Top 25 Recent Horror Movies You Haven't Seen: The Top 5

5. The Signal (2007)

A story told in three parts by three different writer/directors, The Signal follows three characters trapped in a world gone mad. Phones, TVs and radios have all begun transmitting a signal that, if stared at or listened to for too long, infects the viewer/listener with delusions and homicidal rage. The first "transmission" (as each of the film's acts are titled) concerns a young woman escaping from her abusive husband during the initial outbreak, and the beginning of her journey to meet her secret boyfriend at the train station. The second transmission involves the husband's pursuit of his wife, and provides the viewer with perspective on what it's like to see through the eyes of the infected. The final transmission belongs to the boyfriend, who is also looking for the wife so that he can rescue her. The film is strong overall, but really shines in the middle act which manages to be deeply sinister and darkly hilarious at the same time. The cast is made up of unknowns, but they do a great job with the material. Bonus: the extras on the blu-ray/DVD include three cool short films set in various locations as the signal outbreak begins (a TV news studio, a family on a road trip, and in a Best Buy).




4. Ginger Snaps (2000)

The werewolf-as-metaphor-for-puberty angle hasn't really been used any better than in the intelligent Canadian indie Ginger Snaps. Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle (both best known for this movie, actually) play a pair of Goth sisters in a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood whose idea of fun includes taking detailed photos of fake suicides and guessing how the popular kids at school are going to die. Both are also late to begin getting their periods (at ages 16 and 15), a fact which their mother (Mimi Rogers, simply amazing in a role as a mom so polite and sincere that it scares the girls more than the werewolf does) takes way too much interest in. But then the older sister, Ginger (Isabelle), is attacked by a werewolf, and her body begins to change. She gets her period, starts craving the popular boys, and hair starts to grow in places where there was no hair before. The younger sister, Bridgette (Perkins), suspects her sister is becoming a werewolf, and seeks assistance from the only other person who saw the werewolf that attacked Ginger: the local drug dealer. The film has a lot of fun playing with the puberty metaphor, especially in a scene with the school nurse that is the comedic highlight of the film. As Ginger's changes begin to intensify, the comedy starts to fade away and gets replaced by some genuine scares. As an indie production, the werewolf effects are not fantastic. But they are decent enough to not be too distracting, and the clever script makes up for the film's budget limitations.



Honorable Mention goes to the first of Ginger Snap's direct-to-DVD sequels, Ginger Snaps: Unleashed. (NOTE: Spoilers for the original film ahead) Unleashed picks up after the original film, and follows Bridgette as she treats herself with doses of Monkshood  (aka wolfsbane) to keep from transforming into a werewolf. She is also being haunted by visions of Ginger, who acts as a visualization of Bridgette's conscience. Bridgette accidentally overdoes and ends up in a government rehab facility (I'm sure there's a Canadian healthcare system joke in here somewhere), cut off from her cure. While not as good as the original, Unleashed is still a very clever movie and a worthy follow-up. And extra points for going darker with its content, including a really disturbing supporting character.



The direct-to-DVD prequel, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, can be skipped. While not terrible (it's the best-looking of the three), it is basically just the original Ginger Snaps set a hundred years in the past, but less clever and entirely unnecessary.


3. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

The first film from director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness, 50/50) was shelved before its scheduled 2006 theatrical debut, and has yet to receive any kind of release in the US (it's available as a region-free UK blu-ray, or can easily be torrented if you're into that kind of thing). A perfectly cast, and impossibly gorgeous, Amber Heard (Drive Angry, The Rum Diary) stars as the film's titular character. Mandy is the virginal object of desire for seemingly every guy in school, yet is extremely shy and self-conscious. She grew up an orphan, had few friends, and has only recently blossomed into womanhood. She seems uncertain how to deal with all the attention she's suddenly getting. Hesitantly accepting an invitation to a remote house party, she finds herself with a group of "friends" that she doesn't know very well. In not much of a plot surprise, teens begin to die off at the hands of a killer who is obsessed with Mandy.

Pictured: worth killing for.

