From terrifying found footage flicks to surprisingly original slashers to new twists on the possession genre, 2023 has been a killer year for horror. Here are the movies you shouldn't miss.
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00:00 From terrifying found-footage flicks to surprisingly original slashers to new twists on the possession
00:06 genre, 2023 has been a killer year for horror. Here are the movies you shouldn't miss.
00:11 If you like your horror on the weird side, you just might like Cobweb. Nothing is as
00:16 it seems, and director Samuel Bowden keeps you on your toes every step of the way. A
00:20 young boy named Peter hears strange knocking inside his bedroom walls. His parents brush
00:25 off his claims as tall tales, but it becomes evident they're trying to hide something.
00:30 "This is an old house. There's bound to be bumps in the night."
00:34 What exactly that may be reveals itself in a twisty revelation that'll leave you gobsmacked.
00:39 Amid the creepy happenings, the film vines together a bizarre family drama about abuse.
00:44 Peter's parents are always a bit aloof, and their parenting style grates against the nerves.
00:48 From its weighted emotional underpinnings to skin-crawling cinematography, Cobweb makes
00:53 for a delightful, funhouse romp through the bowels of human nature.
00:57 Bess Wohl's directorial debut is an impressive one. Baby Ruby examines postpartum depression
01:02 and the necessity of support systems. Noémie Merlon plays an influencer and lifestyle blogger
01:08 named Jo, who gives birth to a newborn named Ruby. Almost immediately, Jo begins to believe
01:13 that her child is angry with her, a trait of postpartum psychosis. As the film progresses,
01:18 she loses herself and any sense of reality. Merlon's performance is appropriately scatterbrained.
01:24 As societal pressures crash down around her, Jo falls further and further away from the
01:28 person she once was.
01:30 Baby Ruby knots together psychological thriller with real-life horror in a way that feels
01:34 grounded. Many might struggle to see the horror of it all, but it's there in plain sight.
01:39 Jo's emotional untethering is horrifying to witness, and it reaches such a fever pitch
01:44 it's suffocating. To overlook it simply because it doesn't scream "horror" in the traditional
01:48 sense is to undersell its agonizing emotional qualities. Baby Ruby takes clear cues from
01:54 Rosemary's Baby, but manages not to live in its shadow.
01:58 Don't believe the audience reviews of Malum. A reimagining of 2014's Last Shift, the Anthony
02:03 de Blasi directed feature takes what the original did and tightens the screws. It's a far more
02:08 volatile, relentless foray into madness, with its brutality being something you have to
02:13 see to believe.
02:14 Pinkie cop Jessica Loren follows in her father's footsteps. For her first shift, she signs
02:19 up to take the last shift at a dilapidated police station, where her father died and
02:23 a cult killed themselves. Strange occurrences unravel, putting Jessica through the wringer
02:27 both mentally and physically.
02:29 De Blasi takes no prisoners with Malum. While it's far slicker than Last Shift, it has enough
02:34 skin-sawing bloodletting to make even stalwart horror fans gasp.
02:38 Written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, John Higham's Sick takes all the worry, paranoia,
02:44 and fear of the COVID pandemic and shapes it into a nicely packaged slasher.
02:48 "There's somebody in the house. Where's your phone?"
02:54 When Parker and her friend Miri go on an excursion to Parker's family's cabin, Parker's on-again,
02:59 off-again beau DJ shows up unexpectedly after following a trail of breadcrumbs posted to
03:04 Parker's Instagram.
03:05 But things take a turn for the worse when a group of intruders descend upon them for
03:09 reasons unknown. Sick barrels through its story, not messing around with frivolous exposition
03:14 or needless character backstory. When the killers are revealed, the film further focuses
03:18 on the early days of the pandemic, when the uncertainty around the virus caused many to
03:23 act a fool. All of this gives it plenty of cultural relevance, which goes a long way
03:27 when it comes to horror flicks.
