5 Horror Movies that Deserve More Love
Don't know what to watch for Halloween? Maybe I could help a bit…
October is my favorite month and Halloween is my favorite holiday. And if you are the same, you know as well as I do how crucial it is to have a good horror movie pick for a successful Halloween night. I myself am a big horror fan. I love the classics like The Evil Dead, Dawn of the Dead, or The Thing (my favorite movie of all time, actually). But everybody knows about those. So instead I’d like to recommend a few movies that are not exactly unknown, but that I still think deserve more love.
In another words if you are a big horror movie buff, few or none of the movies on this list will probably be a surprise for you. But if you are a more casual horror viewer, I really hope that some of the picks on here might peak your interest and make your next Halloween night a bit more interesting.
All five movies on this list are some of my favorites of the genre, but I wouldn’t want to rate them against each other. So just to clarify, I will order these chronologically from oldest to newest. As simple as that.
The Exorcist III (1990)
The one positive that might come out of the new Exorcist: Believer is that it could somewhat shift people’s attention to an actual good Exorcist sequel. Because The Exorcist III is not only the best of the franchise sequels and prequels (which, to be fair, isn’t saying much), but it’s also a great film on its own and a movie that I, and hear me out here, actually prefer even to the original.
One thing that’s great about it is how different it is to William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, because this one is basically a supernatural psychological detective horror story with unnerving atmosphere and great visuals. Not to mention that it was written and directed by William Peter Blatty, the author of the original The Exorcist novel (and Legion, which this movie was based on) and the screenplay adaptation for Friedkin’s film.
There is still a bit of a controversy about the reshoots in this movie and the adding of an actual exorcism that wasn’t in the original version, but for me it works. The entire film is dark and weird and at its core very emotional. Not to mention it has one of the best jump scares in horror history and the best performance in Brad Dourif’s whole acting career.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
There’s this general understanding that John Carpenter’s movies in the ‘70s and ‘80s were great but that he dropped the ball in the 1990s. And I would agree… with just one exception. Because right between Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Village of the Damned (that aren’t really bad, just boring) he made In the Mouth of Madness. The best Lovecraftian movie adaptation that wasn’t really even adapting Lovecraft.
It’s sort of a blend between Lovecraft’s and Stephen King’s takes on the horror genre. It’s properly creepy, it has some great creature effects, and most importantly it has this great end-of-the-world atmosphere that Carpenter also played with in The Thing and The Prince of Darkness. I could also say that Sam Neill is great in the movie, but when isn’t he?
The Mist (2007)
While Mike Flanagan perfected the art of adapting Stephen King’s books to the point that he no longer needs Stephen King to write them (as he proved with his brilliant Midnight Mass miniseries), I still think that Frank Darabont is actually the ultimate director for King’s stories. And while everybody knows his The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, not so many people ever talk about The Mist. You know, the one that is actually in the genre King is most known for.
Frank Darabont’s The Mist (not to be confused with John Carpenter’s The Fog) is actually an example of a movie adaptation being even better than the original book – or in this case a 176-page novella. It’s a very chilling and bleak psychological horror about a group of people locked in a small town store while weird monsters are looming outside. And the more time and real-life world events pass by each year, the bleaker and scarier the movie actually gets.
The Mist is one of my favorite movies of all time, but you should be warned that it really is pretty dark. Its ending is so dark in fact that my Blu-ray player once straight up froze just before the ending scene was about to start and refused to play the disc any further. I guess that might also be the reason why it didn’t really clicked with a lot of people, similarly to Carpenter’s The Thing back in 1982. But while The Thing is now a cult classic, The Mist… not so much.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
I’d expect this one will probably be the most well known pick on my list. Similarly as Scream was deconstructing the 1980s slasher genre, The Cabin in the Woods is trying to dissect the horror movie genre in general, with even its opening story beats being heavily inspired by Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. And if you’ve already seen the movie, you know the inspirations didn’t stop there.
Some people see The Cabin in the Woods more as a horror comedy. As something that points its finger at all the horror cliches and how formulaic they’ve become over the decades. And even though the main premise (that I won’t spoil here) truly is ludicrous and really out there, I think it also asks some interesting questions about why do we still enjoy all of the stuff that horror movies are repeating over and over again and how we should maybe try to shift the entire horror genre into a new direction. And to be fair, when I look back at what came after The Cabin in the Woods from the likes of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, or Mike Flanagan, I think we actually managed to do that.
I think the more horror movies you’ve seen, the more you might appreciate what The Cabin in the Woods is trying to say. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon managed to achieve with it something that in my opinion no one else apart from Wes Craven ever did. And even though it probably really is the most famous horror movie on this list, I think it still deserves even more credit than it already gets.
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Here I started writing what I think is the main difference between a horror and a thriller, but it turned into a bit longer thought process that I might actually expand in one of my future posts. Either way my point was that however you personally differentiate these two genres, I think that 10 Cloverfield Lane does an amazing job in keeping you on edge about into which of them it actually falls more.
It has a great small cast of John Gallagher Jr., John Goodman, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who, as I already mentioned in my Ahsoka post, I adore) in a claustrophobic setting of an underground bunker with an unknown threat above them.
It is also the only movie from that short point in time when the Cloverfield franchise might have actually evolved in something interesting. Into this sort of film version of The Twilight Zone where they could’ve fund unique standalone genre movies by selling them under one brand. For example if this years brilliant No One Will Save You was a Cloverfield movie, it might have actually gotten the widespread attention that I think it deserves.
Of course this all went down the toilet when The Cloverfield Paradox tried to connect with the first movie by an uninteresting multiverse plot (ahead of its time in that, really). And the sad part is that some people that have only seen The Cloverfield Paradox may therefore be disinterested in seeing 10 Cloverfield Lane or even the first (and also great) Cloverfield movie. And that would’ve really been a shame.
So here’s my list. And whether it was in any way helpful to you or not, I just hope that you will have a great Halloween!