2023 was a mixed bag for horror, but there were some great finds if you knew where to look. We present to you our top 20 horrors of the year. Some were out in cinemas, others went to VOD, and a few hit the festival circuit with wider distribution still to come (keep your eyes peeled). If you there’s any of these that you haven’t caught, we wholeheartedly recommend them all.
20. Doctor Jekyll (dir: Joe Stephenson) Awaiting distribution
A goofy, sly playful romp, riffing on the Jekyll-and-Hyde narrative with unexpected twists and turns. Izzard’s wry, sour performance walks a high wire, but it works. A great movie to kickstart the return of the Hammer Horror brand.
19. The Passenger (dir: Carter Smith) VOD
Dark, almost Carver-esque tale of battling your demons vs taking others down with you. A burger-flipper snaps at work one day, and kills his co-workers – with one exception, a dweeb he kidnaps on a setting-things-right drive around town. Kyle Gallner great as ever.
18. The Coffee Table (dir: Caye Casas) Awaiting distribution
The darkest, most disturbing comedy of the year. This almost unwatchably bleak tale of a man who overrides his wife to buy a hideous coffee table, and comes to regret it, outdoes Todd Solondz or Charlie Brooker for sheer excruciation. The Coffee Table played at London’s always-surprising Soho Horror Fest.
17. There’s Something Wrong With The Children (dir: Roxanne Benjamin) VOD
The year’s best possessed-kids movie is just strange enough to keep things interesting, with the audience on the back foot.
16. M3GAN (dir: Gerard Johnstone) VOD
The year’s best horror gif – and the movie around it is plenty of fun too. Your basic AI-gone-wrong tale, but writer Akela Cooper (Malignant) makes sure to provide a solid emotional core about parental duties and overcoming trauma (without overdoing the latter part, a failing of so much recent horror). Plus an ear gets ripped off.
15. #ChadGetsTheAxe (dir: Travis Bible) VOD
There have been perhaps too many horrors of late about desperate, failing influencers trying to film ghosts, but #ChadGetsTheAxe is one of the better ones – perhaps because it knows enough about vloggers and livestreamers to portray them in all their hideous glory.
14. Renfield (dir: Chris McKay) VOD
In this movie, someone snorts a millipede like a line of cocaine. If you find that amusing (I did), this is the movie for you. Plus Nick Cage as Dracula, heartfelt Universal Horror homages, and Nicholas Hoult doing his charming thing. A true shame they cut the animatronic song and dance routine you can briefly glimpse behind the end credits.
13. Dark Harvest (dir: David Slade) Amazon Prime
1960s small town America. Each year, the demonic form of Sawtooth Jack arises from the local cornfield – and the town’s jocks compete to protect the harvest by stopping him before he can make it to the church. This distinctive film performance an impressive balancing act by being broadly accessible yet genuinely weird. It’s like if Sometimes They Come Back had a psychotic episode.
12. Hostile Dimensions (dir: Graham Hughes) Awaiting distribution
Two young women get more than they bargained for when they explore a set of doors that seemingly lead to other dimensions. This reminded me a lot of the creepypasta tales, the Backrooms, and especially the SCP Foundation. In fact this is one of the best films I’ve seen with that SCP kind of vibe. Twisty, off-beat fun.
11. Suitable Flesh (dir: Joe Lynch) VOD
Although this adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep ostensibly takes the work of Stuart Gordon as its artistic lodestar, it actually reminded me a little more of the very good Lovecraft anthology Necronomicon, with an added dose of 90s erotic thrillers. Everyone is having a blast, especially Heather Graham as the lead.
10. Sick (dir: John Hyams) SkyTV/Now
Great, underrated Covid-themed slasher is one of the best examples of the genre to come out in recent years. No surprise when the credits roll to see the name of Kevin Williamson (Scream) on it.
