The horror films resurgence of the last few years has been a remarkable thing to watch: some of the most exciting new filmmakers to emerge have been working in the genre, and plenty of masters have been doing some of the best work of their careers. And, unsurprisingly, given that waking up every morning in 2017 has been like stepping into a John Carpenter nightmare, the last 12 months has seen the horror boom bigger than ever.
A mid-budget Stephen King adaptation became the biggest-ever movie in the genre (and outgrossed most of the superhero movies and tentpole sequels while it was at it). And two further original horror pics became giant smashes, one of which is all but certain to become the first horror movie to pick up a Best Picture Oscar nod, and maybe even win the damn thing, since “Silence Of The Lambs.”
But even outside the mainstream, there was a wealth of great work, from international debuts to Netflix gems. Given that the genre’s often overlooked in our end of year coverage, we try to give it a special focus in a feature that picks out our very favorite horrors of the year: below you’ll find the 15 best that we saw. Take a look, and let us know if we missed your own faves in the comments.
Click here for our full coverage of the best of 2017, including Best Cinematography,Posters,Trailers and the100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2018
15. “Prevenge”
It’s the cultiest of cult shows, but it feels like one day that early 00s British comedy “Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace” will be seen as the same kind of talent factory as “The Simpsons” or “The Dana Carvey Show” were. Richard Ayoade got his start with the show, while Marenghi himself, Matthew Holness, drops his promising directorial debut “Possum” next year, and in between came this gloriously nasty, darkly funny first feature from Alice Lowe, who broke out on ‘Darkplace’ before connecting with a wider crowd with Ben Wheatley’s “Sightseers.” “Prevenge” certainly shares a sensibility with that movie in its story of a grieving, heavily pregnant woman persuaded, seemingly, by the voice of her unborn child, to take bloody revenge on the people she blames for her boyfriend’s death. It’s arguably a touch too episodic in structure, but there’s still immense fun to be had as Lowe’s Ruth works her way through a murderer’s row of comic talent (including Kayvan Novak and Kate Dickie), and a surprising emotional resonance as her spiral of revenge gets deeper too. It’d be an impressive directorial debut for anyone, but all the more so given that Lowe shot the whole thing on a shoestring budget in two weeks while seven months pregnant herself.
14. “The Blackcoat’s Daughter”
Last year Netflix debuted Osgood Perkins‘ “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House,” one of 2016’s best horror movies, and this year A24 unleashed his follow up (which was actually filmed first). Perkins, the son of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins, seems to innately understand horror, and this new movie might be even better than the first. It’s the tale of three girls – Rose (Lucy Boynton) thinks that she might be pregnant, Kat (Kiernan Shipka), goes to school with Rose at the same boarding school and sees ghostly visions, while Joan (Emma Roberts) is traveling to the boarding school while harboring a dark secret. How these girls relate to each other and intersect gives the movie its spooky, unnatural vibe and it concludes with a terrific twist that isn’t just shocking but emotionally resonant. (It also makes you want to watch the movie again – immediately.) Perkins knows how important mood and atmosphere are and builds each piece of the movie deliberately and thoughtfully (the young actresses give rousing performances too). It’s not as mystical and gauzy as “I Am the Pretty Thing …,” but it is just as haunted and melancholy and it’s nice, with this feature, to see him handle a more complicated straightforward narrative. Perkins is one of the genre’s most exciting auteurs; can’t wait to see where he’s headed next.
13. “Better Watch Out”
The Christmas-related horror subgenre is an odd one, when you think about it: there isn’t anything about the holiday that particularly seems to lend itself to scares and gore. And yet Christmas-related horror always seem to be particularly fun, and after the excellent “Krampus” a few years back comes this clever, energetic slasher movie from Australian director Chris Peckover. It sees babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) and the 12-year-old who’s crushing on her (Levi Miller, of “Pan” and “A Wrinkle In Time”) being menaced by home intruders over the Christmas period — but not everything is on the level… Although there’s some slight wonkiness due to the circumstances of production (it’s an Australian movie set in the U.S, and some of the accents are a bit wobbly), the film’s a lean, brisk blast with extremely assured direction from Peckover, fun performances, and a gleefully demented sense of play — even before one character is despatched with a tin of paint on string, you’ll have started to feel that this is like a firmly R-rated, fucked-up “Home Alone.” It barely made a splash on release, but this feels like it’ll become a seasonal favorite for years to come.
12. “1922”
The string of successful Stephen King adaptations continued with “1922,” a somber adaptation of 2010 novella that, like “Gerald’s Game,” seemed like an unlikely candidate for big screen interpretation. The titular year is when Wilfred James (Thomas Jane) hatched a plan with his 14-year-old son Henry (Dylan Schmid) to murder his wife (Molly Parker). She wanted to sell their downtrodden farm and move to the big city, but the farm was all he knew. Of course, this being a King story where karmic retribution is a must, as soon as the murder is committed, the farm starts to turn sour and Wilf is haunted with ghostly visions of his wife (and some very carnivorous rats). While King has compared the movie to “There Will Be Blood,” it’s more like “Grapes of Wrath” meets King’s own “Graveyard Shift,” complete with a phantasmagoric twist to the original ending. It works mostly because of writer-director Zak Hilditch‘s commitment to the source material and his elegant, understated direction and because Jane, who could have used the role as an excuse to overact, plays the part naturalistically and beautifully. Also, the score by Mike Patton is wonderfully eerie.
11. “Tragedy Girls”
Horror-comedy is an absolute fucker of a genre to pull off, as you’d known from the littered corpses of movies that attempted to pull off the mix. So credit to writer-director Tyler MacIntyre for one of the better recent entries with “Tragedy Girls.” It’s a film that wears its influences — “Heathers” and “Scream,” mostly — very much on its sleeve in its story of two high schoolers (X-Men universe grads Alexandra Shipp and Brianna Hildebrand), who try to boost their true-crime Instagram by becoming serial killers themselves. And while hitting the vacuousness of social media is, yeah, a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, it’s done with such a light touch here, thanks in large part to the winning performances from the two leads, who managed to make their two monsters curiously likeable despite their shallowness (there’s good supporting work, too, from Josh Hutcherson, Craig Robinson, Kevin Durand and Jack Quaid). It delivers where it matters too, with both some pleasingly bloody set pieces (the aspiring killers tend to botch their murders), and plenty of big laughs. MacIntyre brings some real visual flair too, while making sure the film remains a breezy watch. We suspect the director has better in him, but this’ll more than do for now.