Top Ten Best Re-Watchable Horror Films

There are a lot of great horror films but for a lot of them, you only really need to see it once and never see it again.  The Saw films are fun but I don’t feel the need to revisit them.  Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a masterpiece but I don’t really want to watch it yearly.  Here is my list of horror films that for whatever the reason I can watch again and again.

1. The Thing

2. Evil Dead 2

3. Ghostbusters

4. Into the Mouth of Madness

5. Shaun of the Dead

6. Poltergeist

7. The Frighteners

8. Hellraiser

9. Cabin in the Woods

10. Slither

Dead of Night (1945)

From Ealing Studios comes this collection of stories told in flash backs from guests at a party.  One of the guests named Walter arrives and believes he’s seen all of them before and forewarns of something terrible about to happen.   They try to convince him otherwise (this is where the flash backs come into play).   I’m not surprised that this film is as good as it is; that’s Ealing Studios for you.   All the stories are great; I especially love the one about the mirror.   There’s even a comic tale about two golf buddies that’s really fun.   What makes this all work is an ending that really seems ahead of its time.  Grade: A-

Baskin (2015)

This Turkish horror film is about a bunch of unlikable police officers who deserve to get killed that go to a house after being called in for an emergency, only to find they’ve entered a cult of torture and mutilation.  There’s also a dream-like quality to the film where you question if what is happening is real or if this place is actually hell.   If you like ultra-dark horror with torture and sex and lots of violence than this might be your cup of tea, or more like your mug of malice.   I was kind of bored after a while.  Maybe I’m a weirdo but the theater of it all didn’t hold much meaning for me.   It felt like Can Evrenol was so intent creating a gruesome hell sequence he forgot why we needed to see it.  Grade: B-

Videodrome (1983)

I can’t believe I never saw this one before.  I thought I had until talking with a friend and it became clear I was thinking of Cronenberg’s film Scanners.  I’ve been missing out.  This is a marvelous demented film that’s packed of ideas and surreal images.  It’s frightening as well as thought provoking.  James Woods plays Max Renn, a shock jock looking for pirated material to broadcast on his minor cable channel.   He finds a broadcast called Videodrome that shows torture and rape.  After watching it though he starts to have hallucinations and that’s when he falls into a trap that he must desperately try to break away from or be a puppet to an underground organization.  The Criterion version has a great behind the scene documentary about the make-up effects from Rick Baker.  If you haven’t seen this one, do.  It’s eerily prophetic.  Grade: A

John Dies at the End by David Wong

This book is way too complicated to even try to describe.  It’s a loony, gory, Lovecraftian adventure with two paranormal fighting friends named John and Dave.  They take an alien-demon substance they call Soy sauce to see into the future.  They battle a meat monster.  They travel to another dimension.  They have to help save a girl named Amy Sullivan.  Basically so much happens I can’t remember it all.  What I do know it was a blast to read.  Grade: B+

The Black Cat (1934)

Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi get top billing on this original film written by Peter Ruric (it has nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe’s story).   Edgar G. Ulmer directs this, his most memorable film, until Detour that is.  Honeymooners Peter and Joan get stranded in Hungry and a doctor (Lugosi) on his way to see his college (Karloff) at his castle invites them to come along.   It’s clear Karloff is a devilish foe and that the Lugosi is there for revenge.   It’s a convoluted plot but full of many memorable scenes, especially a cat that gives the doctor a scare and the dungeon where many dead women are displayed.  I wouldn’t say this holds up that much, it is old and feels quaint, but it’s a must-see if you want to see the classics.  Grade: B

The Canal (2014)

This Irish ghost story about a film preservationist named David who may or may not have killed his wife who may or may not have been having an affair.  Alone in a house with a violent past, David starts to feel an evil presence is trying to take away his son.  While the cops circle and his family worries about his sanity, he dives deeper into the mystery of his house in a hope to protect his son. Written and directed by Ivan Kavanagh.   Grade: A-

Spoilers:  Another depressing ending.  This is getting upsetting.  Okay, again I don’t mind it if a film has a sad ending.  The hero doesn’t have to live to make it a good film.  But in this one, did the boy have to die?  I mean, come on, the father gave his life so his son would live and then the kid dies anyway.   It’s haunting, that’s for sure, but so damn hopeless. 

