27 Oct Best Horror Films of the 21st Century

Before diving straight into my list of the best horror films of the current millennium (thus far), I think it will be helpful to frame the trends that preceded and indelibly influenced them, and in so doing give a shout out to films that most people are likely to have already seen in order to shine more light on films that you may not have seen.

The first decade of the 2000s was mostly an era of genre-blending. Just as the 80s gave rise to the Horror-Comedy, the 00s became a Golden Age of Horror Spoofs. The Wayans Brothers’ Scream spoof, Scary Movie, became the highest grossing Black film of all time–a record it would hold for almost two decades until Marvel’s Black Panther unseated it in 2018. Scary Movie also maintains a place on the All-Time Most Profitable Movies list with a budget of $18 million and a worldwide gross of $278 million, representing a 1544% return on investment.

The other most prominent trend of the 2000s was the Action-Horror hybrid, also with roots in the 1980s–as pioneered by James Cameron in his Aliens and Terminator films. The now substantially lowered cost of digital effects made them far cheaper than practical FX and that completely changed the look and pace of Horror films, resulting in Universal’s 1999 remake of The Mummy taking on a more Indiana Jones than Imhotep feel. The massive success of the franchise led to swashbuckling takes on Van Helsing and even Hansel and Gretel. These are generally not good movies, but David Twohy’s surprise hit Pitch Black (featuring a then-unknown Vin Diesel) shone head and shoulders above the entire genre of Alien rip-off films to establish a truly scary and exceptional Sci-fi cinema experience that launched a franchise. Paul Verhoeven’s exceptionally violent and mean-spirited Invisible Man re-jiggle, Hollow Man, was another rare example of true, unadulterated horror at the turn of the century (even if it didn’t entirely succeed), and Mary Harron’s visceral and satirical adaptation of author Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho captured the scathing parallels between Wall Street trading and grisly, serial murder.

More and more remakes of 80s, 70s and even older horror films (and their sequels) managed to occupy the box office steadily, but to mostly little acclaim. There were some rare exceptions, however. Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 reimagining of Suspiria actually makes better use of the Cold War period setting than the Dario Argento original, which was shot during the actual Cold War in Berlin in 1977. Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds was his scariest films since Jaws, and the undeniable acting chops of Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, and a scene-stealing Tim Robbins injected an immediacy that gave this well-read story a sense that anything could happen. Likewise a big-budgeted, Will Smith led version of I Am Legend, managed to survive multiple directors and casting announcements (over a dozen years) to deliver a startling and effective adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel that had previously been filmed as The Omega Man, and The Last Man on Earth. Director Francis Lawrence’s starkly empty New York City streets of 2007 was an odd premonition of April 2020’s pandemic in the way that Independence Day had presented the unthinkable destruction of skyscrapers five years before the real-life events of 9/11.

While American movies were locked in a digital-splatter devolution, Asian horror films became a whole new wellspring of ideas. Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998) caused a worldwide sensation that hadn’t been seen since Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th and launched a cottage industry of remakes, sequels, copies, and variations on a theme that shined a light not just on Japan, but also Korea and Thailand where the Pang Brothers’ The Eye (2002) and Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) launched industries of their own.

In 2000 Japanese journeyman Kinji Fukasaku helmed his swansong, Battle Royale, a sort of Hunger Games before-the-fact, that was deemed so controversial an export that it took almost a decade to get an official release in the United States. Higuchinsky brought an H.G. Lewis sensibility to the Tim Burton aesthetic via his wondrously weird Uzumaki, and the following year Sion Sono, an experienced indie director with already a dozen projects on his resume, established himself on the international awards circuit with Suicide Club, an exquisite blend of glam rock kitsch and over-the-top gore clearly influenced by Takashi Miike’s Audition.

And so it is against this background that The Best Horror Films of the 21st Century were born.

