Hello all, it's been a while, and for that I apologize.
But, now that I'm back, I have decided to begin a series on my favourite films of all time from every genre, leading to a final list of my favourite films, full stop.
Over the course of this series, I will be looking at horror films, musicals, dramas, fantasy, science fiction and everything in between from the major studios and the little guys and from every era of film. And alongside my lists of favourite genre films, I will also be looking at the classic serial format of early cinema as I feel that while some of my favourite works come from movie serials, they don't really fit into a list of genre films due to their often wildly different tones and story types across the length of the serial.
With all that being said, today I will be looking at:
Now, before I get started, a few basics about what I consider a horror movie. First, a horror movie has to have an unsettling atmosphere, and through the use of legitimate drama drive rising tension, be devoid of false jump scares, and has to primarily use psychology to drive the horror with minimal use of gore. That being said, slashers and monster movies do not qualify (and will be receiving their own list in the future), and almost no films from the last 20 years qualify for me either as I haven't found many to be legitimately scary.
And now, for the list:
10: The Uninvited
Released in 1944, The Uninvited was directed by Lewis Allen in his directorial debut and is about a pair of siblings who decide to move into Windward House, and abandoned seaside mansion, after managing to purchase it for an unusually low price from its owner, Commander Beech. Roderick, played wonderfully by Ray Milland, meets and becomes infatuated with the Commander's granddaughter, Stella and brings her to the mansion against her grandfather's wishes. The new homeowners period of enchantment with the house comes to an abrupt end as the sounds of a woman sobbing in the middle of the night ring through the house. Stella develops an attachment to the spirit now obviously haunting the manor, and in her first encounter with it, she attempts to throw herself from the same cliff her mother jumped from when she was just a small child. The presence in the house increasingly makes itself felt and becomes ever more malevolent, especially toward Stella.
While by no means revolutionary, and far from perfect, this film works in much the same way that the original The Haunting works, in that you never actually see the spirit. This is also one of the first Hollywood films to present ghosts as a serious supernatural event, and it is extremely downplayed and subtle in its treatment of the subject matter (though in its initial US run, the studio added superfluous effects to highlight the supernatural aspect), and the ghost isn't really the focus of the film, it's the psychological effects of the haunting on the inhabitants of the home. The Fitzgeralds (Roderick and Pamela) become increasingly fraught with the presence in the house and their superstitious housekeeper slowly delves into her own form of madness. But it is really Stella's story, and it is here that the film really shines in that she is initially portrayed as a simple, naive girl but slowly unravels as the presence haunting the manor takes an interest in her. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and even unnerving at times, the sound design highlights the bleak nature of the haunting, the direction is superbly subtle in its execution, and the acting is top notch. I'd advise that if you've never seen this little masterpiece from the golden age of horror, you give it a go.
9: Dracula (1931)
Tod Browning's classic pre-code horror masterpiece is so well known that to describe the plot makes little sense, so I will simply list my reasons for including it at this spot on my list. I love the Universal Gothic Horror Cycle of the 1930's, having watched them religiously as a child during yearly marathons at Halloween, but Dracula was never my favourite of the Monsters. I felt that he was too refined and too charming to relate to and I gravitated toward the more fringe characters, like the Monster, the Wolf-Man and the Creature (I refuse to call him Gill-Man). That being said, I still idolize this film for the horror cycle that it kicked off and for the genius Tod Browning's (whose more infamous film only receives honourable mention on this list) use of lights and shadow to evoke a sense of creeping darkness and to mimic in some ways the German Expressionism of the 1920's. And Bela Lugosi is to many people the quintessential Dracula, informing nearly every portrayal since, in his most famous role and the one to which he would always be associated afterwards.
Dracula is a masterpiece of pacing, dialogue, lighting, and sound design, though the dialogue can at times be a little forced and I still rewatch it at least once a year, but the reason it is this low on my list is because I feel there are better vampire movies out there.
8: The Grudge
No other trend in horror has had more impact in the past 20 years than the infusion of J-Horror into the American market and the Hollywood capitalization of that trend. And no other film typifies that than The Grudge, the American remake of Ju-On: The Grudge, with the original director back in the chair to oversee this. And I feel that is its greatest strength against its competitors in this field, such as The Ring, The Eye, Shutter, Dark Water and so on. Takashi Shimizu brings a consistency to this film with its predecessors, as it is more a loose sequel than a strict remake of the series to date, and he brings with him a different mentality to his American counterparts that plays well into this type of horror.
