The Best Horror Movies of 2023

While the industry as a whole felt more downs than ups this year, horror films continued to be a consistent attraction overall. While the studio hits were not quite as splashy as they were 2022, the year saw the birth of new franchises (M3GAN, The Pope’s Exorcist, Talk to Me, Thanksgiving), the revitalization of the reliable favorites (Evil Dead Rise, Insidious: The Red Door, The Nun II), and reminded us just how essential writers, actors, and the all the creatives both in front of the camera and behind it are to making any of this not only work, but sell.

As for the big horror trend this year, controversy was thy name. While there were a few entries critics and audiences were able to rally around, most of them drew conflicting opinions — which this list is surely proof of.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Skinamarink, The Outwaters, Cocaine Bear, Beau is Afraid, A Knock at the Cabin, The Exorcist: Believer, and Five Nights at Freddy’s all had their defenders and detractors. Wars were fought but few were won with anything resembling a consensus. Only time will tell how these films will be re-evaluated if they will at all.

And speaking of Five Nights at Freddy’s, Blumhouse’s adaptation of the popular video game series became the highest-grossing horror movie of the year, speaking to the year’s other big trend. PG-13 and gateway horror made a comeback in a big way. From M3GAN, The Boogeyman, Insidious: The Red Door, and It Lives Inside, newcomers and young genre fans had plenty of options to choose from, without having to rely on their parents’ buying tickets or sneaking in. While most of these films offered plenty for adult audiences as well, don’t be surprised if the breakaway success of Five Nights at Freddy’s leads to further horror offerings geared towards younger viewers on the big screen in the coming years.

What did not trend this year, unfortunately, was Dracula. While I found them to be unique and well-made twists on Stoker’s iconic novel, both of Universal’s Drac-centric offerings, Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, failed to connect with audiences or critics. Are The Count’s days in the moonlight done? Not a chance. While studios may be hesitant to pursue unconventional takes on Dracula, Focus Features and Universal will bring Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu to the screen next December, which is sure to chill the blood. And what about those other classic monsters? Fear not! Universal has Radio Silence’s untitled Universal Monster project and Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man hitting cinemas next year. And the master of monsters himself, Guillermo del Toro is finally filming his adaptation of Frankenstein next year for Netflix.

While the strikes resulted in a slowdown in major news, the biggest story in the realm of horror was Miramax beating out A24 for the rights to the Halloween franchise, which will continue across film and television — and stand separate from recent Halloween filmmaker David Gordon Green’s completed narrative. Other news included James Wan and Jason Blum moving ever closer to consolidating their horror banners Atomic Monster and Blumhouse, and Sony revitalizing Screen Gems to focus on horror with writer-director, Gary Dauberman (It, Annabelle, The Nun) signing a first-look deal.

Now, as we get ready to put 2023 in the rearview mirror, it’s time to celebrate the best horror of the year, both the major theatrical releases and the independent and direct-to-streaming releases. But first a quick aside: Last year, I was asked several times about the reasons for the category split of two lists. “Shouldn’t independent features be able to ‘compete’ on the same level as the studio ones?” My answer is, of course. Yet, these lists are a celebration and I’ve often found that when anything is ranked by 20 or more, people tend to scroll right down to 10 and look for what they’re familiar with while ignoring the rest, or worse, looking at the 20th spot as something skippable. And since this is about showcasing as many of the best horror films as possible (except for Godzilla: Minus One, which I was unable to see in time) I present to you two essential top ten lists, crafted with an awareness of both the distribution means and budgets at their disposal. Rather than let the numbers keep you up at night, let these movies do the trick instead.

Best of the Major Releases

Sophie Thatcher THE BOOGEYMAN
Sophie Thatcher THE BOOGEYMAN

10.  The Boogeyman

Rob Savage expands on Stephen King’s short story of the same name, creating a new lore surrounding the cross-cultural nightmare of the Boogeyman. Therapist Will Harper (Chris Messina) struggles to create a sense of normalcy for his two daughters, Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) following the death of their mother. After finding the body of one of her father’s patients (David Dastmalchian) in their home, Sadie begins noticing a strange mold growing in their home, and a creature, visible only out of the corner of her eye, that seems to have set its sights on her family. Savage, previously known for his found footage horror films, creates a similarly immersive experience within this traditionally formatted film. While The Boogeyman doesn’t re-write the rules of the genre, it feels like a classic crowd-pleasing horror flick with strong performances, visually impressive set pieces, and a great monster, a strong reminder of why so many of us fell in love with the genre in the first place. And what better way to communicate that than through the universal concept of the first creature who taught us to fear the dark?

