Top Ten Horror Movies of 2020

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my most anticipated horror movies of 2021, and now it's time to do my favorite horror movies of 2020.  While this year was kind of a bust for new theatrical releases, horror was actually able to thrive a bit.  Granted, we still had a lot of big movies pushed back to next year, but horror has an advantage over a lot of other genres in this regard: many of the best horror movies are small indie films that would've gone straight to streaming services or VOD even if theaters were open.  Because of that, we still got a lot of good new horror this year, so I didn't have to pad this list with mediocre releases that wouldn't have had a chance without the pandemic.  I really love all of these movies, so without further ado, here are my top ten horror films of 2020.

10) Scare Package

Scare Package is an anthology movie that came out on the horror streaming service Shudder back in June, and it's one of the best meta horrors I've ever seen.  Imagine if Randy from Scream was in The Cabin in the Woods, and you'll have a decent idea of what this film is like.  It lovingly and hilariously pokes fun at some typical genre tropes (especially the ones that don't make much sense) and some of the ways we fans often talk about horror, and it's an absolute delight to watch.  It's funny, it has heart, and it's made by people who love the genre just as much as we do.

9) Host

Host is another Shudder movie, and when this one came out back in July, it took the horror world by storm.  It's a found footage movie, but instead of using camera footage, it takes place over a zoom call.  It's about a group of friends who hold a virtual séance, and when one of them accidentally invites an evil presence into their call, all hell breaks loose.  That might sound generic and lame, but I promise you it's not.  This movie takes a super simple premise and turns it into cinematic gold, so you're going to be seeing this one on a lot of top ten lists this year.

8) Vampires vs. The Bronx

Vampires vs. The Bronx is a Netflix movie that came out back in October as part of their Netflix and Chills lineup, and it's about a trio of kids in the Bronx who have to fend off a group of vampires who've taken up residence in their neighborhood.  This movie has laughs, great characters, menacing vampires, and a great message.  It's pretty much the total package, so even though Netflix movies are known for being very hit or miss, this is definitely a big hit for them.

7) Sputnik

Sputnik is a Russian movie that actually wasn't on my radar until about a month ago.  I completely missed its release, but then I got a screener for it through one of the websites I write for.  And I'm super glad I did because this movie is fantastic.  It takes place in the 1980s, and it's about a Soviet cosmonaut who returns to earth with an alien monster living inside of him.  Going into this film, I was expecting a monster movie along the lines of Alien, but instead I got a Guillermo del Toro-esque drama with horror elements, and it completely works.  It's a slow burn that focuses more on the characters than the monster, and it exceeded all my expectations.

6) Color Out of Space

Color Out of Space originally premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but it was released to the general public in January of this year, so it still counts as a 2020 film.  It's based on the H. P. Lovecraft story "The Colour Out of Space," and it does a great job of capturing the essence of that story while also updating it and bringing it into the present day.  It's about a family that encounters an alien creature that's literally just a color, and it wreaks absolute havoc on their lives.  I know that sounds really weird and probably a bit ridiculous, but the movie actually pulls it off.  In good Lovecraftian fashion, this film taps into our fear of the unknown and reminds us just how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, so if you never imagined that a color could be scary, this movie will prove you wrong.

5) Love and Monsters

Love and Monsters is a post-apocalyptic monster movie set seven years after the earth was taken over by giant, mutated versions of normal animals like bugs and lizards, forcing humanity to live in underground bunkers to stay alive.  It's about a young man who decides to leave his bunker one day and travel across the surface to go see his girlfriend, and along the way, he meets some really interesting people and fights some scary monsters.  This movie gets a lot right, but I can sum it all up by saying that it does the absolute most important thing that any monster movie needs to do: it strikes a perfect balance between great characters and really cool monsters, so in my book, it's the best creature feature of the year.

