The Scare Salon

I normally don’t do this year-end ranking thing, for a couple of reasons. One, I’m too lazy and/or too busy, and two, I usually don’t see enough new horror movies in any given year to justify making a list like this. But 2024 was a shockingly kick-ass year for horror, and I ended up seeing so many great movies that I had no problem at all coming up with twenty fantastic ones. So I figured I would break with tradition and discuss my favorites of the year; I’m sure most horror fans will have seen many of my picks, but I’m hoping that I can recommend a couple that maybe flew under your radar. Keep in mind, however, that although I saw way more new horror films this year than I normally would, there are still a few buzzworthy ones (In a Violent Nature, Smile 2, A Quiet Place: Day One, Arcadian, and Night Swim, to name a few) that I didn’t get to see yet, so I won’t be commenting on them one way or the other.

Although this top twenty list is roughly ranked in the order that I liked them, all of them are very good to outstanding and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any one of them. I also feel obliged to point out that I would never be so bold as to call these the best horror films of 2024; these were just the ones I personally enjoyed the most, so if you feel the need to argue with me about my very subjective opinions, maybe just take a deep breath and reconsider your life choices before whipping out your angry little typing finger. On with the show.

Azrael

I did a long review of this one, so I won’t repeat myself too much here, but this was a compelling post-apocalyptic horror starring Samara Weaving as an escapee from a cult whose members believe speaking is a sin and thus have removed their own vocal cords. The story is Biblical in nature, set after the Rapture and featuring a lot of religious symbolism, the understanding of which goes a long way toward appreciating the tale that’s being told.

Keep in mind that the movie has almost no dialogue and necessitates close attention to body language, facial expressions, and background details to get the gist of what’s happening, but if you like horror movies in end-of-the-world type settings with a heaping helping of violence, cannibalistic creatures, and religious weirdness, then this should be right up your alley.

MadS

This French film made a big splash when it debuted at Fantastic Fest, and it’s easy to see why; aside from the fact that it was shot in one continuous take, which is incredible in itself, it also features some stellar acting performances and a chaotic energy that propels the story toward its horrifying conclusion at a breakneck speed. It’s the feature film debut of director David Moreau, who also penned the screenplay for the excellent 2006 film Ils (aka Them).

At first, we’re following a young man named Romain (Milton Riche), who just turned eighteen. His wealthy dad is out of town, and Romain wants to do his birthday up right. To that end, we first see him at his dealer’s apartment, picking up some drugs. He’s planning on swinging by to get his sort-of girlfriend Anais (Laurie Pavy) and they’re then going to a friend’s party.

But as Romain is tooling down the road in his dad’s snazzy convertible, he drops a cigarette on himself and has to pull over. As he’s stopped, a very fucked-up looking young woman emerges from somewhere and gets into his car. Her head is wrapped with bandages and she isn’t really answering his questions; Romain doesn’t want to call the cops because he’s high as balls, so he decides he’ll just drive this poor woman to the nearest hospital and drop her off.

The woman is carrying a radio, on which we hear that she’s escaped from some nearby facility. Romain is still planning on dumping her at the emergency room, but then she complicates matters by repeatedly stabbing herself in the neck, spraying blood all over the car and her ostensible savior.

Now in a complete panic, Romain shifts gears and drives quickly home with what he thinks is a dead body in his car. He parks in the garage and tries to figure out what to do, but after washing all the blood off in the shower and trying to act normal on the phone with his dad, he goes back into the garage, only to find that the woman has disappeared.

After this point, Romain is essentially shanghaied by Anais and his friends into going to the party as planned, but it’s clear he’s not feeling all that well, and as the night goes on, events begin to spiral out of control.

This is, in essence, a zombie film, but more in the infection style (a la 28 Days Later) than the walking corpse type. The story progresses in a sort of chain or relay race, as we latch onto new characters and leave other ones behind, but the action never stops moving forward as the infection starts to spread. Brian Tallerico over at RogerEbert.com called this film “George A. Romero’s Run Lola Run,” and that’s about as apt a description as you’re going to find, so if that sounds like your thing, then get on this one tout suite.

The Devil’s Bath

This is another one that I did an extensive review on, but if you don’t want to read through all that, I’ll just give a brief recap here.

