The Best Horror Flicks Of 2012 Part Two: The Top Five

 If you missed the first part of this countdown, you can check it out HERE.

5. Cabin In The Woods

I’ll admit that I was kinda apprehensive going into this flick.  I’m not much of a Joss Whedon fan, and the way the press were falling all over themselves to verbally blow the guy made me nervous.  Luckily, this was the best thing to hit theaters this year.  It was meta without being condescending.  It was a flick by horror geeks for horror geeks.  Whether I was playing “spot the reference,” laughing at the knowing parade of clichés, or applauding when those clichés were turned on their heads, Cabin In The Woods made me glad to be a horror fan.  The fun factor even overcame the abominable CGI.  I have a feeling that the orgy of gore (goregy?) featuring every horror monster you can think of will be the most freeze famed and slow motioned scene in any horror flick for years to come.   With the homage’s coming so fast that repeated viewings are almost required, it’s like a cinematic equivalent of that “photo hunt” game we all get sucked into during slow nights at the bar.  Not scary in the least, but it’s the most enjoyable self-referential horror send up since Behind the Mask.

4. Abed

By design, post-Romero zombie horror is horror of the masses.  It’s fear on a pandemic scale.  Abed does something I’ve never seen from a zombie flick; it takes the scope of the undead backdrop and scales it down to make something truly intimate and disturbing.  Based on a story by Elizabeth Massie, this movie left the audience dumbfounded and maybe a little sickened at the Buried Alive film Festival, where it won Best Feature. I went into this one having never read the story, and I wasn’t prepared for where this was going.  It’s pretty damn hardcore, but it’s done with a gravitas that makes it as mentally and emotionally extreme as it is visually and thematically. It’s a very personal terror, and director Ryan Leiske does a great job of making us share the protagonist’s torment.  The zombie makeup looks fantastic.  50 Minutes is the perfect length for the story, but unfortunately it’s gonna make the flick a little hard to market.  Therefore it might be a little tough to track down, but trust me, you owe it to yourself to see this one.  Need more convincing?  It’s got zombie sex.  Yeah, I knew that would get you.

3. The Loved Ones

It feels like I waited to see this one forever.  It’s been appearing on top 10 lists for a couple of years now, but it finally got a DVD release in America this year, and it was well worth the wait.  This twisted flick is anchored by an amazing performance by Robin McLeavy as Lola.  If I were doing acting awards this year, she would have Best Actress in the bag.  There are so many elements that make this movie great in addition to my favorite villainess of the year, maybe even the decade.  We see a lot of Mother/Son psychotic pairs, but here we have a Father/Daughter duo that’s a nice change of pace.  The well played incestuous sexual tension between the two ratchets up the cringe factor.  The violence is brutal and unflinching, the cinematography and art design are top notch, and the story offers up a couple of wicked twists.  I have also rarely seen a film choose a song more aptly to weave into the narrative.  It’s a nauseatingly cheesy tune, but it fits Lola perfectly and, in context, actually becomes pretty chilling.  This Aussie flick is intense, darkly funny, and absolutely engrossing.

2.  Excision

Excision is a coming of age film gone horribly wrong.  Actually, it’s more like David Lynch and David Cronenberg taking turns brutally raping the memory of John Hughes while Alejandro Jodorowsky suggests positions.  Like The Loved Ones, the flick features a tour de force performance from its female lead, AnnaLynne McCord.  Hers is a complex character that will ring true for anyone who’s ever been the “weird kid” of their school.  Surrounding her is one of those “Holy shit, who ISN’T in this flick” supporting casts full of genre vets.  Veering back and forth between mundane suburbia and Pauline’s blood soaked masturbatory fantasies, this is body horror combined with a riveting character study, with both aspects laid bare and presented at their most raw.  Alternately touching and disturbing, this movie succeeds on every conceivable visual, narrative, and performance level.  It might not even be horror in the strictest sense, but this is genre filmmaking for people who don’t mind thinking.  If Richard Bates Jr. can pull this off in his maiden voyage in the director’s chair, I can’t wait to see what else he has in store for us.