4) Impetigore

Impetigore is an Indonesian movie that came out in its home country in 2019, but it was released here in the states on Shudder in 2020.  It's a folk horror about a young woman who travels to her ancestral village to take possession of her family's house, and soon after she arrives, she realizes that the villagers have other, much more sinister plans for her.  This movie was written and directed by Joko Anwar, who also made another fantastic movie called Satan's Slaves, so I was really excited to see what else he could do.  And I was not disappointed.  Unlike way too many horror movies today, this one doesn't feel the need to throw jump scares at you every five seconds.  Instead, it's a very atmospheric film.  Even when nothing all that strange is going on, it's just dripping with creepiness, so it keeps you hooked from beginning to end.  On top of that, this movie also has an intriguing plot and characters that you root for, so it works on pretty much every level.

3) The Dark and the Wicked

The Dark and the Wicked is another movie that came out at a festival last year (Fantasia) but was released to the public this year.  It was written and directed by Bryan Bertino, the same guy who did The Strangers, and it has the same bleak, pessimistic tone that his first movie had.  In fact, you might even say that this film is basically just The Strangers transposed from home invasion to supernatural horror.  It's about a family that's beset by a demon, and much like the killers in The Strangers, the demon in this one just toys with them before finally finishing them off.  It's a really bleak portrayal of evil, and I have to admit that it got under my skin in a way that few films ever have.  In fact, I can count on one hand the movies that have affected me the way this one did, so I couldn't help but put it near the top of my list.

2) Relic

Relic is an Australian movie about a woman with dementia who goes missing for a few days.  Her daughter and granddaughter go to her house to look for her, and when weird things begin to happen, you start to think that this might be more than just a bad case of dementia.  Soon afterwards, the woman shows up out of the blue and refuses to talk about where she went, and their situation just gets scarier and scarier.  I absolutely adore this movie.  My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, so horror films that deal with dementia really resonate with me, and this is hands down the best of the bunch.  It does a great job of depicting what dementia is like for both its victims and their families, and it also shows us how we should treat people afflicted with this terrible disorder.  It's atmospheric, it's beautiful, and it has a great message, so in some other years, it probably would've taken the #1 spot on my list.

1) The Invisible Man

But this isn't any other year.  This is 2020, and my favorite movie of any genre this year is The Invisible Man.  It's a modern updating of the classic H. G. Wells novel (and its 1930s film adaptation), and I can't say enough good things about the job that writer/director Leigh Whannell did with it.  He took a very sci-fi concept and made you feel like it could actually happen, and he used it to unmask a very real and very pervasive evil in today's society: abusive relationships and the lack of empathy towards women who experience them.  I could go on and on about this movie, so I'm going to control myself and just leave you with this: Leigh Whannell's last movie, Upgrade, was really good, and it made me interested to see what he would do next.  But this movie immediately catapulted him into the upper echelon of horror directors working today, so now I'm not just interested to see his next project.  I absolutely can't wait to see it because I'm confident that it'll land a spot near the top of my list once again no matter what year it comes out.

New Theatrical Movie Review: Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter is an action-monster movie based on a video game series of the same name, and it came out on December 18.  It was written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, the same guy who did the Resident Evil movies, and it's about a group of soldiers who get sucked into another world filled with huge, vicious monsters.

Going into this film, I had heard that it was a dumb, fun monster movie, and I thought I would really like it.  Dumb, fun monster movies are right up my alley (for example, I loved Rampage from a few years ago), so I was very much looking forward to this one.  Unfortunately, it's a bit too dumb, and its faults really take away from the fun, so I came out of the theater pretty disappointed.

I had a few problems with this movie, but by far the biggest one was the monsters.  If you're going to make a dumb, fun monster movie, you have to have fun monsters, but this one didn't.  For about the first hour of the film (and it's only an hour and forty minutes long), pretty much the only creatures you see are these giant spider-like things, and while they're cool enough, they get boring rather quickly.  This kind of movie needs variety in its monsters (like Kong: Island or this year's underseen gem Love and Monsters), and an hour of giant spiders is the exact opposite of that.

