Month: October 2023

Here are again, ladies and gents.  More physical media goodness.  Yesterday, I made post on how physical media isn’t dying, it’s just going back to being a niche market the way it used to be in the 70s and 80s.  While most youngsters are fine with online streaming, collectors like me aren’t.  WE MUST HAVE PHYSICAL MEDIA!  PHYSICAL MEDIA IS LIFE!  In all seriousness, and I keep saying this, collecting physical media isn’t just about having the movie in case the internet goes out, it’s a matter of film preservation, because most streaming services just aren’t going to be keeping stuff on their services if nobody’s watching.  It’s an even worse situation for older movies from the early 20th century.  A lot of these movies just haven’t been moved over to the digital realm because the studios don’t see the monetary value in doing so.  But people like me see otherwise.  There’s value in those older movies.  Not monetary, but culturally.  The way we make movies today is vastly different from how they made them back then.  Those older films are a window into an era that no longer exists.  But it’s always important to keep an eye on the past while looking to the future.  That said, I got a bunch of crap this month, so let’s take a look.

Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey – Scream Factory

A Florida fourth grade teach was accused of showing their students Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey.  Parents were outraged.  Why?  Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey is a horror movie.  That’s right.  It’s a gory slasher movie.  Ignoring the hilariousness of the situation in that news report, Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey was made only because the characters of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet were in the public domain, which means anybody could do anything they want with the characters as long as it didn’t infringe on previous copyrighted material.  So…the film-makers opted for a slasher movie.  Christopher Robin grew up and left Pooh and Piglet behind to become a doctor.  The animals of 100 Acres didn’t like that and reverted to their animalistic ways and became blood-thirsty killers.  Is this a good movie?  No.  But it’s absolutely my kind of bad.  Look, I don’t have the emotional connection to these characters the way a lot of people do.  So, it didn’t offend me when Pooh turned into a murdering psychopath.  The use of CGI blood is questionable, but the movie was made for less than 50,000 GBP(British Pounds), but it made more than 5 million dollars.  It’s a success.  So, of course they’re going to make a sequel with a larger budget.  I’m strangely looking forward to it.

The Abomination – Visual Vengeance

Speaking of gory, we also have a micro-budget shot on video horror movie called The Abomination from 1986.  Yes, shot on video.  Which means the picture is of VHS quality.  On one hand, it’s kind of ugly, but at the same time there’s something charming about that kind of visual.  There were a lot of these kinds of movies that were shot on video back in the day.  The film-makers simply couldn’t afford the kind of equipment that you need to make the movie look professional.  So, it IS guerilla-style film-making.  The Abomination is a hoot and a holler.  It’s about a guy who discovers that his mother had a tumor that grows and requires human flesh to survive.  It’s gory.  The acting’s awful, and again, the picture quality is terrible, but that’s part of the experience.  What doesn’t suck are the effects.  It’s all done practically.  Also, look at the special features and what the disc comes with.  This is one of the best disc releases I’ve seen this year, and it’s for a movie that 90 percent of the audience hasn’t even heard of.  It comes with a comic-book adaptation of itself.

The Exorcist – Warner Bros.

It’s The Exorcist.  What more do I need to say?  It’s one of the greatest horror movies of all time.  If you’re a horror fanatic, you should already own this.

The Exorcist III – Scream Factory

Of all the Exorcist sequels, this one is what many consider to be the best, and it wasn’t even originally supposed to be a sequel.  WB wanted an actual sequel that wasn’t The Heretic, so the movie that William Peter Blatty tried to make had to go through some reshoots and ended up being cut to make more of a connection to the original film.  This set from Scream Factory includes two versions of the film: The theatrical cut and Legion, the original version that Blatty wanted to put on screen.  It’s a vastly different kind of movie than what WB wanted.  Legion is a far more character-oriented version of the film that focuses more on the relationship between George C. Scott’s character and Brad Dourif’s Gemini Killer.  It’s a solid entry regardless of which version you watch.

Halloween Ends – Universal Pictures

I know that in my review of this movie, that I wasn’t as impressed with it as I was with the first two movies in David Gordon Green’s trilogy.  That said, I’m the kind of guy that’s willing to give movies a second chance, and I’m glad I did, because NOW I get what DGG was trying to go for with this one.  I don’t necessarily think he succeeded completely, but the idea of a traumatic event that can cause people to do things that they would normally never do.  The film’s opening is still a bit of a shocker, but the overall movie is better than I initially gave it credit for.

