Simply coexisting with others in apartments, co-ops, condos, hotels, and other similar high-rises can lead to tension or conflicts, but external harms are also to blame for the terror found throughout these locations. Once the threat is made, getting out can prove difficult.

Still hankering for more high-rise horror after watching They Will Kill You? Then be sure to add these ten movies to your watchlist.

Somebody’s Watching Me! (1978)

A month after John Carpenter scared moviegoers with Halloween, his made-for-TV thriller, Somebody’s Watching Me!, first aired. This cat-and-mouse story shares some surface-level similarities with Michael Myers’ first outing, although there’s something more realistically terrifying about the scenario and the antagonist in Carpenter’s telefilm. Here, Lauren Hutton and Adrienne Barbeau suspect a man in the apartment building across the way is a stalker and a murderer. Unfortunately for them, they’re right. For a similar setup, but also a movie not restricted by the rules of television, also check out Eyes of a Stranger (1981).

Demons 2 (1986)

Trading the big movie theater for an unassuming apartment building, Lamberto Bava‘s Demons 2 allows for a different sort of confined atmosphere. The characters here all come upon the otherworldly forces in their own time and space before then taking to the hallways and other shared areas for their survival. Overall, it doesn’t quite outperform Bava’s original, but the one official sequel has its own charms.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

It took some years to see it happen, but more folks have come around to Joe Dante‘s Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Some might even prefer it. This zanier sequel, of course, moves that story of Mogwai and mayhem to the Big Apple after beginning in a small Pennsylvania town. A skyscraper becomes the main venue for the ensuing chaos born from Gizmo’s offspring coming in contact with a gene-altering serum.

Candyman (1992)

Urban horror does not get much better than Candyman, Bernard Rose‘s adaptation of Clive Barker‘s story “The Forbidden”. A colossal housing development in Chicago is haunted by a boogeyman of sorts, one who is played to perfection by the great Tony Todd. On the other end of that bloody hook is Virginia Madsen, that scholar whose prying lands her, and others, in the maw of a ruthless entity.

The Shaft (2001)

Dick Maas‘ vision for a killer elevator first came to fruition in The Lift (1983), but it was only when he remade his own movie that the story could reach its full visual potential. Now armed with a higher budget, the Dutch filmmaker’s English redo, one which stars Naomi Watts, is a spectacle that has to be seen to be believed.

REC (2007)

POV horror reached great heights in Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza‘s [REC]. This Spanish stab at the found-footage format is a masterclass in sustaining tension and building atmosphere, balancing light and darkness on screen, and executing scares in an effective way. The singular movie, one about a reporter trapped inside a quarantined apartment building, comes at you pretty fast before slinking back into its shadowy corner.

Devil (2010)

What could have been the start of a trio of stand-alone horror movies, ones produced by M. Night Shyamalan, wound up being a one-and-done kind of venture. Nevertheless, John Erick Dowdle‘s Devil is a way more fun time than one would expect, based on the fact that the story is largely contained to an elevator.

Dream Home (2010)

Pang Ho-cheung‘s Dream Home brings new meaning to the phrase “killer listing”. Josie Ho goes on the offensive after losing out on not only her dream apartment, but also her dreams in general. As gory and wince-inducing as this satirical slasher is, it also has an affecting quality to its story.

Attack the Block (2011)

A superb script elevates a relatively simple, not to mention familiar, concept in Joe Cornish‘s Attack the Block. Fully fleshed-out characters and expert pacing to go with the pulpy plot, this movie is a tough one to beat. The setting is put to such good use in this tale of young, underclass saviors going up against alien invaders. Since then, there have been some similar stories put on screen, including Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) and Infested (2023).

Tower Block (2012)

While James Nunn and Ronnie Thompson‘s Tower Block might have the smell of a mere thriller, its execution is rife with enough jolts and suspense to include it with these horror offerings. Here, the remaining residents in a soon-to-be closed block are stuck on the top floor, and they’re gradually being picked off by a mysterious sniper. The reason for their targeting is never hard to figure out, but the fun here is the mayhem and carnage, not the mystery.

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That’s why I never understood the genre purists who were against the running zombies of 28 Days Later, as Romero himself was a champion of having his creations adapt over time. And in honor of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland teaming up on 28 Years Later in order to once again revolutionize the zombie genre by allowing the infected to evolve, we’ve decided to come up with a list highlighting six of the scariest zombie mutations in horror!

After all, if the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of the unknown, what’s scarier than turning established horror tropes on their head?

In order to make things easier, we’ll be defining “zombie” as any human being transformed into a homicidal ghoul by some kind of viral outbreak, regardless of whether or not they’re actually undead. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own mutated favorites if you think we missed a particularly scary one.

With that out of the way, onto the list…

6. The Phytos – Z-Nation (2014-2018)

Z-Nation may not have been the most serious piece of zombie fiction ever made, but even this wacky Syfy show was capable of terrifying viewers with the occasional undead nightmare. And between unkillable ghouls and radioactive zombies, the show also gifted us with one of the scariest variations of the living dead on television. First introduced in Season 2, the Phytos mutants remain a highlight of this underrated series.

Like some of the other eerie undead on this list, the Phytos mutation is memorable because of the added body-horror element derived from their Swamp-Thing-inspired condition, with these monsters being the result of an accident involving scientists desperately attempting to extract a cure for the zombie virus from certain medicinal plants. This means that these creatures aren’t just scary – they’re also uniquely tragic.

Not bad for a Syfy show!

5. Lickers – Resident Evil (1998)

The Resident Evil franchise arguably perfected the concept of mutating zombies in order to keep them scary throughout repeated encounters. And while the Umbrella corporation has introduced us to many memorable variants of the undead over the years, one of the nastiest – not to mention the most iconic – came in the form of the eerie Lickers.

A secondary mutation occasionally suffered by human beings infected by the T-virus, the Lickers barely resemble their zombified brethren due to their exposed brain matter and oversized claws. However, they’re still a crucial part of the “life cycle” of Umbrella’s fearsome bioweapons, with some fans interpreting them to be a more advanced form of Crimson Head zombie.

The only reason the Lickers don’t rank higher on this list is the fact that we’ve seen them so often in sequels and adaptations that they no longer seem quite as intimidating as they did in the 90s.

4. Tarman – Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Inspired by a novel written by the co-writer of the original Night of the Living Dead, 1984’s

is technically an alternate universe follow-up to George Romero’s classic. This means that these nearly unkillable ghouls are simply the next step in zombie evolution, with all of the film’s infected having been spawned by a single iconic monster that spent decades fermenting inside of a hilariously fragile containment unit.

Tar Man’s disgusting demeanor initially suggests that he’s already on the verge of falling apart, but it’s precisely the idea that a creature this far into decomposition shouldn’t even be able to walk around that makes him so disturbing as a monster. Combine that with his penchant for problem solving in order to find fresh brains (not to mention the glorious practical effects that bring him to life), and it’s easy to see why he makes it onto this list.

3. The Rat King – The Last of Us Part 2 (2020)

The Fungi-spawned undead of the Last of Us franchise are already especially eerie due to the body-horror elements of the infection and the biological plausibility of this biology-inspired outbreak, but there’s one specific variant of the Cordyceps infected that terrified players above all others, and that’s the uniquely disturbing Rat King from The Last of Us Part 2.

Inspired by legends of swarming rats that would end up fused into a single hungry entity after getting their tails tied up in a knot while nesting, the Rat King of TLOU2 takes an already nightmarish concept to the next level by trading in rats for humanoid infected – with the end result looking like something out of Neil Blomkamp’s Zygote.

I’m just curious to see if Craig Mazin is brave enough to include this crawling chaos in the next season of the game’s HBO adaptation.

2. The Witch – Left 4 Dead (2007)

Quite a few of the zombie variants on this list have video game origins. That makes sense when you consider that an interactive medium would get boring pretty fast if you had to face the same kind of enemy over and over again. However, out of all the gaming-related undead on this list, I think we can all agree that Left 4 Dead’s iconic Witch has to be the scariest.

A pale lady zombie that can scream like a Banshee and call other undead to your location when startled, the Witch lives on as one of Valve’s most nightmarish creations despite existing in a game with several other scary zombie variants. Personally, however, I find her lonely sobbing much freakier than her ear-splitting screech.

1. Tristana Medeiros – [REC] (2007)

Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [REC] has yet to be topped as the scariest depiction of a zombie outbreak in film, and part of that is due to the filmmakers’ clever decision to combine tropes from both zombie movies and possession flicks in order to explain the origin of the virus here. That’s why this franchise’s take on a “patient zero” is actually the result of a Vatican agent attempting to scientifically study a young woman suffering from a demonic infestation only to end up accidentally creating something infinitely worse.

An evolved form of both a re-animated corpse and a victim of demonic possession, Tristana Medeiros mutated into an oversized monstrosity before proceeding to spread the infection to the neighbors. And if this backstory isn’t scary enough for you, Tristana is brought to life by an unholy combination of practical effects and an eerie performance by genre veteran Javier Botet.

The post Scared of the Alphas in ’28 Years Later’? Here Are 6 Other Terrifying Zombie Mutations appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Leave it to horror to exploit viral fears with monstrous contagions that wreak havoc on the human population. This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to viral outbreak horror movies that bring the intensity but avoid heading down the familiar zombie path. These five horror titles unleash supernatural or bioweapon contagions that induce violence and leave you on edge.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

28 Weeks Later – Hulu, Tubi

Six months after the rage virus ravaged Great Britain’s population, the US Army helped to secure a small area of London for the survivors to resume a post-apocalyptic life. After a carrier of the highly infectious pathogen gets brought in for testing, however, the virus takes root in the quarantined city and threatens to destroy them all. Introducing a whole new set of characters, 28 Weeks Later frames an intense cat-and-mouse thrill ride around a family splintered by the initial outbreak. Robert Carlyle makes for an unnerving antagonist as a father whose guilt marks the impetus for this viral nightmare.

The Crazies – Fandango at Home, Hoopla, Fawesome, Kanopy, Pluto TV, Roku Channel, Starz

This update to George A. Romero’s 1973 classic goes heavy on the suspense and dread. Set in small-town Iowa, residents start turning inexplicably violent. Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson), David’s wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), and her assistant Becca (Danielle Panabaker), band together to survive against the onslaught of crazed citizens and the military that’s arrived to snuff out the outbreak. It’s a harrowing race to escape for the foursome, dodging armed forces and infected alike.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Kanopy, Max

Strange pods land on Earth, grow, and invade San Francisco like a virus in this update on the 1956 sci-fi classic. They take over humans while they’re asleep, creating emotionless duplicates to take over the world. It’s a story that should feel quite familiar at this point, considering it’s been remade so many times, but it’s hard to shake the imagery from this version. The cast is stacked here, too: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Art Hindle, Leonard Nimoy, and Jeff Goldblum star. The viral nature of this alien invasion makes for a bleak journey.

Pontypool – AMC+, Shudder

Stephen McHattie is a commanding presence in this atypical outbreak horror movie. The actor plays shock jock DJ Grant Mazzy piecing together an outbreak in Pontypool, Ontario, from his radio station booth as events play out in real-time on air. That means much of the action happens via audio, with reports and town residents calling into the station. Yet, none of that detracts from the suspense. It’s an unusual yet effective take on an outbreak, and winter serves as an excuse to keep its main character trapped inside and feeling secluded.

[REC] – Tubi

Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s outbreak horror film follows reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo, played by unseen actor Pablo Rosso, as they cover the night shift of a local fire station for their television series “While You’re Sleeping.” It begins as a quiet evening but spirals into abject terror when they become trapped in quarantine with a deadly outbreak. [REC] gives the subgenre a new, bone-chilling twist, making for a non-stop horror assault that puts the viewer right in the thick of the terror. 

The post Five Viral Outbreak Horror Movies to Stream This Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

These titles showcase various forms of isolation, from remote settings to extreme quarantines, to leave you on the edge of your seat.

Here’s where you can watch them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Hush – AMC+, Shudder, Shout TV

Mike Flanagan mines palpable tension from isolation in his home invasion thriller. Kate Siegel stars as Maddie, a deaf and mute author who lives alone in the woods. Her self-imposed isolated existence gets violently interrupted by the arrival of a bloodthirsty maniac, setting in motion a suspenseful cat and mouse chase in the middle of the woods. It’s a good old-fashioned horror story elevated by the ingenious use of tension, sound design, and serious thrills. John Gallagher Jr., who often excels in the nice guy role, turns in a chilling performance as the ruthless killer. 

Isolation – Crackle, Prime Video

As the title indicates, this claustrophobic creature feature captures a pervasive feeling of isolation. This Irish horror feature by writer/director Billy O’Brien takes place on a rural farm where a gruesome bio-genetics experiment with the cows is well underway. When one cow gives birth to a mutated calf, born with parasitic fetuses of her own, the place becomes ground zero for a terrifying bid not only to survive but to prevent the parasitic contagion from getting out into the populace. It stars Sean Harris (The Green Knight, Possum), Ruth Negga (“Preacher,” World War Z), and The Babadook’s Essie Davis in a supporting role. 

Pulse (Kairo) – Criterion Channel, Hoopla, Max

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural chiller gives an unsettling spin on isolation via a paranormal apocalypse. A heavily overcrowded afterlife caused the dead to spill over into the world of the living to a chilling effect. They invade like a viral infection via technology, plunging the globe into hopeless despair, isolated loneliness, and, eventually, death. Kurosawa spins this tale through two distinct halves, as different groups of characters discover that ghosts are invading through the internet. The more methodical pacing allows the sense of unease to unfurl slowly, eventually stripping away any semblance of hope through terrifying spectral encounters and devastating loss.

REC – Tubi

Late-night reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo, played by unseen actor Pablo Rosso, set out to cover the night shift of a local fire station for their television series “While You’re Sleeping.” A quiet, routine evening curdles into a harrowing nightmare when they get quarantined in an apartment building host to a lethal viral outbreak. Directors  Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza make viewers active participants in the terror, delivering a contemporary found footage classic that shakes up the outbreak and zombie horror formula. It builds to one chilling conclusion. The entire quadrilogy is currently on Tubi.

Sweetheart – AMC+, Shudder

Kiersey Clemons stars as Jenn, a woman marooned on a small tropical island with few resources available for survival. As if that’s not dire enough, Jenn soon discovers that a strange, predatory creature emerges from the sea every night. It’s in the vein of Cast Away, centered largely around a single performance and light on dialogue, but with an unforgettable new movie monster designed by Neville Page (65, Goosebumps). Clemons earns easy rooting interest as the adaptable and resilient Jenn, while writer/director J.D. Dillard captures her isolation and survival bid with heartfelt emotion and stunning imagery – the first glimpse of the creature is an all-time movie moment.

The post Five Isolation Themed Horror Movies to Stream This Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

And in honor of Evil Dead Rise brilliantly relocating the action to an LA apartment building, we’ve decided to come up with a list celebrating six of the best Apartment Horror movies. After all, there’s nothing scarier than finding yourself trapped in a high rise with nowhere to go but down!

In the interest of keeping the list varied, we’ll be leaving out a few obvious entries like Candyman and Rosemary’s Baby, as I think we can assume that most of our readers have already seen these. And if you’re hungry for more Apartment Horror, I’d also recommend checking out Jim Mickle’s Mulberry Street, which we already covered in another article.

With that out of the way, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite apartment horror flicks if you think we missed a particularly spooky one.

Now, onto the list…

6. The Toolbox Murders (2004)

While he’s best remembered for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper’s filmography is much more varied than most people realize, with the late director helming horror projects well into the 2010s. One of the most underrated of these movies is his unorthodox remake of Dennis Donnolly’s The Toolbox Murders, which follows a teacher as she investigates a series of homicides in an old Hollywood-hotel-turned-apartment complex.

We’ve already discussed how the film’s troubled production left Hooper incredibly frustrated and how the finished picture is technically still missing footage, but it’s still one hell of a unique slasher with more than its fair share of brutal deaths. Plus, the apartment location gives it an urban edge that you don’t usually see in this kind of genre flick.

5. Citadel (2012)

From Ils to Eden Lake, hoodie horror became incredibly popular in Europe during the mid-2000s, leading to some excellently grounded genre pictures. One underseen gem from this movement is Ciarán Foy’s Irish/Scottish thriller Citadel, an atmospheric psychological horror flick about an agoraphobic father protecting his infant son from a seemingly supernatural gang of evil teenagers that haunt a condemned tower block.

Shining a light on the horrific consequences of gentrification and social isolation, Citadel is a much denser film than its humble budget would have you believe, relying on surreal visuals and compelling performances to tell a gripping story that’s sure to send chills down your spine if you’ve ever had to walk home by yourself at night.

4. Poltergeist 3 (1988)

Taking place in a Chicago high-rise instead of suburban California, Poltergeist 3’s urban frights may be overshadowed by its troubled production and the tragic death of its 12-year-old star, but looking back on it decades later reveals a surprisingly efficient supernatural thriller. Following Carol-Anne as she moves in with her Aunt and Uncle and continues to be hounded by paranormal forces, the film isn’t exactly a masterpiece (especially when compared to the first entry in the franchise), but it’s certainly never boring.

Gary Sherman puts on a veritable showcase of practical effects here that are still impressive today, and even studio interference couldn’t diffuse the star-power of the talented late Heather O’Rourke. All in all, the flick makes me wish we had more apartment-set ghost stories in the west.

3. Dream Home (2010)

Part slasher flick and part darkly comedic character study, Pang Ho-cheung’s Dream Home uses its urban setting to explore the human consequences of China’s housing crisis. Telling the story of a hardworking young woman with the dream of purchasing a waterfront apartment, the film follows the ambitious Cheng Lai-sheung as she embarks on a killing spree in an attempt to drive property values down, with the murders being intercut with the events that led her to this extreme course of action.

The non-linear storytelling and heavy-handed social commentary might put off some viewers, but Dream Home remains an insanely stylish and entertaining horror flick that isn’t afraid to linger on its main character’s flaws, with Josie Ho turning in a career-making performance as a desperate woman with nothing left to lose.

2. Dark Water (2002)

Hideo Nakata is already horror royalty due to his involvement in the Ringu franchise, but the director was also responsible for another J-horror classic that was popular enough to warrant an American remake. A deeply claustrophobic tale about a single mother protecting her child from paranormal phenomena stemming from a leak in their rundown apartment, 2002’s Dark Water is a must-watch for fans of Japanese scary movies.

Not only is the film creepy enough on its own merits, refusing to pull any punches regarding its dark subject matter, but it would also gain online notoriety after True Crime fans began to compare the tragic events of the flick to the mysterious real-life death of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel.

1. REC (2007)

A frantic Found-Footage masterpiece following a news crew as they accompany a group of firemen into a Spanish apartment complex, [REC] doesn’t just make zombies scary again, it makes cramped apartments seem genuinely terrifying. From the confused neighbors to the terrifying government response, the cinematic chaos on display here is just further proof that POV cinematography can be used to revamp familiar frights.

Featuring some of the best use of claustrophobic living spaces in genre cinema, [REC] is a top-tier example of Found Footage done right and one hell of a scary time. And if you enjoy this one (as I’m sure you will), be sure to check out the sequel, which takes place immediately after the first one and continues to explore the terrors of this doomed apartment complex.

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If you’re in the mood for scares but don’t have much time to spare, these five movies should do the trick.

As always, here’s where you can stream them this week…

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – AMC+, IMDb TV, Showtime, Shudder, Tubi

Tobe Hooper set the bar high with this stone-cold classic. Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her brother, and their friends take a road trip to visit her grandfather’s grave in Texas. While strolling down memory lane, the group falls prey to a family of cannibalistic psychopaths. Trade the woods for rural flatlands, but the strange locals’ scenario still applies. Hooper infuses his disturbing debut with some twisted humor. It’s always the perfect time to revisit this classic. But perhaps now, even more so, with a new sequel on the way this year.

Terrified – AMC+, Shudder

The cinematic equivalent of enjoying a haunted attraction, Demián Rugna’s feature is an onslaught of terror from beginning to end. Plot-wise, there’s not much to it, nor is there a lot of explanation for those that prefer answers. However, that doesn’t stop a cop on the cusp of retirement and a slew of paranormal experts from trying to get to the bottom of a series of bizarre activities plaguing a Buenos Aires neighborhood. With creative and innovative scares aplenty, Terrified is the type of horror film that lives up to its name; it’s freaking petrifying.

The Loved Ones – Pluto TV

This brutal feature introduces Lola, who wants nothing more than to be a princess and find Prince Charming. She decides that Brent is the one and invites him to the school dance. When he rejects her offer, and she sees him with another girl, well, Lola decides she’ll get what she wants one way or another. Lola doesn’t take rejection lightly, and things get downright brutal. The truth is that maybe no one will love her as much as daddy, and that’s most terrifying of all. Love hurts.

Them (Ils) – Criterion Channel, IMDb TV, Shudder, Vudu

Them, also known as Ils, predates the more well-known The Strangers by two years yet rivals it in terms of bone-chilling suspense from start to finish. Lucas and Clementine live quietly alone in their rural countryside home. Their peaceful existence gets shattered one night by the arrival of hooded assailants that begin to terrorize them throughout the evening. This French-Romanian home invasion movie brings intensity and nail-biting tension. While touted to be “based on a true story,” it also rivals The Strangers in its unsettling one-liner in terms of the killers’ motivation.

[REC] – AMC+, Roku

The idea behind 2007’s [REC] was born from Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s desire not just to make a scary horror movie but to make the audience an active participant in the fear unfolding on screen. The film follows reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo, played by unseen actor Pablo Rosso, as they cover the night shift of a local fire station for their television series “While You’re Sleeping.” It begins as a quiet evening but spirals into abject terror when they become trapped in quarantine with a deadly outbreak. [REC] gives the subgenre a new, bone-chilling twist, making for a non-stop horror assault that puts the viewer right in the thick of the terror.

The post Stay Home, Watch Horror: 5 Intense Horror Movies Under 90-Minutes to Stream This Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s the spookiest time of the year, and this week’s streaming picks aim to deliver the chills. These five horror movies build an unsettling atmosphere and demonstrate an uncanny ability to craft innovative scares that might leave you breathless.

