Halloween is a week away and horror has been thriving at the box-office this year. Not just that, arthouse horror is very much still being critically-acclaimed with filmmakers such as Robert Eggers, Ari Aster and Jordan Peele leading the way.
Some recommendations are in order.
Last year, I published the 10 best of the 2010s. I’ll probably post my list of the 10 greatest horror movies next week. Let’s up the ante and name our best horror of the 21st Century. So much to choose from, it’s a genre that keeps reinventing itself and refuses to get dated. These are the 11 I keep coming back to …
It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)
Hereditary (Ari Aster)
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)
The Descent (Neil Marshall)
Get Out (Jordan Peele)
A Quiet Place (John Krasinski)
The Others (Alejandro Amenábar)
28 Days Later (Danny Boyle)
The Mist (Frank Darabont)
Frailty (Bill Paxton)
Five from the 2000s and six from the 2010s. Paxton’s “Frailty” is one of the most severely underrated movies of the last 20 years. If you haven’t seen it, please do. Or questions our roles in religion, family and society. A very disturbing piece of cinema.
The first time I saw “Hereditary” was at its first and very memorable Sundance screening. I immediately went to my room and wrote a rave review for it. A24 picked it up and quoted me in the film’s trailer and poster. It was one of the most exciting discoveries of a new talent I had ever experienced.
A year earlier the same thing occurred, at Sundance again, with Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which was a very late addition “surprise” screening to the fest.
Then there’s David Robert Mitchell’s minimalist and sexual “It Follows.” The film refused to adhere to the conventions of 21st-century horror cinema. Mitchell delivered this stunningly authoritative movie. It was a blend of the surreal with the very real. A taste of the next generation of horror movies to come. Every scene in Mitchell’s film is filled with unbearable dread, bringing to mind early Carpenter. Scene after scene, the viewer is engulfed in an inescapable sexual nightmare.
There were so many more films choose to from, I love this genre so much and these we’re some other major highlight for me this century …
The Invitation, The Cabin in the Woods, The Witch, Lights Out, The Wailing, Don’t Breathe, Hush, Sinister, It, Crimson Peak, Goodnight Mommy, I Spit On Your Grave, Mandy, Raw, You’re Next, Attack the Block, Climax, Midsommar, Us, Cam, Possessor, The Guest, Drag Me To Hell, Paranormal Activity, Antichrist, Cabin Fever, Joy Ride, Piranha 3D, The Devil’s Rejects
Now the question is whether Spidey can become the first movie to cross $1 billion domestically. With its legs having slowed down, and $63M in receipts still needed, I highly doubt it.