The Scariest Things

Since 1984, the Criterion Collection has been dedicated to publishing important classic and contemporary films from around the world in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements. No matter the medium—from laserdisc to DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD to streaming—Criterion has maintained its pioneering commitment to presenting each film as its maker would want it seen, in state-of-the-art restorations with special features designed to encourage repeated watching and deepen the viewer’s appreciation of the art of film.”

When this company was founded, the world was just getting used to VHS. Having your own copy, or an available copy of a classic movie was now at your fingertips. Fans of classic films could now watch great films and create a library of their favorite movies. Important, but non-commercial movies rarely got shown in theaters, and by the eighties, the places where they did play, the small independent movie houses were being replaced by cineplexes that would present new releases and big blockbuster films.

The Criterion Collection focused on the collectors. They got on board early with laser disc technology and remastered copies of legendary movies for the cleanest and best archival quality available. Low volume, high-quality curation was the name of their game. Over the years, it established a bit of cinema elitism, but you could be assured that your copy of the movie would come with director notes, actor interviews, scenes from the cutting room floor, and behind-the-scenes footage.

Quite simply, it was the best packaging a movie could offer. The big question for horror fans would be: What about us? The good news is that the Criterion Collection is fond of SOME horror films. Thrillers make the cut, and foreign films are well-represented. You will find the collected works of David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro, and Roman Polanski in the catalog. Val Lewton, David Lynch, Brian DePalma, and Alfred Hitchcock films are abundant here. And, oddly enough, Godzilla’s Showa era (1954-1975) is here in its entirety.

Like LP records, the Criterion Collection’s physical copies still offer up the best in physical media. The movies now are in Blu-Ray 4K formats, but they still come with all the trimmings that a film historian would crave. They also have gone through the effort for many films to have new cover/poster art created for the DVD’s, much like what the Austin-based Mondo Posters has done. And, they continue to follow up with restoration, in bringing back old movies and restoring them to the most current production format.

If you want to avoid purchasing a DVD and want to stream the movies, you can to go straight to the source and subscribe to The Criterion Channe where you can have access to the full library. You can find these movies on other streaming platforms, but if you want the film extras that The Criterion Collection creates, you’ll want to get a subscription. Our recommendation? Get the DVDs! Create a library! Also, this would be a service if horror is part of your film preferences, but you also love other genres. You’ll run out of horror films before too long.

With competition like A24 and IFC Midnight supporting high-quality horror productions that would often be snapped up by The Criterion Collection, it will be interesting to see if any modern classics get the Criterion treatment. It is notable that the major studios are not usually represented in this process. Notably, there are no Universal monsters, for example… except for Shape of Water.

In our podcast, Eric went into brain freeze on a key quote that was very quippy, and he went into brain freeze. Here is the missing quote!

Mr. Peters: Got a question for you. Which magazine sells the most copies?
Mark Lewis: Those with girls on the front covers and no front covers on the girls.”

Peeping Tom

It is rare to see an independent feature film loaded with lavishly appointed sets and historically accurate props. This is usually the domain of big budget studio productions, but Vincent Shade and his team have crafted a rich tapestry of Lovecraft-era period piece lore. The movie strived for period authenticity from the well-appointed general store to the creepy old mansion to the antique vehicles. Appropriately, this film had its world premiere at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

The story begins with a MacGuffin, a letter written to a store clerk, summoning him to attend to his ailing uncle, whom he was previously unaware of. The letter is of little consequence other than to launch a series of interlocked mysteries that are shrouded in old grievances, dark secrets, and cryptic rituals.

Jonathan Ackley, summoned to a gloomy mansion by his mysterious Uncle, Lord Barksdale realizes that the invitation was a ruse. His uncle is not ailing, physically, but may have been driven mad by the loss of his daughter, Emily. Barksdale cannot pursue his hunches because he has been exiled from Dunwich by his former partner and now arch-rival Richard Armitage. Barksdale suspects Armitage has been holding her. Since Jonathan is a new face in town, Barksdale suspects the estranged Jonathan can slip into town and find her.

Of course, much scheming has been festering in the background, both within Barksdale’s mansion and within Dunwich. Jonathan has been given blasphemous tomes to assist with Emily’s potential whereabouts. Indeed, that should have been a red flag. When Jonathan is awakened by Lady Barksdale having seizures, he realizes that something is seriously amiss within the old house. Are the tomes and the seizures connected? Wait and see!

Jonathan’s investigations in Dunwich prove that he is way over his head. He is assaulted by Armitage and his thugs as soon as he arrives in town. Father Maurice, a local black minister rescues Jonathan from being carved up by Armitage’s goons. Maurice has been witness to the depravities that have cursed the town. He knows of Emily’s fate. As it turns out, nobody abducted Emily. She’s not even missing… but she is gone. A dark ritual summoned a shoggoth to bring Emily back: an amorphous chaotic being of pure evil intent. When things like this are beckoned from evil tomes, they do not behave as expected. It works its tendrils through the entire community on both sides of the political divide.

