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The 10 Best Horror Movies of 2014

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People might tell you that 2014 was a lackluster year for horror. They would be wrong. Very, very wrong. In fact, 2014 was a superlative 365-days for the genre. So much so that piecing together a Top Ten List was exorbinately difficult as there were at a handful that may have earned a place in a lesser year but didn’t exactly have the goods to nose their way into the top slots. Among those notable contenders is Kevin Smith’s batshit walrus misadventure Tusk, superior alphabetical anthology flick The ABCs of Death 2, and a trio of delectable found footage flicks featuring werewolf realism – Wer – Altimizer’s gone demonic – The Taking of Deborah Logan – and a horrific vampiric flu – Afflicted. Cautionary internet tale The Den had a lot going for it as well, another strong contender for the year. Had I considered E.L. Katz‘ monstrously good Cheap Thrills a horror – I don’t – it might have topped the list but that’s an argument to be had in a separate space.

10. THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT

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It takes little imagination to find a souring brand of daunting realism in Bobby Roe‘s grizzly found footage account (one of four on this list) of a group of Halloween thrill-seekers who stumble too far down the rabbit hole. Going above the conventions of normalcy, The Houses October Built arcs at terminal velocity into the unforgiving maw of a real hellhole, offering scares that gingerly walk the fine line between reality and invention in which it’s improbable to parse the artifice of trying to scare the sh*t out of someone with actually, you know, trying to kill them. You’ll never enter a haunted house the same again.

9. THE BABADOOK

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A storybook nightmare come alive with electric performances from Essie Davis and youngster Noah Wiseman, the former of which offers a performance embedded with equal strands of motherly sacrifice and true terror, the later half-wittingly stumbling into one of the least self-aware performances from a child the year had to offer, regardless of genre. The Babadook may not present the bone-chilling frights some of the its chief pundits have claimed but its mightily well made, with fierce attention to relationships and an original enough concept to boot – an undeniably winning formula in our eyes.

8. THE BORDERLANDS

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The whole descent into hell thing has been done before (even once later on this list) and anyone a fan of the genre is no stranger to priests nosing into miracles-cum-hauntings but the way in which The Borderlands builds and builds while tightening and tightening makes it a fine study of found footage done justice. The other chief victory for director Elliot Goldner comes in his writing, which keeps us surprisingly invested in the characters, offering three-dimensional beings not often found in the found footage catalog. Robin Hill‘s wisecracking Gray clashes perfectly with Gordon Kennedy‘s damaged but devoid Deacon so that when things finally come to a head, and boy oh boy do they, you’re rooting for them, not against (as is too often the case.)

7. OCULUS

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2014 was a plugged full of studio misfires for the genre – a fact that has contributed to the misconception that it was a minor year for horror – what with Annabelle, The Purge: Anarchy and Ouija  all being marked gaffes and The Evil Within and The Quiet Ones failing to make much noise at all – but if there was one studio released scary movie that fans and critics were able to rally around it was this. Oculus thrives on its sense of internal consistency and increasingly high-stakes games of mindf*cking, and Karen Gillan s overly committed performance didn’t hurt. For a film about a haunted mirror, Oculus is able to inject an overbearing sense of dread into what could have easily been a disaster of epic proportions. That director Mike Flanagan  also managed to blend two time periods seamlessly into one, presenting a fully distorted picture that was great than the mere sum of its parts, is further evidence of his subtle mastery of the genre.

6. HOUSEBOUND

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Sam Raimi accidentally invented the horror-comedy in 1981, almost stumbling upon a wheelhouse hungry subcultures didn’t yet know they wanted, his whacked-out formula later taken by a young, tooth-cutting Peter Jackson to further extremes in the celebrated messterpiece Braindead. In the great tradition of wily horror-gone-funny, New Zealand’s very own Housebound jettisons the zany hallmarks of past horror-comedy successes – all the while very intentionally tipping their hat to them – giving it space to hone in on its very own import of yuck-horror and bloodspolsions. This tongue-in-cheek haunter may be bratty, puerile and claustrophobic but, most importantly, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.

