When I talk about horror movies I suspect a lot of people think of harsh violence and heavy gore. For sure some horror movies specialize in that type of thing, but many of them do not. To tell the truth, as I get older, and especially now that I have a young daughter, I find I have less tolerance for the ultra-violence on screen. Especially sexual violence.

But horror doesn’t have to include that. I love eerie haunted house movies and movies that terrorize you with the threat of something awful happening. I love a good psychological horror.

Don’t Look Now is a film that has very little on-screen violence. In fact, it has very little violence at all. But it does have horror, mostly coming from a sense of dread and grief. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play a young couple who recently lost their son due to a tragic accident. Sutherland’s character has taken a job in Venice and they are both using it as a way to escape. But you can’t escape that kind of grief. It is a beautiful, powerful, and yes horrific film. Criterion has just released it in a new 4K addition and it is my pick of the week.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

Prey: Predator is a ridiculously dumb 1980s action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger who goes to the jungle to fight a killer alien. It is also kind of awesome. It somehow managed to launch an entire franchise. I haven’t seen all of them, but I’ve seen quite a few of them and they are definitely a mixed bag. Prey is really freaking good. It is basically the same premise as the first one except for this time the alien lands on Earth some 300 years ago and a Comanche Indian has to fight it with primitive tools.

Talk to Me: I’ve heard good things about this horror film about a group of friends who conjure spirits using an embalmed hand. They become hooked on it, go too far, and unleash the spirit world upon them.

Evil Dead Rise: The original Evil Dead is a low-budget horror masterpiece. The sequel, Evil Dead II, took the same premise (dumb teens go to a cabin in the woods and unleash evil) and turned it into a slapstick horror/comedy masterpiece. That spawned another sequel (Army of Darkness, not as good, but fun) and eventually a TV series (Ash Vs Evil Dead, I’ve only seen a few episodes, but I liked it). Then came a soft reboot which went back to its roots (dropped Bruce Campbell and the humor). And now it has a sequel. That’s a lot of words to say that I have no real desire to see this. I saw the reboot and didn’t much care for it. Like I said earlier, hard-core violence just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

It Came From Outerspace: Very silly-looking 1950s science fiction flick gets a nice release from Universal Studios.