The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen (2014)

I wrote this a while back for another site, but the project didn't work out. Seeing that it's now streaming in Amazon Prime I thought I'd throw it up here...

The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen (2014)

"a countdown of horror's hidden gems"

We all love a countdown show, right? A couple of hours playing pop culture bingo, agreeing with or disputing the decisions and rankings. It's a good time. When I came across this one from 2014 (and that title which, frankly, felt like a challenge) I couldn't resist.

First, let me say that this is not a top tier production. It’s affiliated with the now-defunct Shock Till You Drop website and directed by Anthony Masi, whose career seems to mostly consist of making horror documentaries. It’s populated by passionate horror fans who work in the genre - but don’t expect any heavy hitters.

The biggest name is PJ Soles (Lynda in Halloween) who narrates. Besides her, there’s a motley crew of indie horror creators, mostly c-list actors, and journalists and bloggers you've probably never heard of. As you’d expect, they each pop up intermittently and give a little context, personal opinion and recommendations for each movie. Some of them are better at being in front of the camera than others, but the worse it gets are some cheesy jokes and dated comments about sparkly vampires.

What’s cool about this countdown is that it’s pretty much spoiler free, so if any of these films do catch your interest, you can seek them out happily knowing nothing more than the basics.

Here’s the list. What do you think? 

(btw I've linked any that I have reviewed in the past).

50. Basket Case (1982)
49. When a Stranger Calls (1979)
48. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
47. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
46. Valentine (2001)
45. Grace (2009)
44. The Hunger (1983)
43. Prophecy (1979)
42. The Dentist (1996)
41. The Food of the Gods (1976)
40. Motel Hell (1980)
39. Wrong Turn (2003)
38. The Fury (1978)
37. April Fool's Day (1986)
36. Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
35. Hatchet (2006)
34. May (2002)
33. Lemora (1973)
32. The Brides of Dracula (1960)
31. The Exorcist 3 (1990)
30. Burnt Offerings (1976)
29. The Funhouse (1981)
28. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
27. Hard Candy (2005)
26. Castle Freak (1995)
25. Feast (2005)
24. Slither (2006)
23. Inside (2007)
22. Tourist Trap (1979)
21. Trilogy of Terror (1975)
20. Splinter (2008)
19. Session 9 (2001)
18. Ginger Snaps (2000)
17. Alice Sweet Alice (1976)
16. Visiting Hours (1982)
15. Repulsion (1965)
14. Alone With Her (2006)
13. Near Dark (1987)
12. Joshua (2007)
11. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)
10. Audition (1999)
9. Let The Right One In (2008)
8. Re-Animator (1985)
7. Wishmaster (1997)
6. The Descent (2005)
5. Alone in the Dark (1982)
4. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
3. The Beast Within (1982)
2. Pumpkinhead (1988)
1. Black Christmas (1974)

If you're the kind of person who’s going to watch 2 hours of something with a title like this, I'd say you've probably heard of, if not seen, a lot of these movies. Perhaps this was made more for spooky scene-setting, to be aired around Halloween for inspiration, but for those of us who kind of live and breathe horror, there’s a fair amount of “well, duh” entries. However, I did get a couple of new films to check out such as The Fury: Brian De Palma made a telekinetic horror movie?! Sign me up immediately! And The Exorcist 3: which I always assumed was crap, but apparently it's amazing.

The one that jumps out as a dubious addition in my opinion is number 45. Despite a juicy premise, Grace was a big disappointment lacking the gut-punch you expect from baby-horror. I’d swap that out (choosing pre-2014 films to keep it fair) for the “humans are the real monsters” tale of Deadgirl or maybe the bloody mindfuck of Triangle.

The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen is worth checking out if you’re in the mood for something inoffensively horror-adjacent. While not something that's going to truly blow any horror fan's mind, the countdown doesn’t drag, there are some interesting tidbits, and you might just discover some new favourites.

Currently streaming on Tubi, Amazon Prime and Youtube, too.

Little Deaths (2011)

I've been rolling the British-made Little Deaths around in my head since I watched it a few days ago, wondering what exactly to say about it. If you can't stop thinking about a horror movie - does that make it good? This is an odd one.

