LISTEN: Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks [2013]

With sprawling electro-fist pumpers strewn across an eclectic eighth album, Nine Inch Nails have returned with Hesitation Marks on the latter eve of first single Come Back Haunted. A taster, if you will, back then of what to expect from Trent Reznor's industrial tour-de-force. It would be naive to suggest that Reznor is the only driving member of the band but here again, as made evident from 2008's The Slip, each individual has a part to play. This album is meant to be played loud. Nine Inch Nails, similar to Tool, want you to not just listen, but feel the very strength behind their works.

WATCH: Carrie [1976]

To get myself in the mood for its impending horror remake, I took to a viewing of Brian De Palma's Carrie starring Sissy Spacek in the titular role, featuring a delightfully terrifying turn from Piper Laurie as Margeret, Carrie's hyper-religious mother. A definite theme here then, what with Mrs Carmody from The Mist, with Stephen King and his employment of fanatics throughout his work. One thing is certainly clear to me, this is not a horror - at least, not by today's standards. It is definitely a psychological thriller with lashings of the paranormal. However, these lashings are infrequent opposite to how the paraphenalia attributing to the film's cult status would suggest.

It reminds one of the unnerving feeling that The Shining (another King) delivered. Whereas that movie orbited around isolation, hauntings and mental breakdowns, here we see a girl who, timid and bullied, deservedly gains the telekinetic powers she uses to wreak havoc in the film's savage finale.

WATCH: Snowtown [2011]

I seldom approach films with the subtitle 'Based On A True Story' or 'Inspired By Real Events'. However, there was something about Justin Kurzel's debut Australian feature-length, based on the 1999 Barrel Murders of Snowtown, Adelaide wherein eight bodies were found dismembered in barrels. Snowtown is bleak, depressing and has a colour palette that blurs between faded candy coatings to dirty tapwater. The actors are sweaty and their hair greasy. But these aren't bad points, these are a gloriously rendered series images from Lucas Pittaway's introductory monologue as Jamie, right through to this hard story's bitter end. It branches from an ambiguous sexual abuse incident involving Jamie, his younger brothers and a male neighbour. While his mother Elizabeth (Louise Harris) is out on a date, the neighbour photographs the boys naked. Ambiguity hangs in the air during this scene, as any molestation is only hinted at when we see the neighbour sit down at the kitchen table naked in the aftermath.

WATCH: The Mist [2007]

Frank Darabont and Stephen King have a definite rapport with onscreen pairings, similar to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, they just work well. So much so that King, who is said to be difficult to please when it comes to film adaptations of his work, thoroughly enjoyed the devastatingly bleak ending that The Mist delivers. Darabont's interpretation, while the CGI looks comparatively dated, hits all the right notes when it comes to human struggle, survival and desperation. Touching on familiar tones like xenophobia, religious extremism and suicide in a world that has lost control without any explanation as to how or why before the body count starts racking up.

Using familiar faces to those who have seen the Darabont-produced The Walking Dead, and an excellent star-making turn with Thomas Jane, the delivery of this tale of survival in enclosed spaces is perilous and harrowing to endure. But that's what makes it a powerful watch. David Drayton (Thomas Jane) is a successful graphic artist who lives with his wife and son in familiar King-territory Maine. A violent thunderstorm uproots a large tree in the garden and the boathouse. Drayton, who is on previously unfriendly terms with his neighbour, Brent (Andre Braugher), set aside their differences as a means to help each other out by taking a trip to the local store now that Brent's car is completely destroyed.

WATCH: Only God Forgives [2013]

Nicolas Winding Refn once said that he would direct Only God Forgives upon the completion of Valhalla Rising, his Viking-era purgatorial venture, but did otherwise at Ryan Gosling's request to complete Drive. I wish Refn hadn't listened. Ryan Gosling's character in that wonderful film is a completely different kind of anti-hero in this Eastern cowboy film. With its very seductive imagery and taboo themes spread across a blue-and-red neon filmscape, Only God Forgives is a lot of style and very little to get to grips with.

It is very beautiful, the emotion captured in Gosling's face when he has very little to no dialogue can speak volumes. My only reasoning for its want to have been directed before Drive is that mainstream audiences have since identified with Drive and Gosling as a Refn favourite. It is no secret that Gosling is definite eye-candy and was somewhat of a anarchic rockstar in Drive. To deliver this outing will leave a bit of an odd taste in the mouth of that audience.

WATCH: Paranormal Activity [2007]

Handheld horrors don't bode too well with me. There are, however, some fantastical gems that shine through in this densely-filled sub-genre. Some of my favourites have been, and not including the sequels of, REC and The Blair Witch Project. They captured the claustrophobic nature of a handheld viewpoint; that you ultimately cannot see what is going on in some instances and the cries of the characters onscreen can be agonising to bear when the terror is unseen. A lot of handheld films force a perspective on you, using unnatural movement that doesn't feel human.

Paranormal Activity excuses this completely as it uses a fixed-point perspective throughout most of the film. I admittedly scoffed upon seeing main character Micah (Micah Sloat) show us his camera in the mirror of his house. This isn't a mini-DV, this is a full size Sony HDR. But through little snippets of conversational dialogue with his fiance, Katie (Katie Featherston), we understand that he has very good reason for his purchase. A natural tech-head anyway, the young couple are plagued by a mysterious presence in their home so they hope to catch it all on camera.

WATCH: Evil Dead [2013]

My earliest horror film memory was of Nightmare On Elm Street when Tina was dragged up the walls, screaming. My second was of Pennywise the Clown pulling a little boy down a drain. Somewhere along the way was the memory of a girl being raped by branches in the woods. That was what I remembered from Evil Dead. A bit of background and some refreshing new views on this comedy-horror franchise; it certainly is difficult to view a remake of a film without having seen or having prior knowledge of the previous entries in the series. Back then, I thought Evil Dead was cheesy, outdated but certainly had a story to tell, buckets of fake blood and horrifying creatures of the night. All with a low-budget but cinematically unnerving to watch. Today, I still think Evil Dead is cheesy and certainly prefer the second installment in the series for its cleaned up appearance while still delivering a story, comedy-horror and memorable moments. The dead hand, laughing furniture, dancing dead girlfriend and chainsaw hand are keynotes in horror cinema history.