The 25 Greatest Horror Films of the Past Quarter Century, Part Three

Here’s the third installment of my list of the twenty-five greatest horror films from the past quarter century, starting from the bottom and gradually heading to the top by the end of this year. It’s my November attempt to give thanks for excellence.

Here’s a link if you missed the second installment, here‘s where you can find it. I’ll try to stay as spoiler-free as possible for recent films.

#15 – It Follows (2014)

Sometimes the simplest plots are the most effective ones, and so it is with writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. I mean, the premise of the story is encapsulated in those two words, with the important unwritten proviso of, you don’t want “it” to catch you. 

To wit, the film begins with an unfortunate young woman running away from her home at dusk, looking panicked. A couple of people, including her father, ask her if she’s okay, but she just gets in her car and speeds out of there to go to the beach by herself. She sits there, all alone, clearly scared. The film cuts to dawn, and there she is, a corpse in the sand, one leg snapped at the knee turned round to point at her lifeless face, like a violently broken doll. That’s what happens when “it” catches you.

Elsewhere, college student Jay (Maika Monroe) is excited about going out with new guy, Hugh (Jake Weary). They end up getting intimate, but after that Hugh chloroforms her and she wakes up tied to a wheelchair in an abandoned area. He informs her that (to save his own life) he has passed a curse on to her through intercourse, and now an entity will be following her and will kill her if it catches her. It can take on the shape of anyone, and other people won’t be able to see it. It only walks in its pursuit of her, but it will never stop. The only way to escape the curse is to pass it on to others via sex, and hope they do the same, because if those people are killed, the curse comes right back to her. As Jay sits there, trapped, she sees a naked woman walking slowly towards her, proof of his claims.

Hugh drives her home and leaves. Jay doesn’t know what to think, but the police can’t find Hugh to ask. She tries to forget the traumatic event until one day at school she sees an old lady in a hospital gown walking toward her. Jay bolts. She and her friends try to find Hugh to get more information, but as time passes it becomes clear that this curse is real. In fear for her life, Jay debates whether she should infect someone else to temporarily save herself.

Monroe, who has gone on to be the star of several great horror movies (such as Longlegs and Watcher), feels very believable as Jay, and she completely sells the fear of her character’s unusual situation. She seems like a real person, not an actor in a film, which makes the story much more effective. Weary is good as the morally questionable Hugh, who’s saving his own skin by putting Jay in danger, which seems unquestionably bad until you later see Jay weighing doing the same thing. The actors who play Jay’s friends also seem low-key and real, cracking dumb jokes and watching old monster flicks, and they seem more convincing than teens in standard Hollywood fare.

Director Mitchell frequently has the camera watching Monroe, as if Jay is always being stalked, even from the beginning of the film, when it’s just a neighbor boy peeping as she floats in her swimming pool. This style is amplified when Jay becomes cursed, and he uses this to create paranoia in the audience, who becomes hyperaware of anybody walking behind her. This slowly building tension is intensified by Disasterpiece’s score, whose insistent beat recalls John Carpenter’s music from Halloween. Mitchell’s opening sequence is very strong, kicking off the story with a brutal shock, and the scene in which a tall man unexpectedly walks through a bedroom door towards Jay, unseen by her friends, is an all-timer jump scare.

Mitchell’s script concept may just seem like supernatural VD, but it’s really the fear of never feeling or being safe, of knowing that an inexorable enemy is after you. We never find out what “it” is, and that doesn’t matter. Doom is doom; knowing what or why won’t spare you from it. Jay’s final decision to possibly pass the curse on recalls Naomi Watts’ character’s decision to become complicit in evil in The Ring, which adds a disturbing moral murkiness to the film. 

The final shot, which shows Jay and a friend walking down a street, reveals a person walking behind them in the distance. Is that “it?” Are they both cursed? The film left that as an unanswered question eleven years ago, but all I know is that a sequel, called They Follow, is currently in production.

 # 14 – The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

If Scream was the most meta horror film of the 20^th century, The Cabin in the Woods holds that honor for the 21^st. I’d argue that it’s also more ambitious, casting a wider net to playfully comment upon as many types of scary movies as it possibly can. Add to that ambition a very witty, knowledgeable script, a terrific cast and more monsters than you can count, and you have a small masterpiece. Pretty good for a movie that was supposedly written in three days.

The plot is seemingly straightforward: Five college students travel into the woods to have a party weekend at an isolated cabin by a lake. Along the way there, they encounter a creepy old gas station attendant warning them not to stay in that area (this trope is essentially a horror movie station of the cross), but they ignore him. The cabin is disconcerting (it has one-way mirrors to spy on people), but the group is fine until they explore the cellar and find a trove of ominous objects, one of which leads to a Zombie Redneck Torture Family rising from the dead to attack them. 