03:29 The killer doll of the year goes to Model 3 Generative Android, or Megan for short.
03:34 Sorry, Chucky. You snooze, you lose.
03:37 In the world of robotics, Gemma manufactures a toy far too complicated for even its creator
03:41 to understand. Gemma works out the code to be self-taught, picking up social cues from
03:46 real-life interactions with Gemma's niece, Katie. What begins as an innocent plaything
03:50 designed to give kids companionship morphs into a murderous, figuring hellbent on protecting
03:55 Katie at all costs.
03:56 The high-tech silicone doll goes on a rampage by eliminating everyone in Katie's path, including
04:01 a school bully who certainly had it coming.
04:04 "You know what happens to bad boys that don't mind their manners? They grow up to be bad
04:11 men."
04:12 When Gemma reprimands Katie for spending too much time with her shiny new toy, Megan sets
04:16 her sights on Gemma. It's a battle of strength and ingenuity, nearly costing Gemma her life.
04:22 Megan reinvents the killer doll genre with a smartly wound script and a rad doll design,
04:27 and who could forget Megan's cutting quips and iconic viral dance?
04:30 All the pieces are in place for a sequel, and let's hope it leans farther into the zaniness
04:34 that made it just the right amount of charming.
04:37 How Scream didn't venture to New York City before now is beyond us. Where co-directors
04:42 Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett restarted the franchise in 2022's Scream with a familiar
04:47 baton-passing story, the duo ratchet everything up a few notches with Scream 6.
04:52 Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera return as Tara and Sam, respectively, and they're still
04:57 reeling from their emotional and physical trauma. Each deals with their pain in their
05:01 own way, for better or worse. Jasmine Savoy-Brown and Mason Browning also return as the Meeks-Martin
05:07 twins. With NYC as a vast concrete playground, Scream 6 uses every chance to deliver the
05:12 goods when it comes to vertigo-inducing set pieces. The latter scene alone is a chef's
05:17 kiss.
05:18 "What?"
05:19 "Anika, you have to move right now!"
05:24 "You have to move!"
05:26 But Ghostface doesn't mess around. They're far more violent and merciless than ever before.
05:31 From the twisty opening scene to the surprising finale, Scream 6 demonstrates that the franchise
05:36 is far from dead.
05:38 A mix of sci-fi and horror, Landlocked tells the tale of a young man named Mason who returns
05:43 to his childhood home before it's set to be demolished. There, he uncovers a vintage video
05:47 camera and a set of VHS tapes and begins to wander back through the halls of his childhood.
05:52 Director Paul Owens captures the sorrowful beauty of growing old, the ephemeral quality
05:56 of time, and how we never relive our glory days no matter how hard we try. As Mason traipses
06:02 through the property, he loses himself in memories. With each tape, he tumbles into
06:07 pivotal moments from his youth as they replay like a projection machine around him. While
06:11 it's short on actual scares, the real horror stems from the stark reality that we're all
06:15 victims of our inevitable mortality.
06:18 This isn't new conceptual territory by any means, but Owens finds a way to make it original
06:22 and affecting. Filmmaker Brad Anderson reshapes the vampire mythos with a story uniquely his
06:28 own. Blood, written by Will Honley, asks questions about morality, ethics, and addiction through
06:34 the lens of one child's vampiric condition. When a young boy named Owen gets bitten by
06:38 the family dog, which vanished in the woods only to return wounded much later, Nurse Jess
06:43 learns that her son has a new thirst for blood.
06:46 "I want more. Now. I need it."
06:51 But it's far more than that. Blood has become a life-saving elixir that gives him energy
06:55 and returns him to his usual happy self. As Owen craves more and more, things become complicated
07:01 when Jess first steals bags of blood from the hospital, and then later turns her attention
07:05 to live specimens. Things naturally escalate, and the lengths Jess is willing to go are
07:10 tested. Blood mangles the senses with plenty of blood-sucking and its ability to tell a
07:14 very raw human story of desperation in such an exaggerated way. In a year that saw Renfield
07:20 and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Blood stands out as something truly unique and captivating.
