Horror Countdown

Images from popular horror films from 2018 play over the following introduction. 

We like to be scared, we like to be spooked. No matter how gripping the movie, we love to jump from our seats now and then. And 2018 gave us a hell of a lot of scares!

So these are the ten best horror movies of 2018 and we are Screenstruck.

The horror genre has recently become awfully popular with studios and producers. Why wouldn’t it? It offers high returns on low investments. Sleeper hits are no longer exceptions. Studios like Blumhouse have grown and grown and grown. It does lead to the creation of cashgrabs on an annoyingly regular basis. But without it, we would never get the chance to watch some of the great movies on this list.

So without further adieu…  

Veronica. 

This Spanish supernatural thriller was all the rage at the start of the year. Netflix seemed to have taken over the internet promoting it as the scariest movie you’ve ever seen. Which. It. Isn’t. What it is though is far more interesting and wholesome. A coming of age horror drama with its /fair share of heady scares/ and a brilliant central performance by Sandra Escacena. You may recall director Paco Plaza from a pair of game changing zombie flicks Rec1 and Rec2 which, to be honest, scared the beep out of me. Well, he ups his game with Veronica. Crafting the tale of Vero, a teenager whose life is turned upside down, as it usually is when you mess with an Ouija board. It is scary, malevolent, full of great performances and this abnormally cute kid. 

Unfriended: Dark Web

I’m sure I’m in the minority when I say that this was way better than Searching, you know, that other movie where everything you see takes place on a computer or phone screen. But I stand by it. See, Unfriended Dark Web is wildly ambitious. And definitely more thrilling. Here a guy, Matias, gets this new laptop which belonged to someone else who really didn’t want to part with it. So while Matias plays an innocent little game with his friends on a group video chat, this pissed off someone else starts threatening them with terrifying consequences unless his laptop is returned to him. Director Stephen Susco does a great job of tapping into our worst fears about the dark side of the internet. Yes, the film is a bit rough around the edges. But it is a perfect cautionary tale for our times. And well, it is just entertaining as hell!  

Tumbbad

And you thought Bollywood was all about song and dance! Almost a decade in the making, Rahi Anil Barve’s debut film is a symbolically visionary moment. Stripped down to its bare essentials, Tumbbad is the tale of one man’s greed and obsession in search of a near mythical treasure. But that’s exactly what makes it timeless and universally relevant. The visuals are astonishing, the atmosphere bleak, dank and dreary and the film is anchored by an authoritative central performance by Sohum Shah. His Vinayak is a man possessed. A man who would stop at nothing to find the treasure he’s had his eyes on ever since he was a child. For once Bollywood has given us an anti-hero who appalls and astonishes us equally, and we cannot help be carried along by the sumptuous imagery and the ominous music.

Upgrade

Is this the Venom we all deserved? The story of a man turned near superman who spends half his time talking to himself and the other half bashing bad guys up. The first thing I did after watching this amazing techno-thriller-chiller-horror was look up the person who came up with it. Wait for it, guys. For this is the man who wrote Insidious and Saw, a long time James Wan collaborator. Going aaah, are you? No wonder this mad stuff came out of his head. But Upgrade really impresses with its great execution. The action is beautifully choreographed. Lead actor Logan Marshall Green’s conversations with the man inside his head are hilarious and ominous at the same time. Oh and for most of its runtime, it is just a great story. We cannot recommend it enough. 

Revenge

Woo beeping hoo! An eye for an eye might indeed make the whole blind. But it definitely makes for exhilarating cinema! Exploitation horror films have normatively been made at the expense of the female body. Well, not this one! Debutante Coralie Fargeat throws a hand grenade into the exploitation genre with Revenge. It’s a delirious, mad, raw and unflinching portrayal of one woman’s revenge upon her rapists. Her Jen, erstwhile mistress to Richard, is left to rot hanging from a tree, life dripping out of her drop by drop in the middle of an unforgiving desert. What follows is her transformation into that other object of male desire, the badass. But this heroine will break through ceilings and mirages in a blood spattered assault on male tyranny. And it will leave you gasping for more!    

