22: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Behind the mask is the exact opposite of Wes Craven's Scream. Scream had a brilliant opening scene, one that was genuinely scary and innovative. It was a tour de force. What followed was an absolutely awful film, a lazy whodunit mixed with a lazy comedy prancing around pretending to still be scary. It was a great disappointment. In Behind the Mask, the main character comes out and says five minutes in that he is the serial killer. What follows is a genuinely clever comedy that pokes fun at horror films while still giving them the respect they deserve. The only low point in the film was the final act, in which the film devolves into a somewhat lazy slasher film.

Behind the Mask is a mockuemntary, following a group of college students producing a film about Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesal), a man who intends to go on a supernatural killing spree to avenge his wrongful death 20 years ago. Rather than being dark and brooding like you would expect a serial killer to be, he is full of energy. He is ecstatic to show off his hard work to the film crew, and his joy infects the rest of us. The film really only works because of Nathan Baesal's performance. He is the kind of guy you would want to sit down and have a drink with. Even when he goes out to murder people, you're still on his side.

The film's most hilarious sections are when he explains his preparations for the big night. He goes through the house where the killings will happen, making sure all the flashlights have dead batteries and rigging the fuse box up to a kill switch. He sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber to practice slowing his breathing and heart rate in case he needs to pretend to be dead. And on his off days he reads David Copperfield and Houdini (and a bit of Gray's Anatomy as well.) The film treats his serial killer ambition as something completely mundane. His best friends are a retired serial killer and his wife, who used to be his final girl. They worked back in the 70's, before the big names like Freddy and Jason “changed the industry,” into the franchise-based murder spree system we have today.

The film's only real problem comes in the final act, when Leslie actually goes on this killing spree. The problem is that the film tries to pull in too many different directions. It tries to deliver on the promise of murdering all of the teenagers he spent the movie stalking, while trying to wave its finger admonishingly at the audience for enjoying the carnage the film had been setting up for, while trying to be genuinely scary. And it does all of this while still trying to remain a mostly comedic film. In the end, it doesn't really work. But it is a fun ride. If you didn't like Scream, maybe you can give one last chance to a snarky slasher comedy. And if you did like Scream, this film will blow your mind.

(As a side note, this film might have the greatest one-liner in horror comedy history. I don't want to spoil it, but you'll know it when you hear it. My friends and I almost died laughing.)

23: May

The easiest thing to mess up in a horror movie is the ending. Do you know why most generic horror films end in one last predictable jump scare? Necessity. If the bad guy is unquestionably defeated and the film ends on a happy note, then the ending and the rest of the movie have major conflicting tones. If you have the good guys brutally murder the bad guys, you get a closer match, but the endings tend to feel cathartic and the entire movie winds up feeling like a thrill ride rather than a horror film. The ending needs to match the tone of the film, while extending the films themes AND providing a satisfying conclusion to the films plot. There are a lot of ways for an ending to go wrong, and there is only one way to get it right. May's ending is perfect.

The film starts off slowly, dealing with May's (Angela Bettis) rough childhood. She had a lazy eye, and was forced to wear an eyepatch. Everyone always made fun of her for it. In the end, her mother told her that if she couldn't find a friend, she should go make one, and gives her a handmade doll. May takes this lesson to heart, and the doll becomes her first and only true friend. Years later, the doll is still May's only friend. She talks to it day and night, and she never takes it out of its case, just as her mom would have wanted.

Eventually May tries to go and make friends with other people. She doesn't really have any idea what she is doing. She is obsessive and cripplingly shy. She becomes hugely attached to parts of people, even more than the person themselves. She's a big fan of this guys hands, or that person's legs, or Polly's (Anna Farris) neck. May starts getting into fights with her doll (apparently, it doesn't like the people she is hanging out with). It's clear from the beginning that May isn't exactly mentally healthy, and she eventually goes off the deep end when she starts getting rejected by her new friends. In time, she decides to make a new friend, to make up for the ones she was losing. It's pretty easy to see where this is going, but it is still a shock when it happens. May's switch from a victim to a predator is disturbingly abrupt, no one even has time to notice the difference.