07:25 In Mother, May I?, Emmett and his fiancée Anya return to Emmett's childhood home in
07:29 order to sell off the property. Unresolved trauma around his late mother leaves Emmett
07:34 irreparably damaged, but Anya believes that he can be cured. In a bizarre turn of events,
07:39 Anya begins acting like his dead mother as immersion therapy, forcing him to finally
07:43 deal with and move on from the past. What begins as drug-induced play-acting turns into
07:48 something far more terrifying and emotionally grueling. Anya puts him through the proverbial
07:52 wringer, continuing the charade for the next several days. The lines between reality and
07:57 fantasy blur, and Emmett must somehow confront the truth and find a way of pulling Anya back
08:02 from the ledge.
08:03 While writer-director Lawrence Vannicelli no doubt deserves praise for his execution,
08:07 the spotlight is fully on Kyle Gallner and Holland Rodin, both of whom absolutely dazzle
08:12 in their roles, playing off one another to deliver two of the year's most psychologically
08:16 disturbed performances.
08:19 Talk to Me utilizes the theme of grief to tell a supernatural story about an embalmed
08:23 hand. When you grab the hand and say "talk to me," you open up a portal to the other
08:27 side by which you can communicate with the dead. The catch is that you have to sever
08:31 the connection before 90 seconds pass, or else.
08:35 "What happens after 90 seconds?"
08:37 "Talk to me! Talk to me!"
08:40 "Don't wanna stay."
08:42 When Mia plays the game, it gives her a rush she has never known in life, so much so she
08:47 becomes addicted to it pretty much instantaneously. The following night, tragedy strikes when
08:52 Mia convinces her best friend Jade's little brother Riley to participate, setting off
08:56 a bizarre and brutal turn of events. Talk to Me is relentless, brooding, and sharply
09:01 written, a perfect example of why A24 has become the ultimate purveyor of modern horror
09:06 classics.
09:08 Fix a cult with sex work, and you have Candyland. Instead of exploiting sex workers for the
09:12 sake of sensationalism, Swab's take is one of empathy and matter-of-fact presentation.
09:18 Remy is newly emancipated from her cult family, deciding that such a strict, misguided lifestyle
09:23 no longer suits her. She dreams of something different, even sex work. She's initially
09:27 apprehensive about entering the business, and a group of young women teach her the ways
09:31 of making a living. But Remy harbors ill intent. She's always a little bit off, as though something
09:37 is bubbling just below the surface. What begins as a gritty, unapologetically perverse drama
09:42 quickly erupts into a grisly slasher film. An unknown killer unceremoniously dispatches
09:47 each sex worker in a gnarly fashion. The descent into madness is harrowing, to say the least,
09:52 and you won't forget the disturbing ending for as long as you live.
09:56 Found footage is a tough sell, considering how oversaturated the genre is these days.
10:01 But make it part mockumentary, and you have something that might entice those of us who
10:05 would scoff otherwise. With Horror in the High Desert, Minerva, filmmaker Dutch Marich
10:10 builds on his previous entry, 2021's Horror in the High Desert, by expanding the universe
10:15 and digging his fingernails deeper into the macabre. Two separate stories about disappearances
10:20 are pieced together into an unsettlingly grim picture. One young woman's body is discovered
10:25 along a desolate stretch of highway, while another vanishes without a trace some distance
10:29 away. Set in northeastern Nevada, the film possesses a true crime quality that makes
10:34 what you see even more chilling. While it's a slow-burn venture, the last 20 minutes make
10:38 it all worth it.