It quickly becomes clear why the studios balked at releasing this film. The movie is simply too damn good, which makes it somewhat unmarketable. It's too artfully done to be a true horror movie, but too disturbing and violent to please the art house crowd. It's the rare slasher movie that is well written, well acted, and very well directed. The teenagers are not stereotypes, but fleshed-out characters with all the simultaneous arrogance, self-consciousness, intelligence and naivety that real teenagers have. Also working to the film's advantage is the reveal of the killer during the second act rather than the third. This allows the film to also develop the killer's story and motivations. Which is not to say that there isn't also a disturbing third act twist, of which there are several. Heard does a good job as the audience's quiet cypher, observing those around her and trying to determine whether their intentions with her are friendly or selfish. The rest of the cast is equally good, with Whitney Able (Monsters) giving the film's best performance in the "shallow head cheerleader"-type role and adding several painful layers of insecurity and sadness to what is usually a cliche. Able also gets the movie's best-looking sequence, as she is pursued by a car through a large hayfield. Earlier I said that Rogue was the second best looking movie on this list (after #1). While that is true, I had to put a lot of thought into whether Rogue or Mandy Lane looked better, because Mandy Lane is a beautiful-looking movie. Treat your eyes to this movie, because everything on screen looks amazing.

Left: Exhibit A. Right: Exhibit B.

2. Session 9 (2001)

Brad Anderson's second entry on the list coasts almost exclusively on the intensely-creepy atmosphere of its setting: the real-life Danvers State Hospital, an abandoned, decaying psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts (which throughout history has also been known as State Lunatic Hospital At Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, and The Danvers State Insane Asylum). The film is ostensibly about a small hazmat team brought in to remove asbestos from the hospital in preparation for the hospital's sale and subsequent renovation. But that's just a setup to get a bunch of guys in white hooded suits to walk around inside a dark, terrifying building (did I mention that they filmed in the real hospital, the one where the pre-frontal labotomy was first developed? I did? Good)(oh, and that the set dressing was 95% made up of real stuff the crew found lying around in the hospital? I didn't? Well now you know.) Anderson milks the location for every scare it's worth, including a nightmare-inducing walk through the dark underground tunnels that connect the various wings of the hospital. There are some plot twists as each of the characters are overcome with either fear, paranoia or plain ol' madness. But again, the building itself is the main character, and it is a truly unsettling place (Fun fact: The hospital was renovated and turned into an apartment complex a few years after the movie was filmed. Then a year later the apartments burned down under what was described as "mysterious circumstances" in the event's official report.)




1. Stake Land (2010)

Have you ever wanted Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) to make a post-apocalyptic vampire movie? If so, Stake Land is the closest you're likely to get (though Malick does tend to make weird decisions, so you never know for sure).  Stake Land follows the enigmatic Mister (Nick Damici, who co-wrote the script with director Jim Mickle) as he leads newly-orphaned Martin (Gossip Girl's Connor Paulo) as they travel across a country that has been destroyed by a vampire plague. They journey upwards through the ruins of America towards the mythical New Eden, a town in Canada rumored to be a safe harbor where humanity is starting over. While technically vampires, the creatures mostly serve the same purpose as zombies. They are an ever-present threat, but the biggest challenge is the day-to-day survival in a world where society has collapsed. Lack of food or shelter is just as dangerous as vampires, and other surviving humans may not have the noblest of intentions either. Mister and Martin pick up a few strays along the way, including a nun (Kelly McGillis, nearly unrecognizable from her Top Gun days) and a pregnant southern belle (modern scream queen Danielle Harris). The movie plays like The Road, as the makeshift family moves from one temporary shelter to the next on their long, slow trek towards hope. Along the way they encounter small communities of survivors, both benevolent and hostile. But the characters never stop for long. This is a movie about constantly journeying onwards.

That's exactly how I think Canada actually looks.

The film's cinematography is breathtaking. Mickle worked diligently to scout locations that would give his vision of a ruined society an authentic punch. Abandoned factories, collapsed farmhouses, overgrown highways and dead forests do wonders to convey the sense of complete isolation from the living. The gore is vivid when it needs to be, but not excessive. Stake Land is a gorgeous, intelligent, scary and desperate film.

