The horror genre has been experiencing a renaissance for years, to the delight of fans like me. While there are plenty of upcoming horror movies to look forward to, I also love to re-watch some of the best horror movies over and over again. One favorite from the 2010s was Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods, which is a bonkers meta project that pivots between comedy and terror. And I'm so psyched that it's currently trending on HBO Max.

Those with an HBO Max subscription are treated to a ton of great horror content, including the upcoming series IT: Welcome to Derry. It looks like subscribers are already enjoying spooky season, because The Cabin in the Woods is trending on the streamer. Given just how much fun the 2011 flick is, I can't really blame them.

The Cabin In The Woods Is A Perfect Horror Comedy

At first glance, it looks like The Cabin in the Woods is a standard horror flick. The title inspires images of a number of beloved movies, including The Evil Dead, Cabin Fever, and The Strangers. And while we watch a group of hot college students get into debauchery while being warned about the dangers of the woods, it's a much more complicated (and hilarious) movie than just that.

Because as we follow that storyline, we're also shown a secret underground lab where engineers are manipulating the kids into acting like dumb, stereotypical horror characters. In the lab, we're treated to hilariously deadpan performances from actors like Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, and more.

Seeing the lab technicians try to ensure that the kids are murdered makes for some great gallows humor and also adds unique stakes to the various action sequences for The Cabin in the Woods. While the Scream movies brought meta commentary of the horror genre to theaters, Joss Whedon's movie offered a more modern take on these tropes.

I've also got to talk about the outstanding acting talent that makes up the cast of The Cabin in the Woods. The movie features Chris Hemsworth and was released the same year his life would change with the first Thor movie (streaming with a Disney+ subscription). Additionally, Grey's Anatomy star Jesse Williams is also featured, just a few years after he was introduced as Jackson Avery on the medical drama. Final Girl Kristen Connolly also stars as the main protagonist, Dana, before eventually appearing in House of Cards.

As previously mentioned, Bradley Whitford has a role, as does Sigourney Weaver as the surprise final villain. A bunch of familiar faces from Joss Whedon's projects also have roles, including Angel's Amy Acker, Dollhouse's Fran Kranz, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Tom Lenk. While fans have waited for a Cabin in the Woods sequel, it doesn't seem like that's happening.

Overall, The Cabin in the Woods is a delightful movie, one that I'm glad is getting love over on HBO Max. And smart money says it won't be the last horror movie to get giant streaming numbers this October.

Over the years, countless filmmakers have given us movies where almost no one makes it out alive (or no one at all). We’ve seen it in some of the best horror movies, a few Best Picture winners, and in oh so many crazy disaster films. There’s just something about the whole “safety not guaranteed” aspect that keeps drawing us in.

That said, if you want to check out 32 movies where almost no one makes it out alive, stick around because we’re about to break it all down…

Titanic (1997)

Rose DeWitte Bukater (Kate Winslet) and several historical figures who survived the real-life 1912 sinking survived Titanic, but the vast majority of the characters we met during James Cameron’s massive box office hit sank with the doomed ship. Only if the epic’s protagonist had saved some room for her third-class lover on the infamous door.

Scarface (1983)

As soon as Al Pacino’s Tony Montana was introduced in Scarface, we all knew this rags-to-riches story was going to end in a hail of gunfire. And it did just that, as the film’s antihero is massacred alongside most of his men in his massive Miami estate in the film’s explosive and bloody final scene. Tony wasn’t alone, as all but a few of the characters introduced in this iconic crime film bite the dust before it’s over.

Much like the book on which they are based, the various adaptations of All Quiet on the Western Front have all been dark, terrifying, and heartbreaking antiwar films that show the true cost of combat. Edward Berger’s 2022 take on Erich Maria Remarque’s landmark novel is particularly harrowing, especially in the final moments when a last-minute charge of death and destruction shatters hope and survival.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, one of the best movies in the franchise, is admittedly a little bleak with its depiction of a doomed band of spies trying to steal the plan for the Death Star, but there is some hope in their act of sacrifice. The blast of an operational battle station in the final moments is an awesome show of power and a dreadful end for characters we came to know and love.

The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a masterclass in tension and paranoia, with its story about a remote research base being taken over by a mysterious shape-shifting alien. If that wasn’t bad enough, the main characters begin getting picked off one by one as the survivors (it ends up only being two in the end) are left trying to make sense of the madness and not knowing if they can trust each other or themselves.

Night Of The Living Dead (1967)

George A. Romero put himself on the map in 1967 with the transformative zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead. On top of introducing heroes that go against the status quo in ‘60s Hollywood, the start of Romero’s legendary horror franchise ended with one of the bleakest moments in horror history.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

It’s hard to say how many of the thieves from the ill-fated diamond heist in Reservoir Dogs make it out alive, but we know that the vast majority of the color-coded crew don’t make it out alive. Either at the hands of their former partners or the police chasing them down, these lowly criminals meet a violent yet unsurprising end in Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut.

The Grey (2011)

Joe Carnahan’s 2011 survival thriller, The Grey, is honestly one of the most intense movies to come out in the 2010s. Starring Liam Neeson as a sharpshooter at an oil facility in Alaska, the movie follows the grieving man and a group of other roughnecks as they attempt to survive a plane crash in a remote part of the state. If that’s not bad enough, the wounded and weary men are targeted by a pack of hungry wolves.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Thanks to a clever and very impressive marketing campaign, The Blair Witch Project felt less like a found-footage horror movie and more like a documentary about a trio of filmmakers getting lost and dying in the woods. With one of the most shocking endings in horror history, this trailblazing 1999 movie left no one alive.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1968)

Though we never see Paul Newman or Robert Redford’s characters die in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, it’s all but guaranteed that these two outlaws die in the final shootout. With figures like this, did anyone expect there to be survivors?

The Departed (2006)

Martin Scorsese’s 2006 crime epic is a remake of a Hong Kong movie called Internal Affairs, but it totally feels like a modern take on a Greek tragedy. Before this one comes to a close, all but a couple of the main characters are in the grave. Heroes, villains, and random characters in one or two scenes, they are all taken down in this Oscar-winning classic.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

A movie primarily set in one location, The Hateful Eight doesn’t hold back with the violence and mayhem. Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 Western introduces and kills characters at such a high rate of speed that you’ll find yourself pausing and rewinding to make sense of all the carnage.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

One of the best examples of a disaster film, The Poseidon Adventure follows a group of survivors as they attempt to escape a capsized cruise ship. Though there are thousands aboard the ship before a wave tips it over, only a handful of passengers and crew make it out of this race against time.

Dawn Of The Dead (1978)

George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead introduces some of the best zombie movie characters of all time, but going in, you know most are going to either die or turn into an undead ghoul. By the time everything is said and done, only two survivors make it out, which is far cheerier than what Romero originally had planned.

The Northman (2022)

Based on the ancient legend that inspired William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Robert Eggers’ 2022 epic revenge film, The Northman, is a bloody, violent, and mind-bending experience. And just like any tale of vengeance, it’s not one with a happy ending or a lot of survivors.

Alien (1979)

One of the best things about Ridley Scott’s Alien is how the crew of the Nostromo is picked off one by one by the mysterious and deadly xenomorph after each of the Weylan-Yutani employees is introduced and given time to shine on screen. In fact, it’s only Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and Jones the cat who make it out alive.

Sunshine (2007)

Sunshine, an oft-forgotten collaboration by director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, follows eight astronauts as they try to reignite a dying sun. Though the movie does give you some hope that the core cast – Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, and Michelle Yeoh – will survive the mission, it becomes clear that this is a one-way trip to save humanity.

Hereditary (2018)

Ari Aster’s Hereditary is one of the most traumatizing and terrifying horror movies of the past decade, and one that doesn’t leave a whole lot of survivors. In fact, pretty much the entire Graham family is killed in some bloody, fiery, or devastating fashion by the time this is over and done with.

Cloverfield (2008)

When it comes to disaster films with the largest body count, Cloverfield has to be up there on the list. Not only do all the main characters get squashed, eaten, mutated, or killed by the invading alien creatures, but pretty much all of New York City is wiped off the map once the military gets involved.

Don't Look Up (2021)

Don’t let Don’t Look Up’s darkly comedic tone fool you; the 2021 Netflix satirical end-of-the-world disaster film is full of death, destruction, and heartbreak. Even as the members of the ruling class learn centuries after the destruction of Earth, there’s no escaping death.

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is one of the funniest satirical dark comedies of all time. It’s also a political movie with a whole lot of death, especially with the whole ending sequence of atomic warheads detonating around the world, sending what survivors are left into a nuclear winter of epic proportions.

The Alamo (2004)

Before even pressing play on The Alamo back in 2004, we all knew how John Lee Hancock’s historical drama was going to end. One of the most told stories in American history, the Battle of the Alamo in the Texas Revolution, has become the stuff of legends (just don’t ask about the basement). Some 200 Texans, including Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton), Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), and Bill Travis (Patrick Wilson), sacrifice themselves for freedom in this epic.

300 (2007)

Few movies kill off the main character like 300, which sees Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas (and his Spartan soldiers) go out looking awesome. Yeah, it’s sad to see these brave warriors get defeated by the Persian army, but it took A LOT to bring down this king.

The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)

The Return of the Living Dead has to be one of the best horror comedies of all time, as well as a movie that doesn’t end on the happiest of notes. After a zombie outbreak turns Louisville, Kentucky, into a wasteland of brain-eating ghouls, the military gets involved in an attempt to sweep it all under the rug.

Knowing (2009)

Blending elements of sci-fi, thrillers, and disaster films, the 2009 Nicolas Cage movie, Knowing, centers on the discovery of a manuscript that can help predict various disasters in the future. Those familiar with this setup know that survival isn’t likely in this scenario, and that’s what happens when a solar flare turns everyone on the planet into ash.

The Cabin In The Woods (2012)

The Cabin in the Woods is one of the wildest, silliest, and most unique horror movies of the 21st century, and one that kills a lot of people. One by one, a group of college students is killed off by different monsters as they unknowingly become part of a plan to save the world from old gods.

Open Water (2003)

Inspired by true events, Open Water follows a couple as they are mistakenly left behind while scuba diving on vacation. Left alone in shark-infested waters and deteriorating conditions, the couple attempts to survive the situation, which is no easy task.

Silent Night (2021)

Camille Griffin’s Silent Night is one of the funniest, strangest, most brutally honest, and unsettling dark comedies of the past decade. When a deadly fog rolls into England and offers no chance at survival, a group of friends decides to have one final holiday party before dying. But there’s a twist…

Final Destination 5 (2011)

Like its predecessors, Final Destination 5 is a movie about cheating death and what happens if you evade the grim reaper’s touch. Well, in this 2011 installment, a group of survivors think they’ve cheated death for good when they board a plane. However, it’s not just any plane but instead the doomed flight from the first movie.

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (2012)

With a title like Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, it should be no surprise that this 2012 romantic comedy starring Steve Carell and Keira Knightley was going to end with everyone dying. Despite the obvious ending, this charming little movie has a whole lot of heart and soul.

Melancholia (2011)

There are disaster movies and then there’s Melancholia, Lars von Trier’s 2011 drama about two sisters coming to terms with their lives and past decisions days, hours, and minutes before a planet crashes into Earth. With a heavy focus on the inner and more psychological aspects of impending doom, opposed to the collapse of society outside their picturesque escape, this frightening yet awe-inspiring meditation on life and death is a sight to see.

This Is The End (2013)

This is the End, an over-the-top end-of-the-world disaster film starring Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, and some of the biggest comedians of the late 2000s and early 2010s, is an absolute bonkers movie. Going in, you know everyone and their mother is going to die. But it’s what comes after death in this one that’s so much fun.

Have you ever walked out of a movie feeling like you saw something almost entirely different from what the trailer promised you? Well, you are certainly not alone, and this sort of thing happens all the time in Hollywood, to be frank. See for yourself by taking a look at some beloved films that would prove to be a bit of a stretch from how they were portrayed in the marketing, for better or worse.

Jennifer's Body (2009)

From director Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody, Jennifer's Body, starring Megan Fox as a high school student transformed into a succubus after a failed demonic sacrifice, is heralded as one of the most misunderstood cult favorites of all time. The trailers delivered on the thriller's horror content but were light on its feminist themes and heavy on its risque coming-of-age comedy. Not to mention, the poster's depiction of Fox contradicted the film's tongue-in-cheek commentary on teen objectification.

About Time (2013)

Richard Curtis' About Time starts off much like the winning rom-com the marketing promised and that you would expect from the writer and director of Love Actually. However, the time travel movie starring Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams ultimately evolves into a deeply emotional tearjerker about holding onto one's familial bonds.

Godzilla (2014)

The marketing for Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures' reboot of the world's most famous kaiju relied heavily on the popularity of one of its stars, Bryan Cranston. So, it came as quite a surprise to see Godzilla kill off the Emmy-winning Breaking Bad cast member's character in the first act.

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982)

The central character of the Cameron Crowe-penned, Amy Heckerling-directed coming-of-age comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High is Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh). However, you would not know that from the marketing, which made Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli the most prominent figure.

Passengers (2016)

The trailer for the futuristic sci-fi thriller Passengers suggests that commercial space travelers Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) are both mistakenly woken up from their cryogenic slumber at the same time. In the actual film, Jim is the only one woken up by accident and selfishly wakes up Aurora on purpose so he would no longer be alone, tainting the story's romantic element for many critics and audiences.

Sucker Punch (2011)

Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch was marketed with trailers that comprised mostly of the F-rated thriller's visually stunning action sequences. However, they appeared to leave out the fact that these moments only exist in the head of Emily Browning's character, Babydoll, and that she and the rest of the ensemble are confined to a mental asylum throughout.

Magic Mike (2012)

Audiences who expected a fun dance flick from director Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, which is loosely based on star Channing Tatum's life, would be more fulfilled by its 2015 sequel, Magic Mike XXL. However, the original is essentially a tale of self-destruction and aspiration for a better life, complemented by a number of fun dance sequences throughout.

The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

Director Drew Goddard's feature debut, The Cabin in the Woods, was marketed as just another formulaic horror flick about stupid kids getting into a freaky situation during a woodland vacation. Of course, in truth, the film is a clever and subversive deconstruction of the genre's most prevalent tropes and has since been heralded as one of the best horror-comedy movies of its time.

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Director Robert Rodriguez revealed to Yahoo! that Miramax wanted to underplay the Quentin Tarantino-penned From Dusk Till Dawn's horror elements in favor of hyping up its Pulp Fiction-style crime thriller elements in the marketing. Thus, many were surprised to see the story of two ruthless criminal brothers on the run (played by George Clooney and Tarantino) suddenly become a relentlessly gory vampire movie in the final act.

Drive (2011)

Considering its title, it is easy to see why some audiences may have assumed that Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, starring Ryan Gosling as a getaway driver who participates in a job gone wrong, would be a high-octane action flick instead of a slow-burn neo-noir drama. According to The Guardian, one woman felt genuinely bamboozled by the thriller's marketing and filed a lawsuit against it, citing that she was promised something more along the lines of the Fast and Furious movies.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2007)

Johnny Depp stars in the title role of the gothic thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in which a 19th Century hairstylist seeks to avenge his wife and child's brutal murder, which he was wrongfully convicted of. Unless you were a fan of the original 1979 stage production by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, you might not have known that the Tim Burton movie was a musical from the marketing alone.

It Comes At Night (2017)

Personally, I believe Trey Edward Schults' sophomore feature, It Comes at Night, is a masterful exercise in slow-burn suspense and paranoia. The film follows a family's struggle to survive a cataclysmic virus. Yet, I can also understand why someone might have been disappointed to learn that the A24 horror movie is not a straight-up zombie flick like the marketing suggested. I'll even admit that I am not sure what the "it" in the title is supposed to refer to.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

I imagine there were many fans of Jim Carrey movies who walked into director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind not expecting a cerebral, somber meditation on the lengths one might go to escape their romantic grief. The trailer, set to Electric Light Orchestra's upbeat hit, "Mr. Blue Sky," does highlight some of the acclaimed sci-fi film's surreal elements but also attempts to sell it as more of a quirky, overt comedy.

The Grey (2012)

Director Joe Carnahan's The Grey is widely praised as a moving story about the struggle to survive both the unforgiving natural world and internal depression. However, the trailer hypes the thriller up as "Liam Neeson vs. the wolves," which is a scene we do not even get to see as the film cuts to black and the credits roll right after the Irish actor's character prepares to fight his furry foe.

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

Perhaps director Doug Liman's retrospectively beloved time loop movie Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise as a reluctant soldier who mysteriously finds himself continuously respawning after death during a human-alien war, was a box office flop not because of its underwhelming title. I think it had more to do with the marketing hyping up the alien Invasion movie as an earnest war film, completely underselling just how fun and clever the action-packed sci-fi thriller turned out to be.

Red Eye (2005)

The misleading nature of Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams as a woman coerced into assisting the flight passenger next to her (Cillian Murphy) with an assassination plot, can be blamed on a couple of things, including the fact that Wes Craven is the director. The marketing even seemed to try selling it as a slasher in the vein of his Scream franchise, but the PG-13 political thriller is actually one of the filmmaker's lighter efforts in terms of tone.

Unbreakable (2000)

Unbreakable was marketed as more of a supernatural thriller in the vein of M. Night Shyamalan's breakthrough hit, The Sixth Sense, from the previous year. Thus, many audiences were surprised to learn they were seeing a dark take on a superhero movie that was not based on a comic book and was way ahead of its time.

Catfish (2010)

Imagine going to see what you assume is a found-footage thriller, such as The Blair Witch Project, only to find out that the film in question is just a simple documentary. That was the case with Catfish, in which Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost document Nev Schulman's relationship with a woman he meets online and whose true identity is put under scrutiny.

Bridge To Terabithia (2007)

I remember seeing the trailer for Bridge to Terabithia, starring Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb, and thinking it was a feel-good family film set in a wondrous fantasy land. However, I later discovered that director Gabor Csupo's adaptation of Katherine Paterson's novel is a deeply saddening story about escaping the grief of reality through imagination.

Lady In The Water (2006)

Any time a new M. Night Shyamalan movie is announced, audiences are bound to immediately assume it is a horror movie. The trailers for his somber fairy tale Lady in the Water, in which an apartment complex superintendent (played by Paul Giamatti) tries to help a mysterious young woman (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) return to her otherworldly home, did not help dispel such assumptions.

Wonka (2023)

Academy Award nominee Timothée Chalamet portrayed author Roald Dahl's eccentric chocolatier as a younger man in director Paul King's Wonka. The only hint that the wondrously sweet family film was a musical might be that the original 1971 film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was a musical because there were certainly no signs of that in the marketing.

The Many Saints Of Newark (2021)

Fourteen years after the acclaimed HBO series, The Sopranos, ended with one of the most divisive series finales in TV history, Warner Bros. released a divisive feature film digging deeper into the mafia family's past. The Many of Saints of Newark was not an origin story for Tony Soprano (played by the late James Gandolfini's son, Michael) like the marketing promised and centered more heavily on his mentor, Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola).

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Did you know that Matthew Broderick's eponymous slacker from John Hughes' classic high school movie had two other siblings, in addition to Jennifer Grey's Jeanie? Anyone who saw the original trailer for Ferris Bueller's Day Off might have been able to pick up on that, only to find that the actors who played his younger brother and sister were cut from the finished product.

Click (2006)

Click, in which Adam Sandler plays an overworked family man who receives a special remote that is universal in the true sense of the word, would turn out to be one of the comedian's more mature efforts, especially after the device begins to take control over his character's life. However, the film's more serious and even heartbreaking turns surely came as a surprise to audiences expecting yet another screwball comedy like the former Saturday Night Live star is best known for.

Colossal (2016)

You might say that the misleading marketing for director Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal worked in its favor, as audiences expected this flick starring Anne Hathaway as an American woman who discovers a kaiju in Japan is mimicking her actions would be a quirky sci-fi comedy. The story is actually much deeper than that, as it is revealed that the monster is a manifestation of the main character's struggle with addiction.

Kangaroo Jack (2003)

Not only is the eponymous, Australian-based animal from Kangaroo Jack barely in the movie, but he does not even talk, save for one dream sequence taking place in the head of Jerry O'Connell's character, Charlie Carbone. However, said dream sequence was a huge focal point in the marketing, which also underplayed the PG-rated comedy's unbelievably inappropriate material, which I imagine many parents did not appreciate.

Yesterday (2019)

Nothing about the tone or plot of Yesterday, in which a struggling musician (played by Himesh Patel) finds himself in an alternate reality in which The Beatles never existed, is undersold in its marketing. However, many people were shocked and even angered to see Ana de Armas, who was featured in the trailer, completely cut from the finished film, including two fans of the Oscar nominee who attempted to sue Universal over it.

Mean Girls (2024)

If you did not know that 2024's Mean Girls was based on the coming-of-age comedy's stage musical adaptation, you might have assumed it was just a pointless remake of the 2004 original. There were absolutely no hints of it being a musical in the marketing, unless you count the sheet music note in the logo.

Observe And Report (2009)

Based on its joke-heavy trailer, audiences expected Observe and Report to be just another zany romp like what star Seth Rogen was then-primarily known for and not a pitch-black psychological thriller examining the mind of an unstable mall security guard. I would be more concerned to discover if parents mistook director Jody Hill's divisive dramedy for a similarly plotted movie from the same year: the more family-friendly Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Bicentennial Man (1999)

Seeing Robin Williams play a robot sounds like a fun time for the whole family, and the marketing for the PG-rated Bicentennial Man largely made it seem like that was the case. Little did audiences know that this futuristic flick based on an Isaac Asimov story was a slow-paced examination of mortality from the point of view of a machine.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016)

Tina Fey stars in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot as real-life journalist Kim Baker in an adaptation of her memoir, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which chronicles her days covering Middle Eastern conflicts in the early 2000s. While ultimately praised for its balance of comedy and drama, the trailers for the film emphasized the former, perhaps to better appeal to fans of the 30 Rock star and creator.

Lamb (2021)

A24's Lamb, starring Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason as a couple raising a strange half-sheep, half-human hybrid, was marketed as a horror flick. However, that element of the otherwise bizarre story does not come into play until near the end, while most of the film is a slow-paced meditation on grief and the struggles of parenting.

Some movies get stuck in development for years and years before a single frame gets shot. However, what is even more disappointing is when a movie is shot, edited, and pretty much ready to go, but it takes years and years before a soul gets to see a single frame. The following are some of the most noted examples of movies that took a while to get to the big screen (or even just the small screen) after they were already finished.

Red Dawn (2012)

Principal photography on director Dan Bradley's remake of the classic '80s movie Red Dawn, starring Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, and others as teens stepping up to defend their town from invading terrorists, took place in 2009. However, according to the LA Times, financial troubles at MGM and an effort to change its antagonistic country from China to North Korea in post-production led to its delay before FilmDistrict bought the distribution rights.

A Thousand Words (2012)

A Thousand Words is a fantasy comedy starring Eddie Murphy as a literary agent who must keep silent to keep a mysterious tree (and himself) alive. SlashFilm recalls that it was filmed in 2008 and early 2009 but was shelved for years as a result of DreamWorks Pictures' separation from Paramount Pictures and Viacom and also underwent reshoots in 2011 before securing its 2012 theatrical release.

The Other Side Of The Wind (2018)

The final film by writer and director Orson Welles, which follows the events leading up to the death of a jaded Hollywood director (played by John Huston), took six years to film in the early 1970s, as Bright Wall/Dark Room recalls. Unfortunately, The Other Side of Wind would not see the light of day until 33 years after the Citizen Kane creator passed away in 1985, when producers secured distribution through Netflix.

Night Of The Ghouls (1984)

Ed Wood was the mastermind behind some of the most infamous B-movies of all time – one of which he never lived long enough to see properly released. Night of the Ghouls was shot in 1958, but a lack of funding prevented the horror movie from receiving theatrical distribution. As recalled in Gary D. Rhodes and Tom Weaver's book, Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster, it would be made available to the public for the very first time on VHS in 1984 by a wealthy fan of the filmmaker named Wade Williams.

Roar (2015)

In 2015, the marketing for the infamous creature feature, Roar, relished in the fact that several cast and crew members suffered injuries by the 150 wild animals on set. However, the reason it took 34 years to secure a North American release actually had to do with the distributors wanting to claim the profit shares promised to the lions and because most of the crew was non-union, as recalled by Scene Stealers.

Blue Sky (1994)

Jessica Lange earned her second Academy Award for playing the wife of a military officer (played by Tommy Lee Jones) embroiled in a nuclear testing cover-up in Blue Sky in 1994. However, according to BFI, director Tony Richardson's final film was shot in mid-1990 but suffered a delay when Orion Pictures faced bankruptcy.

Chaos Walking (2021)

Doug Liman's adaptation of author Patrick Ness' sci-fi trilogy was initially shot in 2017 and, a year later, was scheduled for reshoots that could not begin until late 2019 after Daisy Ridley was done filming Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Tom Holland completed Spider-Man: Far From Home, according to THR. In 2021, Deadline reported that Chaos Walking finally secured a March release date that year, following a worldwide movie theater shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Margaret (2011)

Anna Paquin leads an all-star cast as a high school student inadvertently involved in a fatal bus accident in Margaret, which was filmed in 2005. However, the drama was delayed for six years as writer and director Kenneth Lonergan struggled to settle on a favorable edit, which led to a series of lawsuits that went on until 2014, according to THR.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1997)

One of the most reviled installments in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise is subtitled The Next Generation (known for starring a young Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellwegger), but it premiered as The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at SXSW in March 1995 before securing a limited release later that year. That October, Columbia TriStar Pictures bought the home video rights with plans for a wider theatrical distribution under a new title and with a new edit. However, according to Film Vault, the studio delayed the release until after Zellwegger's Jerry McGuire role made her a household name.

The Cabin In The Woods (2012)

Chris Hemsworth auditioned for 2011's Thor when he was still filming the horror-comedy favorite The Cabin in the Woods, in 2009, which was also the year it was initially set to hit theaters. Collider reported that co-writer and director Drew Goddard's clever genre deconstruction went through several delays (due to its conversion to 3D and financial troubles at MGM) before setting a 2012 release date under Lionsgate.

Trick 'R Treat (2009)

There has never been a publicly stated explanation as to why Michael Dougherty's cult favorite horror anthology movie Trick 'r Treat was pulled from Warner Bros.'s 2007 theatrical release schedule and distributed straight-to-DVD two years later. Possible reasons, as collected by ScreenRant, include the studio wanting to avoid competition with Saw IV or not knowing how to market a horror movie in which children die.

'Salem's Lot (2024)

Writer and director Gary Dauberman's 'Salem's Lot was supposed to be the first theatrical adaptation of Stephen King's vampire story and was initially set for a September 2022 release after wrapping the previous November. However, it was delayed several months and then indefinitely shelved (much to the author's chagrin), before being distributed exclusively with a Max subscription in October 2024.

Take Me Home Tonight (2011)

Not long after his That '70s Show cast tenure, in 2007, Topher Grace shot a comedy movie set in the 1980s that was released with the title Take Me Home Tonight... four years later. The Film Stage reports that Relativity Media was hesitant to release a movie featuring young people using certain illicit drugs that were popular in the Reagan Era, which would explain why it was shelved for so long.

Case 39 (2010)

Case 39 director Christian Alvart explained to EW that his thriller – about a social worker (played by Renée Zellweger) discovering a seemingly abused child is a kid you don't want to mess with, to say the least – was shleved for three years after wrapped in early 2007 because it was a low priority project for Paramount. One might assume that releasing the film after star Bradley Cooper had achieved A-list status might have helped its chances at the box office, but it only made a worldwide profit of a little more than $2 million.

Accidental Love (2015)

Originally titled Nailed (referencing the freak accident that Jessica Biel's character suffers at the beginning), Accidental Love went through various production setbacks, from cast and crew member walkouts to financing issues, leading director David O. Russell to quit the project two years into production in 2010. EW reported that when the dark rom-com was set to release five years later, Russell requested to be credited as "Stephen Greene."

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2013)

Amber Heard stars in the title role of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane – a slasher movie that premiered at TIFF in 2006, not long after it completed filming. However, poor test screenings and the disappointing box office returns of Grindhouse the following year convinced The Weinstein Company to sell distribution rights to a German company called Senator, which did release it overseas. According to the LA Times, it was not until the studio bought back the rights that the movie was finally released in the U.S. in 2013 under its subsidary, Radius-TWC.

Jet Pilot (1957)

Vivien Leigh and John Wayne are the stars in Jet Pilot, a Cold War-era romance that was filmed between 1949 and 1953. However, producer Howard Hughes' tinkering kept it out of theaters for another few years, finally being released in 1957.

Rampage (1992)

Not to be confused with a video game movie from 2017, Rampage is a drama starring Michael Biehn as a DA pursuing a notorious serial killer played by Alex McArthur. According to The Sun Sentinel, the film played at festivals and had an overseas theatrical release in 1987, but when De Laurentiis Entertainment Group went bankrupt, it was left shelved for five years. During that time, director William Friedkin changed the ending before Miramax became the new distributor.

Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)

The brutal, fact-based crime drama, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was initially given an X rating after it premiered in 1986, which led Atlantic Entertainment Group to back out of its distribution deal with the film. As detailed in Shaun Kimber's book about the controversies surrounding the movie, the MPA refused to accept any attempts to cut it down to secure an R rating. Roger Ebert's review is often credited with helping it land theatrical distribution through Greycoat Films, who released the film unrated in 1990.

Shortcut To Happiness (2007)

Alec Baldwin's directorial debut, Shortcut to Happiness – in which he also stars as a struggling writer who finds success after a run-in with the Devil (Jennifer Love Hewitt) – was shot in 2001. However, as reported by Variety, it was plagued by several financial woes and did not find distribution until 2006, at which point Baldwin disowned the project, feeling it was no longer the story he intended to tell.

Shanghai (2015)

In Shanghai, John Cusack stars as an American who uncovers the mysteries surrounding his friend's death in China months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Deadline reported in 2015 that The Weinstein Company set the noir thriller for a 2008 U.S. release date before pushing it to the following year and, later, removing it from the schedule completely for another six years.

Car 54, Where Are You? (1994)

Director Bill FIshman's cinematic adaptation of the 1960s cop comedy series, Car 54, Where Are You?, starring the late David Johansen, was one of several films produced around 1990 that was delayed due to Orion's financial struggles at the time. Star John C. McGinley told The AV Club that it was initially filmed as a musical-comedy, but most of the numbers were edited out.

The Plot Against Harry (1990)

Writer and director Michael Roemer's The Plot Against Harry stars Martin Priest as a Jewish mobster seeking redemption after he is released from prison. An article from The New Yorker explains that the film was shot in 1969 but failed to find distribution until 21 years later and was released commercially to wide critical praise.

Eye See You (2002)

Sylvester Stallone stars in Eye See You as an FBI agent who discovers the elusive killer he has been tracking has followed him to a rehab facility that specializes in treating law enforcement officials. According to Ain't It Cool News, the thriller, which was originally shot under the title Detox in 1999, was shelved by Universal until 2002 due to poor test screenings, multiple reshoots, and additional title changes.

Collateral Damage (2002)

The largely overlooked Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Collateral Damage stars the Austrian actor as a man seeking revenge on the terrorists who caused the death of his wife and child. IGN mentions in an article about Hollywood's reaction to the tragic attacks on September 11, 2001, that the film was originally slated for October of that year. It would eventually come out in late 2002.

The New Mutants (2020)

Director Josh Boone insisted to EW that, despite rumblings of reshoots, his X-Men-adjacent, YA Marvel movie, The New Mutants, boasts the exact vision he had intended. Disney's acquisition of Fox was among the reasons the comic book movie experienced several release date pushbacks before it finally hit theaters three years after principal photography had been completed.

A Sound Of Thunder (2005)

Ray Bradbury's acclaimed short sci-fi story, A Sound of Thunder, was adapted into a feature film that was completed in 2003 but held back until 2005 due to its bankrupt production company, director and actor changes, script issues, and a Hollywood strike at the time. IGN reported that these issues also affected the release of Nintendo's tie-in video game.

The Lovers On The Bridge (1999)

The Lovers on the Bridge is a French drama following the romance between an addicted aspiring circus performer (played by Denis Lavant) and a nearly non-seeing young painter (played by Juliette Binoche). Budgeting issues forced the production to last four years, but, as reflected in an article by The Nation, it took another eight years for it find American distribution.

White Dog (2008)

White Dog is the story of a young woman (played by Kristy McNichol) who discovers her new pet has been trained by his former white supremacist owner to attack people of color unprovoked. Despite an enthusiastically positive reception at the festival circuit, Paramount was hesitant to give the film an official theatrical release in the United States due to its sensitive subject matter. It was made available for home viewing in the U.S. for the first time 27 years after it was filmed, thanks to The Criterion Collection.

Prozac Nation (2005)

Based on Elizabeth Wurtzel's 1994 memoir, Prozac Nation – starring Christina Ricci as a woman struggling with her mental health while attending Harvard – premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2001. However, according to Variety, after a series of test screenings and subsequent re-edits, it was finally released to the public on Starz! in March 2005 before coming out on DVD three months later.

Romance And Cigarettes (2007)

The star-studded dramedy Romance and Cigarettes premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2005 and was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland and other European countries the following year. However, it would not be shown in American theaters until writer and director John Turturro distributed it independently in 2007 due to Sony Pictures and MGM's merger, according to Playbill.

Camp Hell (2010)

Camp Hell – which depicts a devilish encounter at a spiritual retreat for Christian youths – was shot in 2007 and released straight-to-DVD in 2010 with Jesse Eisenberg's face and name featured prominently on the cover. As reported by THR, Eisenberg, having recently received an Oscar nomination for The Social Network, filed a lawsuit against Lionsgate for promoting the horror movie with him as the star despite mere minutes of screen time.

Genres are helpful—until a movie comes along that throws the rulebook into the fire. Some films are so inventive and wildly ambitious that slapping a single label on them feels like an insult. These movies blend tones, mix storytelling traditions, and challenge expectations at every turn. Whether mashup horror and comedy, sci-fi and romance, or animation and noir, these 32 films break free from traditional classification, proving that the best stories often refuse to fit into a box.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

The plot of Everything Everywhere All at Once sounds absurd when you hear it out loud. It’s sci-fi, but it’s also a family drama. It’s one of the best action movies in recent memory. It also happens to be an absurdist comedy with a scene that breaks my heart every time I see it–I still can’t look at rocks or googly eyes the same. It’s a meditation on existential dread wrapped in kung-fu spectacle. The Daniels crafted something that shouldn’t work but does—an emotional, high-energy, genre-blending rollercoaster where nihilism and love collide in the best way possible.

Donnie Darko (2001)

A suburban teen, time travel, existential horror, and a man in a creepy rabbit suit—Donnie Darko refuses to be pinned down. Is it a psychological thriller? A coming-of-age story? A horror film with sci-fi elements? Richard Kelly’s cult classic is all of these things, a moody, enigmatic puzzle box that continues to haunt viewers decades later, an easily one of Jake Gyllenhal’s best movie performances.

