This has been a hell of a year. Personally, I have been trying to wrap up my license to teach while also teaching and navigating the usual challenges life throws at you. Fortunately, all that work and stress comes with a great run of horror movies to keep the ship upright, some of which I didn’t see until days before this list was compiled. Enough of the prelude, let’s get to the movies that made a world gone mad seem a little more sane.
10) Evil Dead Rise
Furthering the argument that Evil Dead is the most consistently good franchise, Evil Dead Rise serves as a sequel to the 2013 remake/reboot while managing to exist on its own merits. The characters are likable enough, the setting is isolated, and the tone is mean – all the ingredients for a modern Evil Dead film. Alyssa Sutherland is terrific as the possessed mom and engages in a no-holds-barred assault on her family with gore to spare. A terrific popcorn horror film that may not have the resonance of some of the others on this list, but stands tall as a great party movie with some thrilling set pieces.
9) Knock at the Cabin
When Old was released, I was convinced I was off the M. Night Shyamalan ride. Now I have decided two things are true: I like M. Night Shyamalan as a director, but not as a writer, and the man is willing to take some big swings with his work. With Knock at the Cabin, Shyamalan is adapting a novel (which I have yet to read), and is in full possession of his ability to build tension. Dave Bautista is great, playing against type as a gentle teacher who has been tasked with stopping a doomsday. Or has he? That’s the crux of the dilemma as Bautista and his partners demand a sacrifice of a family on retreat. It’s tense, it’s compelling, and it’s a blueprint for Shyamalan marching forward. But, more likely, he’s going to do a terrible adaptation of some manga. God bless him.
8) Talk to Me
Talk to Me topped a lot of ‘Best of’ lists this year, and it was only banished to the bottom half of mine due to a glut of trauma-based horror over the past few years. The familiarity with the film’s themes makes it slightly less impactful than some others, but Talk to Me nails some good scares. The premise is simple: a cast of a severed hand, when held, allows one to become temporarily possessed by a spirit. The jolt is like a high, and Sophie Wilde is effective as Mia as she becomes obsessed with pushing the limits of the game to contact her deceased mother. The final act doesn’t carry the same punch of the setup, but it announces directors Danny and Michael Philippou as names to watch.
7) Cobweb
I like a movie with some moves. And Cobweb is a movie that doesn’t give away its secrets until the final act (and I won’t reveal them here). When lonely boy Peter begins to hear a voice from inside the walls, one wonders if this is going to be a story of a child in distress or… something else. With creepy turns by Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr as parents with something to hide, Cobweb presents as something heady and easily categorized as slow-burn horror… until it’s not. When things go off the rails, I was surprised and delighted. The Halloween vibe puts this one on the seasonal playlist in the years to come. Fun as hell.
6) Beau Is Afraid
Ari Aster is an honest-to-goodness auteur. His success with Hereditary and Midsommar have given him the latitude to make a movie like Beau Is Afraid. Thank goodness for that. One can make the argument that Beau Is Afraid is not technically horror, but if not that, what? It is a movie that lives in the space between what we know about ourselves and what we fear may be true. As Beau navigates an alternate present to get to his mother’s funeral, he is beset by tattooed madmen, man-hunting veterans, paint-swilling teen girls, fears of sex, glimpses at futures that might have been, and all manner of neuroses. I was swept up in the lyric nature of the movie, confused by its sudden pivots, made tense by the all-too-relatable self-doubts, and all under the shadow of a mother that is expert at making Beau doubt everything about himself and his life. Unsettling and beautiful in equal measures, but, admittedly, not for everyone.
5) The Last Voyage of the Demeter
The pitch turned me off. Hey, what if we take four pages of the novel Dracula and turn that into a whole movie? It’s like Wonka, only a vampire! Ugh. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this could be total trash. In the hands of the guy who did Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Andre Ovredal, it is a thrilling riff on Alien. Trading a space trucking scenario for a 19th-century ship transporting strange cargo, the claustrophobic nature of the setting makes this a class in creating tension. Also, Ovredal has some new takes on the classic vampire legend to make it all feel fresh and genuinely disturbing at times. What could have been a cynical cash grab is a confident and scary take on an old story with plenty of freshness to keep things lively. Turn out the lights and double feature this with the original Alien and you’re in for a spooky night.
4) Brooklyn 45
I wasn’t as hot on We Are Still Here as many, but I am now on board with Ted Geoghegan in a big way after this period piece of a ghost story. Assembling a murderer’s row of character actors, including Anne Ramsay, Ezra Buzzington, Larry Fessenden, and Kristina Klebe, Geoghegan addresses the way war is never really over for those who fought. It also has plenty to say about the other-ing of people different from us and the convenient scapegoating that allows. What starts as a familiar parlor ghost story becomes all-too-poignant and affecting. The final moments are haunting in a way that few horror movies are.
3) Infinity Pool
Like Ari Aster, Brandon Cronenberg is making his stamp on modern cinema. It’s hard not to compare him to his groundbreaking father, but he acquits himself well with a film like Infinity Pool. The film asks the essential question: who are we really? When all guardrails are removed, what kind of person lurks below the surface of the face that meets the faces we meet? When James Foster (Alexander Skarsgard), a minor novelist who marries rich, is given an opportunity to experience a life available only to the wealthy at a resort in the fictional La Tolqa. What ensues is a hallucinatory look at privilege, the barbarism of life without rules, and a genuinely disturbing series of events. Maybe the most terrifying scene this year is Mia Goth, that new queen of horror, reading a literary review. Challenging and withering.
2) Skinamarink
I don’t always go in for the artsy-fartsy horror, but then there are the undeniably original, subliminally terrifying movies that somehow get under the skin and refuse to dislodge. Skinamarink can be described as analog horror, surreal, slow-burn… At the end of the day, this is a movie that aims for the subconscious and nails the target. Best viewed with the lights out and headphones on, Skinamarink asks the viewer to buy into the style and rewards that buy-in with some of the year’s best scares. There are no jump scares, no music stings, just a creeping dread and an ambition to make the viewer as uncomfortable as possible. Released early in the year, Skinamarink has hung with me for months and lingers in that space between waking and dream.
1) When Evil Lurks
Demian Rugna made a splash with Terrified, but I always felt that movie’s parts were better than the whole. Rugna corrects that complaint with When Evil Lurks, delivering both the narrative satisfaction of traditional horror and the balls-out, uncompromising horror that was suggested with Terrified. Rugna is willing to go places few other filmmakers are, but somehow never feels as if he is being purely exploitative. Here, he creates a story of possession that suggests a deep lore without ever getting didactic. The fascinating premise of a demonic possession set loose is married to Rugna’s astounding knack for delivering images that hit like an axe to the head. One of a mother carrying her child along the roadside is perhaps the most effective scene of pure horror I’ve seen this year, and that’s before we get to the scene with the dog…. that dog… holy shit. Oh, and it has something to say about faith and trust. Not just my favorite movie this year, on the shortlist for a favorite of this (relatively) new decade. We should all send Rugna a fruit basket for being this damn good at being this damn scary.
And there you have it! Let me know what you think on the Legion Discord and see you soon for more monkey business on The Dark Parade. Happy New Year!