Top 25 Recent Horror Movies You Haven't Seen: 6 to 10

10. Below (2002)

A tense, action-packed thriller about a possibly haunted submarine in WWII. Director David Twohy (Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick), working from a project initially developed by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream), finds an interesting balance between the underwater WWII action of U-571 and the weird happenings of a classic haunted house movie. Olivia Williams (Rushmore, The Sixth Sense) stars as a British nurse whose hospital ship has been sunk by a torpedo strike. She is rescued by an America submarine captained by Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek, I, Robot), and quickly befriends crewman Matthew Davies (Blue Crush). When strange events start to occur onboard, Williams and Davies begin to suspect that Greenwood, his imposing first mate Holt McCallany (Fight Club), and mousey boat chief Scott Foley (TV's Felicity and The Unit) are keeping a secret from the rest of the crew. The story's biggest strength is that there are practical explanations for everything strange that occurs (the ship is damaged, the air is becoming dangerously contaminated by hydrogen, and they can't surface because they're being stalked by a German cruiser). But when the number of events start to add up, it becomes harder and harder to see it as a coincidence, even if there are practical explanations. There's also a funny supporting turn by Zach Galifianakis as another crewmember who loves telling ghost stories and refuses to elaborate when he uses big words. The movie makes its point too obvious during a small speech at the end, but otherwise it works well as both a war movie and a haunted house mystery.



9. King of the Ants (2003)

B-movie master Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Robot Jox, Space Truckers) directs this disturbing psychological thriller about a young man (relative unknown Chris McKenna) who is hired to kill accountant Ron Livingston (Office Space) by Daniel Baldwin (Vampire$) and a shockingly intimidating George Wendt (Norm!). When he goes to collect his payment he is instead locked in a toolshed and tortured for weeks, going somewhat crazy in the process and retreating into fantasies/hallucinations of Livingston's widow (former MTV VJ and b-movie queen Kari Wuhrer). When he finally gets free, he seeks out the mission where Wuhrer works. Not knowing that he killed her husband, Wuhrer nurses McKenna back to health, and he slowly starts to begin a new life with her. But he also still dreams of revenge against Baldwin and Wendt. And it's becoming harder and harder to hide the truth from Wuhrer about who he really is.

Gordon and screenwriter Charlie Higson (who adapted from his own novel) maintain a very delicate balance with their lead character, making him seem sympathetic despite the fact that he murders a man and then moves in with the victim's wife. McKenna's performance is uncomfortably good, playing the character as someone who is trying really hard to fight off his own madness without letting those around him know that he is doing so.



Oh, and the trailer is terrible. It tries to make the film look like standard revenge-thriller stuff. The actual movie is more quiet and subtly disturbing, with only sudden bursts of horrific violence.

8. Rogue (2007)

Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) wrote and directed this incredibly gorgeous giant crocodile movie that's not nearly as stupid as the term "giant crocodile movie" would imply. A sightseeing cruise through the Australian outback is interrupted when a big-ass crocodile gets territorial and sinks the boat, stranding the tourists (including Alias' Michael Vartan and a pre-Alice in Wonderland Mia Wasikowska) on a small island in the middle of a tidal river. The boat's captain (one of my all-time cinematic crushes, Radha Mitchell, in a rare role where she can actually use her real Australian accent) tries to hold the group together. A pre-fame Sam Worthington (you know who he is, he starred in the most successful movie of all time which you, statistically speaking, saw 4 times) is also there as Mitchell's ex-boyfriend who may be the person most capable of getting everyone off the island alive. The real strength of the movie is in how everything is dealt with rationally. The crocodile is not a bloodthirsty monster, just a big wild animal that doesn't want things encroaching on its turf. The humans' plans are well thought out, and the hysterics are kept to a minimum. And I really can't say enough about how good the movie looks. Of all the movies that are on this list, only #1 looks better. Rogue's first act could easily serve double-duty as a commercial for Australia's Department of Tourism.

I will take any excuse at all to post a picture of this woman.

7. The Films of Christopher Smith

OK, I'm cheating here and shoving 3 movies into one ranking. Christopher Smith is a British writer/director that has been putting out good horror/thrillers for a several years and has yet to achieve breakout success.

In his first film, Creep (2004), a psychotic figure stalks terrified commuter Franka Potente (Run Lola Run, The Bourne Identity) through the underground labyrinth of London's subway system. The film is dark, tense, and relentless. It may not have much depth, but it doesn't let up long enough for you to really notice.

His second film is the slasher comedy Severance (2006), which concerns a group of white-collar corporate employees getting picked off one by one while on a team-building retreat in the woods. There's not much suspense to this one, but it is very funny and features an appropriately gratuitous amount of gore. The film has a decent cult following in the UK, but the US horror fanboys haven't really embraced it yet. They should.

