Horror films of the 2010s

WATCHobscure

Possum

A disgraced puppeteer returns to his childhood home carrying a bag he cannot get rid of.

WATCHobscure

Hell House LLC

A team building a Halloween haunted attraction in a real abandoned hotel, and the footage is all that is left.

WATCHcult

Tigers Are Not Afraid

Children orphaned by the Mexican drug war, three wishes, and the dead following them through the streets.

WATCHcult

A Field in England

Deserters in the English Civil War eat mushrooms and dig for treasure while reality dissolves. Shot in black and white in twelve days.

WATCHcult

Impetigore

An Indonesian folk horror about a woman who returns to a village that has been waiting for her.

WATCHcult

Resolution

Two friends in a cabin while something rewrites the story around them. Benson and Moorhead's first film.

WATCHcult

We Are What We Are

A Mexico City family loses its father and has to work out who now does the hunting.

WATCHcult

A Dark Song

A grieving mother and an occultist doing a months-long ritual properly. The tedium is deliberate.

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Spring

A love story that happens to involve an immortal woman whose body is not stable. Benson and Moorhead again.

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Sightseers

A caravan holiday across the English Midlands turns into a killing spree, and it is a very bleak comedy about class and resentment.

WATCHcult

The Void

Practical effects made on Kickstarter money, doing an unembarrassed Carpenter impression.

WATCHcult

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

A web-streaming crew live-broadcast from a real abandoned Korean hospital for the views.

WATCHcult

Hounds of Love

A Perth couple abduct a teenage girl, and the film is about the fracture between the two of them.

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The Perfection

Swerves three times and mostly earns them. Best watched knowing nothing at all.

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Terrified

Argentinian, and it front-loads three of the best scares of the decade in the first twenty minutes.

WATCHcult

The Untamed

A Mexican film in which a creature from a crashed meteorite provides pleasure and death in equal measure.

WATCHcult

Bedevilled

A Seoul bank worker visits the island she grew up on. Everybody there has been failing one woman for years.

cult

Cam

A camgirl finds an identical copy of herself has taken over her account and locked her out.

WATCHcult

Berberian Sound Studio

A meek British sound engineer comes apart while dubbing an Italian horror film he can hear but never see.

WATCHcult

Kill List

Starts as a kitchen-sink drama about money, ends somewhere else entirely. The turn is brutal.

WATCHcult

The Wretched

A teenager suspects the woman next door is a witch wearing the neighbours' skins. A word-of-mouth streaming hit.

WATCHcult

When Animals Dream

A Danish coming-of-age werewolf film, and the transformation is puberty in a fishing village that already knows.

WATCHknown

La Llorona

A Guatemalan dictator on trial for genocide is haunted in his own home. The weeping woman as historical reckoning.

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The Innkeepers

Ti West's other 1970s-feeling film, about two clerks working the last weekend of a haunted hotel.

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The Love Witch

Shot on 35mm to look exactly like 1969, written and designed by one person, and very funny.

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Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

The real Santa Claus is a horned thing frozen in a Finnish mountain, and a drilling company has found it.

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Saint Maud

A palliative nurse decides she has been called. Morfydd Clark is terrifying and the last shot is a gut punch.

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The Blackcoat's Daughter

Oz Perkins' debut. Glacial, wintry, and the timeline is doing something you will only spot late.

WATCHknown

One Cut of the Dead

Sit through the rough first 37 minutes. That instruction is the whole review and it is worth obeying.

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The Vast of Night

A radio DJ and a switchboard operator in 1950s New Mexico chase a signal across one night. Shot for almost nothing.

WATCHknown

Tumbbad

An Indian folk horror about greed, a hidden god, and a womb in the earth, spanning three generations.

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In Fabric

A haunted red dress moves from customer to customer through a nightmarish department store.

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The Endless

Two brothers return to the UFO death cult they escaped, and time is looping in the hills.

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Verónica

A Madrid teenager holds a séance during a solar eclipse and brings something home. Loosely based on a real police file.

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Under the Shadow

Tehran during the War of the Cities, a djinn, and a mother the state has already stripped of options.

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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

An Iranian vampire western shot in California, in Farsi, in black and white. Nothing else looks like it.

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Bacurau

A remote Brazilian village disappears from the map and finds itself hunted for sport. Weird, angry and unclassifiable.

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Creep

Two actors, a cabin and a camera. Mark Duplass is the most unsettling thing in modern horror.

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Color Out of Space

Nicolas Cage, alpacas, and a colour that does not exist. More faithful than most attempts.

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The Bay

Barry Levinson made a found-footage eco-horror about a Chesapeake town and parasitic isopods.

WATCHknown

The Lodge

Two children snowed in with their father's new partner, who has a history with a cult.

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Confessions

A teacher calmly tells her class she knows two of them killed her daughter, and that she has already taken revenge.

