10: Audition

One of the signs of a great director is his ability to create the proper weight in all of his scenes. You will see a lot of horror movie director's pile the gore on, trying to gross people out with the sheer quantity. That doesn't usually work out because having such excessive amounts of gore tends to pull people out of a story. People have no idea what it feels like to have an arm severed cleanly with a machete, where the body seemingly offers no resistance. Scaling the gore back makes it more personal. Scaling back the gore and adding proper weight makes movies feel much more violent than they really are. You will see this effect if you go back and watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The film audition does something remarkable: it takes what easily could have been a cartoonishly ridiculous amount of gore and gives it enough weight to be incredibly effecting. This is as disturbing as it sounds. This film has scenes of torture and madness that you would be hard pressed to see done better in any other film. Scenes in this film would have had me and my friends laughing hysterically if they weren't so disgusting. The film is hard to watch even when nothing is going on.

The story is fairly bare bones: Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) sets up a fake audition to try and find the perfect girlfriend. He meets Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), who he falls in love with almost immediately. She turns out not to be perfect. Unbeknownst to him, she is dangerously obsessed with him. She sits at her phone day and night waiting for his call. She is also completely inconsiderate, barely even feeding the person she keeps tied in a burlap sack in her apartment (it's also a bad sign that she keeps someone tied up in her apartment).

One of the thing's I like best was the build-up. The film is very slow. We know almost immediately that she is dangerously insane, but we still watch their romance unfold. There are scenes that are almost heartfelt, but because we know it can't end well, they wind up bittersweet. Once he start's checking out the girls past, we start seeing the breadth of her insanity. You never actually see her hurt anyone until the final third of the movie, but there are stories and rumors that will make your skin crawl.

Once the torture scenes start, the film seems to go completely insane. Aoyama, who spent the whole film being a sweetheart, is still a sweetheart as she is murdering people. Slowly. She giggles childishly as she cuts through body parts with cheese wire. The tension was so high throughout the film,You never managed to get comfortable, and then the film ends with one of the most uncomfortable scenes I think I've ever seen. Actually, that's not true: the film doesn't end there. Takashi Miike manages to torture you for even longer after that scene.

Audition is a film of great moments. I've never been able to get some of the scenes from this film out of my head. The film maintaned such a sense of dread that it put my teeth on edge. The film didn't have to set up a scare to be scary, so when it did it was absolutely insane. If you only watch one horror film by Takashi Miike, watch Audition.

11: The Host

When you think of east Asian countries where monster movies are popular, you probably think of Japan and Japan alone. In the last ten movies, there was only one really great monster mash, and it was made In South Korea. The Host is really compelling, simultaneously sprawling and contained. The events in the film are large-scale, effecting the entire country in one way or another, but the film itself stays incredibly focused on how those events effect a single family. The film gives up a bit of scope compared to something like Godzilla, but instead gains a major dose of humanity. It was a good trade.

Gang-du Park(Song Kang-Ho) is a bit slow. He works at his father's snack stand cooking squid and falling asleep at the job. He has a problem supporting his daughter Hyun-seo, but he is managing. He is the big screw-up of the family. His sister is an Olympic-class archer, and his brother is a college graduate. He's been coasting through life on the skin of his teeth.

When a monstrous creature surfaces from the Han river, his daughter goes missing in the confusion. Everyone who was brought in contact with the monster is taken into the custody of the U.S. Military, because of a virus scare. Now the family has to escape the government to find Hyun-seo and save her from the beast. They all put everything on the line to try to save Hyun-seo.

The virus scare is only a ruse. It's covering up the fact that the government poured hundreds of gallons of dirty formaldehyde into the river, which created the monster in the first place. As they get more and more desperate to kill the beast and hide their mistakes, they decide to release a toxic chemical called Agent Yellow to kill the beast and to serve as an anti virus agent for the virus that doesn't exist. It's not that often that the Americans are portrayed as the bad guy in a film, so it could turn some people off. The government brings in dangerous chemicals and weapons, but the people on the ground don't have respect for the place they are occupying, so screw-ups happen. It does give pause to think that the government's actions in the film are based on real events in recent history.

The film's tight focus works well with the film's themes. Governments are too focused on the big picture, so a single family tragedy is below their notice. Hurting one man to keep up appearances seems like a reasonable trade on the macro level, but it is obviously monstrous from that man's perspective. In addition, keeping the focus on the family allows for some genuinely touching moments. All of the main actors are solid, and all of the characters are amazing. Any scene where the whole family is together is a scene worth watching.

Perhaps the film's one weakness is its poor CGI. The film was made with a $10 budget, a titanic amount for a Korean film, but not quite enough to make it rival a proper Hollywood production. The monster itself is impressively designed, and entire film is well-directed. The film is set to have a Hollywood remake soon, but I doubt it will look any better. A skilled director with a good design and bad effects tends to look better than an average director with poor design but great effects. 

12: American Psycho

Horror and Comedy inherently work well together. When a film ramps up the tension, the audience is looking for an excuse to laugh. A good joke right then would send the entire theater into stitches. That is why so many horror films have unintentionally hilarious bits, little things that wouldn't be noticed in another genre wind up causing gales of laughter in a slasher. The comedy works as a release of tension, essentially working in the same way a cheap jump scare would. Audiences will remember a great bit much more fondly than they will a cat jumping out of a closet at them. As an added bonus, the right brand of pitch black comedy can be funny in the moment, but also deeply disturbing once the laughter dies down. It's very tricky to pull off, but when it works it really works.

American Psycho is the king of disturbing black horror comedies, and it is all because of Christian Bale's performance. He plays Patrick Bateman, the king of vapid consumer culture. The only thing he likes more than reservations at the most expensive restaurant in town is dropping hints about his murderous hobby. He is cold and arrogant, obsessive and cruel. He has no real connection to his friends, they are just people who admire his stuff. He doesn't really know the first thing about them, and they don't really know the first thing about him.

At first, this is played up for some laughs. He and his friends all buy $600 dollar suits, but they all look identical to each other. In their spare time they admire each others business cards. Patrick Bateman almost cries when he realizes that his is inferior to Paul Allen's. No one can tell any of them apart, because they all make such an effort to look “good” that they all look identical. At one point, the whole gang starts making fun of Patrick, not realizing that he was still among them. Even when killings start happening, they somehow wind up funny.

The film never lets up, though. At some point, a switch seems to flip. Patrick Bateman's cold emptiness starts becoming more and more creepy. The character never changes, the film doesn't even really change. It just keeps going, and you start realizing that the film was serious the whole time. The second half doesn't have a whole lot of laughs.

One of the things I like most about the film is what it leaves unstated. In order for his friends to not realize how empty Patrick Bateman really is, how uncaring he is, they would have to be as uncaring themselves. None of them really care about anything, they are all just going through the motions. They go through all of these rituals because that is what normal people do. Any of them could be doing anything and none of us would even know. That's a very scary thought. Their alleged friend is going through a mental breakdown and no one even notices or cares. Even more, we never really know just how much of the film happened, and what bits were all in the main character's head. This is all capped off by one of my favorite lines in film history.

“there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. "

The ending of the film is that there is no ending. It was all meaningless. It couldn't have ended any other way.

13: Battle Royale

You'd be hard pressed to find a film like Battle Royale made in America. The subject matter, brutal violence done to children by children, is one of the few big taboos that American studios won't touch. Even in the age of Saw style torture movies, there are still lines that Film producers won't cross. There isn't a whole lot of demand for a movie like Battle Royale, and for good reason.

The story is very minimalist. The government fears that the younger generation will overthrow their regime, so to keep them in line they cart a busload of 13 and 14 year-olds to an island and have them kill each other. The last living person is free to go. If more than one person is alive after three days, they all die. “Exchange Students” who appear to have extensive combat training are constantly trying to cull the herd.

