Top 5 Horror Films of 2019
By Austin Johnson
I have a separate list for 2019 that considers all films, but this is Filmgazm and we love horror the most so I want to list some films that scared, spooked, and unsettled me this past year. None of these films appear on my overall 2019 list, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy horror. There were a lot of genre benders that just left me flabbergasted. Parasite has some serious horror elements, but I think it’s more of a drama than anything. I don’t know, someone could definitely convince me that it is a horror film. It came in at number 3 on my overall list, partly because of that genre bending I love so much. Some of these films below definitely flirt with that very thing, but when I think of these five films, the first word that comes to mind is horror.
5.) Crawl
“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
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I was bored one day during the summer, so I did what a lot of folks do. I went and saw a summer flick to kill some time. What I got was one of my favorite monster films in recent memory. Alexandre Aja already directed Piranha, a very entertaining monster film from 2010, but Crawl is even better. Mainly because our monsters are piranhas in Piranha and alligators in Crawl. The alligators are fucking giant and they look magnificent on the screen. Kaya Scodelario plays the main character, Haley, who is a competitive swimmer. A massive hurricane hits her hometown and she can’t get a response from her father, so she goes back to find him. What she doesn’t know is that she’ll have to avoid gators while looking for him. It’s a simple set up for a simple film that is under an hour and a half long. There’s absolutely no fat here, just chaos and devastation. This isn’t typically my kind of plot, but if it’s done correctly then it can really hit and that’s what Crawl does.
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4.) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
“Stories hurt, stories heal.”
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What a wonderfully surprising experience! I saw Scary Stories with my girlfriend and Connor in theaters, because we all love horror, so why not? Our expectations were pretty neutral, but we walked out with a really fun experience and some scares that seep into my mind every now and again, mainly that one when that creepy ass lady engulfs Chuck. Gives me the heebie jeebies. André Øvredal clearly has a love for horror when it comes to his work and this film is fucking textbook. Mainly because its source material is a legendary book series of the same name by Alvin Schwartz. The book is for children but not really and same goes for the film. It’s Halloween time in 1968 and three close friends named Stella, Auggie, and Chuck are up for some shenanigans. They get into some shit with this unhinged bully, Tommy Milner who is played tremendously by Austin Abrams. The three friends then run into a drifter at a drive in theater named Ramon played by Michael Garza and he protects them for the time being. The tempo doesn’t really let up after Ramon is introduced and the group stumbles upon a book that will make their nightmares far too real. I love how ambitious this film is with it’s gutsy turns and unique scares. The formula has been seen before, but I rarely see it hit on all cylinders. Scary Stories is something that I could see standing strong for years to come in the horror genre.
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3.) Climax
“Something’s kicking in."
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Climax is a film I came across just because of the deal A24 has with Amazon. A ton of their stuff is on Prime, so one day I decided to throw this on and I’m really glad I did. Well, I don’t know if glad is the right word. Climax is extremely intense and authentically unpredictable with some turns that will surely make you sweat just like the dancers in the film. Our setting is downtown Paris in 1996 with some dancers gathering for a rehearsal and then an after party to drink sangria and socialize. There are 24 total dancers that are all talented, but definitely there with an agenda. The after party gets going, but the dancers start to feel very strange because someone spiked the drinks! Climax is Gaspar Noe’s fifth feature length film and just the second one I’ve seen after Enter the Void. This is a free flowing film that contains a 42 minute shot. I felt like I was being ripped around like a rag doll while watching Climax, making it one of the most unforgettable films of the year for sure. This one is tough, because it technically came out in late 2018 overseas, but it wasn’t available here in the US until March of 2019. Anyways, Climax doesn’t have any big time actors, but instead Noe hired real dancers who were entertaining as hell. The music alone entrances you, but then the camera starts putting you on some sort of visual drug that is violently scary.
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2.) Midsommar
“Well we think of life like the seasons. So you're a child until you're 18 and that's spring. And then at some point we all do our Pilgrimage, which is between 18 and 36, and that's summer. And then from, eh - 36 to 54, we're working age, which is fall. And then finally from 54 to 72 you become a mentor.”
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Episode 21 of Filmgazm features Connor and I rarely disagreeing on a film. That film would be Ari Aster’s Midsommar, his follow up to his masterpiece from 2018, Hereditary. We all love Hereditary, but Midsommar just didn’t quite do it for some of the fans he gained after making a textbook horror film just one year prior to this coming out. Midsommar takes more liberties with genre and quite frankly, copying 70’s cult films, in particular The Wicker Man. This argument simply can’t be won in my head because I like Midsommar. No, I love it. And I really liked Joker, which is extremely similar to Taxi Driver from '76. I don’t mind repeating old tropes if it’s executed well, and I think Ari Aster is a master. He’s worked with A24 on both films and my gosh, the marketing for this one was genius. Misleading, sure, but the music and the colors are absolutely mesmerizing. Florence Pugh gives one of my personal favorite performances of 2019 and I know she is having a massive year with Midsommar, Little Women and signing onto the mega machine of Marvel to appear in Black Widow later this year. I have heard mixed things about all of the characters in Midsommar, but I find them all to be very believable when you consider the amount of drugs they intake from the moment they arrive in Sweden. The first ten minutes of the film are absolutely brutal, containing some of the most disturbing images of 2019. Classic horror set up as our main character decides to deal with personal tragedy by traveling to Sweden with her boyfriend and three of his buddies. Horrible decisions are made as most young adults do in horror, but I always go back to those damn drugs they keep taking. It adds an element of hasty decision making that makes the 2 and a half hour run time seem quite quick in my opinion. Midsommar was an unforgettable theater experience and I can’t wait to see what Aster does next.
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1.) The Lighthouse
“How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks?
Two Days? Where are we? Help me to recollect.” |
And my favorite horror film of 2019 is Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse. Another A24 distribution and a director that gained all of my attention after his first film, The Witch. Connor and I discussed The Witch during episode 36 on the Filmgazm podcast and then talked about The Lighthouse on bonus number 13. Go check those out if you haven’t, because we both have plenty of great things to say about each film. We even saw The Lighthouse together at Santikos Embassy Theater and immediately fell in love. It was a pure treat to watch Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe just do their thing with a thin script in a black and white film. It wasn’t just the aesthetic that stayed with me after watching it though. It wouldn’t be number one if it didn’t stir me up at the core and make me feel utterly frightened and unsettled. There is no way I am capable of actually explaining this film, which is partly why I love it so much. It sneaks back into my mind when I’m thinking about the past year because it sticks out like a sore thumb. All we have is Dafoe and Pattinson, but they prove to be plenty as they drink and manipulate one another on this island in the middle of nowhere. The time of day is never validated and the amount of time they have been on the island is always unclear. The clash between our only two characters is something else. 2019 was fucking great for films and I will not be forgetting The Lighthouse anytime soon.
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