Here’s where to stream them this week.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe – AMC+, Shudder

André Øvredal goes full throttle for the scares in this quiet little chiller that sees a father and son coroner team stumped over the bizarre mysteries contained within the body of an unidentified young woman. Well executed scares, clever twists, and earnest performances by Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch gives this supernatural haunter serious heft. While the narrative bides its time unveiling the truth behind Jane Doe’s battered body, it’s heavily steeped in witchcraft. In other words, The Autopsy of Jane Doe presents a new take on the subgenre. More importantly, it’s seriously spooky.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum – Shudder, Tubi, Vudu

Amateur ghosthunters in over their heads is a plot description that could apply to many found footage movies, let alone horror in general. If you’re going this route, you’d better find an innovative way to set it apart from the rest, or at least ensure the scares are plenty. Gonjiam nails it. In this Korean film, a horror web show crew plans a live stream event in one of the country’s most infamous abandoned hospitals. The host has rigged fake scares to spook his team for the sake of ratings, but they prove unnecessary thanks to the sinister forces haunting the place. While this movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it makes up for that with unrelenting terror. Turn the lights down low and prepare to get creeped out.

[REC] – AMC+, Crackle, Plex, Roku 

The idea behind 2007’s [REC] was born from Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s desire not just to make a scary horror movie but to make the audience an active participant in the fear unfolding on screen. The film follows reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo, played by unseen actor Pablo Rosso, as they cover the night shift of a local fire station for their television series “While You’re Sleeping.” It begins as a quiet evening but spirals into abject terror when they become trapped in quarantine with a deadly outbreak. [REC] gives the subgenre a new, bone-chilling twist, making for a non-stop horror assault that puts the viewer right in the thick of the terror.

Shutter – Kanopy, Vudu

Photographer Tun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) are a happy couple in love. That changes when they open up the doors to supernatural torment when a distracted Jane accidentally runs a woman over while driving home from a friend’s wedding. Tun, who’d been drinking, convinces Jane to flee, leaving the woman alone in the middle of the road. Subsequently, strange images begin showing up in Tun’s photography. The feature debut by Parkpoom Wongpoom and Banjong Pisanthanakun brings stark moments of terror and nightmare imagery that sticks with you. If you love this one, also check out Pisanthanakun’s The Medium on Shudder.

Sinister – Showtime

True crime author Ellison Oswalt has uprooted his family and moved them into a home where a family was previously murdered, unbeknownst to them. He’s researching the murder for his new book, hoping the research will lead him to the whereabouts of the murdered family’s missing 10-year-old girl. When he finds a box of Super 8 home movies in the attic, he discovers the murder might be the work of a serial killer whose work dates back to the 1960s. Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s feature consistently ranks high among the scariest horror movies, and it’s not hard to see why. Eerie atmosphere, iconic jump scares, and a memorable boogeyman all make for a noteworthy genre movie.

The post Stay Home, Watch Horror: 5 Horror Movies to Stream This Week That Bring the Scares appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Her fears prove correct when she discovers the shadows harbor a malevolent force hellbent on destroying everything around her. The near-empty hospital staffed only by a skeleton crew means the eerie place offers very little light to reprieve Val. The longer the night wears on, the more exposed to danger Val becomes. It leads to some intense, unnerving moments in the pitch-black spaces.

The Power releases on VOD, Digital, and DVD on September 21, 2021. In anticipation, we look back at ten of the scariest scenes in horror that embrace the darkness.

Hereditary – Annie on the ceiling

Just seeing a dim room in a horror movie puts you on edge as your mind immediately starts checking the perimeter for danger. Ari Aster exploits this to its fullest, training audiences to look for ominous, hidden figures lurking in the background. Then, after accidentally killing his sister, Peter (Alex Wolff) awakes in the middle of the night by strange sounds and startling images of her lurking in the corners of his room. It’s just a mere warm-up for later. In the climax, Peter awakens once more and heads downstairs to find his father. He’s unaware that his now-possessed mother crawls above him on the ceiling, watching him in bed then skittering to follow him into the living room. It’s so quietly handled that the slow realization that she’s there at all packs a potent punch.

The Conjuring – Hide and Clap

James Wan offered no shortage of scares across the first two films in The Conjuring universe, which kickstarted a franchise still going strong. That means you could take your pick from unforgettable moments of fright that take place during the blanket of night. But it’s hard to beat the effective moment that helped usher in this franchise’s reputation for terror; the disembodied clapping hands that guided Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor) to the dank basement then trapped her in the pitch black. It was just the start of her nightmare and ours.

Lights Out – Red Light 

David F. Sandberg established himself as a master of crafting bone-chilling nocturnal scares with the short that inspired this feature-length adaptation. He continued that same scare-crafting throughout, finding new ways to wield his menacing shadowed specter in the dark. In an early scene, protagonist Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) awakes at night and assumes her half-brother is hunched in the doorway, hidden by shadows. It’s not. The flickering red neon light outside the apartment window creates an eerie red light, green light game between human and malevolent presence.

Hell House LLC – Night Visitor

A Halloween haunt crew picks the empty Abaddon Hotel for their latest seasonal attraction and move in to get it ready in time. Naturally, they don’t realize it’s been uninhabited for a reason, and the hotel’s spooky denizens waste no time welcoming their new tenants. One of the most startling moments of this creepfest sees one of the members awakened in the middle of the night by a strange sound. He turns on the light, unaware that a ghost has been sitting in the dark, watching him. When he notices her, he turns the light off and buries himself under the covers. The ghoulish night visitor finds him anyway.

47 Meters Down – A Flare in the Dark

An impulsive diving expedition goes awry and traps two sisters at the bottom of the ocean with limited oxygen. Making matters worse are the hungry sharks on the prowl. All of it builds to one of the most intense jump scares. This pivotal scene sees the girls slowly making their way to the surface, stopping to acclimate to the pressure as they go. That makes them vulnerable to predators, and only a sole flare keeps them at bay. Then it fizzles out, leaving the sisters scrambling for a new light. It leads to one disturbing reveal of danger.

Lake Mungo – Alice’s vision

Teen Alice Palmer drowns while swimming with her family. Shortly after, strange things begin happening at the family home, prompting her brother to set up cameras around the house. It’s the start of a strange, haunting tale full of twists and turns, with surprising revelations about who Alice really was. One of those reveals is that Alice had a premonition about her death, and it culminated in one unexpected, terrifying moment in the dark. On a school trip to Lake Mungo, Alice wandered off into the night and encountered the bloated corpse doppelganger.

Cloverfield – Subway parasites

When a giant monster is rampaging across New York City, underground seems like the safer means of travel. The protagonists flee into the Subway, far from the chaos. Using the light and night vision from the camera to guide their way as they walk through the pitch-black tunnels, rats signal something far more threatening is closing in on them. It’s this suspenseful scene that introduces the monster’s parasites, followed by a harrowing reveal of what happens when you get bitten by one.

The Descent – Night vision reveal

A camera’s night vision is a handy tool in horror, but sometimes it proves ignorance is bliss. For the group of women on a spelunking adventure gone wrong, it’s perhaps a bit of both. Survival odds are already precarious when trapped in an unexplored cave system with no help on the way. That’s before the realization that these characters unwittingly stumbled into the den of humanoid predators. At first, they can be spotting in the background for eagle-eyed viewers. Then, director Neil Marshall delivers a massive jolt with its proper introduction; one sneaks up behind a character, and it’s only discovered last minute by the camera’s night vision.

Alien – The air ducts

Nostromo captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) volunteers to enter the air ducts to flush the creature out and into the airlock. He crouches through the vents, using a flame thrower to help light his way while his crew guides him over the radio. The tension coils tighter the further Dallas goes, and the more the beeping indicates he’s getting closer to finding the creature. Dallas finally decides to flee, not realizing until it’s too late that he’s run right into the alien, which blends in perfectly with the dark, black ducts.

REC – The Penthouse

How do you wrap up a nonstop found footage outbreak movie that refused to give its characters a moment’s reprieve? With an even more breathless finale that sees the two remaining survivors finally get some insight into the outbreak while pitting them against its source in one nail-biting sequence set entirely in the pitch black. Trapped within the penthouse suite, Angela and Pablo attempt to evade the gaunt, starving Tristana, but when you can’t see her coming, the suspense increases tenfold. It ends with an unforgettable shot of Angela getting dragged into the darkness.

Discover more dark set scares when The Power releases on VOD, Digital, and DVD on September 21, 2021.

The post When ‘The Power’ Goes Out: 10 of the Scariest Scenes in Horror That Take Place in the Dark appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

One of the greatest found-footage films is the Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró-directed [REC] (2007), which spawned an even better sequel and two more follow-ups that would be directed individually by each of the aforementioned filmmakers.

The franchise is legendary, with all of the films being smash festival hits and also instant fan favorites, not to mention giving birth to the U.S. remake, Quarantine, and its own sequel.

Now, Filmax is celebrating their own series with the forthcoming documentary, [REC] Terror Sin Pause, which just started principal photography.

Terror Sin Pause is being shot, directed by Diego López-Fernández, and portrays the birth and impact of the first installment, which resulted in a whole cinematographic phenomenon.

Notes the press release: “With the creation of its own fantastic genre film label, Fantastic Factory, Filmax opened a period of splendor in which it made the leap to the international level. Conceived by Julio Fernández and the American filmmaker Brian Yuzna, this label established itself within Spanish cinema with Faust (Brian Yuzna, 2001), Arachnid (Jack Sholder (2001), Dagon (Stuart Gordon, 2001), and Darkness (Jaume Balagueró, 2002) shaping what later became known as Terror Made in Spain. Each of these films helped cement the foundations of Filmax’s future success: the [REC] saga.

“In addition to its directors, the documentary will take a tour of the different areas of production, interviewing the promoters of the idea, its main cast, professionals from areas such as art direction and photography direction and prominent personalities such as Ángel Sala, director of the contest that gave birth to the phenomenon: the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia,” the press release adds.

The doc will feature interviews with Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza (directors); Julio Fernández, Carlos Fernández and Carles Rojano (Filmax); Oriol Maymó (production); Pablo Rosso (director of photography); David Ambit (FX); and the protagonists of the film: Manuela Velasco, Carlos Lasarte, and Javier Botet, among many more.

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Hamster, an aspiring influencer, doesn’t set out to oppose the crime syndicate in his neighborhood, let alone with a seemingly unstable vagabond from the streets that spins tall tales of superpowered battles. Through his budding friendship with Max Fix, however, the pair become unlikely heroes.

In celebration of today’s release of Archenemy’s in select theaters and drive-ins, On Demand and digital, we look back at some of horror’s unlikeliest of heroes.

Unbreakable – David Dunn

David (Bruce Willis) is a former college football star turned unhappy security guard whose marriage is on the rocks. His already shaky life is upended when his train crashes and leaves him the sole survivor among 130 victims. Through the aid of a strange comic book store owner, David realizes that he has possessed super strength and near invincibility for his entire life. In accepting his gift and becoming a superpowered vigilante, David is transformed from a miserable everyman to a fulfilled hero.

WolfCop – Lou Garou

Sure, the film’s title alone pegs the titular character as the hero, but it’s easy to forget that upon the first introduction of Sergeant Lou Garou (Leo Fafard). Compared to his far more competent and intelligent colleague, Sergeant Tina (Amy Matysio), Lou is an apathetic alcoholic uninterested in doing anything outside of sleeping all day and getting hammered at the bar each night. Then he’s knocked out and stricken with a curse that transforms him into a werewolf. His animal instincts kick in, and his werewolf rage winds up, making him a better cop during his quest for answers. Lou’s a mess of a human but an unlikely hero in wolf form.

The Cabin in the Woods – Marty Mikalski

Marty and his friends didn’t learn until far too late that their weekend getaway to a remote cabin in the woods was part of a ritual orchestrated by an underground laboratory to appease ancient deities. Five unaware victims fulfilling traditional horror archetypes are to be sacrificed to stave off the apocalypse. Of the five, only the Virgin may live if the world is to keep turning. Marty (Fran Kranz) was unwittingly designated and manipulated into playing the part of the Fool, a comedic relief type destined for an early grave. Marty isn’t interested in dying, though, and uncovers the entire scheme while unleashing bloody hell upon the lab. Technically, Marty doesn’t save the world, but he’s still a hero in our book.

The Blob – Meg Penny and Brian Flagg

In Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont’s remake of the 1958 classic, the default expectation is that good guy jock Paul (Donovan Leitch) will fill Steve McQueen’s shoes as the hero. Not only does the film focus on his character in his pursuit of cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith), but it establishes him as morally pure, too. In a shocking move, Paul’s among the first victims of the eponymous blob, leaving Meg and social outcast Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon) to rally and save their town. No one expected this unlikely duo, full of attitude, to take on the government and put a stop to an amorphous entity with an insatiable appetite.

[REC] series – Angela Vidal

At the outset of this quadrilogy, no one would’ve guessed how much of a fighter Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) would become. The meek reporter spends most of the first film running away in abject terror, relying on those around her to see her to safety. She makes an unexpected return in the sequel, though her newfound fighting spirit reveals a ruse for the truth; the source of infection possesses her. Her improbable and transformative arc from victim to hero kicks into high gear in Rec 4: Apocalypse.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter – Tommy Jarvis

By the fourth entry in the mega-popular Friday the 13th franchise, the unstoppable killing machine known as Jason Voorhees has been well established. No one that crosses paths with the undead Camp Crystal Lake horror icon lives to tell the tale, but his favored victims are teen or adult party-goers and camp counselors. That Jason Voorhees proves a fearsome foe for grown-ups makes his biggest archnemesis all the more surprising; twelve-year-old Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman). Tommy outsmarts Jason by shaving his head and invoking the memory of Jason Voorhees’ childhood trauma. Once vulnerable, it’s Tommy who delivers the finishing blows with the machete. Sure, this battle left Tommy psychologically disturbed, but he carried his grudge well into adulthood and faced his fears through two additional sequels.

The Phantasm franchise – Reggie 

Like Ash Williams, Reggie (Reggie Bannister) appeared in his franchise’s first film as a supporting player before becoming the de facto hero. The comedic relief and loyal friend to the central protagonists, brothers Mike and Jody Pearson, Reggie preferred to strum his guitar between shifts delivering ice cream with his truck. Reggie’s acute sense of loyalty catapulted him from fierce ally to the franchise’s driving force. Reggie grew tougher in his tireless fight with the Tall Man while never wavering from his pursuit of women with each entry.

The Evil Dead franchise – Ash Williams

In any other setting or series, Ash (Bruce Campbell) would be among the first to die. In The Evil Dead, the shy and cowardly romantic barely outmanages to outlast his friends, sister, and girlfriend before the unseen evil attacks him in the closing minutes. While Ash grows more assertive in his repeated encounters with the demons over every sequel and TV episode, so does his clumsy buffoonery and bravado grow larger. With every misstep, failure to perform a spell correctly, and his overall cocky attitude, Ash’s resilience in his never-ending attempts to save the world (and himself) mark him as one of the most atypical heroes in horror.

Discover Hamster and Max Fist’s improbable journey to herodom when Archenemy releases on December 11, 2020.

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The 4DX technology incorporates up to 21 synchronized effects in the projection. Thanks to it, the viewer has the opportunity to see the main premieres with effects of movement, air, water, heat, aromas, vibrations, as well as weather elements such as fog, wind, lightning and bubbles.

In the film that spawned three sequels and a U.S. remake (Quarantine), a television reporter and cameraman follow emergency workers into a dark apartment building and are quickly locked inside with something terrifying.

Related: [Revenge of the Remakes] Pits [REC] (2007) vs. Quarantine (2008) 

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Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [REC] played an instrumental role in morphing “Matt Donato, Horror Dabbler” into “Matt Donato, Forever Horror Enthusiast.” Around the film’s release, I’d spend my collegiate downtime nurturing a newfound love of cinema that’d subsequently recalibrate my post-graduation career trajectory. The funny part is, horror wasn’t my forefront focus or dedicated passion until university – until I discovered [REC]. One fateful Netflix DVD rental on an internet blog’s recommendation showed me how profoundly introspective, deceptively versatile, and scarily unforgiving the horror genre could reach. [REC] is bulletproof found-footage artistry that’ll forever rank in my class of horror “untouchables,” as I shy not from the foundational context of this month’s “Revenge of the Remakes” analysis.

In 2008, in the thick of Hollywood’s horror remake craze (either golden oldies or ineffable imports), Screen Gems looked to capitalize on the Spanish-language [REC] after heaps of overseas praise. If memory and IMDb release dates serve me correctly, their remake Quarantine beat [REC] to stateside markets with an October 10th, 2008 premiere versus [REC]’s long-last limited US drop on October 17th, 2008. Producers wasted no time enlisting brothers John and Drew Dowdle, hot off The Poughkeepsie Tapes, to Americanize [REC] for those who refuse to read subtitles. Why promote international cinema when you can spend millions of dollars to recreate, mimick, and swipe the credit for yourself, right?

The Approach

The Dowdles’ screenplay mixes a 70%-30% blend of original scripting from [REC] and “unique” diversions that are infrequent, yet thematically drastic. While dialogue remains word-for-word mainly, the two most significant changes are cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) existing as much on-screen as he does behind his rig and a rabies explanation for the residential contagion outbreak. Quarantine adds a few new characters but remains slavishly dedicated to copy-pasting [REC]‘s narrative, sequential composition, and spouted lines to the point where you can easily ignore alterations.

Jennifer Carpenter steps in as late-night television personality Angela Vidal (familiar), host of a local program dedicated to spotlighting overnight professionals who work while we all slumber. Tonight’s episode devotes screentime to those brave men and women who combat blazing fires, as Angela quietly wishes for some “action” to shoot. When the station’s alarm goes off, she’s whisked away to shadow an apartment building alarm investigation. Angela tails firemen Jake (Jay Hernandez) and “Fletcher” (Johnathon Schaech) as they locate an unwell woman, only to find minutes later that the government has sealed every exit under contagious disease protocol. Tenants panic, tensions rise, and Angela informs Scott to record everything. Right until the proverbial – and physical – hammer drops.

It’s par-for-the-course duplication with the addition of verbatim conversation snatching. Scripted blueprints lay a repetitive groundwork, throwaway tweaks introduce “new material,” and you get a product that’s desperately familiar yet hopefully not mirrored enough to instigate objections from [REC] obsessors who’ve seen this movie before.

New name, same concept, more animal cruelty.

Does It Work?

The difference between [REC] and Quarantine highlights the inefficiencies of modern American horror throughout the later 2000s. The brothers Dowdle inflate [REC]‘s body count and shift focus from ravenous tension to squeamish gore (Fletcher’s broken shinbone), but not as a method of expanded storytelling. [REC] is leaner, meaner, and develops characters where Quarantine throws civilians or crisis responders, whoever’s closest, into infected feeding frenzies. Balagueró and Plaza strive to elevate outbreak paranoia by introducing theological terror through Niña Medeiros (Javier Botet), creating this consummate horror arc that evolves throughout prototypical zombie ideologies. Quarantine is a more generic renovation, jettisoning mythological intrigue as Act III reveals barely touch upon a fleeting doomsday cult motive as Doug Jones’ “Thin Infected Man” suggests the sickly will transform even sicker.

Quarantine’s bolstered cast adds nothing outside of gratifying kill-count gnarliness, given how a moot pawn like Denis O’Hare’s “Randy” comes and goes with inconsequential impact. He’s introduced as an alcoholic dissenter, pushing back against Jake or Officer Wilensky (Columbus Short), only to be mauled by a Cerberus-lookin’ canine who’s in full rage-mode. Randy gets called into the lobby, makes a big deal about this being ‘Merica (in a matter of words), and after drunkenly stumbling out the building’s elevator, retreats only to have said doggo lunge past the closing doors as Angela watches in horror. We don’t witness the brutality, mind you. We merely glimpse Randy’s chewed-up corpse scenes later when Jake, Scott, and Angela use the same elevator. Utterly pointless, where random violence remains random and meaningless to the overall scenario.

In terms of atmosphere, I’d love to compare production design measurements between Quarantine’s entire four-story set – a fully functioning apartment complex – to [REC]’s shooting location. Quarantine increases the square footage, adds the aforementioned elevators, and lessens the pandemic claustrophobia that defines [REC]. Balagueró and Plaza work their asses off to emphasize the close-quarters intimacy of [REC], where the Dowdles favor spatial comforts. [REC] feels filmed on-location (read: natural) within some low-rent stack of rental units while Quarantine, architecturally, gives the impression of being a Hollywood rebuild.

Quarantine does more than other remakes to honor its source material. Still, those intentions are sometimes in question as Carpenter, Hernandez, Short, and damn-near every actor playing a legacy character reuses hijacked dialogue. Not as noticeable with time wedged between original vs. remake watches, but back to back? Try ignoring the carbon-copy nature, when what’s considered a “fresh take” instead steps back into a more seen-it-before realm — light on all-cylinders substantiality, heavy on grotesque effects and kill-em-all mentalities.

The Result

The differences between Quarantine and [REC] speak volumes to a definable period in horror history. In translation, Quarantine loses what makes [REC] a still buzzed-about anomaly. [REC] locks into a persistent fervor that champions first-person filmmaking for all it’s viciously worth. Quarantine might attempt the same route, and while faring better than other remakes and found-footage duds, it doesn’t deliver enough to separate itself from far superior influences. Even cleaner video feed visuals in Quarantine subtract from the primal severity captured in [REC]. Justification is paramount to a remake’s success, and there’s not enough customization to singularly appreciate another fast-tracked appropriation of ideas.

One single [REC] and Quarantine back-to-back viewing calls to attention just how little US-based horror films, at the time, believed in audiences. Take an example as simple as Scott, our tour guide. In [REC], we never see videographer Pablo (cinematographer Pablo Rosso). A sneaker gaze at most. In Quarantine, it’s seconds into shooting when Scott leaves his post and interacts with Angela in-frame. The Dowdles don’t trust that viewers can connect with a character who’s inescapably present, just maybe not shown, so Scott is forced into usage even when not required. He’s practically waving at the screen as a reminder that yes, Scott is real. It’s a pinhead-sized illustration of a massive problem, one that drove horror fans like myself towards courageous foreign titles that didn’t spoon-feed to the point of obliterating obviousness.