Known as Des Teufels Bad in its native German, this is a historical drama with horror elements, that is somewhat based on real events. Set in the mid-18th century, it follows a young woman named Agnes (Anja Plaschg) who moves to the village of her new husband Wolf (David Scheid). Shortly afterward, she begins suffering from depression, partly caused by her situation (overbearing mother-in-law, husband who won’t have sex with her and is possibly closeted, crippling debt, and outsider status in the village, among other things). She starts to become obsessed with another village woman who threw her baby off a waterfall and then confessed to the crime immediately so she would be executed. The woman’s headless body is on display at a shrine in the forest, as an example and moral lesson, we’re led to assume.

The film delves into a real practice in this part of the world in this era, whereby women suffering from acute mental health issues would commit a murder and then confess, so they would be absolved of their sin before their execution. This was done because suicide was considered a far greater sin than murder, so women who wanted to take their own lives would exploit this loophole to make sure their souls went to Heaven. It’s a tragic and horrifying bit of history that doesn’t get much attention, so it was fascinating to see a horror movie based around it. Don’t get me wrong; The Devil’s Bath isn’t a traditional horror film by any means, but it certainly deals with some awful, bleak subject matter, and features some pretty grotesque imagery, so I feel like it totally qualifies.

Abigail

This one was a fun, gory, somewhat comedic romp, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the same team behind the awesome 2019 film Ready or Not. There was a great deal of discussion about this movie in the horror community over whether the trailer should have revealed the big “twist,” and I admit it probably would have been a more satisfying experience going into it blind. The producers clearly believed that more people would go see it if they knew it was a vampire movie up front, and I guess they were right because this did pretty well both with critics and audiences. I would have loved to have watched it without knowing what was going to happen, but overall, it didn’t ruin the movie for me.

So the story concerns a group of a half-dozen criminals who have been assembled under the auspices of a man named Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) to pull off a particularly tricky job. The heist involves kidnapping the daughter of an unnamed wealthy individual for ransom, and keeping her prisoner in a spooky mansion until the payment can be negotiated. The abduction goes off without a hitch, though a couple of the team members aren’t really cool with kidnapping a kid, and for the first bit of the movie, we’re just watching the criminals interact with each other in engaging ways, as none of them really knew each other previously and all have intriguing secrets and backstories.

But soon enough, shit starts to go sideways when it’s revealed that not only is the little girl, Abigail (Alisha Weir), the daughter of one of the most feared figures in the criminal underworld, but she’s also a powerful vampire who loves nothing more than messing with her hapless captors before tearing them limb from limb.

This movie was just a blast: entertaining, gloriously bloody, and often hilarious. Each of the criminals was an interesting character in their own right, and their back and forth was a big part of the movie’s charm, as was the inherent humor in watching a gang of cynical, hardened gangsters getting their asses kicked by a super-strong, bloodsucking child. A good time all around.

You’ll Never Find Me

This is yet another film I already talked about at length, so if you want a more in-depth take, check out this linked post. For everyone else, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version.

You’ll Never Find Me is an Australian horror thriller that makes the absolute most of its one location and two characters. Though much of the suspense is generated through the interactions of the main leads and the ambiguous nature of the unfolding situation, the third act ties everything together nicely with some creepy, slightly surreal visuals.

Loner Patrick (Brendan Rock) lives in an isolated trailer park in the back end of beyond. One night during a storm, a woman only credited as The Visitor (Jordan Cowan) pounds on his door, asking for a ride into town. Between the weather and Patrick’s iffy vehicle, said ride is not on the cards, so The Visitor comes into the trailer to wait out the storm, hoping to walk to a payphone once the conditions improve.

There then ensues a series of strange, extremely tense exchanges between the pair where the viewer is not entirely sure what’s going to happen next. Patrick appears extremely sketchy and we’re worried on The Visitor’s behalf, but then at times it seems that The Visitor might be hiding a few things too, so we’re not sure if our expectations are being fucked with. The best thing about this movie, in fact, is the tightrope it walks as these two possibly unreliable characters pursue their own unknown goals and purposes.

Fans of more action-oriented horror might not have the patience to sit through a film whose runtime is almost entirely comprised of two people talking, but I thought this was deliciously suspenseful and eerie, and demonstrated very handily that you don’t need a big budget to make a great horror movie; all you need is a tight script, two amazing actors, and buckets of unsettling atmosphere.

Longlegs

Probably the most divisive film of 2024, this one got a ton of hype that many people felt it didn’t live up to. It’s a weird flick for sure, but anyone familiar with Osgood Perkins’s previous work (such as The Blackcoat’s Daughter or I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House) will probably really dig it, as it has that cold, off-putting vibe he’s known for, but filtered through a 90s police procedural lens. I really liked it and evidently lots of other folks did too (since it’s still Neon’s highest-grossing film, pulling in an astonishing $127 million on a less than $10 million budget), but I can definitely see why it’s not for all tastes.

