Horror is always in season.
That’s how the market is now. Used to be you had to wait for certain times of year. The televised marathon specials. The seasonal physical media releases.
We now live in the best time ever to love horror movies. Not only do you have incredible access to the past, both in popular film but also entire services full of cult gems, but horror now release the entire calendar year.
We wear our heart on our sleeve: horror is a formative part of this website and tends to be what moves us. These are the ten horror pictures that burrowed under our skin in 2024.
I Saw the TV Glow
We all watch for different reasons. I watch horror to absolve my deepest anxieties. The more extreme the content, the less absurd my brain seems. It’s always moving too fast, always too panicked, never settled. But when I watch horror, I can identify. Body dysmorphia is a lot and it’s so rare to feel so deeply seen, to see such a break from binary definitions of self that honors who we truly are. I Saw the TV Glow means more to me than just about any movie I can think of, identity-wise. It’s so perfect. It gives the same window of escape by which it provided for me. I’ve been so immensely moved by this gesture all year. This is the future of horror. Not just about trauma. About our sense of self. Radical and forward work.
Alien: Romulus
The truth is horror, like comedy and for many of the same reasons, is as subjective as genres get. You either go to Alien: Romulus and have the best time you’ll have at the movies all year or you do not. You either find the union of Alien (1979) & Aliens (1986) to be one of the most thrilling prospects or you do not. You love it or you don’t. All Alien movies are good movies, though, and this one is great for the same reasons other Alien movies have been. Sometimes fan service reaches us directly. This is that time. An incomparable experience in IMAX for the year.
Nosferatu
Nobody has cultivated a filmography that speaks to modern dread quite like that of Robert Eggers. In just four films, three of them have emerged as definitive statements on horror for the last couple decades. Lavish and stylish attention to atmosphere and mood pervade Eggers’ excellent Nosferatu, proof positive that the director is an innovator and classicist at once. A profound and gothic work that conjures the classics and pays them forward for a new future of horror.
The Substance
Coralie Fargeat is an astonishing and complete filmmaker. If you saw her 2017 debut Revenge, you might already know. She arrived fully formed with one of the greatest exploitation movies of our time. Now she enters the public consciousness with the best feel good hit of 2024 — what a wonderful story that The Substance found its audience. Wonderful that Mubi took it up when others passed. Wonderful that Coralie Fargeat is still in her early career and this feels like the beginning of a fascinating filmography that puts horror forward and effortlessly understands how to blend social issues. Just a gorgeous and accessible piece of genre filmmaking all-around.
Longlegs
Much has been made of Nicolas Cage’s expertly creepy take on Longlegs but perhaps not enough has been made about Osgood Perkins marvelously uniting two modes of Thrillers: Jonathan Demme and David Fincher into the mode of horror. Yes, it plays just like Silence of the Lambs (1991) interpolated with Seven (1995). But whenever those movies turn into their thrills, on the horror-thriller spectrum, Longlegs shifts the other way. Proudly horror and captivating.
Oddity
When we think about horror we often think about liminal spaces. Especially in the classic Kubrick sense of The Shining (1980). The thresholds we cross between the living and the dead are so tightly drawn and held at the line in Oddity, an excellent and spatially expert horror movie. Damian Mc Carthy expands his craft from Caveat (2020), and finds even more curiosity, as the director nails down the feeling of space in horror movies.
Satranic Panic
True originality is hard to find. It’s hard to find because it’s hard to define. Alice Maio Mackay is a true original, a very young filmmaker who has already become prolific making fun horror movies that speak to identity. She made her debut feature at 16 and now, in her early 20s, seems to be one of our best emergent talents. Still working at an inspired and small level but do not be surprised when she makes a statement piece. She’s already producing work worthy of your attention and best of lists.
Local Legends: Bloodbath!
Local Legends (2013) is the definitive biopic of our times. It’s the story of hyper-prolific songwriter, filmmaker, and friend of the site Matt Farley and is about art process and what happens in life when we’re not making art. The filmmaking duo of Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh are our most dynamic backyard filmmakers and create inspired works full of dexterous wordplay and daring low-budget efficiency. The new Local Legends further unpacks the autobiographical original but now using the other context Motern Media works so well in, in the form of a horror movie. And it’s just as good as you’d hope: essential work.
Late Night with the Devil
It’s Halloween, 1977, and a late night talk show is desperate for ratings, so they bring on a possibly possessed child. The film blends documentary and found footage filmmaking from there, inventive and efficiently indie. It’s such a clever construction, a great concept well-conceived. Bummer of the year is the use of mild AI insert graphics, which sadly brought into focus how AI may also infiltrate indie film, and how it already has. That it’s still here is a testament to how well the execution of its core concept goes over.
The First Omen
Okay, the conversation has been too quiet for too long. The First Omen rules. It’s the debut feature of Arkasha Stevenson who does everything the modern big budget horror reboots never do. It makes the most of the property and while it does not reinvent the wheel, it’s got much more gore and practical effects under the hood than you might think it would. The health of the horror scene can be measured by how we get a terrific new entry in a long running series and it hardly makes a wave. There’s so much to watch. But do make sure to catch this one. It has so much more for the horror fan than you might imagine.
In a Violent Nature
If the studios can’t sort out their rights to the Friday the 13th movies, then some indie filmmakers are just going to have to go and make better versions of that property. So it goes with In a Violent Nature which introduces a fascinating new slasher villain with a good gimmick in the Ambient Killer. By playing with ambience as a central tenet of its direction, In a Violent Nature gets to do so much, and does it with economy and an intense love for genre.