The Best Horror Films of 2021

I’m not suggesting that I love horror as a genre. Even when the narratives cohere, the scares tend to exploit. It has an infamous history of utterly laughable duds to mediocre films which only rely on the fact that they make you jump from your seat. However, as the world ascends its steps towards the impending apocalypse, horror genre is witnessing a stream of surprisingly nuanced offerings. These are stories which work well not just as chilling ghost-tales but also as social parables. Perhaps it’s because of the unnatural expansion of medium- due to which even a social parable like The Great Indian Kitchen becomes some kind of a terrifying horror which is an otherwise everyday reality in India’s households, or a quiet Apichatpong Weerasethakul film becomes a conveying medium of the horrors of Spanish cultural amnesia. With the emergence of such stories, the otherwise only competent, more direct ghost tales seem rather comforting as only good ‘genre’ entries which aren’t too mindful about their existence.

2021 was a surprisingly compelling year for horror films. For one, I can assure you that there were better horror films this year than there are in the usual film year. Mostly the genre-faithful movies witnessed their breakthroughs. However, as you will see with the progression of the list, the chills have penetrated deeper than that. Here are my ten favourite horror films of the year, those which you must devour if you’re really a fan of the genre.

Special Mention- Censor

Last year, Rose Glass mesmerized us with her outstanding work in Saint Maud, a restrained and masterful A24 British horror that seemed to pose an unsettling question towards horror cinema’s unhealthy bullying of the evil, showing us a divine light which was not at all good to bear. More importantly, it unapologetically decked itself in its female gaze and developed a wonderful character study for its protagonist Maud, among the other things that it did. This year, Prano Bailey-Bond takes over as the British horror debutant of the year. Revolving around the life of a British Censor Board officer named Enid, the film fabricates a discomforting narrative around her in the times when the horror sub-genre of Giallo and bloody exploitation was enjoying its peak and awaiting an urgent banishment.

The scope of the story is broader than the female experience it looks upon. It’s a story about casual sexism, cinema instrumental for exploitation, and the monstrosity that distress and post-trauma can cause. It is also quite committed to the bit- the film is dedicatedly visual, with stunning frames which appear in the most horrific moments. Also, the editing is sleek and so is the excellent performance pulled off by Niamh Algar. The problem with the film is that it doesn’t skim beyond its well-rounded surface. Thus, while not extraordinarily far from achieving its potential greatness and being solid throughout, Censor doesn’t become anything more than a strong introduction to its filmmaker’s capabilities.

10. Oxygen

A film with the aesthetic and plot of Oxygen, that too in a European language, is not a rare occurrence on Netflix. Alexandre Aja’s Oxygen, at that, is focused more on a done-to-death genre- a single-location thriller. However, the film is not entirely silly and not half as atrocious as such films often tend to get. This is because where it lacks in placing the anxiety, it more than makes it up with its horror. The horror itself is quite a stand-in for the mental distress caused by our home quarantine during COVID-19. It might or might not be intentional, but it surprisingly works- mainly because it is substantial and competent, if also indulgent at times.

The main reason why this only well-made thriller works is the extraordinary performance pulled off by Melanie Laurent. The camera is obviously focused on her for one-hundred per cent of the film, but she never stumbles in her delivery. She is unafraid of showcasing her vulnerability and straight-up nuance in a film that clearly is at home with the fact that it doesn’t need those things to survive. More conclusively speaking, it’s difficult for me to put Oxygen in a justifiable bracket when it comes to putting it on this list- it’s not one of the best films of the year, but the fact that I had so much fun and was discomforted where I was supposed to, makes it one of the year’s better genre outings.

9. Lamb

At this point in time, an A24 horror film with its distraught visual aesthetics and hidden demons don’t really need other nuances to work- it just works. Something about these chilling truths conveyed in a muted fashion is oddly consistent- it is always fascinating and interesting, if only because it’s stunningly imagined and great to look at. While this is only a subjective and debatable opinion, let me assure you that Lamb is much more than just that. The Nordic horror film, which serves as a feature directorial debut for Valdimar Johansson, is an actually terrifying allegorical tale. With manifold readings, the film is a sharp and occasionally smart folktale about morbid hope and the conflicting nature of motherhood.

There’s no reason why Lamb shouldn’t work. It stays away from the trappings of monster origin stories and elicits comfort in the strangest of places. Its writing is brilliant because it knows where to hint the audience with bouts of surrealism and where to employ the simmering relationship drama. We also get, in the form of Noomi Rapace’s Maria, one of the darkest and most sharply performed female characters of the year. However, the film is never too sure about what tone it wants to be comfortable with. It’s too unsure about itself, so much so that it seems pretentious (which it isn’t). I think this is exactly what keeps it from a better spot among the best horror films of the year.

