Top 10 of 2020

It’s obvious to us all that 2020 was a pretty godawful year for general human existence. But for the horror genre, it was actually a really good year, in my view. Now, we did miss out on a lot of the scheduled, anticipated theatrical horror, like Halloween Kills and Nia DaCosta’s rendition of Candyman. But a wide variety of high-quality horror movies made their way to VOD and streaming platforms. Cosmic horror of the Lovecraftian variety was a standout subgenre and horror dealing frankly with difficult tragedy was also popular. While no tentpole movies made my list, even some of the theatrical stuff, like Underwater, was pretty interesting and made some bold choices. These are 10 of my favorites, but there were at least 20 horror movies I really enjoyed this year.

10. Gretel and Hansel (dir: Oz Perkins)

Oz Perkins’ latest is very much spiritually in line with his previous films, particularly I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House (2016). It’s gorgeous to watch, lush to hear, and ominously poetic in its execution. But it’s also somewhat obtuse and the ending doesn’t land as poignantly as it feels like it should. But I’m not sure there’s any horror film from 2020 that looks and sounds better than this. Perkins knows how to appease the senses.

9. The Beach House (dir: Jeffrey A. Brown)

Although Color Out of Space, which appears higher on this list, was the more heralded and obviously H.P. Lovecraft-inspired work, The Beach House is an extremely admirable effort to portray the eerie existential void in which humankind stares. The low budget does minimize the on-screen effects, but there is a palpable atmosphere of dread once the story moves past the gentle and somewhat slow build-up. There is just enough ooey-gooey goodness to please body horror fans and the movie thoughtfully ponders the future of our species — and I think the movie strikes an interestingly optimistic tone about our demise.

8. Relic (dir: Natalie Erika James)

Relic was one of the more poignant horror films to drop this year, dealing compassionately with the devastation that dementia can wreak on a family, reminding me of The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014). But the movie is also out to unsettle, and effectively wields demonic possession and a geometry-shifting house straight out of the book House of Leaves. Overall, Relic has a beautiful sense of empathy that is rare in the genre.

7. Sputnik (dir: Egor Abramenko)

This Russian film is the best alien horror film the last few years have offered. There is definitely a lot of extraterrestrial-driven carnage, but what sets the movie apart is its examination of Cold War politics in the Soviet Union, and illustrates many of the fatal flaws that were ultimately the undoing of that regime. The alien design here is interesting and mostly convincing, although entirely computer-generated. It reminded me of Life from 2017, in its eschewing of humanoid terror in favor of something way more alien.

6. Color Out of Space (dir: Richard Stanley)

Richard Stanley has been a somewhat notorious pariah in Hollywood, but production house SpectreVision (famously co-founded by genre champion Elijah Wood) trusted Stanley’s vision for this Lovecraft adaptation enough to basically give him free reign. Their trust was well-founded because this imaginative movie is at once creepy, relatively faithful to its source, and expansive enough to work as a feature film and potential introduction to a full SpectreVision Lovecraft universe. The film’s kind of heavy on the CGI, which only works some of the time, but there are still plenty of grisly practical effects and horrifying insinuations about the fate of the human race.

5. The Mortuary Collection (dir: Ryan Spindell)

This was the most fun I’ve had watching a movie in some time. Generally, horror anthologies are an uneven bunch, but since Ryan Spindell wrote and directed all the segments, the movie is pleasantly entertaining the entire duration and flows better than most anthologies could hope. This film offers a little something for every type of horror fan and attention to small details make the fictional town of Raven’s End feel real and lived in. Clancy Brown is wonderful as the mortician guiding the storytelling. Bolstered by Spindell’s above-average sense of humor and drama, as well as his visual style, The Mortuary Collection is a pretty perfect watch for Halloween season.

4. Anything for Jackson (dir: Justin G. Dyck)

This movie plays sort of like Rosemary’s Baby but from the point of view of the Castevets. Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings are spectacular as an elderly couple driven to the desperation of a Satanic ritual as they grieve the death of their daughter and grandson. Fantastic acting, effective pacing, unsettling atmosphere, ghoulish ghost/demon designs, and a script that infuses the scares with pathos help elevate this above the fray from the year.

3. His House (dir: Remi Weekes)

This Netflix original is a stunningly poetic examination of immigration and atonement, as told through the plight of two Sudanese refugees trying to make their way in London. The movie’s a bit short on scares (though there are a few scenes that are very effective), but it’s so beautifully written that you hardly notice it’s only barely a horror movie. The horrors here are mostly in how we treat each other; there just happens to also be a demon stalking around.

2. The Wolf of Snow Hollow (dir: Jim Cummings)

This is probably the most smartly written horror movie I’ve seen in years. It’s been echoed elsewhere, but this is essentially a genre-tinged Coen brothers movie. Jim Cummings writes, directs, and stars in this flick that focuses on the downward spiral of a small-town sheriff’s officer trying to solve the most grisly case of his career while watching his marriage, relationship with his daughter, and health of his father fall apart simultaneously. The movie is bitingly funny, though not in a belly-laugh sort of way, and has moments of genuine horror, though scares are not its central or even really a primary concern. I think this fact led to some genre fans writing it off.

1. The Dark and the Wicked (dir: Bryan Bertino)

I think most of us can agree that Bertino’s debut film, The Strangers, is one of the scariest horror flicks of the 2000s. However, I think his follow-ups have mostly fallen short. But with The Dark and the Wicked, Bertino finds his way back to the scares in a film that sort of plays like an even more vague version of The Witch (2016), but without the impenetrable accents. The movie leverages silence and darkness more effectively than most horror movies and never goes for the cheap jump scare. Slowly creeping dread and bleakness are the game here. There are no easy answers as to why these dark and wicked things are happening to this family, but that’s okay with me.