There were a ton of great movies that came out this year, and I also caught up on a bunch of fantastic films from previous years that I missed. I was tempted to do a “top ten movies I WATCHED this year” list but that might be too confusing. So I’ll limit myself to only 2018 films, although having experienced the magic of the WNUF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL and NEON MANIACS, I’m sorely tempted to put those on the list.
You can find recaps of these flicks all over the internet, so I don’t feel the need to reproduce them here.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s the top 10 films I saw in 2018.
10. THE RITUAL
I love the hell out of Adam Nevill’s work and can only hope the success of this flick will usher in a few more adaptions, hopefully NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE (starring Tom Hardy as Knacker, please…). THE RITUAL features an amazing creature design, but also fantastic chemistry between the leads.
9. THE ENDLESS
Kind of like LOST, except at the end I was in awe of the creators’ skill at crafting a unique and unsettling vision instead of angry at them for wasting six years of my life. If I were to revisit this list next year, I’d imagine THE ENDLESS might even get bumped up a few spots.
8. PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH
I know nothing about the previous Puppet Master movies (something I’ll have to unfuck soon), but LITTLEST REICH was just an hour and a half of pure joy. I mean a guy gets his head cut off and pees on his own face, what’s not to love?
7. THE NIGHT COMES FOR US
Not a horror movie, even though it’s been covered by a ton of horror sites. What it IS is two hours of the most brutal action you’ll ever see. All kinds of kick ass.
6. A QUIET PLACE
This movie is a master class in tension. The opening scene did a great job of establishing the scenario and showing us how far the filmmakers were willing to go (all the way).
5. MANDY
A super rad journey through a series of heavy metal album covers. While I often get annoyed when people in movies stand there not saying anything to each other (looking at you, Nicholas Winding Refn), MANDY is such a surreal, fever dream of a movie that it works. Any movie that features both an axe AND a chainsaw fight gets my twenty bucks.
4. INCIDENT IN A GHOSTLAND
This movie did something that is pretty much guaranteed to piss me off (no spoilers), but here’s the thing—they got away with it. While there are some shades of TEXAS CHAINSAW, INCIDENT is very much its own thing, and what a fantastic thing it is.
3. ATERRADOS (TERRIFIED)
The little boy, yo. That scene alone would be enough to make me adore this movie. The way the narrative is structured echoes the hauntings in the story, and it’s all very, very cool.
2. THE WITCH IN THE WINDOW
I don’t want to sound like a hipster here, but THE WITCH IN THE WINDOW is a strong example of the argument that horror almost HAS to be low-budget in order to be truly scary. There’s one scene in particular where the father is talking to his son that might be the scariest thing I’ve seen all year. That’s it, a conversation—no monsters, no demon nuns, no levitation. Absolutely brilliant. Aside from a minor logic flaw (and what horror movie is totally bereft of that particular bugaboo), WITCH is just about perfect.
1. HEREDITARY
Toni Collette FTW. The pole. Blonde cult creep. Gabriel Byrne as a professional door-opener with a questionable accent. This movie’s a fucking masterpiece.