Carnage Park, Neon Demon are perfect Halloween movies

Director Joe Begos knows his horror movies. The filmmaker’s feature debut, 2013’s Almost Human, paid enthusiastic homage to ’80s-era monster tales — particularly John Carpenter’s The Thing — while his follow-up, the just-released on Blu-ray The Mind’s Eye, could best be described as “Scanners-on-meth.”

So, when we asked Begos to name the best film to watch over Halloween, it didn’t come as a huge surprise to discover he actually had a few recommendations up his sleeve.

“I’d recommend Carnage Park, which just came out, by Mickey Keating,” says Begos. “[It’s a] really cool, tense horror movie that I think is really doing something that horror movies aren’t doing right now. It’s [about] a crime, sniper, not told in a linear fashion. There hasn’t been an independent horror movie that’s come out like that in I don’t know how long. I’d really recommend that. It’s got some nice performances in it. It’s nice and short, 80 minutes, which is the best run-time for a horror movie. I just saw The Neon Demon, which I figured everybody and their mother would have seen, but according to the box office apparently nobody went to see it. But that was a goddamned masterpiece. I loved that movie. I really liked The Witch. I really loved Green Room. A lot of people bitch about the state of horror, but there’s actually a lot of cool stuff out there right now. You’ve just got to dig around.”

Carnage Park is available on Blu-ray from Scream Factory on Nov. 1. You can see trailers for that film, The Neon Demon, The Witch, Green Room, and for Begos’ The Mind’s Eye, below.