To be fair, there is one creature that's not a spider, but it's not terribly interesting either.  It's basically just a generic burrowing monster à la Tremors or the sand worms from Beetlejuice.  It's not bad, but it doesn't add nearly enough variety to this first part of the film.

Then, in about the last forty minutes of the movie, you see some different monsters, but rather than make you excited to see something new, they just make you realize how derivative the film is.  We've seen giant spiders and burrowing monsters a million times before, and this second batch isn't any different.  Some of them look like dinosaurs (there's even a stampede scene that reminded me a lot of Jurassic Park), there's a dragon that looks like a knockoff of Smaug from the Hobbit trilogy, and there's another monster that looks like a cross between a dragon and a xenomorph.  Admittedly, a xenomorph-dragon sounds pretty cool, but in the context of this movie, it's just another derivative creature that doesn't add anything new or interesting to the genre.

That's all pretty bad, but to be honest, I might've been able to forgive it if the human characters were fun to watch.  Unfortunately, they weren't.  Almost all of the soldiers die in the first few minutes, and then the one survivor teams up with someone who's been there for much longer and who knows the ins and outs of that world.  Paul W. S. Anderson could've done some pretty interesting stuff with that setup, but he instead chose to make his characters paper thin.  They're not terrible; there's just nothing particularly likeable about them.  In fact, they're so generic that they're almost not even real characters.  They're just excuses to see more monsters, and given how bad the monsters are, that's not a good thing.

Last but not least, we have the final twenty or thirty minutes of the movie.  This last bit opens up the world a little and implies that there's a lot of mythology behind this place and these monsters, but the film holds it all back like a tall kid holding a candy bar above his head while a short kid tries in vain to reach it.  It's really frustrating, and it's made even worse by the final scene.  It ends kind of like the original Mortal Kombat, with the good guys getting ready to square off against another monster right before the credits roll, and it feels like the filmmakers purposely held off on explaining the mythology just to get us to come back for a sequel.  It felt like a big slap in the face, and it killed any last vestige of interest I may have had in a potential sequel.

So all in all, I would not recommend that you go see this movie.  It's just a mix of elements taken from other (and better) films and put together into a frustratingly unsatisfying story.  If you like dumb, fun monster movies, go watch something like Rampage, Pacific Rim, or just about any Godzilla movie.  They're all much better ways to spend your time than Monster Hunter.

Most Anticipated Horror Movies of 2021

2020 has been an absolutely crazy year in just about every respect, and movies have been no exception.  The vast majority of major releases got pushed back to 2021, including several horror films that had the potential to be big hits.  Thankfully, 2020 is almost over, and it looks like there might finally be a light at the end of this pandemic tunnel.  That's great for a lot of reasons, but for the purposes of this blog, it means that we might actually get all the movies we're looking forward to next year.  It feels like the last time that happened was a lifetime ago, and it's great to have some realistic hope that it just might happen again.  To celebrate the end of this dreadful year and the hope of a better 2021, here are my ten most anticipated horror films of the coming new year.

Morbius

Morbius isn't what most people normally think of when they think about horror, but I'm putting it on this list anyway.  It's based on a Marvel Comics anti-hero named Michael Morbius, a scientist who unintentionally turns himself into a kind of living vampire, and it hits theaters on March 19.  Horror is my favorite genre, but I'm also a huge fan of comic book movies, so if you make a comic book movie about a horror character, I'm totally in.  What's more, while the movie is part of Sony's new Spider-Man universe (which started with 2018's Venom), the trailer seems to imply that it's also connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I'm just chomping at the bit to see what treats this film has in store for us.

A Quiet Place Part II

Next, we have a movie that needs no introduction.  A Quiet Place is one of the most popular horror films of the past few years, so obviously the sequel is going to land a spot on this list.  It comes out on April 23, and it follows the Abbot family (the people from the first one) as they venture out into unexplored territory.  The early reactions (it was originally supposed to come out this year) say it's another winner, so I can't wait to see what new silent horrors John Krasinski has in store for us this time.

Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho is probably my least anticipated movie on this list, but I'm still looking forward to it.  It's a psychological thriller with some sort of time travel element, and it comes out on April 23, just like A Quiet Place Part II.  We don't know much about this film, but it's going to be directed by Edgar Wright, the guy behind the zombie classic Shaun of the Dead.  That's enough to get me intrigued, so while I'm admittedly not going crazy with excitement for this movie, I'm definitely interested to see what Edgar Wright does with his next foray into horror.

Godzilla vs. Kong

Going from my least anticipated movie on the list to my most anticipated movie in any genre, Godzilla vs. Kong is exactly what it sounds like.  It's Godzilla fighting King Kong, and it hits theaters on May 21.  I'm a huge kaiju fan, and in my opinion, Legendary Pictures has been doing an amazing job with these two monsters in the past few years, so I absolutely cannot wait to see them pit these two giants of cinema against each other for the first time in almost sixty years.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

I think The Conjuring is the best horror movie of this millennium, and I think The Conjuring 2 is one of the best horror sequels of all time, so of course I'm excited for the third entry in the series.  However, I have to admit that my excitement for this one is a bit tempered.  James Wan (in my opinion the best horror director working today) is stepping down from the franchise to work on other projects, and I'm not convinced that the new director will be able to continue the magic of the series.  But I'm willing to give it a shot, so I'm still going to be first in line to see The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It when it comes out on June 4.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Sure, sequels made multiple decades after the originals are notoriously hit or miss, but that doesn't mean I can't be optimistic about a new entry in the original Ghostbusters series.  Afterlife is a new sequel to Ghostbusters 2, and it comes out on June 11.  I'm a big fan of both of the original movies, so I'm crossing my fingers and praying really hard that this new one honors their legacy and shows a whole new generation "who you gonna call."

Candyman

I'm not a huge fan of slashers, but one of the few slashers I really like is the original Candyman.  It's about way more than just a guy going around killing people, so it gives us some real narrative substance, something this subgenre often lacks.  I don't know if this new reboot/sequel is even going to come close to the original, but since it's produced by Jordan Peele (who wrote and directed Get Out and Us), I'm willing to give it a shot.  It comes out on August 27, and hopefully it can capture at least some of the same magic that makes the original so much better than your typical by-the-numbers slasher.

Halloween Kills

Another slasher that I really like is the original Halloween, and while I'm not a big fan of the rest of the franchise, I think the 2018 sequel is fantastic.  Sure, it has some stupid teen slasher tropes, but it also tells a really compelling story about Laurie Strode's lifelong struggle with trauma after her encounter with Michael Myers.  I have no idea what they're going to do in this new one to make it stand out from the slasher pack, but I trust that the guys who made the only good Halloween sequel can do it again.  Halloween Kills comes out on October 15, just in time for your, well, Halloween viewing pleasure.

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley is a new Guillermo del Toro movie that's supposed to come out some time in December of 2021.  It's a psychological thriller about a carnival worker who gets by on deception and manipulation, but one day he meets a woman who's even more dangerous than he is.  Other than that basic plot synopsis, I don't know too much about this film (it's based on a book, but I've never read it), but the fact that it's directed by Guillermo del Toro is enough to pique my interest.  I don't like every movie he's ever made, but I do like most of them, so I'll always be excited whenever he comes out with a mysterious new project.

Malignant

The last movie on this list doesn't have a release date, but it is supposed to come out at some point during 2021.  We don't know much of anything about Malignant except that it's directed by James Wan and that it's supposedly a giallo film (a precursor to slashers, this style was popular among Italian filmmakers in the 60s and 70s).  I'm not much of a giallo fan (I like them even less than slashers), but I'll watch any horror movie James Wan directs.  Like I said before, I think he's the best horror director working today, so even if he's dabbling in a subgenre I don't generally like, I'll still be there whenever this movie finally hits theaters.

