iHorror.com just released their "20 TOP HORROR FILMS
ON NETFLIX: The Best Scary Movies You Haven't Seen But Should"
I'm going to list them all here and
then I'm going to give you my review based on how I felt while watching them.
There are several that I have seen before but were not too impressed with. All
movie descriptions were copied from the Rotten Tomatoes website.
20. Odd Thomas
Small-town
fry cook Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin) is an ordinary guy with a paranormal
secret: he sees dead people, everywhere. When a creepy stranger shows-up with
an entourage of ghostly bodachs - predators who feed on pain and portend mass
destruction - Odd knows that his town is in serious trouble. Teaming up with
his sweetheart Stormy (Addison Timlin) and the local sheriff (Willem Dafoe),
Odd plunges into an epic battle of good vs evil to try to stop a disaster of
apocalyptic proportions. Based on the best-selling thriller by Dean
Koontz, Odd Thomas is a supernatural action thrill-ride from the acclaimed
director of The Mummy and G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra.
19. The Canal
Sitting in an empty theater, a film archivist
watches the grainy footage that will be his undoing. David and his wife are
perfectly happy-or so he believes. When he finds out the home he shares with
his wife and son was the scene of a ghastly turn-of-the-century murder, David
dismisses it as ancient history. That is, until the sinister history ripples
into the present and casts a shadow over life as he knows it. And when a
looming secret shatters his marriage, David can't help but suspect the dark spirits of
the house are somehow involved. In his drive to unveil the shadows hidden in
the walls, David begins to descend into insanity, threatening the lives of
everyone around him. Through ghastly imagery and a chilling score, Ivan
Kavanagh's The Canal is an Irish ghost story that will leave you with a fear of
the dark and a dripping chill down your spine long after the film's conclusion.
18. Late Phases
Crescent Bay is not the ideal place to spend
one's golden years, especially since the once-idyllic retirement community has
been beset by a series of deadly animal attacks from the ominous forest
surrounding it. When grizzled war veteran Ambrose McKinley (Nick Damici) is
forced into moving there by his yuppie son Will (Ethan Embry), the residents
immediately take offense to Ambrose's abrasive personality. But that take-no-prisoners
attitude may be just what Ambrose needs to survive as it becomes clear that the
attacks are being caused by creatures that are neither animal nor man, and that
the tight-knit community of Crescent Bay is hiding something truly sinister in
its midst... Following the release of his Here Comes The Devil, as well as his
scene-stealing segment "B is For Bigfoot" in the horror anthology The
ABCs of Death, Adriån Garcîa Bogliano cements his status as one of the top
horror filmmakers coming out of Spain with LATE PHASES. In a bookend of sorts
to his performance in the cult hit Stake Land, Nick Damici commands the screen
here, coming on the heels of last year's Sundance vigilante thriller Cold In
July and the critically acclaimed cannibal drama, We Are What We Are.
This film to my amazement was not as bad as I expected. It had several know actors that you would recognize when you see them. The story kept moving at a decent pace unlike some "B" movies where you are waiting to die before the victims are. The low part of this movie is the creatures themselves. One of the better scenes is the transformation sequence where you that you were watching a cheap remake of "An American Werewolf in Landon". Although cheaply done, you know were they got their idea.
17. 13 Sins
A cryptic phone call sets off a dangerous game
of risks for Elliot, a down-on-his luck salesman. The game promises increasing
rewards for completing 13 tasks, each more sinister than the last.
16. The Den
After receiving a grant for her graduate
thesis, Elizabeth Benton (Melanie Papalia) logs onto a video-chat site known as
THE DEN, on a mission to explore the habits of its users. During one of her
random video-chats, Elizabeth watches in horror as a teenage girl is gruesomely
murdered in front of her webcam. While the police dismiss it as a viral prank,
Elizabeth believes what she saw is real and takes it upon herself to find the
truth. Her life quickly spirals out of control as she gets pulled deeper into the
darkest recesses of the internet. And eventually, Elizabeth finds herself
trapped in a twisted game in which she and her loved ones are targeted for the
same grisly fate as the first victim.