1. Where The Dead Go To Die

You don’t watch Where The Dead Go To Die.  You experience it.  I can honestly say that it’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen.  It boggles my nearly unbogglable (yes, that is a word…now) mind every time I watch it.  It’s what extreme cinema is all about.  Some of the things that take place in this flick make Serbian Film seem like a Lifetime movie.  Visually, it has some of the most bizarre imagery I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something.  The animation is, at times, crude and glitchy, but that only adds to the off kilter mind f**k that this flick is.  To some it may seem like shock value for shock value’s sake, but if you pay attention, there’s a lot of substance tucked between the brutality and perversion. Writer/director/damn-near-everything-else Jimmy ScreamerClauz managed to take the extreme subject matter and hallucinogenic visuals and weave them around an emotional core that will simultaneously tug at your heart strings and try it’s best to make you get reacquainted with whatever you last ate.  The fact that a lot of the story deals with children takes the flick to some rather uncomfortable places.  If you’re a sick freak like me though, there are some demented laughs to be had. 

At times this film struck me as a combination of Heavy Metal, Cannibal Holocaust, The Girl Next Door, Holy Mountain, Peanuts, Gozu, and a 90’s Tool video.   The word “nightmarish” is thrown around a lot in the horror world, but this might be the best cinematic representation of nightmare logic ever captured. You’re trapped in an otherworldly place where anything can happen at any time and you have no control at all.  You don’t even know what rules apply. Everything seems not quite real, but real enough to hurt if the trip decides to turn bad.

This is definitely not a film I would recommend to everyone.  Those whose tastes lie firmly in the mainstream and those with even slightly delicate sensibilities need not apply.  If you’re into subversive art, unique “video fringe” oddities, and effectively realized films that will actually challenge you as a viewer, this one is for you.  It manages to be mind blowing, gut wrenching, heart breaking, and soul shredding at the same time.  You may love it, or you may hate it, but if you just sit back and let the flick work its depraved magic on your brain, I guarantee you that it’s impossible not to be affected by it.  In other words, Where The Dead Go To Die punched me in places I didn’t think I had any more, and I love it when a film can touch me that way. 

Cabin in the Woods, The Loved Ones, and Excision should all be available wherever you get your DVDs and Blu-rays.  Keep an eye on the festival circuit for Abed and check out the film’s facebook page HERE.  You can get Where The Dead Go To Die HERE or on Amazon.

Well, there ‘ya go Cellmates, my picks for the best that the horror movie scene had to offer in 2012.  Do I have great taste?  Would I not know good horror if it buried a machete in my face?  Tell me what you think.  Now, let’s see what kind of shocking places horror takes us in 2013.

The Best Horror Flicks Of 2012 Part 1: 10-6

Before I get to the first half of my top 10 list, I’m gonna rant for just a sec.  It’s a rant you’ve heard from me before, but I’m gonna bang this drum as long as my banger still works.  Whenever I tell someone that I write about horror movies, they often say, “They just don’t make any good horror movies any more.”  When someone says that, I ask them how many independent horror movies they’ve seen lately.  Nine times out of ten, their response is “Huh?”  There’s the problem right there. 

One criticism I know I’m gonna hear about my top 10 is “But Nathan, I’ve only seen two or three of these.”  That’s because only two of my top 10 got a major theatrical release.  If you’re relying on your local multiplex for good horror, you’re shortchanging yourself folks.  I implore you, look deeper.  The good stuff isn’t coming out of Hollywood.  If you really want to see the best of what the genre currently has to offer, you’re gonna have to dig.  Not far, mind you.  Of the 8 indie flicks on my top 10, 7 are available at Redbox, on VOD, from Amazon, or are a simple google search away.  I’ve seen way too many top 10 lists this year that include mediocre major studio fare just because they only take big releases into account.  For the sake of the genre and for the sake of your entertainment, SUPPORT INDEPENDENT HORROR!

