Editorials
The Best Horror Films Set Within Each Century of the Last Millennium
As any regular user of the internet knows, the bread and butter of modern media discourse is the celebratory top-10 retrospective. Every year will usher in a slew of anniversary lists celebrating the films and media from 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. It’s as reliable as the tides.
If you ask me, those retrospectives don’t ever go far enough. Sure, we can all look back a few decades and wistfully recall the best horror films of our youths (or our parents’ or grandparents’ youths), but how often do we ever get to look back over the entire MILLENNIUM and see what films are the most representative of their era? Well, allow this list to stand among the first. Let us, horror fans, look back to the early days of AD 1000 and count our way forward, citing the best horror films set in each subsequent century.
Best Horror Film of the 11th Century – Macbeth (1948)
Set in 1039 to 1057
Shakespeare’s Scottish play, first performed in 1606, may not be his bloodiest (that honor belongs to Titus Andronicus), but it’s certainly his most harrowing. A Scottish nobleman and his wife – inspired by the prophecy of a trio of witches – commit a brutal act of bloody regicide. They then essentially spend the rest of the play wracked by guilt and suffering the dark consequences of their actions. The play’s most famous speech is about hopelessness and nihilism. Pretty much all the main characters die. It’s a great play.
The best film version of Macbeth (and there have been many) might be Orson Welles’ 1948 production, which is a stylized nightmare set at the base of towering castle spires that disappear into the night sky, and is cloaked deeply in dank shadows. Shakespearean scholars place the action of the play in the mid-1000s, making it one of the best films of the 11th century.
Best Horror Film of the 12th Century – Häxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922)
Set throughout the Middle Ages
Although not set in the 12th century exclusively, Benjamin Christensen’s amazing – and amazingly scary – 1922 Danish/Swedish docu-drama Häxan does straddle most of the Middle Ages, including the 1100s. The film seeks to be an exposé on witchcraft and other demonic practices over the course of several centuries, but it plays more like a straightforward horror film, featuring a lot of scripted re-enactments and legit horror scenes.
The film was banned in America for several decades because of all the demonic awesomeness, including sex, torture, and straight-up nudity. It’s currently available on The Criterion Channel (complete with an optional commentary track) and has been restored several times over the years. Or, if you’re a physical media junkie, you can always get a DVD.
Best Horror Film of the 13th Century – The Virgin Spring (1960)
Set in 12??
Swedish master Ingmar Bergman typically made films about religious and existentialist dread more than he made straight-up horror movies, but his 1960 masterpiece The Virgin Spring is handily both of those things. Set in the 13th century, the film follows an austere and well-behaved Christian family who live in relative peace in the countryside. One day, their young daughter is unexpectedly assaulted and murdered by some itinerant ruffians. Those safe ruffians then try to take shelter in their victim’s family’s home. The family then has to question if blood revenge is, morally speaking, the correct path.
If the story sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen Wes Craven’s 1972 classic The Last House on the Left, essentially a grindhouse remake of The Virgin Spring. Or maybe you’ve seen Revenge. Or I Spit on Your Grave. Or any number of bloody revenge flicks. The Virgin Spring‘s actual date is never given, but the folk tale it’s based on comes from the 1200s.
Best Horror Film of the 14th Century – Black Death (2010)
Set in 1348
Another movie about death and religious angst, Christopher Smith’s 2010 film Black Death features a before-he-was-famous Eddie Redmayne as a traveling monk who must accompany a rough-hewn knight (Sean Bean) to a remote village that seems to be untouched by the Black Plague that was ravaging Europe throughout the 1300s. The film is hazy, muddy, dirty, angry and unpleasant.
When our heroes finally reach said village, they find a nihilistic necromancer (Carice Van Houten) who convinces Redmayne that life has no meaning, that death is part of the equation, and that God is absent or not paying attention. It’s bleak, scary, and death clings to this movie like, well, a plague. Black Death was noted by critics when it was released and has lost none of its depressing sensationalism in the ensuing years.
Best Horror Film of the 15th Century – Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (2019)
Set sometime in the 15th century
One of the best films of 2019 so far, Lukas Feigelfeld’s Hagazussa is a quiet and atmospheric horror film about magic, death, and madness. Set in the Alps sometime in the 15th century, a young woman watches her mother die in the first act, finds herself the inexplicable object of a villager’s scorn in the second act, and ends up… doing and eating… horrible… horrible things in the third act. It is a quiet and slow film (my favorite!) and reeks of annihilation. I implore that you seek it out.
