The Best in Horror 2011 (Jeff's Picks)

1. AMERICAN HORROR STORY:  It might be a cheat to include a TV series on this list, much less put it at the top, but if we’re talking about the Best Horror of 2011, to put anything other than AHS as "number one" just wouldn’t feel right to me.  It’s been awhile since TV horror could be described as being watered down – since at least the 1990 debut of Twin Peaks, horror on TV has been allowed to be weirder, edgier, and more violent than previous TV standards had allowed – but even still, AHS managed to be a jolting experience. A horror series by Ryan Murphy, the co-creator of Glee, did not appear to have the makings of great genre television (even if Murphy’s series Nip/Tuck had involved darker subject matter) but from the pilot episode, it was clear that AHS was not going to be a simple soap opera with supernatural overtones. Some have labeled AHS as camp, bad TV that’s irresistible to watch, but I believe that AHS ultimately favored real emotions over shock value. Even though a second season is in the works, I hope no cast members or storylines from this year are continued, leaving AHS’s first season to stand alone as a self-contained tale.

2. I SAW THE DEVIL:  This sinister South Korean scorcher from director Kim Jee-woon is the latest watershed in serial killer cinema. Released in its native country in 2010, I Saw The Devil made its Stateside bow this year. As graphically, grandly operatic in its bloodshed as Kim’s earlier genre masterwork A Tale of Two Sisters is hushed, haunted and delicate, I Saw the Devil is one of those films – like Manhunter or Seven – that straddle the line between hardboiled crime thriller and horror. Making the grim hunt between Dirty Harry and Scorpio in 1971’s Dirty Harry look like a playground game of tag, I Saw the Devil is both gritty and, as events escalate, knowingly absurd. Some critics have carped that it’s unrealistic that the film’s killer should so easily cross paths with other killers (the pair in the cab as well as the cannibal) but despite its grisly violence, I Saw the Devil is not about observing reality anymore than, say, The Dark Knight is and the point Kim is making that is that Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik) is not just a psychopath but a true Monster Among Monsters. As a twisted fable of revenge, I Saw The Devil is like the Citizen Kane of torture-porn.

3. THE SKIN I LIVE IN: The horror genre has given us many tales of mad surgeons over the years but director Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In instantly vaults to the upper ranks of those tales. Inspired by Thierry Jonquet’s 1995 novel Mygale (republished in 2005 under the title Tarantula), Almodóvar’s hybrid of horror, sci-fi and melodrama stars Antonio Banderas as a surgeon keeping a woman secretly hidden in his mansion for reasons unknown. Given the mystery at its core, it’s best to go into this film knowing as little as possible about it. But without giving any spoilers away, I will say that I found The Skin I Live In’s concluding moments to be one of the most moving of any movie this year.

4. ATTACK THE BLOCK: It’s a crime that the atrocious Creature got a wide release this year, giving monster movies a bigger black eye than even the Syfy Channel could ever imagine, while this genuinely terrific creature feature was so difficult to find in theaters this past summer. Tracking the nightlong war between a gang of young thugs who reside in a British tenement and a pack of extraterrestrials that have landed in the gang’s inner city neighborhood via meteor shower, Attack the Block is a model of brisk, smart genre filmmaking. Lead actor John Boyega is impressive as the hardened but heroic Moses and the alien creatures are the best monsters to grace the screen in some time. I’m sure the supplemental features on the DVD spill the beans on exactly how the aliens were brought to life but I loved that it wasn’t instantly apparent to me what combination of practical work and CGI was used. Writer/director Joe Cornish’s debut film is welcome proof that modern monster movies can still have all the magic of yesteryear’s creature features.

5. INSIDIOUS: Horror isn’t any one thing and different genre films have different things to recommend them (just see this list for evidence of that) but sometimes being scary is all that matters. Insidious’ plot may be nothing remarkable but, to appropriate the tagline from its chief cinematic model, this is a film that "knows what scares you." As a collaboration between the masterminds behind Saw and Paranormal Activity – director James Wan, screenwriter Leigh Whannell and producer Oren Peli – Insidious is a cinematic haunted house of the highest order, a goose bump machine that makes old-fashioned frights feel new again.

Honorable Mention: The Last Circus, StakeLand, Paranormal Activity 3, and Final Destination 5