‘Parks and Rec’s’ Plaza stars in zom-rom-com
What’s new to watch this week on pay-per-view and streaming services:
Pay-per-view
Who knew that the romantic zombie comedy (or rom-zom-com, if you prefer) would become a thing? “Life After Beth,” with Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) as a dead girlfriend come back to life with unusual hungers, arrives on Cable On Demand. Because there just aren’t enough Halloween date movies.
Debuting this week on Cable Pay-Per-View the same as theaters is the military drama “Camp X-Ray,” starring Kristen Stewart as a soldier at Guantanamo Bay who befriends a prisoner of war held without trial, and the musical drama “Rudderless,” with Billy Crudup as a grieving father who forms a band to perform his late son’s music. Also new: Science fiction survival thriller “Young Ones,” starring Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, and Michael Shannon in a drought-stricken future, and the Australian crime thriller “Felony” with Joel Edgerton and Tom Wilkinson.
Netflix
It’s not too early to start thinking about Halloween movies. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of family-friendly horror films on Netflix, at least not many made in the past 40 or so years.
“Rosemary’s Baby” is rated R for some nudity and a nightmarish demonic rape scene but is more scary and insidious than gory and quite restrained compared with modern horrors. The original 1976 “Carrie,” with Sissy Spacek as Stephen King’s telekinetic teenager, is also R-rated for its bloody mayhem and some nudity. Mature teens and tweens might be ready to graduate to both of these classics.
For foreign horrors there’s “Witching & Bitching,” a comic horror from Spain about jewel thieves versus a coven of witches, the adolescent vampire film “Let the Right One In” from Sweden, which is both intelligent and quietly haunting, and the Nazi zombie horror comedy “Dead Snow” from Norway.
And then there is “Galaxy Quest,” which isn’t a horror film at all but a science fiction comedy about the cast of a “Star Trek”-like TV series plunged into a real intergalactic war. It’s fine for the whole family, very funny, and just might give you some good costume ideas.
Amazon Instant Prime
“Carrie,” “Let the Right One In” and “Galaxy Quest” are also available on Amazon Prime.
Again, it’s hard to find family-friendly horror films to stream, but there is “The Woman in Black,” a PG-13-rated British ghost story starring Daniel Radcliffe, and the original 1956 “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” a superb science fiction thriller.