Maika Monroe (of It Follows and Watcher fame) plays Lee Harker, a soft-spoken FBI agent with low-key psychic powers. She’s working on a bizarre serial killer case in which fathers murder their entire families before taking their own lives. At each of the scenes, a coded letter is discovered that’s signed “Longlegs,” though it’s clear that whoever this mysterious figure is, they’re not the one responsible for the crime itself. Law enforcement officers are operating under the assumption that Longlegs is somehow forcing or brainwashing the killers into perpetrating the murders, which seem to have some Satanic purpose.

This movie takes some strange pathways, introducing a possible connection between Lee and Longlegs and also featuring a pronounced supernatural element. Nicholas Cage as the title character is a real standout, ridiculous but extremely disquieting at the same time, and the juxtaposition of his over-the-top peculiarity with Maika Monroe’s extreme introversion makes for an interesting dynamic. Though slow-moving in parts, I admit I kinda vibed with the chilly 90s aesthetic of this one, though I wouldn’t mind a second viewing to pick up anything I missed the first time around.

MaXXXine

Having been a huge fan of Ti West’s previous two films in this series, X and Pearl (both 2022), I was eagerly anticipating the third movie, which follows Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) several years after the events of X. Although I didn’t love it as much as the other two movies, this was still really solid, using the framework of an 80s erotic thriller cross-bred with a Satanic Panic angle to dive deeper into Maxine’s character.

In 1985, Maxine is quite a successful porn star who also has a sideline working in a peep show. But true to her nature, she wants more than just accolades in the adult film world; she craves real Hollywood stardom. To that end, she auditions for a cheesy horror film called The Puritan II, and the director, Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) takes a shine to her, admiring her acting chops as well as the controversial edge she’ll bring to the film.

At the same time, though, a series of disturbing murders are occurring around Hollywood, with the victims all having some connection to Maxine and all branded with Satanic symbols. Maxine herself becomes embroiled with a shady private investigator named John Labat (Kevin Bacon), who seems to want to nail her for her part in the mass murder that occurred in X.

Though MaXXXine is a tad uneven tonally, I really enjoyed it a lot, and Mia Goth was badass as always. Kevin Bacon was also a highlight, imbuing his character with such appealing loathsomeness that you couldn’t help but love him. The look of the film was really vibrant and cool, and I loved the veneer of 80s L.A. sleaze that permeated every frame. Sure, it’s an homage to thrillers from that era and could be accused of being a pastiche, but it’s a damn good one for all that.

Terrifier 3

Slashers aren’t my favorite subgenre of horror, but when the mood strikes I do love a good one, and gorehounds really can’t go wrong with Damien Leone’s stubbornly independent Terrifier franchise. Art the Clown seems to have achieved horror villain immortality overnight, and I totally understand how that happened; even though killer clowns in general are pretty played, David Howard Thornton’s silent-era theatrics and physicality as Art really make the character something special, even leaving out how much the mute, supernatural clown clearly enjoys his bloody work.

In the third installment, set at Christmas, Art (who was decapitated at the end of the second film but doesn’t let his headlessness cramp his style) heads for the asylum housing the now-possessed Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi), who will not only give birth to Art’s new head, but will become Art’s sidekick on this fresh journey of savagery. Before they begin, though, they actually go into stasis for five years, presumably to wait for final girl Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) to be released from a mental hospital following the traumatic events in the last movie.

While Sienna tries to reconnect with her family and get past her horrific experiences, Art and Victoria go on a blood and viscera-heavy rampage, axing entire families to death, blowing up a bunch of children with a bomb in a mall, forcing rats through a tube into a woman’s mouth, and in the movie’s best scene, slicing a dude in half longways with a chainsaw, ass-crack first (with a bonus scrotum mutilation for added flair).

With jaw-dropping practical effects that are as gleefully disgusting as ever and acting performances that are miles better than they need to be, Terrifier 3 ramps up the gore factor and expands the (complicated) lore, ending on one hell of a fucked-up cliffhanger that all but guarantees a fourth chapter. And hell, if it’s as much sick fun as this one, I’m all for it.

Exhuma

This is yet another movie I discussed at length elsewhere on this site, so again, I’ll keep it short here.

A South Korean folk horror film written and directed by Jang Jae-hyun, Exhuma tells the story of a group of paranormal experts who unwittingly unleash evil when they’re tasked with exhuming the mysterious grave of an old man.

