Editorials
Best & Worst ’10: BC’s TOP 10 OF 2010
Last year, I had about 20 movies that I would feel comfortable placing in my top 10. This year, I struggled to even FIND 10. While I obviously like all of my choices, it’s pretty damning of the year’s genre output that I had fairly major issues with most of the movies on my “best” list, with only the top 3 really being movies that I was thinking “best of the year!” when I saw them. Ideally they would all be A-movies, but some of these barely register as Bs. The worst list was much easier – barely a week went by without me being massively disappointed with something. And 2011 doesn’t look to be too much better; if I had included films I saw at festivals (i.e. unreleased as of yet), my list wouldn’t really change much. There’s just way too much mediocrity out there as of late, and looking over this list and next year’s schedule, I fear a 90s style wasteland may be fast approaching. Try harder, studios and filmmakers.
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
BC’S TOP 10 OF 2010
Let the flaming begin!
If you took Halloween or any other great home-set suspense driven slasher, and replaced the masked killer with a tiger, you’d have Burning Bright, a lean, refreshingly straight-forward thriller that does no more, no less than what is promised in the synopsis: a girl (Briana Evigan, yay!) and her little autistic brother trapped in their home with a tiger. Illogical? Sure, but so are most horror movies – and those don’t feature Meat Loaf cameos or the single best “heroine loses her cell phone” scene in horror movie history.
If not for a puzzling midway perspective shift that kills the momentum it had built up thus far, this would place even higher. Hilariously building itself around the plot element that the worthless (otherwise shot for shot) remake ignored, Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró further cement their status as Spain’s most exciting genre filmmakers, and delivered a kick-ass sequel that perfectly complements the classic original (which oddly ended up at #9 on last year’s list, now that I think about it).
While not as great as the underrated previous entry, Saw 3D was a fitting denouement to the landmark (and Guinness World Record winning!) franchise, providing some of the series’ most splatter happy kills (likely due to the 3D), a few tied up loose ends, and the return of everyone’s favorite oncologist (whose appearance would have been even more triumphant and amazing if it had been saved for the end of the film, but oh well). If this is truly the last one, it ended on a higher note than most of the franchises, pre-reboot (i.e. Halloween: Resurrection, Hellraiser: Hellworld, etc).
Daniel Stamm proved there was still life in the crowded found footage genre with this surprisingly fun and even occasionally scary Exorcist-lite tale. The lead performances by Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell (who was nominated for a Spirit Award for her work!) are some of the best a genre film has offered in years, and Stamm admirably keeps the guessing game of “is she possessed or crazy?” up for quite a while. Only a weak ending mars an otherwise terrific late summer offering.
At long last, this gory and goofy German import hit commercial release in the US, though sadly in very limited release before it hit DVD. Part of the fun (for me) was seeing it with a crowd, where the humorous moments played far better than they do at home. Plus it’s always fun to see folks get grossed out or walk out. An excellent “party” movie choice!
“The Shyamalan Groan” was not an urban legend, I was witness to it on several occasions. It’s a shame that it became more popular than the movie itself, which was a terrific nail-biter, ably directed by John Dowdle and almost entirely devoid of Shyamalan’s usual bullshit. Add in a great performance by Chris Messina and you have a movie that didn’t deserve its unfortunate fate of being associated with a guy whose name value has long since been rendered worthless. Hopefully future “Night Chronicles” will live up to Devil and convince him to stick to producing.
After the debacle of Midnight Meat Train, it’s a shame that the next Clive Barker film ended up more or less in the same hands (Lionsgate plays a big hand in After Dark distribution). Not that the film would have ever gotten a 3000 screen release, but it’s a bummer that this intelligent psychologically driven thriller would be lumped in with the ADF, which isn’t exactly known for highbrow entertainment. Silver lining – it actually plays even better at home, where the claustrophobic and terrifying opening and closing scenes feel all the scarier. Great soundtrack too.
Like Devil, Frozen has a seemingly unfilmable premise (in this case, three people trapped on a chairlift) but ultimately becomes one of the year’s most suspenseful films. Star-making turns by Shawn Ashmore and Emma Bell, an uncompromised production (none of the film was shot on green-screen or faked – the actors were really suspended 50 feet above ground on an actual chair lift, even for close-ups), and touching dramatic moments (if you don’t cry at the puppy story – you’re soulless) combine to deliver Adam Green’s best film yet.
Tim Olyphant – you are forgiven for Live Free Or Die Hard. It may not win any awards in the script department, but Breck Eisner’s redo of George Romero’s more dramatically-leaning original is an adrenaline-fueled rush from start to finish, with some great setpieces (the car wash, the farmhouse) and kick-ass action hero heroics from Olyphant – I defy anyone to say that the “knife in the hand” bit wasn’t the year’s most cheer-worthy kill. Of all the Romero remakes, this is the only one I can claim was an improvement.
Adrien Brody’s wardrobe is pretty much the only problem I had with this otherwise superior “science gone awry” movie, which was much more Cronenberg-ian than the trailers suggested. The scene where they present their experiment to a room full of investors and other highbrow types is one of the most jaw-dropping “holy shit” moments in ages, and the crazy sexual overtones in the 3rd act elevated the film from being an above average sci-fi horror into a great original. Kudos to Warner for taking a chance on releasing it in the summer, but it’s a shame it failed to catch on. Hopefully DVD will help fans find out what they missed.
BONUS: The “It’s Not Really Horror” Award: A four way tie between Shutter Island, Monsters, Black Swan and Buried, all of which are better than most of the films on my top 10, but for one reason or another I had trouble considering full-blown horror. Monsters comes closest, due to the uh, monsters, but calling it a monster movie would be like calling The Wolfman a Max Von Sydow vehicle. Regardless, all terrific films that genre fans should check out just so they can say they saw a great movie that day.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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