The Best Syfy Original Horror Movies, According To Reddit
Sometime around the turn of the century, the B-movie vacuum originally filled by drive-in theaters was passed to the good people at Syfy (né The Sci-Fi Channel, né Sci Fi). The network started doling out the lovable schlock once reserved for late nights in disreputable dollar theaters. Frequently underproduced and universally over-the-top, "Syfy Original horror movies" became shorthand for "Corman-esque, low-budget cheap-thrill power-hours." The spiders were icier, the octopuses more giant, the sharks 110 percent more 'nado.
To date, there have been hundreds of motion pictures released on the cable network, with memorable names ranging from Ghost Shark to Ghostquake, all the way to Ghost Voyage and Mansquito. Like any camp movie presented to a large enough audience, they've gained a cult following — not necessarily as individual works of art, but as a tapestry of goofy weirdness. Still, a few have managed to stand out and make a name for themselves. Not Mansquito, but other ones.
Frequenters of Reddit's r/horror forum convened in a meeting of the minds, hoping to reach a conclusive answer to the question "which Syfy Original horror movie takes the proverbial blood-spattered cake?" Through the time-honored democratic process, they came up with a top-ten list of giant insects and mega sharks that they held near and dear to their hearts.
Syfy's got crocodiles, monsters, and monster crocodiles
We start our journey at number ten: 2004's Shallow Ground, TV horror maestro Sheldon Wilson's saga of a small-town sheriff pulled into a world of horror by the mysterious appearance of a blood-soaked young man. Featuring loads of gore, psychic abilities, and Patty McCormick, it's a film with something for everyone.
Coming in ninth is Lake Placid vs Anaconda, the first of two inter-franchise monster mashes on the list that appeared in the years following Freddy vs Jason. Appropriately, Robert Englund, the once and future Freddy Krueger, makes an appearance. A crocodile fights a snake. No matter who wins, we lose.
Eighth place goes to Dinocroc, a film that bravely asked and answered the question: "What if a big lizard got mixed with another big lizard?" The 2004 banger was directed by Kevin O'Neill, who would later stretch his creative legs by moving on to more mature fare in 2010's Dinoshark.
Number seven: Abominable, not to be confused with the adorable children's movie of the same name released in 2019. If you, or someone you love, has ever wanted to see Jeffrey Combs from Re-Animator and Lance Henrickson from Aliens go toe-to-toe with a sasquatch, this one will put some pep in your big-footed step.
Demonic toys, windswept sharks, and spiders of unusual size
Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys marks viewers' number-six pick for best Syfy Original. It may not have been well-reviewed, is nowhere near canon, and isn't even over 90 minutes long, but the story of two sets of evil dolls going head-to-head struck a chord with viewers in 2004. As films where Corey Feldman gets terrorized by living toys go, it's basically at the front of the pack.
Number five on the list is Big Ass Spider!, a quiet think piece about a spider that, in defiance of all that is good in this world, is really quite large. Fun fact: IMDb credits the writer, Gregory Gieras, as a set production assistant on Glengarry Glen Ross, which explains his 2013 Syfy flick's adherence to the old saying immortalized by Alec Baldwin: "A.B.D. – 'A,' always, 'B,' be, 'D,' directing Big Ass Spider."
It goes without saying that Sharknado had to make an appearance on the list, and it clocks in at number four. It's the movie so impossible to ignore that it spawned five sequels, each more Sharknado-y than the last, and defied audience expectations by keeping Tara Reid employed for half a decade. Inexplicably, over the course of six movies, the tagline, "You'll Believe a Shark Can Fly Around in Circles" was never officially adopted.
The dogged race to the top
Third place belongs to 2003's Beyond Re-Animator, the late-in-the-game sequel to 1985's Re-Animator and 1990's Bride of Re-Animator. Jeffrey Combs returns to the mad scientist's laboratory of Dr. Herbert West, in all likelihood grateful for work that doesn't involve wearing blue makeup and antennae on Star Trek: Enterprise.
In second place: Cube 2: Hypercube, also known as Cube2, or, mathematically, "huh?" Following the events of the first Cube, it holds a special place in the hearts of ultra-low budget Canadian horror fans.
That leaves us with number one: Dog Soldiers. Written and directed by first-timer Neil Marshall, who would go on to helm The Descent and 2019's Hellboy reboot, it's undoubtedly one of the best-reviewed Syfy Originals of all time with a 79 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating from critics. If you like werewolves, if you like gore, and if you, like millions of others around the world, just can't get enough of Sean Pertwee, Dog Soldiers is the movie for you. Even on a paper-thin budget, it gave audiences some of the best practical effect lycanthropes of all time, and cemented Marshall's place as a genre darling.