Out this week in theaters is Radio Silence’s Abigail, a heist-turned-bloodbath when kidnappers realize the child ballerina they’ve snatched isn’t quite human. That the petite vampire is a ballerina feels apt. After all, the deceptive art form has a reputation for dainty elegance that belies the sheer grueling dedication of its performers, both physically and mentally.
Ballet requires a high level of dedication to practice and performance and frequently spills over into body horror through broken toenails, stress fractures, and overuse injuries. In other words, ballet is often a mix of pain and beauty, which means it pairs well with horror.
This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to ballerinas in horror.
These horror movies feature at least one ballerina tormented by her art form, highlighting the stark, beguiling contrast between beauty and horror. Here’s where you can stream them now.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Audition – Arrow, Fandor, Hi-Yah, Kanopy, Midnight Pulp, SCREAMBOX, Tubi
In Audition, Takashi Miike lulls you into thinking you’re watching a quiet love story unfold between widower Shigeharu and enchanting ballerina Asami. It’s deliberate in pacing; it’s easy to overlook the red flags from both sides of this new couple. The more he falls head over heels with Asami, the more he wants to know about her past. The more he tugs at the threads of her history, the more her docile façade unravels until it builds into the most terrifying and explosive finale. Asami’s past and the abuse suffered in her dance upbringing are unsettling, but it’s nothing compared to how Asami deals with those who’ve wronged her.
Black Swan – Max
Nina (Natalie Portman) lands the coveted lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” but her commitment to perfection threatens her sanity. Darren Aronofsky’s psychosexual mind-bender gets deep into Nina’s headspace as she hallucinates everything from sexual encounters to moments of body horror. It’s a dizzying mirror for Tchaikovsky’s ballet, in twisted psychological horror movie form. Nina’s transformation into the Black Swan is as beautiful as it is grotesque. Through ballet, Black Swan captures the all-consuming obsession that comes with trying to perfect an artform through visually arresting but disturbing psychological horror.
The Cabin in the Woods – Hulu
Five friends opt for a weekend getaway at a cabin in the woods. Their party gets interrupted by a zombie redneck torture family, and they start dying one by one according to their archetypical horror role. Of course, there’s much more than meets the eye in this horror-comedy, and they realize there’s a much bigger plot afoot. In terms of entertainment and monster mashups, it doesn’t get much better than this. Just about every single conceivable monster is represented on screen in the Grand Guignol finale, including an elegant young ballerina with a ghastly gaping maw for a face. While her appearance may be brief, the imagery is so effective that this little monster dancer ensures you won’t forget her, even as the copious bloodshed and monster invasion kicks into overdrive.
The Red Shoes – Criterion Channel, freevee, Max, Plex, the Roku Channel, Shout TV, Tubi
Co-directed by Peeping Tom helmer Michael Powell, The Red Shoes centers around a ballerina, Victoria (Moira Shearer), forced to choose between love and her craft. Much like Nina in Black Swan, the ballerina soon finds herself cracking under immense pressure. The Red Shoes isn’t horror in the conventional sense, but it does walk a fine line between stunning technicolor drama and foreboding psychological horror, thanks to a constant sense of unease as Victoria spirals toward a tragic outcome. It’s helped by surreal dance sequences that feel nightmarish and red shoes that almost seem to entrance their wearer. Highlighting the horrors of artistic pursuit here helped bridge the gap between ballet and horror and no doubt influenced at least two horror movies on this list.
Suspiria – Artiflix, Kanopy
Jessica Harper stars as Suzy Bannion, an American newcomer at a prestigious dance academy in Germany who uncovers a supernatural conspiracy amid a series of grisly murders. Director Dario Argento borrowed from a lot of influences when crafting this gorgeous film, including Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Specifically, the vibrant technicolor process, though Argento also considered Suzy as his Snow White. It infuses a fairy tale quality to the almost dreamlike supernatural horror movie centered around witchy ballerina teachers and their unsuspecting students. The vastly different remake, currently available to stream on Prime Video, shifts from ballet to contemporary dance, but the effect is almost the same: dance remains a preternatural spell cast upon the audience as well as the films’ protagonists.
The post Five Horror Movies Featuring Creepy Ballerinas to Stream This Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
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