Just finished watching this one and it too was a good movie considering. There was a lot of build up and the story kept flowing along and made you guess what was going on and what was causing the problems. You will enjoy this movie all the way to the end. It will make you want to start searching the internet for websites like the den.
15. Grabbers
On Erin Island, an idyllic fishing village off
the coast of Ireland, charming but somewhat work-shy Ciaran O'Shea, is tasked
with greeting Lisa Nolan, a straight-laced young officer who has arrived from
the mainland. Not that there is much for them to do, aside from dealing with
the occasional drunk, and that's usually O'Shea himself. But strange doings are
afoot: the crew of a fishing boat disappears, whales start appearing dead on
the shore, a local lobsterman catches a strange tentacled creature in his
trap. Soon it becomes clear to O'Shea and Nolan that there's something big out
there, and that it's hungry. It's time to rally the villagers, arm the
troops...and head to the pub.
14. The Expelled (a.k.a. F)
A terrified group of teachers and students are
locked inside of a high school by a mysterious gang of vigilantes who waste no
time in picking off the unlucky victims one by one.
13. The Horde
When their partner is
murdered by the Nigerian trafficker Adewale, four corrupt cops are planning a
violent revenge and decided to enter her refuge, located on the top floor of a
dilapidated building in the Paris suburbs.Adewale senses the arrival of the
police and fires first, killing the agent Jimenez who, once dead, back to life
trying to bite his teammates. It is just the beginning of a siege by a horde of zombies
that have surrounded the building hungry for human flesh.
This movie was intense and exciting. The drawback is that it is subtitled so be prepared to read.
12. Housebound
Kylie Bucknell is forced to return to the house
she grew up in when the court places her on home detention. Her punishment is
made all the more unbearable by the fact she has to live there with her mother
Miriam - a well-intentioned blabbermouth who's convinced that the house is
haunted. Kylie dismisses Miriam's superstitions as nothing more than a
distraction from a life occupied by boiled vegetables & small-town gossip.
However, when she too becomes privy to unsettling whispers & strange bumps in the night,
she begins to wonder whether she's inherited her overactive imagination, or if
the house is in fact possessed by a hostile spirit who's not particularly
thrilled about her return.
11. Here Comes the Devil
HERE COMES THE DEVIL combines modern indie filmmaking
and storytelling with a hint of '70s-styled psychological horror that may not
just be psychological. Francisco Barreiro and Laura Caro play parents Felix and
Sol whose preteen son and daughter inexplicably reappear after being lost
overnight on a desolate, cave-riddled mountainside after a casual hike became
every parent's nightmare. The good luck and good fortune of their return soon
changes, as the children's behavior suggests ominous and unspeakable events the night the children were
lost that continue even now. As a loving couple - and loving parents - try to
care for and protect their children, the ancient and half-whispered legends
around the caves and the mountain and those who have gone there before become
too strange to believe ... and too dangerous, no matter how insane, to ignore.
10. Extraterrestrial
From The Vicious Brothers, the creators of
Grave Encounters comes a different kind of encounter, one of 'EXTRATERRESTRIAL'
origin. Still reeling from her parents' divorce, April (Daytime Emmy winner,
Brittany Allen) is dragged back to the vacation cabin she spent fond summers at
as a child accompanied by a group of friends. Her trip down memory lane takes a
dramatic and terrifying turn when a fireball descends from the sky and explodes
in the nearby woods. Lead by her boyfriend, played by Freddie Stroma (Harry Potter & The Half
Blooded Prince, Pitch Perfect), the group venture out toward the crash site and
discover the remnants of a ship from another planet along with footprints that
suggest its alien occupants are still alive. The college friends soon find
themselves caught in the middle of something bigger and more terrifying than
anything they could ever imagine.
