From the slashers of the early 2000s to the renaissance of ghost stories and monster movies of the 2010s, the 21st century has been a rollercoaster for the beloved horror genre. However, for all the deep lows that the genre had to incur during the time, there have been some highs that have ended up being some of the best entries in the genre. In fact, to some, the 21st century has proven to be a second golden age for horror. Why? Because horror filmmakers have been able to honor the genre’s roots while infusing them with modern sensibilities. So, here are some of the best horror movies of the 21st century in reverse chronological order!
Note: We’ll be updating this list whenever another great horror movie comes up!
Another Note: What’re your favorite horror movies of the 21st century? Let us know in the comments!
What it’s about: After the death of her mother, Annie (Toni Collette), her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), and their kids (Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro) begin to uncover sinister secrets about their family.
Why it’s great: Hereditary is without qualification the scariest movie I saw in theaters. It’s also a horror fan’s dream. It’s a puzzle that you have to solve and unlike a lot of slow burn horror movies, it gives you the clues, you just have to find them.
Hereditary is also patient in its scares—in addition to its story. The horror set pieces are long drawn out and some you don’t even notice until a second look. That’s what makes this a masterpiece. It replaces jump scares with truly frightening imagery and an unsettling atmosphere.
Everything from the score to the production design to the sound design drip with evil. And it also has a smoldering family drama underneath it all. Not to mention one of the great horror performances from Toni Collette. It’s also one of our favorite movies of 2018.
Where to stream it: Hereditary is available to stream on Prime Video! It’s also available to rent or buy.
What it’s about: After an anomalous area that becomes known as “The Shimmer” appears on the southern coast, the government sets up a facility to explore it. However, no team that has gone into “The Shimmer” has returned — until Kane (Oscar Isaac) emerges weak and near-death. His wife, biologist Lena (Natalie Portman), signs up for the latest expedition led by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to find answers. What she discovers is far more confounding than she’d ever imagined.
Why it’s great: In “The Shimmer,” the laws of nature don’t apply, leading to some stunning and terrifying sequences involving the living things enveloped by the area — you’ll never look at a bear the same way again. Director Alex Garland has a unique ability to get under your skin with the movie’s imagery, but the real beauty of Annihilation is what’s under the surface.
It’s a movie about humanity and our propensity for self-destruction. The movie has monsters, but the biggest monster is ourselves. With a chilling, impressionistic third act and a killer score by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, Annihilation ranks among my favorite movies of the decade.
Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.
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What it’s about: Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) goes to Upstate New York with his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to meet her parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener). However, though they are hospitable at first, their intentions are darker.
Why it’s great: Get Out is perhaps one of the best horror satires ever made. Perfectly balancing its intricate plot and social themes with well-mined tension and blistering dark comedy, Jordan Peele creates a heightened world not different from our own. And with his story, he makes a devilishly entertaining point about progressiveness.
Read our full review for Get Out here!
What it’s about: Don’t Breathe follows three would-be teen home invaders (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, and Daniel Zavatto) who break into a house of a blind man (Stephen Lang) thinking it would be an easy score. They were wrong.
Why it’s great: Don’t Breathe is a breathtaking exercise in narrative efficiency. Director Fede Alvarez shows instead of tells. He sets up the house where the would-be robbers meet their grizzly ends in a beautiful one-take that shows us the field of play. From there on, he practices some incredible patience, which is something not seen in horror movies today.
He holds shots and moments as long as he can to truly make you uncomfortable and there are some moments that are truly unbearable to keep watching. That’s what makes this one of the best horror movies in recent memory. Read my full review for here.
The zombie genre has had its highs — we’ll be talking about the highest high a little later — and its countless lows. But surprisingly the 21st century has been kind to the genre with great entries like the remake Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Pontypool (2008). But a recent Korean movie has all the makings of a great zombie movie and then some.
Train to Busan doesn’t do much to add to the genre as a whole. It has all the characters that you’d expect in a zombie movie — precocious daughter, bad Dad, kickass supporting player — however, it throws them into a situation that we haven’t seen a zombie film take place in. Described as Snowpiercer with zombies is an oversimplification, but good enough description for the movie. Subtle class warfare and human nature are at the center of the movie’s themes and the zombie apocalypse is there to serve those themes. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some interesting action set-pieces and genuine scares. Train to Busan is a good ol’ suspensful zombie movie with updated themes that give it a modern flair.
Read our full review for Train to Busan here!
Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.
