Top 10 Horror Movies of 2024
Horror is one of those genres that people tend to either love or hate (or love to hate, or hate to love). There’s something universal about the way fear can both repulse and excite us, the way we’re drawn to that which seems risky or perhaps even deadly. Consider how long people will wait in line to ride the most thrilling roller coasters, or the increasing popularity of Halloween. Perhaps part of the thrill is that tropes of the genre have historically been associated with paganism (unsurprising given the Puritan roots of the U.S.), potential manifestations of the demonic that could corrupt American youth or glorify sin. But who doesn’t enjoy a small taste of the forbidden, or a cathartic release of pent-up aggression? It’s no wonder the Hays Code had specific guidelines about how to portray the horrific in film: it’s popular! That tension between the socially acceptable and the taboo continues to be one of the most exciting elements of the genre today: it’s not uncommon for horror movies to perpetuate conservative values — the possessing demon is defeated by the power of Christ, the horny teenagers are punished for their premarital promiscuity — even as they push the boundaries of gore, violence, and all-around good taste.
The horror genre also remains a good way for young up-and-coming filmmakers to make a name for themselves. They can often be made on the cheap, and a talented director can make low lighting and a few jump-scares go a long way. It doesn’t take much Googling to discover dozens of websites devoted exclusively to covering the world of horror cinema, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of noteworthy horror releases each year. I’m far from an expert, and I certainly can’t see everything. But I do enjoy a good spooky yarn (and being grossed-out by fictional bloodsplatter), so I do my best to watch a fair amount of them, if not to intellectually consider what they reveal about the state of our societal fears, then just to relieve some stress.
Below, you’ll find a few thoughts on some of the best horror movies I saw last year. As always, you can use JustWatch to see if they’re available to stream. Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases., so please use the customized links below to rent / purchase the films.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Heretic is a captivating and suspenseful critique of religion about two Mormon missionary girls who find themselves trapped in a house with a man who either wishes to end their lives or their faith. At what point are those one and the same? I can’t recall the last time a horror film kept me so thoroughly engrossed by simply putting people in rooms together and letting them talk. Hugh Grant continues to shine in his villain era, using his natural charisma and good looks to chilling effect: if there’s bullshit to sell, he’s the one to do it.
The First Omen received more attention, but as far as movies about nuns getting impregnated by Satan go, I found Immaculate far more memorable. It’s shlocky entertainment, but it’s also a horror film that holds to its convictions: the final moments are some of the most politically radical of the year, particularly given the recent attacks on women’s rights.
Fans of the slasher genre would do well to check out . More of a stylistic exercise than a traditional narrative, the camera of In A Violent Nature follows behind a supernaturally-resurrected masked killer as he stalks young people in the woods and kills them in gruesome fashion (one scene in particular is sure to become a favorite of gorehounds). The cinematography is slow, smooth, and beautiful, emphasizing how the serenity of the landscape contrasts with nature’s brutality. While director Chris Nash doesn’t seem to take a particular stance on media violence, I found his exploration of (and occasional subversion of) slasher tropes stimulating, right down to the final moments, which unnerve due to their emotional realism rather than climactic bloodletting.
Out of Darkness follows a group of Stone Age travelers on the search for an area with plenty of shelter and food sources. Their journey to the mountains is cut short when they’re attacked by a mysterious creature, forcing them to fight for survival against an unknown enemy. While there are nits to pick (why do all these paleolithic humans look like they just walked off a GQ cover shoot?), I was stunned by the way the ending subverts expectations, transforming what seems like a straightforward wilderness thriller into a meditation on conflict, violence, and human nature.
In a just world, Naomi Scott would have an Oscar nomination for her work in Smile 2.
You’ll Never Find Me is a moody Australian chamber piece about a reclusive man (Brendan Rock) and a young woman (Jordan Cowan) who shows up at his trailer seeking shelter from a storm. The majority of the 100-minute runtime is spent watching these two people talk, and the tension comes from trying to figure out who’s lying and who might hiding a more sinister secret. What begins as a mystery — what’s the truth? — gradually transforms into an eerie, surreal character study about karma, guilt, and the way it manifests as self-loathing. I saw this movie nearly a year ago, and there are still images that I haven’t forgotten.
ABIGAIL
It’s a pity that the big twist of Abigail was spoiled in the marketing — I can’t help but wonder if this incredibly fun and breezy slasher might have become a word-of-mouth sensation if audiences were left to be surprised by its twists and turns on their own. As with Ready or Not, filmmaking duo Radio Silence (Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin) know how to take a simple premise and execute it well: six criminals are hired to abduct a young ballerina and hold her for 24 hours in exchange for a $50 million ransom, only for them to discover that — spoiler! — the titular child is in fact a powerful vampire intent on having them for dinner. What follows is a darkly comedic and gory series of set pieces, as our adult leads struggle to survive against a foe who looks more like Annie than Dracula. The cast finds just the right amount of wry camp amidst the violence, particularly Dan Stevens as a dirtbag cop and Melissa Barrera as our beleaguered final girl. If you like your horror light and bloody, this is a film for you.
