A few things to note – you may well see films like mother! (Darren Aronofsky), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos), Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas) and Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo) on some lists – and if I fully considered them horror films, they would be right near the top of this list (at least, the first three). But I erred on the side of not including them here – as they really aren’t pure horror films. Feel free to disagree.
Death Note (Adam Wingard) takes what could have been a good premise, and really screws it up – I cannot believe this is the same director as The Guest and You’re Next. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Paul W.S. Anderson) is more of the same mixture of action and horror, that doesn’t really work for me. Rings (F. Javier Gutierrez) has as its scariest moment, the opening of an umbrella, so that’s not a good sign. The Snowman (Tomas Alfredson) is very nonsensical, which undermines everything about it. The Void (Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski) is dull when it starts, starts to look like it will go somewhere, and then goes wildly wrong. We Are The Flesh (Emiliano Rocha Minter) thinks it is saying something profound about our empty culture – it is not.
The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour) really does try to do a lot – only some of it horror – but none of it really works. Dig Two Graves (Hunter Adams) has style to spare – which helps makes up for the underwritten screenplay, but not too much. Jigsaw (Spierig Brothers) has a couple of nifty kills – but not much else in this limp reboot of one of the biggest horror franchises of the 2000s. XX (Jovanka Vockovic/Annie Clark/Roxanne Benjamin/Karyn Kusama) is an omnibus film that goes one for four in terms of effectiveness.
A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski) has a ton of style, and it takes guts to make something on this scale – I just wish it all came together better. 47 Meters Down (Johannes Roberts) is admirably low-key and realistic shark/scuba diving film for an hour, before it throws it all away with a terrible ending. The Girl with All the Gifts (Colm McCarthy) wants to twist the zombie genre in knots, and only gets part of it right. 1922 (Zak Hilditch) would have been a great, 1 hour adaptation of a Stephen King story – but stretched into 100 minutes, it’s a little thin.
A Dark Song (Liam Gavin) has a great premise, and style to burn – but is perhaps too slow of a burn to be truly great. Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan) is as good an adaptation of a nearly unfilmable Stephen King I can imagine – but they should have jettisoned King’s awful ending. Happy Death Day (Christopher Landon) is a lot of fun, even if I wish it took a few more chances. Life (Daniel Espinosa) is stylish and fun – and also incredibly dumb – but if you can accept that, the fun outweighs the dumb. The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczynska) is such an original – a musical, mermaid, horror, sexual film that you have to admire the sheer balls it took to make it – even if I’m not sure it works. Prevenge (Alice Lowe) has such a brilliant premise – a woman kills because her unborn fetus tells her to that it’s enough that the movie doesn’t quite deliver on its promise, because it does to be kind of nuts and insane. Split (M. Night Shyamalan) is a fine film from Shyamalan – an improvement over his The Visit, which was an improvement over most of his most recent films – but it’s still nowhere near as good as his best work.
Alien: Covenant (Ridley Scott) is a film that I quite like as a stylish horror film, with some delusions of grandeur – but then again, I liked Prometheus, so take my recommendation for whatever its worth. Better Watch Out (Chris Peckover) is a tremendously entertaining, horror comedy about a little psycho tormenting his babysitter, which never crosses the line that would make you feel icky – which is harder than it sounds. Creep 2 (Patrick Brice) makes the original look even better, as this low budget found footage entry is creepy and scary, as it follows its killer into middle age – and sets up the conclusion of the trilogy really well. Hounds of Love (Ben Young) is one of the year’s most disturbing film – about a couple who kidnap and torture a teenage girl, which captures every dirty, grimy detail – without being overly exploitive. Super Dark Times (Kevin Phillips) has tremendous horror movie atmosphere in its story of teenage violence.
Top 10
I wasn’t much of a fan of the original Annabelle – a spin-off of The Conjuring franchise – but this film, a flashback in time to the dusty, Midwest of the 1940s is superior in every way – and has actually grown in my mind since seeing it – it continues to haunt me. Director Sandberg made an excellent feature debut last year with Lights Out – a film that, like Annabelle: Creation maybe clichéd, but is brilliantly directed. Here, the combination of creepy dolls, little girls, a sick wife and Anthony LaPaglia, combined with great technical merits, makes for one of the most satisfying mainstream horror films of the year.
9. The Devil’s Candy (Sean Byrne)
I’ve been waiting for Sean Byrne to make a follow-up to his wonderful The Loved Ones – a demented prom horror film – ever since I saw it at TIFF years ago. While The Devil’s Candy isn’t quite up to that level, it’s still disturbing and horrific, with a great performance by Ethan Embry as a rock loving painter, haunted by visions of dead children. The film’s casting of Pruitt Taylor Vince as a psychopathic child killer is perhaps a little too obvious. Yet, because this film is about a father’s fears about his children – and the imagery that haunts him – the film really did weasel itself into my brain, and wouldn’t leave. Byrne is still a horror filmmaker I want to see more from – I just hope it doesn’t take as long to get his next film.
