My original plan was to kick off the month of October with the first in a series of horror movie retrospectives. In previous years, I’ve looked at some films based on the works of Stephen King, but this year, I have something different in mind. Alas, our last few weeks have been hammered with sports and outside obligations, and I haven’t had the time I’d hoped to watch, write or attend screenings. There’s a light coming at the end of the tunnel, and I’m going to attempt to get back on track in the coming weeks, but I had to pivot.
But I figured that it might be fun to talk about some of my favorite horror movies. I’m not a genre expert; there are many, many critics who have a deeper knowledge and love for horror cinema than me. But I do enjoy a good scary movie, particularly during the weeks leading up to Halloween. When done to perfection, horror offers an experience like no other genre, tapping into our deepest and darkest places and making us confront the things we dread. And I often encourage aspiring critics to begin with horror when they get started, simply because the genre offers such a wide array of experiences and the films are so dependent on craft. Horror is still too often looked down upon, but many of our greatest directors got their starts there – and for those who want to see the box office come back to life, horror has long been one of the most dependable draws to the theater.
My top 10 list of horror movies won’t surprise anyone. Like I said, I’m not an expert on the genre. But I think they are films worth celebrating, and movies that speak deeply to me in their own way. Some of these are just good gross-out fun; others have rattled me. They’re the horror movies I respond most deeply to; and I would love to hear yours.
Alien: I had seen Alien a few times prior to its Halloween night theatrical re-release in 2003. But it never grabbed me as fully as it did that night. Ridley Scott’s haunted house in space movie is the most tense and terrifying film I’ve ever experienced, a perfect exercise in building dread and then pouncing. No monster design has ever repulsed and fascinated me more than the titular creature. There is a sequence in the air ducts that still makes me look away from the screen because I know it’s going to launch me out of my chair. But in addition to the overt horror is the subtext in its themes about sexuality, corporate inhumanity and our own expendability in the void. It’s a great, scary movie.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: When I was a kid, my Dad used to do scary movie nights with my siblings and me when my mom was out. Usually, this included movies like The Wolfman or Frankenstein. But one night, when I was probably still in single digits, he brought home Tobe Hooper’s classic. Thankfully, the kids all fell asleep shortly after it started (it was the second part of a double feature). It wasn’t until about 15 years later that I finally saw Chain Saw and had to tell my dad, “that was pretty messed up.” Hooper’s film feels rotten from the first frame, taking place in a sweaty, putrid Texas where the world seems to be falling apart even before the protagonists stumble onto that house. Its kills are sudden, random and brutal; even if they’re not gory, they still shock. It has a sound design like nails on a chalkboard, and the climatic dinner scene is a masterpiece of terror before the film culminates in a chase sequence that feels like it will never end. Dread and despair thrum under every frame and even the fact that a character escapes doesn’t make us feel better because we know Leatherface is still out there, dancing in the sunrise with his chainsaw.
Night of the Living Dead: I know, I know. Dawn of the Dead is George Romero’s masterpiece, not its predecessor. And while I like the middle entry of that initial Dead trilogy, Night of the Living Dead still disturbs and haunts me more. There’s something about our tendency to treat older, black-and-white films as more quaint that makes this film’s scenes of gut-munching violence and its provocative ending even more transgressive and wrong. Romero set the template for an entire genre, but every time I watch it I feel its most primal aspects still work. Slow zombies are still the scariest because of their unrelenting, suffocating danger. And as they descend on that farmhouse and its inhabitants fall apart – and the TV and radio suggest the outside world isn’t any better – there’s the palpable sense of the world’s center not holding, a feeling that is all too relatable today.
Halloween: There was a time when I would have compiled this list half full of slasher movies. I was a kid of the ‘80s, and Freddy, Jason and Chucky were our blood-drenched equivalent of today’s superhero franchises. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost a lot of love for the slasher genre and come to view it largely as a guilty pleasure. But John Carpenter’s Halloween is the exception to the rule (there’s one other exception on this list). While the Michael Myers sequels devolved into a convoluted mythology and gore, the original film is still a masterpiece of suspense and simplicity. There’s no reason given why Myers stalks babysitters in Haddonfield; he’s just there, and they’re home. Carpenter captures the terror of evil stalking our safe spaces, and if he didn’t create the slasher genre, he perfected it. The film’s final half hour is a masterclass in tension, the relentless and stoic Myers is still our greatest slasher, and Jamie Lee Curtis created the Final Girl and set the bar high. Plus, it has maybe the greatest horror score of all time.
