Vincenzo Natali’s Splice is just about everything I was hoping for: a smart, scary, visceral, well-acted, and good-looking two hours of scifi/horror. That alone would qualify it for accolades, as it’s been kind of a depressing year for both scifi and horror so far.  But what really makes me excited about the film is its odd equal opportunity nature.  With Splice, we finally get a female mad scientist worth the screen time.

Let me back up for a minute and reiterate how much there is to love about the film, in general.  It’s a thoughtful (not quite revolutionary, but still very smart) and provocative take on cloning and genetics. Splice is a story about a couple of hotshot supernerds (dig the Bride of Frankenstein reference with the names of our two main characters: Clive and Elsa) played by Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody, who secretly make themselves a gene-spliced, mutant test-tube baby.  Bloody hijinks ensue.  As a portrait of hip nerddom, it’s practically unmatched in genre film: our protagonists are self-assured, very ironic, and deeply cool young scientists. (Their car?  An AMC Gremlin.  I rest my case.)  A big part of the fun of Splice is that it’s an alternately scary and hilarious film about new parents. (In this way, it reminds me quite a bit of Joshua, an under-appreciated little psychological horror gem about Manhattan parenting.)  Splice taps into so much complicated energy about new parenting that, at times, the character drama overshadows the horror feature – which is saying an awful lot about the acting chops that Polley and Brody bring to the film, since they’re competing for attention with an amazing monster. I can’t help but mention that “Dren,” the mutant baby who starts off looking a little bit like a turkey but who ends up being an uncanny human-like (but definitely not human) creature, is played to perfection as a child by Abigail Chu and as an adult by Delphine Chanéac.  Thanks in part to these performances, seamless visual effects, and some strong writing, the film blurs the line between anthropomorphic identification and compassion in ways that are very compelling, which makes the blood and mayhem (some of it fun, some of it very painful to watch) of the film that much more effective.

Splice doesn’t quite hit Cronenberg levels of unease, but you’ll feel plenty uneasy by the end.  In fact, one of the strangest accomplishments of Splice is the parenting/psychosexual love triangle that it creates between Clive, Elsa, and Dren.  (This film plays with all sorts of Freudian, gender, and family conventions, and just when the audience is about to point its collective finger at either Clive or Elsa and say, “Ok, that’s really effed up,” the other parent comes along and does something REALLY effed up.)  I don’t want to say anymore, because I just don’t want to spoil a single moment of the film.

But what I found truly exciting about Splice was Elsa.  She’s a driven, accomplished young scientist – and a deeply troubled woman with lots of unresolved issues about motherhood.  Her relentless desire to achieve results is clearly grounded in her traumatic childhood, and her conflicting impulses about Dren are rooted in a need to control.  The psychology of Elsa’s character breaks no new ground in cinema. In many ways, her profile is completely stereotypical. But here’s what’s marvelous: Elsa is a completely realized and powerful woman of science.  We get a lot of Pandora’s boxes in scifi and horror, but they’re rarely made by Pandora herself.  And this Pandora is brought to life by Sarah Polley, who is just a great great great actress.  By the end of the film, we really see Elsa as pretty unhinged, and that’s exactly the point: she’s a mad woman scientist.  And like all mad scientists, she must contend with the results of her scientific hubris. Now THAT is breaking some new ground in cinema.

Splice evokes gender in really interesting ways, too. It exploits our cultural anxiety about intersexed creatures (a long-standing horror convention is hybrid creatures, and sex/gender is a common embodiment of that hybridity) even as it raises issues about how Elsa and Clive “gender” Dren. Splice will be fodder for good feminist critique for a long time.  So, yay.

(Despite the fact that I’m recommending Splice like crazy, I would totally understand if new or expecting parents would want to sit this one out.  Yeah.  Also, I want to give a trigger warning about the film, too.)

