Another year, another bunch of comments about how this year’s been a terrible one for decent horror titles. To be fair, the quantity of those comments appears to be substantially smaller than the pile of posts which bemoaned 2023’s genre output. Narrowing the field down to ten proved, as ever, exceptionally difficult because there’s been so much damn good stuff to enjoy. This is also the reason that there are six Honourable Mentions instead of the usual five, because I felt it would be too mean to drop one of them.
As is customary, the rule is that to qualify for inclusion the film has to be a new (or new-ish) one which I viewed during 2024. As usual, if your favourite isn’t among the list, it might not have landed with me, but it’s more likely that I enjoyed it very much and it didn’t quite make the cut or I wasn’t able to get around to seeing it. There are thousands of movies out there and a finite amount of time to watch them. It’s a rubbish excuse, I know, but it’s my rubbish excuse and I’m sticking with it.
Enough waffle. Here’s my Top Ten, in purely alphabetical order…except for the fact that I’m going to mention which two were competing for my best of the year. On with the list!
BLINK TWICE
Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut features Naomi Ackie as Jess, who accepts an invitation to the private island of Channing Tatum’s tech bro Slater King, a place where the luxury holiday experience seems too good to be true, with the weird visions that begin to creep into her mind suggesting that could be exactly the case.
Kravitz gives toxic masculinity a considered kicking in a tale which carefully constructs the rarified atmosphere of a billionaire’s world in which something is clearly up from the start, unveiling the clues and shocks at a measured pace before hitting the viewer with the stark terror of what’s behind the exotic locale, the unlimited champagne and the Michelin-starred meal options.
Blink Twice is a stylish, satirical thriller which combines the #MeToo movement and the re-energised “eat the rich” notion into a slick package, amping up the tension and sardonic humour as we wait to see whether or not a bunch of the most hideous blokes alive will get their comeuppance. It’s a feminist movie, no doubt, and all the better for taking that stance, but there’s genuine catharsis here for everyone and the resolution is a sly, pleasing one.
BROKEN BIRD
Vying for my favourite film of the year along with The Substance (damn it, I’ve given away one of my picks), Joanne Mitchell’s mix of vivid fantasy and crushing reality sees mortician Sybil meeting the man of her dreams and then being given the most gruesome opportunity to spend a lot more time with him. I heard this described as “Coraline meets Nekromantik” and that’s a fair shout, although Broken Bird is better than both, if you ask me.
The screenplay from Dominic Brunt, rich with detail, sharply contrasts the mundanity and low key hilarity of life in a small place with brilliantly rendered dream sequences. There’s also some surprising gore along the way and a few genuinely startling moments as Sybil’s view of the world becomes increasingly skewed, leading to a fiery and heartbreaking climax.
Elevating the material still further is as astonishing lead performance from Rebecca Calder, her fragile outward appearance concealing a steeliness and fierce imagination. Sybil is driven to do some dreadful things, but it’s difficult not to have some sympathy with her plight, even when an equally damaged detective is on Sybil’s trail and tragedy surely lies just around the corner. Despite the often ghastly business in play, Broken Bird is a rather beautiful and ultimately tear-jerking foray into the workings of a unique mind.
CANNIBAL MUKBANG
My first opportunity to see this was in December 2023 at the Soho Horror Film Festival, but that didn’t pan out and I ended up viewing it this year, so last year’s loss is very much this year’s gain. April Consalo plays Ash, whose hungry online audience is frequently sated by videos of her consuming vast quantities of admittedly delicious looking food. A chance meeting with the socially awkward Mark slowly develops into something more serious, but their fledgling romance is about to be tested severely, especially when Mark discovers the source of those tender morsels.
Blood. Sex. Food. That’s the tagline of Cannibal Mukbang and there’s no skimping on any of those in Aimee Kuge’s tangy blend of romcom and raucous revenger, twisting the tropes of those genres in unexpected and darkly comical ways, including the turning of the developing relationship montage into a series of gleefully executed murders.
The whole production oozes confidence and class. Kuge’s smart script has much to say about toxic relationships and the cycle of dependency. The cinematography and lighting cannily matches the shifting mood of the piece. The performances are terrific across the board, in particular the complex character of Ash, perfectly portrayed by April Consalo. How she isn’t already a massive star is something I can’t fathom. If enough of us watch this, maybe we can make it happen.
HELL HOLE
The Adams Family returns with a pleasingly twisted take on the monster movie, as a fracking operation in Serbia releases something far more deadly than a gas pocket, throwing the project into an escalating nightmare which mixes mumblecore workplace comedy with The Thing. You probably don’t want to know how the monster gains access to its victims, but that’s made abundantly clear quite early on.
