Beyond its numerous other artistic and political catastrophes, 2016 turned out to be a lousy year for horror cinema. There were highlights, of course—the best films were nigh-masterpieces—but the overall bell curve in horror quality lurched decidedly towards the cruddy end of the spectrum this year. Distributors seemed to sense this, declining to screen numerous wide-release features for critics, presumably in the hopes that compulsive first-weekend teenage filmgoers would be enough to coax their shabby offerings into profitability. While horror sequel-mania seems to have abated somewhat this year, other, equally dispiriting trends took its place: an upswing in wearisome aimlessness at the expense of mood; filmmakers who confused a reliance on musty, perfunctory clichés for enthusiastic embrace of genre; and a repugnant new horror subcategory in which nice white people are menaced by the bugaboos of non-white folklore.
What follows is a catalog of this year’s cinematic disasters, mediocrities, and uncommon triumphs in the horror genre, ranked from worst to best. A film qualifies for this list if it could be viewed theatrically by the ticketed general public in the St. Louis metropolitan area between January 1 and December 31, 2016.
24. The Darkness
There are other films on this list that are more ludicrous, more offensive, and more spectacular in their awfulness than The Darkness. So why does this dusty fart of a film—in which Kevin Bacon’s family is terrorized by ancient Puebloan demons—belong at the bottom? There’s the absolute incompetence that director Greg McLean exhibits with respect to mood, pacing, and rudimentary storytelling. There’s the script’s glib cynicism in its portrayal of everything from autism to eating disorders to Native American culture. Mostly it’s the sensation that the film elicits of having flushed 92 precious minutes of life into a devouring void of banal crappiness. Reviewed here.
23. The Disappointments Room
It’s a good bet that D.J. Caruso’s chintzy, anti-scary haunted house tale has a thoroughly boneheaded story, but one can’t be completely positive about that, since the film is so terrible at conveying it. Tepid, awkward, and monotonous for most of its running time, The Disappointments Room manages some minimal train-wreck interest in its rushed final act, which descends into hilarious cinematic incoherence.
22. Shut In
Shut In signals its horribleness early, with a wobbly premise and a complete absence of imagination in its methods. What truly makes director Farren Blackburn’s bumbling thriller a cinematic fail is that nothing interesting happens for the first 45 godforsaken minutes. Naomi Watts, bless her, does her best, but she can’t revive such a muddled, mind-numbing mess before it descends into outright stupidity.
21. 31
For a moment there, Rob Zombie was threatening to become one of America’s most surprising and fascinating horror filmmakers. Then he squeezed out 31, an ungainly and appallingly juvenile cavalcade of cinematic pilfering and faux-transgressive excess. Particularly on the heels of the superlative The Lords of Salem, the film comes off as a shabby, half-baked fiasco, and a showcase for the director’s most grating inclinations.
20. The Other Side of the Door
Johannes Roberts’ dull, silly Hindu ghost story might have been forgettable rather than dreadful, were it not for two factors. Firstly, there’s the absurd stupidity of it protagonist, Maria, whom the screenwriters seem to despise for feeling maternal grief. Then there’s the unapologetic racism in the film’s crypto-colonial depiction of Indian people, who are used as exotic props, disposable victims, and ooga-booga mystical monsters.
19. The Forest
Speaking of racism, Jason Zada’s bleary, ponderous The Forest only nudges out The Other Side of the Door due to its marginally less exasperating heroine, and the fact that it is actually frightening in short bursts. Its xenophobia is more overt, however, and its portrayal of Japan is obnoxiously lazy and retrograde. Intermittent, ferocious jump scares aren’t sufficient to wash away the film’s vile taste. Reviewed here.
18. The Purge: Election Year
Director James DeMonaco was so busy cobbling together an action-heavy survival thriller with (ugh) political “relevance,” he forgot to make the third entry in his ludicrous film series the least bit scary. Election Year is thoroughly dreary and repetitious, but the film’s worst sins are its tin-eared dialog and nonsensical, slapdash efforts to make a satirical statement about… something. Exactly what is anyone’s guess.