9. Birth/Rebirth (dir: Laura Moss) Awaiting distribution
A single mother’s mourning for her dead daughter is complicated with a rogue morgue technician steals her body. But for what end? A great approach on the mad doctor trope, which so rarely gets a female spin as it does here.
8. El Conde (dir: Pablo Larrain) Netflix
For god’s sake, go in cold to The Count; there’s some third act action they’ve wisely withheld from the trailer. Savage, righteous, and very funny… Sure, the satire is superficial and silly, but it’s also so strangely joyful. Larraín’s sly, playful Pinochet-as-vampire tall tale wasn’t for everyone, but it sure was for me.
7. Vermines (aka Infested) (dir: Sebastian Vanicek) Awaiting distribution
Attack The Block meets Arachnophobia in the Paris banlieues. This French spider-attack popcorn flick is the jump-out-of-your seat film of the year.
6. Beau Is Afraid (dir: Ari Aster) VOD
A paranoid man (Joaquin Phoenix) embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother. Ari Aster’s direction is arguably better than his sometimes baggy scrupting, but when this works it really works; the opening, the love scene, the showdown at the house, the look in his face trying to make sense of his fantasy on the woods… All magic.
5. Late Night With The Devil (dir: Cameron Cairnes, Coline Cairnes) Awaiting distribution
This Ghostwatch-style 1976 broadcast, live from New York, as desperate Johnny Carson wannabe David Dastmalchian hosts a Halloween Special with a little help from a psychic, a sceptic, and the demon Abraxas. Playful, ominous, and funny – with a great climax. The period verisimilitude is especially good (ratio changes, station idents etc.); aside from Dastmalchian the MVP is Ingrid Torelli as the possessed girl brought out as the broadcast’s centrepiece. Spooky & hilarious, she is all the film’s best aspects distilled into one performance.
4. Godzilla Minus One (dir: Takashi Yamazaki) In cinemas now
The best Godzilla movie since the original, harnessing Godzilla’s towering presence to symbolize the nation’s unresolved traumas, unresolved conflicts and societal confusion. Godzilla is a monstrous force, an embodiment of historical terror, forever threatening to emerge from the deep waters of the collective Japanese subconscious to lay waste wipe out any attempt at growth, love, or peace. Godzilla is the physical manifestation of PTSD on a nationwide level. Much as I loved Barbie, maybe this is the true pairing for Oppenheimer than we needed.
3. Evil Dead Rise (dir: Lee Cronin) VOD/Netflix
A slick, bloody rollercoaster of a film, precision-tooled to please the crowds and reboot the franchise. t’s the big crowd-pleasing Evil Dead movie we were hoping for. Remixing the dark humour of ED 1, the polish of ED 2, and the savagery of the 2013 reboot, all blended together and perfectly paced, in a 1930s tower block. It moves from darkly funny to utterly savage. Also good to see some trans-masc representation, and even better that it’s without a flashing light on it.
2. Infinity Pool (dir: Brandon Cronenberg) VOD
Infinity Pool continues Cronenberg’s fascination with extreme psychological states triggered by absurd, existential sci-fi concepts, successfully channelling the spirit of late-period J.G. Ballard. Skarsgård does a great job of losing his mind, and Mia Goth is demonically babyish as the little devil that leads him astray. Dan Martin’s effects work is also once again grade-A stuff – he gets chances here to portray a drug-up orgy in which body parts emerge from other, quite unexpected body parts, plus a very crunchy/pulpy fist fight. I loved this trip into the darkness, with all its strange existential dread.
1. Talk To Me (dir: Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou) VOD/Netflix
A group of friends discover they can talk to the dead using an embalmed hand. They become hooked on the rush of regular séance parties, until one day they go too far… This is the best horror of the year so far, and when you know where it’s going it’s horrifically, soul-destroyingly bleak. This is the kind of movie where you won’t want to go to bed straight away, that’s for sure. Sophie Wilde is incredible in the lead, and I think Talk To Me might actually have one of the all-time horror movie endings. Haunting, in all the best ways.
Whitlock&Pope 