5. CREEP

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Mark Duplass has always played something of an everyman. Even on The League – an FX comedy deliciously overstuffed with caricatures of characters – his Pete is snarky but believably human. Perhaps that’s what makes his turn in the delightfully eerie Creep so, uh, creepy. Starring opposite him is (first time) director Patrick Brice, playing a man who’s just responded to a mysterious Craigslist ad that enlists him as a cohort of sorts to Duplass’ increasingly odd asks. Never quite going the direction you expect, Creep relies sternly on the ever captivating presence of its two leads – who never disappoint – and their slightly askew developing relationship.   

4. HONEYMOON

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Rose Leslie melted many snowy hearts north of The Wall as Ygritte on HBO‘s winning Game of Thrones series but seeing her stripped of that throaty accent, her hoary nightgown and, eventually, her personality in Honeymoon showed a new side to her, one hemmed with dimensionality and rich with ambiguity. She was, in a phrase, a nightmarish panorama. Less a conventional antagonist than a harbinger of uncertainly and unease, Leslie’s Bea was one of the more interesting characters additions from 2014 and director Leigh Janiak knows just how to manipulate her stalwart tendencies and flip them on their head. In a film that’s all about marital bliss gobbled up, Honeymoon is one savagely appetizing gaze at alien femme fatality.  

3. AS ABOVE/SO BELOW

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Critically dismantled, criminally underseen, As Above/So Below was dealt a losing hand upon its unceremonious theatrical dumping. To get an idea of how little confidence Universal had in their picture, they screened the film at 7 PM the night of its official release. Meaning, they screening it a mere 3 hours before they started showing it to general audiences. Of all the entries on the list, this suffered the biggest blowback for its critical panning in the eyes of the suits – coming in with a shabby 21 million off an estimated 5 million production budget – but the true loss came on behalf of the audiences who skipped it assuming ineptitude. From the truly inspired Paris Catacomb settings to its litany of diabolical lore, As Above/So Below is stuffed with arcana and welcome scares, like a giddy, terrifying adventure of Legends of the Hidden Temple with an improved upon Laura Croft as your host.

2. STARRY EYES

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If there is one consistency from the year, it’s that 2014 was a moment for the woman in horror. From As Above/So Below‘s kickass Perdita Weeks to Honeymoon‘s subterfuging Rose Leslie, Oculus‘ exceedingly zealous Karen Gillan, The Babadook‘s sublime Essie Davis, Housebound‘s ever-angsty Morgana O’Reilly and It Follow‘s perfect casting in Maika Monroe, the stars have not shone brighter on the fairer gender within our beloved genre. But no entry on the list had as big an ask of their actress as Starry Eyes, a bone-dry, humorless waxing on the pitfalls of ambition. Alexandra Esso literally buried herself in the role and you won’t find another who chick on this list or any another that undergoes such a shocking 360. An absolutely blood-curdling series of dispatches – a barbell tops the gruesome weapons list – in the midst of Essoe’s particular brand of body dysmorphia makes it an unforgettable genre entry that’s slowly been earning a deserved cult following.

1. IT FOLLOWS

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The urban legend of the STDemon seems like one that’s been whispered amongst circles of throbbing-genitialed teenagers forever. Debuting at Cannes and making a hell of a festival circuit run, It Follows spins its own Are You Afraid of the Dark type mythos of a sexually transmitted entity that never stops, never sleeps, never reasons. Just follows. Brilliant in its simplicity, It Follows doesn’t squander time with getting to know you’s. Rather, it’s a raw, dirty, brilliant orgy of nail-crunching tension, rich with pregnant silences and offscreen moments of self-sacrificing, proving that sometimes the simplest of ideas are the best of them.

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13 Most Disturbing Horror Movies of the Last 13 Years

First of all, I’m gonna throw down the NSFW gauntlet for these 13 most disturbing horror movies of the last 13 years because what you are about to witness is, as the name suggests, a list of not exactly your grandma’s horror movies. These are the most twisted, most gnarly, most graphic horror films ever. Their intent is to scar you. Their purpose, to become your nightmare. In the patheon of twisted, these reign supreme. The sample pictures I’ve included alone should be enough to scare you off from ever watching any of these twisted entries in a troubled genre. Treat this as a dare, not a suggestion. You enter the territory of the twisted on your own accord. If you’re still around by the second to last entry, may God have mercy on your soul. Read More

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13 Most Disturbing Horror Films of the Last 13 Years

