Every year gets progressively better for female filmmakers. Horror, specifically, has been a difficult realm to break into. With its history of macho overtones in public perception, despite the background of horror movies being a canonically queer, POC, and female dominated workforce. February has become the annual celebration of the feminine figures that keep horror ticking, and these are the movies that are some of the most important pieces of the movement, whether you know that or not...

Blood Diner

Jackie Kong's 1987 horror-comedy "Blood Diner" was supposed to be the successor to Herschell Gordon Lewis's campy masterpiece, "Blood Feast." Although the separated plot lives harmoniously within the sinew of "Blood Diner," this movie has been credited as its own cinematic experience that is unique to its inspiration. Two dopey brothers open a diner and kill their patrons to harvest their limbs and organs to prepare a ritualistic feast with the goal of resurrecting the goddess Sheetar. This movie is bloody, hilarious, and very, very entertaining. 

In My Skin

A director named Marina de Van wrote, directed, and starred in this French body-horror feature that depicts a traumatized woman becoming obsessed with consuming her own body after she survived a tragic accident. The shocking lengths that de Van goes to will disturb and scar you as you swell with empathy for the poor woman who is actively killing herself, one bite at a time. This movie is highly stylized, paced extremely well, horrifically gory. 

The Mafu Cage

This flick has been described as a "The Shining" adjacent clone with just as many unique features as it has similarities. Two sisters are forced to live alone, jobless, in their sprawling yet collapsing mansion after their father passed away. Their father left them his fortune, his estate, and his pet ape, who was locked inside of an expansive cage. One of the sisters celebrates her independence from her father by attempting to make the house her own, the other eventually becomes consumed by her own brain and descends into insanity. This movie is beautifully shot, fantastically acted, and it makes Karen Arthur look like someone who hates monkeys.