Top 10 Horror Movies of 2009 (#1-10)

Well here it is. My Top Horror Movies of 2009! Sorry for taking so long to get this posted but I had to catch up on some of the movies I missed this year. I usually look at other people's lists and watch the movies that others claimed were the best. If I didn't, I would have missed a few sleepers and some hidden gems.

So this year's edition is a "fat as Texas" edition. I'm not just posting a top 10 list but adding #11-20 as well. If you missed #11-20 click here. This list from #11-20 you'll be surprised to find has many of the movies that can be found on the horrorsphere's Top 10 lists. I had a different take on what was considered "the best" this year and my picks are totally abnormal from everybody else. I'm just quirky that way.

First some fun facts and sidenotes!

• Though some of these movies came out in 2008, I label any movie that got wide releases or DVD releases in 2009 as coming out in 2009.
  
• It's a mix of STV, indie horror and box office elephants.
  
• Here are the movies I didn't see yet: Anti Christ, Cold Prey, Infestation, 36 Pasos, Jennifer's Body, The Last House on the Left, Rec 2, The Descent 2 and countless others
• 3 films that almost made the list that now get the Honorable Mentions tag: The Burrowers (2 spinkicks), Carriers (2 and half spinkicks), Bad Biology (2 and half spinkicks)
• The 20 films broken down by country: USA = 13, UK=1, France =1, Korea =1, Canada=2, Norway=1, Sweden=1
• The 20 films broken down by spinkick rating: 4 spinkicks=3, 3 and a 1/2 spinkicks= 2, 3 spinkicks=10, 2 spinkicks and a half=1, 2 spinkicks=4
• To read the entire review of the film click on the title.
• 4 spinkicks didn't necessarily guarantee you a higher place on the list.
  

So what did 2009 offer us in the world of horror?

• Shaky cam/POV horror makes a comeback that nobody saw coming
• All of Hollywood's remakes sucked and all were big giant turds
• The whispering killer kid movies stormed into the mainstream and excelled
• Zombie movies still packed a punch but vampire movies ruled the horror universe
• Long awaited movies made their much awaited DVD premieres
• My #1 movie is again not from the USA

Let's get to the list! Here is #10 to #1.

10.) Zombieland (3 spinkicks)

Zombieland is the only big blockbuster box office elephant in the top 10 and its one of the best zombie comedy movies to come out since Shaun of the Dead.

The "rules", Woody, the Bill Murray cameo and the zombie kill carnage are all top notch and so much fun.

To think this could have been a TV series is unbelievable as it works so perfectly as a movie. My favorite rules were "Double Tap" and "Enjoy the Little Things"

And there were a ton of little things in Zombieland that I highly enjoyed.

Read the full review here.


9.) Header (3 spinkicks and half)

Header was released by Synapse on DVD in 2009 which is why it qualifies as 2009. But why is a movie you've never heard of ranked #9 on my list?

Because of the title. What the hell is a header?

I can't tell you or it would ruin the entire movie. Let's just say Header is filled with a redneck Hatfields and McCoys war, moonshine and some of the most fucked up shit I've ever seen.

Header is the best underground horror movie of the 21st century. If you decide to cowboy up and watch Header, you are a fuckin sicko. A disturbed, fucked up individual.

And in doing so, you will be initiated into the elite club of having seen one of the most fucked up films ever made. Welcome to the club.

Read the full review here.

8.) Laid to Rest (3 spinkicks)

Our new slasher on the block Chromeskull will be remembered for his style, his knife and his damn sicko looking mask.

Laid to Rest is the best techno slasher movie of the 21st century. If Hatchet was old school American horror, Laid to Rest is new school American horror.

What Robert Hall has created here is purely an homage to all the slashers films that have come before. It's also a pure millennium based slasher film that is so sly and witty and full of top notch splatter and gore we all need to give him a standing O.

Laid to Rest should be seen if you call yourself a horror fan. It's easily one of the best horror movies of 2009.

Read the full review here.

7.) Pontypool (3 spinkicks)

Pontypool has been making many Top 10 lists and I'm adding it to mine.

Pontypool was a totally different type of pretzel I've never seen before.

It's an actually intelligent virus turning the masses into a bunch of crazies type movie that can be perceived in many ways. Is it a satire of censorship? A commentary on geopoliticalisms? Or is it just a suspense driven horror film to scare the crap out of you.

Well, it's all 3 and so much more.

You'll dread you speak the English language.

