Horror movies are back. Actually they never left. Yet after a few underperformed in the springtime, pundits with apparently a short-term memory about the genre perceived that its popularity was on the decline. Turns out, reports of its demise were greatly exaggerated—like always.
One of the most basic and satisfying things cinema can offer is a safe space to be scared, to be intimidated, and to be thrilled at the sights of wicked things. And there’s been wickedness aplenty in 2024. Here are the best ones for those interested in looking for such delights.
I Saw the TV Glow
There aren’t many overt horror elements at play in Jane Schoenbrun’s excellent I Saw the TV Glow. There is no blood dripping down walls, nor any crazed killers on the loose. But that doesn’t mean the film isn’t packed with dread. Protagonist Owen (played brilliantly by Justice Smith) has to confront the horror of being in the wrong family, in the wrong town, and in the wrong body. Additionally, Owen and friend Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) must deal with the most terrifying thing of all: the premature cancellation of their favorite TV show.
A deeply personal allegory covering media, gender, and identity, I Saw the TV Glow brings plenty of chills thanks to The Pink Opaque, the fictional (we hope) TV show at its center. The Pink Opaque is like a Smashing Pumpkins music video filmed in hell and somehow slipped onto ‘90s era Nickelodeon between Are You Afraid of the Dark? and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Its haunting episodes are preserved by Owen and Maddy on grainy VHS tapes and filled with monsters-of-the-week like demonic clowns, oozing sentient ice cream crones, and most chilling of all: the luminescent Mr. Melancholy. – Alec Bojalad
The Substance
You can say this about The Substance: it has the courage of its (few, simplistic) convictions. There is nothing namby pamby about Coralie Fargeat’s body horror satire on beauty and aging.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a Hollywood movie star-turned-TV-workout-queen whose 50th birthday marks her career cut-off point. Old isn’t sexy, and sex sells, so it’s goodbye to Sparkle and hello to the next nubile hardbody on the conveyor belt. Unless… could a shady new drug that allows Sparkle’s body to painfully birth a younger, ‘better’ version of herself (Qualley) solve everything?
Of course not. It goes horribly. And we mean horr-ib-ly. If you’re watching this one as part of dinner and a movie, make the dinner something plain and easily digestible unless you want to see it again. In her ode to Cronenbergian and Kubrickian horror, Fargeat (Revenge) throws so many bucketloads of gore at the screen that you’ll walk out of the theater checking your clothes for splatter. OTT, voyeuristic, and spitting with rage, you’ll love/hate The Substance. Watch it to find out which. – Louisa Mellor
Speak No Evil
The rule with this Blumhouse remake seems to be if you’ve seen the nasty, bold Danish original, then no further action is required on your part. If you haven’t seen the original, then you’re good to enjoy this reworking, which swaps bleak confrontation for old-fashioned slasher thrills.
Directed by Eden Lake and The Woman in Black’s James Watkins, Speak No Evil stars Mackenzie Davies and Scoot McNairy as Louise and Ben, a well-heeled American couple stranded in lonely London. When, on holiday, the hand of friendship is extended by free spirits Paddy and Ciara (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi), Ben sees it as a lifeline and accepts an invitation to visit. He, Louise, and their 12-year-old daughter drive to the West Country for a weekend of fresh air, good food, and friendship with Paddy, Ciara and their young son. What could be nicer?
A desperate need not to offend leads Louise and Ben to ignore several alarm bells in a tense first act, before everything inevitably descends into gory, claustrophobic violence. Despite what it has to say about modern masculinity, politeness and transgression, horror Speak No Evil will leave you asking just one question: when did James McAvoy get so bloody scary? – LM
Sleep
Enjoyment of this tightly structured, strongly acted South Korean chiller is underscored with sadness at the premature death of its star Lee Sun-kyun in December 2023. The Parasite actor is by turns funny, touching and terrifying as Hyeon-soo, an aspiring actor and expectant father who begins to sleepwalk as the birth of his first child approaches. He’s matched by Jung Yu-mi as mother-to-be Soo-jin, the family breadwinner who fears her husband’s somnambulism has a malevolent supernatural source.
