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The 50 Best Horror Movies of the Decade

Monsters, killers, cults, and more… these are the best horror films of the decade as decided by eight horror-loving nerds with internet access.
Decade Rewind Best Horror
By  · Published on October 31st, 2019

40. Rubber (2010, France)

Rubber is one of those you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it movies, but that’s the realm in which director Quentin Dupieux excels. The plot is simple. A rubber tire rolls around town exploding heads with its mind, and a gathering of weirdos led by Wings Hauser collect in the desert to observe the shenanigans. This is the cinema of “No Reason.” Watch and contemplate all you want; you won’t find any deeper meaning than that. The film is no more absurd than the endless parade of Freddy or Jason movies. If you can invest in a pedophile dreamscape stalker, then you can certainly relate to a mute rubber wheel obliterating chumps who foolishly cross its path. The movie is damn funny, taking aim at those that dare to create as well as those who inanely observe from afar. We’re all hungry for our entertainment, and as long as we’ve got it, we don’t necessarily mind that it’s poisoned. Don’t eat the turkey, guys. (Brad Gullickson)


39. Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010, Canada)

The litmus test for what I look for in a modern horror comedy, Tucker and Dale vs Evil pokes pitch-perfect fun at well trod horror tropes that are then grounded by a Laurel and Hardy-esque turn from Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine as the titular duo. If the meta-humor wasn’t a selling point enough for die-hard horror hounds, the film has a heart filled with sincerely sweet moments of compassion and brotherly love between the two bumbling rednecks who have been mistaken for the “backwood cannibal” variety of good ol’ boy. It’s a laugh a minute comedy, with more going on underneath the sticky-icky veneer of disposable teen blood that makes us genuinely feel something deep down in our cold icy hearts. (Jacob Trussell)


Bonus! A Cure for Wellness (2017)

A Cure For Wellness is the best Roger Corman/Vincent Price movie never made, bloated into a fat epic for Poe-cycle fanboys to wallow within. Visualist Gore Verbinski takes his time stretching the mystery of what is actually going on behind the curtain of the nefarious wellness center where corporate lapdog Dane DeHaan is being held prisoner, but once its mask is ripped off, and its hideous face revealed, the film transforms from simply spooky to full-on nightmarish. A Cure For Wellness was woefully dismissed as a swollen melodramatic gothic as if that was a bad thing! Folks! This movie is a mad celebration of classic universal horror cranked to eleven and dunked into a vat gut-munching eels!! Soak in it and get pruned. (Brad Gullickson)


38. Under the Shadow (2016, UK)

Many of the most visually striking and deeply chilling films out there draw from the real-life horrors of history, specifically the dark corners of the past that are least often explored on-screen. Like Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone, Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow takes a simple premise, a haunting, and explodes it outwards into a heart-pounding, evocative take on a specific time and place in recent history. In this case, the setting is 1980s Tehran, where mother and medical student Shideh (Narges Rashidi) comes face to face with politically motivated sexism, neighborhood bombings, and a determined Djinn — a spirit — who’s out to get her daughter (Avin Manshadi). The film is tense and relentless, and under Anvari’s sure directorial hand, it’s also beautiful. More than anything else, it’s one of the most authentically scary original films in recent years. (Val Ettenhofer)


37. Annihilation (2018, UK)

After her husband (Oscar Isaac) returns ill after a year away in an area known as “the shimmer,” a biologist (Natalie Portman) volunteers to join a team in entering the dangerous zone in an effort to find out what happened. Turns out this is a place where the laws of nature do not apply. Without the laws of nature to hold everything in balance, weird shit happens. Some of that weird shit includes horrifying mutated bears. Alex Garland’s trippy sci-fi journey is a lot to handle and will take multiple viewings to fully digest. It’s a heavy film that deals with loss and grief, subjects that typically may not be fun for repeat viewings, but you know, there’s a mutated bear so it evens out. (Chris Coffel)


36. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

Sure we talk about Toni Collette’s incredible performance in Hereditary as the “Best Acting Ever in a Horror Movie,” but have we forgotten that just a few years earlier John Goodman knocked our teeth in with his emotional central performance in the semi-follow up to J.J. Abrams’ biggo monster spectacle Cloverfield? Taking that humongous world and placing it in a teeny tiny bunker, 10 Cloverfield Lane gives us a mystery to follow in an environment that scrapes our insides with anxiety, but the movie is Goodman’s. He effortlessly seesaws between fatherly warmth and terrifying evil in a way that we have not seen from him since Barton Fink. There are very real monsters outside the bunker walls — like super cool, non metaphorical ones. But inside the bunker is where the true danger waits, and it’s name is John mother fucking Goodman. (Jacob Trussell)


