Editorials
5 More Overlooked Indie Horror Films You Should Watch
With the ease of movie-making technology and the advent of numerous new venues for watching films, the number of releases per year has grown exponentially. It’s great for horror fans looking for new movies, but it can be tough for horror filmmakers to find an audience with the sheer number of films for viewers to choose from.
Today we’re serving up five MORE overlooked indie horror films that deserve more attention than they received.
The Ugly (1997)
This 1997 film from New Zealand was released in the U.S. during its initial run, but you wouldn’t know it from its near-invisible streaming presence. The story follows a fame-hungry psychologist who wants to profile a notoriously violent serial killer who has spent years in isolation in a mental hospital. As she begins her sessions, she thinks she’s getting inside his head… but she slowly realizes it’s the other way around.The dilapidated asylum is a stand-in for the corroded mind of the killer Simon, played with both vulnerability and menace by Paolo Rotondo. Scott Reynolds’ feature directorial debut is assured and disturbing, and it’s a crime that both he and Rotondo weren’t hot commodities after this film. With stark cinematography, haunting images, and an impactful ending, the movie leaves a lasting impression. Though it’s hard to find it digitally, it’s definitely worth hunting down.
They Look Like People (2015)
Perry Blackshear’s first feature is a triumph of ingenuity on a tiny budget. Childhood friends Wyatt and Christian get together again as twentysomethings after both have just gotten out of a troubled relationship. Christian is wounded and trying to find motivation to ask his co-worker out, while Wyatt is dealing with something much more serious: he believes that creatures are infecting and taking over people he loves in preparation for a worldwide takeover.The film has three primary performers, and they all do subtle, excellent work, with the two male leads embodying a compelling and lived-in friendship. The sound work in the film is excellent and unnerving, and the few visual effects in the film are simple but hauntingly memorable. They Look Like People is a slow-burn indie that uses its minuscule resources for fantastic results.
Mr. Jones (2013)
There have been so many found footage films in the wake of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity that sometimes it feels like there’s nothing new to do with the format. Thankfully, films like Mr. Jones come along to re-invest me with hope for the future of the style. To spoil how it subverts expectations would be robbing the film of its most interesting surprises.Writer/director Karl Mueller tells the story of a couple who moves to a cabin in the woods so the boyfriend can work on finishing his film project. They discover they’re distant neighbors with a strange outsider artist named Mr. Jones, known for anonymously mailing his disturbing work to random people. After they sneak into his house to learn more about him, strange things start to plague them. There’s so much more to the story than this; find out for yourself.
PVC-1 (2007)
The central premise is simple: a woman has a bomb secured in a PVC pipe around her neck by armed gunmen who tell her family to provide them with ransom money or they will activate the bomb. What ensues is the real-time journey of the family, from their isolated house to a police station where an officer tries to help them deactivate the bomb.The simplicity of the story allows director Spiros Stathoulopoulos to flex his muscles with this film that is shot entirely in a single unbroken take. The terrifying directness of the story is all the more affecting if you know that the events of the story are based on a true story. Cast with non-actors in many roles, and containing passages of haunting silence and close-ups of anguished faces in the midst of existential uncertainty, PVC-1 is a powerful piece of verite filmmaking.
The Human Race (2013)
In an instant, eighty people are torn out of their normal lives and dropped into a winner take all race. They are given a designated path and a few rules: don’t leave the path or you die, get passed three times by the group and you die, and keep going until there is only one runner left. It is appropriate that director Paul Hough’s film is about running because the action in his first feature film never slows down.A clear labor of love for the filmmaker and his enormous cast, the film paints a big picture on a small canvas. Shocking deaths, double-crosses, a diverse cast, and a wickedly dark sense of humor make this high-concept, high-octane film a fantastic watch with a group of friends. It can be found easily online, and you should find it soon.
“Elevated Horror.” Of all the combinations in the English language, that one is the most insufferable.
