All the horror films to watch now you’ve survived ‘Hereditary’
Hereditary came out in cinemas last year and none of us felt safe anymore. So it’s worth taking a look at other horror films released in the past couple years that may have gone under the radar. They might be films that you decided not to watch because it was late and you were in by yourself – or maybe you decided not to watch them because you’d seen enough horror that day as you’d been watching the news. (You may laugh now.)
Either way, these are some horror films we can solidly recommend – just don’t ignore us like we did that old man who told us not to go down to the haunted old mine just to get high and have premarital sex but we went anyway and now we’re the only ones left to tell the terrifying tale of what happened that day. (Help!)
Anyway, here are ten recent horror films you should check out now that Hereditary has officially scared your tits clean off and you can probably handle anything now.
John Krasinski (The Office) co-writes, directs, and stars alongside real life wife Emily Blunt (Sicario) in this year’s (so far) top horror blockbuster. It’s a sharp and interesting take on the horror genre, but the idea of silence throughout does remind a lot of the “Hush” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which we’d argue is also a lot better.
Annihilation
In what is only his second directorial feature, Alex Garland proves again that he is a filmmaker of genuine quality. A horror film might not have seemed the most likely follow up to his 2015 film Ex Machina, but that’s what great filmmakers do – they surprise you. In Annihilation they also scare the crap out of you!
Unsane
Everyone must have heard by now that Steven Soderbergh (Logan Lucky) made his latest film on an iPhone. That should be a point of interest and not an indicator that he couldn’t have at least borrowed an actual camera from a friend or something.
Unsane is a white knuckle ride into the mind of someone who can no longer trust what she believes to be true or not – basically anyone who watches the 24 hour rolling news coverage – with a fantastic performance by lead actress Claire Foy (The Crown).
Hellraiser: Judgement
While it was always unlikely that any kind of Hellraiser reboot would have the same impact the first films did, this new instalment of the Pinhead-based franchise certainly gives the old skool fans more of what they got in the originals. Granted, not the original which is a bonafide classic – like one of the later instalments set in a metal club or something.
The film has stupidly high levels of the grotesque with more torture than you can shake a stick at, so if those were the vibes you were somehow lapping up in Hereditary, this one is for you.
Wildling
It would be nice to see Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) play someone who wasn’t a dangerous maniac sometime, but at this point in his career it would probably just be unsettling.
It’s not as unsettling as Friedrich Bohms’s film Wildling, psychological horror film that delivers on both levels. It follows Anna (Bel Powley) who has spent most of her childhood locked in a cellar by a man she calls Daddy – do we even have to tell you that he’s played by Brad Dourif? Nope. Thought not.
Summer of 84
Ok, so it’s clearly taken a lot from Stranger Things – which in turn, took a lot from other things – so it might be easy to disregard it as just a cash in on 80s psychological teen fantasies. But there’s more to the film than that. It’s got a great cast of young actors and while the storyline does take a bit of time to get going, it delivers a solid punch right at the end.
Bad Samaritan
If you liked the dysfunctional domestic setting of Hereditary, you’ll likely love this little doozy of a film. Directed by Dean Devlin (Geostorm), the film follows Robert Sheehan (Fortitude) as he becomes one of those “bad samaritan” folk your grandparents warned you about. The guy burgles a rich man’s house and discovers a kidnapped woman in there.
The film then descends into all-out mayhem as the rich man (David Tennant) sets about tearing Sheehan’s life to pieces simply for his own amusement. It’s kind of like Bad Santa, only not as depressing.
Veronica
Nuns and ouija boards. What could possibly go wrong?! Paco Plaza follows up the REC saga with this genuinely twisted tale in which a teenage girl accidentally invites evil into her home. It’s loosely based on the true story of Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro, who mysteriously died in 1991 after using a ouija board just in case you needed a little extra terror on the side of this terrifying Netflix Originals movie.
Marrowbone
Sergio G. Sánchez’s film may have struggled a little to at least make back its $8 million budget at the box office, but that’s not to say that the film should be totally ignored. Taking elements from his previous script for The Orphanage, Marrowbone is both dark and solid, a lot like the other kind of marrowbone that dogs like to chew.
Ghost Stories
Written and directed by Andy Nyman (Death at a Funeral) and Jeremy Dyson (Funland), this brilliant slice of British terror manages to combine the feel of a 70s Hammer Horror tale along with a few of the slick touches of Black Mirror. It’s a great horror film that has enough twists and turns to keep even the most diehard of horror fans on the edges of their seats.