COBWEB
COBWEB

9. Cobweb

Samuel Bodin taps into childhood fears in this Halloween set spookfest involving a young boy, Peter (Woody Norman), and his suspicions that his parents, Carol (Lizzie Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr) are hiding something from him, something potentially dangerous that can be traced to the scratching he hears in his bedroom walls at night. With only his teacher, Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman) to rely on, Peter begins to excavate the secrets of his parents and his very neighborhood to discover the horrifying truth. Operating almost like a reverse tale of Hansel and Gretel, Cobweb posits the question, “What if you were already living in the witch’s gingerbread house and just didn’t know it?” In further tying the tradition of fairy tales to horror, Bodin delivers a bone-chilling experience with standout performances and a hell of a third act. It’s a film that deserved a better release strategy than Lionsgate gave it, and feels like it has the potential to become a Halloween cult favorite.

A mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts in THANKSGIVING.
A mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts in THANKSGIVING.

8. Thanksgiving

Sixteen years after Roth debuted the trailer for the fictitious film as part of Grindhouse, and promised to make it into a feature, Thanksgiving is finally here. Set one year after a Black Friday massacre at RightMart, Jessica (Nell Verlaque), the daughter of RightMart’s owner, and her friends Gabby (Addison Rae), Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), Evan (Tomaso Sanelli), Scuba (Gabriel Davenport), Yulia (Jenna Warren) and Ryan (Milo Manheim) begin receiving threatening messages and are stalked by a man dressed as the Pilgrim, John Carver. With the help of Sherrif Newton (Patrick Dempsey), the group tries to outsmart their pursuer, but in classic slasher fashion, they can’t stop the bodies from being carved up. Much to the film’s benefit, Thanksgiving isn’t operating on the level of a sleazy ’70s grindhouse movie. Rather than falling into the trap of the provocative and taboo for the sake of shock value, Roth emerges as a more mature filmmaker, without entirely sacrificing his sense of humor and penchant for brain-altering gore. Thanksgiving is an earnest slasher film that introduces a welcome cast of newcomers and feels like a spiritual successor to the post-Scream run of ’90s slashers.

Amie Donald as M3gan
Amie Donald as M3gan

7. M3GAN

The year kicked off with the viral, camp horror sensation, M3GAN, directed by Gerard Johnstone and written by Akela Cooper of Malignant fame. Don’t let the PG-13 cut of the theatrical rating scare you off (though the unrated version gives adult audiences more of what they want), this killer doll still plays nasty. When roboticist and toy developer, Gemma (Allison Williams) is given custody of her 8-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) she pairs her with her latest experimental prototype, M3GAN, an AI-powered humanoid robot meant to serve as any child’s best friend. As Gemma’s duties as guardian take a backseat to her work, M3GAN steps in and starts taking the role a little too seriously. When deaths start occurring around Cady, Gemma fears her prototype may be beyond her control. Johnstone approaches the subject matter like an ’80s horror paperback, while the cast understands just how to play up the archness of Cooper’s writing. M3GAN delivers the necessary tone that may not make it one of the year’s scariest, but certainly one its most entertaining watches.

Knock At The Cabin
Knock At The Cabin

6. Knock at the Cabin

M. Night Shyamalan delivers his take on Paul Tremblay’s novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, in the way that only he can. While vacationing at a remote cabin, Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldrige), and their daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui) are visited by four strangers, Leonard (Dave Bautista), Redmond (Rupert Grint), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and Adriane (Abby Quinn). The strangers come bearing a message: one of the family members must willingly choose to sacrifice themselves to prevent the end of the world, and for every day they don’t choose a plague or catastrophe will be unleashed on mankind. Although the film takes significant departures from Tremblay’s gripping novel, Shyamalan crafts his own tale of suspense that like so many of his movies, hinges on faith, and the power of human connection even within a world its characters may no longer feel a part of. It’s a sentimental affair to be certain, but Shyamalan never forgets the horror of this scenario and while light on blood, makes expert use of sound in ways that prove to be equally if not more distressing.

Angela Fielding Lidya Jewett and Katherine Olivia Marcum in The Exorcist Believer.
Angela Fielding (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia Marcum) in The Exorcist: Believer.

5. The Exorcist: Believer

David Gordon Green serves up a modern perspective on faith, one directly aligned with his perspective and background rather than trying to walk in William Friedkin’s shoes. When Angela Fielding (Lidya Jewett) and her best friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum) disappear in the woods and return three days later with no memory of where they’ve been and display increasingly disturbing behavior, their parents begin to suspect something supernatural. While Katherine’s parents, Miranda (Jennifer Nettles) and Tony (Norbert Leo Butz) turn to the church, Angela’s father, Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) begins to look elsewhere.

While one neighbor Stuart (Danny McCarthy) introduces him to a rootwork healer, Dr. Beehibe (Okwui Okpokwasili), another, Ann (Ann Dowd) a former novitiate, sends him searching for Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) who decades ago faced her daughter’s possession and wrote a book about it. Together these families and ministries from different walks of life must join to confront the evil with every tool of faith they have at their disposal. It’s true no film can ever recapture the phenomena of The Exorcist and shock the world the way that first film did, so Green pursues what he does most effectively – examining how crisis can shape a community and either bind them or tear them apart. The Exorcist: Believer is a genuine examination of how culture, race, class, and religion share so many similar tenets, yet continue to divide us globally and escalate warfare. It’s a film that has something to offer beyond the status of a “legacy sequel,” and provides commentary that feels particularly timely through its depiction of both religious unity and religious warfare all within a Georgia ranch house.

Lee Cronin Evil Dead Rise
Lee Cronin Evil Dead Rise

4. Evil Dead Rise

The Deadites return in all their gruesome, gnarly, glory in the Sam Raimi-produced and Lee Cronin-directed fifth entry of the Evil Dead franchise. Set in an L.A. apartment high-rise set to be condemned, Beth (Lilly Sullivan) visits her sister, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), and her three children, Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher). Their reunion is cut short by an earthquake that uncovers three phonographic records that contain the secret rites to one of the three volumes of the Necronomicon. Danny, hoping the records contain something of value to help his family, plays the recording and unleashes demonic entities, one of which possesses Ellie. So begins their night of terror, brutal wounds, and gallons of blood as the Deadites spread throughout the apartment complex twisting bones and leaving carnage in their way in the way only Evil Dead can deliver. Cronin manages to pay homage to Raimi while carving his own viscera-strewn path through the franchise that establishes itself within the series continuity and results in a delightfully stomach-churning finale that gives audiences two memorable new horror characters in the form of Beth and Ellie.

Beau is Afraid
Beau is Afraid

3. Beau is Afraid

After shocking audiences with Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster returns with his third feature and an altogether different type of horror which proved to be controversial and (some might argue needlessly) complex. Yet, Beau is Afraid, Aster’s unique take on the horror comedy and the “mommy horror” subgenre is a bold, frustrating, and fascinating odyssey from a filmmaker who commits to his visions each time like he’ll never work again.

It is difficult even to know where to begin with Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), a perpetually anxious man plagued by fears of being both inside and going outside, that the act of sex will kill him, and that he’ll disappoint his mother, head of the Wasserman Empire who has her hands in everything from pharmaceuticals, the food industry, and media. When she dies, with the last wish she not be buried until he arrives, Beau undergoes a phantasmagoric quest to arrive at her estate. Much like a twisted SNL sketch featuring Stefan — ironically Bill Hader does have a small role in this film — this movie has everything: a man-hunting veteran, a 30-minute stage drama interlude, haunting cruise ship flashbacks, weird, sexually-charged mother-son dynamics, Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby,” and a giant, dick monster. Is the film a three-hour exercise in naval gazing? Perhaps, but Aster’s exploration of performance anxiety in all aspects of life uneased me like few films this year and magnifies the scope of what constitutes as horror.

Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in 'Scream VI'
Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in 'Scream VI'

2. Scream VI

After resurrecting the franchise just last year, Radio Silence upped the ante with a bigger scale, more memorable set pieces, and plenty of blood. Moving the action to New York, Scream VI finds the core four, Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega), Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and Chad (Mason Gooding) trying to redefine themselves following the events of Woodsboro. Of course, the past doesn’t go down easy, and a new Ghostface, more competent, and not afraid to use firearms to get his kill, begins targeting the group and their new college friends, while also entangling returning franchise favorites Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) in the bloody mix.

