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The 50 Best Horror Movies of the Decade

Monsters, killers, cults, and more… these are the best horror films of the decade as decided by eight horror-loving nerds with internet access.
Decade Rewind Best Horror
By  · Published on October 31st, 2019

10. The House That Jack Built (2018, Denmark)

Leave it to Lars von Trier to make the best horror-comedy of the decade. Putting aside the child hunting and duckling mutilation, the true test of how a viewer is going to respond to The House That Jack Built is the montage in which serial killer Jack (Matt Dillon, in a career-best performance) monologues about his nihilistic worldview about art and violence while von Trier splices in footage from his own filmography. For those attuned to the director’s taste, this is a self-aware reflection on a career’s worth of morbidity and an upfront self dunk on his own indulgent tendencies. For the cowards among us, it’s a grating display of narcissism and nothing more. But audiences who get on board will be treated to a film about an egomaniacal asshat who fancies himself a conniving, law-evading criminal mastermind. Jack’s not just killing people, he’s making art, you peasant! In an age where serial killer factoids are traded like baseball cards, The House That Jack Built’s acrid mockery is a satirical uppercut that punches in the right direction: square in the ego of self-professed geniuses, too pathetic to realize they aren’t fooling anybody. (Meganna Shieldswanson)


9. Evil Dead (2013)

The best horror remakes do right by their predecessors without falling into the trap of thinking that hitting same beats achieves the same results. Did we learn nothing from Gus Van Sant’s Psycho? To sit at the table with a classic, you need to earn your seat. And for my money, there’s no surer way to prove your worth than weaponizing familiarity to elevate a whole dang mythology. While containing many great surprises of its own, Fede ÁlvarezEvil Dead takes the original trilogy’s bag of tricks and twists it into a recurring nightmare. And the emphasis really is on “nightmare.” Evil Dead is one of the decade’s most unrelenting, genuinely gnarly genre entries, liable to breech even the strongest of stomachs in a way other 2010s entrants just can’t match. Nothing this vile should be allowed to look this beautiful, let alone be this fucking fun. Evil Dead is the real deal: an “oh shit!” corn maze that keeps the party going until the credits roll. Now where did I put my nail gun… (Meg Shields)


Bonus! The Unkindness of Ravens (2016, UK)

With their Hex Studios brand, Lawrie Brewster and Sarah Daly have unleashed some of the best and most imaginative horror of the last decade. You might be familiar with their hilarious Owlman prank videos, but when it comes down to their actual films, viewers are in for a real scary treat. I recommend every single one of them. The Unkindness of Ravens doesn’t revolve around Owlman, but it does feature some warrior ravens tormenting an army veteran in the Scottish Highlands. Is it real? Is it imaginary? That’s for you to decide. If cosmic horror and world folklore is your cup of tea, you need to see this movie immediately. (Kieran Fisher)


8. Train to Busan (2016, South Korea)

Zombie movies are like Funko Pop figures. I’m sick of seeing them everywhere, but just when I think I don’t need another one in my life, a variation on the theme appears and knocks my damn socks off. Inspired by the very best element of George Romero’s Dead trilogy — humanity — Train to Busan knows that flesh-craving ghouls are only as interesting as the people wearing that very snackable flesh. The rampaging horde of zombies merely represents the never-ending terror of a parent raising their child in a world designed to crush them down physically and mentally. Bonus points for all the amazing gore and action set-pieces that elevate this very real-world terror. (Brad Gullickson)


7. Under the Skin (2013, Switzerland)

Jonathan Glazer’s beguiling, surrealist nightmare is an alien film the likes of which we haven’t seen before or since. Scarlett Johansson absolutely excels as a visitor from another world forced to adapt in order to lure unsuspecting men back to her… void? Is that what we should call it? Either way, this film is shrouded in mystery, often allowing narrative to give way to impressionistic imagery and pure atmospheric terror. Anchored by composer Mica Levi’s hypnotic score, Under the Skin is an unnerving slow-burn masterpiece that pulls you into its terrifying web. Like the men beckoned to their deaths by Johansson’s character, we can’t resist this film. (Anna Swanson)


6. The Witch (2015)

“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” Duh. Yes. We would. Especially if we lived under the thumb of a religious whackjob who hauled my siblings and me to the fringes of the country where we would become the special sauce of some magic stew. Black Phillip is an intoxicating figure, barely glimpsed by our hero or the audience, with a cult of followers who are at least appreciated for what they have to offer him. Robert Eggers’ The Witch is a stifling slow-burn horror, where a young daughter is squished into a hellish corner of her family by her father until she discovers the freedom another master might offer. Suddenly, her life has options, and to break free from the known world of her household is not only sensible but necessary. Is it a horror film? Yes. Just not for the reasons you thought when the baby first got snatched and mashed into jelly. (Brad Gullickson)


Horror In The Shadows

5. What We Do in the Shadows (2014, New Zealand)

The horror-comedy has always been a hit-or-miss sub-genre. In 2014, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement scored a massive hit with their mockumentary about the lives of a group of vampires living in New Zealand. The film brilliantly touches on all the tropes and mythos we love and hate about vampires, from their feud with werewolves (definitely not swearwolves!) to their unique fashion sense. The film hits on everything you want from a genre mashup. The comedy elements slay with more laughs than Dracula has bitches, while the horror side of things delivers copious amounts of blood. Further proving its standing as one of the decade’s best, the film has spawned an equally hilarious television series. (Chris Coffel)


