Curve
as close to being a good movie as captivity/torture porn ever gets. Women menaced by hitchhiker drives car of edge of highway, becomes trapped inside for days as he periodically returns to torture her, mostly psychologically.
House Hunting
Decent supernatural thriller with Mr. No-Nonsense, Art La Fleur. Two families are lured to look at a house out in the woods, arrive to nearly hit a young girl in the road with her tongue cut out, and soon discover they can’t leave the property. Every attempt to drive or walk back to the road just puts them back at the house. 7 cans of beef stew keep reappearing in the pantry every day. Months pass. Everybody goes a little insane, dead relatives appear, etc.
The Cabin In The Woods
Leave it to Joss Whedon to take a horror movie, with the standard tropes, in a direction nobody ever has before. Ultimately it's a Joss Whedon movie first, ie a fantasy like everything he does, and a horror movie second. Fun and deserves its status as a classic. (Except for the Sigourney Weaver cameo, which totally breaks suspension of disbelief, because the movie is, like, 80% over, and suddenly you're like, "Hey, that's Sigourney Weaver.") The attention to detail in this movie is unparalleled, there's a lot here for pop culture geeks to scrutinize at extreme length, and if you type the movie's name into a search engine, you'll find they have.
Also, I believe, it has the most monsters in it of any movie: in one of many examples of aforementioned geekery, Screen Rant has listed 81 of them. Not to be outgeeked, the
The Last Winter
One of those small but special films I really like. Horror meets wilderness survival flick. Well done, solid, understated, original, starkly beautiful horror/suspense film set at oil drilling office in the remote arctic. Ron Perelman. Things slowly go wrong, climate change is implicated but no more is said than absolutely needs to be. Gorgeous, stark cinematography benefits the film in the same manner as "Open Water".
Housebound
Alright. Petulant Kiwi teen under house arrest, ankle monitor and all, with her crazy family in big old house. Things go bump in the walls, as what looks like a setup for supernatural horror turns into a pretty decent non-supernatural thriller.
The Babadook
Oh, my beloved "The Babadook". It could so not work, but it really does. So well-directed. A genuinely scary movie. Mother and young son deal with the pain of losing dad, and a monster which may or may not be the manifestation of that loss.
I consider this one a classic, full stop.
I've had friends say they found it disappointing. And I can understand that, I suppose, considering how some viewers may have grown used to being spoonfed by modern horror. This film has actual plot and character development that you have to sit through. A lot of this film's runtime is just the psychological dynamics of a deteriorating mother/son relationship (and possibly also the deteriorating mental health of one or both) with the scenes of traditional scares only coming as brief emotional punctuation marks.
Consider, on the other hand, that this also has a 98%…
Southbound
Inventive anthology. Lots of creepy unexplained shit, and Maria Olsen playing it straight for once. Fun, pretty original, I liked it.
Cold Prey
A not-bad entry in the psycho-picking-off-teenagers-in-a-remote-location genre. but snow fields instead of woods this time, which is refreshing. Set in the norwegian outback, in an abandoned lodge. Goes on a bit long, but if you're gonna watch something in this genre, this is a decently creepy, non-annoying one.
Dead Weight
zombie road picture plays like a missing episode of Walking Dead, from one of the good seasons.
Amityville Horror (remake)
Execrable. Seems like a probable attempt to invent a "mythology" that could be spun off into 14 sequels, but nobody is that stupid.
I Am A Ghost
She's a ghost. She wanders around a house. Doesn't sound like much but actually kind of a pretty cool movie. Kind of leans towards being an arthouse flick, but in a good way, without overbearing pretense. Poetic, slightly dreamy, original and self-assured. A spirit goes through the motions of her life before being contacted with by a medium trying to help release her spirit.
John Dies At The End
A critic called this "a very interesting failure", and that's about right. This time- and dimension-hopping adventure wants really badly to be a cult classic somewhere between "Donnie Darko" and "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", and doesn't quite rise to that level, but, almost. It's pretty entertaining. I like it, have watched it a few times, and will probably watch it again.
Insidious
One of my favorite horror movies. Just very well-directed. Actually scared me at points. I will say no more.
EDIT: I will say more. This was directed by James Wan, who I later discovered, just plain has a talent for elevating his supernatural tales by seeding them liberally with just great, memorable individual horror scenes. This movie definitely has it's silly aspects, but even his far worse movies have individual scenes that are so well done they make the picture worth watching. The man just knows how to direct a horror movie, not a modern gorefest or jump-out-and-say-boo teen scream, but legitimate horror cinema in the tradition of the classics. And here he's at his best at that.
Cabin Fever
Ok, now I get why Eli Roth's name is known. His first film, a surprisingly good entry in the vacation-gone-wrong/gorgeous-teenagers-menaced-on-a-trip-to-the-woods gore flick, because the primary villain is not a monster but a flesh-eating disease. There's some unfortunate stereotypical murderous rednecks, and while they threaten to overpower it, they never do. Some predictability keeps this from being a great picture but it's definitely a cut or two above the ilk I expected it to be just like. Much better than Hostel, which I thought was more the work of a hack than most other people seemed to. I see why Eli Roth might have been considered a promising horror director at the time.
