Best Horror of 2024 (so far) 🕷️, 'Crumb Catcher' catches crumbs 🍞, & more!

It’s hard to believe that we’re already halfway through 2024. This year has delivered a number of great films, including the Radio Silence hit Abigail, and, most recently, NEON Rated’s Longlegs. While some films have been shuffled around, including Saw XI, which is now setting its traps for a September 2025 release, there’s still so much to look forward to for the remainder of the year, including Cuckoo, Nosferatu, All My Friends Are Dead,and Terrifier 3.

With the above, I’m always shocked to hear that “This is the year for horror” or “Horror’s back!” from multiple publications. Horror has always been here, and we shouldn’t always rely on what’s being released on the big screen or exclusively on a major streaming platform to determine this. There are a number of must-see films that enjoy a regular release (e.g. on VOD), including some that we’ve covered in this newsletter and elsewhere, and are overlooked because we must embrace the films with a large financial backing or (limited) theatrical release. I think we’ve learned that’s not the case anymore.

To sum it up, yes, we should celebrate horror in all its forms, whether a big or small release, while continuing to champion those who are contributing to the genre as well. This Bud’s for you. 🍺

Issue 007’s Letterboxd list can be found here

Bee Delores founded B-Sides & Badlands in 2017. Initially a music blog, they expanded to cover all things horror in 2018 and has since reviewed everything from ultra-indie gems like Death Trip to such breakout hits as In a Violent Nature. Check out all the fresh and rotten reviews.

Trigger warning for this recommendation

This book club isn’t called ‘Disturbed’ for no reason… So this week I want to recommend something that will really test your stomachs and your ability to handle the depraved. 

My book taste is questionable at the best of times, but if you want f**ed up literature to desecrate your delicate mind, then it’s about time you braved 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade. 

One of the most controversial, and notorious authors of all time is Marquis de Sade. His name was the basis for the terminology masochism and sadism, so if that doesn’t give you an inkling into what his books depict, then I don’t know what will. 120 Days of Sodom follows four libertine men who decide to take a group of female and male children and teens to an isolated mansion where they sexually abuse, mentally horrify and physically torture their victims for days on end to satisfy their own perverted fetishes. 

This is not for the faint hearted, and requires you to really want to push your own personal boundaries.

80 Years of Gaslighting

Gaslighting.

The term, dating back 80 years, wormed its way into the public consciousness from director George Cukor’s 1944 film Gaslight. Often cited as the word’s source material, the film draws upon a 1938 stage play by Patrick Hamilton and serves as an American remake of the 1940 U.K. film of the same name. Despite its previous iterations, the Ingird Bergman-starring flick pushed the concept into the common vernacular.

Turning 80 this year, the seminal classic remains one of the genre’s finest examples of character-driven psychological thrillers that still aggravates the senses and boils the blood. Its influence throughout horror and thriller history stretches into modern times – peruse countless horror films, and you’ll find a character gaslighting another about what they witnessed with their own eyes and ears. There are far too many to name, but one film I consider a spiritual successor is 2020’s Black Bear, starring Aubrey Plaza. My emotional response is much the same: rage.

Rage about a woman being perceived as crazy after confiding her experiences to the one person who should believe her. In the case of Gaslight, a husband goes to extremes to convince his wife that she has gone off the deep end – even going as far as turning up and down the gas-lit lamps that adorn the home (thus the term “gaslighting”) to make her think she’s seeing things.

In the film, Ingrid Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, a newlywed who returns to her childhood home. After the tragic murder of her famous opera-singing aunt, she went to university where she also studied opera. While there, she falls in love with and marries Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), and the couple decides to move back to London and settle in the flat once owned by Paula’s aunt.

Things begin innocuous enough. A loving couple enjoys their new lives together... until things slowly turn sinister. Gregory, ever the domineering personality, shows signs that he has ulterior motives, provoking Paula in tiny increments. That’s how it starts, isn’t it? Gaslighting can be slyly insidious. It’s always the little things at first, like convincing Paula that she’s tuckered out from all the worry or that she absentmindedly lost his family’s treasured broach. Paula questions her mental capacity but initially laughs things off, showering Gregory with hugs and kisses when he decides to take her out for a night of music.

