See, ideally, you want to represent (yo!) as many of horror's lovely little subgenre's. Fear the mighty Wall of Text!
Hostel
Genre - Ew.
This is a terrible film, and Eli Roth is a terrible director, but anybody looking for an absurdly gory movie to endure with a few mates and a few beers could do a lot worse. And there's an extra kick for Europeans, because we get to be baby-eating torture fetishists who all have weird crap growing out of our our faces. Sure Roth, I believe you when you say you're not a xenophobe.
Blair Witch Project
Genre: Oh God, we're lost!
Now, there are people who didn't get this film. They say that the characters are unlikeable idiots, or they'll say that nothing happens, or they'll say that it doesn't make sense. Almost universally, these people share one thing in common- they've never been camping.
It's hard to get lost nowadays, says one character, and that's true. It's hard to find a place without a single recognisable landmark, discernable horizon, manmade object, light source or audible sound - but all these things lack out in the woods, and people forget that. We're not used to real silence anymore, or real darkness - there's a reason both are used to torture people.
After the first day out in the woods, your calves ache because your legs are used to flat surfaces. Anything you break or forget, you'll have to live without, and you'll discover that your rainproof garments keep the wet in far better than they keep it out. You can't wash. On the second day, you reek, everything belonging to you is wet, your back and chest start to ache from your pack, and regardless of what you have on your feet, they'll be damp so they'll blister into all sorts of interesting new shapes. On the third day, every point of contact on your skin will be red raw. You'll hate everyone you've ever met, and scream at inanimate objects as though it really is their fault you fell over them. If there's somebody else with you, you may have tried to kill each other in the night. On the fourth day, everything is beyond hurting and rational thought isn't even an abstract concept in your subconscious mind, because you don"˜t have a subconscious mind anymore. You barely have a conscious mind. Assuming you then go home, this is a best case scenario. If something goes wrong, if you get hurt or lost, well, now you know why people who go camping regularly all look like serial killers.
It doesn't matter that we don't see the witch - it's not about the witch. It's about three kids driving themselves mad and then finding out that just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean the woods aren't out to get you.
The Haunting
Genre: Haunted House
Not the remake with the stupid evil fireplace. The good one, the old one. Amber "You know, I'm quite insanely underrated" Tamblyn's dad is in it. Proper Old Skool horror, in black and white and everything. Not a film to watch at a party - it takes patience, because it's got plenty. There's nothing visibly wrong with Hill House. No broken windows or lightning bolts to the rooftop. No, on the surface, everything's fine. But just underneath, there"˜s something terribly wrong. The movie just simmers along nicely and slowly"¦ so much so that you might think you're imagining it. You might think Eleanor is too. She might be.
Ginger Snaps
Genre: Werewolf
"¦ is the Buffyiest thing ever made that doesn't have any Buffy actors in it. It does have an incredibly well hidden Xena cameo though, and more menstruation humour in one and a half hours than in all of the rest of cinematic history combined ("Just cramps?!?"). Which shouldn't, but probably will, put people off. Ginger Snaps is whip smart and wickedly funny, and it"˜s one of the most deserved cult hits of recent times. Sure, the werewolf is terrible and the last half hour feels like it accidentally fell out of another film, but a brilliant first half and an oddly poignant ending hold it up. Ginger gets the showy dismembering scenes, but it's Brigette who's the star, her exasperation at yet again having to clean up her older sister's messes gradually turning to anger that her idol's a raging bitch as well as a werewolf . She might as well be hiding Ginger's cigarettes instead of the corpse of one of her schoolmates, and it's the cracking Ginger/ Brigette interplay that stops the puberty/ werewolf metaphor getting annoying. Shame the sequels are awful, but then, with an ending that perfect there's nowhere to go. The Descent take note.
Hellraiser
Genre: Demon summoning fun.
It's weird, given how iconic Pinhead is, how few people have actually seen this film. People think they know it, and they seem to reckon Pinhead is interchangeable with Freddy Krueger. Which is a shame, because Pinhead himself isn't actually on screen an awful lot. He doesn't wisecrack or run around in his little dress after our screaming heroine. He's more like hell's butler. That's what makes him scary - he can't be reasoned with, because he's so damn reasonable. You made your bed, now die in it.
See what I did there?
Sure, the effects have aged a smidge since then"¦ but not a whole lot. Still gross, still shocking, still pretty damn unique. That said... for demon summony fun, Candyman comes a close second. Hard to beat evil bees.
