The Best 2018 Horror Movies You Haven't Seen

Beautiful, awesome, restrained, and challenging, Annihilation is the best film of 2018 that — odds are — you haven't seen. 

The movie focuses on the aftermath of a meteor strike that has given rise to an inexplicable phenomenon, the impact enveloping a wide area of wilderness in an ever-expanding shimmer that no human being has yet been able to leave alive. When five female investigators enter the boundary of the shimmer for their attempt at pinning down what's going on, they enter a disorienting pocket world that appears to be slowly remixing itself. Within the confines of the shimmer, they discover biological and geological matter fused into impossible hybrids, and watch as living things combine with one another in gorgeous, disturbing, and ultimately dangerous ways. 

It's a horror premise that creeps up on you, with the implication of the story being nothing less than the meaningless doom of the world. But as much as Annihilation is a story about apocalypse, it's also a deeply personal story about its explorers, all of whom embarked on their mission with detailed motivations that all get quietly, effectively explored. 

The second film from Ex Machina director Alex Garland, Annihilation is a masterfully creepy movie that stays with viewers long after they watch it, which makes it such a shame that — for a number of unfortunate reasons that have nothing to do with the movie's quality — nobody did.

Sometimes a horror fan wants something intellectual and challenging, and sometimes they just want to watch innocent people get murdered in insane ways by a clown. 

A spinoff of the 2013 horror anthology All Hallows' Eve, Terrifier puts a feature spotlight on the killer Art the Clown, a sadistic, one-note character who exists only to torment others. Trashy, exploitative, and mean-spirited, Terrifier is the sort of movie that's meant to be discovered on a beat-up VHS tape, with the tracking all warped and the picture all fuzzy — except instead of being pumped out into dollar theaters in the '80s, it was somehow released in 2018. They quite sincerely don't make them like this anymore. 

Terrifier commits to its trashiness from every angle, the rare grindhouse homage that actually fits in with the crowd it's emulating. It's simplistic, low-budget, and sometimes dubiously acted — which is not to say that it's a bad movie, because it isn't. While it's certainly not for everybody, the movie has notched a solid 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning slasher fans should feel confident giving this punchy, predatory thrill ride a late-night spin.

Hellraiser stopped being a respectable film series something like 20 years and five movies ago, so it's no surprise that there wasn't much fan goodwill around to greet the series' tenth installment. But against all expectations, the filmmakers behind 2018's Hellraiser: Judgment actually went out and made themselves a real movie. 

Anything would look good coming after the completely abysmal Hellraiser: Revelations, which was the first movie in the series to be bad enough that Pinhead actor Doug Bradley didn't want anything to do with it. But while the second movie also features a non-Bradley Pinhead performer, there's a lot going on here that warrants a closer look. 

Written and directed by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Hellraiser: Judgment was designed to work with or without the Hellraiser brand attached, featuring a strong central premise that doesn't rely on nine movies' worth of franchise history. 

The plot of the movie is simple, examining the dead and damned as their sins are tallied and they head off to eternal torment. But what elevates the simple premise is the care given to the set pieces, which are surreal and sickening. A lot of thought went into designing the freaky machinations of this netherworld between here and Hell, and the result is far, far more compelling than it has any right to be. It's not a great movie, but it is a legitimately good one — and for the Hellraiser franchise at this point, that's a miracle.

Horror movies are a very special genre, because they don't need to be good in order to be good. You know what we're saying? 

Truth or Dare (full title Blumhouse's Truth or Dare, lest we neglect to mention the Oscar-nominated producer responsible for this) was a springtime-release horror movie that got ravaged by critics on its arrival at the box office, with professional reviewers happily pointing moviegoers toward A Quiet Place instead. 

It was a reaction which totally made sense — if you want interesting characters, strong performances, and atmosphere to spare, there are plenty of quality horror movies that provide that. But if you want to just get good and drunk and holler at a movie with your friends, Truth or Dare's for you.