8. The Blackcoat’s Daughter (Oz Perkins)
This is actually Oz Perkins (son of Anthony) first film, even though it is being released a year later than his second – I am the Pretty Thing That Lived in the House – a film that I thought was technically wonderful, but overall hollow. Here, the brilliant technical merits are still there – and it’s paired with a story that actually works (actually, a couple of interconnected stories). In one, a wonderful Kiernan Shipka is stuck at her boarding school over Christmas break – with only one other girl (wonderfully played by Lucy Boynton). This is the stronger of the pair of stories – although the one with Emma Roberts as a hitchhiker has its moments as well. Perkins clearly knows horror, and he gradually ratchets up the tension here in wonderful ways. I wanted to see more from Perkins even after I was underwhelmed by his second film – no, I really want to see more.
7. Most Beautiful Island (Ana Asensio)
Most Beautiful Island isn’t only kind of a horror film – it is basically an immigrant drama, about the lengths they have to go to survive in America – that has two absolutely terrifying scenes – the second of which comes at the end of a brilliant 30 minute build-up. So, it’s close enough to horror for me. The film was written, directed by and starring Ana Asensio, who does all three wonderfully (well, the movie is perhaps a little under written) – and has made a brilliant calling card here. I won’t spoil the horrifying scenes – but I will never, ever forget them. Truly scary.
6. The Transfiguration (Michael O’Shea)
I have seen countless vampire films over the years – and yet, the ones that do something truly different and original with the genre are few and far between. But Michael O’Shea’s debut feature – about a young teenage African American teen who believes himself to be a vampire, and occasionally goes out “hunting”. His slow, blossoming relationship with a new neighbor makes him at least reconsider his action. The film is more haunting and spooky than out and out scary – it’s also wonderfully ambiguous, and quietly disturbing. O’Shea does – and tries – to do a lot of things, and I’m not quite sure he sticks all of them – but I cannot help but admire the ambition, on such a small budget.
5. The Untamed (Amat Escalante)
How does one describe Amat Escalante’s The Untamed – other than to say it’s a horror film about a tentacle monster that gives women orgasms – but is also capable of inflicting great pain on those it comes in contact with, depending on what they deserve? The film is a strange blend of genres, a critique of macho, homophobic culture, and it pretty much swings for the fences from the first frame to the last. Escalante’s film is inspired by films like Zulawski’s Possession – and even if it doesn’t quite live up to that level, damn if you cannot help but admire it for trying.
4. It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults)
Trey Edward Shults’ second film is a dystopian horror film, set in the middle of the forest, as one family tries to stay alive in their home, in a world ravaged by some sort of disease – and what they decide to do when they meet a second family. His first film – last year’s Krishna – was an emotional horror movie of sorts, about a woman who returns to her family for the first time in years, and cannot quite make a go of it – and so he makes an easy transition to the horror genre, gradually building the suspense, right up until a great finale. True, they sold this film as something it isn’t – there is no big monster, or big jump scares, but the horror here is more insidious, and works its way inside in ways that don’t leave. This is a horror film that will last.
3. It (Andy Muschetti)
The biggest hit of the year in horror is also one of the best films the genre had to offer. It could not have been easy to adapt Stephen King’s magnum opus – splitting it in two was a good decision (although it worries me a little about the second one). Bill Skarsgaard’s Pennywise the Clown will join the ranks of the all-time great movie monster performances – he is creepy in the extreme. Yet, it’s really the non-horror elements that make It such a great film – the kids, and their relationship between them, hits exactly the right spot – and is one of the best films I have seen in getting the tone of King’s novels correct. Sometimes audiences make horrible movies hit – not with It – this is about as good as mainstream horror films get.
2. Raw (Julia Ducournau)
Julia Ducournan’s Raw is the most shocking horror film of the year – a film about a pair of sisters a veterinary school in competition with each other. The film gained legendary status after TIFF 2016, when apparently a member of the audience passed out watching it – and it’s true, the film can be a lot to take as you watch it, with lots of horrific things happening. Yet, the film is far from just shock cinemas – there is a very real undercurrent of sexual awakening and sibling rivalry, and coming of age going through. The brilliant lead performance by Garance Marillier starts out supremely sympathetically – and then challenges us to keep having sympathy for her throughout (one time directly). The film is shocking – but that’s only part of what makes it so great. This is one of the best debuts in horror cinema is years.
1. Get Our (Jordan Peele)
Yes, the most talked about horror film of the year is also the best. Jordan Peele’s debut film knows it horror history down cold – brilliantly playing off of the films of the 1960s and 1970s, while also finding its own voice. The film is scary – but not in the way most horror films are, and not in the same way for every audience. I cannot speak as to how African-American audiences reacted to the film (I can certainly guess), but for “good white liberals” like myself, the film made me cringe and want to hide for the entire runtime – making us question each and every interaction we’ve had for years. Horror films are strange – you never really can tell which ones will last – but in the case of Get Out, I think it’s safe to say we’ve see a genre mainstay – a classic that will be studied as long as the genre is still being watched.
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