What is not so straightforward is the facility located deep below the cabin, in which white-collar employees monitor everything the college kids do. They’ve been watching the students since they left their dorm, the creepy old gas station attendant reports in to them (a scene in which the very serious attendant is embarrassed to realize he’s on speakerphone is very funny), and there are cameras hidden throughout the cabin. These people are controlling everything, drugging the kids to make them into the perfect sacrifice they require, to appease the Ancient Ones deep in the earth and keep them from destroying the world. But the best plans can go astray…

The entire cast is outstanding, all on the same page stylistically and synched in with the humor of the piece. Fran Kranz is the best of the college students, hilarious as the stoned but perceptive Marty, the archetypal wise fool. Chris Hemsworth is also quite good as smarter-than-you’d-expect jock Curt (in a weird twist of fate, Cabin was filmed two years before Thor, but they both came out in 2011). Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins steal the show as two facility managers, models of deadpan hilarity as they comment on the kids’ actions, bitch about their lives and bet on which doom the students will select from the cellar. Sigourney Weaver has a nice small scene as the facility Director, a voice of supposed reason that is firmly rejected.

First-time director Drew Goddard does an expert job merging the dichotomy of styles from the two storylines into one spectacular denouement, in which more or less every monster ever seen in a film are released from their cages ALL AT ONCE. Some monsters seen: werewolves, ghosts, zombies, pseudo-Cenobites, a giant snake, a killer clown, pseudo-Strangers, Angry Molesting Trees, and a merman. Goddard co-wrote the script with Joss Whedon, and although it didn’t take long to write, decades of horror movie love produced this delight of a film. It’s also worth noting that our heroes in the story are maybe not quite so heroic: by “winning” they destroy the world.

Random bits – The secret of the film is revealed in the opening credits, which are old pictures of human sacrifice; the shot of a majestic eagle flying through a canyon only to hit an invisible force barrier and get fried is both funny and foreshadowing; Bradley Whitford’s character explaining, “The virgin’s death is optional, as long as she suffers” incorporates and explains the final girl trope into this story; they must have used all the fake blood in whatever country they shot this film in for the “system purge” scene aftermath. 

#13 – Weapons (2025)

I know that this only came out in August, but its greatness and originality are clear. I wrote a spoiler-free review of it, and here’s the link: https://trailersfromhell.com/weapons/

#12 – The Strangers (2008)

All I’m saying is, whoever Tamara is, she has a lot of explaining to do. Writer/director Bryan Bertino’s film is undeniably the greatest home invasion movie ever, a masterclass in building up suspense and dread. 

It begins with Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque narration, claiming that the story you’re about to see is true, a stretching of the facts that the film doesn’t need (Bertino claims he mainly based it on the Manson Family killings), but forget about that. Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) are driving back to his family’s remote summer house after attending a wedding. They’re not speaking, and a tear has rolled down Kristen’s cheek. James had proposed to a surprised Kristen at the event, and the answer was no. Considering what’s to come, James is having a very bad day. 

Once they’re home and settling in at 4 a.m., there’s a knock at the front door. A young woman stands there in the dark (someone has unscrewed the lightbulb…), asking, “Is Tamara home?” They assure her that she’s at the wrong house, and she walks away. James leaves to get Kristen some cigarettes, and the woman returns again. After that the knocking becomes rattling and pounding, and Kristen realizes that someone has been in the house. James returns and quickly understands they’re in danger. He grabs a shotgun. They try to escape in their car, to no avail. The strangers, two women and a man all wearing masks (the credits refer to them as Dollface, Man in Mask and Pin-up Girl), are toying with them. But when dawn arrives, the game is over.

Bertino uses diegetic sounds (a crackling fire, wind chimes, record albums on an old turntable) expertly as a way of highlighting the otherwise notable silence in the isolated house. It reminds the audience of the couple’s vulnerability – they’re all alone out there. He also paces the story deliberately, ratcheting up the tension gradually, the strangers beginning to silently appear in the background of shots, just watching Kristen, so when the axe comes through the front door, the audience is in full-on panic mode. He also doesn’t pull his punches. The most chilling moment in the movie is when Kristen and James have been tied up, and Kristen asks the strangers why they’re doing this. One of them answers, simply, “Because you were home.” And then our heroes are stabbed to death.

My brother and I took our wives to see The Strangers in a theater when it came out. We loved it, but they very much did not. When I recently asked my wife why she felt that way, she explained that many horror premises are clearly fictional and easily dismissed, but that this one was literally too close to home. And she’s right – if you can’t feel safe in your own home, where can you feel safe? And that’s why this film is great, aside from the inspired filmmaking and acting craft, because it scares people who don’t usually get affected by horror films. In our world, violence can be random and nowhere is completely safe. Now that’s scary.

