10 Surprisingly Awesome 2021 Movies You Probably Missed
1. The Amusement Park
Even ardent horror fans might've spaced on the fact that George A. Romero posthumously released one final film this past year.
The Amusement Park was shot in 1975 and originally commissioned as an educational film about elder abuse and ageism, but ended up shelved due to its edgier-than-expected content, and after sporadic festival screenings was believed to have been lost.
But in 2017 a 16mm print was rediscovered and subsequently remastered in 4K, before premiering on Shudder last summer.
Though absolutely a specialist engagement for Romero fans above all others, this is still a fantastically confronting and unexpected piece of work, filtering prejudice against the elderly through the filmmaker's uniquely nightmarish lens.
Even the film's totally unvarnished aesthetic only adds to its potency, while Lincoln Maazel's central performance as a brutalised elderly man is nothing short of mesmerising.
And if you're somehow still on the fence, it's only 55 minutes long.