The Conjuring Universe 7-Film Collection – Warner Bros.

Of all the movies that were inspired by The Exorcist, I consider The Conjuring to be one of them.  Now, I bought the collection because I hadn’t seen any of them before, so I started with the original movie.  Outstanding.  I’ve yet to watch the others, but I’m sure I’ll get a kick out of them.  This set has no special features, and has two movies per disc, but the picture quality for the standard DVD isn’t bad.

Prey – 20th Century Studios

This is the 5th film in the Predator in the series, and it’s the best one since the original.  It’s a prequel that takes place in the early 18th century, so it gets to take things in a different direction, and Dan Trachtenberg does a phenomenal job.  Amber Midthunder is a revelation in this film, as the film focuses on the Comanche people.  It works incredibly well, and the creature itself is still an intimidating presence.  What makes this home video release interesting, is that Prey went straight to Hulu, a streaming service instead of theaters.  Understandable, considering how lame the previous film was.  Most of us had no reason to expect Disney to release this movie on physical media.  They had it on Hulu, so why the physical release?  Streaming isn’t as profitable as Disney had hoped, and people really wanted a physical copy.  What’s great, is that this disc also includes the Comanche dub for the film, which gives the film more authenticity. It’s fantastic.

The Maltese Falcon – Warner Bros.

The Maltese Falcon is one of the great noir films of the 40s.  It is an absolute classic with Humphrey Bogard, Mary Astor,  and Peter Lorre.  The McGuffin of the film is this golden bird that everybody seems to be interested in, but the actual story involves private investigator Sam Spade as he investigates the murder of his partner, and gets wrapped up in this wild goose chase.  The dialogue, the performances, and the ending are pure gold.  There’s a reason why I love movies from these era and The Maltese Falcon is a perfect example.  It’s THE noir film that really made the genre popular.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

I’ll be completely forthcoming: I love the Michael Bay Transformers movies.  Except for Revenge of the Fallen.  That one can go die in a fire.  But the rest of them are a lot of fun.  I got a real kick out of The Last Knight, despite it not making a lick of sense.  But that opening battle in medieval times was EPIC.  The movie was absolutely silly and it was clear that Anthony Hopkins was having fun with it.  But the film was the first movie in the franchise to actually flop.  So, Paramount went back to the drawing board and we ended up with Bumblebee which was a wild movie featuring everybody’s favorite Autobot.  Now we have Rise of the Beasts which finally brings Unicron into the picture in all his enormous glory.  The movie includes two different eras of Transformers: The Gen 1 Autobots and the Maximals from the Beast Wars cartoon.  It’s also under 2 hours long, so it feels more stream-lined.  It’s actually one of my favorites of the franchise, and its set in the 90s.  It’s a ton of fun, and it made enough money at the box office to get at least one more movie.  It needs one more movie because the whole Unicron angle needs to be explored.

And those were the movies that I bought since the last time I did this.  So, yeah, I picked up some interesting stuff.  Next week’s going to see the release of Barbie and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, so you can bet your ass I’ll be getting those.  There’s also some other surprising stuff coming out that I’m interested, so I’ll let y’all know when I get that stuff.  So…until next time!

 

 

 

 

I want to talk about the state of physical media right now.  By physical media, I mean DVD/Blu-Ray/4K UHD.  I also want to talk about why physical media isn’t dying.  I’ve been seeing a lot of pundits on YouTube crying about the “death of physical media.”  Here’s a statistic for you, and this comes from The NPD Group, a research company as of May of 2023: Physical media is still generating $1.34 billion dollars annually in the United States alone.  You know what means?  People are still buying physical media.  Now, here’s another statistic: According to Media Play News, total disc sales dropped 22.72 percent from last year during the last week of September.  So, why the discrepancy?  Well, the fact of the matter is that the market has changed.  With the dawn of the streaming age, people are subscribing more to streaming services which offers a massive ton of content for a steady price.  Whereas, with physical media, people have to shell out for each copy of the film or TV show.  As streaming has become more prevalent, physical media has begun seeing a decline.  In fact, physical media has been seeing a decline of at least 25 percent each year, which is around 20-23 million.  These are the facts.