Little Deaths, as the name and the artwork suggests, is about sex and death. Two staples in our genre. Here we have three shorts collected together but without any wraparound or connecting threads. I suppose it's a bit like The ABC's of Death, with nothing but a common theme to unite the work.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I feel it works better with larger projects (like the alphabet). For this, when the credits rolled after the third story, it felt undercooked, somehow? I hadn't been keeping track of the time but I had assumed there'd be more than three segments in this anthology.

Anyhow, this trio of tales has elements of sex, death, and also revenge. House & Home (written/directed by Sean Hogan) seems to generally be considered the best of the three - at least judging by the Letterboxd reviews. It concerns an affluent couple whose hobbies include kidnapping and abusing young homeless women. This is a pretty typical "they picked on the wrong girl this time!" story, though the reveal wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's fine enough, but the degradation that comes before the payoff made me feel uneasy and kind of exhausted. 

Mutant Tool (written/directed by Andrew Parkinson) is bonkers but loses a lot of its impact due to its plodding plot. I am a fan of stories about imprisoned and exploited entities, so long as they escape and the captors get their comeuppance. This doesn't exactly happen here, but the ending is satisfactorily dark.

The third and final tale is Bitch (written/directed by Simon Rumley), and it's the one I've thought the most about post-viewing, but I honestly can't decide if I like it or not. 

Here, we witness the day-to-day goings on in an abusive relationship between Claire (Kate Braithwaite) and Pete (Tom Sawyer). Claire is mean and manipulative; she does what she wants and makes Pete feel bad until he goes along with it, treating him like shit in front of his friends as well as in private. They have a kinky "puppy play" situation where Pete wears a mask and leash, crawls around on all fours, and gets pegged by Claire (and sleeps in a kennel in the spare room) but we get the distinct impression that this is more for her enjoyment than his. Ultimately, after she literally fucks one of his friends right in front of him, Pete breaks. He begins to set up a revenge plot that preys upon her deepest fears.

This story is tough to watch, it goes without saying, as abuse is never a fun thing to witness. Sawyer does well in portraying Pete as a sweet bloke trapped in his relationship. He seems constantly agonised and yet the crumbs of affection or interest Claire throws him, plus the hope that things will improve are enough to keep him from leaving. 

Claire is - aptly, given the title - shown almost entirely as a bitch. A horrible, selfish, abusive woman. Her moments of phobia are the only glimpse we get into something deeper or less repulsive about this character. As the villain, I guess this makes sense, but it's a shame to see such broad strokes used. Tackling an abusive relationship from the lesser-represented side of a male survivor is refreshing, but painting Claire so one-dimensional makes it come across more like Rumley just fucking hates women. Her unpleasant fate is not entirely clear, and I hope this was the creator's intent and not an oversight. I won't spoil it, but I have my reasons for disagreeing with a few reads I've seen of what becomes of her.

(aside: well... yikes. I just found out that Rumley also directed the most upsetting segment of the aforementioned The ABC's of Death: P is for Pressure. So honestly, I'm not going to waste too much time wondering what his motivation was here).

I think what got to me most about Bitch was its use of music as it's made clear what Pete is doing. An emotive, uplifting instrumental plays over this montage, stopping with jarring immediacy on a shot of him weeping at what he's done. It's my favourite part of the entirety of Little Deaths, though I'm not sure it's enough to redeem the whole thing...

This is streaming on Shudder at time of writing. It's barely over 1hr30 so if you feel like gulping down three odd little stories, you could do a lot worse??

The Dark Tapes (2017)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that low budget horror films can pretty easily scare the bejesus out of you.

There's a certain charm and ingrained creepiness to something that looks like your imaginative mate could have made it, and these lower branches of the horror tree really have the capacity to capture that feeling horror hounds are constantly chasing. 

Yeah, we want to be "scared", but the emotions are more complex than that. Speaking for myself, some of my favourite horror experiences have been less outright "fright" and more deep discomfort, helplessness and hopelessness. 

Without the gloss of Hollywood, you're one step closer to the dirt.

