monster terror horror panic evil insanity apocalypse etc

May 27, 2021 7:11 AM

They say you can define a particular historical moment by its popular monsters. The Best NEW Horror Movies (Trailers)

Included in this compilation are:

00:03 Saw: Spiral
01:40 Antlers
03:47 The Wretched
05:44 A Quiet Place 2
08:07 Freaky
10:45 Wrong Turn
12:55 Sputnik
14:51 Gaia
16:40 The Cleansing Hour
17:44 Willy's Wonderland
19:28 The Reckoning
21:12 Underwater
23:25 The Unholy
25:49 Train to Busan 2: Peninsula
27:35 The Woman in the Window
29:53 What Lies Below
31:54 The Empty Man
33:19 No Escape
35:42 The Grudge
38:29 Fantasy Island
40:48 The New Mutants
43:00 The Mortuary Collection
44:29 The Beach House
46:30 The Vigil
48:13 Brahms: The Boy 2

posted by philip-random (56 comments total)

This is supposed to be about popular monsters but I don't see Elon Musk anywhere on this list.

Also, Willy's Wonderland is some kind of travesty.
posted by deadaluspark at 7:46 AM on May 27, 2021 [11 favorites]

I feel like our current historical moment needs some sort of post-horror movie.

Like maybe something which begins with the monster defeated. It picks up with the survivors attending a funeral for the friend who was eaten. Then the story segues into the difficulties of living a normal life after having experienced a traumatic monster encounter and the characters cope by researching rumors of a second monster which they plan to proactively seek out and defeat before it can threaten them. Before they can put those plans into motion, a completely unrelated natural disaster happens and everyone is separated. A subsequent financial crash forces each party member to abandon their monster-hunting ambitions, and the film ends with a closeup of the second monster shedding a tear.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:54 AM on May 27, 2021 [83 favorites]

I was kind of hoping for a video essay/analysis, but this is just a bunch of trailers.
posted by KChasm at 8:17 AM on May 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

This seems like an ad (with ads).
posted by pompomtom at 8:23 AM on May 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

I view it as a whole bunch of movies I don't need to see but I can have at least a peripheral idea of what they're about. Ideal for cocktail parties ... assuming we'll ever again have cocktail parties.
posted by philip-random at 8:26 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Why can't we have a movie where people hunt down billionaires and forcibly redistribute their wealth?

It could be a whole series of movies, in fact. With one absolutely-no-really-totally-you-bet fictional billionaire per outing.

It would be a bigger hit than FF, mark my words. Get a team together each time, some new folks, some recurring folks. Like a mission impossible thing, every Billionare's got a different impregnable fortress.

C'mon, I'm telling you, this is the pitch of the century. Let's go.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:35 AM on May 27, 2021 [30 favorites]

I don’t love zombie films, but Train to Busan was a very very good example of the genre which absolutely does not need a sequel.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:39 AM on May 27, 2021 [10 favorites]

Why can't we have a movie where people hunt down billionaires and forcibly redistribute their wealth?

Substitute "predatory capitalist" for "billionaire," and this is basically the plot of Leverage.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:43 AM on May 27, 2021 [6 favorites]

Why can't we have a movie where people hunt down billionaires and forcibly redistribute their wealth? It could be a whole series of movies, in fact. With one absolutely-no-really-totally-you-bet fictional billionaire per outing.

We probably can, but that doesn't sound like a horror film. This is a post about horror films.

And I get the point here. I belong to a post-apocalyptic book club, and have noticed something similar - you can tell approximately when a given book was written based on the exact nature of the apocalyptic event in question. Nuclear war? Gotta be a Cold War thing. Environmental collapse? 21st Century, or maybe early 70s. Asteroid? Definitely 60s or 70s. It says something about what people of the time were most afraid of - what they thought was a problem so big it might bring society itself down.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:48 AM on May 27, 2021 [12 favorites]

I don’t love zombie films...

You lost me.

, but Train to Busan was a very very good example of the genre which absolutely does not need a sequel.

