To the outside observer it may seem like every single year is called “one of the best years for horror ever,” but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: It’s never a bad year for horror. The entertainment industry damn near runs on scary movies, which are cheap to produce and able to take artistic risks that bigger budget genre films — the ones that have to sell tickets to everybody just to break in — are too timid to even consider. You can always find great horror movies. The trick is knowing where to look.
And that right there is the trick, because smaller movies don’t have huge advertising budgets, and they don’t drive traffic so publications can’t always allocate the resources to cover them. Great horror movies fall through the cracks all the time. Heck, even major theatrical releases don’t get their just desserts a lot of the time, vanishing from theaters if they’re not hits right away, and getting a bad reputation just because some critics just didn’t get it.
So let’s take a moment to look back at the best horror movies that 2024 has already had to offer, that weren’t huge hits. They may be obscure, they may just be underrated, but one thing’s for sure: They aren’t “Longlegs.” You already know about “Longlegs” — and probably “Immaculate” and “Late Night with the Devil.”
Let’s give these other scary movies some (digital) ink, shall we?
“Abigail”
A gang of criminals kidnaps the daughter of a mysterious millionaire, only to discover that wow, they really shouldn’t have. I won’t ruin the twist for you here, because all of the trailers did, and that didn’t help “Abigail” sell many tickets when it premiered in April. Just a couple weeks later it was tossed onto streaming, but don’t sleep on it. Whether you’re coming in fresh or already know the gist of it, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (“Ready or Not” and “Scream 6”) have directed another funny, frightening banger. The wonderfully wicked cast includes Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand and Alisha Weir, and they all end up covered in buckets and buckets of blood. You’ll laugh until you scream.
“Abigail” is streaming on Peacock.
“Arcadian”
Ah, it’s a good year to be a Nicolas Cage fan. (Then again it usually is.) A few months before Nicolas Cage creeped out the world as a satanic serial killer in “Longlegs,” he played the hero role in an overlooked, and darned cool monster flick. “Arcadian” stars Cage as a father fighting to protect his house and family from monsters after the fall of civilization, and if that sounds like a knockoff of “A Quiet Place,” fair enough. But it’s a good knockoff of “A Quiet Place,” and its terrifying creatures are something cinema hasn’t seen before. Their big reveal, when an unearthly arm reaches through a window, is bizarre, nightmarish and new.
“Arcadian” is streaming on Shudder.
“Cuckoo”
You’ll go cuckoo for “Cuckoo.” Hunter Schafer stars as a teenager whose parents drag her to the Bavarian Alps, where she’s forced to work at a weird hotel where the guests are all mysteriously sick, and she’s allowed to go outside alone at night. Tilman Singer (“Luz”) directs “Cuckoo” like an arthouse horror thriller, all mood and mystery and subtext, the kind of slow burn we associate with classy, critically acclaimed genre films. Then Singer says screw it and the film explodes into an in-your-face, schlocky shocker. Like the bird that gives the film its title, there is something duplicitous about “Cuckoo,” and it’s a treat to watch its story unfold. Schafer gives a star-maker performance, and Dan Stevens (him again!) has an off-kilter, impish menace that Peter Lorre would have been proud of.
“The Devil’s Bath”
A film like “The Devil’s Bath” defies simple categorization — it’s part historical drama, sure, but also part psychological horror, part feminist tragedy, and only partly a tale of terror. But by the time the closing credits roll, you will be horrified. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala wrote and directed this Christo-folk horror movie, set during the 18th century, about a woman named Agnes (Anja Plaschg) who marries into a new family but has no place there. Her husband doesn’t love her, her mother-in-law can’t stand her, her neighbors mock her. As her relationship and life falls sadly, inexorably apart, a sense of excruciating dread keeps mounting, because we know Agnes’ story has something to do with another woman who threw her baby off of a cliff. Profoundly disturbing, deeply damning cinema, in which the evils of history need no embellishing.
“The Devil’s Bath” is streaming on Shudder.
