10. “Kairo” (2001)
As we said above, J-horror remakes were all the rage in the early 2000s, a trend that came and went fast, but not before Hollywood could co-opt the style to make a quick buck. There were a few quality entries (“The Ring” features on this list for good reason), but that can’t be said for the 2006 American take on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s fantastic, incredibly sad apocalyptic story about ghosts in our machines. “Kairo” is still the cream of the crop, a very scary film at times but one more reliant on atmosphere, mood and quiet to unsettle the viewer, resulting in an extremely artful and contemplative take on a ghost story. Kurosawa delves into the nature of our technological dependence and obsession, not so much fearing these new toys and “them kids with their internets” (an often unfair criticism against J-horror releases). Instead, he uses this brave new world to explore a basic, ultimate human fear: dying alone. What comes out in the end won’t leave you feeling warm and fuzzy, but it will leave an impact if you can get on the film’s peculiar wavelength. Though it only has a few moments of true terror, this film in particular stands out for being scary as hell, even out of context.
9. “Black Swan” (2010)
If people were surprised that Darren Aronofsky was following up “The Fountain” and “The Wrestler” with a movie set in the high falutin’ world of ballet, they must have been truly stunned when “Black Swan” turned out to be for all intents and purposes a werewolf picture as indebted to Argento as it was to the Archers. But they must have been shocked into minor cardiac arrest when it also turned out to be totally brilliant, a bonkers and beautifully made genre picture that somehow ended up being a minor award phenomenon. The Oscar-winning Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a young ballerina marked for big things after the retirement of the company’s previous star (a meta-tastic Winona Ryder, who’d have played Portman’s part fifteen years earlier), but who can’t quite convince the director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) that she has the requisite darkness to play the Black Swan as well as the White in “Swan Lake.” But the arrival of a potential rival/lover Lily (Mila Kunis) seems to unleash a lingering darkness in the young ingenue. Melding Cronenbergian body horror with “All About Eve”-style melodrama, and shot with visionary control by Aronofsky, the film is weird, disturbing, hallucinatory and peculiarly beautiful, not least in its glorious climax. It’s still the director’s best film, and one of the classier horror pictures of recent years.
8. “Trouble Every Day” (2001)
You don’t necessarily associate Gallic arthouse darling Claire Denis with the horror genre, but as anyone who saw her most recent film “Bastards” knows, she’s capable of shocking and appalling with the best of them. But for her purest horror picture, you have to go back to “Trouble Every Day,” an oddity in the Denis canon, but no less terrifying for it. Unfortunately, the title “The Hunger” was already taken, as it does a solid job emphasizing the carnal rage with which Denis’ sojourn into more horrific territory is concerned. Along the French countryside, a curvy animalistic nymphomaniac (Béatrice Dalle) can’t help but devour her lovers, and she’s only held back by the dutiful concern of her male paramour. At the same time, two Americans (Vincent Gallo and Tricia Vessey) struggle to understand how they’ve arrived at this place of sensual longing and flesh-eating scientifically, while simultaneously struggling with how their passions seem both exactly the same, and, because of a lack of compatibility, completely opposite to their interests. “Trouble Every Day” is a gory test for the average arthouse habitué, but it continues Denis’ sensuous obsession with the matters of the flesh and the chasm that separates even the most dedicated of lovers.
7. “The Witch” (2016)
Proving that sometimes the most effective tactic is to zag when everyone else is zigging, first-time director Robert Eggers‘ instant classic is remarkably, well, classic in approach. An austere, immaculately researched period piece, complete with borderline incomprehensible New England argot and accents, it derives its terror from the vice-like grip the director has on the tone of doomy unease throughout. It’s the muddy, lived-in authenticity that Eggers brings, along with his extraordinary cast (Anya Taylor-Joy is the breakout, but Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson are astonishing as her parents, while the goat who plays Black Peter is the G.O.A.T. of goats) that, rather than any excess of gore or jump-scariness, make the uncanny feel so plausible. Set within a family who’ve been excommunicated from their puritan village and tapping into early American era of religious mania, superstition, hypocritical piety and sanctimony, there are shades of fairy tales and folk stories within the film’s archetypes (the doomed baby; the little-girl-lost in the off-limits forest; the nightmarish monster that lurks within), but Eggers invests it all with a seriousness and a sobriety that in these po-mo, self-aware times comes as a breath of frightening fresh air.