The Dark Tapes adopts the format which in some ways re-energised the genre. Found-footage movies have been around for years of course - as have horror anthologies - but together they created a beautiful little monster of a sub-genre (a sub-sub-genre?).

With V/H/S (and to a lesser extent, The ABC's of Death) viewers had the same feature-length runtime, but inside it were several stories to enjoy, usually with a wrap-around narrative to tie it all together.

And this too, is a series of found-footage, short spooky tales with a bookend narrative. Although the difference here is that all of the stories are from the same twisted mind, that of writer/director Michael McQuown.

First impressions were favourable, as viewing the trailer was enough to tell me that I probably couldn't comfortably watch this film in the house on my own. The POV's of dark domestic hallways alone ruled that out.

Tension is my absolute favourite thing about horror, and I think it's one of, if not the most important weapon in this genre's arsenal. Even those cheap jump scares from the throwaway summer blockbuster horror movies wouldn't work if the audience wasn't nervous in the first place.

When The Dark Tapes lets itself breathe enough to build tension, it does so very well. The tape entitled "The Hunters & The Hunted" involves a couple in a new home experiencing ghostly activity, and the group brought in to investigate.

The Hunters & The Hunted

Of all the tapes this one is the most grounded in reality, and it benefits greatly from that. If the test for a decent horror sequence is whether or not you find yourself trying to escape into the back of the sofa with your hands over your eyes, then this segment passes.


The thing is, there's a blessing and a curse with film shorts. The makers must find that sweet spot of a strong idea, plus a no-frills, tight delivery of it. With little time to waste, the set-up and tear-down of these stories has to be confident and to the point.

The Dark Tapes felt in places - particularly the wrap-around narrative - that this was a draft or two away from that sweet spot. There's a LOT of exposition at the beginning, delivered in a pretty dry way, so it's easy to become lost (and the danger with being lost, is being bored).

The weakest link in the chain here is "Cam Girls". It asks us to take huge leaps with it, narratively, with a pay-off that will make you scrunch up your face in a "wha? is that it?" rather than an "oh shit!".

Cam Girls

Webcam/skype-centred movies are a real double-edged sword, too. It's so gimmicky that unless you fucking nail it, it doesn't work. 

All of the stories came from an interesting idea though, and "Amanda's Revenge" was another I enjoyed, due to the creative use of film and Brittany Underwood as Amanda. 

Amanda's Revenge

Underwood is the best actor in the entire movie, if playing it a tiny bit too earnest and peppy at times, given what she's apparently going through. With a faint smack of the It Follows about it, the "Amanda's Revenge" tape shows the most imagination and flair, with some creepily stunning shots towards its conclusion.

For a budget of $65,000 this film definitely gave it the old college try, and there are some genuinely imaginative and suspenseful moments here... you just have to wait through some scenes of questionable, unnatural dialogue and an overuse of "scary static". But I've done more for less :)

McQuown and this team are worth keeping on your radar though; apparently there's a sequel in the works, so it'll be interesting to see what a second movie from the same stable is like. Hopefully they'll have sanded down some of the rougher edges and polished the points from their debut that shone through, because they're undoubtedly there... they just need a little work.


The Dark Tapes is available on iTunes here, and a tonne of other places if you want to check it out: Google Play, Vudu, iNDemand (Comcast- Xfinity, Time Warner, Cox, Bright House & more), Dish TV, Amazon, Vubiquity (Verizon Fios, Charter, Sudden Link, Media Com &more), Xbox, Playstation, Sling TV & Vimeo.

Holidays (2016)

Okay firstly, that artwork is the shit. It genuinely looks like it could have been from thirty years ago, and Holidays, this sweet little horror anthology, was made this year, in 2016! 

Secondly, I'm not sure I will ever think of Easter the same way after this film. 

From the opening I had a good vibe about Holidays, and the reason for this was the music. One might argue that the synth approach to spooky stuff is old hat (It Follows, Stranger Things...) but I don't think I will ever tire of it.

These holidays run chronologically, so we start with Valentine's Day: a stylish and adorably grisly exploration of misguided teen love. Clearly some Carrie influences here, complete with bitchy girl bullies and locker rooms. It's somewhat predictable but fun.