17. Incarnate
Brad Peyton’s nonsensical, derivative Incarnate isn’t the worst entry in the dog-tired demon possession subgenre, but it’s an exemplar for today’s cheap, ill-conceived breed of horror filmmaking. Plot holes and cut-rate characterization abound, and even Aaron Eckhart’s lantern-jawed presence can’t salvage the film from its insipidness. However it’s foremost Incarnate’s maladroit execution of an already doltish premise—Inception meets The Exorcist!—that makes it such a drag.
16. When the Bough Breaks
“Crazy Stalker [Fill in the Blank]” is a trashy but straightforward species of thriller. It’s therefore perversely remarkable that director Jon Cassar’s entry When the Bough Breaks makes such a drowsy hash of it. It’s not one thing, but everything: Jack Olsen’s trite, sexist script; Cassar’s flat, charm-free direction; the implausibility of Jaz Sinclair as a violent psychopath; and the criminal anonymity of a film shot in New Orleans.
15. Blair Witch
Blair Witch embodies contemporary horror’s stubborn lack of imagination, aversion to risk-taking, and crude, mechanized logic. An unwanted, unnecessary second crack at a sequel to the galvanic lo-fi 1999 original, Adam Wingard’s forgettable film manages some decent scares and clever tricks, but it’s depressingly mundane on the whole. Whereas its predecessor relied on restraint and suggestion, Blair Witch face-plants in its adolescent eagerness to be bigger and scarier. Reviewed here.
14. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Burr Steers’ one-joke mashup is weirdly faithful to its Austen source material, at least superficially, and the film’s steampunk-tinged Regency production design is on point. However, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fails to unearth anything substantive at the cross-genre nexus it flaunts, or to deliver a single unexpected narrative beat, preferring to wallow in the stale spectacle of gorgeous young women hacking their way through the walking dead. Reviewed here.
13. Morgan
Director Luke Scott’s dreary scifi-horror thriller Morgan is the sort of just-competent-enough genre diversion that evaporates from the mind the moment that the viewer leaves their seat. A sullenly pedestrian retelling of Frankenstein with the dubious addition of near-future corporate intrigue, Morgan is sufficiently bleak and bloody to hold one’s attention. However, it is hampered by witless characters, insultingly obvious “twists,” and the personality of a primer-gray wall.
12. The Conjuring 2
If one can see past The Conjuring 2’s sluggish, haphazard assembly, and its smug, shallow religious apologetics, there’s some crackerjack horror filmmaking on display from director James Wan. For every rote jump scare, he serves up a bravura sequence of low-key eeriness or nightmarish nuttiness. Moreover, the film’s climactic reveal has such wicked grace, it’s almost enough to make one forget the charlatanism behind the film’s “true events.” Reviewed here.
11. Lights Out
There’s plenty that Lights Out gets right. It’s a refreshingly fleet ghost story, replete with satisfying funhouse shocks and unnerving visual tricks, as well as characters who react to supernatural menace as actual humans might. Nonetheless, in the questionable endeavor of expanding his acclaimed spooky short into a full-length film, director David F. Sandberg takes some missteps, including lazy deference to genre tropes and a harebrained, superfluous backstory. Reviewed here.
10. The Boy
William Brent Bell’s The Boy suffers from a miscast heroine, some nagging plot inconsistencies, and a plodding final sequence that feels drably obligatory. Nonetheless, there’s a fascinating quality to the film’s (mostly) scrupulous construction, not to mention its bracingly insolent shifts in subgenre. (Creepy old people movie? Ghost movie? Evil doll movie? Insane protagonist movie?) It’s the film’s canny ambiguity that makes its reality-flipping third act realignment linger. Reviewed here.
9. Don’t Breathe
For its first 45 minutes or so, director Fede Alvarez’s inverted riff on Wait Until Dark is a riveting, superbly constructed thriller. Using space and shadow to outstanding effect, Don’t Breathe serves up a brutally straightforward scenario erected on a substrate of disquieting moral grays. Then the film flinches, the ethical ambiguity vanishes, and the whole edifice starts to collapse into tedious inanity and crime-horror cliché. Reviewed here.
