2018 has been a spectacular year for horror. It’s not the first time I’ve said it, it certainly won’t be the last, and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you otherwise – no matter how hot the take is. In both film and television, studio and indie cinema, across the board, filmmakers have delivered diverse and disturbing visions of horror in so many subgenres it will make your head spin.
To think we got studio films as unapologetically B-movie asOverlordand as downright bizarre asAnnihilation, that we saw festival films as creative asThe Endlessand unrelenting asHereditary, and that we got new horror series that treated the genre with as much respect asThe Terrorand as much heart asThe Haunting of Hill House. We even got a genuinely goodHalloweensequel! Yes, what a year indeed, and the filmmakers behind the best of the year really brought out all the stops when it comes to scares.
With the year coming to an end, I wanted to celebrate my favorite scares and most iconic horror moments of the year in both film and television, from the pulse-pounding to the soul-crushing. Be aware, I’ve tried not to spoil every detail of a particular moment, but I am talking about very specific scenes from a whole bunch of film and TV shows that dropped in 2018. So this is yourspoiler warning. I’ve tried to keep things somewhat vague, but if you haven’t seen one of these movies or shows, it’s probably best that you skip on down the next title and come back later.
The Haunting of Hill House
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Bent-Neck Lady
Runner Up:The Hidden Ghosts
In the realm of TV, the scariest invention of the year is hands-downMike Flanagan’s ghostly apparition known as the Bent-Neck Lady inThe Haunting of Hill House. One of the many, many ghosts that populates Hill House, the Bent-Neck Lady torments sweet young Nell throughout her life, from her childhood years in the house where the Lady floats above her at night, her long dark hair reaching down towards Nell’s face like a stain, to later in life, where her presence always seems to underscore a deeply traumatic moment in Nell’s journey. And then there’s the ultimate reveal of the truth behind the ghost, a heart-breaking, somewhat mind-bending reveal that gives the Bent-Neck Lady the one thing every great ghost story should have – tragedy. It’s a beautiful, truly haunting story Flanagan cooked up for his instantly eerie figure.
Speaking of figures; it wouldn’t be right to mention theHaunting of Hill Houseand the best scares of the year without giving props to Flanagan’s use of hidden ghosts throughout the series. A spectacular and insanely effective trick that makes you feel as haunted as the Cranes when you realize those ghoulish figures were there the whole time, you just didn’t see them.
The Terror
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Cannibal Camp
Runner Up: The First Death
Inspired by one of the best books by one of literature’s greatest genre novelists (The Terrorby Dan Simmons), AMC’s limited seriesThe Terroralready had a lot going for it, but the visions and character journeys in the final product were the absolute best possible outcome any fan could have asked for – a deadly series character study with moments of piercing terror built on the fragility of the human body and mind. And some pretty good monster stuff too. From the moment the good doctor Goodsir witnesses his first death aboard the naval expedition,The Terrorsets a tone of otherworldly menace mixed with human frailty and that carries through the slow burn series until it boils over in the final episodes. In the finale, Captain Crozier sets out to discover the lost ranks of his men and finds instead only suffering, starvation and madness in the remains of a camp. The Terror doesn’t tell you exactly what happened there, but it doesn’t need to. Bones lie in the fire pits – human bones, bodies line the camp ground and when Crozier discovers poor Lt. Little still alive, his face pierced with chains. Was that a cruelty set upon the lieutenant by one of his men? A final act of madness he inflicted upon himself? Or something more?The Terrordoesn’t answer those questions for you, leaving the audience haunted by mystery with just enough details to obsess over. just as historians and enthusiasts have obsessed of the unanswerable questions of what went wrong in the real-life HMS Terror expedition for centuries.
