The 25 Best Horror Films of the Aughts: 1. Pulse.

12. Bug. "Bug, an intense little chamber play of blossoming madness, allowed William Friedkin to put his characteristic screws to both his characters and his audience while nearly achieving a poignancy that only heightens the horror. Your enjoyment of the film may depend on whether or not you buy how quickly Ashley Judd succumbs to paranoia and insanity. I didn't buy it, but the film's relentlessness overcomes the occasionally stagy absurdity. In one of his first key roles, Michael Shannon looks a little like Anthony Michael Hall at his most hungover, but his presence and surprisingly soft voice throws you off balance, and Friedkin masterfully exploits that emotional uncertainty, paving the way for an ending that's abrupt, unforgiving, and the perfect capper for a very over the top last third. Bug has been referred to as a thriller or a horror story, but it's really a perverse romance?a heightened, demented parable of losing yourself to someone. CB"

 

11. War of the Worlds. "The apex of what critic Matthew Wilder astutely pinned as the summery popcorn movies finally wrestled with the aftermath of 9/11 (along with Land of the Dead and Red Eye), Steven Spielberg's relentless update of H.G. Wells's creaky, pre-Cold War property often feels like a regression into the cheap safety of a zero-relativity "Us vs. Them" mentality. Which is exactly why it still seems like the most upsetting mass entertainment in Spielberg's entire career. Stuffed with all the brutally efficient mayhem of Jaws, Poltergeist, Gremlins, and Jurassic Park put together, War of the Worlds is a mirror held up against the nation's sense of festering shock. But for all the sympathetic shots of people running for their lives with grimaces of terror on their faces, you can't help but wonder if Spielberg's ultimate disaster movie isn't also smuggling in criticism about the nature of our worst collective fears. EH"

 

Horrible film which might be my choice for Spielberg's worst. The script reeks of David Koepp mediocrity and Cruise can't play that type of role. Never for a second will I believe he is a blue collar guy.

 

I do believe that some technical achievement award is due WAR OF THE WORLDS for
Most Repetitious Use of Smash-Zooms and Close-Ups of Dakota Fanning's Leering, Crying
and/or Screaming Face in a Single Motion Picture. Unfortunately, I was spending more time
with Weta and in 2005, and therefore can't accept it.

 

I already kind of knew I was in the minority on this one, but I actually really loved this movie. I didn't expect to like it, but I saw it on television and decided to watch a few minutes, just for laughs. I found myself entirely sucked into the movie by its sheer intensity. It's pretty grim and I really, really loved the film's dedication to a ground level view of the invasion. I mean, it's essentially a movie about being a refugee and I found it really gripping and intense. It's pretty grim for Spielberg, it seems to me, at least latter day Spielberg. But I loved it.

 

I agree, thought this was a great film, suspenseful and hard-hitting. However, this is more Sci-fi then Horror, so its placing on this list is questionable in my mind.

 

10. Wolf Creek. "A beautiful expression of existential terror that doesn't come with the noxious sexual baggage that typically dooms its horror ilk, Wolf Creek immediately stands apart from the pack, beginning with the stunning image of sunset-tinted waves crashing onto the sands of an Australian beachfront. For a split second, this expressionistic shot resembles a volcano blowing its top, and the realization that it's something entirely more mundane exemplifies the unsettling tenor of the film's casual shocks. Like two of the best horror films of the '80s, Robert Harmon's The Hitcher and Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark, Wolf Creek is propelled by a lyrical sense of doom, and the ease with which first-time director Greg McLean creates a compelling sense of place and characters worth rooting for is truly something to behold. EG"

 

Wolf Creek above Let the Right One In? I dislike this list more every day!