It’s only partially explored in the film’s text, but there is also an air of witchcraft hanging over Hagazussa (which literally translates to “A Witch’s Tale”), which evokes suspicion and accusations that we in the 21st century know from the historical Witch Trials of Salem. Hagazussa is currently available on Amazon Prime.
Editor’s Note: Alongside Doppelgänger Releasing, Bloody Disgusting released Hagazussa earlier this year.
Best Horror Film of the 16th Century – The Golem (1920)
Set in the mid-1500s
One of the great silent horror films, Paul Wegener’s and Carl Boese’s Der Golem, Wie er in die Welt Kam has provided cinema with an indelible monster that remains part of the medium’s everlasting horror canon. Set in the 1500s in Prague, The Golem (as it is known in America) follows a rabbi living in the Jewish ghettos when the Holy Roman Empire elects to oust the entire community. In response, he builds a Golem, a powerful hulk-like statue made of clay brought to life via an obscure magical rite.
At first, the Golem is a good way to impress the occupying Empire, but, as may be predictable in such monster scenarios, it eventually commits murder. The Golem is a terrifying monster on par with any Frankenstein or Jason Voorhees. The most baffling thing about the Golem is that we haven’t seen it in more movies.
Best Horror Film of the 17th Century – The Witch (2015)
Set in the 1630s
Yet another film about the overhanging threat of witchcraft, Robert Eggers’ 2015 film The Witch manages to take that threat and make it feel very, very real. The film follows a family of Puritans who is so puritanical that they are ousted from their already super-puritanical tribe of Puritans. Moving into a home at the edge of the woods, they all begin to suspect that supernatural forces are encroaching on their not-at-all-placid existence. That their goat, Black Phillip, looks like a demon spawn certainly doesn’t help matters.
The Witch makes the threat of supernatural interference seem as real to us as it would seem to the characters, leaving us questioning how much of what we’re seeing is real, and how much is imagined. Additionally, Eggers wrote the film using authentically florid 1630s English, having each character declare their lines poetically rather than merely speaking them. It’s one of the best films of 2015 and the best film of the 17th century.
Best Horror Film of the 18th Century – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
Set in the mid 1700s
Tom Tykwer’s truly odd and utterly wonderful film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is the only odor-based horror film in my recollection. The main character, Jean-Philip Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) was born in the smelliest part of 18th-century Paris, possessed of a supernatural sense of smell. He is allured by odd odors – cotton and metals and the like – and dreams of recreating the ultimate perfume someday. He eventually finds that certain human beings – usually young women – possess pieces of the ultimate smell, and he will go to great, grisly lengths to capture their odors in a bottle.
Perfume is lurid, Gothic, and amazing. More than any other film, you begin to get a sense of actual smells while you watch it, and you can almost sniff what Grenouille might be searching for in his mad quest. It’s a creative premise, a great story, and a deliciously violent potboiler. More need to discover the best horror film of the 18th century.
Best Horror Film of the 19th Century – Gothic (1986)
Set in 1816
Although Frankenstein itself is set in the 19th century – along with many other well-known monster stories – the best film of the 19th century might be Ken Russell’s bonkers 1986 tale of how Frankenstein was written. Horror lit fans know all about Frankenstein‘s origin: In a rain-soaked mansion, Mary Shelley made a bet with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley as to who could write the finest horror story over the course of their stay there. Mary wrote Frankenstein, changing – some would say properly inventing – the genre forever.
In Ken Russell’s version of these events, the party was a wild night of madness, drugs, hallucinations, and debauched hedonism springing from relationship angst and dimly realized motherhood symbolism. The film is a wild, messy blast of dirty, dizzying air from a director known for pushing boundaries.
20th Century – Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Set in 1944
If we want to look at the 20th century from the perspective of the 21st, then it’s no contest. Guillermo Del Toro’s El Labarinto del Fauno is certainly the celebrated director’s best film, and remains, after 13 years, one of the more stirring horror fantasies of its century. Set in Franco’s Spain in the 1940s, Pan’s Labyrinth is about a young girl named Ofelia who finds herself transported into the household of a wicked stepfather whose quest it is to hunt down rebels hiding in the nearby woods.
Under the cloud of violence, Ofelia begins to encounter fantastical creatures, including a massive scary faun, imploring her to go on a series of magical quests wherein she matches wits with creatures and monsters. Whether or not the creatures are real, or merely a fantasy in the mind of Ofelia will depend on how you modulate your cynicism. It’s one of the best horror films of the 2000s, and also one of the best horror films of the 20th century.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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