6. “The Orphanage” (2007)
Kids are creepy; deformed kids forced to wear Scarecrow-style sackcloth hoods with crudely sewn-in features are terrifying. Juan Antonio Bayona’s “The Orphanage” is as close to a perfect ghost story as this list boasts, an uncanny tale that abounds in both physical, visceral shock moments and ratcheting gradual unease. Exquisitely mounted and shot so that while it’s contemporary, it almost feels of a period with “The Others” or “Pan’s Labyrinth,” the film is also elevated by a terrific central turn by the beautiful Belen Rueda, who brings a kind of earthy strength to the character of Laura that serves to ground the supernatural aspects of the plot. But most brilliantly, “The Orphanage,” for all it manifests classic horror movie set pieces (like the times we see the sackcloth kid Tomas and then he isn’t there, etc), derives its power and underlying emotion from real-life terrors. The connection to our past, the inescapability of our earthly fates and the unfairness and cruelty that children can both experience and visit on one another are all heady, resonant areas that Bayona expertly orchestrates. Yet for all the gut-punching horror and frightening revelations, the thing that makes “The Orphanage” truly great is just how sorrowful a film it turns out to be. Its perfectly poised ending (again, very reminiscent of the similarly knife-edge hopeful/tragic close of “Pan’s Labyrinth”) may leave us with a kind of acceptance, and on its way the film may have scared us silly, but after the credits roll and all the mysteries are solved, its beauty remains in its desperate, terribly human sadness.
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5. “Let The Right One In” (2008)
As much gothic love story as horror, Tomas Alfredson’s original Swedish version of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel isn’t just one of the great recent horror movies. It’s one of the great movies, period. It’s also a rarity: genre geeks and arthouse snobs can mutually appreciate the work. Set in Stockholm in 1981, the film details the friendship between a lonely child Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) and his new neighbor Eli (Lina Leandersson), who’s just moved into the next-door apartment with a man who is presumably her (or possibly his) father. But as Oskar befriends her and other neighbors start dying, it becomes rapidly clear that Eli has supernatural abilities, but that won’t break the friendship up. It’s a coming-of-age film of rare feeling and power, capturing its era beautifully, but it also happens to be a gloriously splattery, almost Raimi-esque horror film, and Alfredson, who directs the hell out of the film (the swimming pool sequence remains legendary) somehow melds these two seemingly disparate elements into something nearly unique. Matt Reeves’ 2010 American remake “Let Me In” was improbably almost as good as the original, but you should still stick with the original.
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4. “The Host” (2006)
There are monster movies. And then there is “The Host.” Bong Joon-ho‘s flawless, fearless creature feature was at the time of its release the most successful South Korean film ever, and it’s easy to see why. What starts as a fairly typical nature-gone-wrong tale (with some prickly political overtones), quickly evolves into something more, encompassing a handful of genres on its way to an ending so beautiful and atypical that you would never expect to see it in an American film. After the American military dumps hazardous toxins into the Han River (this bit is actually based on a historical footnote), a giant, amphibious creature emerges from the water and causes havoc, eventually spiriting away a young girl (Go Ah-sung). The girl’s family, led by her schlubby father (Bong regular Song Kang-ho), vow to retrieve her, and what follows is equal parts horror film, comedic family drama, satirical sci-fi and, well, fairy tale (in early scenes, it’s also a fascinating portrait of cultural differences when it comes to grieving a lost loved one). Everything about “The Host” is so, so satisfying. It’s dazzling enough that Joon-ho would attempt incorporating all of these disparate genres, but it’s another thing altogether that they all seem to hit. “The Host” has been endlessly aped in the years since (mostly by J.J. Abrams), but its quirky energy and tonal uniqueness has never been appropriated, let alone matched.
3. “Time Of The Wolf” (2003)
Michael Haneke broke through to international recognition with “Funny Games,” which is essentially a deconstructed slasher movie. Since then, you could make an argument that almost any of his films (even “Amour”) are horror films, or at least flecked with horror, but we reckon the truest example of the genre in the director’s output is his dystopian terrorfest “Time Of The Wolf.” The apocalypse has come and gone by the opening of the film, but that doesn’t mean that the worst is over. Far from it. Society is still crumbling around the central family, led by matriarch Anne (Isabelle Huppert), who are struggling to survive in a world in the aftermath of an catastrophe (drinking water is scarce and livestock are set aflame). And in the opening minutes, they’re robbed and have to watch as the patriarch (Daniel Duval) is murdered, forcing them to flee until they eventually come under the questionable protection of a tinpot despot played by Olivier Gourmet, who has control of the uncontaminated water. It’s about as much fun as you’d expect from a post-apocalyptic Haneke film —i.e. no fucking fun whatsoever— but it’s impeccably directed and performed, by Huppert especially. And what elevates it above something like “The Road,” and what makes it in our mind a horror film, are the hints that the director gives —without ever over-egging it— that he’s not really talking about some futuristic dystopia, but about the places in the world —Kosovo, Somalia, wherever— where people eke out desperate existences in circumstances all too similar to those of Anne and her family.
