The 7 Best And 7 Worst Horror Movies Of 2020

With a raging pandemic that engulfed the world, 2020 was already pretty scary on its own. That didn't stop plenty of horror films from coming out, all of which provided a distraction from the terrors of reality. And distract they did, either as successful renderings of the genre or as flops so bad they're almost funny.

A few horror movies this year captivated both critics and audiences, such as Netflix's His House, which currently has a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. Other attempts to scare audiences this past year were not as successful, like Blumhouse's Fantasy Island, which lands on the other end of the Rotten Tomatoes spectrum with an ultra low 7% on the Tomatometer. His House and Fantasy Island are just two of the horror flicks of the year which attracted attention for better or worse: here's a rundown of the seven best and the seven worst horror releases of 2020.

While films like The Invisible Man were successful at scaring people, other horror attempts of the year only sullied the genre. One of those failures is Blumhouse's Fantasy Island, a loose reinvention of the classic TV show directed and co-written by Jeff Wadlow. Believing they've each won a contest, a group of people show up at a tropical resort called Fantasy Island, where enigmatic proprietor Mr. Rourke (Michael Peña) makes the guests' fantasies come true. But those fantasies quickly turn into nightmare scenarios and the guests must figure out the mystery behind the island in order to save themselves.

Most critics agreed that the film didn't have a firm grasp on its own foundation, trying to do too much at once and contradicting its own plot. Variety described the film as playing out "like an out-of-control pitch meeting, lurching from one ostensibly clever idea to the next without taking the trouble to connect the dots." RadioTimes called Wadlow's direction "comatose" and the meant-to-be-shocking twists "stupefying."

With the lead actors also criticized for overacting, Fantasy Island ended up as a place where very few critics — and not many more fans — enjoyed their stay.

In 2004, Hollywood made The Grudge, an English-language remake of a Japanese horror film called Ju-On: The Grudge. The remake, helmed by the writer-director of the Japanese original, Takashi Shimizu, did well in box office terms — it's the second highest-grossing horror remake — but holds just a 40% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite the mediocre score, the film has led to two sequels plus 2020's identically titled The Grudge, described as a "sidequel."

Directed and written by Nicolas Pesce, it takes place both before and during the events of the 2004 film and follows a detective (Andrea Riseborough) who's investigating a murder scene, which turns out to be a house that has had multiple killings occur in it. The house in question possesses a curse that overtakes anyone who enters it — they're bound to die violently.

The film garnered the most criticism for adding nothing to the already existing story and for the complicated non-linear timeline that is too confusing to add any depth. The Times UK gave it just one star, lamenting that "the most terrifying aspect of this horror reboot of the long-running Grudge franchise is that it exists at all."

Henry James's classic 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw, had perhaps its biggest year ever in 2020. It is the basis for Netflix's horror series The Haunting of Bly Manor, as well as Floria Sigismondi's theatrical film The Turning. But while Bly Manor received a positive reaction from critics and a decent one from audiences, The Turning was not nearly as successful and garnered itself a meager 12% on the Tomatometer.

The Turning introduces Kate Mandell (Mackenzie Davis), who takes a governess job at the Fairchild Estate to take care of two kids, Miles (Finn Wolfhard) and Flora (Brooklyn Prince), after the death of their parents. Mysterious events soon begin unfolding and Kate must discover the dark secrets of the estate's past.

The Chicago Reader acknowledged the film's potential, along with its talented cast and director, but came to the conclusion that "a bevy of offscreen characters that only serve to complicate an already meandering plot and a sorely muddled ending rob it of its full potential." Further, the plot was laced with overdone horror tropes — jump scares, dream sequences — but did nothing to make them feel fresh or worthwhile. The New York Times declared that these "repetitive goosings" resulted in a film that was "humorless — and scare-free."

In William Brent Bell's Brahms: The Boy II – a standalone sequel to his 2016 film The Boy – Liza (Katie Holmes) and her son Jude (Christopher Convery) survive a home invasion that spooks both of them and results in Jude developing mutism. Liza's husband Sean (Owain Yeoman) suggests the family move out of town and they end up at a manor in the countryside. There, Jude finds an old porcelain doll and names him Brahms, without realizing the doll possesses a sinister nature.

The biggest critique of the film was the ways in which it contradicted The Boy, which actually received some praise for its clever twist ending — the supernatural doll was never alive and the son perceived to be dead was still alive and living in the walls, doing the tormenting. Yet in the 2020 sequel, the logic backtracks and suddenly the doll actually is supernatural, meaning that the two films don't actually work in tandem.

Polygon addressed how the new logic of the sequel didn't carry the weight it needed to make the plot work, saying, "More frustrating than the hazy nature of the character's abilities is Bell's refusal to depict them in action." Thus, the audience doesn't get to see the doll move or wreak any havoc, leaving the question of why he's supernatural in the first place — and why this sequel even exists.

Behind You, directed by Andrew Mecham and Matthew Whedon, takes place in, like countless other horror films, a creepy house — this one notable for its lack of mirrors. When one of the film's two young sisters does come across a mirror, in the basement their aunt forbade them from going into, she accidentally releases an evil presence that had haunted her mother and aunt years earlier.

The main gripe with Behind You was its lack of originality; amidst a multitude of horror films about haunted houses, this one did nothing to stand out. And beyond the unoriginality, the film took hits for its lazy writing, as laid out in a pan by Decider. The piece outlined the film's "unconvincing speeches that explain the concept in vague terms," which resulted in it being "profoundly derivative." It's no wonder Behind You only managed to eke out a mere 6% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In Evil Eye, directed by Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani, Pallavi (Sunita Mani) begins dating Sandeep (Omar Maskati), which initially thrills her mother, Usha (Sarita Choudhury). But after meeting the new boyfriend, Usha begins to notice strange similarities between him and someone from her past, quickly becoming fearful of this dark connection.

According to IndieWire, Evil Eye had potential, but ultimately missed the mark and even chose the wrong genre: "Its dramatic and emotional elements are so much better tuned." The review concluded by deeming it "a film that doesn't dare get really chilling and thrilling until its final minutes."

Also noting the missed opportunity of setting this story in a different genre, Empire addressed the ways in which the film became muddled without a firm footing in the horror realm. The reviewer stated, "It's tonally uneven — the first portion of the film plays out as an extended meet-cute." Maybe something resembling a meet-cute can briefly show up in a horror flick, but not one that takes up half the running time — and certainly not one that makes you question the genre you're watching.

Brannan Braga's Books of Blood is based on the short story collections of the same name by Clive Barker. The film contains three stories that interconnect in what was described as "a journey into uncharted and forbidden territory through three tales tangled in space and time."

Critics found the writing in this Hulu original film to be as vague as that description. A significant amount of the criticism discussed the ways in which the characters were not fully formed, making them hard to become emotionally invested in. Polygon wrote that even the most fleshed out character "often comes across as a detailed concept rather than a living, breathing human." Polygon also addressed the dialogue and story, declaring that the plot consists of "every other line of dialogue [being] either exposition or some form of cliché."

But it was Variety that really got to the point of where the film went wrong: "With a certain kind of horror, a laugh's as good as a scream, and Books of Blood delivers plenty of the former."