You found me again!
posted by gurple at 8:49 AM on May 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

I don’t love zombie films...

nor I. One friend recently opined that the zombie film officially died on Jan-6 when a horde of real life zombies stormed the capitol building -- a reality both more terrifying and banal (and pathetic) than any fiction could ever touch.
posted by philip-random at 8:59 AM on May 27, 2021 [14 favorites]

I am simultaneously surprised by some of the deeper cuts in this list, like The Mortuary Collection, and confused by the inclusion of films that are mediocre to bad. I don't think the person that made this has watched all of these movies. I also think it is really weird not to see things like Promising Young Woman, Possessor, or His House on this list since they were good and had lots of buzz and instead see things like Underwater, Fantasy Island, and New Mutants.

Why can't we have a movie where people hunt down billionaires and forcibly redistribute their wealth?

There are a fair number of those. Just off the top of my head:

Eating Raoul is about a couple that can't get a bank loan to open their business so they start murdering rich swingers and selling their cars.

Ready or Not doesn't have a financial motivation, but it does feature Samara Weaving killing her way through an old-money family that made a deal with the devil for their wealth.

Mayhem features Steven Yeun fighting his way to the top of an office building to take his grievances to management about their poor treatment of employees.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover has social commentary for days followed by, (spoiler warning), the literal eating of a kleptocrat.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 9:01 AM on May 27, 2021 [15 favorites]

Would like to see Chris Rock and Sam Jackson in a revisioning of Se7en or some kind of actual detective story, not another tired Saw spasm.

.
posted by lon_star at 9:04 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: not another tired Saw spasm
posted by elkevelvet at 9:08 AM on May 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks great...
...but I can't even look at it with both eyes...
...YIKE! Or even one eye, turns out...
...oh. It's The Grudge. No wonder."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
"That looks dumb."
posted by Don Pepino at 9:14 AM on May 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

(Wait but in case I've not been clear, thank you for posting. A ton of these look hilarious and fun.)
posted by Don Pepino at 9:17 AM on May 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

I really hate trailer clip compilations on youtube. It's like the worst bottom feeding. At least this one doesn't add a watermark for some dumb website to the trailers. (I do like trailers when it's from the company that is putting it out.)

But back in the beforetimes, in Phoenix at science fiction conventions, there was a huckster named Barry Bard (sadly now passed,) who'd run a panel on Sunday mornings with the latest trailers that he'd get from his contacts in the movie industry. Usually with buttons and posters and tshirts. Sometimes there'd be passes to screenings for the "line people". And Barry reading whatever promo tagline from the films before he pressed play on the vcr. Then we'd watch it, look around at each other and nod our heads and wait for the next one.
posted by Catblack at 9:22 AM on May 27, 2021 [8 favorites]

It just hit me - this compilation has omitted the trailer for the upcoming remake of Candyman.

I wonder if it's not only true that "you can define a particular historical moment by its popular monsters", but also by what stories about those monsters get overlooked.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:26 AM on May 27, 2021 [7 favorites]

Laugh out loud moment at the trailer for the (first impression possibly unfair but I wouldn't bet against it!) extruded whitebread horror product "The Unholy" where someone says eeebilwoman is drawing crowds "from New York, to D.C....every demographic in the world!" It's like an unironic variant of the Blues Brothers' "we've got both kinds of music! Country and western!"
posted by Drastic at 9:46 AM on May 27, 2021 [7 favorites]

define a particular historical moment by its popular monsters

I think that can be true but I'm not sure this batch of trailers really does that for our time right now. Some of these films are fairly old (New Mutants for instance) in terms of completion and release - all were made pre-pandemic. They are also all, to put it euphemistically, of a "certain quality" and some were heavily promoted by their respective distributors (even something like Mortuary Collection had some heavy promotional money behind it) and as was mentioned above, the trailer compiler actually misses more interesting films like Possessor which tells me whoever put this together wasn't interested in that stuff or is simply being a corporate shill (not that there is anything wrong with that - everybody's gotta eat).

Just off the top of my head:

There's also Eat the Rich.

I feel like our current historical moment needs some sort of post-horror movie.

I totally agree with this. I'd love to see something that. The closest film I ever saw to idea is the Koreeda film Distance, about the family members of the cultists who sabotage a water supply and then committed mass suicide. You never see the act itself just the family members trying to make sense of it long after.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:51 AM on May 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

I realized my first comment was negative, so here are some movies from that list that I think *are* good or at least fun. I don't think I'd put any of them on a best list, though. Maaayyybbee The Empty Man, depending on how long my list was.