To a true, die-hard horror fan, many of the films on this list may seem obvious (or possibly heretical), but I’m sticking to the same criteria I used in my list of 13 Less Obvious Horror Films: (well-shot, well-acted, creepy) and expanding to highlight more international films and celebrate movies that offered new ideas or showcased new techniques. So again, I stress that it is impossible to include every great horror film from the past 20 years in a list that allows less than one film per year, but I’ll mention as many as I can while focusing on some hidden gems. I’m going to take it for granted that anyone interested in Horror Movies has already seen the following modern classics: Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), which gave a seemingly literal adrenaline shot to the zombie genre. Gore Vidal’s remake of The Ring (2002), which is one of the few remakes that can objectively be considered better than the original. Guillermo del Toro’s twin masterpieces, The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and the Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Modern cult classics Let the Right One In (2008) and Matthew Vaughn’s American remake Let Me In (2010), which helped restore the reputations of Vampires worldwide from gothic teen romance trash to unadulterated, cold-blooded savages (each with its own merits). Paranormal Activity (2009), which revitalized the “found footage” sub-genre and remains the single most profitable film in history with a budget of only $15K and a worldwide gross of over $193 million; that’s a profit of 12,866%. And of course, Get Out, Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning box office juggernaut that helped define a generation and his nearly-as-excellent follow-up, Us (2019), which featured one of the two best performances of the year, but went unrecognized at the Oscars along with Ari Aster’s Midsommar. And I’d be remiss to not mention Nicolas Winding Refn’s Argento-esque Neon Demon (2016), which skewered the modeling business as effectively as Tom Ford nailed the blue-chip art world in Nocturnal Animals the same year.

If I’d allowed myself more than 18 slots, I might have also included Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, J.A. Bayona’s The Orphanage, Fiala & Franz’s Goodnight Mommy, Ana Lily Amirpour’s sultry and stylistic A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and maybe even M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and Split, which are flawed but satisfying films wrought with edge-of-your seat tension. And two of my favorite films from each of the last two decades, David Fincher’s Zodiac and Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room certainly have elements of horror, but are really Thrillers.

And so here are my picks for The Best Horror Films of the 21st Century (thus far).
They are listed chronologically, not ranked.

LOS SIN NOMBRE (1999) – Juame Belagueró found international fame in 2007 with his found-footage frightfest, [Rec], but it was his debut film, an adaptation of author Ramsey Campbell’s The Nameless that makes my list–with a bit of explanation. Los Sin Nombre was originally released in Spain in 1999 but didn’t get subtitled in English until 2001, and it didn’t get an American release until it was released on DVD in 2005. The emotionally devastated mother of a slain child receives a startling phone call that kicks-off a series of unexplainable phenomena in this police procedural that explores how grief affects survivors amidst occult and quite possibly supernatural overtones. Borrowing a bit of philosophical fascination from an earlier Spanish horror film, Alejandro Amenabar’s Tesis, but exploring trauma from a theological bent, Los Sin Nombre is an infrequently seen film that packs a wallop.

KAIRO (2001) – While Hideo Nakata’s Ring is undeniably the film that established J-Horror as an international phenomena, it was Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo (aka Pulse) that set the high-water mark. Originally screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, Kairo was the among the first films to showcase the Hikikomori, a segment population of self-isolating recluses whose withdrawal from society represents a kind of untreated agoraphobia and who have become increasingly asocial and suicidal. Kurosawa’s prior films Cure and Charisma had adapted his own novels, which frequently signal concerns about mental health with suspense as a vehicle for his narrative. Kairo is now seen as a somewhat prophetic allegory about the dangers of social media as a contributor to negative population growth and the ultimate downfall of society. While heavily inspired by The Day of the Triffids, the “monster” of Kairo is not a physical being; it’s more of an idea. It was the first film to suggest that the voluntary nature of social media (and therefore also, social withdrawal) creates a generation of willing victims by weaponizing depression. The final reel is utterly nightmarish.

THE DESCENT (2005) – A spelunking adventure goes horribly awry in one of the very few post-feminist horror films. In the most basic sense, director Neil Marshall has laid out the archetypes of The Hero’s Journey and steered them through elements of Jeepers Creepers, The Hills Have Eyes, and Picnic At Hanging Rock without resorting to clichés. The essentially all-female-cast is not a sample set of stereotypes nor are they mere stand-ins for male scripted characters. The story is informed and enriched by multi-faceted performances that never ring false. The scope shifts from epic to claustrophobic but leaves room for interpretation. This film died at the box office but gained such a following on home media that a (lackluster) sequel was produced. Stick with the original. It’s fresh and it’s hardcore.

