Tag Archives: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

20 Best Horror Films of the Past Decade

Posted on by Arleigh

The Aught’s, as some people have come to call this decade about to end, was actually a pretty good decade in terms of the amount of quality horror that showed up on the big-screen. We had some channeling the nastiness of the 70’s exploitation era while a couple ushered in this decade’s era of the so-called “torture porn.” There were more than just a few remakes of past horror films. Most of these remakes were quite awful compared to the original, but more than a few managed to end being good and held their own against the original.

Some of the titles I will list will eschew gore and the shock scares for a more subtle and atmospheric approach. More than a few straddled not just horror but other genres like comedy, drama and sci-fi. If there was one major observation I was able to make, when collating what I thought was the 20 best horror films of the decade, it was that the Foreign studios really came into the decade with a vengeance.

While I consider these horror films on this list as “the best of…” it is still my opinion and I am sure there will be people who will disagree, but even if people do not agree with all my choices it would be hard to dispute any of them as not being good to great in their own way. Like my similar Sci-Fi list this one will be numbered but only for organizational sake and doesn’t determine which film is better than rest. They’re all equal in my eyes.

  1. The Mist (dir. Frank Darabont)
  2. Splinter (dir. Toby Wilkins)
  3. Let the Right One In (dir. Tomas Alfredson)
  4. Hostel (dir. Eli Roth)
  5. A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Ji-woon)
  6. The Descent (dir. Neil Marshall)
  7. Martyrs (dir. Pascal Laugier)
  8. 28 Days Later… (dir. Danny Boyle)
  9. Bubba Ho-Tep (dir. Don Coscarelli)
  10. Dawn of the Dead (dir. Zack Snyder)
  11. The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro)
  12. Frailty (dir. Bill Paxton)
  13. Kairo (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
  14. Shaun of the Dead (dir. Edgar Wright)
  15. American Psycho (dir. Mary Harron)
  16. Inside (dir. Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Mary)
  17. The Orphanage (dir. Juan Antonio Bayona)
  18. The Devil’s Rejects (dir. Rob Zombie)
  19. Slither (dir. James gunn)
  20. Audition (dir. Takashi Miike)

Honorable Mentions: Saw, Haute Tension, Drag Me To Hell, Trick ‘r Treat, Dog Soldiers, Ju-On, May, Midnight Meat Train, The Ruins, Jeepers Creepers, Ginger Snaps, Funny Games (remake), Shutter, Frontier(s), Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon…just to name a few.