Ranking all the 2019 Theatrically Released Horror Movies

[Kyle]

Captive State- This is another one of those "Cloverfield Universe" movies that is really a stand alone movie that got bought up and shoehorned in. Unlike other ones, however, this one seems to be a decent fit in both the nihlistic feel and the actual plot. The movie revolves around this questions- when aliens have conquered earth and tagged everyone with a biological tracker that follows your movements and records everything you hear, how to you coalesce a rebellion to fight back? The way they did it is the interesting part- but I don't want to think about it too hard because I'm sure much of their efforts will seem superfluous or nonsensical if I do. The acting was good, the plot was fine and the turn towards the end was alright, if not predictable. The problem was that I didn't have any investment in the characters. So I got bored. And that sucks because these were good characters living in a extremely lived-in world, but their back stories (when we got them) were clearly just "thriller script" fare. This movie could have been so much better than it was. But all that said, it was fine.

[Kyle]

The Wind- What a pleasant find this was. It's a period piece set in the old west about a husband and wife. During the night, weird things happen that only the wife witnesses and the husband thinks she's crazy. Things devolve from there. This is a small movie that constantly keeps you guessing at the plot, which is moved forward in a nonchronologic pace. The actors are great and the diaglogue is spare, but it's better that way to build tension. I very much enjoyed this movie.

The Curse of Buckout Road- If you're only going to watch one "haunted road" movie from 2019, skip Clinton Road and instead watch The Curse of Buckout Road. The plot isn't particularly anything unique, but it was fun watching a group of teens try to solve the puzzle of why Buckout Road is cursed. The movie does suffer from some questionable acting. It also really suffers from dialogue that has characters saying things that real people don't say so that we get exposition- and that exposition is unnecessary: it's a cursed road; we get it. But throw that all aside and just enjoy it as dumb popcorn fare. Not bad.

Apparition- I'm getting sick of "haunted app" movies. They never make sense and the force technology to work in ways it's not supposed to work. And while this movie is theoretically a haunted app movie (App-araition- get it?), the app is just a stupid way to get the scooby gang into an abandoned asylum. Ugh. Abandoned asylum movies are so lazy. And this movie is one of the laziest I've seen. Bad acting, bad dialogue, character motivations that make no sense, Kevin Pollack. But this movie commits one of those flaws that I find unforgiveable. This movie has a pretty young female lead character who's dating the "rich jock boy." And everything the rich jock says is to cut her down, insult her, and to generally remind her and everyone else what a piece of shit she is- even though the movie goes to great lengths to show us she's a perfect angel. I hate this. First- people don't actually act like this. Second- why would she stay with him? It just doesn't make sense, and they just want to give us an asshole to kill. Oh and cardinal sin number two- it has a magical autistic person in it. I'm not going to get into it, but I'm getting sick of magical autistic people in movies. It's offensive.

Dark Light- I'm not going to tell you this is a great movie. But I will say that I enjoyed it in a way I'm not sure I should have. It's nothing new- it's just another creature feature with a monster that starts causing trouble when a couple moves back into their family home. I've seen this hundreds of times. The characters are also paper thin, without spending time trying to explain to you why their doing what they're doing. But I was kind of okay with that. Because they're fighting fucking monsters. I don't need to know why you'd do that- they're monsters. That scans. But the appeal to this movie is the creature design. This is a super low budget movie, so there are times when the "rubber suit" bleeds through, but it was still well designed and creepy as hell. I liked that, and thus, thought this movie was kind of fun.

The Lighthouse- Right off the bat: not a horror movie. It's a weirdo art film by the guy that made The Witch. It only has two characters played by Robert Pattinson and Willem Defoe. And holy hell- they knock it out of the park. The premise is these two guys are isolated on an island for four weeks to tend a lighthouse. It then becomes a study in growing dread, guilt and insanity. That's all I'll say about the plot. Look- this movie is definitely not for everyone-- it's filmed in black and white in a 3x4 frame. And I get that that's supposed to add to the isolation of the movie, but that distracted me a shitton through the first third of it before I forgot it. And let me be clear- shit gets real weird and there's one of those ambiguous endings where you have to think through what happened. But all that appealed to me. And I recognize that it might not appeal to everyone else. So while I recommend this movie, I do so with the caveat that you should only watch it if you enjoy art films.

[Mike]

I will never watch The Lighthouse again, but I'm so glad I watched it once. It's completely batshit, but totally hypnotic. It doesn't matter if action on the screen is manic or drudgery or just an almost still shot of a face for way too long while the surrounding action is imagined... every bit of it is really powerful.

