Editorials
[BEST & WORST ’11] Micah’s List of the Worst Horror Films of 2011!
Horror movies can be outstanding in the right hands (Kubrick, Scott, Polanski). And can also be a lot of fun if done right (Raimi, Jackson). These picks have none of those qualities.
Instead, the flicks I’ve chosen are a wasteland of disappointment and opportunity lost. It goes to show that there are a lot of ways to screw up a film and that there are always individuals / studios out there willing to do just that. The films range from a cringe-inducing horror comedy based on a solidly hilarious comic, an angst-ridden bastardization of a famous fairy tale, to a mind-boggling suckfest that might be the worst film of the decade so far. These five films should exercise the right to remain silent (and unseen)…forever.
Worst Horror of 2011: Micah
Micah (Best/Worst) | Lonmonster (Best/Worst) | Evan Dickson (Best/Worst) | Lauren Taylor (Best/Worst)
Posters (Best/Worst) | Trailers (Best/Worst) | Performances (Best)
It’s okay to not like stuff that sucks. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like others out there must not buy into this film and it’s purposefully over-the-top shock jock propaganda. And I’m not some middle America housewife who spends her free time picketing against Marilyn Manson. I love gore, blood, evil doctors, and butt-sewing as much as the next guy, but I found nothing in this film worthwhile. A stylistic turd is still a turd and controversy for controversy sake is obnoxious.
The least funny horror comedy of the year. I remember thinking to myself wile watching, “This movie would be better with Paris Hilton in it” and at around the hour mark, “I wonder what’s on reality TV tonight?”
I attempted, in good faith, to watch this movie again after I fell asleep during the first viewing, because of what I assume was my body shutting itself down due to excessive teen angst. Moral of that story is this movie was even worse the second time around. I have the feeling that I probably should have watched a trailer or listened to everyone EVER that this movie was garbage.
It’s the movie that bravely supports kitten abuse. Hilarious stuff. It’s of importance to note that the target audience for this movie is teenage girls who judge each other by what “hot guy team” they drool over. It’s not meant to be taken seriously by adults with brains. Minka Kelly and Cam Gigandet (30ish playing an underclassmen) should be taken behind a woodshed and flogged for their performances. The flogging should be televised and free sandwiches should be handed out for those who attend in person.
To call Creature bad would not be accurate. It’s stupendously, stunningly, staggeringly bad. B.A.D. If you like horror films with pesky things like coherent plots, remotely believable characters, on screen kills or even the smallest nugget of a redeeming quality you need to look elsewhere. Creature is the Ed Hardy of horror films. I don’t know; maybe if you drink a bunch of Jaeger bombs while tanning with your Brosephs this fun tunnel of a movie would totally crush. The cast is the most unlikeable bunch of asshats this side of Altitude, who inexplicably are ALL still alive an hour plus into the movie. A remarkably moronic ending finally puts this movie down for the count. But hey, at least no one fell for this nonsense. Creature has the dubious honor of the worst EVER opening for a wide release – with less than six people attending each showing the first weekend. While audiences weren’t fooled, this movie is an embarrassment to the genre and horror fans alike. Blerg. The only question is: Is it bad enough to be become successful midnight movie?
2011 Honorees and Accolades:
Movie So Bad I Forgot About It Until After This Article Was Already Submitted: Hellraiser: Revelations. Words like terribad were invented for films like this one. Then again, should we have expected more from a movie that was made, in two weeks, solely to save the rights to the franchise by the studio? Clive Barker said it best when he declared that this movie was nor from his mind or his a**hole. Ouch.
Not Quite Top 10: Monsters, Undocumented, The Yellow Sea, Seconds Apart and Snowtown.
TV That Sucked, Then Became Awesome: American Horror Story. The first few episodes felt like corporal punishment, but then, like a Phoenix rising out the ashes, sh*t got real…good. The same can be said of True Blood’s finale episode, which nearly redeemed an entire season of suck in one fell swoop.
Biggest Flop of the Year: Remakes, Prequels and Remakequels. None of the many big-budget studio cash grabs did anything for me. Most just made me want to perform a memory lobotomy that would allow me to forget I wasted my time and money. Case in point, I’ve had Arby’s meals that were more memorable than Fright Night 3D or The Thing.
Biggest Disappointment: Piranha 3DD. Since the moment the credits rolled on Piranha 3D I’ve been excited to get back to the fishy action. C’mon, Ving Rhames asks someone to “bring me my legs” in the hilarious trailer for the sequel. That’s tough to beat. All I wanted for this holiday season was for someone to bring me a sequel to my favorite cheese ball horror flick of 2010. Studio. Release. Fail. P.S. Shark Night 3D only made my longing for 3D piranhas attacking big boobed bloody bimbos worse.
Best Disc Release:Island of the Lost Souls from The Criterion Collection. Beautiful in every possible way.
Best Use of Breaking the 4th Wall: Rubber. The movie itself was a little too discombobulated to check in as one of my faves of the year, but it was certainly one of the most inventive. Plus, who doesn’t like telekinetic head explosions?
Best Gimmick: Oscillating Camera in Paranormal Activity 3. Nothing else came close to causing as many white-knuckling, heart-stopping moments. You could literally feel the tension grow with each mechanical swoop the damn thing made.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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