The Princess Bride (1987)

What other film can balance fairy tale fantasy, satirical comedy, swashbuckling action, and heart-melting romance without breaking a sweat? The Princess Bride is a book-to-screen adaptation that is as good, if not better than the novel it's based on. It’s a love letter to classic storytelling while also poking fun at its conventions. It’s pure magic—a film that can make you laugh, cheer, and cry, often within the same scene.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, one of his best movies, refuses to let fantasy be an escape. Instead, it interweaves a fairy tale with the brutal realities of war-torn Spain. Part fantasy film, dripping in historical drama and a dash of horror. Del Toro blends all three into something chillingly beautiful, proving that sometimes the scariest monsters are human.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

A hard-boiled noir detective film… with animated cartoon characters running wild? Who Framed Roger Rabbit defies expectations by fusing classic film noir aesthetics with Looney Tunes madness. It’s part mystery, part slapstick comedy, part technical marvel, entirely unclassifiable, and, in retrospect, not very appropriate for children.

Swiss Army Man (2016)

Since finishing up his tenure as Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliff has made some weird movies, and none are as odd as Swiss Army Man. Think Cast Away with a farting corpse–as a stranded man befriends a farting, talking corpse with Swiss Army knife-like powers—if that sounds like nonsense, that’s because it is pure absurdist genius. It’s an iconic buddy comedy, an existential drama, and a surprisingly heartfelt film about loneliness, self-worth, and the strangeness of human connection.

The Fifth Element (1997)

Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element is one of the best science fiction movies of the 90s, sure, but it’s also a campy, over-the-top, French space opera that veers into comedy, action, and cartoon levels of insanity. It’s a spectacle of pure creative energy, filled with outlandish characters and visual madness that make it impossible to categorize.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an unholy blend of campy B-movie horror and glam rock musicals. It embraces its genre-defying weirdness with open arms. It’s more than a film—it's an experience with some of the catchiest songs committed to screen.

Being John Malkovich (1999)

A movie about a portal into John Malkovich’s mind that turns into a psychological drama about identity, obsession, and control? Spike Jonze, in his directorial debut, and Charlie Kaufman turn an absurd premise into something deeply unsettling yet darkly funny, making Being John Malkovich one of the strangest films ever made and one of the best flicks of the 1990s.

The Shape of Water (2017)

If you mix a Cold War espionage thriller with a creature feature and, of course, a fairy tale romance, you’ll get an idea of what The Shape of Water is. Guillermo del Toro masterfully stitches these elements together into a haunting, poetic, and profoundly weird film. A love story between a woman and an amphibious creature shouldn't work, but in del Toro’s capable hands, the movie becomes unforgettable and deserves all its Oscar wins.

Hook (1991)

Though much maligned since its release, Hook is easily one of Robin Williams's best performances. It tells a compelling father-son story mixed with whimsy and is a family-friendly swashbuckler. However, at its heart, it’s a deeply melancholic story about rediscovering lost youth.

Spirited Away (2001)

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is an intoxicating blend of myth, folklore, and childhood wonder, defying any easy categorization. The film operates on dream logic, shifting between the whimsical and the nightmarish, crafting a world that feels both hauntingly strange and intimately familiar. It’s one of the very best adventure family movies out there.

Fargo (1996)

The Coen Brothers have a habit of making films that exist in the gray area between genres, and Fargo might be their greatest balancing act. It’s a crime thriller, a dark comedy with some of their funniest quotes, and a bleak meditation on human nature. The film is full of violence and tension, yet it never loses its absurd sense of humor—often in the same breath.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

At first glance, The Cabin in the Woods is one of the best horror movies of the 2010s, but the deeper you go, the more it mutates into something else entirely. It works as a love letter to and a brutal deconstruction of the horror genre, blending meta-comedy with genuine scares. It starts like a standard slasher film, but by the end, it’s an apocalyptic fever dream that leaves you questioning everything you know about horror storytelling.

Gremlins (1984)

Is Gremlins a horror movie? A dark comedy? Is it a Christmas film or just Christmas-themed? The answer is all of the above. Joe Dante’s chaotic creature feature shifts wildly between tones, sometimes feeling like a heartwarming holiday classic and other times diving headfirst into gruesome horror. It manages to be both gleefully silly and genuinely unsettling—making it impossible to fit neatly into one category.

The Pagemaster (1994)

The Pagemaster refuses to commit to a single identity. Though it loomed large in my childhood, its unwillingness to commit to a single genre could be why it has such an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score. While it’s positioned as a children’s film about the power of books, it blends so many visual and storytelling styles that it becomes something else entirely. This surreal, hybrid experience feels both nostalgic and oddly experimental.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China is an action movie that plays like a comedy, a kung-fu film that satirizes kung-fu films, and a supernatural adventure that revels in its own ridiculousness. It gleefully subverts action hero tropes, making its protagonist more of a bumbling sidekick–with some of the greatest Kurt Russel quotes–than a traditional lead. Its genre-bending nature has made it an enduring cult classic.

Her (2013)

Her straddles multiple genres while remaining profoundly intimate and personal. Yet again, Spike Jonze takes a premise that could have been used for satire—a man falling in love with his AI assistant—and turns it into a heartbreakingly sincere exploration of modern relationships. It’s futuristic but deeply human, making it impossible to categorize.

Last Action Hero (1993)

On the surface, it’s an action movie but also a deconstruction of action movies. Last Action Hero arguably came out at the wrong time, as it revels in Hollywood excess while poking fun at its clichés, blending over-the-top action with meta-commentary way ahead of its time. It’s self-aware, chaotic, and often refusing to be boxed into a single category.

Burn After Reading (2008)

Burn After Reading is classic Coen Brothers chaos—a film where every character thinks they’re in control, yet none of them have any idea what’s actually happening. It plays with the tropes of espionage thrillers, only to reveal that the stakes are laughably low, making it a darkly hilarious puzzle box of a movie. Also, it has one of the best Francis McDormand performances ever.

Men in Black (1997)

It’s a sci-fi film, but it’s also a buddy-cop comedy. It’s a blockbuster, but it has the sharp humor of a satire. Men in Black blends alien conspiracies, action-packed spectacle, laugh-out-loud comedy, and one of the scariest aliens committed to celluloid into something effortlessly entertaining. It thrives in its refusal to take itself too seriously, making it one of its era's most unique sci-fi films.

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Edward Scissorhands is unapologetically Tim Burton at his best. An oddity that defies easy classification. It’s equal parts whimsical and tragic, blending a monster movie's aesthetics with the romance's tenderness. The film’s visual style is pure fantasy, yet its emotional core is deeply human, making it one of Burton’s most enduring works.

A Ghost Story (2017)

A Ghost Story is a slow, meditative exploration of time, grief, and existential loneliness. It also tells the story of a spiritual being who walks the earth in a bed sheet. This story challenges everything you expect from a ghost story, stripping away jump scares and supernatural lore in favor of long, lingering shots and quiet, contemplative storytelling. It’s haunting, but not in the traditional sense—more of a melancholy whisper than a scream in the dark.

La La Land (2016)

A musical, but one that subverts the tropes of the genre. La La Land embraces old Hollywood spectacle while refusing to follow the standard “happily ever after” formula. It’s nostalgic yet modern, blending reality and fantasy in a way that feels both dreamlike and achingly real.

The Lobster (2015)

The Lobster is so uniquely bizarre that it exists in a separate genre–the genre of Yorgos Lanthimos. Lanthimos takes an inherently ridiculous premise—that single people must find a partner or be turned into animals—and turns it into something deeply unsettling, bleakly funny, and weirdly moving.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a movie far better than its bombing at the box office would lead one to believe. It is a wonderful stop-motion movie, but it's also unmistakably Wes Anderson, as the filmmaker blends the time-consuming animation with his signature aesthetic. It feels like a classic children’s storybook brought to life, yet it carries an undercurrent of existential angst that makes it resonate just as strongly with adults.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

No movie influenced 90s cinema quite like Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. This unpredictable film intertwines multiple narratives, with Samuel L. Jackson as the standout performer. The movie redefined nonlinear storytelling by skillfully blending brutal violence, humor, and unexpected poignancy.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Another Charlie Kaufman brainchild, Eternal Sunshine, takes a high-concept premise—erasing painful memories of lost love and toxic relationships—and turns it into an achingly beautiful meditation on heartbreak, fate, and human connection. It’s as cerebral as it is emotional, making it one of the most uniquely structured love stories ever told.

Prey (2022)

Prey is not just another Predator movie; it’s a historical survival thriller and an Indigenous-led action film that reinvents the franchise. By removing the excessive machismo of earlier movies and setting the story in 1719 around a young Comanche warrior, Prey transforms into a compelling tale of resilience and culture. Amber Midthunder emerges as a standout new face in the lineage of final girls in horror.

Aliens (1986)

James Cameron cranked Ridley Scott’s slow-burn terror into an all-out war film, proving that a sequel doesn’t have to repeat its predecessor. Aliens retains the dread of its predecessor while injecting explosive, military-driven spectacle, making it a rare hybrid that succeeds as both a nerve-wracking horror movie and a high-octane action thriller.

Coraline (2009)

It looks like a children’s fantasy film, but Coraline, while being one of Laika’s best movies, is pure nightmare fuel. A dark fairy tale with horror undertones, the film walks the tightrope between whimsy and dread. Its stop-motion animation is gorgeous yet eerie, and the story—about a young girl lured into a seemingly perfect world with sinister secrets—feels like something pulled from the pages of an old gothic ghost story.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

A coming-of-age story drenched in comic book and video-game aesthetics? Scott Pilgrim vs. The World should have been a hit, with its pure kinetic energy, blending pop culture, music, and self-aware humor into a hyper-stylized spectacle. Edgar Wright expanded his abilities as a filmmaker, creating a film that’s part arcade game, part indie rom-com, and wholly unique in its execution.

The term “Final Girl” refers to the female protagonist in a slasher film, creature feature, or almost any other kind of thriller who, typically ends up being the last person standing against the main villain or obstacle. We looked back at some of the most iconic characters associated with this trope from some of the best horror movies of all time and came up with this assortment of the horror Scream Queens who come first in our hearts.

Sidney Prescott (Scream)

Neve Campbell's lead role from the 1996 Wes Craven-helmed classic is not actually the sole survivor of Ghostface's murder spree and would appear in several more sequels. However, Sidney Prescott is, essentially, the compendium of all the most inspiring Final Girls to come before her, especially when you consider that Scream was a compendium of all the best slasher movies to come before it.

Nancy Thompson (A Nightmare On Elm Street)

Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) has a tougher break than most "Final Girls" as she never has a chance to have a moment's rest since sleeping makes her more vulnerable to Freddy Krueger's attack. However, she shows Robert Englund's iconic horror movie villain no mercy in the final act of 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street, taking down the burned boogeyman Kevin McCallister-style before Home Alone was even conceived.

Sally Hardesty (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre)

Most "Final Girls" earn their merit from bringing their attacker to some sort of justice, which makes Marilyn Burns' role from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre an odd one out since Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) is still alive and well by the end of Tobe Hooper's nightmarish 1974 classic. Yet, Sally Hardesty's sheer will to survive and ability to ultimately escape his sawblade and flesh-eating family should be commended, especially after all she goes through.

Alice Hardy (Friday The 13th)

It is a shame that, after surviving the events of 1980's Friday the 13th, Alice Hardy never had the opportunity to take on Jason Voorhees – a sentiment actor Adrienne King agrees with. Then again, she is the one who beheads the notorious killer's mother (and one of the greatest female horror movie villains), Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), essentially setting off Jason's vengeful killing streak, which makes her an undisputed legend of Crystal Lake lore.

Sarah Connor (The Terminator)

While more widely associated with classic action movies thanks to its later sequels, James Cameron's 1984 sci-fi masterpiece The Terminator is a slasher movie in its metallic bones. Thus, Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor, whose son is destined to lead humanity in a revolt against mechanical overlords, should be recognized as a definitive "Final Girl."

Jess Bradford (Black Christmas)

Many audiences might know Olivia Hussey best from her star-making turn as the female lead of Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. However, she is also an icon in the horror community for leading Bob Clark's 1974 holiday horror movie favorite, Black Christmas, as a college student who begins to suspect that she and her fellow sorority sisters are being stalked by a homicidal creep during winter break.

Jeryline (Tales From The Crypt Presents: Demon Knight)

Spun-off from the eponymous hit horror anthology TV show, 1995's Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight depicts the modern-day peak of an eternal quarrel between an immortal warrior (William Fichtner) and the demon (Billy Zane) he is sworn to fight against. However, by the end of the film, Jada Pinkett Smith's Jeryline proves to be out to be the true titular hero.

Sienna Shaw (Terrifier 2)

Only a lucky few have survived the many unspeakable acts by Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), such as Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) in Terrifier 2. Just as quickly as the creepy clown movies' horrifying harlequin became a hall-of-fame slasher villain, she became one of the top "Final Girls" of her generation, ensuring her return in Terrifier 3.

Ellen Ripley (Alien)

In Ridley Scott's terrifying, 1979 space movie masterpiece Alien, Ellen Ripley wound up becoming the sole survivor of the Xenomorph's attack on the Nostromo (unless you count the cat, Jones). Sigourney Weaver would return to the role bigger and better in James Cameron's more action-oriented 1986 favorite, Aliens, for which she earned an Academy Award nomination and a place among cinema's fiercest "Final Girls."

Laurie Strode (Halloween)

There are few horror movie icons more widely beloved as Academy Award winner Jamie Lee Curtis, particularly for her breakthrough performance as Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's riveting smash, Halloween. When the Haddonfield teen first took on Michael Myers in that 1978 classic, the "Final Girl" trope was essentially invented and every slasher movie protagonist has tried to live up to her influence since.

Ginny Field (Friday The 13th Part 2)

The first "Final Girl" in the Friday the 13th movies to take on the one, the only Jason Voorhees in 1981's Friday the 13th Part 2 is Ginny Field. Played by Amy Steel, she is also the one who discovered the horror movie villain's somewhat understandable motivation to avenge the death of his mother, which she cleverly used against him.

Julie James (I Know What You Did Last Summer)

Jennifer Love Hewitt's Scream Queen moment came when she led the cast of 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer as Julie James. She would reprise the "Final Girl" role the following year in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which sees her still suffering the consequences of seemingly causing the death of an innocent man in a car accident.

Maxine Minx (X)

In Ti West's acclaimed 2022 A24 horror movie, X, Mia Goth's Maxine Minx became the only survivor of a massacre on the set of an adult film that was meant to be her big break. Luckily, as revealed in 2024's MaXXXine, she would go on to have a decent career in the industry, which would eventually win her a part in a legitimate horror film but not without a run-in with another crazed killer with a personal vendetta against her and the general moral decline of the '80s.

Erin Harson (You're Next)

In director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett's You're Next, a dysfunctional family gathering is interrupted by a group of masked assailants who keep their secluded home surrounded with deadly traps and weaponry. Luckily, they have some help from one family member's girlfriend, Erin Harson (Sharni Vinson), who is revealed to have been raised on a survivalist compound, making her one of the most refreshingly resourceful horror movie characters of all time, regardless of gender.

Clear Rivers (Final Destination)

For starters, is there a single horror movie "Final Girl" with a more wicked name than Ali Larter's character from 2000's Final Destination? It was a shame to see the Grim Reaper finally claim her soul in the sequel but her willingness to take that risk to help a new group of doomed characters makes Clear Rivers a legend.

Naru (Prey)

In 2022, Prey was criticized by a few for the "unrealistic" depiction of a petite, young, 18th Century Comanche woman single-handedly taking down a hulking extraterrestrial whose most notable adversary from the previous Predator movies was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, any true fan of the 1987 original should know that it takes brains and not brawn to defeat said creature, and Naru (Amber Midthunder) was one of the first humans to realize that instinct and use it to victory.

Dani Ardor (Midsommar)

One of the few "Final Girls" to willfully and effectively adopt the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy is Dani Ardor (Oscar nominee Florence Pugh) from 2019's instant A24 movie classic, Midsommar. Not receiving the comfort she needs from her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), after suffering the horrifying loss of her entire family, she finally finds it when she attends a cultural festival run by a group of Swedish villagers who put a big smile on Dani's face as she watches them burn Christian alive.

Jamie Lloyd (Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers)

Danielle Harris was only at least 11 when she earned Scream Queen status by following directly in the footsteps of the quintessential "Final Girl," Laurie Stroud. Harris stars in 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of the Michael Myers as the orphaned daughter of Laurie Strode, Jamie Lloyd, whose uncle makes her his next intended prey.

Mia Allen (Evil Dead)

Jane Levy proved that an Evil Dead movie without Bruce Campbell's Ash Williams in the lead is still worth hailing to with her performance in Fede Alvarez's 2013 reboot as Mia – an addict whose road to recovery is grossly interrupted by malevolent entities that turn her into a vessel of grueling terror. Luckily, her brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez), manages to cure her possession, leading to one relentlessly brutal final showdown between her and a boss Deadite.

Grace (Ready Or Not)

In Radio Silence's brilliant 2019 horror-comedy movie, Ready or Not, Samara Weaving plays the newly married Grace, who falls prey to a ritual that forces her entire extended family to hunt her to death. While she does receive some help from her brother-in-law and it is ultimately Satan's wrath that saves her, she manages to outrun, outwit, and out-fight many of them and (mostly) maintain her sanity throughout the bloody ordeal.

Adelaide/Red (Us)

Throughout much of Jordan Peele's 2019 sophomore effort, Adelaide (Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o) has the audience's full support until the shocking Us ending that reveals she was her tethered duplicate Red the whole time, having switched with the real Adelaide decades ago. This marks one of the few instances in which the "Final Girl" (who does manage to save her entire family from the Tethered) is revealed to be the true villain in the end.

Casey Cooke (Split)

One of the various roles that have made Anya Taylor-Joy a great Scream Queen for her time is Casey Cooke from the 2017 M. Night Shyamalan movie, Split. She cleverly uses her own history of abuse as a weapon against her captor... or, more accurately, "captors," since James McAvoy's Kevin Wendell Crumb is a DID patient housing a few unfavorable personalities

Dana Polk (The Cabin In The Woods)

In director Drew Goddard's ingenious horror genre deconstruction The Cabin in the Woods, a group of college students fall prey to strange and terrifying circumstances on a camping trip, unaware it is all part of a ritual that requires people with their common personality types. Dana Polk (Kristin Connolly) absolutely fits "The Facility's" definition of a "Final Girl" but she ends up being the kind who also stands her ground and ends up turning the tables on them, in spite of the apocalyptic circumstances.

Sarah Carter (The Descent)

What makes 2005's The Descent a special kind of horror film that acknowledges grief is that Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) is a protagonist who defies expectations with her resilience. She endures the loss of her husband and daughter, the discovery that her husband was being unfaithful with one of her best friends, and being trapped in an unexplored cavern with man-eating mutants like a total boss.

Kirsty Cotton (Hellraiser)

It's bad enough that Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) struggles to warm to her stepmother, Julia (Claire Higgins), in Clive Barker's 1987 favorite, Hellraiser. However, learning that Julia was murdering men so that she could reunite with her reanimated lover, Frank (also Kirsty's uncle) who has escaped captivity from a group of sadomasochistic demons is quite a challenge.

Jen (Revenge)

At the beginning of Coralie Fargeat's 2018 feature debut, Revenge (indeed one of the best revenge movies), Jen (Matilda Lutz) comes off as a conceited bimbo. However, after her boyfriend's business partner takes advantage and, instead of offering help, the boyfriend leaves her for dead in the Moroccan desert, she proves to them that she is not one to mess with and to us that she is a resilient hero worth rooting for.

Tree Gelbman (Happy Death Day)

Tree Gelbman is one of the few "Final Girls" who actually does die in her own movie... multiple times. Writer and director Christopher Landon's Happy Death Day is a fun slasher-style take on the time loop movie genre in which Jessica Rothe's protagonist finds herself reliving the same day over and over again and must use her "unlimited lives" to figure out who has been trying to kill her.

Alison Parks (Chopping Mall)

Chopping Mall is a 1986 cult favorite from producer Roger Corman in which a group of teens become locked inside a shopping center with security robots that have gone inexplicably haywire. The way Kelli Maroney's Allison Parks claps back at the machines with their own catchphrase ("Have a nice day!") before making junk out of them makes this awesomely cheesy movie worth a watch.

Maddie Young (Hush)

One of Mike Flanagan's best movies, 2016's Hush, is a creepy, well-crafted thriller about an author named Maddie (Kate Siegel) whose secluded home is invaded by a masked murderer (John Gallagher Jr.). Despite having lost her ability to hear as a teenager, Maddie prevails in her deadly cat-and-mouse game with the stranger using her sharp instincts.

Emerald Haywood (Nope)

If not for its stunningly unique take on the alien invasion movie genre or its clever satirical commentary on the influence of spectacle, the number one reason to see Jordan Peele's 2022 thriller Nope is Emerald Haywood. Keke Palmer's infectious, scene-stealing performance as the ambitious, amateur UFO hunter makes the character a standout "Final Girl" (of sorts) for the ages.

Jessie Burlingame (Wrong Turn)

Wrong Turn – in which six people fall prey to a group of murderous mutants when they become stranded in the middle of nowhere – is one of the more underrated slasher-style thrillers of the early 2000s. In the same breath, Eliza Dushku's character, Jessie Burlingame, is one of the more underrated "Final Girls" of her time, bearing the right amount of intelligence and resilience to be considered a worthy horror movie hero.

Marybeth Dunston (Hatchet)

Some "Final Girls" have remained staples of their respective franchises, even if that means recasting them with different actors. For instance, Marybeth Dunston was originally played by Tamara Feldman in 2006's Hatchet but was portrayed in the next three sequels by Halloween franchise star Danielle Harris.

Movies about trips gone wrong are as old as Hollywood. Some of the funniest, scariest, or most stressful films come from this sub-genre and we are here to celebrate those movies with this list. Whether it's a classic comedy like City Slickers or an action/horror movie like Deliverance, these are our favorite movies about vacations that ended up a total nightmare.

National Lampoon's Vacation

You can't have this list without the all-time classic road trip disaster that is National Lampoon's Vacation. Everyone has been on a family road trip; it's a rite of passage in the United States. Thankfully, most don't go as bad as this Griswold's Chicago-to-California trip to WallyWorld. It's such a classic that it launched a mini-franchise.

Deliverance

There is no movie ever made about a camping trip that goes as bad as Deliverance. The Burt Reynolds-led classic from 1972 has become a cliche for a nightmare of a canoe trip (or really any trip into "the hills." All the guys wanted to do was canoe a river one last time before it was dammed up. The locals had a different idea entirely.

The Great Outdoors

Chet Ripley (John Candy) just wanted to have a classic summer vacation in the woods with his family. Unfortunately, like so many dads before him and after him, the trip went a completely different direction once his obnoxious brother-in-law, played by Dan Aykroyd showed up uninvited with his family. At least Aykroyd has some classic John Hughes quotes in the movie.

The Hangover

It's not usual for a bachelor party in Vegas to go a little sideways, but we sure hope none have gone quite as disastrous as Doug's party in Vegas the night before he got married. What started as a quick shot on the roof of Caesar's Palace in The Hangover, ended with Doug missing, a stolen police car, a surprise wedding, and more. At least almost all of Alan's quotes in The Hangover (by actor Zach Galifianakis) are hilarious.

The Beach

Imagine finding paradise in Thailand while trying to find yourself as a young college-age kid, and then imagine that dream spot becoming a total nightmare. That's what happens in The Beach. Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his friends manage to find the mysterious, beautiful beach, and everything is idyllic—until the community (and its leader) go to extreme lengths to keep the beach a secret.

Home Alone

Home Alone isn't about the vacation itself, it's about the kid left behind as the rest of his family heads to Paris. Things go pretty well for Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) at home as he triumphantly defeats the Wet Bandits, but for the family on vacation, especially Kevin's mom (Catherine O'Hara), it is pretty much a nightmare as she (and they) try to get home to him.

The Cabin In The Woods

There is nothing better as a college kid than finding an out-of-the-way place, like a cabin in the woods, to spend some time partying with your best buds. That is, unless, you're one of the kids in The Cabin In The Woods where everything about your trip is being messed with by some crazy scientists trying to conduct a psychotic "experiment" with cabin... and the kids.

Anyone But You

Imagine finding yourself at a destination wedding with a one-night stand who you detest after things went sour quickly. For Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell), it's a Shakespeare play come to life. They secretly still really like each other, but neither can let the other know and the idyllic vacation/wedding is anything but. At least at first.

City Slickers

Dude ranches were all the range in the 1990s and the Billy Crystal classic City Slickers is a big reason why they were so popular. It's strange that people had any interest in spending their vacation time at one, given how horrible the trip goes in the movie.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Murder mystery parties are a nightmare even when they go perfectly, or at least they are for some people. Other people seem to like them. Even those people wouldn't love them much if they went the way the party goes in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Old friends turn enemies in this disaster of a trip that is manipulated by their mysterious, rich friend.

Bad Trip

Eric André and Lil Rel Howery star in Bad Trip and the name pretty much says it all. It's a classic road trip-gone-bad movie as the two stars try to make it from Florida to New York. It's an underrated comedy that had a bunch of problems upon its release and as a result, not enough people have seen it.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

To be clear, pretty much everything that goes wrong in the horror flick I Know What You Did Last Summer is the fault of the selfish college kids on the vacations. We're meant to like them, of course, but it's hard to like any of them after everything they do.

Get Out

Meeting your significant other's parents is always a little stressful. For Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) in Get Out, it starts out actually pretty well. His white girlfriend's parents are perfectly fine, it seems with their daughter dating a Black man, something he was worried about. Of course, things turn into a nightmare when he finds out what is really going on and why her parents are so "cool" about things.

Weekend At Bernie's

Is Weekend at Bernie's really a vacation movie? Well, kind of, right? After Larry (Andrew McCarthy) and Richard (Jonathan Silverman) expose company fraud to their company's owner, Bernie, the boss invites them out to his place in the Hamptons for the weekend. Well, we all know what happens next and while Bernie never intended for it to be a vacation for our heroes, things go from bad to worse when Bernie dies.

Summer Rental

John Candy found his way into quite a few vacation disaster movies. Summer Rental might not be the best-remembered one, but boy is it a disaster. What was supposed to be a nice 5-week vacation in Florida meant to reduce stress turns into the most stressful beach vacation you can ever imagine as literally everything goes wrong.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

There is no worse nightmare than trying to escape to paradise for a while to forget your ex-girlfriend only to find out she's at the same resort with her new, extremely obnoxious boyfriend. That's exactly what happens to Peter (Jason Segel) as he tries to leave his heartache behind in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. At least he meets Rachel (Mila Kunis) who is way cooler than Sarah (Kristin Bell).

The Sure Thing

The Sure Thing has some of John Cusack's most iconic quotes. Of course, that's because he's trying to make the most of a cross-country road trip that turns into a total disaster. Everything goes wrong as he tries to deal with a travel partner who he hates and who hates him. It's also a wonder rom-com as they end up falling in love after bonding over how bad the trip is.

Jurassic Park

Not everyone on the trip to Jurassic Park in Jurassic Park are there for a vacation, but the two kids, Lex and Tim, are there for one. Boy oh boy does it going bad for them! All they thought they were doing is seeing their grandfathers amazing new bio-park. Instead, they are almost eaten again and again!

National Lampoon's European Vacation

The Griswolds returned for their second vacation in National Lampoon's European Vacation. Unfortunately for Clark (Chevy Chase) and his family, things go as bad as they did when they drove to WallyWorld. They aren't in the car as much, but when they are, it's maybe worse when they drive by Big Ben and Parliament for hours.

Couples Retreat

Most couples look forward to a weekend away together. Other couples use time away as a chance to rekindle their relationship and get things back on a good track. The latter is what is happening in Couple's Retreat, but with "vacations" like that, who needs the stresses of home to ruin marriages?

Gotcha!

It was supposed to be a dream summer trip for a college kid exploring Europe in too-often forgotten Gotcha! starring Anthony Edwards. It turns into a Cold War nightmare when Jonathan (Edwards) meets an exotic woman named Sasha (Linda Fiorentino), who turns out to be a spy.

One Crazy Summer

As summer jobs and vacations go, things could be a lot worse than what happens to Hoop (John Cusack) in One Crazy Summer. He finds love with Cassandra (Demi Moore) and makes some life-long friends. But it all comes with some serious challenges along the way that Hoop and his friends must overcome.

A Very Brady Sequel

Taken straight from the classic show, A Very Brady Sequel sees the whole family traveling to Hawaii to rescue Carol from an unscrupulous con man who has kidnapped her. That might not sound like a vacation, but the family still manages to make the most of their time on the islands, but even that goes wrong.

What About Bob?

Psychiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss) takes his family on their annual vacation to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. It's going as planned until a borderline psychopath patient of Leo's named Bob Wiley (Bill Murray) shows up and does his best to ruin Leo's life and vacation.

Brokedown Palace

You know those announcements at the airport that tell you not to accept things from strangers to take on the plane with you? It seems like common sense, but Darlene (Kate Beckinsale) and Alice (Claire Danes) don't heed that warning and unknowingly smuggle drugs into Thailand and their dream vacation turns into a prison nightmare quickly.

Spider-Man: Far From Home

When you think about movies about bad vacations, superhero stories may not stand out, but Tom Holland/MCU Spider-Man movies break that. Spider-Man: Far From Home starts as an amazing school trip to Venice, but is interrupted in a violent fashion when the Water Elemental attacks the city. It's not what you expect from a school trip, that's for sure. It's far from the final twist in the movie though.

Us

Director Jordan Peele followed up one vacation nightmare movie (Get Out) with another one, Us. Us is an equally disturbing vacation movie, based on a more traditional beach vacation. What makes it worse is that Addy (Lupita Nyong'o) saw it coming. She knew what was up.

Vegas Vacation

Once again the Griswolds, led by Clark, set out to have a good, fun, family vacation, this time in Sin City. Vegas Vacation, like the two previous (actual) vacations in the series, turns into a total disaster for almost everyone except Cousin Eddy. Clark loses all his money gambling, the kids get into all kinds of trouble, and Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) almost gets seduced by Wayne Newton.

EuroTrip

Things start badly for Scotty (Scott Mechlowicz) when he gets dumped in the most brutal fashion after graduating high school. They get worse when he is cut off from his German pen pal. To save things, he decides to head to Europe to meet her in person. The trip, of course, is a total disaster, at least until the very end, when it gets much better. It takes a lot to get there, though.

Thelma And Louise

People forget that Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) were just planning a weekend getaway up to the mountains to escape life for a bit. Instead, their quick jaunt turns into a run from the law after Louise shoots a man assaulting Thelma after a night in a bar. It's an amazing adventure, but it doesn't end the way you want your vacations to end, that's for sure.

Midsommar

Dani (Florence Pugh) has had a rough year after the death of her sister and an increasingly hostile boyfriend. She decides to take up a friend's offer to travel to a midsummer festival that only happens once every 90 years in rural Sweden. Instead of a festival celebrating rebirth and life, it turns out the commune where it is being held is nothing short of a hedonistic nightmare.

Home Alone 2: Lost In New York

In the first Home Alone, the vacationing family are the ones having the real disastrous trip. In the second installment, the trip starts off as a nightmare for Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) but once again really affects his family much worse than it does for him, even though he's the one that has to meet a certain future politician in the movie. Things always seem to work out for Kevin.

We know that it is customary to root for the more resourceful and heroic horror movie characters, but there have been a number of times when we could not help but feel sympathy for the maniacs and monsters they came at odds with. You could even argue that what makes some of the best horror movies so great is when they involve an antagonist whom you can actually identify with, or at least have some understanding of why they became the way they are. 

Now, to be clear, we are in no way justifying the heinous and horrifying actions of any of these iconic horror movie villains, but by taking a deeper look at their back stories, you may never be able to see them in quite the same light (or, more accurately, darkness) again.

Carrie White (Carrie)

In Brian DePalma's 1976 adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie, Sissy Spacek's title character uses her telepathic powers to cause an explosive massacre on prom night. However, after facing unwarranted torment from her merciless classmates, constant judgment from her fanatical mother, and getting pig blood poured on her on stage, it is easy to interpret her as the hero of the story.

John “Jigsaw” Kramer (Saw)

Despite the deadly nature of his homemade traps, it is not really John Kramer's (Tobin Bell) intention to actually kill anyone in the Saw movies. The terminally ill criminal — otherwise known as Jigsaw — wants to give his "subjects" a new appreciation for life by bringing them dangerously close to death.

Pamela Voorhees (Friday The 13th)

Jason Voorhees drowned to death in Crystal Lake because his camp counselors were too busy indulging in debauchery. Therefore, while there are better answers than violence, you cannot blame his mother, Pamela (Betsy Palmer), for attempting to put an end to such behaviors in the original Friday the 13th.

Jason Voorhees (Friday The 13th Movies)

As we discover in Friday the 13th Part 2, Jason Voorhees never actually died (Or was resurrected as immortal, maybe?), but is still mad about his counselors' neglect. Throw in the fact that his mother is dead — at the hands of another teen — and he has more than enough reason to be Camp Crystal Lake's worst nightmare.

Sam (Trick 'R Treat)

Not enough people see Halloween as the sacred time of year it deserves to be treated as — a mistake that Sam (Quinn Lord) intends to correct in the 2007 cult favorite anthology, Trick 'r Treat. The mischievous trick-r-treater may go a little too far in his attempts to teach people a lesson in honoring All Hallow's Eve traditions, but his passion for the holiday is unmatched and, for that, we believe he should be recognized as its official mascot.

Pale Man (Pan's Labyrinth)

Who likes to share food anyway? Doug Jones' grotesque ghoul from Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth certainly does not, as seen from when he catches Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) stealing some of his grapes.

The Mother (Barbarian)

In Zach Cregger's 2022 horror favorite, Barbarian, Georgina Campbell's Tess discovers her accidentally double-booked Airbnb is also hiding a revolting mutant woman (Matthew Patrick Davis) who takes her prisoner. When you think about it, though, she was born into a world of isolation and abuse and grew up to be the kind of person who just wants someone to care for (hence the credited name of "The Mother"), which is an undeniably admirable quality to have.

The Facility (The Cabin In The Woods)

Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins' characters in the clever horror-comedy movie classic, The Cabin in the Woods, work for an organization tasked with preventing the apocalypse. It is not their fault that the only solution is letting deadly creatures loose on a group of five young, archetypical vacationers to appease the gods.

The Thing (The Thing)

In director John Carpenter’s 1982 paranoia-driven alien invasion movie classic, The Thing, a group of researchers are forced to question which one of them is still human when a shape-shifting alien infiltrates their base in the arctic. While the creature’s imitation of multiple characters does suggest that its ultimate goal very likely could could have been a global takeover, at the end of the day, it seems that it just wanted to survive. Quite often, the most effective method is blending in.

Sweeney Todd (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street)

Anyone who has seen director Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (or the Broadway musical it is based on) knows that Johnny Depp's titular hairdresser is not just some natural born killer. He was falsely convicted of a terrible crime by a judge (Alan Rickman) who wanted to steal his wife, leading him down a vengeful path.