The Invitation
Seriously tense drama turns thriller as a new age dinner party gets weird, after old friends suddenly make contact several years after disappearing to join a cult.
This is one of those movies that seems like it was originally written as a play, which is something that I always tend to like, when it's done competently. Here, it works really well, although if I have any complaint it's that the story builds emotional unease so capably and steadily, that by the time it turns from emotional to physical brutality, it almost breaks the tension. It feels very emotionally authentic as the unease builds. Fucking creepy new agers. (I do have mixed feelings about transplanting the "no cellphone reception out here" trope to the city, although they do pretty much pull it off.)
It's seriously well cast, fairly original, well done all around. Good ending, too. And the closing song rips…
I Am Not A Serial Killer
Fairly enjoyable little picture, actually. In a small midwestern town, a young teenage sociopath with his killer urges under control struggles to be normal until he discovers an older man (Christopher Lloyd in a deadly serious turn) is a serial killer and tries to stop him. Light on violence or horror and with only a totally unexpected phantasmagoric turn at the very end, plays for the most part like a drama. I kinda liked it.
Condemned
Maybe the only shitty, no-budget Troma-studios-level bad indie gore flick I've ever truly enjoyed. An abandoned building full of junkies and lunatic squats comes down with a psycho virus and kills each other in ridiculous ways. But, talk about an A+ for effort. Can't put my finger yet on what made this one so different but I sincerely like it. Managed to stay far enough away from cliches to be entertaining, I guess. Or maybe the director is real good, or something. Didn't go over the top in the usual ways, but found new, entertaining ways to go over the top instead.
The Lobster
Promising but ultimately disappointing future dystopian black comedy with a slight Clockwork Orange artifice and sterility to the production. Single people are sent to a hotel to either hook up or be transformed into animals and set loose in the woods. One man escapes and joins the "loners", who forbid romance, in the woods — at which point the movie completely runs out of steam, and spends the remaining half its length going absolutely nowhere.
Bokeh
boring as hell drama about an unlikeable gorgeous couple doing nothing interesting in Iceland after everyone else in the world inexplicably disappears.
Ugly Beautiful People
Missi Pyle tricks a bunch of really unlikeable good-looking people into coming hiking with her in what seems like an attempt at a "Big Chill" for millenials but doesn't even come close. They spend the time arguing before a big huggy ending, without ever succeeding at making you care about what they're arguing about. (Not a horror movie, BTW, even though it sounds like it.)
The Signal (2007)
Compilation of three short tales, revolving around a broadcast signal driving people insane. I like this one a lot, very well done. (Note: there's another 2014 horror movie called "The Signal" that isn't nearly as good.)
It Comes At Night
two families share a cabin in a post-apocalyptic-plague woodland. More a bleak drama than a horror movie. Well-made enough, I'm sure some people will like it, but wasn't my cup of tea. Doesn't really go much of anywhere.
The Number 23
Adequate direction saves this overwrought, poorly-thought out, nonsensical attempt at a thriller from being a complete crapfest. Instead it's just mostly a crapfest. Jim Carrey is actually alright at keeping a (mostly) straight face but the movie still seems to somehow have a touch of his usual mania in the way it tries to contort and surprise but instead just ends up confusing.
Pontypool
Kind of a personal favorite, despite how much of a stretch it is at points. Another one of those small, unique, strangely good films Canadians seem so good at. DJs stuck inside a radio station as society goes insane en masse outside. Some novel ideas, but does require a bit of suspension of belief at points — but in this case it's forgivable. I've heard a few other people say they particularly like this one, too.
Altergeist
Haunted winery turns out to be something more as gorgeous ghost hunters get picked off. Why did previous owners kill themselves by stabbing themselves in the stomach? Starts out as a standard ghost story and expands to something a little more freaky and maybe even sci-fi.
Man Vs
Pretty decent entry in the "man realizes he's not alone in the remote woods" category. No more cliched than the story requires, which is nice, and especially refreshingly centers on a man who videos himself at all times (outdoor survival reality show star in this case), without using shaky first-person camera perspective.
Invoked
The Blair Witch Project in Ireland, with ghosts instead of a witch. Not bad actually, kind of creepy for a cheapo shitty first-person-filmed movie.
Contracted
A small film, but one I like. Woman contracts strange degenerative disease that causes her body to decay. One of those ones you can't say too much about without giving it away, but takes an unusual spin on some things. Doesn't feel like much as you're watching it, but satisfyingly adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
Good Satan
irreverent, deeply irreligious low-budget spoof about a bumbling Satan, yes, *that* Satan, trying to scheme his way back into heaven. Kind of charming and funny. Guaranteed to offend the devout. Avoid if you are offended by scenes of your preferred deity having gay sex.
Maniac
If you're going to watch a slasher movie, it's going to be a slasher movie, no matter what. Given that, it might as well be "Maniac". Character-driven, for one thing, and told from an unusual first-person perspective of the villain, played by the always-strangely-likable-even-at-his-most-degenerate Elijah Wood. Plus a really authentic-sounding '70s-style analog synth soundtrack.