St Patrick's Day is a strange beast. Flavours of The Wicker Man and Evil Dead style crash zooms of boring rituals - so, actually more Shaun of the Dead... BOOM! Making tea! BAM! Driving to work! - mixed with body horror, black comedy and a frankly bonkers ending.

Easter? Well. Never has there been a more glisteningly terrifying incarnation of the Easter bunny than the one I just saw. It also reminded me that I really love the element of "now you must take my place" in my monster terror. This holiday may have been my favourite just for the sheer WTF?! factor. Although the Halloween segment comes in a very close second.

Mother's Day uses the scary premise that it's possible to get pregnant every single time you have sex, regardless of your precautions. It travels from an uncomfortable examination room beginning to a birth in the desert, cutting to black before you have a chance to pick up your jaw.

Father's Day

I found Father's Day the most disappointing, in that the build was SO good, so eerie and tense, that when the end came it did not do justice to what preceded it. It probably would have been contender for favourite, had the payoff, er... paid off. A real shame.

The revenge of cam girls on their creepy porn agent makes up the plot of the Kevin Smith written and directed Halloween tale. This one totally reminded me of Hot Girls Wanted but with a way better ending. If you know me at all, you know I fucking love Kevin Smith, and this made me want to see more short films from him. The Halloween theme is tenuous at best, but this is funny, gross, and features his wonderful daughter Harley Quinn Smith. I approve!

Christmas

The best way to describe Christmas with real life married couple Seth Green and Clare Grant, is Black Mirror lite.

And finally, a New Year's celebration begins by leading the viewer in one direction, only to change it up for a very satisfying, messy conclusion. I will say no more. It may put you off internet dating for a little while though!

I'm happy I started this challenge with something I ended up genuine enjoying. With any anthology film there are going to be weak links, but honestly one way or another, everything in this had something to recommend it. The chapter titles as old style greetings cards are also just plain beautiful, too, so keep an eye out for those!


🍺 For this film I was sipping on... 🍺

20 Pounds of Pumpkin by Samuel Adams 

At first it underwhelmed me both in pumpkin flavour and the flavour generally. However the spiciness does come through after a while, just maybe not as much as I'd like. I'm sure finishing the six pack won't be a problem though... I'd give it 2.5/5.

V/H/S (2012)

I'm so out of the loop. All I knew of this film was the name, and only then because someone I follow on Instagram posted about it a while back. So I slung it on Netflix without much thought. Sometimes that is really the way to go.

What I quickly gathered was that this is an anthology film! These can work so well when done decently. It can scratch so many horror itches in one single running time, and shorter films have to work harder and be tighter in their execution, because they don't have long to get their shit done.

The film starts like a You've Been Framed from hell: a compilation of faintly unsettling footage plays out before us. There's an attack on a woman in a parking garage and pointless vandalisation of a house... It's not slick, it's not pretty and it's not even that entertaining; it's just odd, gratuitous and uncomfortable to watch.

Well played, V/H/S  I was already feeling like this wasn't going to be a movie I mindlessly let wash over me. There's potential for fidgeting in seats, exclamations - maybe even a few nervous jumps.

The central story which threads the others together, is that of a group of guys breaking into a house under the instructions of an unnamed employer, to retrieve a video cassette. Once inside the house they find not only hundreds of VHS tapes, but also a dead body. Awkward. However they seem pretty unfazed by all this, so they each investigate the house and one by one pick up a tape and start to watch the videos - and as they do, so do we.

(Image from here, as are all the following)

Remember the controversial scene in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: the one with Henry and Otis watching footage back after taping the murder of a family, and how we the audience don't realise until the last moment that we are watching it back with them? This film kept reminding me of that scene. In pressing 'play' on this film, we are willing accomplices. This is always the case of course, but with found footage - especially of an unpleasant and criminal nature, as here - it's extra creepy when you think about it. We sit there like Henrys and Otis's, on our sofas coolly taking in the awful events, all for our entertainment.

I don't recall there being titles to the shorts during the film itself, but Wiki informs me they go by the following:

Tape 56/frame narrative

Amateur Night

Second Honeymoon

Tuesday The 17th

The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger

10/31/98

I include them here because titles are cool, and it makes it easier for me to refer to them!