The film really tries to hammer home the wrongness of the events. There is an extremely perky assistant who enthusiastically explains how and why people are going to be killing each other. The children all look like children and act like children would act. They group together with their closest friends and try to wait it out. They all know they can't wait it out, they just try not to think about that. As the days go on, something's gotta give.

It is easy for a film with such over the top violence to appear campy, but it never crosses that line. This is a film that has massacre after massacre after massacre. The film is full of nameless people killing and being killed. Unlike in a slasher film, there is real weight behind it. It is a tragedy when a nameless character dies in this film, as it should be.

There is a surprisingly prolific genre of films that throw innocent people into arenas and force them to kill each other, but Battle Royale is my personal favorite because it emphasizes the political aspect. The film has 42 students as victims, an unusually high amount for this type of thing. It allows them to throw bloodbath after bloodbath at the audience, have deaths of real meaningful characters, and still have more to give. One of the film's most affecting scenes was a group of 8 students holed up in a lighthouse. One is convinced that her friend is a murderer, and she slowly becomes more and more paranoid about it. Eventually, she tries to poison her food. Once this is found out, everyone in the lighthouse starts butchering each other. Someone was trying to kill them, and they had to protect themselves. None survived.

Battle Royale hammers home the same points again and again. It never moves to far beyond its central concept, but it does that concept so well that I can't help but be impressed. After watching Funny Games, I am convinced that the best way to speak out against violence is to show the result of violence, and Battle Royale does that well. Check it out.

14: The Hamiltons

A family is shattered by the death of their parents. The eldest brother David Hamilton (Sameul Child) is desperate to try and pick up the pieces, assuming all of the responsibility in the house. The Fraternal twins Wendell (Joseph mckelheer) and Darlene (McKenzie Firgens), on the other hand, just want to do whatever they want, to hell with the consequences. The youngest, Francis, is just starting to go through adolescence, an he doesn't really get the rest of his family. He's the only one who ever questions the morality of capturing people and torturing them for their sweet, sweet blood. Did I not mention that? They're also cannibals.

The core of the movie is the idea that Francis is an outside observer to all of these goings-on. He doesn't like the killing, but he loves his family too much to turn them in. He doesn't have any friends other than his family because the family is constantly moving from place to place. Eventually, he winds up getting really close to one of the victims they have locked in their basement. She keeps trying to convince him to abandon his family and his home by letting her out of the cage. The character of Francis is incredibly sympathetic, no matter what he chooses he is the only one who pays the price.

David Hamilton, on the other hand, is just generally unnerving. He is really flat, he is constantly trying to be the perfect older brother. No matter what he is doing, he always has the same posture, the same tone. He has nice conversations with the people he is murdering, as he is murdering them, and he gets upset that the conversation seems really one-sided. That's just rude after all, he was asking them a question. He gives off this vague sense of danger, you never really know what he could be thinking or doing. For all you know he could be ready to explode at any time.

You always know what the twins are thinking, because they are always thinking the same thing: Let's terrorize some people or have sex. It's hard to discuss one twin without simultaneously talking about the other. They are one and the same in a lot of ways. They give no thought to the consequences of their actions. They'll lure a kid from school home and viciously murder them, only for the kid to turn out to be the daughter of a police officer. They are the sole reason the family is constantly moving. They are predators, they enjoy the thrill of the hunt. Whereas David needs the control of someone tied down to get his work done, they enjoy a runner. The slight chance of them escaping is part of the fun. They are incredibly close, much closer to themselves than they are to anyone else in the family. They are very, very close. It's disturbing.

The Hamiltons is another After Dark Horrorfest film, and it really sold me on the idea of the Horrorfest. This film is pretty unorthodox. Watching a bunch of flawed but interesting movies Isn't a bad way to spend a day, especially if every once in a while you get to watch an excellent interesting movie. Even if you don't like the Hamiltons, you are unlikely to see anything like it for a while.

