Do meh to good films count?
Splinter (2008)
The Ruins (2008)
Triangle (2009)
None of them blew my skirt up but each was pretty good.
Well, I recently took another look at The Host (2006), and I think it’s a solid entry into the horror genre. I also really enjoyed The Descent (2005) for the most part.
The genre is lagging at the moment, though. And I admit that I don’t watch too many horror movies.
I liked “The Ruins” a lot, actually. If I’d made a top 50 in 2008, it would have been on thie list.
I can’t bring myself to watch Frontiers or Martyrs just yet but I’ve heard good things about them. Then again I heard good things about Inside which was atrocious.
Lake Mungo (2008) was pretty good. Nothing amazing but had some creepy parts.
i liked let the right one in quite a bit and it’s american remake too. or aren’t these considered horror anymore lol
Oh, Thirst (2009) was pretty cool.
28 Days Later (2002)
Los Bastardos (2008) definitely terrified me
I hear The Orphanage (2007) is pretty excellent.
Maybe We Are What We are (2010) or Let The Right One In (2008)?
[REC] (2007) was a good movie… when i heard about the second part of it, i was pretty excited but i wasnt as good as the first one…
Let the Right One In (2008) is an absolutely brilliant film and probably a masterpiece.
“Freaks” is #1.
Probably because you’re not looking hard enough. Yes, the genre (especially in America) has devolved into something that doesn’t even care about anything other than brutalizing its audience, BUT there ARE plenty of good horror films out there (a handful of which have already been mentioned here).
Both ‘Let the Right One In’ and (dare I say even moreso) its remake, ‘Let Me In’ are outstanding.
Others from the last decade or so (not all are great, but they ARE worth watching):
Thirst
The Host
A Tale of Two Sisters
May
Ginger Snaps
Diary of the Dead
Wolf Creek
Cabin Fever (an acquired taste, though… Falls short of greatness, but a distinct voice. Hopefully Roth will move away from the torture porn he’s been making, for I feel he has a great horror movie in him someday)
Audition
The Devil’s Backbone
28 Days Later
Dawn of the Dead (to date, the only palatable movie Zach Snyder has made)
Mother of Tears
The Mist
Drag Me to Hell
Frailty
Session 9
Dog Soldiers
Dagon
The Others
Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s)
Pontypool
Martyrs
Funny Games (Haneke did his own original proud- better acting than the original)
Devil’s Rejects (same as Roth, I think Zombie has a unique eye, and might very well make a great one someday. This is his best thus far, mainly in that EVERY character is loathsome, so when they are killed – it feels deserved)
Identity
Let The Right One In (08), Strigoi (09), Pontypool (08) and Trick ’r Treat (08) were all delightful.
The last one that really spooked me and my entire audience out was THE DESCENT. Screams and screams and screams.
Ben – I can’t think of another film that evokes claustrophobia so well.
Dubiel,
I actually agree with what you mean behind Roth’s and Zombie’s movies, but I do not have as much faith that they will actually manage to get there. They both love the genre and mean to make these movies as loving examples of the genre, this I will not argue. But they do not get that the reason why we love Audition (Roth is a big fan of Miike and even has several interviews with him) is because we understand why the main character and the girl are doing what they are doing, not because we take particular pleasure as an audience for seeing legs cut off with piano wire (we do as an abject pleasure, but with the context being put through a meaningful narrative. If the figure on screen is merely meat and not a character, with personality, we are in the realm of camp. If it’s not funny, and in fact the man and woman alike are hateful and mindlessly evil, then we’re in the realm of sadism). Zombie doesn’t get that the reason we love Laurie Strode is specifically because she’s not the type to spin bagels over her breasts going, “WOO WOO WOOO TEEHEEHEEEE!”
^The exact moment I realized Halloween was going to be a consistently miserable experience, considering it’s made out of consistently hateful people. Consider that this scene happens AFTER the only character with any personality or soul (Danny Trejo’s incidental janitor, which is telling) is already offed to prove just how mindless Michael is. The same thing happened for me in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre : the only character that struck me as having any sort of interesting or personifiable traits, homeboy in the wheelchair, was offed almost instantly in preference for a mindless squealing banshee that we have to watch trip through the woods for a fucking hour and a half. What the hell is the point of that? When you say “so when they are killed — it feels deserved” I agree with what you are saying re: Last House on the Left style horror, but a character being so completely obnoxious and cringeworthy that her death is DESIRED less disturbed, is evidence of really shitty scripting indeed.
So I think Roth and Zombie could make a good movie if they started learning some basic principles of asking “What do these characters want? Why do we care?”, but I do not think they will simply because they are enabled to make pretty much whichever movie they like without real editorial guidance or nurturing. As it goes, currently I’m more open to Zombie because he at least has the camp solidified in his music, and I think his earlier movies are probably better because they aren’t attempts to be Halloween but attempts to be 1000 Maniacs.
Give modern filmmakers guff for their self-referentiality and intertextuality, at least some of them learned from the movies they love.
—PolarisDiB
The point about Chain Saw is that we do not identify with any of the teenagers in the film, and more with the cannibals (the family); the fact that Franklin is portrayed as a bit on the mindlessly destructive side (all he can do to occupy himself is take the knife to the car – a bit like Leatherface going at the front door with his chain saw) ties him closer to the bunch of degenerates. The others are constantly shown as non-characters, pieces of meat, even before they are killed. The last true masterpiece of horror was made in 1974, folks.
I actually liked I Saw the Devil quite a bit. That’s the last horror film that I remember really liking.
Pontypool was a good spin on the zombie film.
Neil Bro:
I get the “the monster is the hero/antihero” concept. Texas Chain Saw Massacre doesn’t do it right, at least in my opinion.
—PolarisDiB
Let the Right One In (2008), obviously. I also enjoyed Drag Me to Hell.
Well, Polarisdib, it’s – I think – more to do with the American family in turmoil in the Seventies: the nuclear family, in the wake of WWII and the Sixties, is not all its cracked up to be. The monster, ironically here, stands in for the American family (they are disenfranchised consumers, among other things), and there isn’t really a “monster as hero/anti-hero” angle.
But enough of my yakkin’.
:)
It’s the type of movie one cannot go very long without having to watch or rewatch, so I’ll try watching it from that perspective next time it somehow ends up in front of me, which I am sure is to happen eventually.
—DiB
Read Robin Wood on it. And a neat little article by Lucy Fife Donaldson here
Quarantine
The Mist
Cloverfield
Paranormal Activity 2
The Orphan
There still good horror films it’s just that the US have way down hill with the genre.
any way my favourite horror films of the 00’s and 10’s are
“Let The Right One In (2008) (Sweden)”
“A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003) (South Korea)”
“28 Days Later (2002) (UK)”
“28 Weeks Later (2007) (UK)”
“The Eye (2002) (Hong Kong)”
“The Host (2006) (South Korea)”
“The Descent (2005) (UK)”
“The Others (2001) (USA)”
“Devil’s Backbone (2001) (Spain or Mexico)”
“Ju-On (2000) (Japan)”
I still have to see “I Saw The Devil”
Nokta
what was the name of the last good horror film you have seen and the year?