The Horror Oscars

October 1, 2018 12:26 PM

Sean Fennessey picks "The Best Scary Movies of Every Year Since 1978’s ‘Halloween’"
posted by Ipsifendus (65 comments total)

The Stranglers beat Let The Right One In?! I call foul.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:34 PM on October 1, 2018 [11 favorites]

Timely! I also noticed that Benito Cereno's yearly list of horror movies on Netflix just got updated for the 2018 Halloween watching season. (previously!)
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:46 PM on October 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

I was pretty much ok - I mean there was wrong choices but not too wrong - until I got to You're Next beating Kill List... at that point I stabbed the list through the heart, decapitated it and stuffed the mouth with holy wafers before burning the whole thing and scattering the ashes in a river. It's the only way to be sure.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:47 PM on October 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Poltergeist over The Thing? I mean, sure, that's totally the kind of decision one could expect from The Oscars. But it's totally wrong.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:49 PM on October 1, 2018 [40 favorites]

The 1980s really stand out in this presentation, when you look not only at the winners, but the quality of runner-ups.
posted by doctornemo at 12:51 PM on October 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

Naturally I have some disagreements.

1981 - oh, that should have been Evil Dead, but ok.
1982 - agreed with It's Raining Florence Henderson .
1987 - that's five really good and distinct films.
2001 - I would have preferred The Devil’s Backbone, a powerful film, especially with its bookend/thematic sequel about fascism, Pan's Labyrinth (which isn't on the list at all?).
2003 - A Tale of Two Sisters is so much better than High Tension, but nobody ever sees it, from what I can tell.
2006 - why bother putting the odious Wicker Man remake there at all?
2007 - [REC] is a better movie than Paranormal Activity, but less influential.
2008 - agreed w/grumpybear69.
2011 - Absentia should be the one. Sorry, fearfulsymmetry .
2013 - Oculus is more more interesting and powerful.
posted by doctornemo at 1:01 PM on October 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Noooo I only just got out of the literary canon thread a few below this and now I have to read and disagree with another list??
posted by chappell, ambrose at 1:03 PM on October 1, 2018 [12 favorites]

I can't say I agree with his picks, but this is a good list of horrors with plenty of movies that I haven't seen. Which will come in handy as I like to watch a lot of horror movies in October.
posted by orange swan at 1:22 PM on October 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

I generally dislike and avoid horror films, but Blair Witch Project? I laughed at that movie at the time. It was hokey. Even back then, I can remember thinking that if you thought the movie was real you were an idiot. Audition is a much better film.
posted by axiom at 1:23 PM on October 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

Annnnd I note that Lost Highway wasn't even nominated in 1997, which makes a mockery of this list.

(Other than that I have surprisingly few complaints, although I'm signing on to fearfulsymmetry and It's Raining Florence Henderson's objections re The Thing and Kill List being robbed of their hypothetical Oscar statues that cry blood or whatever)
posted by chappell, ambrose at 1:24 PM on October 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

1987! Tough choice.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:29 PM on October 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

1979: yes
1980: yes
1981: yes
1982: no poltergeist is good but The Thing should win here
1983: no, The Hunger please

1990: what, not Tremors??
1991: yes

1993: yes
1994: sure, why not?
1995: yes
1996: sure!
1997: ugh, I'm a bit embarrassed to say I found Funny Games really boring, so Event Horizon
1998: works for me
1999: hmmmm...not sure, lots of interesting competition here
2000: you're not afraid of the dark, are you?
2001: haven't seen this but Devil;s Backbone vs. Session 9...difficult!
2002: yeah

2005: oh yes

2008: they let the wrong one in here

2010: seriously?

2015: YES

2017: OH YES
2018: tbd...
posted by supermedusa at 1:29 PM on October 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

1992 should have been Man Bites Dog if only because the subtext of the documentary crew getting sucked into the evil that they are documenting highlights just how corruptible we all are.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:34 PM on October 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

1996: Scream is good and all, sure, but From Dusk Til Dawn is more betterer if only because it doesn't become a scary movie until halfway through and [mrtorgue]THAT IS AWESOME!!!![/mrtorgue]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:41 PM on October 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

I couldn't join my buddies for The Blair Witch project when it came out. They reported to me that it was lame and boring and not scary and anybody who thought that was real was a stooge, but it was a kind of interesting marketing campaign. So that was my frame of reference when I watched it by myself in the middle of the night like 10 years later.

