10 Favorite Horror Movies & TV Shows of 2019

If you haven’t found at least one original horror movie in the last 15 years, you might want to dig a little deeper. That was the conversation recently surrounding modern horror releases, and quite frankly, it’s a bit silly. From the indie circuit and such streaming services as Shudder to nationwide theatrical releases, horror cinema is very much thriving these days.

2019 was a banner year, and storytelling of the dark and twisted variety is finding new, inventive and altogether enthralling ways to disturb your dreams. The genre has never been so healthy, and you can literally consume any kind of sub-genre to quench your thirst at any given moment. Whether you love your bloody slashers or your slow-burning art-house or your more macabre psychological nail-biters, you’ll bet your bottom dollar that you’ll find it somewhere online. Netflix, Shudder, Hulu, Apple TV, and countless others, are offering up gripping pieces of horror, from limited-run series to full-length features. And everything in between!

Below, B-Sides & Badlands has compiled our picks for Top 10 Favorite Horror Movies & TV Shows of 2019 – and a slew of honorable mentions. Eat your heart out!

Honorable Mentions: Davide Melini’s LION (short film); Daniel Isn’t Real; Tigers Are Not Afraid (Shudder); Marianne (Netflix series); The Perfection (Netflix); Us; Pet Sematary; Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix series); Stranger Things (Netflix series); You (Netflix series); Child’s Play; Doctor Sleep; Hole in the Ground; The Nightshifter (Shudder); The 6th Friend; and 1st Summoning (Netflix).

Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Shudder)

Director: Xavier Burgin

Shudder has been absolutely killing it this year. Directed by Xavier Burgin, the streaming site’s new documentary on the role Black Americans have played in Hollywood horror is sketched through new and archival interviews, and it’s truly an enlightening, passionate, and moving experience. Horror movies, especially slashers, have been the butt of a lot of jokes – including the cliche that the black characters always die first. It’s like this weird, definitely racist, rule – it traces back to one of the first films called Birth of a Nation which featured white people in literal blackface. That template would evolve and take many forms throughout the decades, and it’s always been right there on the surface. Today, we have such outstanding storytellers as Jordan Peele taking the reigns and completely upending what horror is and could be in the future. Throughout the 83-minute feature, some of horror’s most well-known players take centerstage to dissect the genre which has “not always loved us,” as horror scholar Tananarive Due says. She is joined by such heavy weights as Tony Todd, Ken Foree, Rachel True, Rusty Cundieff, Loretta Devine, and countless others.

The Furies (Shudder)

Screenwriter: Tony D’Aquino

Director: Tony D’Aquino

“It’s a fucked up world full of fucked up men,” Taylor Ferguson (Glitch, Homecoming Queens) speaks her truth in one of the film’s crucial emotionally-thematic scenes. The Furies, directed by Tony D’Aquino (Two Twisted, Alpha Male), is far more than an uncomfortably-gory slasher flick, often feeling like Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Freddy vs. Jason. But if blood-soaked, eye-popping carnage candy is your speed, this briskly-paced romp will certainly satisfy your wildest fantasies. While D’Aquino situates his 82-minute woodlands excursion smack in the middle of slasher conventions, he also makes sure to puncture the arteries of cultural and social relevance: “Fuck Patriarchy” is written in bright red spray paint in one of the early scenes, an underlining motif that glues the entire narrative together. Then, there’s the utilization of The Furies, or Erinyes, known in Greek Mythology as three goddesses who punished men for crimes against nature. In D’Aquino’s vision, those Furies are Ferguson’s Sheena, Linda Ngo (Top of the Lake, Mako Mermaids) as Rose and Airlie Dodds (Ready for This, Killing Ground) as Kayla, our lead protagonist whose debilitating epilepsy layers a disturbing distortion to her character arc. Dodds’ performance is shaded with excellent subtleties, owed to a largely organic, emotion-heavy script that seeks to uphold the female view. When Kayla finally cracks beneath the weight of a Hostel-bent game of cat ‘n mouse, her raw disgust for men hangs thick off the camera. Even more, the cinematography is chilling in much the same way as Ari Aster’s summer hit, Midsommar. The brightness of daylight and a generally-earthy color palette is enough to make you squirm; the woodsy location is one that’s been beaten into the ground, yet D’Aquino manages to rip it out at the roots. [Full review here]