Read the full review here.

6.) Let the Right One In (3 spinkicks)

I had said I wanted to put this on my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2008, but I kinda watched it too late. As technically we all saw this on DVD in 2009, it cements itself here at #6.

Dump more praise on the Let the Right One In bandwagon.

A movie about a 12 year old girl engulfed in vampire lore is so full of innocence and dramatic despair that it's more emotional and more touching then seeing some vampire teens whining about their iPods.

More importantly, this movie is about loneliness and the connections we have in our lives.Plus seeing a 12 year old vamp suck blood seems kinda sick and awesome at the same time.

Read the full review here.

5.) Trick R Treat (4 spinkicks)

A top 10 list is not complete without having Trick R Treat on it right?

One of the best anthologies to come out in a while, this creative and unique Halloween themed campfire tales was the perfect movie to see on October 31st.

Trick 'R Treat is the best Halloween movie since Halloween. For an anthology collection, it ranks right up there with Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt.

You wonder why nobody makes movies like these anymore. I'm going all Nostradamus here but I think TRT will spawn more anthology horror movies and either that's a good thing or a poisoned candy apple.

And who can forget our new "what the hell is he?" rookie slasher of the year: Sam. One of the most scariest WTF killers to come on the horrorverse in quite a long time.

Trick R Treat was hyped and lived it up. BOO!

Read the full review here.

4.) Black Devil Doll (4 spinkicks)

The moment after I saw Black Devil Doll, it was guaranteed a spot on my Top 10 list. Think blaxsploitation, slasher flick, Skinemax and comedy all thrown into a blender and your waxing your carrot while waiting.

That's Black Devil Doll.

Black Devil Doll is the apex of all modern day blaxploitation movies, filled with sleazy humor, tons of nudity and splatter happy gore. Harking back to the old grimy and sticky Times Square grindhouse days, Black Devil Doll is a tour de force of debauchery, insanity and nudity.

And it has a Muthafuckin Puppet!

Read the full review here.

3.) Deadgirl (3 and a half spinkicks)

Deadgirl is like a depraved, warped up horror version of Stand by Me. Think an indie film with a horror element Romero-ed into it. Such is the beauty and the chill sicko-ness of Deadgirl, definitely one of the top 10 horror movies of 2009.

I've seen films where as I'm watching I feel really ashamed to be seeing this. Deadgirl so disturbing yet highly provocative that at the end you feel dirty, kinda ugh and your definitely not Jersey Shore fist pumping in the air. But when a movie like this comes along, you have to give it a standing O.

Read the full review here.




2.) Thirst (4 spinkicks)

I watched Thirst at the end of the year. It was one of those "its on a lot of Best of lists" so before I lock down my list, I needed to see this. And what did it do?

It knocked some good movies out of the Top 10 and flew up to #2. Now that says a lot doesn't it?

Chan-wook Park's Thirst is more than a vampire movie it's a morality tale of how absolute power can corrupt absolutely. It has so many layers, that each of the 3 separate acts could have been turned into their own movie.

Chan-wook Park established himself with his Vengeance Trilogy. Those movies revolutionized the action genre. With Thirst he's done it again. The horror genre will never be the same.

Read the full review here.

1.) Martyrs (3 spinkicks)

Yup. Another French movie is #1 on my list for the 2nd year in a row. Lo and behold the fuckedupness that is Martyrs. It's the most controversial, I loved it-I hated it, film of 2009. From every voice in the horror world, nobody can stop talking about this film.

I came down on the "I absolutely LOVED it" side. Why?
Martyrs has sort of created a new subgenre of horror. Uber-surreal torture-core.

It's a twisblended hybrid of the Argentoism, pure unrelenting grindy torture-core and horror taken to a transcendent level.

That's not to say I didn't have my gripes. It's almost pointless at times until you get to the end and figure what the whole thing is about. For 100 minutes, if you take the visceral challenge, you may have been a martyr yourself.

The ending is an absolute marathon to watch but when you see the finish line and finally realize what the whole thing was about, you begin to think back on everything you just witnessed. Some have said it's absolutely pointless, I beg to differ.

The definition of Martyr is "to witness". And after seeing this movie, you feel like Anna in the movie. It's a transcendent horror movie, one that makes us endure the most horrific scenes I've ever seen and than drops a bombshell and says it's all for the better good.