PVC-1 (2007) – PVC-1 is not a horror film, per sé; at least not in the sense that Sinister is a horror film. It’s a thriller, strictly speaking, but it could just as well be classified as an 85-minute act of home-video terrorism. During a home invasion, instead of killing the residents, the invaders strap a plastic pipe bomb to a woman’s head as a form of ransom. Did I mention that the entire film was shot in real time in a single take? When I screened this film as part of my Disturbing Movie Night series, it was this film more than any other that caused panic. That series included Cannibal Holocaust, In My Skin, Irreversible, Martyrs, Men Behind the Sun, Mermaid in a Manhole, A Serbian Film, Singapore Sling, and many other very unpleasant films. The level of tension is off the charts as you watch this poor Colombian woman seeking help, wondering if the bomb is going to go off or not. Not recommended for anyone suffering from any form of PTSD. Every louder-than-normal noise will cause you to flinch–and there are lots of them. I’ve heard films described as emotional rollercoasters, but this is like an emotional water-boarding.

MARTYRS (2008) – French Extreme Horror is on a level unto itself. From Alexandre Aja’s High Tension (2003), the gauntlet had been tossed and a new breed of nasty, sadistic, and unpredictable cinema made it clear that nothing was sacred. Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs begins as an unconventional home invasion and escalates toward psychological and visceral abuses never before captured on film. The brisk pace of the first half gives a false sense of security that the ensuing run time completely eviscerates. The depths of depravity that this film achieves would shock you even if you heard them in detail before seeing them. And while this is an endurance test of epic proportion, it’s also still very scary, and incomparably horrifying. In 1985’s Gore Score, writer Chas Balun (may he rest in peace) developed a grading system that assigned numbers to calculate the extremity of graphic horror. Mary Poppins would rate a 0 and Day of the Dead would be a solid 10. Martyrs requires a whole new classification system.

THE GREY (2011) – Liam Neeson has showcased his talent for badassery in many films. From Schindler’s List to Taken, he’s been award-calbre in every genre. Joe Carnahan’s The Grey is the epitome of man-against-nature with an unexpected dose of man-against-himself in this Arctic Wilderness, wolf-version of Jaws that combines the humanity of Shawshank Redemption and the machismo of The Dirty Dozen with the spiritual intensity of Life of Pi. This is gutsy, high-stakes filmmaking from a talented cast and an underrated director. It would not be inappropriate to call it life-changing.

KILL LIST (2011) – This gem of an independent UK thriller completely changes genre half-way through the film. It starts out like a British Goodfellas, and then becomes Race With the Devil with a little bit of The Krays, Hostel and The Wicker Man thrown in. The working class setting is immediately reminiscent of Alan Clarke or Ken Loach, and the actors seem like gifted unprofessionals to the point that you forget you’re watching a movie. Ben Wheatley directed the excellent and allegorical A Field In England, and Kill List is somehow less tethered to the norm. While a mash-up of gangster vérité and horror, it suffers no dilution on either side and delivers quite a surprise when motives are finally revealed.

DARK SKIES (2013) – Until writer-director Scott Stewart brought a keen understanding of the frustration of unexplained phenomena to this extraterrestrial extension of the Blumhouse universe, the best alien abduction films to date were Philippe Mora’s new-agey adaptation of Whitley Strieber’s Communion, and a ten minute sequence in 1993’s Fire in the Sky. The loss of time frequently reported from alleged abductee experiencers has never been better showcased than by Kerri Russell just ahead of her six-season, multiple award-nominated role on The Americans, and co-star Josh Hamilton conveys a believably diminishing skepticism as unexplainable occurrences escalate from somewhat embarrassing to absolutely life-threatening. The backdrop of long-term unemployment and interminable self-doubt contribute to a very genuine sense of inevitable dread that never rings false, and the juvenile performers are top notch. There is nothing even remotely Spielberg-esque about this terrifying family drama about Close Encounters of The Fourth Kind.

