Board 8 > Board 8 Ranks 2010s Horror Movies - *THE RANKINGS*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Snake5555555555 posted...

Suprak the Stud - C-

What you dont have is horror. This is the film on this list that I feel like couldve been dropped for a variety of reasons, but the biggest of which is Im not sure it fits in the genre.

Content-wise, it's definitely horror. They just botched the tone.

And then I kinda hate all the characters besides Sandra Bullock. They are all these horrendous one dimensional archetypes and I couldnt have cared less when they all died. Part of it is because of the strange set up to the story, and you literally start the movie with Sandra Bullock alone with her kids and no one else, and it doesnt take an intense examination of the story to figure out everyone is dying.

Nailed it. The non-linear narrative was a poor choice for this type of movie.

Snake5555555555 posted...

Johnbobb - this movie's big emotional revelation is the main protagonist's realization that maybe her kids deserve to have a name and this is for some reason the person we were supposed to be rooting for fuck you sandra bullock this movie is shit

Hahaha!

Lightning_Strikes
There is some good stuff here, the scene where they are driving to the supermarket in a car with all the windows and windscreen entirely covered is great - you dont know exactly what theyre hearing or feeling outside.

This scene I actually enjoyed a lot, with them using the GPS to navigate the roads to the supermarket. It was like playing Mario Kart DS while only looking at the bottom screen.

One issue with the film is that it seems to bend its own rules for the purpose of the plot.

Little off-topic, but this is what ruined A Quite Place Part 2 for me. After adhering so strongly to the rules in AQP1, the writers of 2 seemed to excuse noise whenever it was convenient.

plasmabeam posted...

All the hate for Terrifier makes me sick. I hope it at least beats the Found Footage Cousins (V/H/S and Creep).

Lumping Creep in with V/H/S should be a punishable offense.

BetrayedTangy posted...

Lumping Creep in with V/H/S should be a punishable offense.

Creep is leaps and bounds better than V/H/S, but I'm not a fan of that subgenre.

Blair Witch would be my #30 on practically any horror list I can imagine.

plasmabeam posted...

Creep is leaps and bounds better than V/H/S, but I'm not a fan of that subgenre.

Blair Witch would be my #30 on practically any horror list I can imagine.

Yeah I'm pretty much in the same boat. Without going too in depth, I just found that Creep fixed most of my issues with those types of movies.

Oh yeah I'm like 1000% with you on that. Blair Witch is probably one of the worst movies I've seen in general.

Cool topic! I'm not a massive horror guy so I didn't join in with this, but I'll follow the topic.

Of the ones I've seen, my gut ranking would be something like:

1. The Lighthouse (2019)
2. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
3. It Follows (2014)
4. The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
5. Train to Busan (2016)
6. You're Next (2011)
7. Get Out (2017)
8. The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015)
9. Hereditary (2018)
10. Us (2019)
11. The Babadook (2014)
12. Midsommar (2019)
13. Don't Breathe (2016)

...where I consider myself a fan of the top 5, 6-11 are alright to good, and I actively dislike the bottom two. I doubt my tastes would align with the board a lot, but we'll see I suppose. And I don't even consider Lighthouse or Girl Walks Home Alone to be horror movies and they're my top two here, so that shows where my taste is lol.

Glad I didn't bother with Bird Box!

bird box more like turd sux am I right

jcgamer107 posted...

I dunno I thought Malkovich had a great character - immediately pounding liquor once they reach the supermarket lol

Yeah, he at least gets a couple moments. I thought Paulson and Rhodes were wasted even more. Paulson hardly gets a scene or two in the thing and Rhodes has next to no characterization. Huge wastes.

BetrayedTangy posted...

Lumping Creep in with V/H/S should be a punishable offense.

Creep is much better than VHS or Terrifier.

I can feel the tomatoes being prepared with nearly every post in this topic.

Snake5555555555 posted...

Machine Gun Kelly is in this movie for some reason and hes one of my favorite secondary characters because at least he has the decency to leave right away.

I like to think he showed up just to get a sex scene and peace out.

