It’s been a robust year for genre film. Horror’s continued dominance at the box office has effectively spilled over into fantasy, thrillers, and sci-fi in ways that defy easy classification. So much so that it’s difficult to overlook the 2023 genre movies that employ horror techniques, draw inspiration from our favorite genre, or simply dabble in it.
These horror adjacent movies may not fully plunge into the genre, but they’re also not afraid to wear their horror influences on their sleeves, whether through style or bloodletting.
Here are the top ten best horror adjacent movies of 2023.
10. A Haunting in Venice
Director and star Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot gets reeled into another whodunnit, but this time Branagh leans into the Halloween setting with stunning style to infuse this murder mystery with atmospheric mood. A Haunting in Venice looks and feels like a vintage ghost story, complete with nods to Edgar Allan Poe.
These horror adjacent movies may not fully plunge into the genre, but they’re also not afraid to wear their horror influences on their sleeves, whether through style or bloodletting.
Here are the top ten best horror adjacent movies of 2023.
10. A Haunting in Venice
Director and star Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot gets reeled into another whodunnit, but this time Branagh leans into the Halloween setting with stunning style to infuse this murder mystery with atmospheric mood. A Haunting in Venice looks and feels like a vintage ghost story, complete with nods to Edgar Allan Poe.
- 12/24/2023
- by Meagan Navarro
- bloody-disgusting.com
The eerily contemplative opening frames of “Falcon Lake” depict an idyllic lake on a summer night, a scene so calmly off-putting that you just know something has to be amiss. The shot remains unchanged for so long that when a body finally rises out of the water, it feels more like an inevitable moment of catharsis than a jump scare. That ominous serenity continues throughout “Falcon Lake,” yet the first truly startling moment in Charlotte Le Bon’s directorial debut is the sight of a Nintendo Switch.
Thanks to Le Bon’s dreamlike pacing and Kristof Brandl’s grainy cinematography, the film’s opening scenes of a nuclear family heading out for a lake house vacation come across as a long-buried memory unfolding before our eyes. The establishing shots would seamlessly fit into an ABC-era “Twin Peaks” episode, and the fashion could be ripped straight from a mid-90s Vineyard Vines catalog.
Thanks to Le Bon’s dreamlike pacing and Kristof Brandl’s grainy cinematography, the film’s opening scenes of a nuclear family heading out for a lake house vacation come across as a long-buried memory unfolding before our eyes. The establishing shots would seamlessly fit into an ABC-era “Twin Peaks” episode, and the fashion could be ripped straight from a mid-90s Vineyard Vines catalog.
- 6/2/2023
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
Going on holiday with parents who are wrapped up in their own experiences can feel like being a ghost. Adolescence can inspire similar feelings. Bastien (Joseph Engel) is old enough to get along with older kids, old enough to experience sexual desire, but not able to compete with kids just a few years older whose bodies now look adult. An intense bond with the older Chloé (Sara Montpetit) seems to welcome him into the adult world, yet when she looks away, when she gives her attention to somebody else, it’s like he doesn’t exist.
“A boy drowned in the wild part of the lake,” claims Chloé, who likes telling ghost stories. Is it childish to make things up? She isn’t fully adult yet. There are things she doesn’t feel ready for, despite what the older boys want. Surrounded by trees, the lake makes a good setting for fantasies of various kinds.
“A boy drowned in the wild part of the lake,” claims Chloé, who likes telling ghost stories. Is it childish to make things up? She isn’t fully adult yet. There are things she doesn’t feel ready for, despite what the older boys want. Surrounded by trees, the lake makes a good setting for fantasies of various kinds.
- 5/31/2023
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Every cinematic cabin in the woods suggests a place out of time. If you believe the movies, they’re either a) a dread-inducing home to all manner of spirits and masked killers which directly tie the cabin back to its haunted past; or b) an idyllic getaway for a teenager during a formative coming-of-age experience. The directorial debut of Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon is an unusual, immediately arresting combination, grounding its deeply sincere account of first love within the realm of gothic horror––here the urban myth of a girl who drowned in the nearby lake many summers prior.
This is a tale with which Chloé (Sara Montpetit) is obsessed. Throughout the course of Falcon Lake we see Chloe elaborately stage her own death, floating face-down in the lake only to turn upright and keep swimming like nothing happened. She may be, at 16, the oldest of the kids on the family holiday,...
