Decades of Terror 2021: 2010s Weird Movies: Decades of Terror

By Steve Hutchison

Steve Hutchison reviews 100 amazing weird horror films from the 2010s. Each film is analyzed and discussed with a synopsis and a rating. The movies are ranked. How many have you seen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Hutchison
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778870064

Steve Hutchison

Artist, developer and entrepreneur in film, video games and communications Steve Hutchison co-founded Shade.ca Art and Code in 1999, then Terror.ca and its French equivalent Terreur.ca in 2000. With his background as an artist and integrator, Steve worked on such games as Capcom's Street Fighter, PopCap's Bejeweled, Tetris, Bandai/Namco's Pac-Man and Mattel's Skip-Bo & Phase 10 as a localization manager, 2-D artist and usability expert. Having acquired skills in gamification, he invented a unique horror movie review system that is filterable, searchable and sortable by moods, genres, subgenres and antagonists. Horror movie fans love it, and so do horror authors and filmmakers, as it is a great source of inspiration. In March 2013, Steve launched Tales of Terror, with the same goals in mind but with a much finer technology and a complex engine, something that wasn’t possible initially. He has since published countless horror-themed books.

Book preview

DecadesOfTerror2021_2010sWeirdMovies_Cover.jpg

Tales of Terror’s

Decades of Terror 2021

2010s Weird Movies

INTRODUCTION

Steve Hutchison reviews 100 amazing weird horror films from the 2010s. Each film is analyzed and discussed with a synopsis and a rating. The movies are ranked. How many have you seen?

#1

One Cut of the Dead

2017

Things go sour for a director, his crew, and his cast while shooting a zombie film, as the undead actually rises from the grave.

8/8

This film will require all your attention. Every detail matters. The first 37 minutes were shot with one camera, in one take, and that, in itself, considering the rhythm and special effects involved, is something to witness. Some filmmakers have attempted this in the past, but rarely with such accuracy. The first act is absolutely bonkers. It is incessant. It is a frantic masterpiece.

And then, there’s everything else. The second act will remain unspoiled, and the third one is nothing but twists. This is, simply put, one of the best and most creative horror films in history. One Cut of the Dead is a movie about people making a movie, and that doesn’t even begin to describe what awaits. The actors are sublime, but the first act only reveals a glimpse of their potential.

The thing is the whole crew’s working miracles. The cameramen are giving all they have, which is an understatement considering what you’re signing up for. They’re extremely agile, precise, and only surpassed by the actors’ calculated yet vivid performances. One question resurfaces every five minutes: what the fuck are we watching? Answers will come. Better enjoy the ride till everything adds up!

#2

The Final Girls

2015

Four friends get pulled into a 1980s slasher and must avoid getting killed.

7/8

This slapstick comedy isn’t afraid to get dramatic to get its point across, but 95% of it is delirious. It is fascinating and hysterical. It’s a spoof of Friday the 13th, first and foremost, but it’s also about a cyclic time loop, it’s meta, and it’s an unusual time travel movie. It’s also claustrocore in its way. Every second of this gem is fascinating and unprecedented.

The characters are a likable bunch, even the ones in the film within the film. They get our imaginations running wild. Adam Devine and Angela Trimbur are hilarious as the two dumbest 1980s slasher flick stereotypes a writer could come up with. The way the two realities merge is far-fetched, but it’s better to roll with it, considering where the script takes us if we suspend our disbelief.

Billy Murphy’s design is as close as possible to Jason Voorhees’, and it’s impressive how much the creators got away with. In this film, the killer comes second. The Final Girls is all about the survivors. This production nears perfection. The dialogue is right out of a stand-up comedian’s mouth. Everything in the script feels calculated. This is an ode to horror movie fans.

#3

Cult of Chucky

2017

A possessed doll infiltrates a psychiatric hospital.

7/8

After you’ve gone through an opening so nerve-racking you just might swallow your tongue, you’re transported to a sanitarium, of all places, where all the good stuff is about to take place. Like Curse of Chucky, this film centers on Fiona Dourif’s character; Chucky’s daughter, who’s about the furthest thing there is from a stereotypical final girl.

Cult of Chucky is a fascinating mindfuck with more twists and turns than any of its predecessors. You won’t see most surprises coming until they hit you right in the face. The murders are gory and look cool as hell. The photography surpasses all we’ve seen up to now. Chucky never looked so good and so alive. We can no longer tell how he is animated from shot to shot.

Don Mancini, writer, director, and franchise owner, learned a lot from Curse, the previous film. The last thing he wants is another Seed of Chucky. He follows Curse of Chucky’s winning combination to a T: put the scares and the mystery first; the humor and the Easter eggs second. That being said, all Chucky movies should be watched in order. They are first and foremost made for fans.

#4

Scare Package

2019

The owner of a video store teaches his new employee the rules of the horror genre.

7/8

When it comes to horror anthologies, this millennium, Scare Package deserves your attention. Horror anthology films were sturdier then than they are now; think Amicus and Creepshow, but this is one of the few times I’ve been impressed by this format recently. Expect excellent practical effects in all segments, good actors, dialogue that flows, and an impressive level of uniformity.

Considering all shorts were made by very different artists, the visual continuity is baffling. Photographically, it’s like all segments were directed by the same people. The gore’s always amazing. Whatever budget was invested was spent wisely. That said, the horror trope thread comes and goes, because some writers wanted to do their thing and got artsy.

Segment 1 has a plot driven by mishaps. Segment 2 has two distinct stories that hardly converge. Segment 3 is an embarrassing tale of lycanthropy. Segment 4 is a pointless mindfuck. Segment 5 makes fun of everything campy about slashers. Segment 6 is an inside joke between the writer and himself. In segment 7, a video store clerk, a film critic, and a bunch of strangers run away from a killer.

#5

Insidious: Chapter 2

2013

A family attempts to expel a haunting force from their home.

7/8

Insidious Chapter 2 is just as well written and directed as Insidious was, and it is much darker because it picks up right after the sad, horrifying conclusion to the original story. The end product is a little less like Poltergeist and a little more like The Amityville Horror, with a possession subplot filling a significant portion of the script and various typical elements of the subgenre.

While the narrative structure gets more complex, it is in good hands and doesn’t feel convoluted. Time and space play an important role in the story, but we never get lost in the details. The many jump scares are legit, not cheap, and are paced to trick the audience, often