Freaky
Sputnik
Gaia
The Empty Man
The Mortuary Collection

Willy's Wonderland is okay if you like Nic Cage trash, but it also isn't the best Nic Cage has to offer so I'd watch only if you've already seen Vampire's Kiss, Mom & Dad, Wicker Man, etc.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 10:00 AM on May 27, 2021

How can anyone make fictional horror when we live in a reality where this is a real headline:

Fox, 'Rick & Morty' creator plan a blockchain and NFT-enabled animated series
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:26 AM on May 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

I really hate trailer clip compilations on youtube. It's like...

... going through the garbage can at the beach looking for all of the ice cream wrappers, gluing all those wrappers onto a piece of bristol board then proudly displaying that board in the front window of your house.
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:42 AM on May 27, 2021 [9 favorites]

But back in the beforetimes, in Phoenix at science fiction conventions, there was a huckster named Barry Bard (sadly now passed,) who'd run a panel on Sunday mornings with the latest trailers that he'd get from his contacts in the movie industry.

My second most notable "trailer park" panel memory is from Wonder Con 1998 in Oakland. This panel included "sizzle reel" footage intended for movie theater owners and distributors. Those clips are not approved for all audiences, so when the Disturbing Behavior package rolled, it included a brainwashed high-school student ripping her shirt open, smashing her own head on a mirror and using one of the shards to try to stab James Marsden. The crowd hooted and hollered at the nudity, which caused some slight embarrassment for the panel's host.

My top "trailer park" memory is from a volunteer assignment at San Diego Comic-Con in 2004. I was assigned to sit in a Sunday programming room to work the dimmer switch when movie clips were projected on screen. The programs included:

Jennifer Tilly promoting Seed of Chucky. She was hilariously unhinged and suggestive. She told the attendees that she "strapped on her bosoms for this crowd." She handled the mic and the crowd perfectly.

A video clip of Ray Bradbury promoting the A Sound of Thunder movie, which is a uniquely terrible experience.

Mick Garris discussing the movie version of Steven King's internet novella, Riding The Bullet.

My last assigned panel was two relatively unknown Brits talking about their new zombie comedy movie, Shaun of the Dead.

All of this was enhanced by wearing a headset that allowed me to hear the salty comments and lighting directions of the A/V staff while they ran the room.
posted by JDC8 at 10:42 AM on May 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

"They're targeting cops."

Sips beer. OK, strap on, you a*holes. When will popular media not realize that wearing a badge doesn't make you the good guy.
posted by SPrintF at 10:44 AM on May 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

I would like to see A Quiet Place II.

At a screening.

Or possibly the first matinee on opening day.

But in a crowded theater? As if.
posted by y2karl at 10:44 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think that can be true but I'm not sure this batch of trailers really does that for our time right now. Some of these films are fairly old (New Mutants for instance) in terms of completion and release - all were made pre-pandemic.

Also, like 4 are sequels, there are several remakes and others that were... clearly inspired... by other movies. I haven't seen any of these, other than The Boy II, so my hot takes are based only on how they're being marketed. Which reflects something, if not necessarily the movie itself.

That said, there are some pretty clear through lines, like sort of what I think of as "frontier horror". Where people, sometimes just individuals and sometimes humans as a whole, have just gone too far from civilization and nature gets its revenge. Sometime that's through a literal monster, like Underwater or Gaia seem to be. Wrong Turn fits in with that, but instead of the monster being "other" it's that old Lovecraftian narrative of people who went into nature and lost their humanity, along the lines of The Hills Have Eyes, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Antlers (which was already on my list of movies to watch) could totally be something along those lines, digging up something sealed in a mine is a super on the nose metaphor for going to far looking for knowledge\riches. I can see how these kinds of stories are gonna pop up whenever there's big technological upheaval or non-urban population growth.

Possession\replacement seems to back in vogue too. Looks like there's a couple Pod People style flicks in there, What Lies Below and The Beach House, as well as the obvious demonic influence ones. I think after the last... decade of watching people become radicalized that makes a lot of sense to me. I think a lot of people have had that moment where they woke up and their former friend or family member is suddenly VERY different than they remember.

