Editorials
The 12 Best Horror Films Released in the First Half of 2021
It’s that time again; we’re halfway through another year. Luckily, 2021 holds much more promise, at least compared to last year. The world is slowly opening up again, and the theatrical slate returns to normality just in time for the summer blockbuster season. While that means that the first half of the year was scarce on the theatrical front, it held no shortage of fantastic horror releases. The genre has proven time and time again that it thrives on every format, and offerings have become downright overwhelming on VOD and streaming platforms.
The back half of the year looks stacked, especially heading into the Halloween season. As a refresher, and to ensure great movies don’t fall through the cracks, here are the best horror titles of the year so far. In no particular order…
The Power
Young nurse Val (Rose Williams) gets off on the wrong foot with her supervisor on her first day on duty. As a result, she’s assigned the night shift to watch over the remaining patients in the ward of a crumbling hospital. With most of the staff and patients already relocated to a new facility, it leaves Val almost entirely alone in a strange building nearly enveloped by darkness thanks to the city’s rolling blackouts. Struggling with her paralyzing fear of the dark proves extra tricky when it seems an evil presence thrives in the shadows of the hospital’s corridors. Writer/Director Corinna Faith builds a chilling atmosphere and injects this haunter with triumphant catharsis.
Sator
Writer/Director Jordan Graham crafts a singular tale inspired by personal inherited trauma. Graham nearly constructs the entire feature by hand, serving as producer, cinematographer, editor, sound designer, composer, set decorator, and beyond. The result is a mood piece that won’t be for everyone, but for fans of occult horror heavy on ambiguity and creepy atmosphere, it’ll get under your skin. It follows a family nestled deep within the woods, confronting their grandmother’s history with a supernatural entity. Sator offers a dreamlike depiction of mental illness consuming a family from within, executed with a strange, wholly unique vision.
Son
Andi Matichak (2018’s Halloween) stars as Laura, the single mother of an eight-year-old son, David (Luke David Blumm). Their everyday life gets upended one night when a group of strangers shows up in David’s room. The detectives who answer her call don’t suspect foul play, but detective Paul (Emile Hirsch) stays to help when David falls violently ill with a mysterious affliction that stumps his doctors. Laura’s convinced it’s related to the cult she fled from long ago and discovers how far she’s willing to go to protect him from her dark past. Kavanagh once again delivers potent chills and an ominous atmosphere, transforming a familiar setup with flair and style.
Violation
Rape and revenge films, by nature, offer one of the most uncomfortable and extreme subgenres of horror. They tend to follow a distinct formula, which Violation promptly tosses out the window. Instead, co-writers/directors Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer apply Lars von Trier-like auteurism and realism to the rape-revenge story, refusing to offer any tidy catharsis. Sims-Frewer stars as Miriam, a troubled woman looking to reconnect with her sister over a weekend trip. Instead, trust is irrevocably broken, and a disturbing sexual assault spurns a devastating quest for revenge. Violation eschews linear storytelling in this extreme rape-revenge tale. Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer have created a strange, slightly dreamlike psychodrama with spurts of grotesque, graphic violence.
In the Earth
While a deadly virus ravages the world, Dr. Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) heads deep into the woods to locate Dr. Olivia (Hayley Squires) with park scout guide Alma (Ellora Torchia). They’re attacked in the middle of the night and left shoeless. It leads them to Zach (Inside No. 9’s Reece Shearsmith), a hippie type living off-grid. Getting in and out of the forest won’t be easy anymore, as reality ceases to hold meaning. Ben Wheatley crafts a wild, hallucinogenic descent into abject terror and includes folk horror mythology and references to witchcraft. It’s a voyage through insanity that doesn’t skimp on the horror or violence, including cringe-worthy body horror moments.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Eight entries deep into the popular Saw franchise meant dizzying levels of history; time jumps, character reveals, mythology, deadly traps, and twists aplenty. Director Darren Lynn Bousman returns to usher the series in a different direction for the ninth installment without the complicated mythology. Chris Rock stars as Detective Zeke Banks, a deeply cynical cop that’s amassed an impressive number of enemies during his tenure. Saddled with a rookie partner (Max Minghella) he doesn’t want, Zeke gets assigned a throwaway case that turns out to be something far more significant and grislier than anyone anticipated. A new Jigsaw-inspired copycat unleashes a new game of lethal justice, and this time their target is the police. The traps bring the pain, but this sequel bears more in common with a police procedural. Spiral brings style and substance, with a few chuckles to balance the gore.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
The third entry in the core Conjuring franchise takes Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) out of the familiar haunted house setting and gives them a much larger playing field. James Wan passed the baton to Michael Chaves, who injects a lot of Easter eggs and homages to classic horror as horror’s favorite couple embarks on a quest to prove the existence of the devil before their newest case ends in a death sentence. The sequel goes lighter on scares but firmly establishes Farmiga and Wilson as the true heart of this franchise. It’s a warm reunion with romance, stakes, expanded mythology, and a thrilling new villain.