Weirdly, Smith's third movie, Triangle (2009), has lately started to get some attention on sci-fi and horror blogs (and showing up on a few lists of underseen horror movies that the respectable movie blogs always publish around Halloween) despite no one noticing its initial release two years ago. Melissa George (30 Days of Night, The Amityville Horror) stars as a woman out with her friends on a yachting trip in the Bermuda Triangle. When a storm overturns their boat, they drift in the open ocean until they encounter a cruise ship that appears to be abandoned. But the truth is far crazier, and the movie is less of the "haunted ship" variety and closer to an episode of The Twilight Zone, though still with plenty of creeping dread and brutal violence. The movie's central conceit is one that I won't give away, but does lead to the most amazing shot (both in content and in concept) of a pile of corpses that I've ever seen. I felt compelled to include Creep and Severence in this entry, because both are quite good. But if you have to pick just one of Smith's films to watch, pick Triangle.



A quick Honorable Mention goes to Smith's fourth, and most recent, film Black Death (2010). It's not a horror film, but still has some effectively creepy sequences. A monk in the Middle Ages joins a group of knights who are sent by the Catholic church to investigate why a remote village has not suffered even a single death from the bubonic plague. Plus there are rumors that the dead have been returning from the grave. Despite that last line, the movie is actually just a medieval thriller. Sean Bean stars and basically just plays his Games of Thrones character (it's kinda how he plays every role, really).

6. Feast (2005)

The third, and last, movie produced by Project Greenlight, Feast is simultaneously the project's most commercial and daring film. The setup is a classic cliche: group of strangers trapped in a small remote building (a roadside bar, in this instance) and being terrorized by the monsters outside. But Feast is self-aware, and uses any opportunity it can to flip genre conventions on their head. Being a child or the film's Hero in no way guarantee survival. Each character is introduced with a title card that summarizes their character type and gives predictions on their survival, with mostly inaccurate results. The title cards also score the film's biggest laugh with the title card for Jason Mewes (the "Jay" of "Jay and Silent Bob" infamy), in a cameo as himself.  The movie goes enjoyably overboard with its special effects and gore (all classic practical effects, too, with only a single CGI effect in the whole film that wouldn't even be noticeable unless you listened to the director's commentary and knew where to look). The film's pace is fast, the viscera is extreme, and the cast of mostly character- and TV- actors is uniformly solid. Judah Friedlander (30 Rock) and Jenny Wade (Fox's underrated and prematurely cancelled cop comedy The Good Guys) give the movie's best comedic performances, while the usually-terrible Krista Allen (8 Emmanuelle movies) makes a surprisingly good badass in the film's latter half.

Top 25 Recent Horror Movies You Haven't Seen: 11 to 15

15. Pontypool (2008)

Character actor Stephen McHattie (2012, Watchmen) is outstanding in a rare lead performance as a shock jock trapped inside his radio station as an epidemic breaks out in the outside world. The movie has a lot of ambition, and puts a unique twist on the classic disease/zombie outbreak genre. My biggest gripe is that it tries to be a bit too clever at times, though I definitely prefer when a movie is too ambitious rather than not ambitious at all.



14. Julia's Eyes (2010)

Guillermo del Toro produced this Spanish thriller about a woman who starts going blind while investigating the supposed suicide of her twin sister. While the movie has some deep flaws in its plotting, there are some masterful suspense sequences (including a search through the darkness lit only intermittently by a camera's flashbulb) and good character development. And while I generally consider jump-scares to be the laziest kind of horror filmmaking, the ones in this movie are set up and executed very well.



13. The Horde (2009)

A group of corrupt policeman raid a derelict housing complex in the Paris slums seeking revenge against a powerful drug lord for killing one of their fellow officers. But soon the complex is under siege from hundreds of ravenous zombies and the cops, drug dealers and housing residents must work together to survive. The film is clearly paying homage to John Carpenter's classic Assault on Precinct 13, but makes up for its lack of originality by turning the volume up to 11. The film's pace is frantic, the action sequences are really fun, and the blood is plentiful. Plus it contains possibly the best "one man's last stand against the zombies" sequence I've ever seen (and I've seen a mind-boggling amount of them).