10:40 Brandon Cronenberg's Infinity Pool follows failing novelist James and his wife Em as
10:45 they go on vacation to a fictional seaside country. There, they befriend Gabby and her
10:49 husband Albin, a seemingly innocent tourist couple looking for a good time. However, when
10:54 the resort's slimy underbelly reveals itself to be a sadosexual masochist's wet dream,
10:59 Gabby unleashes unholy terror on James through a sick game of cat and mouse. In one of the
11:04 resort's twist adventures, the rich pay to have their likeness cloned and then killed.
11:09 Infinity Pool spares no expense in driving nails into the back of your skull. When it
11:13 all hits the fan, Mia Goth dives even further into bonkers territory to deliver one of the
11:18 year's most impressively peculiar performances.
11:21 "Oh, Jamesy! Oh no! Oh no!"
11:27 With his second feature film, Cronenberg demonstrates that he has a twisted mind just like his father,
11:32 David, but exhibits his own singular vision and aesthetic.
11:36 Co-writers and co-directors Wesley Taylor and Alex Weiss strike a goldmine in horror
11:40 and humor with Summoning Sylvia. Sure, the scares are slight, yet the cast's magnetism
11:45 makes up for it. Following a group of gay men, the story unravels inside a Victorian-style
11:50 home that the group rented for the weekend to celebrate Larry's upcoming nuptials. The
11:54 fact the house is haunted is just icing on the cake. Decorated with spooky imagery and
11:59 bumps in the night, Summoning Sylvia revs its engines when the group performs a seance
12:03 to, well, summon Sylvia. Things go as planned, but Larry and his friends prove ill-prepared
12:08 for what comes next.
12:10 Larry's Kuwait veteran, soon-to-be brother-in-law Harrison, arrives, and his presence is far
12:14 more horrifying than anything Sylvia has in store. Harrison's blatant bigotry drives the
12:18 story forward, offering a timely reminder of how hate can sometimes be unlearned. Throughout
12:23 the film, the group contends with both horrors of the literal and figurative variety.
12:28 Arguably the third-best entry in the franchise, Evil Dead Rise reapplies its own conventions
12:33 in a new location. Set in a city high-rise, there's plenty of opportunity to elevate the
12:38 tension, violence, and graphic set pieces. With a new cast of characters, Lee Cronin's
12:43 installment competes with 2013's Evil Dead remake for the most blood used onscreen, from
12:48 the elevator sequence to the blood-doused finale. When Danny discovers the Necronomicon
12:53 and a set of vinyl records, they unwittingly open up their family to be overtaken by the
12:58 dead. Cronin twists the viewer through a gory funhouse, and some moments are so uncomfortable
13:03 you can't help but squirm in your seat.
13:04 "Mom?"
13:05 "Mommy's with the maggots now."
13:13 Danny's Aunt Beth proves to be a worthy adversary against the dead, and eventually picks up
13:17 the iconic chainsaw to do a little slicing and dicing. With its endearing characters
13:22 and buckets of blood, Evil Dead Rise demonstrates that a decades-old franchise can still be
13:26 relevant to a new generation. Its admirable opening weekend debut of $24.5 million is
13:32 more than enough evidence that the dead just won't stay dead.
13:36 A TV set flickers in the blackness. A cartooned gentle hum fills the room. Two children, Kevin
13:42 and Kaylee, find themselves locked in their home, where the doors and windows have all
13:46 disappeared. Their father has also vanished. If that weren't terrifying enough, a voice
13:51 emerges from the darkness and beacons the children to come upstairs.
13:54 Drawing upon childhood fears, from darkness to being left alone, director Kyle Edward
13:59 Ball utilizes wide shots, strange camera angles, and empty space to fill the audience with
14:04 terror. It's what you don't see that's most horrifying. As the unseen entity circles closer,
14:10 its demands grow more grotesque, such as "put the knife in your eye."
