Spring Horrors. Recommendations.

I've been watching a lot of movies lately... and still pretty stuck in the horror genre... hoping to find some hidden gems. Here are three recommendations for things either just released or soon to be.

Splinter
Released April 14, 2009.

A couple on a less than idyllic camping trip are carjacked by another couple trying to get out of the country. They come into contact with a bizarre plantlike virus that culminates in a standoff at an isolated gas station. A little derivative, but the characters are not nearly as predictable as the majority of horror film clones.

Trailer:



Dorothy Mills
Released February 10, 2009.

The promo posters make this seem like it's another possessed girl movie, but that's a little misleading... not entirely... but... anyway. A psychiatrist from Dublin is travels to a small island where a teenage girl had assaulted a baby left in her care to babysit. She's given the task to determine how prosecution of the girl should be handled. There are definite echoes of Wicker Man and Straw Dogs as the outsider is not exactly welcome with open arms. And the girl, Dorothy Mills, well there's something a little more complicated going on than just bad behaviour. Great performances, especially by the spooky Jenn Murray in the title role. The "revealing all" moment near the end of the movie stretches belief's suspension a little, but overall solid and creepy.

Trailer:


There doesn't appear to be an English language trailer online anywhere.

The Burrowers
Released April 21

A horror western. Why aren't there more of these? When two families sharing a patch of land are attacked leaving some dead and others abducted a search/rescue party sets off with the assumption that Indians are the culprits. The party is under the command of a narrow minded Army Seargent who's mind is made up despite conflicting evidence. Eventually a smaller party including Coffey, an Irish settler engaged to one of the abductees, Walnut, an emancipated slave and army cook fed up with the Sgt and a couple of roughneck frontiersmen splits off to follow a trail that hints something other than Natives might be behind the kidnapping. This works well because the filmmakers are careful to get the Western part right before introducing the horror elements. They also manage the difficult feat of creating tension in the unlikely wide open prairie.

Trailer: