Insert preamble here…
Well, here we are again. As Warped Perspective is about to enter its tenth year – and that coming off the back of the old Brutal as Hell days, too – I’ve racked up quite a few editions of these Top Tens, and every year I search for some kind of summative comment to make about the year that’s just departing. To start with, 2024 has been a very good year for cinema. Along the way, it has seen perhaps a surprising number of sequels and prequels which seemed unlikely to ever appear; the fact that both Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Furiosa made it to our screens this year is pleasantly surprising, and the arrival of a Gladiator sequel (arguably a kind of remake) is another generally pleasant surprise, even if only one of those films makes it onto this particular list. If we’re thinking about bigger trends and signifiers, then the Beetlejuice sequel, whilst perfectly enjoyable, didn’t really need to happen: it’s just further evidence that nostalgia is now such a key driver in bigger budget decision-making of late, something maybe amplified by the post-Covid years. Speaking of Covid – was that really five years ago? – the independent film scene has probably, finally got through its slew of titles ‘made during Covid with a skeleton crew and cast’, which nearly always relied quite heavily on some kind of space/time disruption, handily accounting for the lack of people or any measurable sense of normality. Unfortunately, this has now matured into a burgeoning subgenre of space/time-themed sci-fi and horror, much of which is very thin gruel, using the notion of quantum physics to bypass cogent screenwriting in favour of an ‘anything goes’ approach, which almost never makes for a decent film. So…no more time travel please – unless you’re Moorhead and Benson, where it is still allowed. Thanks.
Elsewhere, newer obsessions and developments have been turned to much greater effect, particularly (and inevitably) around the impact of technology and AI on our lives. Several titles taking technology as a theme are represented on this list. It’s also been great to note some fantastic examples of body horror, particularly where the female body is specifically concerned – and, just ahead of the much-anticipated Robert Eggers rendition of Nosferatu (which may well have been on this list, were it not for the fact that UK audiences have to wait until New Year’s Day 2025) that someone has made vampires good and repellent again. A title doing just this takes its place amongst an array of other monstrous projects, as well as a couple of films where concealing the dead turns out to be a pivotal plot point. In a nutshell then: AI and modern technology can be pivotal alienating factors, bodily breakdown is back, bloodsuckers are virulent parasites – and death is not the end, even if this is because someone decides it isn’t.
Let’s get on with it, then.
10: The Dead Thing
One of a number of titles I covered for the consistently great Fantasia Film Festival in Canada, The Dead Thing is an unseemly, uncomfortable blend of anxieties over modern technologies and a much more established terror of the supernatural. Hook-up addict Alex (Blu Hunt) passes her evenings on Tinder (or a mirror-image equivalent) and bed-hops to get away from a larger, recognisable existential crisis. When she’s ghosted by the one guy she actually feels a connection with, it disrupts something in her, she’s emotionally affected enough to try to track him down; after seeing him on a date with someone else, but also after being handed a funeral notice for Kyle when she tries to find him at his workplace, she is confused and intrigued enough to (shock) uninstall and reinstall the app, at which point she gets another match with Kyle. Kyle, the same nice guy, who seemingly can’t remember her at all. Is he alive and in hiding? Dead and a ghost in the machine? Playing with her? This tentative existential modern horror has plenty within it to get a hold on its audience, feeling both bang up to date and also part of a grand tradition of supernatural tales which co-opt elements of modern life to land their scares. You can check out my full review here.
9: Cara
Cara doesn’t spend much time dallying with redemption; what it does suggest is redemptive is reframed as being part of the same, sordid, exploitative puzzle we’ve seen throughout the film and as such, it is emphatically not a film for everyone. It’s unpleasant. It’s unkind. Its well-meaning characters become monsters in the imagination of the titular heroine Cara (Elle O’Hara), and/or they meet a miserable end, and/or they were never really there (perhaps). Such is the way of things when your film follows a young woman with a legacy of abuse and mistreatment, reaching adulthood only to succumb to profound mental illness, whilst trying to eke out an existence beyond the walls of the secure hospital. This existence pushes her into the fringes of the sex industry, which would be a tough break for even the most balanced person, and – well. Cara is already on a very slippery slope before we even encounter her and what we observe is her obsessive pursuit of freedom from all those who have, stood by or worse, contributed to her ordeal. Warped Perspective wrote one of the very first reviews for this title, by the by, and we even get a mention on the end credits: here’s a link to the review, and watch out for a wider release of this film in 2025.
8: Tiger Stripes
I haven’t seen very many Malay horror films, so Tiger Stripes was a pleasant surprise with its tale of a young girl reaching adolescence, with all of the attendant horrors of bodily changes, particularly menstruation – which is still seen as ‘unclean’ in Malay society, but let’s not feel too superior about this, as it’s only in 2025 that I’ve ever heard the word ‘blood’ in an advert for period products. Menstruation is only the start, however. Zaffan, the girl in question, isn’t simply getting used to blood and new issues around cleanliness: her period has arrived with other bodily changes, some of which seem to grant her… superhuman abilities. Hey, if she’s going to be excluded from old friendship groups and activities, she may as well get something out of it. But equally, if she’s now seen as ‘unclean’ simply for menstruating, then how is a small, religiously-devout community going to take to these other, rather more extreme changes? A smart, well-paced film with plausible family and friend relationships, a gleeful sense of humour and a great lens with which to examine attitudes to the female body, Tiger Stripes is well worth a watch. Here’s a link to my full review.