Daybreakers actually looks less like horror and more like very stylized sci-fi (the presence of Hawke makes it feel all the more like Gattaca) until the first of many buckets of gore are unleashed on the audience (frankly, I haven’t seen this much head exploding since Scanners) at which point you know that you’re in for some serious horror action.  But the premise is smart enough: it’s 2019 and vampires run the show, but they’re about to run out of human blood. Our Hawke hero is a reluctant vampire scientist searching for a blood substitute, who also has a trigger (fang?) happy brother in the vampire army. Enter Willem Dafoe, a redneck former vampire who goes by the name Elvis, and a group of hunted humans, led by the very compelling Claudia Karvan. Rounding out everything is a perfectly cast Sam Neill as a (literal) corporate bloodsucker. There’s a bit of social commentary here – Hawke works for the equivalent of big pharma – but it’s never particularly heavy-handed. Instead, the film is a pretty solid blend of brains, blood and actors who do a good job of selling the script, which gets pretty thin at times. Add to that a solid dose of muscle cars, a lot of cheeky visuals, chimpanzee vampires (chimpires!) the most ludiciously fantastic bloodfeasting sequence – we’re talking SLOW MOTION BLOODFEASTING here, people – and a couple of very good jolts and you’ve got yourself quite a January horror gem.  It’s good!

One other item of note about Daybreakers: being a vampire is seriously uncool in this film.  These vampires are bad. What a refreshing return to form for a supernatural creature that seems confined to handwringing and canoodling with humans in pop culture these days. Hooray for the return of the bloodsucker!

Top of the Awesome

1. Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) (2008). There’s nothing in this decade that really compares to this powerful, chilling, and inventive Swedish vampire thriller. It’s a dark and compelling (not to mention gender-bending) story of unhinged adolescence and mutual need, framed with some of the best cinematography you’re likely to find in any genre. It’s the best vampire film in two decades, and it’s a major addition to horror.

2. 28 Days Later (2002). Danny Boyle’s film about a post-apocalyptic plague is often misunderstood as a zombie film. It’s not, although it’s highly derivative of Romero’s work (in fact, 28 Days Later is like a fast, high-intensity trip straight through Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead). But I don’t say that as a critique. The film is extraordinary, a relentless thriller (about urban nihilism, mayhaps?) featuring a heartbreaking performance by Brendan Gleeson.

3. The Descent (2005). Neil Marshall’s spelunking nightmare is terrifying even before the creepy-crawlies start appearing. The Descent is unrelentingly claustrophobic, ratcheting up the tension between the film’s heroines and their natural surroundings – as well as each other – before letting all variety of nastiness fly. The Descent is also quite a smashing vision of women in horror.

Bring on the awesome!

4. Shaun of the Dead (2004). It’s really a comedy of manners masquerading as a zombie movie, but c’mon, it’s bloody brilliant.

5. The Ring (2002). It’s the only film to make two lists! No, seriously, Gore Verbinski’s remake of Ringu is, in some ways, superior to the original. It’s got better pacing and more tightly-wound action, and is scary even if you’ve already seen Ringu. It’s actually worthwhile to watch them both. I’m sure you’ll agree: English or Japanese, nobody wants that girl crawling out of their televisions.

6. Rec (2007). Speaking of remakes, you may have seen the English-language remake of this (Quarantine) last year.  Quarantine is pretty much the same film, shot-for-shot, but doesn’t quite add up to the original.  Rec makes the best use of the faux-documentary trope in this decade.

7. El espinazo del Diablo (The Devil’s Backbone) (2001). Hooray (again) for Guillermo Del Toro! This is imaginative and wickedly fun horror.

8. The Others (2001). A graceful, old-fashioned ghost story with a perfectly cast Nicole Kidman. Wonderful.

9. The Last Winter (2006). Finally… a worthwhile, modern eco-horror film! Featuring people with missing eyes and ghostly caribous!

10. Ginger Snaps (2000). Well, of course Ginger Snaps is going to be on this list. Not only is it one of the few sincerely feminist horror films, but it’s also a great little werewolf flick that explores all the terrors – natural and unnatural – of adolescence. Woot!