This is slightly less of a family affair this time out, with Zelda Adams absent and Lulu Adams on co-writing duties only, but John Adams and Toby Poser are present and amusingly incorrect here, working with a Serbian crew on their latest opus. This reflects the onscreen action in a lovely way, with all of the culture clashes and language barriers which that type of enterprise produces.
Sure, it’s a creature pic which is a huge amount of fun and it can be enjoyed purely on those terms, but lurking just under the surface there are big themes, including bodily autonomy, the ethics of profiteering from an increasingly unstable planet and American involvement on foreign shores. There’s much to chew on while being grossed out by the impressive gloopy and bloody special effects and, for anyone who thought Where The Devil Roams was a little too downbeat and brutal, this finds the Adamses in more playful mood. It’s grisly, hilarious and unsettling, often at the same time.
HERETIC
I did not have “Hugh Grant – Horror Icon” on my bingo card for 2024 but here we are. Festival goers and indie fans feasted this year, but denizens of the multiplex were provided with choice cuts too, Heretic being one of the prime examples of its type. Two young missionaries show up at the front door of Grant’s Mr. Reed and find themselves in a battle of wills as Reed brings a studied, increasingly worrying shakedown to their entire system of belief.
Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, they of A Quiet Place (and, yes, 65, but let’s not think about that right now), this is a similarly high concept piece which may be rather talky in its first half but oh, the talk is good, raising pertinent queries about the fundamentals of religion and the wider topic of control, while taking care to portray those with faith as rounded, engaging, sympathetic folks. Its approach of questioning everything never feels like an atheist-driven hit job and there’s a central mystery to the strange goings-on which is adeptly unravelled down the home stretch.
Grant is excellent and clearly relishing a well written, multi-layered role which constantly keeps the viewer on their toes as to just how far he will go to prove his points. Swerving, for the most part, the albeit skilfully crafted jump scares of AQP in favour of an overriding air of unease throughout, Heretic proves that you don’t need to dumb down to win over your audience. Also, Hallelujah! for an ending which doesn’t have a sequel on its mind.
THE LAST PODCAST
Charlie Bailey (Eric Tabach) hosts a podcast which debunks supposedly supernatural occurrences, but when one episode backfires spectacularly he finds himself being followed around by the ghost of junior professor Duncan Slayback (Gabriel Rush). Charlie sees a chance for both personal and follower growth, but his focus on clicks and monetisation threatens to derail both his relationship with long-suffering girlfriend Bree and Duncan’s side mission to complete some unfinished business.
Writer/director Dean Alioto’s inspiration was the buddy humour of An American Werewolf In London and the back and forth between Tabach and Rush does contain traces of that, but The Last Podcast is very much its own beast, balancing the humour and horror with a great deal of skill and revealing layers to our two protagonists that we may not like while keeping the chuckles and chills coming in regular fashion.
Combining classic ghostly activity with pointed jibes about the contemporary influencer’s issue of growing your follower base, The Last Podcast delivers a number of genuine jolts on its way to a satisfying rug pull and a surprisingly poignant conclusion before rolling out a mid-credit tease as to which direction this particular universe could be heading next. I don’t say this often but hey, bring on the sequel.
THE PARAGON
When tennis player Dutch is the victim of a hit and run accident, his life is changed forever. Unable to continue his athletic pursuits, Dutch turns his attention to finding the driver who left him with a smashed leg and a growing sense of injustice. How does he go about this? He follows up on a newspaper advert which suggests it’s possible to learn how to be psychic, which leads him to no nonsense teacher Lyra and the beginning of a bizarre adventure Dutch never expected.
The Paragon grounds its plot in well-worn horror motifs, but this genre offering from New Zealand leans into the inherent daftness of the premise and plays most of the proceedings for laughs, be they smart, silly or just plain puerile. The humour hits the mark over and over, which makes the shifts into more emotional territory land all the better and the double act between Benedict Wall and Florence Noble, who play Dutch and Lyra, is a delight. Noble’s deadpan reactions to Wall’s unflinching idiocy are particularly fine.
New Zealand continues to provide fertile ground for comedy horror and while The Paragon doesn’t delve into the dark stuff nearly as much as, say, Housebound, the set pieces and cult subplot mean it doesn’t stray from the genre entirely. I think that people who would normally run a mile before watching anything in the genre would love this and as such, it’s the perfect gateway into horror while also providing something warm and fuzzy for the fans. Also, knife tennis!
PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT
Starting out as a cross between Clerks and High Fidelity before taking off on an excursion to weird, bloody, cult madness, writer/director Christopher Bickel takes the grindhouse-flecked promise (and some of the cast) of his previous flick Bad Girls and delivers a psychedelic nightmare in which a group of vinyl-loving friends track down a reclusive band of musicians and soon wish they hadn’t.
Made for the price of a second hand car, Pater Noster And The Mission Of Light belies its microbudget, maximising its resources with evocative, readily available settings, a committed cast and some impressive gore. It has the slasher sensibility of picking off its characters one by one in a wilderness from which there appears to be no escape, but elevates itself way above the usual set ‘em up, kill ‘em off fare with trippy visuals and a lively examination of both music fandom and collector culture.
As a music lover myself, I was overjoyed that the soundtrack for this is an absolute cracker. There are tracks from the titular band themselves, creating its own strange feedback loop, blurring the lines between the fiction of the movie and the fact of creating and being able to listen to the songs in the here and now. The tune which plays over the closing credits is an earworm; you have been warned. Bickel’s output just gets better and better without ditching his punk rock ethos. This is lo-fi indie cinema at its finest.
STRANGE DARLING
Splitting a movie’s story into chapters is an affectation of which I’ve had more than enough. Non-linear narratives also possess the potential to wind me up, because they’re often a misguided means of giving a straightforward tale an appearance of depth. Strange Darling is split into chapters. Not only that, but it also opens with Chapter Three. I did not storm out of the cinema. Not only I did I hang around for its entire runtime, but I also loved it more than even I could have hoped for.
For much of the time this is a two-hander, but there’s no treading water for an hour before the real action kicks in as we’re launched immediately into a lethal game of cat and mouse, carried off with surefootedness by the always reliable Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald, both given tricksy roles as the boundaries between hunter and hunted blur. Gallner’s brand of onscreen persona and knowledge of his previous filmography play into the watcher’s expectations as to how his character may or may not behave whilst Fitzgerald almost nonchalantly drops a career best, boundary pushing performance.
That’s all I really want to say about this one. In general, the less you know about a film before going in, the better the experience will be and in the case of Strange Darling, I would recommend that you talk to no one about it, as they’ll be too eager to blurt out spoilers. Don’t even watch the trailer. Sit back, enjoy, and think about how it went all those places you didn’t predict.
THE SUBSTANCE
Seven years after Coralie Fargeat’s ferocious feature debut Revenge, her follow-up often makes that previous movie look positively restrained by comparison. Demi Moore’s fitness show star Elisabeth Sparkle hits fifty and is given the news that the network is looking for a new model. Shady medical advances afford her the opportunity to turn back the clock and exact some measure of revenge on Dennis Quaid’s oily TV exec, but there are rules to follow and increasingly drastic consequences every time those rules are broken. Which, of course, they are.
Vying for my favourite film of the year along with Broken Bird (which isn’t a giveaway unless you’re reading this from bottom to top), this showcases a turn from Demi Moore which proves what I’ve been saying for years about her acting work always being great, regardless of the quality of the movie she’s in. Here, at last, she’s in a shameless, splattery, sledgehammer satire which is perfectly suited to her talents and would have almost certainly given her more award nods, had this not been one of those dirty genre items that soil “proper” cinema.
I’ve seen comments that the film is too long. Yes, it does clock in a whopping one hundred and forty minutes, which would exceed the unwritten rule concerning the ideal horror film length by at least fifty, but this a story which needs to breathe so the viewer can fully immerse themselves in the neon-soaked nightmare and, of course, to appreciate Moore’s stellar work. Contrasting the glitz and glamour of Hollywood with some of the grimiest, gorge-rising body horror in recent memory, it’s a startling riposte to the unrealistic standards of beauty that women have had to endure for an age. You won’t know whether to laugh heartily or lean over to throw up. And that, my friends, is a recommendation and then some.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Here are six further titles which are well worth your time. I know that I only listed five in my 2023 list, but I don’t make the rules. Hold on, I do make the rules. I agonised over which one of the following to remove and didn’t have the heart to do it, so six it is. More filmic goodness for you to check out.
BA
Finding himself into a parlous financial state, single father Daniel makes a deal in which he is given the monetary security he craves, but has to act as a modern day Grim Reaper, assigned to take the lifeforce of the people he’s assigned within a set time limit, all while avoiding the attentions of the city’s law enforcement and a local social worker who’s concerned about the well-being of Daniel’s daughter Collette.
Writer/director Benjamin Wong builds his world – and path to another world – with an eye for the crucial details that makes collecting souls a rational, if rather shady, career for those pushed to the fringes of society. It’s great to see Michael Paul Chan and Brian Thompson lending their considerable talents to important supporting roles, but it’s the convincing, emotional rollercoaster of the father-daughter bond between Lawrence Kao and Kai Cech that seals the deal here. Get ready to pretend you have something in your eye.
