Seen Any Good Horror Movies Lately?

Trying to remember when I last saw a new horror movie I liked, I had to go back to my notes on Letterboxd to see what had captured my attention over the last year or so. It feels like I haven’t much enjoyed horror movies lately, at least recent ones. Tonight, for instance, I watched Bring Her Back, which horror fans I know have been praising highly, but, frankly, I loathed it. Loathed it. (This review by C.J. Prince gets at many of my objections to the film.) In many ways, Bring Her Back represents everything I most hate in contemporary horror storytelling: slick aesthetics and high production quality in service to shallow narratives based on clichés dressed up as Deep Thoughts About Trauma and/or Grief. I wrote about some of this exactly 4 years ago in a post called “Unelevated to the Gallows” — I guess October 16 is my day for feeling a lot of annoyed disappointment with the state of contemporary horror cinema…

As I said in that 2021 post, I recognize that I am in the minority here and that most horror movie fans and critics really like the “elevated horror” that the A24 production/distribution company made into a brand. As far as I can tell, I and a couple critics (Scout Tafoya, Willow Catelyn Maclay) are the only people who find this tendency in horror cinema to be objectionable. (Bring Her Back has received mostly rave reviews.) So be it. I like my life in the margins. My concern, though, and the reason I write now and then with frustration about these films that most horror movie buffs really respect and enjoy, is that it is making it harder and harder to find the scrappier, grimier, weirder horror that I cherish.

Hence, my checking through the stuff I happen to have chronicled over recent years via Letterboxd. Because when you really dislike a movie that lots of serious fans of the genre do like, you can question yourself. Do I even like horror movies anymore?

Here, then, recent horror movies I saw in the last couple years and did like, with links to reviews if I’ve written them:

*Sinners (more a monster movie than a horror movie, and kind of a mess narratively, but I enjoyed it)

*The Vourdalak (refreshingly weird)

*Monolith (more science fiction than horror, but unsettling enough that I’ll let it count)

*Starve Acre (what Bring Her Back could’ve been. Significantly better than the book because it doesn’t trap us in the obnoxious husband’s misogynistic point of view.)

*The Substance (broad satire and really gross body horror somehow worked for me)

*Immaculate (not by any means a great movie, but a solid, unpretentious little shocker)

*Stopmotion (excellent stop motion animation. The film is short and sharp enough to survive a thin plot.)

*Femme (would most people call this a horror movie? “Revenge thriller” is probably most apt. But I’ve found few films in recent years as compelling while being unsettling.)

*I Saw the TV Glow (a favorite of any genre in recent years. It took me a second viewing to realize its genius. I haven’t yet written anything about it because I don’t have the words.)

*The Devil’s Bath (the kind of thing “elevated horror” directors try to make but lack the creativity, taste, and humanity to achieve.)

*Violation (I don’t know that I have the stomach ever to watch this again, but it is a masterclass in courage from everyone involved, and also in how to use visceral terror for artistic purposes — it makes something like Bring Her Back look like the shallow drivel it is.)

*The Outwaters (innovative, sometimes annoying, very slow, but somehow I find it captivating)

*Saw X (yes, a Saw movie; for what it is, it’s quite good until the last 20 minutes, which are a waste)

*Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor (godawful title; really scary movie)

*When Evil Lurks (if you’re going to make a shallow movie that exists only for its own thrills, make it this sharply)

*Enys Men (strange, enigmatic, truly haunting)

Okay, I guess I still like horror movies. Well, some of them…

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Images: 1. I Saw the TV Glow; 2. Enys Men