Keep bringing on the awesome!  Here are some bonus picks that didn’t quite make the list:

• Drag Me to Hell (2009). Sam Raimi returns to form in the greatest horror film about passing the buck ever made.
• Dog Soldiers (2002). The other great werewolf film of the 2000s, by Neil Marshall. (Mark my words here: Marshall will be the next John Carpenter.)
• Dawn of the Dead (2004). I really wanted to hate this remake. But it’s actually pretty radical: great acting, big scares, fantastic action. It’s nowhere near as meaningful as the original, but it’s wowtastically entertaining.
• The Host (2006). Mind-blowing monster film from South Korea!

Finis!

Top of the Awesome

1. Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) (1994). This amazing Italian horror film by director Michele Soavi (a protégé of Dario Argento) is a true one-of-kind: a frightening and funny movie about a cemetery caretaker (a fantastic Rupert Everett) who defends a small town from zombies that also doubles as a really sincere exploration of love, death and the meaning of it all. If that sounds a little too heavy, let me assure you that Dellamorte Dellamore is also one hell of a good time: visceral, violent, and weirdly erotic. It’s sublime.

2. Jacob’s Ladder (1990). In many ways, Jacob’s Ladder defies genre categories, falling somewhere between horror, psychological thriller, and drama. Without a doubt, it’s far more haunting than just about any other movie made during the 1990s, so I believe it deserves to be recognized among horror films. And, like many of the films listed in the Horror Hall of Awesome, Jacob’s Ladder derives its power from confusing the line between the real and imagined, reality and hallucinations, and it is extremely effective at making the audience feel just as paranoid and scared as the Vietnam vet (Tim Robbins) at the story’s center. It’s also got some wicked creepy visual effects.

3. Scream (1996). Now that we’ve spent a very long decade watching bad-to-mediocre postmodern horror films, it’s easy to feel less enthusiastic about Wes Craven’s thoroughly ironic slasher. But Scream remains a stellar horror flick: extremely well shot, clever (a little too clever, at times) and chock full of good scares. It’s hard to find actual scares in the painfully overused slasher formula, and Scream delivered them consistently and surprisingly. And the sequels weren’t bad, either.

But there’s more!

4. Cronos (1993). Hooray for Guillermo del Toro! This brilliant and imaginative horror story about a machine that grants immortality feels refreshingly classic.

5. Ringu (Ring) (1998). Whoah, J-Horror! It’s got some showstopping effects, but Ringu trades on supercreepy minimalist intensity. Also, it was really hard to find this film before the 2002 remake appeared, and the feeling of watching a bootleg of it made it all the more surreal.

6. Braindead (Dead Alive) (1992). On a splatter scale of 1-10, this Peter Jackson film rates an 11. It is ridunkulous. Seriously. It’s also hilarious, and features the funniest, grossest Freudian film climax of all time.

7. The Exorcist III (1990). This is a criminally underrated supernatural horror film, and (finally) a most worthwhile sequel to the original. Bonus: cameos from Patrick Ewing, Sam Jackson, Fabio and Larry King. Also, there’s a scene in this movie that scared me so much I almost peed my pants. I would describe it to you, but I’m afraid it would give me nightmares again.

8. Candyman (1992). This urban legend tale (made six years before the first of the Urban Legends hit the screen) is first-class horror: smart, evocative and full of great acting (no really). It doesn’t quite live up to its promise in the end, but that’s only because it promises so much. Also, it has a kick-ass soundtrack by Phillip Glass.

9. Army of Darkness (1993). I’ve soured a bit on Army of Darkness over the years, mostly because its crazy fanboy following kind of exhausts me, but I would be really, really remiss if I didn’t include it. Hail to the king, baby.

10. Ravenous (1999). Cannibalism, Manifest Destiny, Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle and lots of old-timey mustaches. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Coming very soon: the 2000s!  Whew!