The Shark (Jaws)

Like any animal, a shark has to eat and, sometimes, humans just happen to be around when the aquatic apex predator from Jaws is hungry. In fact, as many fans of Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster agree, the story's true villain is the greedy Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who keeps Amity Island's beach open despite the warning signs.

Queen Xenomorph (Aliens)

Out of all the different Xenomorph variations seen in the Alien movies, few would disagree that the Queen is the most terrifying by her appearance alone. Yet, how truly threatening is she when unprovoked? In 1986’s Aliens, she is merely minding her own business laying some eggs until Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), after rescuing Newt (Carrie Henn), takes a flamethrower to her children. Would that not get you pretty riled up?

Daniel Robitaille (Candyman)

Tony Todd's titular urban legend from Candyman was savagely murdered over his romance with a white woman, igniting a vengeful fury that allowed him to live beyond death. The Clive Barker-inspired 1992 thriller's themes of racial discrimination were expanded upon in the 2021 requel, which suggests that people who die unjustly are resurrected as part of the "hive."

Alex Forrest (Fatal Attraction)

They say that love makes people do crazy things, even boiling the pet rabbit belonging to the family of the man you had a one-time fling with. Of course, you could argue that Manhattan editor Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) was already mentally unstable before crossing paths with Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) in 1987's Fatal Attraction, but the married lawyer should have known better than to toy with a woman’s feelings in the first place.

The Tethered (Us)

Jordan Peele’s 2019 thriller, Us, comments on classism, as represented by The Tethered — a group of people who really want nothing more than to live a life of their own beyond their underground home, like they surface-dwellers they resemble and have been forced to mimic. Not to mention, the central antagonist, Red (Lupita Nyong'o), absolutely deserves her revenge, given what we discover about her true identity at the end.

Kevin Wendell Crumb (Split)

In M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 hit, Split, James McAvoy gives a transcendent performance as Kevin Wendell Crumb, who takes three teenage girls captive in his home. However, the real Kevin — a patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder — actually had nothing to do with the kidnapping, which was really orchestrated by the more villainous personalities living inside him that manifested out of him being subjected to years of abuse.

Stitches (Stitches)

It is very rare to find a creepy clown movie with a sympathetic antagonist, but the horrifying harlequin from the Irish slasher, Stitches, comes closest. It stars comedian Ross Noble in the title role — a birthday clown who falls prey to a fatal joke and, years later, returns to exact revenge on the pranksters who caused his death.

Belial Bradley (Basket Case)

The grossly deformed Belial was separated from his twin brother, Duane (Kevin VanHentenryck), against his will, forcing him to be kept hidden in a basket — hence the title of Frank Henenlotter’s 1982 cult classic, Basket Case. If the doctors who performed the procedure had respected the siblings' wishes to remain conjoined, they would still be alive.

Winslow Leach (Phantom Of The Paradise)

In Brian DePalma's 1974 musical horror comedy movie, Phantom of the Paradise, Winslow Leach (William Finley) is a talented musician whose compositions are stolen by record producer Swan (Paul Williams). After an attempt to stop the situation leaves his face disfigured, he is forced to haunt Swan's concert hall, the Paradise, where he seeks vengeance against him.

Alex Hammond (Prom Night)

One of the few teen slashers with a somewhat sympathetic villain is Prom Night, which stars Jamie Lee Curtis and follows a group of teens targeted by a masked killer during the big school dance. Their assailant is actually Alex Hammond (Michael Tough), who wishes to punish the teens in question for causing the death of his sister years earlier.

Clover (Cloverfield)

Imagine being a lonely, helpless, confused child prematurely woken up from a nap. It seems that a temper tantrum would be the natural response, right? Well, according the creators of 2008's found footage horror favorite, Cloverfield, that is the reason why New York falls prey to a strange monster, and not for any malicious intent.

Herbert West (Re-Animator)

While we do not particularly agree with the idea of cheating death, the idea of giving people a second chance at life or the chance of a longer life is an admirable goal. Thus, we cannot deny that Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) created his resurrection serum with good intentions in Re-Animator.

Eva Galli (Ghost Story)

In 1979's Ghost Story, four elderly men are reminded of a terrible mistake from decades earlier when they become a acquainted with a woman named Alma Mobley (Alice Krige). However, they come to realize that Alma is really the spirit of Eva Galli — a woman from their past who has returned to avenge her death.

Lord Summerisle (The Wicker Man)

At the infamous, shocking conclusion of 1973's The Wicker Man, we discover that Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward) was duped into coming to Summerisle as a sacrifice for the island’s crops. While the idea of murder magically benefitting agriculture is obviously ridiculous, we can at least admire the community's leader, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) for going to far lengths for the sake of his people, even if his methods are horribly misguided.

Laura Barns (Unfriended)

In the surprisingly scary "video call horror" favorite Unfriended, a group of teens hanging out over Skype are taunted and killed one by one by an unwanted visitor.  It turns out to be the vengeful spirit of Laura Barns — a student who took her life after they embarrassed her with a viral video a year earlier.

Anton Phibes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes)

One of the most overlooked characters played by horror icon Vincent Price is the tile role of The Abominable Dr. Phibes, who seeks revenge on the doctors responsible for his wife's untimely death. To punish them, he takes inspiration from the Bible, setting rats, locusts, and other unusual curses on them.

Angela Baker (Sleepaway Camp)

After losing his father and sister in a skiing accident, Peter Baker was sent to live with his aunt, who forcibly raised him as her daughter under the name of his dead sibling, Angela. When "Angela" (Felissa Rose) was sent to the eponymous Sleepaway Camp, her fellow campers' merciless torment and inappropriate advances by some adult employees was the final straw, driving her to murder.

Victor Crowley (Hatchet)

While we are certainly not justifying the sadistic, indiscriminate murder streak of Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder), we cannot help but feel a bit bad for the antagonist of 2006’s Hatchet and its sequels. Because of his grotesque facial deformity, he was hidden from the public against his will until the day he died and was resurrected as an undead vessel of vengeance.

Rusty Nail (Joy Ride)

In 2001’s Joy Ride, Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, and Leelee Sobieski’s characters are stalked by a mysterious trucker referred to as Rusty Nail after pranking him over a CB radio. In Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead, another group of travelers feel his wrath after stealing a car from his house. In Joy Ride 3: Roadkill, he is lured by a young couple intending to rob him. In conclusion, this killer trucker only messes with people who mess with him first.

Willard (Willard)

Bruce Davison plays the title character of 1971’s Willard — a lonely, poorly treated young man who finds unexpected kinship in a litter of rats. When his cruel boss (Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine) ends up killing one of his new friends, named Socrates, he and an army of furry vermin retaliate.

Mama (Mama)

The eponymous, mysterious entity from 2013's Mama becomes the guardian to two young girls she saved from their own father, until they are discovered in the woods and taken in by their aunt and uncle five years later. So, it makes perfect sense that "Mama" would feel her adoptive children were stolen from her and want them back.

May Dove Canady (May)

Due to her awkward personality and lazy eye, the titular character from May, played by Angela Bettis, had no friends but a twisted doll named Suzie, until she becomes broken. We cannot blame her for wanting to find a replacement for Suzie, even though her solution is creating a new friend out of an assembly of human body parts.

Next time you watch a horror movie, instead of immediately writing off the villain as irredeemable, try to see things from their perspective. However, we also recommend trying to deal with your own problems in a calmer and more mature manner, as well.

Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson forever changed the horror movie landscape when they unleashed Ghostface on an unsuspecting public. Released in 1996, Scream provided a bracing blend of murder-mystery, slasher movie shocks, and playful self-awareness through the plot of a movie-mad killer slashing their way through the fictional town of Woodsboro. The landmark film reinvigorated a flatlining genre, gleefully explaining and then subverting horror movie clichés and spawning a new generation of scary movie fans in the process.

The original Scream isn't only one of the best horror movies of all time, its success also fueled multiple sequels, an MTV series, and – given the $138 million box-office haul made by the 2022 “reboot” – proves that the franchise still has what it takes to slay the competition. So, if you’re looking to stream more movies like Scream, made by horror movie buffs for horror movie buffs, check out our list below of 10 great horror movies like Scream (and where to watch them).

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Two harmless hillbillies are besieged by a group of panicky college students in this goofy horror comedy. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil invokes the tropes of rural horror and repeatedly flips them on their head, with the vacationing kids of Eli Craig’s movie clearly having seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Deliverance too many times. 

When Tucker and Dave save unconscious teen Allison from drowning, her prejudiced friends automatically assume they’ve got murder in mind. The reality is that Dale prefers board games to menacing banjo solos and the titular duo just want to renovate their cabin. Yet an escalating series of gory accidents only strengthens the conviction that they’re evil incarnate.

Stream Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Amazon Prime Video.
Rent or Buy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Amazon Prime Video.

Fright Night (1985)

The passé pleasures of Hammer Horror movies invade 1980s suburbia in this hugely entertaining film from Tom Holland. Fright Night follows teenager Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale), an ardent fan of TV host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) whose acting credentials include playing a vampire hunter. After becoming convinced that his new neighbor Jerry (Chris Sarandon) is a bloodsucking killer, Charlie tracks the B-list has-been down and begs him to help stop Jerry’s reign of terror.

The line between “fiction” and “reality” get blurred as gothic horror tropes irrupt in modern suburbia, and there’s some deliciously ironic commentary on 80s horror trends. As Vincent laments, “Nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. […] all they want are demented madmen, running around in ski masks, hacking up young virgins.” Immensely fun, Fright Night is one of the decade's best vampire movies alongside The Lost Boys.

Rent or buy Fright Night on Amazon Prime Video.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Directed by Drew Goddard and co-written with Buffy scribe Joss Whedon, The Cabin in the Woods takes the prototypical slasher template and uses it to deconstruct and revitalize the genre. It also functions, as Whedon explained to Total Film at the time, to critique the “devolution of the horror movie into torture porn.”

Almost every horror convention is flaunted as Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Holden (Jesse Williams), and Dana (Kristen Connolly) find themselves brutalized by a “Zombie Redneck Torture Family,” caught up in the machinations of an underground organization to placate some world-destroying deities. Much in the way Scream acknowledges the "rules" of the genre, Goddard’s film offers a funhouse of references – invoking Evil Dead, Japanese ghost stories, even Michael Haneke’s Funny Games – with the ending a gory blitzkrieg showcasing horror cinema's extensive iconography.

Stream The Cabin in the Woods with a Hulu subscription.
Rent or buy The Cabin in the Woods on Amazon Prime Video.

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Halina Reijn’s English-language debut is a horror satire whose whodunnit setup feels like a feature-length, Gen Z variation of Scream’s house party finale. Resentments are already brewing when Bee (Maria Bakalova) and her girlfriend (Amandla Stenberg) arrive for a “hurricane party” at their friend David’s gigantic mansion. So when the storm kills the power during a Murder in the Dark-style game and one of them is found with their throat slashed, nobody is above suspicion. Bodies Bodies Bodies is a brilliant black comedy and we can’t wait to see how Reijn’s upcoming A24 thriller Babygirl tops it.

Stream Bodies Bodies Bodies with a subscription to Paramount Plus.

Scream (2022)

Released 11 years after Scream 4 and the first entry not directed by Wes Craven, this “requel” focuses on a generation of characters reared on a movie diet of endless reboots and high-brow A24 horror movies, and whose connection to the original Woodsboro murders makes them the target for another Ghostface killer. 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s reverence for the franchise is what makes this movie work, and although it embraces the new – including a fresh cast led by Melissa Barrera – it remains heavily indebted to the OG slasher. The opening scene riffs off of Drew Barrymore’s deadly movie trivia tête-à-tête, while the ending giddily restages the first film’s third-act bloodbath with ballsy legacy characters like Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).

Stream Scream (2022) with a Paramount Plus subscription.
Rent or buy Scream (2022) on Amazon Prime Video.

Totally Killer (2023)

Totally Killer follows Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka), who on Halloween night – the 35th anniversary of the Sweet Sixteen Killings – goes to a rock concert with her friend Amelia (Kelcey Mawema), a gifted student working on a time machine. But when the masked maniac strikes again, a melee in Amelia’s time machine sends Jamie back to Vernon High circa 1987 – giving her the perfect opportunity to prevent the original killings.

Shipka brings a Gen-Z sensibility to proceedings as a time-traveller from a more “enlightened” age, given the unenviable task of keeping a bunch of horny Gen X teens alive. It’s a lively mashup of Back to the Future and movies like Scream, which, from the early demise of Modern Family-star Julie Bowen to the film’s skewering of clichés, pays dutiful homage to the aforementioned slasher classic.

 Stream Totally Killer with an Amazon Prime Video subscription.

Freaky (2020)

Freaky is a hilarious hybrid of body-swap film and horror movie. When the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) stabs high student Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) with a mystical dagger, the two mysteriously swap bodies. Their surreal predicament allows the infamous killer to wreak havoc as Millie without drawing suspicion, while Millie as the Butcher embraces a brutish strength she finds empowering.

The film's role-reversed take on the gendered slasher formula is ingeniously subversive, standing out as a defiantly inclusive example of the genre. As expressed when Josh declares, “You’re Black, I’m gay. We’re so dead!” to Nyla, the genre hasn’t historically been kind to marginalized individuals, yet Freaky embraces its “otherness” to both sweet and satirical effect. Vaughn, meanwhile, is perfectly cast, and never more endearing than when bashfully entertaining the attention of Booker, Millie’s high school crush.

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Rent or buy Freaky on Amazon Prime.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

A few years before Wes Craven made Scream, he directed what many consider to be his meta masterpiece. New Nightmare didn’t set the box-office on fire, but Craven’s cerebral shocker did receive rave reviews, with Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers calling it “The cleverest, wittiest, most twisted scarefest in ages!”

A film about the making of another A Nightmare on Elm Street movie, New Nightmare found the cast and crew of the 1984 original being terrorized by a Freddy Krueger-like entity, with actress Heather Langenkamp trying to prevent him from crossing over “out of films, into our reality.” It’s an ingenious concept, whose meta layers and "rubber reality" engender a deeply unsettling atmosphere. Freddy even gets listed in the film’s end credits as being played by – *gulp* – “Himself.”

Rent or buy Wes Craven’s New Nightmare on YouTube.

Ready or Not (2019)

Before relaunching the Scream series to critical acclaim, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett directed Ready or Not, a blackly comic thriller starring Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, and Andie MacDowell, and which cemented Weaving’s reputation as one of the all-time greatest horror scream queens. She plays the newly married Grace, who’s hunted by the Le Domas family during a deadly game of “Hide and Seek,” her demented in-laws under the impression that she must be sacrificed to satisfy a Faustian pact. Like Scream, Ready or Not effortlessly combines satire, subversion, and splatter, with Weaving’s transformation from naïve spouse into gun-toting badass a delight to witness.

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Rent or buy Ready or Not on Amazon Prime Video.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

An American Werewolf in London set the standard for modern horror comedies: balancing shocks, mockish humor, and featuring a soundtrack with an ironic litany of lunar references. The story concerns American backpackers David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), who’re savaged on the Yorkshire Moors by a vicious, wolf-life creature. David survives, waking up in a London hospital three weeks later. But he’s plagued by visions of his dead friend, who urges that he kill himself before the next full moon – or else. It’s a garishly bloody and bloody funny film, featuring one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history thanks to FX artist Rick Baker.

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Rent An American Werewolf in London on YouTube.

If you're looking for more to scream about, read here for everything we know so far about Scream 7. Plus, there are plenty of upcoming horror movies planned for 2024, so there'll be no shortage of scares this year.

As a horror fan, I annually use September and October to both watch and rewatch movies and TV shows in my favorite genre… but even I’ll admit that I went a tad overboard in 2023. After keeping track of everything I saw in theaters, streamed, and popped into my 4K player, I find myself on Halloween looking at a list of over 100 different titles. It was a marathon that presented a wide range in quality – from absolutely awful to new favorites – and in reflection, I took a lot away from the experience.

Looking back on the various films, shows, and miniseries that I watched over the last two months (some of which made our recent best horror movies list), 15 things in particular ended up standing out to me, and I’ve put together this feature to both collect my thoughts and offer some recommendations that can help movie-lovers start their own planning for spooky season 2024.

When Evil Lurks Is The Most Disturbing New Movie Of The Fall, But No One Will Save You Is The Best

This fall, the quality of Saw X turned out to be a big surprise, I dug The Exorcist: Believer more than most, and I loved Suitable Flesh (more on that movie later), but if I’m doing yearbook-style superlatives about spooky season 2023’s new releases, When Evil Lurks and No One Will Save You are the biggest wins. The former earns the title of Most Disturbing – particularly due to a standout sequence involving a little girl and a dog – but the latter gets Best Overall for being a wonderful (nearly) dialogue-free experiment and a fascinating meditation on grief.

All Three Blob Movies Are Excellent And Offer Radically Different Experiences

The general problem with sequels and remakes is the tendency for them to deliver more of the same from their predecessors, but that’s not the case with The Blob movies and as such, they make for a great triple feature. The 1958 original starring Steve McQueen is a terrific encapsulation of the era (replete with not-subtle anti-communism messaging); 1972’s Beware! The Blob is a ridiculous sequel that takes a left turn and operates as a goofy comedy; and the 1988 remake is a shocking effort that unleashes some horrifying death sequences.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Has Instantly Become One Of My Favorite TV Shows

Earlier this year, I watched all of The X-Files in celebration of its 30th anniversary, and I decided to follow that up this spooky season by watching one of that show’s biggest inspirations: Kolchak: The Night Stalker starring Darren McGavin. I watched the one season 1974 series as well as the two TV movie that preceded it – The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler – and now I plan on recommending it to every genre fan I know. It’s dated in some respects, but mostly it’s terrific monster-of-the-week action from the perspective of crafty Chicago reporter Carl Kolchak, and the dynamic between Kolchak and editor Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) is and endless well of witty brilliance.

The Night Flier Is One Of Stephen King’s Most Underrated Movies, And It Needs A Home Video Upgrade

Thrilled by my discovery of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, I was inspired to check out another excellent tale of a reporter hunting a vampire: The Night Flier, based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King. I’ve maintained that it’s not just an underrated King adaptation, but one of the best Stephen King movies of all time, and it’s disappointing that no studio or boutique home video company has released an edition better than the existing DVD.

Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein Is A Nonsensical Title

Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein is a goofy and fun horror comedy that mixed in well among the various titles I watched with the intention of terrifying and disturbing me, but I do have to express a gripe, and it concerns the title. The 1948 film doesn’t just limit itself to its eponymous monster and is actually akin to the Avengers of the Universal Classic Monsters – featuring Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, and Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man in addition to Glenn Strange (Boris Karloff’s successor) as Frankenstein’s monster. “Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein” is a major undersell.

The Nancy Trilogy Is The Way To Go With Nightmare On Elm Street Movies

I’ve watched the entirety of the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise enough times at this point to know which titles I like and which titles I don’t, so I took a new strategy to rewatching them this year: I just stuck to The Nancy Trilogy. Ignoring the second movie, installments four through six, the Friday The 13th crossover, and the remake, I simply stuck to the three films starring Heather Langenkamp, which is to say the original, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and Wes Craven's New Nightmare. I don’t think I’ll go back to watching the franchise any other way.

Screenlife Movies Are Much Better When They're Grounded In Familiar Reality

I rewatched Searching in the early weeks of the year in advance of the theatrical release of Missing, and so I decided to make screenlife horror a part of my Halloween season plans. I watched Host, Open Windows, Unfriended and Unfriended: Dark Web, and while all three stretch reality to a certain degree (two involving the supernatural, what I found is that the best examples of the medium/genre keep the computer activity grounded. Open Windows gets lost using too advanced technology/software and Unfriended doesn’t fully work with the literal ghost in the machine. Unfriended: Dark Web works better than expected, and Host is the best by far.

So Far, Chucky Season 3 Is The Show's Greatest Season Yet

Because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Chucky Season 3 has been split in half, and the next four episodes of the run won’t debut until an unannounced date in 2024. That’s a particularly hard pill to swallow given that this season is thus far the best that we’ve seen from the show. The chaos that the titular homicidal doll has unleashed at the White House has been both delightful and chilling, including some stunning murder sequences, and the mid-season finale cliffhanger is top shelf stuff.

To Get The Most Out Of Suitable Flesh, Watch Re-Animator And From Beyond First

Now out in limited theaters and on VOD, director Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh is one of the many great new highlights of the 2023 Halloween season (as previously noted), and it stands perfectly fine on its own, but if you want to get the most out of the experience, you should do some prep work first. With a screenplay by Dennis Paoli and starring Barbara Crampton, the film is made as a sister sequel to director Stuart Gordon’s legendary H.P. Lovecraft adaptations from the mid-1980s: Re-Animator and From Beyond. In tribute to Gordon (who died in 2020), Lynch made Suitable Flesh with a similar tone and cinematic language, and context helps you fully appreciate the work.

Incubus Starring William Shatner Is Beautiful And Has A Fascinating History, But It’s Also Laughably Bad

First developed in the late 19th century, Esperanto has never caught on as the universal communication that it was intended to be, but one feather in its cap is the existence of the 1966 Esperanto-language film Incubus. Released the same year that Star Trek premiered, the movie is notable for starring William Shatner as the male lead, and it features some gorgeous Ingmar Bergman-esque aesthetics courtesy of cinematography legendary Conrad Hall… but it’s otherwise a disaster. It’s painfully clear that the actors have no idea what they saying, and the succubi-centric plot is ludicrous.

Is The Faculty Part Of The Cabin In The Woods Universe?

In The Cabin In The Woods, Richard Jenkins’s character mentions in an early scene that the United States-based operation of which he is a part hasn’t failed in its Old God-appeasing practices since 1998… and after watching Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty for the first time this spooky season, the horror geek in me wonders if the two movies are linked. It’s said in the 2012 film that the 1998 failure was due to a mistake made by the chemistry department, and The Faculty (released in 1998) sees the protagonist defeat an onslaught of body snatching aliens thanks to a special designer drug cooked up by Josh Hartnett's Zeke Tyler. This might be coincidence, and I'm not the first person to make this connection, but they’re now connected in my personal headcanon.

The First Three Texas Chainsaw Massacre Sequels Aren’t Nearly As Bad As I Thought They Would Be

I wasn’t able to watch all of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies in the last two months, but I did manage to squeeze the first four in the franchise into my watching schedule, and I was pleasantly surprised by how tolerable the first three sequels are given their terrible reputations. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is a totally average movie as a pivot to more Friday The 13th-type territory, and both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (a.k.a. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation) are easy to like if you accept their bizarre swings at dark comedy (and the latter also has a surprisingly great final girl turn from Renee Zellweger in a face-off with an unhinged Matthew McConaughey).

More People Should See Popcorn

I watched a number of horror films for the first time in the last couple months that both surprised and delighted me, but one among them that I am particularly excited to eventually revisit is director Mark Herrier's 1991 slasher Popcorn. The movie can be described as a hybrid between Friday The 13th Part II, Phantom Of The Opera and Matinee, featuring movie theater employees being mowed down amid the presentation of a William Castle-esque horror triple-feature, and though not everything about the plot totally makes sense, there is a cool twist and some stellar effects work.

I Finally Understand Why So Many People Have Recommended I Watch Angel Heart

Director Alan Parker’s Angel Heart is a film that was first recommended to me in college, and it’s been recommended to me multiple times since then, but I stupidly dragged my feet finally getting around to watching it. That changed this month as I got my hands on the domestic 4K UHD release, and not only do I finally understand the recommendations, but they were spot on. Starring Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro, the movie is an awesome blend of horror and neo-noir that goes to some shocking places and unleashes a twist ending I never saw coming.

The Fall Of The House Of Usher Is Amazing, But It’s Still Not My Favorite Mike Flanagan Netflix Miniseries

In recently ranking the film and TV shows made by Mike Flanagan, I opted to take recency bias off the table by rewatching everything that Flanagan has made. That being said, his latest miniseries, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, still placed toward the top, as it’s a tremendous work… but I still don’t quite think it’s the filmmaker’s best Netflix serialized work. That honor, in my opinion, goes to 2018’s phenomenal The Haunting Of Hill House.

The official spooky season may be over, but every real horror fan knows that the true spooky season lasts year round, and there are always some great new scary films right around the corner. To keep track of all of the exciting releases that are coming in the weeks and months ahead, scope out our Upcoming Horror Movies guide.

While some horror sequels can be awesome, for every Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 there is the critically reviled The Exorcist 2: the Heretic. In a genre plagued by an overabundance of sequels and never-ending franchises, it’s refreshing to stumble upon some great horror movies that break the mold and refuse to tread the familiar path. As horror enthusiasts, we know too well the deluge of repetitive sequels that water down the impact of a once-terrifying concept. However, there are some hidden gems in the horror vaults—films that dared to stand alone, eschewing the allure of franchise riches. 

In this list, we celebrate 20 such remarkable horror movies that never succumbed to the temptation of a sequel, proving that a well-crafted one-off tale can haunt our nightmares just as effectively as an entire franchise.

Peeping Tom (1960) 

Directed by Michael Powell, Peeping Tom was far ahead of its time. He broke new ground in horror. While countless flicks have explored voyeurism and the twisted psyche of a serial killer through Mark Lewis, a shy and reclusive film crew member who secretly films and murders his victims, Powell was a trailblazer. Despite its cult classic status and influence on the slasher genre, the film remained a stand-alone masterpiece with no sequels. It received scathing reviews upon release but later gained recognition as an unsettling cult classic.

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)

Bob Clark, known for directing Black Christmas, A Christmas Story (check out 10 behind-the-scenes facts about the holiday classic), and Porky’s, began his career with the tragically underseen Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, a unique blend of horror and dark comedy. The story follows a theatre troupe that accidentally awakens the dead during a macabre ritual, leading to a night of terror. Although a remake was planned, it never came to fruition after Director Bob Clark died in 2007, leaving the original as a cherished one-time experience.

Frogs (1972) 

Jaws is arguably one of the best '70s movies and is responsible for reigniting the killer animal flick, but before we were all afraid to set foot into the ocean, there was Frogs – a creepy eco-horror directed by George McCowan. Despite the misleading title, it’s not just frogs involved but amphibians and reptiles launching a deadly assault on humanity, causing chaos on an isolated island. The story centers around grumpy Southern chemical baron Jason Crockett and wildlife photographer Pickett Smith, who discovers bizarre animal behavior on the island. Remaining a stand-alone tale of ecological revenge, Frogs rejects franchise aspirations and holds significance as one of Sam Elliott’s earliest starring roles.

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Long before the slew of slasher sequels flooded the market, My Bloody Valentine stood as a grisly standout, directed by George Mihalka. The film gained cult status and had a 2009 remake. Still, despite the development of a potential sequel titled The Return of the Miner in the '90s and Aughts, it never materialized possibly due, at least in part, to a tragic accident involving the original producer, John Dunning. With the release of the mostly positively received 2009 remake, any chance of a sequel faded away, leaving My Bloody Valentine as a stand-alone '80s horror gem.

Possession (1981) 

Possession, helmed by Andrzej Żuławski, defies easy categorization, blending horror, drama, and surrealism elements. The film explores a crumbling marriage through an arthouse cinema lens while mixing with a creature feature as a bizarre creature emerges from the void. With its nightmarish visuals and intense performances, Possession carved its own niche, never needing a follow-up to maintain its enigmatic allure.

 The Stuff (1985) 

Larry Cohen’s The Stuff is one of the '80s movies that don’t get enough love. Serving up satirical horror as an addictive alien substance becomes a popular dessert, turning people into zombies. Despite its humorous approach to consumerism and body horror, the film stands alone, avoiding franchise potential.

Scarecrows (1988) 

Bearing a chilling atmosphere and over-the-top violence, Scarecrows, directed by William Wesley, introduced us to a group of bank robbers trapped on a haunted farm. The scarecrows’ curse and their unrelenting pursuit of the intruders gave horror fans a memorable experience. Nevertheless, the film never branched out, keeping its haunted harvest confined to a single terrifying tale.

The Faculty (1998)

The Faculty is one of a number of great Robert Rodriguez films. Blending sci-fi and horror, high school students battle against parasitic aliens invading their school. With a stellar young cast and sharp writing, the film enjoyed moderate success but never propagated sequels, preserving its status as an enjoyable stand-alone thriller.

Idle Hands (1999) 

Part horror, part comedy, Idle Hands, directed by Rodman Flender, is an iconic '90s flick that delivers a macabre coming-of-age story about a slacker whose hand becomes possessed and commits murder on its own. Despite its cult following, the film never received a follow-up appendage, though its star, Devon Sawa, says he’s open to returning to the quirky and delightful universe. 

Frailty (2001) 

Frailty, the directorial debut of Bill Paxton, enchanted audiences with its chilling tale of a father who believes God has commanded him to destroy demons hiding among ordinary people. This underrated horror movie’s dark and haunting narrative and a masterful Matthew McConaughey performance left a lasting impression, but the story remained contained within a single gripping installment.

The Others (2001) 

As Nicole Kidman’s tour-de-force performance captivated audiences, The Others emerged as a psychological horror experience that is legitimately scary, despite being PG-13. Alejandro Amenábar’s atmospheric ghost story earned critical acclaim and became a benchmark for haunted house tales. However, the film chose not to linger in the realm of sequels, preserving its haunting essence, though a remake has been in development since 2020. 

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead breathed new life into the zombie genre with its brilliant blend of horror and comedy. Simon Pegg’s titular Shaun faced an undead apocalypse with wit and charm, making this British rom-zom-com, though part of the director’s unofficial “The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy,” a beloved and best zombie movie with no intentions of resurrection.

Trick ‘r Treat (2007) 

Trick ‘r Treat holds a special place as one of the best horror anthologies and Halloween movies. This delightful and dark anthology, directed by Michael Dougherty, weaves interconnected stories of terror and mischief on Halloween night. With its beloved status among horror fans, the movie’s director has faced challenges getting a sequel off the ground, but for now, it remains content as a stand-alone and unique tale of Halloween horrors.

The Loved Ones (2009) 

Sean Byrne’s Australian horror The Loved Ones took the theme of teenage obsession to twisted extremes. As a lovelorn girl orchestrates a horrifying prom night, the film sends shockwaves through audiences. Despite its spine-tingling effect, filmmakers chose not to relive its horrors in any further installments.

The Crazies (2010) 

Breathing new life into George A. Romero’s original, The Crazies 2010 remake, directed by Breck Eisner, was critically well received and amplified the tension and terror of a small town struck by a military-engineered virus. With its gripping suspense and visceral scares, the film earned its place as a stand-alone horror tale.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) 

Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard turned the horror genre on its head with The Cabin in the Woods, a meta deconstruction of horror movie tropes. Combining satire, comedy, and genuine scares, the film offered a fresh take on horror, and while fans may have wanted more, the director said he doesn’t want to “fuck it up” and has wisely kept it an isolated excursion into the unknown, which makes sense given its ending.

It Follows (2014) 

David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows breathed new life into the supernatural horror genre with its haunting premise of a malevolent entity passing from person to person through sexual contact. The film’s artistic flair and haunting score left a lasting impression. Still, its narrative never ventured beyond the confines of a single, terrifying pursuit, even though the movie’s director expressed interest in a sequel in a 2015 Slate interview.

Hush (2016) 

In Hush, director Mike Flanagan delivers a taut and suspenseful home invasion thriller with a unique twist - the protagonist is deaf and mute. The film follows a writer living a solitary life in the woods, fighting for survival in silence, when a masked killer appears at her window. With its innovative premise and heart-pounding tension, Hush is a well-regarded stand-alone gem in the horror genre.

Terrified (2017) 

Terrified (Aterrados), an Argentinean supernatural horror film, follows paranormal researchers investigating strange events in a Buenos Aires neighborhood. The film’s inventive scares and clever storytelling left audiences craving more, but its creators chose to keep its eerie mysteries contained. However, a 2018 report by Variety revealed that Guillermo Del Toro is set to produce a remake for Fox Searchlight.

Hereditary (2018) 

Ari Aster’s directorial debut, Hereditary, stunned audiences with its unflinching exploration of grief and terror within a family, solidifying it as one of the best A24 horror films. One of Toni Collette’s most haunting and best performances, which should have won her an Oscar, and the film’s dread-soaked atmosphere earned widespread acclaim. Nevertheless, the film embraced its status as a self-contained nightmare, never seeking to continue the harrowing tale.

While sequels and franchises are an integral part of the horror genre, the films mentioned above stand as shining examples of the power of a well-executed stand-alone horror experience. These one-off wonders have etched their indelible mark on the genre’s history, reminding us that sometimes, the scariest stories are the ones that know when to end. As we continue to seek the thrill of the unknown, let’s celebrate these 20 great horror movies for their unique ability to leave us terrified and satisfied, all in a single unforgettable sitting. And, who knows, maybe some of the upcoming horror flicks on the 2023 movie schedule will soon find their way on this list.

There are many stereotypical tropes that appear in horror movies, but one of the most overused is the “final girl”: the last character alive to confront the killer.

Once upon a time, the final girl was a shell of a character who could only defeat the monster thanks to luck or coincidence. But in more modern horror movies, we see final girls who not only defeat their monster but completely flip the trope on its head.

We have to give homage to the OG final girls, like Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott, but this article is about totally badass final girls from horror movies that came out more recently. Oh, and there are spoilers ahead, so beware!

Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell - Barbarian)

From the first scenes of Barbarian, Tess Marshall is a very self-aware woman. When she first enters the double-booked Airbnb, we can see Tess assessing her surroundings, locking doors behind her, and learning as much as she can about her potential attacker. Even though her co-habitant, Keith (played by It leading man Bill Skarsgård) is actually harmless, Tess demonstrates that she’s not going to be taken by surprise if danger comes her way.

When the real danger is revealed in the form of a “monster” in the basement, Tess must flex her survival skills in very different ways. Unlike the men who fall victim before her, Tess learns how to understand her capturer. Rather than dismiss them as a monster, Tess is empathetic towards her, and that’s what really saves her.

Dana (Kristin Connolly - The Cabin In The Woods)

The Cabin in the Woods subverts nearly every horror stereotype in the book, but the movie’s final girl, Dana (Kristin Connolly) bends the horror rules in more ways than one.

As pointed out here, and in other horror flicks like Scream, the final girl is usually a virgin who outwits the monster because of her purity or moral superiority. That’s not Dana, a college student who’s just getting over a fling with one of her professors. Dana also has a co-final girl/guy, Marty—who just might be the first comic relief character to ever make it to the final scenes of a scary movie.

Dana further subverts the stereotype by letting the world burn at the end. She realizes it’s too late to save herself, but it’s not too late to bring everybody else down with her. The scene of Dana and Marty smoking a joint as Apocalypse rolls in is one of my favorites in all horror films.

Grace (Samara Weaving - Ready Or Not)

One of my favorite final girls of recent memory is Grace Le Domas from the 2019 horror film, Ready Or Not. Grace starts out as the victim of her in-laws’ murderous hide-and-seek tradition, but by the end of the film it’s clear she actually found some enjoyment in participating in the ritual.

Grace’s triumphant exit at the finale of the film solidifies the fact that she dodged a huge bullet with this family, both literally and metaphorically. What’s more satisfying than throwing your wedding ring at your abusive ex?