This all leads up to the downright scariest ending in any film I've seen. It was perfect, it was spellbinding. I didn't see it coming, but it was really the only way the film could've ended. I was in awe, it was so dark and so vague and so creepy. I wasn't even sure I liked May until I saw the ending, but once I did I loved the film.

24: Black Swan

When I first heard about this film, I was convinced that it was produced for me personally. The film just sounded too good to be true: Darren Aronofsky writing and directing a horror movie, a sister piece to The Wrestler. A film heavily inspired by the apartments trilogy of Roman Polanski, but also featuring stylistic influences from David Cronenberg and Dario Argento. A film with an absolutely amazing orchestral score, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, and they have sex. Nothing could have kept my from this film. Absolutely nothing. It didn't disappoint.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina completely focused on perfecting her craft. She dedicates every hour of every day to being perfect at what she does. She has full control of her graceful movements at all times, and she is all set to play as the lead in Swan Lake. The problem is that Swan Lake is about losing control. She not only has to play as the graceful white swan, but as a very sexual and passionate black swan. Between her devotion to her craft, and her mother infantalizing her, she has no real idea what to do.

This isn't so much a film about a character growing up as a character realizing she grew up a long time ago and just never dealt with it. Her instructor keeps trying to force her to “lose herself” in the role (or have sex with her. It is disturbingly difficult to tell the difference between the two. He's probably trying to do both, actually). In an attempt to show her the way, he introduces her to Lily, who dances the black swan perfectly. Under Lily's “guidance,” Nina goes out and gets hammered, something she never would have done before.

In my eyes, this film is about repression and the malleability of identity. Nina thinks she knows who she is, but once people start trying to pressure her, parts of herself she didn't know existed started coming out. A repeating image in the film is Nina looking in the mirror to see herself as Lily, or to see Lily as her. To her, Lily represents all those aspects of her that are out of her control. Nina thinks of herself becoming a different person because she can't accept that those thing are a part of her. In the end, this leads her to blaming others for her behavior. She becomes paranoid, convinced Lily is going to steal her role. In the end, she starts hallucinating. She loses her grip on reality.

Once the hallucinations start, the film goes from a somewhat unsettling drama to a full on horror film. It's hard to describe most of the imagery, and to try would ruin the effect. Nina sees all of her worst fears paraded in front of her, and we're right there with her. She has no idea what is real or what is imagined, or what is half-imagined but really happened. It winds up feeling very much like the the works of Roman Polanski. People are almost definitely plotting against Nina, and Nina is almost definitely paranoid and delusional, but there is always the question of which events fall into which camp. In some cases, we never find out.

25: Funny Games

Funny games is a unique film, sort of. It is a shot for shot English-language remake of a unique film from Austria. Directed by Michael Haneke (who also made the original), this film is a horror movie in its truest sense. At first, it all seems like familiar genre territory: A nice family goes out to their vacation home to see some friends, only to have their home invaded by a pair of maniacs. But it soon becomes clear something else is going on. The bad guys seem to switch from pleasant to horrible to funny and back again. They care about the rules to their “game,” but you don't know anything else about them. The psychos practically seem chummy. It soon becomes clear that the bad guys hunting down and killing the good guys isn't really what the film is about.

This film is attackimg you, the viewer. The bad guys keep breaking the fourth wall to make little asides to you (“What do you think? Think they stand a chance?”). They have a running bet going with us if the family is going to make it. They break any and every horror taboo they can think of (right down to killing a dog).. And all the while they are still torturing the family in any way they can.

But it isn't just the bad guys. Every note of the soundtrack (classical music which jumps randomly into thrash metal), every shot of the camera, every convention and pattern created (and immediately ignored), is all just to say fuck you to the audience. Especially the camera. There is hardly a drop of blood in the entire film. It's always pointing somewhere else while the brutality goes on. Then the camera lingers on the family, bruised and frightened. For almost two hours, the film sits there and watches a family immediately before and after terrible things happen to them. There's no catharsis, no revenge, and no hope.