THE BUILDOUT
Friends Cameron and Dylan take a motorcycle trip out into the desert where Dylan plans to join up with a religious group which has restored her faith in existence after suffering traumatic, personal loss. This has been described by writer/producer/director Zeshaan Younus as “a pseudo-found footage, Terrence Malick-inspired, cross-genre film.” If you’re going to mention Malick then you’d better bring your A-game and Younus does not disappoint.
Jenna Kanell and Hannah Aline are never anything less than believable as lifelong friends whose relationship is tested to the limit by the ghosts of the past and the weirdness of the present. The horror is oblique and unnerving, the settings are staggeringly gorgeous and, if you’re in the mood for something which steadfast refuses to explain every single incident, this is a movie which will stay with you. Pause the proceedings to admire the visuals and press play to marvel at Kanell, who continues to be a fascinating performer.
FREWAKA
Making its proper bow in 2025, I was lucky enough to catch this when it screened at the Celluloid Screams Festival in Sheffield, where it lifted the Audience Award for Best Feature. Who am I to disagree with the Celluloid audience? The title of Aislinn Clarke’s thoroughly unsettling folk horror refers to hidden, tangled roots and Clare Monnelly’s care nurse Shoo is about to know that word’s true meaning, as she’s sent out to rural Ireland to take care of the combative Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain). Peig is convinced that ghosts are out to get her and after a short while at her crumbling abode, Shoo comes to fear that her patient might well be correct.
An Taibhse blazed the trail for Irish language horror this year and Frewaka picked up the baton of spooky happenings in the countryside. Although Clarke’s movie is set in the modern day, there’s an unhealthy dose of the past coming back to haunt the present and some DNA is shared with her debut The Devil’s Doorway, which is also well worth your time. The sound design is flawless and, combined with a disquieting Die Hexen score, has the viewer on edge even when the camera isn’t prowling around the darkest recesses of Peig’s place. Frewaka may cause you to keep checking behind you while you’re watching it.
GANYMEDE
A high school wresting star grapples with his sexuality as he finds himself developing a crush on his openly gay classmate. His family fear it will ruin their reputation as pillars of the community, calling upon the services of a local pastor who suspects that his subject has been possessed by an evil creature which must be exorcised.
Colby Holt and Sam Probst’s film is one designed to make you angry and I’ll admit that I spent a good deal of it wanting to shout at the screen. Small town bigotry is uncomfortably realised in Holt’s keenly observed script, which plays down any sensationalism and paints an all too realistic portrait of a place in which reputation is everything and any transgressions must be squashed, otherwise Hell awaits. David Koechner (yes, Champ Kind from Anchorman) proves that he can make you scared just as much as he can make you laugh, his fire and brimstone preacher bringing a marrow-freezingly, dangerous real edge to the already fraught situation.
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL
Arguments over AI generated content aside, no algorithm can generate the uneasy atmosphere and queasy suspense of Colin and Cameron Cairnes’ chiller, with a noteworthy performance from David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, a TV talk show host with an idea to boost ratings with a special, occult-themed episode. Everyone’s interested in the supernatural, right? This results, inevitably, in matters going horribly awry.
The aesthetic of 1970s US talk show television is superbly recreated and playing out the plot in real time in front of both the studio and home (or cinema) audience throws a neat spin on to the found footage subgenre, as well as freshening up the possessed girl trope. The switches from set to backstage during each ad break are a nice touch, also allowing the drip feeding of Delroy’s backstory to inform each act as the suspense builds, leading to an outrageous pay off. Dastmalchian commands the attention as the epitome of calm on camera, increasingly twitchy and unsure away from its glare.
THE WELL
What this list needs is a riotous, gory, Italian horror which is clearly influenced by the straight to vid splat-fests of the 1980s and whaddya know, The Well fits that bill perfectly. Lauren LaVera sheds her Terrifier trappings to play a restorer of damaged art, called upon to work her magic on a particular painting with a peculiar past.
With flexible logic, a certain level of incoherence, bursts of extreme violence and actors who don’t so much chew the scenery as bite bloody great chunks out of it, this is nectar to those of us weaned on those wonkily dubbed “What the hell did I just watch?” VHS rentals, the icing on this blood red velvet cake being a cameo from the late, great, genre stalwart Giovanni Lombardo Radice. Free from the BBFC cuts which would have been imposed, had this been released in the era from which it clearly takes its inspiration, gorehounds will lap this up. The casual observer may find it silly, overblown and downright repellent, but if you know, you know.