The absence of Sidney, despite the unfortunate salary reasons surrounding Neve Campbell’s exit, allows the new characters to further define themselves and their relationships. In particular, Barrera’s Sam, who operates as a foil to Sid’s classic virtuous final girl, emerges as a more vicious type of final girl, who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and has more than a little of her father, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) in her. While the film doesn’t entirely commit to satirizing slasher sequel conventions, something that’s been increasingly difficult to do with consistency following Scream 2, Scream VI nevertheless does exist as a high mark in the current slasher renaissance, and is self-aware enough to offer its take on current trauma horror trend as well as the idea that characters can offer more to horror than a body count.

Zoe Terakes in Talk to Me.
Zoe Terakes in Talk to Me.

1. Talk to Me

Right out of the gate, twins Danny and Michael Philippou announce themselves as unique, new voices in the horror space, bringing an unquantifiable energy that surely stems from their days making strikingly edited, stunt-heavy, and often dangerous viral videos for YouTube. That same feeling of danger is present in Talk to Me, which centers on a group of teenage friends in South Australia who discover they can commune with the dead by way of an embalmed hand of unknown origin. As teenagers would, they turn the hand into a party game, letting a randomized spirit use their body as a vessel for 90 seconds.

But for Mia (Sophie Wilde), it becomes more than a game. Haunted by the death of her mother, Mia believes the hand is a way for her to reach out to her, but something else reaches back. A shocking tragedy tears Mia’s group of friends, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), Daniel (Otis Dhanji), Riley (Joe Bird), Hayley (Zoe Terakes), and Joss (Chris Alosio) apart, and sends Mia down a path to discover the horrifying truth about where the spirits come from and just how much power they have over the living. Talk to Me is one of A24’s most accessible horror films and strong evidence that sometimes the best horror doesn’t necessarily need to be narratively complex. Still, a great hook, clear rules, and vision with a pulse can bring all the chills and thrills needed to keep you up at night.

Honorable Mentions: Saw X, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, The Nun II, Insidious: The Red Door

Best of the Streaming and Independent Releases

Ralph Ineson in LORD OF MISRULE
Ralph Ineson in LORD OF MISRULE

10. Lord of Misrule

William Brent Bell’s latest showcases yet another subgenre turn for the filmmaker who made this list last year with Orphan: First Kill. Lord of Misrule navigates tradition and warring religions in a strikingly atmospheric folk horror tale set in the English countryside. During an annual autumnal pagan celebration, Grace (Evie Templeton) the daughter of the town’s new minister, Rebecca Holland (Tuppence Middleton) and her agnostic husband, Henry (Matt Stoke), disappears. Rebecca’s frantic search, and reliance on the police and locals pits her against pagan traditionalist Jocelyn Abney (Ralph Ineson), who reveals the startling secret behind their town. While certain to draw comparisons to The Wicker Man (1973), Lord of Misrule feels more akin to The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), while still offering its own monstrous revelations.

Totally Killer
Totally Killer

9. Totally Killer

Like The Final Girls (2015), Happy Death Day (2017), and Freaky (2020), Nahnatchka Khan’s Totally Killer utilizes our ’80s nostalgia, and contemporary social issues to refashion the slasher formula. In this case, it’s Back to the Future (1985) by way of Slumber Party Massacre (1982). When the Sweet Sixteen Killer returns after 35 years and murders Jamie Hughes’ (Kiernan Shipka) mom, Pam (Julie Bowen), a survivor of the original massacre, Jamie feels guilty over their strained relationship. With the help of her genius friend Amelia (Kelcey Mawema), Jamie travels back in time and finds herself 35 years in the past with a teenage version of Pam (Olivia Holt), and a narrow window of time to solve the mystery of the Sweet Sixteen Killer and change the trajectory of the future. Funny and heartfelt with a great lead performance from Shipka, Totally Killer makes a strong case for the continued rise of slasher mashups.

