Dread Central’s Best and Worst Horror Films of 2015
Steve Barton
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- Anthony Arrigo’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Ari Drew’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Debi “The Woman in Black” Moore’s Best and Worst of 2015
- The Foywonder’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Gareth Jones’ Best and Worst of 2015
- John Squires’ Best and Worst of 2015
- Matt Molgaard’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Paul “Nomad” Nicholasi’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Stephen Romano’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Todd Rigney’s Best and Worst of 2015
- Trisha Chambers’ Best and Worst of 2015
Paul “Nomad” Nicholasi
Probably close to my sentiments of last year, I find as I have less free time, I am pickier with what I fill it with… and that means all that crappy horror had to go, replaced with an abundance of geeky TV fulfilling my comic book-reading childhood wishes. This year I found waaay more bad than good and instituted a 15-minute “NOPE System” in which, if after 15 minutes I feel myself dying, I turn off the movie. It’s working well for me.
Creep
A man answers an advert to record a dying man’s last words to his son… and everything gets really, really weird. Fantastically, amazingly, awesomely awkward to the point you want to lean straight into the screen and yell ”STOP DOING THAT!” In a world where most horror seems content to jump scare you once, Creep skillfully creates such an intolerable level of intriguing unease that, all at once, you want to look away and never stop watching.
What We Do in the Shadows
A mock documentary from the crew behind “Flight of the Conchords” puts every vampire movie stereotype in a house together to see what happens when the undead stop being polite… and start getting REAL. No, not really. It’s hysterical and charmingly unassuming, with very little forced hilarity.
Backtrack
Adrien Brody drifts through his nearly destroyed life and is quickly caught up in intricate layers of mystery and well-planned and executed plot twists! For most people, that’s enough reason to watch. It doesn’t hurt that the filmmakers really did their homework and know… exactly… what scares you.
Turbo Kid
A boy with dreams of superheroic justice in a land straight out of an 80’s post-apocalyptic movie future befriends a wacky, overly enthusiastic girl. Adventure and vengeance await… and some awesome splatter gore! Turbo Kid answers the question… what if a Troma movie was actually more laughs than groans?
We Are Still Here
After a year of ghost films that went “thud” in the night, it was refreshing to see a tale of friends and family descending on a house in a remote location, only to find A DEATH CURSE!! With baddies that would make John Carpenter grin from ear to ear, this creeper explodes with gore and carnage that will make you check the calendar to see if it’s the 80’s again. Ridiculously bloody, fun horror movies are the best kind.
It Follows
#UnpopularOpinion. An STDemon very slowly hunts down a young girl, often disguising itself as familiar people in various states of disturbing undress that would have the girl running even if the creature were not out to kill. Middle-age men in their tidy whiteys standing on rooftops looking like they are having a chemically imbalanced induced episode does not scare me in the way I think the film intended.
Hellions
Now here’s a film that over-estimated our fear of short people wearing “creepy” Halloween costumes! A young pregnant girl is hunted by otherworldly little folks accompanied by a brain-liquifying score that features relentless choruses of little kids mockingly aping childlike songs without use of words. There lies the only horror to be found in this film.
The Lazarus Effect
Under threat of losing their funding, a group of scientists play Frankenstein in a lab after hours and unlock a horror we are mostly not allowed to see. QUAKE IN FEAR at the thing that kills off camera!! This film plays like a low budget Syfy channel movie with no scares to be found and a concept that must have been a single sentence.
The Gallows
Three “teens” head to a school after hours to trash a school play’s set, thus sparing one of their party from embarrassment while acting in said play, only to find the ghost of a boy killed the last time this play was performed is ANGRY… albeit clueless as to how to strike terror into an audience. ROPE!! FEAR THE ROPE!! Yeah, no. Can you believe I skipped Sinister 2 but saw this in theaters? Yeah, me neither.
The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
Hey, guy who was the mad scientist in the first Human Centipede movie… this is probably going to be your last time to act in any film ever, so we are going to let you chew up nearly every scene and scream your head off, looking like a 90-year-old giant turtle climaxing, while we make all those scenes and everything in between as disgusting and as unwatchable as is humanly possible. Fantastic. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the filmmakers were exacting some sort of fiendish revenge on the film’s financiers… but … you know… they put their money in Human Centipede THREE… so they sort of had it coming.
