Best of the Year: 2025

Here we are!

Or maybe 17. I don’t do math. What I DO do is, every end of January, take a moment to call out my favorite movies reviewed here from the past year. Does this mean they’re good? NOT ALWAYS. Does this mean they’re relevant to a new year? BASED ON THE DATES, PROBABLY NOT THAT EITHER. 

What it DOES mean is that I really, really really, mostly really liked these movies. Links to the full reviews in each number. This year, we had a nice and round 10.

Let’s go.

10. Blades

The influence of Jaws can probably never be understated. Iconic lines, cinematic tricks, musical style…there are a LOT of ways Steven Spielberg’s first blockbuster changed the world, but it’s ripoffs that I found most exciting on this 50th anniversary. Blades, a 1988 horror comedy, puts the soul of Bruce the shark into a sentient lawnmower hellbent on destroying a golf club’s big summer tournament. The results are very dumb, and very, very fun. 

9. Night Watch

If you ever need to be reminded what it means to be a movie star, consider queuing up Brian G. Hutton’s Night Watch, where a supposedly past her prime Elizabeth Taylor tries to hold onto her sanity while wandering a creaky British estate. It’s the stately kind of stage adaptation filled with crystal decanters and shifty gardeners, with secrets lurking around every fully furnished corner. The ending is a banger in more ways than one. 

8. Alligator

The second Jaws-inspired genre comedy on this year’s list, Alligator is the kind of stupid film that only very smart people can make. Written by John Sayles, directed by Lewis Teague, and starring an often shirtless Robert Forster, this is a film that has a few deeply political opinions to ponder by way of very silly, often barely working alligator rigs. It’s an excessively good time.

7. The Feast

Not surprisingly, I love good food horror. In fact, my affection for it runs equally deep to that of folk horror, making Lee Haven Jones’s The Feast a pretty satisfying 90 minutes. The last ten years have given us plenty of ‘eat the rich’ takes, and while The Feast doesn’t necessarily reinvent the subgenre, it does bring its own serene style. 

6. Woman of the Hour

I’ve always been a fan of Anna Kendrick as a performer, so it was quite nice to discover she’s equally talented behind the camera. In her directorial debut, Kendrick explores the women whose lives were taken or fundamentally changed by real-life serial killer Rodney Alcala. While true crime generally turns my otherwise iron stomach, the version here (slightly fictionalized in details, though generally accurate in spirit) never feels exploitive. Instead, Kendrick and writer Ian McDonald use the backdrop of an incredibly unusual event (Alcala’s real-life appearance on The Dating Game) to tell a story not about a dangerous man, but one about how the women on the other side of male violence have to navigate the world. 

5. The Coffee Table

More black comedy than horror, Caye Casas’s The Coffee Table still managed to be one of my favorite, most inappropriate watches of the year. This is, to be clear, A VERY DARK RIDE. And it’s hilarious. 

4. Everyone Will Burn

Could I tell you what David Hebrero’s movie was actually about? No. Could I spend the next three hours showcasing my own performance art based on the way star Macarena Gómez wears oversized hats? You know it! Everyone Will Burn is a strange, stylish bite of magical realism that feels like the most delicious meal you can eat knowing you’ll suffer food poisoning after. Head on in expecting a beautifully strange ride. 

3. The Lamp

One of the most exciting things about scouring every streaming site on the internet is that you get to discover actual treasures from eras you thought you had already picked dry. A slasher by way of evil djinn made in 1987 and set overnight in a history museum? What ELSE has this world been hiding from me all these years? Tom Daley’s The Lamp (aka The Outing) isn’t necessarily a life-changing watch, but it’s a big hunk of good fun. While there are certainly nostalgic signs of its ‘80s peers, the movie also manages to offer real surprises and stand on its own, something that wasn’t too common for even the best output of the golden age of slashers. 

2. The Hole In the Fence

A film that has been haunting me for the better of 10 months, The Hole In the Fence follows a class of privileged Mexican adolescents as they follow a long-established tradition of camping just outside a poor village supposedly riddled with crime. The boys are safe under the care of their wealthy guardians (all of whom long ago conquered the same right of passage) but the titular structural weakness suggests something very, very dangerous has already breached the barrier. Director Joaquin del Paso is a master at building mood, curating incredibly real performances from his young, mostly untrained cast. The story calls to mind Bacurau, a similarly haunting and violent film about how the haves use the have nots as a playground for their basest urges. But The Hole In the Fence has an even more disturbing undercurrent in focusing on how the young generation is so easy to mold into something so, so awful. This isn’t a movie that will have you cheering, but if you’re looking for true horror, it’s hard to beat. 

