LIST: The Best Horror Films of 2013 (And a Few Bad Ones Too)

Last year, I was lucky enough to see two great horror films: the wildly entertaining The Cabin in the Woods and the provocative Kill List.  This year, several horror films worked and worked reasonably well, but none of them walked up to me and punched me in the groin.  That is, unless we're counting individual segments in horror anthologies.  In which case, you need to stop everything, get a Netflix, go to minute 42 of VHS 2, and press play.

The segment, a doomsday-cult yarn called "Safe Haven," is maybe the hardest I've been scared since the final ten minutes of Rec.  I attribute some of this to my background, since this movie has images straight out of a Catholic kid's worst nightmares.  Warning: things get messy.

As was the case last year, these dates are contingent on American wide-releases, and there are a few films I still haven't seen.  Most notable among them are You're Next, A Field in England, and House of Bad.  But no list is ever complete, and no ranking is fair.

So lighten up.

---

Movies I Didn't Like

18. Loss of Life

...is The Nadir of Mumblegore

An insufferable thriller that spends nearly half of its endless 70 minutes with a group of teenagers indecipherably shouting over each other, until two masked men walk out of an alley and start shooting and stabbing them.  Go killers!  The still-young idea of "mumblegore" (proudly amateurish, often-improvised slices-of-life with gory interludes) feels like an excuse here; does some hokey attempt at "naturalism" require the total abandonment of intelligence, wit, and style?  Especially frustrating is how the film does nothing with its cast of young black men, a type of hero rarely allowed in the genre.  What a squandered opportunity.

17. Sharknado

...is Cynical

This is an insidiously smug piece of garbage, a hollow meme-ready exercise that exists so that people will chuckle and say, "A sharknado is ridiculous."  Sharknado comes from production company The Asylum, responsible for dozens of films that try to be stupid, that want to be the high-concept throwaways, that strive for nothing.  But good camp tries, goddamnit.  Think of films like Troll 2, The Room, and Plan 9 From Outer Space.  Awful?  Sure, but made with passion and heart.  This film is made by people who don't care.  Instead, they slum their way to success by flattering viewers with dishonest, calculated "dumbness."

16. The ABCs of Death

...is Modern Horror's Lowlight Reel

If you're stuck in a two-hour anthology movie with 25 other directors, that means you have less than five minutes to make an impression.  So do you build an involving story, or do you make a girl with a fart fetish shrink and fly into her lover's ass?  The fact that the latter is even a thing (let alone an option) explains how most filmmakers tilt in this grossness-above-all compendium.  Bummer is, all that flatulence (and gore and crap and semen) gets boring quickly.  The ABCs of Death has some value as an introduction to the insane breadth of the current horror scene, but few episodes show the best of their creators.  Standouts include the affecting "D is for Dogfight," the absurd "Q is for Quack," and the atmospheric "U is for Unearthed."

15. Fin

...is a Weak Pulse

Given that rapture-chiller Fin opens with a group of reuniting friends, the underlying idea (everyone you know goes away in the end) doesn't require a grand show.  But this mood piece invests so little in the apocalypse that its few attempts at suspense feel manufactured and low-stakes.  The film's most memorable set-piece features the heroes biking away from dogs.  I guess that's scary...?  The spiritual implications are mostly unremarked upon, leaving the heroes to wander until someone disappears, then express consternation, and then wander until someone disappears, and express consternation, then wander...

14. American Mary

...Doesn't Trust Itself

American Mary has all the appearance of a cult victory.  It's set in the world of body modifications, where plastic surgery gives social misfits devil horns and doll-like androgyny.  It stars Ginger Snaps star Katherine Isabelle.  It comes from the Soska Sisters, directors of Dead Hooker in a Trunk.  So why are we stuck with another rape-revenge story?  And a shallow one at that?  A heroine is raped; she therefore becomes a sociopath, free of anything resembling internal conflict.  This vapid storyline backgrounds the "body mod" community, turning intriguing side characters into props, sacrificing the fresh and new for the old and stale.

---

Movies I'm Mixed On...

