March 2024 Review: The Best Movies I Saw Last Month

After months of being caught in a funk, I can confidently say that I am getting closer to getting my routine back with my reviewing. My health is looking up, work is starting to calm down, and I am catching up on everything that I have back logged. It hasn’t quite extended to the number of movies I get to watch each month, but nevertheless I was able to log 14 first time watches and re-watch 2 films this month. Here are the best!

Re-Watch Highlight: None

BEST #6) Hellraiser: Inferno (2000); Director: Scott Derrickson; United States

After spending the night with a sex worker who was found murdered the next morning, a corrupt police officer finds himself in the middle of a seedy investigation where he must cast suspicion off himself in addition to finding the true killer. As he gets himself tangled in the web further, he learns of a mysterious “Engineer” who is responsible for the deaths. All the while he investigates, he finds himself plagued by disturbing visions of sex and murder. Determined to clear his name and save his reputation, he presses forward. I have never been a huge fan of the Hellraiser movies, but this one is definitely the most imaginative since the first two. Scott Derrickson’s directorial style shifts the tone and aesthetic widely from the franchise’s usual campy supernatural mayhem to something more restrained and edgier. It doesn’t always work and the story does get lost a few times, but Hellraiser: Inferno is a fair attempt to bring life into a series that, at this point, has just begun its descent into straight to video hell.

Overall Score? 6/10

BEST #5) 6 Souls (2010); Director: Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein; United States

Constantly at odds with her more whimsical father, a renowned yet skeptical psychiatrist decides to investigate a case of a patient with multiple personalities. One of his alters is a sweet Appalachian man with religious convictions, and the other is a harsher, down-on-his luck city guy with a propensity for many vices. In her conversations with the man, she discovers that he knows information about the death of a young man decades ago that he couldn’t have possibly known. This leads her down a rabbit hole of spirituality that threatens her life and her family’s too. 6 Souls is a standard psychological supernatural horror film that capitalizes on its angle on mental health. At this point, Dissociative Identity Disorder (then called multiple personality disorder) was experiencing its last hurrah in popular culture before fading away after more light has been shed on the disorder in real life. The performances are great, and the story is dynamic, even if it is rather predictable. Don’t expect greatness, but be ready to engage in a dumb, fun, if problematic early 2010s take on mental health and horror.

Overall Score? 6/10

BEST #4) Dream Demon (1988); Director: Harley Cokeliss; United Kingdom

Fighting an increasing array of disturbing dreams, a young woman, who has moved to a new house in the city, tries to maintain composure while staying home alone. With her decorated war hero husband busy with work and dedicated muckrakers camping outside her door to make her life hell, Diana fronts it alone until Jenny, a tourist from Los Angeles, joins her in her quest to uncover the mystery behind her haunting dreams. Together, the two battle a spiritual realm far greater than either could imagine. Dream Demon capitalizes off of far better films but manages to capture a certain charm that makes it so engaging. Its dream logic plot and solid special effects for the time, make it a wonderland of disturbing images and jump scares worth celebrating. Some may be turned off by the odd directions it goes, or doesn’t, but for the average horror fan it will evoke enough 80s goodwill to earn a second watch.

Overall Score? 6/10

BEST #3) Deliver Us (2023); Director: Cru Ennis, Lee Roy Kunz; United States/Estonia

On the verge of retirement, a priest journeys to a remote nunnery where a nun claims to have experienced immaculate conception. Destined to birth twins, the priest is skeptical of her ordeal until he realizes how in danger this woman and her unborn children are. In a daring escape to evade a team of rogue clergy determined to kill the baby deemed “evil,” the priest and crew must run, hide, and fight until the bitter end if they want to save themselves, and the world. Pregnancy and religious horror are experiencing a resurgence in the past few years [I wonder why!] and Deliver Us wants to carve out its own special place in the subgenre. There’s nothing too unusual about the themes and concept of Deliver Us. Its presentation, however, is stylish, coherent, entertaining, and even at times, scary. This makes the indie film a true standout from many in the pack. For this reviewer, religious horror steeped in Christianity tends to evoke cheese and camp due to how heavy-handed the script is in its examinations of faith. While Deliver Us experiences some of this clunkiness, it makes up for in delivering a brutal and shocking tale of terror and hope.

Overall Score? 6/10

BEST #2) Immaculate (2023); Director: Michael Mohan; Italy/United States

Please check out the full review here.

Overall Score? 7/10

BEST #1) Cure (1997); Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Japan

Detective Kenichi Takabe works hard investigating crimes for the city of Tokyo all the while caring for his ailing wife. When a string of vicious and seemingly connected murders take place by people with otherwise normal tendencies, the detective believes something more sinister is afoot. His hunch takes him on a hypnotic journey into the power of suggestibility with a peculiar young man at the epicenter of other’s destruction. Cure is a fascinating examination on the concept of free will and the power that words can have on others, the mundanity of violence, and the unexplainable ways humans make meaning of nightmares. Following a typical procedural horror, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa skillfully directs Cure in a way that feels clinical, intimate, and affecting throughout the bursts of violence and its aftermath. A slow burn without definitive answers, Cure may be frustrating for some while thoroughly enjoyable for others.

Overall Score? 7/10