A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[6 of 13]
THE OBJECTIVE (April 2008)


… The Objective is ultimately about a government’s hunger for power, and how all else falls by the wayside in light of that all-encompassing yearning for the upper hand.

Read the entire review here.

(The Objective OS courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[5 of 13]
SURVEILLANCE (February 2008)


Though this is nominally a thriller, as with most of her father’s work, [Jennifer] Lynch’s Surveillance does what the best horror movies should do, unsettle, disturb its audience.

Read the entire review here.

(Surveillance OS courtesy of impawards.com; design by Jeremy Saunders.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[4 of 13]
LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN
(LET THE RIGHT ONE IN) (January 2008)


[Låt den rätte komma in is] quite simply a fascinating and darkly alluring cinematic experience unlike any other.

Read the entire review here.

(OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[3 of 13]
THE BRØKEN (January 2008)


[Director Sean] Ellis succeeds in doing, with a tremendous and confident flourish, what those [other] films so clearly failed to do: present us with an involving, creepy, and ultimately disconcerting narrative that plays on certain common fears.

Read the entire review here.

(The Brøken French OS courtesy of beyondhollywood.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[2 of 13]
[REC] (August 2007) / QUARANTINE (October 2008)



So I’ve finally gotten the opportunity to see Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [REC]. Lo siento, Senor Balagueró, but as I explained in my Quarantine review, seeing your original has turned out to be a quest for me.
And now that I’ve completed the quest, writing a review for [REC], in light of my Quarantine review, just seemed to be an invitation to, a) repeat myself, or b) have the review be a compare/contrast write-up.
Thus, I’ll just use this opportunity to say this about [REC]: brilliant. It’s great to see Balagueró operating in this chaotic and improvisational first-person POV horror milieu, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t repeat it here, that [REC] kicked off the recent slew of shakycam horror that counts Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield, George Romero’s Diary of the Dead, and of course the Dowdle Brothers’ Quarantine, amongst its ranks.
If you happened to see Quarantine first, then you really must check out [REC].

Thus, we actually get 14 horror movies in this year’s ¡Qué Horror!, and that’s always a good thing… ([REC] and Quarantine share one slot since they’re roughly the same film, but at the same time, are quite different cinematic animals, really.)
In a way, I’m glad I got to see Quarantine first. Yes, it’s a terribly effective horror film (which is why it made the ¡Qué Horror! cut in the first place), but [REC] does manage to hit harder because of the unfamiliar faces in front of the camera, and the ultimate nature behind the infected, which is fundamentally different from that used in Quarantine.
It’s a narrative element that fits very smoothly in the Spanish setting, and manages to induce that much more shuddering during post-viewing contemplation…
If I had seen [REC] first, I suspect that even though I would have still enjoyed Quarantine, there would probably have been a teeny niggling streak of dissatisfaction with the changes, even if those same changes make Quarantine, in turn, fit more smoothly into the post-9/11 American milieu. (See what I mean about the compare/contrast?)

Anyway, I’ll just leave off with this: Now I’m really revved to see [REC] 2!

Oh, and you can read the entire Quarantine review here.

([REC] and Quarantine Spanish OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[1 of 13]
À L'INTÉRIEUR (INSIDE) (May 2007)


Make no mistake, À l'intérieur is extreme horror that brings the goods, a brazen bit of Grand Guignol that will find its audience riveted, watching slack-jawed over stretches of running time, as the onscreen atrocities—supervised by Jacques-Olivier Molon—just escalate to terribly ridiculous heights.

Read the entire review here.

(À l'intérieur OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2009
The Preliminaries (2)

Before I get to last Halloween’s rundown, just some random statistics.
While ¡Qué Horror! 2008 had two sequels (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later and Eli Roth’s Hostel: Part II), three film adaptations (The Mist, from Stephen King’s novella; The Ruins, from Scott B. Smith’s novel; The Midnight Meat Train, from Clive Barker’s short story), and one foreign-language film (Juan Antonio Bayona’s El Orfanato), this year’s batch will include two remakes, one film adaptation, three foreign-language titles, and one entry that finds its origins in TV.

Now, for the record, ¡Qué Horror! 2008 looked like this:

The Last Winter (Dir: Larry Fessenden; September 2006)
Joshua (Dir: George Ratliff; January 2007)
The Signal (Dirs: David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry, Dan Bush; January 2007)
Teeth (Dir: Mitchell Lichtenstein; January 2007)
28 Weeks Later (Dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo; May 2007)
Bug (Dir: William Friedkin; May 2007)
El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (Dir: Juan Antonio Bayona; May 2007)
Hostel: Part II (Dir: Eli Roth; June 2007)
The Mist (Dir: Frank Darabont; November 2007)
Cloverfield (Dir: Matt Reeves; January 2008)
The Ruins (Dir: Carter Smith; April 2008)
The Strangers (Dir: Bryan Bertino; May 2008)
The Midnight Meat Train (Dir: Ryuhei Kitamura; July 2008)