I mean, horror's a bit like comedy in that what works for you depends a lot on your taste and mood, but whatever. That movie scared the shit out of me.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:49 PM on October 1, 2018 [13 favorites]

I generally dislike and avoid horror films, but Blair Witch Project? I laughed at that movie at the time. It was hokey. Even back then, I can remember thinking that if you thought the movie was real you were an idiot.

I imagine that if you went in to BWP expecting a real snuff film you were going to be disappointed (because it wasn't) and if you went in expecting a regular horror film you were going to be disappointed (because it also wasn't) but if you went in with an open mind it could scare the shit out of you (or rather, me), because it really captured a fundamental human fear (being lost) and on top of that managed to add a sense of something uncanny and disquieting but also unquestionably hostile (standouts for me: the wrapped packages with parts of Josh inside, the noises, the house at the end with the handprints, the final shot).

Plus it's well-paced, and the pacing and the strong performances give rise to a steadily increasing sense of panic (probably helped by the innovative method acting / improv / GPS treasurehunt that the actors had to follow).

Finally, this was the first and almost only time that the "found footage" gimmick wasn't terrible. [NB: I thought The Last Broadcast came before BWP but actually it didn't and anyway it's not good. I'll grudgingly admit that Paranormal Activity, REC and Creep are also successful examples of the genre.]
posted by chappell, ambrose at 1:50 PM on October 1, 2018 [13 favorites]

This year marks 40 since John Carpenter’s Halloween, a film that kicked off a wave that redefined the genre,

And 44 years since Black Christmas created the genre and codified the tropes which Halloween dutifully followed, but please continue, my sweet summer child.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:58 PM on October 1, 2018 [7 favorites]

1985: Return of the Living Dead should be the choice. Reanimator (going from memory, I was a teenager,) didn't get a wide release and was a film you discovered on video later. RotLD with an audience at a midnight showing was glorious. And RotLD is the reason zombies love brains. (Also why I love Roky Erickson.)
posted by Catblack at 1:59 PM on October 1, 2018 [9 favorites]

Zombies love brains because brains are delicious. I've said too much.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:34 PM on October 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

mostly I'm posting this to see if other people share my mutation.

I enjoy horror movies. But it'd be rude for me to watch them in theaters, because I find them hilarious. like, at exactly the points where the audience is supposed to be so lost in the raw affective force of the experience that they lose themselves and start screaming, that is precisely when I start thinking about how diabolically clever the writers are at finding ways to make things terrible for the characters, and I start laughing. Like, I enjoyed the hell out of Funny Games, but I know to keep my reactions in check when watching it around friends, because I don't want to give them reasons to think I'm an utter psychopath.

Contrariwise, I want to scream and hide under the seat when watching cringe comedy; I feel like the terrible things that are happening to the characters are happening to me, and I lose my shit altogether.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 3:12 PM on October 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

the first and almost only time that the "found footage" gimmick wasn't terrible.

Bit of an aside, but I'll vouch for Troll Hunter and The Sacrament.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 3:23 PM on October 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

But but but what about Audition and Pontypool? Both innovative and scary, not necessarily winners for their years, but deserving of a mention. Also gutted that we miss out on a lot of 70s classics due to the arbitrary zero selection (The Exorcist? The Omen?).

Great list though, and inspiration will be drawn for viewing parties in the coming month.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 3:32 PM on October 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Okay, so:

• I'm annoyed at how many of the runner-up films aren't good, they're just famous. Amityville Horror, for example, is a franchise that has never, ever produced a good movie, and I say that having seen nearly all of them and having a lingering fondness for them.
• Let's not even get into how impossible it is to go back and watch Children of the Corn after having seen the Terminator films- the notion that Linda "Sarah Connor" Hamilton is even vaguely threatened by these children is simply laughable!)
• Who has time for The Strangers and leaves out Pontypool?!
• It's good to see You're Next get some recognition since it's kind of vanished from the public eye since its release (still holding out hope for that soundtrack release!)

Bit of an aside, but I'll vouch for Troll Hunter and The Sacrament.