“Exhuma”
Buckle up. “Exhuma” tells the story of a hard-boiled occult professionals — a shaman, her protégé, a mortician and a Feng Shui expert — who are enlisted to remove a supernatural curse from a wealthy family. Their plan is to dig up the unholy grave of one of their ancestors, exorcise his spirit, and move the body to hallowed ground. Naturally it all goes wrong and all hell breaks loose. “Exhuma” starts out like a supernatural Michael Mann thriller, all business and style, before diving into the deep end of bizarre demonic possessions and ancient monsters. It’s a rollercoaster ride, inventive and fascinating, and more people should be talking about it.
“Exhuma” is streaming on Shudder.
“The Front Room”
If you blinked, you probably missed the theatrical release of “The Front Room,” the directorial debut of The Eggers Brothers (their other brother, Robert, directed “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse”). It’s hard to say why audiences stayed home, but they missed out on one wild horror comedy. Brandy Norwood stars as Belinda, a pregnant woman whose mother-in-law will leave them a fortune if they let her move into their house. But the psychological manipulation, the racist barbs, and the simple task of caring for the elderly and infirm begin to drive Belinda insane. Kathryn Hunter plays the stepmother, a demented clown of a character, as much a gremlin as she is a relative, breaking everything her path. Damnably funny, uncomfortably bitter, deceptively smart, sadly overlooked.
“I Saw the TV Glow”
For many who’ve seen it, Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow” is already considered one of the best movies of the year. Some, like yours truly, consider it one of the best films of the decade. But not enough people have seen it, so here we are. Justice Smith stars as Owen, a teenager in the 1990s who is obsessed with a supernatural TV series called “The Pink Opaque,” and bonds with another outsider, Maddy, played by Bridgette Lundy-Paine, over their mutual geekery. When Maddy suddenly vanishes, Owen lives a sad and lonely life until one day, years later, Maddy returns and drops a bombshell that changes everything. Everything. Rich and textured and upsetting, “I Saw the TV Glow” captures the horrors of never hatching out of your shell, a metaphor for the trans experience that’s simultaneously empowering and cautionary, terrifyingly familiar and unlike anything before it. It’s a singular vision, inspired by popular media but alchemically mixed into something new and powerful and terrifying.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is streaming on Max.
“In a Violent Nature”
The pitch for “In a Violent Nature” is simple: What if there was a “Friday the 13th” movie from Jason Voorhees’ perspective? And yet in execution it’s so much more — and not just because one of this movie’s executions is so grotesquely ingenious, it’s already the stuff of hushed whispers and legends. Writer/director Chris Nash’s film is oddly peaceful and pastoral, with the camera floating behind the undead killer like a rogue Terrence Malick movie, as he makes his way through the woods, stumbling onto new victims, whose stories we piece together through contextual clues. “In a Violent Nature” is an odd but effective experiment, suggesting that the life of the undead may be more spiritual in nature than you probably imagined. You might never look at a slasher movie — or at least slasher villains — the same way again.
“In a Violent Nature” is streaming on Shudder.
“Infested”
There’s an old “Kids in the Hall” sketch where someone writes one of the scariest novels ever written, and it just reads “Hey, there’s a spider on your back!” For those with arachnophobia, it might not take much more than, you know, a bunch of spiders to give you the willies. But if you don’t have arachnophobia, “Infested” might give it to you. The film stars Théo Christine as a bug enthusiast and small-time fence who brings a rare species of spider into his rundown apartment building. When the damn thing escapes it breeds out of control, and its babies get bigger and bigger. And bigger. There are spider scares galore in “Infested” but just as frightening is the film’s insistence that, because the killer spider infestation is happening to poor people and people of color, nobody outside their community cares. They might even be willing to help the spiders along. Cynical, sinister stuff.
“Infested” is streaming on Shudder.
“Lisa Frankenstein”
Fifteen years ago, Oscar-winner Diablo Cody wrote the script for “Jennifer’s Body,” an fantastic horror comedy that critics and audiences failed to appreciate — at least in large numbers — until many years later. You’d think we’d have all learned our lesson but no: Cody finally wrote another horror comedy, it’s also strange and wonderful and weird, and not many people gave it a second look. Or a first one. They missed out: Kathryn Newton (her again!) stars as Lisa, a teenager whose only real friend is a zombie, so she starts killing the horrible people in her life to sew their parts onto his body and make him whole again. Directed by Zelda Williams, “Lisa Frankenstein” has superficial similarities to mean-spirited 80s teen comedies like “Heathers,” but it’s got much more in common with more overlooked eccentricities like Bob Balaban’s “My Boyfriend’s Back” and John Waters’ “Serial Mom.” Morbid? Sure, but also sweet and romantic. A cozy horror classic in the making.