7: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
That we even got another film in the Mad Max pantheon from George Miller is a marvellous thing; hey, we may yet get more. But if he ends on Furiosa, with its stellar cast, strong visuals, fantastic high action scenes and sustained storytelling, then it’ll be a great place to part company. If some of the CGI is a little eye-twitch-inducing – to acknowledge a few minor faults – then for the most part it blends well into the film’s gritty, colourful aesthetic. Best of all, though, is getting to spend more time with the War Boys, drivers, Immortan Joe and his crew – and of course, with the brilliant Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, as an easy-on-the-eye upcoming warlord with a hinted backstory and an emotional life of his own). As I said at the time, the whole film is basically what happens when people get overpromoted and then break the fragile infrastructure which has been built up – just imagine such a thing! Anya Taylor-Joy is remarkably good, too, and if it’s a little annoying that Furiosa got recast by a much younger actor when the likes of De Niro get the whole de-ageing treatment – another minor eye-twitch – then at least Taylor-Joy takes on the role with serious panache, doing it justice. Like its predecessor Fury Road, it’s a simply enough yarn, but done very well. My full review is here.
6: Black Eyed Susan
Surprise, surprise, it’s another title which I feel I need to say is ‘not for everyone’. Given that nothing is ever ‘for everyone’, what I really mean is that Black Eyed Susan is, like Cara, an intentional and unpleasant study of humanity, frequently at its worst, but always complicated, with its moral lines placed under a microscope. But there’s more: here, notions of consent, sex, violence and modern life are refocused by the film’s use of a key plot point, a brand-new, trainable sex doll. Nicknamed Black Eyed Susan by the crew working on ‘her’, Susan is designed to act as a pressure valve for stressed, frustrated men who want to hurt the women they’re intimate with – the doll’s creator expresses this as if it’s just a truism. Writing all of this in light of the recent Dominique Pelicot case and his mass facilitation of rape, it all feels even more sordid and unpalatable even than it did, but clearly the morals being eroded in the film are all too often being eroded in the real world, out there, often just out of sight. Susan’s original trainer takes his own life – why, you might wonder? – so step up, lonely but otherwise all-too normal Derek (Damian Maffei) who agrees to the job because he is at his lowest ebb, financially, socially and emotionally. But he doesn’t want to hit and hurt the realistic doll, and doesn’t seem to care that she can develop a strikingly lifelike black eye…so, in response to his far more humane treatment, Susan begins to show revulsion at the idea of violence, too. She wants to be a different sort of companion. Great, right? That should be fine. Well… this intimate. queasy, questioning film is a challenging watch which escalates its questions and its quandaries as it goes. At the heart of all of this is the brave and unflinching performance by Yvonne Emilie Thälker as Susan: few actors could take this on, but she does it superbly. My full review can be found here, and again, be warned: this augmented reality is unpleasant, and the worse for its encroaching proximity.
5: Broken Bird
Whilst it would be nice to move onto this write-up of Broken Bird and note that we actually get some effective female agency here, that wouldn’t quite be true – or straightforwardly true, at least. It’s a tragic story about a woman unable to relate to others normally, or to form relationships in a healthy way. In many respects, the story of Sibyl (Rebecca Calder) subverts expectations: it’s not normally women we see behaving in this way, if you think of colder, more clinical true crime cases and the films about them. But Sibyl has a compelling, horrifying backstory which is only oh-so slowly parcelled out to the audience; along the way, we see her determination to craft the perfect family for herself, in a way. If it takes some time for Sibyl’s story to properly mesh with an accompanying story, that of Emma (Sacharissa Claxton), a policewoman grieving the disappearance of her young son – then it is oh-so worthwhile when it comes. This is a ghastly, richly Gothic story which matches intricate detail against shocking revelation, with a horror denouement which is both shocking and aesthetically brilliant. Tell you what, take a look at my full review to get more of a sense of all of this…
4: The Vourdalak
The Vourdalak was an unexpected delight, a period piece which very clearly channels the horror cinema of yesteryear with its lush colours, archetypes, setting, music and script. Then there’s the use of celluloid, of course: the film looks like an unearthed gem, a lost project found intact somewhere after a limited run in the late 70s, which in and of itself makes the film charming and interesting. Based on a 19th Century short story by Anton Chekov, director Adrien Beau (who also co-wrote the film with Hadrien Bouvier) has, however, opted for a much darker spin on this tale which was also used by Mario Bava in his portmanteau classic, Black Sabbath (1963). However, the Beau/Bouvier take on The Family of the Vourdalak renders the revenant father a true monster – realised through puppetry, a marionette which can’t but trigger some kind of visceral reaction. This is only the beginning of a far more fatalistic, gruelling vision of vampirism, too. A sensory, aesthetic triumph and a grim story of contagion and conquest, I liked The Vourdalak enough to write this special feature on it, as well as a more conventional review.