And not for everyone. But Lisa and I both had fun and it ended in fascinating discussion.

[Kyle]

Don't Let Go- Let's get this out of the way: not a horror movie. This is a supernatural murder mystery. It revolves around a girl who is murdered with her family, who is speaking to her uncle, who's a cop, through a cell phone. It's weirder and more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist of it. Elevated by performances by David Oyelowo (as the detective/uncle) and Storm Reid (the victim/niece), this is an otherwise boring procedural. Which is weird because it introduces elements that could be really cool- specifically, the ghost is calling from three days in the past, which could lead to super freaky stuff. But it doesn't. It just leads to a little bit of action scenes and eventually catching the murderer. Which is a shame because this could have been much more that what it was- which is only slightly above a true crime television movie. I'd like to know what the original script looked like before it got watered down. I think I want to see that movie, not this one.

[Kyle]

The Dead Don't Die- I'm mixed on Jim Jarmucsh films. I loved Ghost Dog (but maybe that's because I was in college and I was supposed to- I only remember parts of it). I hated Dead Man (Ugh. Just ugh.). I thought Only Lovers Left Alive was fine. Slow, but kind of enjoyable. I feel like Jarmusch is like an older Wes Anderson- a lot of naval gazing, a lot of ennui, a lot of heavy sighs with apathetic looks. But then I watched this movie and I've decided that maybe I was being too cruel. Maybe I had only seen a certain type of Jarmusch movie. Because let me tell you something- I LOVED THIS MOVIE. It's a comedy set in a horror/zombie apocalypse. I would say it's a horror movie, but I understand why people would say that it's not. I don't care. This movie was such a loving homage to Romero and horror movies, it was just delightful for a long-time horror fan like myself. Take the quirky characters- real characters- and put them in a Romero zombie awakening. Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny are freaking great in their low-energy, passive reactions. I know you think that this is the type of stuff that I normally rail against, but it was pulled off to perfection here. This movie is sublime. To its core. I loved everything about it.

[Zombie]

Reviewed but forgot to rank.

[Kyle]

[Kyle]

Killer Unicorn- Hey, have you ever been watching I Know What You Did Last Summer and thought, "You know what would make this movie better? Replace all the Dawson's Creek walk-on actors with a bunch of drag queens with no acting experience." If you have- this movie is for you. Friday night my wife and some of my kids picked a movie from the unwatched ones on this list and this was the first trailer we watched. They didn't need to watch a second- they were all in. I'm not going to tell you this is a good movie because it's not. The story was predictable and not unique. But... we all kind of liked it. It's so bad, but we didn't like it in an ironic way. This was a true horror movie made by drag queens for drag queens. And even though the acting was atrocious, there was something endearing about these queens giving it the full over-the-top queen treatment. There was a lot of heart in this movie and you can tell that the crew was having a blast camping it up. I can't recommend it really, and I can't tell you I liked the movie, but I really enjoyed watching it. So if that makes sense to you, give it a watch.

[Kyle]

Rottentail- So you know when you watch a horror anthology like Creepshow, and you put up with the hammy, stupid segments so you can get to the one where Ted Danson is buried up to his neck on the beach? Well, this movie is like those awful non-Danson segments. Based on a graphic novel, this movie is an intentionally cheesy, self-aware B movie. It’s effects are terrible and the acting by everyone but the three stars, is uncle-on-the-set horrible. Starring Corin “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” Nemic in the title role, the plot centers on his character getting bitten by a mutant rabbit and turning into a monstrous man bunny with special powers. And then he kills a bunch of military people. And I think he rapes a woman half way through, but they show her consenting at the last minute. Yeah. It’s awful. It hates women. It is labeled as a comedy because it CONSTANTLY makes third grade jokes about dicks and poop. Avoid this movie at all costs.

[Kyle]

Made Me Do It- This is two movies. The first starts out as a pretty decent home invasion movie, with a girl and her brother who are home alone and dealing with the recent divorce of their parents. A psycho shows up and shit happens. But I feel like they got done filming this movie and realized it was just 55 minutes long and they needed it to be 90. So they decided to get a VHS camera (how edgy!) and film the psychos back story. And it’s just terrible. The flashbacks are excruciatingly interspersed throughout the main film with now logical purpose. The flashbacks are like a German arthouse torture porn film. They’re choppy, nonsensical and peppered with dumb hand drawn pictures for no reason. Ugh. These parts were just unbearable and ruined the movie. At the one hour mark I would have turned it off if it weren’t for this challenge.