The movie is quite long by genre standards and consists of two interrelated halves. The first follows the gang as they actually dig up the grave and have to deal with the consequences of the grouchy ghost that emerges, while the second jumps ahead a few months and involves a more ancient spirit that was buried beneath the first one and wreaks havoc on everyone in the vicinity.

This was a masterpiece along the same lines as the brilliant 2016 film The Wailing, so if you liked that one then I’d recommend this one as well.

Red Rooms

I had entirely missed the boat on this film, not even hearing of it until I happened across a small horror channel doing a year-end ranking that mentioned it. It’s a French-Canadian film, set in Montreal, and though I’d hesitate to call it a straight horror film, it’s definitely a dark drama with psychological horror elements, that deals with some disturbing subject matter. I guess it technically came out in Canada in 2023, but I don’t think it got much of a wider release or recognition until later, so I’m still counting it as a 2024 film. Sue me.

The first sequence of the movie details the opening arguments in the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), who stands accused of abducting, raping, torturing, and murdering three teenage girls for an internet “red room,” i.e. a site one can go to on the dark web where one can watch torture and murder in real time and bid on opportunities to give suggestions for various depravities to be inflicted on the victims.

One of the people watching the trial is a young woman named Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a renowned fashion model and online poker pro who seems to have a particular fascination with the case, as well as the most fucked-up corners of the dark web in general.

While attending the hearing, she meets up with another obsessive, a quasi-homeless girl named Clémentine (Laurie Babin), who is convinced Ludovic is innocent and comes up with all sorts of conspiracy theories to justify her belief. The two women strike up a strange friendship, with Kelly-Anne allowing Clémentine to stay in her clearly expensive apartment while the trial goes on and listening to Clémentine’s bizarre defenses of the suspect with some bemusement.

Through her shady online activities, Kelly-Anne has illegally come into possession of the videos of two of the victims’ murders; the third video has yet to surface. The videos themselves are never shown; we only hear the horrifying audio and see people’s reactions to them, which is actually pretty effective as it leaves much to the viewer’s imagination.

As the story goes on, Kelly-Anne starts becoming more and more involved with the case, eager to get her hands on the third missing video for reasons that aren’t revealed until later (and perhaps not even then, at least not entirely).

More a dark character study about obsession than a traditional horror, this one was almost hypnotic, exploring Kelly-Anne’s fractured psyche while still keeping her motives largely mysterious. She was a fascinating protagonist, and the way the actress played her almost like a blank slate but with a very obvious undercurrent of deep mental disturbance was dynamite. I feel like this one will be a bit of a sleeper, but if you like more restrained psychological horror that doesn’t give you any easy answers, then you might want to check this one out.

Caddo Lake

Another film that plays more like a drama but features some mind-bending elements that give it a bit of a science fiction angle, Caddo Lake is one that I saw come up on a lot of “best of 2024” lists, and for very good reason. Some viewers might be frustrated by the length of time the film takes to build up the suspense and how it refuses to clarify what’s going on for a while, but for me, that’s what made it so involving. Though I’ll try not to spoil too much here, I would advise going into this one completely cold, without any knowledge of what’s happening.

We’re following two seemingly unrelated families living in a rural community along Caddo Lake (a real lake on the border of Texas and Louisiana). At the beginning, we see a car accident where a vehicle plummets from a high bridge into the lake; the passenger, Paris Lang (Dylan O’Brien) is able to swim to safety, but the female driver drowns.

We then skip ahead six years and discover that the woman who died was Paris’s mother. Although the doctors diagnosed her with a seizure disorder, one of said seizures being responsible for her driving off the bridge, Paris believes something more mysterious might be afoot and seeks to solve the enigma on his own.

Meanwhile, a teenage girl named Ellie (Eliza Scanlen) is having a tough time adjusting to her recent family situation. Her formerly neglectful mother Celeste (Lauren Ambrose) has married a new man, Daniel (Eric Lange) and she now has an eight-year-old stepsister named Anna (Caroline Falk). Celeste has long told Ellie that her father went missing years ago and was later declared dead.

One day, Anna tries to follow Ellie to her friend’s house using one of the family’s small skiffs, but the little girl disappears, along with the boat. A massive search for her ensues, and during this time, both Ellie and Paris separately begin to notice some odd things about the lake, including bizarre unplaceable clanging sounds, huge dead moths that supposedly went extinct some time ago, sightings of incongruous white wolves, and unexplained hand tremors and bleeding ears whenever one ventures into certain areas of the lake.