Quarantine will, in most cases, better appeal to someone who’s never seen [REC]. That’s the film’s purpose, and it’s hard to argue against the Dowdles’ attentiveness in restructuring those most frightening moments. An infected woman with bloodshot eyes lunges into Scott’s camera, foam frothing out her mouth (remember, rabies). Pipsqueak Briana (a toddler Joey King), dead-staring Wilensky as the policeman cautiously approaches a zombified child (not cautious enough). The attic scare – THE ATTIC SCARE. Again, if you’ve never seen [REC], your appreciation for horror elements alone should be rewarded – but I’ve seen [REC]. Therefore, I’ve seen all these scares executed on a higher level.

Are the sins of remakes past committed? Yes, but on a lesser scale. My argument is always surrounding the “Why?” of remake filmmaking, and Quarantine doesn’t deceive. Screen Gems’ [REC] Version .5 exists for a general public who either possess no viable option to watch [REC] or were never going to bother with words on their screen. Nothing makes this “John And Drew’s Signature [REC].” Quarantine is A Very [REC] Remake for better and worse, only distancing itself through Americanized pitfalls that plagued horror releases through much of the 2000s.

The Lesson

Allow me to share Jaume Balagueró’s reaction to a finished Quarantine:

“It’s impossible for me to like, because it’s a copy. It’s the same, except for the finale. It’s impossible to enjoy Quarantine after [REC]. I don’t understand why they avoided the religious themes; they lost a very important part of the end of the movie.”

That.

Maybe I should have led with Balagueró’s snippet, but then you could have ignored the rest of my thesis (resistance is futile). While Quarantine is classifiable as “different,” it’s not. There’s no fooling those who worship at the altar of Medeiros. You’ve revamped a deeply disturbing, blasphemously inclined, found footage wonder and stripped away advantageous traits in favor of a rat stomped underfoot and protruding bone fragments. Ah, the American way.

So what did we learn?

• A remake shouldn’t challenge an original in the style of Highlander (“There can only be one!”) – it should reinvent and repurpose in a way that offers some new experience for an audience who maybe has seen the first, maybe hasn’t.
• Understand *why* fans fell in love with an original. Don’t ignore the very reasons the source has become acclaimed enough for remake treatments.
• Trust your audience! I promise I knew Scott was a real human being without seeing his face shoved towards the screen!
• If you’re going to cycle through the same dialogue and sequential scene order, your execution better be bulletproof.

A silver lining, perhaps? Paco Plaza confirmed that our humble U-S-A remake ended up shifting newfound attention unto [REC]. “It moved a spotlight onto our film. You know, the fact that it was going to be remade in Hollywood, it was big news in Europe.” Quibbles and rants aside, there’s a smile on my face knowing an original piece of art gained further momentum thanks to a remake that ain’t down with the same sickness.

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Arriving in New York and Los Angeles theaters this Friday, February 7th before expanding everywhere on February 21, The Lodge follows a family who decides to spend the holidays at their remote winter cabin. When dad Richard (Richard Armitage) must head back to the city for work, he leaves his children, Aidan (IT’s Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), in the care of his new girlfriend, Grace (Riley Keough). A blizzard traps the trio inside the cabin, locking them into a bone-chilling nightmare as Grace’s past threatens to overtake them all.

Fiala and Franz create a sustained level of tension throughout, made even more unnerving by the isolated setting from which their characters are unable to escape. In anticipation of The Lodge’s release and celebration of its severe intensity, we look back at some of horror’s most unnerving offerings.

1408

For a film set mostly within a single hotel room, 1408 coils the tension tighter and tighter as it progresses. Based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name, the adaptation follows cynical author Mike Enslin (John Cusack), who accepts an anonymous challenge to check himself into the infamous Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. A room so haunted that no one stays beyond an hour, and in the hotel’s 95-year history, it’s wracked up a death toll of 56. An onslaught of terror ensues for poor Mike, making a chilling believer in the process.

Night of the Living Dead

By today’s standards, George A. Romero’s classic may not seem all that unnerving. I’d argue that it is, especially in the context of its release. Night of the Living Dead is a tense siege movie; a group of strangers barricades themselves in a farmhouse, trying to survive against an endless horde of walking dead. It’s more than the living dead’s insatiable hunger that provides unnerving horror, but that this group of strangers can’t get along long enough to combat a common enemy.

It Follows 

After Jay (Maika Monroe) sleeps with her date, he confesses he’s passed on a supernatural affliction through their sexual encounter. One that will relentlessly pursue her until she dies, or if the curse spreads far enough to keep her out of its direct path. The mysterious entity can look like anyone, and only the afflicted can see it. This begins a feature-length chase steeped in paranoia; Jay can’t stop running for any lengthy period, and danger lurks everywhere. With no respite from potential death, It Follows maintains a near-perfect level of suspense.

Don’t Breathe

A trio of thieves break into a blind man’s house, expecting to tiptoe around him and run off with his riches. They have no idea just how capable and dangerous the man truly is until it’s far too late. Fede Alvarez’s sophomore effort dials up the tension to unbearable levels, creating one of the most unnerving cat-and-mouse thrillers that flips the home invasion subgenre on its head.

Green Room

In Jeremy Saulnier’s visceral, breathless thriller, a punk band must fight for their lives when one of their own accidentally witnesses a crime in the remote neo-Nazi club where they’ve just performed. Vicious, violent, and with an edge-of-your-seat tension that threatens to send your heart into overdrive, Green Room blurs the line between horror and thriller, offering up one of the most anxiety-inducing features in years.

The Strangers

“Because you were home,” marked the dread-inducing punchline of one of horror’s most foreboding home invasion films of all time. A young couple, seemingly at the end of their relationship, find themselves fighting for their lives when a trio of masked assailants show up at their remote home with murder on their mind. It’s not the quick and dirty kind of death they have in mind, but the slow, predatory stalking that comes with relishing their torment. It’s suspenseful, atmospheric, and utterly creepy.

The Invitation

Will accepts an invitation to attend his ex-wife’s dinner party, but being in his former home drudges up painful memories of the child they lost. What’s worse is that his ex-wife’s behavior sets off inner alarm bells. Is there something seriously amiss with her intentions for the evening, or is his depression clouding his perception? The mystery lends palpable terror to an intense evening that brings paranoia and pain. The Invitation is a horror-thriller crafted around an insane level of nail-biting tension until it explodes in a memorable finale.

The Descent

Long before the ill-fated spelunkers realize just how much trouble they’re really in when they explore an unknown cave system, director Neil Marshall ramps up the terror by cluing in the audience. Lost and on their own, group tensions threaten to boil over. It’s at this precise moment that we see a creature lurking in the background, biding its time for the hunt. White knuckle tension kicks into overdrive from there. Claustrophobic horror has never been as unnerving or as primal as it is in The Descent.

[REC]

A television reporter and her cameraman’s overnight fluff piece on firefighters turns into something far more harrowing when they follow their subjects on a call to an apartment building and become locked in with unimagined evil. It’s not just the limited scope of the camera the provides unrelenting fear, but the unpredictability of the infected and the limited places to hide in this quarantined apartment building. For unsettling nightmare fuel and eerie mythology, [REC] offers up one of horror’s scariest. 

Inside

Depressed and reclusive after her husband’s death, a pregnant woman’s Christmas Eve turns deadly when a mysterious woman shows up to her home, hellbent on taking the unborn baby for herself. Gory, disturbing, and claustrophobic to an insane degree, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s debut feature makes for one discomforting and tension-fueled viewing experience. And Beatrice Dalle’s La Femme makes for one seriously feral horror antagonist.

For more claustrophobic dread and unrelenting tension, look for The Lodge in limited theaters starting this Friday, February 7, 2020, before expanding on February 21.

The post Tense Horror: The 10 Most Unnerving Films Ever Made! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s not just the setup the makes Luz feel different from any other possession horror film out there, though the demon’s body-hopping style is reminiscent of The Hidden. It’s the avant-garde way in which Singer relays this story. Through wide-tracking shots, dreamlike and smoky staging, and an electronic score to boot, Luz is firmly planted in the experimental. There’s nothing traditional about this film, from the way it handles the mysteries behind this demon’s desire to find Luz or the way it unravels the narrative. Which means that while it most certainly won’t be for everyone, the way it approaches the possession genre is refreshing.

Possession horror began in earnest with William Friedkin’s seminal classic, The Exorcist. Based on William Peter Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist established the rules and tropes of the subgenre, largely in part because of the wave of films that borrowed from it in attempt to capture the same success. Tropes like the demon targeting a young female, who often wears white gowns to her exorcism. Or a priest suffering a crisis of faith. Symptoms of possession taking root almost always include speaking in tongues, levitation, and some form of body mutilation or gruesome physical deformity, too. There’s also a good chance the possession film will come with some warning that it’s based on a true story.

Because these tropes and story beats mirrored from The Exorcist have become so exhaustingly common, it’s become far too easy to just classify exorcism centric films as a separate subgenre. But they all stem from demonic possession, and the ones that attempt to break free from The Exorcist blueprint are worth celebrating.

The first major release to do so, launching a franchise of its own in the process, was Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. A group of friends unwittingly unleash a Kandarian demon via tape recording found in the basement of their weekend getaway cabin. It doesn’t just choose one victim to possess, it wants them all. One by one, the group is possessed and turned into a gnarly deadite until only Ashley J. Williams (Bruce Campbell) is left. And as the franchise lays out, there’s no removal of this demonic infestation; Ash’s battle with demons is lifelong.

In the years that followed, similar demonic possession films appeared. 1985’s Demons turned unlucky theatergoers into demonic monsters, spread by scratches. Night of the Demons bent the rules even further with its fun take on demons that take over a Halloween party by way of possession. John Carpenter gave demonic possession his own spin with the second entry in his Apocalypse Trilogy, Prince of Darkness. Here he took the concept of the ultimate evil, Lucifer, and merged it with physics, namely matter and anti-matter.

Event Horizon plays out like a gory haunted house movie set in space, but that haunted house- the Event Horizon– is sentient, possessed by the hell dimension from which it returned. In turn, that evil finds a human host in Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), who self-mutilates and eschews his former identity to carry out the ship’s desires.

While the found footage craze came and went, and is now often met with derision, we can’t be too upset at a subgenre that gave us the REC franchise. The first film delivered a terrifying outbreak style horror film, an intense sort of zombie movie. Except, the final act revealed the outbreak’s source. A priest kept a possessed girl, Tristana Medeiros, sedated and used her in scientific experiments. Eventually, he isolated the possession to a particular enzyme, a contagion spread by saliva and bodily fluids. This outbreak, and the infected, are all demonic in nature. Something that’s expanded upon in REC 2, pushing even further into the religious.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter may have proven divisive with its slow-burn brand of horror, but it’s an interesting premise that I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of; a horror movie set after the exorcism. At least in part. The plot sees two girls facing an evil, demonic presence when they’re left behind at their boarding school over winter break, and it plays against a parallel story that sees one of the girl’s parents picking up a lonely girl at a bus stop while en route to the school. While the former plays out like an atmospheric tale of demonic possession, the latter takes a meditative examination of the aftermath. What happens to the victim after the demon has been expelled?

The Exorcist was so effective and such a major success that it became the standard. Its recognizable characteristics makes it easy to dominate the conversation about possession horror. But there’s a lot more to the subgenre, including great movies that aren’t afraid to explore different aspects, themes, and mythologies of possession. Luz is just the latest of many demonic possession films that defy convention, and they’re all worth seeking out.

The post ‘Luz’ and Demonic Possession Horror Movies That Break Convention appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Godzilla – The Roar

The 1954 film Godzilla spawned a massive franchise that includes 33 films and counting, video games, and endless merchandising thanks to a massive beast that came from the sea. His monstrous size meant he destroyed everything in his path, but it was his distinct roar that solidified Godzilla as an icon.

King Kong – Empire State Building

The monstrous beast from Skull Island scaling the Empire State Building is one of cinema’s most iconic scenes of all time, to be repeated in nearly every iteration of the character. What’s King Kong without a massive skyscraper to climb?

Phantasm – Flying Death Sphere

The silver orbs in the Phantasm series are as iconic as the Tall Man himself, if not more so. The first time we see the unusual weapon, it’s flying through the mausoleum in search of its victim. It’s just a silver ball, until two blades pop out to latch onto its victim’s skull. Followed by a drill that rips its victim’s brain to shreds while blood spews out from the other side. If that wasn’t distinct enough, the victim’s bladder releases when he hits the ground.

Cabin in the Woods – Monsters Released

The choose-your-own demise set up for the unwitting group of friends at the titular cabin meant they had to contend with the zombie redneck torture family as their destroyer, orchestrated by a high-tech underground facility. Cabin in the Woods transitioned from hilarious meta horror comedy to a horror lover’s dream when plucky heroes Marty and Dana open up all of the monster containment units, unleashing every possible monster you could imagine. It was so gloriously bloody.

Se7en – What’s in the Box?

David Fincher’s gritty crime thriller ventures into full blown horror territory over and over again with grisly crime scene after grisly crime scene. The startling jump scare behind the victim representing the deadly sin of Sloth is an all-timer. But it’s the concluding moments, as we learn about the killer’s final victim, that sticks out. “What’s in the box?” became instantly quotable not only because of Brad Pitt’s anguished delivery, but the horrific ramifications of the box’s contents.

Saw – Reverse Bear Trap

The film that launched a franchise and is credited with creating the “torture porn” subgenre of horror is full of many memorable lines and images. But the scene that is most often recalled from memory is that of Amanda Young’s encounter with the Jigsaw killer, and how she survived the franchise’s most notorious puzzles – the Reverse Bear Trap. A massive mechanical contraption fixed to the victim’s head, they had limited time to unlock it or it’d snap open and rip their jaws apart. This gruesome trap popped up in the series the most.

Pet Sematary – Zelda

Director Mary Lambert’s adaptation of Stephen King’s scariest novel is full of great moments that petrify. The burial ground that revives those buried there propels the Creed family from tragedy to pure terror as Louis gives in to grief and makes one bad decision after another. Yet, it’s the haunted memories of Rachel Creed’s spinal meningitis afflicted sister Zelda that induced nightmares. Lambert’s decision to have Zelda played by 20-something Andrew Hubastek transformed the character from sickly girl to intimidating monster.

It – Georgie Plays in the Rain

We’re lucky in that we have not one, but two different versions of this memorable scene, and both are great. But in this instance, it’s the 1990 made-for-tv movie that earned a spot thanks to a petrifying Tim Curry as Pennywise. His cheerful demeanor gives way to something cold and dangerous, and his proclamation “You’ll float too!” is pure nightmare fuel.

28 Days Later – Empty London

28 days after the cold open that initiates a massive outbreak, Jim awakens from his coma to find the entire hospital is empty. He finds it’s not just the hospital that’s deserted, but the entire city of London as well. The imagery and quiet is isolating and haunting. Zombie movies usually place the story at the beginning of the outbreak, not well into it. Seeing the aftermath of the devastating destruction is powerful.

The Amityville Horror – Get Out

The arrival of a priest to bless your home should ward off potential evil spirits, but the iconic house in Amityville wasn’t having it. When Father Delaney arrives to cleanse the house, he’s instead stricken seriously ill as flies swarm the room. An ominous, disembodied voice commands, “Get out!” This house has serious issues.

Jacob’s Ladder – Dance Club

Jacob Singer’s return to his normal life after fighting in the Vietnam War is a psychological battle of nightmarish proportions. Surreal hallucinations, disturbing flashbacks, and an increasing difficulty in determining what’s real or not makes this horror movie an all-timer. But his bizarre journey is best summed up in the horrific scene set in a dance club, where his girlfriend Jezzie seems to be having a lot of fun with a creature right out of Lovecraftian hell.

Zombi 2 – Splinter in the eye

You don’t even have to be familiar with Lucio Fulci’s filmography to know he has a way with destroying eyeballs. That’s due to Zombi 2, an Italian zombie film meant to serve as a sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Thanks to one drawn out sequence that sees a zombie slowly impale a woman’s eye onto a massive splinter of wood, eye trauma in horror was never the same.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – Creeping Cesare

In this 1920 silent film, one of the spookiest moments comes as the hypnotized Cesare sneaks into Jane’s bedroom to stab her. Though the moment in which Cesare was first awoken may have elicited screams from the audience, the unpredictability of Cesare as he creeps towards his sleeping victim is much more terrifying. Will he stab her? Or worse?

Audition – What’s in the Bag?

For widower Shigeharu Aoyama, the sweet Asami seems like the ideal girl of his dreams. Director Takashi Miike keeps up that façade for a long while, lulling viewers into suspecting they’ve hit play on a sweet romantic drama instead. Until we see Asami’s apartment, that is. Mostly bare and without any personal belongings, the viewer hones in on the strange bag in the middle of the room. And then it moves. Who is Asami? More importantly, what’s in the bag? The stuff of nightmares, that’s what.

[Rec] – Angela is dragged away

What should have been a quiet night turns into a traumatic fight for survival in Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero’s terrifying found footage film that refreshed the zombie/outbreak subgenre. For reporter Angela Vidal and her camera man, they’re increasingly forced upward as the infected close in, building up into a discomforting scramble in the pitch dark of the penthouse apartment. We watch through the night vision lens of the camera while Angela frantically reaches out, unaware of the monstrosity lurking there. If we though Plaza and Balaguero were going to give us a moment’s relief, the final moment of Angela being dragged into the dark boldly declared otherwise.

Society – The Shunting

Thanks to the surrealism and gooey special effects magic of Screaming Mad George, the final act dubbed the “shunting” refuses to be forgotten. The rich literally feed on the poor, but it doesn’t quite look the way you’d expect. Twisty, slimy, slurpy, and bonkers. High class parties have never been so grotesque.

Cat People – Swimming Pool

Irena becomes increasingly jealous of her husband’s relationship with his assistant Alice, to the point where stalking becomes a regular habit. The scene where Alice is ominously being followed before the arrival of her bus one night is the birth of the jump scare known as the Lewton Bus, but the most memorable scene comes later. In it, Alice decides to take a swim in the basement pool of her apartment building. It’s calm and peaceful, until shadows move along the wall and a predatory animal roars out. Or is it just Irena?

Nosferatu – Orlock’s Shadow

One of the most influential silent films of all time also happens to feature one very memorable vampire. Count Orlock’s creepy appearance is distinct, and lent to an iconic sequence in which he stalks and bites his prey. But it’s only his shadow that’s seen. It’s a striking visual.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? – I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy

Former child star Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) is an alcoholic and mentally ill, and spends her adulthood psychologically torturing her wheelchair bound sister Blanche (Joan Crawford). The depths of how far gone Jane is mentally is encapsulated in the scene where she shrieks out her former childhood song. It’s somewhat funny, somewhat tragic, but wholly creepy.

The Haunting – Bulging Door

Director Robert Wise’s adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House delivered on chills thanks to creative style, camera work that evoked a disoriented feeling, effective sound design, and above all, those bulging doors. The ghosts of the Crain house consistently threaten the group of paranormal investigators by trying to enter their rooms, pressing against the door so hard it bulges at the weight. So memorably spooky.

Phantom of the Opera – Unmasking the Phantom

One of the most iconic moments of horror also happens to involve one of the earliest jump scares. In the 1925 silent film based on Gason Leroux’s 1910 novel, protagonist Christine’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she slowly approaches a distracted Phantom to peel away his mask. The unmasking didn’t just deliver a shocking jolt, but an image so strong that it seared itself permanently into the pop culture collective.

Salem’s Lot – Vampire Kid at the Window

Director Tobe Hooper proved even made-for-TV movies could deliver chills and atmosphere. The slow-motion scene that sees freshly turned vamp Ralphie Glick outside his brother’s window, scratching and grinning to be let in, scarred young viewers. The horror of the scene was dialed up to eleven with the realization that his brother’s bedroom is on the second floor. Children are creepy. But floating vampire children? Even creepier. Decades later, it’s this scene above all others that still induces nightmares. It also influenced many vampire films that followed.

A Nightmare on Elm Street – Freddy’s Long Arms

Freddy Krueger was one terrifying boogeyman in Wes Craven’s franchise launching A Nightmare on Elm Street. It takes a while for Craven to give us a full look at the iconic character too, relegating him to the shadows in earlier scenes as he targets poor Tina (Amanda Wyss). It’s right before he finally catches and kills Tina on the ceiling of the bedroom in which she’s sleeping that we finally get a better look. In her nightmare, he appears silhouetted in shadow, edging closer until his arms reach out toward her and grow to inhuman lengths. All the while he’s cackling. It’s terrifying.

The Blair Witch Project – Mike stands in the corner

One of horror’s most memorable moments, and most frightening, also happens to be one that leaves a lot up to the viewer’s imagination. From the opening scenes, we already know that the trio of aspiring filmmakers have vanished with only their left behind footage as clues to what happened. The mythology behind the filmmakers’ subject, the Blair Witch, slowly unravels as they get lost in the woods, culminating in a creepy scene that has Heather attacked by an unseen presence while Mike silently stands in the corner, facing the wall.

Freaks – One of Us

Beautiful Cleopatra chose the wrong person to con when she marries the leader of sideshow artists, Hans, for his money. After falling ill from poisoning, Hans is humiliated to know he’s been duped by his bride, so he and his friends decide to get revenge. The stormy night set finale is intense and terrifying, but it’s still not as instantly memorable as the reveal of Cleopatra’s fate – the sideshow performers make her one of them and her new appearance makes her the ghastliest freak of all.

Ringu – Sadako Crawls from the Well

Sure, a cursed VHS tape that leaves its viewer plagued by hauntings for seven days until their demise doesn’t exactly sound inherently terrifying. But that’s before we bore witness to Sadaku, and her eerie, not-quite-human crawl out of the well, across the grass, and out of the television screen to kill the cursed. The ghost that launched a million nightmares and set the J-horror craze ablaze, all thanks to one petrifying slow crawl.

The Exorcist III – The Nurse’s Station

This scare is so memorable that chances are you’re aware of it even if you haven’t seen the film. Shot down a long hospital corridor of a nurse’s station, it follows a nurse who goes about her daily routine with a police officer in the background. It’s a setup that makes the viewer feel safe. Especially when the nurse locks a room that she’s just exited behind her. Seconds later, someone in a nun outfit opens the locked door behind her and chases after with giant shears. The loud accompanying music only enhances the truly scary moment.