For anyone interested, the topic for the mini-spinoff ABCs of Death ranking is posted!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80021887

This will just be a side project for fun while the results here are being posted, only 2 films, but both anthology films composed of shorts.

BetrayedTangy posted...

Lumping Creep in with V/H/S should be a punishable offense.

For that matter lumping in parts of V/H/S with other parts of V/H/S!

Im going to be disappointed if every write up doesnt contain a ranking of the individual parts of VHS.

I think there's exactly one pretty good segment in V/H/S and all the others are bad

Johnbobb posted...

For anyone interested, the topic for the mini-spinoff ABCs of Death ranking is posted!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80021887

This will just be a side project for fun while the results here are being posted, only 2 films, but both anthology films composed of shorts.

Thanks for this! I wholly encourage everyone here to participate in that!

Anyway, #29 coming up very soon!

thesmark posted...

I think there's exactly one pretty good segment in V/H/S and all the others are bad

The Skype one, right? Tell me we're on the same page.

Also on my rewatch I found the fact that Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson were being so nonchalant to the reports of mass suicides in Russia hilarious.

Snake5555555555 posted...

And finally, the base scores for all movies (any ties will be broken by removing the highest and lowest rankings):
100
130
140
142
153
161
167
181
186
191
191
200
202
206
208
221
225
254
254
256
266
274
289
301
304
339
348
355
364
367

I highlighted the gaps that are greater than 15 points. Impressive that the gap between #1 and #2 is 30, which is the 2nd-largest gap (#25 and #26 has a gap of 35).

Pretty clear that we're in agreement on the bottom five. Also, there is a strong gap between #17 and #18/19.

The Top 15 is generally tight, with only 55 points separating #5 from #15. That says a lot about the overall quality and variety of the list.

plasmabeam posted...

The Skype one, right? Tell me we're on the same page.

No, the last one

thesmark posted...

No, the last one

Yeah, that's the only one I like as well.

Those are both really good!

29. V/H/S (364 points)

Why I Chose It:The anthology is a horror tradition that dates back to 19th century penny dreadfuls and dime novels, and, in film, 1919's Eerie Tales or 1945's Dead of Night which truly helped popularize the format as a horror film staple. Basically, it's a challenge of how short an author can go while still scaring their audience; it's also a great springboard for launching the popularity and notoriety of some creators who go on to become household names within the horror industry. V/H/S succeeds on both fronts - Adam Wingard (Blair Witch, Godzilla vs. Kong), David Bruckner (The Ritual, The Night House), Ti West (The Innkeepers, X), Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream) - 4 names you can't escape from if you're any sort of even casual horror fan, whose subversive and quick-witted talents continue to bring critical acclaim and box-office draw to the horror genre. V/H/S has also become a huge franchise in its own right - spawning three sequels, a spin-off film, and a shorts series on Snapchat - continuing to highlight some of the most original voices and talents in horror.

Tom Nook: 12
FFDragon: 16
jcgamer107: 19
Suprak: 21
Johnbobb: 23
fortybelowsummer: 24
PrinceKaro: 25
red13n: 26
Lightning Strikes: 27
Inviso: 28
Plasmabeam: 28
Snake: 28
thesmark: 28
rockus: 29
BetrayedTangy: 30

Tom Nook - Anthology movies can be fun, regardless of the quality of the segments, just because they come at you quickly and you don't know what to expect each time. None of these were great, but I also didn't think many of them were that bad. The one with the honeymoon where the lover kills the guy was pretty pointless, and was definitely the weakest of all of them. The one with the guys going to a party was sort of forgettable but was fine enough. The one with the glitch in the woods was cheesy, but there is something about a glitch killing people that was entertaining to me; maybe it took me back to my days of Pokemon since MissingNo is my favorite Pokemon. The two best segments were the ones that featured a cute girl. The one with Emily who was being used as some kind of alien incubator was good as a short. And then of course the segment with the succubus girl Lily, who just has this great look for the part. I'm sure that was everyone's favorite segment.