Jonathan must overcome his natural cowardice to set things right or die trying. A heavily armed mob and an amorphous chaos monster? No problem!

Appropriate to the source material, the plot of this film is very dense and cryptic. The web woven between all the participants is often hard to untangle. There is a ton of exposition, and every player has multiple motives both in the open and under the surface. The benefit of a Lovecraft period piece film is that it transports you to another time. The downside is that, like many of Lovecraft’s stories, it gets confusing.

Again, this feels like a Call of Cthulhu (or Mansions of Madness, if the Arkham Horror board game is more your speed) game brought to life.

A Call of Cthulhu game often plays like this:

I really liked the atmosphere and feel of this film. However, I wish the evil menace had crystalized sooner in the plot. A lot of attention is spent on establishing the relationships between all the characters, and the main thread not only gets a little lost. The story has a second-act slump, as more characters are revealed.

I appreciated the first-act hooks. I enjoyed the third act’s call to action. The second act, however, could have used some editing. Another somewhat problematic element was the antiquated speaking. Many of the actors wrestled with the period dialogue. It made for some uneasy pacing. Such is the price of working with Lovecraftian material sometimes. This mannered speech maintains period authenticity but feels dense for both the performers and the audience.

If you like Agatha Christie – complex mysteries full of scurrilous characters, you may be handsomely rewarded with this film. It is a transportive film in many ways. The look is stunning. Andrea Grant’s original score composition soars. Having a full orchestra perform the piece is an audio treat. The movie is also a real treat for Lovecraft scholars, as there are plenty of references and Easter Eggs for fans of his work.

The Letter bears the burden of cosmic horror. It is difficult to describe something as “Indescribably Evil” while simultaneously trying to show it. You want your mind blown, which sets up certain expectations. Some nifty special effects reveal the monstrous underpinnings of the story, but there is a need for a heavier dose of the ultimate dread. The story compensates for the wickedness within the characters, but I would have liked more of the inexplicable evil shown.

Vincent Shade delivered a movie with all the production values of a bigger studio effort. Shane Simmons embodied a very Lovecraftian hero, full of doubt, angst, and curiosity. John Judd appears to have the time of his life chewing the scenery in his monologues as Lord Barksdale. All the actors had great moments in the film, and even some initially minor characters get worked into the central plot. At times, though, the tangled relationships worked to separate rather than bind these characters from the central story thread.

The Letter debuted at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. The film is scheduled for release in February of next year. The movie is not crafted for young audiences, as the plot and language is very complex, but a PG-13 rating would be appropriate for this film, should it apply for an MPAA rating.

I recorded an interview with Vincent Shade and Shane Simmons backstage at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival before having seen the film. You can hear our conversation right here:

Few people in independent cinema have risen as fast and maintained the rigorous intellectual integrity of far-out horror as Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. They have done so much at such young ages, that their resumes read like every independent filmmaker’s wish list. Resolution (2012), Spring (2014), The Endless (2017), Synchronic (2019), and Something in the Dirt (2022) built up such creative notoriety that Marvel brought the duo on board to direct Moon Knight (2022) and Loki (2023) for them.

Their themes of time travel, spatial anomalies, astrological impossibilities, and the sheer vastness and terror of mathematical equations helped push the genre into heady territory. Many of his stories involve characters seeking universal truths. Through addiction (Synchronic), love (Spring), belonging (The Endless), and logic (Something in the Dirt) these characters all seek higher meaning. They risk their sanity on what could very well be beyond what we can imagine. It was inevitable that Moorhead would attend the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. This year he and Benson produced Things Will Be Different (2024) which he promoted at the festival on its theatrical release date.

Reality isn’t stranger than you think… it’s stranger than you CAN think.

That was a key phrase from his lecture. It referenced the not-so-humble, amazing octopus. Often used as the subject of Lovecraftian lore, the octopus is so alien and so intelligent that it defies logic. You can’t think like an octopus because the creature, as intelligent as it is, does not process the world in any way like a human might. The cephalopods can solve puzzles. But the things it can do unconsciously, like change its skin color and texture as camouflage or display are wildly beyond our comprehension.

It is that sort of creative thinking that has inspired scores of filmmakers. You could see the admiration from his fellow filmmakers backstage at the festival. Moorhead was so gracious with his time. He shared thoughts about everything ranging from film theory to professional wrestling with a number of us in the green room. He was extremely supportive of all the other directors in attendance. I appreciated the community spirit of all the filmmakers this year, and Aaron was at the center of this experience.