Scanners – Head Explosion

Even if you haven’t seen this David Cronenberg film, you’ve probably seen this moment. It’s a great one. In it, Michael Ironside’s Darryl Revok proves just how ruthless and powerful he is when he demonstrates his “scanner” ability by making his stage partner’s head explode, before a live audience. It’s gruesome.

Bride of Frankenstein – The Monster Meets his Bride

Boy meets girl. Boy is smitten at first glance. Girl recoils in absolute aversion. Such is the story of poor Monster (Boris Karloff), a lonely, tragic creature longing for acceptance. The brief moment of elation that the Monster may have a mate is ruined almost instantly when the Bride screams at the mere sight of him. Her reaction is startling, but it’s tragic sympathy that presides over this moment. Elsa Lanchester’s stellar performance pushes this firmly into iconic territory.

Black Christmas – Suffocation by Plastic

This seminal slasher’s first major kill is so iconic that it’s featured on most of the film’s artwork. After the sorority sisters deal with what’s revealed to be one of many obscene phone calls, Clare heads up to her room to pack for Christmas break. It turns out that caller is in her room, hiding in her closet. When she gets close enough, the killer uses a plastic dress bag from her closet to suffocate her to death, and then displays her body in the attic window, plastic and all.

The Sixth Sense – I See Dead People

When Cole (Haley Joel Osment) tearfully tells Malcolm (Bruce Willis) his secret, it’s an emotional breakthrough. Malcolm longs to make up for his mistakes with a previous case, and this is a huge step with Cole opening up. Cole tells Malcolm that he sees dead people, all the time, and that they often don’t even know they’re dead. But this small reveal causes momentous ripples throughout the rest of the story. Just when we think everything is tidy and wrapped up, with Cole bonding with his mother, the “I See Dead People” time bomb explodes in Malcolm’s head with the realization that he may be one of the dead people Cole was referring to.

Get Out – The Sunken Place

There are many cultural touchtone moments in Jordan Peele’s feature debut, but the mesmerizing and distressing introduction to “the Sunken Place” is an absolute standout. Missy (Catherine Keener) pressures her daughter’s boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) to subject himself to her hypnotherapy to rid his smoking habit, and what transpires is unsettling. The hypnotic scraping of her spoon against the teacup, her soothing voice, both belie the true danger as Chris sinks through his chair into the dark recesses of his repressed memories. From above she simply smiles at a panicked Chris, “Now you are in the sunken place.”

Friday the 13th – The Lake

Alice has survived a night of terror that claimed the lives of everyone around her, and the resulting trauma has her taking a canoe out onto the lake where she passes out. When she wakes, the bright sunny sky and tranquil water gives the appearance that she’s finally safe. Cue the deformed Jason Voorhees, emerging from the water to drag her under. People often forget that it’s mama Voorhees behind this film’s slaughter, and this scene is why.

When A Stranger Calls – The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House

If ‘70s horror taught us anything, it’s that obscene prank phone calls mean we should vacate the house and go far, far away. Black Christmas may have employed the same setup first, but it was When a Stranger Calls that made the urban legend “the babysitter and the man upstairs” so uncomfortably familiar. Though the rest of the film that followed wasn’t quite as strong, the opening scene that sees the babysitter get stalked by a caller only to find out that the caller is inside the house is absolutely chilling.

Sleepaway Camp – Angela’s Secret

The surprise final shot of this ‘80s slasher is the gift that keeps on giving. No killer reveal in any movie will be able to match the insanity of this final reveal shot. The growling, the pose, the facial expression, and the, well, you know.

Halloween – Michael Sits Up

John Carpenter’s classic slasher offered up numerous cinematic moments that lent to its enduring appeal. But none were quite as terrifying, or as memorable as when Laurie Strode tries to catch her breath in the doorway of the bedroom where she’s managed to fight off her attacker. Except, while the camera is focused on her, we see Michael Myers pop back up in the background. This boogeyman revealed himself to be unstoppable right then and there.

The Strangers – Because You Were Home

Often in horror, there’s a motive behind the killer’s actions. For killer’s like Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, they slay teens out of revenge. For Norman Bates, well, he has a lot of mommy issues. But for the trio of masked killers at the center of The Strangers, their reason is far more chilling. A night of pain, torture, and horror for Kristen McKay and James Hoyt exists for one simple reason- they happened to be home. The random selection of this heinous act feels way to close to reality for our comfort.

Fright Night – You’re So Cool, Brewster

Tom Holland’s Fright Night is a great horror comedy full of enduring characters, but there’s one that really stole the show – sidekick turned vampire henchman Evil Ed. Stephen Geoffreys eccentric take, complete with cackling, on Evil Ed captures our attention early as he taunts lead protagonist Charley Brewster. “You’re So Cool, Brewster!” He laughs. But that personality isn’t diminished in the least when vampire Jerry Dandridge turns him, and watching Evil Ed take on Peter Vincent is a highlight.

Eyes Without a Face – Surgery

Released in 1960, this French horror film grossed out audiences so much that many walked out. Why? Because of the graphic heterografting surgery scene. A surgeon desperately wants to fix his daughter’s disfigured face after an accident and literally steals one from an unsuspecting victim. He chloroforms a woman and surgically removes her face, delivering one of the most shocking scenes of its time.

The Conjuring – Clap Clap

A moment so uniquely creepy it was featured in earlier teasers and promos, the disembodied hands that clap behind Carolyn Perron after she’s locked in the basement is the first massive scare in the main storyline. It also happens to be extremely effective. Who knew clapping could be so terrifying?

The Evil Dead – Playing Cards

The pivotal moment that turned an atmospheric night in the woods into an unrelenting night of demonic attack. Cheryl just survived a brutal assault in the woods, and huddled up quietly traumatized in the corner after while everyone continued on with their night of fun. Until the shocking reveal that Cheryl was no longer Cheryl, that is. It’s the moment that Sam Raimi announced this would be very different than any horror movie before.

The Fly – Help Me!

Even if you’ve never seen the original 1958 version of The Fly, chances are you’re still quite familiar with the scene that sees Vincent Price’s Francois inspecting a spider web. In it, former scientist Andres turned fly creature is trapped, pleading for help as a spider closes in. An insane moment that has been spoofed many times over in the decades since.

Dead Alive (Braindead) – Lionel’s Lawnmower

Leave it to Peter Jackson to take a regular household item like a lawnmower and turn it into a weapon of gory destruction. In the epic third act of this gory zombie comedy, reluctant hero Lionel finally steps up to the plate to save his love Paquita from the horde of zombies that have taken over his home. How? By plowing through them with a lawnmower of course. Horror has never been bloodier.

Event Horizon – Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see

The evil permeating throughout the ship Event Horizon lead to all sorts of meanspirited hallucinations for the crew of the Lewis and Clark. But none were as affected by it then the Event Horizon’s own designer, Dr. Weir (Sam Neill). He becomes an instrument for the ship to stop the surviving crew, with the intent to bring them back to the hellish dimension from which the Event Horizon came. He starts by gouging out his own eyes. Self-mutilation is always a very, very bad sign.

The Changeling – Red Ball

Only a great movie like The Changeling could make something as benign as a small red ball so creepy. For lead character John Russell, he finds himself plagued by strange occurrences shortly after moving into a historical mansion. One of which is a little red ball that moves on its own accord. So, he gets rid of it by driving to a nearby bridge and tossing it over. He gets home, takes off his jacket, and is about to walk into his study when the same ball bounces eerily down the stairs toward him.

Suspiria – Patricia Hingle

While ballet student Suzy Bannion is arriving at the dance academy, Patricia Hingle is fleeing it. Her arrival at her friend’s apartment should mean she’s safe, but an unseen assailant has followed her there and doles out a particularly unpleasant death. That it’s set against Goblin’s unique score and a vivid color scheme makes this death a stylish standout.

Candyman – Bee Immortal

Even knowing that the titular Candyman is a sort of Bloody Mary type urban legend, an entity that will kill those who summon him with his hook, there’s a romantic quality to his haunting of Helen. As he torments her, and destroys everyone around her, he’s also seducing her. It allows both Helen and the audience to drop the guard enough for true horror to catch us unaware. Candyman offers her immortality, and she looks ready to give in, until he reveals bees swarming beneath his exposed rib cage.

Hellraiser – Frank’s Resurrection

Sure, the hellish cenobites that are summoned from the lament configuration puzzle box may have captured our horror loving hearts, but it was the gruesome resurrection of Frank Cotton that seared itself in our minds. It also might have tested our gag reflex, too. The spilled blood on the attic floor seeps into the floorboards, and the body of Frank reforms in goopy, gooey, slimy, bloody, viscera-filled ways. It’s a standout.

Frankenstein – It’s Alive!

The labors of Frankenstein and his assistant Igor’s work comes to fruition in this crucial moment that sees electricity bring their stitched together creature to life. The way in which Colin Clive delivers the line, “It’s Alive” is indicative of just what kind of a madman Henry Frankenstein truly is. He’s absolutely maniacal, and it only took two simple words to convey that to an audience. Brilliant.

Birds – Ominous Arrival at School

Melanie (Tippi Hendren) quietly sits on a bench outside of the school, when birds begin to congregate on the playground nearby. Watching her. Just a couple at a time at first, and then a huge flock of them all at once. It’s ominous and threatening, made more so by the complete lack of music during the scene, save for the children singing from within the school. Eerie and iconic.

The Wolf Man – Transformation

A top-tier Universal classic monster movie and considered one of the best all-time horror movies, The Wolf Man made Lon Chaney Jr. a horror star. Larry Talbot is a tragic character that rendered this movie monster sympathetic. In the final moments, we finally see him transform; an impressive series of lap dissolves that was breakthrough special effects work for its time. The visuals made even more impactful by the emotional gravity of the scene.

Gremlins – The Tavern

Arguably the best Christmas horror movie ever made, Gremlins is a showcase of good versus evil. And stellar practical effects, of course. The best scene that highlights everything great about the movie is the scene that sees Kate Beringer playing barmaid to a crowd of evil gremlins. Not only does it give a good indication of just how badly behaved these little green monsters are, but the puppetry and special effects work on display is pure movie magic.

The Fly – Maggot Birth

Seth Brundle’s transformation from brilliant scientist to gruesome Brundle fly is unforgettable. Even still, it doesn’t quite measure up to the stark terror of what may be inside Ronnie’s womb when she learns she’s pregnant by Seth. How much of that baby is human, if at all? A nightmare sequence plays out where Ronnie gives birth to a massive wriggling maggot, and her desperation to be rid of it is palpable.

Aliens – Get Away from Her, You Bitch!

One xenomorph is bad news. But what about a whole colony of them? This epic sequel sees Ellen Ripley on a mission to exterminate the creatures once and for all. Of course, now there’s way more than one to battle, and not even Ripley saw monstrous egg-laying Queen coming. That Queen took serious issue with Ripley’s destruction of her eggs, and follows her back to the Sulaco. How do you battle a xenomorph of that size? By getting into an exosuit cargo loader and engaging in hand-to-hand combat of course. If you’re a badass like Ripley, that is.

Child’s Play – Batteries in the Box

Ever since Karen Barclay brought home a Good Guy Doll for her son Andy, bad things started happening. Her best friend died and the police suspect Andy, and Andy’s behavior has been a little off. He blames it on his doll. Eventually, she decides that maybe she should finally toss out Good Guy Doll Chucky’s packaging. When she picks up the box, the batteries fall out and grim comprehension takes over – Chucky has been talking and moving on his own. The goosebumps break out on your skin and tension mounts as Chucky is finally about to reveal himself.

The Howling – Eddie Quist

Every great werewolf movie should have at least one great transformation sequence, and in Joe Dante’s The Howling, it belongs to creep Eddie Quist. This isn’t just memorable for its amazing special effects, but that Eddie is transforming while closing in on his prey. It reveals that these werewolves don’t need the full moon to turn.

The Silence of the Lambs – I Ate His Liver

Hannibal Lecter doesn’t actually have much screen time in The Silence of the Lambs, but Anthony Hopkins delivers such a powerhouse performance that it feels as though Lecter is around for much longer. The scene that really turned Hopkins’ Lecter into an icon? The creepy line he gives Clarice Starling about what happens when a census taker tried to test him once, followed by that memorable hissing sound that no one but Hopkins seems to be able to make.

Poltergeist – They’re Here!

Once again director Tobe Hooper proves adept at creating some of horror’s most memorable moments, and Poltergeist has no shortage of them. The face peeling nightmare, pool corpses, and the demonic clown doll all delivered great frights. But none were as significant, at least in terms of pop culture memory, as young Carol Anne fixated on the television emitting white static and announcing, “They’re here!” in a sing-song voice post-earthquake. It wasn’t just the earworm way in which Heather O’Rourke delivered the line that made this scene significant, but that it was a warning cry for the beginning of the Freeling’s supernatural nightmare.

Misery – Hobbling

Annie Wilkes has her favorite author, Paul Sheldon, in her clutches and she refuses to let him go, no matter what it takes. The more he tries to escape, the worse it gets, building into one of cinema’s most cringe-inducing scenes of all time. Annie straps Paul down to the bed, places a block of wood between his ankles, and pulls out a sledgehammer. “Trust me. It’s for the best.” I don’t even have to describe what happens next; you already know.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Matthew Bennell’s Scream

One of the best horror remakes of all time, this all-star studded cast lead by Donald Sutherland brings the bleak horror. Sutherland plays Dr. Matthew Bennell, one of the earliest survivors to catch on to the alien invasion that’s slowly replacing the human race one by one. Bennell goes on the run with friends, trying to evade both sleep and the alien replacements until they eventually split up. After a hellish night, the only other survivor, Nancy (Veronica Cartright), stumbles across him on the street. She’s relieved to see a friendly face, until he lets out that iconic scream…

The Wicker Man – Blazing Pyre

Police Sergeant Howie spends most of his time on the strange island of Summerisle in search of missing girl Rowan. The more he investigates, the stranger things get as he realizes the townsfolk are Pagans prepping for their May Day celebrations. His search for Rowan gets frantic with the comprehension that this Pagan celebration may require sacrifice. But no one was prepared for what that sacrifice truly entailed.

Don’t Look Now – Girl in the Red Coat

On a trip to Venice, still grieving for his deceased daughter, John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) sees a small figure in a red coat like the one his daughter wore. He sees the figure numerous times throughout the movie, as tension between he and his wife builds, until the climax where he finds the red hooded figure once more, giving chase hoping to find his dead daughter. The one-two punch of the hooded figure’s reveal is brilliant because not only does it give Baxter’s story a shocking conclusion, but it recontextualizes the entire film that preceded.

Scream – Casey Becker Gets a Phone Call

“Do you like scary movies?” A memorable line that was delivered in one of cinema’s greatest cold opens of all time. The scene alone is a great exercise in building suspense as Casey Becket is home alone popping popcorn when a menacing prank phone caller consistently interrupts. It’s a clever introduction to this movie’s maniac modus operandi, as the Ghostface killer first toys with his prey and then brutally disembowels them. The cherry on top, and what made the entire film that followed feel dangerous, is that Casey Becket was played by the biggest star at the time, Drew Barrymore. If she can get offed so soon, who is truly safe?

Carrie – Bucket of Blood

If we’re talking strictly scares, then the movie’s final moment jump scare involving Carrie White’s grave would win hands down. But in terms of defining film moments, the instant that Carrie White’s joy at being crowned prom queen turns to horror as a bucket of pig’s blood rains down upon her delivered the most disturbing prom scene in history. That moment brought a kaleidoscope of emotions all at once; horror, shock, confusion, empathy, sadness, and above all, rage.

An American Werewolf in London – Transformation

Sure, David Naughton may have starred as the unwitting werewolf we were rooting for, but the true star may very well be special makeup effects designer and creator Rick Baker. The first full transformation sequence by Naughton’s character David, under the light of the full moon, was a dazzling display of special makeup effects that saw David’s body break, twist, and elongate in painful fashion as his inner beast burst forth. Baker set the bar extremely high for werewolf transformation sequences.

The Omen – Look at me, Damien! It’s all for you!

Signs that little Damien Thorn isn’t your average child occur pretty early on in The Omen, as well as signs that Damien has an effect on some of the people around him. The most memorable of which comes fairly early on, at Damien’s fifth birthday party. A rather large birthday gathering, complete with tents and a carousel, gets a shocking interruption courtesy of Damien’s nanny. She cheerfully calls for his attention as she stands on the top ledge of the Thorn home, smiling as she tells him, “Look at me, Damien! It’s all for you!” Then she plummets to her death, a noose around her neck.

The Shining – Here’s Johnny!

There are numerous memorable scenes and iconic imagery in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. From the beckoning Grady twins, the woman in 237, to even the tidal wave of blood erupting from the Overlook elevator; Kubrick’s vision has a way of embedding itself into your mind. But none have made quite as large of an impact on pop culture as Jack Torrance taking an axe to the bathroom door so he can get inside and murder his family. Jack Nicholson plays unhinged like no other, and his line, “Here’s Johnny!” became famous both in and outside of horror.

Night of the Living Dead – “They’re Coming to Get You Barbra”

Barbra is already on edge when she visits her father’s grave with her brother, Johnny. Like most brothers, Johnny uses her anxiety as another opportunity to taunt her. All the while, the viewer is aware of a strange man in the background, his movements not quite normal. Then, that man attacks, and Johnny steps in to save his sister only to die while Barbra flees. The film never lets up from there, growing more intense and harrowing by the minute. George A. Romero redefined both horror and the zombie subgenre from the outset.

Rosemary’s Baby – He has his father’s eyes

Poor Rosemary Woodhouse is offered up to Satan by her own husband, gaslighted by everyone around her, and left to endure a terrible pregnancy all alone while she’s manipulated by those she’s supposed to trust. After she goes into labor, she’s sedated and told the baby died when she comes to. All of the lies culminate into one shocking finale, when Rosemary discovers not only that her baby is indeed alive, but the terrible truth behind the baby’s paternity. “He has his father’s eyes,” and they look nothing like her husband’s.

The Thing – Defibrillator

This iconic scare occurs late in the game, with paranoia already high and a crew well aware that they’re dealing with a deadly foe not of this planet. The strange occurrences that have resulted in death and bizarre body horror left the crew, and viewers, shaken to the core. By comparison, Norris suffering a heart attack seemed a perfectly human reaction to the chaos around them. Until the rug is pulled out from Dr. Copper (and the viewer) when he attempts to revive him via defibrillator. The brilliant misdirect locked this scene down in the pantheon of iconic movie moments.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – Meet Leatherface

There are a lot of iconic moments in this classic, making this one tough. From Leatherface’s crazed twirling of the chainsaw at the end or the worst dinner party ever, Hooper’s debut film an unnerving ride beginning to end. The most memorable moment, though, goes to the film’s brutal introduction to the iconic Leatherface. Poor Kirk had no idea what he was getting into when he stepped into the Sawyer residence, and neither did the unsuspecting audience. The quick succession of Leatherface emerging from the back room, bringing down his sledgehammer upon Kirk’s skull, dragging his body into the back, and then slamming the door shut left audiences shook.

The Exorcist – Head Spin

Having just celebrated its 45th anniversary of release, The Exorcist remains one of the scariest movies of all time. It’s easy to see why; the devil demonstrates how evil he really is by possessing a 12-year-old girl and having her behave in heinous fashion. One of the most scandalous scenes sees a possessed Regan masturbating sadistically with a crucifix. That alone was enough to unnerve audiences, but the moment is punctuated by Regan sitting up in bed and turning to face her mother – 180 degrees the opposite direction. Human necks do not, under any circumstances, rotate that far, making the moment utterly chilling.

Psycho – The Shower Scene

A scene so famous and mind-blowing that it even received a documentary, Alfred Hitchcock caught audiences with their pants down thanks to one of horror’s most surprising death scenes. Up until her brutal death, Marion Crane was the film’s central character and lead. No one saw that coming.

Jaws – You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Sometimes less is more, and that was the case in Steven Spielberg’s classic that made generations afraid to go into the water. The animatronic shark used in production had a way of being uncooperative, making Spielberg get creative and use the shark’s appearances sparingly. It resulted in one hell of a reveal, in which Chief Martin Brody is haphazardly tossing chum in the water from the back of Quint’s boat. It appears without warning, and in a state of shock, Brody makes an astute, yet humorous observation about Quint’s boat in correlation to the shark’s size.

Alien – Chest Burster

The iconic scene that not even the actors purportedly saw coming; the birth of a xenomorph by way of the gruesome death of its human incubator. Kane seemed to be on the mend after a harrowing encounter with a strange face-hugging lifeform on a derelict space ship. He and his crew are having a cheerful meal post recovery, but it’s interrupted when he starts convulsing. An alien violently rips out of his body through his rib cage, splattering everyone around him with blood and beginning the battle for survival.

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Deborah Logan – The Taking of Deborah Logan

The progressive stages of Alzheimer’s disease are scary in itself, a loved one developing dementia can lead to a host of bizarre symptoms that make them feel unfamiliar or vacant. For Sarah, watching her mother Deborah slip away thanks to the disease is unsettling in itself, but there’s also something more supernatural at play. It’s not just a disease eating away at Deborah, but the possession of an evil physician looking to complete a cannibalistic ritual he started years ago. It leads to startling truths about Sarah’s mother as she continues to deteriorate. Deborah grows increasingly more terrifying, right up to the unhinged finale.

Margaret White – Carrie

In terms of strange supernatural abilities, then Carrie White wins at intimidation. Her telekinetic fury decimated the school gym, and everyone inside it, after all. But Carrie is still a sympathetic, tragic character. A target for bullying by her peers and a subject of harsh abuse at home, it’s understandable Carrie would eventually snap. The true villain is Carrie’s mother Margaret. It doesn’t take long to discover that Margaret White’s grasp on reality was always tenuous at best, and her abuse toward her daughter has been lifelong. Who knew something called a “prayer closet,” a tool of punishment for Margaret, could be so unnerving? But Margaret becomes petrifying when she draws the conclusion that her daughter is a witch – and “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Rhoda Penmark – The Bad Seed

Eight-year-old Rhoda is all sunshine, sweetness, and pigtails. Rather, that’s what she’d like you to believe. Beneath the façade is a manipulative sociopath that kills to get what she wants, and takes pleasure from it. She drowns a classmate for beating her at a simple penmanship competition, sets adults on fire then gleefully plays her piano while they burn, and more. And have I mentioned that she’s only eight? Thanks to the MPAA’s Hays Code, which didn’t allow characters to get away with any crimes, the 1956 film stopped Rhoda before she grew into an adult sociopathic serial killer. The source novel, and other adaptations, left Rhoda on the loose for more terror.

