It rarely, if ever, gets talked about, but it is possible to find a good horror movie. To qualify, a good horror movie is a good movie with an element of the unnatural that is scary or at least creepy. These movies are generally easy to spot because you’re shocked at the director’s ability to tell a story. I blame the industry. If there weren’t so many terrible and incoherent horror movies the following titles wouldn’t be so stunning.

Descent
A smashing little horror flick about a group of female cave crawlers who fail victim to mutated humans from a distant past expedition. Sounds like a standard horror movie to me. However, the characters are well developed. They aren’t Mamet, but there is a greater degree of depth and interpersonal conflict than a normal horror movie. Additionally, the setting adds tremendously to the plot. Caves are creepy and confine — bad things happen to people in tomb like locations. Moreover by trapping the characters in a cave or series of caves the story becomes plausible. This is a great Halloween pickup for a nice gore-encrusted evening.

28 Days Later
Quickly becoming a classic, Danny Boyle, who won an Oscar last year for Slumdog Millionaire, redefined zombies by allowing them to run, yell, and ooze. Plus the backdrop of London/England makes the vista shots more interesting.

Zombieland
Sometimes it’s not about doing something original, it’s about doing something right. Zombieland is going to rise as a horror cult classic. The production values, writing, acting, and directing are all above their more recent (post-28 Days Later) competitors. Wrought with strong comedy elements this self-deconstructing post-apocalyptic zombie fest, this film is still in theaters and no one seems to care. Unless they’ve seen it, then they won’t shut up about it. Do yourself a favor and get in on the ground floor.

Friday the 13th (1980)
Say what you will about the movies that followed, the original is fantastic. We all know the plot and I assume most of us have seen it, but much like A Muppet Christmas Carol I try to watch this once a year.

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