Horror films

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Abigail

A kidnapping that goes wrong in the most enjoyable way. Very wet, very fast, very funny.

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Candyman

The shadow-puppet sequences are the best thing in it. A sequel that is actually about the original.

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Creepshow

Romero and King doing EC Comics, with panel borders, primary lighting and a story about a cake.

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Immaculate

Nunsploitation with a real budget. The last shot is a single unbroken take and it is the reason to watch.

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I Spit on Your Grave

Ebert gave it zero stars and called it "a vile bag of garbage". Clover argued the camera is with her throughout. Both cases are live.

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Jacob's Ladder

A Vietnam veteran in New York whose reality will not stay put, and the demons move wrong on purpose.

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Pet Sematary

King wrote the novel and thought it too bleak to publish. The film keeps the bleakness.

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Re-Animator

The funniest Lovecraft adaptation ever made, which is not what anybody expected.

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The Hills Have Eyes

A nuclear family against a family mutated by nuclear testing. By the end there is no difference in method.

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The Monkey

Osgood Perkins doing King as a gore comedy. The deaths are elaborate and the film is laughing.

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Renfield

Nicolas Cage plays Dracula as a toxic boss, and his familiar wants to leave the relationship. A horror comedy about codependency.

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Tremors

The monster has rules and the film obeys them. A perfectly built piece of engineering.

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Beau Is Afraid

Ari Aster's three-hour anxiety odyssey, and it is horror only in the sense that being alive is.

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Creature from the Black Lagoon

The last great Universal monster, and a suit design nobody has improved on in seventy years.

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Day of the Dead

The bleakest of Romero's trilogy, hated on release, and Tom Savini's best work.

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Heretic

Two missionaries, one house, and Hugh Grant enjoying himself enormously as the worst man alive.

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Longlegs

Marketed better than almost any horror film this decade. The first hour earns it, the last act is arguable.

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Prince of Darkness

The second of Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, and it is quantum physics as a book of the dead.

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Ready or Not

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

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Videodrome

Predicted most of what people now say about the internet, using a Betamax slot in a man's stomach.

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X

A porn crew shoot on a Texas farm in 1979. Ti West doing the texture of the era properly.

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Barbarian

Go in knowing nothing. The structure is the point and every synopsis ruins it.

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Candyman

Philip Glass wrote the score believing it was an art film. That mistake is why it sounds like nothing else.

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Doctor Sleep

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

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Fright Night

A teenager works out his new neighbour is a vampire and no adult will believe him, so he hires a washed-up TV host.

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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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Trap

Shyamalan's high-concept swing: a serial killer takes his daughter to a pop concert that is a police trap for him.

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Cocaine Bear

A black bear ingests a fortune in dropped cocaine and goes on a rampage. Loosely, very loosely, based on a true event.

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Companion

A weekend away with a reveal in the first act rather than the third, which is the smart choice.

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Dawn of the Dead

The best zombie film ever made, set in a shopping mall, and much funnier than people remember.

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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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The Dead Zone

Cronenberg's most restrained film, and Christopher Walken plays a man who can see how it ends.

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The Wolf Man

Most werewolf folklore you think is ancient was invented for this script in 1941.

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Freaks

Tod Browning cast real sideshow performers, MGM cut a third of it, and it ended his career.

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In the Mouth of Madness

The third of Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy and the most explicitly Lovecraftian thing he made.