It represents almost a decade of scary movies that, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. Horror responds to the moment, so its “why so serious” lean makes sense as we scuttle through the “worst of times” equation of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines. But there’s still an opening and a need for a lighter approach; one that not only has fun with its audience but takes the piss out of a genre that is seemingly letting its newfound “respectability” go to its head.
Wes Craven believed devotees see horror films to let out their fears one primal scream at a time. At their core, these movies are roller coasters; they bring us as close to the edge as possible before pulling us back into a safety net of reality. The need for a bigger and badder coaster increases during times when the size of that net decreases.
There’s a thrill that comes from imagining being in a foot race with a madman, or outthinking the hordes of zombies on the other side of the door, plus the scavenger humans coming behind them. There’s even a rush that comes from imagining how one might deal with possession to see good triumph over evil in the end. It’s all about building tension and releasing it through catharsis. That cathartic release usually sounds like screams followed by laughter, which signals relief. Genre heavy hitters over the past 10 years offered very little of that respite when the credits rolled. Films like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and even Smile (pick one) keep that tension going after the screen fades to black.
Hereditary
As the genre became obsessed with creating trauma metaphors, that lack of release made sense. Anyone with even a small sample size of traumatic experiences knows those emotions don’t magically resolve themselves in an allotted run time. But how much trauma can one take? Especially when there’s a mess going on outside that few of us can escape from. Movies offer that off-ramp, no matter how short.
Everything can’t be, nor should it be, “elevated.” Audiences need thoughtful explorations of life’s ills via monsters as much as they need murdering masked maniacs with kitchen knives. And no, it doesn’t have to go any deeper than that. Sometimes, a knife is just a knife, and it’s still worth our time and respect. As weird as it sounds, that simplicity is comforting not in spite of the trauma but because of it.
The worst of times should manifest more than just anguish. People need to laugh just as much as they need to think seriously about this moment in time. Even the Scream franchise forgot the meta rock upon which it built its church when the latest foray sacrificed the subtle comedy for serious drama. Scary Movie returned at the perfect moment. It provides the necessary laughs, but it’s not a cure-all.
This isn’t a call for Scary Movie imitators but a return to a mainstream landscape where Killer Klowns from Outer Space sat with The Serpent and the Rainbow, nestled neatly with the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, which took nothing away from The Vanishing.
They Live
Even They Live, John Carpenter’s horror sci-fi satire sandwich, kept its tongue firmly in cheek while discussing serious ideas still relevant in 2026. Yes, a film about aliens taking over the world through subliminal messaging only visible through coded sunglasses is, in fact, a tad silly. Carpenter understood that mainstream horror can’t become so self-important that it never looks itself in the mirror and laughs at that inherent silliness.
The thing is, horror historically excels at poking fun at itself. Most of the Scream franchise, The Cabin in the Woods, or The Blackening show adoration without kowtowing. They recognize tropes and trappings but invert them for an audience already in on the joke, but one that also finds solace in said conventions. This keeps the genre on its toes; once something gets parodied, it’s usually time to evolve. That breeds new ideas and fresh filmmakers, which not only strengthen the genre’s collective voice but also amplify it.
Get Out, as “elevated” as some critics want us to believe it is, is a cathartic, populist scary movie that spoke to an untapped audience rather than speaking down to them. Backrooms is one of the biggest horror hits in years, partially because it’s fine-tuned for modern-day teenagers instead of their parents. Movies like these tell everyone the genre is open for business; open for innovation and, yeah, open for new ways in which people can lovingly poke fun at with a wink and a nudge.
Horror needs dread as much as it needs laughter.
Catharsis is just as important as tension, and pulpy populism has the same merit as more high-brow material. Respectability shouldn’t come at the expense of an experience akin to walking through a haunted house. At a time when joy seems in short supply, horror should look to its past to map out its future, and make things just a tad brighter for audiences.
Backrooms
You must be logged in to post a comment.