4. Kill List (2011, UK)

Ben Wheatley’s second feature is a movie that deserves to be experienced with no prior knowledge going in. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading this blurb and go watch the movie then come back. If you have seen Kill List, then you know how special it is. What starts off as a character-driven movie about hitmen takes a sudden turn into occult territory, but it’s not an unexpected U-turn. From the film’s outset, there’s an unsettling dreamlike feeling in the air that only intensifies as the story progresses, and you know from the moment they accept the job they’re walking into a bear trap. The film is a masterclass in ambiguous storytelling that boasts moments of shocking violence (that hammer scene) and powerhouse performances from Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley. The ending is an all-timer, but its confusion is well-earned. (Kieran Fisher)


3. The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Nothing gives die-hard horror fans a jolt of pure serotonin like well-executed meta-horror, and no film this side of Scream does meta-horror quite as well as director Drew Goddard’s expectation-shattering debut feature. Goddard and Joss Whedon wrote the script together, and the former Buffy the Vampire Slayer team took some of the elements that made that series shine (a “Scooby Gang” of witty friends), mixed them with other ideas that had room to grow (The Institute), and added in a heavy dose of clever self-examination to create a puzzle-box cocktail that goes down smooth. The plot, as told by the film’s wonderfully misleading first trailer, mimics that of The Evil Dead, complete with a group of young lovers and friends uncovering a cursed book in an old cabin. By the time the film’s title comes screaming onto the screen, though, you’ll realize it’s a whole different beast. The Cabin in the Woods pulls off a perfect double whammy by being both endlessly entertaining — the third act almost demands re-watches in order to catch everything — and casually thought-provoking in its play on the viewers’ own obsession with horror. (Val Ettenhofer)


Bonus! We Are Still Here (2015)

As mentioned elsewhere in this list of great horror films, haunted house movies typically go the more ethereal route with invisible phantoms, moving furniture, and the occasional flash of something spooky. Ted Geoghegan’s feature debut takes a slightly messier path with bloody demises, crispy ghouls, and an all-out gorefest of a third act, and we’re all better off for it. The film wears its love for Lucio Fulci’s The House By the Cemetery (1981) on its grue-drenched sleeve, and while it’s equally embracing of Fulci’s languid, dreamlike pace and logic it all comes to a head in a lively, energetic, and splatter-filled finale. Before then, though, Geoghegan takes his time ensuring the grief and sadness weighing down his characters — both the living and the dead — is as evident and oppressive as the thick expanse of snow surrounding the house. Toss in turns by genre legends like Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden, an atmospheric score by Wojciech Golczewski, and a focus on the family strong enough to make the Fast & Furious crowd happy, and you have a horror movie deserving of all the love. (Rob Hunter)


2. Green Room (2015)

A group of armed White Supremacists using entertainment as a cover for their anger-fueled business dealings? God, why does that sound so familiar? Green Room follows a strapped for cash punk band who agrees to take a gig at a secluded neo-Nazi skinhead bar only to be held captive when they discover the body of a dead girl. If you’ve ever wanted to experience every muscle in your body being clenched for 95-minutes, Jeremy Saulnier is here to make your “OH FUCK THAT” dreams come true. Green Room is unabashedly vulgar without feeling sadistic; a scrappy wrong-place-wrong-time thriller that may very well be this generation’s Assault on Precinct 13. Green Room operates in extremes: in chunk-munching dogs, bitches with box cutters, and Joe Cole choking someone out with his thighs… y’all. Green Room is the definition of a taut thriller. You could bounce a goddamn penny off it. Also: my main man Macon Blair needs to be in more movies. (Meg Shields)


1. The Invitation (2015)

I’m not sure that any of us suspected beforehand that Karyn Kusama’s brilliant and tense dissection of grief, paranoia, and terror would land at the number one spot of the decade’s best horror movies, but as the team’s ratings rolled in it became a foregone conclusion. All of us love it — well, aside from Chris who inexplicably hasn’t seen it — and it’s clear why as the film offers up a masterclass in character, pacing, and intensity. Writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi are equally deserving of credit as architects of a script that works at times as something of a puzzle box. Our guide Will (a fantastically sympathetic Logan Marshall Green) is either going mad with grief or seeing the tattered edges of a far darker truth, and the film works its ass off to make either outcome believable and upsetting. If he’s mad it’s insanity birthed from the still resonating death of his child, but if a certain something else is going on? Well, his child’s death won’t be the last. It’s worth noting too that the film continues to work its magic even on re-watches, as like Green Room above, its masterful execution is unaffected by knowing how it all ends. Speaking of which, the film’s final moments deliver one of the best endings in horror film history. Of course, you should expect nothing less from the best horror movie of the past decade. (Rob Hunter)

Red Dots

Thanks for reading! And in case you missed any of this month’s smaller features, check out more entries in our 31 Days of Horror Lists!

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Rob Hunter has been writing for Film School Rejects since before you were born, which is weird seeing as he's so damn young. He's our Chief Film Critic and Associate Editor and lists 'Broadcast News' as his favorite film of all time. Feel free to say hi if you see him on Twitter @FakeRobHunter.