Look, I'm really not trying to sound like a film snob here, I just want more people to get a chance to see these kick ass movies.  Ok, now that I’m done proselytizing, lets get on with the countdown…

10.  Nazis at the Center of the Earth

I’ve spoken before about my love of The Asylum, the preeminent purveyors of mockbusters and SyFy channel guilty pleasures, but they outdid themselves here.  This gem is, in my opinion, the best movie ever to come out of The Asylum’s hallowed halls.  It has everything.  There’s gore, Nazi flying saucers, human experiments, gratuitous nudity, gunplay, lost worlds, and a perfectly played Dr. Mengele.  Yes, it has the over the top insanity that they are known for, but it’s got a darker, grittier, and nastier undercurrent than their usual output.  It makes for a potent b-movie cocktail.  The essence of this flick can actually be distilled into one scene.   Yes, this is a spoiler, but it’s the kind of spoiler that will only make you want to see it more.  Trust me.  There is a scene where Jake Busey performs a forced abortion on his own baby momma, then throws the stem cells into a machine that immediately gives birth to Robo-Hitler!  If you can read a sentence like that and not immediately add this to your necessary viewing list, there’s something horribly wrong with you.  I saw a lot of movies this year that may have been technically better, but I honestly can’t say that I had more fun watching any movie this year than I did with this one.

9. TIE: The Revenant and A Little Bit Zombie

Yeah, I know, a tie is technically cheating.  It’s my countdown and I’ll cheat if I want to.  In a year that provided us with a whole lot of godawful horror comedies, there was a pair of zomedies that got it right.  They both featured excellent comedic timing, good acting, crisp dialog, and quotable one-liners.  So many horror comedies are purely splatstick or “dumb comedy.”  While there is definitely a place for both of those styles, and both of these films embrace those elements, thankfully they also have brains…and not just the ones being devoured.  Both flicks also feature relatable, well-rounded characters.  The Revenant, in particular, had sequences that left me thinking “that’s EXACTLY what me and my friends would do in that situation."  I think I need new friends.  Anyway, I laughed hysterically at both of these, and I’m picky as hell about my comedy.  It’s the perfect ZomCom double feature.

8. Sinister

Take a bunch of tried and true horror tropes, throw in a couple of original ideas and interesting visual flares, and you’ve got the makings of a nice little creepfest.  I just saw this one last night, and it was a great way to close out my viewing year.  Yes, it’s painfully obvious where it’s going, but getting there is an entertaining ride.  There is some excellent spooky imagery.  Ethan Hawke does a good job in the lead.  There is even come awesome comic relief embedded in the dialog.  The “bedroom argument” scene had me rolling.  Plus, Mr. Boogie is just plain cool looking.  I’ve seen this film compared to Insidious in some reviews, but Sinister is the superior of the two in every way.  What really cemented this flick’s place on the list however, is that – I can’t believe I’m gonna admit this – this was the only movie I saw in a theater this year that actually got me with a jump scare.  In fact, it got me twice.  One of them I even saw coming a mile away and it still worked.  Well played gentlemen, well played.

7. Cell Count

Body horror came back in a big way this year, with Cell Count being one of the films leading the charge.  We can all relate to the fear of our own bodies turning against us and the unease of not really understanding what our doctor is doing to us.  Cell Count plays on these very real fears with a clinical ferocity.  This kind of claustrophobic ensemble piece requires good performances all around to work, and this cast definitely comes through.  I’m a sucker for mad scientists, and Dr. Victor Brandt is the best one since Dr. Heiter.  Director Todd E Freeman mainly sticks with practical effects, and when he does, they’re imaginative and messy.  By never revealing too much at one time, the film creates some real tension while still providing sick jollies for the gorehounds, which is a balance many can’t manage.   This refreshingly “old school” combination of the prison/isolation and disease/infection subgenres really gets under your skin.

6. The Collective Volume 4

Some of the best, most innovative filmmaking going on today can be found in short films.  Unfortunately, they’re criminally underseen because, outside of festivals, they don’t really have a showcase.  JABB Pictures is changing that with their Collective series.  The Concept: ten filmmakers each make a ten-minute film based around a central theme.  It’s basically an indie horror sampler platter.  JABB released volumes 3-5 of the series this year; and Volume 4, with each film tackling a different emotion, proved to be the epitome of what the series is all about.  From the gritty, nihilistic realism of Luke 1:71 to the gross out excesses of Epidemic to the faux grindhouse madness of Bloody Hooker Bang Bang: A Love Story, this one truly has something to scratch everyone’s particular macabre itch.  The Collective series gets my vote as the best horror value for your buck on the indie market right now, and Volume 4 is the best of the bunch…so far.

Come back tomorrow for 5-1.