Eden Lake (2008)

Here’s another film about a couple that go away to some remote area only to find terror instead of happiness.  What makes this British thriller stand out is the remarkable performances from Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender.  James Watkin’s direction is very strong too, creating intense scenes that are brutal and frighteningly real.   I’ll be thinking about this film the next time my wife and I go camping that’s for sure, especially if I run into a group of thuggish teenagers.   Grade: A-

Spoilers:  The end of this one is greatly depressing and had me fuming mad.  That’s two films in a row where I wanted to punch someone’s face.  The difference here, although very cynical and mean-spirited, I felt the storyteller had something to say, an emotional truth that the audience needed to swallow even if it burned going down.   The only knock I had on this one is that Kelly’s character doesn’t just die a horrible death, but she fails so miserably.   I would have found it so much more rewarding if the teenager she had run over was that bastard Brett.   Oh well, that’s theater of cruelty for you. 

13 Cameras (2016)

I hated this movie.  A couple rent a house from a creepy Billy Joel look-a-like who secretly watches them from cameras he has staged around the house.  Obviously things go from bad to worse when the creepy landlord witnesses the husband cheat on his pregnant wife so he decides to kidnap the girl he’s cheating on.  As this far-fetched scenario unfolds it just becomes more preposterous and cruel.  The acting is pretty average but I blame the writing.   The characters these actors play are so badly developed and their decision making is infuriating to watch.  The only memorable aspect to this film is the landlord portrayed by Neville Archambault; a villain so over the top you want to laugh.   I know what kind of film Victor Zarcoff is trying to make but in the end I felt like he sacrificed a lot of believably to get the end he wanted.   Stay away from this one, folks.  It’s just dumb.  Grade: C-

Spoilers:  I don’t mind endings where the villain wins; it’s a result that happens in a lot of horror films, but this one is just mean and silly.  There’s no way this guy is going to get away taking care of a kid on this own.   I think you’re supposed to laugh and find the ending shocking, but I just thought it was unnecessary.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2015)

Ana Lily Amirpour’s take on the vampire.   It’s a crime film, it’s a love story, it’s coolness seemingly inspired by Jarmusch.  A young man trying to help his father get off drugs gets involved with a young woman who stalks the night.  It has some slow parts but this is a very satisfying film.  The black and white photography looks great and the performances are all excellent.  Grade: A-

Orange Eats the Creeps by Grace Krilanovich

I’m so pissed.  I was really looking forward to this book.  I thought it was going to be the kind of experimental, slap in the face novel that would forever leave me shaken and wanting more.   Instead I was bored and frustrated by a very gifted writer more interested in rambling on with strong images and poetic details than giving me even a nugget of a story.  I get it.   Books don’t have to be plot centric but they should be coherent.  What is this book about?  It’s about a foster teenage girl in search for her sister in the Pacific northwest.   She hooks up  with a bunch of vagrant teenage junkies (vampires?) and that’s about as much as I got before it became redundant and annoying to keep reading.  I did finish it; I’m proud of that.  I could have and wanted to stop after the first third of the book, but I kept on, taking my time, reading each sentence carefully, hoping for meaning, scrambling for a metaphor, trying to convince myself that I was just not smart enough, that there had to be something there.  Maybe there is, but I couldn’t find it.  Some passages were very powerful in a “look-at-how-amazing-a-writer-I-am” way.   But I never understood who these characters were, I never became emotionally concerned for them, or witnessed some transformation that moved me or got me to think outside my point of view.  Basically I wasted my time.  I hate being so harsh and I actually like the idea of challenging the reader and redefining what a novel can be or should be.   Yet in the end the writer  must keep me engaged and here Krilanovich failed.  Grade: C