Midsommar

Screenwriter: Ari Aster

Director: Ari Aster

Two films deep, screenwriter and director Ari Aster has already positioned himself as a truly revolutionary storyteller. If Hereditary didn’t get under your skin enough, containing jaw-dropping performances from Toni Collette and Alex Wolff, Aster somehow manages to turn daylight into a terrifying experience. He once again utilizes grief, trauma and recovery as the thematic linchpins to the narrative, and Florence Pugh’s turn as the emotionally frantic Dani is the year’s finest performance. There is no question Pugh can deliver some loud tear-jerking moments, but it is often her subtle choices that are far more wrecking. As Rave Reviews points out: “When Aster depicts death, it is sad, it is gross, and it is over quickly. He gives us a disturbing image that doesn’t last long, but is impactful enough that it sticks in your brain, accumulating tragedy around it like a magnet picking up iron filings.” No spoilers here – but following an unimaginable tragedy, featured in one of the most unnerving opening scenes ever, Dani accompanies her detached, unfeeling boyfriend named Christian (Jack Reynor) and his group of bros Josh (William Jackson Harper), Mark (Will Poulter) and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) to a Swedish mid-summer festival. Aster’s visuals are coated in bright whites and yellows, deceiving you into a place of comfort, before he twists the screws on you and sucker punches you right in the creepy-crawlies. What you see and think are only mirages for a disturbance far greater than you could have anticipated; the third act is not for the faint of heart. Clocking in at just under two and a half hours, the slow-burning psychological thriller – don’t worry, there’s plenty of gore and other stomach-churning imagery to satiate any blood thirst – never feels too long. In fact, the director’s cut teases even more unbearably macabre footage that we need to see stat and could give further context to some of the already included story beats. Midsommar is a defining film of this generation.

Ready Or Not

Screenwriters: Guy Busick & Ryan Murphy

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett

Samara Weaving is a national treasure. Following her stint as the irresistible Bee in 2017’s The Babysitter, a bloody, ravenous feast, Weaving’s turn as Grace – a young woman raised in an orphanage, desperately seeking a real family – in Ready or Not (co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) is a dynamic, rich, and emotional performance. The Le Domas Family, who prefer “dominion,” as Grace’s soon-to-be-husband Alex (Mark O’Brien) explains, harbor a dark and strange past, and it soon comes to light when Grace must play a game of Hide & Seek. It’s a deadly cat ‘n mouse caper, set amidst extravagance and various movable set pieces, that tests Grace’s will to survive at all costs. And what you think you know it’s what it seems. Alex is pitted against the love of his life and a commitment to his bloodline, and his loyalties will find their way to the surface, as well. The cast – also comprised of Adam Brody (Daniel), Henry Czerny (Tony), Andie MacDowell (Becky), Melanie Scrofano (Emilie), Kristian Bruun (Fitch Bradley), Nicky Guadagni (Aunt Helene), and Elyse Levesque (Charity) – is a true ensemble. Each player must play their part, and they do so quite brilliantly. The character relationships ping off one another like game of badminton, and if one of them is off, it could cost them their very lives. But it’s Weaving’s show. She carries the entire film on her shoulders, and she never once even winces when not tasked with strength or vulnerability or a cross between the two. Samara Weaving is a national treasure.

Belzebuth (Shudder)

Screenwriters: Luis Carlos Fuentes & Emilio Portes

Director: Emilio Portes

Often identified as Prince of Demons, Beelzebub is a figure of great prominence in the Hebrew Bible. Later, in the Christian version, Jesus Christ is accused of driving out demonic forces through Beelzebub’s power. A 16th Century text from occultist and demonologist Johann Weyer suggests the Devil ranked much lower than Beelzebub, then cited as being the chieftain of Hell who led a successful revolution against his adversary. Director Emilio Portes appears to excavate a similar thematic arc with his return to feature filmmaking. Belzebuth, which clocks it at nearly two hours, is a dark and wildly disturbing picture that rarely gives its viewers a moment to breathe. It’s a relentless, throat-grabbing tour de force of child slaughter; fair warning, the opening scene is one of the year’s most brutally unnerving and squeamish sequences. And that’s only the beginning. [Full review here]

Incident in a Ghostland (Shudder)

Screenwriter: Pascal Laugier

Director: Pascal Laugier

Lovecraftian horror is largely characterized through the fearful lens of the unknown. It’s the suffocation of isolation as the sky opens wide to reveal a boundless cosmos that holds all of humanity’s secrets and the one true destiny. Often referenced as “cosmic horror,” the film and literature sub-genre is most closely linked to the work of H.P. Lovecraft and frequently wrestles with themes of psychological terror, mental decay and gutting hopelessness. Lovecraft is certainly a pioneer of visceral, vulnerable and bizarre storytelling, and yet he would never get proper credit until well after his death in 1937. Writer and director Pascal Laugier firmly situates his first film in six years, the violently relentless, disturbing and altogether jarring Incident in a Ghostland, around such thematic beats in what has quickly become one of the most controversial features of the past year. Originally released last summer, the 90-minute murderous confection has gone severely under-viewed and finally finds its home this week on streaming. A framework drawing parallels to Laugier’s 2008 film Martyrs, often associated with New French Extremity (in essence, the total deconstruction of humanity with nauseating violence and grotesque mutilation), Ghostland harbors itself as offering a substantive, emotionally-grueling dissection of trauma. [Full review here]

Monster Party (Shudder)