Maddie (Kate Siegel - Hush)

One of my favorite horror movies is Hush, which stars Mike Flanagan-verse actor Kate Siegel as Maddie, a deaf woman under the attack of a home invasion.

Maddie’s attacker can tell that she’s smart, but it’s clear he sees her as a weak opponent. Maddie fights him tooth and nail until the bitter end, using her creativity and resourcefulness to come out on top.

Also worth noting—Maddie’s cat survives until the end of the movie as well. Double final girls.

Emerald Hayworth (Keke Palmer - Nope)

The “final girl” is usually white—characters who are people of color, gay, or serve as the comedic relief are often the first to be taken out and rarely survive to the end of the movie.

Jordan Peele’s 2022 horror film, Nope completely flips the script with Emerald Haywood, a queer woman of color played by Keke Palmer. As expected, Palmer brings her real-life sense of humor to her character, providing many of the film’s most comedic lines.

Not only does Em survive to the end, she actually gets to be the one to expose Jean Jacket to the world. She’s truly a final girl like no other.

Erin (Sharni Vinson - You’re Next)

You’re Next might follow some horror tropes to a T—for example, in the opening scene two characters die after having sex—but the horror film’s final girl, Erin, is anything but expected.

If I were a paid hit man, I probably wouldn’t expect my target to be skilled in apocalypse survival. But, that’s what the masked assassins get with Erin, who was raised in a doomsday survivalist compound.

Erin beats out multiple attackers in hand-to-hand combat, and knows how to booby trap the hell out of a vacation home. And don’t let this girl get her hands anywhere near a blender. You’re Next completely scraps the idea of a damsel in distress and instead gives us a badass woman with no qualms about doing whatever it takes to survive.

Jay (Maika Monroe - It Follows)

This horror film about a sexually-transmitted possession stars Maika Monroe as Jay, the newest victim of an entity that passes from person to person via intercourse.

It Follows is kind of a play on the entire “if you have sex during a horror film you’ll die” trope, but like all the films on this list there’s a twist. You can escape from the entity by passing it on to someone else.

While the movie has a somewhat ambiguous ending, Jay survives to the end by passing the entity on to others. It’s implied she’ll have to keep passing the entity on in order to survive, but she’s more than capable of doing so.

Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe - Happy Death Day)

Jessica Rothe carries Happy Death Day, a time loop horror movie where the only way to make it to tomorrow is to kill the person who’s about to kill you.

It’s a confusing concept, but Tree Gelbman is a very smart final girl. She solves the mystery of her predicament much faster than other fictional characters do (in Groundhog Day, it took Phil like, a year to break the loop). She also successfully takes out a serial killer and hangs herself in her quest to break the loop. 

Tree even gets a sequel, appropriately titled Happy Death Day 2U.

Dani (Florence Pugh - Midsommar)

The real horror of this movie isn’t the cult—it’s the chains of an unfulfilling relationship. 

Ari Aster’s cult favorite, Midsommar, stars Florence Pugh as Dani, a girl with a traumatic family history and an emotionally neglectful boyfriend. At first, Dani seems like the victim of the murderous Swedish cult they encounter while on a trip with classmates. But, as Dani becomes indoctrinated into the cult herself, she finds herself empowered by the community and sense of belonging she’s found.

Does Dani become the “anti-hero” of Midsommar? It’s hard to say. Like most of the final girls on this list, that’s up to viewer discretion to decide.

All of these final girls are well-worth the title, and have added something great to modern horror movies.

There are plenty of horror comedies out there that people love, whether they be movies or TV shows, ones that have truly exploded over the last couple of years, and others that are certified classics. One that has grown in popularity since its premiere is What We Do In The Shadows, a series that follows vampire roommates who live on Staten Island. 

It’s funny, well-acted, and will have you on your knees for days laughing about some of the jokes that come out of these actors' mouths. But if you’re like me and you binge all the episodes very quickly and need to find something new to watch, look no further, as we have plenty of great options here for you to enjoy. 

Santa Clarita Diet (Netflix)

First up on this list, we have Santa Clarita Diet. This Netflix original series, starring Drew Barrymore, follows a seemingly normal couple where one of them ends up turning into a zombie with a strange connection to ancient rituals - and their life is turned upside down. 

To this day, I will never forgive Netflix for cancelling this show, because it was so funny. Like What We Do In The Shadows, this series was more like a parody, except it was of the zombie genre - and from the moment it began, it was just so damn hilarious. The Santa Clarita Diet cast had such great chemistry, the story was full of fun - seriously, so upset it ended the way it did. Could we get a Season 4, please?

Stream Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix.

Wellington Paranormal (HBO Max)

Oh, you want parody? You’re getting parody. This show, Wellington Paranormal, is a mockumentary series that dives into the world of horror, following the two officers from the film it was based on, What We Do In The Shadows, as they investigate paranormal events - and have a hell of a crazy time doing it. 

That’s right, this series was literally based off of the original What We Do In The Shadows that released in 2014, and this show even came out before the series named for the movie. And it’s so funny. Good God, I don’t think I’ve laughed this much in a long time. It’s seriously so funny and as someone who likes those spooky ghost investigation shows, this one is one of the best ones parodying them. It was also co-produced by film director Taika Waititi, so you know it’s going to be funny. 

Stream Wellington Paranormal on HBO Max.

Shaun Of The Dead (Amazon Prime)

Y'all, I love zombies - and I love them even more when they are funny. In Shaun of the Dead, we follow two blokes in England as a zombie outbreak begins, and their journey to try and rescue Shaun’s girlfriend from her impending doom. 

There is just something about this funny horror comedy that is so damn perfect. Like What We Do In The Shadows, there are plenty of elements of horror included without it being too scary, and it’s so funny from the moment it begins to the very end. I love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as they do make some really great projects together, and this movie is proof of that. Now, if a Shaun of the Dead sequel would come, that would be great. 

Stream Shaun of the Dead on Amazon Prime.
Rent/Buy Shaun of the Dead on Amazon.

Ash Vs Evil Dead (Netflix)

Moving on, we have Ash vs. Evil Dead, a horror comedy that was made by Sam Raimi, one of the creators of the Evil Dead franchise. This show, taking place in the Evil Dead universe, follows legendary character Ash Williams (played by Bruce Campbell) who has to leave his mundane life behind and take on the titular Evil Dead again as it begins reeking havoc. 

Evil Dead, in of itself, is honestly pretty scary, but this show isn’t like that at all. While it has plenty of elements of horror, as you would expect, this show is so funny in so many ways - mainly from Bruce Campbell’s amazing performance as the lead. He really shines in so many ways, and for fans of What We Do In The Shadows, there are plenty of hilarious moments that will make you laugh just like those vampires do. 

Stream Ash Vs. Evil Dead on Netflix.

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil (Amazon Rental)

We got another horror comedy coming up. In Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, we follow two hillbillies who mean well but end up falling into a peculiar predicament - they are mistaken for killers by some college students who don’t know any better, throwing their lives into chaos. 

As fan of horror comedies, this one is certainly a little less on the gory side, but if you’re a fan of What We Do In The Shadows, there are plenty of funny moments that will make you snicker, and you can’t help but love Tucker and Dale, played by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine, who have some of the funniest chemistry on screen. 

Rent/Buy Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil on Amazon.

The Cabin In The Woods (Amazon Rental)

Now this is such a great horror movie mixed in with some great comedy - just like What We Do In The Shadows. The Cabin In The Woods follows a group of young adults as they go away to a cabin far away in the woods, but as they are out there, they start to experience strange things and end up having their trip turn deadly. 

What I love the most about The Cabin in the Woods is that while it is a horror-comedy at its core, it’s almost like a commentary on the state of horror movies as a whole, because they really do dive deep into the psyche of how horror movies work on the viewer and what is scary to someone. The cast is also great, too, with stars like Chris Hemsworth, Bradley Whitford, and more. I only wish a sequel would happen - but I don’t think that’s coming any time soon. 

Rent/Buy The Cabin in the Woods on Amazon.

Miracle Workers (HBO Max)

Ah, another fun comedy series that you definitely need to check out. In Miracle Workers, this anthology series documents different works from writer Simon Rich, following different characters in new stories in each season as they all try to perform different kinds of miracles in worlds where they seem impossible. 

Miracle Workers and What We Do In The Shadows have one thing in common - and that’s the amazing dynamic between the main stars. They are so funny and truly carry this show no matter what timeline or what story we are following. Also, Daniel Radcliffe as the star does some of his best acting I have ever seen, and I have never seen him so funny. Steve Buscemi is also a hit, as well. 

Stream Miracle Workers on HBO Max.

Flight Of The Conchords (HBO Max)

This show is so funny. In this sitcom, Flight of the Conchords, we follow a real-life two-man band, called Flight of the Conchords, as they travel from New Zealand to the United States and to New York City, trying to find fame and success. 

Starring Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie (who play fictionalized versions of themselves), they are so funny. For fans of What We Do In The Shadows, this is another case where the lead characters really draw you in, and you’ll love the dynamic that they have from the moment they step on the screen. I still can’t believe that this show only lasted for two seasons. 

Stream Flight of the Conchords on HBO Max.

Penny Dreadful (Showtime)

I know its horror, but hear me out. Penny Dreadful is an excellent Showtime series that is filled with suspenseful and creepy stories, as our characters try to fight scary creatures, like vampires, demons, monsters, or even just the personal demons you’re fighting on the inside. 

While What We Do In The Shadows is a mockumentary, at its core are vampires - and fans of the show have to have some interest in vampires in the first place to enjoy a show like this. Which is why I seriously suggest checking out Penny Dreadful, as it not only tells some great stories, but has some creepy creatures. 

Stream Penny Dreadful on Showtime.

Reno 911! (HBO Max)

Last up, we have another mockumentary for fans to enjoy, Reno 911!. In this show, we follow a police department as they go on their daily duties, chasing criminals, and everything else in their lives - all while taking a hilarious twist, mainly parodying the show, Cops. 

While this series doesn’t have any crazy fantasy aspects, it’s still a mockumentary, something that What We Do In The Shadows very much is, and is so funny. I’ve never been the biggest fan of cop shows, but I do love myself a good parody - as you can see - so if you’re like me, you’ll certainly enjoy this one as well. 

Stream Reno 911 on HBO Max.

There are so many great picks on this list, and I’m sure that no matter what you end up watching, you’re going to have a hell of a good time, mixed in with some great laughs and a whole lotta blood. What will be your next binge? 

This article contains SPOILERS for multiple horror movies. Proceed with caution!

There’s nothing quite like a truly great horror movie twist. With so many movies from this genre coming out lately, it’s tough to pull off a genuine jaw-dropping, audible “WTF” moment, and to go a step further, deliver a twist that you can enjoy on a rewatch. But when it does happen, it’s better than any jump scare or chill down our spines. It’s the ultimate sick joke of a reward. As the Saw franchise continues this weekend, we’re reflecting on the best horror movies with a twist to revisit.

I don’t know about you, but movies with big twists offer more incentives for me to go back to them because I want to see if and how the filmmakers set up the surprises. Not all of them are as rewarding during a rewatch, but I believe this batch of movies are just as fun on a second or tenth viewing even if you already know what’s coming.

Saw

Nearly 20 years following the first 2004 Saw film, a lot has gone down in the franchise. But there’s nothing quite like going back to the beginning and seeing the twist that started everything for the bloodfest of a franchise. After a sick game between the Jigsaw killer and his players, the corpse in the middle of the room is revealed to be alive and the one behind the game all along. When Leigh Whannell’s Adam tries to shoot him, he shocks them before turning off the lights in the room, shutting it down and proclaiming “game over.” It’s one hell of a debut for Jigsaw, making a rewatch worthy of stomaching.

Scream

Another original film in a lengthy franchise that’s fun to give another whirl is 1996’s Scream. In contrast to Saw, Wes Craven’s slasher is child’s play, but don’t we love a campy horror fest? The movie is about a masked killer called Ghostface who is on a murder spree and the group of teenagers who are his target. I’ve seen Scream a number of times, and I still forget the conclusion to the film, which is, of course, that Neve Campbell’s BF is one of two killers that have been haunting their high school crew. It’s still a smart take on the slasher that is a blast to return to.

Psycho

Can we even talk about horror movie twists without naming Psycho? It just would not be a complete list without Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film. The iconic movie gave one of the first horror twists ever, and it was done ingeniously by its filmmaker. It changed the way Hollywood looked at movies in a lot of ways and taking a look back at it is always a good idea if you’re intrigued by the history of movie twists. These days, there are some issues with Hitchcock’s big Norman Bates reveal, but it makes for a great discussion piece.

The Witch

Robert Eggers’ The Witch is a modern horror benchmark when a new line of ‘slow burn’ horror movies began to emerge in the genre. On a first watch, the movie can be confusing and more atmospheric than plot heavy, which makes for an unsettling and confusing watch. But once you already know that Anya Taylor-Joy is destined to become a witch by the end of it, it is more fun to watch her interact with her family and catch the moving parts leading up to her rise into her power.

Orphan

Another fun twist to relive on the small screen is 2009’s creepy thriller Orphan starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabelle Fuhrman as the orphan Esther. As the movie reveals during its shocking conclusion, Esther is revealed to be the force behind the troubling events that have been going on since they adopted her and she’s actually a 33-year-old woman! I’ll admit, it’s so much more fun and creepy to watch Orphan knowing that Esther is a middle-aged woman the whole time due to her hormone disorder.

Us

Jordan Peele has proved himself to be a mastermind in the horror genre with his two entries Get Out and Us, and the twists for both are even more incredible on multiple viewings. For the purpose of this article, I want to put the spotlight on Us because its twist isn’t as well-documented and boasted about as Get Out. The movie follows Lupita Nyong’o’s Adelaide and her family’s confrontation with the Tethered. At the end of the film, we learn her doppelgänger has been the human of the two Adelaides this whole time. Going down the road is even better the second time because of all the intentional imagery and hints Peele leaves for the audience to spot.

The Visit

M. Night Shyamalan is another one of those filmmakers who is well known for his unforgettable twists, and we’d be doing a disservice to him by not adding one of his movies to this list. The Sixth Sense is the obvious choice, so let’s instead give The Visit some love by revisiting the twist about a group of kids visiting their grandparents’ house. As we learn later in the movie, they’ve been spending the whole week with complete strangers who have fashioned themselves as their relatives after murdering their real elders. It’s a chilling ride that’s a completely different experience on Round Two!

Cabin In The Woods

Our final twist to highlight here is for Cabin in the Woods; it's an especially bizarre twist that has a stark commentary to make about horror movies themselves. What’s fun about Cabin in the Woods is it’s partially a parody of what we expect out of the genre, so when you’re done trying to figure out what’s actually going on with the plot, it’s really fun to sit back and enjoy all the smart choices Drew Goddard made with the apocalyptic turner.

Which of these twists have you gone back to first? Vote in our poll below and check out Spiral: From The Book of Saw coming to theaters this Friday, May 14.

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Over the years, Bradley Whitford has played some of the best characters on television with the likes of Josh Lyman on The West Wing, Marcy/Magnus Hirschfeld on Transparent, and Commander Joseph Lawrence on The Handmaid's Tale, all of which netted the accomplished actor Primetime Emmy Awards. To some people, myself included, Whitford will always be known for his uncanny ability to play a jerk better than just about everyone. Whether it's a maniacal prick in Billy Madison or a condescending, racist, and odd asshole in Get Out, Whitford is not only great at portraying a jerk, he has range when doing so.

So, with Adam Sandler movies and Aaron Sorkin productions getting a lot of attention here recently, I've been looking back on the career of Bradley Whitford and some of the biggest pricks of his repertoire of detestable, unlikable, and downright awful characters. Here are just seven of the times he's played the perfect jerk.

Billy Madison (Eric Gordon)

You couldn't have a list of Bradley Whitford's biggest jerks without including his character from Billy Madison, and it would be impossible to start off with anyone but Eric Gordon. The executive vice president of Madison Hotels who has a history of manipulation, extortion, and unlawful possession of a loaded firearm in a public school setting is perhaps the most irremediable character Whitford has ever played, which is why it remains his most recognizable character after all these years.

From the first time we meet Eric Gordon in the opening act of the 1995 Adam Sandler classic, we know we're not going to like this guy (I mean, my brothers and I were sending gifs of Bradley Whitford while I was writing this and they were all from the opening dinner scene) and it only gets worse from there. Always in the background pushing chess pieces (and an odd cutout of Billy Madison's face with black lipstick and punched out eyes) throughout most of the movie, Eric puts it in overdrive when he blackmails Principal Max Anderson (Josh Mostel) with the August 1983 edition of Wrestling World. When that plan fails, he threatens to take Brian Madison (Darren McGavin) to court before the climatic academic decathlon.

Get Out (Dean Armitage)

When we first meet Bradley Whitford's Dean Armitage in Jordan Peele's 2017 instant classic Get Out, something seems a little off about the neurosurgeon who seems a little too eager to meet Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya). With comments about wanting to vote for Barack Obama a third time and trying his damnedest to not come off as racist in the same way that an overcompensating baby boomer is oft to do, we can't help but think about how things are going to turn out and how the good doctor will be revealed to be a jerk, and an evil one at that.

By the time we see Dean Armitage holding an auction for Chris Washington in what is later revealed to be a plan to put Jim Hudson's (Stephen Root) brain in Chris' body, we realize that yep, Bradley Whitford is once again playing a jerk, but instead of blackmailing or pulling out a gun, he has kidnapped and sold a black man so that his wealthy, elderly, and extremely white friends can take his body. And while he's not as mean-spirited as Eric Gordon here, Dean's intentions, philosophies, and actions are even more upsetting.

Adventures In Babysitting (Mike Todwell)

Before we even meet Bradley Whitford's Mike Todwell at the beginning of Adventures in Babysitting, we know he's going to be a prick. First of all, he pulls up in a red Camaro with a license plate reading "SO-COOL," and then honks his horn to let Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) know that he's arrived (never do that, it's very much not cool). And although his girlfriend is all dressed up in a nice dress and jewelry, Mike shows up in jeans, dirty sneakers, a leather jacket, and the worst pair of aviators you'll see in a Chris Columbus movie. Armed with a bad haircut and even worse excuse, Mike cancels the date at the fancy French restaurant in Chicago, breaking Chris' heart and setting up the plot of the movie.

Near the end of the movie when Chris and the Anderson kids are trying to find the babysitter's best friend, she encounters Mike and his new date at the same French restaurant the jerk couldn't make earlier in the evening. He gets his comeuppance in the end and is kicked into the table, ruining his dinner, but that doesn't excuse his actions, including honking to announce his arrival. I mean, who does that?

Scent Of A Woman (Randy Slade)

Bradley Whitford is only in Scent of a Woman for a cup of coffee as Randy Slade, the younger brother of Al Pacino's Lt. Col. Frank Slade, the blind retired Army officer, but during the tense dinner, the dickish younger brother reveals how Frank lost his eyesight in the first place, and he doesn't hold back. Between putting down his older brother's drinking problem and the drunken games he played that cost him his sight, Randy (that's such a great name, by the way) gives Frank and Charles Simms (Chris O'Donnell) some great Bradley Whitford looks that we have all come to know so well over the years.

And it's not what Randy is telling his older brother that makes his character such a jerk, it's the air of entitlement and disdain the really drives the point home. He's not telling a cautionary tale, he's putting his brother down in front of the whole family because he knows it's going to get a reaction. And soon as Frank reacts (by putting him in a chokehold), Randy immediately plays the victim. Look at his face in this clip and try not to see the cowardice of Randy take over his demeanor after acting like such a tough guy just moments earlier.

Revenge Of The Nerds II: Nerds In Paradise (Roger Latimer)

If Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and the rest of the Tri-Lambs thought there was no one worse than Stan Gable (Ted McGinley) in Revenge of the Nerds, they were in for a rude awakening in the 1987 sequel, Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, where they met Bradley Whitford's Roger Latimer, the head Alpha Beta at the national fraternity conference. When he wasn't giving the "nerds" the wrong directions to a party, he was busy coming up with new by-laws surrounding physical fitness standards and framing the Tri-Lambs for stealing his car. But that's not the worst.

In a final attempt to get rid of Tri-Lambs, who did nothing to him in the first place, Roger had them kidnapped and dumped on a deserted island. This alone could have resulted in the deaths of multiple people, but Roger, he don't care. Luckily for everyone not named Roger, the king jerk is voted out of the fraternity and the conference after getting decked by Lewis, who always seems to come out ahead in these movies.

Awakenings (Dr. Tyler)

Although he's not in Awakenings all that much, Bradley Whitford's portrayal of Dr. Tyler at the New York psychiatric hospital where Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) attempts to treat catatonic patients is pretty remarkable even if he has only a few lines and some awful body language. And it's true that Dr. Kaufman (John Heard) is the biggest jerk of the bunch in the 1990 medical drama, but Dr. Tyler's demeanor and way of dismissing everything that Sayer says should be remembered, especially when he mocks Sayer in saying "the will of the ball."

And within this minor role lies the brilliance of Bradley Whitford's ability to play a jerk better than most. It's like it's a natural tendency of the award-winning actor to act in this way. But as we see in his other performances, especially as Josh Lyman in The West Wing, Whitford is just a remarkable actor.

The Cabin In The Woods (Steve Hadley)

And then there is the horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods, in which Bradley Whitford plays Steve Hadley, one of the two scientists who run the simulated cabin in hopes of providing the gods with human sacrifices to avoid the destruction of the world. And though it's true that neither Hadley nor Gary Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) is a major jerk in the movie (they're just doing what needs to be done to ensure the survival of the human race), their large-scale betting pool and disdain towards other departments comes off as douchey.

But hey, throughout The Cabin in the Woods, Steve keeps talking about wanting to see a merman and is genuinely bummed when he was so close to seeing the elusive beast after all these years. Fear not, as Steve gets his wish in one of the movie's most fulfilling and heartwarming death scenes when he meets his death by the webbed hands of the sea-monster.

I will admit, it has been fun looking back on all the awfully jerky characters Bradley Whitford has played over the years, but let's not forget that he's done more than just play some of the most hated characters the past 35 years. But I can't deny the fact that he will always be Eric Gordon, either.

Happy Halloween season! It’s officially the best time of year to revisit the best spooky movies. But I get it, sometimes it's tough to decide where to even start. These days, the libraries available to us immensely stretches the row of DVDs or VHS tapes on our shelves we used to dust off come October. There are riches of streaming services at our fingertips and so many films to explore to get into the spirit of things. Fortunately, we’ve conjured up six themed marathons to check out depending on what streaming service you prefer to stick around on.

We’ll start off light and sweet and go for advanced creeps in darkness by the end. Which marathon you pick depends on what you prefer or can handle. They can be enjoyed for an entire day of Halloween fun, or split up and viewed out throughout the month. It's up to you! Check these out:

Bag Full Of Treats Edition (Disney+)

The entry level and most family-friendly of our Halloween marathons can be found over on Disney+ of course. To start things off, pop on the classic 1952 Disney short Trick or Treat, which stars Donald Duck and his nephews on Halloween night in true tradition for the studio. Your first feature film should then be the 1998 Disney Channel original Halloweentown, an adorably Halloween-themed film about a young girl who finds out she’s a witch and ventures with her brother and sister to a place full of supernatural creatures.

Then check out the underrated Disney Channel original gem Don’t Look Under The Bed, which has a teen having her imaginary friend take on the Boogeyman, who is framing her for all his pranks in the neighborhood. Of course, you’ll have to revisit the Halloween staple with the Sanderson sisters next with Hocus Pocus next, and end your candy corn-sweet marathon with Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas. This watchlist is just six hours long. Start it over on Disney+ here.

Classic Monster Mash Edition (Peacock)

In order to appreciate the roots of the Halloween season, i.e. the horror genre and the movie monster genre, you can go over to new streaming service Peacock for this fun marathon. Start your viewing party off with 1931’s Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff, which tells the famed Mary Shelley story of the monster created from cadavers. Follow it up with 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, also starring Boris Karloff, who is given a mate by his creator. (That movie is currently being developed as a modern remake.)

Before moving out of the ‘30s, the third feature in the monster mash edition is Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi’s version of the famous vampire. Next up, we jump forward half a century for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, a modern spooky essential about a newly dead couple who need help from Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice to haunt the new tenants of their home. The best way to end things is with the most seminal entry into horror, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which is about a woman who stays in a creepy motel while on the run. This watchlist will take about eight hours over on Peacock here.

Screamin’ Slasher Edition (Shudder)

Shudder is also a fairly new streaming service, and it's completely made up of horror films, so this is a great hub to go to during Halloween time. As for this marathon, the screamin’ slasher edition is not for the faint of heart (especially compared to the past two). These are technically scary, but a fun time too. First up is 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, a zombie classic by George Romero, which should be followed up by the original Black Christmas, where a group of sorority sisters are hunted by a mysterious caller.

Then, since you’re over on Shudder, you’ll have to brave 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (I do make the rules!), the highly-disturbing story of Leatherface. For a brief segue into the modern fare, check out Haunt next, a 2019 horror flick and Shudder exclusive about a group of friends who discover a haunted house on Halloween that feeds into their fears. End this marathon with John Carpenter’s original Halloween movie, especially before Jamie Lee Curtis returns for Halloween Kills next year. Enjoy this eight-hour marathon over on Shudder here.

Corsets And Daggers Edition (Netflix)

Netflix has a huge horror selection, and of course, the highly-anticipated Haunting of Bly Manor series coming this October. The marathon I have for you here is a healthy mix of classic Halloween fun and serious horror and gore that all give off an old timey, stuck-in-a-foggy-forest vibe. To prime you is The Addams Family, a go-to 1991 Halloween movie with dark humor. Then you should go over to 1990’s The Witches, a strangely terrifying Roald Dahl adaptation (also) starring Anjelica Huston.

Then go to the depths of hell with Kate Beckinsale for the original 2003 Underworld film, which follows a vampire Death Dealer who hunts Lycans for an action-packed creepfest. Check out the Netflix original Apostle, an underseen 2018 period horror piece starring Dan Stevens about a man who tries to save his sister from an evil cult on a remote island. The final feature on this marathon is 1999’s Sleepy Hollow, an early collaboration with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp that tells the gothic story of Icabod Crane and the Headless Horseman in an entertaining and creepy way. This nine-hour marathon is over on Netflix here.

Haunted In Lockdown Edition (Amazon Prime)

Is there anything that screams horror or Halloween in 2020 then being stuck in your home with some pesky demons? Dare I say, this is the most relatable marathon for your viewing pleasure, which makes it even more frightening. We’ll start this marathon off on the more wacky end with 2019’s Crawl, a fun disaster horror film about a girl being trapped in her home with deadly alligators during a horrible hurricane. Then join a young Ryan Reynolds for 2005’s The Amityville Horror remake, which is about a newlywed couple haunted by demons.

The marathon continues with last year’s The Lighthouse, following Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as lighthouse keepers who (hilariously) drive each other insane on a remote island, as the movie also explores some deep themes. Follow that by checking out 2011’s The Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard’s clever and twisty thriller featuring Chris Hemsworth. The final feature here is Ari Aster’s Hereditary, a truly messed-up horror entry that examines family psychosis with unforgettable and terrifying images. This nine-hour marathon is available to stream over on Amazon Prime here

Possessed By Horror Edition (HBO Max)

The last Halloween marathon has to be the most intense and hardcore. There's ten hours of horror content here, and it's all available on HBO Max (or through your streaming HBO subscription, it's the same thing now). We’ll start soft with an ‘80s favorite, Gremlins, which is about a boy who is given a pet monster that unleashes havoc on his neighborhood. Next is 1990’s Child’s Play 2, which continues Chucky's rampage to take young Andy’s soul after his mom is taken to a psych ward and he is placed in the foster care system.

This marathon that heavily explores the terrifying idea of demon possession continues with 2009’s Orphan, which has a couple taking in a young girl who gives the kid in The Omen a run for his money. Try not to skip over one of the most horrifying horror entries to this day, 1973’s The Exorcist, which is about a mother who enlists two priests to help her possessed daughter. The marathon ends with last year’s The Shining sequel, Michael Flannagan’s Doctor Sleep, following Dan Torrance as an adult as protects from the powers he encountered at the Overlook Hotel. Check out this marathon on HBO Max here.

Enjoy your Halloween viewing! Let me know which one your checking out by voting in the poll below and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more movie and TV news.

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Looking for a streaming platform to have the ultimate spooky movie binge this Halloween? When you take a look at the best horror movies on Amazon Prime, you will see that it is one of the best streaming services to subscribe to for indulging in some great horror movies during this special season or any time of the year.

That being said, it can be a real nightmare sifting through all the best movies on Amazon Prime in search of the scariest cinematic favorites it has to offer. Well, allow me to help make your horror movie marathon less horrifying by picking out the genre’s finest that come available with an Amazon Prime subscription.

Terrifier And Terrifier 2 (2017, 2022)

Director: Damien Leone

Starring: David Howard Thornton, Lauren LaVera

What it’s about: A sadistic clown stalks unsuspecting innocents with torturous and murderous intent.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Immediately earning their place among the most iconic creepy clown movies for their shocking gore and the brilliantly acted villain, Art the Clown, are Terrifier and Terrifier 2, which would spawn the successful third installment, Terrifier 3.

• Stream Terrifier on Amazon Prime
• Stream Terrifier 2 on Amazon Prime

The Thing (1982)

Director: John Carpenter

Starring: Kurt Russell, Keith David

What it’s about: A crew of researchers stationed in the Antarctic question who among them is still human when they discover a shape-shifting creature from another planet.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: With a faithful adaptation of John W. Campbell’s novella, Who Goes There?, John Carpenter introduces, arguably, the scariest movie alien ever with The Thing – a brilliantly crafted story of paranoia elevated by timeless practical effects.

• Stream The Thing on Amazon Prime

Dracula (1931)

Director: Tod Browning, Karl Freund

Starring: Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye

What it’s about: A real estate agent is lured into servitude by a Transylvanian count who then moves to London searching for fresh blood.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Playing the vampiric title role of Universal’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula made Bela Lugosi one of the greatest horror movie icons of all time.

• Stream Dracula on Amazon Prime

The Invitation (2016)

Director: Karyn Kusama

Starring: Logan Marshall Green, Emayatzy Corinealdi

What it’s about: While attending a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife and her new lover, a man begins to suspect there is a sinister agenda to the occasion.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: One of the best horror movies from a female director, The Invitation, is a masterpiece of slow-burn horror that accurately captures the feeling of being the odd one out at a friendly get-together.

• Stream The Invitation on Amazon Prime

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Starring: Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen

What it’s about: A group of traveling twenty-somethings falls prey to a power tool-wielding killer and his family of cannibals.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: By authentically capturing the feelings of a nightmare on film, Tobe Hooper made one of the best horror movies of the 1970s out of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is not actually inspired by a real incident as it claims.

• Stream The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on Amazon Prime

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

Director: John Landis

Starring: David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter

What it’s about: After a tragic incident, a Stateside college student touring the U.K. receives warnings from his dead friend’s spirit that will transform into a vicious creature under a full moon.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: With Academy Award-winning makeup effects by Rick Baker and a slyly comical approach to lycanthropic lore, An American Werewolf in London is one of the finest werewolf movies ever made.

• Stream An American Werewolf in London on Amazon Prime

Possum (2018)

Director: Matthew Holness

Starring: Sean Harris, Alun Armstrong

What it’s about: A disgraced puppeteer is forced to confront his disturbing past when he returns to his hometown.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: If the nuanced commentary on childhood trauma of the slow-paced Possum – an overlooked recent horror movie – does not get under your skin, the grotesque titular puppet undoubtedly will.

• Stream Possum on Amazon Prime

The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)

Director: Dan O’Bannon

Starring: Thom Matthews, James Karen

What it’s about: A strange accident at a medical supply warehouse causes the dead to rise from their graves.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: One of the all-time funniest and most acclaimed zombie movies is The Return of the Living Dead, which introduced the concept of the undead craving brains.

• Stream The Return of the Living Dead on Amazon Prime

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran

What it’s about: Adult Dan Torrance is forced to confront his traumatic past in order to protect a younger telepath from a group of vicious immortal psychics.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Mike Flanagan’s moving and terrifying adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep helped the author come to terms with his feelings over its predecessor, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

• Stream Doctor Sleep on Amazon Prime

Nosferatu (1922)

Director: F.W. Murnau

Starring: Max Schreck, Alexander Granach

What it’s about: German real estate agent Knock meets a client named Count Orlok, who turns out to be a malevolent creature of the night.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: In 2024, Robert Eggers is releasing a remake of Nosferatu, which may not be the most famous (unofficial) adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula but is still widely considered to be one of the finest and scariest vampire movies of the silent era, if not all time.

• Stream Nosferatu on Amazon Prime

Barbarian (2022)

Director: Zach Cregger

Starring: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long

What it’s about: A documentarian meets a strange man after accidentally reserving the same Detroit Airbnb, which turns out to be the least concerning thing about the house.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: The Whitest Kids U’Know star Zach Cregger surprised the world with Barbarian, which was touted as one of the best horror movies of 2022 for its subversive narrative and unsettling twists.

• Stream Barbarian on Amazon Prime

Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil (2010)

Director: Eli Craig

Starring: Alan Tudyk, Tyler Labine

What it’s about: Well-meaning hillbillies Tucker and Dale are mistaken for murderers by a group of young vacationers, which creates “a real doozy” of trouble for all of them.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: By cleverly turning one of the most overused slasher movie tropes (the creepy countryman) on its head, Eli Craig makes Tucker and Dale vs. Evil one of the best horror-comedy movies of its time.

• Stream Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Amazon Prime

The Menu (2022)

Director: Mark Mylod

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy

What it’s about: a woman unwittingly becomes involved in a dangerous situation while attending an exclusive dining experience curated by the renowned Chef Slowik.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Once again proving that Anya Taylor-Joy is the Scream Queen of her generation, The Menu is a dazzling and deliciously demented satire of elitist dining culture.

• Stream The Menu on Amazon Prime

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

Director: John Erick Dowdle

Starring: Stacy Chbosky, Ben Messmer

What it’s about: An elusive, sadistic serial kidnapper leaves behind visual evidence of his hellacious crimes on a large collection of VHS tapes recovered in a small town in New York.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: The Poughkeepsie Tapes is one of the most unsettling documentary-style horror films for the brutally realistic way it depicts the experiences of captivity and its damaging psychological effects.

• Stream The Poughkeepsie Tapes on Amazon Prime

Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Director: Zelda Williams

Starring: Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse

What it’s about: Lonely teen Lisa Swallows finds an unexpected romance with the reanimated corpse of a young man in the late 1980s.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Written by Academy Award winner Diablo Cody, Lisa Frankenstein, is a charmingly macabre and deliriously funny reimagining of Mary Shelley’s seminal novel warmly wrapped in ‘80s nostalgia.

• Stream Lisa Frankenstein on Amazon Prime

Tales Of Halloween (2015)

Director: Various

Starring: Various

What it’s about: A babysitter learns why you should never eat too much candy, a stranger teaches a young trick-or-treater his own sinister tricks, a killer’s chase is interrupted by a strange encounter, and other ghoulish tales set on one fateful All Hallows’ Eve.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: With creepy, loosely connected shorts ranging from hilarious to truly horrifying, Tales from Halloween is one of the most underrated horror anthology movies of its time.

