Yeah, yeah, everyone does a “top 10” Halloween movie post. But, I hate “going to the well” lemming mentality for these kinds of posts so… are my top 10 Halloween movies of the past 10 years. Halloween isn’t about watching a bunch of classic movies you have already seen 10 times before. Yes, Halloween, Psycho, Carrie, The Exorcist and A Nightmare on Elm Street are ALL AWESOME. But Halloween is about being scared out of your gourd and sleeping with the light on for a week. So, I thought I’d put a list of new and obscure horror films together that will CREEP you out! Seriously, remember the feeling you got the first time you saw Friday the 13th? Yeah, that’s the feeling these movies will give you.
For a Classic List of Scary Movies: Boston.com’s Top 50 Scary Movies
For a List of New Scary movies: Unrealty Mag’s Top 10 Best Horror Films of the Last Decade
1. The Midnight Meat Train (2008)
The photographer Leon lives with his girlfriend and waitress Maya waiting for a chance to get in the photo business. When Maya contacts their friend Jurgis, he schedules a meeting for Leon with the successful owner of arts gallery Susan Hoff; she analyzes Leon’s work and asks him to improve the quality of his photos. During the night, the upset Leon decides to wander on the streets taking pictures with his camera, and he follows three punks down to the subway station; when the gang attacks a young woman, Leon defends her and the guys move on. On the next morning, Leon discovers that the woman is missing. He goes to the police station, but Detective Lynn Hadley does not give much attention to him and discredits his statement. Leon becomes obsessed to find what happened with the stranger and he watches the subway station. When he sees the elegant butcher Mahogany in the train, Leon believes he might be a murderer and stalks him everywhere, in the beginning of his journey to the darkness.
The Audition
You didn’t think I’d make this list without a Takeshi Miike film right? Well, Audition has to be one of the most ****ed up movies ever made, and if you can get through the absurdity of it, it’s a damn good horror flick as well.
The burlap sack reveal remains one of the most disturbing thoughts ever put into film, and the movie even provoked one woman so much at a screening with Miike, she stood up and yelled “You’re evil!” at him. How’s that for a screen test?
If you haven’t seen Audition, you should, but approach with caution. You might not be the same afterwards.
The Orphanage
The Orphanage is the best horror film of the last decade because it’s just so damn smart. The entire movie can be read two different ways, depending on how you’d like to interpret it. It can either be a ghost story, full of long-dead children running around the halls of a creepy orphanage, or it can be a psychological thriller, where all the ghosts turn out to be either real or imagined, and I’ve had many people miss this aspect of the film completely.
The movie is absolutely terrifying despite lacking any real gore and only a handful of jump moments. It’s an exercise in what can happen when intelligent people actually get their hands on a horror script, and the reigns are handed to a director who knows that real horror is more about the prelude to the kill than the kill itself. And sometimes there doesn’t even need to be a kill at all.
Session 9
Session 9 (if you are from Boston, this will creep you out for weeks and leave you sleepless… hint – think abandoned Danvers State Mental Asylum.) This movie creeped both Nick and I out – I think he didn’t sleep for like a week after watching it. If you ever lived in Mass. and you heard stories about the “Institution on the Hill” and you want to be scared out of your mind, watch it. It is the creepiest movie EVER! The gist? A cleaning crew working at an abandoned mental hospital is an obvious recipe for scares. You just know that something bad is going to happen. And happen it does. It’s only at the end do we – the audience – realize how crazy one of the crew members has been since the beginning. As an added bonus the film was shot at the former state hospital in Danvers, Mass.
Paranormal Activity (in theaters)
A young couple suspects that their house is haunted by a malevolent entity. They set up video surveillance to capture evidence of what happens at night as they sleep. Their surveillance and home videos have been edited into the 99 minute feature film “Paranormal Activity”
Honorable Mention: The Exorcism of Emily Rose, 28 days Later, A Haunting in Connecticut, Frailty, Bug (2007), Dawn of the Dead, What Lies Beneath, Ju-on.
Seen one of these movies and had the shit scared out of you? Tell me about it! Or know of a particularly scary new or obscure movie? List it in the comments below!
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