As of now, I’ve logged a lot of horror films made in the 2000s on letterboxd… Chloe (2009) dir. Atom Egoyan, a slow burn dark erotic thriller, is not ‘horror’, but I’m still thinking about that film now despite only seeing it once in the cinema when it came out in 2009. It’s not here on the list, though.
I just couldn’t work out my condensed list, and found myself adding loads from 2009 & 2007 especially, so … I did a year-by-year, and then tried to whittle it down from that.
I know it was the decade that brought us The Others, some dodgy reboots and remakes of classic franchises, sequels, and so on. Also, we had some horror/action SciFi like Doom and Ghosts of Mars, and I do like those films a lot! But they don’t make it to my ‘get to know me’ pick list, as sadly (?) those films just don’t vibe with me as much. I enjoyed them, but I watched a lot of them too late to really get the full impact of them.
The Blade trilogy will always have a special place in my heart too, but didn’t end up on the list in the end – the first film is on my ’90s list though for sure, I just didn’t really rate the sequels as much? They had some great moments though for sure.
I think the films that deserve a very special shoutout, before we go any further, are the two Pat Higgins films from this decade that made me laugh so hard I nearly spat a mouthful of water over my laptop, and in trying not to do so, very nearly drowned:
KillerKiller and Hellbride (both 2007).
Memorable for the best and worst reasons. Highly recommend these as embodying the true spirit of indie British horror of the 2000s; off the wall, tongue-in-cheek, my-mate-wanted-to-be-in-a-film quality all the way through, then doubled down on. Check out Pat Higgins’ work, you will be many things, but not disappointed. Give this director a proper budget and Jason Statham’s number, for the love of God.
Honorable mention goes to Dan Gildark’s Cthulhu (also 2007 – what a gift of a year), which is online for free, on the director’s own YouTube channel. It’s a gay Lovecraftian cult romp, and there’s so much going on in it. So much. It’s an interesting watch, and worth highlighting in a category of its own.
Plus, another dark fantasy with monsters (and my comfort film of the 00s) that gets a mention here and is classed as horror: Van Helsing (2004) dir. Stephen Sommers. This film had the brides/Dracula that partially inspired S. T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood, and Saint discussed that with me in this episode of my podcast. I’m not ranking it with the other horror films, as I personally don’t class it in my head as Horror.
These are the ones I definitely did vibe with:
Top 10 Horror Picks
- Dog Soldiers (2002) dir. Neil Marshall – My ultimate comfort werewolf film which I watch as a double bill with Howl (2015) dir. Paul Hyett. Howl didn’t quite make it to the top 20 of the 2010s, but it would definitely be in the top 30.
- House of 1000 Corpses (2003) dir. Rob Zombie – parts of this are a comfort watch, parts of this I leave the room for and make a cup of tea and come back when it’s over
- Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) dir. Darren Lynn Bousman – I had this musical on repeat at one point.
- El Espinazo del Diablo/The Devil’s Backbone (2001) dir. Guillermo Del Toro – Really enjoy repeat watches of this one, my original introduction to Del Toro, I think? But I also loved Pan’s Labyrinth which I saw in the cinema. That one isn’t classed on Letterboxd as ‘Horror’ but rather as dark fantasy, and I’d say The Devil’s Backbone is more squarely horror, so that’s why it’s on this list instead.
- Wake Wood (2009) dir. David Keating – I loved the concept and the necromancy element so much.
- The Midnight Meat Train (2008) dir. Ryûhei Kitamura – I also like the Clive Barker story it’s based on.
- Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama – Just a lot of fun.
- The Children (2008) dir. Tom Shankland – I hate kids. Creepy kids are the worst. This is the worst film for the worst kids.
- 30 Days of Night (2007) dir. David Slade – A comfort watch.
- El Orfanato/The Orphanage (2007) dir. J. A. Bayona – Heartbreaking, had a big effect on me when I originally saw it not long after its release, and I don’t revisit it often.
Top 10 Horror Runners-Up
Debated adding Splice (2009) dir. Vincenzo Natali and Les Pacte Des Loupes/The Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) dir. Christophe Gans to this list for very different reasons. Neither of them won. This is so hard because this is the decade that brought us Låt Den Rätte Komma In/Let The Right One In (2008) dir. Tomas Alfredson. It also brought us Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot that I didn’t hate, more famous films like The Strangers and Signs and The Descent, not to mention 28 Days Later. But I feel like you’d get a better idea of me as a viewer (a trash goblin) from these instead:
- The Woods (2006) dir. Lucky McKee – when I want a woodsy boarding school horror but not in the mood for the original Suspiria, this is fine I guess.
- The Collector (2009) dir. Marcus Dunstan – My favourite is actually The Collection (2012) but it didn’t beat the others in my list for the 2010s (I actually kind of forgot about it), so I’m adding The Collector in here as penance.
- Dagon (2001) dir. Stuart Gordon – This is here because it brought me so much pure unbridled joy. It’s a low-budget Lovecraft adaptation which is really ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ set in Spain. I watched this in German with German subtitles, which sort of gave up and started not translating the Spanish into German halfway through, and that massively improved the experience. No, I don’t speak German, or Spanish, but I can not read both slightly better than I don’t speak either. Best 95mins of my week, easily. Je ne regrette rien, as they say in neither Berlin or Imbolca.
- 헨젤과 그레텔/Hansel & Gretel (2007) dir. Yim Pil-sung – I liked this take on this fairytale. When Eun-soo gets lost in a country road, he meets a mysterious girl and is led to her fairytale ike house in the middle of the forest. There, Eun-soo is trapped with the girl and her siblings who never age. Eun-soo finally discovers a way out which is written on a fairy tale book. But the book tells a story of none other than himself!
- Borderland (2007) dir. Zev Burman (narrowly won out over Vacancy (2007), but I keep going back and fore on it. I haven’t seen Hostel so the comparisons of Borderland with that are lost on me, and I don’t think they’re substantially the same from what I’ve heard/read.)
- The Devil’s Rejects (2005) dir. Rob Zombie – I really enjoy fucked up family dynamics, so this one got watched a lot while I was thinking about writing my own twisted inbred family for Pagham-on-Sea.
- The Dark (2005) dir. John Fawcett – By no means a perfect film, but I actually like it. Absolutely nothing like the book it’s nominally based on, Sheep by Simon Maginn. Everything is completely different, in fact, except it’s still set in Wales, and the backstory of the pastor sending his congregants over the cliff is still used. The book is psychological horror – the film is supernatural horror borrowing elements of Welsh folklore and myth. Maginn isn’t Welsh, and the film isn’t Welsh-made, so while the setting might qualify as “Welsh horror” in the sense of horror about Wales, it’s not strictly speaking Welsh horror or Welsh Gothic. That said, a drowning child and suicidal sheep are definitely elements of Welsh Gothic/Welsh rural horror. One reviewer described this as “Welsh misery porn”, and that feels right.
- Calvaire (2004) dir. Fabrice Du Welz – I’m never watching it again, it was the most viscerally fucked-up thing I’ve seen in a while, and I almost wish I’d never seen it to begin with. I think about it a lot. (CW: male rape, bestiality, check doesthedogdie.com on this one)
- Hannibal (2001) dir. Ridley Scott – It was between this and American Psycho, which I really like too, but I read Hannibal as a teenager, around 15/16, and so this one wins for the Thomas Harris nostalgia.
- Shadow of the Vampire (2000) dir. E. Elias Merhige (I know Final Destination and a few others came out this year, but I’ve enjoyed my rewatches of this one more.)
I’m pretty happy with my choices there, I think…
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