(Ignore the awkward English dubbing in the trailer's dialogue. The actual movie is in French with English subtitles)

12. The Dead (2010)

The Dead may be "horror" in its setup, but not in its execution. The film takes place in a zombie-ravaged West Africa, as a lone US Airforce engineer tries to make it back to safety after his cargo plane crashes. It's really a road movie across a barren land where water is scarce and zombies slowly wander around looking for flesh. The zombies are ignored just as often as they are put down. In fact, the first zombie encountered in the film is left alone and merely side-stepped, as though it were nothing more than an object in the way. Obviously the filmmakers use the movie to make a comment on how America and the United Nations largely ignore Africa's problems, but the point is never so heavy-handed as to become distracting. And it should be noted that the movie looks fantastic, and having sweeping vistas of the African plains in the background of every shot gives the movie a huge sense of scale.



11. YellowBrickRoad (2010)

Ah, this movie.

First, the plot synopsis:
40 years ago the entire population of a small New Hampshire town walked up a local mountain trail and were never heard from again, nor was any evidence of what happened to them ever found. So a small documentary crew gathers and heads up the trail to look for clues to what happened. Things don't end well.

Now the explanation:
The movie is rather divisive. It catches a lot of backlash for posing a bunch of interesting questions and ideas, and not answering or explaining a goddamn one of them. Plus the final scene is just terrible. Like really, really bad. So naturally, this turns a lot of viewers off. But as a story of people pursuing a mystery until it drives every last one of them mad, I found it to be a huge success (except for that last scene. Seriously, fuck that scene). All kinds of weird things happen, and the movie keeps getting creepier and creepier. The film's first act of violence is extremely effective, since it seemingly comes out of nowhere (but is not a jump-scare, just an unexpected act). It works almost like the inverse of horror's "torture porn" sub-genre. Instead of watching people be ripped apart physically, you want them all psychologically crumble.

Top 25 Recent Horror Movies You Haven't Seen: 16 to 20

20. Dead End (2003)

Ray Wise (Swamp Thing, Robocop) stars as a man driving his family (including genre favorite Lin Shaye as his wife) to a Christmas dinner at their in-laws' house. He takes a short cut down a side road that seems to go on forever, and from which there appears to be no escape. Plus they are being haunted by the mysterious Woman in White (former Supermodel Amber Smith, still smoking-hot even in ghost form). One by one the family members start to descend into madness, while daughter Alexandra Holden (Sugar and Spice) tries to hold them together. The film's big twist is obvious pretty early on, but it's still a lot of fun to watch the family slowly fall apart. There's an incredibly stupid coda which adds nothing to the previous story, and is best ignored.




19. The Burrowers (2008)

A family in the Civil War-era Midwest goes missing, presumably victims of the local Indians. A small group of men goes looking for them, led by the always-awesome Clancy Brown. They soon discover the family was taken by something much worst than Indians. Unlike most horror films, this one doesn't completely disintegrate in the third act. But it also takes a little while to get going, which knocks it down a few notches.




18. The Woods (2006)

Writer/Director Lucky McKee's follow-up to his cult hit May is set in a 1960's girl's reform school, where Agnus Bruckner (Blood and Chocolate) has been sent by her estranged father Bruce Campbell (don't act like you don't know who he is). The school is overseen by a very ominous Patricia Clarkson, and Bruckner makes a fast enemy in fellow student Rachel Nichols (GI Joe's Scarlett). As can be expected, there are strange occurrences at the school and people seem to be keeping some kind of secret which may or may not be supernatural in nature. The movie keeps the secret well hidden until its somewhat lackluster reveal and most of the school girls are interchangable, but Clarkson can always be counted on for a good performance. While Bruckner makes a decent enough lead, it's Nichols that gives the film's other standout performance as the school's bully who acts tough out of fear and a survival instinct in a place where the weak are preyed upon.




17. The Objective (2008)

I've written about this one before. It maintains a great sense of dread throughout its entire runtime, even if the ending leaves way too many questions unanswered.




16. Splinter (2008)

Shea Wingham (HBO's Boardwalk Empire) carjacks young couple Paulo Costanzo (Road Trip) and Jill Wagner (host of TV's Wipeout), and soon the three of them end up trapped inside a remote gas station by what can best be described as a walking disease. The acting is solid, the creature effects are good, the suspense is tight, and the characters act thoughtfully and logically. There's the expected last-minute effort to make Wingham's character more sympathetic, but otherwise the movie doesn't misstep. It's not original, but it's very well executed.