What I find particularly remarkable is that Benson and Moorhead came upon cosmic horror themes by osmosis. Early in their career, they were lauded by Rogerebert.com as “A Hybrid of Richard Linklater and H.P. Lovecraft.” The irony was that they were unaware of either of those references at the time they were bestowed with that appraisal. Now, they are fully aware of the literacy and lore of both Linklater and Lovecraft, but they came by their ideas naturally. Perhaps that is why their stories always feel fresh and uncluttered, despite the cerebral nature of their films.

Madness and dreams are a staple of Lovecraftian horror. The Dreamlands beckon the unwary. In the Lovecraft Mythos, malevolent forces can infiltrate our minds and our world through our sleep cycle. The power of suggestion is strong, and there is only so much that our minds can potentially handle. Such is the struggle that Alex and Mallory are dealing with.

Dream Eater explores the fragility of the dream psyche, using an appealing couple at its core. This is as much a story of love and devotion as it is about madness. The found footage format is not always a great format for telling complex stories, but Dream Eater manages to explain its multi-layered tale with a whole lot of heart… and jump scares. Dream Eater exploits the power of found footage authenticity to ramp up the tension and scares. The beauty is that Dream Eater doesn’t use the first-person perspective for cheap thrills. This film earns its scares.

Dream Eater punctuates these fears, through an emotional bond between the characters and the audience. The characters are normal people with whom you can identify. Think of Paranormal Activity as a precedent.

Life has been stressful for Mallory and Alex, a young Canadian couple. Despite struggling to pay the bills between their jobs in the documentary film world, they have saved enough money for a long-awaited vacation in the proverbial cabin in the woods of Quebec. Alex has been waking in the middle of the night, muttering cryptic and only semi-coherent thoughts. He has also been sleepwalking, and more alarmingly, he has started acting violently during his semi-conscious dream state.

His therapist, Dr. Snape has recommended this getaway, and since Alex doesn’t recall any of his sleeping actions, she has requested that the couple film these encounters to see if this helps Alex recall what he might be going through. So far, he recalls nothing, and his waking self is charming and affable. As the snow falls during their retreat, the parasomnia gets worse. Alex becomes more aggressive and frightening. Eventually, these events take their toll on him.

Alex has been taking nightly trips into the crawlspace under the cabin, talking to a malevolent presence, and he starts having visions about a demon with a beard of snakes. Mallory grows more concerned about Alex’s worsening state, and she reaches out to Dr. Armitage, an author who describes the demon Alex has seen in his nightmares. Dr. Armitage relays that there may be an ancient evil entity that may be trying to possess him and turn him into the Dream Walker. This being travels like a curse, through troubled bloodlines. Alex’s past is a mystery, having been raised in foster homes. Initially dismissing Dr. Armitage as a quack, Mallory is in a race to determine to piece together the truth as Alex descends deeper and deeper into madness.

The power of found footage is the visceral and personal authenticity that is implied with the hand-held camera. Dream Eater utilizes a more controlled and professional documentary look (because Mallory is a documentarian) early on in the movie, and it descends into the visceral chaos of a GoPro aspect when Mallory needs to use the camera to see where she is going. It is always the responsibility of a found-footage shaky-cam film to justify the use of the hand-held camera. Dream Eater was quite successful in this, even when some of the third-person perspectives takes the camera out of the hands of Mallory.

Dream Eater won the best feature in an excellent year for feature films at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Why? Simply put, Dream Eater is successfully scary. As much as I typically dislike found footage films, one thing this format excels at is the jump scare. Alex Lee Williams transforms from a silly and adorable character into a raving wild-eyed lunatic who pops up at the worst (best) moment possible. This is essentially a two-person drama. Williams and Drumm infuse their off-screen friendship into the characters, with emotional gravitas. Protagonists you care about. It matters.

It is not a movie without issues though. Mallory has horrible survival instincts. Yes, love will color most impulses, but at a certain point, all of the horror survival tropes get violated. Don’t go chasing Alex into the crawlspace. Make a plan. Make sure you have the car keys on you. Be prepared. You have the foresight to do the homework, and all signs point to DOOM, so even if you think that Alex could be saved… have a contingency plan! Having said all that, it makes the third act into a roller coaster.

Full marks to the story and lore. The Lovecraftian exposition was handled really well. There is a build of the lore, but not an excessive build. I really appreciated the Dr. Armitage easter egg, and he was the perfect person to do the exposition dump.

Dream Eater will find a home with fans of both found-footage horror and cosmic horror. The directing trifecta of Drakulich, Drumm, and Williams has been making some regional waves near Toronto, but I suspect that they could make a dent in the horror space. It was apropos that Aaron Moorhead was at the Festival as well, and getting to hang out with the four of them backstage in the green room helped convince me that they may be able to find a similar way forward as the Indie taste-makers Benson and Moorhead.