3: Late Night with the Devil
Only in a particularly strong year for film could The Vourdalak ever find itself in fourth place, but 2024 was also the year which brought us the clever, note-perfect charms of faux documentary horror, Late Night with the Devil. What a fantastic, well-researched occult horror: this was another title which had me writing a special feature, this time to explore the many clues, nods and references contained within it. It’s a smart and engaging hyperreal experience, but at its heart it’s a Faustian pact spelled out in a lurid 70s colour palette, with knock-out, entirely fitting performances and a great grasp on the hokum and trends of the era. It’s just that, here, they’re given license to move onto a great ‘what if?’, by considering what might happen if there was an occult force out there, waiting to break through and to grab its side of the bargain.
2: The Coffee Table
I’m still mulling The Coffee Table over. Months after watching it. I think it may be one of the darkest things I have ever seen. Now and again, my mind returns to some element, or some scene in particular; for someone who routinely watches a hell of a lot of films, that in itself is to the film’s credit, but the reason this is still happening is because it is such a momentous, significant, utterly grim experience – and it does it with no splatter, no torture, no ordeal – the chief ordeal here is in one man’s mind, and in how he chooses to carry it, until he can’t carry it any longer. It all starts, as some of the darkest days no doubt do, with the utterly banal – accepting, of course, the simmering discontent in the lives of new, and late-life parents Jesus and Maria. For Maria, this is her dream finally come true. For Jesus, he is miserable; he doesn’t love being a dad, he’s aggrieved by the child’s given name, even, and he feels utterly powerless in his relationship so that, when given the chance at some brief moment of agency, he puts his foot down. Where does he do this? At a furniture store, where he demands a new coffee table for their apartment – a garish, outdated, lumpen item which the shop assistant is suspiciously keen on. Maria thinks it’s hideous, but Jesus’s mind is made up. So he gets his coffee table, though it gets delivered with a part missing. Jesus is left holding the baby while he waits for the part to be dropped off, so he can finish putting it together and – well. Here we part company with the normal. Let’s just say he’s not able to do it very well. I’ll hand over to Darren here, whose review was initially going to be one single word: ‘fuck’. If you’ve see The Coffee Table, you can only nod sagely at this.
1: The Substance
2024, without a shadow of a doubt, is the year of The Substance. There’s now a meme which says, ‘Please don’t make The Substance your entire thing’. Too late, of course; you can even buy the yellow coat, if you like. Coming out of left-field with a huge Hollywood star being given the full body horror treatment, it was always going to make a huge impact – particularly, might I add, on regular audiences, who probably just wanted to see the new Demi Moore film and got treated to something unlike anything else they had ever experienced before. For all those audiences who’d never heard of Brian Yuzna, god bless ’em and you’re welcome.
But what a fun, clever film, riffing on the horrors of ageing and a culture which derides any woman over the age of, ooh, fortysomething, which is interesting, as director Coralie Fargeat is at that age herself, as almost certainly are many of the film’s biggest fans, myself included. The film follows a relatable start point with an increasingly outrageous, fantastical conclusion which never feels entirely untethered from very real feelings and situations. It captures not just the entitled brat behaviour of an industry and of men who can never seem to turn that critical eye on their own ageing physiques, but also on how women will quite readily fuck each other over, too: Elisabeth and Sue, despite being ‘one’, never behave towards one another like there’s some inviolable sisterhood between them. Their whole relationship turns into one of ‘divide and conquer’, with increasingly grisly results. Maybe this, too, is ‘the patriarchy’, but it’s never a film of feminine passivity, at least. It’s icky, uproariously funny and well-realised, and a creative force majeure from Fargeat. You can check out my full review of this year’s film of the year here. Now, I need a new coat…
Notable mentions:
Here are some other great films which didn’t quite make the Top Ten, but definitely deserve a mention anyway:
- Alien: Romulus. A decent return to a much-beloved universe, which, even if it leaned too heavy on the fan-‘pleasing’ references and toyed with what was plausible within its confines, was still an enjoyable piece of sci-fi, with a phenomenal performance from David Jonsson.
- Cold Meat: a potential Xmas movie, perhaps? Sure, if you’re deranged and love human misery. But this surprising, tightly-wrought wintry ordeal horror deserves a lot of love.
- Property: A thoughtful, thought-provoking tale of wealth, inequality and people fighting the good fight under extreme duress in rural Brazil. This is a political film, for sure, but one which never lectures anyone, and that in itself is to its great credit. It’s a gripping piece of tragedy.
- In Our Blood: another interesting take on a certain stalwart supernatural genre, combined with a mockmentary format which is used very well, handing down surprise after surprise.
- MadS: hallelujah, New French Extremity has popped back to deliver a fresh spin on contagion horror. Where have you been all these years? We’ve missed you…