FFDragon - Carried hard by Amateur Night.

jcgamer107 - An interesting concept that was probably better in theory than in execution. The found footage style has gotten stale for me and feels too gimmicky at this point, so Im not really the target audience for this anymore. There are bright spots - Ti Wests segment and the haunted house segment at the end were well done, the latter containing some good effects. Parts 3 & 4 are OK - not too much to them but theyre at least inoffensive. The whole thing starts out rough though, as the first short has some of the most obnoxious characters ever put to film (that laugh). I did like the shot of the guy getting pulled up into the sky though - Ive had vivid dreams where something like that happens. Its a decent grindhouse-type experience, with supernatural elements sprinkled in.

Johnbobb - Didn't really have the same wow factor it had when I first saw it a decade ago. The inevitable trouble with short-film collections is that, without some sense of overall cohesion, they can only really be judged by their best and worst parts. Some of the found footage direction here is REALLY rough, at times being a headache to even watch. Most of the segments at least have something good going for them, aside from the overarching "story" which is kinda trash and completely unrelated to any of the short films. Really the whole thing would be better with that all cut, as it would at least save it from dragging as much. There's also not much cohesion here. The first four films all have a vague theme of manipulation behind them, but none of that relates to the beginning story, and the theme is also dropped by the less-than-stellar last segment. Then there's the issues of several of the stories just not making much narrative sense. Amateur Night and Emily are probably the highlights of the film, but even those are pretty flawed.

Less popular opinion: Lily, not a deal-breaker.

fortybelowsummer - I like found footage for the most part. I feel like more people hate it than like it, and nobody actually loves it, but I enjoy what it provides. The problem with an anthology like this is that usually there are some weaker parts that bring down the whole thing. With a short format you definitely dont get much character development and the stories can feel rushed or unimaginative. I really dont want to get into each individual film, but the overall package is not great. Its basically that each segment, a couple of which are definitely good with the rest being not so good, takes too long to build up. Then it crescendos and you start all over again so its just an uneven, chaotic experience. Thats not to mention when the jittery camera work is almost unwatchable at times. I know this lends toward making you feel uncomfortable but its not much fun. The framework story that holds it all together is bad too. I will mention one specific thing: that freaking succubus girl in Amateur Night is terrifying. Just the way she looks and acts, I seriously cant even watch her. I like you. Goddammit, moving on.

PrinceKaro -
An anthology of found footage horror shorts that is a very mixed bag. Basically these burglars have to steal some special VHS tape from this weird house, and they play all the segments trying to find it or whatever.

Of great note is the constant video and audio glitches that plague every single short, yeah VHS tapes never had the greatest quality, but this is so ridiculous and hammy that I wonder if any of these directors have ever used a real VCR in their life.

First up, and easily the worst of all the segments, which is just these three awful dudes pick up a girl who turns out to be a harpy or something and everyone gets mindlessly eviscerated. It is utter rubbish.

Second is the vacation video of a couple who do boring things on a road trip but the wife is a secretly a killer lesbian or something.

Third segment is these kids go camping in the woods and get murdered by Missingno. It is rote and uninspired.

Fourth is where this guy is on zoom calls with his girlfriend, who is seemingly being haunted by ghost children.

The final segment basically runs with the concept 'what if the people in the haunted house were too stupid to realize they were in a haunted house', which is an interesting idea but one executed very poorly here.

The quality varies wildly between these segments but none really shine or stand out. All are hampered immensely by the found footage thing, bad 'acting' and bad 'camerawork' are pretty much the norm, and far too much of the film is spent watching lame home videos while waiting desperately for something spooky to happen.

red13n - A bunch of shorts that never seem to aim for anything beyond a bit of random garbage and people dying. Nothing here that really felt like it wanted to stick with me, just boring. Even when they seem like they might be conceptually interesting, they are too short to ever really have any depth and it just makes it difficult to care. There is some overhanging plot to this with some VHS tapes or whatever, but it doesn't really have much cohesion with the rest of the movie to really matter nor is it all that interesting on its own.

Lightning Strikes -
I like you!

There is only one way to fully evaluate this film, and thats to break it down short by short then the whole:

Tape 56: The wrap-around framing device, while it is competently directed (by Adam Wingard no less) it greatly weakens the whole film. The protagonists are so unbearably hateful it somewhat sours you on the whole thing. This really should have been minitiuarised or cut. The disappearing corpse was fun but thats about it really.