The resolution of the mystery is not at all what I was expecting, which is what made this such an enjoyable watch. The story is very focused on the characters and their fraught relationships and tenuous connections with one another, a focus that will make more sense as the details of what’s going on in the lake become more fleshed out.

Again, it’s not horror in the traditional sense, but it was definitely eerie and engrossing, with excellent acting performances all around and a plot that twisted your brain in knots.

The First Omen

I recently did a long post about this one too, and as I mentioned before, I’m actually glad I gave this one a chance because although I wasn’t expecting much from a prequel to 1976’s The Omen, this film delivered in spades, not only honoring the spirit of the original but telling a great, riveting story that easily stands on its own.

The narrative revolves around Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), a young novitiate who travels to Rome in 1971 to work at an orphanage and take her final vows as a nun. Once she arrives, she becomes intrigued by an older orphan girl named Carlita (Nicole Sorace), who is always being punished for one thing and another and appears to be troubled by terrifying visions.

As the story goes on, Margaret slowly begins to realize that she’s somehow involved in a conspiracy among a breakaway Catholic sect to facilitate the birth of the Antichrist.

This was just a damn fine prequel, one of the better ones I’ve seen; it homaged the original and stayed consistent with the lore, but told its own interesting story that wasn’t just a rehash of what we already knew. There were also a couple of clever nods to iconic scenes from the 1976 film, but changed up a bit to subvert expectations. The acting was wonderful, the cinematography stunning, and the atmosphere suitably eerie and totally in line with the vibe of the original. Even people who hate prequels should dig this one; it’s a rare example of one done right.

Alien: Romulus

Another film that I wasn’t enthused about but ended up pleasantly surprising me was Alien: Romulus, the seventh movie in the Alien franchise and one that went back to basics with excellent results.

Directed by Fede Álvarez (also responsible for 2013’s awesome Evil Dead reboot and 2016’s Don’t Breathe), the movie is set in 2142, between the events of 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens. The tale focuses on a group of young people working for the Weyland-Yutani corporation on a perpetually dark planet called LV-410. Our hero, Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) and her companion, a janky older-model android named Andy (David Jonsson) who she considers a brother, decide to escape the drudgery of their lives when the powers that be forcibly renew their work contracts after promising them freedom (plunging them into indentured slavery, essentially).

Rain’s ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) and their other friends/relatives have discovered a derelict space station hovering above the planet, and plan to steal the cryostasis equipment from it in order to make the nine-year journey to a planet outside the system run by Weyland-Yutani, where they can live freely.

This being an Alien movie, however, the space station contains some unexpected cargo in the form of a shit-ton of face-huggers and a dead xenomorph, as well as a busted-up android named Rook (digitally modeled to look like the late Ian Holm, who played Ash in the original Alien) who has some nefarious intentions.

Alien: Romulus wisely kept the narrative simple and action-focused, efficiently sketching its characters in a way that got you emotionally invested in their goals and ultimate fates. Though the movie isn’t reinventing the wheel, it takes all the best stuff from the Alien universe and refines it down to a tightly-paced, gory, and action-packed tale that’s entertaining all the way through, and features plenty of nods and Easter eggs for fans of the franchise without forcing them in (well, except for that ONE line, but can’t win ’em all).

Nosferatu

This was probably my most anticipated film of the year, and it totally didn’t disappoint, though I will say that fans not well-versed or much interested in gothic horror and all the melodrama that accompanies it might want to give it a pass because it’s about as gothic (in the classic literature sense) as a modern movie gets.

A plot synopsis is probably unnecessary, as the original Nosferatu from 1922 was an unauthorized Dracula adaptation and shares most of its plot beats (with some differences in the character relationships and the ending). In execution, this 2024 version (of course directed by the great Robert Eggers) somewhat resembles the 1979 Nosferatu remake by Werner Herzog, but also flirts with a silent movie aesthetic at times.

Mostly set in Wisborg, Germany in 1838, the story plays a lot with the idea that Mina equivalent Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) has some sort of messed up, romantic/erotic, attraction/revulsion connection to Dracula equivalent Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), who seemingly visits her in her dreams and has for many years. I actually love the way Orlok is portrayed here, incidentally; it would have been easy to do the ratlike Nosferatu look from the 1922 and 1979 versions, but in this film, the vampire looks like a powerful but plague-ridden and decidedly corpsy Vlad Țepeș, complete with mustache and Wallachian duds. It’s a great, unique look, and his voice is creepy and awesome too.

