The Best Horror Movies of 2016

2016 has been another banner year for horror cinema, with a steady stream of fright flicks emerging both from the studios and the indie scene. In fact, 2016 was such a good year for horror films that I had a hard time narrowing down my best of the year list to 10 titles. Unfortunately, as with year’s previous, some titles were omitted not because they weren’t awesome, but because I didn’t get to see them (I live in the sticks…). Because of that, things like The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Eyes of My Mother and The Love Witch didn’t make this year’s round-up.

With that out of the way, here are my top 10 horror films of 2016 – presented in no particular order.

Green Room

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Jeremy Saulnier’s third feature film finds a group of punk rockers squaring off against Neo-Nazis (led by none other than Patrick Stewart) in a fight for survival after they witness a murder at a dive club. Lean, mean, and filled with surprisingly nuanced performances (from the aforementioned Stewart and the gone-too-soon Anton Yelchin), this isn’t your typical genre offering – but few would expect anything less from Saulnier – who’s quickly developing a reputation for stylish and intense revenge films.

Green Room isn’t a traditional horror film in that it doesn’t feature ghosts or slasher killers, but Stewart’s band of Neo-Nazi punks are arguably some of the most terrifying screen monsters we saw in the past year.

The Shallows

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No one’s made a truly classic killer shark film since Spielberg invented the genre with Jaws, but filmmaker Jaume Collett-Serra gave it the old college try with this year’s The Shallows.

Blake Lively plays a surfer who becomes stranded a mere 200 yards from shore when a great white shark begins stalking her. The ensuing cat-and-mouse game stretches the willing suspension of disbelief, but Collet-Serra keeps the tension high and the shocks coming so you’ll probably not really mind. While certainly one of the more lightweight films on this year’s list, there’s fun to be had here.  The Shallows isn’t going to supplant Jaws on the greatest shark movies of all-time list, but it will wash the taste of Deep Blue Sea out of your mouth.

Hush

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Filmmaker Mike Flanagan has the distinction of being the only filmmaker with two movies on this year’s list – which is not really surprise if you’ve seen his earlier work (Oculus, Absentia). This guy’s been on the “horror directors to keep an eye on” list for a few years. 2016 was essentially the moment he arrived.

Hush is one of those deceptively simple horror features – a psychopath menaces a woman who’s isolated and alone. What sets Hush apart is that the woman is deaf, which allows Flanagan to play with traditional genre tropes in a way these kinds of films usually can’t. The result is a tense little chiller that gleefully presents well-worn situations then quickly subverts our expectations. Flanagan doesn’t reinvent this sort of film, but Hush definitely gives the subgenre a facelift.

Train to Busan

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Just when you thought you could happily live the rest of your life without seeing another zombie movie, director Yeon Sang-ho delivers one of the better walking-dead flicks to emerge in recent years.

Train to Busan finds a group of South Koreans trapped on a speeding train when the zombie apocalypse happens. And really, that’s all you need to know about it as far as the plot is concerned. What’s interesting is the setting, which evokes memories of Snowpiercer, and the fact that Yeon actually makes running zombies tolerable.

While I wasn’t quite as gaga over Train to Busan as some of my colleagues, there’s no debating that this is one of the better zombie offerings to come along in recent memory. If you haven’t hit full-on zombie fatigue yet, you’ll want to check this one out.

The Invitation

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An intimate dinner party at a beautiful house in the hills doesn’t sound like the setting for a horror film, but that’s exactly what Karyn Kusama has crafted with her latest offering, The Invitation.

The less said about the plot of this particular film, the better – the real joy is trying to decide if the ever-present sense of dread experienced by the film’s main character is real, or just in his head. This slow burner ratchets up the tension until the final act, wherein everything is finally revealed for exactly what it is.

It’s at least a little bit unfortunate that those final revelations aren’t as deftly handled as everything that comes before them, but The Invitation still works. It may not be an overtly horrific film for the majority of its runtime, but it is another prime example of how small, intimate settings can be used to create genuine dread – both for characters and the audience.

The Witch

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At their best, films can transport us to places or times we could never experience on our own – which is exactly what Robert Eggers has done with his tantalizing period piece, The Witch.

Dripping with authentic period detail, this tale of a family being torn apart by the forces of darkness in 1630s New England is probably as close as any of us will ever get to experiencing firsthand the hysteria of the era when concerns about women being witches was a genuine thing. Somber, dark, beautifully shot, and legitimately creepy (if you don’t mind the pacing), The Witch is one of the rare horror films that actually lived up to the hype it generated on the festival circuit. While it might be a bit too artsy for those looking for simple blood and guts, adventurous fright fans looking for something different will enjoy this.

Ouija: Origin of Evil

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If you’d told me a prequel to 2014’s tepid Ouija would make my best of the year list back in January, I’d have laughed at you – but such is the power of Mike Flanagan. Flanagan’s second entry on the list is arguably the most surprising – if only because expectations seemed so low for this movie going into it.

Flanagan again showcases his gift for subverting expectations – taking a somewhat predictable premise (fake medium’s family actually encounters the supernatural), and turning it on it ear. Flanagan yet again finds ways to make familiar tropes seem fresh and interesting. For a studio film, this one is really solid.

Baskin

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If you held a gun to my head and forced me to pick my favorite horror film of the past year, I’d probably go with Baskin. This nightmarish import from Turkish filmmaker Can Evrenol is creepy, gory, and mind-bending – which is everything I look for in my entertainment.

A group of cops go on a call – only to find themselves fighting Satanic cultists in an abandoned building that may well serve as a portal to Hell. The cinematography is beautiful, the FX work gruesome, the story clever, and Mehmet Cerrahoglu steals the show as the terrifying leader of the cult.

Baskin was technically a 2015 release, but most American audiences didn’t get to see it until this year – which makes it worthy of inclusion on my list.

10 Cloverfield Lane

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There’s been a lot of debate about whether 10 Cloverfield Lane – Dan Trachtenberg’s follow up to Cloverfield (at least in name…) – is actually a horror film. I’m taking the side that it is, but like The Invitation, it’s not so easily categorized.

The premise, which finds Mary Elizabeth Winstead held in an underground bunker after John Goodman rescues her certainly has horror film overtones – and the film’s sense of paranoia and mystery (Goodman insists he’s saved Winstead – there’s bad stuff happening aboveground) will keep you riveted until the film’s final moments.

If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that there are a lot of films that straddle the lines of horror cinema without being what many would consider overtly horror films. No matter how you categorize titles like 10 Cloverfield Lane and Green Room, they’re still well worth seeing.

The Wailing

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Na Hong-jin brings us the second Korean film to make the list, proving that Asia still has a thriving and vibrant horror scene.

Unlike Train to Busan, The Wailing is a more traditional Asian genre effort in that it blends a lot of disparate elements together. It’s part police procedural, part family drama, part mystery, and all horror.

The story revolves around a cop in a small mountain village who begins investigating why his fellow citizens are coming down with a strange illness. Things get more personal when his daughter starts exhibiting symptoms.

Where Train to Busan is more frenetically paced, the Wailing is content to take its time to tell its tale – but it pays off in a very satisfying way for viewers who are patient enough to stick with it for it’s roughly two-and-a-half-hour running time.

Honorable Mentions

Here are the movies that just missed making the cut – but are still worth checking out.

Don’t Breathe

The Conjuring 2

Rob Zombie’s 31

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