You’ve probably been bombarded by scary movie listicles this month, but I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring with a small list of both recent favorites and ones that have haunted me for years. These aren’t in any particular order, but all are available to stream and I’ve included where to find them!
The Nightmare (2015)
This is a pretty gnarly documentary about the terrors of sleep paralysis, from the same director who did Room 237 (the documentary that over-analyzed different interpretations of The Shining). You will definitely get freaked out by the stylish reenactments that are shown as real people describe the terrifying things they see when they wake up and can’t move. There’s some really cheap jump scares (it’s clearly much more interested in scaring the audience then being an actual documentary that empathizes with its subjects), but most of the time it knows to just play off of your dread as the camera pans from the person paralyzed in bed to what they see coming through the door.
WHERE TO WATCH: Netflix
The Void (2016)
If you love 80s movies with absurdly gory practical effects, this is for you. A lot of the creature design (and lack of cgi) is heavily influenced by The Thing, as is the set-up (swapping out the remote Arctic research facility for a backwoods hospital), but there’s enough new stuff here to eventually let it stand on its own. To give you an idea of what you’re in for, the tag line on the poster is “There is a Hell. This is worse.” It definitely descends into absurd levels of satanic and Lovecraftian imagery, with some legit scares, but I do wish they spent as much time on the plot as they did on the awesome effects.
WHERE TO WATCH: Netflix
The Cell (2000)
I was fifteen when this came out, and at the time I thought it was a masterpiece of terror. The grotesque and shocking dream imagery blew my mind and scared the hell out of me. Saying it hasn’t aged very well would be too kind. It wants so desperately to be in the same conversation as Silence of the Lambs or Seven, but both of those movies were expertly directed with much more restraint. The Cell just throws weird image after weird image at you, hoping it will distract from the huge plot problems. Jennifer Lopez plays a supposed psych expert who can enter a serial killer’s mind and convince the little boy inside him to tell her where the last victim is. Setting aside this laughably simplistic set up, her character can’t hold a candle to Clarice Starling. She is frustratingly useless once the movie gets going, and needs to be saved by drunk detective Vince Vaughn (who has no experience going into this extremely dangerous procedure, but wings it and immediately finds the clue they need lol). Lopez and Vaughn aren’t even that bad in this, but they just don’t have enough to work with. It’s a music video trying to be a movie. Still, the haunting image of what happens to that horse will be burned in my brain forever…
WHERE TO WATCH: HBO
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)
Just when I had completely written off zombies, this comes along and proves there’s still more to explore in the genre. It should get your attention when Glenn Close signs up to be in a zombie movie, and you quickly realize what attracted her to the story. Before it turns into 28 Days Later with a twist, the way in is compelling and original. Close’s character runs a lab on an army base that’s studying a group of children who are essentially extremely high-functioning zombies. The main kid is played by Sennia Nanua in a truly fantastic performance, she outshines Close the whole movie. There are some awesome scares, and the tension is ratcheted up just as much as it was in 28 Days Later. But just like 28 Days Later stole its opening from The Walking Dead comic books, you can’t help but think of the 2013 video game The Last of Us the whole time you watch this movie (The set design and lore are so similar it basically makes any movie adaptation of the game seem unnecessary. It might just be unfortunate coincidence though, the book this film is based on was published only a year after the game). Highly recommend checking this one out.
WHERE TO WATCH: Amazon Prime
The Conjuring (2013)
I remember being pretty surprised when this came out to glowing reviews, since the subject matter seemed so well-covered. The third act is a little all over the place, and Patrick Wilson is pretty stiff, but for the most part the critics were right. While the “based on true events” marketing doesn’t mean much these days, it is a fresh twist to be following the paranormal investigators who get called in to check out the haunted house just as equally as the family living there. What I loved about this movie is how methodically it goes about scaring you. James Wan doesn’t rely on startling music cues or quick pans or cheap “closing the medicine cabinet” moments. Instead he lets your dread do most of the work as the camera slowly pans across an empty room. He forces you to look where you don’t want to. Just like in Paranormal Activity, your imagination of what’s coming is more effective than anything a movie can end up showing. Dread will always be scarier than gore. It also helps that you don’t ever really know the rules of this movie. Is it just gonna be weird noises and clapping hands and doors slamming on their own? Or will there suddenly be a creepy woman sitting in that chair? I haven’t seen the sequel or any of the surprising amount of offshoots this movie started, but I doubt they match the effort here. Definitely check it out if you somehow haven’t seen it.
WHERE TO WATCH: HBO
The Neon Demon (2016)
Nicolas Winding Refn can be extremely hit or miss (hit being Drive obviously and miss being the abomination Only God Forgives), but his style-over-substance formula is really perfect for horror. Don’t get me wrong, large chunks of this movie make no sense (Keanu Reeves’ character seems to only exist in a fever dream), but it’s so gorgeous to look at you just don’t care. Elle Fanning is perfectly cast, but the real star of the show is Jena Malone. It’s a slow burn as you follow Fanning’s character’s ascent (descent) into the dangerously jealous world of modeling, but the payoff is a shocker. You’re either gonna love this or hate it, but give it a shot.