[Kyle]

100 Acres of Hell- Going into this movie, I was digging the premise: four old friends have a "bros weekend" at an abandoned hunting preserve. Legend has it that the hunting preserve is home to a family of incestuous cannibals. Okay. Nothing unique, but I like wilderness horror and I love cannibal movies. So I start watching this movie, and I'm trying to figure out why the main character is played by a mountain of a man who isn't a bad actor, but certainly isn't a good one. And the other three bros are all horror stereotypes: Businessman douchebag, horny car salesman, and reasonable best friend. But the main guy is a retired wrestler? Wait... oh shit. Goddamn it.

Sure enough I go on imdb and it turns out that the lead actor is Gene Snisky, a pro-wrestler that goes under the creative name Snisky. I've never heard of him, but then I realize I'm watching a third sub-class of horror movies-- wrestler horror. I shit you not, this is a thing. And now I hate this movie. I hate it because, like all wrestler horror movies, I know it's going to come down to a final showdown between Buck Severs (Snisky) and the head cannibal. And they're going to wrestle to the death. And SPOILER ALERT- that fucking happens. Honestly, I wouldn't have loved this movie even if it wasn't a wrestler horror movie because the effects were terrible and the main cannibal was a rubber mask dude. The editing was awful and half the time you couldn't tell what was going on, or the timeline was fucked. Hard pass on this movie.

For what it's worth, the only good wrestling horror movie is Santa's Slay starring Goldberg. That movie fucking OWNS and is ALSO a christmas horror. So good. Go watch Santa's Slay, not this garbage.

[Zombie]

I had no idea that was a thing. Fascinating.

[Eliahad]

[Kyle]

[Kyle]

The Dead Center- I had high hopes for this indie film, which weirdly starred Shane Carruth (the guy that wrote and starred in Upstream Color and Primer), but he only acted in it. It's about a mental patient that gets checked into a psych ward of a hospital and he thinks he's possessed by something evil. Carruth plays the psych who is evaluating and treating him. This movie was just alright. It never really took off in a compelling way. Carruth is surprisingly good in his role (as were all the actors), but there wasn't a mystery to it. Spoiler alert- the dude is really possessed by something evil and the movie let's you in on that fairly early on. So you end up just watching Carruth in denial of what you already know is true, and over the course of the movie he comes to discover... what you already know is true. It was disappointing because I felt like this movie had all the right elements to it, they just didn't fit together properly.

[Kyle]

Shed of the Dead- This is a movie that really hates women. And in that insidious toxic male way. It's a comic horror movie about a D&D nerd and his nerd best friend who like to spend time in his shed playing D&D so he can avoid his comically shrewish wife and having to find a job. Then the zombie apocalypse starts. It plays out as predictably as you would guess. But this movie really, really hates women in that D&D nerd, stereotyped way. It was super cringey. The guy hates his wife, and wants you to hate her too, for doing things like... nagging him to get a job, be responsible, pay attention to her. You know- all those TERRIBLE things. And the wife has a dominatrix best friend who's a sex pot and sexual object for the whole movie. This film is seeped in juvenile humor that is so misogynistic, I just can't understand how this got made last year. Rape jokes. Boob honking jokes. It was so bad.

[Kyle]

The Church- Indican Pictures, the distributor of this movie, is going to be the death of me. Their responsible for half the movies left on this list and they all look horrible. I think Indican picks these films up, promises a theatrical release in two theaters for a week (they all earn very little money) and then make their money on DTV. I'd say this movie has the quality of a bad SyFy movie, but it's actually a bit worse than that. Starring Bill Mosely (The Devils Rejects) and Ashley Williams (The Human Centipede), those are the only two passable actors- and actually Bill Mosely is the only good actor here. Outside of those two, everyone else is a friend-of-a-friend-level of stiff line reading and awkward standing where they don't know where to put there hands. It says it also stars Clint Howard, but his role is so small it's practically non-existent. The dialogue is awful, the plot is run of the mill and stupid, and the direction is on the level of a soap commercial-- no. Worse than that. The special effects look like they were done by a 15 year old on his gaming laptop. Oh wait, I forgot to give the premise: haunted church. Who gives a fuck. This movie is awful.

[Kyle]

The Divine Fury- Here’s what I’ve been waiting for. A movie I’ve never heard of and wouldn’t watch if I did. This Korean movie focuses on an MMA champ whose dad died when he was a kid and he’s lost his faith in God. He runs into a priest (I discovered 30% of South Koreans are Christians) who is an exorcist. At this same time, the hero suffers a stigmata which can exorcise demons. Much ass kicking exorcisms ensue. This movie is surprisingly slow and thoughtful at times (in a good way), and when the action starts, it’s great. And it’s a legitimate horror movie too! Really loved this. High recommend.