Catch-Up Review: Sputnik

Sputnik is a Russian movie that came out in its home country back in April, and it was released in limited theaters and on VOD platforms here in the states this past August.  It takes place in the 1980s, and it follows a Soviet psychiatrist who's recruited by the military to examine a cosmonaut who came back to earth with a dangerous alien organism living inside of him.

I went into this movie expecting an Alien-style space monster movie, but what I got was so much more.  It's a very slow burn, and while you do eventually get to see the creature in all its vicious glory, it never turns into a full-blown horror movie.  It's really more of a Guillermo del Toro-esque drama with horror-centric elements, and it's fantastic.

The film takes about a half hour to set up the characters and the plot, and when it finally shows you the creature, it just raises a whole bunch of questions.  Then, after that initial reveal, the bulk of the movie is about the psychiatrist and her military colleagues studying the monster and trying to answer those questions.  You get a few scenes of legit horror, but it's mainly people talking and trying to figure out what makes this thing tick.  It's really intriguing, and the movie keeps your interest the whole way through by making you want to find out more about this creature and what happened to the cosmonaut.

Seeing this all unfold is the best thing about the movie, so I won't say anything more about the mystery of the alien creature.  It's best to go in as blind as possible, and I wouldn't want to ruin the experience for you.  What I can say, though, is that the film grounds this mystery with strong characters that you grow to like, and it even gives you a bit of the cosmonaut's backstory.  By the end of the movie, that backstory becomes an important part of his arc, and it also gives the entire story a bit of an emotional underpinning.

On top of that, I can also tell you that the monster is really cool.  The design isn't the most original thing in the world, but it's good enough.  It'll look pretty familiar to seasoned genre vets, but it's not such a blatant ripoff of other creatures that it becomes distracting.  What's more, when it goes all out and attacks people, the thing is just as brutal as you would expect.  It pulls no punches and takes no prisoners, so fans of monster action will definitely enjoy those moments.

But this thing isn't just a mindless killer.  Again, I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm going to have to be vague.  Suffice it to say, there's more to this creature than just a thirst for blood.  The filmmakers find a way to flesh it out a bit as an actual character rather than simply a force of nature.  It doesn't talk or communicate like an actual person, but it's more than just your typical animalistic monster.

All that being said, I do have to give one caveat about the creature.  It's CGI, and I only saw the movie in standard definition (in case you're wondering, no, I didn't download it illegally; I got a standard def screener), not high definition.  The monster looked fine to me, but I can't guarantee that it'll look great if you watch it in high def.

All in all, I really enjoyed Sputnik.  It wasn't on my radar when it first came out, but I'm super happy that I eventually found out about it and got a chance to watch it.  It has a cool monster, characters you root for, and an intriguing plot, and in my opinion, it's one of the best horror movies of the year.  In fact, unless a slew of great new genre films pops up in the next few weeks, it's going to land a spot on my top ten of 2020, so I highly recommend that you check this one out.

Christmas Horror Movie Recommendations

It's December, which means that just about everywhere you turn, you'll see houses decorated for Christmas, you'll hear radio stations playing Christmas music, and you'll see way too many channels showing Christmas movies.  What's a horror fan to do during this time?  Can we celebrate the most wonderful time of the year in a way that suits us, or do we have to resign ourselves to watching Elf and Hallmark movies?

Thankfully, there are plenty of Christmas horror films, so we can happily get into the spirit of the season without abandoning our favorite genre.  We just need to know what's out there, and that's what I'm here to help you with.  I've put together a list of five of my favorite Christmas horror movies that you can watch this holiday season.

The Nightmare Before Christmas 

Let's begin with the most universally beloved movie on this list.  People of all ages and with all different kinds of tastes love The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Its monsters aren't so creepy that they'll scare non-horror fans away, but they're cool enough that we genre fans still love them.  It's the perfect middle ground in that regard, so you can watch this film with just about anybody.

But it's not just about the monsters.  It also has a really great story.  It's about a monster who's grown tired of constantly being scary, and when he discovers Christmas, he instantly falls in love with it.  In fact, he loves it so much that he kidnaps Santa and tries to do Santa's job himself.  This all goes terribly awry, and he has to scramble to fix it before it's too late.