8. Ouija: Origin of Evil
A retconned prequel to a wincingly dreadful film could do a lot worse than director Mike Flanagan, who brings a craftsman’s practiced eye to the undeserving Ouija: Origin of Evil. The result is an entertaining, by-the-book morsel that’s not free of fumbles, but nevertheless laced with credible gestures and small, disturbing subversions. It’s exactly the sort of spook story that makes for hassle-free Halloween viewing with easily frightened friends. Reviewed here.
7. The Shallows
Jaume Collet-Serra’s best feature to date is anchored by a lean, committed turn from Blake Lively and an attentiveness to the roiling chemistry between The Shallows’ formal aspects and storytelling demands. As efficient and merciless as the great white shark it pits against Lively’s stranded surfer, the film thrashes the viewer bloody with an effortlessness that is almost elegant, were it not so superbly brutal. Reviewed here.
6. Shin Godzilla
This native Japanese reboot of the Godzilla franchise represents one of the boldest gambles venerable studio Toho has ever made with their beloved green behemoth. Director Hideaki Anno delivers what is foremost a bureaucratic procedural and bone-dry satire, but in its heart Shin Godzilla hides a malignancy of chilling apocalyptic horror. The 1954 original had a stain of sorrow, but Toho’s latest gapes as the world crumbles, paralyzed by existential terror.
5. Demon
Marcin Wrona’s skin-crawling, defiantly mysterious final feature is an inventive expression of supernatural horror conventions, illustrating the vital role that European art cinema plays in the genre. Simultaneously unnerving and sardonic, Demon takes the prosaic setting of a wedding reception, adds a restless Jewish ghost, and lets the chaos ensue. Wrona’s tale is seemingly dense with metaphor, yet also gleefully drunk on the absurd particulars of human behavior. Reviewed here.
4. 10 Cloverfield Lane
Forget the title and disregard the final sequence, nerve-wracking through it might be. The core scenario of Dan Trachtenberg’s seemingly insoluble psychological puzzle box is comparable to a superlative journey into The Twilight Zone. Opening impeccably and unfolding pitilessly, 10 Cloverfield Lane is buttressed by two dynamite performances: Mary Elizabeth Winstead with her harrowed, ever-calculating eyes; and John Goodman’s chilling turn as monster of the most human sort. Reviewed here.
3. Green Room
The formula for Jeremy Saulnier’s punks vs. neo-Nazis battle royale is marvelous in its simplicity. Green Room elicits striking, visceral terror from cold criminal pragmatism, rather than demonic evil, while spattering acrid subtext concerning rock, racism, and the failures of white liberalism. Supported by unexpectedly striking visuals and a pitch-black performance from Patrick Stewart, Green Room is survival horror at its grittiest and most cold-blooded. Reviewed here.
2. The Neon Demon
Set within the dehumanizing confines of the L.A. modeling world, The Neon Demon lays out a chilly, exquisitely stylish critique of commodified want. Then, in the film’s last act, director Nicolas Winding Refn lurches into the realms of lurid, bloodthirsty horror, upending expectations and dragging the viewer squirming through a jaw-dropping final gesture. Relentlessly gorgeous, thematically rich, and deliciously audacious, The Neon Demon is a triumph of style as substance. Reviewed here.
1. The Witch
The disenchantment that many horror aficionados felt as 2016 unfolded was due in part to the genre peaking early, for it was in February that Robert Eggers’ masterpiece The Witch came scratching at the door. Sweeping away the accumulated sardonic detachment and meta-textual preciousness of American horror cinema, Eggers’ feature demands sincere engagement with centuries-old shadows. There’s something to commend at every turn: the flawless design; the wickedly equivocal narrative; the remorseless pacing; the authentic yet diffident performances; and the bone-deep instinct for the evocation of dizzying fear from ordinary details. In its vicious depiction of a family that throttles itself in the wake of tragedy, The Witch uncovers the fear-steeped rot in the American soul. The film is billed as “a New England Folktale,” but it is in truth something richer and more unsettling: a glimpse of the nation’s ruinous, fundamental angst—as it was, as it is, and as it will likely always be. Reviewed here and discussed further here.
