This past decade was a phenomenal one for horror cinema. After lazy CGI effects and cheap jump scares dominated horror films of the 2000s, the genre got back to the unabashed terror of its late ‘60s/early ‘70s heyday throughout the 2010s. The decade gave rise to so-called “elevated horror,” which is a term coined by critics who didn’t want to be looked down on for giving a scary movie a positive review.
Visionaries like Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Ana Lily Amirpour have made their mark on the genre and found fresh ways to terrify audiences. But the horror films of the 2010s weren’t all great. Here are the decade’s five best and five worst horror movies.
Best: The Witch (2015)
Written and directed by Robert Eggers, The Witch takes us back to New England in the 17th century as a family is banished from civilization due to their religious beliefs. They set up in a farm in the countryside, where they’re promptly terrorized by a witch.
Eggers’ movie refreshingly avoids jump scares in favor of building a creepy atmosphere. Modern-day “scream queen” Anya Taylor-Joy is captivating in the lead role, too.
Worst: Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)
The it didn’t even pioneer that. The franchise reached its lowest point with The Ghost Dimension, its sixth and most mindless installment.
The Ghost Dimension was touted as the final film in the series in its marketing, but a sequel is currently in development anyway, which is a perfect metaphor for the empty meaninglessness of this movie.
Best: Train To Busan (2016)
Every bit the visceral, realistic take on the zombie genre that World War Z tried and failed to be, Train to Busan masters the structure of a horror movie: it introduces its characters throughout the first act to get you emotionally hooked, then switches gears to non-stop intensity for the rest of the movie.
On top of the action set pieces involving sprinting swarms of the undead, Train to Busan also uses the class hierarchy of the train to explore the class hierarchy of society.
Worst: The Thing (2011)
One of the biggest draws of created by Rob Bottin when he was just 22 years old.
In the years since the 2011 prequel to Carpenter’s classic hit screens (and was seen by almost no one), practical effects tests have been leaked online as a depressing hint of what could’ve been. A team of effects geniuses created a bunch of mind-boggling practical special effects for 2011’s The Thing, only for the studio to have it all plastered over with bland, generic CGI.
Best: Hereditary (2018)
Harking back to the unceasing terror of genre classics like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, Ari Aster’s Hereditary is a movie that uses the rituals of a pagan cult to bring out the real horrors of grief and familial tensions.
It’s a shame that Toni Collette’s riveting lead performance was snubbed by the Academy. As with Aster’s follow-up movie Midsommar, Hereditary is filled with nightmarish imagery that you can’t unsee.
Worst: The Curse Of La Llorona (2019)
Despite having two powerhouse stars in Linda Cardellini and Breaking Bad’s Raymond Cruz, overreliance on jump scares and nonsensical plot.
Crammed into The Conjuring’s fictional universe as nothing more than a marketing tool, The Curse of La Llorona falls into all the pitfalls of lazy 2010s horror movies. Unfortunately, its director Michael Chaves has been hired to replace James Wan at the helm of the mainline Conjuring series.
Best: It Follows (2014)
Helmed by David Robert Mitchell, It Follows is centered around a young woman, played brilliantly by Maika Monroe, who is cursed with a sexually-transmitted parasite that causes monsters to relentlessly follow her wherever she goes.
The movie’s mythology isn’t 100% consistent, but there’s enough unsettling imagery and genuinely effective jump scares that recall ‘80s horror that the mythology doesn’t really matter.
Worst: The First Purge (2018)
Initially, The Purge was not a political story. It was conceived simply as a high-concept thriller. But as the sequels have gone on, it has morphed into an on-the-nose attempt to be the definitive horror franchise of the Trump era.
While The Purge and its first sequel Anarchy interestingly focused on the inherent class issues of the premise, the third movie Election Year and especially the 2018 prequel The First Purge were flooded with distractingly clunky and unsubtle political commentary that didn’t actually have anything to say.
Best: Get Out (2017)
Before Get Out took the world by storm and influenced the global conversation surrounding race, there were doubts that sketch comic Jordan Peele could even direct an effective horror movie.
Of course, those doubts immediately fell by the wayside when Peele delivered a social thriller that reinvigorated the genre, captured the unnerving magic of The Twilight Zone, and more than earned its Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Worst: The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) (2015)
Every Human Centipede movie is pretty disgusting, and not in a fun “schlocky grindhouse B-movie” way; in an almost vomit-inducing way.
But the franchise sunk to new lows with its big finale, the Endgame of the Human Centipede saga, if you will: The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence).
