C. M. Rosens

Up to now, I’ve watched 161 horror films from the 2010s, according to my Letterboxd logs (which never lie). My favourite films are going to be really hard to whittle down, but I can try!

I’m not including my favourite 2010s trilogy, Gogol, dir. Egor Baranov, as I watched this as a series like Fear Street. That ran 2017-2018 and I really enjoyed it. It’s supernatural Gothic with fun twists, based on Gogol’s stories, and really fun.

These are a mix of stuff that really gets to me, things I thought were really hard watches in places, things that were really enjoyable and worth multiple rewatches, and comfort films.

Top 10 Horror Picks

• Us (2019) dir. Jordan Peele – I started watching this when it was on telly and turned it on just as the doppelganger family are at the bottom of the driveway and that bit freaked me out so I turned it off and I only just got brave enough to watch the whole thing. Really glad I did, because I loved it. Husband and wife Gabe and Adelaide Wilson take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.

• Ready or Not (2019) dirs. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett – comfort rewatch. Love this one. I’ve seen it so many times that it has to go in the top 10. A bride’s wedding night takes a sinister turn when her eccentric new in-laws force her to take part in a terrifying game.

• Annihilation (2018) dir. Alex Garland – I really like the books by Jeff Vandermeer, and how divergent the film is. I think this stands on its own really well. A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don’t apply.

• Aterrados/Terrified (2017) dir. Demián Rugna – That fucking dead kid. No. It genuinely was the scariest film I saw for the #100HorrorMoviesin92Days Challenge last year. Police commissioner Funes and three researchers of supernatural phenomena investigate inexplicable events that are occurring in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

• Get Out (2017) dir. Jordan Peele – Really enjoyed this one. Another rewatch, and I also would recommend the talk I saw on this as Afro-Gothic, or American Gothic; Race, Romance and Horror in Bridgerton, Candyman and Get Out with Tanagra GGNOC and Sam Hirst. Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.

• The Lodgers (2017) dir. Brian O’Malley – Genuinely a really great Irish Gothic film, using the Supernatural Gothic to explore the tensions in Ireland between the Irish rural working class and the Anglo-Irish elite in the turbulent years between the Easter Rising and Irish Independence [for the Republic]. 1920, rural Ireland. Anglo-Irish twins Rachel and Edward share a strange existence in their crumbling family estate. Each night, the property becomes the domain of a sinister presence (The Lodgers) which enforces three rules upon the twins: they must be in bed by midnight; they may not permit an outsider past the threshold; and if one attempts to escape, the life of the other is placed in jeopardy. When troubled war veteran Sean returns to the nearby village, he is immediately drawn to the mysterious Rachel, who in turn begins to break the rules set out by The Lodgers. The consequences pull Rachel into a deadly confrontation with her brother – and with the curse that haunts them.

• La Región Salvaje/The Untamed (2016) dir. Amat Escalante – Erotic, violent, visceral, tentacles. Not for everyone and people do get hentai’d to death. Desperate to flee but consumed by fear, Alejandra, a young mother and working housewife, is trapped in a violent and unsatisfying relationship with her husband, Angel. She leans on her brother Fabián for support, but he has secrets of his own. All of their lives are turned upside down by the arrival of the mysterious Veronica. She convinces them that in the nearby woods, inside an isolated cabin, dwells something not of this world that could be the answer to all of their problems… something whose force they cannot resist and with whom they must make peace or suffer its wrath.

• Crimson Peak (2015) dir. Guillermo Del Toro – One of my favourite Gothic Horror Romances. You should subscribe to Johannes T. Evans’ Medium to read his PROLIFIC outputs, but his post on Crimson Peak: A Love Letter to Gothic Romance is worth a read. In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds… and remembers.

• A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) dir. Ana Lily Amirpour – I really enjoyed this, although it was such a hard watch. CW for drug addiction and coercive pressure to shoot up. In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

• The Woman in Black (2012) dir. James Watkins – I love this film. It was the first proper ghost story Hammer ever did, and I have a lot of love for the bleak aesthetic and how they diverged from the ending in the play/novella to make it less awful. The story follows a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps, who is ordered to travel to a remote village and sort out a recently deceased client’s papers. As he works alone in the client’s isolated house, Kipps begins to uncover tragic secrets, his unease growing when he glimpses a mysterious woman dressed only in black. Receiving only silence from the locals, Kipps is forced to uncover the true identity of the Woman in Black on his own, leading to a desperate race against time when he discovers her true identity.

Top 10 Horror Runners-up

• The Invocation of Enver Simaku (2019) dir. Marco Lledó Escartín

• Haunt (2019) dirs. Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

• Tau (2018) dir. Federico D’Alessandro – as seen in my Rapunzel post!

• A Dark Song (2016) dir. Liam Gavin – I’m still not sure the effects at the end worked well for the film as a whole but I really liked the whole premise and the claustrophobic atmosphere and performances.

• Cold Moon (2016) dir. Griff Furst – Southern Gothic but I can’t get over the fact it’s Will from Criminal Minds in a VERY different role

• Dabbe 5: Zehr-i Cin/Curse of the Jinn (2014) dir. Hasan Karacadağ – this is a straight tie with Karacadağ’s Dabbe 4: Cin Çarpması/The Possession (2013) and honestly I can’t choose between them so I’m cheating. I thought 4 was my favourite, but then there’s stuff in 5 I really liked as well.

• The Borderlands (2013) dir. Elliot Goldner

• Jug Face (2013) dir. Chad Crawford Kinkle – cw for incest & graphic miscarriage

• Red Riding Hood (2011) dir. Catherine Hardwicke

• Outcast (2010) dir. Colm McCarthy

I don’t know if I’ll change my mind as soon as this is posted… I think I’m ok with these for now…