Tristana Medeiros – REC

Tristana only makes her presence known in the final scenes of this chilling found footage film, but what an impact it makes. The viral outbreak that has residents and first responders fighting for their lives in a quarantined apartment building gives no real insight as to the cause. Until reporter turned survivor Angela Vidal finally reaches the penthouse apartment. It’s there that she and her cameraman uncover that the owner, an agent of the Vatican, used the apartment as a scientific lab for studying demonic possession. Tristana Medeiros was his demonically possessed test subject, whom he abandoned and left for dead, and her demonic sickness became viral. Played by Javier Botet, Tristana’s grand entrance is pure nightmare fuel.

Samara – The Ring

When Rachel Keller digs into the cursed videotape that first affected her niece, then herself, she discovers the haunted presence of Samara. Rachel does what most would do in a traditional ghost story; uncover the truth behind the haunted presence and put the angry spirit to rest. In this case, it’s Samara, a creepy little girl with insomnia issues and psychic abilities. Rachel uncovers the horrific truth behind Samara’s death, and proceeds to give the body a proper burial. But Samara isn’t just an average ghost on a quest for vengeance. She’s pure, unrelenting evil.

Julia Cotton – Hellraiser

On the surface, she may seem prim and put together wife of Larry Cotton, but underneath she’s ruthless and unhinged. One brief affair with Larry’s husband Frank shortly after her wedding day sparked an insane obsession that not even a grotesque resurrection can quell.  Any woman who can bear witness to the gloopy mess of a formerly dead person coming back together one sinew and artery at a time, and then proceeds to seduce victims for them, is not someone who can be reasoned with. Julia Cotton is ambitious, ruthless, and ice cold. It’s a scary thought to be so flippant about assisting in the murder of multiple unsuspecting men, but it’s even scarier when it’s inspired by a skinless dead guy that somehow still stirs lust.

Asami Yamazaki – Audition

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or maybe just a seriously deranged woman with a mean jealous streak. Asami Yamazaki seems like the ideal wife for widower Shigeharu Aoyama, urged to date again by his teen son. She’s sweet, docile, and Aoyama enjoys her company. But signs slowly emerge that something is off about his new lady love. Digging into her past reveals a trail of body parts and dead bodies. Even still, he’s not prepared for the wrath incurred when Asami finds a picture of his dead wife still on display in his home. Cue the piano wire, needles, and chilling giggles as she ensures Aoyama will never love anyone as much as he should love her. So creepy.

Annie Wilkes – Misery

There’s always something inherently terrifying about the plucky next-door neighbor types who deftly hide a depth of malice beneath that cheery veneer. Such is the case of Annie Wilkes, an avid romance reader who resorts to using words like “cockadoodle” in lieu of profanity. But Annie is a poster child for obsessive-compulsive disorders, and many other mental issues, and when she rescues her favorite author from a car accident, it sets off a chain of unhealthy behavior that results in a lot of pain and suffering for Paul. She has a history of murder, and the infamous hobbling scene still comes as a genuine shock. In Stephen King’s novel, the scene is much, much worse – she chops off his foot with an axe and uses a blowtorch to cauterize the stump.

Lola “Princess” Stone – The Loved Ones

If anyone thinks Carrie White is the prom date from hell, they haven’t met Lola. And she doesn’t handle rejection well. Like a lot of teen girls, Lola is a bit boy crazy. Unlike a lot of teen girls, she works through those crushes by kidnapping the object of her desire and inflicting a mass heap of excruciating torture before lobotomizing them via drilled holes and boiling water. She then keeps them around to starve in her cellar. Lola is assisted by her father, who gives his little princess whatever her heart desires, no matter how dark and depraved that may be. Lola loves her daddy just a little too much, and the reveal of what she did to mommy will make your skin crawl.

La Femme – Inside

A very pregnant Sarah is terrorized in her own home by an unnamed woman who will stop at nothing to take Sarah’s unborn child. La Femme, played by the fierce Beatrice Dalle, is downright primal. Her attacks on Sarah, and anyone else that may get in the way, are absolutely savage and the blood splatters freely. La Femme’s motivation behind the attack stems from tragedy, but La Femme long moved past grief, and anger, into a primordial need that almost makes her feel “other.” She sustains injuries as if there’s no one home, that’s how much her goal drives her. In horror, there’s no one else quite like La Femme.

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The Nameless

This independent Spanish horror film marked the director’s feature debut, and it also happens to be the least known among his works. A slow build horror thriller that opens with a police crime scene in which the body of a small child is found stuffed down a well. The grisly autopsy that follows shows the body mutilated beyond recognition and proves the poor child suffered horribly before death. Only a piece of jewelry can help the parents identify the body as their own missing child. Flash forward five years later, where mom Claudia still hasn’t moved on. She receives a call one day from her dead child, claiming that dead body was a plant by those that took her, and she’s still very much alive. It sets off a twisty spider’s web of conspiracy as Claudia seeks to solve the mystery of who was on the phone, and what really happened to her missing daughter years ago.

That slowness is likely to put off viewers, but Balagueró takes his time building mystery and unnerving cult lore. The deaths are gruesome, and The Nameless are super creepy. It’s here that he establishes his fearlessness in refusing to wrap things up in a tidy, happy bow. The Nameless didn’t make its way stateside until after his English debut, though, making this 1999 release one of the decade’s most underseen horror films.

Darkness

Balagueró’s English language debut didn’t fare well upon release stateside on Christmas day in 2004, at least not critically anyway. It’s easy to understand why. The marketing presented Darkness as a familiar haunted house tale, which turned out not to be the case at all, and the ending was pretty grim – far from the norm at the time, especially for a Christmas release. It also didn’t help that despite the rich occult mythology at the heart of the film, Balagueró hadn’t quite mastered his storytelling yet and Darkness could be vague at times.

The plot follows an American family as they settle into a home that was the site of the disappearance of six children forty years prior. The move alone would be stressful for any family, but patriarch Mark (Game of Thrones’ Iain Glen) is suffering from Huntington’s disease, and his symptomatic outbursts put an additional strain on his wife, Maria (Lena Olin), teen daughter Regina (Anna Paquin), and young son Paul (Stephan Enquist). While Paul seems susceptible to the ghosts of the house’s sordid past and Maria clings to denial, it’s Regina that delves into the house’s horrifying history in the hopes of saving her loved ones. Spooky set pieces and a unique, bleak story steeped in occultism demonstrated a lot of burgeoning potential for the director.

Fragile

The director’s third feature film, a Spanish-British production, showed remarkable growth. The story was tighter, more focused, and downright terrifying. If you’re a fan of supernatural horror films, anyway. Nurse Amy Nicholls (Calista Flockhart) is fleeing her own guilt-ridden past by taking up a night shift at a rundown hospital preparing to close. She’s to watch over the children’s ward, while they’re all fast asleep, but the kids keep waking from random injuries. As Amy tries to prevent further injuries to her patients, the children tell of Charlotte, a girl who inhabits the abandoned floor upstairs.

That’s right, this is a haunted hospital story. In Balagueró’s hands, though, it’s pretty terrifying no matter how familiar the tropes. It also helps that there’s a pretty sweet story that engenders itself to the viewer well, between Amy’s desire for redemption and her emotionally engaging bond with orphan Maggie. Charlotte is one of the creepiest entities of the early aughts, too. Quick paced, charming story, and extremely creepy scares, Fragile is the perfect bridge between the director’s earlier occult tales and the intense found footage modern classic yet to come.

To Let

This made for TV movie follows a young couple trying to find a short-term place to live after selling their apartment. They discover an out of the way building with an empty flat, but the landlady doesn’t seem to want to let them leave. Ever. It’s atmospheric and tense, as the young couple (who are expecting their first child) are trapped inside with deranged people. Though, it is plagued with dumb people making dumb choices, it’s far more intense and bloody than most TV movies.

To Let was part of the new Films to Keep you Awake, or Películas para no dormir, series that aired in Spain in 2007. Balagueró’s twisty film was the second entry in this revival.

[REC]

Balagueró teamed up with Paco Plaza, who he’d previously worked with on a 2002 documentary, to co-helm the decade’s scariest horror movie. The pair erased any doubts that there was life left in the found footage subgenre with [Rec], a film that followed reporter Angela Vidal and her cameraman as they cover the night shift of a local fire station for her reality series While You’re Sleeping. It’s all going well until they accompany two firefighters on a call to a local apartment building, where one is attacked and bitten by an aggressive older woman. When they find they can’t remove the injured due to a quarantine, others soon fall ill and attack, leaving the survivors fleeing and fighting for their lives.

The word “gamechanger” isn’t one to be thrown around lightly, but [Rec] is every bit deserving of the word as it completely altered the rules of outbreak horror and the zombie subgenre. To elaborate further would be a spoiler, but suffice it to say that the background of the source infection is not one that’s easily predictable. Plaza and Balagueró deliver a tightly wound, nail-biting thriller that brings the horror in every sense, right up to its terrifying conclusion.

[REC] 2

Picking up immediately where the first film leaves off, [Rec] 2 saw Plaza and Balagueró reteaming to expand this creepy universe in a thrilling way. The core group of characters this sequel centers on is Dr. Owen, a Ministry of Health representative, and a GEO team armed and sent into the quarantined apartment to investigate. There’s also a trio of curious teens who decide to sneak past police and quarantine officials to find an underground entrance into the apartment, bringing the father of Jennifer (the infected girl from the first film) with them. Some characters prove to have hidden motives, while many of the others come to regret ever stepping foot into the building in the first place.

Claustrophobic and full of well-executed jump scares, you get a feeling that long-time friends Plaza and Balagueró were having a ball creating atmosphere and spooky set pieces. For all of the mystery in the first film, this sequel explains the interesting mythology behind the zombie-like outbreak in spades. In other words, this sequel feels more like the other complementary half to its predecessor.

Sleep Tight

The job of helming [Rec] 3: Genesis fell solely on the shoulders of Plaza, and that’s because Balagueró was busy directing one of the few films to truly get under my skin; Sleep Tight. Trading physical horror for psychological, Sleep Tight follows perpetual pessimist Cesar (Luis Tosar), a concierge at an apartment building who seeks to make everyone around him as miserable as he is. But new tenant Clara (Marta Etura) is unflappable in her happiness, driving Cesar to demented lengths to break her spirit. While Clara is fast asleep in the seeming security of her own apartment, she’s oblivious that Cesar is usually lying in wait under her bed so he can tamper with her things, her life, while she’s asleep.

Balagueró takes everything he’s learned in building fear and pours it into this deeply unsettling twist on a home invasion film, with the viewer forced to get up close and personal with psychopathic Cesar by telling the story from his point of view, as his vendetta against Clara gets darker and darker. Disturbing, uncomfortable, and a chilling master class in tension, Sleep Tight is Balagueró at his best.

[REC] 4: Apocalypse

Plaza passed the director baton to Balagueró for this sequel, who helmed the final entry in the popular [Rec] series on his own. Picking up immediately after the events of the second film, the Army sends in a special task force team to demolish the building. One officer hears Angela Vidal’s screams for help, though, and saves her. Angela later wakes up on a ship out at sea, and soon discovers the virus has followed her. Granted, fans of [Rec] 2 know why that is.

Here’s where I’ll catch some flack; this sequel isn’t terrible. It doesn’t reach the same edge-of-your-seat highs as the first two films, but it does thematically tie everything together. It gives Angela a satisfying story arch, too, as the helpless damsel turned villain turned ass-kicking final girl. Also, Balagueró always said in interviews that the most important thing in creating a found footage film is to justify the existence of the camera’s usage. If it doesn’t make sense for the camera to still be rolling, it’s going to take the audience out of the story. He steadfastly holds to that rule by dropping the found footage aspect and going traditional. I’ll also give him credit for making some bold choices in the overall mythology, even if it doesn’t all work. Though [Rec] 4: Apocalypse may be the weakest of the series, it doesn’t mean much considering just how great the series is as a whole.

Here’s to hoping Balagueró keeps finding new ways to exploit our fears. Which film is your favorite?

The post Director Spotlight: The Fear Filled Filmography of Jaume Balagueró appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Here are all the new release highlights we can expect from Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Shudder throughout October.

Amazon Prime Video

Hell House LLC

In 2009, a haunted house attraction befell a horrific tragedy that claimed the lives of 15 people on opening night. Every single member of the crew died, save one who went missing shortly after. A documentary crew found her, and decide the best plan of action is to head back to the scene of the crime to find out what happened. Ok. So this is a found footage horror. But give it a chance anyway. It’s themed around a haunt attraction around Halloween, but more importantly, it manages to craft well-executed scares that work.

Jigsaw

What’s Halloween without a Saw movie? The latest, released last Halloween season, marks the return of the Jigsaw killer, further muddying one of horror’s most convoluted timelines ever. But if you’re seeking fun and a whole lot of intricate killer traps, than Jigsaw succeeds and then some. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a lot of fun. This is the perfect movie to watch while carving pumpkins, right?

Pet Sematary II

Yes, I’m still defending this maligned sequel. It’s over the top and bonkers, not unlike Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. It also is set over Halloween, with Halloween night factoring into the plot in a major way. Starring Edward Furlong and Anthony Edwards as the father-son duo dealing with their own loss, the real reason to watch is for Clancy Brown’s scene-chewing performance. It’s pure madness in the best way. If you’re still not convinced, then rest assured Pet Sematary is also available on Prime Video.

Scarecrows

One of Fall’s major icons is the scarecrow, and one of horror’s best movies about killer scarecrows is, well, Scarecrows. When a group of robbers are making their getaway by plane and forced to land in an abandoned field, they find themselves facing killer scarecrows. The plot doesn’t always make sense, but the atmosphere and great effects more than make up for the flaws. This is a fun one.

Slice – October 18

When a pizza delivery driver is murdered, the city is on the hunt for the murdered. A disgraced werewolf is the prime suspect, but in a town full of ghosts, witches, and humans there’s more to this mystery than pizza. An irreverent horror comedy by first time feature director Austin Vesely, Slice stars Chance the Rapper, Zazie Beetz, Hannibal Buress, Joe Keery, and more. If you want something more lighthearted this Halloween season, this might be for you (our review). It’s the equivalent of a spooky Saturday morning cartoon.

“Lore” Season 2- Available October 19

A unique anthology series based on Aaron Mahnke’s podcast that explores folklore-based horror in a sort of documentary/live-action podcast format returns for a second season with a new showrunner at the helm. Some of the new episodes will harken back to familiar episodes of Mahnke’s podcase, and some will feature wholly new stories.

Hulu

[REC] series

Hulu has dropped not one, but all four movies in the REC franchise. Which makes for a perfect Halloween movie marathon. The first two films, written/directed by Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero, are two halves of a whole, giving a unique twist to the outbreak sub-genre. More importantly, they both deliver on the scares in spades. Paco Plaza went solo for the third entry, REC 3: Genesis, dropping the found footage format for a spinoff story that deserves more love and recognition than it’s received so far. Jaume Balaguero returns to close the series out with REC 4: Apocalypse, but it’s not nearly as strong as everything that came before. Even still, this is one of the best modern horror franchises, and for a night of spooky fun you can’t go wrong with REC.

Into the Dark “The Body” 

This anthology series is unlike any that’s come before; each episode is a feature length film. Beginning October 5, a new episode airs every month on the first Friday of the month and will run year-round. The movie-a-month series will revolve around that month’s holiday, beginning with the Halloween themed episode “The Body.” Starring Tom Bateman, “The Body” follows a hitman who carries out his latest victim in plain sight on Halloween, pretending it’s simply a Halloween prop. When groupies latch on, it becomes a battle of will and wits.

Pyewacket – Available October 6

The latest by Adam MacDonald (Backcountry) sees a young girl performing a ritual to summon a witch to kill her mother after a devastating fight. But when they make up soon after, it may be too late to revoke the spell. A brooding, atmospheric coming of age story, Brad called this an instant indie gem that should make its way onto many best of the year lists. Thanks to Hulu, Pyewacket is less likely to slip under the radar as of October 6. And witches are, of course, a major Halloween staple.

Light as a Feather – Available October 11

This 10-episode supernatural series revolves around a group of teen girls being picked off one by one after a game of “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.” The surviving girls then must determine why they’re being targeted, and whether an evil presence is the one behind the murders. This is the first Hulu project to be based on a Wattpad story, and stars Ajiona Alexus, Liana Liberato, Peyton List, and more.[/caption]

Shudder

Satan’s Slaves 

A remake of an ‘80s film of the same name, this Indonesian horror film has consistently been touted as the scariest horror film during its run on the festival circuit. Written and directed by Joko Anwar, Satan’s Slaves follows a family that begins experiencing paranormal activity shortly after the matriarch passes away. Effective jump scares and unnerving atmosphere grounded by the endearing family dynamics makes for a spooky Halloween movie to add to your watchlist.

True Horror 

The hit U.K. horror series is coming to Shudder to elicit chills. A docudrama series that opens with a disclaimer of true terror, True Horror presents based on true story encounters with the paranormal by combining on camera interviews and dramatizations. The series is by the producers of 2015’s The Enfield Haunting. This series sounds like a great pairing option with WNUF Halloween Special or Ghostwatch.

Terrified – Available Oct 11

This Argentinian horror film from the mind of Demian Rugna only has one true purpose; to scare the crap out of you (our review). It succeeds in its goal and then some, delivering several memorable scares that will leave you wanting to sleep with the lights one. Set in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, a group of paranormal experts and a soon-to-be-retired cop investigate a series of creepy events happening on the block. Turn all the lights out, turn the volume up and prepare for scares. Even better? Pair this with Satan’s Slaves and forget about ever sleeping again.

The Witch in the Window – Oct 18

Written and directed by Andy Mitton (YellowBrickRoad, We Go On), this small scaled chiller follows a father who brings his son, Finn, to a rural home in Vermont to flip, and the pair encounters the malicious spirit of the previous owner. The longer they stay, the stronger she gets. Kalyn called this horror film one of the most exciting horror movies of the year.

Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block – Available October 25

Just the day before season four of this beloved horror series makes its debut on Syfy, Shudder gives you a chance to catch up with season 3, Butcher’s Block. Based on Kerry Hammond’s “Search and Rescue Woods,” Butcher’s Block follows a young woman that works with her sister to find out what’s happening to the city’s residents after moving there and discovering a string of disappearances. It stars Rutger Hauer and was directed by Arkasha Stevenson.

The post Here Are the Best Halloween-themed Movies Available on Streaming! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As previously reported, all four films in Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero’s terrifying Spanish horror franchise [REC] are being collected together for the first time on Blu-ray here in the States, Scream Factory. They’ve set the release for September 25. The [REC] Collection Blu-ray set includes audio commentary with writers/directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, making-of featurettes, behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes, deleted scenes, trailers, and more. Full specs have just been shared and are listed below.

In the first film, [REC], a TV reporter and her crew are asked to cover a crew of firemen on duty. What seems like a routine story about a night at the fire station soon turns into a nightmare. Trapped inside a quarantined building, the crew must try to survive the terror that rages inside.

• In Spanish with English Subtitles and English Dub
• Audio Commentary with writers/directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza (In Spanish with English Subtitles)
• The Making of REC  (40 minutes)
• Crew Interviews (46 minutes)
• Extended Scenes
• Deleted Scenes
• Behind the Scenes Footage (43 minutes)
• Teaser
• Theatrical Trailers
• TV Spots
• Still Gallery

• In Spanish with English Subtitles
• Audio Commentary with writers/directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza (In Spanish with English Subtitles)
• The Making of REC 2 – In An Affected World (118 minutes)
• Behind the Scenes
• Deleted Scenes
• Extended Scenes
• A Walkthrough of the Set
• REC 2 On Tour
• Sitges Film Festival Press Conference
• Theatrical Trailers
• TV Spots
• Still Gallery

• In Spanish with English Subtitles
• REC: Genesis – Preparing A Bloody Wedding (117 minutes)
• The Making of REC 3
• Deleted Scenes
• Outtakes
• Theatrical Trailers
• TV Spots
• Still Gallery

• In Spanish with English Subtitles
• The Making of REC: APOCALYPSE
• Theatrical Trailers
• TV Spot
• Still Gallery

The post Scream Factory Details Massive [REC] Collected Blu-ray Box Set! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In the first film, [REC], a TV reporter and her crew are asked to cover a crew of firemen on duty. What seems like a routine story about a night at the fire station soon turns into a nightmare. Trapped inside a quarantined building, the crew must try to survive the terror that rages inside.

The post Scream Factory Releasing Entire ‘[REC]’ Franchise in Blu-ray Set! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But, like most sub-genres of horror that have waned in popularity, all it takes is one innovative twist to breathe new life into the undead. Take 2016’s Train to Busan, a zombie outbreak film set mostly on a train and with a ton of heart. Or Irish horror film The Cured, out on VOD now, that posits what happens after a cure for the infected has been found and implemented.

While most zombie films tend to be a dime a dozen, there are a great number of worthwhile horror films breaking the mold. Here are 10 good zombie films that defy convention.

Seoul Station

This prequel to surprise hit Train to Busan takes a drastic unconventional aesthetic choice; it’s animated. From there, it leans heavily into genre tropes to make a social critique on how the homeless population is perceived and treated. So, looking past the unique look of the film, that doesn’t exactly scream unconventional. Until you realize that writer/director Yeon Sang-ho has been playing you the entire time, knowing you’ll play into every single expectation the zombie sub-genre has taught us before pivoting and pulling the rug out from under us. In that sense, Seoul Station weaponizes zombie convention, giving viewers an equally emotional viewing experience as Train to Busan; just in a completely different way.

