Fear is terribly subjective, leading to a weird phenomenon wherein a number of the highest critical scores suffer mixed to negative audience scores. Additionally, release dates can be slightly controversial. My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To and A Quiet Place: Part II would both hit the top of this list and did make their theatrical debut this year, but both films actually debuted in 2020, rendering them ineligible. Finally, in the case of a tied critical score, of which there are several, audience score will be the tiebreaker.
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Writer/director Julia Ducournau’s second feature film is a bizarre abstract nightmare packed with graphic body horror, inexplicable eroticism, and stylish brutality. Titane won the Palme d’Or, the highest prize at Cannes, making Ducournau the second woman to win the prize. The film also holds the highest audience score on this list at an impressive 85%. The film is gruesome, but so aggressively strange and well-crafted that audiences couldn’t tear their eyes from the screen.
The story is straightforward, delivered largely through visuals, and the swift pace keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. Titane doesn’t look like a crowd-pleaser, and it’ll definitely be too weird for some, but what it excels at is setting the mood and dropping the jaw. Expectations for Ducournau’s sophomore effort were high after her excellent first film Raw and she’s exceeded them. The world can only imagine what incredible and terrible visions she’ll bring to the screen next.
This engaging thriller sees an unhappy wife handcuffed to the corpse of her husband as part of an intricate revenge scheme. Till Death is the first feature film project of both writer Jason Carvey and director S.K. Dale. The film enjoyed high critical praise for the neophyte’s direction and for a new career-best performance from the star, Megan Fox.
Fox’s career has had some rough spots, but between this and the cult hit Jennifer’s Body, her home is clearly in horror. Her sheer charisma elevates the material to gallows humor and her dedication to the role really shows on screen. This film boasts a refreshingly simple narrative and raises its profile with well-executed fights for survival. Fans of home invasion horror films like Hush or You’re Next owe it to themselves to check out Till Death.
Another directorial debut, Censor is the first feature from Prano Bailey-Bond, with some strong similarities to her 2015 short film Nasty. The film stars Niamh Algar as a strict censor who works to remove distasteful content from cinema during the height of the “video nasty” period in the early ’80s. While diligently restricting content from the masses, she discovers an exploitation film that comingles with her own personal trauma, sending her on a downward spiral that blurs the line between art and reality.
Censor is a visual masterpiece, full of striking color, elegant cinematography, and clever storytelling through editing. Underlining the deeply unpleasant psychological horror lies an incisive commentary on the relationship between on-screen violence, media, fantasy, and its real-world counterpart. This masterful art-house horror is a must-see for fans of the genre and Bailey-Bond’s next project is sure to be hotly anticipated.
The Fear Street trilogy, an interconnected series of horror movies set in the same town in three different time periods and based on the works of R. L. Stine was the talk of the summer. 1666 was the capstone and best-recieved part of the trilogy. The series as a whole takes inspiration from a variety of other horror sources, Part Three has its eyes set firmly on the very specific subgenre which contains The Crucible and The Witch.
As the end of the trilogy, this film recontextualizes its predecessors, revealing aspects of hidden depth that retroactively improve the series as a whole. This film is smart, emotionally powerful, genuinely scary and a great end to a series of thrilling horror hits.
With a whopping 40 point difference, this film has the largest gulf between critical and audience score on the list. This New Zealand horror thriller is yet another feature directorial debut, this time from actor James Ashcroft. The film centers around a couple and their two kids who, while on a scenic hike, encounter a pair of violent drifters in what appears to be a random attack. As the unpleasantness continues and the body count rises, the innocence of the victims is called into question and the grim narrative only sinks lower.
This is a tough watch, its greatest merit is its unbroken tension. After its brief opening scene, nearly its entire runtime is spent in a hostage situation as context slowly emerges. It’s not for everyone, as evidenced by its less than stellar audience reviews, but its sheer intensity and emotional stress make it worth experiencing.
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