Ourweekly columnStaff Pickstakes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme andthe "Staff Picks" section was the placetofind outwhat films were worthy of one's time.Of course, our version ofStaff Pickshas a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out the films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week, a new movement of horror grows out of the indie film world known as "Mumblecore" to create an entirely new subgenre, "Mumblegore."
If you're unfamiliar with Mumblecore, congratulations. It means you didn't spend the aughts watching loosely improvised, poorly shot films about the malaise of being in your mid-to-late-twenties. Filmmakers like The Duplass Brothers and Joe Swanberg—and on the better end of the equation Andrew Bujalski and Lynn Shelton—popularized this low budget movement in the mid-2000s, often attracting actors that were looking to "get back to their roots" or creating new stars of their own. Greta Gerwig, Kate Lyn Sheil, Katie Aselton, Amy Seimetz, and Mark Duplass are just a few of the people who got their big break thanks to Mumblecore.
As many of these actors and directors grew in popularity, their films began featuring more and more famous faces looking to come and cut loose in between big budget blockbusters. This led to increased exposure to the Mumblecore style, but more importantly, led the way to the more interesting outgrowth of the movement, Mumblegore. These were horror films with low budgets and big ideas, movies that adopted the low-fi aesthetics of the Mumblecore style, but applied them to chilling effect.
The notion of aimless twenty-somethings sitting around and bitching about their lives becomes much more interesting when there's a slasher on the loose or an unseen entity haunting them. The insufferable character archetypes that littered Mumblecore films proved to be great fodder as horror film victims, as you no longer had to root for them, but could rather enjoy the victory that came in their elimination from the narrative. While horror was a part of Mumblecore from almost the very beginning, as the calendar turned over to the 2010s, filmmakers became much more savvy in using the best elements of both genres—Mumblecore and Horror—to much greater effect.
The five films we'll be looking at today are all ten years old or newer, and not only brilliantly exploit the tropes of Mumblecore and Horror, they also feature some great nudity! Skinless—or mostly skinless—entries in the genre you would be wise to check out as well include 2013's Blue Ruin, 2014's The Guest, and Ti West's masterful disconnected trilogy of films House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, and The Sacrament.
Red, White, Blue (2010)
British writer/director Simon Rumley has been working in the Mumblegore vein since before it was an officially designated subgenre. His films are often brutal, as is this film, easily the most difficult watch of the five films we're looking at today. I'm including it because it manages to deal with some pretty heady subject matter without leaning too much into the preachiness of your usual flick confronting societal ills. There is an unexpected twist involved in the third act and a revenge sequence that leans hard intosome Grand Guignol tendencies, but it's also got the most nudity of any of these films, which is why it earned a place here.
Amanda Fuller plays a very promiscuous woman who seems content to enjoy unprotected sexual encounters with men, so long as she doesn't sleep with them more than once. Fuller goes nude several times in the film's first hour, sleeping with just about everyone in sight...
The reason for her promiscuity and insanely risky behavior are explored in the film's second half, which is much tougher to get through. At least stick around until the 47 minute mark when Lauren Schneider goes topless in a sex scene where her guy even goes down on her...
Available to rent on YouTube
You're Next (2012)
Probably the most high-profile film in the entire Mumblegore movement, this inspired horror-comedy has a sort of Mumblecore All-Stars feel to it, making it all the more satisfying to watch some of the more insufferable faces of the genre are summarily hunted down and killed. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett take the home invasion thriller and partner it with an Agatha Christie-esque whodunnit chamber piece, sprinkling in a bit of screwball comedy from the days of the Ealing Studios/Alec Guinness ensemble comedies of the 40s and 50s.
The film's cold opening finds redhead cutie Kate Lyn Sheil baring her breasts in bed getting banged by legendary indie director Larry Fessenden, before walking around the house in an open shirt and eventually ending up dead...
The only other nude scene in the flick comes pretty early on when Margaret Laney, playing wife to the always intolerable Joe Swanberg, attempts to get ready for the day, but the horned-up Swanberg—does he have any other mode as an actor?—removes her bra to try and get something going. It doesn't work...
Although the film debuted at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, it didn't get a theatrical release until August 2013. The film was a modest hit, making over $25 million at the box office against a budget just over a million bucks. It's got an engaging narrative and plenty of creative kills once the body count starts piling up. Also, if that's not enough to sell you on it,I might add that it's the only place you get to see such smug faces as Joe Swanberg and A.J. Bowen meet fairly grisly ends.
