Cannes Film Festival is known for serving up deftly executed dramas and countless visual feasts of the silver screen that leave even the toughest critics drooling.
But look closer and you may find a few dark and freaky gems – like last year’s It Follows and 2011’s Killer Joe. This year, we found a handful of thrillers lurking in the shadows of show-stoppers like Macbeth or Mad Max: Fury Road.
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Tale of Tales
He took on Italian crime in his saga Gomorrah. Now the multifaceted writer/director, Matteo Garrone, dips into Neapolitan fairy tales that would haunt the Brothers Grimm. The result: an ambitious tale of kings, queens, and beasts that’s bathed in as much in beauty as it is blood.
Need proof? Salma Hayek gnaws on a beast’s beating heart, Toby Jones shares his blood with a massive flea – it’s all very Pan’s Labyrinth by way of David Bowie. It’s haunting imagery you can’t un-see. And won’t want to.
Stream the mesmerizing trailer below. While you wait for the release date, chew on Holy Motors, Leos Carax’s head-trip odyssey filled with images that equally unsettle and mystify.
The Chosen Ones
With Mexican sex slavery in his sights, David Pablos crafts a waking nightmare about a 14-year-old girl who’s targeted and then lured into a trafficking ring by a newbie pimp named Ulises. Overcome with guilt, he makes her a deal: He’ll let her go once he finds a suitable doll-faced replacement.
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Check out the gritty trailer below. Then queue up Miss Bala, about an aspiring beauty queen whose dreams are dashed after getting caught in the crossfire of a bloody drug war.
Krisha
This one actually premiered at SXSW before making its way to the French Riviera. It’s essentially a holiday mind-bender that’s high on family secrets, mental breakdowns, and addiction. Squint and it almost resembles that bonkers Adult Swim infomercial for Claridryl.
Sure there’s no “unedited footage of a bear” in Trey Edward Shults’s deeply personal psychological thriller – but there is a turkey. And it plays a far bigger role than your everyday Thanksgiving centerpiece.
Check out the trippy trailer for Shults’ pressure cooker flick below. Then get to know A Woman Under the Influence, John Cassavetes’ dark portrait of a fraying suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself.
Green Room
The latest from Blue Ruin director Jeremy Saulnier proves this young filmmaker possesses an original voice in a field overrun with regurgitated crime narratives. Green Room stars Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, and Mark Webber in a siege horror-slash-punk rock thriller about a band that stumbles across a body after their set in a dingy dive run by neo-Nazi skinheads.
The film’s gory rage is not for the faint of heart – disembowelment and severed body parts abound. It might be some of the most shocking films to crawl across the silver screen at Cannes. Hyperbole or well-deserved hype? You decide in the clip below.
Until then, check out Saulnier’s agonizing revenge flick, Blue Ruin.
Featured still from "Tale of Tales" via Archimede.