1. The Ugly Stepsister

It’s hard to describe just how powerful a feeling it is to see the kind of film your 14-year-old self would have dreamed of making. In her filmmaking debut(!), writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt spins a world as beautiful as it is disgusting, as heartwrenching as it is hysterical. “Cinderella but from the stepsister’s point of view” isn’t a unique concept in itself, but Bilchfeldt’s execution is the kind of thing that makes you feel limitless confidence about the future of genre cinema, especially when it’s in the hands of such deranged genius.  

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.

Best of the Year! (well, my year)

It’s an annual tradition in these parts to take the last week in January as the day I celebrate my favorite movies that I reviewed over that past year. It’s my late stab at doing a ‘best of’ list, and also, my own little way of remembering that it was this same week WAY back in 2009 that I decided to build my own doll’s house in literary cinematic form.

Here we are, FIFTEEN YEARS later, and what can I say? The world has changed. I’ve gone from my 20s to my 40s, lived a few lifetimes, and have witnessed the birth of FOUR additional installments in the Children of the Corn franchise. 

And have still yet to find an actual good one.

In other words, don’t worry: this site remains what it is and has always been, a little nook on the internet to grab a weekly dose of my blathering on about the most rewarding genre.

With that in mind, here are the best movies I reviewed here in 2023. And remember: I never said I had good taste. 

14. Snow White: A Tale of Terror

Fantasy horror hit a draught in the ‘90s, with director Michael Cohn’s mid-budget Snow White dying a slow death on Showtime. While not a masterpiece, it’s a gorgeous-looking film and most importantly, features a true movie star performance from Sigourney Weaver. She clearly relished the chance to go big, but what makes her wicked stepmother such an anchor is how much pathos she brings to this character. The last few years have seen a minor renaissance in this kind of film, and all of them share this kind of layered, glamorous villainess who tends to grab more of the audience interest than the bland ingenue intended to be the story’s heart. Snow White is far from perfect or even the best telling of this kind of story, but there’s a lot here that is easy to relish.

13. Hounded

We’ve seen plenty of variations on Hounded’s plot: poor but plucky young delinquents attempt to rob old money snobs only to discover they’ve punched their tickets as prey in The Most Dangerous Game. There’s nothing that revolutionary about Hounded, but director Tommy Boulding imbues his version with a surprising amount of heart. His characters are human beings who aren’t ready to face (or cause) death, even if it comes at the hands of the deliciously gravel-voiced head huntress Samantha Bond. 

12. The Strays

Sometimes a good movie becomes great in its last ten seconds. Making his filmmaking debut, writer/director Nathaniel Martello-White takes several big genre-bending twists as he follows Neve, an upper class stay-at-home mom and light-skinned black woman whose past comes back to reckon with the life she meticulously, immorally built for herself. It’s not a perfectly paced story, but it’s aided by some ferocious performances and, most importantly, one of the most wickedly satisfying film endings I’ve ever seen. 

11. Bit

Low budget lesbian vampire stories aren’t the first thing I expect to add to a best-of list, but I knew immediately after watching Bit that it would find its spot here. Trans rights activist Nicole Maines stars as a recent high school graduate who falls into the wrong (or right?) undead crowd headed by the insanely cool Diana Hopper. Writer/director Brad Michael Elmore doesn’t change the genre landscape, but he finds a new angle into an old story and lets his incredibly charismatic actresses thrive. 

10. You Should Have Left

David Koepp reunited with his Stir of Echoes star Kevin Bacon for this extremely satisfying twist on the haunted house format. Bacon stars as the much older husband of Amanda Seyfried’s movie star wife. When they take their daughter to a secluded Welsh farmhouse for some family bonding, things quickly unravel. Much like another title a few spots up this list, You Should Have Left is a pleasant reminder that sometimes, A-list talent still has a place in the horror genre. 

9. Sea Fever

Who can ever say no to Alien at sea? Neasa Hardiman’s sci-fi body horror follows an awkward grad student’s ill-fated ride on a fishing boat through extraterrestrial squid territory. It’s short, it’s gooey, and it’s so efficient in its storytelling that my only real problem was that I wanted more.

