Josh Malerman is a New York Times bestselling author and one of two singer/songwriters for the rock band The High Strung. His debut novel, Bird Box, is the inspiration for the hit Netflix film of the same name.
His other novels include Unbury Carol, Inspection, A House at the Bottom of a Lake, and Malorie, the sequel to Bird Box. Malerman lives in Michigan with his fiancée, the artist-musician Allison Laakko.
THE GREASY STRANGLER
If you have not seen THE GREASY STRANGLER, you are going to send me fan mail. Thank you letters. First of all what I like about THE GREASY STRANGLER is Sky Elobar is an absolute genius actor, he’s phenomenal in this, and so is Michael St. Michaels. I don’t want to say it’s shameless, well it is a bit of that, but it’s letting the imagination go in directions, wether its freaky or fun or creative, or weird, but somehow still maintaining this acceptability, it’s palatable. The soundtrack is super weird, yet poppy. You think this is a B movie, but no, a lot went into this movie, and there’s a lot of that dichotomy, where you think ‘what I’m witnessing is something fresh, and cool and weird and a little bit scary and a lot a bit fun. It’s the perfect late night movie.
MANIAC
You can just tell this is a passion project. A horror fan making a horror movie. And done really well. It’s unsettling, and uneasy, if I’d seen that movie as a kid I think it would have really messed me up.
TROLLHUNTER
I’m a fan of found footage, I’m a sucker for it. TROLLHUNTER is a really good one, with some holy-cow memorable monster scenes.
THE BEYOND
Anything Fulci, literally, is going to rings bells everywhere for every horror fan. The soundtrack is phenomenal.
HAXAN
HAXAN is amazing and doesn’t necessarily need to be watched in linear form. I think it was originally started as a pseudo documentary on witchcraft. And it has become something else over time, you’ll see what I mean, it’s not a straight documentary…I mean, I don’t know, maybe it is, maybe all that stuff was really happening and was caught on tape, I’d like to think that was true.
BRAIN DAMAGE
This movie is wonderful, the monster is so weird, the whole feel, the whole vibe, the same dude did BASKET CASE and FRANKENHOOKER and it’s just got a thing, kind of like THE GREASY STRANGLER, where its weird and accessible at the same time.