To witness Martyrs is to challenge yourself and to think about the endless possibilities of existence. And for that experience, it's my #1 horror movie of 2009.

the jaded viewer related linkage:

• Top Horror Movies of 2009 (#11-20)
• The Best Quotey Quotables from the Worst Movies I saw in 2009
• Check out The Jaded Viewer's Top 10 Horror Movies of 2010 (#10-1)
• Check out The Jaded Viewer's Top 10 Horror Movies of 2010 (#20-11)

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OK, I know you horror minions have your 2 cents. So go ahead and let me have it. Throw that smelly poop at me or if on the off chance you partially agreed on some of my picks, send me that love. Chime in and let me know what you think.

This list of the Top 20 Horror Movies of 2009 also is an opportunity to see the movies you may have missed that made many of the best of 2009 within the horror community. We all missed a few flicks here and there. I hope you all give all of these movies a chance and then come back and let me know what's the what.

Next up: The Best Horror Movies of 2009 (A compilation from the horrorsphere)




Tags:
Top 10 horror movies of 2009, best horror movies 2009 , top slasher movies 2009 , 2009 horror movies

Categories: 2009 exploitation movies, 2009 horror dvd, 2009 horror movies, black devil doll review, martyrs review, the jaded viewer, top 10 horror movies of 2009, top 20 horror movies of 2009

Martyrs (Review)

Martyrs

Martyrs (2008)

Directed by Pascal Laugier

Well that wasn't what I was expecting.

After avoiding all the reviews and hype, I figured this was a classic run of the mill torture porn but taken to the ultimate extreme.

Boy was I wrong.

Martyrs has sort of created a new subgenre of horror. Uber-surreal torture-core.

Yeah I know what your saying. What the fuck is that?
Dude, I don't even know. But I can say this. This isn't torture porn like Saw or Hostel or any of the other "kill for the fun of it" horror.

It's a twisblended hybrid of the Argentoism, pure unrelenting grindy torture-core and horror taken to a transcendent level.

That's not to say I didn't have my gripes. It's almost pointless at times until you get to the end and figure what the whole thing is about. For 100 minutes, if you take the visceral challenge, you may have been a martyr yourself to a first. Uber-surreal torture-core horror.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

France. A night at the beginning of the 1970s.

Lucie, a little girl missing for over a year, is discovered wandering by the side of a country road.

Near catatonic, she can say nothing about what has happened to her. The cops quickly find the place in which she's been incarcerated - a disused slaughterhouse. Every indication is that she never once left the empty, freezing room in which she was imprisoned.

Filthy, starving, dehydrated, the child's body nonetheless bears no traces of sexual abuse - this was no paedophile abduction, but something far stranger.

What happened in that icy room? And how did Lucie escape?

Lucie is hospitalized - slowly she learns how to live again, an enfant sauvage gradually returning to the real world. In the hospital, she meets Anna, another little girl, and a victim of terrible abuse at the hands of her family. In no time, they are inseparable. Anna takes charge of Lucie, like a mother. As for her kidnappers, the police are at a dead end. Lucie's ordeal remains a terrible mystery.

One night, as Anna sleeps, Lucie hears an awful, rasping breathing. A vision appears: a body, naked, skeletal, tortured. Barely human. The apparition seizes her...

15 years later. A house, isolated in the middle of a forest. A family: Mum, Dad, two kids. A happy home. As they eat breakfast, there's a knock at the door. The father opens it to find a young woman, hollow-eyed and wraithlike and mad. In her hands, a rifle. "Remember the little girl I once was?" She shoots him where he stands, enters the house, and locks the door...

Minutes later, the family lie bloody. All dead. Lucie calls Anna, who tells her not to move, she'll be right there. In shock, Lucie hangs up. And then she hears it. That terrible, terribly familiar breathing...

Awesome Review-O-Matic

If you've seen Inside or Frontiere(s) or even Haute Tension, you know the French may be squeamish when it comes to war but not in their horror movies.

It be best to break this down like Kool Aid minutes. "Oh Yeah!"

!!!SPOILERS BELOW!!!

The first 35......

The movie starts off in pure insanity as we see a teen Lucie escape from her abductors. We see a childhood friendship develop between the victimized Lucie and her new BFF Anna.It seems our baddies haven't been caught by the cops and poor Lucie is having nightmares of the monsters she left behind.

Fast forward to 15 years later and our French girls are now French foxes. And BOOM! like a mushroom cloud we get carnage. Lucie believes she's found those mofo's that tortured her.