 #11 – Session 9 (2001)

The tagline for director/co-screenwriter Brad Anderson’s film Session 9 was “Fear is a place,” and if ever a bit of ad copy was true, it’s that one. The location for the movie was the real-life Danvers State Mental Hospital in Massachusetts, which looms like a ruined, decaying palace over the proceedings, madness and despair palpably emanating from it. Its shape is described in the picture as a “giant flying bat,” which seems appropriate for this Gothic-seeming monstrosity. It was built in 1871, perfected prefrontal lobotomy surgery, and closed in 1985, just in time to become the creepiest location in which to set a horror classic sixteen years later.

Gordon (Peter Mullan) is a new father with a wife and baby and an asbestos abatement company that didn’t get the last couple of jobs it needed, and he’s feeling the pressure. Against his co-worker Phil’s (David Caruso) advice, he greatly underbids for a city contract to clean asbestos out of part of Danvers State Mental Hospital in just a week’s time. Veteran workers Hank (Josh Lucas) and Mike (co-screenwriter Stephen Gevedon) grumble but are mollified by the prospective heavy financial bonus, and Gordon’s rookie nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III) is just happy for a gig. They will all have cause to regret this decision.

On day one the group hangs plastic sheeting to collect toxic dust and brings in the machinery to do the job. Phil notices that Gordon is distracted and is concerned, but he focuses on managing the crew. Hank discovers a stash of old coins and rings in a crematorium wall, while curious Mike looks at the hospital file of an old patient named Mary Hobbes. He finds reel-to-reel tapes of her therapy sessions in which her alternate personalities – the Princess, Billy and Simon – are questioned by a doctor about her murdering her family. As days go by, Hank disappears, Mike becomes engrossed in his research, and Gordon gets more distracted, as if the world is a troubling, distant dream. And then Simon steps in.

Mullan successfully plays his role for tragedy, walking around as if stunned by grief, his sense of reality gone and replaced by a nightmare. The shots of him sitting in his car quietly looking at photos of his wife and child are haunting, parked outside his house but not moving to go inside. It’s a heartbreaking performance filled with subtle details: the pained grimace he makes when he tells someone that his wife is tired, as if he can barely get the words out, the progressively sadder phone calls to home, looking at the abandoned wheelchair in Danvers like he sees his broken future there, or the nakedly emotional confession that he blurts out to Phil like a lost child – “I want to go home.” But, unfortunately, he is home now.

Caruso had one of his best performances as the angry, frustrated Phil, so much so that his vivid delivery of an elongated “Fuck you” became an early internet meme. The film strains to set him up as a red herring when the killing gets going, but in fact Phil is the conscience of the movie, earnestly saying, “I need you to wake up” to his friend, Gordon. Lucas excels as the unpleasant Hank, mercilessly needling Phil, but is also sympathetic after he himself has been attacked, sitting naked in the dark basement of Danvers mindlessly repeating, “What are you doing here?” Gevedon is memorable in a scene in which he vividly demonstrates how a lobotomy is performed, and Sexton projects sheer terror as he runs through a long hallway as the lights all begin to go out. Oh, and genre legend Larry Fessenden pops into the flick for a few minutes!

Session 9 is a masterpiece of spooky atmosphere, and director Anderson wisely knows that Danvers is the star of the film and lets it do its magnificently melancholy, isolated thing. He (via the impressive cinematography of Uta Briesewitz) lingers on shots of the empty rooms and hallways, rusty water forlornly dripping in the dark, paint shedding off the walls like burnt, dead skin. The camera moves slowly through the corridors to the backward-playing music of the eerie soundtrack by Climax Golden Twins, reminding me of the line from The Haunting of Hill House: “Whatever walked there, walked alone.”

Anderson and Gevedon’s script is replete with memorable frights and clever misdirection (not to mention working class characters, which is rare enough in horror cinema), but its scariest moments are all from voice recordings. Although no violence is depicted, the sound of the murder of a man’s family (including their dog!) is succinct and truly chilling. And then there’s Simon. He appears as a voice (a demonic entity?) on the old hospital tapes encouraging Mary to kill and then starts encouraging one of the men in the current-day story to do the same. In my understanding of the film, his evil presence pushes his victims over the edge toward violence. As the villain, the king of this terrible castle, he gets the epilogue over that crackling reel-to-reel tape. When he is asked where he lives, Simon responds with satisfied simplicity: “I live in the weak and wounded, Doc.”