THE DEVIL’S BATH
Though it takes place in 18th-century Germany, The Devil’s Bath feels surprisingly timely in its depiction of religious and societal horror. Loosely based on real events, the film follows Agnes (a haunting Anja Plaschg), a newlywed woman in a rural village who strives to be a good wife: she tries to conceive a child, prays to God every night, and gets up early to try and catch some fish for breakfast. But she finds herself unable to get pregnant, likely because her husband seems sexually uninterested — or is it because she’s cursed? It doesn’t help that she finds herself drawn to the corpse of a woman who was publicly executed for murder. The villagers think Agnes is possessed by the devil, but the truth is far more quotidian. The horror of The Devil’s Bath is social and political, and it serves as a bleak and powerful reminder that, no matter how easy it may be to blame our problems on an Other, the truth can only be found by looking inward.
HERE FOR BLOOD
If you’ve ever wondered what it might look like if John Carpenter directed an Evil Dead movie, look no further: Here For Blood combines the wry, macho heroics of Big Trouble in Little China with the gore and gloop of Sam Raimi’s low-budget splatterfest. Shawn Roberts does a fantastic job standing in for Kurt Russell as Tom O’Bannon, a financially strapped pro-wrestler who agrees to help his girlfriend by replacing her as a babysitter for 10-year-old Grace. The night takes a bloody turn when a group of masked intruders attempts to break into the house, leaving Tom and Grace to fend for themselves using their wits and the former’s brawn to survive. Here For Blood has more than its fair share of red syrup, but the violence is always done with a knowing wink, hoping to elicit a delighted chuckle rather than a troubled wince. It’s the kind of movie that’s best experienced with a crowd of people, a comfy chair, and a large bucket of popcorn.
INFESTED and new life
To see how a society deals withs with national trauma, one need look no further than the movies it makes in the aftermath. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was the Vietnam War. From around 2005 until at least 2015, Hollywood churned out film after film that, intentionally or not, functioned as a way to cope with the shock of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent War on Terror, from the alien invasion of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds to the urban destruction of the Transformers series (not to mention the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, which offered audiences the fantasy of heroes who could violently defeat villains and prevent global disaster without making more enemies in the process).
It makes sense that the horror genre would be the natural outlet for us to process the paranoia, isolation, and panic of the COVID-19. Infested, a French production from director Sébastien Vaniček, might appear at first to be a simple, high-concept creature feature about an infestation of killer spiders in a dilapidated apartment complex. But between its paranoid characters who would rather stay inside than risk getting bitten and its depiction of a government content to sit by while the lower class dies, there’s clearly more on its mind than just creepy-crawlies and jump scares (though there are plenty of those, too). Who knew a movie with hair-raising sequences involving mutated arachnids would be the perfect encapsulation of the fear and isolation of lockdown?
And as I wrote last June, while not explicitly about a novel coronavirus, New Life is a mystery-turned-horror film that weaves elements of zombie flicks and chase thrillers into what is ultimately a movie about coping with disease and the government’s efforts to contain it. The narrative follows a young woman named Jessica (Haley Erin) as she tries to make it to the border before a private contractor (Sonya Walger) can arrest and quarantine her, perhaps to lethal effect. It’s a twisty, captivating exploration of the messy intersection between personal liberty and public safety that forces the viewer to weigh what we might have to sacrifice (intentionally or unintentionally) in the name of security and freedom. It’s been months, and I still can’t stop thinking about it.
ODDITY
At times, Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy’s Oddity nearly ventures into full-blown camp. There are soapy relationship dynamics, vengeful twins, hand-carved mannequins that come to life at night, and even a character who may have clairvoyant powers. But McCarthy somehow manages to strike just the right tone and grounded atmosphere to prevent the proceedings from sliding into comedy. It’s the kind of movie best experienced with as little plot information as possible, so I won’t even spoil the premise, suffice it to say this is a careful, methodical chiller that will appeal to those who like their horror with more than a dash of whodunit. It also boasts the most foreboding wooden sculpture since The Wicker Man.
STRANGE DARLING
“You seem like a nice guy. You do. But you never really know. So I'm going to have to ask you, are you a serial killer?”
