20 Favorite Horror Films of 2020
EIC Jason Scott picks zir absolute favorite horror film sof 2020.
Horror has been a salve this year unlike never before. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but my god. Horror has made me cry, laugh, and find necessary healing. Given the state of things, most films were either pushed indefinitely or hit streaming and VOD options, perhaps giving horror fiends far more access than they otherwise would have had.
Despite it all, horror filmmakers really delivered some knockout stories this year. Whether we’re talking political-framed satire, a reinvention of a 1930s classic, or a creepy haunted house story totally flipped on its head, there was plenty to satiate any and every kind of disturbing hunger.
Disclaimer: films like An Unquiet Grave, which I absolutely adore, and Cyst, the FrightFest standout, do not qualify as they have only made festival debuts so far. Neither have been released digitally or in theatres. As such, any film that is not widely accessible is ineligible for this year’s picks.
Below, B-Sides & Badlands has compiled our picks for Top 20 Favorite Horror Movies of 2020 – and some honorable mentions, too. Eat your heart out!
Honorable Mentions: Bliss, Vivarium, Minor Premise, Mortuary Collection, In Search of Darkness (documentary), Maggie May (short), and Horse Girl
Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (documentary)
Directors: Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen
“I couldn’t stay where I was. I mean, apart from being an actor, the gay me… I would have been dead. Some redneck would have killed me on a backroad, and that would have been my life,” actor and activist Mark Patton remarks on leaving his hometown of Riverside, Missouri, for New York City. His pain, and more importantly his bravery, shines through the new documentary, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, a production co-directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen, dissecting the homoeroticism of 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Revenge.
I suppressed the waterfall welling up behind my eyes. I didn’t want to miss a beat of Patton’s heartfelt and heart-wrenching story for my blubbering. So, I clenched my jaw, wiped away a stray tear, and firmly reset my gaze at the TV. I was enthralled by his candor, his daring to confront his own real-life demons, and his ability to ask pointed, unrelenting questions in the face of true terror. There’s nothing more horrifying than having to swallow that lump in the back of your throat as you stare into the eyes of someone who hates you, letting their disgust rip through your body ⏤ and feeling like you could die.
Read the full review/personal essay.
The Very Last Day
Director: Cédric Jouarie
Working through trauma is a lifelong process. You must shackle your demons, confront, scrutinize, manage, and cope ⏤ and later toss them back into the lake of fire. If you’re lucky, you have art by and through which you can further filter out parts of yourself and, perhaps, see things in a clearer, more objective light. Filmmaker Cédric Jouarie journeys through the past and his own sexual assault to find greater meaning, redemption, and hope in the rubble of his youth. His debut feature film, The Very Last Day, now up for rental and purchase on Amazon Prime, rearranges specific tragic details to give the fictional narrative more care, heart, and weight.
The Taiwanese picture stars Lawrence Ong as Raymond ⏤ a world-famous, bestselling author, known for exploiting personal tragedies in many of his novels ⏤ and Wei-Yi Lin as Melanie, a victimized young woman whose pain feeds a bottomless hunger for revenge. When Raymond releases his latest book, the aptly-titled The Very Cold Summer, in which he subconsciously retells a long-forgotten assault, Melanie poses as an obsessive fan, stalks his home for an autograph, and later seduces him into a vengeful web.
The Invisible Man
Director: Leigh Whannel
Four months after he nearly killed my mother, he came after me.
It was a warm March morning. It was a Saturday. I had just gotten home from planting flowers at the local park with my 4-H club. I was standing at the sink in the kitchen, which overlooked our one-acre backyard, the green grass sparkling like emeralds in the sunlight. Nothing particular was on my mind that day ⏤ but in an instant everything changed. I looked further out across the lawn to the neighbor’s, a two-story house painted baby blue, and there he stood. Frank Gibson. He was in the middle of the street. The back end of his car, some vintage ’70s model, I think, stuck out from around the corner. His profile – I’d recognize that beak and high forehead anywhere – made my blood run cold. He was talking to someone just out of view, his stick, chicken-leg-of-an-arm pointed in my direction. I couldn’t move… at least not at first.