Creep (2014)

Mark Duplass plays an oddball who hires a videographer played by Patrick Brice for a personal project.   What starts off as just a little bit of an awkward situation devolves into a nightmare.   Patrick Brice directs the film with Duplass and himself credited as writing it.  I’m assuming there wasn’t much of a script and that they adlibbed much of the film (which is impressive).   It’s a well-crafted found-footage story because it constantly keeps the audience guessing.  At times I laughed and then started to feel that gut-twisting sense that something bad was going to happen.   I highly enjoyed this film and expect it to become a horror genre classic.  Grade: A

We Are Still Here (2015)

Anne and Paul move to the country for a fresh start.  They lost their adult son and are both still in mourning.   Yet the house they move in has a connection to the dead.  Has their son returned to them?   Why does everyone in town seem to distance themselves from them?    And when they’re visited by close friends, May and Jacob, why do people start to disappear?  This unsettling film kept me on edge and second guessing what would happen.  The acting isn’t always great, but the film succeeds at building to a terrifying climax.   Grade: B+

Suicide Club (2001)

Imagine if you will people all of a sudden killing themselves?  And for no reason, almost as if it was just something to do? Japanese director Sion Sono creates such a story, with the police trying to figure out why this was happening and how it relates to packages containing rolls of human skin.   The pacing of this film isn’t always consistent but the mystery is so frightening and entrancingly bizarre you’ll be thinking about it for some time.   There are some really shocking moments in this film that really should be seen if you love the horror genre.  Grade: B+

Amanda Knox (2016)

Okay, this is not really a horror documentary.  At the same time, when you think about being sent to prison for a crime you didn’t do, it’s a very scary ordeal.   This film pretty much debunks the idea that Amanda Knox is a killer.  Yet it demonstrates how the media and the Italian officials crafted a narrative that she and her boyfriend (at the time) killed her roommate.  It’s sad that two people in love had to have their lives stalled over faulty evidence and fabricated stories.  There is no doubt that the murder of Meredith Kercher was a horrible tragedy.  To make it ever worse the police poorly investigated the crime and went after the wrong people.   Grade: B+

Honeymoon (2014)

Maybe don’t go on your honeymoon to some remote cabin in the woods.  Yes, I know your new wife used to come there all the time, but instead go on a fun cruise or resort where you’ll be treated like a king.   And if you do go to some remote cabin in the woods and your wife starts to act “weird” maybe that’s when you get out of there.  And I mean, you run if you have to.   Harry Treadaway and Rose Leslie star in this fantastic science fiction horror film in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers by director Leigh Janiak.   It’s an intense experience that leaves a lasting impression.  Grade: A-

Green Room (2016)

A punk band on the road and needing a gig drives out to a club somewhere in the Pacific Northwest (think Portland, Oregan) to find they’re going to be performing for a gathering of Nazi skinheads.  If that isn’t unnerving enough, things get really intense very quickly when they witness a crime that happens in the green room.  Anton Yelchin stars (I so miss the guy) along with Alia Shawat and Patrick Stewart.   Director Jeremy Saulnier has come a long way from his 2007 indie Murder Party but hey, I could tell he had talent then and boy, has he become a very accomplished director.  This film is very impressive.  It’s one of the most suspenseful films I’ve seen in a while and the horror feels very real.   Mr. Stewart is a fantastic and believable villain; he keeps his sinister qualities low-key and that’s what makes it work so well.   A great modern day horror film that will have a long shelf life I’m certain.  Grade: A

Severance (2006)

We start this year’s 31 days of Horror with this comedic horror film by Christopher Smith (co-written by James Moran).   A bunch of co-workers go on a business team-building holiday in a remote area in Eastern Europe.  Events quickly spirally into the absurdly horrific as they become hunted by crazies.  I really enjoyed this one.  It’s funny, it’s suspenseful and full of surprises.   Grade: B+