Top of the Awesome

1. The Shining (1980). Kubrick’s very liberal adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining draws its power from being unlike most traditional horror films. It’s so quiet and monotonous (even boring, at times) that you almost don’t realize how scared you are until all hell breaks loose. In that way, the experience of watching The Shining is not unlike Wendy Torrance’s experience of sudden dread and terror when she realizes her world has been falling apart all along. What’s more, Kubrick evokes madness, ghosts, psychic phenomenon and family dysfunction in the most economical of ways, mixing the ordinary with the terrifying and then totally confusing the two. The Shining makes the banal creepy and then makes the creepy REALLY creepy. It’s the kind of film than can and does stick in your lizard brain forever.

2. The Thing (1982). John Carpenter’s remake of the The Thing From Another World (1951) is a high-tension chiller, a barftastic visual effects bonanza, and a surprising contemplation on identity (is the shape-shifting space alien changing the men it inhabits or uncovering their primal, unsavory selves?). Carpenter is at his claustrophobic best in The Thing, and the action is all the more unsettling because it’s set against such a vast Arctic landscape, featuring an ending that is at once super bleak and dismaying hilarious.

3. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). A Nightmare on Elm Street derived its scares from collapsing the boundaries between the real and the imagined. It’s now quite cliché for a character in a horror film to wake up in a dream, but Nightmare was pretty much the first – and definitely the best – at making that truly terrifying. It’s also a study in Final Girl ingenuity. How awesome is it when Nancy Thompson (the mighty Heather Langenkamp) gets all MacGyver on her bedroom and then goes into her dream and pulls out Freddy Krueger? TOTALLY awesome. A Nightmare on Elm Street also deserves props for launching a dependably interesting line of sequels. They weren’t always great, and they were never as good as the original, but they always tried to achieve something technically innovative or add something thoughtful and fun with the mythology.

More! More! More!

4. An American Werewolf in London (1981). It’s scary, it’s funny and it features one of the greatest monster transformations to ever appear on screen (the pre-CGI make-up effects in this film are stunning). It set the standard for werewolf films and raised the bar on monster flicks altogether.

5.  Near Dark (1982). Kathryn Bigelow’s Western vampire flick is the best horror film about making a living ever to hit the screen. It’s gorgeous, far smarter than any standard vampire film, and it’s got the cast of Aliens in it.

6. The Changeling (1980). This elegant haunted house story starring George C. Scott is both frightening and moving – a real standout that blends stellar craftsmanship and a good story. It will also make you terrified of wheelchairs.

7.  Pick Yer Favorite Cronenberg: Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), The Dead Zone (1983), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988).  I know I’m cheating here, but any of these films are contenders for this list (and all for different reasons).  David Cronenberg’s 1980s canon is totally unprecedented.

7.  Evil Dead (1981)/Evil Dead 2 (1987). I’m putting these two together so they don’t dominate this list, and also because Evil Dead 2 is both a sorta-sequel and a re-imagination of the first one, anyway. The Evil Deads set the benchmark for both cult films and horror comedies in the 1980s.

9. Re-Animator (1985). An adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft story Herbert West: Reanimator, this film gives Evil Dead 2 a run for its money in both the humor and the gore departments. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

10. The Hitcher (1986). The Hitcher anticipated the legions of cat-and-mouse thrillers that dominated 90s film – but still retains its horror origins and outscares them all. It also features a Jennifer Jason Leigh taffy pull that is not for the faint of heart.

It Came From the 80s!

It would be a crime if I didn’t mention just a few more treasures from this decade….

• Parents (1989). Domestic horror flick about a couple of conservative, cannibal parents directed by none other than Bob Balaban. Whoah!
• Poltergeist (1982). I’m sure this would make a lot of top ten lists, and it’s a near-miss for me.  It’s still very scary, even though we know all of its tricks inside out.
• Hellraiser (1987). The whole of Hellraiser was never quite as big as the sum of its parts, but its parts were completely awesome: great creature ideas, marvelous visuals, and really interesting story concepts.
• Return of the Living Dead (1985). The early standard for zombie comedy.

Next Up: The 1990s!