My Horror Anatomy: Emile Milgrim of Las Nubes offers intoxicating sounds -

Welcome to My Horror Anatomy, a terrifying series in which artists and creators dissect their five most influential horror films.

There’s a mood-infused intensity to Las Nubes‘ new album, Tormentas Malsanas. Collaborators Ale Campos and Emile Milgrim chop together various stylistic noises into an avalanche of sound. Songs like “Enredados – Misty’s Mix” and “Canse” crash into the eardrums, while such moments as “The Weeks That Followed” slither and simmer on the earlobes.

Tormentas Malsanas, which translates to “unhealthy storms,” captures a breadth of personal experiences “I had firsthand or felt secondhand through the lives of my close friends and relatives over the span of five years,” Milgrim shares. “The feelings brought on by these experiences were charged, sometimes stagnant and unforgiving, much like the summers here in South Florida. When it comes to expressing these personal narratives, I always felt that articulating them through the lens of nature was something that anyone could feel a connection to.”

What results is a frenetic, wall-vibrating record that weaves in and out of the human experience. In support of the project, Emile Milgrim walks us through the five defining horror movies that have impacted their lives and work.

Child’s Play (1988)

This is the first horror film I saw in a theater. I was six years old – SIX YEARS OLD! That in and of itself is pretty messed up, but what’s even more messed up is that my dad took me to see it instead of taking me to school one day. I don’t know what he was thinking, but it spawned years of us watching horror films together, many that were not at all age-appropriate until I was a teenager. I guess I just liked hanging out with my dad, and horror/sci-fi movies were one of his big interests. Maybe I believed that I could “prove myself” to him – whatever that means – by always being game to watch these things. Did it scare me? Of course. Did I let on that it did? Of course not. A serial killer possessing a kid’s doll? Classic. Maybe it also resonated with me because the main character, besides Chucky, was a kid. That whole “brave kid saves the day” trope is particularly effective on other kids, I guess.

The Shining (1980)

I think after my dad saw I could handle scary movies, it was game on. Man, The Shining. We had the VHS and probably watched it over a dozen times together. This is another one where the kid is the hero of sorts, so it resonated with me immediately. I also remember being taken aback by basically every other element of it. Unlike the scary stuff I’d seen to date, this was something else. This was art! Of course, I had no frame of reference for Kubrick or King, but over time I’d learn so much about the film, its production, and all the wackiness surrounding it. I’d also learn and understand more about its themes. To me, it has this overall quality that successfully conveys madness in multiple directions. It also always made me feel physically cold and vacant while watching. I haven’t revisited it in over 20 years, but it might be time. I’ve also never read the book.

Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990)

As mentioned, I grew up watching a lot of horror/sci-fi stuff with my dad, which included a very healthy dose of episodic series like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, and my personal favorite, Tales from the Darkside. Of course, a Tales from the Darkside film was gonna be a standout! This is another one we saw in the theater, then got the VHS and watched a ton. The overall “plot” is that a woman kidnapped a kid to kill, cook, and serve to folks at a dinner party. In order to “stall,” the kid starts telling the woman stories from a book she had given him to read while chained up in her basement. The stories are pretty disparate content-wise, spanning killer cats, mummies, and gargoyles, but with a healthy dose of social and moral commentary throughout. The practical effects were also pretty good for the time, and I can never get the scene at the end of the “cat” story out of my head. Bonus points for a pretty cool cast, including Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, Christian Slater, Julianne Moore, and David Johansen, among others.

It (1990)

So this one was actually a miniseries, but I didn’t see it until it came out on double VHS, so I only ever saw it in its entirety. Since it was made for network TV, they had to be really clever and creative to capture how frightening the story is, and they accomplished that in spades. Tim Curry as Pennywise is the reason I slept with the lights on until I was 11. Every bathroom, every remotely nature-related setting, every time it rained too hard, I was scared as hell. And I’m not the only one – it’s verifiable that this scared the shit out of millions of people. What an incredible achievement! It’s been long enough that the reboot has happened, and now a prequel series is coming out, blah, blah, blah, but this version is THE version. I need to revisit and see if it still freaks me out. I have a feeling it will.

Candyman (1992)

Just as I started to get over my It-related fear, I saw this devastatingly frightening thing. There is not a frame in this film that isn’t irksome to me. And the score? Still makes the hair raise on the back of my neck. Seriously, of the hundreds of scary things I’ve seen, this is the one that lives rent-free, firmly planted in my brain. So yeah, it’s based on a Clive Barker short story (duh, I had to squeeze him in somewhere), but transposed from Liverpool on to a poverty-stricken Black neighborhood in Chicago – a choice ultimately critiquing United States race and class struggles. It’s very raw and very real. There’s a dissociative psychedelic grit to the sequences and the performances, making you feel like you’re losing your mind. It’s also brutal and unapologetic in that fundamentally, everyone and everything gets ruined, either physically, psychologically, or both. Apparently, Virginia Madsen was actually hypnotized to make the “trance” scenes hit extra hard. And the bees, my god, the bees! All real! Cheers to Tony Todd for agreeing to the bees. So much of this film retroactively screams Jordan Peele, which comes full circle since he made the 2021 sequel. I don’t need to revisit to tell you this film still does and always will scare me.

Note: 2021’s Candyman was directed by Nia DaCosta, but Jordan Peele did produce