Top Whore-Ers of the 2010's

2010
5. The Crazies
4. Insidious
3. Shutter Island
2. Let Me In
1. Black Swan

Great way to start off the decade! It's an easy choice for Black Swan, but Let Me In was beautiful and the other three were batshit nuts as well.

2011
5. Absentia
4. Final Destination 5
3. Scream 4
2. You're Next
1. The Skin I Live In

Finally I'm not choosing the popular choice! The Skin I Live In was brilliant and just gets more demented the more it unravels.

2012
5. Maniac
4. Excision
3. Sinister
2. Frankenweenie
1. Cabin in the Woods

Me putting an animated movie on just for having elements of horror should show you what I think of this year in a nutshell. It couldn't be anything but Cabin in the Woods though.

2013
5. Curse of Chucky
4. Carrie
3. Green Inferno
2. Oculus
1. The Conjuring

As much as they've played out The Conjuring/Nun/Annabelle/Daughter's Niece's sister of Annabelle franchise, The Conjuring was the perfect jump scare movie, a cinematic roller coaster that doesn't ease up.

2014
5. The Guest
4. Housebound
3. The Babadook
2. Starry Eyes
1. It Follows

Can I please just list my top 3 all as one movie? No. Okay then, It Follows wins by a hair. And HM to Zombeavers, shut up, it was hilarious.


2015
5. The Invitation
4. The Final Girls
3. The Blackoat's Daughter
2. Southbound
1. The Witch

Year of the slow burn right? I'd say everything but The Final Girls falls into that category. Despite the super natural elements, I felt that The Witch perfectly demonstrated the greatest and most prevalent form of evil that there is; fucking people.

2016
5. Split
4. Hush
3. Raw
2. Train to Busan
1. The Neon Demon

I kind of love that two of my top 5 are foreign films, and one barely includes any dialogue at all. Language diversity! You should know by now I love rabbit down the hole in the pursuit of success movies and couldn't ride with anything else but The Neon Demon.

2017
05. Anna and the Apocalypse
04. Shape of Water
03. It
02. Get Out
01. The Killing of A Sacred Deer

This was a terrific year! I'll probably expand this into a top 10 once I see a few more things on my watch list. Update on my #1! TKOASD rattled me to the bone unlike no other.

2018

5. Unsane
4. Incident in a Ghostland
3. Terrified
2. Sharp Objects
1. Hereditary

This was a pretty fair year overall, yes I am cheating by putting a mini-series @ number 2, but fuck it, watch that show and tell me it didn't fill you with more dread than just about anything that came out that year. Hereditary was a complete shit show from beginning to end (in the best way possible), and therefore gets my vote.

2019
5. The Perfection
4. Us
3. Ready or Not
2. The Lighthouse
1. Midsommar

I feel like this was the year for return masterpieces as 3 of these films were directed by directors that made recent previous lists. Tough call between my top 3 as one is one of the most fun of the decade and two are some of the most unforgettable. Midsommar grabbed me harder than any feature this year, and for that I tip my hat.

Starry Eyes

Such an evocative and unsettling look into the process of becoming famous, and Alex Essoe is a star in the making.

3/4

Burying the Ex

There's  a nasty undertone of misogyny that makes the living characters more nasty and soulless then the undead ex.

2/4

Serena

How can you take a movie like this seriously  when it's as subtle as a Wayans' brothers movie?

1/4

The Guest

Takes all the standard material of the average stranger danger material and elevates it to the next level.

3/4

Foxcatcher

It's a cold turkey of a movie that never gives you a reason to care despite the terrific trio.

2/4

Horns

Its ambition can't be denied, but an overload of sublots and ridiculous ending drag it all to Hell.

2/4

Snowpiercer

Kudos to the cinematography and Tilda Swinton's menace, but this train flies off the track after the climax.

2/4

A Most Violent Year

Similar to Whiplash, A Most Violent Year is a movie about the great American dream; to become successful, and the less then beautiful things we have to do to achieve it.

Oscar Isaac & Jessica Chastain were completely screwed out of Oscar nominations for this movie, they're spellbinding. Both actors ooze such a fire in their performances in a completely different way. The couple resembles a volcano; Isaac as the firm, steady base with the capability to explode but still a way to go before it, Chastain is the tip of the volcano, oozing such a flame you better stay away.