This is a tale with which Chloé (Sara Montpetit) is obsessed. Throughout the course of Falcon Lake we see Chloe elaborately stage her own death, floating face-down in the lake only to turn upright and keep swimming like nothing happened. She may be, at 16, the oldest of the kids on the family holiday,...
- 5/31/2023
- by Alistair Ryder
- The Film Stage
Loosely based on a graphic novel by Bastien Vives, Falcon Lake is another in a long line of coming-of-age tales about the discovery of first love. But Charlotte Le Bon, an actor making her feature directing debut, cloaks her take on youthful summer romance in an aura of ominous foreboding. The titular Quebecois lake is the setting for the budding relationship between Bastien (Joseph Engel) and Chloé (Sara Montpetit), which is complicated by the latter’s insistence that the place is haunted by the ghost of a boy who drowned there.
It’s this macabre tale that informs the tenor of Falcon Lake, as Le Bon blurs genre to craft a bildungsroman whose deeply pensive tone and eerie sound design and visual compositions lend it the rhythms of a ghost story. But Le Bon’s genre-bending maneuvers also prove to be frustrating at times, as the film feels just as...
It’s this macabre tale that informs the tenor of Falcon Lake, as Le Bon blurs genre to craft a bildungsroman whose deeply pensive tone and eerie sound design and visual compositions lend it the rhythms of a ghost story. But Le Bon’s genre-bending maneuvers also prove to be frustrating at times, as the film feels just as...
- 5/28/2023
- by Wes Greene
- Slant Magazine
Whether it’s Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Anthropoid, The Promise, or last year’s Fresh, chances are you’ve seen Charlotte Le Bon’s work as an actor. She’s now helmed her feature with Falcon Lake, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival and will now arrive in theaters next month from Yellow Veil Pictures.
Following a shy teenager on a summer vacation who experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl, the cast features Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Thomas Laperrière, Anthony Therrien, Pierre-Luc Lafontaine, Lévi Doré, and Jeff Roop.
The director also touched on the ghostly element of the film, saying, “I am a fan of horror films. They are my first visceral memories of cinema. When I was younger in Quebec, my friends and...
Following a shy teenager on a summer vacation who experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl, the cast features Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Thomas Laperrière, Anthony Therrien, Pierre-Luc Lafontaine, Lévi Doré, and Jeff Roop.
The director also touched on the ghostly element of the film, saying, “I am a fan of horror films. They are my first visceral memories of cinema. When I was younger in Quebec, my friends and...
- 5/3/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
"Some ghosts don't realize they're dead." First love will haunt you. Yellow Veil Pics has revealed an official trailer for a mysterious little indie film titled Falcon Lake, directed by the Quebecois actress Charlotte Le Bon making her feature directorial debut. A shy teenager on a summer vacation experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl. This premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight section last year, and is arriving to watch in the US in June this summer. Bastien and Chloé spend their summer vacation with their families at a lake cabin in Quebec, haunted by a ghost legend. Ready to overcome his worst fears to earn a place in Chloé's heart, the holiday becomes a pivotal moment for him. Falcon Lake stars Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Arthur Igual, and Karine Gonthier-Hyndman. This is quite an alluring trailer,...
- 4/27/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The Canadian Screen Awards has unveiled nominations for the national film and TV prize-giving, and the CBC civil rights drama The Porter leads the film and TV field with 19 mentions in all, including for best small-screen drama.
The first Canadian drama series from an all-Black creative team, which also streams on BET+, centers on the lives of Black train porters and their families as they launch North America’s first Black labor union in the 1920s.
The TV categories, voted on by around 3,000 Canadian industry insiders, also sees the CBC series Detention Adventure and Sort Of – a Peabody award-winning show about a gender fluid young Muslim in Toronto played by Bilal Baig — nab 15 nominations each in an awards show shaping up to be a major showcase for people of color.
That follows Canadian film, and TV industry efforts to ensure diversity and inclusivity in the country’s indie production sector and prize-giving process.
The first Canadian drama series from an all-Black creative team, which also streams on BET+, centers on the lives of Black train porters and their families as they launch North America’s first Black labor union in the 1920s.
The TV categories, voted on by around 3,000 Canadian industry insiders, also sees the CBC series Detention Adventure and Sort Of – a Peabody award-winning show about a gender fluid young Muslim in Toronto played by Bilal Baig — nab 15 nominations each in an awards show shaping up to be a major showcase for people of color.