My flight response jump started my brain somehow, and my body moved frantically to lock our many front doors ⏤ our enclosed front porch had two entrances, plus another off the living room. An earthquake tore through my body. A hard 10 on the richter scale. I had always been a little anxious, something I inherited from my mother, but that day, not quite spring but not winter either, I couldn’t even see straight. Perhaps through a sheer animalistic will, buried deep inside of me, I managed to grab our cordless house phone and hunker down in the hallway closet. My fingers scattered over the numbers. I coughed horsely into the phone, “Frank is here!” My then-step-mother, who was working a half-day at the bank that morning (my father was off installing carpet), was on the other end. What came next was a blur of panic and blinding terror. I think I was out of my body at this point. Another next door neighbor became a safe haven for the rest of the day, but not before I made a mad dash across the street, more horrifying shockwaves cascading through my chest. Would he see me? Would he catch me? Would he kill me?
Read the full review/personal essay.
Black Bear
Director: Lawrence Michael Levine
Gaslighting is not a new conceit in horror or drama films. Dating back to two 1940s films, both named Gaslight, loosely based on a 1938 stage play by Patrick Hamilton, the psychological torture that has characterized much of modern society is as terrifying as you can get. Lawrence Michael Levine applies such hellish mental makeup in a new setting, utilize the common trope of seclusion-in-the-woods to prey upon the viewer ⏤ his tangled, deceptive web draws you in like a fly to a spider’s nest. Once he’s caught you, there’s no escaping. You must resign yourself to fate.
That’s certainly what Aubrey Plaza’s character Allison must feel. She’s an artist clearly suffering for her her (and her life) directly from the hands of her domineering, toxic, and insufferable husband Gabe (Christopher Abbott). It is tough to properly examine the film’s rich complexities on human desperation, paranoia, sabotage, and manipulation without exposing its viney twists and turns. Let’s put it this way: it’s the kind of film that needs time to marinate. And it’s gaslighting set on high and letting your pot of precious linguine run dry, burn, and crumble before your eyes.
Beneath Us
Director: Mac Pachman
Where The Hunt writhes around in the mud of a heightened, satirical playpen, Beneath Us reads more straight and serious ⏤ an uncomfortable doom lining its cracked cage. That’s not to say Max Pachman’s directorial debut doesn’t explore heated socio-political topics with the force of a cast-iron skillet to the skull. Instead, the tone slides under the fingernails and behind the eye balls; its story might ring uncomfortable to some, but for others, it’s cold, hard, and brutal reality. With a script written by Pachman and Mark Mavrothalasitis, the story follows undocumented workers, their desperation to build a life in America, and the bloodsucking white supremacists who’d rather bury them six-feet deep than show an ounce of compassion.
Rigo Sanchez (Goliath, Animal Kingdom) and Josue Aguirre (Showtime’s Dexter) offer strong, emotionally rich performances as two undocumented workers named Alejandro and Memo, respectively. Day in and day out, they camp out near a lumber mill, longing for a break that’ll push them closer to the American Dream. Contract work is hard work, and they’ll do anything to push forward. Alejandro hopes to earn enough money to bring his wife and son across the border, while his younger brother Memo expresses great disgust toward Alejandro for seemingly abandoning his family.
She Dies Tomorrow
Director: Amy Seimetz
Everything that’s living is dying. And yet death somehow remains a taboo discussion topic. “We’re all gonna die. I just think we should be able to talk about it,” Jane Adams says, pointblank. Her character, also named Jane, crashes the birthday party of her sister-in-law Susan (Katie Aselton), wearing her floral pajamas and waving a bloody, bandaged hand. She’s just been confronted with the inevitability of her own demise by close friend Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), and she is so disheveled that her mind literally can’t focus on anything else. She Dies Tomorrow, written and directed by Amy Seimetz (Sun Don’t Shine), scrawls a poetic and brutal thesis on our collecting dying, evoking a similar emotional response as David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, but squares up harder-coated conversations on death, wasting one’s life, and infectious hysteria.