8. The Innocents

It’s not secret that evil children are one of my all-time favorite types of horror movie villains, which also means I’ve also seen a LOT of evil children horror movies. You have to work hard to tap into something fresh. That’s what makes Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents such a special watch. Set under the shining Nordic sun, The Innocents follows a set of kids who seem to be randomly gifted extraordinary powers of the mind. The problem? They’re so young that they don’t necessarily understand their own moral grounding. It’s eerie, occasionally horrific, and always unsettling. 

7. Better Watch Out

It was a good year for The Shortening! Writer/director Chris Peckover nails a clever tone with his Christmas-set home invasion that follows a plucky babysitter (the always reliable Olivia DeJonge) and her more-than-meets the eye charge (Levi Miller). The easy description is that this is the natural horror movie progression of Home Alone, but that sells Peckover’s work short. This is a filmmaker who has a lot to say and explore, and more importantly, has such a mastery of the genre that he manages to do so in funny AND shocking ways.

6. Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge

There are ‘80s horror movies, and there are ‘80S HORROR MOVIES. Phantom of the Mall is set at a MALL. It has SKATEBOARDING deaths. SHOULDER PADS. MORGAN FAIRCHILD IN SHOULDER PADS. These things are great on their own, but toss in some early capitalist satire and even more sequins and you’re in for a truly delightful treat. 

5. Citizen X

Unlike a lot of my fellow horror brethren, I find serial killers and particularly, movies based on REAL serial killers more nauseating than entertaining. Citizen X, an early HBO original movie, gets a bit of a pass for having enough distance between its true crime pedigree and the present to assuage my guilt at being so intrigued by a horrific crime involving real people. Because seriously: this movie is highly entertaining. Stephen Rea plays a Soviet forensic specialist leading an 8-year investigation into a child murderer. That’s hard, but doing so under the bureaucratic weight of the Soviet Union is nearly impossible. Thankfully, there’s Donald Sutherland as a higher up with a better understanding of how to play the game. Watching these actors play off each other is a thrill, especially when you factor in a good old-fashioned detective story told well.

4. Influencer

Just as ghost hunting was the premier profession of 2010 horror characters, the job of influencer has become quite common on Shudder originals and when it’s done as well as Kurtis David Harder’s film, I have no problem with that. The incredibly charismatic Cassandra Naud stars as a world traveler with an unhealthy habit of befriending social media sensations and taking over their already fragile identities. There’s so much more going on here, and it’s genuinely thrilling with surprise after surprise. What a refreshing little movie. 

3. Copycat

Sometimes you spend 20+ years assuming you’d seen a popular big budget studio film only to discover you were mixing it up with a dozen other movies. Thankfully, I finally sat down to watch 1995’s Copycat and was rewarded with something special: big movie stars giving it their all in a sharp thriller filled with everything you want on the big screen. Copycat is the kind of movie that doesn’t really get made anymore, though you can certainly see its legacy on streaming miniseries that often misunderstand the appeal of a good investigative mystery. Holly Hunter and Sigourney Weaver are at the top of their game as two incredibly capable, yet very different professional women who are the last thing standing between a psychopath and a whole lot of innocent victims. It’s a master class in how to do a popcorn flick right. 

2. Sissy

Influencer culture is a hot topic in this year’s indie horror, and though I still flinch when someone sends me a TikTok, I’m all for it. With Sissy, the writer/director team of Kane Senes and Hannah Barlow craft an incredibly rich portrait of a successful but anxiety-filled social media star who can’t quite let go of the emotional scars of her past. Lead Aisha Dee is achingly good in the titular role, making it easy for the audience to actively root for her success even if it means the death of a few innocent bystanders. This was one of the most satisfying watches I’ve had in a long, long time. 

1. Dual

Riley Stearns is one of the most interesting filmmakers working today with the lowest profile, and with an output as good as Dual and Faults, I hope things stay that way. More black comedy than the futuristic sci-fi its plot synopsis sells, Dual follows an unlucky woman (played to deadpan perfection by Karen Gillan) misdiagnosed with a fatal disease in a future where you can commission your own double to take over your life when you die. When her illness proves to be minor, she’s now challenged by a clone who won’t leave in a society that has specific, bureaucratic systems in place to deal with such matters. It’s incredibly funny and exceedingly weird in ways that call The Lobster to mind, and I absolutely loved it.