Anyway, I my totally shot in the dark guess is that post pandemic we're probably going to see a rise in movies about physical corruption and feeling isolated by those changes, like the Cronenberg The Fly. and the sort of classic horror movie monster we're all going to rediscover is going to be parasitic aliens.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:01 AM on May 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

What, no Blood-Sucking Monkeys from West Mifflin, Pennsylvania?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:02 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oh and I just realized that I over looked another possible reason for the demonic possession trend: There's been a resurgence in oral tradition\urban legend type horror, a lot of which center on summoning rituals.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:14 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

One friend recently opined that the zombie film officially died on Jan-6 when a horde of real life zombies stormed the capitol building -- a reality both more terrifying and banal (and pathetic) than any fiction could ever touch.


Funny you mention that, but I remember thinking the exact thing nine months earlier when I saw this photo.

“Braaaaaainnnns!”

“Welp, zombie movies aren’t fiction anymore, I guess!”
posted by darkstar at 11:36 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Watched about 2/3rds of these and The Empty Man is the only one I would whole heartedly recommend. Easily my favorite horror movie of the past year+

Underwater was so so, really more of an action adventure, but worth it for the final 10-15 minutes.
posted by mannequito at 11:38 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

I don't really watch horror movies, but my zeitgeist predictions:

1. More movies where the horror is happening somewhere else: like someone on the other end of the phone is trapped somewhere with a monster and the audience surrogate is trying to talk them through it / console them / looking up escape routes on google maps. Lots of remote screams and frustration about not being there to do anything.

2. More threats that were 100% avoidable except someone was selfish. Maybe the world is invaded by invisible alien creatures who are normally docile but explode in a carnivorous rage when they smell bacon and most people are like "oh, I guess we'll stop cooking bacon" but there will be that one guy who insists on having a huge bacon cookout and the whole neighborhood is suddenly getting their intestines slurped out.

3. More situations where the real monster is institutional apathy. Even though the number of grisly shark deaths keeps climbing and the mayor is telling people that chum makes a great shark repellent while literally pushing children off the pier and into shark infested waters, there's just nothing we can do about it, alright? It's not like anyone can hold him accountable, even if he also ordered public swimming pools to be stocked with sharks and later shot the sheriff in front of the whole town council. I guess we'll just have to wait for him to hopefully be voted out in the next election.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:18 PM on May 27, 2021 [11 favorites]

Wot no Last Night In Soho?
posted by Hogshead at 12:20 PM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

If someone wanted to capture our time, they would need a monster who was the bearer of a message which would have saved us all if we'd listened, but the heros realized that might reduce their income by 5%, so they conspired to kill it and suppress the message.
posted by jamjam at 12:34 PM on May 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

I wonder if it's not only true that "you can define a particular historical moment by its popular monsters", but also by what stories about those monsters get overlooked.

Candyman was almost completely overlooked in 1992 as well. I remember seeing it in a rep cinema, and thinking, "people should be studying this movie in film school." It should have got the kind of attention that Get Out received in 2017.

I'm actually curious about the setting, considering that most of Cabrini-Green isn't there anymore.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:40 PM on May 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

> really hate trailer clip compilations on youtube. It's like the worst bottom feeding. At least this one doesn't add a watermark for some dumb website to the trailers. (I do like trailers when it's from the company that is putting it out.)

I'm the opposite, I feel like a rube whenever someone successfully exposes me to an advertisement, and I feel even weirder about going out of my way to watch them on purpose. No denying the bottom feeding, but at least this way I'm not helping these individual companies by watching their ads their way, not knowing which ones are bastards or not, whereas here I get all these trailers and there's only one bottom-feeder to worry about benefitting, or two counting Google.

There's quite a few of these I didn't even realize had come out. The Underwater movie seemed interesting to me, especially playing Subnautica lately. Saw is the dumbest franchise that I can't help but look-away-from-watching and I'm actually excited to see what new stuff they jammed into their "lore."

"They're targeting cops."
Sips beer. OK, strap on, you a*holes. When will popular media not realize that wearing a badge doesn't make you the good guy.

FWIW, in this instance I do not think it was a "cops are good guys thing" so much as "oh shit, they're targeting cops, and we're cops!" In the context of Saw movies, the Cops aren't good guys either, and one of the main villains is a Cop who kills and frames other cops.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:41 PM on May 27, 2021

I don’t love zombie films, but Train to Busan was a very very good example of the genre which absolutely does not need a sequel.