First of all, I’m gonna throw down the NSFW gauntlet for these 13 most disturbing movies of the last 13 years because what you are about to witness is, as the name suggests, a list of not exactly your grandma’s horror movies. These are the most twisted, most gnarly, most graphic horror films ever. Their intent is to scar you. Their purpose, to become your nightmare. In the patheon of twisted, these reign supreme. The sample pictures I’ve included alone should be enough to scare you off from ever watching any of these twisted entries in a troubled genre. Treat this as a dare, not a suggestion. You enter the territory of the twisted on your own accord. If you’re still around by the second to last entry, may God have mercy on your soul. Read More

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SXSW Review: STARRY EYES

“Starry Eyes”
Directed by Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Starring Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan, Fabianne Therese, Shane Coffey, Natalie Castillo, Pat Healy, Nick Simmons, Maria Olsen, Louis Dezseran
Horror
United States

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At the risk of emasculating myself, I’ll admit that Starry Eyes was so scary that it made me cry. Not ooey, gooey gobs of terror tears so much as the lone, solitary drop leaking down my face as my jaw was busy sagging half-way to the floor. Still, a tear’s a tear and a tear did floweth. So if this film doesn’t at least creep you out, check your pulse because you’re probably not human or may have already sold your soul to the devil. It’s more likely though that you’ll be sitting in a pile of your own yuck after the screening, tired, sweaty, fearful and all the more afraid of the dark.

Like last year’s very frightening The Conjuring, few to no jump scares are employed as this isn’t the brand of chilling that seeks to sporadically startle you and lap up easy frights. No, director duo Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer‘s plans are far more sinister. They would rather crawl deep inside you, settling in the nook of your cerebral panic center, and plant a seed of horror that’ll grow throughout the movie until explodes into a full blown anxiety attack. And just when everything seems like it possibly couldn’t get any worse, you turn a corner into a whole new realm of terror. A maze of shudders, a labyrinth of gore, Starry Eyes triggers your instinctual fight or flight mode and dares you to stick it out.

Wringing all the best elements of a dark character study with the deeply unsettling nature of the body horror genre, Starry Eyes soars on the wings of star Alex Essoe. As Sarah, Essoe embodies the 20something wanna-be starlet who will go to any lengths in order to achieve her dreams of fame and fortune. Her bedroom walls plastered with the icons of 1940s celebrity, she wants the world, and she wants it now. When a role comes along that would be the perfect launching pad to become the next “it” girl, she goes to anything lengths necessary to land the role, even if that means losing herself.

Essoe’s performance is the bombastic center piece of the film – the gory bride on a red velvet wedding cake, the bouquet of rotting roses on some unmarked grave. Her positively brilliant turn as Sarah reminds us of Natalie Portman‘s Oscar-earning performance in Black Swan and Shelly Duvall‘s massively underrated embodiment of horror in The Shining. She’s at once totally in control and veering from the tracks of sanity. As she makes more and more conceits of character and body, Essoe’s arc becomes unforgettable, an indelible bookmark of Starry Eye’s staying power. Without Essoe’s incredible and unflinching performance, this would be a whole new beast entirely.

There’s one point where we feel like all of the build-up may be for naught, that this would tilt into a cautionary tale that peters rather than commits to its zany over-the-topisms but that’s not the case. Once the third act rounds the corner, it’s an unrelenting marathon of what we – and Sarah – can and will endure. It’s chilling, the stuff of nightmares, but it hurts so good.

The whole selling your soul to the devil thing has been done before and probably in more subtle ways but subtlety is not Kolsch and Widmyer’s game. Rather Starry Eyes is such a horrifying victory for them because of how far they’re willing to take us. This deep down the rabbit hole, everything is so pitch black that we can’t see even the faintest flicker of light and they, in this realm of deprivation, they mine the scares perfectly. It’s unrelenting darkness opens the flood gates, letting the horror flows from what’s onscreen and those other thoughts that exist in our imagination alone. It’s the perfect synthesize of shock, disgust and angst that’ll have audiences turning in their seats and watched through the crooks of hands shielding their faces.

Starry Eyes conjures up quick similarities to Black Swan and Rosemary’s Baby but finds a perfect footing between the two so any similarities feel incidental rather than essential. It may wheel in the same thematic ballpark but, if you can believe it, makes both of those features look like a walk in the park. Both Swan and Baby may leave you unsettled but Starry Eyes will leave you shaken. At any rate, it’s unique and visionary take will all but guarantee a long shelf life among horror buffs and is sure to earn a deserved overnight cult following.

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