No movie in recent memory — or on this list — has come as close to classic 70s horror as It Follows. Director David Robert Mitchell took the horror cliche that character who have sex are killed and expanded into an impressive set of rules and an intriguing central villain. Instead of going for jump scares, he uses tension to put his audience into a state of constant anxiety. The opening scene — which doesn’t show the eponymous “it” — simply uses the intriguing camera work and innovative score to set the movie’s eerie atmosphere that never truly relents. However, what really lands this movie on this list is its timelessness. Mitchell created a piece that doesn’t exist in a specific time or place. The very best horror movies do that same, which is why it’s one of the best horror movies of the century.
The Witch is streaming on Netflix.
The Babadook is not only one of the best horror movies of the century, it’s also one of the most haunting and profound movies of about grief in recent memory. On the surface, The Babadook is a great ghost story with an adeptly built creepy atmosphere and a fantastic central performance by Essie Davis. However, when you start peeling back the layers, you find a story about guilt, motherhood, paranoia, and most importantly, grief. Writer/director Jennifer Kent keeps the story lean and moving, but doesn’t skimp on character development and uses small moments — a coworker asking Amelia on a date, Sam caressing his Mother’s face — to give the audience enough to know the state of the characters without feeling heavy-handed. However, more importantly, this movie will scare you and give you nightmares for nights after you watch it
Found footage struggled to find its footing after the turn of the decade. Few were able to recreate the magic of the first few entries. However, I think the unjustly overlooked Unfriended uses the genre for all it’s worth. Unfriended would be an average horror movie at best without its intriguing “found footage” concept. Its general conceit is a slasher revenge film, all the way down to the characters involved. That being said, the concept of the entire film taking place on a laptop screen brings it above and beyond what many horror movies have been doing in recent years. It builds tension opposed to just going for constant cheap jump scares, and it even unsettles you from something in your everyday life.
Read our full review for Unfriended here!
“Leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet.”
Horror is hard to pull off. Comedy is hard to pull off. Horror comedy is almost impossible to pull off. However, when it works, it really works. This century has seen some of the best horror comedies from Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) to the best use of Bill Murray in a film Zombieland (2009). However, no horror comedy quite reaches the heights of Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows.
What Waititi was able to do with What We Do in the Shadows is build a world that is as quirky as the characters it follows. It’s easy to see a comedy about four centuries old vampire roommates going off the rails. But by playing into and then making fun of genre conceits — hypnotizing victims, a vendetta against werewolves — he creates a hilarious and nostalgic tribute to the monster movie genre. More importantly, it’s simply one of the funniest horror comedies you’ll see.
Five friends go to an isolated cabin in the woods and are tormented by [insert movie monster here]. Basically, I’ve just described every horror movie from the 80s to the 2000s. That’s what Joss Whedon was both emulating and satirizing with his brilliant The Cabin in the Woods. While the set-up of the movie is one we’ve seen before, this is not your typical horror movie. Whedon simultaneously pays homage to the genre and criticizes its direction by playing into the tropes — the old man warning the characters of their impending doom, the creepy cellar, the stereotypical roles — then completely destroying its effectiveness. The final result is hilarious, terrifying, and downright entertaining.
Check out our post celebrating the 5th anniversary of The Cabin in the Woods!
The reason The Conjuring was as lauded and revered as it is is because it came at almost the perfect time in the history of horror movies. The 2000s saw the genre take a turn for the worst with copy after copy of slasher films. So, when an original movie about paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren was announced, there was a huge excitement around it. However, no one expected the terrifying movie experience that followed. James Wan used good old fashioned horror movie directing — as evidenced by the terrific hide and clap sequence, which I broke down here — to create incredible set pieces that built up to its chilling finale. However, what makes it one of the best horror movies is that it kicked off a new golden age for horror.
You’ll notice that almost all the movies on this list have little to no gore in them. That’s because I don’t think gore makes effective horror. Plus, most gory horror movie are uninspired and just copies of the rest. While there are a few that make the most of the “torture porn” like Saw (2004), one rises above the rest.
However, the grisly and gory You’re Next makes this list because it’s aware of what kind of movie it is and uses that to its advantage. Simply put, You’re Next is a B-movie that knows it’s a B-movie. The dark comedy brought on by the perennially morbid characters mixed up with the bumbling antagonists make the movie more ridiculous than the premise sounds — it’s pretty much a gorier version of And Then There Were None. And that’s one of the virtues of the movie. It takes the home invasion premise and turns it on its head making it part soap opera, part parody, and a genre enthusiasts dream.