What is also a fact is that streaming hasn’t been as profitable for major studios as they’d had hoped.  There are only so many households on the planet that you can reach, and if you somehow reach them all, your revenue stream will hit a plateau, where you won’t be making anymore money.  A lot of streamers now are offering tiers of service that include ads.  But that’s not enough, and we’re seeing movie studios just drop content from their services if they don’t bring in enough subscriptions.  That’s the only way these services make money.  Netflix’s entire revenue structure is based around its streaming content.  Companies like Amazon and Apple can afford to do streaming because that’s not their core service or industry.  It’s just another revenue stream.    The reason I bring all this up is because earlier this week, it was announced through Variety and other trades that Best Buy was going to pull all of its physical media out their stores next year.  They’ll still be selling video games, though.  Movies and TV show? Not so much.  When this hit the interwebs, everybody was crying wolf, saying this heralded the end of physical media.  No.  If anything it’s heralding the end of Best Buy, which has become nothing more than a glorified phone kiosk which also happens to sell appliances, TVs, and computers.  That’s it.  If you’ve been in a Best Buy over the past 5 or so years, you have seen their movie selection shrink from AISLES of titles to one set of shelves and a couple of displays.

Best Buy really isn’t doing well.  Their revenue has been decreasing year after year.  I honestly don’t expect them to survive another decade.  I really don’t.  Target is also removing physical media from some of its store, because they aren’t generating enough to make it worth stocking and displaying them.  The reason for that is that the audience is different.  Younger audiences aren’t as interested in collecting physical media as the rest of us.  BUT:  There’s reason to hope.  There are still brick and mortar stores like Walmart that will continue to stock physical media. Boutique labels like Shout Factory, Criterion and Kino Lorber are picking up the slack.  There are also online retailers that specifically deal in physical media like DiabolikDVD and Gruv.  I’ll post links at the end.  Physical media isn’t dying.  It’s shrinking.  It’s going back to the niche market that it used to be in the 70s and 80s with VHS and Betamax.  Physical media didn’t really explode until Tremors hit the shelves in 1990.  Then it took off.  When DVD entered the picture in 1997/98, it was all the rage.  Same thing with Blu-Ray.  The way audiences have consumed media has evolved over the last 40 years.  But studios like Disney are starting to realize that they can’t just dismiss physical media out of hand, because the money they get from those sales is not insignificant.

That brings up another issue:  What happens when optical disc players are no longer being manufactured?  We’ve seen multiple companies exit the optical player industry.  But there are still companies out there that still build these things, even if it is at a loss.  Sony has their PlayStation 5 which is also a 4K player.  Same deal with the Xbox Series X, although, Xbox just introduced a refreshed system that doesn’t have an optical drive.  PS5 is also getting a “slimmer” version, but it does give the consumer the option of having the optical drive or not.  Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all these companies decide not to build anymore of these players?  What happens then?  Well, someone on YouTube, I forget who, said that some of these boutique labels would be willing to pick up the slack, by manufacturing their own.  Physical media is going to be around for quite a while.  Yeah, most brick and mortar stores are getting out of that, but most people these days are buying stuff online anyway, whether it’s through Amazon or Walmart.  THAT’S where physical media’s going.  It’s going to be for those of us that really do care about preserving movies in any format.  There’s a lot of us collectors out there that are willing to pay good money for quality products.  It’s just good business.  Make US happy, we make YOU happy.  So, NO, physical media ISN’T dying.  It’s slowing down, but if I’m being honest, there are more movies being announced for Blu-Ray/DVD/4K then there have been in the past year or so.  There’s STILL a market for this stuff, you just have to look.  You wanna know something that’s really funny?  Of the three formats, basic DVD is outselling Blu-Ray AND 4K combined.  I still buy some movies on standard DVD.  So, don’t believe the hype that physical media’s going away anytime soon.  It’s not.  The market is simply changing as per the technology.  Honestly, if these big-ass studios continue to erase content that people watch from their services, audiences will leave those services.  If anything, I expect physical media to make a pretty big comeback in the next year or so.  I’ve got no evidence on that, it’s just a gut feeling.

I almost forgot: Here are some links to various boutique labels and online retailers aside from Amazon and Walmart that you should check out:

DiabolikDVD
Gruv
Deep Discount
Synapse Films
Shout Factory
Criterion
Kino Lorber
MVD

With October in full swing, we can expect a large number of horror movies this month.  Horror, as a genre, has been around for centuries in written or stage form.  In the early 20th century, motion pictures took off with the advent of silent movies that used actual piano players in the theater to accompany the movie.  Even at the earliest stages of cinema, film-makers have tried to scare the pants off their audiences.  The genre wasn’t codified until 1931’s Dracula.  The earlier films, which sometimes included German expressionism, were horror movies, but there wasn’t until a real term for that yet.  The genre has evolved a great deal over the past century.  Not only was there just straight horror movies, it evolved to include comedy, action, drama, science fiction, and romance.  In fact, aside from comedy, horror is perhaps the most versatile of genres.  The only real difference between horror and comedy is intent.  They tend to follow the same beats and timing otherwise.