UPDATE: 
- Nazis at the Center of the Earth, A Little Bit Zombie, and The Revenant are all available on Netflix or on DVD/Blu Ray.
- Cell Count is available on itunes, Amazon instant, VUDU, Playstation Network, XBox Live, and just about every other VOD service you can think of.
- All 5 Volumes of The Collective are available at  http://www.jabbpictures.com.  They're just 10 bucks each, or get all 5 (that's over 8 hours) for $40.
- Sinister, well, you shouldn't have a hard time finding that one. 

See, your old pal SOC made it easy on 'ya. 

The Five Worst Horror Flicks Of 2012

For the past two years, this is where I've been Mr. Positive and said “I don’t care if everyone else is proclaiming that this was an abysmal year for the horror genre, I thought it was great.”  This year, however, I’m on the “damn, it really was a bad horror year” side.  Don’t get me wrong, 2012 definitely produced some great flicks, but man did it give us a lot of foul film feces too.  I’ll happily take one for the team and sift through it all for you though, Cellmates; because I believe the old adage that without the dark, there is no light.  Without a villain, there can be no hero.  Without nu-metal, there can be no real metal.  In the world of horror flicks, it means that without sifting through a multitude of sucktitude, you wouldn’t find those precious nuggets of badassery.  I’m gonna share said badass nuggets with you starting tomorrow, but first, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least try to save you the trouble of watching these five atrocities.  Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between…I present to you The Five Worst Horror Flicks Of 2012.

5. Detention

This is a very divisive movie.  It’s actually showing up on a lot of top 10 lists, but it lands on my worst flicks list for one main reason…I find most hipsters unbearably annoying.  Therefore, by proxy, I hate hipster humor and hipster movies like Napoleon Dynamite, Juno, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and Detention.  If hipsterism ever truly becomes mainstream, then this is what will happen to horror cinema.   That absolutely cannot be allowed to happen.  It’s a film awash in that style of comedy that continually pokes the audience to say “Hey, did ‘ya see that?  Wasn’t it funny?”  If you have to do that, then no, it wasn’t.  Basically, this flick is trying way too hard for snarky coolness.  It’s the cinematic equivalent of that 12 year old sporting a brand new “distressed look” Pink Floyd ’73 tour shirt his parents paid 35 bucks for at Hot Topic.

To be fair, it did have one inspired sequence (the detention room parade of teen eras), but getting to the end of this one became a war of attrition against the movie itself.  If you want to see how it’s possible cram as many references as possible into a flick and actually be funny about it, then watch The FP.  Otherwise, just find a couple of those guys with the skinny jeans and meticulously disheveled hair, get them jacked up on cocaine (note: it might have to be soy-coke) and whatever energy drink the mainstream hasn’t caught onto yet, then listen to them argue for an hour and a half.  That would be roughly the same experience as watching Detention.

4. The Devil Inside

I just went back and looked at my initial review of this flick from January, and I was WAY too generous.  I gave it one severed thumb up.  What the hell was I thinking?  I still stand by my opinion that there is a 20 minute or so stretch of this film that is pretty good.  Unfortunately, it’s preceded by an unoriginal and entirely tepid first hour.  What follows the good portion is what makes it deserving of the vitrol spewed at it by horror fans and its place on this list though; the worst rip-off ending of the year.  Hell, it might be the worst ending in horror history. It just stopped.  No logical conclusion, no closure, no well crafted cliffhanger, nothing.  It just stops.  They actually expected viewers to go to the film’s website for the rest of the story.  As I said in my original review, “Screw that, screw you, screw your ending; and god help us, if that was your way of setting up a sequel, screw The Devil Inside Strikes Back too!”

3. Cold Creepy Feeling

I hate deriding this kind of micro-budget “labor of love” type of flick, but this one was just plain boring.  The problem was that NOTHING happened.  For the first half hour, we watch tedious vacation style “found footage” of a couple driving to their new house.  Then we watch as they explore the grounds and settle in.  Then they start in on a little hanky panky in a haunted house.  Time for the spooky stuff to kick in right?  Not by a long shot.  A spider pulls a little coitus interruptus, and the couple goes to a bar for the next 10 minutes.  When they get home, the girl has a slightly unsettling dream, so we’re treated to them spending 8 more minutes taking turns reading from an online paranormal forum.  Get the picture?  When the film finally gets to the point in the last 10 minutes, it’s too little too late.  The title is the only cold, creepy feeling to be had here.  For the record, this was my first, and to date only, actual two severed thumbs down review.