Anyway, we get the familiar story of Jonathan Harker analog Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) being sent to the wilds of Eastern Europe to help Count Orlok purchase some property in Wisborg, all the better to get closer to Thomas’s wife Ellen, the woman who awakened him from his long slumber. We also get our Van Helsing stand-in, Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), who is the first one to figure out what’s going on vis-à-vis the vampire curse.

The movie looks gorgeous and goes all in on a lush, oppressive gothic atmosphere, making it a really immersive experience. The acting performances are also top-notch, with Skarsgård an obvious standout and Dafoe providing a small amount of levity to the otherwise serious undertaking. It’s somewhat languidly paced and takes some time to build up its dreary, nightmarish mood, but fans of old-school gothic horror should love it, as it perfectly encapsulates all the best aspects of the genre.

Strange Darling

A visually stunning thriller that debuted in 2023 but didn’t get a wide release until about a year later, this was another one I did a full-length review of previously, so I’ll just keep it brief.

Told as a story in six chapters (plus an epilogue), the narrative is presented out of order so as to subvert audience expectations about what is occurring. We’re led to believe this is a straightforward, serial killer cat-and-mouse tale, which it kind of is, except in ways that it isn’t.

Purportedly based on the last few murders of a 2021 killing spree (but not really), the film features essentially two characters: The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) and The Demon (Kyle Gallner). At the “beginning” of the film, which is actually chapter three, we see an injured Lady fleeing through the woods, being pursued by The Demon, who is driving a pickup truck and armed with a rifle.

From this setup, we think we know what’s happening, but that’s where Strange Darling fools you, luring you into complacency using your knowledge of familiar thriller tropes before pulling the rug out from beneath you. Suffice it to say that nothing is as it seems in this movie, and though I admit I had some misgivings about the (possibly unintentional) messaging of the film, the style and surprises in this one more than made up for any doubts I harbored. It’s a fabulous, engaging thriller that’s constantly heading off in refreshing directions, and it looks bloody great to boot (the cinematography was done by famed actor Giovanni Ribisi, in case you wondered).

Oddity

Yet another film I reviewed before, this one seems like it just kinda came out of nowhere and quietly became one of the best-loved supernatural horrors of the year.

Helmed by Damian McCarthy (whose debut film Caveat came out in 2020), Oddity is an Irish ghost story slash murder mystery that does everything just right, and boasts one of the best, most dread-inducing opening sequences in recent memory.

It centers around a spooky psychic woman named Darcy (Carolyn Bracken) whose twin sister Dani (played by the same actress) is horribly murdered at the remote farmhouse she’s been renovating with her husband Ted (Gwilym Lee). Ted is a psychiatrist at a hospital for the criminally insane, and it’s believed that one of his patients killed Dani shortly after he was released.

A year after the murder, Darcy turns up at the now-finished farmhouse which Ted is sharing with his new girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). She ostensibly wants to reconnect with Ted and sort through their grief about Dani, but it’s clear Darcy might have another agenda, judging by the extremely creepy life-size wooden man she gives the couple as a gift.

This was like the perfect classic ghost story, eerie and atmospheric with very few (well-earned) jump scares and chilling vibes for days. It seems like it should be easy to make something as simple and scary as this, but when you see an excellent film like Oddity and compare it to others of its ilk, you realize just what a rare treat this movie is. I still haven’t heard anyone who’s seen this say a bad word about it, and believe me, there’s a reason it has pretty much universal acclaim.

Cuckoo

Yep, you guessed it, I covered this one too. While Cuckoo wasn’t nearly as divisive as Longlegs was, I still feel like it was one of those movies you either really vibed with or really didn’t, and even some people who dug the first two-thirds of the film felt that it fell apart in the final act. I don’t agree, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and my opinion is that I fucking loved every minute of this weird-ass thing.

Directed by German filmmaker Tilman Singer, Cuckoo is about a seventeen-year-old girl named Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) who is forced to move to Germany with her estranged father, stepmother, and younger half-sister after the death of her mother. The family ends up at this remote resort compound since the dad is helping the owner of the place build a new resort nearby.

Almost immediately, shit starts to get strange. Women randomly vomit in the front lobby. Odd noises seem to emerge from the surrounding woods. And Gretchen’s mute sister Alma (Mila Lieu) begins having seizures, seemingly caused by a high-pitched screeching sound coming from who knows where.

Gretchen eventually teams up with a former cop to figure out what the hell is going on at this place, and in particular the sketchy agenda of the resort’s owner, Herr König (Dan Stevens).

This was bizarre and unsettling and I adored it, as it really leaned into its peculiar premise and went full speed ahead. The mystery of the resort is admittedly pretty out there and a little convoluted, but as I said, I really like audacious stories like this that let their freak flag fly. Not for everyone, but I thought it was great.