09. Torment
Newlyweds Cory and Sarah Morgan take Cory's
7-year old son Liam up to the country for some much needed family time. When it
appears as if Liam has run away, psychological suspense becomes straight-out
horror, as Sarah and Cory must now confront a sadistic cult-like family who
have been hiding in the house all along and have taken Liam for themselves.
08. The Road
The Road tells the story of a twelve-year-old
cold case that is reopened when three teenagers vanish while traversing an
infamous and abandoned road. As investigators try to find leads to the
whereabouts of the missing teens, they also unearth the road's gruesome past
that spans two decades - a history of abduction, crimes and murders.
07. Troll Hunter
Shot in a vérité style, Trollhunter is the
story of a group of Norwegian film students that set out to capture real-life
trolls on camera after learning their existence has been covered up for years
by a government conspiracy. A thrilling and wildly entertaining film,
Trollhunter delivers truly fantastic images of giant trolls wreaking havoc on
the countryside, with darkly funny adherence to the original Norwegian
folklore.
06. Stake Land
America is a lost nation. When an epidemic of
vampirism strikes, humans find themselves on the run from vicious, feral
beasts. Cities are tombs and survivors cling together in rural pockets, fearful
of nightfall. When his family is slaughtered, young Martin ("Gossip
Girl's" Connor Paolo) is taken under the wing of a grizzled, wayward
hunter (Nick Damici) whose new prey is the Undead.
05. The Town that Dreaded
Sundown (remake)
65 years after a masked serial killer
terrorized the small town of Texarkana, the so-called 'moonlight murders' begin
again. Is it a copycat or something even more sinister? A lonely high school
girl, with dark secrets of her own, may be the key to catching him.
04. Rites of Spring
After kidnapping the nine-year-old daughter of
a wealthy socialite and hiding out in an abandoned school, the kidnappers fall
prey to a recurring terror in this place, a bloodlust that comes every first
day of spring.
03. I Saw the Devil
I SAW THE DEVIL is a shockingly violent and
stunningly accomplished tale of murder and revenge from Korean genre master KIM
Jee-woon (The Good, The Bad, The Weird and A Tale of Two Sisters). Oldboy's
CHOI Min-sik plays Kyung-chul, a dangerous psychopath who kills for pleasure.
The embodiment of pure evil, he has committed horrifying and senselessly cruel
serial murders on defenseless victims, successfully eluding capture by the
police. On a freezing, snowy night, his latest victim is the beautiful
Ju-yeon, daughter of a retired police chief and pregnant fiancée of elite
special agent Soo-hyun (The Good, The Bad, The Weird's LEE Byung-hyun).
Obsessed with revenge, Soo-hyun decides to track down the murderer, even if
doing so means becoming a monster himself. And when he finds Kyung-chul,
turning him in to the authorities is the last thing on his mind. The lines
between good and evil fall away in this diabolically twisted game of cat and
mouse. Pushing the concept of revenge to its most extreme limits, KIM Jee-woon
brilliantly transcends the police procedural and serial killer genres in
surprising and thrilling new ways.
02. The Taking of Deborah Logan
Mia Medina (Ang) has finally found the perfect
subject for her PhD thesis film on Alzheimer's Disease. For the next several
months, cameras will record the everyday life of mother Deborah Logan (Larson)
and her daughter Sarah (Ramsay). But as the days progress, strange things begin
to happen around Deborah that are not consistent with any findings about
Alzheimer's. It becomes apparent that there's something besides Alzheimer's
that has taken control of Deborah's life. It's an evil that is far worse than the
debilitating disease with which she was first diagnosed.
01. The Babadook
Six years after the violent death of her
husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her
'out of control' 6 year-old, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a son she finds impossible
to love. Samuel's dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill
them both. When a disturbing storybook called 'The Babadook' turns up at their
house, Samuel is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he's been dreaming
about. His hallucinations spiral out of control, he becomes more unpredictable
and violent. Amelia, genuinely frightened by her son's behaviour, is forced to
medicate him. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all
around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her
about may be real.