When looking for the ideal actors to execute what you want, look no farther than yourselves. Dream Eater is a slice of original thinking. It utilizes the evergreen Lovecraftian concepts of dreams, madness, legacy, and spins them into a fresh story. The film is Rated R for language, violence, and intensity. It is not a particularly gory movie, but it has a lot of shock moments.

Dream Eater has already been released in Canada, and the international streaming release (USA) will be coming soon. You will also be able to watch this on the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival streaming edition taking place from October 18 to 20, along with several other great features and shorts. Again, this was a very strong showing for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and if you missed it, now is your chance to catch the films online!

Some films land at the right place at the right time. Such is the case with The Dæmon, a well-crafted slice of cosmic horror that evokes all the mythos you can shake a stick at. Cosmic horror can be a trick to pull off well. Every year at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland (and Providence), filmmakers will try to convince hardened cosmic horror fans of some new profound insights. If the movie uses too much exposition, you get bogged down in hyper-intellectualism. On the other hand, with not enough exposition, cosmic horror can become supremely difficult to unwind.

These types of films lean on an almost academic intelligence. They can be heady portraits of things that are explicitly unknowable. When not carefully done, they become art-school thesis projects that only the creator can understand. Or, the opposite effort is made, and the film can be sloppy and incoherent, leaning on gross-out gags to keep the audience engaged. The Dæmon threads the needle deftly, and it all starts with well-drawn characters.

Elliot, alone in his cabin on the banks of Lake Michigan is writing a final message to his son. Visions of his arm rupturing provide ominous warnings of impending madness, but he finishes his message. He then wanders out and surrenders himself to the vastness of the lake. Tom receives the certificate of Elliot’s death along with the completed letter, suggesting that visions from Tom’s youth were true. Something in the lake was calling him from the deep, from the dark, and the same thing that claimed Tom’s mother was going to get Elliot too. Tom was right, and his father was proud that he got away.

Tom flees to the cabin by the lake, to try and find more answers, leaving Kathy behind without saying goodbye. Meanwhile, Jess struggles in her job as a counselor, where she strives but ultimately cannot connect with her parolee charge. Mark is insensitive or unable to identify with what Jess is going through. He offers whatever limited moral support he can, but it’s a fairly weak effort. When Kathy comes in a drunken panic to request Jess’s help to find and talk some sense into Tom, Jess jumps at the opportunity to help.

When Mark, Jess, and Kathy arrive at the cabin, Tom is in an emotioanlly detached state and doesn’t want any help. Tom angrily lashes out that he was avoiding everyone for a reason. It was a warning to stay away. Tom isn’t grieving, as he still harbors old grudges about his dad not believing that Tom saw his mother dragged out to the lake by a mysterious force. He has come back to the lake for answers and he doesn’t want the others around.

That night, they have a mostly enjoyable campfire, unaware that The Crawling Chaos is coming. Azathoth, the chaotic supreme leader of the Outer Gods of the Lovecraftian Mythos has entangled Tom’s family and is coming to engulf the four campers. An evening full of nightmares washes over the group. As dawn breaks, the unlucky campers face destruction by demons within their psyches and externally by cosmic terrors. No amount of psychoanalysis or plucky determination is going to stop the forces of evil coming up from the depths.

I have always been a champion of evaluating a movie by how much I care for the protagonists. The Dæmon superbly sets up four wonderfully flawed protagonists, who have both admirable and despicable traits. The first act fleshes out the characters well, providing distinct textured personalities. Tom is sympathetic because he has been suffering from these literal demons since he was a child, and he intended to deal with this on his own and didn’t want to put others at risk. Jess has a huge heart but gets stuck in her own therapy cookbook. Her efforts come out well-meaning, but shallow. Kathy may be a hot mess, but she’s a caring hot mess. Mark can be a douchebag, but he loves his wife and his sister.

Rooting interests all. All this character development allows for the third act of carnage to land like hammer blows. These aren’t cardboard cutout characters. They are identifiable people, sympathetic individuals. Horror fans will enjoy the gory spectacle too. This film mixes in some amazing gory special effects for its little indie budget. There are a couple of amazing visual gags that may want to make you physically gag. (Or laugh!) The film renders Azathoth spectacularly, both in the night sky and deep underwater. According to director David Yohe, the imposing undersea Azathoth was a puppet designed by Oscar-winning effects man Joel Harlow.

The story is tight. Despite the challenge of depicting chaos incarnate, the plot is always comprehensible. It is an efficient film, and it never lags. Lake Michigan makes for a grand location. The setting is brooding, foreboding, and at times spellbinding. The dark and ambiguous ending is a classic horror ending. It is both bleak and spectacular at the same time.