The evening is supposed to be fun, a time to enjoy one another’s company and take in a live performance. But Gregory has other plans. He twists the knife on his ailing wife as he claims his shiny gold watch has been misplaced, only to discover Paula “stole” it from him. She breaks down in tears, disrupting the evening before being whisked back to their secluded home. That’s how things first unravel. Tattered and beaten down, Paula usually exudes a bubbly personality but finds herself locked away, rarely going out, and never hosting any company.

What should have been the happiest time of her life has devolved into a mental prison. Gregory makes snide remarks and chips away at her self-worth. He also frequently pits their maid Nancy (Angela Lansbury) against Paula – making them both believe that the other distrusts and despises the other.

A neighbor named Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotten) suspects something sinister is afoot. Paula catches his attention when he mistakes her for Paula’s aunt come back to life. Naturally, he learns of her true identity and expresses concern about Paula and Gregory’s marriage. Things aren’t as cozy as they appear on the surface, with Brian picking up certain behavioral cues when he stalks the couple outside their lavish estate.

Later, Brian follows Gregory on one of his late-night strolls and spies Gregory climbing onto the roof and into his home’s boarded-up attic. As a result, Paula hears footsteps above her head, leading her to believe she’s now hearing things that aren’t really there. With her mind so psychologically damaged, Paula tumbles further into a whirlwind of manic self-doubt.

There doesn’t seem to be any way of stopping Gregory. He’s managed to isolate Paula from the world, make her believe she’s insane, and convince even the help [including the cook Elizabeth (Barbara Everest)] that Paula is gravely ill. It’s only when Brian barges his way into the flat and gets Paula alone that the film shifts on its axis. After Brian witnesses the gas lights dimming, Paula realizes that what she’s experienced is very real and that she is in dire trouble.

Gregory will stop at nothing to obtain Paula’s aunt’s famous jewels, even if that means driving Paula mad and forcing her to give up her property. But Brian is not about to let that happen. In a scuffle, Brian ties Gregory to a chair in the attic where Paula confronts him about everything he’s done – taunting and playing a little mind trick on him, too. She turns gaslighting into an art form of her creation, as a way to regain her self-worth, identity, and strength as an independent woman. In the nick of time, it’s not only Brian that pulls her from the ledge, but she learns to save herself. She becomes the heroine of her own story.

Gaslight(1944) makes for a prime textbook case of gaslighting at its most volatile. It’s not necessarily a demonstration of the most explicit examples of deception but the sort that slithers into one’s life with the precision of a python. It goes unnoticed, at first, allowing the perpetrator to chisel the foundation with a razor-sharp edge before detonating bombs. Throughout the film, Gregory exhibits vein-popping anger that rattles Paula – her shock plastered across her face – but his apologies are enough to assuage her from blaming him for her supposed missteps.

As evidenced here, gaslighting roots itself in blatant misogyny as a way to control women. From the 1940s to today, the term captures the mental anguish women frequently undergo in the workplace, online, and in their everyday lives. It might not be about creepy mirages or bumps in the night, but it does equal damage to one’s psyche and self-understanding. The deterioration is palpable in any circumstance.

When I revisited Gaslight this week, I was reminded how infuriating it is, as I once again witnessed Paula descending into madness and Gregory smirking at his handy work. With each frayed end, the film makes great use of dialogue and quiet character moments to burrow into the brain. I may have even started to question my own sanity through the process...

It might be set in the ‘40s, but Gaslight transcends time and place. A crash course in mental manipulation, it highlights how gaslighting continues to permeate every inch of our culture. Prepare to rage.

Now that the year has reached the mid-way point, it's time to take stock of the horror landscape, take a step back, and see where we land. As such, Brett and I have put together our Top 10-15 horror movies of the year so far. Check out our separate lists below.

View Bee’s List on Letterboxd | View Brett’s list on Letterboxd

Popcorn Frights announces its 10th anniversary celebration with a first wave program headlined by 24 boundary-pushing and mind-enhancing feature films, including 11 world premieres as well as a stacked cult classics lineup that pays homage to horror’s titans, and with many more screams, surprises, and film premieres yet to come! Learn more at popcornfrights.com.

Silver Scream Con, the horror convention that brought 5,000 blood-thirsty movie fans to Boston's North Shore in each of its first two iterations, brings the Three-quel everyone's been dying for to Worcester’s DCU Center on September 13-15, 2024. Tickets and information are available now at silverscreamcon.com.

The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 28th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 18 through August 4, 2024, returning yet again at the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montréal’s Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée.