The 5 Best Horror Movies of the Past 5 Years

You know what I’m tired of hearing? I’m tired of hearing that “The Exorcist” is the scariest movie in whole wide world. It’s not, especially not if you’re an atheist or even one of those fence-sitting wussy agnostics. Then the movie is just a crashing bore. And let’s be honest. “The Exorcist” is a phenomenally boring movie. I finally sat through the entire leviathan earlier this year after having seen only bits and pieces of it years ago with my jittery college roommate, a Mormon who was absolutely terrified by the notion of demonic possession. He had little to fear if you ask me. I hated sharing a room with that buttwipe. I couldn’t imagine Satan wanting to share a body with him.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. What I’d actually like to discuss, apart from my dislike of “The Exorcist” and its overwhelming popularity, are the lists that pop up on the Internet around this time of year, lists of the “best” horror movies. They’re all so samey and dull. Most of the flicks on them are older than I am. That doesn’t necessarily discount their quality. Make no mistake, I don’t think pop culture only became valid on August 12th, 1979, and any movie made before my date of birth is irrelevant. I am, however, sick of seeing a 35-year-old movie like “The Exorcist” as a chart-topper on all these lists when there have been plenty of scary movies made rather recently. What’s more, some of are actually watchable.

So if you’re thinking about throwing a Halloween party and want to screen some genuine fright flicks, ones that won’t have you reaching for the remote so you can fast-forward to the “good parts,” here are some modern horror classics, listed in no particular order:

The Mist: Writer-director Frank Darabont, the guy Mick Garris secretly wishes he could be, adapts another Stephen King story for the screen. Unlike his previous efforts (”The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile”), this one’s a horror flick about a group of people trapped in a grocery store by a strange mist that rolls into town and is seemingly loaded with Lovecraftian beasties. The film was released theatrically in color, but one of the DVD special features is the option to watch it in black-and-white, the version that I prefer. “The Mist” is a great film that I hope is finding an audience on video; it sank like a stone at the box office because the Weinstein Company stupidly released it the day before Thanksgiving. And it has one of the best “Oh, s***!” endings I’ve ever seen.

The Descent: Neil Marshall’s follow-up to “Dog Soldiers” is about an all-female group of spelunkers who find themselves trapped in a cave with a bunch of blind, albino freakshows — each with a taste for human flesh. The claustrophic arena is scary in and of itself: the Survivor Girl becomes stuck in a tunnel my cat would have a hard time squeezing through; another girl’s hands are shredded by a rope; and yet another girl suffers a gruesome compound fracture. This is all before the monsters even show up. Then all hell really breaks loose. I actually prefer the American version to the one released in the UK. Of course, the UK release was redubbed the “unrated” version when the movie landed on DVD and simply has an additional scene after the final scare, one that’s a little esoteric and sort of unnecessary. I’d suggest just stopping the movie after the final scare; you’ll know it when you see it.

Planet Terror: The first half of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” isn’t all that scary really, but “Planet Terror” is a great splatter film. Rodriguez’s films have an energy and a sly sense of humor that’s almost always appealed to me. Here, he’s clearly having a ball, putting his own spin on the exhausted zombie/viral outbreak sub-genre. This being a “Grindhouse” movie, the story doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense (a military platoon unleashes a zombie virus in a small Texas town for some reason or another), but that’s sort of beside the point. What’s important to Rodriguez is recreating the experience of seeing an exploitation movie — one that’s thoroughly scratched, missing a reel and swimming in blood and gore. And he does. Rodriguez brings some of today’s technology to a film that’s supposed to be a throwback to obscure B-pictures of the ’70s. Rose McGowan’s assault rifle for a leg is clearly achieved with CGI. But griping about the use of sophisticated special effects and not the ultra-low-budget approach taken by the exploitation wunderkinds of yesteryear would be like lamenting ILM’s work on the “Indiana Jones” movies, which were inspired by the Republic serials from the ’30s.

28 Days Later: Speaking of zombie/viral outbreak movies, Danny Boyle breathed new life into the rotting corpse of the sub-genre with this film. Some folks think that Zack Snyder’s remake of “Dawn of the Dead” is a worthy successor to George A. Romero’s classic; they’re dead wrong. “28 Days Later” reinvents the zombie film for the 21st century. Shot almost entirely with digital cameras, save for the final scene, the movie is set a month after the outbreak of “Rage” virus in England. Bike messenger Jim wakes up in the hospital from a coma, not knowing what’s happened outside the hospital doors. Confused and alone, he wanders through the empty streets of London until a horde of fast-moving “infected” find him. The way Boyle portrays the infected as snarling, red-eyed vessels of intense hatred is utterly terrifying. Traditional shambling zombies that groan and bite you if you get to close aren’t anywhere near as scary as these sonsabitches. I’ve read a lot of blather about how the film falls apart in its third act, once Jim and his two fellow survivors encounter a platoon of British soldiers with dubious intentions. But I think Boyle is saying something about the breakdown of our civilization, how it’s not necessarily going to be caused by some external “other,” rather by our own bastard selves.

Shaun of the Dead: Zombie movies have been all the rage for the past 5 years or so. What can I say? This one’s at least a comedy, an approach not often taken. Comedy and horror are a difficult mash-up. Sam Raimi can do it in his sleep, evidenced by “Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn” and its sequel, “Army of Darkness.” Edgar Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” is a worthy successor to Raimi’s spook-a-blasts. The script for the film, co-written by star Simon Pegg, is as sharp a piece of writing as I’ve seen in any genre recently. Wright brings a certain flair to his direction that emphasizes the humor over the scares; it’s why the film is grouped with my other comedies and not my horror flicks on my DVD shelf. But it’s still a better zombie movie than George A. Romero’s last two clunkers. It has a respect and appreciation for the genre that movies like the stunningly overrated “Dawn of the Dead” remake lack. It also has character. Pegg’s Shaun is a recently dumped electronics store assistant manager, one with little to no ambition beyond spending his evenings at the local watering hole, throwing back a pint or two with his friend, Ed (Nick Frost). That it takes a zombie outbreak to get him to accept a little responsibility and try to win back his ex-girlfriend. The setup provides for plenty of laughs and considerable gore. Still, this is definitely a movie you can sneak past that one person in your life who doesn’t typically like zombie movies.

Since I’m moving tomorrow, all my DVDs are boxed up. I haven’t watched even half of the movies I’d planned on seeing in the days leading up to October 31st. It’s been a busy month. But you could do a lot worse than what I’ve listed above. Have a Happy Halloween…even if you decide I’m full of bunk and rent “The Exorcist” anyway.

-Brad Lohan

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