For a first-time feature film, The Dæmon punches above its weight class. The writing, directing, and editing brim with confidence. The acting was on point, and the characters were colorful and the relationships were clear. I would have liked to have seen some more time at the cabin before the chaos hit. Some additional character interactions would have been a bit of extra frosting that could have added additional depth.

For Cosmic Horror fans, this will be a must-see. It deals with trauma, grief, addiction, and guilt. The psychological horror also turns visceral, in unexpected ways. I had a wonderful time talking about this film with David Yohe, and it’s too bad that Matt Devino was unable to make the trip out to Portland, as he is a dyed-in-the-wool Lovecraft junkie.

The MPAA does not rate this film. The language, and particularly the gore would make this inappropriate for younger children, but hardened teens should be OK with even the gory stuff. The heady material might go over many younger viewers. This film is still on its festival run, and it does not yet have a distributor for streaming yet.

For some delicious extra insight, here is Eric’s interview with one of the directors of The Dæmon, David Michael Yohe. He’s a funny guy, and he was so at ease in the festival. It was a joy to hang out with him throughout our time at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

The nineties were a semi-desert for the genre. The slasher exploitation films that propelled the eighties was limping along, as Jason, Freddie, and Michael just seemed to run out of steam. The sustainability of a franchise outing every other year saw diminishing returns. The trends at the time were nursing off the success of Se7en and police procedural horror. Consider these offerings: The Bone Collector, Resurrection, and End of Days. The Indie scene was largely dormant, but things were about to change.

The two dominant movies from 1999 were about to change everything. The Blair Witch Project injected a steroid shock into independent horror filmmaking. The film which cost $60,000 and earned $248,000,000 worldwide proved that found-footage shaky cam authenticity can go a very long way. The film birthed an entirely new sub-genre, which just now seems to have lost some steam. Most importantly, it gave so many creators the permission to try feature filmmaking on a shoestring budget.

The Sixth Sense ushered in high-minded story-driven horror. Along with The Silence of the Lambs, from earlier in the decade, it proved you could make a serious dramatic horror movie that was character and plot forward and still make bank. Storytelling matters and there was clearly an appetite for quality plots.

Horror movies had been struggling to be scary. The old formulas had lost steam. Frankly, they had become boring. To find truly terrifying films, horror fans started to look across the Pacific for thrills. Also in keeping with the story-forward trends, look no further than Audition for how to create a movie that will make you want to run back up the theater aisle, if your legs can muster the strength to do so. The pure violence of Audition arrived late, but it left a scar on movie-goer memories. Japanese films like Ju-On (2000), Audition (1999), Dark Water (2002), Ringu (1998), and Cure (1997) inspired Western filmmakers to adapt or study this new wave of horror. It also inspired its Korean neighbors to develop into a horror powerhouse in their own right.

The impact of 1999 can be felt in our Top 500 Horror Movies of All Time rankings survey. These films made our list: The Nameless (466), Sleepy Hollow (275), The Ninth Gate (174), Ravenous (187), The Sixth Sense (76), Audition (55), and The Blair Witch Project (13)

Sure, there were still some half-baked sequels and remakes as there are every year. 1999 was particularly egregious with the trifecta of The Haunting, The House on Haunted Hill, and The Horror of Hell House… all produced by mid-major studios. You are forgiven if you got these films confused with each other. And, there were plenty of throw-away straight-to-DVD releases as well. Some things never change.

This episode, Eric is joined by our friend of the podcast, Ian Parker who inspired this retrospective topic. If you are interested in participating in our podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon contributor!

Earlier this year, I created a Studio Dead List ranking all the horror movie film studios and distributors. This inspired Liz to plunge into a random research assignment: spin the wheel, get a studio, and report back some recommendations on movies that the studio has made. It was luck, or misfortune, of the draw! You can check out the drama of the assignments from our Spooky Time Episode 27, where we gathered to SPIN THAT WHEEL!

Sadly, Mike and Robert weren’t able to make the episode, but that gave the rest of us plenty of time to talk about our assignments:

Marissa Pona drew Lionsgate, the mini-major horror movie studio with a proud history of popcorn-ready crowd-pleasing, and sometimes genre-defining horror films.

Liz Williams landed on Hammer, the venerable British horror movie studio of Gothic traditional horror with a touch of exploitation. Have some sympathy for Liz… ’50s and ’60s horror is well outside her comfort zone. (Sorry Liz! But, this WAS your idea!)

Jacki Georgiani got Magnet Releasing, a distributor of some of the finest independent modern horror films. Jacki, though not an art-house horror fan found lots to like in the Magnet catalog.

Eric Li received Blumhouse, perhaps the most active producer of horror films in the world right now. Blumhouse is exclusively a horror movie production studio. Blumhouse is associated with both bigger studios (Universal) and independent filmmakers. Lots to pick from for Eric!

Listen in, and discover how we handled our horror movie studio homework assignments. (If only summer school was always this fun!)