2. Chernobyl Diaries

You know that third person shaky cam that I always bitch about?  This is the epitome of everything I loathe about that style.  Honestly, after watching the trailer, how many of you thought this was a found footage flick?  Yeah, I did too.  It’s not, but it’s shot like one.  Why would anyone do that you ask?  For the same reason most movies employ this cheap blight on modern cinematography; they’re attempting to create artificial action and tension to cover up for the fact that the filmmakers failed to create any within the actual story.  That alone would be enough to call it one of the worst flicks of the year.  But wait, there’s more.

Leah, my most frequent movie watching companion, is my scare meter.  She’s a pretty easy startle.  After thousands of horror flicks and almost 20 years in the haunt business, I’m too jaded to be a good judge of the effectiveness of jump scares, so I use her for that purpose.  She didn’t jump once.  If you can’t get a rise out of her, you have officially failed in the scare department.  That’s still not the end of the suckage to be had here.

Chernobyl Diaries had one thing, and only one thing, going for it; that great setting.  Chernobyl is creepy as hell.  So what did the filmmakers do?  They set the second half of the flick in a dark underground labyrinth, effectively nullifying the one selling point of the film.  While we were in the ruined city, it was at least kinda cool to look at.  Then again, as spastic as the camera was during all of the “action,” we wouldn’t have been able to get a good look at anything anyway.  Chernobyl is a killer setting for a horror movie.  Hopefully someone makes a decent one there someday.  I saw this one at the discount theater, where tickets are $1.99, and still felt ripped off.

And the winner, er, loser...

1. Area 407

I should have known better.  I told myself that I wasn’t going to subject myself to any more found footage movies outside of the PA series.  I loathe the vast majority of them.  Notice how 3 of my top 5 are found footage flicks and one might as well have been?  Point made.  How did they get me to break my oath and watch a FFF?  They promised me dinosaurs.  It had to be dinosaurs.  You bastards.  Dinosaurs are, like Nazis, bad movie kryptonite to the Son of Celluloid.  I love dinosaurs.  Led by my dino-love, I gave this flick a chance against my better judgment.  Wouldn’t you know it, it turned out to be a bait and switch.  There are less than 10 seconds of dinosaur footage in this movie.  Yes, less than 10 seconds.  To make matters worse, every last shot of the dinosaur(s?) is in the damn trailer!  It’s a dinosaur-less dinosaur movie.  So, if less than .1% - not 1% mind you, but POINT ONE PERCENT - of this flick contains dinosaurs, then what in the green hell could the rest of the movie possibly consist of? 

After the plane crash 15 minutes in, it’s 75 minutes of people pointing into the darkness and screaming “What was that?” and “Did you see that?”  Yes, that’s really all it is.  The whole point of a FFF is realism, right?  Well, let’s just say that you’re in a large, dark area with unknown monsters and someone panics, points into the darkness, and yells “what the hell is that?” What would you do instinctively?  Right, you’d look too.  Not in this flick. The camera never leaves the survivors.  Never.  It’s painfully obvious that the camera operators were instructed to do everything in their power not to catch any of the action, or anything interesting at all for that matter, in the frame.  All of the deaths occur offscreen.  Yup, every last one of ‘em.  Literally all we see is annoying characters yelling at each other, pointing at things we don’t get to see, freaking out, crying, and running in the dark.  It’s as if someone bet the director that he couldn’t make a movie entirely out of reaction shots. 

What we end up with is a movie that not only epitomizes every overwrought, overdone, and played out weakness of the found footage subgenre; but cheats the viewer out of the promised hook, which was the only reason to watch the movie in the first place.  Congratulations Area 407, you are the worst horror movie of the year.  Think about that for a minute.  You were worse than every remake released in 2012.  You were worse than every neutered PG-13 teen thriller that the major studios vomited forth this year.  In fact, you are the first indie flick that this staunch indie horror supporter has named “Worst Horror Flick of the Year!”  I would much rather slap Hollywood around, so don’t ever make me do that again, please.  Basically, I can sum up my feelings about Area 407 with a quote from a REAL dinosaur movie…”That is one big pile of shit!”