Mandy

Anyone who commits the grievous mistake of killing Nicolas Cage’s wife cannot be expected to hold on to the original contours of his face for long. Director Panos Cosmatos’ second feature gives you just that mad Nic Cage experience that you knew you had coming the first time you saw this actor in a film. With an excellent Andrea Riseborough in the supporting cast, Mandy’s bloody, violent images and hard-metal soundscapes conjure a singular film-viewing experience that is worth drowning into. It isn’t even a film in the strictest sense. But perhaps a dream, an acid-trip, a video-game made flesh and blood. A delirium inducing dance of colour and sound, Mandy is mad, bad and dangerous to behold. 

Hereditary

You’d have to be living under a pretty heavy rock if you didn’t hear about this one in 2018. It inspired love and hate in equal measure upon its release. (note to self: make the sound at intervals) Oh and a lot of internet chatter! We still can’t decide whether Ari Aster’s debut film is a modern horror classic or a superlative family drama that ends up as a fairly regulation horror film. But that cannot distract from its craft. This slow-burn story of Toni Collette slowly losing her shit as her family is torn apart by a supernatural force never stops being genuinely creepy. It wears its artifice on its sleeve. It is never shy of using jump-scares when necessary. And it definitely offers some nightmarish images which, try as you may, you will never forget. Oh and then there’s this:

The Endless

This might just be the most criminally under-watched film on this list. But we will never stop championing it. It is just that rare thing, an original. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead’s cerebral mind-benders never shy away from entertaining their audiences. Nevertheless, they remain less well known than some of their peers. Honestly, it should be declared a crime. For this is an amazing, amazing film. It starts off as a tale of two brothers who head off to a mysterious cult. Well and good. Things will go to hell. But then it turns into a mystery-thriller-mindbender that’s also a creature feature and a buddy film. Oh and if you have seen their previous films, especially the excellent Resolution, get ready for a pleasant surprise. Watch The Endless to see what great storytelling is capable of and why there’s no better horror than indie horror. 

A Quiet Place

We are just surprised this one got made in the first place. In a marketplace dominated by catastrophically noisy blockbusters, A Quiet Place was a summer hit that reminded us of the glorious silent era. Oh and it was scary as hell! John Krasinski, and nothing would stop us form reminding you pop-culture hoarders that he’s the guy from The Office just like every other website, acts and directs this defiantly silent film about a family trying to stay alive in a world overrun by creatures that attack you the moment they hear a sound. That sounds like a lot of hard work. And as it turns out, it surely is. The film is intense, pin drop suspenseful, and awfully scary in parts. Btw, just how talented is Emily Blunt anyway!

Before we reveal our number one pick, here are a few films that almost made the grade. The other time Cage lit up the screen with his antics, we got the subversively hilarious Mom and Dad. David Gordon Green made a largely by the numbers reboot of Carpernter’s classic Halloween. Ghost Stories was stiff upper lip erly British horror with a trick or two up its sleeve. What Keeps You Alive was a great survival horror till it said goodbye to its realism halfway through. Finally, Night Eats the World was fantastic. Just not enough zombies to make it to our list. 

which brings us to our numero uno

Annihilation

Alex Garland’s terrific follow-up to Ex Machina taps into the anxiety ailing our current world. The fear of the unknown and the inscrutable runs like a raw nerve throughout Annihilation. As Natalie Portman and her co-explorers go deeper and deeper into the Shimmer, a phenomenon they cannot understand, they come face to face with their deepest fears. Annihilation is based on Jeff Vandermeer’s novel of the same name. And it is complex, piercingly beautiful and uncompromisingly intelligent. But that doesn’t stop it from being scary and endlessly creepy. There are aliens, geomorphic animals, vegetative sculptures, a whole lot of mindbending stuff and a general sense of dread. Beneath it all, is one woman’s resolve to find out the truth about her husband’s disappearance. It makes us proud to say that our number one horror film of the year is about love, and its first cousin, grief. 

Do you think any of these films can take horror to the oscars again? Did we miss any fo your favourites? Let us know in comments. Oh and like, subscribe, share and hit the bell button so you never miss any of our future videos. 

This is Screenstruck signing off.