think anyone said. I had to rely on visual storytelling, my very limited grasp of Spanish (and Latin, since they have a lot of root words in common), and the movie's Wikipedia page to get the gist of what was going on. The behind the scenes work that goes into making these lists can get wacky.
A psychic medical school student named Sofia and several friends are on their way to a spring break vacation when their car goes off the road (hopefully everyone kept their bowels under control this time). They find a foreboding house to spend the night in, only to discover that it was once used by the military during the Parsley Massacre, a mass killing of Haitians in 1937 led by the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Throw in some black magic and you’ve got yourself a mean haunting. The low-budget effects are often campy, but the bloody deaths and overall grimy atmosphere of the house give it some bite. Like a lot of horror movies we've covered, it uses the trappings of horror to reckon with difficult history. Unlike the others, Catholicism is treated with a lot of reverence - its intervention saves the day during the unexpectedly corny ending.
30. Bulgaria - Roseville (2013)
This movie is supposedly based on a real unsolved murder case in 1985, but there doesn't seem to be any background information available on the internet. Real or not, it serves as the foundation for a slow-paced possession story about four people encountering an evil presence at a remote mountain lodge. One of them is an American photographer who is so obnoxious that he almost torpedoes the movie. This character is arrogant, aggressive, won't use the native language, and seems desperate to shoot something. We can only really blame ourselves given that these are the traits American culture tends to embrace.
Even without him, this movie would still be a little frustrating. Most of the big scares turn out to be hallucinations and other ones just don't really land - the demonic dog following one of the characters around actually looks pretty friendly. Leaning into the true crime/cold case aspects of the story might have helped.
31. Antarctica - South of Sanity (2012)
The first time I did one of these lists, I made a joke about hitting every continent except Antarctica. Well, now we've got all of them. I couldn't have found a better way to end this third (and probably last for quite a while) batch of 31 movies, even if it's not a "country" in any sense of the word. There are no indigenous people of Antarctica and nobody else there except research facilities and rich tourists. So who made this horror film? Penguins?
A group of real British researchers shot this movie for fun while stationed there. It’s extremely rare for a non-documentary film to shoot in Antarctica and the spectacular snowy vistas lend a unique look to what is otherwise a pretty standard low-budget slasher. About a dozen characters find themselves isolated and vulnerable as a killer in a freaky mask picks them off one by one. Despite how small the group is, they don’t seem to notice that their colleagues have vanished for an inordinately long time. That and the amateurish acting makes it hard to get out of the mindset that you’re watching someone’s home movie, but there's entertainment to be found in that as well.
That brings us to the end of this three year adventure. I've enjoyed this immensely and I hope you've found it interesting as well. I'll continue to search for movies from other countries to add to the master list and hopefully you'll see another 31 movies pop up on October 1 sometime in the future. Long live horror and Happy Halloween!