It's a heartwarming tale about diversity, broadening our horizons, and recognizing that we need other people, especially those who are different from us.  It celebrates the differences among us and tells us that those differences are a real strength, so if you're looking for a fun horror movie that the whole family can watch and learn from, The Nightmare Before Christmas is just the film for you.  

Gremlins

Gremlins is another beloved classic, although it's not quite on the level of The Nightmare Before Christmas.  It's a horror-comedy about a man who buys his son a pet called a mogwai, and the creature comes with a few very important rules the kid has to follow.  Unfortunately, he gets a bit sloppy, and that one mogwai turns into a hoard of mischievous gremlins that run around town destroying things and causing a whole lot of trouble for all the residents.

Unlike the other movies on this list, this one isn't really about Christmas.  It simply takes place around Christmas time, but there are a few scenes that really lean into the holiday setting.  For instance, at one point in the film, a bunch of gremlins show up at someone's front door, and they start singing a Christmas carol.

All in all, Gremlins is quite possibly the best example of a horror movie that's considered a classic simply because it's really, really fun.  It's just a hoot seeing the creatures run around town and cause a mess while imitating normal human life (the Christmas carol scene is just one of many examples), so if you're a fan of monsters, this should definitely be on your Christmas watch list.

Krampus

As you might've guessed, Krampus is about the infamous anti-Santa figure of German folklore.  Whereas Santa brings children presents if they've been good, Krampus punishes kids who've been bad, and in this movie, the main characters have been very bad.  It's about a family that basically hates one another, and Krampus comes to punish them for their lack of Christmas spirit.

Much like Gremlins, this one is also a horror-comedy about a bunch of monsters.  While Krampus himself is obviously the main bad guy, he brings a bunch of minions with him, and they're almost as much fun to watch as the gremlins.  Then, when the big guy himself shows up, he's just as terrifying as you would expect.

But unlike Gremlins, this one doesn't just happen to take place on Christmas.  It's soaked in the themes, imagery, and traditions of the holiday, so if you want a creature feature that truly revolves around Christmas, you should give Krampus a watch.

A Christmas Horror Story

Of all the movies on this list, A Christmas Horror Story is hands down the most purely horror.  It's not an animated children's horror movie, and it's not a horror-comedy.  This is just a straight up horror movie.  It's an anthology film, and all of the stories in it center around Christmas in some way.  For example, there's a segment about a family going to get a Christmas tree, and there's another one where Santa Claus has to defend his home from Krampus.

Like all anthologies, some of the stories are better than others, but there aren't any complete duds.  They all work to some extent at least, so at no point will you find yourself too tempted to fast forward to the next segment.  In particular, the wraparound story stars William Shatner as a radio DJ, and he's a lot of fun to watch.

So if you're looking for a straight up horror movie this December, give A Christmas Horror Story a shot.  It's a bevy of fun Christmas scares that forms a good counterbalance to many of the other films on this list, so it will round out your holiday horror viewing quite nicely.

Rare Exports

Finally, let's take a look at a horror movie that's all about Santa Claus.  Rare Exports is a Finnish movie that reimagines Santa as a demon-like creature that kidnaps and tortures children who misbehave, and a long time ago, he was trapped in ice by the people he terrorized.  However, his frozen prison has recently been discovered, and it's up to just a handful of people to keep him from wreaking havoc once again.

This movie puts a cool twist on the evil Santa trope (he's not just a guy in a Santa costume who goes around killing people), and it creates an interesting mythology in the process.  It's one of the more original Christmas horror films you'll see, and that alone makes it worth watching.

On top of that, it also has likeable characters that you easily root for, so you become invested in the story.  Unlike way too many throwaway horror films, you actually care what happens to these people, and that makes all the difference.  In short, Rare Exports is a creepily delightful Christmas horror movie, so if you're a fan of creative twists on traditional mythology, I highly recommend checking this one out.