The Battery

This indie darling written and directed by Jeremy Gardner on a micro-budget follows two former baseball players slash best friends trying to survive long after a zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world, or at least the New England area in which the film takes place. Even though the rules of the zombie apocalypse fall right in line with every zombie apocalypse before it, it still manages to reinvigorate the sub-genre by not really being a zombie movie at all. It’s more of a unique road trip movie among buds, Ben and Mickey, trying to survive. Sure, there are occasional zombie encounters, some humorous and some harrowing, but in its own unique way, The Battery is a sort of anti-zombie zombie movie. It works.

Dead & Buried

Gary Sherman’s underrated ‘80s horror film is unconventional for both its unique undead rules and for its mysterious atmosphere. Set in a small coastal town, Sheriff Gillis must investigate a series of grisly murders of visitors, only to discover that the town’s dead are re-animating. The walking undead in this town aren’t your cookie cutter zombies, but to explain further would be stepping into massive spoiler territory. The narrative also pays homage to the original zombies, in which the dead were reanimated by way of voodoo (don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler). Though this was a story that favored chills and atmosphere over gore, Stan Winston’s makeup effects made the few gore scenes really stick their landing.

28 Days Later

Before Alex Garland toyed with sci-fi and horror conventions in Ex Machina and Annihilation, he forever altered the way we perceived zombies by penning 28 Days Later. Stemming from a simple concept of wanting to do a movie featuring running zombies, Garland and director Danny Boyle gave us one of the most terrifying collapses of society on screen. Stemming from a rage-inducing virus that spread like wildfire, the infected aren’t exactly undead. They might as well be, though, as any semblance of humanity is long gone once the virus takes root; just an inherent instinct for swift brutality.

Shaun of the Dead

Edgar Wright’s breakout hit wasn’t the first zombie comedy, or even the first zombie rom-com, but it was the first to give zombies a massive mainstream appeal. It affectionately played with deconstructed zombie tropes, giving audiences outside of our genre a zombie education they didn’t know they were getting by using sharp-witted humor. By paying homage to the films that came before it but with a mass market approach based in laughs, Shaun of the Dead paved the way for many genre comedies, and even zombie films, that would follow.

Pontypool

Based on a novel by Tony Burgess, also adapted for screen by Burgess, director Bruce McDonald takes an Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds type approach to this unique micro-budget horror film. Shock Jock radio announcer Grant Mazzy, stuck inside his radio station during a blizzard, finds himself and his co-workers isolated from the outbreak happening outside in the town of Pontypool, relying on field reporters and callers to fill in the blanks on a mysterious virus spreading by uttering words. Yes, words. It’s clever and witty, and Stephen McHattie sells both his character and the intensity of a viral zombie outbreak often heard but not seen.

Deadgirl

Writer Trent Haaga (Cheap Thrills, 68 Kill) penned one of the most polarizing takes on the zombie genre perhaps of all time with bold social commentary and uncomfortable subject matter. Why? The plot follows two teen boys as they find a naked female zombie in an abandoned psychiatric hospital, chained to a table. How they decide to handle this discovery makes for one of the bleakest horror films I’ve ever witnessed, and epitomizes the concept of humanity being the real monsters. Unlike most zombie films, there’s only the one zombie here, and the eponymous Deadgirl earns unwavering viewer sympathy for enduring what toxic teens J.T. and Rickie dole out. Love it or hate it, it’s unlike any zombie film you’ve ever seen.

Re-Animator

Stuart Gordon’s classic horror comedy, loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s novella Herbert West-Reanimator, is an unconventional zombie film in that it was born from Gordon’s desire to see a Frankenstein film in a genre inundated by Dracula films. Though the reanimated dead in this film are far more closely aligned with what we’re used to seeing in zombies, there’s no question that the manic Dr. Herbert West (played by the amiable Jeffrey Combs) shares a lot in common with mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein.

Cemetery Man

Otherwise known as Dellamorte Dellamore, this quirky horror-comedy follows Rupert Everett as cemetery caretaker Francesco Dellamorte. He and his mute sidekick Gnaghi spend their days ensuring the new revived dead are put back in their graves.  All is going well, if a bit mundane, until Francesco falls hard for a young widow (Anna Falchi) and Gnaghi falls for the mayor’s daughter. Things get crazy and very surreal, not least of which is Death incarnate visiting Francesco to demand he stop killing the dead. There’s a wry tongue-in-cheek, dream logic approach in director Michele Soavi’s work. Between the unique plot, characters, and style, there’s nothing like Cemetery Man.

[REC]

Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero unleashed one of the most terrifying zombie films with 2007’s [Rec]. Even more shocking is that they managed to do it with found footage. But most of all, is that their viral outbreak that turns its infected into violent, biting killers introduces a brand-new mythology to the zombie sub-genre. We’ve seen toxic waste, space debris, voodoo rituals, and viral outbreaks as the cause for zombie apocalypses. [Rec] falls right in line with the latter for most of the running time, until a late game reveal changes everything. There’s nothing typical at all about this surprise zombie franchise.

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When it comes to foreign horror the explosive wave of brutal films that emerged from France in the early 2000s, often referred to as New French Extremity, made the rest of the world take notice with films like Inside, High Tension, Martyrs, and so much more. The wave emerged as the boom of J-horror began to wane. Between the extreme visceral horror of the French, and the instantly iconic long-haired female ghosts of Asian horror, a very vital voice in worldwide horror had slipped by mostly unnoticed.

Spain has long been a master of horror, proving again and again that they can match the creeping supernatural frights and the vicious brutality of their brethren. But where Spanish horror truly excels is in the psychological. The permeating dread and unease combined with unexpected twists and turns makes Spanish horror some of the absolute best.

Though Spain had a horror boom that mirrored the U.S. in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and continued throughout the decades, it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that we started to really take heed. Spain has since emerged as a leader of horror, delivering some of the most terrifying films in recent memory and a new wave of talented filmmakers with an uncanny ability to craft scares. For the uninitiated in Spanish horror, here are 5 must-see films that serve as a great gateway:

Who Can Kill a Child? – Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

Or, ¿Quién puede matar a un niño?, Serrador’s 1976 killer kid movie manages to make his island of homicidal children genuinely creepy. British tourists Evelyn and Tom decide to take an island getaway vacation before Evelyn gives birth to their third child, but they quickly discover that their island of choice doesn’t seem to have any adults. The sense that something is truly off-kilter about the children gives way to a severe sense of unease, before the children become menacing in a way that few killer kid movies manage to achieve. Serrador favors psychological torment over gore, which makes the few moments of gore pack a punch. Before Children of the Corn, there was Serrador’s seminal shocker.

The Day of the Beast – Alex de la Iglesia

El Día de la Bestia is the perfect introduction to the dark, twisted humor of Alex de la Iglesia. A highly underappreciated Christmas horror film that follows a Catholic priest that teams up with a black metal enthusiast to try to stop the birth of the Antichrist, therefore the end of the world. How does the priest try to avert the birth? By committing as many sins as possible. Released in 1995, this horror comedy is a fast-paced thrill ride that’s as funny as it is horrific and offensive. If you enjoy this film, and you should, don’t stop there- de la Iglesia’s The Last Circus, Witching and Bitching, and The Bar all deliver on the director’s trademark horror and mean sense of humor.

Thesis – Alejandro Amenabar

Before scaring audiences stateside with ghostly shocker, The Others in 2004, Amenabar emerged as one the best Spanish directors of the ‘90s with psychological thriller Thesis. The plot revolves around Angela, a film student doing a thesis about violence, who discovers a snuff film of a girl being tortured to her death. The girl happened to be a former student at her school. It’s a masterful example of the psychological mysteries that reveal twist after twist that Spain does so well. A clever thriller that introspects on snuff and violence in media, while giving us characters you’re invested in and a killer that’s tough to predict. Taut with tension, it’s a fun thrill ride made even more impressive by it being Amenabar’s debut feature.

[REC] – Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza

Leave it to Spain and, more importantly, directors Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero to remind the world that found footage not only still had life left, but could deliver the most chilling narratives in horror history if handled with respect and innovation. [Rec] is the film that made the rest of the world sit up and pay attention to what Spain was doing in horror in 2007. After we slept with the lights on for weeks, that is. This found-footage nightmare, following television reporter Angela Vidal as she gets locked into an apartment building with something sinister, spawned 3 sequels and an American near shot-for-shot remake. A game changer in multiple ways, [Rec] was the film responsible for bringing Spain to the table. If you’re already quite familiar (and I have a hunch you are), then be sure to check out Balaguero’s chilling supernatural film Fragile and skin-crawling home invasion film Sleep Tight. And if you still haven’t seen Plaza’s Veronica, it’s on Netflix so there are no excuses. These two modern horror masters are clearly not slowing down.

The Orphanage – J.A. Bayona

Reminiscent of 1980’s cult classic haunter The Changeling, Bayona’s feature debut is as heartbreaking as it is frightening. The film’s profile may have been boosted by having Guillermo del Toro attached as executive producer, but Bayona helmed a master class of spine-tingling scares made more profound with a story of love among endearing characters. It, of course, helped that the story’s ghosts were children, particularly one with an affinity for creepy masks. Laura brings her family back to her childhood home, a former orphanage for handicapped children, and her son’s new invisible friend brings an ominous presence within the home. It’s no surprise that Hollywood snatched Bayona up after this film’s release; after breaking hearts in A Monster Calls, Bayona has promised to bring back the horror in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

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Time and time again, history demonstrates that current events wind up reflecting in the period’s genre films as well, and the turn of the century proves no different. September 11, 2001 wasn’t just a dark day stateside, but it reverberated globally as well thanks to continuous media coverage of terrorism and military focus. The early 2000s brought the rise and fall of the sub-genre dubbed “torture porn.” New developments in digital technology and laptop software, in conjunction with a recession that affected the filmmaking industry, meant new voices in horror that may not have arisen prior to this decade.

International turmoil and continued rapid pace advancements in technology meant the rise of international horror. Asian horror was already on the rise thanks to breakout hits like Ringu late last decade, the French emerged as a powerhouse of brutal horror in what’s been dubbed New French Extremity, and the Spanish unveiled an uncanny ability to delivery supernatural chills. Despite the economic and cultural mood, the 2000-2009 was a fantastic decade for horror, and here are the best:

American Psycho (2000)

Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, of which he received death threats upon publication for its content, Mary Harron’s masterful adaptation tows the perfectly balanced line between horror and biting humor. A social satire on Wall Street excess and investment banking, New York investment banker’s hatred for humanity gives way to dark psychosis and indulging in violent fantasy. Christian Bale’s performance as Bateman was a revelation, setting his career afire instead of ruining it as he was warned it would prior to accepting the role. As bloody as it is funny, Harron had to trim some scenes to get the film down to an R-rating from its initial NC-17 cut. As memorable as the sequence that sees Bateman chase his victims down with a chainsaw while naked is, so is the scene of passive aggressive business card exchanging.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

John Fawcett’s coming of age werewolf tale is lower budget perfection. A lycanthropic metaphor for puberty, sexuality, and fitting in, werewolves have never had their pulse on what it’s like to be a teenaged girl like Ginger Snaps. The practical effects are great, but what really makes the film something special is the performances by Katharine Isabelle as Ginger and Emily Perkins as her sister Brigitte. Their deep bond as sisters grounds the film, but their diverging path the moment Ginger is bitten by a werewolf unleashes an inevitable emotional devastation.

Final Destination (2001)

On paper, James Wong’s Final Destination looks like just another teen horror, with a plot set around a teen who predicts a plane crash and therefore avoids the accident, only for death to catch up to he and his friends. Wong applies the Hitchcock Bomb Theory to the inevitability of death, drawing out an unbearable tension to almost each death as fate slowly sets in. Sometimes humorous and often self-aware, it’s the suspense and intricately designed deaths that inspired an entire franchise.

28 Days Later (2002)

Danny Boyle’s surprise hit revitalized the zombie sub-genre by creating a unique, contemporary vision of the viral apocalypse set against an intimate character study. As terrifying as the rage virus was, including its infected to attack and quick speeds, it’s the realization that the humans are even more evil and terrifying that makes this so effective. Except Boyle doesn’t make it so simple; posing the question of necessity when humanity is at stake. Aside from Boyle’s cinematic style, 28 Days Later is bolstered by a fantastic cast lead by Cillian Murphy, Naomi Harris, and Christopher Eccleston, all of whom make us care about what’s happening to these characters.

May (2002)

Lucky McKee made an impressive debut with May, with an equally impressive performance by actress Angela Bettis. Bettis’ May is both heartbreaking in her loneliness and chilling in her murderous disassociation with reality.  An outcast since youth thanks to her lazy eye, May’s only true friend is her porcelain doll, and her desire to forge a meaningful friendship is rebuffed again and again. May’s determination and awkward attempts are both humorous and endearing, but as equally terrifying when she takes matters into her own hands.

Saw (2004)

Saw is often credited as an early pioneer in the maligned “torture porn” subgenre, but the surprising truth is that it offered mostly suggested violence and very little gore. What it did do, however, is launch the careers of James Wan and Leigh Whannell and an entire franchise that grew increasingly grisly. Though the subsequent sequels would ramp up the gore and violence, Whannell and Wan’s shocker relied more on weaving a unique murder mystery and clever narrative twists. Saw nailed one of the biggest surprise endings of the decade and delivered an iconic horror villain in Jigsaw in one fell swoop.

Shutter (2004)

When the fervor for long-haired Japanese ghosts had started to wind down, Thailand enters the arena and proves there’s still a lot of life left. Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom craft a captivating murder mystery all while making Polaroid cameras the stuff of nightmares. For a photographer and his girlfriend, strange images begin showing up in their photos after an accident. Soon, supernatural occurrences begin to ramp up until the past catches up to them. The tropes laid out previously in J-horror still exist, but Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom manage to make them feel new, especially wrapped with a tragic mystery. They also deliver some of the most bone-chilling sequences on film, making this long-haired ghost on par with the likes of Sadako and Kayako.

The Descent (2005)

Neil Marshall’s seminal creature feature is notable for a couple of reasons. One, the cast is almost entirely female, and two, Marshall’s ramping up of dread set against a claustrophobic setting is so effective that it almost doesn’t even feel like a creature feature. The friendship and emotional stakes in conjunction with the tense atmosphere are so well done that no one ever notices that it takes a full hour of run time before the bodies start piling up. The Descent is extremely bloody and scary, but it’s also impressive in how it redefines women in horror. These are tough spelunkers that never feel one-note or forced. Though Sarah may have been the lead heroine, Juno wins for being Crawler slaying MVP.

The Devil’s Rejects (2005)

Rocker turned director Rob Zombie surprised critics and audiences alike with the follow up to his 2003 debut House of 1000 Corpses. Gone was the vivid coloration and dark, twisted humor and replaced with sepia-toned ‘70s grit and nihilism. The much more narratively polished sequel follows the Firefly family’s exploits, making them somehow (somewhat) sympathetic despite leaving a path of carnage and death in their wake. Zombie’s magnum opus is so stylistically different from its predecessor that it borrows more heavily from Bonnie and Clyde than House of 1000 Corpses in just about every way. Even haters of Zombie’s filmography have a tough time hating this one.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

Scott Glosserman’s clever spin on the slasher sub-genre inexplicably slipped under the radar for many, but it remains one of the decade’s best. What begins as a sort of documentary style break-down of slasher tropes with Nathan Baesel as the charismatic Leslie Vernon in his quest to become one of the slasher greats like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, then shifts into a more traditional style for the grand finale. While there are notable cameos by Robert Englund, Scott Wilson, and Zelda Rubinstein, it’s the explored relationship between Vernon and his chosen final girl that makes this slasher break-down so amazing.

Inside (2007)

Written and directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, this no holds barred standoff between to fierce females delivers one of the tensest cinematic experiences that eventually builds into one of the bloodiest, brutal finales ever. Beatrice Dalle is ferociously terrifying as La Femme, and the Maury and Bustillo take the most mundane of household items and turn them into deadly weapons. Knitting needles, scissors, toasters, and more are all weapons of cringe-inducing destruction.

The Orphanage (2007)

J.A. Bayona’s directorial debut sees Laura returning to her childhood home, an orphanage for the disabled, with the intent to reopen it once more. When her son begins making new unseen friends, and then goes missing, Laura is sent on a frenzy to find her son and uncover the truths of her past. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, there’s a lot in common with his films; the emotional core, the gothic setting, and weaving of creepy supernatural elements against a more profound cultural story. A heartfelt ghost story that also manages to really deliver on the chills, The Orphanage is at the top of its class.

[Rec] (2007)

By 2007, the found footage subgenre was feeling tired and worn out thanks to cheap imitators after the surprise hit of The Blair Witch Project. Enter Spanish filmmakers Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, who created not only one of the most terrifying films of the decade, but proved that anything can be reinvigorated and exciting again with clever minds behind it. The cast is comprised of mostly relative unknowns in their native Spain, including Manuela Velasco, also a TV presenter like her character Angela Vidal. Plaza and Balagueró also kept their cast in suspense, only doling out the script bits at a time so they’d never learn their characters’ fate until the day of filming. Nor did any of the cast know the fireman would fall to his death early in the film. Basically, the cast was as terrified while shooting the film as the audience was watching.

Trick ‘r Treat (2007)

Michael Dougherty’s expertly woven anthology celebrates the spirit of Halloween in ways that no film has come close to touching. Covering all aspects of the holiday, from costumes to trick or treating, Trick ‘r Treat lays out the rules while delivering the cutest Halloween mascot of all time; Sam, the pint-sized terror with the cutest of weapons. Every frame is saturated with the holiday, from the look, feel, and tone of the horrors and fun of Halloween. Not only did Dougherty nail the very essence of Halloween, but he also changed the rules of what an anthology could be. A decade later, fans are still clamoring for more.

Let the Right One In (2008)

Adapted from the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, this mature spin on vampire lore is deceiving by its lead cast of two youths. A strange, haunting love story between 12-year old bullied Oskar and the peculiar Eli, who has a thirst for blood, the beautifully shot film is an intelligent break down of what it means to be immortal and lonely. It’s a romantic horror in the darkest sense, friendship and devotion giving way to revenge and death that’s well past Oskar’s 12-years. In terms of vampire movies, there’s nothing quite like it.

Martyrs (2008)

Pascal Laugier’s is extremely divisive for pushing theological and spiritual exploration to brutal, visceral limits. It’s also a narrative that seems to be comprised of multiple movies in one; beginning as a story of revenge for a woman tortured as a child before escaping before switching to a story of cultish torment leading to cringe-inducing terror. Love it or hate it, there’s no forgetting the horrific imagery Laugier presents on screen. Martyrs is a study on pain and suffering, and the very definition of nihilistic horror.

The Strangers (2008)

Bryan Bertino’s impressive feature debut stands out in a decade where home-invasion was popular. Memorable for its bleak, depressing tone, The Strangers also is regarded for its chilling randomness. While the young couple at the center of the story is suffering the breakdown of their relationship, they also fall victim to three masked assailants who terrorize them at their isolated cabin. Why? Because they happened to be home. The very concept that this could happen to anyone, anywhere, combined with Bertino’s mastery of atmosphere, gave this a more realistically rendered approach that terrified audience goers.

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Legendary creature performer Javier Botet has been blowing minds and lurking in nightmares ever since the [REC] franchise.  His forthcoming movie credits include the titular role in Slender Man and KeyFace with the fourth entry in the Insidious series.

In Freehold (AKA 2 Pigeons in North America), Botet sheds the hours of practical effects makeup to play a traditional role of a Spaniard living in the England with a sinister cohabitation twist.  Take a look at a morphing video that recaps the creature feature roles on his resume before revealing his regular face.  After playing Horror Channel FrightFest & Grimmfest the film is out now in the UK on DVD & Digital HD.

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Today’s creator: Peter Watkins.

Real to Reel

Though the fake documentary film has gotten a bad reputation in recent years due to the glut of inexpensive, amateur, and knock-off films that always come in the wake of a popular movement, some of the most interesting and groundbreaking horror films have been… fake documentaries.

From The Last Exorcism to Lake Mungo, The Poughkeepsie Tapes to REC to Trollhunter, the fake doc (or found footage) film has a number of great films to its credit. Some credit Paranormal Activity with the current boom in found footage horror, but slightly older film fans know that The Blair Witch Project redefined horror just before the turn of the century with its convincing realism, its grittiness, and its brilliant marketing campaign.

More well-versed horror aficionados recognize that much of what made The Blair Witch Project so effective was explored years earlier in 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust, which used the conceit of a documentary crew traveling to the Amazon only to be captured and killed by a local tribe.

But who invented the fake documentary? Whose idea was it to spend the time and effort to write a fictional narrative, then photograph it as if it were taking place in reality? Orson Welles was using the fake news style for small segments in Citizen Kane as far back as 1941, and director Federico Fellini is credited with making the first full-length fake documentary in 1970, called The Clowns. But another filmmaker beat him to it by six years, won an Oscar for one of his fake docs, and made several of the best fake doc films of all time.

In 1964, director Peter Watkins made The Battle of Culloden for BBC, a documentary-style film about the battle in 1746 that filmed it as if cameras were present for the proceedings. It was daring, controversial, and very political. It led to his next film, The War Game.

The equally controversial film was so convincing that it was pulled from BBC, but still aired elsewhere and ended up actually winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1966! The world was so unaccustomed to the idea of a false documentary style that the film beat out other real documentary films for an Oscar.

Watkins would find critical acclaim for that film and several others that also utilized the fictional documentary format, including Evening Land and the very interesting historical biopic about the artist Edvard Munch. Those movies did the seemingly impossible: they legitimized the phenomenon of the fake documentary as a real and valuable storytelling device for film.

However, his most enduring and powerful work is also his most popular and one of the few which embraced clear genre elements. 1971’s Punishment Park showed an eerie alternate present where political undesirables are put through a grueling game in the desert similar to the Richard Bachman novel The Long Walk.

The film confronts many issues of the time, allegorically speaking about Vietnam, counterculture protest, political division, and governmental overreach. As shockingly modern in its content as anything on current news, the film is the best kind of genre storytelling that uses its subject to talk about bigger themes.

So if you like the way the documentary style was used to comment on religion in The Last Exorcism, xenophobia in Cannibal Holocaust, reality television in Series 7: The Contenders, or environmentalism in The Bay, you have Peter Watkins to thank for inventing the method they used.