The Strangers Prey at Night
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Pool Scene
And now, to the realm of film. To my great heartbreak,The Strangers: Prey at Nightwas not one of the best horror movies of 2018. A long fall from the 2008 film that preceded it,Prey at Nightis often too focused on paying homage to classic horror films to become one itself – except in the third act, and in particular, the glorious pool sequence. With glowing neon palm trees and ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ blaring in the background, young Luke (played byBad Times at the El RoyalestandoutLewis Pullman) finally gets one over on the Strangers and kills one of their own. It’s a moment that Pullman nails, the combination of horror and triumph, especially when the sound of an axe on concrete lets him and the audience know this fight isn’t over. Once Baghead shows up, the scene ramps up the action in a viscerally thrilling fight scene that dances above and below the water, bursting with bright light and color, and uses the pool setting to perfectly capture that nightmare sensation of running way too slow. It’s a beautiful banger of a set piece that ensures I’ll leave this movie running anytime it’s on just to watch the pool scene one more time.
The Endless
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Shortest Loop
FilmmakersJustin BensonandAaron Moorheadproved this year that you don’t need a big budget to build a big world with their Lovecraftian nightmareThe Endless, It wouldn’t do well to spoil the whole film, but suffice it to say, theResolutionfollowup (though the filmmakers insist you don’t need to seeResolutionenjoyThe Endless) traffics in time loops. In the film’s third act, Benson and Moorhead’s characters take a journey past and through a number of those loops and Benson’s character discovers a man trapped in a ruthlessly short and violent loop. He tries to communicate as best he can with the seconds he has, and his greyed weary face would be enough to haunt your nightmares, even without his extra-bloody demise repeating in an endless loop. From his wardrobe to the props around him, it’s clear this man has been stuck in his two-second hell for a very long time. It’s a quick sequence, but everything about it works perfectly; Benson and Moorhead let you see just enough to get a sense of the scope behind the man’s torment, but they also leave so much to the imagination that you’ll be pondering on the moment long after film ends. I first caught The Endlessback at Fantastic Fest in 2017, and though I’ve seen the movie a number of times since then, I still get caught up on the queasy sights and sounds of that pitiful micro-loop.
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The One-Take Murder Spree
Runner Up:Laurie Escapes
There are a lot of really good kills inDavid Gordon Green’sHalloweensequel, which makes it pretty hard to chose which one is most expertly crafted. But damn, that extended one take when Michael Myers takes to the streets of Haddonfield once again — that is really something. Green and cinematographerMichael Simmondscompose a love letter toJohn Carpenter’s classic 1978 slasher with the sequence, which trails behind Myers in an extended take as he unleashes his random carnage in the happy homes of the quiet town. They make the iconic slasher villain seem like a force of nature again; a walking game of death that blows where the wind takes him and brings a bloodbath in with him. Those few minutes alone are chilling, spectacularly composed on a technical level, and filled to the brim with affection for the original film, which is to say everything franchise fans wanted.
Like I said, the movie is filled with great moments, and I also wanted to shout out the moment poor Vicky discovers there really is a monster in Julian’s closet and the many, many clever callbacks to the original film — best of all, the moment where Michael Myers turns to find Laurie’s body in the grass, only to discover she’s disappeared. My how the tables have turned, and every single audience I sat with let out a legit cheer in that moment.
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Opening Invasion
Runner Up:Boyce Discovers the Nazi Lab
One of the most spectacular moments of thrilling action this year came at the top ofJulius Avery’s Bad Robot sci-fi horrorOverlord, which drops a troupe of World War II solders into France where they discover nightmare facility packed with Nazi mutants. ButOverlord’s most pulse-pounding moment arrives long before supernatural rears its mutated head. Avery kicks off his action-horror with one of the year’s biggest and best set-pieces; an aerial war scene of the highest caliber that follows the soldiers into battle. Their attempt to parachute into hostile territory goes horribly wrong at every turn; planes exploding and bullets blasting through the hull, and Avery drops us dead centers in the experience, from the nightmare in the skies to the terror of parachuting through chaos and ultimately to the horrors waiting on the ground. It’s a staggering sequence that leaves you breathless from the film’s first moments, perfectly teeing up the audience for the madness to come, and building the sci-fi horrors and mad scientist thrills lying in wait on the unshakeable foundation of the real-life horrors of war.
