Kbin: What is your favourite (or least favourite) horror film?
We all either love horror films, or hate horror films. What's that film that kept you up at night? The one that you re-watch all the time? The one that made you groan at 'the big reveal'?
Favourite: Evil Dead (2013). It was just insane, wonderfully gory and made you wanna squirm.
Least favourite: Sharkenstein (2016). Watching this film, I gained a new appreciation for Meet The Spartans.
Up front warning: This is the ultimate low budget b movie campy horror film. It was written and shot in a seven days on the sets of another movie. It is not scary and is by no objective means a good movie. If you like campy low budget slashers it's a must watch.
Sorority House Massacre 2. Five college women spend the night in their new sorority house, the old Hokstedter place, and make the mistake of using a Ouija board. It has a great twist revealing an unlikely hero and the last line of the movie is my favorite line in all of cinema.
Least favorite: Sorority House Massacre. Maybe the worst example of a low budget slasher flick ever made. This movie is so bad that the sequel used clips from a different movie, Slumber Party Massacre, for it's flashbacks and backstory. While intended to be scary campy low budget slashers flicks tend to be so ridiculously badly written and acted that they become parodies of themselves and present as humorous movies. Sorority House Massacre isn't interesting enough to reach this important self parody status and winds up being neither scary nor funny.
My absolute favorites are mostly your standard entries that you’ll find on plenty of top 10 lists:
Halloween
Alien
Scream
Night of The Living Dead
An American Werewolf in London
Apart from these, I’d recommend
The Wailing (2016, 156 minutes): a Korean movie about a detective trying to find the cause of a mysterious disease running through a town
Barbarian (2022, 103 minutes): this movie falls in the very weird “AirB&B” sub genre of horror. It has some scenes of incredible tension, one of the best (and well-earned) jump scares, and some great humor.
The Return of the Living Dead (1985, 91 minutes): a horror-comedy zombie movie with some incredible practical effects
For my least favorites, I’d probably put Slenderman, Meghan is Missing, Winchester, and Ghosts of War.
I’m a big fan of the found footage (FF) subgenre of horror. Some favorites would be Gonjiam Haunted Asylum (2018), Cloverfield (2012), and Hell House LLC (2015)
I got sucked into binging the V/H/S series a while ago and enjoyed all except Viral, which I turned off midway through as it was boring me to misery. 94 and the more recent 99 were the standouts for me.
Still need to see those two. Loved the first two, my computer confirms I watched Viral but fuck If i know anything that occurred in it so I guess my assessment matches yours lol.
Juon. Not the American remake The Grudge, the Japanese version.
In the Japanese version, the house felt like a normal, everyday house, and that’s what made everything scarier. It was lit like a normal house, unlike the American version.
Also, that scene were Toshio, the ghost child, is on every floor as the elevator went up literally had me backing up trying to get away, it creeped me out that much. Juon had so much subtle horror like that, along with the big scares.
And as for least favorite, I guess the Saw movies. I never much liked the torture porn genre. I prefer being creeped out than grossed out.
While not really a fan of horror movies, there are plenty that I have loved, as films in the general sense and not specifically as any genre.
At the top of the list for me, it has to be the original The Wicker Man, and in second place it's Evil Dead Pt 2.
As least favorite, not one specific film but the entire slasher film realm.
Hard to pick a favorite. If I had to pick a personal favorite I'd say In The Mouth of Madness. I've never seen it brought up as often as The Thing or other Carpenter films, but it was the first "meta" horror movie I ever watched and I've always had a soft spot for it. Besides that, there are a few I make sure to watch every year. I have to watch Trick 'R Treat sometime in October and I usually start December off with Krampus (2015). Also, I'm not sure it even qualifies as horror, but One Cut of the Dead is a great one for horror fans or just movie fans in general, especially if you like lower-budget films and the passion that goes into making them. Admittedly the first twenty minutes or so can be hard to get through on the first viewing, but it's a great movie if you stick with it.
Least favorite I'd have to say, Lake Mungo. I don't think it's a bad film. I just went into expecting found footage horror and got a mockumentary about dealing with loss and uncovering a deceased family member's secrets. Again, not a bad film but not what I was in the mood for when I watched it.
I also really liked In The Mouth of Madness! Not as much as The Thing, but it was definitely a good time. The opening shot in the diner is amazing and pretty much immediately had me hooked for the rest of the movie.
John Carpenter's The Thing is not just my favorite horror movie but it's on my list of top 5 favorite movies of all time. I just love that movie to bits on so many levels. Other favorites of mine include Alien, Evil Dead 2, Creepshow, and Return of the Living Dead. Though some honorable mentions to The VVitch, Barbarian, and The Lighthouse (does The Lighthouse count as a horror? Eh. Whatever. I do really like it).
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