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This is our third installment of the overlooked indie horror films that deserve more attention than they received.

If you missed them, here’s Part 1 and Part 2!

Sleep Tight

Though American viewers know him best for his work on the REC series, director Jaume Balaguero is a brilliant filmmaker with several other great horror and thriller films, and Sleep Tight is one of his best. The film follows misanthropic apartment handyman Cesar as he tests the happiness of one of his tenants by slowly and anonymously making her life miserable, one painful and undignified act at a time.

The film is a brilliant slow burn, starting with acts that cause the viewer mild discomfort and escalating in severity until the woman’s suffering is nearly unwatchable. The performances from Luis Tosar and Marta Etura as polar opposites in a one-sided battle of ideologies are brilliant, and they stay with the viewer long after the film is over. Though it doesn’t match REC’s pacing and terror, this may be Balaguero’s most stylish and mature work.

S&Man

Filmmaker JT Petty (playing himself) is making a documentary on voyeurism, and ventures into the underground world of fetish filmmakers and the dark cult cinema circuit; as he meets and follows a filmmaker known for one particularly gruesome series, he begins to question whether the films are grimy but effective movies, or something much darker.

The only thing more disturbing than the fictional narrative in S&Man is the fact that most of the interviews and footage are from real filmmakers talking about their actual work. A brilliant blurring of the line between fake documentary and actual reportage, filmmaker Petty (a brilliant filmmaker since his low-budget debut with Soft for Digging) interviews people along the horror spectrum from filmmaker Bill Zebub to college professor and author Carol Clover. Illuminating and terrifying in equal measure, this film deserved better than the questionable release it received, and it is one worth tracking down.

The Grave

Creative sibling team Joshua and Jonas Pate are recently more well-known for their work on Caprica, Blood and Oil, and other primetime television series, but their most interesting work was their filmic output in the late 1990s, including this strange and fascinating gem. A southern gothic story about two criminals who escape prison to search for the buried treasure of a dead millionaire, The Grave is impossible to easily categorize. With black comedy, romance, hairpin story turns, and a plot that would suit an R-rated version of The Goonies, the movie never lets the viewers feel safe in their expectations.

The cast of this film is recognizable from end to end: Craig Sheffer, Josh Charles, Donal Logue, Keith David, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Michael Hall, Eric Roberts, Gabrielle Anwar, and that’s just the beginning. Fun, weird, and a little bit twisted, this film deserves a renaissance and some newfound appreciation.

Daylight (2010)

Though it may end up a controversial choice for this list given that it is marketed as a psychological thriller rather than horror, David Barker’s Daylight is a beautiful and haunting film filled with quiet dread. A man and his pregnant wife are traveling through rural America when they are taken hostage at gunpoint by three desperate men. During their imprisonment, it is the pregnant wife who finds the courage and compassion to change their fate.

The film is the rare harrowing experience that also has a silver lining, and the performances are all-around subtle and compelling. The story turns kidnapping thriller clichés on their heads, and the film acts as a strangely hopeful mirror reflection of the similar events in Last House on the Left. At turns both poetic and unnerving, this film will connect deeply with the right viewer.

Circle

The premise is as simple as it gets: fifty people appear suddenly inside a single, bare room. Each has a position marked on the floor, and each gets one vote. A timer in the room counts down in two-minute increments, and every two minutes, the person with the most votes is killed. This continues until there is only one survivor. The simplicity of Circle‘s plot betrays the complexity and moral ambiguity at its center, and the film is a brilliant indictment of the ways the democratic system can be manipulated.

Directors Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione followed up their online series The Vault with this smart and controversial concept. Though most of the actors are unfamiliar, Dexter fans will recognize Julie Benz in the crowd. The whole film is tense and entertaining, but the final ten minutes are a tour de force of intensity where characters are trying to murder each other without ever taking a step towards one another. Circle is a big story in a small location that is definitely worth tracking down.

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In the past decade, the living dead have reached peak saturation thanks to the likes of The Walking Dead, various video games, and the ability for no budget filmmakers to rally a group of friends, throw some white paint on their faces and yell, “Zombie!” From documentaries to home decor, the undead are everywhere. With such an assault on our pop culture senses, it’s easy to get burnt out on them dead bones. The truth is, filmmakers will always return to the well of brain eating masses because it’s a simple plot conceit that still manages to work. Look no further from a recent international smash (mentioned in the list below) to the surprisingly satisfying third season of Fear the Walking Dead (a show I assume most have given up on) to realize a well-told story about flesh eaters is still worth championing.

When tasked with concocting a top 10 list of the greatest zombie films ever to come lumbering, open-mouthed into my horror loving cranium, I thought, “Easy.” As a die hard fan of the shambling undead since I was a wee-teen, at least six films that were deserving popped into my head right away. Three of them happen to involve a certain George A. Romero (please, like that comes as a shock to ANYONE). Instead, it wasn’t long before I was struggling to pare the list down. I quickly realized there were far more standouts in the sub-genre than had initially come to mind.

Films such as Re-Animator, Night of the Creeps, Cemetery Man – these are undoubtedly classics to varying degrees with their own rabid fanbases. For me, though, the words “zombie film” drum up something much different than what’s contained within those pictures. Yes, they feature the dead being brought back to life in some form or another, but the groundwork laid by Romero in 1968 and dutifully copied, updated, and reworked by numerous filmmakers in the time since is where I’ll place the focus of this list.

The truth is, reanimated corpses have been a spooky staple since the inception of the horror genre itself. While the label “zombie” could easily be given to Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, we don’t consider him as such. I won’t be including the more historically accurate depictions of voodoo zombies such as the lyrically haunting Val Lewton production, I Walked With a Zombie or Wes Craven’s underrated The Serpent and the Rainbow. Also, no genre mashups where the living dead are only a small part of the overall threat (i.e. Night of the Comet, The Beyond, Zeder) will be allowed. That said, “undead” isn’t necessarily a prerequisite either. As you’ll see, there are a few films where the creatures are infected by some “zombie-like” virus but are NOT in fact dead or rising from the grave.

For this list, “zombie film” will be defined by a story revolving around a group of diverse characters thrown together in isolated locales fighting for their lives against a shambling horde of deathly contagious “former humans” whose sole purpose is to maim, eat, or simply murder and mutilate our heroes.

#10. Zombi 3 (1988)

AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters 2

The number ten spot was a tough one. It was a toss up between this, Zombi 3, or the equally bonkers Italian munchfest, Burial Ground. It would be quite the challenge to label either one a good film per se. They’re low budget films created with the sole purpose of capitalizing on the success Dawn of the Dead and Fulci’s unofficial follow-up. What makes them noteworthy is just how much damn fun they are. When it comes to the good times, Zombi 3 just managed to edge out the competition.

Originally to be directed by the Italian gore-meister himself, Lucio Fulci, he was replaced after shooting more than half of the film. Rumor has it he bowed out due to health concerns while Fulci claimed he quit over the poor script. Nonetheless, Bruno Mattei was brought in to complete the production by adding in several subplots to fill the running time to feature length. While this sure sounds like a recipe for disaster (and it is), it’s the schizophrenic story structure that gives this film life and earns its spot as one of the best zombie flicks of all time.

The plot concerns a military experiment gone wrong. GASP! Soon the dead are rising up on a small island and a group of randy kids and military grunts are holed up in an abandoned resort trying to figure out a way to survive the hungry hordes. Zombi 3 features a plethora of insane moments such a machete-wielding corpse who moves so fast as to almost lop off the lead actress’s head IRL…right there on camera. There are the “stunt” performers (low paid villagers of the island where they were filming) dropping in from all areas of the screen, and the infamous “flying head”. This is perfect movie night fodder for you and a group of like-minded friends. I avoided it for years due to the terrible word of mouth and sordid production history. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Seek it out!

#9. Train to Busan (2016)

This is the one film I had yet to see when building this list. I knew it was supposed to be the best zombie film in years and signify there was still life left in the undead. Because of this, I knew I had to check it out before putting a finger to keypad. Needless to say, I agree with the hype and only wish I had gotten to check it out in theaters last year during the film’s limited run.

Train to Busan does very little to try and reinvent the wheel aside from a neat gimmick revolving around the infected’s ability to see. Beyond that minor tweak, this is a straightforward survival tale of a father escorting his young daughter on a nightmare train ride to visit her mother. The emotions run high here and it’s easy for the audience to get swept up alongside the characters as they evade (or don’t) one white-knuckle set piece after the other. Busan works due to the stellar direction that keeps the suspense tight and because of the amazing actors who breathe life into what amounts to fairly stock characters. Ultimately, there is little here that you haven’t seen before, but a well-told story can always overcome convention.

#8. [REC] (2007)

I rarely consider zombie films to be scary. Usually, they are either gory, tense, or occasionally, funny. I know for some folks suspense and scares may be one in the same. For me, they differ. Suspense is the mental unease of knowing the worst possible outcome and being forced to wait and see if it will transpire. Fear is an irrational feeling that anything can happen, being powerless against the unknown. Again, these are merely my distinctions between the two, but I bring this up because [REC] manages to illicit fear in what is a typically grounded subgenre.

By taking elements of possession (a more fear-based genre), cramming that into a locked down tenant full of demonic creatures and shooting it all through the “Holy shit! This is really happening!” lens of a found footage movie, [REC] became an integral part of the recent living dead resurgence. The monsters presented here are fast and ferocious, delivering a number of bloody shocks. If the creeping dread doesn’t get you throughout, the film’s final moments will. [REC] goes out on a genuinely terrifying note that has quickly become one of the most horrific images in genre history. If you’ve never seen this flick, I highly recommend it and its sequels. Although, you could be forgiven for missing out on [REC] 4.

#7. Zombie (1979)

AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters, Zombi 2

Lucio Fulci is a legend. Granted, for a long time it seemed he was always considered the lesser of his contemporary, Dario Argento. Thankfully, in this day and age of Blu-ray bringing a new audience to his films with high-def transfers likely outshining his movies’ original presentations, Fulci can rest knowing his special brand of sleaze is appreciated. After George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was released in Italy (under the title, Zombi) to boffo box office, producers were quick to get a “sequel” into production. The film was released as Zombi 2 in Italy, though future releases have simply dropped the 2 to tamp down some of the confusion.

Sans bookending scenes shot in New York as part of a last-ditch effort to try and tie this film to Romero’s, Zombie takes place entirely on a secluded island where voodoo has caused a massive onslaught of gut munching corpses. I know, I said no voodoo, but the voodoo plot here is nothing more than an excuse to get the dead up and moving. They’re still taken down by a bullet to the brain, and no one is about to confuse these rotting, maggot encrusted slobs for a poor sap on a bad trip. While the film’s production might not have been artistically motivated, Zombie is hauntingly scored and beautifully shot, featuring some truly awe-inspiring underwater photography of a zombie battling a shark. A FRIGGIN’ ZOMBIE/SHARK THROWDOWN! That scene alone is enough to land Zombie on a best of list. Thankfully the rest of the film is equally as gruesome and once it starts, the tension never lets up.

#6. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Shaun is a complete shlub who can’t seem to get his life together, his love life in particular, but he can always count on his best friend, Ed. It’s this highly relatable premise that launches us into one of the best undead movies from the early aughts. While there’s plenty of intestine ripping, head shots, and the stakes never feel low, Shaun of the Dead also manages to nab the distinction of being hilarious.

Shaun of the Dead was a fairly large success despite receiving a somewhat limited release. It has gained a giant cult following. Unfortunately, that success also went on to inspire a barrage of low-budget imitators. The reverb of which can still be heard today. Even if they didn’t invent the zombie-comedy, they sure defined what it would look like for years to come. Director Edgar Wright, in only his second feature, creates a star turn for Simon Pegg and a film that manages to perfectly capture the transition in our culture from Gen-X to the age of Millennials.

#5. Dead Alive (1992)

AKA Braindead

Peter Jackson is no stranger to genre fans. Spearheading the epic Lord of the Rings franchise has endeared his name to the hearts of geeks worldwide. However, before launching a bazillion dollar franchise, Jackson was busy turning in raunchy splat-stick flicks out of New Zealand. Dead Alive is possibly the most fondly remembered of his early output. Why? It just so happens to be the goriest film ever made.

Feeling a lot like the Kiwi cousin to Evil Dead 2, Dead Alive is filled to the brim with bucket after bucket of blood and guts. It’s a lot to take in, and quite frankly – I wasn’t sure how to take it all as a kid. I’ll never forget renting a tower of random scary flicks on VHS for my 12th birthday. Dead Alive was the last film we watched as the sun was coming up the following morning. It was a delirious, sleep deprived, and confusing experience. The film is obviously a comedy, but somehow my brain just couldn’t compute what I was seeing at the time. Now all these years later, I still go to that headspace when watching this flick. Jackson has crafted a timeless, gory orgy of absurdity that feels like it was beamed down to us from another world.

#4. 28 Days Later (2002)

In the beginning of the new millennium, horror was slowly on the rise thanks to inventive, ballsy genre fare that was pushing limits of what was expected from big screen fright flicks. It’s safe to say that sub-genre had gone from undead to for real dead by this point. Thankfully, Danny Boyle decided to direct his first full on horror flick, 28 Days Later. That film reignited an entire sub-genre and proved that a huge infection film could be delivered on a small dime. Shot on DV tape, there’s a unique feel to the cinematography that will likely never be duplicated in this type of genre picture. After all, the technology used to create it has long been dead by this point.

The score, the soundtrack, the acting from all involved (including a role that pretty much put Cillian Murphy on the map), and Boyle’s inventive use of the diminutive cameras all came together to make 28 Days Later a breath of fresh air upon its release. It’s a jarring, adrenaline-fueled rush from start to finish…that might not feature legit zombies (the disease here are is a “Rage Virus”). The film also marked the first serious attempt we’d seen of depicting the infected as fast moving, agile hunters. Ultimately, though, the film is a zombie flick no matter how they label or dress them up. It’s basically a condensed retelling of Romero’s original Dead trilogy and classic all its own.

#3. Pontypool (2008)

The first and only film on the list to feature monsters that spread their sickness without the exchange of any bodily fluids. The creatures in this unique little indie are infected by language. That’s right, it may sound bizarre, but as the first in a proposed trilogy (still waiting on part 2…), Pontypool succeeds as a suspenseful chamber piece revolving around a shock jock and his producer, secluded in a radio station’s studio as they slowly come to terms with the insanity that’s taking place right outside. It’s a slow burn flick that takes a surprisingly well-worn trope (a DJ powerless to the horrors beyond the glass) and really makes use of the claustrophobic scenario.

By the climax of the film, my nerves are always in shambles no matter how many times I’ve seen it. The infected here are of the fast moving variety, and their intensity when setting their sights on prey is unnerving. I can’t help but yearn for a sequel that would open things up more. While the contained nature of this narrative is one of its biggest strengths, the concept is wide open for further interpretation. In this day and age of “fake news” and breakdowns in communication despite our ease of access to information, even close to ten years later, Pontypool still works as a perfect metaphor for our times.

#2. Return of the Living Dead (1985)

I first saw Return of the Living Dead on MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs one late Saturday evening many moons ago. There isn’t much to say about this one that hasn’t already been dissected and praised a hundred times before. After going their separate ways post-Night of the Living Dead, Romero continued making his “of the Dead” films while John Russo set about trying to make an official sequel to the original. Hence, while Return is far removed from Night in style and tone, it’s the only film in the fractured series to refer back to the events of the original.

Of course, we also learn Night of the Living Dead was nothing more than a fictionalized version of the true events. Trust me, it’s far less confusing than it might sound. At the end of the day, Return brought something fresh to the genre that hadn’t been successfully mined at the time. Return of the Living Dead stands head and shoulders above many a zombie film due to the inclusion of not only hot pink, punk rock style but an abundance of comedy. If it weren’t for this, we may have never gotten Shaun of the Dead. Return also excels by giving us characters worth rooting for and even a bit of pathos for the creatures themselves. “It hurts to be dead.”

#1. Romero’s Dead Trilogy (1968 – 1985)

Okay, I realize this might be considered a tad bit of a cheat, but if it’s angers you feel, you’re free to bump the two at the top off the list (sad face) and rank these three how you see fit. Ultimately, I’ve grown to love Romero’s original trilogy of Dead films all on pretty equal grounds. The man singlehandedly, well…with some help from John Russo, created an entire subgenre with one film, Night of the Living Dead (1968). It stands as an undisputed masterpiece of genre cinema that still holds up all these years later. If not for Night and the other two films here, we probably wouldn’t have as many awesome films to place on this list. For this reason, I feel comfortable placing all three in the top spot. They’re of equal importance to one another, and it’s easy to pinpoint each one as “best of” examples of the sub-genre.

When I first saw Night, I was far too young. My mom had rented a copy from the library thinking it was just some old black and white flick like the The Black Bat which she brought home the same day. Needless to say, Night was no Black Bat, and I was forever changed after watching it. Both Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985) are exceptional as well. They stand as touchstones for the genre they created and examples of the evolution of horror. While I don’t think anyone could ever consider Night to be a “safe” film, Dawn drives the discomfort much further while placing us smack dab in the pinnacle of American living – the mall! Day, which was my least favorite as a kid has quickly climbed the ranks to join some of my all time favorite films. The effects work from Tom Savini is legendary. The story, revolving around a society descended into madness and paranoia after the outbreak truly opens up the world Romero created to deeper understanding. Even better, It manages to do so by staying true to the confined location setup from the previous two installments.

While Romero went on to direct three more Dead films (Land, Diary, and Survival), none of which reached the same heights as his first three. Luckily, I would say that all except Survival wouldn’t be terribly out of place on this list and certainly were there in the consideration phase. Rumor is Romero has at least one more shot to take at the sub-genre he created, and one can only hope he proves capable of recapturing the sociopolitical pulse of the time like he’s done for us so many times before.

There you have it. The greatest zombie flicks ever made. Did your fav not make the list? Sound off below, fiends!

The post List of the Living Dead – Top 10 Zombie Films of All Time! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Alice Johnson – A Nightmare on Elm Street series

When it comes to this beloved series, most fans fondly recall Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson as their favorite final girl.  While she deserves every bit of the praise and adoration, there’s another final girl in the franchise that’s often overlooked; Alice Johnson. Alice is introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master as the best friend of Kristen Parker, the final girl from Dream Warriors. Alice begins the movie as a timid girl from a dysfunctional family, using her lucid dreaming as a means of escape.  When Kristen pulled Alice into her nightmare, she transfers her powers to Alice upon her death. As the movie progresses, Alice amasses the power of every one of her friends killed by Freddy Krueger, making her one fierce adversary. No longer the shy girl, Alice becomes a force to be reckoned with.  Her character growth makes her transition into final girl even more fun, but that she survives not one but two rounds with Freddy makes her deserving of far more attention than she’s received so far.

Jannicke – Cold Prey & Cold Prey 2

Cold Prey and its sequel aren’t exactly original; they borrow heavily from American slashers, namely Halloween and Friday the 13th. Fans of slashers will pick up immediately who will and won’t survive. Yet, they’re extremely stylish and brutal. The icy setting of the old, abandoned ski lodge makes for a thrilling location. Then there’s Jannicke, a strong-willed woman that seems a lot like Ginny Field from Friday the 13th Part 2. She’s half the size of the giant killer, but her athleticism and strong desire to live compensates for the massive size difference, resulting in a thrilling head-to-head battle.  The killer isn’t fond of losing, though, and round two commences in the hospital set sequel (sound familiar?). When the staff and police fall violently at the hands of the revived mountain man, Jannicke once again faces off against him.

Barbara – Night of the Living Dead (1990)

The 1990 remake of Romero’s classic is an underrated gem in its own right; George Romero re-wrote the screenplay and persuaded Tom Savini to take on directorial duties after initially being hired to handle special effects. The most revelatory update to the zombie classic, however, was the reimagining of lead heroine Barbara. Unlike her 1968 counterpart, this Barbara doesn’t fall into a state of shock and hysterics upon losing her brother to a zombie in the film’s opening sequence. Instead, she becomes a vital asset to the group of survivors holed up in a farmhouse. Played by Patricia Tallman, this more modern take on Barbara eschews her shrinking violet nature in favor of intelligence and toughness.  This version of Barbara not only outlasts on her wits alone but ruthlessly delivers a satisfying conclusion to the power battle between hero Ben (Tony Todd) and obnoxious jerk Harry Cooper (Tom Towles).

Meg Penny – The Blob (1988)

The amorphous monster at the center of this creature feature proved to be a terrifying match for even the military.  Crash landing from space as a small entity, the Blob quickly amasses into a size that threatens to engulf the entire town. Enter Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith), an unwitting cheerleader that suffers perhaps the worst first date in history, when nice guy Paul becomes one of the first victims to be dissolved and devoured by the Blob. Yet, Meg doesn’t let it keep her down for long. She not only discovers the creature’s origins but also figures out the way to stop it. She also uses her charm to woo the town’s black sheep, Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon), to assist in saving the day. When an entire town quarantined by the military are helpless, leave it to one pissed off cheerleader to take care of business.

Yasmine – Frontier(s)

Granted, this 2007 entry in the New French Extremity movement feels like countless horror films before it, borrowing memorable plotlines and moments from films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes or Hostel. Yet the balls to the wall level of violence and gore was so over the top that it didn’t matter.  The NC-17 rating slapped on by the MPAA is a giant clue that final girl Yasmine worked harder than perhaps anyone else on this list to earn her final girl status. The Neo-Nazi family that dispatches Yasmine’s friends are brutal, yet Yasmine matches their viciousness by ripping out the throats of her attackers, impaling them on a table saw, and using any means necessary to survive. This blood-soaked final girl takes no prisoners.

Taylor Gentry – Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

A clever mockumentary that lovingly pokes fun at the slasher genre also takes the relationship between final girl and killer in a whole different direction. Unlike most, where the killer stalks the final girl over the course of the film until the explosive showdown, this movie sees its final girl, Taylor Gentry, developing feelings for Leslie Vernon, as he shares his meticulous plan to slaughter teens over the course of one night. Once Taylor and her crew discover that Leslie’s plans for murder weren’t a farce, the film shifts to traditional horror, and the realization that Taylor was always the intended final girl makes for one of the most fun showdowns in slasher history.  The foreplay between these would-be lovers is killer.