35. Backcountry (2014, Canada)

Animal attack films are a favorite around these parts, but the best the sub-genre has to offer are typically found back in the 70s and 80s. The reasons are varied with at least one — increased concern for animal welfare on set — being worth applauding, but the end result is a severe lack of great animal-centric horror. This year’s Crawl is an exception as it delivers great fun despite its use of CG alligators, but the best the decade has to offer is the directorial debut of Canadian actor and all around nice guy Adam MacDonald. Backcountry sends a couple into the woods for a relaxing weekend, but if their own bickering doesn’t do them in whatever’s been following them through the forest just might. Is it the creepy hiker seen eyeballing Jenn (Missy Peregrym)? Or is it a hungry and vicious black bear looking for a snack? You already know the answer, kind of, so I’ll add only that the film features the most grueling, terrifying, and harrowing animal attack ever captured for the screen. Forget the bear fucking in The Revenant (2015)… this is horrifying. Once you’ve watched this and had time to relax, go ahead and toss in MacDonald’s followup, Pyewacket (2017). It almost made the list itself and makes for a great double feature as it too sees the filmmaker find a hellscape in the otherwise peaceful forest. (Rob Hunter)


Horror Paranorman

34. ParaNorman (2012)

Too often, children’s entertainment speaks from the height of authority, descending lessons as if adults have it all figured out. Ha. The brilliance of Laika Studios is that they know that grownups are dopes and responsible for all the pain and suffering in the world. Children are ultimately our saviors and deserve to be treated as such. ParaNorman presents a kid struggling to find his place in a universe ready to push him to the sidelines as an oddity. Only when he ignores their labels and embraces his weird talents, does he succeed in saving himself, his friends, and even the jerks who wanted nothing to do with him. I’m sure the kids in the audience get a lot from the narrative, but it’s the adults who should really be paying attention. (Brad Gullickson)


33. Anna and the Apocalypse (2017, UK)

The zombie apocalypse hits a small Scottish town just before Christmas forcing a group of surviving high school students to band together and defeat the undead using… song and dance? If that sounds silly it shouldn’t because I already told you it’s Scottish. Christmas horror is tough terrain to navigate. Toss in comedy and musical elements and you run the risk of quickly taking the polar express off the rails. And yet director John McPhail and writers Alan McDonald and the late Ryan McHenry act as three wise men delivering holiday gold with this modern masterpiece. That’s right, I said masterpiece. And I don’t throw that word around like Kieran Fisher so you know I mean it. It’s bloody zombie fun with catchy musical numbers and funny accents! What’s not to love? (Chris Coffel)


Bonus! Demon (2015, Poland)

A chilling cautionary tale about the ghosts that continue to haunt post-war Poland, Demon is a quiet howl of a film with a fresh take on possession. Piotr and Zaneta inherit family land as a wedding gift. As Pitor is preparing the property, he finds buried human remains, but decides to keep the discovery to himself so that all of the wedding arrangements can go on smoothly. Sure enough, during his own wedding celebration, Piotr gets possessed by an unquiet spirit. At a glance, Demon is a beautifully shot, mildly surreal slow burn. But there is more than meets the eye here: a soft genre-meld of Jewish folklore, European absurdism, and a haunting critique of historical erasure in lands “built on corpses.” Demon won’t be for everyone. But if you’re open to hazy forays, and have a soft spot for the sloppy stuff, it’s well worth seeking out. (Meg Shields)


32. Mandy (2018, UK)

Sometimes you see a film, and it hits you like a frying pan across the face, and you think: “god, I need to do that a couple more times.” Mandy is a miracle that makes me vomit adjectives: a trippy, sweet, cruel, hypnotic, homegrown, prog-rock cultsploitation flick with an enormous heart and ambition to match. I have yet to see a filmmaker make use of 21st Century Nic Cage’s talents quite like Panos Cosmatos. Cage’s tried-and-true mechanizations are crystalized in Red’s tenderness; in the stakes and the pathos that ground his fury and give it context. In a movie that is basically a silent film, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score is essential and spine-melting. Throw in the legend that is the Cheddar Goblin, a king’s ransom of banger supporting roles, and dueling chainsaws and you got yourself one hell of a cinematic experience. “I’m your God now” indeed. (Meg Shields)


31. Get Out (2017)

Where were you when the police sirens went off at the end of Get Out? Everyone has a singular horror movie theater experience — my mom likes to tell me about the people next to her who yelled through Jaws — and Get Out is mine. Jordan Peele’s zeitgeist-capturing blockbuster is built for maximum suspense and entertainment, right up until that final moment of bated breath. Daniel Kaluuya is excellent as even-keeled Chris, a black man who is roped into visiting his white girlfriend’s (Alison Williams) too-friendly family in upstate New York. Peele takes a Twilight Zone-like premise and transforms it into a taut social thriller that’s in turn hilarious and gripping. The film dwells on the inherent, unspoken horror of American racial tension, and pulls off something tricky by making its villains not simple racists, but privileged “woke” white folks who fetishize black bodies with no thought for the people who live in them every day. Get Out became a word-of-mouth sensation and a much-deserved award-winner, and ushered in a new era for the genre by proving that mainstream audiences can appreciate smart, diverse, challenging, and well-made horror movies. (Val Ettenhofer)


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Rob Hunter has been writing for Film School Rejects since before you were born, which is weird seeing as he's so damn young. He's our Chief Film Critic and Associate Editor and lists 'Broadcast News' as his favorite film of all time. Feel free to say hi if you see him on Twitter @FakeRobHunter.