This film is often compared to the film Hostel by more mainstream critics, but that really sells this film short. Hostel, along with a whole host of other films use an anti-violence message as an excuse to show the audience what they want: Violence. The bad guys brutally murder the good guys, then the good guys triumph and murder the bad guys. The tension is relieved, and the audience cheers, The problem with this setup is that the violence always ends up being cathartic. It feels great to watch the bad guys be murdered, and as that is the last event in the film, people leave feeling pumped and happy. These cathartic endings are the main problem I have with Eli Roth's films, and why you won't see them on the list (spoiler alert). Funny Games choosing not to show the violence, and only showing the horrific effects, are one of the things that is striking about the film.

Funny games is probably one of the most polarizing films made in the past decade. That is exactly how it was designed to be. A furious review, accusing Heneke of creating the film as an elaborate troll, is probably just as much proof of the film's craft as an irreverent one like this. If a film that is willing to attack you in ways that you have never been attacked before sounds like something you want to watch, then this is the film for you.

26: session 9

I like unreliable narrators. They give stories depth and allow for several alternate interpretations of a series of events. The idea that what the film shows isn't necessarily what happened can be used to create suspense and tension, and the sudden realization that the main character was an unreliable narrator all along has been the backbone of numerous films.

Session 9 is the ultimate in unreliable narrators. The film follows an asbestos removal team as they try to clean up a dilapidated mental hospital, while the hospital starts slowly driving them all insane. One guy finds a bunch of old coins and quits to go to Vegas (or does he?). A second just seems to slime his way around, trying to get people fired so he can have his own guys come in (or does he?). The protagonist's one defining feature was that he never loses his cool, and he just starts going ballistic. Then there is the guy who keeps sneaking off to listen to tapes of a psychiatric patient from the seventies with repressed memories. Doubt is even cast on the doctors from the tapes, when the film brings up all the people who thought they “remembered” repressed memories only to learn that the memories had been planted into their head by well-meaning but misguided doctors.

The main story follows the asbestos removal team as they try to do the huge job on a tight schedule where everything is going wrong, but we also get to listen in on the old psychiatric sessions of one of the disturbed inmates. Mary Hughes has multiple personality disorder, and we listen to recordings of doctors trying to coax her into talking They keep asking her what happened on Christmas years ago, and asking to talk to Simon. We have no idea what is going to happen with her, but we know it can't be good. At first, it seems like the story is just a diversion from the main plot, just another way to ratchet up the tension. It winds up really tying the whole film together by the end.

The film doesn't need any tapes to ratchet up tension for it. It was shot on-location at Danvers State Hospital, which is the creepiest building in the history of creepy buildings. It is covered in dust and graffiti. The whole thing is Labyrinthine, dark, and disturbing, and that's before you get to the patient's rooms. Between the underground tunnel system, the crematorium, the high security ward (which more closely resembles a giant cage than anything else), and the room where the first lobotomy was ever performed, I am not sure which section of the building I am most disturbed by. Not to mention the cemetery (the graves are numbered, there isn't enough space for names).

A lot of times you'll have films with unreliable narrators go all-in on the concept, to the point where the films main draw is finally figuring out what the hell is going on. Films like that are good every once in a while, but way too many films try to do things like this and just fail to pull it off. Session 9 is so good because it leverages it's craziness with tension and a creeping uneasiness. These qualities play off each other, the fact that you know something bad is going on but not knowing what meshing perfectly with the atmospheric surroundings.

Paranoia and Claustrophobia: two great tastes that taste great together.

27: Ginger Snaps

Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabella) are as close as two sisters can be. They are each other's best (only, actually) friend. It is the two of them against the world. There friendship is tested when, on the night of Ginger's first period, she is attacked by a wolf. She becomes moody and distant with her sister. She starts having sex with strange guys, and growing hair in odd places. Then she eats the neighbors dog.

Ginger Snaps Lycanthropy as puberty angle has been done before in other movies (Teen Wolf probably being the most popular example), but what really sets this film apart is the acting and story. The main characters have great chemistry, and it is hard not to love them whenever they are onscreen together. You really care about the fate of Ginger and Brigitte, which is not the most common thing in horror movies. Emily Perkins is great as the sulky Brigitte worried about her older sister, and Katherine Isabella is amazing as the increasingly demented Ginger. Add in the sometimes hilarious and sometimes disturbing mother character (Mimi Rogers), and you have a recipe for a great film.