14:14 Despite scathing reviews from the general public, Skinnamarink is one of the year's
14:17 most ambitious and experimental releases. With its crackling cinematography, not unlike
14:22 TV static, you get the sense the film is some long-lost relic from another time. As the
14:27 camera pans to the very last moment, and something ungodly rises out of the darkness, the words
14:32 "Go to sleep" ring like a death knell. Good luck sleeping tonight.
14:36 Robbie Banfitch is a found-footage visionary. With The Outwaters, Banfitch wrangles genre
14:41 tropes, flips them sideways, and slathers them in time-hopping distortion. The story
14:46 follows a group of filmmakers heading out into the Mojave Desert to shoot a music video.
14:51 Michelle is a folky singer-songwriter with high-rise artistic ambitions. With her friends,
14:56 she hopes to make a visual worthy of her mother, as the song in question evokes her memories
15:00 of her. Naturally, things go off the rails pretty quickly.
15:03 Within the first day, eerie sounds boom in the distance, as though the sky is splitting
15:08 in two. The following evening, a man with an axe is seen standing on the horizon, the
15:12 night sky strewn above him. What ensues is bloody chaos, with Robbie wandering in the
15:17 sweltering heat to safety as he uncovers something far grander than he could have predicted.
15:23 You've already touched on Kyle Gallner's acting prowess once in this list. With Mother, May
15:26 I?, when it comes to Carter Smith's The Passenger, Gallner delivers a menacing performance as
15:31 Benson, a fast food worker who loses his marbles one day and takes his co-worker Bradley for
15:36 the ride of his life. When Benson snaps, he goes on a violent murder spree around town,
15:41 specifically targeting those who've done him or Bradley wrong. Things are intensely personal,
15:46 and each kill feels visceral and raw.
15:49 Beyond just being a gorefest, the movie brings up moral questions about revenge and holding
15:53 onto the past. Call this one of the biggest surprises of 2023.
15:58 Carter Smith is lucky enough to make this list twice, this time with Swallowed. Dom
16:03 wants to send off his best friend Benjamin with a chunk of change before moving to L.A.,
16:07 so he decides to participate in a drug deal. The cinch is, he must swallow the little baggies
16:12 of drugs and then retrieve them once they emerge from the other end. Dom didn't sign
16:15 up for this, but he's held at gunpoint and has no other option.
16:19 When Dom and Benjamin drive over the border to Canada, a redneck pays them a visit at
16:23 a roadside rest stop. He punches Dom in the stomach, setting off a series of unfortunate
16:28 events throughout the rest of the night. Turns out, the little baggies contain hallucinatory
16:32 insects. From there, Smith turns it up to 11. The tension is so thick you could cut
16:38 it with a knife. Eventually, Dom and Benjamin meet the granddaddy of the drug business,
16:43 a man named Rich who possesses his own horrifying pleasures.
16:46 Godless, The Eastfield Exorcism is not your typical exorcism film. It's much more. There's
16:52 a rawness to the story that grounds it in place, nailing the audience to the ground.
16:57 With a script written by Alexander Anglis Wilson and directed by Nick Kosakis, the film
17:01 relentlessly navigates religious extremism and blind faith. The story follows a cult
17:06 that claims a young woman named Lara has been possessed by a demon and plots to exorcise
17:11 the beast from her body. Lara's husband Ron believes it's for the best, but as things
17:15 progress, he doubts whether the exorcist's intentions are as wholesome as he originally
17:19 thought.
17:20 Daniel James King possesses a braggadocious persona, believing himself to be the direct
17:24 vessel of God. But his methods are brutal, evidenced as he puts Lara through literal
17:29 hell. There's physical, emotional, and psychological torture, all in the name of the Lord.
17:34 The movie also raises questions about mental health. Lara suffers from terribly frightening
17:39 dreams, which leads her psychiatrist to believe she has paranoid schizophrenia. Rest assured,
17:44 the film is not for the faint of heart. More than anything, it depicts what happens when
17:48 religious extremism goes unchecked.
17:51 [music]