As it happens, Train to Busan itself is now a sequel as the director made Seoul Station afterward, which is considered a prequel to Train, and is really worth seeing, I mean if you want a zombie flick that's possibly even bleaker and perhaps a more, um, biting social commentary than Train to Busan in terms of class and systemic corruption.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:09 PM on May 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

I think some people are kind of missing the point and being very literal. Like, there are real world horrible things that don't get made into horror movies, because most horror movies aren't about "this is a horrible thing that really happens to people!". A lot of the themes that tie certain eras horror movies together are sideways approaches to a topic. A way to think about it without having to talk about it. Like someone getting cancer isn't a horror movie, it's a tragedy. Someone having to cut off their hand that's been invaded by "evil" summoned by reading a book at their uncle's cabin? That's horror!

That's why I think we're going to see a lot of body horror and parasite horror rather than the obvious stuff about being unable to interact face to face. We've just had a year where a huge number of people realized that their body could betray them. We're all talking about the isolation and societal schisms, so that will have other outlets, but I think this is the trauma and fear that got buried deep after those first few months of last year, the fact that we couldn't trust our bodies not to be sick or infected.

my zeitgeist predictions:

I mean all 3 of those situations are pretty much horror staples already. If those are things you really want to see, I've included some examples.

1 is the newest, but zoom\chat room\live stream horror is a pretty well established sub genre of found footage movies at this point. Unfriended and its sequel are the ones that springs to mind. I'm sure we'll see more of them, but that trend is in motion and seems mostly to be a function that the technology is more common thing than a dealing with the fall out of a pandemic thing. Not to mention it's a good way to get around the "but why don't the teenagers just call the cops or leave?" dilemma and is a good way to have a teen ensemble cast movie that doesn't spend a ton of time at school. The limitation is pretty obvious that putting the audience at too far a distance dulls the impact of any scares.

2 is pretty much every zombie movie. Seriously, there's always THAT guy that got bit and doesn't want to tell. By and large zombies aren't the horrifying part of traditional zombie movie plots as established by the Romero films. The horror is about how people fail each other when faced with zombies. You also see this in a lot of "bad guys fight monsters" movies like From Dusk Til Dawn.

3 is also a good way around the "why don't they just call the cops?" problem. They did call the cops, but the cops didn't believe them or they didn't care or whatever. Lots of slasher franchises in the 80s had this. It also is put in lots of sequels as the set up to why there even is a sequel. I mean, that's a lot of the the Alien franchise right there.
posted by Gygesringtone at 1:28 PM on May 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

I wish there was a way to search these trailers for "A24".
posted by vverse23 at 2:45 PM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'll throw in (spoilery trailer) Escape Room and the forthcoming (spoilery trailer) Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. While the trap/maze horror movie is not new, these movies capture some current flavors (the escape room trend). The first one was just good enough that I wouldn't have minded paying matinee prices to watch it in January 2019.
posted by JDC8 at 2:45 PM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

and most people are like "oh, I guess we'll stop cooking bacon" but there will be that one guy who insists on having a huge bacon cookout and the whole neighborhood is suddenly getting their intestines slurped out.


"Worth it." -- bacon lovers, probably
posted by darkstar at 3:45 PM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

3 is also a good way around the "why don't they just call the cops?" problem.

3 is also just Jaws, to the point that I can't tell if RonButNotStupid is riffing on Jaws or not. The move famously features the mayor being repeatedly warned about increasing shark attacks and potential further deaths and brushing it off because the Fourth of July weekend celebration is too important to the town economy.
posted by star gentle uterus at 4:02 PM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Why can't we have a movie where people hunt down billionaires and forcibly redistribute their wealth?

I can't help but feel this would make a better reality TV series.

For a horror, you'd want a Billionaire that hunts down and kills people in interesting / expensive ways because he can. He's Freddy Krueger with a Patek Phillipe timepiece and there's no institution insufficiently enslaved to capitalism to stop him.

I did google this, and can't find a prior example. But, I mean, there must be one, right?