15: The House of the Devil

The '80s were a great time to be a horror fan. All of the kids who spent their nights watching The Curse of Frankenstein had grown up to direct horror films of their very own. Studios, emboldened by the box office success of films like Jaws and Alien, were willing to sink real money into films they wouldn't even have touched before, and special effects had advanced to the point that a good team with no money could look almost as good as a big budget film. And the 1980 release of Friday the 13^th would lay the blueprint for the the entire slasher Genre. So, while I was counting down horror movies from the '00s, I couldn't help but start missing the '80's. House of the Devil saved the day.

House of the Devil is indistinguishable from a film from the '80's. It takes the idea of the old school throwback and commits to it fully. The people listen to The Fixx on their Walkman's while driving around in old school Volvo's. The main character is a babysitter who is preyed upon by a satanic cult. It uses camera angles and zooms I never realized fell out of favor until I recognized them in this film and noticed I hadn't seen them in a while. The film was released on VHS, Seriously. It's actually hard to believe it came out in 2009.

While the film's basic setup, a babysitter whose sitting for a bunch of murdering satanists who wants to sacrifice her, sounds like just another gory shlock-fest, the film actually impressed me. For roughly the first hour, nothing really happens. It's just a slow building of tension. You know what's coming, but not how or when. Sure, there is some blood and murder going on a little bit near the end, but the majority of the film time is just waiting, knowing that somethings gotta give.

In a movie where the main antagonists are satanists hungry for sacrifice, it is amazing that the thing the film focuses most on is the creepiness of babysitting. The film tries to milk the scares from the mundane angle as long as it can before getting into the supernatural elements. She walks around an almost empty house in the middle of nowhere. It's dark, and you have to look around to try to find light switches when you enter a new room because you don't know where any are. The whole place is unfamiliar, the people are kind of weird. If you accidentally break their stuff you have to pay for it, and if you screw up they are going to go look for someone else instead. Babysitting is frankly terrifying, if you get right down to it. The babysitter winds up scaring herself, and her fear infects us.

It's easy to scare someone with a bang and a loud nose, or with a knife-wielding maniac chasing after you. This film scares you when nothing is happening. Jump scares and mountains of gore are all you see in a lot of today's movies. You get almost none of that here. The horror is in an odd bank of windows, or a disconcerting camera angle, or the music suddenly stopping. The director, Ti West, has to know some secret about making great films that I don't. Those were the most compelling 55 minutes of someone slowly walking through a house I've ever seen.

I guess the Devil is in the details.

(I swear never to make a pun that terrible again.)

16: The Descent

Sometimes, life just keeps piling bad stuff on top of each other. Sometimes, you try to get over the death of your husband by going cave diving with friends in the worlds most claustrophobic cave. Sometimes there is a cave-in. Sometimes, you find out that your friends are untrustworthy and cruel. Sometimes the claustrophobic cave with the cruel friends and dead husband is also full of monsters. The Descent is just one bad day that won't end (because you can't see the sun down in the cave).

This film uses the cave system to great effect. Seemingly endless black chambers turn into impossibly small alcoves the group has to squeeze through which turn into steep crevices too deep to see the bottom. The cave oozes atmosphere, and there is a real sense of danger that never really leaves the place. Once you start getting into the more monstrous areas, like a pool of blood covered in viscera or a mountain of bones, it feels like a natural progression. The cave is the antagonist here, and the monsters are just one part of it.

But the monsters themselves are what really makes the movie work. It is suggested that the monsters were just humans that had adapted to the underground environment. This really fits the tone of the film, this idea that the monsters were just humans that had to be wild to survive in the cave. While they never really become sympathetic, there is enough to make you question the morality of slaughtering them. Once the characters in the film start "adapting" to the cave, becoming desperate and vicious, the film really gets interesting.

When the film gets going, the people start turning nasty. Old wounds rise to the surface and old grudges start getting settled. People get separated from each other and lost and abandoned. One person breaks her leg early on, and the question of whether or not to leave her weighs on the survivors. In its own way, the cave claims each of them, body or soul.