The twenty-first century has triggered a bloom of fantastic horror movies from Spain. Led by Pan’s Labyrinth, The Orphanage, [REC], and Veronika, Spanish horror has been prolific in quantity and quality over the past twenty years. Mike has pegged a lot of Spanish films as “transgressive.” Given the era that Mike loves (70’s and 80’s grindhouse), it isn’t surprising that he has found a bunch of films that push social boundary norms. More current Spanish films have reined in some of the more exploitive tendencies but still manage to land major shocks within more sophisticated presentations. (The Skin I Live In, is a good example.)

While Mexico remains a sleeping horror giant (Tigers are Not Afraid, Santa Sangre, and Cronos, among the few notable titles), the Patagonian countries of Argentina and Chile are emerging hotbeds within the genre. Last year, few horror movies received as many plaudits as When Evil Lurks (Argentina) and El Conde (Chile). Patagonia is producing an out-sized percentage of good horror movies right now. There must be something culturally within these countries that is inspiring some scary stuff.

So, listen in to Eric, Liz, and Mike’s attempt to pronounce Spanish titles and revel in some of their favorite Spanish Language features.

Pay attention, horror fans. Oddity stands to be the most memorable film of the year. Liz Williams first saw this at SXSW and raved about it. I caught this film at Overlook, and it blew me away, where it won best in show. Upon second viewing in the theaters, it proved to be EVEN BETTER. The movie gives you captivating characters, a highly original murder whodunnit mystery, and a satisfying revenge theme.

Damian McCarthy proved his mettle initially with the curious and equally original horror outing Caveat (see Joseph’s review here), but with his sophomore outing, he really hits his stride. Oddity is the combination of several stories that have been bouncing around McCarthy’s brain, and they combine to make a singular piece of complex storytelling that catches you by surprise. He turns expectations around, bending familiar tropes while respecting what horror audiences want.

He really understands how to use jump scares, and at least four of them in this movie had audiences gasping and shouting at my screenings. It astounds me that there haven’t been more horror movies featuring a golem/automaton at its center. I was able to recall The Golem, Old Chief Woodenhead from Creepshow 2, and Talos, the Bronze Giant from Jason and the Argonauts. All of these precedents pale compared to the Wooden Man. He is a construct for the ages.

I am so thrilled that McCarthy took the time to make the long-distance call from Cork, Ireland, to Portland to talk about this film with me. I think you will agree that the movie will have serious staying power once you see it.

Oddity has been released in select theaters in the US. If it is still in the theaters where you are, go catch it. Shudder/AMC has picked up its streaming rights, but it does not have a release date yet. The MPAA gave Oddity an R-Rating for violence, some gore, and seriously scary moments. This movie would be appropriate viewing for strong-willed teenagers.

Welcome to another celebration of the movies from the previous year! Are we late on this? We say resoundingly NO! Many of the best horror movies get launched at film festivals during the summer. Still, they aren’t made readily available for viewing until they get streaming releases, usually early in the following year. A prime example of this for 2023 is Late Night With the Devil, which tore through the festival circuit but didn’t get broad distribution until 2024, to much acclaim.

I’m not sure what was in the water in 2023, but we landed a full pupu platter of possession films, many of them quite good. Both the big studios and the indie producers tried their hand at devilry in 2023. Evil Dead Rise, Talk To Me, When Evil Lurks, The Pope’s Exorcist, Hermana Muerte, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism, Late Night With the Devil, Suitable Flesh, It Lives Inside, Onyx The Fortuitous and the Talisman of Evil, and of course, Exorcist: Believer all took their takes on the possession theme.

Interestingly, four of those films were also from the Land Down Under. Talk To Me, Evil Dead Rise, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism, and Late Night With the Devil were all going through the film festival circuit simultaneously, all from Australia. Stylistically, they were all quite different, and all of them were quite good. In addition to those films, you can include Monolith, and You’ll Never Find Me as terrific horror entries from Oz. From discussions with the producers, it helps that Australia’s film industry provides a helping hand for independent filmmakers, and they don’t shy away from horror as a genre. Bravo!

Also, in 2023, there were a lot of terrific performances from children in the genre. Tellingly, in an era where the old rule that you couldn’t kill kids is almost entirely off the table, horror films are now able to shock audiences with awful things happening to good kids. The past decade has been moving us down this path with films like It, Hereditary, and A Quiet Place using pivotal scenes involving child death. 2023 put the stake in that heart. The best part of this trend is that it ups the ante for casting good child actors to make a more significant emotional impact.