2. “Under The Skin” (2014)
Without question, it’s reductive to simply label Jonathan Glazer’s masterpiece as simply a horror movie. Like the neon-rust drenched sequence in the film where Scarlett Johansson’s alien who fell to earth is overcome by the sheer magnitude of human goodness and emotion, there’s just so many kinds of films layered on top of each other in “Under the Skin” that trying to distill it down to one genre is a fool’s errand. Yet we feel comfortable calling it a horror movie, because it is deeply creepy and totally disturbing. Mica Levi’s fantastical, bewitching score does a lot of the heavy lifting in the creep-you-out department, but not enough praise can be bestowed on Glazer’s bold, experimental approach (using real people off the street for certain scenes, a reliance on visuals to tell the story, etc.) and Johansson’s career-best performance as an alien using her sexuality to prey on men for… we’ll leave it for you to discover. With at least a dozen memorable, totally haunting moments singed into our memories for good (the baby crying helplessly on the shore as the tide approaches, motorcycle men roaming the Scottish highways, the reveal of what exactly happens to these hapless men as they plunge into a black watery oblivion, the closing images, etc.), ‘Skin’ ultimately transcends generic classification to become simply a great film. Packed with ideas and insight into how women’s bodies can be reduced to tools, sexuality as a weapon, and proving that post-feminism theories are about as silly as saying we live in a post-racist society, this is a film to be unpacked and frightened by again and again. Yet its greatest feat is how Glazer realigns our sympathies in the film’s midsection, turning the villain into the victim. There’s true emotion going on amidst its chilly, sci-fi horror exterior. With this film, you have to follow it into the black void, willfully ignorant and understandably scared of what’s coming next. Thankfully, Glazer is an incredibly gifted filmmaker, and is thus to be trusted. Take the plunge.
1. “Mulholland Drive” (2001)
Even if David Lynch’s return trip back to “Twin Peaks” for Showtime fails miserably and he never makes another film again, we will always have “Mulholland Drive.” To our mind, it’s his best film and features the scariest scene of the 2000s (you know the one we’re talking about). Its strange journey from TV show pilot to feature film has been detailed plenty already, but it’s worth noting that evolution to appreciate how Lynch made quite possibly the greatest example of turning lemons into cinematic lemonade. As for the film itself? It’s one of the greatest renderings of nightmare logic into a story, something Lynch had been tinkering with since his beginnings and is perfected here. Its nightmare starts as a particularly American dream, following Naomi Watts’ Betty (in a performance that should’ve won every available award that year), a fresh-off-the-bus midwesterner ready for Hollywood stardom. The dream, which we surmise through various subplots, digressions and twisty logic, is crushed through eventual unrequited love and nefarious producers. The more one watches “Mulholland Drive,” the easier it becomes to piece together its often baffling narrative, one that switches midway through and sees Watts turn into a character named Diane, a more ruthless, vengeful spurned lover who gets what she thinks she wants —revenge— but finds her nightmare is only just beginning when she’s left in a wake of regret and self-hatred. A dark, near-perfect parable about the dangers and corruptibility of Hollywood fame, Lynch’s film never hits a false note, delivering on cinema’s innate ability to literalize a character’s perspective to terrifying results. Definitely a stretch for consideration as a horror (a good deal of arguing among the Playlist staff went into whether this title should be number one on the list, or be removed from it entirely), ultimately we decided that as category-resistant as this film is, “horror” is the closest we can get. As excited as we are about next year’s “Twin Peaks” return, thinking about “Mulholland Drive” makes us fervently hope Lynch has more movies up his sleeve in the future.
As usual, this list could have gone on a fair bit longer, and so there’s more we could have mentioned. Among them, some recent movies that while they might be horror-adjacent, don’t quite qualify, including “The Neon Demon,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “Green Room” and “Only Lovers Left Alive.’
Beyond that, we nearly put in films including Vincenzo Natali’s bonkers sci-fi horror “Splice,” Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Reject,” splattery French twist-fest “Haute Tension,” brutal, underrated Brit chiller “The Children,” Bill Paxton’s fascinating “Frailty,” stripped-back slasher “The Strangers,” Neil Marshall’s debut “Dog Soldiers,” Korean pic “The Red Shoes,” found-footagers “REC” and “Unfollowed,” Lucky McKee’s “May,” Ti West’s “The Innkeepers” and Park Chan-Wook’s “Thirst.”
Then there’s some more recent movies too, like Hollywood satire “Starry Eyes,” brilliant throwback horror “We Are Still Here,” the talented Mike Flanagan’s Netflix horror “Hush,” summer hits “Lights Out” and “Don’t Breathe,” and the “Insidious” franchise. Anything else? Let us know what you would’ve included in the comments.
– Oliver Lyttelton, Jessica Kiang, Drew Taylor, Erik McLanahan