 

9. The Devil's Rejects. "If House of 1000 Corpses successfully transposed the grotesqueries evoked by Rob Zombie's music onto film, then The Devil's Rejects cemented his status as a filmmaker worth noticing. Zombie's sophomore effort, ungodly violent and gruesome as it is, would be nearly unbearable to watch were it not so wonderfully aestheticized. His most noticeable trait as a stylist is, unsurprisingly, a knack for selecting the perfect songs to both match and offset the morbid goings-on of his film, but there's more at work here than mere artifice: Zombie infuses an unexpected somberness where his debut tended toward camp. His sideshow-esque cast of characters, while far from sympathetic, have evolved into genuinely fleshed-out beings whose unexpected pathos only intensifies the terror they evoke. The rejects' long string of satanic ritual murders make for a carnivalesque experience far more viscerally stimulating?and strangely watchable?than it seems to have any right to be. MN"

 

Rob Zombie's best, in my opinion. The intensity during production reached such an extreme level
that filming had to stop at several points for 'time outs'. During the motel murder sequence, both
Sid Haig and Bill Moseley supposedly took Rob aside and told him they wouldn't work on the project
any more because it was too depressing and 'bumming' them out; Rob agreed to some changes. I don't
know for certain if this actually happened since I wasn't there, but the individual that told me the story
was, and saw this first hand. The Z-Beast does have a reputation for asking a lot from his people, though.

Very effective horror movie.

 

8. Antichrist. "Lars von Trier's two-hander psychodrama Antichrist draws heavily from a rich tradition of "Nordic horror," stretching back to silent-era groundbreakers like Häxan and Vampyr (and Dreyer's later Day of Wrath), in particular their interrogation of moral strictures and assumptions of normalcy. In the wake of their son's death, He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) follow a course of radical psychotherapy, retreating to their wilderness redoubt, Eden, where they act out (and on) their mutual resentment and recrimination, culminating in switchback brutal attacks and His and Her genital mutilations. Conventional wisdom has it that Von Trier's a faux provocateur, but that misses his theme and variation engagement with genre and symbolism throughout, rendering Antichrist one of the most bracingly personal, as well as national cinema-indebted, films to come along in a while. It's heartening to see that real provocation still has a place in the forum (let's not say "marketplace") of international cinema. BW"

Conventional Wisdom is in this case right. (Ain't criticspeak grand? "Bracingly personal" means what?) This is a horror movie alright, but not in the way the nimrod reviewing means. Van Trier is the cinema equivalent of modern art; you have to read in instead of reading out.

 

yeah, what's a "faux provocateur"? someone that thinks he/she is a provocateur, but really isn't? someone that tries to provoke, but fails? someone that appears to provoke, but is really only kidding?

anyway, i enjoyed this film quite a bit. i'm liking his semi-return to high production values, even though he probably doesn't.

 

If this critic thinks ANTICHRIST harkens back to the days of HAXAN and VAMPYR, he's insane.

I think you and I already posted about this film back on the VISITOR Q review.

 

7. The Descent. "Soullessness and emptiness manifest physically in the form of screaming night crawlers in Neil Marshall's The Descent, the ultimate prison movie devoid of any trap door for escape. What starts out as a weekend spelunking trip between female friends quickly degenerates into a claustrophobic master class in visceral directionality and piercing sound design, a setup that builds repression and cripples inertia in equal measure. Since every shadow holds the potential for sudden attack, Marshall instills a feeling of being emotionally, physically, and psychologically stuck, layers of simultaneous dread that are terrifying for both the characters and audience alike. Considering the dank corners of the mind Marshall explores in the film's bat****-crazy ending, a denouement crawling with ambiguity, The Descent ultimately shows there's nothing like extreme panic and betrayal to make even the sunniest parts of the physical world a very dark, confined place. GH"

 

Huh. The list is finally, maybe getting back on track.

 

[image=http://www.best-horror-movies.com/images/the-descent-lie-still-small.jpg]

This film could have easily degenerated into a mindless chick-flick, where the
female cast run around in the dark providing little more than target practice for pale
cave dwellers. Far from it. Myanna Buring (right, above) readily guts her troglodyte
attackers; the rest of the spelunking crew are about as tough. The character development,
backstory and plot are commendable as well.

Nicely produced film by a great group of people.


[image=http://anythinghorror.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/witchville2.jpg]

Go on... call me a scream queen.