Directed by Jason Yu, Sleep is a film about marriage, parental anxiety and the terror of giving over your conscious self to—what, exactly?—-each night for eight hours. It’s a relationship drama as much as it is a horror film, but that doesn’t mean it’s without atmosphere or scares. Perfectly proportioned at 94 minutes, it’s an impressive debut from Yu (former assistant to Best Picture-winning director Bong Joon-ho), driven by two excellent performances and a playful approach to the genre. – LM
The First Omen
Weirdly the worst thing about The First Omen is that it’s an Omen movie and therefore needs to tick a bunch of boxes and echo some beats from the original. When it’s its own thing, though, The First Omen is an audacious body horror. Nell Tiger Free plays Margaret, a young novice who has joined a convent and orphanage in Italy. Initially idyllic and full of naughty trampolining nuns (really), Margaret soon senses something is afoot, and it probably relates to young girl Carlita.
This is director Arkasha Stevenson’s feature debut and outside of the references to the original Omen, it’s a distinctive, confident and very female body horror that talks about birth and motherhood, and builds a new mythology leading into the 1976 original. As prequels to classics go, this is impressive, gross, and fun. – Rosie Fletcher
Abigail
From the makers of Ready Or Not comes an even more raucous and outrageous horror that harks back to old school gore movies, but with a modern twist. What begins as an ensemble heist movie takes a turn for the worse as our gang of criminals discover the little girl they have kidnapped for ransom has a very important father and some special powers of her own.
Dan Stevens, Melissa Barrera, and Kathryn Newton head up the band of outlaws, along with Angus Cloud in his final role, while Alisha Weir is a revelation as the adorable titular ballerina. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, better known as two-thirds of the creative collective Radio Silence, don’t scrimp on the grue. If you thought the end of Ready or Not was out there, Abigail ups the ante tenfold. One of the funniest, grossest, smartest horrors of the year, this is absolutely one for horror fans and detractors alike. – RF
Strange Darling
This indie flick from writer/director J.T. Mollner marks actor Giovanni Ribisi’s feature debut as cinematographer. Starring Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner, it’s a non-linear tale of a serial killer on the loose that uses its unusual narrative structure to mess with the audience to great effect. This one comes with twists and turns all the way, so as such it’s best watched cold.
Subtexts of gender politics are pervasive, as our lead couple, initially strangers, indulge in sex games and mess with each other’s heads, even as we know somewhere down the line there will be casualties. Much loved by critics, it’s not always an easy watch but it is a smart experimental thriller that rewards patience. – RF
Late Night With the Devil
Brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes’ Late Night with the Devil remains one of the most original and clever genre offerings this year. An ingenious idea of packaging a movie around a “lost tape” from a 1970s television talk show in the Dick Cavett vein—this one where the late night host perhaps unwisely elects to interview a little girl possessed by the Devil on Halloween night—Late Night with the Devil captures a remarkable amount of ‘70s American TV culture for a film written and directed by two Aussies.
Its secret weapon is star David Dastmalchian. A character actor largely known for playing smaller, often creepier roles, Dastmalchian breaks out as an affable and charming late night host whose easygoing smile might hide deep regrets and painful histories perfect for demonic torment. He anchors the film along with an able cast who walks the fine line between cheese and intrigue. Those are two elements, too, that used to be the hallmarks of good television… until things get a little too real. A wild climactic turn to the surreal doesn’t quite work as well as it should, but the journey getting there is so amusingly unnerving you’ll want to clap anyway, applause sign or no. – David Crow
In a Violent Nature
I’ve long been skeptical about doing an “elevated” or arthouse variation on Friday the 13th and the many other cheapie Halloween clones, yet here we are. Writer-director Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature is a grisly little gem of a horror movie. It stars Ry Barrett as “Johnny,” the ghostly revenant of a young man who died in a fire and who returns from the dead in an old-timey firefighter’s mask to punish horny teens and pretty much anyone who gets in his way in the backwoods near a popular camping lake. Yes, it’s pretty much the setup of any Jason Voorhees flick, but the shrewdness of this movie is that we almost never leave the perspective of the killer.
Largely filmed like a disinterested bird trailing behind or on the shoulder of a masked maniac, the camera patiently lingers on long takes which track Johnny’s movements as he closes in ever nearer to his victims. Suddenly we aren’t dealing with a “teleporter,” but a tireless stalker whose approach can become so grueling that the inevitable flashes of violence are practically a relief—or they would be if the splatter and gutting effects weren’t occasionally on par with the depravity of a Terrifier joint. The ending tries to add some artful gravitas to the concept to debatable results (personally our bigger issue is the movie more than once breaks the ambition of its “killer POV” concept). But for those looking for a fresh spin on the slasher genre, this is a must-see. – DC
MaXXXine
There are those who claim MaXXXine is something of a disappointment when compared to the other two movies in Ti West’s surprise horror trilogy, X and Pearl. While we can concede MaXXXine is the frothiest and silliest of the trio, we also have to ask… isn’t that the point? Whereas X immersed itself in the trappings of independent and amateur filmmaking in the 1970s, and Pearl more ambitiously told a psychosexual drama during the early part of the 20th century with the lusciousness of a Hollywood technicolor epic from the 1930s or ‘40s, MaXXXine is set during the ‘80s. By design it’s the video nasty of the bunch with cheap fog machines, expensive hair, and a shameless sense of the commercial and outrageous.
