Over the past few years, I’ve had a slow dawning
realization that horror may well in fact be my favorite genre. Unlike many
horror fans, I didn’t really come to it in my teens – although I’d go through
phases of it then – but it’s only been in my 30s that I have truly embraced the
inner horror geek in me. Still, I have certain subsets of horror I like more
than others (home invasion, surreal) and ones I don’t like as much (ghost
stories, possession stories) – so keep that in mind as I recap the year in
horror. Please note, I was a little less picky at what I consider horror this
year – last year, I didn’t have mother! or The Killing of a Sacred Deer or
Personal Shopper or Colossal – and I’d probably let at least a couple of them
in this year (I’m not telling which ones).
But of course, even those of who like horror admit
that there are a lot – A LOT – of bad horror movies, and what makes matters
worse is that often you can never be sure which ones those are, because it’s a
critically maligned genre – and some of the best films are the smallest, etc.
So there were quite a few bad to terrible horror movies this year. The Cloverfield Paradox (Julius Onah) showed
why a studio dumped it to Netflix with zero notice and little fanfare and was a
major misstep for the franchise. Ghost
Stories (Jeremey Dyson & Andy Nyman) was a very dull quartet of ghost
stories that never really go anywhere. Inside
(Miguel Angel Vivas) tried to remake an extreme French film without the
extremity – and the result was predictable awful. Marrowbone (Sergio G. Sanchez) was a scareless haunted house film,
with some decent style at least. The
Predator (Shane Black) was sloppy and boring, and dull and not the least
bit fun, which should not have been possible. The Ritual (David Bruckner) features a quartet of friends heading
off into the woods and finding lots of clichés. Still/Born (Brandon Christensen) wants to be a kind of Rosemary’s
Baby of its time – spoiler alert, it wasn’t. Veronica (Paco Plaza) is a standard issue possession movie, which
does nothing new, and does it all very dully. Winchester (The Spireg Brothers) had a great premise and cast –
and simply awful execution.
The following films were at least better than the
ones above – but weren’t exactly good. Bad
Samaritan (Dean Devlin) really needed to go over the top in one way or
another – either into outright camp, or more gore – as it stands, it’s too
slick by half, but has its moments. Downrange
(Ryuhei Kitamura) has a decent premise, of teenagers literally being picked
off one my one – but you don’t care for any of the characters. Insidious: The Last Key (Adam Robitel) showed
its time for this once really good horror franchise to end. The Meg (Jon Turteltaub) is really more
action than horror – but isn’t particularly good at either. The Night Eats the World (Dominique Rocher)
is a zombie movie with a great premise – but doesn’t figure out how to pull
it off. The Nun (Corin Hardy) is a
mediocre entry in the very good Conjuring universe. Summer of 84 (Francois Simard & Anouk Whissell & Yoann-Karl
Whissell) has a good premise, but feels like a hollow retread of It and
Stranger Things – which, to be honest, are retreads themselves (loved the
ending though). They Remain (Philip
Gallett) has some good performances, but really doesn’t do all that much
with its intriguing premise. Truth or
Dare (Jeff Wadlow) is kind of goofy fun, as long as you don’t think about
it – although if it wanted to be a new version of Final Destination, it ain’t
happening. Unfriended: Dark Web (Stephen
Susco) couldn’t quite find a way to make its characters interesting – so it
failed to live up to the first one.
Finally, we’re into some good horror films – none
of these are great, but they are all good. Cargo
(Yolanada Ramke & Ben Howling) is an interesting zombie movie, with
Martin Freeman having to find someone to care for his baby in the hours he has
before he turns. The Cured (David
Freyne) is about a world in zombies can be turned back into humans – and
what that would look like. Let the
Corpses Tan (Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani) is all style, and little
substance – but what style (even if it is less horror than the filmmaker’s
other films). Midnighters (Julius
Ramsay) is a story of a quartet of people all making one horrible decision
after another in very entertaining fashion.
Mon Monsters (Giddens Ko) is what happens when the bullied gets accepted in
the popular group – oh, and does features monsters – and is all over the place,
but worth checking out. Upgrade (Leigh
Whannell) is an action/horror hybrid which isn’t great at either, but good
at both.
