Best of Terror 2019: Top 300 Horror Movies: Best of Terror

By Steve Hutchison

The following recommendations represent the top 15% of 1900 horror movie reviews.

I use a classification method that combines genres, subgenres, ambiances, and antagonists. My evaluation ratings are stars, story, creativity, action, quality, creepiness, and rewatchability

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Hutchison
• Release date: Feb 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778870255

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.

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Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

#300

2006

6/8

Three filmmakers document a serial killer’s routine.

When it comes to homages and parodies of slasher films, there is Scream and then there’s Behind the Mask. The two brands are very entertaining and have nothing in common. The faux-documentary approach of Behind the Mask really grows on you. It’s not what you would call a found footage movie, because, every so often, the creators use conventional film language to tell the story.

There are Easter eggs and cameos in the first act. The film mostly spoofs Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. It’s fun to see the killer justify slasher tropes; stereotypes, body count, the obsession for virgins and final girls, doing a bad job of convincing us that this somehow makes sense. The filmmakers manage to keep us on the edge of our seat all along.

Behind the Mask doesn’t just make fun of horror villains, it creates a new one. It’s about the members of family who do not only kill but also learned to fake their death. Leslie Vernon always has a trick up his sleeve to escape death and lure his victims; sleigh of hands, illusion, scare tactics, and the list goes on. This is definitely one for the horror fans. This movie deserves a sequel!

Cam

#299

2018

6/8

A camgirl finds out she’s been replaced, online, with an exact replica of herself.

Cam celebrates women in its own way, but their bodies aren’t exactly temples. We’re talking about camgirls, here, arguably the cleanest type of prostitutes of the 2010’s. Meet Alice/Lola, a lovely but manipulative porn star with an extremely vapid goal. She wants to rank as high as possible on a webcam portal. This being a horror movie, her life is about to get complicated.

The creators could’ve done without nudity, but where’s the fun in that? Sometimes, you need a little bit of skin to do a screenplay justice. For this reason, and a hundred more, this movie sucks you right in. We’re all voyeurs, here, and most of us payed to be titillated. The men are pretty much all pigs and most of the women are attractive, but all are equally eccentric.

When the inciting incident strikes, it hits like a ton of bricks. Are we dealing with an evil twin? A supernatural phenomenon? A hacker with epic video editing skills? Or perhaps this is all a dream: a wet dream for us and a nightmare for Alice. There are only so many ways this story could end. What a fun film this is, regardless. Cam is sensual, stressful, violent and frightening.

Monkey Shines

#298

1988

6/8

A quadriplegic man’s trained monkey becomes psychotic.

The best stories are the simple ones. They’re the ones easily described. They can be summed up in one sentence. This one is about a quadriplegic man and an evil monkey. One thing that makes Monkey Shines fascinating is the mental state the protagonist is in. He’s suicidal. He’s angry. He’s not a plain victim. And the monkey, his tormenter, is entertaining, to say the least.

This is a slow-burn. Things take a while to pick-up. There is a ton of character exposition. Obviously, we can’t have a monkey killing a bunch of people for over an hour and a half. This must have been a difficult shoot. Having the monkey do what it does was probably no easy task. This was George A. Romero’s first studio film and he didn’t exactly appreciate his experience.

Monkey Shines is one of the best horror movies about an animal gone mad. It’s sad, surprising, it’s well done, it’s unpredictable and it has a good twist. Jason Beghe, the main actor, does a lot with the limited use of his body and while interacting with a trained animal. There is real proximity between us and the characters. The sequence of events is plausible and possibly a tad supernatural.

Insidious

#297

2010

6/8

A family attempts to save their child from evil spirits that inhabit their new house.

Here’s a contemporary ghost tale that feels like every other haunting film, except that it does most things better. The scary moments are earned, well-paced and always effective. The Poltergeist and Amityville Horror franchises have covered this ground, already, but there is nothing wrong with an updated cliche when the production value is so high and the script so delightful.

The cast is remarkable. A lot of the build-up relies on reactions from the characters to supernatural manifestations and the actors are giving a genuine slightly surreal performance. Those jump scares sure creep up on you; catching you when you least expect them because you care so much about the story that you forget it actually wants you to shiver every now and then.

Insidious is a quintessential haunted house flick done right and with clever variants. It is also an aggregation of the best of the subgenres it borrows from, and it’s done right. The last half introduces antagonists with bizarre designs and ideas that may or may not work for you. The editing is noticeably frantic and cool rather than slow and eerie, but most of its eccentricities are welcome.

Addams Family Values

#296

1993

6/8

A serial killer marries a man from a rich family she intends to kills in order to inherit his fortune.

As it was the case with the previous film, it seems that bringing external characters into the family breaks its chemistry, yet without an antagonist this would be a sitcom. Two forces of nature trigger the events of Addams Family Values: a baby and another scam artist. Yes, apparently, everyone’s after the Addams’ money and Fester is once again being used, this time by a black widow.

Taking Wednesday and Pugsley out of their element and putting them into summer camp turns out to be the funniest thing that ever happened in the franchise so far. The contrast between them and the normal kids is the perfect setup for dark humor. The script is filled with jokes, stunts and plot twists, yet everything falls in place and nothing feels rushed.

Joan Cusack, Christina Ricci and Christopher Lloyd truly stand out, here. Everybody gets their turn to shine, of course, but these actors have pivotal roles. This sequel is very similar to the original, but it is even funnier and more shocking. It shares the same themes and the same visual style. Though it is much more dynamic, it