Editorials
[BEST & WORST ’12] David Harley’s List of the Best Horror Films of 2012!
I can’t believe 2012 is almost over. Partly because the year flew by, but mostly because not many films that came out truly left an impression. As horror fans, I think we’re in the same sort of position we were in at the tail-end of all the torture crap; we need a new movement. A new direction. A new something. Anything. We’ve gone through a few trends in the past few years (found footage, ghosts, and vampires to name a few), but nobody is doing anything interesting with them at the moment.
The reason I’m doing all this complaining as a preface for my Best Of list is because this is the first year since I’ve been writing for the site that I haven’t been able to come up with a Top Ten. Either I pulled a Rip Van Winkle and slept through the year or 2012 was a huge bummer. Below are my five favorite horror films of the year, along with a really fun honorable mention that just barely didn’t make it onto the list.
Posters (Best/Worst) | Trailers (Best/Worst)
5. ParaNorman (August 17; Focus Features)
LAIKA’s work on ParaNorman is possibly the best stop-motion to date and shows a huge improvement in terms of fluidity and design over Coraline. The story isn’t revolutionary and there’s a lull or two in there, but it’s a fun – and very charming – family horror film with some really great jokes and nods.
4. Father’s Day (January 18; Troma)
Father’s Day delivers on everything that has defined Troma as a studio for the past 40 years: depravity, sex, violence, and blood. The Astron-6 collective pulls off the insanity of an eye-patched, maple syrup farmer chasing after a genital-eating killer named The Fuchman spectacularly, resulting in a film that would have been right at home on 80’s late night television – the commercial interruptions and faux advertisements are a wonderful touch. There are a lot of other things to appreciate about Father’s Day, like the stop-motion creatures and completely bonkers third act, but the balance struck between the dark violence and humor is the most impressive.
3. Lovely Molly (May 18; Image Entertainment)
Besides for the creepy setting of an old farm that looks both lived in and appropriately run down, Lodge’s great performance, and an atmosphere of dread that is sustained for its runtime, Lovely Molly’s biggest asset is that it presents a compelling argument for both sides of the “Is it real or all in her head?” question. For almost the entire film, Sanchez and co-writer Jamie Nash smartly fuel the fire with abandonment issues, drug addiction, the questionable nature of males in Molly’s life, and the house’s sordid past – a bunch of realistic reasons that would lead someone to become unhinged. By the end, the film veers off towards one viewpoint more than the other, but the finale is ambiguous enough to let viewers draw their own conclusion.
2. The Cabin in the Woods (April 13; Lionsgate)
The Cabin in the Woods is fun and has some strange, unpredictable moments, but it’s more clever than flat-out brilliant. Goddard and Whedon really complement each other and make the material approachable and enjoyable for those lacking extensive genre knowledge, a feat considering all the nods it contains – especially to one of the greatest authors of all time. The protagonists aren’t interesting ninety percent of the time and left me waiting for Jenkins and Whitford to continue their shtick, but it’s great to see a team willing to go that far out on a limb, be that weird, and succeed more often than not over the span of one narrative.
1. John Dies at the End (December 27; Magnet Releasing)
Delightfully weird is the best way to describe Don Coscarelli’s first film in almost ten years. John Dies at the End bravely sets its tone during the opening scene and doesn’t let up until the credits roll; it’s 100% committed to spinning a yarn about two guys high on a drug that lets them see monsters, travel to alternate dimensions, and have telephone conversions through a hot dog. Coscarelli handles the material’s humor and gonzo set pieces like the pro that he is and, with the exception of some wonky CG in the third act, it’s the only film this year that kept me completely immersed and entertained for its entirety and has a high rewatchability factor.
Honorable Mention: Grabbers (TBD; IFC Films)
Grabbers is basically Tremors set in a small Irish seaside village, but with more drunk people. If you have fond memories of graboids and wouldn’t mind a few extra laughs, then the tentacled grabbers should tickle your fancy.
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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