8. Brooklyn 45

Ted Geoghegan’s séance chamber piece interrogates the wounds left to linger in the wake of WWII. On a late December night in 1945, Hock (Larry Fessenden) invites his dearest friends, and fellow veterans Marla (Anne Ramsey), Bob (Ron E. Rains), Archie (Jeremy Holm), and Paul (Ezra Buzzington) to commune with his recently deceased wife, Susan (Lucy Carapetyan). What they discover through their seance is not only that the afterlife is all too real, but so are their pasts which they’ve hoped to bury. The friends’ shocking natures are further exposed by the appearance of Hildegard (Kristina Klebe), a German woman with a connection to Susan, and whom Hock has held captive in his closet under suspicions of her being a Nazi spy. Written in collaboration with Geoghegan’s late father, SSgt. Michael Edward Geoghegan, a quadriplegic Air Force veteran, and later history teacher, the filmmaker offers an empathetic and honest examination of how war lives on, even beneath to pretense of civility.

7. Attachment

Meet Cute becomes meat puppet in this Danish horror film from Gabriel Bier Gislason that breathes new life into romantic horror and the exorcism subgenre. Struggling actress Maja (Josephine Park) becomes suddenly swept up in a whirlwind romance with grad student Leah (Ellie Kendrick). But is Leah as great as she seems? When a sudden seizure leaves Leah with a broken leg, Maja decides to accompany her to her home in England, despite Leah’s protests about her odd mother, Chana (Sofie Grabol), whom she shares a house with. Startled by the strange attachment Leah and Chana have, and Chana’s cruel rejection of her assistance, Maja is drawn into the world of Orthodox Jewish mysticism and Black magic and discovers that something else may have attached itself to Leah. Suspenseful and surprisingly funny, Attachment delves into mythos still largely unexplored in horror while also exploring the nature of selfish and selfless love.

Kaitlyn Dever as Brynn Adams in 20th Century Studios' NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU
Kaitlyn Dever as Brynn Adams in 20th Century Studios' NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU

6. No One Will Save You

One of the year’s biggest surprises landed on Hulu this fall. While the 20th Century Studios film, like Totally Killer, is by no means an indie, Brian Duffield’s largely dialogue-less No One Will Save You is one of the best alien invasion movies to be released in some time. Kaitlyn Dever stars as Brynn, a young woman living alone in her mother’s house and ostracized by those in her small town. But her isolated existence comes crashing down with the arrival of alien invaders with psychic powers and a host of parasites who take over the minds of the nearby townspeople. As Brynn struggles to survive against increasingly fearsome Greys, her past comes into focus and she grapples with the actions that left her shunned. But the real trip is the film’s ending that I can’t stop contemplating which recontextualizes much of who Brynn is as a person, subverts the horror healing trauma narrative, and posits a chilling reality about the inability to relinquish control that may be more horrifying than anything that preceded it.

5. Husera: The Bone Woman

Horror, understandably, has quite the history when it comes to pregnancy, and director Michelle Garza Cervera puts her haunting stamp on it with Husera: The Bone Woman which fuses both body horror and the supernatural in this Mexico-set display of terror. When Valeria (Natalia Solian) becomes pregnant after years of trying, she’s initially thrilled, along with her husband Raul (Alfonso Dosal). But as she’s forced to give up parts of who she is in preparation to become a mother, and is ensnared in judgments of her family who doubt her abilities to raise a child, she becomes increasingly unmoored by this new reality and plagued by visions of a nightmarish woman attempting to kill herself. Believing herself cursed, she turns to her aunt, whose dealings as a bruja force Valeria to undergo a harrowing journey. Haunting imagery and sound design, and the immense range of Solian’s performance, create a gripping portrait of womanhood and societal expectations.

4. When Evil Lurks

Argentine filmmaker Demián Rugna, who crept his way into our nightmares with Terrified (2017), is back with his latest horror feature which some have called one of the bleakest and most disturbing horror films of the year. I may have seen too much horror to get on that train completely, but When Evil Lurks is a gleefully gross-out, feel-bad night at the movies with stunning cinematography, and practical effects that made my stomach turn. As such, it should be on every horror fan’s radar. Two brothers, Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimi (Demian Salomon) move the bloated, seeping body of what they presume is a sick man, only to discover the man is infected with a demon and set to give birth to evil itself. Though they believe dumping the body will rid them of this evil, it turns out its malice is carried by the possessions of those who come in contact with the body, creating an epidemic and, after a horrifying incident involving a child and a dog, forcing the brothers and their family to attempt to outrun the spread of evil and the demonic possession that follows. It’s a road trip into hell where no one comes back the same, that is if they come back at all.