What's so great about the writing is how authentic it feels. Neither character is a bad person which makes their behavior feel more realistic, good people are capable of the worst things. Every scene keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat, like a horror movie, you're constantly expecting the worst to happen. 

From the beautiful imagery, to the top notch performances, to the terrific script, A Most Violent Year is a most stellar movie.

4/4

Whiplash

There's something consistently pounding watching Whiplash and it's not Andrew on the drums; it's your heart racing faster and faster as you're consistently astounded by the amount of tension in a movie that's practically bloodless (with the exception of a brutal training).

What's so fascinating watching Whiplash is the dynamic between Andrew (Miles Teller) and Fletcher (J.K Simmons) is that the movie really never gives you a clear Black and White answer over who is good and who is evil. Is Andrew doing the right thing by pushing himself to the maximum limit to achieve his dream? Or is he foolish, allowing himself to go down a path of blocking out everything and everyone else just to succeed? Is Fletcher just an asshole who pushes people to the utmost extreme? Or is he someone that wants his students to achieve and knows how to push them to get to that point of perfection? Both actors are at the top of their game and their scenes never register as any less then dynamic.

Watching Whiplash is nothing less then inspirational; inspiration to achieve your dreams even when they feel a million miles away, and inspiration that movies out there still have the power to get inside our heads like this one does.

4/4

Guardians of the Galaxy

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The galaxy is the limit for how inventive and energetic Guardians is from start to finish.

3/4

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

In the end, it's hard to make apes that fascinating especially when you feel like the movie was written by one.

2/4

Nymphomaniac Vol. II

All pun intended, but this entry just feels completely limp and stiff at the same time. All the tension, all the intrigue and fascination into watching Joe's sexual tale unfold on screen has no been reduced to a deflated balloon. I feel like the problem is that Joe's younger self is more interesting then her older self. Granted, Charlotte Rampling is great as the title character, you totally believe her in every scene, the problem is, what you're believing just doesn't feel that fascinating. Everything including an odd, misguided and terribly unmoving scene with Jamie Bell as her dominant just feels like punishment to watch. Add in an ending that ties up the story about as well as a shoelace on the Titanic, and you have something that just felt like a big tease that lead you on to nothing.

1/4

Nymphomaniac

What I enjoyed most about this movie was how it took a serious subject such as a beaten nymphomaniac (Charlotte Rampling) telling her sad, sexual, lonely story to a stranger (Stellan Skarsgard) and it made it quite humorous to watch. Granted it's not all fun and games, you have to make it through some pretty demented chapters in her book, none more demented then Shia LaBeouf's ridiculously stiff performance. But there's something quite captivating and arresting about the material. Watching the nymphomaniac (played quite fascinatingly by Stacy Martin) and her journey never lost my attention even though at times it made me want to lose my lunch. Best of all is a scene with Uma Thurman, who pretty much walks away with the movie as the broken wife of a husband who has fallen to the nymphomaniac's knee. 

3/4

Maps to the Stars

This is one where I feel like it's zaniness and kookiness were its greatest strength and weakness. Julianne Moore is stellar as Havana, the lead actress whose realizing her 15 minutes of fame is almost up and she can't take it. Her performance is so full of desperation and lunacy she completely disappears in the role. Same with Mia Wasikowska, whose pretty much a ticking time bomb every second she's on screen, she's proof the biggest sense of fear is the kind that doesn't appear on the surface right away; it bubbles and bubbles until it bubbles over the edge. The men don't fare as well, I liked the actor who was deliciously obnoxious as a Justin Bieber asshole type, but John Cusack & Robert Pattinson just feel underwritten or like they should have been in a different movie. There's a lot of promise in the situations with Havana hallucinating about her dead mother, and Wasikowska's character being the black sheep of her family for mental reasons, but in the last half hour everything flies off the tracks and just gets too ridiculous for its' own good and flies off the map. Shame.  

2/4

See No Evil 2

This is the type of garbage I like to watch; the kind that's actually fun to watch. Same way as I felt about the sequel, which was universally shit on even though it kept me entertained and had some pretty awesome deaths (the cell phone). This one luckily stays in the same territory. I like it when movies take advantage of creepy surroundings and use it to their advantage such as The Descent with the claustrophobic caves. This is the type of movie Danielle Harris thrives in, these B-rated horror movies like this and Rob Zombie's Halloween and I enjoyed watching Katharine Isabelle ham it up as the group's drunk/group's hoe that sets off Jacob's madness. It won't be the cure for cinematic cancer but for what it was I'm not mad.

