Best of (My) Year

 

We close out yet another year with yet another tradition: it’s my own personal best list, pulling out the hearty recommendations of (my) 2024. My only guarantee here is that no other list will have quite the same range. 

Don’t believe me? Observe my first pick:

15. Fantasy Island

I NEVER SAID I HAD GOOD TASTE. 

I’m under no illusion that the Blumhouse adaptation of Fantasy Island is a good film. It’s very, very dumb. And that’s perfectly fine! Sometimes all you want to do as a viewer is sit back and watch beautiful people become very confused on a postcard-ready tropical island. No, the various stories don’t necessarily come together in any real satisfying manner, but along the way, there are plenty of wild twists and big swings that never feel dull. It’s okay to enjoy something very stupid when it’s this fun. 

14. Split Second

A giant rat monster in the sewers. A morgue attendant chomping down a dripping sandwich. And most importantly, Rutger Hauer smoking his way through a coffee-and-chocolate fueled stint as a bad boy detective who works alone (I know you heard that in an intense whisper) until he’s reluctantly paired with an overeducated rookie. Split Second is pure early ‘90s cheese, cheese that’s been left on the counter and you know you shouldn’t eat it the next day, but by golly, it’s just so good.

13. It’s What’s Inside

Who doesn’t love a good body swap? Certainly not writer/director Greg Jardin, who made a smartly paced horror comedy that has oodles of fun putting pretty young people through some chaos of their own making. It’s What’s Inside has some themes to explore in terms of toxic relationships, but at its core, it’s simply a good time.

12. Arcade

My expectations for something produced by Full Moon Entertainment’s in the mid-’90s are generally pretty low, but that shouldn’t devalue the fun I had with Albert Pyun’s Arcade. The cast is loaded with soon-to-be stars who look and sound like real troubled teenagers about to fall deep into some adorable early CGI video game graphics. It’s not a classic by any means, but 30 years after its quiet debut, Arcade holds up as a surprisingly solid genre watch.

11. Wolf’s Hole

My knowledge of Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s stops and ends at me always copying and pasting the word “Czechoslovakia”, so admittedly, I didn’t fully grasp the political associations of Vera Chytilova’s satirical sci-fi ski trip thriller. Even so, this is a strange, riveting, and shockingly positive little slice of a time and place that was very new to me.

10. Slotherhouse

I’m not here to tell you that Slotherhouse, a horror comedy about an abducted sloth turned sorority sister on a murderous rampage, is great cinema. But by golly: it’s pure fun, and easily one of the best times I had all year.

9. Satan’s Triangle

Sometimes the best things in horror come in at under 80 minutes. That’s the case with this made-for-TV ghost story set on a haunted ship cast adrift in the middle of the ocean. It’s shockingly spooky 50 years later, with some ahead-of-its-time politics and clever musings on faith. 

8. The Manor

Take a sip of your Ensure every time I say, “why can’t we have more horror films featuring the elderly?” Axelle Carolyn’s The Manor is not a big film (it was made as part of an Amazon/Blumhouse low budget collaboration and seems deliberately small in scope) but it packs so much beauty into its runtime. The glorious Barbara Hershey plays a retired ballet instructor whose recent health woes have driven her into the care of an assisted living facility…which just might be run by witches. It’s everything you want from such a setup. 

7. The Conference

Comedy is hard. Horror comedy is, well, a feat that should only be attempted by the truly skilled. Thankfully, that turns out to be Patrick Eklund. This Swedish film follows a corporate team-building weekend trip gone terribly, terribly wrong. It’s an absolute blast, and best of all, it actually has some morality at its core.

6. It Stains the Sand Red

Colin Minihan has a pretty strong track record, so it’s no surprise that another team-up with actress Brittany Allen would yield more gold. It Stains the Sand Red follows that modern rule of zombie cinema: the only reason to contribute is if you have a fresh idea. And boy does this one! Allen stars as a woman left alone to trek 36 miles through the Las Vegas desert, her only companion being an undead shambler who she manages to tame into a better man than the living she encounters. It’s not a perfect film (the last at fumbled for me) but it boasts an incredible performance and enough fresh ideas to make it a worthy entry to the genre.

5. Mute Witness

Quietly released in 1995 with an energy that feels far more 1989, Anthony Waller’s Mute Witness is a strange, funny, and highly entertaining little thriller filled with surprises. A low budget American film crew is making a cheap slasher in Moscow when the mute props master (played by the wonderful Marina Zudina) accidentally stumbles on a snuff film in progress. What follows is an exciting cat-and-mouse hunt that comes at you from multiple fresh angles: 1990s Russia, language barriers, special effects tricks, and of course, the challenge of being the titular Mute Witness.

4. Searching

I love few things more than enjoying a film but being annoyed by its mistake….only to end the movie and discover the ‘mistake’ was absolutely part of a reveal. That’s one of many strengths in Searching, a mystery with a great filming gimmick (the POV is John Chu’s laptop) but even better storytelling. This is a tight little watch that left me extremely satisfied.

3. The Cat

An alien general hides out in the body of a housecat to battle a mushroom blob monster in Lam Ngai Kai’s insane action romp. There’s a ten minute battle between said alien general disguised as housecat and a paper mache dog. I like to think of myself as a decent writer but in this instance, I simply don’t possess enough words to express how wildly entertaining this little movie truly is. 

2. Speak No Evil

There’s an art to making a genre film so bleak that as soon as an American remake is announced, the entire world flinches at the collective internet sigh of horror fans knowing they’ll never get the same experience. Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 travelogue is truly a nasty of piece of work, and I say that as an extreme compliment. 

1. The Passenger

I’ve been singing the praises of scream king Kyle Gallner ever since he served as the sole glint of light in the Nightmare On Elm St. remake, so imagine my glee to see him team up with a similarly underrated genre filmmaker. Carter Smith’s The Passenger is a dark ride: a traumatized, anxiety-ridden young fast food worker ends up the hostage/pet project of a violent sociopath in one nightmare of a day. With incredibly nuanced performances from top to bottom, The Passenger is not an easy watch, but it’s a deeply human story that’s unafraid to take its time exploring what it might mean to live in this world.