Amateur Night: The monster here is really creepy and effective, and the gore effects are great. This does establish a memorable creature and is the most consistently scary of the shorts, its easy to see why this got a spinoff. Unfortunately it is again hampered by have protagonists that are the most horrendous people imaginable, though at least you get to see their penises get ripped off. On the whole it was a success, but a flawed one.

Second Honeymoon: Now this is more like it. Super unsettling throughout with a great twist ending. The first time the stalker takes the camera is really, really chilling, and the hints of this persons presence throughout help add to the feeling of something not being quite right. Overall a very good short though I did wonder why they were filming it.

Tuesday the 17th: Incredibly disappointing unfortunately, the concept of somebody using their friends as bait in a horror setting is very strong, and the glitch killers are a cool visual. Unfortunately thats let down by weak acting and a clunky script. Also the fact that the lead fails to get her revenge makes her plan to use her friends to lure them out seem like a terrible plan, either have her win or leave that out. Such s shame.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger: The best of them all. This is a great horror story, with a really fun twist - or rather three twists. Even just the idea of ghosts turning out to be aliens was enough to make me like this, but its really effective in general. Also is this the first example of a film presented as somebodys computer screen? I loved this.

10/31/1998: This was nearly as good. Just a fun tour through a haunted house by people who think theyre just at a halloween party. All of the visuals and imagery is great, and the realisation that they doomed themselves by trying to do good is asad one. These are really the only likeable protagonists in the collection, and you do root for them. To that point I actually prefer the alternate ending for this one, I feel that it does fit the tone better by having them survive and laugh it off, which makes for a good contrast to the anthology as a whole and all its grim endings. Really enjoyable horror short.

Overall, V/H/S has some great stuff, but should have had its length cut down. You can lose the framing device and the third short and you would have a much stronger picture. I liked it but it could have been better than it was.

3/5

Biggest scare: I mentioned it already but the perspective shift in the second short was the stuff of nightmares.

Inviso - Right off the bat, this movie does a poor job of making itself look even remotely appealing. I get that its a found footage film, and I get the appeal of found footage horror. Hell, I ranked Cloverfield third when we did 2000s horror. But with this? The whole film just looked ugly. It didnt look like a found footage film produced by competent filmmakers, but rather a janky, jittery mess. Some of the vignettes wound up better-filmed than others, but the opening is terrible, and its based around a group of nameless scumbags who take WAY too long to die, and the logic behind their presence in the movie is flimsy at best.

Beyond that, the road trip vignette was terribly boring, culminating in a completely forgettable ending. The Skype alien possession was just weird and a bit too long for what it was. The weird glitch slasher film felt too short for its concept. The ending haunted house had some potential, but the characters werent fleshed out enough. And the succubus was probably the most interesting, but again, it wasnt long enough to demonstrate quality. Thats the main problem. None of the vignettes are short enough to be fun little movie clips, but theyre also not long enough to feel fleshed out into solid stories. The whole movie is like that, and there are FIVE of them, on top of the bizarre steal a video tape from this house overarching narrative. Its just too drawn out for its own good.

Plasmabeam - Cool concept, but the execution is shoddy for the most part. The standout story from this collection was the video chat one where we learn that Emily is being manipulated by her boyfriend. I also liked the succubus story, but the rest of this collection was forgettable at best, and the frame tale was garbage.

Snake - Now, if you've been following any of my write-ups in past series, you will know I love anthology films, usually no matter how bad it is. However, I don't love V/H/S. There was a time I did - about 10 years ago, when I was 16 and really digging anything that felt real, gory, and subversive. Mumblegore was just about my favorite sub-genre in horror. However, with those same 10 years now past, I see V/H/S in a different light. Now, its shorts feel more hollow. Every short practically has the same format - a group of annoying college-age douches, who are perverted, loud & obnoxious, and say base-level, cardboard dialogue until they're killed off in unsatisfactory, shaky-cam headache inducing ways. Even the shorts that don't follow this format are subject to the same themes of perversion and promiscuity. These shorts are what teenagers consider shocking - it's no wonder I loved it back then. It's a shame too, because these are some extremely talented people who wrote and directed these shorts. For such an authored experience, these shorts feel surprisingly studio-mandated, full of clich characters and non-endings that are made for group cheering and as less thinking as possible. Shovel in your popcorn and laugh and cheer at the gore and CollegeHumor tier sex jokes, as electronic music blares over a repeated clip of a woman getting her breasts exposed or as this total geekwad tries to perv on one of his female friends. It's some real lowest common denominator stuff and it would be fine if it had anything to say about it but none of the shorts do so the whole things is just a waste of time to me.

