No Real Danger

19 Scarecrows (1988) – A band of thieves trapped in a field with killer scarecrows. Surprisingly well-done for what would seem to be a corny (eyebrow waggle) premise on paper. Good scares, hateable characters, and shocking gore. No wonder it’s something of a cult fav!

18 Good Boy (2025) – A dog and his sickly owner stay in a haunted house. Very impressive, making the dog the main character. Creepy visuals and sound design do most of the horror heavy lifting but there are some great scenes with an unsettling entity. Indy deserves an Oscar!

17 Marshmallow (2025) – A dorky kid finds that the summer camp boogeyman is real! A twisty kid-centered mystery summer camp slasher that really kept me guessing until the end!

16 Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) – A young filmmaker visits the reclusive original final girl of the franchise she’s trying to reboot. Schoenbrun has once again captured creepy vibes and distorted reality on film in a very stylish and distinctive way. 

15 Undertone (2025) – Paranormal investigator podcasters listen to a series of recordings of a woman talking, walking, and singing in her sleep. There is a lot of great creepiness in this story but it crams a bit too much in with backwards children’s songs, unwanted pregnancy, and elder care/neglect/possession. 

14 Primate (2025) – Seems like the whole movie was poorly built around the cannabis-influenced question, “what if a pet chimp got rabies and went ape shit!?” Character logic is absent, dialogue is unnatural, and chimp strength and sentience varies wildly from one scene to the next.

13 Artik (2019) – Hulking weirdo tries to make a young boy his serial killing apprentice but a straight edge punker throws a wrench in that plan. Not a bad effort at all. I liked the killer’s idiosyncratic way of speaking and I’m always happy to see Chase Williamson and Lauren Ashley Carter!

12 Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) – Is the troubled asshole of a kid a killer or what? A decent whodunnit with sprays of bright red blood and plenty of hateable characters. Not quite exciting enough to have earned its cult status.

11 Dolly (2025) – A gruesome backwoods killer story with a classic silent hulk menacing those who run afoul of… her! Twist! The kills are gory and Fabianne Therese cements her place among the ranks of scream queens.

10 Landlocked (2021) – An eerie, melancholic tale of loss and memory. Uses real home movie footage from the father and sons lead actors to create an effective sense of dread.  

9 Noroi: The Curse (2005) – Found footage is always a crap shoot and I’m disappointed more often than not. This one is actually pretty good with some creepy visuals and an engaging mystery to follow.

8 Return to Silent Hill (2026) – Gans fails once again to harness the disorienting, thrilling horrors of the Silent Hill games. I appreciate his (mostly) sticking to the story of SH2, but not his overuse of laughable CGI. 

7 The Pied Piper (1986) – Incredibly detailed and morbidly dark retelling of the classic tale from a genius animator. The blend of stop-motion, live action, and traditional 2D animation works perfectly to tell this dark story of a town full of selfish, greedy assholes.

6 Scanner Cop (1994) – Without Cronenberg writing or directing, this strange offshoot of the Scanners series lacks the creative vision of the auteur but delivers some good weirdness nonetheless. A solid straight to video effort with clever hallucinatory freakouts (and the requisite head bursts).

5 Evil Dead Burn (2026) – A brutally fun entry into the modern ED universe with just the right amount of nostalgia-stoking fan service. It does a good job of injecting some humor back into the franchise while keeping things tense and gory. 

4 Deadly Friend (1986) – This one gave us a great head popping gif but rightfully didn’t leave much of a mark in the annals of horror filmdom. It’s pretty hokey and the makeup effects are not the best but it wasn’t wrong about not trusting AI I guess.

3 Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) – An overlong, muddled, and mis-titled possession story that wastes too much time wheel spinning between decent gory set pieces. 

2 The A-Frame (2024) – A very watchable homage to Cronenberg’s The Fly with an antagonist who will remind viewers of the tech bros who are recklessly chipping away at society in the name of “changing the world”.

1 Cube (2021) – A misguided remake that replaces characters who are deliberately written to be up to the challenge of the mysterious experience with characters who are just warm bodies, and swaps an inscrutable psychological experiment with magical tech bullshit (and maybe something about child abuse?).