When Jane expresses such deep concern that she’s gonna die tomorrow, Susan quickly swerves the conversation back to dolphin fucking (no, literally) and brushes her off as simply crazy. Jane’s brother Jason (Chris Messina) laughs nervously, and the other guests ⏤ Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) and Tilly (Jennifer Kim) ⏤ simply look on, unsure of what to make of it. The party soon disperses; Jane back to her home, where she meets death face-to-face, resembled through flashing red, green, and blue neons (“is this how it ends?” she asks an unseen presence), and everyone else to the rest of their evening. As if contracting some airborne virus, Jason, Susan, Tilly, and Brian quickly contend with their own mortality ⏤ Seimetz toys with the idea that death, or rather the knowing, spreads like an apocalyptic contagion. Once each character is burdened with such knowledge, the emotional beats unfold with crushing force. Even Susan, once vivacious and of stern temperament, devolves into a manic mess. These revelations punctuate the whole notion that absolutely everyone is afraid to die.
Anything for Jackson
Director: Justin G. Dyck
I was in the middle of putting together my year-end horror favorites when Anything for Jackson fell out of the sky. Justin G. Dyck’s first horror feature brims with a throbbing, relentless heart; the accomplished filmmaker, who had largely done Christmas movies up to this point, approaches death and grief with significant care while also delivering plenty of thrills and chills.
When an elderly couple Audrey (Sheila McCarthy) and Henry Walsh (Julian Richings) turn to sorcery to bring back their dead grandson, things naturally don’t go as planned. In their tireless search, scouring the world (literally) for answers, they come across an ancient text that unlocks a dark power to revive the dead. Audrey first begins resuscitating small animals before moving on to the next step of their plan: finding a pregnant woman who doesn’t want her baby. In that way, they fashion a kidnapping of one of Henry’s patients named Shannon Becker (Konstantina Mantelos). Soon, of course, the police catch on to their sinister, even if well-meaning, plot. Anything for Jackson perfectly matches tense slow-burning with shocking, jaw-dropping moments to keep you intrigued ⏤ hook, line, and sinker.
Amulet
Director: Romola Garai
Who says horror is dead. While major movie theatre chains remain largely closed this year, due to the ongoing health crisis, streaming and VOD releases continue offering necessary escapes for our anxiety-addled minds. Mid-pandemic, films like Relic and The Rental have certainly captured our collective imaginations, deep-diving into vastly contrasting genres and giving fans a true feast. Now enter Romola Garai’s directorial debut Amulet, a film so viciously artistic, mean, and gritty that it’ll grip you from start to finish. You may even totally unhinge your jaw by the finale.
Garai, known for her acting work in Atonement, BBC’s Emma mini-series, and Amazing Grace, once read a book surrounding international affairs, efforts to prosecute rape as a war crime, and how many violators are said to “recategorize” their abuses, leading them to live seemingly normal post-war lives. She was greatly inspired to cook up such a character, one who couldn’t possible see his savior complex as anything other. “I think because I wanted to talk about some quite elemental ideas about the persecution of women, and I wanted the audience to be physically sharing the extreme emotions that persecution engenders in women, it seemed better to describe these in these more ‘extreme’ or visceral forms,” she described.
The Hunt
Director: Craig Zobel
Betty Gilpin should be protected at all costs. From her hypnotic, humorous spin on GLOW (which deserves better, tbh) to The Hunt, she commands every scene with gravitas, nuance, and charm. Here, she plays Crystal, “a living fuckery poem of who America is right now, as Gilpin herself described. Crystl is ex-military, so she carries a gruffness about her frame, from the way she delivers zingers like “you fucked up, bitch!” to offering a glimpse into the conservative side of the aisle.
When she is captured by the uber-elite in Hollywood, she awakens to find herself coraled with a bunch of other middle America types. Together, they must combat their political rivals, quite literally. One by one, her fellow conservatives, including Yoga Pants (Emma Roberts) and Trucker (Justin Hartley), are picked off in the most gruesome of ways ⏤ from rival shots to the head and land mines. Crystal eventually kills her way to the queen bee, Miss Athena herself (Hilary Swank), and the two duke it out in the fight scene of the year. The Hunt doesn’t mince its commentary on the polution of extremist thinking, both Republican and Democrat, and it takes no prisoners. Furthermore, it’s just a hoot.