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Frozen

Three people stuck on a chairlift. Almost nothing else, and that is enough.

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Overlord

Nazi zombies with a real budget and a unusually good first act. Better than the premise deserves.

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Revenge

Reworks the structure with the assault largely off screen, which removes nothing it needs.

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Sleep Tight

The concierge of a Barcelona apartment block cannot bear that a tenant is happy, so he makes sure she is not.

WATCHknown

The Invitation

A dinner party where you spend ninety minutes unsure whether the host is grieving or dangerous.

WATCHknown

Apostle

Gareth Evans doing folk horror with the fight choreography left in. Much nastier than expected.

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Climax

A dance troupe, spiked sangria, and Gaspar Noé's camera refusing to cut. Unbearable by design.

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Green Room

A punk band plays the wrong venue. Jeremy Saulnier does not flinch and neither does the film.

WATCHknown

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

Two coroners, one body, one basement. A masterclass in escalating a single location.

WATCHknown

Thelma

A Norwegian student with a repressive religious upbringing discovers her desire has physical consequences.

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Troll Hunter

Norwegian students follow a poacher who turns out to hunt state-secret trolls. Deadpan and enormous.

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Border

A Swedish customs officer who can smell guilt meets a man who smells like nothing she recognises.

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Goodnight Mommy

Austrian, cold, and it works out its own twist early enough that the dread is the point.

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As Above, So Below

A descent into the Paris catacombs that becomes a descent into hell, shot for real under the city.

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Coherence

A dinner party the night a comet passes, and reality starts to fork. Shot in one house in five nights.

WATCHknown

I Saw the Devil

A secret agent catches a serial killer, releases him, and does it again. And again.

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Mandy

Nicolas Cage, a chainsaw duel and Jóhann Jóhannsson's last score. Not for everyone and not trying to be.

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The Ritual

Four men, a Swedish forest, and a creature design worth waiting for.

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The Wailing

Two and a half hours, and it withholds whether the shaman is helping right until the end.

WATCHknown

Bone Tomahawk

A slow western for 90 minutes, then one scene people never forget. You will know it when it starts.

WATCHknown

What We Do in the Shadows

The funniest vampire film ever made, and the flatmate politics are observed perfectly.

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Raw

A vegetarian vet student develops an appetite. Julia Ducournau's debut and a genuine coming-of-age film.

WATCHknown

The Babadook

A film about a widowed mother who resents her son, wearing a monster as a coat.

WATCHknown

Vivarium

A young couple cannot leave a show home. Bleak, airless, and about mortgages.

WATCHcanon

Ready or Not

A bride versus her new in-laws and their family obligation. Very funny and mean.

WATCHcanon

Doctor Sleep

Reconciles King's novel with Kubrick's film, which should not have been possible.

WATCHcanon

Gerald's Game

The King novel everyone said was unfilmable. One bed, two handcuffs, and a degloving.

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Suspiria

Not a remake so much as an argument with the original. Colder, longer, and about postwar German guilt.

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The Platform

A vertical prison and a descending table of food. The metaphor is a brick and the film is effective anyway.

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It Follows

One rule, followed exactly. The most frightening use of a wide shot in modern horror.

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Oculus

A haunted mirror, and a sister trying to prove it killed her parents by filming it destroying her too.

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The Lighthouse

Shot on black and white 35mm in a 1.19:1 box. Two men, a rock, and a great deal of drinking.

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The Witch

Most of the dialogue comes from court records, then it commits fully to the supernatural.

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Sinister

The super-8 reels are the film. Everything between them is a man in an office not turning the lights on.

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Crimson Peak

Del Toro doing full gothic romance. The house is the best thing in it and it is sinking.

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Hereditary

A film about grief that turns out to be a film about a cult. Toni Collette should have won everything.

WATCHcanon

Us

The premise does not survive scrutiny and the film is so well made you will not care until afterwards.

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Midsommar

Runs the folk horror formula in constant daylight. Everyone is perfectly hospitable throughout.

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The Skin I Live In

Almodóvar's only horror film, and it is a revenge story disguised as a mad-scientist melodrama.

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Annihilation

No villain at all, only a process. The last twenty minutes are the closest film has come to Lovecraft.

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A Quiet Place

A high-concept gimmick executed with real discipline. The nail on the stair is the whole film.

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Insidious

Wan's best jump scares and the film that built the modern haunting industry. The Further is silly and it works.

WATCHcanon

The Cabin in the Woods

A machine for explaining why every other film on this site is shaped the way it is.

WATCHcanon

Get Out

Won the screenplay Oscar, which horror never does. The sunken place is the best new image in the genre this century.

WATCHcanon

The Conjuring

Old-fashioned, extremely well made, and the reason there are now nine of these.

WATCHcanon

Train to Busan

The best zombie film since Romero, and the only one that makes you cry.