Best Horror Films of 2024 Lead Us into Halloween
by EG
Need a lineup for your Halloween night horror film festival? Lucky for you, 2024 has been a very good year for new scary movies, so you can enjoy some fresh thrills to go along with all the old classics. Read on for details.
Via Variety.
2024 has been loaded with horror releases, with scary stories about everything from rampaging spiders to satanic late-night talk shows. This crop is distinctive for its unconventional reworkings of well-worn tropes. There’s a slasher that owes as much to Terrence Malick as to Jason Voorhees; a dystopian-future tale that eschews global destruction to examine the implosion of one family; and two movies about nuns with evil pregnancies. Better yet: Several of these efforts have made waves at the indie box office, illustrating the horror audience’s affinity for going to strange new places.
There is at least one more major work left to come — Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” — but here are the year’s best horror releases so far.
Before revealing the top spots, here are some honorable mentions:
“Frankie Freako” — It’s not directly horror, but this love letter to ‘80s and ‘90s puppet features like “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” and “Critters” from “Psycho Goreman” director Steven Kostanski is pitch-perfect for genre fans.
“Alien: Romulus” — It didn’t reinvent the wheel, but there was plenty to enjoy in this nasty, brutish chapter of the “Alien” saga. With incredible sound, production design and wildly stressful scenes, “Alien: Romulus” is great as the space slasher many fans have waited for, with much of the credit going to ambitious director and co-writer Fede Álvarez.
Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have perfected their mix of scares and comedy with “Scream VI” and “Ready or Not,” and “Abigail” is no exception. When a gang of crooks kidnaps a vampire who appears to be a little girl, they’re quickly in over their heads in this gory caper, elevated by inspired performances by Melissa Barrera and Dan Stevens.
Director Arkasha Stevenson and star Nell Tiger Free make the most of this moody prequel to the nearly 50-year-old franchise. Deft camerawork and creepy sets build a haunting backdrop for Sister Margaret’s investigation into her unwanted conception. And Free’s increasingly feral performance echoes cinematic triumphs like 1981’s “Possession.”
The creature feature of the year is this French spider bonanza, in which director and co-writer Sébastien Vanicek brings a tidal wave of lethal arachnids to a run-down apartment building. Audiences will jump, flinch and itch as the body count rises and the spiders run amok across every wall and surface.
Robert Morgan’s dour look at artistic obsession blurs the lines between reality and nightmare as a stop-motion animator (Aisling Franciosi) is freed from her controlling mother but finds untold darkness while fashioning her own story. A punishing mixture of psychological, surreal and body horror, Morgan’s vision is hopeless yet gorgeous.
All hail Sydney Sweeney’s coronation as a scream queen, as she leads this deliciously lurid chronicle of a young nun who finds herself pregnant. Helmed by Michael Mohan, the handsomely shot saga cranks up the creepiness until Andrew Lobel’s script flies into B-movie madness, ratcheting up the gore and giving Sweeney an indelible final shot.
Get the rest of the list at Variety.