Relic
Director: Natalie Erika James
When my father died, he had long been a shell of his former self. Once an active, vibrant, and husky fellow ⏤ who worked two or three jobs, hunted, fished, and camped in the woods, and always woke before dawn ⏤ he was reduced to flesh and bones. He died from ALS (also called Lou Gehrig’s disease), a devastating neurodegenerative ailment that completely destroys one’s ability to function, and it was hard to recognize who he’d become. That was six years ago. In my mind, I still have a hard time accepting the lifeless form he was in his last days. I’ve also since begun to see the parallels to such cognitive deterioration as dementia (a collection of various conditions, like memory loss) and Alzheimer’s; I often picture these diseases as the other side of the same coin. ALS takes the body, while dementia and Alzheimer’s take the mind. In either case, the victim’s very identity is peeled down to the bone until only nothingness remains.
Natalie Erika James’ directorial debut Relic is terrifying, soul-crushing, and artful in the way it handles mental decay. With a script co-written with Christian White, the 90-minute feature rearranges the emotional tendons of 2017’s Hereditary and the stylistic absurdity of mother!, cobbling the psychological shards back together into a wholly unique mosaic of humanity’s grimmest, most troubling experiences. Family matriarch Edna (Robyn Nevin) plants in the eye of the tragedy, as her own dementia seeps into every facet of her life, appearing onscreen as icky, sticky black mold. When she goes missing for three days, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) travel to her estate to mount a search party in the hope she returns unscathed.
We Summon the Darkness
Director: Marc Meyers
Glorious punk-rock heaven, We Summon the Darkness fits snuggly in the same style, tone, and delivery as McG’s The Babysitter, another audacious, blood-soaked romp. Meyers utilizes twisted humor, youthful rebellion, and reckless behavior to cut to the heart of blind religious fanaticism. Three best friends Val (Maddie Hasson), Alexis (Alexandra Daddario), and Beverly (Amy Forsyth) embark on a road trip to a heavy metal show. When they arrive, they befriend a trio of aspiring musicians, immediately striking up a playful camaraderie. Later tha tnight, they group heads to Alexis’ father’s estate to party.
Things quickly go awry after a few drinks, and all is revealed. We Summon the Darkness is like going to a midnight rave in some dark alley in the sketchy part of downtown. You might have initial reservations, but once you sit back and enjoy the ride, it ends up being one of the best nights of your life.
Host
Director: Rob Savage
ou don’t need demons or ghosts to scare you in your own home. The settling of creaky floorboards, unexplainable bumps in the night, and eerie wind gusts will do that for you. Layer on a mandated quarantine, due to a global pandemic, and you’ve got the recipe for self-inflicted paranoia and existential dread so relentless, time and space mean absolutely nothing. Director Rob Savage’s Host revels in such claustrophobic and psychological hellishness in a way most found footage or computer screen horror fail to do.
Savage (Dawn of the Deaf) surgically picks through the subconscious and reapplies one’s distorted perceptions through a heightened, mentally-aggravated state. A brisk 56-minutes, Host centers on six close friends, who hop on a Zoom call to catch up and perform a little séance ⏤ which, on its surface, is mere child’s play. But the thrill lies in its execution, and its high-voltage pace leaves little room for filler. The fact the narrative unfurls mid-pandemic, with references to mask-wearing, elbow-greeting, and keeping a close eye on elders, is only background noise, yet it contextualizes the urgency and emotional helplessness the characters must suffer.
The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw
Director: Thomas Robert Lee
“Does that mean you’d sacrifice yourself for me?” Audrey prods her mother Agatha while having tea. It’s one of the more provocative, bone-picking inquires presented throughout The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw, screening at this year’s Fantasia 2020. Written and directed by Thomas Robert Lee (Empyrean), the film splices together haunted folklore, human depravity and morality, and the disenchantment of faith.