For some reason, crafting a horror movie around Halloween is a task that few filmmakers have been able to do. John Carpenter’s original Halloween is perhaps the only exception — unless you count Hocus Pocus as a horror movie. Then comes along the little film Trick r’ Treat directed by Dougherty. This anthology film is split into six distinct stories that take place in the same town on Halloween. However, the reason it’s one of the best horror movies of the century is its ability to make you feel nostalgic for the holiday. With good old fashioned scares and a storytelling style that makes it feel like you’re sitting around a campfire listening to ghost stories, Trick r’ Treat was able to turn itself into necessary Halloween viewing.
My one condition for The Mist being on this list is that it must be watched in black and white (it’s available here). When you watch the monochromatic version — the preferred one of director Frank Darabont — The Mist unfolds as an extended Twilight Zone episode before turning into an homage to the creature features of the 50s. However, what makes this one of the best horror movies of the century is its focus on the characters and their reactions to the apocalyptic event. If anything, the scariest part of the movie isn’t the monsters outside, but the human inside. Human nature can be a terrifying thing when it’s done right and The Mist certainly gets it right.
Found footage is a hard filmmaking style to apply to the horror genre, which means that it rarely works. However, a few gems were able to rise above the rest like Paranormal Activity (2007) and Unfriended (2015). Still, there is one clear high for the genre from this century.
I’m coupling 2007 Spanish film [REC] and the 2008 English-language remake Quarantine together since the latter is essentially a shot-for-shot remake of the former. Found footage is hard to pull off. In terms of horror, only one movie was able to effectively use the genre to its full potential — The Blair Witch Project. However, [REC] finally took the concept of found footage and unlocked it for everything it is worth. By setting the film in the claustrophobic setting of an apartment complex, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza were able to create a slow-building but completely terrifying dip into a Hell on Earth like none committed to film. What makes the movie so effective is its sense of space. It uses the spiraling staircase, dark corners, and winding passages to set you on edge and disorient you while the characters on screen fight for their lives. Then, we’re treated to one of the most chilling and horrifying endings to a horror movie.
Funny Games is available to buy and rent on Prime Video.
What it’s about: Six adventurous women go spelunking in an uncharted cave where they fight the elements, each other, and for survival.
Why you should watch it: With its claustrophobic setting, dark cinematography, and tension-filled set pieces, Alien is indisputably one of the best monster movies ever made. Almost no movie has been able to fill the massive gap left by it, even sequels to the series. That’s why Neil Marshall’s 2005 The Descent is one of the best horror movies of the 21st century. Instead of a spaceship, The Descent takes place in a winding cave that never seems to end and has never seen light.
Instead of an alien, there are subterranean humanoids tormenting the group of spelunkers. The amount of screentime the monsters are given, like Alien, is minimal, which only adds to the dread when they show up. However, in true horror fashion, the scariest moments are the ones when they aren’t on screen. Lurking around the next bend, perhaps.
Where to stream it: The Descent is available to stream on HBO! It’s also available to rent or buy on Amazon.
While Danny Boyle might be more widely known for 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, most cinephiles will know him as the man who brought us one of the best zombie movies of all time with 28 Days Later. What makes the movie so effective (other than the fact that this is the first time that zombies could run faster than a pathetic gallop) is its sense of desolation and desperation. The first ten minutes after the cold open are perhaps some of the best filmmaking of the early 2000s. The composition of the shots aren’t just beautiful, but they remind us just how alone Jim (Cillian Murphy) is in his hospital scrubs and his lonely plastic bag. However, when he finally encounters Selena (Naomi Harris) it turns into a movie about humanity and inhumanity in the face of destruction.
“7 days.”
This is a phrase that haunted my early adolescent years when I watched The Ring — probably way earlier than I should have. However, that fear wasn’t just my young self scared of the killer videotape at the center of the movie. The Ring is one of the most effective horror movies of the early 2000s, which was right when gore was being mistaken for horror. Instead, The Ring — with almost no gore at all — uses disturbing imagery and smart, well-executed horror set pieces to give viewers a sense of dread. Interestingly, the movie has little score, which has quickly become one of the essential horror movie staples. Instead, the movie sets up its shots in a way that make you fear what’s lurking behind the camera or around the corner or in your television.
Final Destination is available to buy or rent on Prime Video.
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