So, it’s been a year since we did one of these lists and I have been head-down watching all the movies I could get my chubby paws on. Did I miss anything? What’s that? A global pandemic? Ugh, see you guys in 2022… In the meantime, here are, in very particular order, the top 10 horror films of 2020. Suck it, you garbage year.
10. Color Out of Space
It may be a tradition at this point to have an oddball Nicholas Cage-starring movie on my list, but when you couple him with fellow oddball Richard Stanley and adapt a tricky Lovecraft story into something weird and trippy and slimy, well you have my attention. Stanley is, of course, the director who was famously kicked off the Marlon Brando version of Island of Dr. Moreau, and he returns to feature filmmaking with help. The folks at Spectrevision, namely Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah and Josh Waller, have already promised more from this collaboration, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Stanley has his roots in 80s and 90s filmmaking, and Color Out of Space feels more like a Stuart Gordon movie than most Stuart Gordon movies. It’s full of purples and pinks and reds, iridescent plants glowing and wavering, bodies melting and oozing and, threaded through it all, a sense that nothing will ever be quite right again. Cage’s performance begin subdued, but it’s not long before he’s channeling his inner Trump and getting delightfully bonkers with the role, while bit by bit the world, affected by some object from space warping the land and everything on it, becomes something foreign and beautiful and dangerous. Color Out of Space is strange and offbeat and all the things I want a psychedelic creature feature to be. There’s more than a whiff of camp, if that isn’t your thing, but that light touch belies a deeper pessimism in the movie that’s more haunting than I first gave it credit for.
9. His House
The one thing you can say for the rise of conservative politics in America and the UK, among other places of course, is that it inspires some amazing art. His House, a Netflix premiere, is the tale of Bol and Rial who have arrived in England as refugees from South Sudan. When they are fortunate enough to be placed in a home in an English neighborhood, they do their best to assimilate and start a new life for themselves. But there’s something else in the house, too, a force that will not allow the past to be forgotten. In a series of revealing flashbacks, we come to understand more of this family’s past and the true cost of escaping a country as it rips itself apart. There’s commentary about how the English neighbors and administration, as made flesh by Dr. Who’s Matt Smith, see and treat our characters, but the real threat comes from within. His House isn’t so lazy as to be just a movie about overcoming stereotypes. It’s about the wages of survival and the compromises we make with ourselves to sleep through the night. Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku, who Duncan and I fell in love with during our Lovecraft Country recaps, deliver a pair of powerful performances. Also, this may be the only movie on this list to deliver a jump scare that took me out of my seat this year. Oh, yeah, it’s a great ghost story, too.
8. Spiral
Shudder continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. While the very fine Impetigore didn’t show up on my top ten, Shudder’s commitment to bringing premiere horror to their service is making me real happy about spending that $5 a month.