13. Insidious, Chapter Two
...is Three Insidiouses and a Little Lady

Hey, is that The House of the Devil's Jocelin Donahue?  Yep, and she's playing the mother of Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) in flashbacks that try to justify the value of an Insidious sequel.  A tough job, since Insidious already has a spiritual sequel in The Conjuring.  That film's restraint makes it difficult to swallow this film's obnoxious jump-scares (is someone dropping bowling balls on a piano?) and overwritten plot.  Sure, the returns to the first film allow for some clever moments, but they also feel similar to how the Saw series kept doubling back on itself until it ended up somewhere in Jigsaw's lower colon.

12. Carrie

...is Carrie. Again.

Carrie is such a simple, effective tragedy that it takes great force of will to botch up the narrative.  And, to be fair, director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) is an inspired choice for director, while Julianne Moore finds a fresh take on Margaret White as a twitchy bundle of nerves.  But this new version of Stephen King's classic is, at its core, a de-stylized, edge-polished repeat of De Palma's 1976 classic.  Token revisions for 2013 include Carrie's shower humiliation getting iPhoned for Youtube and a soundtrack featuring today's hottest songs, including Vampire Weekend's "Diane Young."  Which sort of clever, I guess.

11. Evil Dead

...is Stuck in the Borderland

Like Carrie, this is an entirely acceptable remake of a revered horror favorite.  And like Carrie, this film lacks the mania and style that made its progenitor so memorable.  Sure, newcomer Fede Alvarez apes some of the original's surface details, especially the unending stream of grue, viscera, and blood, but the style here is more Platinum Dunes than Sam Raimi.  Always proficient, rarely reckless.  Props must be given, however, to Jane Levy's Mia, as well as the climax, which begins with a sigh of relief and ends with someone bifurcated by a chainsaw in the middle of a rain of blood.  If only the preceding film were so imaginative.

11. Mama

...is Good Enough to Disappoint

Look at this goddamn image.  Look at it.  Look at how the wall in the center of the frame turns the shot into a split screen.  Look at how this communicates information.  Unsuspecting woman.  Ghost.  Woman gets closer.  Hears something.  Urgh.  Mama initially thrives in scenes like this, where director Andrews Muschietti and cameraman Antonio Riestra get room to play.  The story's interest in fairy tales eventually usurps the horror stylings, and the contrived comas and dreams that plague Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau strain audience credulity.  On the bright side, critical darling Jessica Chastain punks it up in a black wig.  Rowr.

9. John Dies At the End

...Is Not the Ax That Thrilled Me

-- book-to-screen comments can be found here --

There's a scene in the opening of John Dies At the End, both book and film, where an ax first gets its head replaced, then its handle.  Is it still the same ax?  The same could be asked of John Dies At the End, which chops up the original novel, strings together what scenes could fit into a hundred-minute film, and tosses aside scenes that provide the story its moments of emotional weight.  Is this the same story?  Not really, no.  People unfamiliar with the book are more likely to respond to this film's free-wheeling silliness, which includes a doorknob changing into a penis, a man using a hot dog as a phone, and a vampiric mustache.

8. Berberian Sound Studio

...is Too Good for Itself

It's a backhanded compliment to Berberian Sound Studio that its first two-thirds make its third third frustrating as hell.  The story's about a film sound mixer (Toby Jones) who grows more and more uncomfortable with a "giallo" horror film that taxes both his sound effects skill and his trust in reality.  The first hour of Berberian Sound Studio shows a great discipline in its escalation of unease and effect.  With every clack of tape recorders and every actor's scream, Toby Jones' disgust and anxiety grows.  But the final act opts for an abstracted dream-story that obfuscates more than it illuminates.  In fairness, that's very Italian.

---

Movies I Liked...

7. World War Z

...is Not a Disaster

World War Z doesn't share the original novel's interest in pursuing unexplored approaches to this sub-sub-genre, but at its best, the film displays an honorable seriousness.  With Brad Pitt globetrotting in search of a way to fight the film's bloodless (and too-often weightless) zombie epidemic, social ideas emerge.  My favorite was a  mention of how North Korea resolved the zombie threat by removing the teeth of every single citizen.  Ouch.  Also in the film's favor?  A lightning-fast pace, and an admirably small climax that pushes suspense instead of the usual CG action.