• Stream Tales of Halloween on Amazon Prime

Totally Killer (2023)

Director: Nahnatchka Khan

Starring: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt

What it’s about: A modern-day 17-year-old girl is accidentally transported to the late 1980s, where she is given the chance to stop an infamous murderer’s streak.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Picture the time travel movie classic, Back to the Future, reimagined as an ‘80s-style slasher flick and you would essentially have Totally Killer.

• Stream Totally Killer on Amazon Prime

House On Haunted Hill (1959)

Director: William Castle

Starring: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart

What it’s about: A wealthy eccentric challenges a group of strangers to spend a single night in a spooky old house for a large monetary prize.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Not to be confused with The Haunting of Hill House, director William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill is one of Vincent Price’s most essential and fun thrillers.

• Stream House on Haunted Hill on Amazon Prime

Bones And All (2022)

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell

What it’s about: A pair of young road trippers bond over their shared, unusual appetites in the early 1980s.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Timothée Chalamet reunites with Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino for another gripping period drama about forbidden love, but of a more viscerally shocking and grotesque sort, with Bones and All.

• Stream Bones and All on Amazon Prime

The Collector (2009)

Director: Marcus Dunstan

Starring: Josh Stewart, Andrea Roth

What it’s about: Desperate for money, thief-turned-repairman Arkin plans a seemingly simple burglary job at his wealthy new employers’ house, only to fall prey to the increasingly elaborate traps of a sadistic killer who has confined the resident family inside.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: One of the best movies that fans of the Saw movies should check out is The Collector – a brutal, subversive take on the home invasion thriller.

• Stream The Collector on Amazon Prime

Absentia (2011)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Starring: Katie Parker, Courtney Bell

What it’s about: Several years after her brother-in-law went missing, a recovering addict begins to discover the shocking truth behind the disappearance.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Fans of Mike Flanagan’s movies and TV shows who have not seen the sadly underappreciated Absentia are missing out on one of the filmmaker’s most heartbreaking and horrifying titles.

• Stream Absentia on Amazon Prime

Hell House LLC (2015)

Director: Stephen Cognetti

Starring: Gore Adams, Alice Bahlke

What it’s about: Interviews with surviving witnesses and raw footage captured by the victims expose the mysteries surrounding a small-town haunted house attraction and chronicle the events leading to its ill-fated opening night.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: There are many great found footage thrillers on Amazon Prime, but my personal favorite of the bunch (and of all time) is easily Hell House LLC for its dread-inducing pace, indelibly creepy imagery, and remarkably convincing writing and performances.

• Stream Hell House LLC on Amazon Prime

Hellraiser (1987)

Director: Clive Barker

Starring: Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Doug Bradley

What it’s about: A young woman discovers her stepmother and uncle are lovers, and part of a conspiracy involving murder, a strange puzzle box, and sadomasochistic mutants from another dimension.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Horror maestro Clive Barker made his directorial debut with the disturbing cautionary romance, Hellraiser – an adaptation of his own novella that introduced one of the most iconic horror movie villains, who came to be known as Pinhead.

• Stream Hellraiser on Amazon Prime

Saint Maud (2021)

Director: Rose Glass

Starring: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle

What it’s about: Desperately seeking redemption, a young Welsh nurse believes she has found her chance when she is assigned to care for a terminally ill dancer and decides to pass her newfound religious beliefs onto her.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Not everything is quite as it seems in the A24 horror movie, Saint Maud, which boasts masterful pacing, thought-provoking commentary on faith, Morfydd Clark’s stellar performance, and a startling ending.

• Stream Saint Maud on Amazon Prime

Suspiria (2018)

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton

What it’s about: A young American woman is accepted into an elite dance company in Berlin operated by a coven of witches.

Why it is one of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime: Most missed out on Luca Guadagnino's remake of Dario Argento’s classic, Suspiria, in theaters and that’s a shame because it is a twisty, mysterious, and chilling thriller that features an absolutely remarkable and jaw-dropping conclusion.

• Stream Suspiria on Amazon Prime

The titles above might be enough to convince you to make Amazon Prime Video your prime location for a good scare.

Being an animated send-up of genre conventions, it is surprising that Rick and Morty is now considered one of the best sci-fi TV shows of its time, if not all time. Perhaps, outside of its refreshingly complex plotting and clever references to many great sci-fi movies (and other classics of a wide variety), it is the grounding detail of relatable family drama from many of the best Rick and Morty episodes that has helped it achieve almost universal accessibility.

Adult Swim recently put out an anime version of Rick and Morty that is wildly different from the original series from creator Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland but, fortunately, there are plenty more TV shows with similar themes and tones that you can also “get schwifty” with as we wait for Rick and Morty Season 8 to premiere in 2025. The following are just a few series that remind me of this beloved animated TV show for one reason or another.

Inside Job (2021-2022)

Starring: Lizzy Caplan

What it's about: An anti-social technology expert named s having an especially difficult time helping maintain elaborate cover-ups of the world’s most damning secrets and concerning conspiracies at Cognito Inc..

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: If Rick and Morty was more of a workplace comedy, it might be something like the bizarre animated satire Inside Job, which is a TV show Netflix cancelled too soon from creators Shion Takeuchi and Alex Hirsch.

How to watch Inside Job

• Stream Inside Job on Netflix

The Legend Of Vox Machina (2022-Present)

Starring: Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson

What it's about: A ragtag group of heroes for hire becomes the last hope for the survival of their enchanted realm.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: If Rick and Morty took place in a more traditional fantasy world, it might be something like Amazon Prime’s off-beat adventure comedy series, The Legend of Vox Machina, which is inspired by the creators’ own Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

• Stream The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon Prime

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (2023)

Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

What it's about: A young, emotionally shallow musician is forced to fight seven powerful enemies if he wants to have a relationship with the woman of his dreams.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: Based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s acclaimed graphic novel series and featuring the voice talents of the original Scott Pilgrim vs. the World movie cast, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is another high-energy, fantastic animated comedy series that convinces you to root for a relatively unlikable protagonist, similar to how fans still have some affinity for the emotionally shallow, verbally abusive, hard-drinking Rick Sanchez.

How to watch Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

• Stream Scott Pilgrim Takes Off on Netflix

Invader Zim (2001-2006)

Starring: Richard Steven Horvitz, Andy Berman

What it's about: In an attempt to secretly get rid of him, a species of aliens sends an overly ambitious member and a faulty robotic assistant to Earth with a mission to infiltrate and conquer it.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: For any Rick and Morty fan looking for something similar but more suitable to show younger viewers, Invader Zim is certainly a more kid-friendly sci-fi comedy but is also one of the darkest and absolute weirdest Nicktoons ever conceived, especially for the early 2000s.

How to watch Invader Zim

• Stream Invader Zim on Paramount+
• Rent or buy Invader Zim on Amazon

Gravity Falls (2012-2016)

Starring: Jason Ritter, Kristen Schaal, Alex Hirsch

What it's about: Dipper and his twin sister, Mabel, are sent to live with their great uncle Stan in a town where there is more than meets the eye.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: Also created by Alex Hirsch Disney Channel’s Gravity Falls is also more family-friendly than Ricky and Morty but is also another multi-layered animated comedy fantasy with a legion of devoted fans that follows the adventures of a couple of kids and their eccentric relative.

How to watch Gravity Falls

• Stream Gravity Falls on Disney+
• Stream Gravity Falls on Hulu

Solar Opposites (2020-Present)

Starring: Dan Stevens, Thomas Middleditch

What it's about: A family of extraterrestrials struggles to make a stable living after crash landing on Earth.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: Before a domestic abuse charge led to his exit, Rick and Morty co-creator and former Rick and Morty actor Justin Roiland served as the voice of Korvo (now played by Dan Stevens) and co-creator (along with Michael McMahan) of another animated sci-fi family comedy called Solar Opposites, which some say surpasses Rick and Morty is a few areas.

How to watch Solar Opposites

• Stream Solar Opposites on Hulu

Community (2009-2015)

Starring: Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs

What it's about: A suspended lawyer is forced to attend a community college where he forms a close bond with his diverse study group.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: Before co-creating Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon hit it (pretty) big with a live-action comedy that seamlessly balances pop culture references, deconstructive self-awareness, and relatable social themes like Rick and Morty, as many of the best episodes of Community can prove.

How to watch Community

• Stream Community on Peacock
• Buy Community on Amazon
• Buy Community on Blu-ray on Amazon

The Mandalorian (2019-Present)

Starring: Pedro Pascal

What it's about: An interplanetary bounty hunter becomes the protector of an abandoned creature of great power.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: An iconic duo one could compare Rick and Morty to is the testy Din Djarin and the endearingly innocent, yet sometimes troublesome, Grogu in The Mandalorian – Jon Favreau's Star Wars universe series that also crosses streams with other genre styles and sprinkles comic relief into its action-packed moments.

How to watch The Mandalorian

• Stream The Mandalorian on Disney+

One Punch Man (2015-Present)

Starring: Makoto Furukawa, Max Mittelman

What it's about: A teenage vigilante whose unfailing ability to defeat any enemy with a single attack forces him into an existential crisis.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: A funny thing about Rick is that he is so knowledgeable and resourceful that he finds most dire threats merely tedious, which is similar to the title hero of the popular anime, One Punch Man, which is based on the manga by Yusuke Murata that pokes fun at the superhero lifestyle in some hilariously inventive ways.

How to watch One Punch Man

• Stream One Punch Man on Hulu
• Buy One Punch Man on Amazon
• Buy One Punch Man on Blu-ray on Amazon

Ash Vs. Evil Dead (2015-2018)

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorezno

What it's about: Aging, chainsaw-handed "Deadite" hunter Ash accidentally unleashes another wave of malevolent, possessive forces.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: Any Rick and Morty fan who wants to see more of its signature dark humor and graphic violence in a live-action setting should look no further than Ash vs. Evil Dead – a series continuation of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies which lasted three seasons of non-stop, explosive demon-busting action.

How to watch Ash vs. Evil Dead

• Stream Ash vs. Evil Dead on Starz
• Buy Ash vs. Evil Dead on Amazon
• Buy Ash vs. Evil Dead on Blu-ray on Amazon

Spaced (1999-2001)

Starring: Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes

What it's about: Two platonic friends must pose as a couple to live in an apartment building overrun with some odd characters in London.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: Pegg and Hynes teamed up with Edgar Wright to craft one of the best sitcoms of all time, Spaced, which is similar to Rick and Morty in the way it incorporates inventive references to pop culture iconography with relatable storylines of common human struggles.

How to watch Spaced

• Stream Spaced on Amazon Prime for free
• Stream Spaced on Tubi
• Buy Spaced on DVD on Amazon

Adventure Time (2010-2018)

Starring: Jeremy Shada, John DiMaggio

What it's about: The escapades of Finn the Human and Jake the Dog in a bizarre fantasy land.

Why it is a great TV show to watch if you are a fan of Rick and Morty: While not quite as plentiful with pop culture Easter Eggs and dark adult humor, Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time is a ceaselessly witty and cleverly exciting animated fantasy series that will easily appeal to all ages.

How to watch Adventure Time

• Stream Adventure Time on Hulu
• Stream Adventure Time on Max
• Buy Adventure Time on Amazon
• Buy Adventure Time on DVD on Amazon

What do you think? Would these movies and TV shows go well with a side of Szechuan sauce, or are they just the inferior copies of Rick and Morty you feel would be best if kept in the Citadel?

It’s cliche but true that laughter sometimes really is the best medicine. It makes you feel at ease in times of stress, helps you process complicated things, and just puts you in a better mood. We all need a good laugh. Luckily, the billion and one streaming services offer a plethora of great comedies to watch when we need a little bit of laughter in our lives. Amazon Prime Video’s great film collection offers an abundance of options for laughs.

Comedy is subjective, but I selected a variety of movies and TV shows that often make me laugh. Hopefully, they do the same for you. 

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023)

In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) is a 1950s housewife who discovers that she has a talent for stand-up comedy. She revamps her housewife life to start doing stand-up.

Why It's A Good Option For Laughs: Rachel Brosnahan gives a charming and amusing performance as Midge. She’s the type of quirky character that pulls you into her gravitational force. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel stand-up comedy scenes are fresh and bold (and the show isn’t afraid to take chances with scenes). Mrs. Maisel is a character who makes you laugh while also inspiring you with her bravery at a time not generous to women who didn’t fit the standard. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel also has a very strong supporting cast of funny people, including Tony Shalhoub and Alex Borstein.

Stream The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Prime Video.

Airplane! (1980)

Airplane! is a parody disaster movie. It follows the passengers and flight crew of a plane traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago. During the flight, the passengers and crew face many obstacles, like sickness and an emergency landing. The cast of Airplane! includes Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Airplane! is a very slapstick movie with great one-liners, running jokes, and a fun satirical tone. If you’re a fan of slapstick comedy and over-the-top characters, then Airplane! has the right amount of kick for your needs. I’m serious, and don’t call me Shirley.

Stream Airplane! on Prime Video.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

The 2023 Academy Award-winning Best Picture stars Michelle Yeoh as a woman dealing with IRS issues while also tackling complicated relationships with her daughter and husband. Her troubles manifest in parallel universes and various versions of herself. 

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Everything Everywhere All At Once is more dramedy than comedy, but the comedic moments are very sharp and fun. This is a film to watch if you need a good cry and a good laugh. 

Stream Everything Everywhere All At Once on Prime Video.

Good Omens (2019-)

Good Omens is based on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s book of the same name. It follows various people as the impending armageddon nears. Angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and demon Crowley (David Tennant) are at the heart of the action and they must figure out how to save the world before it’s too late. 

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Good Omens is a very funny novel and the show (at least in the first season) is fairly faithful to the source material. Just because the world is about to end, doesn’t mean you can’t laugh as it happens.

Stream Good Omens on Prime Video.

Upload (2020-)

Upload exists in a world where the rich can upload their consciousness into a digital afterlife. The first season follows Nathan (Robbie Amell), a computer engineer grad and computer programmer who dies unexpectedly and ends up at Lakeview, one of the premiere afterlife destinations. 

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Greg Daniels created Upload and he has a history of creating hilarious comedies, including King of the Hill, The Office (US), and Parks and Recreation. He does not disappoint with Upload. Nathan’s afterlife journey is heartfelt and hysterical. It also has an intoxicatingly sweet romance that works because of Robbie Amell and Andy Allo’s chemistry. Upload is an entertaining series that rom-coms fans and comedy fans can equally enjoy. 

Stream Upload on Prime Video. 

Fleabag (2016-2019)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge stars in and created Fleabag, a series about a woman trying to find herself through a series of hookups, a complicated family dynamic, and a very hot priest. The Fleabag cast includes Sian Clifford, Olivia Colman, and Andrew Scott.

Why It’s AGood Option For Laughs: Fleabag is a dramedy so it blends very serious moments with wit and earnestness. Phoebe Waller-Bridge completely embodies Fleabag, this complex antihero character who wears her scars on her sleeves. For every gut-punching moment, there is an equally side-splitting moment. Fleabag is a nice blend of joy and heartbreak.

Stream Fleabag on Prime Video.

The Bernie Mac Show (2001-2006)

The Bernie Mac Show is a sitcom that follows a comedian who must take care of his sister's three children while she’s in rehab. Bernie has no children of his own. Therefore, this is his first chance at fatherhood — which leads to some very funny situations.  Comedian Bernie Mac based the concept on his standup comedy act.

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Bernie Mac is one of the funniest comedians of all time, so you can count on him to give a hilarious performance. He manages to bring some of his signature comedic style to this family sitcom. Not only is Bernie hysterical but the children play into their roles well. The Bernie Mac Show is mostly family-friendly, while not losing its comedic edge. It proves a show can be mainly wholesome but still very funny. 

Stream The Bernie Mac Show on Prime Video.

The Lost City (2022)

Sandra Bullock once again proves she’s the perfect actress to call if you need someone to deliver a hilarious performance in a romantic comedy. The Lost City follows a novelist kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire to help find a lost city described in her books. Her cover model attempts to save her from him. He just creates more chaos. Daniel Radcliffe plays the billionaire. 

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Sandra Bullock’s best films allow her to fully embrace her characters. She immerses herself in their trauma, struggles, and accomplishments. The Lost City is no different. Bullock really becomes Loretta, this novelist very annoyed with her cover model. This annoyance and Channing Tatum’s Alan’s desperation for approval make it a very entertaining comedy.

Stream The Lost City on Prime Video.

Jury Duty (2023-)

Jury Duty is a feel-good comedy that’s partly scripted and partly a reality TV show. It follows Ronald Gladden as he believes he’s being filmed for a documentary about jury duty. However, it’s actually a reality show and everyone else involved are actors. Everything is scripted but Ronald’s reactions to these situations and people.

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: James Marsden gives one of his best performances in Jury Duty. He’s a stereotypical, narcissistic Hollywood version of himself. Marsden shines in this series, but so does the whole cast. It once again confirms that mockumentary TV series are often the best shows because they are just so funny. 

Stream Jury Duty on Prime Video. 

The Carol Burnett Show (1967-1978)

Comedian Carol Burnett brings her cleverness to a variety sketch comedy show that featured sketches and performances by Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner alongside Burnett.

Why It’s A Good Option for Laughs: Carol Burnett is a comedy legend who put a lot of blood, sweat, and laughter into coming up with these sketches that kept people entertained and laughing all the way through. The Carol Burnett Show has become a beloved classic show because it’s refreshing and zany. It emphasizes Burnett’s outstanding comedy career.

Stream The Carol Burnett Show on Prime Video.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

Pitch Perfect brings the world of collegiate a cappella to the forefront. Anna Kendrick, Skylar Astin, Rebel Wilson, Adam DeVine, Anna Camp, Brittany Snow, and Ben Platt star in this comedy that combines singing, hilarious characters, and very entertaining situations. 

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Pitch Perfect had one of the funniest opening films to a franchise. In my opinion, the franchise kind of fell apart until Bumper in Berlin (Yes, I am still mad about its cancellation). But the first movie is hilarious enough to watch on its own, or if you dare, the other sequels as well. Pitch Perfect highlights the entertaining and  ridiculous (but also charming) sides of acapella groups. Anna Kendrick also gives one of her most memorable performances in it. Additionally, it helped launch the careers of some of the most well-known actors and musicians. 

Stream Pitch Perfect on Prime Video.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Tucker & Dale vs Evil basically spoofs the hillbilly horror genre (examples in the genre include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes). Dale (Tyler Labine) and Tucker (Alan Tudyk) are mistaken for killers by college students. This leads to some unfortunate deaths.

Why It’s A Good Option For Laughs: Tucker & Dale Vs Evil is a great horror comedy whose hilarious premise keeps you horrified and laughing the entire film. The writing sets things up in a clever tongue-in-cheek way that makes it a wild and hilarious ride, especially for Dale and Tucker. 

Stream Tucker & Dale vs Evil on Prime Video. 

These movies should keep you laughing all week, but if you need more laughs, Amazon Prime Video has a wide collection of licensed and original movies and TV shows to pick from. Therefore, I am confident you will find something to make you laugh.

Alright, you horror hounds. You belong to a select club of people who like your movies gory and your TV creepy. In fact, you’re the kind of person who can appreciate a hero with a chainsaw for a hand, and you probably even buy horror-themed toys. To a person like you, a hockey mask is a fashion statement. And because you’re that kind of a person, I have some good news for you. Right now, Hulu is absolutely killing it (pun intended) when it comes to horror. So much so that I wanted to make a list for you.

The great thing about Hulu is that they specialize in TV and movies, so there’s plenty of horror to get lost in for a single sitting if you’re a movie person, or entire days and weeks if you’re a TV person. So grab your nearest bucket of pig’s blood, sharpen your knives and check out this list.

Baskin

Do you like your horror surreal? How about bloody as hell and Satanic? Oh, and do you like your horror Turkish? If you answered yes to any of those questions (or all of them), then I have the movie for you. Baskin (No, not that Baskin) is about five police officers who get a radio call to investigate a strange place and somehow end up at a Satanic ritual. Their journey into the abyss is bizarre and sickening, and the torture scenes, performed by first-time actor, Mehmet Cerrahoglu, will probably have you puking in your popcorn. Just how you like it!

Baskin is a great flick for veteran horror fans because it’s not often that you can watch a movie and be shocked by what you’re seeing, but Baskin has that ability. It lures you in slowly, but then bashes you in the head with a sledgehammer. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Stream Baskin

A Quiet Place

Critical darling and crowd favorite, A Quiet Place is about a husband and wife (real husband and wife pair John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, respectively) who are trying to raise their children in a world of silence. The reason for this is because of some spooky aliens that can’t see, but sure as hell can hear. This makes for some tense moments that will have you gripping your seat at scenes and have you gritting your teeth throughout the entire movie.

Horror fans need to see A Quiet Place since it’s the cool horror movie that has broken into the mainstream. And until we finally get to see the clickers in the upcoming The Last of Us TV show, this is the best we have. Plus, there’s a sequel coming out in September. And you have to see the original before you see the sequel, right?

Stream A Quiet Place

Pet Sematary

Though it could be argued that it’s not as memorable as the 1989 movie, the 2019 Pet Sematary still has some good chills to be had if you put yourself in the right mindset (and don’t mind jump scares). Plus, if you have seen the first movie, there are some pretty big changes to this version, so it’s not like you would just be watching the same film twice, but with better visuals. The story concerns a family that moves to a house by a cemetery (or sematary), but it has a strange tendency to bring animals (and people!) back from the dead.

Horror fans will like the spooky vibe and pacing of this remake. Plus, it’s based off of a famous Stephen King novel, so you pretty much have to watch it. The master will be pleased.

Stream Pet Sematary

The Cabin In The Woods

The Cabin in the Woods is the kind of movie that non-horror fans will balk at, and horror junkies will give a big thumbs up to since it has so many references to other great horror movies. It’s the kind of film that Quentin Tarantino would make if he was a horror junkie rather than a western or crime junkie. The story is about a bunch of college students who go to a remote cabin (in the woods), but things aren’t what they seem. It’s almost like somebody is manufacturing the horror from a lab or something. Scares (and laughs) ensue.

As mentioned earlier, horror lovers will marvel at all the different nods that were slipped into this movie. It’s a horror junkie’s horror movie.

Stream The Cabin in the Woods

Castle Rock

Remember what I said earlier about Stephen King and how all horror fans need to embrace anything that comes from the master of the macabre? Well, Castle Rock is an entire TV show centered around the fictional Castle Rock town featured in some of his stories. It’s an anthology series, much like American Horror Story and Fargo, in that each season is a different story. The first season covers the Shawshank prison, while the second season centers on Annie Wilkes from Misery.

Horror fans will love Castle Rock since it has the same creepy (but fun) Stephen King tone that comes with his brand of horror. Plus, if you’re a fan of his novels, it’s nice to find all the little Easter eggs and nods to his stories. Also, it’s exclusive to Hulu, so you can’t find it anywhere else. Lucky you.

Stream Castle Rock

NOS4A2

I know you like Stephen King, but what about his son, Joe Hill? NOS4A2, based off of the novel of the same name, stars Zachery Quinto (in exquisite make-up) as Charlie Manx, an immortal who survives on children’s souls. He then sends these soulless children to Christmasland, which exists in his mind. But an artist named Vic (Ashleigh Cummings) fights to stop him.

Honestly, it feels very much like a Stephen King story, but somehow not, which is what makes a Joe Hill story so familiar, and yet so different, in the first place.

Stream NOS4A2

American Horror Story

There are nine glorious seasons of American Horror Story, so you have a lot of watching to do. If you haven’t seen American Horror Story yet (and really, what horror fan hasn’t at least checked it out?), each season covers a different theme. There’s the fan-favorite Coven season, the circus season and the very fun ‘80s season. Some seasons are better than others, to be sure, but all of them have something unique to offer.

Horror fans will love the variety of each season. There’s something on this show for everyone. Season 1, “Murder House,” is my personal favorite.

Stream American Horror Story

Oculus

Oculus is that horror movie that you scoff at because it’s a WWE Studios film. Then you actually watch it and you can’t sleep at night. It’s a haunted mirror story, with a mirror that makes people hallucinate. The visuals are super creepy and Karen Gillan (of Jumanji and Avengers: Endgame fame) is great as the protagonist. And her younger version, Annalise Basso, is really good, too.

Oculus is fantastic for horror fans since it’s psychological horror, which we sadly don’t get enough of these days.

Stream Oculus

Mom And Dad

As a parent of two young children who sometimes drive me crazy, I have to say, parts of Mom and Dad really spoke to me. But only the parts about kids driving their parents crazy. Not the whole murder-y aspect. The story is about parents who can’t control themselves for 24 hours and suddenly want to kill their children. And guess what, it stars Nic Cage and Selma Blair as the two main parents. Do I even have to say anything else?

Yes? Well, horror fans (especially fans of horror comedy) will love how bonkers the story gets. And Nic Cage gives one of his better performances and commits to being a real psycho dad.

Stream Mom and Dad

28 Days Later

Isn’t it weird that I’ve done a whole list about horror movies and TV shows and haven’t once mentioned anything about zombie movies? Oh, I’m sorry. 28 Days Later is not a “zombie” movie. Not technically, anyway. But it's definitely a post-apocalyptic film about some survivors (Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Megan Burns, and the great Brendan Gleeson) who are being chased by… not zombies.

Horror fans will love the setting and how claustrophobic it all feels, even though it’s mostly in wide-open environments. And again, Brendan Gleeson is great in it, adding some gravitas to this not-zombie film…which totally is a zombie film, by the way.

Stream 28 Days Later

So, as you can see, there’s a lot of great horror content on Hulu. And if you have a Starz, Cinemax, or an HBO account, you have even more horror genre offerings to choose from. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a full moon to howl at, a dead body in my trunk to dispose of and a chicken that I have to sacrifice in the middle of a pentagram. All in a night’s work for a horror fan.

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Jordan Peele’s new horror classic Get Out has sparked conversations not only about the horror comedy genre but about race, interracial romances, cultural appropriation, and so many other hot button topics. Get Out approaches these serious topics with a playful nature and easy to digest tone. It’s rightfully earned its place as one of the best horror films of the 21st century. Currently, Get Out isn’t available on any subscription streaming service. It is, however, available to rent or buy on Amazon.

The news of Get Out not being available on Netflix, Hulu, or Prime might damper your weekend plans. Even if you’ve already seen Get Out, it’s one of those great movies that presents new layers of brilliance with every revisit. However, on the bright side, there are plenty of other great movies in a similar style of Get Out. These movies either share a theme or tone with Get Out.

Us - HBO Now

What It's About: Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) goes on vacation with her family only to encounter a doppelganger version of herself, one she met as a child. The doppelganger Adelaide also has a family that mirrors Adelaide’s. The families enter into an all-out battle to occupy the space of the living. Winston Duke and Elisabeth Moss also have roles in Us.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: Us is another one of Jordan Peele’s horror creations. It’s a bit more serious than Get Out, but presents similar commentary on oppression and class. Us also has a really good twist that will likely shock you even more than Get Out’s twist.

Stream it on HBO Now here.

Parasite- Hulu

What It's About: Bong Joon-ho’s Academy Award winning film follows the Kim and Park families. The poor Kim family schemes their way into the rich Parks’ lives, but it’s not all caviar and champagne as things quickly escalate. Parasite’s cast includes Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, and Cho Yeo-jeong.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: Parasite and Get Out are both really layered suspense stories. They also both deal with hierarchies, and one group benefiting from the mistreatment of another. Parasite and Get Out also both explore implicit biases, one in terms of race and another based on class.

Stream it on Hulu here.

The Twilight Zone - Cinemax

What It's About: Based on the TV series of the same name, The Twilight Zone movie features four short segments directed by and starring an ensemble cast. John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller direct The Twilight Zone segments. The ensemble cast includes Albert Brooks, Dan Aykroyd, John Lithgow, and Burgess Meredith.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: The Twilight Zone takes everyday situations and adds a paranormal or horror element to them. Something as standard as a plane ride becomes terrifying when mixed with a creepy Twilight Zone element. Essentially, Get Out does the same thing. It takes a simple everyday act, like meeting your girlfriend or boyfriend’s parents, and makes it even more of a nightmare. Jordan Peele has also added his own stamp to the Twilight Zone world by acting as a developer of the reboot.

Stream it on Cinemax here.

The First Purge - Cinemax

What It's About: The Purge franchise has been around since 2013, spanning four movies and a TV series. The First Purge finally goes into how the Purge was created. It starts as an experiment, but four films in and it has become a way of life. The First Purge cast includes Y’lan Noel and Marissa Tomei.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: All The Purge movies focus on how the evil elite use purge day to murder those they deemed not worthy to exist in society, usually people with low incomes, criminals, and minorities. Get Out and The Purge share in their exploration of the rich and powerful creating a system to abuse and murder those they see as less than human.

Stream it on Cinemax here.

Midsommar - Amazon Prime

What It's About: A couple (Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor) on the brink of a breakup, are forced together after tragedy strikes. They then head to Sweden with friends as part of an attempt to observe a pagan cult.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: Midsommar gives you a sense of unease from the moment it starts to the conclusion. Get Out offers a different sense of unease, but both films slowly unravel new details to their audiences, making for a satisfying conclusion when everything is revealed.

Stream it on Amazon Prime here.

Hereditary - Amazon Prime

What It's About: The matriarch of the Graham family dies, and the family soon learns that a sinister entity curses their family. Buried secrets start to be revealed as the family must fight against their destined demise. Toni Collette, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: Hereditary and Get Out share the unsettling nature of family and traditions. Tradition acts as a villain in both these films. It haunts the Graham family, but it acts as a pardon for the Armitage family. It allows them to justify all their actions.

Stream it on Amazon Prime here.

Being John Malkovich-Starz

What It's About: Craig (John Cusack) discovers a secret door that leads to the mind of actor John Malkovich. Craig and others use Malkovich’s mind and body to act out some of their fantasies. Being John Malkovich also stars Cameron Diaz, Charlie Sheen, and Catherine Keener.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: Being John Malkovich is another really well done movie about taking control of someone’s body without their consent. Catherine Keener also appears in both films, so if you’re a fan of the actress, then you get a double dose of her trying to take over someone’s body.

Stream it on Starz here.

The Stepford Wives (1975) - Tubi, (2004) - Cinemax

What It's About: The Stepford Wives is based on a book by Ira Levin. It spun two feature films, one in 1975 starring Katharine Ross and another in 2004 starring Nicole Kidman. The basic premise (spoiler alert) is that men are replacing their wives with robots to make them more compliant to their wants and needs.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: The two versions of The Stepford Wives diverge in many ways, but they both keep the basic premise of the original book, and that’s what connects them with Get Out. The whole idea of stealing someone’s body or likeness to turn them into domestic slaves runs through all of these films.

Stream the 1975 version on Tubi here.

Stream the 2004 remake on Cinemax here.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)-Crackle

What It's About: Invasion Of the Body Snatchers has experienced many remakes throughout film history. It originated from Jack Finney’s science fiction novel The Body Snatchers. The 1956 version was the first film, and then came Body Snatchers (1993), followed by The Invasion (2007) and Assimilate (2019). The basic premise (spoiler alert) is that aliens begin taking over human bodies, turning them into emotionless pod people.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: Get Out and Invasion of the Body Snatchers both deal with the idea of body’s being invaded. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers it is by aliens, but in Get Out, it’s by older white people.

Stream it on Crackle here.

The Invitation - Netflix

What It's About: The Invitation follows a man (Logan Marshall-Green) as he attends a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband (Michiel Huisman). Things become increasingly more intense as the couple revisits demons of the past, and a sinister plan at work starts to become clear.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: The Invitation keeps you in the dark through most of the film. It slowly reveals what’s really going on, and Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and David (Michiel Huisman)’s true intentions for their guests. Get Out also slowly offers viewers pieces of the puzzle until the full picture comes together. They both play on the idea of letting tension build before the bomb goes off.

Stream it on Netflix here.

Escape Room- Starz

What It's About: A group of strangers are invited to participate in an exclusive escape room experience. They quickly discover that you either escape the room or you die. Each room becomes increasingly more dangerous and harder to solve. Escape Room starsTaylor Russell, Logan Miller, and Deborah Ann Woll.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: In both Escape Room and Get Out, the quicker you put together the pieces of the overall mystery, the better your odds of survival. Both main characters in these movies must use their wits, and rely on a bit of luck, to escape their dangerous situations.

Stream it on Starz here.

The Cabin In the Woods- Hulu

What It's About: A group of college kids decide to spend the weekend at a secluded cabin. They accidentally unleash a group of zombies heading to kill them. However, there are greater forces at work manipulating the situation to ensure a gory end for the students. Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anne Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, and Bradley Whitford star in The Cabin in the Woods.

Why Get Out Fans Will Like It: The Cabin in the Woods and Get Out might be the best horror comedies created in the last ten years. They both pay homage to the horror drama while also adding a bit of playful satirical elements as commentary on society and horror films.

Stream it on Hulu here.

The best horror films shock you, challenge your sense of reality, and make you take notice of societal monsters and terrors. Get Out and most of these films do one or all of these things. They’re all worth watching if you’re in the mood for a scare.

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Ari Aster’s Midsommar is a modern day masterpiece. Is it horror? A pitch black comedy? A break-up movie? All of the above? Florence Pugh’s riveting performance is a major reason why the film is so undefinable, and yet, so brilliant. And since it’s currently available on Amazon Prime, I thought it would be good to note some other films that are also available to rent or find on streaming services that fans of Midsommar will likely enjoy.

Now, some of these movies might not seem similar to Midsommar at all, while others are dead ringers as an inspiration. But all of them are worthwhile watches if you enjoyed Ari Aster’s sophomore effort. Here’s looking forward to whatever the exciting director has next in store for us.

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man is usually the go-to movie that everybody compares Midsommar to, and for good reason. Both are about pagan cults, and both are more unsettling than scary. But there are a lot of differences, too. The Wicker Man is about a Christian police officer who goes to Scotland to find a missing girl. What he ends up finding is a bunch of pagans prancing around a maypole (there’s a maypole scene in Midsommar, too). He also finds something much more sinister, with a giant wicker man being the film’s centerpiece.

Fans of Midsommar will dig The Wicker Man because of all the similarities (like the nihilistic ending with fire), but also all the differences, too, like the pacing and the lead character, who is actually disturbed by all the paganism because of his Christian beliefs. If anything else, it’s a nice companion piece to Midsommar that you should definitely check out.

Stream it on Netflix: Netflix

Stream it on Shudder: Shudder

Where to rent it online: N/A

Hereditary (2018)

Hereditary is actually very different from Midsommar, but it has the same director, so it has that going for it. Hereditary is about a woman who loses her mother only to find out that there’s more to her death than she ever imagined. And it ends up haunting her entire family. There is also some of the occult in this film, but other than that, the two movies are completely different. Even tonally. Most of Midsommar is in the daytime while Hereditary seems to get darker and darker throughout the entire movie until it’s almost pitch black by the end.