Heretic

Another film that wrung nail-biting suspense from just a few characters in a house, Heretic was far, far better than I was expecting (and I was already expecting it to be really good). Although the trailer (as most trailers tend to be these days) was slightly deceptive, making the movie seem almost like an escape room type of scenario, in reality, the movie was a cerebral battle of wills concerning the nature of faith, which also featured some gruesome violence.

Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (the team responsible for A Quiet Place and Haunt, among other things), Heretic follows two Mormon missionaries, the more cynical Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and the somewhat naïve Sister Paxton (Chloe East). The pair have a lead on a guy who seemingly wants to hear their spiel, so after a brief sequence where we get to know them, the girls head over to the isolated cottage.

The man who opens the door, Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant, playing brilliantly against his usual persona and absolutely deserving of all the award nominations he’s received), seems delightful and friendly at first, interested in hearing about the Mormon faith. He invites the girls inside for blueberry pie, and though they’re initially reluctant because they aren’t allowed to be in a house with an unattached male, Mr. Reed insists his wife is home and that everything will be fine. The girls, still a little wary, enter the house.

From then on, things get more and more uncomfortable as it becomes clear that Mr. Reed has some unknown agenda, and not the obvious one you might be picturing. He starts by questioning aspects of the girls’ religion; not in a hostile way, just genuinely curious. In fact, I think this is one of the most effective things about his character and why he’s so sinister, because he’s never hostile or angry. He always seems polite and friendly, even when he’s doing really messed-up shit.

His questions slowly get more awkward and invasive, and the girls are actually surprised by how much Mr. Reed knows about religions in general; he is truly a scholar, and his house is full of books on all different faiths. However, by the time the girls realize they might be in danger and need to get the hell out of Dodge, they’re trapped inside the house and are forced to play by Mr. Reed’s bizarre rules in order to have a chance of getting out.

This was just a phenomenal psychological horror film that delved into religious faith as a concept and posed a lot of questions for viewers to ponder, particularly about the meaning of the ending. While it would have been easy to make the Mormon characters clichéd or objects of ridicule, Heretic portrays them as complex, intelligent, principled, and heroic. Though the movie doesn’t really take a stance on whether God exists or which religion is the “correct” one, it explores these issues in interesting ways, while also being a tense cat-and-mouse game between two innocent young women and a frightening man with unclear motives. As soon as I was done watching it, I wanted to watch it again, and I immediately knew it was going to be in my top five of the year.

The Substance

This fucking movie, man. This thing absolutely blew me away and made me chortle with glee at how ballsy, disgusting, amazing, and batshit insane it was. While some films can become victims of their own hype, this one deserved all the hype and then some.

Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat (who also did the excellent 2017 film Revenge, which you need to see if you haven’t), The Substance revolves around aging celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle (played by a fierce and fearless Demi Moore), who gets shitcanned from her gig on a TV fitness show when she hits her fiftieth birthday. Her revolting pig of a producer (played by Dennis Quaid, who looks like he’s having the time of his life being as repugnant as possible) wants a hot young commodity to take Elisabeth’s place, and Elisabeth overhears him laughing about what an old bat she is.

After she’s involved in a minor car accident, an impossibly good-looking nurse at the hospital slips her a thumb drive while telling her she’d be a “good candidate.” Curious, she watches the video on the drive, which turns out to be a promo for some presumably black-market youth serum called The Substance. The promo is very vague about how it works, and Elisabeth thinks the whole thing is probably bullshit, so she tosses it out.

However, as more indignities befall her, she gets desperate, and eventually calls the number in the ad. A mysterious voice sends her to some shady back alley containing a weirdly pristine room that’s full of lockers. She picks up her kit and heads home.

The long and short of it is that The Substance makes a genetic copy of you, only younger and hotter. The copy literally sprouts, fully formed and adult, out of your back, and according to the materials that come with the kit, you and the clone are one.

There are a bunch of rules, though, like the clone gets seven days to run around while the host is lying in stasis being fed through an IV, then the original gets seven days, and you have to keep alternating like that to strike the perfect balance. Elisabeth’s clone, who calls herself Sue (Margaret Qualley), is drop-dead gorgeous, and easily wins the spot on Elisabeth’s old show.

Soon enough, as you might imagine, problems begin to arise as Elisabeth becomes jealous of Sue’s looks and success, and Sue becomes impatient with having to switch places with her older host every other week. Sue gradually begins stealing more time from Elisabeth, which causes Elisabeth to physically deteriorate in grotesque ways. It all ends with an impossibly over-the-top and awesome spectacle of an ending that has to be seen to be believed.