3/4

Ouija

I don't even know what to say about this. It's so hard to come up with something inventive to say about a movie that just feels so ridiculously lazy. Even the actors look like they would rather die, maybe they were emulating how the audience would feel watching them die. The story is terribly flimsy and it's really just a cop-out to throw Shit to the screen and hope something sticks. There's no surprises, imagination, or anything remotely resembling terror here. It's such a lazy trend for horror movies to be PG-13 and think that's a justification to not even try. Only person I feel bad for is Olivia Cooke, who seems to be using her talent in all the wrong games.

0/4

As Above, So Below

This one was another surprise for me, I was expecting a complete Shit-show from the previews/other reviews but I was pretty pleasantly surprised overall. The beginning is flimsy and solid characterization crashes and burns as quickly as the characters' plan to achieve success and fortune but what happens inside the catacombs is pretty intriguing. It looks absolutely stunning and I was at times reminded of The Descent (never a bad thing to be compared to) with how well certain scenes were filmed to make the viewer feel completely claustrophobic, isolated, and unknowing of what lurks around the corner. The ending could have packed a bit more punch as it feels rather hokey and last minute, but luckily the middle is watchable enough for me to walk away somewhat pleased.

3/4

The Babadook

Well, color me surprised. By the previews I was expecting a generic horror movie about a single, helpless mother and her screaming son fighting off a demon but it comes off as something completely different. Instead of focusing on generic, on the surface terror, The Babadook goes deeper into more of a mental terror known as depression. It's about a mother and son dealing with an unexpected, violent death of the father and it's quite fascinating. There's very little bloodshed here but there's so much tension at the surface. The mother, played by Essie Davis is dealing with loneliness, resentment towards her son and others around that don't understand her situation. In a way she's de-humanifying herself to resemble a non-entity such as The Babadook, which is easily the creepiest fucking children's book known to man. This movie really rests on Essie Davis' shoulders and she carries it off amazingly. Performances like this are the reason why more horror movies should host awards similiar to the Oscars. This would never get nominated there, but it deserves to be acknowledged somewhere. She's stellar and the screenplay follows her path, guiding the viewer down a less is more route of terror, making The Babadook feel even more bone chilling.

3/4

Inherent Vice

What a trippy, odd, unforgettable blast. Inherent Vice will take you to a world of such a serious world of crime, poverty, druggies, and coked-out dentists that's it's such a blast when you realize the whole thing is played for comedy.

The players are more then willing to work the joke. What's most fascinating is how when you first meet or hear about each of the characters, the actor plays the role to such a versatility no one ends up as expected. Joaquin Phoenix's character Doc at first sounds like such a dead-end, hopeless guy, but there's such an underplayed charisma to Phoenix's performance you end up entranced by the charmer.

Doc's trip into mayhem is all for his ex-girlfriend Shasta, he's helping finding her current boyfriend whose disappeared, while her boyfriend's wife, and her boyfriend were planning on committing him to the nut house for money. Shasta is such a fascinating character as well. At first when we see her, she seems to be the average damsel in distress, but there's such a mystery and allure that Katherine Waterston brings to the character, you see why Doc would risk his life for this beauty. You wish she was on screen more, and it's a shame that her best, most revealing, most personal scene is one that will never be shown on commericals.

Doc's main ally in this quest is Bigfoot, played by Josh Brolin who almost walks away with the movie. He's such an enigma of a a character they could have made a spin-off of this movie based off his characteristics alone. Brolin is stellar and it's a travesty that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar.

One of the biggest complaints I've read about this movie is that there's too much going on, there's a scene late in the movie where Doc sits there just trying to piece together how everyone and everything is related, and it's easy for the viewer to feel like they're in a similar boat. By this point I realized you're not supposed to really have a "point A to point B" type of mindset and just go along for the ride. If you want to look at this as a straight-forward crime/drama about a man discovering the truth, go ahead. If you want to look at this as a man's vivid and wildly inventive hallucination used to get over an ex-girlfriend, go ahead. If you want to look at this as a love story about a man who will do anything to retrieve his unattainable, unrestriced ex, then go ahead. Inherent Vice makes a solid case for all of the above, proving that sometimes in life the end isn't so much as important as the journey you take to get there.

4/4