Editorials
Best & Worst of ’10: DAVID HARLEY’S BOTTOM 5 OF 2010
Writing this year’s worst-of list was a lot easier than its counterpart; as pure luck would have it, I was only brought to a boiling rage by eight horror films this year! My lowest recommendations of 2010 fail for a variety of reasons, ranging from a clear lack of vision and funds (my biggest pet peeve) to worst use of music ever to shameless capitalization of a name brand. One entry is so bat shit ridiculous and unintelligible that it gave me one of the biggest laughs I had this year, which makes me wonder whether or not we’ll all see it as a big joke in another five or ten years (wait, my future self just informed me that’ll never happen, but it was fun to think about for all of two seconds).
BC (Best/Worst) | Micah (Best/Worst) | Keenan (Best/Worst) | Theo (Best/Worst)
Best One Sheets | Worst One Sheets
Most Memorable Moments | Top Trailers | Memorable Quotes
DAVID HARLEY’S BOTTOM 5 OF 2010
After Hatchet and Spiral, I have to admit I was sipping on the Adam Green Kool-Aid, but Frozen was the first of two giant disappointments from the director this year. Right from the beginning, you have three unlikable characters in a ski lift; the girl is way too passive aggressive, and the guys are obnoxious and total meatheads. Granted, Green presents a tense situation, and the verbal sparring is welcome between the frazzled friends, but talk about some convenient wolves! After a character bites the dust, we have two people left, blurting out past situations and emotions that will make them sympathetic to the audience, but by that point, who cares? I can see why people might like this, and I’m sure some will see this entry as my cashing in my “I know everyone else likes this, but I really hate it” card this year, but tell me this: did you guys laugh when the score swelled as quickly as Parker’s pants as she pissed herself? Lord knows I did.
Despite a cool scene or three and the fact that it’s infinitely less frustrating than Friday The 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street never reaches the plateau that it so earnestly tries to reach. It’s chock-full of interesting ideas and it looks nice thanks to Samuel Bayer’s grunge aesthetic, but a worthy trip to Slumberland it is not. It also features the biggest wasted opportunity of the year, which is the question of whether he really was a child molester or not. It’s brought up later on in the film and presents a very interesting dilemma; unfortunately it’s answered 15 minutes later. For a question that’s as significant as that, there should be more doubt and discussion about the idea in the film, but sadly, it’s not.
At some point, having an angel walk around with a machine gun probably seemed like a good idea. But it wasn’t, and neither was this movie. Why would god wipe out civilization with a haunted ice cream truck, and not something on a cataclysmic level like a flood? When I was on set, Tyrese talked about how unstereotypical the role was, and then come to find out, he recites a monologue about when he was a “shawty.” If I was an angel, there’s no way I would give up armor and crazy looking weapons so that I could possess a mortal and grow sharp teeth; that’s idiotic. I liked Legion better when it was The Terminator.
I can’t say I’ve ever really liked a William Malone film – though, his ‘Only Skin Deep’ episode of Tales From The Crypt is pretty dang creepy – and his visual style always made him seen like an all-too-eager film-school graduate, but Parasomnia‘s Nightmare On Elm Street meets Alice In Wonderland premise intrigued me, especially with Jeffrey Combs hamming it up in the trailer. Even considering my modest expectations, Parasomnia was hard to watch. Everyone involved in this film should be ashamed of themselves, and the Ed Wood homage in the third act is about as cringe worthy as they come. The quirky, oddball Tim Burton visuals seen in the trailer occupy about fifteen minutes of the flick, with the rest of it looking as lazy as Malone’s other films. It’s a sad state of affairs when the House On Haunted Hill remake is your best film, and I wish Malone would stick to the television format, which he excels at much more.
2001 Maniacs: Field Of Screams is easiy one of the worst movies I’ve ever had to review for the site. It never manages to strike a balance between being menacing and campy, and features some of the most head-scratchingly stupid racist jokes I’ve ever heard. Aside from including the barrel death from the original movie and having one other quasi-inspired moment, it falls flat in every single department. Hell, even the sound design appears to have been mastered by a five-year-old. I didn’t exactly hate Tim Sullivan’s first love letter to H.G. Lewis (at least it had Giuseppe Andrews in it) , but everything from the unlikable protagonists to the hastily prepared gore set pieces makes this sequel one of the most unintelligible, infuriating movies around. I love over-the-top stuff, but Field Of Screams is just too much.
I’ve been told that because I was born in 1985, I can’t have a full appreciation of the 80s cheese on display in Cabin Fever 2. I love me some camp, and there aren’t many things that brings a smile to my face faster than popping in my C.H.U.D. or Deadly Friend DVDs, but if this movie is supposed to be a proper representation of the average 80s horror flick, I’ve clearly been missing out of some truly awful shit (not to mention subpar flash animation), and I’m really grateful. If you still laugh at herpes and blow job jokes, and think that peeing in the punch bowl at a school dance is a brilliant inciting incident, then this is the movie for you! If I were Ti West, I would’ve taken my name off it too.
Once again, Universal has failed in reviving their classic monsters, and while Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman is still not as bad as Van Helsing (few things are), it’s still pretty awful. Anthony Hopkins’ scenery chewing and Hugo Weaving’s comedic moments are highlights, but lackluster CGI, one of the worst Danny Elfman scores this decade, and a confusing relation between Benicio del Toro and Emily Blunt that has little basis makes it a muddled affair; nothing gels together. It’s a shame there’s not an alternate reality where Mark Romanek and Tangerine Dream worked on the film together. I was hoping for Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, and I got Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein.
The idea for My Soul To Take is actually pretty cool, but it’s execution and script are so frustrating. I read an early draft about a year or so before the film came out, and I could honestly not tell anyone what it was about after I was done; it was THAT confusing. Things change from first drafts, and the idea was cool, but it was just as bad, and maybe a little worse in some parts, when it hit the big screen. Everything was terrible, and yet, it has a sort of charm I can’t quite put my finger on. Not one that would make me watch it again, but one that makes me laugh uncontrollably when a sister unexpectedly beats her younger brother to a pulp, or when there’s a handful of kids left and someone actually suspects the blind kid did it. It’s like Wes Craven jumped in his DeLorean, visited a future where there’s nothing but really shitty horror movies being made, and then came back and made a post-modern parody of something that doesn’t exist yet. It’s really excruciating to watch now, but I think in five or ten years, it has the potential to be a camp staple.
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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