Once, as an open invitation, we had a number of our favorite contacts voting on the ballot, including a number of the nominees. We thank Ted Geoghegan (dir. Brooklyn 45), Nick Kozakis (dir. Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism), Dennis Paoli (writer, Suitable Flesh, Re-Animator, From Beyond), Michael Lovan (Murder, Bury, Win), Chris McInroy (dir., Guts, We Summoned a Demon, We Forgot About the Zombies), Anthony Cousins (dir. Frogman), and Scott Allie (editor, Hellboy) for joining us this year as distinguished jurors.

A big thank you to our fans, who also showed up strong in the voting this year. Your participation made these awards more substantial!

Unlike many years ago, there is no clear front-runner for best actress in a leading horror role. It’s a wide-open race this year, with a wide range of experience among the nominees. Here are your best actress candidates for the 2024 Thingy Awards:

These actors anchored their films in 2023.  This was a good year for famous actors in horror cinema, which meant it was also a good year for Big Studio horror features.  Foreign films also produced fantastic performances in movies that proved to be both critically and commercially successful. Your nominees for the 2024 Thingy Award for Best Actor are:

The supporting actresses often get some of the best roles.  Roles where the actress can unleash her inner method. Villains and colorful companions are usually the domain of the supporting actresses, and we have some great ones this year.  The nominees for Best Supporting Actress in a Horror Movie are:

Are you looking for comic relief?  Your antagonist?  Your foil?  The best friend who tells it like it is?  Look no further than the best supporting actor. These often scene-chewing performances may leave a lasting impression long after the film is done, even if the character is not the film’s central figure.  Unlike our supporting actresses, this year’s best-supporting actors are largely veteran performers. These guys flesh out the movie and are the extra flavor needed to make the story work.  The nominees for the Best Supporting Actor for the 2024 Thingy Awards:

You don’t have to be a youngster to be a breakout rising star, but it helps.  Many of these performers are in their first dramatic roles in an independent feature film.  In 2023, we had many kids emerging, some with their first feature film appearances. These are actors who deserve to reap the rewards of bigger and better jobs due to their extraordinary performances in 2023 Horror:

We all have to start somewhere, and these nominees for the 2024 Thingy Award for the Fay Gateway Award are your on-ramp to the horror genre. Not as gory or viscerally as intense as much horror, these movies still bring some scares but often bring a lot of fun to the proceedings.  These films would be (mostly) kid-friendly but also apply to the scaredy cat adults who need a fun entry point when picking a horror film. Honestly, this year, there was not a lot of kid’s fare. But there were a bunch of films that would have a “low impact” on horror newbies, and as usual, it’s essentially the big studios providing the more accessible fare.

Horror and Comedy. These complement each other and try to quickly draw the two great and powerful emotions out of you. However, pulling this off is not as easy as you might think.  Humor and glee, with dread and terror.  When it doesn’t work, it’s almost palpably painful.  But when it works: pure gold!  Our favorites in horror comedies for the 2024 Thingy Awards are:

We love our posters here at The Scariest Things. Horror films have always had some of the best of the movie posters. In an era where movie marketers want to pitch headshots of the big stars in their movies, horror movies rely upon the story and feel of the films to draw you to them. Horror movies make an emotional pitch, and we are down with that! The nominees for 2024 include:

Often known for cheap production values, the genre can show off the beauty of the scary. When horror brings quality cinematography to the table, the experience becomes much more powerful. This year, there is an Oscar nominee in the mix, with the stark beauty of El Conde making a rare Horror Appearance at the Academy Awards. Still, plenty of good challengers want to get a chunk of that gold. These 2023 films showed the beauty of juxtaposing or heightening the sense of terror and dread in their movies. The 2024 Thingies Award nominees for best cinematography are:

The Visual effects where it’s the cinema magic being celebrated sometimes is a makeup celebration for horror films. Digital wizardry is at the forefront for this year. We have an Oscar WINNER in the mix for the 2024 Thingy!  Now, Godzilla Minus One may be the favorite, but don’t let that dissuade you from selecting one of the other stellar FX powerhouse horror films from 2023! From the crazy puppetry of Onyx The Fortuitous to the believable cocaine bear to the wonderfully re-mixed Universal blend of Renfield over Dracula, there is some variety in this year’s offerings.

Sound plays such an important role in horror movies.  From the snap of a branch to the snap of a neck, the right audio clue at the right moment makes all the difference in the world.  Sometimes, you are looking for the jump scare; at other times, you are setting up the ominous build-up, and you need the correct audio score to hammer this home.  This category also recognizes movies with strong original soundtrack ties or a great original score. This year’s nominees for the Best Sounding Horror Movie of 2023 are:

Get to know other cultures by what scares them the most!  It’s the most fun you can have learning about another culture and getting your socks scared off.  Foreign films are also envelope pushers.  Horror films pushed to the extremes, and this year is no exception. The nominees for this year’s best International Film are:

We are careful to point out that this isn’t the WORST movie of 2023, but the most DISAPPOINTING movie of 2023.  You have to have the semblance of expectations to begin with to make this list. Some of these movies initially sounded like they were going to be entertaining but ended up being a letdown.  That’s not to say that some of these moments don’t have some good moments (See below), but as a whole, they are not what we wanted from them. Then again, a couple of these movies do suck, and we’re here to point this out. With apologies to one of our esteemed insider jurors, who felt that the Worst Film nominee was a bit cruel (He opted not to vote on this “award”)…  Your nominees for the 2024 Depends Award are:

Truthfully, 2023 wasn’t a particularly gory year in horror. That’s not to say that it wasn’t filled with intense scenes, but there just wasn’t as much blood and guts, except for two movies: Evil Dead Rise and When Evil Lurks, which had enough hyper-violence to make up for everyone else.  Your nominees for the 2024 Bloodbath award are:

Over the past decade, an encouraging trend in horror movies is the emphasis on strong storytelling and dialogue. A great script and story can be the difference in helping you remember a film or dismissing it as a fluff piece.  Horror can be smart.  Horror is better when it’s smartly written. Just don’t call quality horror scripting elevated horror! We are righting (writing?) a wrong by acknowledging the screenwriters in the category this year, an award that is new to the Thingies. This year’s nominees are:

There’s something about a grand, inhuman monster. It brings out the little kid in you as the monsters from your dreams come alive on screen. A rule of thumb: no speaking roles for the monsters! (If they did, they would get nominated for acting roles… like Meagan)  Big and stompy or twisted and mutated, these beasties touched our imagination in 2023:

The Elvira Award:  Best Horror TV Series
The trend of great Horror TV content continued in 2023, as long-format storytelling and horror make for great bedfellows. A few new groundbreaking shows have entered the competition this year, further establishing the promise of long-form horror storytelling.  We want more Horror on TV! Your nominees for the 2024 Elvira Award are:

You might recognize something here.  You don’t have to be a great FILM to have a great horror MOMENT.  However, most of the best horror movies from 2023 also feature an excellent horror moment. Each moment leaves an indelible stamp on your memory of the film in your brain. These are the proverbial “HOLY SHIT!” events that will have you talking about it to your friends later.  The 2024 Thingy Awards best horror moments are:

One of The Scariest Thing’s favorite topics is “Horror movie… or not?”  We embrace horror-adjacent films and want to find a way to include them in our celebration of scary films.  Many of these films were part of the film festival circuit. If you haven’t been paying attention, you should participate in the genre film festivals as there are so many great films, particularly films that are almost, but not quite, horror movies.  Our nominees from 2023:

Best Horror Short

After a year’s absence from the Thingy Awards, the short film is back with a vengeance!  This year, a concentrated effort was made to attend more festivals and watch more short films. We have TEN shorts for you to pick from, and this year, you can watch all of the nominated horror shorts through our website.  As usual, there are the “I haven’t seen enough of the films” options, but we strongly encourage you to watch these wonderful little films.  Here are your nominees for best Horror Short from 2023:

This year’s slate of nominated directors are all first-time Thingy Award candidates. Chalk up a win for Global diversity this year. Only two Americans are on this list; of those two, one is a woman, and one is African American. There are also two pairs of brothers in this year’s nominees. Three cheers for fresh new faces!  Now, it’s up to you to decide who deserves to win.  Your nominees for the Best Horror Movie Director of 2023 are:

Best Horror Feature – Independent / Limited Release

The new golden era of horror cinema has been built upon the back of independent horror films and the latest streaming distribution models through platforms like Shudder, Amazon, and Tubi.  The fantastic film festivals also bolster their events through the success and power of these limited-release features.  Your 2023 nominees are:

The big studios are still players in the horror market, and some have borrowed storytelling lessons from their independent brethren.  Movies here get national releases for multiple weeks in the cineplex and are often the beneficiaries of budgets from $5 million and up. We consider A24 and Blumhouse to be mid-major studios competing with big studios in the market. Your nominees for the best 2024 wide studio release horror feature are:

Thanks to everyone who assisted on the jury this year. Thank you to everyone who reads and appreciates this Award. This is one of the most time-consuming efforts annually for the Scariest Things, but what it does for us is date-stamp each year to remind us of the evolution of horror movies and the genre.

Congratulations to all the winners! This will go down as a landmark year in horror. Talk To Me, Godzilla Minus One, Late Night With the Devil, Evil Dead Rise, and When Evil Lurks (Despite not winning any Thingy Awards) all promise to be horror movies that will be remembered for a long time. These are ★★★★★ movies, and it has been a while since we have seen so many instant classics released in one year. It may be a while before we see this level of quality, so enjoy this crop!

If you want more information about these movies, please check out our reviews on the site. And, if you would like to be part of next year’s jury, please let us know, or join our Patreon contributors, and we’ll be sure to include you for next year’s ballot!