A Quiet Place
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Birth
Runner Up:The Corn Mill
That. Damn. Nail. We knew it was coming.A Quiet Placedrector and starJohn Krasinskimade damn sure we were waiting for that nail to come into play, and once poor Evelyn (Emily Blunt) pulled it up with her laundry bag, it was a certainty – someone was gonna step on that damn nail. Not ideal in any circumstance, but especially in a world where you have to keep quiet or giant monsters will eat you. So yeah, we all knew it was coming, but what most of us didn’t predict was that Evelyn would step on that damn nail while she was alsoin labor. Jesus take the wheel.The entire birth sequence inA Quiet Placeis a triumphant exercise in tension building, carried on the back of Blunt’s staggering performance. The red lights, the ultimate ticking clock (aka a baby on the way out), and those clicking monsters – it’s all expertly constructed in the Spielbergian tradition to get the pulse pounding.
Hereditary
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Decaptiations
Runner Up:Annie’s Nightmare
Yeah, that’s right, I’m cheating! Two for the price of one, baby. But honestly, how could you expect me to choose between the two traumatic decapitations seen inAri Aster’s deeply unsettling feature debutHereditary. Though the film has proven somewhat divisive for horror fans, I’m still firmly in the camp that it’s absolutely horrifying, and I can think of few scenes that have impacted me on such a visceral level as not one, but both of the film’s decapitation sequences. The first is an utter shock to the system – a guilt and grief ridden moment of absolutely dread that forces you to reckon with some of the word possible combinations of human emotion by using camerawork that makes you feel complicit in the horrible act. The film’s final big decapitation conjures a completely different brand of horror, spun out of supernatural terrors and the manic feeling of falling down the rabbit hole to hell while you’re desperately reaching at the sides to try and claw your way out. The first sequence makes you feel responsible second takes away all your control, and they’re both deeply fucking traumatizing.
Special shout out to Annie’s nightmare at the foot of her son’s bed as well – a perfect use of nightmare logic, that churns up dread, anger, and grief into one rapidly escalating moment of cruel confession and collapsing reality. Full body chills, every time.
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Mirror Room
Runner Up:The Ritual
From the momentLuca Guadagnino’s spectacularSuspiriaremake touched down with its first cinema reveal at Cinema-Con, we knew the mirror room dance sequence was going to be something special. Far from hardened genre fans, the folks in the crowd there – made up of distributors, theater owners, vendors and the like – utterly lost their minds over the footage and thus the buzzy scene launched with a whiff of infamy. Fortunately, Guadagnino’s traumatic sequence lived up to the hype. WhenDakota Johnson’s Susie Bannion dares to dance the protagonist in Volk, her actions conjure some dark and angry magic that manifests on the body of a fellow dancer who’s trying to escape the dance academy. Locked in a mirrored dance studio, the poor girls body twists and contorts in response to Susie’s powerful dancing, flopping around like a hideous rag doll, covered in piss and spit. It’s carnal and disgusting; expertly shot, edited and scored to make your stomach turn itself over.
Of course, a shout out also has to go to the outrageous WTF climactic ritual, which unveils the hideous horrors of Helena Markos' decrepit form and unleashes the full power of the coven in a head-exploding bloodbath/revolution by magic. Powerful, haunting, and oh so very very bloody, it’s one of the most unforgettable horror sequences of the year.
Best Scare/Most Iconic Moment:The Chainsaw Fight
Runner Up:[SPOILER] Burns
What a special movieMandyis and what a stunning performance fromNicolas Cage. But yeah, the most iconic moment in the movie is definitely the giant-ass chainsaw fight between Cage and a mutant biker. It feels wrong to pin down that moment specifically since there’s so much depth and pathos underlying the film’s most exploitationy moments, but there’s also Nic Cage doing a whole heap of coke and going to battle with a bunch of mutant bikers and yes, that is just awesome. It’s just awesome, you guys. DirectorPanos Cosmatosfigured out just the right frequency to channel Cage’s wild energy into a performance that’s as wildly entertaining as it is heart-breaking and then he put a meter-long chainsaw in his hand. We are truly blessed.