While I really enjoy Paranormal Activity (I read a bunch of books by/about Earl and Lorraine Warren as a kid and the moment when I realized that the pattern the haunting was taken directly from those books was a wonderful down-the-back shiver), [REC] is in every single respect the superior film and possibly the greatest found footage horror film ever made. There is absolutely no non-illiteracy-related reason to watch Quarantine, the inferior American remake. Also Troll Hunter (super super fun and also scary at times) and The Sacrament (which is basically Jonestown with the serial numbers filed off, and as bone-chillingly eerie a film as I've seen), and The Last Exorcism, whose ending I'm still kind of undecided on. I'm a total dork for found footage, though, and I'll watch pretty much any horror movie in that format without pretending that it's good versus that I just like it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:39 PM on October 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

High Tension was an embarassment. I'm with Ebert on that one.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:39 PM on October 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm annoyed at how many of the runner-up films aren't good, they're just famous

Thank you for saying this! I didn't see Children Of The Corn until recently. Completely baffled that this is a famous horror movie franchise. "oh my god, there is a COB OF CORN on the windshield who put that there was it the kid who kind of looks old?"

Kick that dumb kid off this list and make some room for Rare Exports and Creep.
posted by queensissy at 4:03 PM on October 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

2011's Tucker & Dale vs. Evil appears to be missing from the list.  But perhaps it's because I'm not generally a fan of horror that I liked it so much.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 4:35 PM on October 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

Earl and Lorraine Warren

It's Ed. Earl Warren was a Chief Justice of SCOTUS. That or I missed a really interesting page in American history.
posted by axiom at 4:36 PM on October 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

(Catblack, I cannot + your comment enough. Another die-hard Return of the Living Dead fan here.)

The reception of Blair Witch is fascinating. When it appeared (1999) I was living and teaching in Louisiana, and people's responses divided almost perfectly by age. My students (teens, early 20s) were exhilarated and terrified by it; my middle aged neighbors and colleagues thought it a snooze. I suspected it was a question of relative familiarity with horror tropes, as well as the younger folks' greater interest and investment in the web marketing campaign.

Since then I've wondered if the generational gap (if my observations had merit) was based on geographical experience. The older people were more likely to have spent time in rural areas, and hence were less likely to be panicked by having to hike, whereas the younger ones were more immersed in urban and suburban life. Maybe.
posted by doctornemo at 5:00 PM on October 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

It's Ed. Earl Warren was a Chief Justice of SCOTUS. That or I missed a really interesting page in American history.

I've definitely heard Earl Warren described as a demon, so I'm labeling this one "believable".
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:02 PM on October 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh my god, why is the 2006 Wicker Man anywhere near even the runners-up, somebody get the torches.
posted by Sequence at 5:05 PM on October 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's there because of the bees.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:06 PM on October 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

A word about Cabin In The Woods.

Joss Whedon's smug, smarmy style has always rubbed me the wrong way. Simply put, Cabin In The Woods pissed me off, and I would be pleased if Whedon never worked again. My vote for 2012 would go to Don Coscarelli's John Dies At The End, if only as a consolation prize for Phantasm having had the bad luck to come out the same year as Alien.
posted by KHAAAN! at 5:10 PM on October 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

Tucker and Dale rules because every bad thing that happens is because of people thinking they're in a horror movie. It's ninety minutes of laughing at "well, if I was in a horror movie, here's what I'd do" and it's so goddamned fun and good.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:19 PM on October 1, 2018 [7 favorites]

Timely! I also noticed that Benito Cereno's yearly list of horror movies on Netflix just got updated for the 2018 Halloween watching season.

Teeth is on Netflix. So apropos for this current moment in the news cycle that it hurts.
posted by Anonymous at 5:25 PM on October 1, 2018

Oh hey Benito Cereno doesn't mention it but the BBC series Dead Set, about a zombie apocalypse happing outside the Big Brother house, is on Netflix, and it's terrific.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:06 PM on October 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Scary is good, but I feel like we never spend enough time talking about all the other great things horror movies can be: fun, spooky, funny, awkward, cheaply-made, forgettable, etc.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 6:27 PM on October 1, 2018

If you'd asked me this morning I would have said I'm not really into either serious literature or horror movies. But while I came up mostly blank on the serious literature list a few posts ago I had seen almost all of the winners and usually one or two of the runners up.

It helps I guess that many entries (They Live, Shaun of the Dead, even Let the Right One In) I wouldn't consider horror.