Horror has also changed to include various sub-genres that include specific kinds of horror: Vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, the supernatural, slashers, and rape-revenge films.  You’ve also got body horror, folk horror, found footage, Gothic horror, natural horror, and psychological horror.  We also can’t forget about the international contribution from countries like Japan, Italy, France, England, Germany, Spain, Mexico, and Canada.  Horror is a genre that is both respected and reviled by audiences around the world.  It’s truly glorious…or shall we say, gorious?

What I’m going to do with this post is pick the best horror film by decade.  I’m going to allow TWO per decade, because each decade has a treasure trove of movies that one could pick from.  I’m not going to include short films on this list.  Too many to count, so nearly every horror movie from the 1890s up until 1920 is not going to be on this list.  Full-length films only.  So that means we start with:

1920s:

1922 – Nosferatu

What can I say about the first real adaptation of Bram Stoker’s infamous novel, Dracula?  It’s an unofficial adaptation that got the studio sued by Stoker’s estate.  They won and all copies of the film were supposed to be destroyed.  Thankfully, some copies survived and we got this incredibly creepy 1920s silent film about Count Orlock, played to villainous perfection by the magnetic Max Schreck.  It might not look like much today, but the atmosphere and the dread that it invokes is all too palpable.  Look at Count Orlock.  He’s creepy as fuck.  My hair still stands on end when I see Orlock on screen.  If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend Nosferatu.  Yeah, it’s a product of its time, but it was also ahead of its time on the same token.  It would be one of the most influential movies the genre had ever seen.

1930s:

1931 – Dracula/Frankenstein

1931 was the year that the genre was finally codified and you can thank Universal Studios for that with Dracula starring Bela Lugosi.  This was the first legitimate adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel that got people into theaters.  Bela Lugosi was simply magnetic as the dreaded Prince of Darkness.  It was incredibly atmospheric.  The black-and-white motif simply added to the spookiness.  It’s legitimately considered one of the great monster movies of the 30s.  In the same year, Boris Karloff would walk the screen as Mary Shelley’s infamous Frankenstein monster.  The awesome thing about this movie, is that the creature wasn’t the monster of the film, but his creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who defied the laws of nature to gain power over life and death.  The creature didn’t know what to do with the emotion that he was suddenly experiencing, and it resulted in the death of an innocent child.  It’s a huge morality play about the consequences of playing God.  It’s a powerful and thrilling film.

1940s:

1940 – The Wolf Man

This is the only horror movie from the 40s that I’ve seen, but what a movie it is.  Lon Chaney, Jr. stars as Larry Talbot, who gets bitten by a werewolf and transforms into a hideous beast during a full moon.  At it’s core, this movie is actually a tragedy, because a man is inflicted by a condition that he has no control over and could end up killing people.  Yeah, the make-up effects and transformation sequence don’t look like much these days, but in the 40s?  It was mind-blowing.  It’s well acted and the film also stars Bela Lugosi.  Pretty cool, huh?

1950s:

1954 – Godzilla/Gojira

While some might consider 1933 King Kong to be the first of the giant monsters, Gojira a.k.a Godzilla is the first true Kaiju monster movie.  The film was made as a direct response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 9 years earlier.  It was made as a warning about the dangers of nuclear power.  Believe it or not, the creature only has about maybe 10 minutes of screen time, but his presence is felt throughout, which is an allegory for nuclear power.  Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there and it can be devastating.  This film is simply one of the most remarkable movies to come out of Japan and has since become such a cult classic that it spawned an entire genre of monster movies throughout the 60 and 70s.  Godzilla is surprisingly still popular today with an actual brand new Japanese movie coming soon.  I’m excited, actually.

1958 – The Blob

Look, the idea of Steve McQueen playing a teenager in this movie is ridiculous.  He was almost 30 by the time this movie came out.  Still, he was pretty effective in the film as a kid who sees a shapeless monster and tries to convince an entire town that they’re in danger.  For a movie from 1958, it’s got a pretty high body count.  It absorbs any living thing it touches and grows and grows to gargantuan proportions.  It’s also indestructible.  There are some genuinely creepy moments in the film, especially in a grocery store with the lights out.  But it is kind of goofy in all the best ways.  It’s such a cult classic that there’s a town in Pennsylvania that holds an annual “Blobfest,” which also features the theater that was used in the movie.