Catherine Walker (A Dark Song) plays Agatha, a tortured woman trying to do the right thing and whose deluded moral compass leads her to hide her daughter Audrey (Jessica Reynolds, in her debut film role) away from the rest of the world. Set in 1973, deep within a Protestant village, it has been 17 very long years of poor harvests, a series of unfortunate events, and just plain ole bad luck ⏤ except for Agatha and Audrey, of course, who appear to be absolutely flourishing with vibrant crops and other prized goods. A resentment swells throughout town, and even as fellow farmers and families, struggling to make end’s meet, seek help in trade, Agatha turns them away. Such actions stoke the flames of the village’s inescapable misery, and horrific tragedies soon become so commonplace, townspeople begin to suspect Agatha of dark witchcraft.
The Dark and the Wicked
Director: Bryan Bertino
Natalie Erika James’ Relic arrived earlier this summer with artful devastation. Its intersection of demonic possesion and real-world fear wrought of dimentia allowed for a vehicle of “humanity’s grimmest, most troubling experiences,” as we reviewed. Now, with Bryan Bertino’s The Dark and the Wicked, playing this year’s Fantasia Fest, suffering and its outward seismic aftershocks play a key role in one family’s downward spiral.
The Dark and the Wicked follows two siblings, Louise (Marin Ireland, Hell or High Water, The Umbrella Academy) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr., The Death of Dick Long), as they return home to care for their dying father (Michael Zagst, Divine Access) and a mother (Julie Oliver-Touchstone, Preacher, Backroad) who’s unravling at the seams. Grief can do downright bizarre things to a person; such a tremendous feeling of loss often causes family to become total prisoners to the emotion and the inevitable. Lying comatose and barely breathing, the father’s presence hangs like thick sap over the entire picture, and it is often in the softer moments that ring the most terrifying. Death itself is the most frightening experience a human being will ever face.
Hunter Hunter
Director: Shawn Linden
There’s a soft, piercing crackle running through Hunter Hunter‘s blood. The 90-minute feature embraces the struggles of living in the wild, always at the mercy of the elements and various, long-toothed wildlife, and the inevibility that human beings are the worst monsters of all. Writer-director Shawn Linden (Nobody) sets up his story pieces around a man named Joseph Mersault (Devon Sawa) and his deep distrust of humanity, taken to such extremes that he’s built his entire life out in the Manitoba wilderness.
His wife Anne (Camille Sullivan, Normal) expresses reservations this way of life might be depriving their daughter Renée (Summer H. Howell, Curse of Chucky) of proper schooling and companionship with people her own age. Joseph’s past remains largely shrouded in mystery, and all we really learn is he never finished high school. It’s quickly evident Renée is not only ready and willing to follow in her father’s footsteps but rather content with the only life she’s ever known. Joseph dedicates much of his time to teaching her the ways of hunting and survival ⏤ from techniques in setting traps and how to recognize and track animal scents to skinning their game to make pelts for trading. It’s a humble existence, and Joseph takes great pride in his work.
Freaky
Director: Christopher Landon
I didn’t expect to feel so much during Freaky. Its playful garishness, from lavish color schemes, gory setpieces, and reapplication of Freaky Friday, Scream, and Friday the 13th, was right up my alley. For the record, the trailer doesn’t not do it justice, and I was completely floored by how much heart throbs at its gooey center. Christopher Landon’s latest slasher riff fits snuggly in the same stylish framework as his two Happy Death Day films, while going hard into the pavement to talk about gender identity and sexuality and that confusing teeter-totter when you’re a teenager.
With a script co-written with Michael Kennedy, Freaky is one of the queerest films I’ve ever seen ⏤ and that’s largely owed to Josh, played with delightful perfection by Misha Osherovich (The GoldFinch, NOS4A2), a nonbinary actor who uses they/them pronouns. You see, Josh is one of Millie’s (Kathryn Newton, The Society) best friends, alongside Nyla (Celeste O’Connor), and while banking hard into gay stereotypes, he’s also a celebration of queerness and being comfortable in one’s own skin. “It’s a slaughterhouse!” he proclaims with amused attitude when four of his classmates are found dismembered. It’s seemingly heartless, but such a dark sense of humor eases the tension Milie and Nyla feel. He knows exactly how to comfort the two people he cares most about in the world. I imagine a queer kid in small town America seeing themselves represented in a similiar fashion I did when Sean Hayes gave Jack McFarland life in the 1990s.