The film's first half has a black comedy feel to it as well. A bumbling group of adults try to help Ginger through her hard times, including the aforementioned hilarious mother character. The high school is your standard film fare of jocks and nerds and popular girls, but they all manage to entertain so I can forgive the film for a bit of cliché here. The one thing that is never funny is the films supernatural elements, which are always played dead serious. You will see this a lot in the better supernatural comedies like Ghostbusters or Zombieland, where the humor comes from the characters rather than the the fantastical elements.

When Ginger Snaps is at its best, it reminds me of David Cronenberg's The Fly. Considering that The Fly is my favorite horror film of all time, this is high praise. The idea that someone you love could change unrecognizably into something else is already disturbing, but the point of films like The Fly and Ginger Snaps is that they are recognizable. Even when Jeff Goldblum is full transformed into the fly, you are not allowed to forget he is still Jeff Goldblum. He never goes around screaming “I'm going to eat your brains.” He always says things like “Why would you want to kill my son” or “You can help me, all I need is your body.” And even when Ginger is at her most monstrous, she still cares deeply for her sister. Enough to kill for her, even.

Ginger's full transformation into a werewolf ran the risk of being incredibly campy, especially since the special effects aren't the best. But since it is treated so seriously throughout the whole movie, it manages to really be scary. Even the mother character loses her darkly comedic edge near the end, which really helps show the films major shift in tone. This is all leading up to one of the most intense climaxes I have seen in films in quite a while. I really don't want to spoil it, but the film would be worth watching just for the last 15 minutes. But you shouldn't have to watch it just for the last 15 minutes, because the first 93 are all excellent as well.

28: Insidious

The second truly scary movie directed by James Wan, Insidious is an imperfect film. The parts that work really work, and the parts that don't really don't. But underneath its problems with writing and pacing, there is a genuinely chilling ghost story with a unique and interesting visual style.

The film is at its best in the first hour. Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) is being haunted by ghosts after one of her three sons, Dalton (Ty simpkins), falls into a coma. Her husband is avoiding the problem by taking on increasing responsibility at work, leaving her home alone to be terrorized. Most of the scares occur during the daytime, which is a bold move that helps the film stand out. She is completely alone during the day, but she can't leave her son in a coma to the ghosts. It is a great setup, and it comes with a great payoff.

There is one scene in particular that really makes this film a must watch in my opinion. It happens right after the family moves out of their house and into a new, hopefully less haunted one. Once again, it is broad daylight. The soundtrack is entertainer Tiny Tim's “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” (You might know Tiny Tim best from the pilot episode of Spongebob Squarepants). The ghost is just a small child. And yet, it is still bone-chillingly terrifying. I've studied this scene trying to figure out what makes it so good, and I haven't figured it out.

But, with a film like insidious, it is hard to gush about all the things it does right forever. The film has some real structural problems that drag it down. The film is guilty of a major plot dump about an hour into it, in which a paranormal expert talks nonstop for five minutes about the finer points of astral projection. About ten minutes later, she does it again, this time about her previous history with the family.

The story lacks cohesion. The first hour is all about the mother being terrorized by ghosts. But in the second half, the father ends up the protagonist. The film can never really decide whether it wants Dalton to be an actual character or just a mcguffin. There are actually two other children in the film, but they seem to disappear into the aether whenever they aren't saying something creepy. And each person seems to have their own personal ghost who wants to kill them and them alone for some arbitrary reason (and what's worse, Dalton's ghost looks like Darth Maul). In the end, the problem is that its not a family being haunted; it is a succession of individuals who live in the same house being haunted one at a time.

Its hard to argue that Insidious is a great film, but it does still manage to be a great horror film. James Wan squeezes dread out of every frame. Each scene manages to scare you in a new way. From a paranormal expert performing a séance while wearing a world war 2 era gas mask to a family of ghosts with demonic smiles that stand as still as mannequins, its pretty hard to not be impressed by the visuals he presents.