Fans of Midsommar should definitely check out Hereditary so they can follow this talented young director’s career. It’s interesting to see how different these two films are, but also similar in that the death of family members spurs both of the plots. Both are emotionally wrenching films, and both will have you thinking about them long after you’ve watched them.

Where to rent online: Amazon

The Witch (2015)

The Witch is a period piece about a family in New England that is kicked out of a Puritan colony and finds that their baby is missing. Witchcraft is suspected, and a billy goat named Black Phillip may have something to do with all the recent events.

Fans of Midsommar will love the slow burn of The Witch and the tension of not knowing what will happen next. Also, religion, in a sense, plays a large role in both stories, with the plot of The Witch almost entirely centered around it.

Stream it on Netflix: Netflix

Where to rent online: Amazon

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby is about a pregnant woman (Mia Farrow) who is convinced and possibly even paranoid (hint: She’s not) that a cult wants to use her baby for nefarious purposes. This is a Satanic cult, so it has a bit more in common with Hereditary than Midsommar, but Mia Farrow’s character is almost like a somnambulist in that the story has a dreamlike quality, courtesy of Roman Polanski’s skilled direction.

Fans of Midsommar will find interesting parallels between how Rosemary and Dani deal with their situations, and how the two films nosedive into darker territory by the end of each movie.

Stream it on Netflix: Netflix

Where to rent it online: Amazon

mother! (2017)

How to explain Darren Aronofsky’s mother!? Well, in a nutshell, it’s about a young wife with a poet husband whose life gets flipped upside down when people come to visit the home until it is entirely taken over by unwanted guests. There are several allusions to the Bible with many people even saying that the entire film is an allegory for the story of creation.

Fans of Midsommar will enjoy mother! for all the creative risks it takes. The story of a woman forced into a position she doesn't want is also very similar to Midsommar’s. The religious cultism (this time, Christianity) is felt throughout, as well as a woman’s place when it comes to a patriarchal society.

Where to rent it online: Amazon

Children of the Corn (1984)

Based on a Stephen King short story, Children of the Corn is about kids who murder adults in a small town in Nebraska for the good of the harvest because of an evil presence referred to as He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Terminator’s, Linda Hamilton, is one of the leads as an adult who gets stranded in the town. There are several sequels, but the first one’s the best one.

Fans of Midsommar will want to check out this famous film because it also deals with human sacrifice. Plus, it’s interesting to see fanaticism in children, which makes for a good counterpoint to the older pagan followers found in Midsommar.

Stream it on Hulu: Hulu

Where to rent it online: Amazon

The Village (2004)

Depending on who you ask, The Village is either M. Night Shyamalan’s last great film for a very long dry spell, or his first major misstep into mediocrity. Either way, The Village tells the story of a village (get it?) of people spooked by monsters in the forest. Bryce Dallas Howard places a blind woman, and Joaquin Phoenix plays a young man who's braver than most of the people in the village when it comes to the darkness in the surrounding woods.

Fans of Midsommar will likely enjoy the setting. Similar to The Witch, The Village is a period picture… sort of, and it also deals with the idea of fanaticism, and how it can drive people to madness, and possibly even murder.

Where to rent it online: Amazon

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Okay, now hear me out on this one. The Cabin in the Woods is a horror comedy starring Chris Hemsworth that plays with pretty much every horror convention in the book to create something wholly new and unique. It’s about a group of teenagers who head off to a cabin in the woods where… well, I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s a lot of foul play involved and you’ll never see that ending coming. Not in a million years.

Fans of Midsommar will enjoy The Cabin in the Woods because, like Midsommar, it doesn’t really get pigeon-holed into one specific genre of horror and actually becomes its own unique thing. Plus, it’s funny, and a lot of people, I don’t know why, find Midsommar hilarious. Especially that scene where all the women are commiserating with Dani when she finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her. So don’t tell me Midsommar doesn’t have a sense of humor. It certainly does.

Stream it on Hulu: Hulu

Where to rent it online: Amazon

Suspiria (2018)

Honestly, I wanted to direct you to the 1977 original Suspiria, but would you believe that it’s not streaming or available to rent anywhere? That’s okay, since the remake is enough like the original (minus the awesome, surreal colors) that you can just watch this one instead. Like the original, it’s about an American dancer who goes to train in Berlin (in the original, it was Germany) only to find that the dance troupe is led by witches! Tilda Swinton takes on three roles, one of them being an old man.

Fans of Midsommar will love how Suspiria delves deeply into madness. The original does a better job of it, but the remake also has its qualities of what’s real, and what’s not real, and how the female protagonist (Dakota Fanning in this one) copes with it all. Plus, witches!

Stream it on Amazon: Amazon

I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

Like Suspiria, I wanted to send you to the original, 1978 movie, but it’s also not available to stream or rent anywhere. Unfortunately, the remake is not as good as the original, but it has a similar story. It’s about a woman who is brutally raped and then exacts her revenge against her rapists and murders them in violent ways.

Now, I’m actually not sure if fans of Midsommar will enjoy I Spit on Your Grave since it’s a super divisive movie, and some might be too put off with the rape aspect to find any pleasure in the film’s later revenge aspect. But in a lot of ways, Midsommar is a revenge picture, though of a much tamer sort (Dani’s boyfriend cheats on her and isn’t always there for her when she needs him, but he doesn’t viciously rape her). Still, if you like the aspect of Dani coming out on top in the end, you might (might, I say!) like I Spit on Your Grave.

Stream it on Amazon: Amazon

Midsommar, as I said up top, is a modern classic and one that will likely inspire other movies in years to come. Hopefully this list, if anything, will give you even more appreciation for what Midsommar has to offer.

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This was supposed to be the weekend, folks. After literal years of delays, this was supposed to be the weekend when we finally got to see Josh Boone’s The New Mutants. The Fox/Disney deal was done, and the latter studio committed to releasing the final X-Men franchise feature on the big screen. But then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. With movie theaters all around the world shut down, the film has been postponed yet again, and once again we are finding ourselves needing to wait to see mutant-led horror flick. It’s a real disappointment, but the good news is that there are many of-a-kind titles that you can check out on various streaming services.

In the weeks since the start of the pandemic, we’ve been writing about movie alternatives that audiences can check out in lieu of what was supposed to be arriving in theaters, and now it’s The New Mutants’ turn. Keeping in mind everything from theme, to genre, to characters, to cast, here are 10 titles to stream or rent online this weekend:

The Cabin In The Woods (2012)

It’s easy to get pessimistic about a movie that has been delayed many times. After all, if a title were actually really good, a studio would presumably want to show it to people as early as possible, right? It’s for this reason that there are a number of people who have given up hope that The New Mutants will be a quality cinematic experience – but for those still keeping the faith I suggest watching Drew Goddard’s The Cabin In The Woods for a burst of optimism. This is another title that was forced to sit on the shelf for years, but in the time since it came out it’s been heralded as a modern classic. It’s basically a best case scenario for the X-Men title.

Where To Stream: Amazon Prime

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

Brightburn (2019)

Given that blockbuster comic book movies are generally trying to be four quadrant releases that appeal to everybody, superhero storytelling on the big screen hasn’t engaged much with the horror genre. It makes The New Mutants kind of a rare beast, but those curious about that aspect of the release should do themselves a favor and check out David Yarovesky’s Brightburn. The film is essentially scary take on the Superman mythos, positing the question of what would happen if an alien child was sent to Earth and became a force for evil instead of good.

Where To Stream: Starz

Where To Rent Online: N/A

X-Men (2000)

The X-Men franchise has changed a whole hell of a lot since it was first born, but it’s still a family of films to which The New Mutants belongs – so why not celebrate by going back to the title that started it all? Bryan Singer’s X-Men is arguably the movie that completely changed the world of modern comic book movies, and while it is dated in a few aspects, there are plenty of other ways in which it’s not. It’s a cool blockbuster that definitely understands the important themes that were explored in the comics for decades before it. Plus, this year also happens to be its 20th anniversary, so there are actually two good reasons to revisit it (just do your best to ignore how skinny Hugh Jackman is, and his silly wig).

Where To Stream: HBO GO

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

Before I Wake (2016)

In The New Mutants, one of the main characters is Danielle Moonstar, who is a mutant with a powerful psionic ability. In a sense, she is able to make imagination a reality, as she can manifest images from the minds of herself and others. Mike Flanagan’s Before I Wake operates with a similar concept, centering on a child named Cody (Jacob Tremblay) whose dreams become real while he sleeps. At first it delights his new adopted parents (Kate Bosworth, Tom Jane), but that’s before they experience what it’s like when Cody has a nightmare. It’s a tremendously well-made and spooky vision from one of the industry’s best working horror filmmakers.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Where To Rent Online: N/A

Insidious (2010)

James Wan’s Insidious is another title that plays around with the idea of a young person tapping into a special ability that accidentally winds up creating a fair amount of havoc – not dissimilar to the craziness that can ensue when the main characters in The New Mutants lose control of their individual special gifts. In the case of the 2010 horror release, it’s ultimately a boy who has the innate ability to tap into The Further, a plane of existence inhabited by tortured souls, and doing so accidentally results in a terrible evil using him as a conduit.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

Dog Soldiers (2002)

It’s always exciting to see a new werewolf character up on the big screen, and it’s an element of The New Mutants that we are most anticipating, with Maisie Williams's Rahne Sinclair a.k.a. Wolfsbane possessing the ability to transform into a full wolf, or a human/wolf hybrid. Exactly how the Josh Boone movie will pull off that aspect of the film is still being kept a mystery thanks to the release delay, but for now let that part of your hunger for the movie be satiated by Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers, which is an innovative take on the classic mythos that finds a team of military types hunted down by a monster while on a training mission and forced to seek shelter at a farmhouse.

Where To Stream: Amazon Prime

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

The Monster Squad (1987)

The previously-released film that The New Mutants arguably looks most like is A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, with kids discovering individual dream powers that allow them to fight back against Freddy Krueger, but since that movie isn’t streaming Fred Dekker’s Monster Squad serves well as a substitute. The kids in the ‘80s adventure don’t have any special abilities to speak of beyond extensive horror knowledge, but the spirit is still essentially the same with the team coming together to fight supernatural evil (namely the catalog of Universal Monsters), and it’s awesome through and through. Plus, once you finish watching it you can join me on Team Can Somebody Please Turn This Into The Franchise It Deserves To Be?

Where To Stream: Amazon Prime

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

The Witch (2014)

While she has definitely branched out into other genres (the recent Emma being a perfect example), Anya Taylor-Joy has spent a good amount of time in her young career establishing herself as a Scream Queen. The New Mutants, in which she plays Illyana Rasputin a.k.a. Magik, is one of many horror titles that stand out on her resume, with Split and Morgan also standing out. The film that first really got her on the map, however, was actually her feature debut, Robert Eggers’ The Witch, and if you haven’t seen it already, now is the perfect time. And if you have already seen it, give it another watch, as it’s a fantastically layered movie that is simply just freaky to live in for 92 minutes.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

The Evil Dead (1981)

As noted via voice over in the first New Mutants trailer, the comic book movie seems to have a lot in common with a haunted house story, with the main cast of characters haunted by their pasts seemingly coming to life. Add in the isolation that comes with being in a remote location (specifically an abandoned hospital), and we have a brewed up excuse to suggest you all watch Sam Raimi’s classic The Evil Dead. Admittedly there’s never a bad time to watch this one, but it definitely feels apropos in connection to the new movie about a group coming together to try and survive an attack from a supernatural force.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

Session 9 (2001)

From the footage we’ve seen from the movie, The New Mutants seems like it gets a lot of its spookiness from the atmosphere provided by the former asylum that has been converted into a secret facility for teens with out-of-control superpowers. It's with that element of the production in mind that we recommend checking out Brad Anderson's Session 9 – another film set in an abandoned mental hospital. The plot follows an asbestos cleaning crew into the location and finds them uncovering the place’s horrible past and the terrible experiences of the patients who lived within it. It’s definitely one of the more underrated-yet-brilliant examples of 21st century horror, and if you’ve never watched it before now is a perfect opportunity.

Where To Stream: Shudder

Where To Rent Online: Amazon

With The New Mutants not in theaters, what are you watching this weekend? Are you intrigued by one of the entries on our list, or will you be hunting for something else? Answer our poll below, and hit the comments section with other options for movie-goers!

This poll is no longer available.

Rian Johnson made murder fun again with his own version of the classic whodunnit Knives Out. In fact, the hilarious Academy Award-nominated crowdpleaser, about dysfunctional family put under suspicion after their novelist patriarch’s (Christopher Plummer) mysterious death, was so successful that the writer/director is planning a follow-up with Daniel Craig set to return as renowned private investigator Benoit Blanc.

However, at the moment, Knives Out 2 does not have a set release date, let alone an official title, and in today’s fast-paced world, fans can only wait so long to get their fix of movies rich in laughs as well as suspense. Fortunately, there is a wide variety of films spanning decades that indulge in that irresistibly devilish crossbreed of genres that you can access with the push of a button.

If Knives Out left you puzzled, shaking, in stitches, or all three and wanting more, these additional comedic thrillers should help fill that void. I narrowed the best of the bunch available to stream down to 10.

Clue (Crackle)

The Plot: Based on the classic board game of the same name, six eccentric socialites are invited to dinner it a luxurious mansion. When the wealthy party host, Mr. Boddy, suddenly turns up dead and it is clear the murderer is someone in the house, the six guests, the maid, and the butler (an always dazzling Tim Curry) must piece together the puzzling mystery of who among them is the culprit.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: Clearly Knives Out takes a heavy amount of inspiration from the works of Agatha Christie. Yet, those comparatively earnest suspense novels do not match the playful tone of Rian Johnson’s comedic caper nearly as well as this film. From a story co-developed by John Landis, Jonathan Lynn’s Clue is one of the most beloved whodunnits that keeps you laughing as much as it keeps your guessing until the end which, in 1985, would vary by where your theater was located.

Where To Stream: Crackle

The Brothers Bloom (YouTube, Tubi, Vudu)

The Plot: Brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) have mastered the art of the con, having practiced swindling since childhood. Bloom wishes for a life beyond his criminal past, but not without Stephen nudging him to reunite to relive the glory days. When they select quirky heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz) as their target, it quickly becomes apparent that the last job for the Brothers Bloom may be their messiest.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: Rian Johnson has a reputation for creating high-drama suspense thrillers, such as the high school-set noir Brick, the aggressively original time travel tale Looper, and his devastating Breaking Bad episodes. 2008’s The Brothers Bloom, only his second feature-length effort as writer and director, is his departure from that tone in attempt to create a clever, screwball comedy that he would perfect in Knives Out.

Where To Stream: YouTube, Tubi, or Vudu.

A Simple Favor (Hulu)

The Plot: “Plain Jane” single mother and parenting vlogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) envisions her life changing for the better when she befriends the elegant, but brutally honest, Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), who inspires her to break out of her comfort zone. When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie takes advantage of her newfound confidence to investigate the disappearance, learning more about her friend than she bargained for.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: Paul Feig, director of such comedies as Bridesmaids and Last Christmas, goes slightly against type with this 2018 adaptation of Darcey Bell’s mystery novel that is less of a comedy with a few elements of a crime thriller, a la The Heat or Spy (also by Feig), and more of a crime thriller with a few elements of a comedy. Like Knives Out, A Simple Favor succeeds at being a fun, stylized, and sexy guessing game, but it may be even the darker of the two. Brace yourself for some real hair-raising revelations throughout.

Where To Stream: Hulu

Snatch (Crackle)

The Plot: A stolen diamond has gone missing and anyone who has come within ear shot of the madness surrounding this priceless artifact wants to get their hands on it. Guy Ritchie’s 2000 follow-up to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a Pulp Fiction-style quasi-anthology thriller that chronicles a brainteasing treasure hunt through the streets of London from a unusual variety of various viewpoints that might require subtitles here and there.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: Snatch is the kind of film Rian Johnson would make if he made British crime thrillers. For one, it’s got a star-studded ensemble cast, including Brad Pitt as an incomprehensible, but rambunctious, gypsy, Benicio del Toro as a bumbling jewel thief, and Jason Statham as an innocent boxing promoter who someone gets caught up in the mess, just to name a few). On top of that, every moment of this instant classic is pure zaniness wrapped up in a clever plot straight out of a Michael Mann film that only gets funnier every time you watch it.

Where To Stream: Crackle

Murder Mystery (Netflix)

The Plot: After an unexpected invitation onto a billionaire’s yacht, New York cop Nick Spitz (Adam Sandler) and his wife, Audrey (Jennifer Aniston), seem to be having the European vacation of their dreams, until they become the prime suspects of a murder on board. Now on the run from the law, Nick must use his bumbling detective skills and Audrey her mystery novel expertise to figure out who has framed them and clear their names.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: The title of this 2019 Netflix original says it all. From Danny Boon’s performance as a clear counterpart to Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot (also heavily influential of Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in Knives Out), the colorful cast of suspicious, high-class characters, and Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s break-neck race through Europe to prove their innocence, Murder Mystery hits the spot for fans of comedic suspense thrillers.

Where To Stream: Netflix

The Cabin In The Woods (Hulu, Amazon Prime)

The Plot: Five college students (including a young Chris Hemsworth) take a trip to a remote woodland cabin for a fun weekend getaway. If your guess of what happens next in this PG-13, 2011 release is “Terrible things begin to happen,” well, of course that is what happens, but for reasons that are unlike any “cabin in the woods” flick you have ever seen.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: In the vein of the uniquely meta 1996 slasher Scream, director Drew Goddard and his co-writer Joss Whedon go for a more mysterious, wholly fascinating, and unabashedly insane deconstruction of the horror genre. What Knives Out did for the whodunnit by gleefully pulling the rug from under its audience, The Cabin in the Woods does the same for the teen thriller.

Where To Stream: Hulu or Amazon Prime

The ‘Burbs (Sling)

The Plot: All family man Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) wants to do is enjoy a peaceful staycation, but his friends will not stop bothering him with chilling theories about the never-seen family living in the creepy house next door. Yet, the more he tries to ignore it, the more he begins to suspect that his neighbors could mean danger for suburbia.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: This 1989 cult classic is a highlight of Tom Hanks’ early years as a comic superstar, but also works as a fun mystery thriller for how well it taunts its audience by never fully letting on who the crazy next door neighbor really is. Sporting a tone that fuses the suspenseful imagination of Rod Serling with the cartoonish lunacy of Steve Martin, The ‘Burbs is one of director Joe Dante’s (Gremlins, Innerspace) most beloved dark comedies.

Where To Stream: Sling

Silver Streak (Sling)

The Plot: Average, somewhat clumsy LA book editor George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) finds unexpected romance with the beautiful Hilly (Jill Clayburgh) during a trip to Chicago on the titular train. His stroke of luck soon runs out after he witnesses a murder onboard and the perpetrators throw him off the side of the tracks. With the help of slick car thief, Grover (Richard Pryor), George must find a way back onto the Silver Streak to save his new love from danger.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: Silver Streak is the first film to pair Gene Wilder with Richard Pryor in a string of comic capers, as well as the most widely acclaimed of the bunch. The Oscar-nominated 1976 hit boasts one of the best performances from the late iconic duo, who make an otherwise adventurous, high-energy action thriller a relentlessly hilarious romp that is fun for all ages.

Where To Stream: Sling

In Bruges (Max Go)

The Plot: After a job goes horribly wrong, Irish hitmen Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brenan Gleeson) are instructed by their ill-mannered boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), to hide out in the quaint Belgian town of Bruges. Ken struggles to make light of their situation by treating it like a vacation, but his younger partner refuses to see the bright side as the reason behind his abhorrence and hopeless guilt slowly becomes more clear.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: It might come as no surprise that this mightily dark comedy, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, is the feature-length of playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh, known for testing the limits of tragedy’s comedic appeal with 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Knives Out looks like family matinee in comparison to In Bruges, yet both are rich in shocking twists, a dynamite cast, and a moving, character driven-plot that bends the rules of where the audience’s sympathies should normally lie.

Where To Stream: Max Go

Mystery Team (Hulu)

The Plot: Jason (Donald Glover), Duncan (D.C. Piersen), and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes) were their neighborhood’s top detectives, solving a slew of local “crimes” in their childhood. In adulthood, they prove to be not as successful as the trio attempt to crack a case that forces them realize that solving grown-up crimes takes some growing up first.

Why Fans Of Knives Out Would Like It: Mystery Team, which the immature sleuths call themselves, is the first feature-length writing, producing, and starring credit of Donald Glover (whose Atlanta co-star Lakeith Stanfield plays Lt. Elliott in Knives Out), and a counterpart of the internet comedy troupe through which he first gained notoriety, Derrick Comedy. While Rian Johnson’s whodunnit takes a, relatively, more earnest approach to its humorous elements, if you like to your crime thrillers served dark with a healthy side of engrossing absurdity, this lesser-known 2009 cult film just might be destined to become your new favorite mystery.

Where To Stream: Hulu

Does this list of movie suggestions similar to Knives Out meet your fancy? Let us know in the comments and, in the meantime, be sure to check back for news related to Rian Johnson’s mystery hit and other bloody funny crime thrillers here on CinemaBlend.

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It is an ongoing challenge for moviegoers to not see Thor whenever they see Chris Hemsworth, and understandably so. However, while you are certain to find a few (or more) Marvel movies on this list, it is important to remember that the 36-year-old Australian has talent that ranges past playing the God of Thunder.

In fact, Chris Hemsworth often has a reputation for being the strongest element of some of the projects he has participated in. His role in Snow White and the Hunstman earned him a sequel in which he was the main focus, his chemistry with co-star Tessa Thompson made Men In Black: International watchable at times, and he stole the show from the central female cast of of Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters reboot.

Of course, this is not a list of movies that Chris Hemsworth made better. These are our picks for the best movies starring Chris Hemsworth...

10. Vacation (2015)

You would never guess from the first moment you laid eyes on him that Chris Hemsworth was any more than a jacked pretty boy who who can recite dialogue with an appropriate charm. It would take this soft reboot/sequel of the classic 1983 comedy starring Chevy Chase that became a surprise franchise vehicle to prove to people that the actor could actually be funny.

While taking his family on a road trip to Wally World, just like his dad did, grown-up Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) makes a stop to visit his sister Audrey (Leslie Mann), where she lives with her wealthy entrepreneur husband Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth), who makes his in-laws uncomfortable by showing off his… belongings. The 2015 Vacation is not the best of the series following the Griswold’s disastrous adventures, but still brings the laughs, especially with Hemsworth onscreen.

Stream it here.

9. Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

It is films like The Avengers and The Cabin in the Woods that prove Chris Hemsworth often shines the brightest when part of an ensemble, and not just because he happens to be among the tallest and best-looking of the bunch, admittedly. There is not a lot that I want to give away about how he stands out in Bad Time at the El Royale, but I can promise you that his character, Billy Lee, is very much against type.

In writer and director Drew Goddard’s 1969-set ode to Agatha Christie whodunnits, several strangers check into the understaffed, overly vacant titular Lake Tahoe hotel, at which it appears that not everyone is there is particularly innocent. With an all-star cast also featuring Jeff Bridges, Dakota Johnson, Cynthia Erivo, and more, Bad Times at the El Royale is a Hitchcockian gem that boldly indulges in getting down and dirty with clever twists, shocking violence, and Chris Hemsworth like you have never seen him before.

Stream it here.

8. Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)

Speaking of Chris Hemsworth in ensemble pieces, writer and director Joss Whedon’s sequel to 2012’s The Avengers was the actor’s second collaboration with the fellow heroes in the MCU, his fourth appearance as Thor, and also his second appearance in a good MCU movie. However, among the MCU crossover event films, Avengers: Age of Ultron is rarely considered to be a favorite.

As much as I enjoy the 2015 blockbuster in which Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo) AI called Ultron (James Spader), instead of being the “suit of armor around the world” they hoped, turns about to be their greatest threat yet, I will admit that, with all of its dark twists and overcrowded subplots, it can prove to be an exhausting experience. Nonetheless, it is an Avengers movie, which is always a treat no matter what happens, and it kicks off the quest that leads Thor to Ragnarok… but more on that later.

Stream it here.

7. Star Trek (2009)

With as high on the A-list as Chris Hemsworth is today, it sounds surprising that his film career has a beginning similar to Kevin Costner’s debut in The Big Chill as the deceased Alex in a flashback that was edited out of the final cut. The biggest difference between that and Hemsworth’s role in Star Trek is that he still got to be in the movie, just not for very long.

The actor did, in fact, make his big screen debut after getting his start on Australian television in J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the iconic science fiction series as George Kirk, an ill-fated Star Fleet officer and father to future Enterprise captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). Despite the fact that Chris Hemsworth’s initial appearance does not make it past the opening credits of Star Trek, his character became important to Captain Kirk’s arc throughout the franchise, which also saw a reprisal in 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness.

Stream it here.

6. The Avengers (2012)

While the aforementioned Avengers: Age of Ultron was well-done, but overwhelming at times, its predecessor was an absolute treat. After giving the initial six main heroes of the MCU their own proper introductions in previous films, the Avengers are brought together brought together in the epic 2012 crossover event in which they are tasked by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to help defeat Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s adoptive brother.

The awkward family reunion serves as the endearing core of Joss Whedon’s expertly constructed and relentlessly fun team-up film that would set the tone for what what was to come from future chapters in the MCU. The Avengers achieved the impossible task of putting multiple superheroes into one movie without fail a reality that comic book fans and casual moviegoers alike are proud of.

Stream it here.

5. Rush (2013)

It is a shame that English Formula One legend James Hunt died long before he could see the height of his racing career unfold onscreen in the 2013 biopic Rush. He probably would have been especially proud to see none other than Chris Hemsworth playing him.

Director Ron Howard’s Golden Globe-nominated historical drama mainly chronicles the bitter rivalry between playboy James Hunt and Australian racer Niki Lauda (future MCU antagonist Daniel Bruhl), which was the talk of the Formula One circuit in the mid-1970s. Rush lives up to its name as, not only a biopic about two of Formula One racing’s boldest competitors, but a thrilling exploit of the sport’s make-or-break risk, leaving racers with no room for mistakes.

Stream it here.

4. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Until the release of another recent superhero crossover film that I will mention later, Avengers: Infinity War was the biggest thing to happen to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not only did Anthony and Joe Russo's cultural juggernaut serve as a celebration of 10 years of amazing comic book movie storytelling, but also fully introduced one of cinema’s greatest villains in recent years, Thanos (Josh Brolin).

Thor’s quest in Avengers: Infinity War, from the hopeless sole survivor of the Mad Titan’s Asgardian slaughter to a thunderous redemption with the debut of Stormbreaker, only to be brought down again by Thanos’ reminder that he “should have aimed for the head,” is just one of the many, many, MANY character-driven storylines that are handled masterfully. The “impossible” task that Joss Whedon faced with just six characters in 2012’s The Avengers is nothing compared to what the Russo Brothers did in this film with almost every character previously introduced in the MCU up to that point. And the story had only just begun…

Stream it here.

3. The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

Before teaming up with director Drew Goddard on Bad Times at the El Royale and Joss Whedon for the first two Avengers movies, a young Chris Hemsworth starred in that duo’s brilliant deconstruction of the horror genre. While Scream, the 1996 slasher revival from director Wes Craven, followed a group of characters with a meta awareness of their role in a horror film, 2011’s The Cabin in the Woods had a similar, but far more insane way to one-up that concept.

This is yet another film of Chris Hemsworth’s filmography that I would recommend you avoid spoilers before seeing if you have not already, but I will say that the actor plays one of five college students who encounter a series of disturbing events at a remote cabin, and the reason for their trouble is a brilliant twist that you would never see coming. For all of the remarkably clever and witty indictments on the horror genre we have blessed with over the years, The Cabin in the Woods is in a league of its own.

Stream it here.

2. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Having grown tired of the character that made him a household name, Chris Hemsworth was determined to make his return to the solo Thor franchise in 2017 something special. So, with a new haircut, abandoning of the famous Mjolnir, and guidance from New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi (then known best for vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows) Thor reemerged as one of the MCU’s most simultaneously badass and hilarious characters in a movie that the God of Thunder could be proud of.

After his long lost sister Hela (Cate Blanchett) banishes him with intent to take over Asgard, Thor must team up with Loki, former Asgardian warrior Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and his old “friend from work” Bruce Banner to escape a barbaric planet and save his home as the apocalyptic event prophesied as Ragnarok is imminent. Featuring a brilliantly funny performance by Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster, Thor: Ragnarok is a refreshing turning point for Chris Hemsworth’s role in the MCU that would pave the way for his character’s greatest challenge yet.

Stream it here.

1. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

As I said earlier, Avengers: Infinity War was only the beginning of a much larger story chronicling our Marvel heroes’ biblical quarrel with Thanos. The way the Russo Brothers completed that story the following year in Avengers: Endgame turned out to be one of the most exciting, emotionally devastating, and unforgettably well-told stories that raised the bar for comic book movies higher than we imagined.

Years after Thanos’ victory, the Avengers are given a chance to get the band back together, make things right, and redeem themselves from their dismal existence in one final quest to avenge those they have lost, and no one is in need of a boost more than Thor. While the depiction of Chris Hemsworth’s character as overweight and suffering from depression in Avengers: Endgame met some controversy as some felt it was just played for laughs, I would argue that Thor’s quest for redemption after failing to stop Thanos is one of the strongest and most genuine elements of the story and a shining example of the actor’s ability to give even a god-like character a relatable sense of humanity.

Stream it here.

Do you agree with my ranking of Chris Hemsworth’s best films, or did I leave something out that makes you want to take an Asgardian hammer to it? Let us know in the comments and be sure to check back for more news about the Thor actor here on CinemaBlend.

I am the kind of movie fan who loves to see filmmakers attempt to combine two different genres that, in theory, should not blend smoothly but result in one exciting and uproarious concoction. That being said, I love horror-comedy movies and would even say that some of the best horror movies of all time have successfully managed to be as frightening as they are funny. See for yourself by looking at my recommendations for some of the best horror-comedy movies ever, along with a tip on how to watch them.

Dead Alive (1992)

Director: Peter Jackson

Starring: Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver

What it’s about: A bite from a Sumatran rat-monkey unleashes a virus that turns most of a New Zealand town into ravenous, flesh-eating monsters.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Before he was best known as the Oscar-winning director of the Lord of the Rings movies, Peter Jackson bread and butter was uproarious gorefests like Dead Alive, which is also known as Braindead.

How to watch Dead Alive

• Buy Dead Alive on Blu-ray on Amazon

Ghostbusters (1984)

Director: Ivan Reitman

Starring: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson

What it’s about: A group of New Yorkers work together to eliminate bizarre paranormal encounters throughout the city.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Also written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis and one of Ivan Reitman’s best movies, the original Ghostbusters is one of the most universally beloved examples of fusing horrifying story elements with hilarious hijinks.

How to watch Ghostbusters

• Stream Ghostbusters on Max
• Rent or buy Ghostbusters on Amazon
• Buy Ghostbusters on Blu-ray on Amazon

The Menu (2022)

Director: Mark Mylod

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult

What it’s about: Wealthy food enthusiasts discover that a special dining event curated by a prestigious chef is not quite the delicious experience they were hoping for.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Anya Taylor-Joy (arguably the top Scream Queen of her time) proves that she possesses a striking wit as the central hero of The Menu – a pitch-black satire of elitist culinary culture with some real bite.

How to watch The Menu

• Stream The Menu on Netflix
• Rent or buy The Menu on Amazon
• Buy The Menu on Blu-ray on Amazon

Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)

Director: Stephen Chiodo

Starring: Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder

What it’s about: A young couple struggles to protect their town from an invasion of grotesque aliens disguised as clowns.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Oddly enough, the antagonists from one of the truly funniest examples of the typically earnest creepy clown movie genre, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, are not actual harlequins but evil extraterrestrials who adopted a thematic aesthetic inspired by circus culture, for whatever reason.

How to watch Killer Klowns from Outer Space

• Stream Killer Klowns from Outer Space on MGM+
• Stream Killer Klowns from Outer Space on Tubi
• Rent or buy Killer Klowns from Outer Space on Amazon
• Buy Killer Klowns from Outer Space on Blu-ray on Amazon

Little Shop Of Horrors (1986)

Director: Frank Oz

Starring: Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene

What it’s about: A meek floral shop employee discovers that an unusual plant he recently purchased does not feed on water or sunlight, but human beings.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Based on a popular stage show inspired by a Roger Korman classic, Little Shop of Horrors is also one of the best horror-comedy musical movies for its toe-tapping numbers and boasts one of the best ‘80s movie villains: the “mean, green” Audrey II.

How to watch Little Shop of Horrors

• Rent or buy Little Shop of Horrors on Amazon
• Buy Little Shop of Horrors on Blu-ray on Amazon

Happy Death Day (2017)

Director: Christopher Landon

Starring: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard

What it’s about: A conceited college student finds herself reliving the same day over and over, allowing her the chance to identify the masked murderer who keeps killing her.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: The horror genre has plenty of great time-loop movies, but none are as funny as the wonderfully silly slasher, Happy Death Day.

How to watch Happy Death Day

• Rent or buy Happy Death Day on Amazon
• Buy Happy Death Day on Blu-ray on Amazon

The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)

Director: Dan O’Bannon

Starring: Thom Matthews, James Karen

What it’s about: A pair of medical supply warehouse employees accidentally release a strange gas that causes the dead to rise.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: The origin of zombies being hungry for brains can be traced back to The Return of the Living Dead, which is arguably the better 1985 zombie movie over Day of the Dead but undeniably the more magnificently ridiculous.

How to watch The Return of the Living Dead

• Stream The Return of the Living Dead on MGM+
• Stream The Return of the Living Dead on Tubi
• Rent or buy The Return of the Living Dead on Amazon
• Buy The Return of the Living Dead on Blu-ray on Amazon

Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil (2010)

Director: Eli Craig

Starring: Alan Tudyk, Tyler Labine

What it’s about: Disaster strikes when a couple of hillbillies just trying to enjoy a vacation in the mountains are mistaken for slashers by a group of frightened college students.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: The classic slasher movie trope of shady country folk who are clearly psychopathic, possibly cannibalistic murderers is turned on its head in a hilarious and graphic fashion in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.

How to watch Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

• Stream Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Amazon Prime
• Stream Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Peacock
• Stream Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Tubi
• Buy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Blu-ray on Amazon

Ready Or Not (2019)

Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Starring: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody

What it’s about: A newlywed agrees to her wealthy in-laws’ seemingly innocent game of hide-and-seek that turns out to be a deadly, all-night hunt in which she is the sole target.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Radio Silence crafts Ready or Not into an intense, expertly paced cat-and-mouse game that is a little bit Die Hard, a little bit Rosemary’s Baby, and thoroughly batshit crazy, and secured Weaving as one of the top Scream Queens of her time and any time.

How to watch Ready or Not

• Rent or buy Ready or Not on Amazon
• Buy Ready or Not on Blu-ray on Amazon

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon (2006)

Director: Scott Glosserman

Starring: Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethals

What it’s about: A documentary crew follows an aspiring masked killer as he prepares to embark on his first murder spree.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Set in the same universe as classic slasher movies like Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a mockumentary that cleverly makes light of the genre’s cliches by presenting them in a hilariously and refreshingly informal way.