It still features a hell of a performance by Mia Goth, too, reprising her role of Maxine Minx with a speech near the beginning of the movie which confirms Goth can knock out killer soliloquies before she’s had her morning cup of coffee. The rest of the movie, meanwhile, becomes an exercise in recapturing the excess and glee of a decade where you could beat the shit out of Kevin Bacon to the theme song of St. Elmo’s Fire, and it would just be another Tuesday on Sunset Blvd. – DC
Alien: Romulus
Before Alien: Romulus, every xenomorph in the storied franchise (or at least the ones without Predators) has stood on its own. Each installment ahead of Ridley Scott’s prequels had a different director, and every one a distinct style and gooey soul that made it unique. Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus is thus something of an outlier. It’s the first Alien film determined to make sense of the interlocking continuity while capturing a cosmic dread and nasty sense of doom not seen since the 1979 original.
Its devotion to all of the previous movies, but especially the first one, will be viewed as a flaw in some circles—and one particular easter egg is quite unnecessary and unpleasant. Nonetheless, the film has an almost joyful gruesomeness about it. This thing recalls the hot, sweaty, slimy tactility of the early Alien movies, relying almost entirely on in-camera effects, constructed sets, and wonderful tension-gnashing suspense sequences. It doesn’t bring a whole lot new to the franchise, but in 2024 it is a damn good time and also features a great performance by David Jonsson as a new kind of AI named Andy… – DC
Cuckoo
The second feature from German director Tilman Singer (Luz) is a super weird sci-fi horror starring Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, and Jessica Henwick. Schafer is a grieving teenage girl dragged to an alpine retreat by her father, stepmother, and mute half sister who are old friends with the proprietor, Herr König (Stevens). The family is there to help build the resort, but there is something seriously messed up going on here, and we guarantee it isn’t what you are expecting.
Stevens is glorious as the archetypal mad scientist while Schafer is game as Gretchen, our heroine uncovering the bizarre mysteries of the resort. Odd but never boring, this is a curio like nothing else you’ll see this year. – RF
Longlegs
Nicolas Cage has his long legs on, as well as prosthetics and a ton of white make up in this tense, atmospheric horror from director Osgood Perkins. He’s unrecognizable as a murderous psychopath who appears to be causing murder-suicides in Oregon in the ‘90s. It Follows star Maika Monroe plays FBI agent Lee Harker, who is investigating the case and becomes personally wrapped up in it when she receives a threatening note from Longlegs himself. What’s going on? Why her? It’s a clever and uncomfortable watch.
Shades of The Silence of the Lambs mix with a story of the occult in this highly successful horror that grossed more than $100 million worldwide. – RF
Oddity
As horror movie fans, we’ve seen it all. Sometimes that familiarity brings pleasure, the anticipation of waiting for a character to close a mirrored door and reveal the monster behind them. Sometimes, it brings frustration, a total lack of tension from knowing that Jason will always teleport behind his quarry. Oddity director Damian Mc Carthy understands these qualities and uses them to great effect in his story about a medium (Carolyn Bracken) who investigates the death of her twin sister, possibly at the hands of her sister’s husband (Gwilym Lee).
Mc Carthy stacks trope upon trope in Oddity. Sometimes it’s a killer doll movie, sometimes it’s a crazy guy escaped from the mental ward movie, and sometimes it’s a ghost movie. But the mixture of approaches creates both anticipation and surprise. Mc Carthy lets a giant wooden mannequin just sit at a table for most of the movie, doing nothing but building our anticipation. He uses handheld camera footage to revisit familiar scenes, knowing that the viewers’ knowledge of found footage will create suspense. Not all of it works, but Oddity offers plenty of pleasures to old hands who have known the ins and outs of horror. – Joe George
The post The Best Horror Movies of 2024 (So Far) appeared first on Den of Geek.
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