Hard Candy
Genre:Slasher
There is one (arguable) victim in this film, damn all blood, two locations and three speaking characters. One of whom, Sandra Oh, is totally pointless. Calling it a slasher is sort of odd given we associate the term with the absurdly high body counts of somebody theatrical like Jason or Michael Myers... but the villain of this movie is a violent sadist, they do use knives, and just because they're happy with what they're doing doesn't make them stable members of society. We want to like them because they're likeable, but at the end of the day... if they hadn't found a way to justify this victim, they'd have found another. Excruciatingly tense and pretty damn nauseating, it reaches the point later on where you just start wishing for a death to get it done with. A bit dialogue heavy in the middle, and he gets some very dodgy lines later on ("Thank you Haley"? Are you kidding me?) but Ellen Page puts in a spectacular performance, and it's a terrific argue-at-the-pub kind of film.
Dawn of the Dead
Genre: Zombies!
With an honourable mention to the blimey-this-is-pretty-good remake, and yes Sarah Polley was excellent, the original Dawn of the Dead is still probably the definitive zombie flick because it's the best example of what zombie films are really about - not the zombies. Zombie flicks, to rip off a certain zombie comic, are about the answering the question of who really is the living dead - the corpses pretending they're alive, or the survivors pretending they have something to live for? The social satire isn't nearly as pointed as some would have you believe, but it is there. Some proper zombie fun aside, you also get to vicariously enjoy that most universal of guilty fantasies - living in a shopping centre. Weeeeeeeeeee!
The Ring
Genre: Spooky children, dirty secrets.
The American version's better. There, I said it. It's true though - it does everything a remake's supposed to do, and so rarely manages. It takes the guts of the original story and builds on it, weaving an accessible bit of modern American Gothic that was morally dubious enough for horror snobs and scary enough for Joe Public. And it was scary, bloody scary, and I defy any one who saw it in the cinema when it was out to tell me they weren't freaked when they saw Amber "Yes, me again" Tamblyn's post-Samara face. Alas, all the stuff that made it so great - haunted technology woo0oo0oo! - have already been strip mined by far crapper films - yes, bloody White Noise, I'm looking at you - but it's worth seeing again because it's still a surprisingly good film even when you know what"˜s going to happen. Shocking, spooky and quite patiently mannered when it needs to be, it's easy to forget who directed it.
The Japanese cultural references are swapped for American ones so the film stands on it's own, but more cleverly, it uses our own expectations against us - we expect Rachel to do the right thing, save the day and learn how to be the perfect mom because that's what always happens in American remakes. The problem with evil though, is that it's not always rational, and the problem with seven year olds is that they've got their own subjective perception of justice. There's a few interesting pot shots at our modern reliance on technology as a crutch but it's more interesting for the seamless blend of old fashioned spooks and new fangled technomophones.
The Descent
Doesn't quite fit into any particular genre, because it's got dashes of everything bar werewolf in it.
FOR GOD'S SAKE SEE THE UK CUT! This isn't out of movie snobbery. The only difference is thirty seconds at the end - but they're the most crucial thirty seconds in the film, the punchline to the entire story, and without them it doesn't make sense. Without those thirty seconds, it's a gratuitously gory orgy of violence with a hackneyed premise and yawning plot holes. With those thirty seconds, it's the best John Carpenter film he never made, a sad story about betrayal, survival, and mad pick axe vengeance.
Likeable characters die horribly, horrible characters turn out to be likeable, and complete insanity is an enviably happy ending. The best horror movie of the last ten years, certainly, and one of the rare few where your heroine bites off an ear. The best part is that once the initial shock and awe has worn off, the film stands up to rewatching very well - under the gore, there's some gorgeous cinematography and strong drama carried by a strong cast that aren't afraid to play it straight.
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
"¦ is also not a horror film, but deserves to be. A loving spoof tribute to Horror, the 1980's, and psychotic egomania, Darkplace was made with the sort of insane attention to detail - right down to the scratchy film stock and casual chauvinism - that betrays a hardcore horror nerd. Go nuts spotting the references (Maximum Overdrive, Carrie and er"¦ Beverly Hills Cop) or just revel in the crapness of it all ("This isn't just another exploding patient you can sweep under the rug!") but either way, it's eight episodes of solid joy. Garth, the writer director, and yes indeed, "star" of Darkplace is comic gold. Still solidly convinced his show was cancelled because it was too damn good, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he makes David Hasselhoff look self conscious.
Mathew Holness plays Garth Marenghi playing Dr. Rick Dagless MD, a Vietnam vet now who now fights the forces of evil in Darkplace Hospital, Romford. Marenghi also provides occasional director's commentary on the train wreck unfolding before our eyes, earnestly explaining things like "Sometimes you have be.. a bigot"¦ to beat the bigger bigots" as a means of justifying his ferocious hatred of the "Scotch". Perhaps best of all was that it was made and released just before Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, an almost equally, if this time unintentionally, funny show with an eerily similar premise. Hysterically funny, and well worth picking up on DVD just to see the extended version of the 80'stacular "One Track Lover".
