Hello! Welcome to the FREE Monday newsletter where I give you my unsolicited movie recommendations! In honor of the Speak No Evil remake (you can read my review here), here are some of my favorite movies about people who need to GET OUT.
The Royal Hotel
The Royal Hotel continues writer/director Kitty Green’s apparent mission to make a movie about the most terrifying places to be woman – that was a Harvey Weinstein-esque movie mogul’s office in The Assistant, and in The Royal Hotel it’s a mining town in the Australian Outback. Jessica Henwick and Julia Garner play two American backpackers who take up a job at a bar called The Royal Hotel so they can earn enough money to get back home. Throughout their stay, their experiences – from the mundane to the thrilling – are fraught with dread.
Shirley
This is sort of a double edged “get out” situation. For the run of “Shirley,” you want Rose (Odessa Young) to get away from the toxic, codependent partnership between Shirley Jackson and her husband, Stanley Hyman. But you also want Rose to run away from the conventional domesticity she has with her philandering husband Fred (Logan Lerman) – something she’s able to do in part through her connection to Shirley. Josephine Decker’s film is a thorny, psychological minefield of a film, and one that deserved a lot more recognition than it got at the time.
Sorcerer
A little bit of a different “get out” situation than we’ve looked at so far, but still just as – if not more! – intense. Sorcerer is one of the most nail-biting, enthralling, straight up terrifying movies I’ve ever seen. I’m sure a lot of y’all have seen it, but if you haven’t, stop reading this right now and GO.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be responding to your AMA questions this week, so look out for that!
Sorcerer: I had to dig pretty deep for this one, but I remember seeing the original Wages of Fear on tv as a kid - small screen, black and white, and it still made my hair stand on end. So can't wait to see how Freidkin handled it. But first The Green Knight.
Hi, Sammie. What an interesting theme to explore. It's one of the go-to motifs for suspense films, but you point out that "get out" actually can be nuanced in many different ways. As I was reading, I was reminded of a movie some friends and I went to see as seniors in college. It was called When A Stranger Calls. No nuances here. Not an extraordinary film, but did it ever succeed with us as a "get out" psycho-thriller!