6. Grabbers

...is Irish Gremlins

Grabbers wants nothing more than to be the next Tremors or Gremlins.  A more ambitious idea than you might think, given those films' enduring pleasures.  The monsters here are of that dull octopoid look that goes all the way back to War of the Worlds, but at least the lead grabber has the good sense to cartwheel from point A to point B; in motion, it looks like someone glued tentacles to the runaway boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Also fun is how the grabbers' weakness (a high blood-alcohol level) allows for both drunken antics and the character development of the boozy sheriff (Richard Coyle).  There's also a love story.

5. The Lords of Salem

...is a Good Horror Movie You Won't Like

-- full review can be found here --

A fever-dream of cult and genre cinema, absorbing ideas and imagery from Jodorowsky, Kubrick, Polanski, and Argento, mixing them into a nightmarescape that's hardly "about" anything.  What story there is begins and ends with a radio DJ (Sheri Moon Zombie) who receives a record in the mail that plays a low, throbbing pulse.  What follows includes grand cathedrals, rat swarms, lupine beasts, and a witches' sabbath torn from the subconscious of guilt-hungry Puritans.  While the heroine here seems too eager to succumb to passivity and lethargy, the film feels deliriously alive.  It's Zombie's best since The Devil's Rejects.

4. Maniac

...is Truly Disturbed

A shockingly effective horror remake, Maniac flips the proverbial script by showing us almost everything from the eyes of its psychopath, Frank (Elijah Wood).  By seeing the world as he sees it, we're invited to consider his sad circumstance.  Yes, he's a depraved killer, but he doesn't want to be so depraved and killery.  The first-person camerawork, which could've been a tedious stunt, instead feels essential and effortless.  The camera glides instead of jitters, the editing smooths transitions without trying too hard to hide itself, and the strategic deployment of mirrors let Elijah Wood contribute his perpetually boyish good looks.

---

And a Few Essentials.

3. V/H/S 2

...is "Safe Haven" and Friends.

Okay, the wrap-around segments of VHS 2 are better than the first VHS film, focusing on private investigators instead of criminal assholes.  And the segments in this film feel less misogynist than the first film.  "A Walk in the Park" is a sharp found-footage twist on a zombie story, and "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" has the novel idea of strapping a camera to a dog.  How much further can found-footage go?  Well, maybe the answer's in "Safe Haven."  I suspect that the reason this segment works so well is that the heroes are outfitted with hidden cameras, which allows Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto to cross-cut between parallel stories and edit in a way that resembles traditional film grammar.  Free of the limitation of just one point of view, "Safe Haven" builds from uneasiness to balls-out insanity with maximal precision.

2.5. Pacific Rim

...is Your Childhood Box of Action Figures

-- full review can be found here --

Yes, it's not exactly horror, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't give another shout-out to this genre hybrid, helmed by horror heavyweight Guillermo del Toro, not just because of its Lovecrafty story elements and creepy Kaiju monsters, but because this goddamned thing is just too much fun.  On that note, other non-horror-movies with frightening moments this past year included tense space-thrillers Gravity and Europa Report and rapture-comedy This Is the End.  Although that film offered a turgid devil and a Exorcist-style possession scene, the scariest part was catching a not-safe-for-work glimpse of drugged-up, dead-eyed Michael Cera.

2. Stoker

...is Hitchcock's Doppelganger

Stoker is the great sneak-attack of the year, a film that lures in cinephiles with Hitchcocky tropes before assaulting them with an uneasy study of its three leads.  The performances here excel.  Matthew Goode's velvet-voiced confidence is matched by Mia Wasiowska's depiction of sexual trepidation, and Kidman, sparingly used, carries a ferocity unseen since her early career.  South Korean director Park Chan-Wook films their surroundings with beguiling detail.  Daddy long-legs crawl up legs, and enormous concrete spheres double as tombstones.  This is a familiar type of thriller, presented in a deeply unfamiliar way.

1. The Conjuring

...is Every Ghost Story You've Ever Seen

James Wan believes in the old dark house.  He believes in the foggy moor and the barren, twisted tree.  He believes in the fundamental power of horror images like the living doll and the ominous birds.  And finally, thank God, he believes in the quiet.  There's a shocking control of volume here, twisted to eleven only during the obligatory funhouse finale.  What's missing from the trope-heavy magnificence is the psychological edge that made The Haunting and The Innocents compelling portraits of lonely personalities.  A shame.  What remains is superb scarecraft, the best of its kind since The House of the Devil.