Read the full review/personal essay.
La Llorona
Director: Jayro Bustamante
Guatemala has the third highest rate of femicide (gender-based murder against women) in the world. As New York Times reported last year, “the homicide rate for women is more than three times the global average.” Such bleak statistics stem from a long history of violence and oppression of indigenous peoples, including a 36-year civil war characterized by mass genocide and rape of women. Firmly rooted in this startling, grim reality, La Llorona is a political and social drama knotted with very deep, oozing sores of classicism, racism, and femicide ⏤ neatly tied together with the tortured spirit of La Llorona, a moralist tale that still haunts much of Latin America.
Director Jayro Bustamante draws upon his youth and heritage to reassess La Llorona’s role in “mandating the behavior of women,” he writes in his director’s statement. He excavates the fear the myth still elicits and reapplies it in a new context, shedding light on Guatemala’s tragic and recent past. In using classic horror conventions, he is able to drive home the savagery of real life through squeamish, unnerving imagery.
The Lodge
Directors: Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz
Forget the endless debate about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas. The Lodge is the Christmas movie you should be watching. Within the first 20 minutes, a certain scene will leave you speechless before plunging you beneath the surface of the nearby frozen lake. It’ll take a minute to acclimate, but once you do, you begin to feel a euphoria only nature can provide. That’s what it’s like witnessing Riley Keough’s character Grace, who has just become step mom to two young kids, spiraling totally out of control on a high doseage of paranoia and the claustrophobia of a secluded cabin.
Directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, also behind Goodnight Mommy, do what they do best. They twist the screws so tight you think you’re beginning to crack, too, and perception is everything. What you think you see, and what you think you hear is not it at all. Subversion is the name of the game, and The Lodge receives high marks across the board. Once Grace and her husband Richard’s (Richard Armitage) two children are left alone ⏤ Richard is called back to the city to handle a business crisis ⏤ the darkest of mental anguish sets in. The Lodge can never be properly explained; it must be experienced.
Swallow
Director: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
The most frightening horrors are those ripped straight from real life. Exploring the compulsive eating disorder called Pica, Swallow swims from explicit gaslighting terror to something unnerving bubbling right below the surface ⏤ you can’t put your finger on it but it’s there and ready to pounce. Haley Bennett plays the tortured Hunter Conrad, who would do anyting to please her new husband Richie (Austin Stowell), even if it meant losing herself, with the upmost subtlety. Her performance flickers like a candle between absolute dread to soul-crushing oblivion.
Hunter contends with her new life, including hosting high-profile parties and playing housewife, and a disorder born out of past trauma as best she can. She feels like a fish-out-of-water, and Riche treats her as such, never the compassionate, understanding husband he should be. Hunter’s compulsive eating, including everything from marbles to push-pins and razors, sends her down a bath of redemption, and she ultimately must reclaim her self-worth before it’s too late. Mirabella-Davis’ storytelling is visually stunning, a remarkable constrast against Hunter’s fight for survival.
Possessor
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Brandon Cronenberg has huge shoes to fill. Anyone would if their father were one of the ’80s true horror greats, David Cronenberg. But what Brandon proves beyond a shadow of a doubt is that he possesses (pun intended) his own vision to tell powerful horror stories. Possessor clearly fits into the style mined by his father, yet it feels fresh enough, bold enough, and striking enough to stand on its own. Its merits lie in not only Brandon’s keen awarenss for full-bodied storytelling but with Andrea Riseborough’s remarkable excavation of beautiful tragedy in Tasya Vos, a secret agent using brain implant technology to commit assassinations.
As we’ve seen time and time again, technology can be man’s worst enemy. After inhabiting the body of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), who’s engaged to a woman named Ava (Tuppence Middleton), Tasya must carry out a plot to murder Ava’s father and Zoothroo media company CEO John Parse (Sean Bean). Murder and mayhem ensue, and Colin’s and Tasya’s thoughts, desires, and lusts begin to intertwine. As their mental threads fray, Tasya finds herself fading away into the technology’s firm grasp. Possessor peels back the curtain on human’s obsession with technology and what role empathy plays in such a tech-driven world ⏤ and it is a masterclass.
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