Horror Daily Double: A Tale of Two Sisters, Goodnight Mommy

As one of the handful of South Korean directors whose stars have risen rapidly over the past decade and change, Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the Devil, The Good, the Bad, the Weird) has earned a ton of accolades for his stylish genre work, but it was this twisty dysfunctional family thriller that truly put him on the movie map. Loosely based on a famous Korean folk tale, Tale centers on sisters still grieving the death of their mother who engage in a demented power struggle with their father’s new bride. If you thought your stepmom was bad, just be thankful she never beat your sister bloody, threw her into a sack, and dragged her around the house. The film seamlessly blends supernatural horror with chamber psychodrama, achieving fantastic and chilling results.  Bonus warning: Avoid the American remake, The Uninvited, at all costs.

Available on Shudder, Kanopy 

Like A Tale of Two Sisters, Veronika Franz and Severein Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy revolves around a pair of siblings at odds with an unfamiliar parental situation. Lukas and Elias suspect the bandaged woman who has returned home from the hospital is not, in fact, their mother. She’s about the same size, and she sounds about the same, but something is… off, and the twins aim to find out the truth. This may not sound like a traditional recipe for horror, but as the tension builds from scene to scene, it becomes less apparent who the villain is and more clear things are going to end very badly. Right about the time you begin to feel the creeping dread overwhelming you, the film delivers a savage payoff that’s equal parts disturbing and surprisingly cathartic. You’ll never look at super glue the same again.

Available on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Video, iTunes