WHERE TO WATCH: Amazon Prime
Arachnophobia (1990)
This movie loomed large in my childhood, I can still picture the purple poster: a spider eclipsing the moon overlooking a small town (it was advertised in all of my comic books at the time). But I never gathered up the nerve to actually watch it, since, you know, spiders are scary. Seeing it now, you realize it’s much more of a horror slapstick comedy then anything, but it’s still impossible to view without squirming at all the unabashed close-ups of spiders scurrying about. Jeff Daniels is barely giving any effort here, sleepwalking through the movie as a big city doctor who’s moved to a small town (and who of course is afraid of spiders). I remember all the commercials rightly focused instead on John Goodman’s supporting character, a cocky exterminator with shades of Walter Sobchak. The craziest part about watching it now is realizing how much Spielberg (who was an EP on this) ended up ripping off the first fifteen minutes for Jurassic Park three years later. This movie starts out so much more epically than it has any right to, Frank Marshall (who has no business directing) must have blown half his budget before the story even gets to the small town. It’s a really fun watch.
WHERE TO WATCH: Hulu
Creep (2014)
I still believe that the scariest movie ever made will be a found footage film (not counting all the VR haunted houses we’ll be going to). There is inherent raw terror you feel watching a shaky POV home video that just can’t be matched by conventional movies. You are in the action, and there’s no establishing shots or music to save you. Blair Witch certainly led the way on this, but then the bloated Paranormal Activity franchise kind of killed whatever creativity and goodwill was building with the style. Creep is definitely not the answer (I’m pretty sure I hated this movie), but it is a big step in the right direction. To solve the inevitable problem of why the camera is always rolling (which even Blair Witch didn’t pull off, you really think they’d be recording during the map argument?), the plot here is that Mark Duplass hires a videographer to record his day to day life in a remote cabin before he dies of a brain tumor. Even though we are immediately aware that Duplass seems to be full of shit and is not well, there’s still a pretty freaky moment when the cameraman gets a phone call telling him he isn’t safe there. Both characters make a lot of weird decisions, and the story really drops off after it leaves the woods, but the biggest problem here is actually Duplass himself, who is too recognizable and distracting (a no name actor would have been much better). There are some disturbing moments, a few good jump scares, but it’s mostly all too telegraphed to be shocking. But I do think they were on to something here. And it’s only 77 minutes.
WHERE TO WATCH: Netflix
Green Room (2015)
While this doesn’t quite live up to the gritty, stripped down thrills of Blue Ruin, writer and director Jeremy Saulnier still delivers on a terrifying premise with this follow up. Anton Yelchin’s struggling punk band agrees to play a last minute gig in the middle of nowhere, only to realize the venue is a neo-nazi bar. They make it through their performance mostly without incident, but then see something they shouldn’t, and are held hostage in the green room, seemingly waiting to be executed. The situation is so scary because we know right away it is so completely hopeless, this band is at the mercy of an army of skinheads who will do whatever it takes to impress their leader (Patrick freaking Stewart!). It wisely never falls into the torture porn category, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more shocking and brutally effective gore in a movie. Macon Blair, the star of Blue Ruin, again shines effortlessly with his detached, dead-eyed casualness, even among a cast this stacked. Yelchin and Imogen Poots are also both fantastic, while Stewart never quite owns his role as much as you expect him to. This really is an unpredictable nightmare of a film that is hard to shake, and it somehow unfortunately feels very timely. Inching more into the horror category feels like a natural progression for Saulnier, and at this point I’m just as excited for anything by him as I am by David Robert Mitchell or even Noah Hawley.
WHERE TO WATCH: Amazon Prime
Raw (2016)
This one made headlines when it was reported that people were fainting in the audience during its premiere at TIFF, which is always good for marketing a horror movie. And I can actually believe it this time because cannibalism is almost too disturbing to process (I was so scared to watch Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno, where a group of student activists get kidnapped by a tribe of cannibals in the jungle. That movie was so poorly made throughout, though, that it never ended up being as scary as the premise deserved). There’s definitely some graphic stuff in this to make you queasy, but it doesn’t overly rely on shocking gore (I probably winced the most when our main character is just furiously itching a rash). We follow Justine (played amazingly by Garance Marillier, a breakout star), a vegetarian who heads off to join her older sister at an elite veterinary college in France. This gives writer and director Julia Ducournau an opportunity to have plenty of fun just showing the horrors of college hazing before she gets into the “meat” of the story, and then it is a masterclass in gradual depravity. This could have been so offensive, or worse, forgettable in the wrong hands (like Eli Roth’s), but Ducournau knows exactly when and how to descend Justine further and further into madness. It looks and sounds amazing, and is easily one of my favorite horror movies of the last decade.
WHERE TO WATCH: Netflix
And that’s it! Have any that you think I missed? Thanks for reading and have a happy Halloween! And don’t forget to check out all the scary sequels we’ve covered in the podcast!
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