Available to watch with ads on Tubi
Starry Eyes (2014)
Saudi Arabian born beauty Alex Essoedelivers probably the single best performance in any of the movies we're discussing today in this chilling look at the dark side of stardom. Essoe plays Sarah, an ambitious actress who supports her failing acting career by working as a waitress. She is invited to audition for the prestigious—but fictional—production companyAstraeus Pictures for their new film The Silver Scream, and after blowing the audition, she has a hair-ripping-out grand freakout in the bathroom. Intrigued by what they saw from her after the audition, she is given a callback, which plunges her into a world she seems scarcely prepared to handle, at least at first.
Writer/directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer based the film on many apocryphal tales of disastrous auditions by actresses who had been asked to do insane things for famous directors. The film found financing—and even landed cast member Pat Healy—as a result of Kickstarter, and that level of budget and control allowed Kölsch and Widmyer to be as venomous toward this cutthroat industry as they wanted. During an interview at the time of the film's premiere at SXSW in 2014, Widmyer addressed the fact that Sarah seems willing to do just about anything to land this role and had this to say...
"Sarah doesn't get forced into anything in this film, and that's key to the theme here about how far a person will go achieve their greatest desire. Viewers are meant to see Sarah as a victim at first -- in a traditional horror film she most certainly would be -- but it's only as the film progresses that it becomes clear how much she's fully on-board for the madness provided it leads to success."
This is what separates Starry Eyes from the average horror film/cautionary tale/Mumblegore flick. It actually examines the notion of victimhood begetting further victims, something that your average film wouldn't even take into consideration when crafting this sort of story. The gorgeous Alex Essoe also provides some knockout nude scenes for the film, though she doesn't go nude in the film's first hour-plus. Once her journey is complete, not to spoil too much here, she goes topless to show off her beautiful new body...
During an interview with yours truly back in 2015, Essoe—who recently played Wendy Torrance in Doctor Sleep—shared her very pragmatic thoughts on doing her nude scenes for the film. If only everyone felt the way she does...
My opinion on nudity is that if, like anything else, it serves the story, if it heightens the moment, if it suits the character. We’re representing the human experience, and nudity often a very big part of that. As far asStarry Eyesgoes, there were a few opportunities that they had where they could have nudity in the script like with the second audition or when I go to see the producer, but they saved it for the end. Especially considering where my character was at at that point, I think it’s almost necessary. Without giving too much away, who she is—or isn’t—by the end of the movie, she’s done a complete 180, it isn’t her anymore. So I think it really makes it a lot more terrifying and unsettling to have nudity there. I don’t find it really titillating or sexy, it’s more like, she’s not a person anymore.
Available to watch onAmazon Prime
Goodnight Mommy (2014)
The only foreign language film on our list also has the smallest cast of any of the films we're covering today with only three main characters and a bunch of supporting characters who have as few lines as they do minutes of screen time. 9 year-old twin brothers Lukas and Elias—played by real life twins Lukas and Elias Schwarz—live in a home in the secluded French countryside where they are currently home alone, awaiting the return of their mother from a medical procedure. From the moment the woman who arrives at their homeall bandaged up after her procedures and calling herself Mother (Susanne Wuest), the two boys suspect that something is up and that this woman is not, in fact, their mother.
The film's down and dirty aesthetic, coupled with a loosely improvised script, place it comfortably in the Mumblegore genre despite not being an American film. I wouldn't dare spoil the story's final two acts, other than to say that the nudity all occurs in the first act, so there's no spoilers ahead. Susanne Wuest finally begins to un-bandage herself just prior to the half hour mark, checking out her body in the mirror before walking nude into the woods to remove the rest of her bandages (the digital alteration of her face is done on purpose in the film)...
Availableto watch with ads on Tubi
The Invitation (2015)
Karyn Kusama exploded onto the scene with her well regarded debut feature Girlfight in 2000, before directing back to back big budget flops with Æon Flux and Jennifer's Body. After some time spent in the wilderness, she returned with this absolutely chilling film about a man named Will (Logan Marshall-Green, breaking free of the discount Tom Hardy label that has haunted him lo these many years) who accepts an invitation to a dinner party from his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard). He and Eden used to be quite close, as we see in a flashback of them nude together in the tub...
But their marriage dissolved after the death of their young son. With his new girlfriend (Emayatzy Corinealdi) in tow, Will heads to the party being thrown at the house he and Eden shared when they were married. This, in and of itself, is enough to set anyone on edge, but Will has no idea what's in store for him. To say any more than that would be to give up crucial information which might spoil your first viewing. The most I will say is that the film's other nude scene comes just ten minutes in when Will first arrives and sees a woman named Sadie (Lindsay Burdge) standing bottomless in a doorway, smiling at him as she enters the room...
Sets quite a tone for the insanity to come. The warm reception to this film from the critical and film community has helped getKusama'scareer back on track and she's been working pretty consistently ever since. If she continues making films like The Invitation, I'd say her career will be just fine.
Available to watch on Netflix
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