How to watch Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

• Stream Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon on AMC+
• Rent or buy Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon on Amazon
• Buy Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon on Blu-ray on Amazon

Zombieland (2009)

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

What it’s about: A mismatched group of travelers struggles to tolerate the undead flesh eaters dominating the earth, as well as each other.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Despite its graphic imagery and dark themes, Zombieland is a light, breezy road trip movie with a killer celebrity cameo that puts a bright, blood-stained smile on your face.

How to watch Zombieland

• Rent or buy Zombieland on Amazon
• Buy Zombieland on Blu-ray on Amazon

Slither (2006)

Director: James Gunn

Starring: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks

What it’s about: After a small town becomes overrun by large parasitic worms from another planet, a police officer races to prevent the plague from transforming more townsfolk into revolting mutant creatures.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Slither is a body horror movie of the grossest kind and a horror-comedy of the most crass kind but James Gunn (years before Guardians of the Galaxy) crafts it into something uniquely endearing.

How to watch Slither

• Rent or buy Slither on Amazon
• Buy Slither on Blu-ray on Amazon

Gremlins (1984)

Director: Joe Dante

Starring: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates

What it’s about: When Billy Peltzer receives an unusual furry creature called a Mogwai from his father as a Christmas gift, he soon learns that, lurking beneath its cuddly exterior, is a vicious, green monster that takes the ignorance of a few important rules to unleash.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: The frightening nature of the titular creatures in Gremlins is not to be underestimated, yet they often indulge in some wacky, cartoonish mischief that makes the holiday horror movie an undisputed classic.

How to watch Gremlins

• Rent or buy Gremlins on Amazon
• Buy Gremlins on Blu-ray on Amazon

The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

Director: Drew Goddard

Starring: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams

What it’s about: Five young friends fall prey to horrifying circumstances at a remote cabin where nothing is truly as it seems.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: The less you know about The Cabin in the Woods and its wild ending, the better but I will, at least, mention that it is one of the most dizzyingly clever and unabashedly witty deconstructions of the horror genre yet.

How to watch The Cabin in the Woods

• Stream The Cabin in the Woods on Amazon Prime for free
• Buy The Cabin in the Woods on Blu-ray on Amazon

What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

Director: Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement

Starring: Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement, Jonathan Brugh

What it’s about: A film crew documents the daily activities of three centuries-old bloodsuckers while living together in modern-day New Zealand.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: What makes What We Do in the Shadows one of the funniest movies about classic monsters is its surprisingly relatable and convincingly executed tale of friendship that takes great pleasure in its respectful mocking of traditional vampire lore.

How to watch What We Do in the Shadows

• Rent or buy What We Do in the Shadows on Amazon
• Buy What We Do in the Shadows on Blu-ray on Amazon

Trick ‘R Treat (2007)

Director: Michael Dougherty

Starring: Quinn Lord, Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin

What it’s about: Sam (a lone trick-r-treater who is more than meets the eye) is the connective tissue for a collection of stories all taking place on one particularly unusual Halloween night.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: In addition to being one of the best anthology horror movies, the enduring cult favorite, Trick ‘r Treat, makes a great case for being the ultimate Halloween movie, as a wonderfully wacky, often chilling, and clearly proud celebration of the holiday.

How to watch Trick ‘r Treat

• Rent or buy Trick ‘r Treat on Amazon
• Buy Trick ‘r Treat on Blu-ray on Amazon

Beetlejuice (1988)

Director: Tim Burton

Starring: Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Michael Keaton

What it’s about: A recently deceased couple runs into trouble after enlisting a crude, revolting bio-exorcist to rid their house of its pretentious current inhabitants.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Tim Burton’s signature macabre whimsy, fused with Michael Keaton’s laugh-a-minute, high-energy wit make Beetlejuice a time of your afterlife film that was later adapted into a Tony-nominated Broadway musical and spawned a long-awaited follow-up called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

How to watch Beetlejuice

• Rent or buy Beetlejuice on Amazon
• Buy Beetlejuice on Blu-ray on Amazon

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

Director: John Landis

Starring: David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter

What it’s about: While visiting the United Kingdom, American college students David and Jack are attacked by an animal that kills Jack but turns David into a half-man, half-wolf creature.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: While the humor that made John Landis a household name is present, what really makes An American Werewolf in London a one of the best werewolf movies is its horrific body horror imagery, thanks to Rick Baker’s Academy Award-winning makeup effects.

How to watch An American Werewolf in London

• Stream An American Werewolf in London on Tubi
• Rent An American Werewolf in London on Amazon
• Buy An American Werewolf in London on Blu-ray on Amazon

Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

Director: Edgar Wright

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield

What it’s about: An everyman struggles to protect his friends and family after mindless flesh-eaters overrun London.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: Instead of spoofing the zombie genre, Shaun of the Dead honors George A. Romero’s formula and splices it with sitcom conventions that result in, surprisingly, one of the most realistic zombie movies ever made.

How to watch Shaun of the Dead

• Rent or buy Shaun of the Dead on Amazon
• Buy Shaun of the Dead on Blu-ray on Amazon

Evil Dead II (1987)

Director: Sam Raimi

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry

What it’s about: A man stranded at a remote cabin in the woods is forced to contend with malevolent and mischievous spiritual forces after accidentally unleashing them with a mysterious book.

Why it is one of the best horror-comedy movies: The second installment of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies is a near-perfect marriage of gross-out gore with classic slapstick unlike anything the subgenre had seen before.

How to watch Evil Dead II

• Stream Evil Dead II on Amazon Prime
• Buy Evil Dead II on Blu-ray on Amazon

I believe that it can be healthy for us to be able to find the humor in everything, sometimes even the most grisly topics. That being said, there is no better way for us to exercise that concept than by indulging in a fun horror-comedy movie like the favorites above.

The following story contains massive spoilers about the ENDING of The Cabin in the Woods. Stop reading now if you haven't yet seen the movie, and seriously, go see that movie!

Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods doesn't really lend itself to sequels. Spinoffs, maybe. But by the end of the film, the massive experiment being conducted in a secret laboratory that's meant to appease the gods with sacrifices has failed. And the gods are rising. Still, sequels are the norm in horror franchises, and the death of the leads usually doesn't matter (think how many times Jason or Freddy have been killed on screen, and they just keep coming back). But when asked about a Cabin in the Woods sequel, Goddard shot the notion down, explaining:

Drew Goddard is out promoting his new movie, Bad Times at the El Royale, an unconventional crime noir centered around a handful of fascinating and mysterious characters. And El Royale is EXACTLY the type of original and fresh-voiced stories that Drew Goddard should be doing instead of cranking out Cabin in the Woods sequels that undercut the original film. He basically gives Fandango the perfect answer as to why he and co-writer Joss Whedon didn't try to extend the story of the original film. They came up with the perfect ending. Leave it at that.

Of course, Drew Goddard leaves the door open, telling Fandango:

The one idea that seems like it could work would be a spinoff movie that focuses on a different laboratory in another country. We saw hints of other "games" being played on unsuspecting horror victims, and new stories could be told in that fashion. But again, knowing the ending of The Cabin in the Woods, we'd all be working toward the inevitable. Do you agree? Or do you want to see a sequel in this universe, no matter what? Vote in our poll.

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The horror genre has always had a complicated history in cinema. While there is no arguing that some of the greatest films of all time fit into the category, it can sometimes feel as though the most incredible achievements are outshined by the thousands of titles that purely take advantage of the fact that horror often offers opportunities for high production values at low budgets. Still, every year sees the release of some new titles that you just know audiences are going to be enjoying for decades -- and it's those features that we are here to celebrate today.

Within the 21st century (which is to say going back to 2001), we've seen the release of some horror movies that are guaranteed to be considered classics in the long run, and we've decided to take a look back by ranking them. Below and across the next few pages are our picks for the 21 best horror movies of the century, so far. Can you guess our number one pick? Read on and find out!

#21. The Conjuring (2013)

Director James Wan has launched a number of horror franchises in his career, including the Saw movies and Insidious, but The Conjuring films are arguably the best he's ever made -- with the 2013 original standing as his greatest achievement. Even at a time when we are getting an endless stream of supernatural terror features, this one still managed to be successful haunting. A lot of it is Wan's direction, with his awesome moving camera consistently creating anxiety in a beautiful period atmosphere, but then there is the power of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga's paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who instantly solidify themselves as modern horror icons while trying to protect a family from a haunting specter.

#20. IT (2017)

Because of its immense length, Stephen King's IT was long thought to be totally unadaptable... but then director Andres Muschietti came along. Armed with a script that cuts the epic novel in half and focuses solely on the kids' side of the narrative of the haunted town story, the movie not only weaves a fantastic, self-contained scary story, but also immediately makes you start begging for the adult-centric sequel. Transplanting the story from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, the film is successfully both a nostalgia bomb and hilarious, while also being surprisingly scary and shocking (with a great deal of credit in that department going to Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise).

#19. The Host (2006)

As you'll discover reading the rest of this list, the 21st century hasn't been tremendous when it comes to giant monster movies, Bong Joon-ho's The Host is the notable exception. The Korean horror film is as inventive as it is exhilarating as it is devastating, and ultimately a rather powerful cinematic experience. The story of a family in search of a missing daughter during a kaiju attack along Seoul's Han River, it packs a serious thrills and a sharp emotional punch, while also notably featuring some seriously impressive CGI for the era.

#18. It Follows (2014)

Slasher films in the 1980s did their part to illustrate some extreme dangers of teenage sex, and it's with deep respect for and partial homage to that particular decade of filmmaking that we got David Robert Mitchell's It Follows. Establishing a creative metaphor for STDs, the story sees a young girl (Maika Monroe) have sex only to learn that it comes with a serious consequence. She is passed a condition that will see her constantly pursued by a supernatural force that A) can take any human form and B) wants to cripple and disfigure her body. It's a wonderfully inventive film that packs more than a fair share of big shocks and chills.

#17. The Loved Ones (2009)

We regularly hear about horrific things coming out of Australia, but most of those stories involve sharks or creepy crawlies. In the case of The Loved Ones, writer/director Sean Byrne brought us a wonderfully messed up features bursting with colorful psychopaths. Robin McLeavy is fantastic as the absolutely crazy teenager Lola, who has the habit of trying to find her perfect man by kidnapping and lobotomizing them. Between the foot-stabbing, skull-drilling, and bleach-injecting, this one is definitely not for the faint of heart.

#16. The Descent (2005)

Neil Marshall's The Descent is a nice triple dose of fear. First there's the claustrophobia, with the audience trapped in a series of excessively narrow caves with the six main protagonists. Second is the intense darkness, with the bulk of the movie basically only illuminated by flashlights, flares, and glow sticks. And as if those two weren't enough for a terrifying experience, then the movie throws the flesh-hungry cave monsters at you, giving the last 45 minutes an impressive feeling of both constant paranoia and horror as the characters start yearning for the time when their biggest problem was just being lost. It's a scary and intense ride right up until the end.

#15. Goodnight Mommy (2014)

Filmmakers have been using creepy children to wonderful horrific affect for decades, but you'll find few better examples than Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's Goodnight Mommy. Hailing from Germany, the story centers on a pair of twin boys (Lukas and Elias Schwarz) who harbor some deep suspicions about their mother (Susanne Wuest). She is recovering from face-altering plastic surgery in their new home, but the kids believe that it is not actually their mom who is underneath all of the bandages. It's an impressively unexpected and twisty-turny ride: just when you think the movie is about to turn right, it instead just punches you in the face.

#14. The Witch (2015)

There is a great deal to praise about Robert Eggers' The Witch, but we'll start with its impressive commitment. Even at a sacrifice of absolute clarity, the movie is remarkable in its deeply accurate depiction of life 17th century New England, and has the effect of entrancing you into its time unlike most period films. But then there are also its awesomely disturbing elements that firmly establish its place on this list. Because of the involvement of babies and children, there's a challenge to describe it without using the words "fucked up." It also provided us the breakout performance for emerging star Anya Taylor-Joy, whose current career trajectory will surely only improve The Witch's legacy.

#13. 28 Days Later... (2002)

Okay, so they may not really be zombies, instead just people infected with the Rage virus, but that's not going to stop us from giving Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... credit for helping to totally redefine the zombie subgenre in the 21st century. Audiences had become comfortable with the shambolic, cannibalistic walking dead of the Romero persuasion, but this one jumps their adrenaline 10000% and the terror follows suit. It's hardly a complex or unique premise -- man wakes up from a coma in a hospital as the world around him is falling apart -- but Boyle's intense vision and the tremendous character work from Cillian Murphy, Naomi Harris, Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns make this one of the best scare-fests of the modern era.

#12. Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch is obvious a divisive filmmaker, with many either loving or hating his surrealist style. As a fairly pure extension of his style, Mulholland Drive elicits a similar reaction from audiences, as a good deal of it defies explanation, but can also be appreciated as a beautiful, complex, anxiety-inducing puzzle. Its bizarre structure demands constant attention and absorption, and within that leaves you open to serious apprehension and sincere shock (the king being the discovery of what exists behind Winkie's).

#11. Slither (2006)

Long before he was known as the man behind Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn was better known as a low-budget filmmaker with roots in the schlokiness of Troma Entertainment. His 2006 directorial debut, Slither, is a pure expression of this. While it's certainly as much a comedy as it is a horror movie, it blends the two gleefully with absolutely disgusting sensibilities, getting absolutely everything possible scare-wise with its slimy alien slug antagonists. Admittedly most of the titles on this list are more focused on straight up terror, but Slither comes with the bonus of being a ton of fun.

#10. The Ring (2002)

Fans may remember the period in the early 2000s when Hollywood became obsessed with all varieties of Asian horror, and began remaking titles left and right. As many as were made, however, nothing ever topped the trend-maker: Gore Verbinski's The Ring. Naomi Watts stars as a journalist investigating a mythical VHS tape that kills anyone who watches it in seven days, and it's not just a spine-tingling, scream inducing ride, but a well-crafted mystery as well. It's unfortunate that it's legacy must deal with two legitimately terrible sequels, but they still don't diminish our appreciation for the 2002 release.

#9. Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Sam Raimi's career was born in the horror genre, but much like the Evil Dead franchise, the scares eventually started to get left behind in favor of more genre exploration. Thankfully, in 2009 he returned to it full-bore with Drag Me To Hell. Bringing back many of the amazing, unique aesthetics that made his early scary movies so special, he tells his own take on a gypsy curse story, and it succeeds in being both frightening and at times puke-worthy gross. Alison Lohman is fantastic as the kind but selfish Christine Brown, and it has what is certainly one of the best endings on this list.

#8. Let The Right One In (2008)

In the years before the modern zombie craze kicked into full gear, titles like Twilight and True Blood established vampires as the chic "in" monsters -- but no movie about bloodsuckers from this particular era surprised and shocked more than Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In. A Swedish import, this tale is a cute but also fairly fucked-up tale about a bullied young boy (Kåre Hedebrant) who strikes up a friendship with his new neighbor, who happens to be deadly, dangerous vampire (Lina Leandersson). It's one of the best modern takes on the mythos, and even inspired one of the best English-language remakes of recent memory.

#7. ParaNorman (2012)

Not all horror films need be totally terrifying, and Chris Fell and Sam Butler's ParaNorman is proof of that. The movie fits the genre through its spooky characters and premise (kid who can see and talk to the dead must stop an ancient curse from tearing his town apart), but its greatness doesn't come from scares. Instead, this stop-motion masterpiece from Laika demonstrates its genius through pure emotion and tapping into the feelings of isolation that come from feeling like an outcast -- something of which a lot of true blue horror fans are probably very aware. It's a remarkable piece of animated filmmaking, that is also definitely one of the best genre titles of the young century.

#6. Black Swan (2010)

Darren Aronofsky may not be the first name you consider when you think of "horror directors," but when you factor in the horrors that he makes you feel with his work, you totally get it. This applies to both 1998's Pi and 2000's Requiem For A Dream, but in the 21st Century conversation, it's all about Black Swan. The movie is a trippy and distressing venture into jealousy-inspired madness, following Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) as she clings to her lead role in her ballet company's production of "Swan Lake" and goes completely insane in the process. It's the kind of movie that makes you occasionally forget to breathe, and the Oscar that Portman won is one of the most deserved in recent memory.

#5. Get Out (2017)

Even months after its release it's still hard to fully believe the true story behind Jordan Peele's Get Out. Prior to making the movie, Peele fully established himself as one of the funniest comedic voices currently working in the industry... but then he revealed to the world that his true number one goal is helming horror films. That led to his directorial debut, and what he made is nothing short of stunning. Get Out is a spectacular commentary on race in America, and blending elements of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner meets The Stepford Wives it makes a stunning commentary about prejudice and cultural appropriation. Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams are both incredible in the lead roles, and with any luck, it will be the first of many Peele directorial efforts that eventually find their way on to this list.

#4. Stoker (2013)

A wonderful reflection of the protagonist's intensely enhanced senses, Chan-wook Park's Stoker is one of the most meticulously put together and beautiful films you'll experience -- inside or outside the horror genre. Based on an original screenplay by Wentworth Miller, it tells the story of a teen girl named India (Mia Wasikowska) who sees her world start to change following the death of her father (Dermot Mulroney) and the arrival of her mysterious Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode). As India works to learn more about this strange relative, she begins to not only unravel a dark family secret, but also reveal new parts of herself that have laid dormant her entire life. It's a stunning, gorgeous piece of work that manages to simultaneously be both elegant and brutal, featuring some amazing performances and moments that stay with you long after the end credits have finished rolling.

#3. Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

Similar to Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright is a pop culture filmmaker. He not only has an immense and deep cinematic knowledge, but expresses it through his work -- using each of his features as a love letter to genre with the addition of his own unique sensibilities. He's made some brilliant titles to date, but there is arguably none better than his ode to zombie horror, Shaun of the Dead. Yes, the movie puts comedy first and foremost, and the buddy relationship between Simon Pegg's Shaun and Nick Frost's Ed is an all-timer; but you also have to love its clear affection for the cultural contributions of George A. Romero, making the walking dead not only horrific, but also a reflection of modern society ("apathy" being the big target this time around). Thanks to Wright's blissful and scrupulous use of foreshadowing, it's also endlessly rewatchable, with each viewing revealing something new you never noticed before.

#2. The Babadook (2014)

The Babadook is a film that came completely out of nowhere. Writer/director Jennifer Kent had never written or directed a feature before; and despite having some notable titles on her resume, star Essie Davis was hardly a household name. One amazing piece of work can leave quite an impression, however, and the reality is that their collaboration is not only one of the scariest movies of the 21st century, but rather one of the scariest movies of all time. The mother-son relationship between Davis and young actor Noah Wiseman is psychological torture enough (in a good way), but then the story introduces the titular monster and the whole thing just becomes a living nightmare that leaves you watching in the fetal position. It's an unbelievably terrifying cinematic experience, and would be #1 if not for one other title...

#1. The Cabin In The Woods (2012)

It's perhaps a bit strange for a film that deconstructs the horror genre to be the number one title on a horror movie list, but what can we say? Within the category, Drew Goddard's The Cabin In The Woods is the best film we've seen so far in the 21st century. Its release famously delayed for years and years due to the MGM bankruptcy, the film from the outside looks like your typical set-up (a group of college kids get terrorized by supernatural forces while vacationing in the woods), but there is just so much more to it than that. The script, co-written by Goddard and Joss Whedon, is an endlessly clever and meta analysis of what draws us to this kind of storytelling, and does a brilliant job of taking every notable trope and turning it on its ear. Add the totally unexpected yet genius turn the movie takes into the equation, and you have the title that we just had to give the number one slot.

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While horror is the genre that Halloween calls its own, there's a subgenre that's just as important as its parent classification: the horror-comedy. If horror's the trick, then comedy must be the treat, as laughing and screaming have gone hand in hand for a long while. And yet, for as legendary a field as the land of the horror-comedy is, there are 10 films that top the rest, no questions asked (in our humble opinion, anyway). These 10 films take the world of the absurd, the unexplained, and in some cases, the vicious, and make them into films that can thrill as well as chill. So dim the lights, grab your popcorn, and get ready to laugh at the best genre crossovers that the horror-comedy field has to offer!

10. Zombieland

Zombieland is a film that's basically the American cousin to Shaun of the Dead, though in the case of Ruben Fleischer's directorial debut, it's a little more on the nose, and tends to weigh heavier in its comedic execution than it does in its horror prowess. But without the heavy compliment of laughs and rich character moments that our cast of four zombie hunters keep the film stocked with, those moments of frightening action wouldn't be worth a box of Twinkies after the zombie apocalypse. The planned sequel can't come soon enough, as that failed Amazon pilot reminded us just how delicate of a balance the original film existed in.

9. The Cabin In The Woods

The fact that The Cabin In The Woods sat on the shelf for two years is enough of a justification for this film to be classified as a horror story, as the Joss Whedon / Drew Goddard collaboration is such an entertaining flick that any doubt of its marketability is retrospectively ridiculous. Using the classic Whedon mechanic of mocking horror convention with a look behind the scenes, even the "manufactured" horror is pretty terrifying at times. But let's not undersell the magic that is Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as the bureaucrats running the show, and a certain 80's horror vet in a pivotal cameo as their boss. If you haven't seen this one yet, that mistake's on you... and it needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

8. Beetlejuice

If Pee Wee's Big Adventure wasn't enough of an indication that Tim Burton was a mad genius who time traveled from the 1960s in order to find a decade that appreciated his madness, Beetlejuice is the ultimate proof of such a fact. Replete with retro flourishes, and a very '80s sensibility when it came to color schemes and the behaviors of yuppies, the movie that introduced us to "the ghost with the most" stood out during an era where masked psychos, knife happy dream enthusiasts, and killer dolls made a killing at the box office. The world would never look at shrimp the same again.

7. Slither

He may be a big wig over at Marvel Studios now, but before James Gunn even set foot on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy, he was breaking into Hollywood by way of Troma Studios. With an education in both extreme body horror and effective dark comedy in hand, Gunn created Slither, a film that harkened back to the heyday of 80's horror, while keeping an extremely modern sensibility about it. It works perfectly, thanks to a cast of seasoned vets (Michael Rooker) and fresh faces (Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks,) and a constant balancing act between what's laughable and what's frighteningly disgusting.

6. Evil Dead 2

While The Evil Dead will always be known as a horror classic through and through, the character of Ashley "Ash" Williams has gone on to represent both worlds of comedy and horror equally. You can thank to Evil Dead 2 for that, as the film took the setting and premise of The Evil Dead and recycled it into a more ferocious horror-comedy hybrid. In fact, depending on who you talk to, Evil Dead 2 does what most horror sequels can only dream of: it outpaces the original in terms of quality. If you're a Bruce Campbell fan, then you've more than likely paid homage to this very film numerous times already.

5. Young Frankenstein

Yes, Young Frankenstein isn't really that scary of a film. In fact, there's no real scares to be had in Mel Brooks' comedic classic, but the scares aren't what make the film a horror, as well as a comedy, flick. Rather it's Brooks' dedication to parodying the style of James Whale's iconic Frankenstein that makes Young Frankenstein a classic horror film. As for the comedy half of the equation, it's not hard to sell the world on how Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, and Peter Boyle turned out a comedic classic - all with the steady hand of Mel Brooks and his sharp wit.

4. Ghostbusters

The one... the only... the original! Ghostbusters is a hell of a comedy, and everyone knows it and thinks of that factor first when discussing the film's merits. However, think back to when you first saw it as a kid. Remember the first time you saw the librarian ghost? How about the scene where Dana (Sigourney Weaver) finds that portal to another world in her fridge? Hell, even Zuul was creepy beyond all recognition to a young kid who was drinking it all in for the first time. The big reason Ghostbusters is such a good horror-comedy is that while the jokes are fast and furious, the scares fill in the cracks and do so in epic fashion. You may remember getting huge laughs out of this all-time classic, but it was those frightful moments that helped sell the jokes all the better.

3. The Lost Boys

Vampires have changed over the century and change they've existed, and the current state of the beasts is in flux. While Twilight tried to tell the story of vampires that spanned separate genres, The Lost Boys did that a good couple of decades ago - and it did so in a very hip manner that didn't forget to laugh at itself. The film's plot of sussing out the secret network of vampires in fictional Santa Clara is not only a great opportunity to show off some killer facial prosthetics, as well as Kiefer Sutherland's fantastic chops as a villain, it's also a great chance to delve into the lore of vampiric legend. That's where the legendary Frog Brothers come in, as these two laugh drivers help anchor both sides of the film's story, creating one hell of a combination of laughs and shocks.

2. Gremlins

Arguments can be made that Gremlins 2: The New Batch is the better of the two films in Joe Dante's horror duology involving ill-suited house pets. However, if one were to argue which film was the scarier one, Gremlins' original recipe would be the winner hands down. Filled with a sense of tension that rivals some of the best horror films out there, Dante's first entry in the series manages to play as one hell of a creature feature. If you cut the scenes of comedy from Gremlins, you'd have a hell of a horror film left to watch. Conversely, if you cut all of the horror elements from the film, and you'd have a pitch black comedy that still pleases the crowd. In its original form, it's a legendary blockbuster that walks the fine line between both worlds.

1. Shaun of the Dead

The first thought I had after seeing Shaun of the Dead was the fact that Edgar Wright had not only created a hell of a comedy that runs down the tropes and trials of a zombie film, but he also managed to craft a truly emotional horror film in the process. The best part about Wright's prolific mash-up is that you can't spot the seams between the two genres, as one can have you so occupied in the moment that the other is allowed to blind side you with its full potential. With no set pattern of which move it'll make next, Shaun of the Dead is the perfect horror-comedy because it plays in both sandboxes, but does so in such a subtle and brilliant manner.

Haunted houses are a true staple of the horror genre. The setup of having a group of characters gather together in a place where evil presides and get picked off one by one is a real classic, and one that filmmakers and storytellers have been molding and crafting in unique ways for decades and decades. Cinema history is full of these terrifying locales, and now we’re celebrating some of the best of the best.

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro will be unleashing his own vision of the gothic haunted house story this weekend with the release of Crimson Peak, and it’s inspired us to look back at the history of the subgenre and highlight some of the most creative and horrific that we’ve seen in decades past. Read on… if you dare!

Evil Dead/Evil Dead II

The cabin in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and Evil Dead II wasn’t built for nefarious purposes. It’s just a cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, Professor Knowby had to read from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the basement of the building and unleash a terrible evil that wound up infecting pretty much the entire forest around the remote location. As a result, the whole place is insanely terrifying, and not only do people get possessed and killed, but even inanimate objects and plant life get a fill-up on malevolence and lash out. This is a dangerous, dangerous place… and we really hope that it somehow winds up returning in the upcoming Ash vs. The Evil Dead series.

Beetlejuice

As far as ghost hauntings go, the truth is that you could do a lot worse than the spirits of Adam and Barbara Maitland. They’re good people, and they understandably don’t want anybody living in their house while they’re still hanging around – dead or no. These facts alone don’t really qualify Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice for this list, but the fact that they turn to the eponymous bio-exorcist in order to try and solve their problem is what winds up qualifying the home as a destination to avoid. It’s cool to float around the dinner table singing "Day-O," but the fun and games really stop when the sandworms start showing up.

The Old Dark House

As far as old, classic haunted house movies go, they don’t come much older or more classic than James Whale’s The Old Dark House. Released in 1932, it stands as one of the earliest films of the horror subgenre, and its titular location is definitely a place that anyone is going to want to stay away from. It’s bad enough that you have to deal with the hosts – the grim Horace and the religious nut Rebecca – but then there’s the fire-loving, psychotic Saul who is just waiting to be released so that he can burn the whole place to the ground.

The Shining

Ah, the Overlook Hotel – not only one of cinema’s great haunted houses, but also one of the most iconic locations in the history of the medium. From its weird carpet patterns, to those crazy events in Room 237, to those creepy bits of advice from that old bartender in the ballroom, locations don’t come more malevolent than what’s seen in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and it’s hard not to be in awe of its majesty. There are few films in history that operate quite so intricately and beautifully, and the film’s genius director really does a breathtaking job of turning the ordinary looking building into a place of living, breathing evil.

The Haunting

As a guy, I would certainly be hesitant to spend a night in Hill House from Robert Wise’s The Haunting, but I would be especially reticent if I were a lady. After all, the first four women who took up residence there wound up dying horrific deaths from terrible accidents. Between that history, all of the sharp cries, banging on the walls, and the creepy messages presumably left by the dead former tenants, this is far from an ideal place to ever call home.

Thir13en Ghosts

Steve Beck’s Thir13en Ghosts from 2001 is the only remake you’ll be finding on this list, and while it’s not exactly a good movie (lacking in any real substantial scares or interesting characters), there is a lot of credit due for the production design and creation of ghost hunter Cyrus Kriticos’ spirit-filled home. The ever-shifting nature of the mansion is quite impressive, with the timing of the sliding glass walls doing a great job to disperse the release of the individual ghosts, separate groups, and move the plot forward. It’s such an awesome haunted house that it’s a shame everything else in the movie isn’t up to its level.

The Amityville Horror

Stuart Rosenberg’s Amityville Horror gets special mention on this list not just for presenting an especially terrifying haunted house, but also for being the only film on this list that’s based on true events (if you believe those kinds of things). Despite the friendly name of the town it resides in, the residence at 112 Ocean Avenue has an awfully horrific past, with a mass murderer for a former owner, and it doesn’t do a ton of great things for the family living inside it - as the Lutz family so horribly discovered. The plot of the film unfolds over a good amount of time, but I wouldn’t want to spend a single night at this place.

House on Haunted Hill

When looking for quality classic horror, Vincent Price is a name that movie-lovers can always return to, and while he had his hand in many subgenres during his career, his great haunted house film is William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill. The supernatural isn’t super strong with this one, as is discovered as the plot unfolds, but the film certainly takes big steps in making its titular home into something out of a nightmare, and the place has no shortage of murderous villains dangerous.

The Cabin In The Woods

Are we stretching the definition of ‘Haunted House’ here a little bit? Perhaps a little – but we are still discussing a residence that was built for nefarious purposes and has a whole ton of creatures and beasts ready to be unleashed from beneath it, so I think that it still qualifies. The titular cabin from Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods gets a whole ton of points for execution creativity, a wide variety of monsters, and the extreme danger level that exists in the place – as it ultimately proves impossible for any of the characters to really escape.

Poltergeist

Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist taught us all a very important lesson back in 1982: it’s a really bad idea to build a house on top of an old Indian burial ground – especially if you’re not even going to bother removing the bodies before starting construction. The Freeling family learned this all in the harshest way possible (especially because the haunting wasn’t at all their fault), but the positive side of things is not only that everybody winds up surviving, but also that cinema history gained yet another amazing haunted house.

Should The Cabin in the Woods get a sequel? I asked Drew Goddard, and he told me that, in all honesty, his opinion changes daily.

Drew Goddard directed The Cabin in the Woods in 2012, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Joss Whedon. The immensely clever meta horror film deconstructed the clichés of the genre while setting five archetypal characters in the cabin in the woods, without telling them they were part of a much larger experiment. Those who love Cabin adore it. (Full disclosure: It was the No. 1 movie on my year-end Top 10 the year it came out.) So when I sat down with Goddard at the Toronto International Film Festival, I asked him if he and Whedon had ideas for The Cabin in the Woods 2. He told me:

I’m equally torn. As much as I loved The Cabin in the Woods, I wouldn’t want Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon revisiting the storyline for the sake of squeezing sequel money out of their clever premise. Cabin wasn’t a massive hit, but it made enough money ($66M internationally) to warrant a sequel. Critics dug it (it has a 91% Fresh grade), but we’ll feverishly turn on a sequel if it strikes us as lazy. Real talk here, people.

Now might be the time to strike, though. Joss Whedon has ended his Marvel duties. And after The Martian, Drew Goddard’s resume has a number of potential projects on the horizon – from Cloverfield 2 to Robopocalypse -- but they could be shelved in favor of Cabin in the Woods 2. Now all they need is that one big idea that motivates them to move forward. Let’s see if it happens.

Joss Whedon is exhausted from his work on Avengers: Age of Ultron. The last thing he needs right now is to get hit with a massive lawsuit for one of his past films. Three years after The Cabin in the Woods hit theaters, Whedon and the film’s distributor, Lionsgate, have been served with $10 million lawsuit for infringing on intellectual property.

Peter Gallagher (not to be confused with the actor) is the author of a book called The Little White Trip: A Night in the Pines. According to The Wrap, the suit he filed with the U.S. district court claims The Cabin in the Woods is “virtually identical” in a number of ways, including “plots, stories, characters, sequence of events, themes, dialogue and incidents.” 

Whedon co-wrote the script for the film with director Drew Goddard, telling the story of a group of teens who travel to a cabin in the woods, only to discover that they’re part of an elaborate, horrific monster-based government program. Meanwhile, Gallagher states his book features the same structure, citing the five characters between the ages of 17 and 22, the names of the two girls (Julie and Dura), the cabin with the murderous previous owners, and outside forces manipulating the the kids for a “real-life horror show.”

The film starred Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connolly, Anna Hutchison, Jesse Williams and Fran Kranz as the group of friends. Critics praised The Cabin in the Woods for its clever spin on the horror genre and presenting cliched tropes in new and interesting ways. In addition, the big reveal, involving a prison of monsters (that werewolf, especially), Sigourney Weaver and bloodthirsty gods of chaos, proved to be worth the wait. 

According to the author’s note in digital copies of The Little White Trip, which Gallagher released for free as an e-book, he wrote the book in 2005, published it in 2006 and registered the title with the Writers Guild of America in 2007. Afterwards, he began selling “thousands of copies” on the streets, including the Venice Beach Boardwalk, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Santa Monica in California. Gallagher claims in the lawsuit that he sold 7,500 copies over the course of two publishing runs. 

Neither Lionsgate nor reps for Joss Whedon have responded to the suit, which also names Drew Goddard. This development comes just a couple weeks before Whedon’s highly anticipated Avengers: Age of Ultron hits theaters on May 1. We'll have to see how this all plays out, though it's worth noting the timing of the lawsuit and the fact that it took Gallagher three years to formally file. Sorry, Whedon, but it looks like you won't be retiring from the Marvel universe quietly. 

Are you ready to enter the Cabin in the Woods? If you've seen Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's movie, you may not be so quick to cast yourself into that situation, as most of the characters didn't enjoy their stay in the titular Cabin. But if it's fictional horror-inspired fun you're looking for, you may consider a trip to Universal Studios Orlando this Fall, as the theme park will be featuring a The Cabin in the Woods-inspired attraction for a limited time during the Halloween season.

If you haven't seen The Cabin in the Woods, the vague description is that it centers on a group of college kids who set off for a fun weekend away at a cabin (in the woods). Bad things happen from there, but there's a bigger twist to the story. Where Cabin truly shines is in the way it weaves horror, suspense and humor, offering regular nods to the horror genre, without going quite so far as to parody it. Universal announced recently that they will be "unleashing hell" this fall by bringing to life the Lionsgate movie The Cabin in the Woods for their annual Halloween Horror Nights haunted house event, which takes place during the Halloween season. Last year, they brought zombies to life with a Walking Dead theme, and this year, they're headed into the woods, where there may be a zombie or two lurking.