Finally, we come to the films that in a lesser
year, may well have made the top 10 horror films of the year. Apostle
(Gareth Evans) is probably too long, but is still an interesting, brutal
take on something like The Wicker Man. Calibre
(Matt Palmer) has two outsiders upset a small town, and then trying to
survive – and is almost unbearably tense at times. The Endless (Aaron Moorhead & Jason Benson) have a pair of
brothers return to the cult they escaped from a decade before, and finding it
difficult to leave. The Little Stranger
(Lenny Abrahamson) is a fascinating film, that may not even be horror, but
feels like it. Overlord (Julius Avery) is
an entertaining, bloody B-movie about American soldiers discovering a different
kind of Nazi atrocity. Pyewacket (Adam
Macdonald) involves a teenage girl summoning something she doesn’t
understand. Searching (Aneesh Chaganty) is
a better movie that some on the top 10 – but I struggle with whether it’s
horror or not – either way, it’s great and intense, and yes, scary – with a great
John Cho performance. What Keeps You
Alive (Colin Minihan) has a lesbian couple on their honeymoon being torn
apart.
Top
10
10.
Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier)
Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark doesn’t quite have
the visceral impact of his previous films – Green Room or Blue Ruin – and it
certainly takes its time in its storytelling. But what gradually emerges from
this horror thriller really is terrifying – not on a splatter level, but on
something deeper and darker. Jeffrey Wright gives a great performance as a wolf
expert, called to Alaska to find a small child taken by wolves – who instead
gets much more than he bargained for when dealing with a veteran with PTSD (a
largely silent Alexander Skarsgaard), and his wife (Riley Keough). In terms of
blood and guts, the big scene in a shootout at the halfway point of the movie –
but it’s really the slow, creeping sense of dread that sets in that truly makes
this an unsettling film.
9.
Cam (Daniel Goldhaber)
You could dismiss the Netflix original Cam as a feature
length Black Mirror episode – but that ignores the fact that Black Mirror is a
very good show, and this movie uses its premise to dive into some pretty scary,
real world stuff. The film stars Madeline Brewer as a Cam girl, who finds
herself locked out of her account, although apparently she is still doing shows
for her adoring male fans. That real world panic of being locked out of her
digital life is plenty scary – and then it does start to bleed into the real
world as she tries to figure things out, and to her horror everyone in her life
finds out what she does, and she has to cozy up to some very creepy guys to
figure out her problems. The film is deeply unsettling more than scary – and
its because it’s so plausible that makes the film get under your skin – and
stay there.
8.
The Strangers: Prey at Night (Johannes Roberts)
The original The Strangers is one of my favorite
mainstream horror films of the century so far – it’s so scary, so deeply
unsettling that it left me rattled when I saw it in theaters, and it took me
nearly a decade to revisit it. This long gestating sequel isn’t quite up to
that level – but it’s pretty damn close. Instead of an isolated house, this
time, it’s an isolated trailer park that has the Strangers arrive, and one by
one try and kill off an entire family. The set piece at the swimming pool is
one of the very best of the year – but the whole movie delivers mainstream
scares better than most other films this year. This was not just a cheapy,
knock-off horror movie – but a wonderful horror film in its own right.
7.
A Quiet Place (John Krasinski)
John Krasinki’s surprise early year hit works
because he embraces his premise – that in order to survive in a world overrun
by murderous alien bugs, you have to be quiet at all times, and built that into
his film. Yes, you can nitpick some of the plot points or logic of the movie
(admittedly, some of those nits get pretty big when you think about it) – but
you cannot deny the skill Krasinski shows as a director, nor the power of the performances
by him, Emily Blunt and Millicent Simmonds. The film really is scary and while
I think its scares are more fleeting than truly great horror movies (this film
won’t haunt your dreams) – it shows how to do horror at this scale, and deliver
the goods.
6.
Halloween (David Gordon Green)
I watched every film in the Halloween franchise in
October of this year – it is my favorite of the slasher franchises – and can
assure you that David Gordon Green’s direct sequel to John Carpenter’s original
really is one of the best in the entire franchise (I can also assure you that I
am still right, and you are still wrong – the Rob Zombie Halloween movies are
great!). This film, about PTSD and inherited trauma, passed down now through
two generations of Stroud women, does get to some deeper places that films like
this normally go – but also, never does so at the sacrifice of scaring you.