Screenwriter: Chris von Hoffmann

Director: Chris von Hoffmann

A rabid dog finally breaking free from his iron-wrought cage, Julian McMahon’s Patrick Dawson licks his chops, an appetite for curdled flesh pulsing in his stomach, and spits through his teeth: “I’m ready to make the Dawsons great again!” The slogan that has permeated every corner of American culture for three years is injected with even more gutting relevance, as the onscreen violence bares a striking resemblance to the evening news. McMahon’s gleefully twisted smile is enough to send a shockwave of chills down your spine, tingling your own disturbing bloodlust for gore, bottom-feeding scum and depraved brutality. And, boy, does Shudder’s new exclusive Monster Party ⏤ a brisk 90-minute blood-splattered jamboree written and directed by Chris von Hoffmann (Drifter), whose craftsmanship perfects the typical heist-gone-wrong sub-genre with delightful relish ⏤ offer up a taut storyline of three transient 20-somethings seeking a way out of the ho-hum of middle America. [Full review here]

Creepshow, Season 1 (Shudder)

It’s easy to grow cynical about reboots and remakes these days. Michael Myers just won’t quit; a new vision of Pet Sematary was met to tepid response this spring; and come December, Black Christmas is getting its second facelift. As major motion picture studios battle it out over the next iconic property, AMC Networks horror-ific streaming service Shudder is crafting some truly marvelous and bloody offerings, including Nightmare Cinema, Monster Party, GWEN and The Furies. Each acquisition or total original displays a keen eye for small scale affair that possesses style, perspective and buckets of blood (or shocking suspense).

Then, you’ve got the Creepshow reboot – helmed by The Walking Dead‘s Greg Nicotero – that flips the original films into an ambitious, totally unnerving and remarkable TV series. His work speaks for itself, but Nicotero manages to squeeze low budget constraints into engaging, bite-sized bits of horror, fleshy and slimy and spooky. It also helps that he’s backed with a smorgasbord of creative thinkers and innovators who are unafraid to go to places few others have the boldness to do; across the 12 segments, which are often paired with contrasting stories as palette cleansers before re-immersion into a story equally as disturbing, the series taps into the most macabre of the human brain. [Full review/story ranking here]

Level 16

Screenwriters: Danishka Esterhazy, Katharine Montagu (story editor) & Ken Chubb (story consultant)

Director: Danishka Esterhazy

“I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies: such was what I knew of existence,” English novelist Charlotte Brontë penned through the eyes of the titular character in her second novel, 1847’s Jane Eyre. A classic tale dissecting morality and themes of class, sexuality, femininity and religion, the story also deals greatly with systemic oppression and trauma. In the aforementioned passage, Jane Eyre bemoans early instruction at Lowood Institution, halls savagely-embroiled in strict discipline for orphaned girls. Such a rigid backbone is extracted for Canadian screenwriter and director Danishka Estherhazy’s terribly-wicked, bizarrely-sterile world of Vestalis Academy. “A clean girl embraces obedience,” the voice of matriarch Miss Brixil (played to stunningly-detached, cold effect by The Vampire Diaries‘ Sara Canning) pricks through the television screen in sharp, pervasive waves. In staging what appears, at first glimpse, to be a caste system for womanhood, Level 16 is a ferociously-carnivorous and altogether troubling reflection of today’s society. [Full review here]

Black Christmas (2019)

Screenwriters: April Wolfe & Sophia Takal

Director: Sophia Takal

Film critic/writer April Wolfe and director Sophia Takal spin a barbaric, but delightfully empowering, contemporary yarn which takes direct cues from Bob Clark’s original while also unraveling a wildly bold and pointed conversation around date rape culture on college campuses. 2019’s Black Christmas punches harder with riskier thematic beats, pulling specific talking points from the #MeToo movement (such as “Not All Men!”), and slithers underneath the fingernails of toxic white men everywhere with delicious comeuppance. It’s the kind of soap-box treatment that gives women even more clearance and agency to tell their own stories on their own time. With a PG-13 rating, the 90-minute joyride navigates around gore-less sequences with shock, awe and looming dread.

The stage is set in the spirit of the original: Hawthorne College is shutting down for holiday break, and as attentions are drawn to decorations, family affairs and the upcoming talent show, sorority girls start to go missing. Yet unlike both predecessors, the 1974 landmark and 2006’s grotesque and soulless remake, 2019’s iteration highlights a growing awareness of something amiss almost from the start. Riley, portrayed with great nuance by Imogen Poots (Green Room), contends with her own brutal sexual assault and its lingering effects that have caused her to retreat into herself. Her entire world has skewed, everything always feeling a little off, and it is the sisterhood that brings her comfort, stability, warmth and more importantly, a warrior-like strength in the finale. Aleyse Shannon commands the screen as the head-strong, unapologetically out-spoken activist named Kris, embodying all sociopolitical forward motion, and Lily Donoghue’s Marty perches on the other end of the spectrum, unaware of the harm in being silent and naive. [Full review here]

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