The attraction will offer attendees the chance to be watched and manipulated. "You think you know this story. You think you’re in control. THINK AGAIN." So prepare to have your strings pulled by whoever's running this show.

The announcement says we'll hear more details on what they have planned for the attraction soon, but that the "terrifyingly immersive Halloween Horror Nights event" will offer a movie-quality haunted house experience that's authentic to the film. It'll put guests in the middle of an ancient fight for survival. Tickets are on sale now.

This newly announced event is one more reason to consider visiting Universal Orlando later this year. Not only do they have the Wizarding World of Harry Potter there, but we also recently learned that they're adding a Simspons-themed Springfield mega-attraction. A trip to Universal Orlando this fall (September 20 to November 2) may be in order for those who want to sample all of the movie and tv-inspired attractions the theme park has available, including the Cabin in the Woods Halloween Horror Nights attraction. In the meantime, Netflix has The Cabin in the Woods available streaming.

In retrospect, last year was an absolutely amazing year for genre films. Both The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises exploded at the box office; The Hunger Games birthed a new beloved big screen sci-fi franchise, Skyfall ended up being one of the best James Bond movies in the history of the series, and films like The Cabin in the Woods and Cloud Atlas awed us with inventiveness, ambitiousness, creativity and beauty. Unfortunately, major award groups have a big issue with awarding genre films any recognition and, as a result, the sci-fi, action, horror and fantasy movies of 2012 were all but completely ignored when it came time to start handing out gold statues. But that's why the Saturn Awards exist.

While it's somewhat strange to have an award show six months after the end of the year that it's celebrating, the folks over at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films have announced their winners for their favorite movies of the year. In addition to being the box office king of 2012, Joss Whedon's The Avengers was the big winner of the voting, taking home four prizes in total: Best Supporting Actor (Clark Gregg), Best Direction (Joss Whedon) and Best Special Effects (Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams, Dan Sudick). In the top categories it was declared that Ang Lee's Life of Pi was Best Fantasy Film, Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods was the Best Horror/Thriller Film, and Sam Mendes' Skyfall was the Best Action/Adventure Film.

You can see a full list of the movie, television, and home entertainment awards below.

While I agree with many of these choices and disagree about others, the one I must say I'm happiest to see is Alexander Berner winning for editing the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer's Cloud Atlas. That movie successfully weaved six completely different stories together into one narrative, and the editing was an absolutely essential part of what made the movie as incredible as it was. The Academy Awards totally snubbed it, not even giving it recognition with a nomination, so it's great to see that at least one organization can appreciate how awesome that film was.

But what do you think about the Saturn Awards' choices? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

If you paid any attention to Cinema Blend over the last year, you’d know that Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods was adored around these parts. As a result, seeing Goddard secure a second directing gig is very interesting news indeed. That it’s taking him to another planet entirely is pretty fricking amazing.

The Wrap reports Goddard is in negotiations to write and direct an adaptation of author Andy Weir's The Martian for Fox and Genre Films. The novel was originally released as an e-book, but has since been bought out by Crown Publishing, a subsidiary of Random House, and will see a hardback release in 2014. A theatrical film based on the film could do quite a lot to improve sales.

The titular Martian is a man stranded on Mars who needs to figure out how to survive on the planet long enough for his return trip back to Earth. The source calls the film “a cross between Apollo 13 and Cast Away,” which is in no way a vague way of saying, “Tom Hanks might have something to do with this.” With films like Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity and Sebastián Cordero’s Europa Report hitting theaters this year, it’s a good time to be a fan of original space thrillers.

Goddard’s other credits include the scripts for Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg’s Robopocalypse, which was recently put on hold. The writer/director also touched up parts of the script for Marc Forster’s upcoming World War Z. Goddard definitely seems like the right kind of filmmaker for this material. I wonder they’ll find a cabin on the moon…

We are now just a few hours away from 2013, but we’re not entirely done celebrating the great year in cinematic history that was 2012 just yet.

For the last two weeks we have been applauding the best work of the year, from our individual critical top 10s to lists of our favorite action scenes, on-screen couples, facial hair statements, lines of dialogue, breakthrough performances and much more. And now it’s time to celebrate those very special moments of 2012 when cinema and music fell into perfect harmony.

Just as I’ve done for the last three years, I have traced back through all of the films that I’ve seen this year and brought together the Top 10 Best Movie Music Moments of 2012. Last year’s big winners include amazing titles like Drive, The Muppets, Moneyball and X-Men: First Class, but what will make the cut this year? Find out below!

WARNING: the very, very last page of this feature includes spoilers for two separate movies, so count as you go and tread carefully as you get towards the end!

Skyfall

Song: “Skyfall” by Adele

A big reason why director Sam Mendes’ Skyfall works so well is because of how it pays loving tribute to the legacy of the James Bond character (while deconstructing it at the same time). In the movie we see 007 get his Walther PPK, ride around it in super spy-ready silver Aston Martin, visit exotic locales, sleep with strange women…really, this list could go on. But a truly great Bond film is nothing out with a truly great title theme, and Adele helped deliver just that.

After two straight films with more modern themes (Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name” for Casino Royale and Jack White & Alicia Keys’ “Another Way To Die” for Quantum of Solace), Mendes wanted to make his audiences remember the great work that Dame Shirley Bassey did for the franchise and Adele’s track fits the bill in every way. Beyond its stirring sound, filled with beautiful strings, horns and a wonderful lone piano, the song becomes more amazing once the secret behind the film’s coded title is revealed, with theme’s relating to the relationship between Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Dame Judi Dench) and the battle with Silva (Javier Bardem), as well as a premonition about the third act. Without question one of the best Bond themes of all time.

Silver Linings Playbook

Song: “What Is And What Should Never Be” by Led Zeppelin

In Silver Linings Playbook the lead character is Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) is psychiatrist-diagnosed with bipolar disorder and throughout the film is subjects to moments of what paranoid delusions brought on by stress and manic episodes in between times of normality and peacefulness. With that in mind writer/director David O. Russell couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate song to use in the scene where Pat frantically searching for his wedding tape at three o’clock in the morning.

The magic in Led Zeppelin’s “What Is And What Should Never Be” is in its constantly changing tones. As Pat gets more and more panicked, scaring his parents, waking up all of his neighbors and getting the attention of the police, Robert Plant’s vocals and Jimmy Page’s guitar alternately speed up and slow down as the song goes between verse and chorus, brilliantly mapping out the protagonist’s fractured state of mind. The track’s psychedelic nature puts the audience right inside Pat’s head adds to the chaos in breathtaking fashion. Music can be used to say words that can’t be phrased, and that’s exactly what Russell did with this Zeppelin track in Silver Linings Playbook.

Moonrise Kingdom

Song: “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, op. 34: Themes A.-F.” by Benjamin Britten and the New York Philharmonic

Every time we start to watch a movie we a transported to a different universe. It doesn’t matter if it’s a massive sci-fi epic or a tough, gritty drama based on a true story – with each new film the audience is brought into a new world with new characters, new tales to be told, and new things to be seen. In his latest film, Moonrise Kingdom, writer/director Wes Anderson took that idea to a very literal place and opened the story with the instructional track “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra” by Benjamin Britten and the New York Philharmonic.

With an almost completely dialogue-less opening sequence, Anderson utilizes the track to immediately establish the mood and then uses that mood to give us all the information we need, both for the plot and aesthetically. The music introduces Moonrise Kingdom’s theme as well as the director’s trademark tracking cinematography, while also opening us up to the story, with the troubled Suzy (Kara Hayward) shown looking through her binoculars at the end of almost every shot, before she finally goes to the mailbox and receives a private letter from Sam (Jared Gilman). It’s an ingenious opening that sets up everything for one of the finest films of the year.

Ted

Song: “Thunder Song” by Seth MacFarlane and Mark Wahlberg

Seth MacFarlane knew exactly what he had when he wrote the “Thunder Song” for his directorial feature debut – how else do you explain how it was the first scene in the film’s first trailer? For starters, any song that has the lyrics “Fuck you, thunder! You can suck my dick” and ends with a fart sound is gold off the bat, but it’s even better just because of how well the song fits the characters and their relationships.

While I don’t mean to offend anyone reading this, being afraid of thunder is a phobia almost exclusively found in children (mostly because adults know it just as the sound lightning makes). So what fear is perfect for an irresponsible 40-year-old named John (Wahlberg) who does nothing but smoke pot and chill with his anthropomorphic stuffed bear, Ted (MacFarlane)? And when else do you have the fear make itself known other than when John is in bed with his beautiful girlfriend (Mila Kunis) who wants nothing more than for him to grow up? The “Thunder Song” is featured on this list because it was one of the funniest scenes in Ted - which is a hysterical comedy all around anyway – but it’s good to find the intelligence behind it as well.

Argo

Song: “When The Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin

The scene is set in the period political drama after CIA extraction agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) learns that his mission to help the Iranian hostages has been aborted. Still believing it’s their last night in country before making their escape, the “Canadian film crew” begins to drink and an album is put on the record player: playing the most perfect song you could possibly imagine.

Unlike Silver Linings Playbook, where it’s Zeppelin’s sound that’s being used to mold tone and emotion, it’s the lyrics of “When The Levee Breaks” that makes its use in Argo a seamless fit. Though the hostages don’t know it, with the government withdrawing support they suddenly find themselves behind a levee that’s ready to break. Hell, the song even includes the lyric “Don't it make you feel bad/When you're tryin' to find your way home/You don't know which way to go?” Even better, the song selection adds to the film’s realistic feel, having only been released a few years before the true events depicted. Led Zeppelin has become the first band to ever have two separate in one of my annual Best Movie Music Moments lists, but both are wholeheartedly deserved.

Les Miserables

Song: “I Dreamed A Dream” performed by Anne Hathaway

It would be pretty hard for me to avoid putting the biggest musical movie event of the year, Les Miserables, on my list of the Top 10 Movie Music Moments of 2012, and fortunately Anne Hathaway makes it practically impossible to do so. While the Oscar-nominated actress was only in Tom Hooper’s film for a few short scenes is mostly featured at the very start of the long runtime, it’s her performance of the tragic “I Dreamed A Dream” that audiences are still thinking about as they leave the theater.

In a quick series of scenes, Fantine (Hathaway) finds herself fired from her job at the factory for sending money to her young daughter, and unable to keep her head above water in Post-Revolution France, she is forced to start selling teeth and hair before finally turning to prostitution. The song is sung after the character has reached her lowest point, and while “I Dreamed A Dream” is pre-established as one of the highlights of Claude-Michel Schönberg’s original musical, Hathaway’s performance really does blow the doors off the theater. Performed live on set, the song is filled with every ounce of anguish and desperation that the actress could provide and it’s a stunning thing to see.

The Avengers

Song: “Shoot To Thrill” by AC/DC

Iron Man is unquestionably the A-list star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and I’m not just talking about the fictional masses that worship Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). Of all Marvel Studios films leading up to The Avengers Iron Man’s were easily the most successful. But watching Joss Whedon’s film it’s strange how long it takes to see the metal man in action. Fortunately, when he does finally enter the fray and get involved with his first battle it’s to an awesome musical cue.

The scene is set in Stuttgart, Germany where Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is doing battle with Captain America (Chris Evans) on the ground. After a quick fight it looks like the Asgardian has the upper hand over the super soldier… but that’s when we hear it. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), who is flying above the fray in a quinjet, sees her P.A. system get an override as AC/DC’s “Shoot To Thrill,” Iron Man’s own little theme (set up in Iron Man 2), begins to play and the celebrity superhero comes in to blast Loki off his feet. It may not be the character’s first appearance in the film, but it’s a damn fine introduction.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Song: “Over The Misty Mountains Cold” performed by Richard Armitage And The Company of Dwarves

It’s impressive how religious Peter Jackson is, and is allowed to be, when it comes to adapting the work of J.R.R. Tolkien for the big screen. In his bringing the story to the big screen he and his fellow screenwriters dug through not only the book, but also the author’s appendices, which helped not only add even more depth to the story, but tie the tale to Jackson’s previous Lord of the Rings trilogy. But in adding things like Azog The Defiler and expanding the story of The Necromancer the director didn’t ignore key elements that draw fans to the book – for example, the singing.

While the song admittedly comes during the film’s slow opening, when audiences are just waiting for the group to hit the road and start their adventure, that shouldn’t distract from how hauntingly beautiful the movie’s rendition of “Over The Misty Mountains Cold” is. Not only is it a beautiful song, telling the backstory and motive for their journey, it’s also a true gift for the fans, as it seemed from the outside like an element that the writers would just throw away because of Hollywood conventions. We’re lucky they didn’t, and what we have instead is one of the best movie music moments of year. COURTESY SPOILER WARNING REMINDER!!

The Cabin In The Woods

Song: “Roll With The Changes” by REO Speedwagon

I love a good contrasting soundtrack. While most of the music moments on this list are highlighted for using songs in scenes and matching tones and moods, movies that take the complete opposite approach on purpose are sometimes even better than the straightforward method. Take, for example, the use of REO Speedwagon’s “Roll With The Changes” in Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in The Woods. The happy, upbeat track begins to play as the technicians in the control room begin to celebrate another successful mission, all while poor, innocent Dana (Kristen Connolly) is getting the hell beaten from her by Judah Buckner on the big screen.

This song wouldn’t have made the list if it were just a funny track to play during the scene, but fortunately one can always rely on the cleverness of the Goddard-Joss Whedon team. Looking at the song’s lyrics one could interpret it as being about a man trying to get a woman to trust him after she has had a series of poor relationships, but the theme could easily be applied to the film’s final scene, where Dana and fellow victim Marty (Fran Kranz) decide that it’s time for the world to end and “to give someone else a chance.” Sometimes you just have to roll with the changes.

Django Unchained

Song: “Who Did That To You” by John Legend

Quentin Tarantino’s latest film opens with the track “Django,” the song written by Franco Migliacci and performed by Ricky Roberts for the 1966 Franco Nero movie of the same name, but the truth is that the escaped slave protagonist of Django Unchained doesn’t earn his theme until the third act, but does so in spectacular fashion. After being forced back into slavery and seeing his partner murdered, Django (Jamie Foxx) uses his wits to outfox the crew of Aussie slave traders (Tarantino, John Jarratt, Michael Parks) who are taking him to his next owners and just as he walks out of a cloud of dynamite smoke we hear “Who Did That To You” by John Legend blasting from the speakers.

This film actually marks the first time that Tarantino has used original music written directly for the movie, and in the way Legend’s song is used it’s clear that the writer/director had a very specific plan. As the track plays and Django reemerges on to the screen, he is no longer just the escaped slave turned bounty hunter: he is a mythical figure, like Siegfried from Dr. King Schultz’s (Christoph Waltz) fairytale. And every great mythical figure needs a theme, especially one with lyrics like “If he’s not ready to die, he best prepare for it/My judgment’s divine, I tell you who you can call.”

Many consider 1982 to be one of the greatest years in movie history. With titles like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, The Thing, Poltergeist, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and many other influential, revolutionary, unforgettable movies, it’s a year that will always be remembered as a landmark in pop culture history. And now 30 years later we have a year that could very well end up being remembered the same way.

From start to finish 2012 has been an amazing year for the medium of film. We saw winners like The Grey and Haywire kick off the year, and great ones like Django Unchained, Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty close it out. Major franchises, like Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, came to an end, new ones, like The Hunger Games began, and others started right back up, like Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. We saw new movies from filmmakers like Wes Anderson, Sam Mendes, Rian Johnson, David Cronenberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Steven Spielberg. So where does one even begin when crafting a Top 10 list for a year like this?

Well, it wasn’t easy, but the job is done. I remembered all of the movies that I was still thinking about even weeks after my screening. I remembered all of the movies that had something important to say, or reached me on a personal level. I remembered all the movies that made me laugh and the ones that had me gripping the armrests. I remembered all the movies that I immediately wanted to watch again after the house lights went up. And from there I made my list – and you can read it below.

#10: End of Watch

Making a cut-and-dry cop drama is simple. The formula is so dry that all you need at this point is one or two hero cops, a vicious crime, and a scary villain to craft a story. But David Ayer’s End of Watch isn’t that movie. Instead, the writer/director does his part to try and turn the genre on its ear, and in doing so created not only a pulse-pounding thriller, but also a fascinating piece of cinematography and story experimentation.

Rather than just telling a simple story of cops and robbers, the movie lets the audience dive into the worlds of Officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala (Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena) as they work the beat in their Los Angeles neighborhood and try to keep crime and terror off the streets. Focusing on their lives beyond work, Ayer’s work allows the audience to understand the main characters as people more than just cops, and it creates a personal and emotional bond that connects movie-goers to the film in a very special way. Add in the found-footage type camera work, which gives us a look at the world through the cops’ eyes, and you have one of the most visceral, intense experiences of 2012. (Read my full review here)

#9: 21 Jump Street

It’s typical for studios to save their best films for the second half of the year, but the truth is that the funniest comedy of 2012 came out all the way back in March. While it seemed like a questionable project through production – why did we need a movie version of 21 Jump Street? – the end result is hilarious, features awesome performances from Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum and the rest of the excellent supporting cast, and with any luck it will help directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (who made the amazing Clone High and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs) keep finding work.

Walking into a screening earlier this year I went in with zero expectations, but quickly found myself nearly falling out of my chair laughing and actually gaining a newfound appreciation for Tatum’s skills as a performer. I continue to laugh to myself whenever I think about Jenko and Schmidt taking H.F.S. for the first time (“Fuck you, science!”) and the mix of action and comedy is perfect. You can’t ignore a movie that keeps you laughing every time you see it, and 21 Jump Street is no exception.

#8: Silver Linings Playbook

There are plenty of amazing turns to choose from when determining the best acting performances of the year, but Silver Linings Playbook is one that you have to look back to multiple times in order to get a truly complete list. Backed by an amazing script with a strong core message that points out just how screwed up each and every one of us are, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence alone make David O. Russell’s latest film not only a must-see, but one of the best of year.

Based on the novel by Matthew Quick, the story follows a former teacher (Cooper) who is released after a long stay at a mental hospital and immediately sets out on a mission to regain his wife’s love – but gets distracted when an equally-disturbed young woman (Lawrence) enters his life. The story is simple, but what makes Silver Linings Playbook such a fascinating piece is the work by the gifted ensemble cast. The stars of the show are obvious, and their shared chemistry elevates the movie’s main relationship to a new level, but Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker and John Ortiz take the film even further and help further explore the important central message. As much as I love Three Kings, Flirting With Disaster and The Fighter before this year I’m not sure I would have specifically labeled myself a David O. Russell fan. Silver Linings ensures that I will from now on. (Read my full review here)

#7: Jeff, Who Lives At Home

We live in incredibly cynical times when even the best things in our world can be degraded through negativity and pessimism, but that’s exactly what’s so great about Jeff and Mark Duplass’ Jeff, Who Lives At Home, a brilliantly earnest movie packed with lovely, relatable characters and a fascinating script and an interesting look at destiny and fate.

Jason Segel, who stars as the titular home-dwelling Jeff, once again proves himself to be one of the most likeable actors in film today, and pairing him up with the harder-edged, stricter Ed Helms as a contrast is an inspired move. In spite of being a story about lack of trust and infidelity – as the main characters work to find out if Helms’ wife (Judy Greer) is cheating on him – the story winds up looking at what really ties all of us together and the truly important relationships in our lives. While a bit disconnected, Susan Sarandon’s character’s story is just as interesting, playing the Segel and Helms’ mother who may or may not have found new love in her office. Walking out of Jeff, Who Lives At Home I actually felt an undeniable swelling of happiness forming in my chest, and it’s because of that feeling that the movie has made my top 10. (Read my full review here)

#6: Argo

As someone who paid close attention in history class I knew how the events in Ben Affleck’s Argo would be resolved in the end, but that didn’t prevent me from digging my fingernails into the armrest as I prayed that the embassy employees would safely make it through and escape the deadly Iranian territory.

While since the movie’s been released it’s been revealed that the story takes a few liberties with actual events for the sake of drama, that doesn’t change the fact that the world Affleck created in the film is intensely real and the director convinces you of its factuality, and as a political thriller it still knows exactly when it needs to break the tension and let the audience laugh a bit (John Goodman and Alan Arkin are phenomenal as the Hollywood-types who help the CIA get away with their mission). For a rather straightforward story, the movie is wonderfully paced and keeps the audience fully invested with every twist and turn of the story. Argo is only Affleck’s third directorial effort, but it firmly proves that he is very much the real deal – and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

#5: ParaNorman

To truly appreciate ParaNorman it helps to think of the incredible amount of work that went into making it. Animators spent months on end moving tiny pieces fractions of an inch and snapping photographs, working to put all of the images in order to create the illusion of movement and life. From a technical standpoint the movie is a true piece of blood, sweat and tears art and one of the most truly beautiful pieces to be released this year. And that’s not even taking into account the script, characters, performances or thousands of other factors that make the film one of the best of the year.

The story of a boy named Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) who has the ability to talk with the dead and must work to stop a witch’s curse from destroying his town, the film truly puts the audience in the mindset of a kid and has a powerful message not only against bullying, but in encouraging people to accept who they are, abnormal as they may be. Every step of writer/co-director Chris Butler’s script is a surprise, as conventions are turned on their ear and played with nearly to the point of parody (but it’s never overt). There are some questions regarding the movie’s suitability for young kids, as there are some legitimately creepy/scary moments, but there isn’t an adult out there who should hesitate at the opportunity to see ParaNorman.

#4: Cloud Atlas

It’s been nearly two months since I saw the Wachowski Starship and Tom Tykwer’s Cloud Atlas and I’m still trying to figure out how the movie got made. Not only is the movie contain six separate stories that could be individual films all by themselves, it also intertwines them so that each narrative is being put together at the exact same as the others. The end result should be a clusterfuck of extreme proportions, but with its breathtaking structure and outstanding editing it’s a triumph.

Admittedly it’s a movie that you have to open yourself up to and really get mentally prepared for, but if you do it will take you on a spectacular ride. Not all of the segments are as great as the others, but even when the narrative is lacking you can’t help but marvel at how the entire thing was put together. Taking advantage of the multiple timelines, the film is also beautifully directed, as the filmmakers set up unique worlds for their characters to inhabit and live through (the photography in the Neo Seoul segment is particularly stunning). Of all the movies to come out in 2012 there was none that had me thinking longer and harder than Cloud Atlas, and each time I did I couldn’t help but smile.

#3: The Avengers

The Avengers is the movie that I’ve spent my entire life waiting to see. As a geeky youngster I would obsess about superheroes and my love of film led to dreams of my favorite characters somehow all coming together for one big screen adventure. Had it been awful I would have been crushed, but instead I’ve already seen it more than ten times and think it’s one of the best films of 2012.

And thank the movie gods for Joss Whedon. The writer/director, who has spent more than a decade making magnificent television that everyone has ignored, finally got his chance in the spotlight and made a movie that is as funny and entertaining as it is dramatic and gripping. The 30-minute long action sequence where the heroes battle Loki and his army drops my jaw every time and I will forever remember listening to the movie-goers in the audience cheer when the team comes together for the first time on the streets of New York City. Watching The Avengers was like watching my 8-year-old imagination projected on the big screen, and I loved every damn minute of it. (Read my full review here)

#2: Seven Psychopaths

Walking into the theater to see Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths I have to admit that I wasn’t feeling the level of expectation that I expected. As a big fan of McDonagh’s only other directorial effort, 2008’s In Bruges, I was thinking that the Irish filmmaker’s latest would be good, but perhaps not as good. I ended up being completely wrong.

An epically weird story of a screenwriter and his two friends (Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, and Christopher Walken) who steal a gangster’s dog and must go on the run, the film is a genius meta comedy that not only impresses with fun characters and performances, but serves as a great meditation on violence and its place in our culture. The trio topping the film has some of the best chemistry you’ll see, and because of the eccentricities of the characters you never know what is going to hop out of the sack of crazy next, and having Woody Harrelson playing the shih tzu-loving madmen with the gun chasing them down is almost too much, but ends up being just the right amount. There are only two movies that I gave five stars in 2012, and Seven Psychopaths earns its place as one of them. (Read my full review here)

#1: The Cabin in the Woods

Remember what I said about thanking the movie gods for Joss Whedon? Well, this year it goes double. Not only did the man deliver us The Avengers, one of the greatest superhero titles of all time, but his pairing with director and long-time collaborator Drew Goddard also led to what I think is the best film of the year: The Cabin in the Woods.

The film is armed with a generic title and premise that we have heard a thousand times before, but it really is anything but. From the very beginning when we meet technicians Sitterson and Hadley (Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford) it becomes immediately clear that what’s going on in the movie isn’t anything we’ve seen before, and it fully explores every inch of its creative brilliance. While I still refuse to give any big details away because I still think not nearly enough people have seen the movie and I don’t want to give anything away, the explosive third act is one of the best I’ve ever seen, and inspired one of the longest jaw-drop moments I’ve ever had sitting in a cinema. The Cabin in the Woods is an unforgettable experience destined to find a cult following (if it hasn’t already), and hands down the best time I’ve had watching a film in 2012.

Great Movies That Didn’t Make The Cut: Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Wreck-It Ralph, Ted, Moonrise Kingdom, Skyfall, The Grey, The Master, The Raid: Redemption

Technically, June 15 (or thereabout) would mark the mid-point of 2012. So if we were grading the film’s released in the first half of the year, we’d have to draw a line in the sand at that moment. But that would mean ignoring too many instant classics that rolled out over the second half of the summer season this year.

We’re gearing up for the fall film season, when studios stockpile most of their possible awards contenders. The last few months of 2012 should be crowded with valuable viewing opportunities, so we wanted to take a moment and reflect on the best films we’ve seen so far this year. Hopefully, we’ll spotlight a film you haven’t seen yet, and, if so, inspire you to go hunt it down as soon as you can. And because most of us on staff singled out one particular film as we discussed which movies we’d write about, we’re kicking off the feature with:

The Cabin in the Woods by Kristy Puchko

As an unrepentant fan of horror films, I often have to explain my love of the genre to those who just don't get it. But when a horror movie comes along that's as ferocious, frightening and fun as Cabin in the Woods, my devotion is easily validated. Co-creators Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon spurred new appreciation for this oft-maligned genre by not only offering plenty of ghastly gore and powerful scares, but also drawing attention to the mechanization behind typical terrifying scenarios, and how these reflect our modern zeitgeist.

From the blood-drenched fight for survival that befell some carefully selected college co-eds to the sardonic humor of the control room, Cabin in the Woods delivered on levels of terror and laughs, while offering its viewers something meatier in which to tear. Sure, you can enjoy this horror-comedy for its thrills and wit alone. But the film also raises questions about the “whys” of contemporary horror. Why is an extroverted woman reduced to her sexuality, and so deemed worthy of gruesome death? Why are bravery and intelligence similarly reason enough for execution? Why is a female virgin always given a chance at salvation? And ultimately, why play into a world with such twisted rules?

Moonrise Kingdom by Jesse Carp

It’s not hard to imagine that a Wes Anderson film would fall into my No. 1 slot in a look back on the year’s best from the middle of August (or anytime), but few figured it would be the frontrunner on the majority of these lists. Anderson’s movies are generally well received by critics -- more admired than loved -- yet Moonrise Kingdom hasn’t just captured those hardest of hearts and minds but also the money, uh, hearts of mainstream audiences. It’s not only a critical hit, it’s also a blockbuster! Jiminy Cricket!

Moonrise contains all of Anderson’s usual storytelling affectations, not to mention his immaculately composed moving tableaux, but for some reason this tale has found a larger following than even his Academy Award nominee (The Royal Tenenbaums). The compositions are intricate and colorful, with the small (and fictitious) New England island serving as the perfect 1960s setting for his attention to detail and the charming yet significant story of Suzy and Sam’s forbidden love. Moonrise Kingdom may be full of magic and whimsy in the stunning cinematography, wonderful score and many great performances. But Wes’ artifice also allows for the most emotionally satisfying experiences I’ve had at the cinema in some time.

Take This Waltz by Katey Rich

After making her directorial debut with the heartbreaking drama Away From Her a few years back, Sarah Polley established herself as one of the more surprising and interesting new voices behind the camera, and before she had even turned 30 told one of the more raw and relatable stories of romance between two people near the end of their lives. But it's in Take This Waltz, with Polley turning her camera toward characters of her own age, that she really makes her voice known.

Take This Waltz is a wild, colorful burst of romance and sadness and longing, letting the intense emotions of a would-be affair bleed over into the filmmaking itself, boldly blurring the line between a not necessarily likable heroine (Michelle Williams, incredible as always) and the audience who must go along with her anyway. As a story that for a while is about unspoken passion between a woman and her hunky neighbor (newcomer Luke Kirby), Take This Waltz dares to say everything out loud -- it may be the first movie that looks how an exciting new love feels. That kind of grab-you-by-the-throat bravura for telling such a small story isn't for everyone, but if it works, as it did for me, you won't be able to forget it.

Magic Mike by Mack Rawden

Magic Mike is a filthy movie. Like a good strip club, it’s an obnoxious, kinda skuzzy, talk-about-it-with-your-friends experience. It features drugs, fighting, dancing, the good kind of three-way, and just about every other debaucherous practice you can fathom. Altogether, it’s enough to ensure the film a lifetime of impulse rentals next to the National Lampoon straight-to-DVD films. Luckily, thanks to careful direction, good acting performances and actually giving a shit about its characters, Magic Mike is so much more.

It’s all about balance. If you’re going to make a movie about dudes stripping, you need to show dudes stripping. Magic Mike does that. It’s never ashamed of what it fundamentally is, but it also doesn’t use that premise as an excuse not to develop its characters or give them interesting side plots. By the end, you really care about the decisions “Magic” Mike and his buddies make, and in a way, that makes their exploits a hell of a lot more fun.

Goon by Kelly West

Directed by Michael Dowse, with a screenplay written by Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg, Goon tells the story of the rise of minor league hockey player Doug Glatt. On the surface, he appears to be little more than a dim-witted bar bouncer and hockey enforcer who knows how to throw down the gloves and fight. But beneath the meathead exterior is a man with a giant heart and the determination to serve his team as best he can. In addition to having some great hockey moments, Goon is funny and sweet, and - thanks in part to the charm and humor of Alison Pill and her chemistry with Scott - there's also an incredibly adorable little love story worked into the plot.

Just as Doug Glatt is a man who understands where he fits into the game and in a way, the world, Goon is a movie that understands its purpose, and it never tries to be anything more than exactly what it is. It's not trying to inspire anyone or send some message about team spirit, and yet it manages to do that, while also delivering plenty of laughs. Not only is Goon one of my favorite movies this year, but it also belongs on the list of must-see hockey movies.

Safety Not Guaranteed by Sean O’Connell

My favorite film from South By Southwest 2012 remains the best movie I’ve screened to date this year. Colin Trevorrow’s endearing Safety Not Guaranteed seems to wrap itself in two distinctly protective coatings: A faux-edgy shield of snarky Gen-Y attitude, and the cool aloofness of dime-store science fiction. Yet with each passing minute, the layers shed to reveal a weird, gentle, open-hearted and embraceable core that’s pulses with warmth, comfort and, yes, a necessary dose of Duplass observational humor.

Mark Duplass (the Gene Hackman of 2012) plays Kenneth, a paranoid loner who places a classified ad seeking a partner for a time-travel mission. Aubrey Plaza plays Darious, the skeptical journalist ordered by her editor (Jake M. Johnson, in a breakout role) to investigate Kenneth’s oddball claims. But Safety becomes less about the act of time travel, and more about why we’d want to ever travel through time in the first place. It carries us on a wave of sarcastic energy and plausible hope to those personal moments before life stopped cooperating. And it builds towards an impossibly adorable ending that prompted the audience in my theater (myself included) to stand up and cheer like wahoos. An uplifting, spiritual time at the movies? It’s all but Guaranteed.

The Avengers by Eric Eisenberg

While so many films have failed and/or disappointed this year, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers cannot be included on that list. In fact, if anything, it’s the year’s greatest surprise. When it was first announced in 2008 that Marvel Studios would be working to create a cinematic universe that would lead to the likes of heroes like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Hulk meeting together on the big screen for the first time, the project seemed far too ambitious to be real … and too much of a challenge to be done well. Well, this summer the studio -- and Whedon -- proved everyone wrong, and what we got was one of the best films of the year so far and one of the greatest comic book movies of all time.

And the reason the movie was so successful is because he had everything we were hoping for. It was laugh-out-loud funny, featured some of the best superhero action we’ve ever seen, was packed to the gills with amazing performances, featured some deep, emotional moments and, most importantly, it was all brought together by a filmmaker who truly understood the characters and why they are so essential to us. The Avengers was better than anyone could have hoped for or should have expected, and we should all be thankful.

There are some movies that are so enjoyable, we leave the theater wishing we could go straight to the store and buy it, then watch it over and over again. For me, The Cabin in the Woods was one of those movies, not only because it was one of the most entertaining films I've seen in the theater recently, but also because I'm certain I didn't see everything there was to see. Those who've seen the film likely know which scenes I'm referring to. (Those who haven't, rest assured, there are no major spoilers in this article.)

The basic description for the Drew Goddard-directed/Joss Whedon-written film is that the horror story follows a group of young adults on their trip to a cabin in the woods, where they expect to kick back and have a good time. Things don't go as planned for them and very bad things happen. It's suspenseful, sometimes funny, clever and as far as the characters are written and the story is executed, it does everything right, all the way to the end. That's about as specific as I'm willing to get, as the movie's modest box office take suggests there are still many people out there who have yet to give this film a chance. Come September 18, they'll have the opportunity to do that.

Late last month, the release date for the DVD/blu-ray was finally announced, along with a look at the box art. And this week Bloody-Disgusting.com shared the specs, which include a commentary featuring Goddard and Whedon, a making-of documentary, and the Wonder-Con Q&A with Joss and Drew, among a number of other pieces of bonus content.

I'll be especially interested to hear the commentary and see the making-of documentary. The Blu-ray exclusive feature "It's Not What You Think: The Cabin in the Woods" also sounds like it could be interesting. It's also worth noting that both the Blu-Ray and the DVD will come with a digital copy.

The Hunger Games proved once again to be an unstoppable force, taking the number one spot for the fourth weekend in a row. Dropping just 35% from last week it banked an additional $21 million, bringing its grand total in US sales to an impressive $337 million.

The movie's four-in-a-row success was helped along a bit by the lackluster new competition it faced. The Three Stooges bowed in at second place with just $17 million. Joss Whedon's critically acclaimed Cabin In The Woods settled for third place with just $14 million. It's a disappointing result for Whedon, whose work is always top notch but who can't seem to catch a break from audiences. At least studios know he's talented. His work as director on the upcoming Avengers should give him the box office cred he deserves.

Luc Besson's latest sci-fi action effort Lockout settled for a very distant ninth place earning just $6 million. While Besson hasn't generally helmed major box office draws, this marks a low point. He hasn't had a wide-release movie open this quietly since The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc hit theaters in 1999.

For the full weekend box office, check out the chart below.