Upon its release, Truth or Dare scared up a respectable showing at the box office, but the reviews were in the gutter, with the derivative movie notching only 15 percent on Rotten Tomatoes by the time 104 reviews were in. But all the negative reviews shared one quality — they all took this movie a little bit more seriously than was warranted. 

All the common critiques are true — this movie does rip off It Follows, and it is ineffective as horror. It's bad in the same way most of the Friday the 13th movies are bad. But the Friday the 13th movies are all pretty fun to watch, their flaws included, and the same certainly goes for Truth or Dare.

Wildling isn't just an underappreciated horror movie — this unsung character study is one of the best movies of 2018. The story of a young woman raised in captivity who enters the real world as a teenager, it's a feral child story that takes its premise very literally.

Directed by Fritz Böhm and written by Böhm and Florian Eder, Wilding is a supernatural horror movie that brings out its fantastical elements slowly, drawing you into its world of believable characters well before it reveals what it really is. It's a movie that tests your allegiances as a viewer, with your sympathies constantly shifting as the circumstances change. To boil it down to its core concept, it's a movie of adolescent self-discovery with a particularly wild twist. 

The elevator pitch is to say it's about a young woman discovering she's a werewolf, but to reduce it to that premise robs the movie of its many subtleties. The movie covers entirely different territory than its similar-in-subject Ginger Snaps, mining the same metaphorical material with dramatic and affecting results.

Also to recommend it is a very good performance by its lead, Bel Powley, as well as producer Liv Tyler, making an understated turn as an inscrutable police officer. The movie speeds up quite dramatically in its third act, by then fully shifting from a horror movie version of Room into what is basically Predator — but it's an appropriate transformation, given the subject matter, resulting in a movie that would work for lots of different viewers.

It's not often that you get to call a movie "unhinged" and really mean it, but Ryan Prows' remarkable directorial debut Lowlife more than fits the bill. A violent, genre-bending almost-farce that straddles the border between horror, high comedy, and human drama, Lowlife is admirable for being both audaciously plotted and technically slick. 

Set in the scummy underbelly of Los Angeles, Lowlife focuses on a number of small-time criminals whose stories all converge around an organ-harvesting plot gone wrong. Tarantino-esque in tone and structure, the movie feels like a nightmare inspired by Pulp Fiction — but unlike a lot of ripoffs of that classic, this one stands on its own. 

The movie is stylish at every turn, with distinctive characters that are larger than life, but nothing comes across as being done just for the sake of being cool. If this movie were all style, it'd be insufferable. Instead, every insane character feels like they have a beating heart, from the shotgun-toting recovering addict, the legendary luchador El Monstruo and even the white boy ex-con with a gigantic swastika on his face. 

The script, presented in nonlinear fashion, is expertly tuned to keep the movie moving. For a screenplay with five credited writers, that's nothing short of a miracle. The end result is intense, hilarious, and gross, with effective moments of pure horror reminding you of the human stakes at the center of the story. Despite feeling like it shouldn't work at all, Lowlife is one of the year's best and most savage thrill rides.

Marrowbone  is a quiet, self-assured mood piece of a horror movie. It's a story that doesn't rush itself, making it exactly the kind of horror film that one-star Redbox reviews would characterize as boring. It's not a movie that has scares that jump out at you — rather, it hooks you with its characters and their plight, with clear real-world stakes working in tandem with a more mysterious, supernatural threat to generate a pervasive sense of dread. 

Set in the northeastern United States in 1969, Marrowbone introduces a mother and her four children who have fled across the Atlantic to escape the unspecified abuses of the family patriarch. After the mother dies, the children must maintain the illusion of a healthy family in order to avoid being made wards of the state. As they work to gain the title to their house, they also must contend with a supernatural threat that seems to lurk within the walls, threatening to tear their family apart from the inside out. 

The directorial debut of The Orphanage writer Sergio G. Sánchez, Marrowbone is a movie that rewards rewatching, from a filmmaker who is self-assured at every turn. The movie received middling reviews from critics, taking late-game turns in its plotting that viewers may resist. But the twists in the story are elegantly laid out — nothing in the narrative is cheating. It's a remarkably well-designed movie, accomplishing everything it sets out to do with patience and measured reserve.

