Editorials
Mr. Disgusting Picks the Best Horror Films of 2016!
5 Pretty Good Horror Movies You Might’ve Missed in 2016
[Poll Results] The Bloody Disgusting Readers Chose the 10 Best Horror Movies of 2016
10 Biggest Horror Stories of 2016
If you could graph out the horror genre like the stock market you would see a massive spike over the past few years. Even with mainstream news outlets constantly crying “horror is dead”, we all know the truth – our genre is on fire. It’s so hot, in fact, that it’s even taken over television. Beyond “The Walking Dead”, there’s “American Horror Story”, “The Exorcist”, “Channel Zero”, “Ash vs Evil Dead”, “Stan Against Evil”, “The X-Files”, “Wolf Creek”, and even Netflix’s “Stranger Things”. It’s everywhere.
For 15 years I’ve put together a list of the best and worst films of the year, only it’s getting harder and harder to dwindle it down; the last two years (2014; 2015) I had to split it into two, while I’ve even been forced to make a special list highlighting the independent films that also blew my mind (it’s hard to celebrate a great year in the genre and leave some titles out). I’m in the exact same predicament this year as I was last, and even the year prior. There’s just an insane amount of good content out there that has to be seen. And unlike previous years, there’s a nice mix of studio films to go along with the independent productions, which is a healthy sign for our genre.
To kick things off, the first batch of films are first presented in no particular order, as usual, with the top ten shared on the next page.
Honorable Mentions
- HUSH (Mike Flanagan)
- BASKIN (Can Evrenol)
- THE INVITATION (D. Karyn Kusama)
- PROJECT AVALANCHE (D. Matt Johnson)
- RATS (D. Morgan Spurlock)
THE WAILING (D. Hong-jin Na)
What really sells The Wailing is the absolutely stunning cinematography that brings the locations to life. It’s a gorgeous genre film that mesmerizes the viewer with a terrifying trip around a small village in South Korea. The fish-out-of-water perspective for the viewer drops them into an unique environment that’s both strange and haunting. It all begins when a man arrives in the town, and a plague begins to spread. A quasi-zombie film, there’s plenty of scares to go along with gore, although what makes this one of the best films of the year is a strong screenplay with engaging characters. If you’re looking for a supplemental film to Train to Busan, The Wailing makes its case as the perfect opener.
IN THE DEEP/47 METERS DOWN (D. Johannes Roberts)
Johannes Roberts has the impossible task of having his In the Deep (possibly titled 47 Meters Down) compared to The Shallows, this summer’s other shark survival film that quietly took a chunk out of the box office. Fans of shark survival horror movies are going to love In the Deep, which is vastly different than The Shallows. In fact, they compliment, if not juxtapose each other into the perfect double feature. With Shallows, Blake Lively is trapped on a rock outside of the water with a great white shark circling to attack. In the Deep takes viewers to the bottom of the ocean floor with many other dangers, while sharks also happen to be swimming around. They’re two completely different beasts that both have their fair share of suspense. Deep is full of bite, and is vicious enough for the hardcore horror audience, while also providing an immense amount of thrills for everyone else. Don’t let this one swim past you.
THE SHALLOWS (D. Jaume Collet-Serra)
There was a lot of internal debate as to which I liked better, Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows or Johannes Roberts’s Alex Aja-produced In the Deep/47 Meters Down, and I guess I give the edge to the former. Collet-Serra knows exactly what kind of movie The Shallows is and delivers exactly what’s promised; the shark thriller is more of a dumbed-down popcorn muncher that’s just straight-up fun, boasts stunning cinematography, wicked shark sequences, and of course tons of shots of Blake Lively in a skin-tight wetsuit. It was the perfect summer movie that also gifted us with one of the worst posters of the year.
SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD (D. Chris Peckover)
I loved Chris Peckover’s Undocumented and it kills me that we had to wait six years to see his followup feature, the awesome Safe Neighborhood, a suburban horror in which a babysitter must defend a twelve-year-old boy from intruders, only to discover it’s far from a normal home invasion. It’s hard to really talk about the film without spoiling anything, especially since it won’t be released until next year, but what I can say is that it truly is Scream meets Home Alone. It’s not only going to be a new horror classic, but will also be a holiday one as well. Pan‘s Levi Miller gives one of the best performances of the year, alongside The Visit‘s hilarious Ed Oxenbould. What I love about Safe Neighborhood is that the humor is situational, taking the grim out of home invasion subgenre and making it fun (think You’re Next). This is not to say that this slasher doesn’t have its fair share of gore, which come in crowd-pleasing moments that would have theatergoers erupting. This is one holiday horror you’ll be unwrapping every year.
THE BOY (D. William Brent Bell)
I’m not exactly sure what the majority of horror fans thought of William Brent Bell’s The Boy, but I thought it was brave, and thus paid off in spades. Starring “The Walking Dead’s” Lauren Cohan, the film went against the grain, pushing against what you’d expect out of a big studio release, and delivered a “Tales From the Crypt”-esque finale that surely divided audiences. Looking back at the January release, I loved that STX used false advertising (in a sense) to throw off viewers from being able to figure out the ending, which only aided in them landing one helluva punch that made The Boy the first great horror film of 2016.
FOUND FOOTAGE 3D (D. Steven DeGennaro)
I reviewed Found Footage 3D out of the Bruce Campbell Film Festival this summer, calling it, “An absolute riot that’s also quite scary, setting up a multitude of payoffs that deliver a flurry of satisfying punches… Found Footage 3D, about a group of filmmakers who set out to make the first ever 3D found-footage horror movie, is a super-meta comedy that turns into a straight up horror film; if there were a comparison, it would probably be in the vein of Wes Craven’s Scream. The comedy is a bit inside baseball, but the execution makes the overall experience fun enough to reach outside of just genre fans. It truly is a modern indie gem that really, really deserves a place among the greats.”
UNDER THE SHADOW (D. Babak Anvari)
The feature directorial debut of Babak Anvari follows a mother and daughter struggling to cope with the terrors of the post-revolution in a war-torn Tehran of the 1980s. The period setting gave authenticity to this indie horror that juxtaposes fear and paranoia from the war with that of a Jinn. The scares, albeit far and few between, were immensely impactful. Under the Shadow is a welcomed slow burn that’s carried by an outstanding performance by the mesmerizing Narges Rashidi.
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (D. Dan Trachtenberg)
I forgot that I reviewed Dan Trachtenberg’s claustrophobic 10 Cloverfield Lane, the sister movie to the J.J. Abrams-produced Cloverfield. As I previously wrote, forget the Cloverfield connection, though, what we have here in a masterclass in suspense that can only be described as Alfred Hitchcock and Richard Matheson’s lovechild. John Gallagher Jr. and Winstead’s outstanding performances will, unfortunately, be overlooked because Goodman hits God-level. Goodman is having a renaissance career; his character walks a fine line between sympathetic and terrifying in what could be his coup de grâce. A mic-drop if you will. The early Oscar chatter was fully warranted, and I hope it pops back up in the coming months. Forget all about Cloverfield and just soak in the immense claustrophobia and paranoia that’s so unrelenting you’ll have to dig your nails out of the theater’s armrests.
Up Next: My Top 10 Horror Films of the Year
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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