1960s:

1960 – Psycho

First up for the 60s is an Alfred Hitchcock classic, Psycho.  What makes this movie so important is that it was really the first movie to actually show blood when someone was getting stabbed.  The shower sequence is iconic.  This is considered by many to be the godfather of the slasher movie, even though the body count is in the single digits.  But it’s such an effective movie that people lined up for blocks to see it.  Hitchcock was a true master of suspense, and the performances from both Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins were brilliant.

1963 – The Birds

Two Hitchcock movies?  Really?  Yes…really.  It’s no surprise that I found Psycho and The Birds to be my favorite horror movies of the 60s.  There were a lot of great movies during this decade, but again, if suspense is the name of the game, nobody did it quite like Alfred Hitchcock.  In some ways, this is actually a disaster movie, but the disaster is completely unexplained.  A woman visiting a town is besieged by entire flocks of birds.  Soon, the entire town is under attack.  What I love about this movie is the sound design.  It’s creepy.  It’s absolutely one of my favorite flicks and it’s a lot of fun.

1970s:

1973 – The Exorcist

Now, we come to what may be my favorite decade in movies in general, and we start with one of the greatest and most controversial horror movies of all time: The Exorcist.  Truthfully, there’s not a whole lot that I can say about this movie that hasn’t been repeated a million times before by other people.  It’s a really powerful film and incredibly shocking, especially for 1973.  Now, 1972 gave us Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, which was controversial in its own right, but The Exorcist is a much better film in nearly every way.  Based on William Peter Blatty’s book of the same name, it’s an intense story centered around the demonic possession of a young girl.  Yet, the movie itself is not actually about the girl.  It’s about Father Damien Karras, Father Merrin, and the girl’s mother.  It focuses on the people that are affected by something so horrific.  It’s brilliantly written, with outstanding performances from Jason Miller, Max Von Sydow, Ellen Burstyn, and then-newcomer Linda Blair as Regan.  It’s haunting AND it’s tragic.  It’s one of the few movies that I can honestly say is perfect in nearly every way.  All subsequent movies about possession and exorcism owes their existence to THIS movie.

1979 – Alien

As I said in my intro, horror can be combined with other genres to make something completely different.  Who knew that combining horror and science fiction would result in one of the greatest horror movies of all time?  Ridley Scott’s Alien is an outstanding film that’s essentially Texas Chainsaw Massacre In Space.  Except this time, the villain is a hideous creature literally born from a human host.  It’s atmospheric, claustrophobic, isolated, and it constantly has you on the edge of your seat.  I can honestly say that Alien is the best example of sci-fi horror.  It’s not an easy combination to pull off, as so many movies have tried.  But nobody told Ridley Scott that, and BOOM!  Amazing movie.

1980s:

1982 – John Carpenter’s The Thing

Yeah, about film-makers not getting science fiction horror right?  Well, John Carpenter managed to pull it off with a new adaptation of John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?  The story is set in Antarctica at a remote American science station when the people there see a helicopter chasing a dog.  After the Norwegian pilots are killed, everything returns to business as usual until the dog begins to change.  What makes The Thing so special was not just its amazing special effects, but it’s incredible atmosphere, outstanding chemistry between the actors, and the uneasy paranoia that builds because nobody knows who is human.  Combined with Ennio Morricone’s excellent score, The Thing is a brilliant exercise in tension.  The came out at the same time that Steven Spielberg’s E.T. did.  Most people wanted to see a friendly alien, not a blood-thirsty shape-shifter.

1987 – Evil Dead II

Remember when I said the difference between horror and comedy was separated by intent?  Well, we’ve got a movie here that’s both a horror AND a comedy.  Guess what?  It’s also a sequel.  Yes, Evil Dead II is the sequel to the 1981 cult classic Evil Dead.  Whereas THAT movie was more horror than comedy, Evil Dead II is equal parts funny and scary.  It’s a delicate balance that only somebody like Sam Raimi could master.  With the brilliant physical comedy that Bruce Campbell provides, Evil Dead II is a screaming great time.  Absolutely recommended.

