Let me preface this section by saying that this is only the view of one opinionated horror nerd, if you find a film you enjoyed on this list, sorry.
THE BEST
1. Pearl
Mia Goth gives the single best horror performance of the decade, she deserves an Oscar, it’s a hard film to describe, Pearl has the technicolour colour palette of the Wizard Of Oz which it contrasts with its dark subject matter, a character study of a person’s descent into madness.
2. Terrifier 2
Art the clown is what would happen if the Joker was a demonic mime. He makes Pennywise look like a children’s entertainer, Terrifier 2 single handedly revived the slasher sub-genre.
It’s the most violent film of the year and feels very influenced by a Nightmare On Elm Street. It’s surreal, darkly funny and at two hours thirty minutes, unrelentingly violent.
3. Hellraiser 2022
They finally got the formula right for another good Hellraiser film,
and we haven't had one of those since Hellraiser: Bloodlines.
Jamie Clayton is perfect as The Hell Priest (“pinhead”), her performance is ripped right out of the pages of the original novella The Hellbound Heart.
The film has one or two issues and feels very derivative of 13 ghosts (the plot is almost identical), but overall it works.
David Bruckner understands the source material, the atmosphere and the world of Hellraiser. Though it would have been great to see what Pascal Laughier (director of Martyrs) would have done with the franchise had he continued to be attached to the project but its a step in the right direction for a franchise that quite literally went to hell.
4. Bones and All
Bones and All reminded me a lot of 2012's Byzantium and also strangely Scott Snyders graphic novel "Severed". The film is first and foremost a romantic drama within the horror genre. I was surprised how much I actually liked it, it has its own unique lore and is engaging and enjoyable.
THE WORST.
1. Barbarian. Barbarian is the worst horror film of the year and quite possibly the worst film of the year. Barbarian is garbage, its a film that desperately tries to be shocking but is a cliché predictable mess with terrible pacing and a half-baked laughable plot. Its unsure if it wants to be a social commentary on sexual abuse or a cheesy throwback exploitation film,
it fails miserably at both.
2. My problem with Smile is that it could have been great but it completely falls flat on its face. Mainstream American horror films are never really frightening because they're as commercial as a Mcdonald's burger, they're fine but they're objectively trash.
It basically has everything wrong with American horror in it.
It features a CGI monster that looks like Marilyn Manson, the characters make decisions that are unrealistic and laughable (looking at you stereotypically judgemental husband character who doesn't believe his wife cliche) and it is filled with jump scares every five seconds which for your seasoned horror fan feel cheap when you can literally count the seconds until the next one.
Good horror is not about making me jump, its about leaving me with an image that will stay with me for days, the former is just lazy horror writing 101.
It's only positives are that it's well shot and has a really good idea it never fully explores because its far too restrained to pull it off effectively.
If the concept of your film is that a demon jumps from tormenting one person to another when they witnesses someone kill themselves or someone else in a really horrific way, you have to sell me on that. It cannot be vanilla, it has to be horrific for that concept to work.
3.Halloween Ends
It should be called Halloween Ends: The Corey Cunningham story, who’s Corey Cunningham?
good question, you’d think he’d be mentioned in the last few films in this trilogy before having an entire film focus on him.
But no, we spend most of the last film in David Gordon Green’s trilogy following Corey Cunningham a 19 year old boy who discovers Michael Myers living in a sewer through a plot convenience, beats the ever living shit out of him and steals his mask, why? , I honestly don't know, its never made clear because the writers themselves have no idea either.
Michael Myers was an un-killable monster in Halloween Kills now just one film later he's a withered old man who gets his ass handed to him by a teenager, that is just flat out inconsistent writing.
Here's the thing, if they had already established Corey Cunningham as a character in the previous films or at least implied the dramatic change in the lore of Halloween that now Myers is able to transmit his evil onto another person
it could have worked, in concept that's not a terrible idea,
but in execution it was lazy and haphazardly done.
The whole idea of the final film in a trilogy is to bring a concrete end to what came before it, the final chapter in a trilogy is not for changing up the rules you've solidified in the previous two films, it's meant to be a conclusion of the story arcs set up to round off your series. it was a bold move but not one that worked for me at all, its not earned or explained and makes no sense whatsoever.
Also what is with some of the dialogue in this movie, Laurie Strode while pressuring her grieving granddaughter to go out and get a man so she can get over the loss of her parents literally says "It's time to show grief your tits". WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!.
Then there's the issue of the tacked on ending where Corey is killed rendering building the entire film around him completely and utterly pointless, then we get the final showdown between Michael and Laurie, which is literally the last ten minutes of the film because the writers remembered they were supposed to be writing a Halloween movie and not a remake of Stephen King's "Christine".
The only scene I can say genuinely feels like it was planned during the last two films is when Laurie and Alison butcher Michael,
you get that sense of catharsis that you're supposed to feel watching Laurie finally get revenge and kill Michael for good,
It also ends on a good note with the two parading his corpse through the streets before throwing him into a meat grinder, destroying any possibility of a sequel.
That is a solid ending but it belongs in a very different movie,
with writing a trilogy you can't just go with any idea that seems like it might be interesting on a whim it has to feel like a cohesive thread connecting all three together, Halloween ends ultimately is almost as bad as Halloween 3: Season of The Witch...and that is saying a lot.
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