What a long, strange year it's been for horror movies, folks.  Once again we've had a nigh-constant flood of titles pour into our theatres and video stores, each vying for our ever-more-precious viewing dollars.  We've had some horrible movies, and we've had some real winners--what follows is a list of the ten greatest movies I found this year.  

Okay, I'll be honest--it's more like a list of ten OF the greatest movies I found this year, and you wouldn't believe how many times I wound up asking myself, what about this? What about this?  Dude, you can't ignore THIS!  But eventually I managed to shut up the inner critics long enough to put out this list of ten high points of this year in horror, 2008.



Dance of the Dead

This was, in retrospect, the only really GOOD thing to come out of Sam Raimi's horrible idea, Ghost House Underground.  Most of the Ghost House Underground series was basically a who's-who of godawful horror movies from Europe (and it really WAS heavy on the Eurotrash, too), but this one was special.  Not only was it a sweet zombie movie with lots of laughs and plenty of violence, it was also a reason to make you look forward to NEXT year's Ghost House Underground.  Indeed, it was so good a movie that it actually made you willing to forgive Raimi and company for foisting fourteen hours of garbage on us so we could get one sweet movie.



Diary of the Dead

Romero as he was meant to be.  It was well worth the wait when this one managed to hit a handful of theatres in the opening minutes of 2008, showing us that the original was still the best, and that zombies really are scariest when they don't run like track stars.  Featuring some truly great moments--don't tell me you weren't paying attention when the mute Amish guy with the chalkboard came out!--it definitely kept me watching, and the good news only kept coming when, just a couple months ago, I found that there would be a sequel of sorts, and that it had already started shooting.



Bryan Loves You

The phrase "sleeper hit" might well have been invented for movies like Bryan Loves You, a movie that shows the terrifying possibilities involved when a cult goes too far.  This one flew under a whole lot of radars, but I'm definitely in favor of spreading the word on this one as far as it can go.  Not only is it a terrifying piece of fiction, but it also serves as an excellent cautionary tale, and an all-too-likely look at what just may be.



Masters of Horror season 2 box set

Say what you will about the Masters of Horror series.  You can call it short-lived, you can call it an unstable time bomb of suck that was just counting down to complete implosion, you can call it a great idea gone horribly awry, you can even call it occasionally good.  But one thing you can never say about this series is that they got chintzy with the box sets.  The first time around, they packed all the DVDs in a rather nondescript but still fun mausoleum.  This time, they ratcheted up the creepy factor by giving you an actual SKULL to play with with a detachable cap containing, as though it were the brain, an array of DVDs.

Killer Pad

Robert Englund's first directorial outing of the twenty-first century, and his first directorial ANYTHING in almost twenty years (seriously, his last one was an episode of Freddy's Nightmares back in 1989, and if I wanted to apply the "movie" modifier to it it WOULD be twenty years--976-EVIL back in 1988.), Killer Pad was a laugh riot of horror in the grand style of Idle Hands.  Get three idiot horn dogs together in a house that's actually a portal to hell and let them throw a house party in it?  And THEN add a crossdressing Bobby Lee?  How can you not love this?



The Slaughter

When I saw this movie a few months back I was downright amazed.  I was actually issuing comparisons to this and the great classic Evil Dead.  And when you can make that kind of comparison, especially in a positive light (as in not something like "This piece of garbage will NEVER be as good as Evil Dead."), you know you're in for a treat.  And The Slaughter, with a great twist ending, was indeed a treat worth watching.



Evil Aliens

The funny kept going strong in Evil Aliens, a blood-soaked carnage romp with laughs and the single best (and most destructive) use of farm equipment I've seen in the last five years.  Sure, it was so British it made Tony Blair look like George W. Bush, but that doesn't detract from it.  If anything, it makes for a clever little window into what the Brits like to do with their horror. And it's nice to have one BESIDES Shaun of the Dead and 28 (insert time intervals here) Later for a change.

Cloverfield

I have a special place of affection for Cloverfield, because it employs a camera method that I've always loved and wanted to see more of--the pure first-person shot.  It's done unto death and beyond in video gaming (first person shooter, anyone?), but in movies it's extremely rare.  With the exception of The Blair Witch Project and a handful of lesser titles like The St. Francisville Experiment, it's simply not done.  Thus, I add Cloverfield to my list because they did what almost no one else could.

Saw V

This one should seem like a strange choice to land on the top ten of 2008, and there's a good reason it's here.  Of course there is--why would I put it here if there weren't?  Anyway--the reason in question is that Saw V, under the direction of newcomer and on-his-way-out-er David Hackl (seriously, he won't be back for six.), singlehandedly managed to turn around a Saw franchise that I thought was in deep and desperate decline.  After watching Saw IV, I was convinced that the shark had been well and truly jumped.  I was convinced that Saw V was going to be more of the same...until I saw it.  And it was actually pretty good!  The fact that it didn't suck let it beat almost all of my expectations, and it was actually good enough on its own merit to put it in the top three Saw movies, after one and two.  Okay, so maybe it's in a tie with three, but the point remains.  It was wildly, WILDLY, better than four, and for giving me just a little extra hope for six, Saw V lands on the top ten.



The Haunting of Molly Hartley

This one came as a total surprise to me.  Oh, sure, I knew it was coming to theatres--there'd been advertising enough for it and even my local theatre was getting it--but it still struck me somewhat by surprise.  I decided to watch this one back-to-back with Saw V, because it was the kind of day where I relished the thought of camping out in a theatre for hours on end and I really wanted to soak the place on free drink refills and twenty-five-cent popcorn refills.  Yes, those are ACTUAL OFFERS at my theatre of choice.  But anyway--I watched The Haunting of Molly Hartley first, figuring that if nothing else Saw V would be good for a laugh after the idiocy that was Saw IV, and I had no idea how Molly Hartley would turn out.  And indeed, I was surprised.  The Haunting of Molly Hartley was a thriller that came from out of nowhere to astonish me thoroughly.  If you missed it in theatres you did yourself a serious disservice--don't repeat that mistake when it hits on video.

And that's it for this go-round, folks--join me next month when I'll be talking about the stuff that's got me most excited for 2009!

- Steve Anderson