Tape 56 - The frame story. It's dark, it's clunky, it's boring, it only serves to bring cohesion to the shorts. All the characters suck, which is the point, and then they exist to die off to a random zombie guy. Person who can't go down stairs without tripping counter: 1

Amateur Night - Two jocks make their token geek friend put on spy glasses to film - something...? There's no point for most of the runtime, until the pretty well-done climax where Lily goes full on bat-vampire-lady and destroys the sort-of-pervy frat boys. The gore and make-up effects are really well done and the characters exhibit a palpable sense of panic. It's decent enough.

Person who can't go down stairs without tripping counter: 2

Second Honeymoon - Two lovers on their honeymoon film boring vacation footage and then the husband dies and his wife runs away with her real lover. The scenes where the intruder films the couple sleeping in bed is chilling - a true nightmare for anyone I would imagine. Meh, I never really got the wife's motivation to do this besides one time when her husband snapped at her a little for maybe stealing money from him. And of course it ends before anything is really explained.

Tuesday the 17th - More annoying characters wander around a forest, die, and then some weird glitchy slasher killer gets trapped or maybe kills Wendy or something. Besides the pretty unique idea of the killer, there's not much here.

The Sick Thing - Probably my favorite short here. It's actually pretty hard to see the ending coming, and James' gaslighting and the reveal he does this to more women is perfectly creepy and makes the typical perversion of V/H/S actually have a point for once. There's some solid jumpscares and it's actually the most well-shot despite its filming method.

10/31/98 - Even MORE annoying characters think they go to a haunted house and find out it's actually for REAL haunted. I actually laughed out loud when the friends joined in on the chanting when the group were trying to exorcise the woman. Other than that, it's bog standard.

Okay, phew, that was a lot! It's all posted now.

Outlier:
Tom Nook: 37
PrinceKaro: 22
jcgamer107: 20
red13n: 14
FFDragon: 13
Suprak: 12
Inviso: 10
Johnbobb: 7
fortybelowsummer: 7
BetrayedTangy: 4
Lightning_Strikes: 3
rockus: 2
Plasmabeam: 2
Snake: 1
thesmark: 1

Tom continues to take a commanding length as the rest keep it short.

Next film up later tonight.

BetrayedTangy posted...

It's kind of a shame the best two were at the very end. I think we can all agree that Second Honeymoon was the worst right?

I disliked so many of them that outside of the last segment, which is the only one I liked all that much, it's probably the one after that I disliked the least. Nothing really happens in it but it's not nearly as obnoxious as most of them and you can actually see what's happening in it.

I cant believe Terrifier hasnt placed yet.

Huh I always thought people adored v/h/s for some reason. Top of my bottom half, but I still enjoyed it a lot more than some on the list. None of the shorts were awful to me, but none came close to Amateur Night, so it was a steady fall after a rush out of the gate.

I guess found footage went out of style at some point? I saw people trashing on Blair Witch earlier and that is crazy to me.

Found Footage got replaced by shared screen films thinking of things like Unfriended, Searching and Host. This is another reason why the Skype short is the best!

Lightning Strikes posted...

I cant believe Terrifier hasnt placed yet.

It just has to be 28 at this point. If it's not, what are we doing

FFDragon posted...

Huh I always thought people adored v/h/s for some reason. Top of my bottom half, but I still enjoyed it a lot more than some on the list. None of the shorts were awful to me, but none came close to Amateur Night, so it was a steady fall after a rush out of the gate.

I guess found footage went out of style at some point? I saw people trashing on Blair Witch earlier and that is crazy to me.

