Editorials
13 Horror Films That Don’t Deserve Their Low IMDb User Ratings!
We can all agree that the majority IMDb user ratings are a joke, right? Right??? Okay, good. That being said, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Sometimes, people give not-so-terrible movies terrible ratings. Sometimes, people’s opinions are just wrong (that’s a joke, sort of). Either way, imagine my disappointment when some movies that I love actually had terrible or mediocre IMDb user ratings! I must believe that some people just give movies terrible scores without having seen it. Looking at the lowest-rated horror movies with at least 1,000 scores, there are plenty of movies within the 4-6 star range that deserve higher averages (pretty much all of them with three or less stars deserve it, so there’s that at least). Given my high influence in the internet world (That’s a lie. I have no influence whatsoever.), I thought I would stand up for some of these films that have been so cruelly rated! Let’s begin.
Pod (4.3 Stars)
Pod made my Top 5 list last year, and apparently I’m in the huge minority with that one. I will never understand why, because Pod is one creepy monster movie. It take a little while to get going, but the payoff is more than worth it.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (4.5 Stars)
Halloween III is a good movie, it’s just not a good Halloween movie. People have undoubtedly rated this one so low because Michael Myers doesn’t make an appearance, but to score it lower than Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers? I call shenanigans!
Anaconda (4.6 Stars)
People seem to have it in their mind that Anaconda is a bad movie. It’s not. I’ll get around to writing a full defense of this incredibly fun creature feature one day, but for now I’ll just settle for saying that it does not deserve its 4.6 star rating. Do people just not enjoy fun creature features anymore? People like to complain about Jennifer Lopez, but she’s actually fine in the film. The CGI may be a little iffy, but the puppetry is on point. There are some truly fantastic kills in it for a PG-13 movie as well. Score it higher people!
Cherry Falls (5.0 Stars)
Cherry Falls really got the shaft when it was released in 2000. It was submitted to (and rejected by) the MPAA five times. They had an issue with the student orgy sequence that lasts throughout the entire climax (sorry) of the film. Because of this it was never picked up for distribution and was shown on the USA network as a TV movie. This is a shame, because out of all the Scream copycats that came around the same time period, Cherry Falls stands as one of the more intelligent ones (in a clever subversion of genre tropes, the killer stalks virgins, rather than promiscuous teens). The twist ending may be a little goofy and unoriginal (think Psycho or Dressed to Kill), but everything before it is pretty great. It also features a great turn by the late Brittany Murphy. If you’ve never seen it, it’s getting the Blu-Ray treatment by Scream! Factory in a few months. Buy it, watch it and give it a good score.
Willow Creek (5.1 Stars)
Another one that made one of my end-of-year lists was Bobcat Goldthwait’s Willow Creek a freaky Bigfoot film that really gets under your skin. It is a slow burn, which probably explains the low user rating, but the final 20 minutes are incredibly tense and feature one of the best (and longest) single takes seen in a horror film in recent memory.
Husk (5.1 Stars)
Husk will never win any awards, but compared to other killer scarecrow movies, it’s actually pretty good. It’s a supernatural take on the killer scarecrow film that actually has likable characters (okay, maybe one or two are insufferable). It’s not a very gory film, but the atmosphere the movie creates is one of pure dread. Again, it’s not an amazing film, but it deserves more than a 5.1.
The Lords of Salem (5.1 Stars)
Can you believe that The Lords of Salem ranks lower than Rob Zombie’s Halloween (which had 6.1 stars) and The Devil’s Rejects (6 stars)? The Lords of Salem shows Zombie at his most restrained, at least until the final 15 minutes when shit really hits the fan. It is a film reminiscent of Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, oozing atmosphere and filled with unbearable dread. It also features Sheri Moon Zombie’s best performance to date (though I have yet to see 31). Maybe the ending is where it loses viewers, but it’s still a great film.
Sorority Row (5.1 Stars)
I’ve said my piece on Sorority Row already, but I’d never pass up a chance to recommend it to anyone. It’s a hilarious mashup of Scream and Mean Girls that, if viewed as a horror comedy, is one helluva good time. Maybe I just have an affinity for a sassy script, because Sorority Row has it in spades, but it is one of the most consistently entertaining horror films released in the last 10 years. Also, Leah Pipes is a goddess. That is all.
Grace (5.2 Stars)
Whatever happened to Jordan Ladd? The actress who was one the budding scream queen in films like Cabin Fever, Hostel: Part II and Grindhouse sort of fell off the radar after 2010. This is quite depressing, because she delivered her best performance in Grace. In the film, Grace’s husband and unborn child die in a car accident. She decides to carry the fetus to term and give birth to it, but when she does the baby is born “alive.” To say any more would spoil the experience of watching this truly haunting film.
Bride of Chucky (5.3 Stars)
Look, I’m not saying that Bride of Chucky is high art, but it’s a very smart movie. No doubt inspired by the meta-ness of Scream, series creator Don Mancini took a franchise that had become a joke by its third entry and flipped it on its head. It al works very well and the humor doesn’t ruin the film like it did with Seed of Chucky. It certainly doesn’t deserve to rate lower than Child’s Play 2, which is an enjoyable sequel but definitely a rehash. At least Bride tried something different!
Hostel: Part II (5.4 Stars)
I’ve discussed my love for Hostel: Part II ad nauseam, so I won’t say much more here. Suffice it to say that Hostel: Part II improves upon the original in every way. Screw your 5.4 stars, IMDb users!
Teeth (5.4 Stars)
You may assume that a film that centers around a girl with teeth in her vagina would be terrible, and you’d be wrong! Hell, the film sits at a comfortable 79% on Rotten Tomatoes. Mitchell Lichtenstein’s horror comedy is actually smart, witty and subversive. Let’s not forget the fact that it’s also quite shocking in its imagery of penile dismemberment. Add to that a top-notch performance by Jess Weixler (why isn’t she famous yet?) and you’ve got a movie that deserves way more than a measly 5.4 stars.
Piranha 3D (5.5 Stars)
The trend here seems to be that people just don’t understand horror comedy, because all of them either get rated horribly or flop when they are released. I completely understand Piranha 3DD’s 3.8 rating. That movie is atrocious. Alexandre Aja’s remake, on the other hand, is a smart dumb movie that knows exactly what it is and takes a kitchen sink approach with its plot. The famous massacre scene is worth the price of admission alone. Does no one have a sense of humor anymore? Oh, and did I mention there was an underwater lesbian naked ballet scene?
Not all of these films are perfect, but they certainly don’t deserve the online beating they have received. What are some of your favorite movies that you feel are rated too low? Let us know in the comments below!
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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