That follows Canadian film, and TV industry efforts to ensure diversity and inclusivity in the country’s indie production sector and prize-giving process.
- 2/22/2023
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Often, when embarking on the recent Variety tradition that is this feature — designed to highlight some of the year’s best yet least-Oscar-likely performances — one particular turn will emerge as the poster child. A performance that, for many reasons, really ought to have a shot at Oscar but, being in a language other than English, has little chance. This year, that slot goes to Vicky Krieps who, in Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage,” does not so much play Empress Elisabeth of Austria (a role previously defined by Romy Schneider in the saccharine “Sissi” trilogy) as entirely reimagine and reclaim her.
Rather like with Mads Mikkelsen in Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round,” Krieps has the kind of stateside profile that will help “Corsage” stay in the conversation for the best international feature film Oscar shortlist. But the odds of her getting an individual best actress nod remain far slimmer — a shame, given...
Rather like with Mads Mikkelsen in Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round,” Krieps has the kind of stateside profile that will help “Corsage” stay in the conversation for the best international feature film Oscar shortlist. But the odds of her getting an individual best actress nod remain far slimmer — a shame, given...
- 12/16/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Yellow Veil Pictures has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Canadian director Charlotte Le Bon’s “Falcon Lake” which world premiered at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight.
The coming-of-age tale, handled by Memento International, marks the feature debut of Le Bon, an actor-turned-filmmaker who notably starred in Sean Ellis’s “Anthropoid,” Lasse Hallström’s “The Hundred Foot Journey” and Terry George’s “The Promise.”
“Falcon Lake” follows two teenagers, Bastien and Chloé, who spend their summer vacation with their families at a lake cabin in Quebec which is haunted by a ghost legend. Despite the age gap between them, they form a singular bond. Ready to overcome his worst fears to earn a place in Chloé’s heart, the young boy experiences a turbulent pivotal moment during this holiday.
Following Cannes, the French-language film played at Toronto and Deauville, where it won the d’Ornano-Valenti prize. It will have its U.S.
The coming-of-age tale, handled by Memento International, marks the feature debut of Le Bon, an actor-turned-filmmaker who notably starred in Sean Ellis’s “Anthropoid,” Lasse Hallström’s “The Hundred Foot Journey” and Terry George’s “The Promise.”
“Falcon Lake” follows two teenagers, Bastien and Chloé, who spend their summer vacation with their families at a lake cabin in Quebec which is haunted by a ghost legend. Despite the age gap between them, they form a singular bond. Ready to overcome his worst fears to earn a place in Chloé’s heart, the young boy experiences a turbulent pivotal moment during this holiday.
Following Cannes, the French-language film played at Toronto and Deauville, where it won the d’Ornano-Valenti prize. It will have its U.S.
- 10/12/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
There’s a reason so many horror films — specifically the classic slashers of the ’70s and ’80s — make teenagers their imperiled protagonists. It makes for fun, squirmy viewing to see the relatable vulnerabilities of that age, with its fumbling sexual encounters and peer-pressure anxieties, sliced open by whichever knife-wielding maniac or mask-wearing ghoul happens to be lumbering about. But Charlotte Le Bon’s striking, stylish, sweetly scary debut reverses the polarity, putting the wittily observed tale of a teenage crush front and center of a ghoul-free horror film, where all that goes bump in the night is an embarrassed kid trying to clean his sheets after a wet dream. Coming-of-age movies are usually, like growing up itself, some combination of funny, sad, rueful, awkward or frightening, but rarely are they so successfully all those things at once as in “Falcon Lake.”
This ambitious yet nimbly assured tonal mash-up is introduced in the opening shot,...
This ambitious yet nimbly assured tonal mash-up is introduced in the opening shot,...
- 6/4/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Memento International has boarded “Falcon Lake,” the feature debut of Quebec-born artist and actor Charlotte Le Bon which will world premiere at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.
Penned by Le Bon, François Choquet and Karim Boucherka, “Falcon Lake” is adapted from Bastien Vivès’s graphic novel “A Sister.” The story follows Bastien, a 13-year old boy who moves with his family from Paris to a lakeside chalet in Quebec where he bonds in an unexpected way with Chloé, 16.
Joseph Engel and Sara Montpetit (“Maria Chapdelaine”) star in the film alongside Monia Chokri (“A Brother’s Love”), Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Thomas Laperrière, Anthony Therrien, Pierre-Luc Lafontaine and Jeff Roop.