But I even have one new entry though: Andrew Leman's The Call of Cthulhu, from 2005, done silent and black and white and German expressionism style in a bit of brilliant inspiration. The metaphysical horror of camera angles that are acute when they should be obtuse!
posted by mark k at 7:28 PM on October 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

Doctornemo, the urban/rural experience was also the conclusion my 20-year-old friends and I ended up settling on when we saw the Blair Witch Project and were completely unimpressed. We'd grown up with hiking, hunting, canoeing, or otherwise just traipsing around in remoter woods than that; had plenty of experience with being lost for a little bit until you're found again, hearing odd noises or finding dumb junk and no big deal.

So I can see why, if that stuff is uncanny to a person's experience, it would feel creepy. But we just couldn't get into it at all.

In fact, now that people are bringing up Tucker and Dave that's a really good analogy for what Blair Witch looks like to rednecks.
posted by traveler_ at 7:55 PM on October 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

if only as a consolation prize for Phantasm having had the bad luck to come out the same year as Alien.

They played a good game, BOOOOOOOY.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:52 PM on October 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

I do like the fact that they listed the "runners-up" so you could put the "winners" in context.

The list reinforces my belief that 21st-century horror movies are mostly terrible with a few exceptions.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:03 PM on October 1, 2018

Amityville Horror, for example, is a franchise that has never, ever produced a good movie, and I say that having seen nearly all of them and having a lingering fondness for them.

I have to agree that they've never produced a good movie per se, and have produced rather a lot of bad ones - is it the fourth entry where the source of all the evil turns out to be an old lamp in the attic which tries to strangle someone with a power cord?

However, after having spent most of my life disdaining the franchise, I somewhat recently watched the first two and found that the the second one actually has a lot going for it, if you have the stomach for movies with no likable characters whatsoever. It doubles down on the generational conflict of the first one, perfectly casting Burt Young as a racist, violent Archie Bunker type trying to rule his family with an iron fist as the country crumbles around him. Many of the effects are laughable, but the overall sense of dread is pretty effective in a sort of seventies-era sleazy, exploitative way - it was made in 1982, but it has a Last House of the Left / Straw Dogs flavor to it, right down to the retrograde, abominable politics.

Back to the list, I'd say The Others is a notable miss for 2001. I'm a little confused by what the rubric is for inclusion in this list, and also why it includes Piranha 3DD.
posted by whir at 10:22 PM on October 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

The list reinforces my belief that 21st-century horror movies are mostly terrible with a few exceptions.

To be fair, horror movies of every decade have been mostly terrible with a few exceptions. But man! I actually think they picked great stuff for the 21st century. The Witch is my favorite movie ever, Get Out rules, and honestly most of those picks are pretty solid. That said, Drag Me To Hell - I had loads of fun seeing in the theater at the time, but I'm weirded out by the ethnic tropes when I think about it today. And It Follows has some really solid moments, but I feel like it sort of loses the pace about halfway through.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:38 AM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Blair Witch; My wife saw it in the theater and liked it, thought it was intense and innovative. I don't mind horror movies, but rarely ever find them scary. We watched it at home and I thought it was pretty good until the end, then it completely lost me. But she said it wasn't the same experience at all as seeing it in the theater, and her opinion of it dropped.
posted by bongo_x at 12:56 AM on October 2, 2018

Re: Phantasm...I love that the Tall Man was played by an actor named Angus Scrimm, because his actual name would have worked just as well for the character.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:05 AM on October 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

There is absolutely no non-illiteracy-related reason to watch Quarantine, the inferior American remake

I much prefer the simple super-rabies explanation of Quarantine over the demon possession of REC, but that's more personal preference than anything. Despite getting almost a shot-for-shot copy, the US remake just didn't have the same spark as the original, though it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

Not having been raised religious though, just about any horror plot that revolves around angels and demons and what not just doesn't have much resonance with me. With werewolves and zombies nobody expects me to treat them with reverence, but religious horror films always seem to have a melodramatic/maudlin scene about God and spirituality that I find off-putting and hokey (and not fun hokey).
posted by Panjandrum at 2:02 AM on October 2, 2018

The list reinforces my belief that 21st-century horror movies are mostly terrible with a few exceptions.

To be fair, horror movies of every decade have been mostly terrible with a few exceptions.

