12.30
Clatto has never done a “best of the year” movie list before, but we figured what the fuck. Most of the time we’re too lazy to write up a proper review, so this is a fun and easy way to acknowledge what blew us away. Feel free to add your own choices and/or gripes below!
10. CURSE OF CHUCKY
It’s hard to imagine that a straight to DVD Chucky release would end up in a top ten list, but franchise creator and writer Don Mancini surprised fans of the not-so Good Guy Doll with a dark reboot of the beloved ’80s slasher that was chockful of violent fun and just the right amount of nostalgia.
Curse of Chucky once again featured Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky and introduced his sister Fiona Dourif (”True Blood”) as Nica, a wheelchair-bound woman grieving the suicide of her cruel mother while playing host to her domineering older sister’s family.
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9. AMERICAN MARY
American Mary is the story of a broke and disenchanted med school student, played by Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps), who starts to work the underground surgeries circuit for profit and thrills. Twin filmmakers Jen and Sylvia Soska wrote and directed the critically acclaimed thriller.
Isabelle, working off the Soska’s funny and fucked-up script, is a blast to watch as she goes from awkward, but kind, body modification surgeon to sadistic and vengeful torturer out to make the man who raped her, a professor and a renowned surgeon, pay by hacking off his limbs and modifying his frank and beans.
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8. WARM BODIES
Warm Bodies is a romantic comedy rom-zom adapted from Isaac Marion’s debut novel about the unlikely love affair that develops between a zombie (Nicholas Hoult) and the girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) of one of his victims (Dave Franco).
Written and directed by Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane), Warm Bodies rose above what could have simply been a cute hook to deliver a touching and very funny love story that plays with zombie tropes in a way that is fun, but shouldn’t piss off the genre’s fans.
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7. YOU’RE NEXT
Director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett’s You’re Next was praised as unique and terrifying from a variety of movie critics that clearly haven’t seen a lot of horror. That’s not to say the film isn’t good; it’s very good. But, it’s no Strangers.
You’re Next is, however, an exciting and brutal film with a sexy and captivating star in Sharni Vinson. She plays the girlfriend of the Davison family’s eldest son, and their only hope for survival when a group of masked killers invade their vacation home.
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6. THE CONJURING
SAW and Insidious director James Wan’s The Conjuring stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as real-life married demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, best known for their work on the infamous Amityville Horror case of 1975.
Written by Chad and Carey Hayes (Whiteout), the plot—based on true events—follows the horrifying ordeal faced by the Perron family in 1970 after moving into a haunted Rhode Island farmhouse. The film was a bona fide blockbuster, and an example of how frightening good storytelling can be.
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5. AFTERSHOCK
Producer Eli Roth and Chilean director Nicolás López’s Aftershock is a white-knuckle disaster flick inspired by the aftermath of the 2010 Chilean earthquake. A Hangover for horror fans, the film creates a truly terrifying situation that could happen to any of us while visiting a foreign country.
Aftershock stars Roth, Ariel Levy and Nicolás Martínez as dudes whose efforts to get laid by sisters Lorenza Izzo and Andrea Osvárt and their Russian model girlfriend Natasha Yarovenko during a night of club hopping are thwarted when an earthquake and tsunami hit.
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4. NO ONE LIVES
No One Lives is a hyper-violent revenge/slasher that lives up to its title. Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura (Midnight Meat Train), the film stars Luke Evans as a vicious serial killer out to slaughter the gang of lowlifes that made the grave error of abducting him and his female companion in an attempt to rob them.
No One Lives features plenty of gruesome kills and a fierce performance from Evans as the film’s psychopath. His back story is especially fucked up. The flick co-stars stunner Adelaide Clemens (Silent Hill: Revelations), Laura Ramsey (The Ruins) and Playboy model America Olivo (Maniac).
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3. EVIL DEAD
The Evil Dead reboot was directed by Fede Alverez, the aspiring Uruguayan filmmaker who caught Sam Raimi’s attention with an ambitious four-minute-plus short titled Panic Attack. Alverez wrote the screenplay with help from Academy Award winning writer Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body).
In his re-imagining of the beloved 1981 classic, Alverez gutted all humor out of the story and replaced Bruce Campbell’s iconic hero Ash with a teen female junkie trying to kick heroin. It had all the makings of a disaster, but instead proved to be a refreshingly unique remake chockful of gore and disturbing imagery.
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2. DARK SKIES
Blumhouse Productions’ Dark Skies was for some inexplicable reason not marketed like the studio’s other releases (Paranormal Activity, Sinister, Insideous, The Purge), despite being every bit as good if not better. The lack of buzz, along with its stupidly generic title, kept the film from reaching much of an audience.
It’s a shame considering Dark Skies is the creepiest and best written alien abduction thriller since M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton play parents who, after a series of horrifying and unexplained occurrences, believe aliens have targeted their youngest son for abduction.
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1. THE SEASONING HOUSE
Award-winning FX artist Paul Hyett’s (Woman in Black) directorial debut The Seasoning House is a heartbreaking, cat-and-mouse thriller about an orphaned deaf-mute girl forced to tend to the teen prostitutes at a Balkan rape house. When her friend is sexually battered to death, she exacts revenge and flees for her life.
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