The Mist: Stephen King’s probably my favorite author of all time – he’s certainly the one I continue to read most frequently. And while his movies often get bad raps, there are classics. But none have gut-punched me the way Frank Darabont’s adaptation of The Mist did. What starts as a creature feature among the citizens of a small town turns into an analysis of our ability to come together when the world falls apart and whether we’ll help each other or choose sides and fight it out. Darabont’s not optimistic and, during the pandemic, we saw how true this movie’s view of humanity under pressure may be. The monster attacks are only slightly less terrifying than Marcia Gay Harden’s sanctimonious Mrs. Carmody. And while many horror movies can scare us, it takes a special one to truly horrify, as this movie does in its shocking, ultra-downer of an ending. And yet, Darabont is not merely playing the pessimist. This is just the dark double side of the coin with his other great King adaptation, The Shawshank Redemption, and an argument about the hell that comes with losing hope.
Evil Dead 2: Truth we don’t acknowledge enough: there is not a bad Evil Dead movie. From Sam Raimi’s trilogy of spook-a-blasts, to Fede Alvarez’s gnarly and mean-spirited remake, to last year’s surprisingly effective spin-off, Evil Dead Rise, the Deadites usually portend a great and gross time at the movies. But the platonic ideal of the franchise is Raimi’s second film. While it’s popular – and kind of fair – to call it a remake of The Evil Dead, what Raimi does with his sequel is sand off the rough edges of the predecessor and refine it to perfection. The homemade viscera and speed-ramped cinematography are on steroids here, but married to a tone that is heavy on the Looney Tune vibes. Ash Williams might not be fully realized yet – that happens in Army of Darkness – but Bruce Campbell gives one of the all-time great physical comedy performances. Everything you expect and treasure about Raimi as a filmmaker is on display here.
Seven: David Fincher’s Seven is not technically a horror movie; there’s more noir in its bones than anything. But few movies have disturbed me the way this one does. Taking place in a city that feels like it’s constantly decaying, the atmosphere of evil is oppressive, unbearable. Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt are phenomenal as the detectives chasing down a killer fixated on the Seven Deadly Sins – Freeman’s character wants nothing to do with the case and is resigned to the worst, while Pitt’s character is eager and ready to change the world. There’s very little overt violence, but there are visuals seared into my mind. And its classic ending is darker than dark; it kept me up all night the first time I saw the film. Yet I appreciate the very faint note of hope in the final scene, and it’s a movie that captures the feeling of doggedly making our way forward in a world that seems intent on snuffing out our light.
The Exorcist: There’s a lot of classic stuff in The Exorcist that I don’t think is too scary. Pea soup-vomiting, spider-walking kids can be found in any scary movie these days. And even though I’m a person of faith, movies about exorcisms and demons don’t get under my skin; they’re usually too cliche, hokey and play up things that I believe probably take place internally. But watching it again last year, I found the story of a priest confronting his doubt and a mother helplessly watching the unthinkable unfold to her child to be harrowing and effective. In the film’s best moments – which usually take place outside the room with the possessed girl – William Friedkin brings to life the terrifying thought that too much of our life is spent living in blissful and willful ignorance of the deep and dark things that might lurk behind our realities and try to intrude.
Scream: I have Halloween higher because its primal pull is undeniable. But the slasher genre peaked in 1996 with Scream. Wes Craven’s film is whip-smart and funny, while at the same time featuring sequences that are unbearably tense and shocking. Kevin Williamson’s script acknowledges and weaponizes our love of the horror genre, and Craven – working with easily his most-skilled cast – takes the rare approach of packing a slasher movie full of likable characters who we don’t want to see sliced and diced. The mystery works, the laughs hit, the deaths hurt. It’s the slasher done to perfection.
The Blair Witch Project: I hear your complaints that it’s boring, and I disagree. Everything people see as a criticism, I see as a benefit. The shoddy camera work, shouted dialogue and uneventful plot give it a verisimilitude that is hard to shake. No, the movie is not a visceral experience in terror. But it’s an extremely effective bit of psychological horror, playing off our fears of being lost in the woods, failing our friends, and at the mercy of the unknown. The tension builds and builds, releasing in a dizzying final chase through a haunted house that shocks us with a harrowing final image. Watching it again recently, I was surprised to find that even though I knew where it was all headed, my heart was pounding all the way through to the end. A classic that works on such a simple level that it’s impossible to duplicate (although many, many, many have tried).
Good call including The Mist, an under appreciated classic. Not being a fan of slasher movies, I would replace Halloween with The Thing and I would add The Shining.
Good list Chris! I posted my Top 25 (in two parts) here: https://open.substack.com/pub/kenpriebe?r=1ez6mv&utm_medium=ios