I think the problem is that found footage as a genre has never really felt like quality so much as "how much of a profit can we make for bare bones investment". Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity are both extremely cheap films that had massive box office returns, but they're not great movies. They're both largely boring with one scene at the end that's really and truly scary, which doesn't warrant the runtime up to that point. That being said, when found footage is given a budget and treated like a movie first and foremost (Cloverfield) it's still enjoyable.

Found footage is often like edging. An hour-fifteen of building you up and then 15 minutes of release. You don't need a big budget for that, which is what I think makes the subgenre a lot of the time. Now with an anthology that obviously goes out the window since everything is more condensed, but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a slow build to one big finale.

FFDragon posted...

Found footage is often like edging. An hour-fifteen of building you up and then 15 minutes of release. You don't need a big budget for that, which is what I think makes the subgenre a lot of the time. Now with an anthology that obviously goes out the window since everything is more condensed, but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a slow build to one big finale.

There's a difference between a slow build and NO build. Blair Witch is largely a group of poorly-shot douchebags lost in the woods, and then fast forward to a guy in an abandoned building, staring at a wall. Paranormal Activity is somehow worse than that.

My favorite takeaway from the V/H/S writeups is that the movie could've been stronger without the frame tale. Watching (unlikable) characters watch a haunted video tape only distances the audience from the terror IMO. I'm sure it could be done well, but here it failed mightily.

thesmark posted...

It just has to be 28 at this point. If it's not, what are we doing

Terrifier isn't even the worst one left!

Lightning Strikes posted...

I cant believe Terrifier hasnt placed yet.

Blame me. I loved it.

And it's funny because I took one look at the movie poster and thought, "Yep, this is gonna suck." Then I watched it and was pleasantly surprised. Soon as I finished it, I ran to my phone and raved about it to all my horror buff friends (who were in agreement with me, so I guess not everyone thought it was awful).

I think a big part of it was just sheer oversaturation and a vast majority of them were not good movies. I remember being especially angry that the Living Dead franchise started doing them too.

I feel like at this point were just waiting to get out of the bottom five so we can get to the films that were pretty consensus well-received. I am curious what the fifth one is as four are pretty obvious. I guess its The Purge: Anarchy which I liked.

BetrayedTangy posted...

I think a big part of it was just sheer oversaturation and a vast majority of them were not good movies. I remember being especially angry that the Living Dead franchise started doing them too.

Anytime you have something that's cheap to make, you're bound to have oversaturation.

The only found footage film I loved was Cloverfield, probably because it's the only one I've watched that made me care about the characters.

Lightning Strikes posted...

I feel like at this point were just waiting to get out of the bottom five so we can get to the films that were pretty consensus well-received. I am curious what the fifth one is as four are pretty obvious. I guess its The Purge: Anarchy which I liked.

Bird Box and V/H/S were obvious. Terrifier and Chucky seem likely based on the vibes I've gotten from this topic and the previous one. Purge or Sinister for #26??

Cloverfield rules, though it has a major advantage which is Matt Reeves directing.

REC will forever be king of the found footages.

I really thought Amateur Night would be consensus best segment but looks like it was a bit more evenly split! I get that the guys are horrible monsters, but I felt like that was sort of the point and why the fact that Emily was a succubus is fitting.

I agree that VHS is mostly straight up garbage, but that segment alone sort of saves it for me. Plus anthology stuff is always fun for me so that helps too. There are at least two movies on this list that were worse than even the bottom of the VHS segments imo.

Amateur Night was definitely the best, but none of them are all that great.

FFDragon posted...

REC will forever be king of the found footages.

I'm one of the ones that really likes Blair Witch, but yeah it's either that or REC.

Tag

Also I completely missed until reading the writeups here that they made an entire feature out of the Amateur Night short called SiREN.

Same girl playing Lily and everything. Guess I'll be watching that soon.

Thats been on my list to check out as well. Im a bit worried that a full length version might kind of ruin what made the short special though. Part of the fun is knowing something is weird about Emily but not exactly what it is. The reveal having already happened seems like it would start the movie in a hole.

Without Amateur Night VHS is probably bottom three for me.