After a long and edifying journey, Jim (again) says goodbye to I Do Movies Badly and the friends he made along the way.

Alonso Duralde, podcaster extraordinaire and author of "Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas," returns to IDMB for the annual tradition of Christmas recommendations - this time with a bloody twist. On brand for 2020, Alonso's recommendations for this year are Christmas horror films and they're not the ones you'd expect: Curtis Harrington's Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972), Lewis Jackson's Christmas Evil (1980), and Chris Peckover's Better Watch Out (2016).

In the pantheon of IDMB movies that have befuddled me, there's Igmar Bergman's Person, Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror, Kim Ki-duk's The Isles, and now, there's Andrzej Zulawski's Possession.

House is uh...an indescribable film. Avant-garde haunted house horror-comedy, Obayashi's absurdist answer to Jaws is technically innovative, off the wall ridiculous, and a seeming deconstruction of horror archetypes. Also, boring and exhausting (unless you're Chuck Stephens)

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a darkly comic tale of moral and social rigidity in which an unseen act brings out the inherent darkness in its protagonist. The balance that Lanthimos strikes between absurdity and horror is superb, but does our protagonist deserve what befalls him?

Here's where you can find The Killing of a Sacred Deer review from RogerEbert.com by Brian Tallerico

Benny Krown returns to I Do Movies Badly for the November (and a little bit of December) theme of Highbrow Horror! The guest whose last appearance to talk about Abbas Kiarostami has equal pretensions on his mind, discussing his relationship with the horror genre, what it means to be highbrow/arthouse/pretentious, and recommending three horror films that exist well outside the mainstream consciousness: Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Dear (2017), Nobuhiko Obayashi's House (1977), and Andrzej Zulawski's Possession (1981).

Ma is neither great nor terrible, though its quality would certainly lean more towards the latter if not for the casting of and rewriting for Octavia Spencer, whose portrayal of a character not written to be African-American lends a subtext of tokenism and how victimization perpetuates victimization. 

After a discussion of the film, some news on the direction of the podcast for the remainder of the year (SPOILERS: it's horror).

What can be said about a film that in just 3 years has already been canonized as a classic and has inspired classes in academia? All I can really add to the conversation about Get Out are the reasons that I think it's an excellent horror film along with why it's a fucking absurd critique to say "if the protagonist was white, we wouldn't be talking about it."

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who contributed in some way - big or small - in helping me surpass 100,000 downloads! 

Second and..er...secondmost(?), Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs is clunky at times and strange all the time, but is an excellent social satire, depicting the real life horrors of gentrification and systemic racism in an over-the-top way that made Craven's biting social commentary more entertaining for a mass audience.

The article that I quoted extensively is Daily Dead's "Retrospective: Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs" written by Patrick Bromley.

If you've ever been to BlackHorrorMovies.com or watched the fabulous documentary, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, then you may recognize my October guest. To help celebrate the Halloween season, Mark H. Harris joins I Do Movies Badly to talk about racial reckoning in horror films! Mark talks about how he fell in love with horror, the elements and history of black horror films and racial reckoning, and recommends 3 films that each focus on a different aspect of racism and white people getting their comeuppance: Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs (1991), Get Out (2017), and Ma (2019).

The Prophecy has a really cool premise - angels seeking an edge over other angels to win the second war in Heaven! - and some enjoyable campy performances, but is a badly disjointed film (whether that's because of its first-time director or meddling from the Weinsteins is something maybe only God knows).