Although The Substance tackles some serious issues about women’s value in Hollywood being entirely predicated on their youth and beauty, and the crippling self-hatred many women feel because of this, the movie remembers that it’s also a horror movie, and delivers on that big time. Don’t go into this thinking it’s just some fun, weird flick; this is body horror with a capital BH, and honestly, several people in the theater with me were clearly not ready for how gnarly this thing gets at times. It’s really something to behold, and I was delighted by every WTF minute of it. Great visuals, fantastic gore effects, stunning acting performances, and a crazy premise that would do David Cronenberg proud. An epic film and an instant classic.

Late Night with the Devil

Ever since I first saw this flick in the theater back in March of 2024, I knew it would probably be my favorite movie of the year, and though I saw many other films subsequently that came close to snatching that crown, in the end, Late Night with the Devil still reigns supreme as my number one most beloved movie of 2024. It just captured my heart from the very first frame, and never let go. It probably doesn’t hurt that I also have a bit of a crush on David Dastmalchian, who totally rocks and carries this movie to glory.

Technically a found footage film but the rare one with a refreshing take on the genre, Late Night was written and directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, and is presented as a lost Halloween episode of a 1970s late-night talk show. It’s a similar premise to 2013’s WNUF Halloween Special, honestly, but about a million times better than that. Everything about the aesthetic of Late Night made me deliriously happy, and the filmmakers and actors absolutely nailed the whole vibe of a talk show from this era, right down to the lame jokes and wide-collar suits.

David Dastmalchian plays Jack Delroy, who hosts a show called Night Owls that’s second in the ratings only to Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. At one point, his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig) dies of cancer, and Jack takes a hiatus from the program. There are also hints of larger occult themes at play, such as Jack’s involvement with “The Grove” (obviously a reference to Bohemian Grove) and allusions to a Satanic cult’s mass suicide.

Night Owls’ ratings have been tanking since Jack’s return after his wife’s death, so he gets an idea to do something big for the Halloween special, essentially planning to do an entire show based around the occult. He brings on a famous medium called Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a condescending skeptic and magician named Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss, playing an exaggerated version of real-life magician and skeptic James Randi). and most importantly, a parapsychologist named June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), who has written a book detailing her work with a young girl named Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), who she claims is possessed by a demon. Jack, who has also been sleeping with June, is hoping that they can summon this demon live on TV to get those ratings into the stratosphere.

The show goes about the way a 1970s late-night talk show would go, at least initially. Christou is on first and does some not-very-convincing cold reading, after which the skeptic guy points out how bullshit it all was. Before he leaves the stage, though, Christou seems to fall ill and makes a psychic pronouncement that appears to rattle Jack. The show must go on, however, and we cut to a commercial break.

One great touch that this film had was showing what was going on behind the scenes of Night Owls during the “commercial breaks.” This didn’t hamper the reality of the found footage aspect, because the movie is actually structured as though it’s a documentary about this lost episode of the show, so it has an opening narration explaining the context of the episode and giving a bit of back story about Jack Delroy and all that. So it’s not weird to cut to black-and-white handheld footage of backstage stuff; we just assume someone was filming behind the scenes to document this special, which they were hoping would be iconic.

Anyway, the shit really starts to hit the fan when Dr. June and Lilly are brought out. The actress playing Lilly is incredible: cute and sweet and polite, but also creepy as all get-out. They talk a bit about the demon possession, but of course, skeptic Carmichael just rips them a new one and insults them for entertaining such nonsense. Jack eventually convinces June to do a session with the “demon” against her better judgment, and after some crazy shit occurs, Carmichael steps in to demonstrate how it could have been faked, in a fantastic sequence that makes us question whether what we’re seeing in the movie is what really happened. The show ends in a balls-to-the-wall supernatural shitshow and total bloodbath, and some troubling revelations emerge about Jack Delroy’s former dealings with the occult.

I watched Late Night with the Devil for a second time on Shudder on Halloween night, and I loved it even more than I had the first time I saw it in the theater. Everything about this movie hit just right for me, from the spot-on 70s look to its masterfully immersive nature to David Dastmalchain’s sensational lead performance. I loved this film unreservedly and completely, and will likely watch it every Halloween for the rest of my life. Brilliant and perfect in every way.

Well, that’s my exhaustive list of my twenty faves this year, and I’m sure you guys have some thoughts, so leave them in the comments if you want to start a discussion.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.