Michael Myers is still a scary presence, and they still find interesting ways
to dispatch a bunch of idiot teenagers. It’s also one of the more stylish and
best directed of the series since Carpenter left. No, nothing could beat the
original Halloween (every time I see it, I am amazed again but how simple, and
how brilliantly effective, it is) – but it’s as good as a 40-year-old sequel to
a masterpiece could expect to be.
5.
Revenge (Coralie Fargeat)
The rape-revenge subgenre of horror has certainly
had good entries before – but for the most part, it’s been a fairly odious one
– an excuse to titillate viewers with sexual violence under the guise of the
female lead getting her revenge later. Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge is a
corrective of all those films before it – with a great performance by Matilda
Anna Ingrid Lutz at its core. When she first enters the movie, she looks like
the typical gold digger type, hooking up with a married, rich guy at his
secluded hunting lodge – when his two (much creepier) buddies show up earlier.
But as the film progresses – and she finds out just how horrible they all are –
she is given more depth, more strength, more smarts (and, presumably because of
all the blood, goes from blonde to brunette). Revenge doesn’t skimp on the
blood – it is probably the bloodiest film on this list – and gives genre fans
all the gore they could ask for and more. But it gives more than that as well –
announcing Fargeat as a major new horror movie talent. I cannot wait to see
what she does next.
4.
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos)
Mandy is undeniably the most insane movie of the
year – and I mean that in the best possible way. The film is about Nicolas Cage
taking on a renegade group of bikers who, well, aren’t really just bikers but
more of the Manson family on bikes, after they kill his beloved wife. Cage has
a well-earned reputation for going over the top in his performances – he has certainly
ruined a few films that way – but here it works brilliantly, and actually does
up the emotional level of the film. The two halves of the film are distinct
from each other – with different tones, different styles, different everything
– but they come together in a brilliantly effective mixture of insanity. Mandy
became a cult hit this year – even after the distributer decided to mainly go
direct to VOD with it – and it deserved to. This is going to be a cult film for
the ages.
3.
Suspiria (Luca Guadanino)
You have to hand it to Luca Guadanino – he really,
truly took the bare bones of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, and turned it into
something entirely his own. Guadanino takes seriously the historical time and
place the film exists in, and merges it with a story that doesn’t try to fool
the viewer in terms of what precisely is going on at this ballet school full of
witches. He does stage some excellent horror movie sequences – the dance, where
Dakota Johnson does things in one room, and another dancer is tortured in
another is one of the best sequences of any kind this year, and its insane
climax – which is the only time he really embraces Argento’s, over the top,
colorful style, are great. As are the performances – Dakota Johnson continues
to be a fascinating, enigmatic actresses when she wants to be. Tilda Swinton,
playing three roles, is great in each and every one – shaming people with her
ambition and skill. Does it all hold together? Is it ambiguous or confused? I’m
not sure – but I really don’t care – I loved it.
2.
Annihilation (Alex Garland)
Alex Garland’s Annihilation is a horror movie about
depression and anxiety – and it reveals itself as being one only over time.
There are some traditional horror movie elements – that horrific creature at
around the halfway point of the film – but this is more about horror from
inside, and confronting that horror. It is about the growing sense of unease in
the movie – something isn’t right from the start of the movie, but that feeling
– masterfully sustained by Garland throughout (thanks, in part, to great
performances by its female led cast) grows right up until its final moments.
This isn’t a traditional horror movie in many ways (which is perhaps why while
I think it’s a better film than the top spot on this list, it’s only the second
best horror film of the year) – but its as unsettling as the best horror can be
– and gets under your skin and stays there like them as well.
1.
Hereditary (Ari Aster)
Hereditary is a horror movie about a family living
through trauma – although they don’t realize just how traumatic everything is
while they are living there. Toni Collette gives one of the performances of the
year as a wife, mother and daughter – at first grieving her mother, who she
pretty much hated, and then having to go through more and more as they film
piles it on her. Her strange daughter and stoner son don’t help much – neither
does her husband, who just wants to keep the peace, and ignores everything
going on around them. This is a film with some dynamite, stand out sequences –
but like most of the films on this list, it’s all about a growing sense of
unease – a sense that gets shattered with the biggest, and best moments in it.
Does the ending completely work? I’m not sure – but it’s an appropriate, and appropriately
shocking finale. This was a great year for horror films in general – and
Hereditary is clearly the year’s best.
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