The first, Amateur Night, centres around three guy friends. Here we see how the film makers get around the POV thing for a time, as we're introduced to "video glasses", some hipster looking specs which have a camera and mic inside them. 

Who's got one thumb and probably won't survive the night? This guy!

The kid wearing them goes out on the town with his douchebag friends to pick up girls. All on camera, all without any of the girls knowing, of course. It's a nightmarish sequence in the sense of boozy nights out. Sloppy drunks, getting chucked out of bars... and a spooky intense looking girl who seems to have a thing for our bespectacled friend.

"I like you." has never sounded so scary.

Bringing some drugs and the girls back to their hotel, events progress how you'd assume until... they really don't. Let's just say things turn sour and really, really messy.

What I love about V/H/S is that nothing was what I expected it to be. I may have been out of the horror game for a while now, but genre conventions are strong: you see a narrative unfolding and you think you know where something is heading. These tales are so banal and derivative in their set up, that it comes like a wake-up slap in the face when they then turn out to be something so much more horrible than you had assumed.

Another thing to recommend this film is the fact I couldn't tell if it was a small budget used brilliantly or a large budget used with restraint. The effects are great, but they do what they ought to, and no more. I imagine the found footage vibe helps with coming across more gritty and gross than on slick HD film; the fuzzy, sometimes jumpy visuals wash over everything like a filter so that nothing sticks out and takes you out of the moment.

Second Honeymoon spooked me. Like, watching in broad daylight and I still wanted to crawl out of my skin, spooked. It is probably my favourite of the collection. It's got a dash of the urban myth about it, and I think that's why I liked it so much. That, and it's so incredibly simple.

Also: masks are always scary.

Tuesday The 17th plays like a cabin in the woods type deal, but again, with a twist that keeps you interested. It's the weakest of the bunch in my opinion, but even so it explores a common theme in a way I've never seen before, so must be commended for that.

Between each short the main story progresses, with its own small but chilling developments. Who is the naked person crouched in the basement? How did that apparently dead body move from the chair? (and back again?). Y'know, common questions one finds oneself pondering, from time to time.

The Sick Thing... is yet another simple idea cleverly done. This one features video chatting as an alternative to "why are these people videotaping every single thing they're doing?".

(from here)

It starts as a haunted house deal, complete with classic set-ups like searching a dark room with only one weak light source, and something happening that we and the dude chatting can see, but Emily cannot. Just good old "oh shit!" moments. I enjoyed this one a lot, and at the reveal I was pretty much looking like Emily, there.

When I used to go to horror film festivals, there would be films like these shorts amongst the bigger budget studio ones. I wanted to like them all, to support the people getting out there and becoming a real part of the genre. It was always something of a hit and miss affair though, if they were any good. V/H/S is like a 'best of' mix from one of these events.

I've read that the reception for this film was mixed; complaints of it being too long (it's nearly two hours) and dropping the ball as often as it hits it out of the park. As someone who stepped back from horror because it seemed like nothing and no one was doing anything new or interesting, over and over again, I would consider myself a tough viewer to impress - and impress me V/H/S did.

There are five solid stories here and I would say I was caught unawares 4.5 times by how they developed and concluded. They all tend to reach into different sub-genres, too, so you ultimately feel a full blanket of horror satisfaction!

More horror anthology films please...?

If you've not seen V/H/S, do so. Don't read anything online, just sit and watch and then come back and tell me what you thought! And if you have seen it and its sequel: tell me, should I bother?

And the latest WTF award goes to...

This sounds interesting enough to warrant a look:

Twenty-six directors. Twenty-six ways to die. The ABC’s of Death is perhaps the most ambitious anthology film ever conceived with productions spanning fifteen countries and featuring segments directed by over two dozen of the world's leading talents in contemporary genre film. Inspired by children’s educational books, the motion picture is comprised of twenty-six individual chapters, each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free reign in choosing a word to create a story involving death.

The poster? I...

I am assuming it's meant to be weird and wrong and mad... to my eyes it's just coming off as funny.