IT FOLLOWS (2014) – Slasher film rules have long preached the cautionary tale that “sex equals death,” but David Robert Mitchell’s cast of real teenagers are literally on the run from that allegory and faced with a sort of supernatural social disease that spares them only after they spread it. Not just a tribute to 80s horror, It Follows is fully immersed in the music, art direction and sensibility of the era it emulates while utilizing rust belt locations to exemplify the decline of American industry. With a plot reminiscent of Charles Burns’ cult classic Black Hole, and a visual sensibility somewhere between John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, the world of It Follows is a great metaphor for the decline of American innocence.

THE WITCH (2015) – Wide-eyed newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy carried nearly this entire film in her many close-ups, and director Robert Eggers capitalized on her undeniable screen presence to draw viewers away from the many clues he’s hidden on the periphery of his painstaking recreation of a 17th century New England farmstead and the ensuing wilderness that may provide a veil for the Devil, himself. The impeccable attention given to detail is almost a co-star, but a scene-stealing goat and the creepiest kids this side of the Village of the Damned ensure that anywhere you focus, you’ll be enraptured by The Witch.

BASKIN (2015) – Generally when we think of cinematic presentations of Satanism, we tend to have a very Judeo-Christian view of things. From Haxan (1922) to The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), our notion of the devil and his disciples has pretty much grown out of medieval Europe to fan the fears of Children of the Corn style Christian fundamentalists in everything from Exorcist rip-offs like The Antichrist to Heavy Metal inspired Satanic Panic flicks like Trick Or Treat and Black Roses. And that’s what makes Baskin such a fresh breath of brimstone. This Turkish export is mired in a very Muslim-centric vision of Satanism that follows a squad of cops through a dimensional vortex into Hell after stumbling upon a Black Mass in an abandoned building that channels The Sentinel via Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond. Baskin is a grimy, disturbing melon-twister if ever there was one, helped along by an extrinsic mythology and a very freaky cast of character actors listed in the credits as “frog hunters.” You may feel the need to shower after watching.

A DARK SONG (2016) – An Irish apocryphal horror film that boasts a genuine familiarity with real magick rituals, writer-director Liam Gavin’s A Dark Song takes more cues from the Lesser Key of Solomon than from Faust. Deliberate pacing adds to the claustrophobic oppression that lingers in every bleak corner of the secluded farmhouse that hosts a driven young woman and an emotionally unstable occultist as they attempt to conjure a demon at risk of death and damnation. Atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife and austere authenticity help this mostly day-lit creeper deliver in ways you won’t predict.

THE INVITATION (2016) – While much has been made of the impact streaming services have had upon mainstream movies, less has been said about the substantial slate of thrillers and films from woman to which audiences have been given easier access. Karyn Kusama was well celebrated for films like Girlfight and Jennifer’s Body, but it was six years between directing gigs by the time Drafthouse Films and Netflix released the grief-and-manners shocker, The Invitation. Logan Marshall-Green (star of the fun, over-the-top Upgrade) is invited to an increasingly awkward dinner party by his ex-wife, several years after the death of their child and very shortly after her re-marriage. The pretense of a gathering with old friends is revealed to be a sort of self-help recruitment that escalates in deadly severity fast. A great script, taut pacing and pitch-perfect casting showcase a buffet of passive aggression and indifference with a nonjudgmental ambiguity that helps personalize the danger of the situation for the unsuspecting audience.

UNDER THE SHADOW (2016) – Shot in Jordan, but set in Iran during the 1998 Iraq border war, Babak Anvari’s UK backed, Persian Language film is unlike anything you are likely to have seen before. Immersed in Muslim folklore, the demonic spirits of Under the Shadow are djinn, which is the Arabic word that gives us “genie”, and suffice to say that this is not Aladdin. While one can argue that many war films are about a kind of horror, there are very few good horror films that use the backdrop of war as the principle setting for supernatural events. It is also very unusual for western audiences to be presented with a sympathetic view of the civilian populations of adversarial nations, and so this film is able to make the audience (rather than the principle protagonists) the proverbial fish out of water, while simultaneously highlighting the overt similarities between theologically divided civilizations. There are elemental influences of Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water, but Under the Shadow is its own thing, with intimate allegories about the exertion of power and the struggles of the individual within a patriarchy. Strong performances, inventive camera placement and a uniquely dynamic use of sound add up to a memorable if unsettling viewing experience. It was the UK’s official Best Foreign Language film submission for the 2016 Oscars.

