One quick way for a horror movie to unsettle its audience is to disorient the senses completely. Few things capture the slipping of one’s sanity like immersing the viewer in psychedelic visuals and mind-bending narratives. This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to trippy horror movies that distort reality and assault your senses.
As always, here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Beyond the Black Rainbow – Kanopy, Plex, Pluto TV, Tubi
Panos Cosmatos’ debut features striking visuals. Elena is a young and heavily sedated young woman longing to break free from the strange institute holding her prisoner. Mind-altering substances play a central role in the institute’s experiments and even main antagonist Nyle’s daily stress relief. It results in trippy horror psychedelia at its most unsettling.
Hausu – Criterion Channel, HBO Max
Or simply House, this Japanese cult classic takes the haunted house concept to wacky extremes. The premise has a group of seven high school girls traveling to a remote home belonging to one of their aunts, and it happens to be haunted. That doesn’t adequately prepare the viewer for the madness within. Take the haunted house tropes, like spooky cats, bleeding walls, and vengeful ghosts, and combine it all with psychedelic visuals and funhouse sensibilities. You have the most bizarre haunted house horror movie you’ll ever see in the best way possible. There’s no predicting the madness here.
In the Earth – Hulu, Kanopy
While a deadly virus ravages the world, Dr. Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) heads deep into the woods to locate Dr. Olivia (Hayley Squires) with park scout guide Alma (Ellora Torchia). They’re attacked in the middle of the night and left shoeless. It leads them to Zach (Inside No. 9’s Reece Shearsmith), a hippie type living off-grid. Getting in and out of the forest won’t be easy anymore, as reality ceases to hold meaning. Ben Wheatley crafts a wild, hallucinogenic descent into abject terror and includes folk horror mythology and references to witchcraft. It’s a voyage through insanity that doesn’t skimp on the horror or violence, including cringe-worthy body horror moments.
Jacob’s Ladder – Epix, Hulu, Paramount+
Jacob (Tim Robbins) attempts to readjust upon returning home from the war while still mourning his son’s premature death. When a severe disassociation case sets in, Jacob must decipher reality from bizarre hallucinations while seeking the truth behind his mental state. Director Adrian Lyne introduces several distorted nightmare sequences full of fast twitching entities amidst settings that stretch normality. The trippy horror hallucinations haunt and evoke sympathy for Jacob’s slipping grasp on his sanity.
Let the Corpses Tan – AMC+, Arrow, Kanopy, Shudder
As with Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s previous films Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, the filmmaking duo are less interested in following a traditional, coherent narrative and more about a sensory onslaught experience steeped in vintage Italian filmmaking pastiche. Let the Corpses Tan pays respects to the ’70s Italian spaghetti western. It’s as grotesque as it is beautiful, and it does go to some horrific places. A gang of thieves hides out at a remote village in the desert-like cliffs of the Mediterranean, inhabited by an eccentric artist and her followers, after stealing a truckload of gold. It’s all going well enough until a pair of cops show up, and the entire island erupts into a hallucinatory shootout that endures all night. It’s strange, surreal, and bloody.
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