“When we are teenagers, our love life becomes the center of everything and it is easy to find ourselves in a turmoil of euphoria, fear and pain,” said Le Bon who has starred in films by Michel Gondry (“Mood Indigo”), Jalil Lespert (“Yves Saint...
Penned by Le Bon, François Choquet and Karim Boucherka, “Falcon Lake” is adapted from Bastien Vivès’s graphic novel “A Sister.” The story follows Bastien, a 13-year old boy who moves with his family from Paris to a lakeside chalet in Quebec where he bonds in an unexpected way with Chloé, 16.
Joseph Engel and Sara Montpetit (“Maria Chapdelaine”) star in the film alongside Monia Chokri (“A Brother’s Love”), Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Thomas Laperrière, Anthony Therrien, Pierre-Luc Lafontaine and Jeff Roop.
“When we are teenagers, our love life becomes the center of everything and it is easy to find ourselves in a turmoil of euphoria, fear and pain,” said Le Bon who has starred in films by Michel Gondry (“Mood Indigo”), Jalil Lespert (“Yves Saint...
- 4/21/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
The Cannes Film Festival has added seven films addressing environmental concerns to its 2021 line-up.
“La Croisade” by actor-director Louis Garrel, stars himself, Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel. It was co-written by legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière who died last year. The festival describes the film as: “A fiction in which the children take the reins to protect the planet. A tale of anticipation equally urgent, funny and charming. A story about the alienation of adults from the concerns of children who want to save themselves.”
In “Marcher sur l’eau”, filmed in a village in Niger, director Aïssa Maïga follows a little girl who, while waiting for a well to be built, must travel several kilometres for water every day. The film also explores the question of whether access to water co-relates with access to education for girls in Sub-Saharan African countries.
From India, Rahul Jain, director of Sundance-winning documentary “Machines” (2016), returns with “Invisible Demons,...
“La Croisade” by actor-director Louis Garrel, stars himself, Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel. It was co-written by legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière who died last year. The festival describes the film as: “A fiction in which the children take the reins to protect the planet. A tale of anticipation equally urgent, funny and charming. A story about the alienation of adults from the concerns of children who want to save themselves.”
In “Marcher sur l’eau”, filmed in a village in Niger, director Aïssa Maïga follows a little girl who, while waiting for a well to be built, must travel several kilometres for water every day. The film also explores the question of whether access to water co-relates with access to education for girls in Sub-Saharan African countries.
From India, Rahul Jain, director of Sundance-winning documentary “Machines” (2016), returns with “Invisible Demons,...
- 6/18/2021
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Cannes is going green(er).
For its 74th edition, the Cannes International Film Festival has launched a new stand-alone section focusing on climate change, featuring one scripted drama and six documentaries centered around environmental issues.
Louis Garrel’s feature The Crusade, a drama about children who come together to protect the planet, will have its world premiere in the new section. Garrel also stars in the film, alongside Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel.
One of the documentaries gracing the new section is Above Water from Aïssa Maïga, which looks at the impact of global warming on Niger, one of the sub-Saharan African countries hardest hit ...
For its 74th edition, the Cannes International Film Festival has launched a new stand-alone section focusing on climate change, featuring one scripted drama and six documentaries centered around environmental issues.
Louis Garrel’s feature The Crusade, a drama about children who come together to protect the planet, will have its world premiere in the new section. Garrel also stars in the film, alongside Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel.
One of the documentaries gracing the new section is Above Water from Aïssa Maïga, which looks at the impact of global warming on Niger, one of the sub-Saharan African countries hardest hit ...
- 6/18/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Cannes is going green(er).
For its 74th edition, the Cannes International Film Festival has launched a new stand-alone section focusing on climate change, featuring one scripted drama and six documentaries centered around environmental issues.
Louis Garrel’s feature The Crusade, a drama about children who come together to protect the planet, will have its world premiere in the new section. Garrel also stars in the film, alongside Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel.
One of the documentaries gracing the new section is Above Water from Aïssa Maïga, which looks at the impact of global warming on Niger, one of the sub-Saharan African countries hardest hit ...
For its 74th edition, the Cannes International Film Festival has launched a new stand-alone section focusing on climate change, featuring one scripted drama and six documentaries centered around environmental issues.
Louis Garrel’s feature The Crusade, a drama about children who come together to protect the planet, will have its world premiere in the new section. Garrel also stars in the film, alongside Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel.
