A few weeks ago, I posted to my Twitter about a “Best Horror of the Decade” list I found. I think we all know it’d be impossible for me to watch all fifty movies, and since this blog is about me watching things that are new to me, I decided to cut down the list a bit: originally, I was going to just go with every movie in the Top 10 that I haven’t seen yet. Then I got to thinking: what if I made this a multi-week project? I’ve already seen 15/50 of the movies on this list, I could easily cut the other 35 into three weeks! It’d be a challenge, but it’s totally manageable. So, that’s what I’m doing. Buckle up!

Here’s the plan:

I’ll mention the movies I’ve already seen out of those slices, but I will not be rewatching them for this. I may not have a life outside of Netflix, but I do have a job, so I need to go to that while I do this and it’s the holiday season and I work retail and oh god I’m already living a horror movie do I really want to watch 35 of them?

#50-#36 Best Horror Films of the Decade

According to this list

(bolded = watched this week, * = favorite)

• The Babadook (2014)*
• Sleep Tight (2011)
• The Love Witch (2016)
• The Cabin in the Woods (2011)*
• Under the Shadow (2016)
• Ready or Not (2019)
• The Guest (2014)
• The Conjuring (2013)
• The House That Jack Built (2018)
• Bedevilled (2010)
• Stoker (2013)
• It (2017)
• Helter Skelter (2012)
• Cold Fish (2010)
• Mandy (2018)

I don’t wanna bore you with a movie by movie analysis, because there are a lot of them, and I feel like if I did a breakdown on each one, we’d all collectively give up about halfway through.

Instead, I’m just going to make two lists: one for the movies I feel are worth being considered “Best of the Decade” and one’s that I thought sucked weren’t for me, only out of the one’s that were new to me this week (so I don’t run the risk of being swayed by nostalgia), and then I’ll talk about just a couple of them, because my oh my do I have some THOUGHTS on some of them!

Unofficial Musings

Some (hopefully short) thoughts: The House That Jack Built, The Conjuring, and Under the Shadow are the only three that scared me, though The House That Jack Built is definitely going to be the only one to stick with me for a long time. It’s gory, it’s visceral, it’s horrifying. It’s also artsy, though-provoking, and minimally plot driven. I loved it, but I also don’t know if I’d actually recommend it to anyone, ever. It definitely needs to be your personal decision, and you need to go in with a thick skin and a strong stomach.

Bedevilled is really fucking depressing. Practically the entire movie is about a women being horribly mistreated (essentially being the island slave) and it ends on a low note too. It’s incredibly beautiful and worth seeing, but the movie needs to come with some kind of aftercare.

The Guest is boring as shit and barely makes any sense. It feels like some guy’s ultimate revenge/power fantasy, and that’s probably how it received such a high rating (meaning: 3.5 stars, because horror is almost always rated poorly as a genre). Everyone seemed to love Stoker but I really couldn’t get into it and thought it was disappointing so I might just be the outlier on this one.

Lastly, Mandy. Oh, Mandy. The last one I watched of the week, and the first one I literally had to write a list of all the issues I had with it, so as not to forget anything. *Ah hem*. First off, Nicholas Cage plays the protagonist, who, after watching his girlfriend get killed by a weird hippie cult, FORGES AN AXE and tracks them down to seek his revenge. Ignoring the clear “sexy lamp”-ness of it all, the movie also included the classic “Magical Negro” trope, where the only scene the only character of color was in was so that he could enlighten Nicholas Cage about the DEMONS the hippie cult SUMMONED and then provide him some weapons/words of wisdom for his journey.

… Yeah. Next on the list: the film’s firm decision to make fun of fat people at every given chance? Whether it was name-calling, fat jokes, or literally sacrificing the fat cult member to the demons because he’s “the fat one” and therefore exposable, this film really doesn’t pull any punches on that subject.

Skipping down the list for the sake of time, there was also a scene of one of the demons watching porn- for absolutely no discernible reason-, lighting that was going for the effect of “trippy” but just made everything hard to see, Nicholas Cage calling one of the demons a “vicious snowflake”, and, last but not least, a chainsaw fight. As in, two men, fighting with swords. But instead of swords, it’s chainsaws.

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Even after all that… this movie was well reviewed? Like, REALLY well reviewed. Like, 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and the majority of ratings on Letterboxd being 4 stars (3.6 average). I know I said this in my Black Christmas review but I… I really hate men.

~ If you’re curious about one of the movies I didn’t talk about (or if you’re interested in one of the movies I’d already seen before, reach out to me! Just because I didn’t write about it doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts about it ~