Let's start with the cons, because Family Blood has more than a few. For one, it commits the classic B-movie sin of stuffing 45 minutes of plot into 90 minutes of movie, and its premise occasionally stretches the limits of its budget. As for the story — an allegory for addiction explored through the lens of vampirism — that's nothing too trailblazing either. But despite these faults, the movie has much more going on than its generally poor reviews would have you believe. 

Deserving of the highest praise is actor James Ransone, who makes the movie light up with his dark performance anytime he's on the screen. Playing the role of a neighborly vampire who worms his way into the home of a vulnerable single mother, Ransone exudes a collected menace, and wrenches witty moments out of an otherwise pedestrian script. 

Even though it takes forever to get going (and doesn't go anywhere too surprising), Family Blood revs its way up to an increasingly tense second half, in which a family on the edge rapidly unravels — and blood gets everywhere. 

Overall, Family Blood is a trashy B-movie you want to interact with, shouting down characters' dumb decisions and rooting them on to victory. It's a misfire for Blumhouse, but not a disaster — it's just silly, simple, and sometimes stupid. In grand B-movie tradition, it also makes it a lot of fun, a horror flick to watch exclusively with good friends and some beer.

Based on the local folklore surrounding a real-life creepy location, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is a Korean horror movie that wears its found footage influences proudly on its sleeve. Easily among the scariest movies on this list, the concept here is a classic one. Forget complex mythologies — Gonjiam is about spending the night in a haunted house. 

Gonjiam follows a group of filmmakers on a live horror webcast who try to break a viewership record with an action-packed episode set in a notorious hospital. At first, the program appears to be an exercise in exaggeration and blatant fakery, with the production putting the proverbial thumb on the scales at every turn to keep attracting viewers. But the hospital lives up to its reputation as the signs of a haunting become a lot more convincing over the course of the night. 

Even though they start off faking things, the characters of Gonjiam are charming and likable, serving as perfect surrogates for the audience. Watching their struggle, their fear feeds into your own, as they suffer through suspenseful sequences of unbearable tension. 

Few other horror movies capture the sense of paralyzing dread that comes from knowing something terrible is in the room with you. If you're looking for pure, terrifying, white-knuckle horror, it doesn't get much better than this.

Revenge doesn't start off looking like a horror movie. Oversaturated, brightly lit, and set in a sunny environment that makes you sweat just looking at it, one starts off wondering just how bad things could possibly get. Stylish and sexy with booze and drugs galore, the movie almost gives one a sense of FOMO — until things take a sudden turn toward the really, really bad.

Left for dead in an isolated location, a young woman is forced to hang on to her life as the criminals who disposed of her try to finish her off for good. Over the course of the movie, she goes from a carefree hedonist who only lives for life's pleasures into a vengeful destroyer. The circumstances of her near-death experience are so brutal and unfair that the audience goes fully on her side with quickness; You've never wanted to see the bad guys get what's coming to them as badly as you do here. A vicious, adrenaline-pumping look at savagery and survival, Revenge is not a particularly comfortable watch — but good horror rarely is. 

Given a small release, Revenge hardly made a mark at the box office, which isn't too much of a surprise for a movie that's basically 127 Hours meets I Spit on Your Grave. If you've got the guts to watch it, it's a trip well worth your time.

This Irish twist on the zombie subgenre focuses on the world after the apocalypse, with society having returned to relative normalcy following a years-long stretch of cannibalism-inducing plague.

The Cured opens with Ireland having created a reliable vaccine for the violent disease, with many who have been infected now being reintegrated into society. The problem is, every survivor is able to remember the horrific acts they committed under the influence of the disease with startling clarity, and many are haunted by their involuntary acts of murder and manslaughter. Others who were never infected still harbor distrust for the cured, making for a skeptical and traumatized populace.

It's an interesting backdrop against which to set a horror movie, and with most of the carnage in the rear view by the time the movie begins, The Cured mostly unfolds as a quiet drama. But despite the existence of a cure, there remain a significant number of infected people who are resistant to it, keeping the threat of a zombie attack in the back of each character's mind. 