“Lisa Frankenstein” is streaming on Prime Video.
“Oddity”
Look, let’s be frank about this: Almost everyone loved “Longlegs” but the downside of Osgood Perkins’ smash hit horror indie was that it took a lot of attention away from the other great scary movies that came out in July. “Oddity” may be the best. Damian McCarthy’s deathly terrifying tale stars Carolyn Bracken as Darcy, a blind psychic who collects cursed objects. A year after her identical twin sister’s mysterious murder, Darcy arrives at her brother-in-law’s house and settles in, bringing a horrifying wooden statue with her, and placing it at his dinner table. Damn, it’s all so eerie, and the way McCarthy lures into you his macabre little world — and then shocks the living hell out of you, over and over again — is freaky and devilish. With only a few months to go, “Oddity” might wind up with a legitimate claim to the title “scariest movie of the year.”
“Oddity” is streaming on Shudder.
“Red Rooms”
Sorry, I’m going to need you to hang on for a second… a chill is still running down my spine. “Red Rooms” is a stark and chilling horror thriller about a man on trial for kidnapping, mutilating, and murdering young girls for a live audience on the dark web. But it’s not his story. It’s actually about two women who sit in the back of the trial every single day, who have never met the accused killer before. One thinks he’s innocent and wants to exonerate him. The other… oh, you’ll find out. Pascal Plante’s fascinatingly grim picture takes a scalpel to people obsessed with real-life murders and murderers, asking disturbing questions and giving you answers you don’t expect, and may not like. Juliette Gariépy plays a strange and frightening individual, unlike anyone you’ve met before (you hope), and who you’re unlikely to forget.
“Stopmotion”
“Speak No Evil” found a big enough audience to stay off this list, but earlier in 2024, that film’s co-star Aisling Franciosi headlined a twisted psychological horror film that should have made bigger waves. Franciosi plays Ella, a stop-motion animator whose overbearing mother, herself a famous and influential animator, falls into a coma. It’s up to Ella to finish her mother’s final film, but inspiration strikes and she instead begins to work with raw meat. Then dead animals. And yeah, this isn’t going anywhere healthy. Robert Morgan’s debut feature doesn’t break new ground narratively — it’s the latest in a long line of movies about tortured souls going to pieces in creepy ways — but the terrifying stop-motion horror sequences feel incredibly fresh. Even though they’re rotting. Oh God, they’re rotting.
“Stopmotion” is streaming on Shudder.
“Strange Darling”
The thing about “Strange Darling” is, we’d really be better off not telling you anything about “Strange Darling.” Writer/director JT Mollner’s film takes place entirely out of order, so just when you think you’ve got your bearings and know what you should be afraid of, he pulls the rug out and makes you scared of everything else. Willa Fitzgerald plays a young woman (“The Lady”) who, at the start of the film, is bleeding and fleeing from a terrifying man (“The Demon”) — we’ll leave it at that. Fitzgerald and Gallner are stunning in their complicated roles, but it’s Giovanni Ribisi who steals the show as the film’s cinematographer. Yes, that’s right, he’s a cinematographer now, and it turns out he’s great at it. Wherever you land on “Strange Darling,” if you love it or if it ultimately infuriates you, it’s a powerful horror thriller that was made with incredible skill and unmistakable passion.
“Under Paris”
Sharks vs. The Olympics. There you go. That’s the movie. Xavier Gens’ impressively timely horror-action-disaster-political satire stars Oscar-nominee Bérénice Bejo as a shark expert whose husband was killed by — you guessed it — a shark, and who springs into action when that same damn shark swims into the River Seine… right before the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where the swimmers competed in the Seine. “Under Paris” is slickly produced, exciting and funny, but it’s got a mean-streak 20,000 leagues long. The film’s ending has to be seen to be believed; suffice it to say, Xavier Gens did not have to go that hard, but holy crap, is it awesome that he did.
“Under Paris” is streaming on Netflix.
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