1990s:

1992 – Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Count Dracula.  One of the most recognizable villains in both film AND literature.  There have been countless adaptations.  Obviously Nosferatu was…not official, but it’s iconic.  What else is iconic?  Gary Oldman’s performance as the title character in Francis Ford Coppola’s film.  What makes this adaptation different than others is that Dracula’s origin was that of Vlad Tepes III, or Vlad The Impaler.  The movie gives the character a more sympathetic and tragic quality that you usually don’t equate with vampires.  It’s a great story with an outstanding cast that includes Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Wynonna Ryder, Bill Campbell, and Anthony Hopkins.  The less said about Keanu Reeve’s performance the better.  He was the one bad spot about the film.  It’s visually interesting with an amazing musical score.

1999 – The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project isn’t technically the first found-footage movie.  That honor actually goes to Cannibal Holocaust.  The Blair Witch Project WAS the first found footage movie to hit mainstream.  The movie is about a group of college students who are making a documentary about the legendary Blair Witch who is said to haunt a nearby forest.  It doesn’t look like there’s anything happening in the movie, but you get this sense of dread and foreboding throughout the entire picture.  The acting’s good.  What really made this movie stand out amongst its peers was its marketing.  It was advertised as a film that was discovered by authorities that explained the disappearance of three students making a documentary.  Over the course of several months, people convinced that the students that you see in the film actually disappeared.   They didn’t, of course, but it was a marketing gimmick that got people into theaters, and it’s spooky as hell.

2000s:

2004 – Saw

Yeah, there are a number of movies in this list that kicked off major franchises, but nobody expects to make a franchise out of a low-budget horror movie.  Saw is one of the best movies of its kind.  Yeah, it kicked off the “torture-porn” genre, but it’s more of a detective thriller than a straight-up horror flick.  It straddles the line incredibly well.  It’s got a pretty solid cast with Cary Elwes and Danny Glover, but the real standout of the film is Tobin Bell as the serial killer Jigsaw.  It’s an intense little thriller, but it ends with a twist that you never see coming.  It’s definitely a violent movie for sure, which earns its R-rating and horror title.  Not all of the sequels were that great, but Saw is an absolute fan favorite.  It’s certainly one of mine.

2005: The Descent/Wolf Creek

The Descent is one of the best horror movies to come out in the last 20 years.  Director Neil Marshall clearly had Alien on the mind when he made this movie.  It’s about a group of women who go on cave diving trip only to end up trapped in an undiscovered cavern that also happens to be the home of carnivorous sub-human beasts.  It’s wild. It’s brutal, and it’s absolutely worth watching the original British release, because the American release butchered the ending.  It’s a constant white-knuckle thrill-ride.  Wolf Creek is a slow-burn thriller that gives us one of the most vicious villains to ever grace the screen in Mick Taylor, who was played to perfection by John Jarrett.  He’s incredibly terrifying.  The isolation of the Australian Outback just adds to the atmosphere.  It ended up getting a pretty good sequel, too.  A third movie is apparently in the works, and is supposed to be released next year.

2010s:

2012 – The Cabin in the Woods

Horror movies are generally supposed to be a dark reflection of our fears and our society.  It’s usually very subtle, hidden behind the scares and the gore, but for those that can see the signs, it’s kind of cool.  But rarely do horror movies go full meta.  The Cabin in the Woods is a prime example.  It not only embraces the conventions of the slasher film, it pokes fun at them at the same time.  There’s a character in the film who is a pothead, but he figures everything out, and the cabin they go to is part of an elaborate scheme to kill a group of teenagers.  It’s all tongue-in-cheek, and if you know what to look for, it’s hilarious.  This is a hell of a lot of fun.

2015 – The Witch

A lot has been about the kinds of horror movies that have been coming out in the last decade or so.  “Elevated,” they’re called.  It’s just a fancy way of saying “arthouse.”  I’m still not entirely comprehending what these kinds of horror movies are supposed to be.  Artistic use of horror?  It just sounds really pretentious.  That said, movies like Hereditary and The Lighthouse absolutely have a place among the best in the genre.  Robert Eggers’ The Witch is probably the best among them.  It’s incredibly atmospheric.  It has more in common with The Exorcist than it does with something like A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Anya Taylor-Joy is brilliant in one of her earliest roles, and the cast is well-rounded with the likes of Ralph Ineson.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is just about it.  Now, before anybody comes at me about 2020-2023, let me remind you that there is a little over 6 years left in the decade.  There are a lot of horror movies coming out between now and then.  I’m not going to jump the gun until 2030 at the earliest.  Also, this is MY list, and what you might think are the best movies per decade is going to wildly differ from mine…hopefully.  I’ve got some posts planned about physical media this weekend, so come back to check those out when I get them up.