Megan Garris – Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

When it comes to this franchise, it’s usually the first two final girls of the series that hog the spotlight; Alice Hardy and Ginny Field. Yet it’s Jennifer Cooke’s sassy portrayal of Megan Garris that makes her my favorite final girl of the Friday the 13th series. Her zeal for breaking rules and rebelling against her father, Sheriff Mike Garris, makes for a lively counterpart to Tommy Jarvis’ (Thom Matthews) serious man on a mission. While Tommy, responsible for reviving Jason Voorhees in the first place, does all that he can to correct his mistake, it’s ultimately Megan that saves the day, both in rescuing a drowning Tommy and taking a boat motor to Voorhees’ neck. Final girls are known for their killer survival instincts, but Megan’s fearless passion for life sets her apart from the pack.

Tuffy – Feast

Tuffy doesn’t have a lot going for her when Feast begins. She’s a down on her luck waitress at a bar who moonlights as a prostitute, and her sole source of happiness is her young son. That happiness is ripped away from her violently, thanks to the gross creatures that descend upon the bar. When the bar patrons and purported heroes can’t seem to get their act together to ward off the creatures, Tuffy gets fed up and takes matters into her own hands. When both life and weird horny man-eating monsters keep Tuffy down, she fights back. Hard.  Her revenge against the creatures earns her the title of “Heroine 2.”

Amy Harper – The Funhouse

Elizabeth Berridge’s Amy Harper begins as just another one of many horror teens that wished they’d obeyed their parents by the time the end credits begin to roll. Despite her father’s wishes, Amy sneaks out of the house to meet her new boyfriend, her best friend, and her best friend’s boyfriend to visit a traveling carnival. Sneaking around where they shouldn’t, the group ends up locked in the carnival’s funhouse for the night with a deformed Gunther in pursuit.  It’s good girl Amy who winds up confronting the terrifying Gunther alone, resulting in one of the tensest final battles in slasher history. Of course, the unique setting helps.  She may have been a simple good girl with a small rebellious streak, but her brutal slaying of her attacker earns her worthy final girl status.

Angela Vidal – [REC] series

What should have been a dull night covering the night shift at a local fire station became reporter Angela Vidal’s worst nightmare. A call results in Angela, her cameraman Pablo, and two firefighters investigating an aggressive woman locked in her apartment. You know the drill. The woman bites an officer, and before you know it this zombie-like rage virus spreads throughout the apartment building just as it’s quarantined.  Just as lone survivor makes it all the way to the top, she seems to fall prey to the virus’ source, a very creepy Tristana Medeiros, and the camera cuts to black. For a final girl, it’s a pretty weak ending, right? Except, halfway through the sequel, REC 2, Angela is revealed to not only still be alive, but she’s kicking butt and determined to finally make it out of the building. Considering the sequel’s final reveal, a case could still be made against the plucky reporter for being a worthy final girl. Except, her return in the final entry in the series, REC 4: Apocalypse, has her squaring off against Medeiros infection once and for all. What should have been an easy reporting job turned into a hell that spanned three films, a possession by way of parasitic worm, an exorcism, and a whole lot of carnage in between.  Perhaps she, more than anyone on this list, endured the longest to earn her spot.

Who is your favorite underappreciated final girl?

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We agree. That’d be really awesome. It’s been over a decade since that comprehensive list of scary scenes was put together, and needless to say, the past 10+ years have given us no shortage of horror movies that have imparted nightmares. But what are the scariest scenes of the past decade? Which moments would you include on an updated list, if Bravo asked for your help?

That’s the discussion we’d like to have today, and I figured I’d kick things off with my own little list of recent movie scenes that scared the daylights out of me. As a 30-year-old, jaded viewer who’s been watching horror movies his whole life, it’s not very easy to scare me these days, so the following films have my eternal respect for making me question sleeping with the lights off…

[REC] (2007)

THE STRANGERS (2008)

SINISTER (2012)

MAMA (2013)

IT FOLLOWS (2014)

THE TAKING OF DEBORAH LOGAN (2014)

THE CONJURING 2 (2016)

Which recent moments scared YOU?

The post What Are the Scariest Horror Movie Moments of the Last 10 Years? appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Foreign Horror

Martyrs

Pascal Laugier’s controversial film Martyrs hasn’t even seen a Blu-Ray release in America yet. You can buy the Region B/2 Blu-Ray on Amazon, but if you live in North America it won’t play unless you have a Region Free Blu-Ray player. And even then, the special features amount to a making of documentary and interviews with Laugier and the special effects artist. This fantastic film deserves a better Blu-Ray treatment and certainly deserves an American release.

Inside

Arguably the best film to come out of the New French Extremity movement, it’s perplexing that Inside has yet to see a Blu-Ray release in the states yet. Honestly, it would be great to get a box set of all of the films from the movement, but obtaining all of the rights might prove to be a bit of a chore. Still, the lack of a proper Blu-Ray release for the film that is essentially every pregnant woman’s worst nightmare is puzzling. Let’s get it done Scream Factory!

[REC] Franchise

Let’s just pretend [REC] 4: Apocalypse never happened, alright? I mean, they don’t have to put it in a [REC] box set. Oh fine, they can leave it in. As long as [REC] and [REC] 2 get a release I’ll be happy. They are two of the best found footage films ever created (and definitely two of the best zombie films ever made) and deserve some Blu-Ray love.

80s Horror

Critters

Does anyone else own that DVD with all four Critters films on one disc? It’s awesome, right? Seriously though, why aren’t these films on Blu-Ray yet? Sure, Critters 3 and Critters 4: In Space are subpar sequels, but those first two are on point.

Hellraiser

Hellraiser had a pretty good release from Anchor Bay in 2009 that is now out of print. The Midnight Madness edition from Image Entertainment, which was released two years later, removed all of the special features. Now is the perfect time for Scream Factory to snatch up the film and give its Blu-Ray release a makeover. It would also be nice if they released a Hellraiser box set similar to the one Anchor Bay and Scream Factory did for the Halloween franchise two years ago, but maybe that’s asking for too much.

Demons

C’mon! It’s Lamberto Bava, and you’re going to give it a barebones Blu-Ray release (albeit with perfect audio and video transfers)? Demons deserves better than that. Scream Factory, if you released it as a double feature with Demons 2 (and get some new special features for each one) I’ll love you forever.

90s Horror

Candyman

How has Bernard Rose’s seminal horror film (which I am admittedly not crazy about, but I do see the appeal) not made it to Blu-Ray yet? After Hellraiser, it’s the most famous film adaptation of Clive Barker’s work. Scream Factory already released the sequel, but they haven’t been able to snag the licensing rights for the original yet. It’s such a shame.

Dead Alive

Fun fact: the VHS cover for this movie used to scare the crap out of me when I roamed Blockbuster as a kid. Anyway, Peter Jackson’s gory comedy was released on Blu-Ray back in 2011 with so-so video and audio and just a theatrical trailer in the special features. Where is the Peter Jackson commentary? I want an answer! If anyone can make that happen, it’s Scream Factory.

Event Horizon

Event Horizon already saw a pretty decent Blu-Ray release, but there was apparently a lot of footage left on the cutting room floor with tons of horrifying imagery. Methinks Scream Factory and Paul W.S. Anderson need to meet up and put together a Director’s Cut…

The Faculty

Honestly, I just want a cast commentary on this. You’ll laugh, but one of my favorite commentaries is the cast commentary of the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie. They’re just so fun to listen to! I feel like the cast of The Faculty would have the same chemistry. Just imagine feeling like you’re sitting in a room with Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Jordana Brewster, Usher and Laura Harris. Better yet, have one Student Commentary with those actors and one Faculty Commentary with Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick and Jon Stewart. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be awesome. The current Blu-Ray release of the film doesn’t have any extras so there’s nowhere to go but up!

Recent Horror

Slither

Why in the Hell is James Gunn’s masterful creature feature Slither not out on Blu-Ray yet (at least, once again, not in America)? You would think that after Gunn’s rise to fame after Guardians of the Galaxy some studio would have rushed to get this Blu-Ray released. Maybe the awful box office numbers are giving them pause. Either way, it deserves to see a proper Blu-Ray release.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

One of the most meta horror movies of all time saw a disappointing Blu-Ray release in 2009, when the format was still relatively new. Eight years later and a re-issue seems to be in order, especially considering the fact that there were no extra features included on that release. A sequel to the cult favorite has been talked about for some time. A new Blu-Ray loaded with special features courtesy of Scream Factory could certainly reignite talk of a much-needed sequel.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

For God’s sake will someone release this movie already? If you were able to catch it when it received an extremely brief release on DirecTV in 2014 and felt disappointed, it’s understandable. The film was completed in 2007 (I still remember seeing the posters in the AMC Theaters I was working at at the time) and almost no film will live up to expectations that were in place that long. It’s by no means a terrible film, though. While some of the interview sequences come off as incredibly cheesy, the tapes themselves are terrifying. Could Scream Factory be the one to finally let The Poughkeepsie Tapes see the light of day? I certainly hope so.

Many of these films are relatively mainstream, and Scream Factory has an affinity for releasing lesser-known horror films with cult followings as well. Which horror films, mainstream or otherwise, do you want to see get the Scream Factory treatment? Let us know in the comments below!

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That is the beginning of the children’s nursery rhyme that paves way for a frightening appearance from “The Crooked Man” in James Wan’s The Conjuring 2. Impossibly thin and unnaturally inhuman, the Slender Man-esque Crooked Man is the stuff of nightmares, and while many have praised the genuinely terrifying design of the character, others have criticized Wan for bringing a computer-generated villain to the screen. CGI is enemy number one to the horror fan, and especially since Wan had previously shied away from utilizing the modern technology in a noticeable way, it was indeed somewhat jarring to see him put it to use in the ’70s-set sequel.

Right? Wrong. Because Crooked Man was played by a real man. His name is Javier Botet, and this isn’t the first time us horror fans have mistaken his work for the work of digital effects artists.

“I’ve seen a few critics refer to a Conjuring 2 character as CGI or stop-motion,” Wan tweeted out this week, “but is in fact played by the incredible, and very real, Javier Botet. [He] creates amazing movements with his body. Like a living, jittery, stop-motion puppet. All done in-camera.”

Born on July 30th, 1977 in Cuidad Real, Spain, Javier Botet suffers from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that is characterized by tall statures, slender frames, and elongated limbs and digits. Measuring 6-feet, 7-inches tall and weighing just over 100-pounds, the double-jointed actor has used his condition to become a bona fide icon in the horror genre, responsible for more nightmares in recent years than any other actor who has attempted to, well, give us nightmares.

It was back in 2007 that Botet played Nina Medeiros in the Spanish found footage film [REC], showing up at the end of the movie for an appearance that may have been brief but nevertheless resulted in one of the most frightening scenes in the past decade. The mere sight of a fully exposed Botet, bathed only in the green glow of a night-vision camera, was enough to send chills up the spine and solidify [REC] as one of the scariest horror films in recent years. It’s a role nobody but Botet could’ve possibly played, and the same can be said for his subsequent roles within the horror genre – all of which, we have no doubt, have resulted in you losing some sleep.

Javier Botet was made the star of the show in 2013’s Mama, filling the titular role of an aggrieved mother who died many years prior. Like The Conjuring 2, the Andres Muschietti-directed Mama was criticized for its computer-generated villain, though fans familiar with Botet recognized that he was the man underneath the mask. And while digital effects were no doubt utilized to add little bells and whistles to the character, including her flowing hair, it was mostly Botet’s performance that made it onto the screen – for proof, you’ll find a super creepy movement test below.

Just last year, Guillermo del Toro took to social media to let the world know that the visually stunning ghosts in Crimson Peak were played by actors who were enhanced with CGI, contrary to popular belief, and you’ve probably gathered by now that it was once again Javier Botet who was responsible for much of the confusion. Botet played the ghosts of Enola, Margaret, and Pamela.

More recently, Botet’s one-of-a-kind work was seen in this year’s The Other Side of the Door, an otherwise unremarkable film that is highlighted by his performance as the four-armed creature known as Myrtu. For whatever reason, the character is mostly kept off screen and hidden with quick cuts, but nothing about the movie shines brighter than Botet’s contribution to it.

Check out some of Botet’s creatures below, along with the aforementioned Mama screen test!

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It’s the Plants! – The Happening

Remember when the trailer for The Happening was released, and everyone forgot Lady in the Water for a moment? It was fairly great marketing that didn’t reveal too much about the plot, which is a rarity nowadays. Unfortunately, it turned out that 20th Century Fox knew they couldn’t do that because it was so silly. People are killing themselves because of plants! While the suicide scenes are executed well, nothing else about the movie is. From Wahlberg’s laughable performance to the scene where the characters try to outrun the wind, the film is a failure on every level. You can’t say the premise, about a wave of mass suicides taking over the country, isn’t intriguing though!

A Split Personality – High Tension

Alright, maybe this is too obvious of a choice, and I really do like most of High Tension! I just can’t stand that ending. The premise of a woman with dissociative identity disorder killing everyone around the woman she is in love with is compelling. If only Aja hadn’t tried to make it a twist in a film whose plot, as Roger Ebert put it “has a hole that is not only large enough to drive a truck through, but in fact does have a truck driven right through it.” I’m able to suspend quite a bit of disbelief, but High Tension was too much.

No More Found Footage? – [REC] 3: Genesis

Truth be told, I actually don’t hate [REC] 3 as a movie, but I do hate it as a part of the [REC]franchise. After the superb [REC] 2, directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza split up to each direct the third and fourth entries in the franchise. Plaza took over for [REC] 3, which tells a story parallel to the timeline of the first film. While the film starts out in the series’ trademark found footage filming style, it quickly abandons it in a sly wink to the audience when a character asks the cameraman why he is still filming during a zombie attack. It’s a nice bit of meta humor in a film and it would have been find had the humor stopped there. Unfortunately [REC] 3 becomes a horror comedy, and barely feels like a part of the series that birthed it.

It Was All In the Mind – The Human Centipede 2

The Human Centipede did little with it’s gross-out premise, and it turned out to be a one-trick pony. The sequel didn’t fare much better, and to add insult to injury it pulls the “it was all a dream” twist on the audience. Again, the meta premise, about a man obsessed with Tom Six’s first film who decides to make his own, is quite intriguing, but it becomes botched in an asinine twist that makes the whole movie feel like a waste of time.

An Innocent Child Molester? – A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

It sounded like a great idea on paper. What if Freddy Krueger was actually innocent? What if his revenge spree started because he was burned alive an innocent man? It’s a fairly interesting, albeit drastically different, take on our favorite nightmare bogeyman. Unfortunately, the film decides to puss out and say “Just kidding!” Turns out there was nothing about this remake sets it apart from the original at all. It is just a hollow imitation of Wes Craven’s masterpiece. There wasn’t even a decent dream sequence (or kill) in the whole movie! Wasted potential, if you ask me.

What are some films that you thought had a lot of potential that disappointed you? Let me know in the comments below or shoot me a Tweet!

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The folk over at Digg have put together a video that details this evolution by using clips from dozens of zombie films, culminating with…”iZombie”? Well, I can’t argue technicalities!

Check out the video below and then tell me your favorite type of zombies in the comments! Is it the Romero slow walker or the 28 Days Later speed runner? Is it [REC]‘s demon zombies or Victor Halperin’s Haitian Voodoo-inspired creatures?

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After experiencing her parents fighting one too many times, Maya (Dylan Penn) leaves the squabbling behind to go stay with her boyfriend, Dante (Ronen Rubenstein). Dante is currently living with a couple of his bandmates in a run-down apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which is also home to a variety of unsightly characters who engage in various illegal activities, including drug production. Reluctantly, Maya agrees to stay with the group. Naturally, her decision to stay is shown to be a mistake, as the building’s sewage system causes more than just a sanitary concern. An infection originating from the occupants’ collective waste starts causing the inhabitants to become insane, murderous crazies. Now Maya and Dante have bigger problems.

Thumbs up to Gesner on creating the look for this film. The apartment building definitely fits the definition of condemned, with trash, grime, graffiti littered throughout the halls and rooms. Accentuating the grimy feeling is the decision to primarily shoot in low light, not only mimicking the run-down conditions of the apartment, but also heightening the tension. I loved the shots that were seemingly lit using the reds from a neon sign, or sickly yellows and blues that light Cookie’s (Perry Yung) apartment. I also dug some of the shots Gesner used, such as the camera travelling throughout the apartment using the plumbing. Coupled with the distorted sound of water running through pipes, it’s a pretty cool idea. Coupled with some good choices in music (a mix of punk, organ and ambient), the presentation is great.

When it comes to the acting, it’s mostly average. Dylan does alright in her debut as Maya, turning in a believable performance as a lovestruck teen that makes typically bad teenager decisions. Ronen Rubenstein has one of the better performances of our protagonists as Dante, who does a good job of selling the relationship his character has with Penn. Highlights of the kooky characters in the apartment include Perry Yung as the drug cooker Cookie, acting paranoid, hallucinating and generally insane. Jordan Gelber as Big Foot is scary, regardless of whether he’s infected or not. Speaking of the infected, gorehounds will get a kick out of the effects, which are appropriately gross and fit perfectly with the surroundings. They’re indie level of quality, but kudos to Kristen Alimena, Pete Gerner and their crew for making them count.

The biggest problem Condemned faces is it’s first half. While it’s great that Gesner takes time to establish the characters and the setting, the film moves at a glacial pace, spending its time mulling over character interactions and doing all of these interesting shots. Sure, it’s great to have development, establishing the crazies that live in the apartment and showing off some neat shots, but it doesn’t lead anywhere. It takes forever for things to really start happening, and literally by the 40 minute mark of the film’s 83-minute runtime, things start to get interesting. By then, the film starts to turn up the gross-out factor with infected characters covered in pustules puking and acting crazy in an over-the-top and hardly believable way. At the same time, the film degenerates into a poor indie version of Quarantine, with Dante and Maya running around, avoiding or battling the infected. Whatever tension was created in the first half of the film is reduced, as well as the sense of terror.

While there are some cool visuals and appropriately gross effects, Condemned suffers greatly in its pacing. The film takes an eternity to get traction, and once it does, the film slowly rolls along, and never really builds itself up to a consistent speed until the end. It’s not quite the debut that Gesner or Penn wanted, I’m sure. Those looking for another take on the [REC] or Quarantine idea will glean a bit of enjoyment from this film, if they can stand waiting until things finally get going. The rest will probably pass.

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The trailer has some nods to films like Evil Dead (the POV ghost cam) and [REC] (the hallway drag scene), so fans of those films can definitely find some interest here.

A cool gimmick with this film is that it will be the first movie in New Zealand to utilize “Rumble”, a low frequency wave generator that instills a sense of discomfort and fear in the viewers. More about that can be viewed here.

The synopsis for The Dead Room reads:

When a terrified family flees a desolate southern New Zealand farmhouse, two cynical scientists and a young psychic are sent to investigate their claims of a haunting. There they encounter a powerful spirit that will protect the house’s secrets at all cost.

The Dead Room is inspired by the chilling urban legend surrounding a farmhouse in Central Otago, New Zealand. In the early 1970s, two science tutors went to debunk claims a rural house was haunted and uncovered an incredibly disturbing mystery.

Jason Stutter directs with Jed Brophy, Jeffrey Thomas, and Laura Petersen starring. The film opens October 29th in New Zealand.

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One of the most amazing things, in my opinion, that the internet did was that it, in a way, removed country boundaries. People in one part of the world could suddenly start talking to someone in a completely different country without waiting for letters to be mailed or having to pay absurdly long distance calling fees.

As a result, the cultures, thoughts, and joys of these people became far more readily accessible in ways never before seen. And you damn well better believe that this included movies, especially the horror kind.

So, let’s talk about some great foreign horror films and how to get into them!

Perhaps the greatest joy I get from watching foreign horror films is that I get to see what scares other cultures, other people. It’s fascinating from an anthropological perspective because I simply observe, I don’t interact. This window into another way of life is something I relish.

While I know that many of you want me to recommend films like Martyrs, REC, High Tension, A Serbian Film, and similar titles, I’m sure that by now you know why I can’t do that. Those movies, while amazing, are way too intense and insane for someone who wants to dip their toes into the foreign horror ocean.

Rather, let’s start with Let The Right One In. One, it’s a beautifully crafted film, shot almost like a visual poem. That alone makes it a fascinating journey for any fan of cinema. But it’s how the movie actually plays out, slowly unwinding and earning your love and care for the two main protagonists: Oskar and Eli. The pain and suffering that Oskar goes through is something that many people can relate to while having someone like Eli is something many of us wish we’d had. Seeing Oskar’s bullies meet Eli was one of the most satisfying moments I’ve ever felt watching a film. However, that satisfaction quickly turned into self disgust as I realized what I’d just championed. It’s that incredibly range of emotions that makes me recommend this film.

Moving from Sweden to Spain, I recommend Pan’s Labyrinth. Once again, it’s another movie tat will utterly destroy your emotions. But that doesn’t make it any less horrific. The horrible situation that Ofelia has been thrust into makes her imaginary world beautiful but ever bitter. We know, even though we desperately don’t want to admit it, that her world isn’t real. It simply can’t be, regardless of how fantastical and appealing it is. So when that drop of Ofelia’s blood falls and her small smile slips away, we’re as crushed and broken as Mercedes. All the horrors and pain that she endured and we’re the ones left to pick up the pieces of our broken heart.

After watching these films, you’re gonna need something to prove that foreign horror isn’t all about breaking your heart and wrecking your emotions, right? What better than going to Japan and checking out Ringu? It’s creepy, it’s spooky, and it’s one of the films that really helped bring a wave of foreign horror to the American shores. Plus, it’s a great way to being the dark descent into J-horror, which features some of the most unique and absurd horror films I’ve ever seen.

Venturing down the rabbit hole of foreign horror can be incredibly daunting, so my ultimate recommendation is to go country by country and not try to leap boundaries. Take your time and really go into each culture to see what it has to offer because that’s the only real way to begin seeing patterns and themes, all of which will only enhance your viewing experience.

Check out the rest of our How To Start Getting Into Horror series.