Starring Ellen Page, Sam Keeley, and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, The Cured is a satisfying and quiet genre movie with strong performances and a surprisingly compelling central concept. The movie keeps what little violence it has for its third act, by which point the characters have become so compelling that the scarce moments of horror have real impact.

Okay — a lot of caveats to this one, because this movie ain't for everybody. But if you're in the target audience — which is to say, proto-gothic 12-year-olds who like witchy young adult novels — then stop your horror movie search right here. We've got just the thing for you.

Based on a vintage YA book by author Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall tells the story of a young woman who is sent away to a mysterious boarding school for talented teens, at which she appears to be one of the only students. Under the watchful eye of a creepy Uma Thurman (giving a knowingly theatrical performance), the students begin to uncover a sinister secret about the school that may threaten their very lives.

Upon its release, Down a Dark Hall earned middling reviews from most publications, dinged as overly familiar and less than scary. Both critiques are true — again, this movie is not for everyone — but that doesn't mean that this is a bad movie. Adults looking for serious scares should stay far away, but the movie does a lot right by its target audience. If you're a horror fan parent looking to get your kid into the genre, this one might be worth checking out; approached with an open mind, you might have a decent time with it as well. As easy as Down a Dark Hall looks to dismiss, it's really quite fun. 

Surreal, contemplative, and completely crazy, Mandy is designed to divide. How's this for a blender pitch: Take the tone of personal apocalypse from True Detective season one and cross it with Crank. Add a dash of Metalocalypse, then soak in a cauldron of existential dread. The bizarre nightmare of a vengeance story you're picturing is probably pretty close. 

Mandy stars Nicolas Cage as a laconic logger living with his girlfriend, Mandy, in a mythical-feeling version of 1983 America. The film initially devotes itself to exploring their isolated, woodsy domestic life, with special focus on Mandy, played hauntingly by Andrea Riseborough. 

The resulting first half is a slow and steady exercise in drawing the audience towards Mandy, portraying her as a lovable, fully-realized person. That groundwork pays off violently at the movie's midpoint, when the couple faces a horrifying home invasion. The encounter has devastating costs, setting up a final act of righteous vengeance, insane violence, and apocalyptic horror, all presented in a hypnotic, atmospheric, starkly-lit package.

Mandy is the second film from writer-director Panos Cosmatos, whose previous film, Beyond the Black Rainbow, is a similarly challenging, slow-moving trip. While both movies evoke the heady feeling of smoking a bale of marijuana and thinking about death, only Mandy does so with character and humor — most of which is capably provided by Cage in a self-aware performance. Slow-moving and hyper-stylized, Mandy's definitely not for everyone — but if you can get on its heightened level, it's a uniquely rewarding watch.

The Clovehitch Killer is a disturbing presentation of a story that's easy to see coming. The concept is pretty simple: Thanks to a confluence of strange circumstances, a young, sheltered boy from a religious family begins to suspect that his father, a community pillar, may actually be a notorious serial killer. Those small suspicions quickly lead to gigantic red flags, with the audience never being given much reason to doubt that something is up with the manipulative family patriarch, played to creepy perfection in a brave performance by Dylan McDermott. (He is capably assisted, it's worth noting, by some felonious-looking facial hair.)

Clovehitch doesn't try to surprise with a twist. Instead, the movie doles out increasingly big reveals at a satisfying clip, relying on mounting dread rather than mystery to keep viewers invested. The killer, we learn, is a BTK-style control freak who's been dormant for more than ten years, and we watch his budding return to murder in parallel with his son's growing suspicions. After the first hour, the movie settles in to an unexpected structure that leaves the final act loaded with tension, giving you full knowledge of the horrors that are coming and letting you appreciate the gut-wrenching escalations.

Understated, low-budget, and realistic, this is a movie about an extreme situation that plays out in a way that feels true to life. Well-reviewed yet underseen, it's a nightmare you can safely wake up from, chilling for how close it feels to being real.