THE RITUAL (2017) – David Bruckner, director of the “Amateur Night” segment from V/H/S and the forthcoming Hellraiser reboot, delivered one of the best folk horror films of all-time by injecting a monster-in-the-dark element into a European take on Deliverance. A film as steeped in PTSD as Jacob’s Ladder, and as much about male bonding as Stand By Me, The Ritual presents hallucinations and night terrors in a fantastically innovative way that doesn’t cheat or reset anything narratively. It also features one of the most original movie monsters since Predator.

HOLD THE DARK (2018) – Jeremy Saulnier became something a film festival king after the one-two punch of Blue Ruin and Green Room, but to me Hold the Dark is his crowning achievement. Jeffrey Rush redefines calm-and-collected as a wolf expert lured to an hermetic community in far-north Alaska to investigate the disappearance of a child at the behest of a forlorn, young mother. But nothing is as presented and when the child’s father returns from deployment in Afghanistan all hell breaks loose. Borrowing elements of Donald Cammell’s White of the Eye and Thomas Eidson’s The Missing and showcasing an action sequence as explosive as Michael Mann’s Heat, Saulnier gave Netflix a bonafide classic that hasn’t quite found the audience or the acclaim it deserves yet.

HEREDITARY (2018) – Ari Aster’s debut film is practically a clinic of great acting, but it is an absolute crime that Toni Collette was not nominated for her performance as a wealthy and somewhat emotionally withdrawn artist who is forced to process the grief of two overwhelming personal losses in a short span of time. She is introduced to goetia rituals as a kind of coping mechanism, not aware of the infernal consequences. Hereditary features one of the most shocking sequences of recent memory and established Aster as an actor’s director with a special gift for making grief relatable while bringing a high degree of authority to the esoteric. I could have chosen his follow-up, Midsommar instead, but Hereditary wins the contest by a head.

CRAWL (2019) – Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) gave birth to two important film classifications: the summer blockbuster, and the When Nature Attacks horror movie. While there have been dozens if not hundreds of variations to the Animals on the Loose theme, it’s a brief list of actually good movies. Lewis Teague’s Alligator (1980), featuring a John Sayles script is perhaps underrated and a number of ridiculous shark, snake and reptile movies are fine popcorn flicks, but French sadist, Alexandre Aja’s entry into the genre, Crawl, is really the one to beat. After losing communication with her dad as a Katrina-caliber hurricane slams the gulf, Kaya Rose Scodelario (of the Maze Runner film franchise) finds herself trapped in a rapidly flooding basement with one or more terrifying apex predators. Anyone who has seen Aja’s Haute Tension or better-than-it-deserved-to-be Piranha 3D knows that you can’t trust the fate of a likable protagonist in his films, and that injects a sense of immediacy into the already hectic mix of looters, first responders, reptiles and the wrath of god.

ADDENDUM:

INVISIBLE MAN (2020) – Something of a blend between Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man, which was the first post-modern interpretation of H.G. Wells’ mad scientist novel, and the Julia Roberts domestic violence vehicle, Sleeping with the Enemy, Leigh Whannell’s update combines incredible, cinematic sleight-of-hand and a powerhouse performance by Elisabeth Moss to induce upon the audience a first-person sense of gaslit paranoia that instills edge-of-your-seat urgency throughout the film. As a viewer, you never feel safe, and the nerve-wracking ingenuity of Moss’ sadistic ex isn’t just a parable for how abuse is often hidden in plan sight and how society frequently blames victims, it’s a mortally terrifying experience that sticks with you long after the credits roll. For an interesting, low-fi take on Terminator, check out the director’s also-excellent UPGRADE (2018).

So there you have it. Hopefully there are a few selections that you haven’t seen yet.
All bolded titles are linked to either Amazon or Netflix for your convenience. Enjoy!