Should you be sitting in and looking for a good scare, we got you covered.
Fair warning, they’re both pretty late, so this really is for the night owls, or for anyone with the foresight to DVR them and watch them at their own leisure.
First up is Series 7: The Contenders.
Released in 2001, and quickly disappearing without a trace, the problem with Series 7 is that it was way too smart for its own good.
A mix of Running Man and the current love for all things reality TV, it tells the story of a government-sponsored television programme in which a number of contestants are selected at random, and then camera crews follow them each individually as they are forced to kill each other on live TV, until only one person survives, promised a life of fame and fortune.
The super dark mix of comedy and horror stems from the niggling fear that it always feels like society as we know it is never too far aware from green-lighting a show like this for real. It hasn’t happened yet in the 17 years since the movie came out, but you never know…
Clip via CG Entertainment
And secondly, we’ve got Red State.
We’re so used to writer/director Kevin Smith delivering irreverent comedies like Clerks and Zack & Miri Make A Porno that when he turned his hand to horror, it was kind of a shock.
Especially when he gave us this incredibly dark religious tale, in which a group of teenagers accidentally cross paths with the followers of a particularly charismatic fundamentalist leader (Michael Parks).
Thinking that they’ll be saved by the federal agents who surround the compound (headed by John Goodman), they soon discover that the trigger-happy cops outside are just as big a threat to their survival as the cult members inside (especially the leader’s biggest fan, played by Oscar-winner Melissa Leo).
Clip via YouTube Movies
Series 7: The Contenders is on Film 4 on Saturday Night (into Sunday morning) at 2am, and then Red State is also on Film 4 on Sunday night (into Monday morning) at 12.30am.
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