Well, clearly we have different taste and different criteria for what makes a good movie?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:32 AM on October 2, 2018

Gui da gui is a terrific Sammo Hung kung fu horror comedy from 1980. I think it definitely deserves to at least be a runner-up, although it's so different from The Shining that it's difficult to compare. It's got jumping vampires, possession, and battling magicians. I don't know whether Sam Raimi saw this film, but I feel like it has the same balance of horror and comedy as Evil Dead II.

For 1989, I would have chosen Warlock over any of those titles on the list. For 1990, Hardware, or at least Jacob's Ladder rather than their choices. For 1996, Bad Moon. The effects are uneven in that one, to put it mildly, but it's a unique film and IMO the scariest werewolf movie ever made. For 2009, I'd pick Daybreakers. I think that's a clever film that holds up very well to repeated viewings. I keep rewatching it and liking it more.
posted by heatvision at 3:20 AM on October 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

The list reinforces my belief that 21st-century horror movies are mostly terrible with a few exceptions.

I'll sort of echo shapes that the high points are just about as good. What the 90s and even moreso 80s had that nowadays doesn't was a solid parade of mostly-effective cheap crap. We have our equivalents of Alien and The Thing, but not the equivalents of Motel Hell and CHUD and suchlike.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:29 AM on October 2, 2018

Important List Of Things Left Off Even The Runners-Up Until I Get Bored With It:

1979: Prophecy
1980: Alligator, Humanoids from the Deep, Motel Hell, Schizoid
1981: The Entity, Evilspeak, Omen 3, Wolfen
1982: Basket Case, The Boogens, Beast Within, Humongous, Q
1983: The Keep, Sleepaway Camp
1984: CHUD
1985: Lifeforce, The Stuff, Warning Sign
1986: Aliens isn't horror, but Chopping Mall / Killbots, Invaders from Mars
1987: Angel Heart, The Gate
1988: The Blob, Lair of the White Worm
1989: CHUD 2, Exorcist 3
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:47 AM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

> Pope Guilty:
While I really enjoy Paranormal Activity (I read a bunch of books by/about Earl and Lorraine Warren as a kid and the moment when I realized that the pattern the haunting was taken directly from those books was a wonderful down-the-back shiver), [REC] is in every single respect the superior film and possibly the greatest found footage horror film ever made. There is absolutely no non-illiteracy-related reason to watch Quarantine, the inferior American remake. Also Troll Hunter (super super fun and also scary at times) and The Sacrament (which is basically Jonestown with the serial numbers filed off, and as bone-chillingly eerie a film as I've seen), and The Last Exorcism, whose ending I'm still kind of undecided on. I'm a total dork for found footage, though, and I'll watch pretty much any horror movie in that format without pretending that it's good versus that I just like it."

I cringed SO hard when they remade [REC] with a sound track and stingers. Troll Hunter was a wonderful surprise.
posted by Samizdata at 4:32 AM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

> GCU Sweet and Full of Grace:
"Important List Of Things Left Off Even The Runners-Up Until I Get Bored With It:

1979: Prophecy
1980: Alligator, Humanoids from the Deep, Motel Hell, Schizoid
1981: The Entity, Evilspeak, Omen 3, Wolfen
1982: Basket Case, The Boogens, Beast Within, Humongous, Q
1983: The Keep, Sleepaway Camp
1984: CHUD
1985: Lifeforce, The Stuff, Warning Sign
1986: Aliens isn't horror, but Chopping Mall / Killbots, Invaders from Mars
1987: Angel Heart, The Gate
1988: The Blob, Lair of the White Worm
1989: CHUD 2, Exorcist 3"

It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters.
posted by Samizdata at 4:33 AM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

BTW, if any of you are on Letterboxd: There's a fun listmaking/movie-watching event that was started a few years ago called Hooptober.*

It's a yearly challenge to watch 31 horror movies (preferably during October) while also satisfying an ever-growing series of scavenger hunt-style conditions, e.g. "Watch 6 films from before 1970", "Watch 10 films that are celebrating their 10th/20th/30th/etc anniversary this year," or "Watch at least 2 movies directed by women." Which makes it a great way to introduce a bit of variety and cultural relevance to your horror viewing. Here's this year's Hooptober rules, as posted by Letterboxd user cinemonster, the original creator of the event.

*It's called that because it started as an attempt to watch Tobe Hooper's whole filmography before it went a bit out of control.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:04 AM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's a shame that there can be only one winner from each year. Evil Dead 2 deserves top billing in 1987, but Near Dark was a damn good movie.
posted by vverse23 at 8:20 AM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Not even a mention of Jacob's Ladder on the list? That's a major oversight.
posted by Edgewise at 8:58 AM on October 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

To be fair, horror movies of every decade have been mostly terrible with a few exceptions.