(Myanna Buring switches from gutting C.H.U.D. to people as Sarah Douglas's smirking, cold-blooded
killer/sorceress daughter in the Syfy channel's WITCHVILLE.)

 

6. Halloween II. "Jason Vorhees and a thousand other disposable serial killers have long tried to diminish the essence of Michael Myers, a shell of a man devoid of morality, nothing less than evil manifest. Less a sequel than a continuation of Rob Zombie's own remake of John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece, Halloween II restores Myers to his deserving, iconic status, holding a candle to the original film in the process. As artful as it is ferocious, Halloween II quickly numbs the viewer to the effects of physical destruction and random violence ("Cow! COW!") as a primer for the inward, downward spiral experienced by the victims, who must now attempt to reassemble their lives after such horrible events. Compared to the existentially tinged levels of bloodshed, the film's media satire is practically an afterthought, but one is thankful for the spurts of levity amid Michael Myer's expressions of primal rage. The incomparable Brad Dourif provides the emotional anchor, his familial tragedy another confirmation of Zombie's deeply felt empathy. Like a gnarly David Lynch joint, the film isn't necessarily pretty to look at, but it most definitely is beautiful. RH"

 

So I'm not the only person in the world to have seen Witchville?

And . . . we're off the rails again.

 

Naw... It was released in Germany as HEXEN: DIE LETZTE SCHLACHT DER TEMPLER, so there is a chance
a doorman in Berlin might have watched it, latenight.

 

I absolutely hate Halloween II. It is a vulgar and disgusting film with really stupid characters who stretch the bounds of tolerance for horror characters. Also, Sherri Moon Zombie as the weirdo ghost Myers Mom is about the stupidest thing done in horror films maybe ever.

 

5. Martyrs. "If any one film could be used as a poster child for the punishing and unrelentingly gory new wave of recent French movies, Martyrs would be that film. Writer-director Pascal Laugier's film leaves you with the scopophilic equivalent of shell shock. The gauntlet that his film's heroine, a "final girl" who's abducted and tortured by a religious cult straight out of a Clive Barker novel, is forced to endure is considerable. Which is like saying that King Kong is big, Vincent Price's performances are campy, and blood is red. Laugier's film is grueling because there's no real way to easily get off on images of simulated violence. The film's soul-crushing finale makes it impossible to feel good about anything Laugier has depicted. In it, Laugier suggests that there's no way to escape from the pain of the exclusively physical reality of his film. You don't watch Laugier's harrowing feel-bad masterpiece, you're held in its thrall. Abandon hope all ye who watch here. SA"

Given this description, perhaps we should discuss why people actually go to these films. It doesn't appear to be for entertainment, so titilation and torture porn appear to be the answers. Are we ensuring that we are enured to such things in the future? The point is that these are not 'horror' films, when the sole reaction is disgust/titillation. They are quite obviously porn, in both execution and intent.

 

This actually is a horror film, I think: it's a reaction against "torture porn" and the use of torture and violence for titillation. There is nothing titillating or sexy about what happens in this film. Even the perpetrators of the violence within the film are not doing it because they "get off" on it. Whereas in torture porn the camera often gazes longingly at the maiming of beautiful young bodies, in Martyrs the gaze is cold and clinical. It takes the subject matter other films have been using as porn and makes it horrific. The same people who would roundly and rightly condemn an abominable act under many circumstances, it postulates, are able to justify undertaking the same horrific actions if they're framed properly (as for intellectual rather than hedonistic purposes, or for the greater good rather than private gratification). I'm not sure what I'd have made of this film if I wasn't versed in the basic canon of torture porn, but within the context of that tradition, Martyrs is something else.

 

I don't mean titalation in a sexual sense.

I hope.

 

I don't know I suspect I'm kinder to "torture porn" than need be in the sense that I'm into the Saw series. I don't think they are cinematic masterpieces or anything but they are solid horror films with a really great villain.

Something like Centipede or A Serbian Film(which I haven't brought myself to see) would probably fit the bill for "porn". Although like Zaz mentioned it's hard to imagine who would be titillated by it.