(assuming it hasn't just been buried in a vault in a basement at the bottom of Trump Tower)
posted by Sparx at 4:40 PM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

Sparx, you're looking for The Most Dangerous Game. That one is from 1932, but there are regular entries in the genre. Usually it's set on somebody's private island so not quite what you're saying, but yes, there are a bunch. TV Tropes link
posted by five toed sloth at 4:50 PM on May 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

Good call, five-toes sloth, but not quite what I was getting at. Most of those you can swap the billionaire for a hunting club and a fence and nothing much changes. Are there any where the hunter's actual killing methods require billionairity? Enemy of the State only replacing the state with the super-rich?
posted by Sparx at 5:09 PM on May 27, 2021

Here's what you do: You edit the trailers and market the movie like it's a home-invasion thriller, with a gang of faceless assassins hunting down our plucky billionaire. But when audiences actually watch it, it turns out that the assassins are the likeable protagonists, and what they're really watching is a heist movie with the murder of a billionaire as the MacGuffin.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:57 PM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

3 is also just Jaws, to the point that I can't tell if RonButNotStupid is riffing on Jaws or not. The move famously features the mayor being repeatedly warned about increasing shark attacks and potential further deaths and brushing it off because the Fourth of July weekend celebration is too important to the town economy.

I was riffing on Jaws because it's already the go-to horror movie for the pandemic and has even turned up in Dominic Cummings' recent testimony about Boris Johnson.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:21 PM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Mayhem features Steven Yeun fighting his way to the top of an office building to take his grievances to management about their poor treatment of employees.

Snowpiercer, but in an office tower?
posted by nubs at 7:47 PM on May 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

I did google this, and can't find a prior example. But, I mean, there must be one, right?

It's more an action movie than horror, but this is literally Hard Target.
posted by hippybear at 8:53 PM on May 27, 2021

Snowpiercer, but in an office tower?

Less abstracted than that, but you're not far off.

Another one I just thought of his High-Rise. Maybe it is a bit of a cheat since it is an adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel?
posted by forbiddencabinet at 9:54 PM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

I mean, wouldn’t you have to be pretty rich to own your own private island?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:02 AM on May 28, 2021

Another “evil rich people” one is 1963’s B-movie Monstrosity (which was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 under its alternate title, The Atomic Brain). Rich elderly lady keeps a live-in mad scientist on retainer, then lures pretty young girls to her mansion with the promise of lucrative jobs so one of them can be the host body for her transplanted brain. Her gold-digger husband is OK with the plan.

There’s also William Castle’s 1959 cult classic House on Haunted Hill, in which millionaire Vincent Price promises five guests (or their heirs) $10K each if they survive the night in his rented haunted mansion. It was remade in 1999. I’m sure there must be other films of the “Old Dark House” genre in which people are offered rich rewards for spending the night someplace that’s supposed to be full of ghosts and stuff.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:18 AM on May 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Another one I just thought of his High-Rise yt .

I loved this adaptation. So smart and cool (Can blaring on the dance floor) and cuttingly satirical, I began to forget it was a horror story ... until it got properly horrifying.
posted by philip-random at 7:19 AM on May 28, 2021

A direct result of bouncing through the compilation to trailers for flicks I hadn't seen or been aware of was to make me watch Willy's Wonderland.

Overall, I wish the crew behind Mandy had instead made it. That hallucinogenic super colorful saturated style would have been a great fit for a story about a supernaturally great janitor cleaning a place despite the best efforts of evil possessed animatronics. The expository scooby gang of woefully ineffective arsonists could have been axed entirely for the superior story of how difficult it is to clean a bathroom when evil forces keep messing things up again.
posted by Drastic at 9:21 AM on May 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

While the trap/maze horror movie is not new, these movies capture some current flavors (the escape room trend).

When the escape room is Taiwan's parliament building...

Get the Hell Out was an absolute riot to watch, literally and figuratively.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:45 AM on May 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Horror has always offered a warped take on the time when it appears.

Some observations from this compilation alone, not the films themselves:

A hefty amount of franchises, sequels, remakes.

More common themes include:
-nature as source of horror, with some trailers pointing to folk horror
-children as lead characters
-social media as venue for terror
-family horror
-aliens (following the centuries-old sf-horror crossover)
-male bodies on display
-race, inc. indigenous people
-religions
-disease

Other themes:
-police
-the end of the world
-space (again w/sf)
-the sea
-zombies (far less than lately)
posted by doctornemo at 2:37 PM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]