Well, clearly we have different taste and different criteria for what makes a good movie?

Don't get me wrong, I love horror movies more than anything else. I pretty much exclusively watch cult horror movies. But for every super cool movie, or even for every so-bad-it's-good movie, there are dozens and dozens of incredibly boring, uninteresting movies that just aren't fun to watch no matter how much you want to like them. It's just that nobody ever remembers them, or how many just-plain-bad horror movies came out in a given year.

In other words, I think we only ever remember the absolute trashiest/cheapest/weirdest movies and the absolute best. It's that stuff in the middle that blows, and I think that's actually most of what's out there.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:17 PM on October 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

(As a rule of thumb, I count a movie as just-plain-bad if by the end feel like I want my 90 minutes back. So many bad nights have started with "oh, never heard of this, let's check it out." There's a reason we'd never heard of it. It was meant to be forgotten in the mists of time, until we unwittingly uttered a name that hadn't been spoken in ages and unleashed a boring menace upon ourselves.)
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:29 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Blair Witch; My wife saw it in the theater and liked it, thought it was intense and innovative. I don't mind horror movies, but rarely ever find them scary. We watched it at home and I thought it was pretty good until the end, then it completely lost me. But she said it wasn't the same experience at all as seeing it in the theater, and her opinion of it dropped.


Fascinating. I had the inverse reaction: hated it in the theater; loved it on home video.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 1:20 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Where's Francis Ford Coppola's Academy Award–winning box office hit Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)? *snort*

Seriously, though, this reviewer's list underrates vampire movies (or at least overrates the drive-in splattery ones like John Carpenter's Vampires, 30 Days of Night, From Dusk Til Dawn). Recognizing Let The Right One In as 2008's best horror movie is simply egregious, while Kathyrn Bigelow's Near Dark (1987) and Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) arguably faced stiff competition. Otherwise, there are too many outright omissions, e.g. Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995), E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire (2000), Park Chan-wook's Thirst (2009), Neil Jordan's Byzantium (2012), and Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive (2014—a strong year for bloodsuckers, admittedly).

On the werewolf side, where's Ginger Snaps (2000)?
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:44 PM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

In other words, I think we only ever remember the absolute trashiest/cheapest/weirdest movies and the absolute best. It's that stuff in the middle that blows, and I think that's actually most of what's out there.

That's a fair point, and I guess I should have been more specific in my original comment. In my opinion, even the absolute best horror movies of the past 18 years aren't very good.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:06 PM on October 2, 2018

Well now I really am curious to know where your tastes lie. I almost always prefer stuff from the 60s-80s, but I've absolutely loved some newish movies, too. I think some of them (like The Witch and Black Swan) are good movies in their own right, not just as genre movies.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:42 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Black Swan was good, but it was an anomaly, a throwback. It reads like a movie of a previous generation. It's retro-giallo, and I'm amazed it got the funding to get produced in today's climate.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:35 PM on October 2, 2018

And even then? It was good but not great. I'll watch it if it's on late at night, but I've never sought it out.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:39 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I Saw The Devil was a runner-up to Black Swan? Pfui, not even close. BS has a big director, big stars, but it's not really horror. It's an art movie. IStD will have your butt walking you off your couch to go hide in the bedroom under the covers until the credits roll. IMO, it's the perfect blend of spattercore with a nicely intricate plot. Love it, love it, love it.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 6:49 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

OK, listen. You guys aren't wrong. The Thing is really great, and is the best horror movie of that year.

As someone who has just seen it for the first time: Poltergeist is really good you guys. Plus this is the Oscars. You don't think they would give the movie to the *cough* Spielberg *cough* directed film?
posted by graventy at 1:19 PM on October 3, 2018

IStD will have your butt walking you off your couch to go hide in the bedroom under the covers until the credits roll. IMO, it's the perfect blend of spattercore with a nicely intricate plot. Love it, love it, love it.

I also loved I Saw the Devil. I would highly recommend, however, that you don't watch it too close to bedtime. Even I found it deeply disturbing, and I love horror/revenge flicks.
posted by holborne at 1:24 PM on October 3, 2018 [2 favorites]