[Featured image – The Devil’s Candy courtesy IFC Midnight]
Another year, another bumper crop of horror movies. As always, the horror genre continues to provide truckloads of cash receipts to studios. 2017’s horror releases provided their own unique road-map of scares – from faux documentary (Creep 2), to Stephen King coming of age tale (IT), to social satire (Get Out). In a pleasant change of pace for horror fans, some of the highest grossing genre titles also earned critical raves to go with the oceans of green (IT and Get Out earning 84 and 99 percent Fresh ratings respectively at Rotten Tomatoes).
Late last year, Thrillist’s Best Horror Movies of 2017 (So Far) by Scott Weinberg inspired me. How many of the listed movies could I watch before January 1, 2018? How would my opinions agree or clash with Mr. Weinberg’s? I started off with House on Willow Street (here at F&S) and The Void (reviewed at SciFi4Me). However, due to things like “work” and “going to Urgent Care“, I only managed a total of 16 out of 30 movies.
Detailed reviews of my arbitrary groupings will follow. For starters, here’s my ranking of the sixteen movies I managed to watch, with Scott Weinberg’s ranking in parenthesis.
The Top Tier
1 – Raw (5)
2 – The Devil’s Candy (8)
3 – Creep 2 (16)
4 – The Void (28)
5 – Split (15)
6 – Get Out (1)
Fun Creature Features
7 – Life (17)
8 – Alien: Covenant (23)
9 – Annabelle: Creation (27)
The Stephen King Afterschool Specials
10 – Gerald’s Game (4)
11 – IT (2)
12 – 1922 (13)
Beautiful, but Remote
13 – It Comes at Night (22)
14 – A Dark Song
OK for a Matinee
15 – Cult of Chucky (30)
16 – House on Willow Street (29)
Channel Zero Archive 