Western superstition has no real equivalent to the onryō of Japanese folklore, and so it can be difficult for Western directors to adapt the concept effectively. Shimizu, having grown up with these kinds of ghost stories, which are uniquely Japanese and Southeast Asian, brings a knowledge and understanding of what makes type of horror genuinely unsettling. And the nearly all Japanese crew helped to create an otherworldly ambiance for the film as Japanese filmmaking is unique to that of Western style. And while I am not a fan of jump scares in general, I feel that this film does them well. None of the scares seem false and they rarely even break the building tension, they just add to it. The ghosts, while familiar to Japanese audiences, were new and unique to American audiences, and were genuinely frightening that first time around in a way that is hard to describe now.
Then, there was the casting of Sarah Michelle Gellar (in probably one of her best roles outside of Buffy), which helped to cement the feeling of isolation and otherness that the onryō represent. Her character is in an unfamiliar place, she doesn't speak the language, and now she has to deal with these angry supernatural events that threaten to kill her and everyone she loves. Not a perfect film by any means, and I can understand why the critics disliked it, but I still feel it is the best of the American remakes of Japanese horror classics, though its sequels were all garbage.
7: Kuroneko
And now we move from an American remake of a modern Japanese classic to a legitimate classic of Japanese horror cinema, Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko (A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove). Considered by many to be the prototypical onryō film, this 1968 film directed by Kaneto Shindo tells the tale of a mother and daughter-in-law who are brutally raped and murdered and their home burned down by soldiers during a civil war in the Heian period of Japanese history. The woman return as beautiful ghosts with a stately home in a bamboo grove after a black cat appears and licks at their bodies. The women make a pact with the spirits of the underworld to return and kill samurai in revenge for their death.
This film is one my favourite Japanese films of all times, surpassed only by Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, and it is hauntingly beautiful in its cinematography. Less of a traditional ghost story, their is little supernatural to this film, but the appearance of the women is always enough to unnerve as they act less human and more animalistic after their deaths. The acting is subtle, the lighting is incredible (the use of shadows to create depth is something I've rarely seen), the sound design is superb at creating a sense of dreamlike unease, and the sets are beautifully crafted. The story is in many ways very basic, and yet it feels wholly fresh and seems completely unique. There's a reason that this film became one of the templates for ghost films to follow in Japanese cinema.
6: The Babadook
Psychological horror has seen an amazing resurgence in the past decade with such amazing films as Get Out, The Witch, Under the Shadow, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and many other. But, in my opinion, the best of the bunch is The Babadook. Less a supernatural horror film than it is the tragic tale of a mother with severe post partum depression, a condition she has held onto for her child's entire life to this point after her husband died driving her to the hospital to give birth. My one complaint about the film is that in the beginning, the son is overbearingly obnoxious, but I can let this slide as after viewing it a few times I realized that we are seeing the world through the mother's eyes, and she hates her son in the beginning for the death of his father. As our perspective changes to the son's near the end, he becomes far more realistic, and this is a brilliant technique by first time director Jennifer Kent.
It helps to create this nightmarish reality where the appearance of the titular book suddenly brings to the fore a physical representation of the mother's hatred. Through the use of sound, shadows, and subliminal images we are drawn into the building insanity of the mother, exacerbated by the increasingly out of control son culminating in some of the most disturbing imagery I've ever seen in a film. Through its sublime direction, near perfect acting, and the idea that less is more, The Babadook really is a nearly perfect horror film, one that scares without resorting to loud noises and animals.
5: The Phanton Carriage
Released in 1921, Körkarlen (which literally translates as The Wagoner) went on to become a central pillar of Swedish cinema, influencing the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick. Based on a 1912 novel of the same name, the story is based on the European legend that the last person to die before the new year is required to ferry the souls of the dead to the underworld for the next year. The film follows David Holm, an unrepentant drunk with consumption (tuberculosis), who after being killed in a fight just before the clock strikes 12 on new year's eve is shown by his friend Georges (the current charioteer) the wrongs he has committed.
The film is famed for its special effects and for its narrative built upon flashbacks within flashbacks. You can see the influence in most of Ingmar Bergman's films, as well as in The Shining, and even in It's A Wonderful Life. While this film is less a horror and more of a cautionary tale, the atmosphere is dark and moody and the ghosts are ethereal in a way that was highly advanced for its time. Not really scary, but atmospheric and dreamlike to an incredible degree and once you know what to look for, you'll actually see the influence this film had on later horror directors.
4: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
If you had asked me before 2008, I would have told you that Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens was my favourite vampire film of all time. It still is my second favourite, which is an achievement in and of itself. For those that don't know, Nosferatu was the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula to film, albeit unlicensed and thus considered by many for decades to be lost. Luckily, several copies were found and restored, making it possible for us to see what many still consider to be the most frightening vampire film ever made.