3. The Sacrifice Game

Director Jenn Wexler and co-writer Sean Redlitz refresh multiple horror subgenres with holiday scares in The Sacrifice Game. In using the expectations of familiar conventions to circumvent them, Wexler follows up her debut feature The Ranger (2018) with a film that while operating on a larger canvas, carries a similar punk-rock spirit that boldly rebels against tradition. At Blackvale Academy in 1971, two students, Samantha (Madison Baines) and Clara (Georgia Acken) reluctantly stay behind over the holiday break under the supervision of their kind-hearted teacher Rose (Chloe Levine), and her boyfriend, the school’s cook Jimmy (Gus Kenworthy).

But the burgeoning holiday warmth is cut short by a group of strangers who come in from the cold, Jude (Mena Massoud), Maise (Olivia Scott Welch), Grant (Derek Johns), and Doug (Laurent Pitre) keen on playing torturous games with their victims and in search of a book hidden in the school that holds the final secret of summoning a demon who will grant them their deepest desires. Of course, demons require sacrifice, but the nature of the sacrifice takes an unexpected turn and the game we’re led to believe is being played turns out to have a very different set of rules. The Sacrifice Game taps into the underbelly of Christmas, the loneliness, quietness, and anxiety that can manifest from suspended desire, and receiving something else entirely.

Alexander Skarsgard in INFINITY POOL.
Alexander Skarsgard in INFINITY POOL.

2. Infinity Pool

Brandon Cronenberg’s follow-up to his mind-melting Possessor once again challenges notions of morality, identity, and much like his father, flesh. James Foster (Alexander Skarsgard) travels to the tropical resort of Li Tolqa with his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman), in search of inspiration for his new novel. What he finds instead is a culture of tourists drawn to depravity and hedonism and is quickly swept up in their allure, particularly that of Gabi Bauer (Mia Goth). After a fatal accident that finds him imprisoned and facing death, James discovers the secret of the island: He can be cloned, for a hefty fee, and allow his duplicate to be killed in his place. This option proves to further James’ downfall as he learns the tourists he’s befriended engage in this practice often, having sent dozens of clones of themselves, complete with memories and emotions, to their deaths. As James begins to relinquish his humanity and presumed identity and engage in drug-fueled orgies, he finds himself subservient and easily manipulated by an increasingly unhinged Gabi. Infinity Pool is a wild ride that proves to be a funny, brutal, and cold examination of human emptiness and the performative behaviors we allow to shape us.

Birth/Rebirth
Birth/Rebirth

1. Birth/Rebirth

Laura Moss further modernizes the Modern Prometheus in their debut feature, a female-led reinterpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Emotionally disconnected doctor Rose Casper (Marin Ireland), a pathologist invested in bringing the dead back to life through her fetal tissue, a product of self-induced abortions that have wracked her body, finds her life upended and given new purpose. When she steals her latest test subject, a deceased five-year-old girl named Lila (A.J. Lister) who shares her blood type, she is tracked down by Celia (Judy Reyes), the caring, yet devastated nurse from the same hospital, who is also Lila’s mother.

When the two collide, fear and animosity subside into a reluctant partnership. Rose’s desperation to see her experiments succeed and Celie’s obsession with bringing her daughter back sends both women on a harrowing journey as they break all the rules of medical practice and find themselves caring, each in their own way, for this resurrected child who has been brought back with something…off, and a time-sensitive need for more fetal tissue to keep her alive. Birth/Rebirth is a stunning debut film that pierces the subject of both gender and motherhood with excellent turns from Ireland, Reyes, and Lister, and executed by Moss with the precision and confidence of a surgeon, who knows just where to cut to create the most deeply felt and lingering sensation.

Honorable Mentions: Sick, Suitable Flesh, Skinamarink, Influencer, Apendage

Looking ahead to next year, horror films on the radar include: Night Swim, Lisa Frankenstein, The First Omen, Salem’s Lot, Imaginary, The Watchers, A Quiet Place: Day One, Trap, Speak No Evil, The Strangers: Chapter 1, Alien: Romulus, Beetlejuice 2, Saw XI, Smile 2, Wolf Man, Terrifier 3 and Nosferatu, along with many more yet to be revealed. See you then and stay scared!

Best of The Hollywood Reporter