This is one of the first things that Willa Fitzgerald (giving an awards-worthy performance here as “The Lady”) asks Kyle Gallner (“The Demon”) before the duo head to a cheap motel for a night of drug-fueled sex. And every time I thought I had figured out what would happen next during their one-night stand, the movie threw me another curveball. Over the course of a brisk 96 minutes, writer-director JT Mollner delivers the most exciting puzzle-box of the year, using non-linear storytelling techniques to craft both a compelling character study and an engaging mystery. Throw in some darkly funny appearances from Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey, and you’ve got the makings of a cult classic. And did I mention that it was gorgeously shot on 35mm film by Giovanni Ribisi (yes, that Giovanni Ribisi)? As far as genre pastiches go, this is one of the best in recent memory.
The Substance and what you wish for
My uncle likes to say, “Getting old ain’t for sissies.” When Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore, in a perfect piece of meta-casting) is fired from her long-running televised aerobics program, she realizes she’s not cut out for it. Rather than embracing her status as an elder and seeking new opportunities, she opts instead to try out a black market treatment known as “The Substance,” which promises her a “more perfect” version of herself. But this is a far more physically demanding injection than Botox: after injecting a serum, Elisabeth finds that her consciousness is reborn inside a younger, beautiful woman who emerges from a slit in her back (yes, it’s as gross as that sounds). But of course, forbidden knowledge comes with a price and certain rules that must be followed, and Elisabeth is so desperate to feel worthy of love that she starts to think the rules don’t apply to her. It’s the age-old tale of hubris and the inevitable downfall, but what I love about The Substance is that it’s a serious movie (getting awards consideration, no less!) that proudly asserts itself in the body horror subgenre. The climax involves practical makeup effects so astonishing and gooey that it recalls Brian Yuzna’s infamous Society, another biting satire that twists and contorts its characters as a way of externalizing their inner monstrousness. The irony for Elisabeth, of course, is that she winds up with exactly what was promised — the perfect, refined version of what was always there.
Another film that’s even closer to Society thematically — though the horror here is far more psychological than physical — is What You Wish For, director Nicholas Tomnay’s slow burn chiller about a chef (Nick Stahl) who steals a dead man’s identity and wealth in the hopes of living his dream life. But like Elisabeth Sparkle, he finds himself caught up in consequences he could not foresee, trapped by the ramifications of his own choices (and forced to make even more damning ones). As I wrote previously, What You Wish For and The Substance feel to me like great episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” parables that serve to counsel us about the dangers of succumbing to our most selfish desires (and the people who already have). Both films remind us that there’s a finite amount of resources — youth, money, or life itself — to go around, and for us to have more means that others will have less. Will we heed their warning? Or will we keep seeking more until it costs us our souls?
Terrifier 3
I’m far from a slasher aficionado (I was a bit too young during their 80s and 90s heyday), and if you had told me in 2016 that a Terrifier sequel would be one of the best movies I saw in a particular year, I’d have laughed in your face. The first Terrifier struck me as a fairly paint-by-numbers affair, with Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) as a dull pastiche of other, more iconic movie killers (think Pennywise meets Freddy Krueger with a dash of the Jigsaw puppet). But the sequel took things in a surreal direction. It also contained what might be the most sadistic and unpleasant extended murder scene in an American film in the 21st century. Leone is clearly aware of the thematic and social concerns of the slasher genre, and he's willing to navigate the tension inherent in its depiction of violence as something horrific but also cathartic and entertaining. In Terrifier 3, the struggle between Good and Evil becoming an explicitly religious one, with Art as a demonic force that only be defeated by our resurrected Christ-figure / Final Girl. There's also a bit more willingness to critique the audience that makes this franchise so successful -- Art's opening slaughter is set to "O Come All Ye Faithful," inviting devoted fans to witness the re-birth of an anti-Christ, and a true-crime fan discovers reality is far more horrifying than fiction. Say what you will about these films, they aren’t “mindless” entertainment.
If you’re a gorehound, this is a movie for you. If you’re not, you should probably avoid it. I’ve seen a lot of disturbing shit in movies, but the Terrifier films are some of the few that I know I can count on to make me squirm in genuine discomfort. What can I say? There’s a sick part of me that enjoys watching fictional people get tortured and dispatched in the most awful ways imaginable. This brand of “torture porn” isn’t for everyone, but there’s no denying that Leone does it well. Thornton has now managed to distinguish Art the Clown from other slasher villains by drawing on silent movie tropes and traditional clowning techniques. And Lauren LaVera secures her place as one of the most compelling slasher heroines in recent memory. I never though I’d be looking forward to a sequel, but compared to some of the real-life horrors shown on the nightly news, sometimes it’s nice to have bloody catharsis.