Let The Right One In

Midsommer is my favorite. A slow, realistic slide into horror.

You like em tongue-in-cheek? You might try Chopping Mall (1986). Shopping mall management invests in a killer robot security system. A group of horny teens decides to spend the night there, but a lightning storm takes out the main killer robot controller! It's funny, a little gory, has topless men and women, and it's hilarious. A spook night favorite of mine.

Alright I can think of a few that strangely haven't been mentioned yet!

• Barbarian - Woman checks in to an AirBnB. But beneath it lies a horrible secret. This one's pretty disturbing in subject matter, actually. But it's solidly eery.

• Tremors - It's bright daylight! In a small desert town! What's so spooky about that? Vibration-sensitive, man-eating sandworms maybe. This movie is just solidly fun all around. Legendary B-movie monster film.

• The Descent - Always thought caves were creepy? Want to experience claustrophobia from the safety of your own home? Wanna see how an all-woman horror film cast is done correctly? This one's a treat.

• Dog Soldiers - The Scottish Highlands are gorgeous for a hike. Less appealing though if you're a squad of British soldiers doing a training exercise in a monster movie. Features reasonably smart cast of soldiers doing their best, but cleverly using the training scenario premise to take away their live ammo so they can't just shoot away their problems. Also, I remember it being very "B movie" in a good way. A well-placed cheesy joke or two had me laughing out loud without it being Marvel-grade snark, but it was still tense and exciting.

• Pandorum - Guy wakes up from hypersleep on a giant ship where things have gone horribly wrong. His only other awake crewmate is uh...a bit off, maybe? This one feels VERY Deadspace. If you like "Creepy massive cathedral-like dungeon ships" flavored sci-fi horror, this one's pretty good. I'd say maybe much tamer than Event Horizon, but clearly took some inspiration there.

• 30 Days of Night - You know how in Alaska they get really long periods where the sun is just gone? You know how certain classic horror antagonists hate sunlight? Uh oh.

• Overlord - A World War 2 horror film. I mean, WWII was full of horror but...like... unbelievable horror. No, like, pulpy mad scientist supervillains and secret experiments horror--No, like stuff that DIDN'T actually happen. It's the closest to a Wolfenstein movie as we're gonna get. (And very "Weird Wars 2" if you've played a good Savage Worlds TTRPG or two)

• Resident Evil - I liked maybe two or three sequels too, before it got utterly ridiculous to farm cash, but the original is always cited as a horror classic, even among people who aren't fans of the games. (Almost entirely unrelated characters and plot.)

Bob Roberts, a true tale of political horror.

The Devils Rejects.

House of 1000 Corpses and 3 From Hell are alright, but Devils Rejects is my favorite. I can't hear Midnight Rider or Freebird without thinking about this movie.

Another horror favorite: Don't Look Now (1973), directed by Nicolas Roeg, starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Set in Venice, it concerns a couple recovering from the accidental death of their very young daughter. Roeg uses the color red as a signature throughout the film: things are not always what they seem.

One of my favorites, one I feel is hugely underrated, Michael Wadleigh's 1981 Wolfen, which is not about werewolves, but ecological displacement, loss of habitat from urban development (among other issues), and not terrorism

a conclusion initially drawn by the police

but territory. With Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory Hines, Edward James Olmos, and Tom Noonan. Its release in theaters was eclipsed by “The Howling” and “An American Werewolf in London”, but Wolfen is not merely a horror movie, but an intelligent one, ahead of its time IMHO. The confrontation atop the Manhattan Bridge between Finney and Olmos (see below, not a spoiler), which still makes my knees weak, involves no stunt doubles. The film also has beautiful dog sequences, imaginative cimenatography, and yes, some gore.

Noroi - The Curse (2005, Japan) Supernatural first-person video documentary style POV, but with higher image quality than Blair Witch Project for example. No jump scares, just very creepy and unsettling. Slow burn, but good pacing IMHO. No weaknesses IMHO, hence on top of my list. Just a very unsettling and disturbing, almost real-feeling, horror movie.

Also good:

• A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, South Korea): less horror, more artistic, intelligent and original. Great story
• Shutter (2004, Thailand): my favorite jump-scare horror with cool effects
• Incantation (2022, Taiwan): great supernatural slow-burn horror with a cool twist
• Hereditary (2018, USA): great supernatural slow-burn horror, original as well
• Sinister (2012, USA/UK/CAN): great supernatural horror
• Event Horizon (1997, USA/UK/CAN): great sci-fi horror, very unsettling
• REC (2007, Spain): one of the best zombie style movies and also one of the most horror-like ones
• It Follows (2014, USA): kind of a stupid plot but it works. It's original, well executed and unsettling (supernatural)
• Smile (2022, USA): an even more stupid plot, but also well executed. The ending is bad. But it still terrified me so it works at its core, and that's all that horror films need to do (supernatural)
• As Above, So Below (2014, USA/France): the weakest one on this list but it's very original as well, I like it because of that

Rec (2007) . A slow night where a novice news reporter shows a day in the life of the local firestation turns into so much more.

I think there's something about the intersection between found footage and a foreign (to me) film that makes it so much more believable and enjoyable. This is miles beyond the US remake, quarantine. No big name actors here to ruin the found footage vibe. Just a small town news reporter meandering through a slow night at a local fire station.

Small shout out to !horrormovies@lemm.ee

Event Horizon

picking a favourite is hard, but In The Tall Grass (2019) is definitely up there, and i never see anyone talk about it. also, Malignant (2021). definitely try to go in blind for that one if you can.

The Thing (1982) has basically consistently been my favorite horror movie