Lucie is blasting Dad, mom, Peter Brady and Jan to kingdom come with a freakin shotgun. It's insane first few minutes.

I've never seen such bloody crassness in a while. Lucie goes all child-a-cide killing little swimmer Jan. It's so brutal, you may feel sick. But this is the new wave, and the Rottweiler French horror has gone postal. The beginning is pure mystery, Scooby Doo-ey in a way. Questions are raised. Who abducted and tortured poor Lucie? Is she sure this normal Brady bunch family did it? What is this thing chasing after her?

The next 35........

As Lucie gets bombarded by her dreammares, she starts to self mutilate herself. She starts to slice her arms, back and hand via figments of her torture-verse. Meanwhile, Anna starts to doubt Lucie's saneness and starts to Reservoir Dogs the mess thats been made by cleaning up bodies and calming Lucie the fuck down.

But Lucie has gone cuckoo and slits her throat.

Later, have a brief mourn Anna finds a hidden compartment and works her way down to a lab of horrors. She finds a deprived, almost corpselike body of a woman who she attempts to heal. But shits too late for her.

These scenes are like Lynchian and surreal blocks of fuckedupness. The woman is naked and scarred and has a device that has been nailed to her head that blinds her. It's almost like a death piece of art. The one thing most people have agreed upon is that it's breathtaking to see these images on screen. Nothing, and I mean nothing will prepare you for this level of sheer horror.

But I've always said, if I have not seen it before, that's a plus. And if it works within the boundaries of the film, then the amplification goes off the scale.

This all comes crashing down as our poor medievaled victim is blown away by the abductors.

The last 35........

Now Anna is told the experiment into martyrdom by an old lady. It seems the religious are not the only ones to experience the world of martyrdom.

And so begins the torture-core of Anna. It's by far a very difficult thing to watch. Almost bordering on the rape scene in Irreversible.

Anna is fed what looks to be pea soup, beaten constantly, forced to expel her self via a bucket and her head is shaved.

These constant fade ins and outs of Anna's torture are sick to the gut. If one can watch these 20 or so minutes, it's like a running a marathon of horror-core.

Though, how does one survive within the world of this film. She's lets herself go and accepts her fate. This is then leads to her torturers to skin her entire body except her face.

And in this act of letting go, she is the 4th to experience what the movie is about......

Seeing what lies after death.

Because as we are told, Martyr means to witness and that is what Anna becomes.

The thing about every torture porn like flick is you feel super duper empathy towards the victim. Every fiber in your being hopes the victim will go all Kill Bill and somehow escape and kill off the sicko killers. I had that inkling too. Maybe she would kill off these fucked up people and escape.

But that never happens....and seriously that's a good thing.

The whole point of Martyrs is to flip that shit upside down. The big bad evil at the end seems to have a religiously and scientific (sorta) reason of why they are doing this. It's not rich people or some old guy spewing out a "live your life" philosophy. Jigsaw is just evil and so are the wealthy Madoffs.

This world within Martyrs has cult like normals wanting to know what lay beyond. Does the end results justify the means?

Oh believe me, I still want all those people to get tortured and Abu Gharabed, but its almost Argento-y in a way where this insanity is logical.

This film isn't without its negatives. It paces way to long and drags and drags. It also destroys all logic (where the fuck are the police?) But the biggest gripe comes in that the torture that Lucie, Anna and the other victims go through seems pointless until the end. And even the revelation that this is an experiment into martyrdom and what lays beyond death is almost bordering on just being plain stupid.

Shit dude, this was the plot of Flatliners!

But it is a film thats spawned a new subgenre. Uber-surreal torture-core horror.

And that's an accomplishment.

Gore-ipedia

Shotgun blasts
Sliced arms
Shotgun blast to the head
Corpse walking art
LOTS AND LOTS of torture
Skinned alive

Nude-ipedia

I'm going to have to say tortured victim nudity doesn't count
Brief boobies from Anna

WTF moment

A skinned Anna witnessing

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Martyrs is not as good as Inside which to me for now is the pinnacle of all that is French horror. But its new progeny Martyrs, it's as good as advertised.

Be warned, it's not a movie with any semblance of plot, or an in depth look into characterology or any sort of "horror" kills.

It's something new and that should be something we all need to witness.

Rating:

Trailer:













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Categories: french film, french horror, gore, inside, martyrs, martyrs official trailer, martyrs review, splatter, splatter gore, torture porn