One of the documentaries gracing the new section is Above Water from Aïssa Maïga, which looks at the impact of global warming on Niger, one of the sub-Saharan African countries hardest hit ...
- 6/18/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
French actor Louis Garrel has been married twice, first to Iranian talent Golshifteh Farahani, and now to model-cum-actress Laetitia Casta. He has also directed two features, the first a free-wheeling love-triangle comedy called “Two Friends” in which Garrel plays the cad who comes between his best friend and the object of his obsession (played by Farahani), and the other the relatively low-key drama “A Faithful Man,” centered on a different sort of triangle, in which two women (one played by Casta) compete for Garrel’s affections.
That description grossly oversimplifies both movies, and yet, their personalities could not be more different, hardly even the work of the same filmmaker, which must say something about Garrel’s state of mind in these two marriages. If “Two Lovers” was a lively New Wave lark, exploding with color and energy, then “A Faithful Man” is its sober, cerebral opposite, gray and stylistically restrained,...
That description grossly oversimplifies both movies, and yet, their personalities could not be more different, hardly even the work of the same filmmaker, which must say something about Garrel’s state of mind in these two marriages. If “Two Lovers” was a lively New Wave lark, exploding with color and energy, then “A Faithful Man” is its sober, cerebral opposite, gray and stylistically restrained,...
- 7/20/2019
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
There are almost too many original ideas in “A Faithful Man,” the second feature directed by French star Louis Garrel.
Many plot twists and turns are packed into the rather rushed 75-minute running time here, and they are not always “elegant,” to borrow a preferred term from the film, but they are certainly diverting. The screenplay was co-written by Garrel and the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, and the tone is all over the place, but playfully so.
“A Faithful Man” begins with a shot of the Eiffel Tower and some tasteful piano music on the soundtrack, and this would seem to threaten some serious Gallic treatment of l’amour. Garrel’s character Abel tells us in narration that he has been living with Marianne (Laetitia Casta) for three years. As he is leaving one morning for work, Marianne very matter-of-factly tells him that she is pregnant with a baby by a mutual friend named Paul,...
Many plot twists and turns are packed into the rather rushed 75-minute running time here, and they are not always “elegant,” to borrow a preferred term from the film, but they are certainly diverting. The screenplay was co-written by Garrel and the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, and the tone is all over the place, but playfully so.
“A Faithful Man” begins with a shot of the Eiffel Tower and some tasteful piano music on the soundtrack, and this would seem to threaten some serious Gallic treatment of l’amour. Garrel’s character Abel tells us in narration that he has been living with Marianne (Laetitia Casta) for three years. As he is leaving one morning for work, Marianne very matter-of-factly tells him that she is pregnant with a baby by a mutual friend named Paul,...
- 7/16/2019
- by Dan Callahan
- The Wrap
"I was in a war over Abel." Kino Lorber has debuted an official trailer for the French relationship drama A Faithful Man, originally titled L'homme fidèle in French. This is the second film directed by French actor-filmmaker Louis Garrel, who also co-stars in it. A couple's relationship becomes complicated when she leaves him for his best friend, and returns after he dies. The full cast includes Laetitia Casta as Marianne, Lily-Rose Depp as Ève, plus Joseph Engel, Vladislav Galard, and Diane Courseille. This is another one of these very French films about romance and love and sex and the complexities of it - which might be enticing for some of you. "Shifting points of view as nimbly as its players switch partners, the sophomore feature from actor/director Louis Garrel—co-written with the legendary Jean-Claude Carrière—is at once a beguiling bedroom farce and a playful inversion of the patriarchal...
- 6/13/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Louis GarreI: 'I talked to Jean-Claude and then I realised that we could be a good couple. That's because he has his age and I have got my age and sometimes, for example, I'm much more sentimental than him. Jean-Claude is very dry and rough and tough' Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival Louis Garrel's capricious romantic comedy A Faithful Man (L'Homme Fidèle) is showing in competition at San Sebastian Film Festival. Co-written with veteran Jean-Claude Carrière (The Unbearable Lightness Of Being), it takes a sometimes deadpan, always quirky look at a love triangle between a man (Garrel) who rekindles the flame with an ex (Laetitia Casta) after the man she left him for dies, while being idolised by the dead man's younger sister (Lily-Rose Depp) and trying to strike up a relationship. All under the watchful eye of the deceased's young son Joseph (Joseph Engel).
Speaking at...
Speaking at...
- 9/23/2018
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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