One of the progenitors of the German Expressionism style of cinema (of which I am a massive fan), Nosferatu portrays its titular character as a monster. Not suave, not charming. A straight monster. Following Stoker's novel almost to the letter, this film presents us with a vampire that is equal parts repulsive and terrifying, driven only by his blood lust and with no pretense at human civility. With his use of deep shadows, including some masterful uses of real shadow to convey the powers of Count Orlok, F.W. Murnau crafts a masterclass in how to create dramatic tension and atmosphere. And while many might consider it dated and a little slow, these both work in the film's favour to create something surreal and dripping with tension.
3: The Shining
Stanley Kubrick is my favourite director of all time. I love all of his films, even the ones he himself didn't like. And easily, the eeriest film on this list is Kubrick's 1980 masterpiece, The Shining. Again, not really a straight horror, more of a psychological thriller, this film dives deep into madness and the consequences of it. Famously hated by Stephen King, this is probably the best adaptation of a King novel ever, and that is down to Kubrick's signature style. The geography of the hotel is intentionally made to be physically impossible to create a sense of disorientation. Kubrick's editing helps add to the sense of dreamlike surrealism and even further disorientation as it slowly becomes impossible to tell what is real and what is hallucination.
The acting is great, especially Shelley Duvall's, as she was basically tortured by Kubrick during film to keep her constantly on edge and frayed. Jack Nicholson portrays the slow burn loss of Jack Torrance's mind supremely well, and though you can tell that he loves his family, the spirits of the Overlook manage to twist him completely to their purpose. Unsettling, unnerving, tense, monstrous; these are all words that can describe this film about one family's slow descent into madness.
2: The Devil's Backbone
Guillermo del Toro is probably one of the most visually stunning directors working today, with such amazing films as Blade II, the Hellboy films, Pans Labyrinth, and Pacific Rim to his name. But, it really is in the horror genre that he shines brightest. From his debut with Cronos in 1993 to Crimson Peak, del Toro is at his best when bringing us the beautifully horrific.
And nowhere is that more apparent than in The Devil's Backbone, which takes place during the Spanish Civil War at an orphanage haunted by the ghost of a dead boy. The design of the ghost in this film is one of the creepiest I have ever seen, with the blood from his fatal head wound constantly flowing upwards toward the sky. And though at first, this is treated like a regular horror film, it quickly evolves into something much more, an extremely sad, melancholic story about the loss of innocence and the horror of war.
Pitch perfect direction, incredible acting (especially from the mostly child actors), amazing cinematography, and sound design all work in unison to create one of the best ghost stories ever put to film.
1: Let The Right One In
Before the release in 2008 of Låt den rätte komma in, there was one undisputed champion of vampire films; Nosferatu. But that all changed with Tomas Alfredson's little film based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist. A low key film where the horror aspects really play as a background aspect of the larger story at the heart of this masterpiece of modern cinema. Let the Right One In is, at its heart, a coming of age story with strong themes of lost innocence, the power of friendship, true love, and the consequences of abusing others.
Alfredson took a very deliberate approach to ensure that his film didn't look or feel like an American horror film, which is one of its greatest strengths, specifically in what I believe is the best scene in the entire film. It also captures the bleak reality of soviet era Sweden and the industrial nature of the north of the country. The two leads are incredible, especially for such young actors, and their chemistry is natural; awkward, yet warm and loving. The film goes out of its way to show that Eli is not a monster, that she just does what she has to to survive, which is directly contradicted by Oskar, who would be a monster if he could be. But, through that, these two come together in a connection that neither seems to fully understand, but which they trust, unlike their connections to other characters. The story deals with so many of the issues facing teenagers in such a natural, unromanticized way; neither sympathetic nor patronizing, just observing the reality. And Lena Leandersson really does feel like she is a centuries old vampire while Kåre Hedebrant really does convey the isolation of his character and the more antisocial aspects incredibly well. All in all, this is as close to perfect as just about any film I have ever seen in my life and I make sure I watch it at least several times a year, picking up on new subtleties and nuances with each viewing.
I really can not express how much I love this film and so will cut this short so that I don't ramble on endlessly about how great it is. Just know that if you haven't seen Let the Right One In yet, you really should go watch it. But ignore that ill-conceived American remake which tries its hardest, and yet manages to suck out all the heart and soul of the story and makes a by-the-numbers American horror film.
And so, that's my list. Now, this is just my opinion and I know that everyone will have their own favourites, or might not like horror films at all, which is fine. I look forward to hearing what your favourite horror films are and stay tuned as I continue the series with my favourite slasher films of all time. Good night.