PG: Psycho Goreman
During a particularly grueling game of Crazy Ball in the backyard, Siblings Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myer) uncover a strange gem that awakens an evil intergalactic conqueror. The being, which the siblings’ dub Psycho Goreman, is eager to continue his path of destruction. Too bad for him that the gem allows the overbearing Mimi to bend PG to her will. Writer/Director Steven Kostanski checks off every nostalgic box in his evocation of the ’90s live-action fantasy fare. Psycho Goreman delivers the schlocky space operas of our youth but injects hyper-violence and splatstick mayhem to liven things up. It’s a no-fuss, straightforward story that showcases the special effects and creature designs. In short, it’s a blast.
The Djinn
The Djinn follows mute twelve-year-old Dylan Jacobs (Ezra Dewey), who has moved into a new apartment with his dad, Michael (Rob Brownstein). Being the new kid on the block means Dylan has yet to make any friends, and he’s still struggling with the loss of his mother. Then he discovers an old Book of Shadows left behind by the previous tenant, which contains a ritual that promises to grant the performer’s greatest desire. Getting that wish comes with a catch; an evil Djinn will only give it if you follow specific rules, lest it takes your soul. Dylan becomes trapped and embroiled in an intense battle for his life. Directors David Charbonier and Justin Powell display an uncanny ability to wield tension like a weapon and create potent chills from a sparsely decorated apartment. This talent and the fearless way they put their young lead through the emotional and physical wringer elevate a modest feature into something thrilling.
Come True
Anthony Scott Burns delivers a gorgeously haunting synth nightmare. High school student Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) is a runaway struggling in all aspects of her life, including the ability to get a decent night’s sleep thanks to troubling nightmares. The solution comes in the form of a sleep study, except the longer Sarah participates, the worse her nightmares become. Burns brings the dreams to life through brilliant artistic vision and a foreboding synth score to match. The dreamscapes are eerie and full of disturbing entities. It’s a sumptuous visual feast full of narrative mystery, preferring to keep viewers in the dark as much as its effective lead.
The Vigil
Possession-based horror movies tend to feature a central protagonist suffering a crisis of faith, thanks to the massive success of The Exorcist. However, what sets this chilling tale apart is its approach, refreshing shift in religion, and distinct demonology. This spooky tale takes place over one frightful evening, with its lead confronting both his guilt and a demonic entity. That lead is Yakov (Dave Davis), a former Orthodox Jew attempting to adjust to the secular world after tragedy sucked away his faith. Yakov also struggles financially, prompting him to accept the overnight job of standing vigil over a recently deceased Holocaust survivor. Yakob tangles with a demon that feeds off guilt, transforming a simple job into a fight for his soul and survival.
Censor
Prano Bailey-Bond makes her directorial feature debut with Censor, an atmospheric plunge into the Video Nasty era, resulting in a creative and nightmarish critique of the moral scrutiny and censorship that fueled it. Enid Baines (Raised by Wolves’ Niamh Algar) takes great pride in her work as a thorough and strict film censor. Her tidy, sanitized life threatens to unravel entirely when her parents finally declare her long-missing younger sister as dead—the nature of the disappearance remains a blank space in her memory. Then, a Video Nasty she was responsible for censoring, Deranged, turned out to not be so scrubbed clean after all and has inspired a murder. It puts her in the spotlight of public scorn and outrage. When a new Video Nasty falls in her hands, the lines between reality and fiction blur in increasingly disturbing ways. Full of trippy dream logic and rich themes to be mind, it’s intricate, gorgeous, and mesmerizing.
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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