8. Ghosts of the Golden Groves

At its core, the utterly satanic and possessed Shonajhurir Bhoot is a film belonging to the past tense. And yet, the flavour is distinctively present. The futuristic euphoria exuded by Aniket Dutta and Roshni Sen’s potent feature directorial debut is so unsettling that it sometimes seems to trump over the film’s actual ghosts.

Either way, the Bengali film breathes (or stabs) a new blood cell into the heart of Indian horror, which is too content with mediocrity and even more full of its occasional surprises. A duology based on an Aniket Dutta short story and one written much earlier by the Apu Trilogy laureate Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, the film’s black and white aesthetics are such a blood-curdling howl from the dead of the night that it almost seems to promise the dawn of the new moon in horror as a genre- from Tumbbad via Bulbbul to now this, the change is welcome. 

7. Last Night in Soho 

We live in such unpredictable times. We all know that we simply can’t expect an Edgar Wright film to be in a horror-movie list (this, when his best is literally a zombie invasion comedy), but here we are. Last Night in Soho finds Wright obsessing with his love for vivacious soundtracks of yore yet again, with elements from genre cinema history being juxtaposed with each other. And yet, it isn’t quite Wright to be expected here: it’s a serious female companionship fantasy, nailing its coffin at the heart of the dark, and fitting the neon-tinted Italian Giallo neons everywhere possible. This is a visually stunning piece of puke-worthy sensationalism, and yet, the camp is too stylish to be dismissed.

Starring Thomasin Mackenzie who pulls off her centre-stage with oddly wistful energy, and an extraordinary Anna Taylor-Joy as her compelling sixties avatar of sorts, Last Night in Soho is a gloriously uneven film that might be the weakest form yet for its oddball storyteller. And yet, its perverse anatomy also makes it strangely taut and enjoyable.

6. Fear Street: 1666

Leigh Janiak’s hokey horror trilogy doesn’t need an introduction if you’re a genre enthusiast in their Netflix-sneaking peak. The three weekly releases became a sensation this summer, with their atrocious, maddening mediocrity being a little easier on the senses because of their campy, post-modern storytelling. Even at their weakest, these films find Janiak tugging the heart of the period in which the stories are set, especially when she’s staging the monstrous encounters of these teenagers in the nineties and the seventies.

Having said that, the folk horror of 1666 demanded the filmmaker to be a little more aggressively contemporary and grave, both in terms of tone and approach. Fortunately, she lives up to the task well. Not only is the cult horror of the last part of the Fear Street trilogy tightly orchestrated, but also engaging and robustly promising, with performances that are better and the writing which is less full of itself. One can assure this because even when the story returns to the nineties (which is the latest the film’s hokey ass can afford to get updated in), the film takes solid and smart story-telling decisions, for example giving its central couple a sense of closure.

5. Churuli

Lijo Jose Pelliserry is a confirmed master when it comes to the post-modern wave of relevant Malayalam films. His films tend to revolve around a community, and by becoming its part, it does its bit of scrutinizing and criticizing it. Sometimes it lands, at other times it doesn’t. His widely acclaimed and most popular Jallikattu didn’t work for me on a film level. Yes, this was a strong story that blurred the lines of the man and the beast in process of tightness; however, the film itself doesn’t rise above what it basically is. Churuli, having said that, is a crushingly familiar step to take. The story about normal characters getting consumed by their strange and at times unnervingly exotic environments is a tried-and-tested subgenre in films.

Churuli too feels like a familiar exercise. However, the sinister, devilish pleasures of the film and its wicked originality manage to land very well. Its futuristic cult horror drama is equal parts exhausting and enthralling. I, for one, enjoyed being relentlessly tossed through the film’s wild mix of tonalities and plot turns. The climax is a burning mess- you either get used to it or don’t. Let’s just say that the wildness of its ending is the one thing that had my eyes locked towards the screen. 

4. The Story of Southern Islet

Keat-Aun Chong’s The Story of Southern Islet is the finest political horror film I’ve seen this year. Essentially conveying the strange horrors of the immigrant experience, the film revolves around a Chinese couple in a Malaysian town, the wife of who must save her husband from his sickness by the help of ritualistic endeavours, ranging from following the ghosts of the sleepy town to partaking in shamanistic practices.

In his debut as a director, Chong really proves the vivaciousness of his film language. The aesthetics and the meditative tone essentially remind us of the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. However, he is also an original voice unafraid of navigating the rawest and most unsettling directions of the story. The fact that the film emerges, if only partly, out of his memory, makes The Story of Southern Islet all the more terrifying.

3. Mad God

Phil Tippet’s Mad God is a crazy audio-visual experience. An apocalyptic and feverish recreation of the director-animator’s worst nightmares, the film took forty-five years to come to the development with which we can witness it today. The way these digital colours, creatures and slime-laden set-pieces smear themselves on the screen leaves you with breathlessness and a sense of distress.

Whether the film is engaging or not is debatable. So is the fact whether the film really has a plot or not- I didn’t understand too much beyond a scene of a hospital. However, the cinematic aura of the film is so strong and pungent that you’ll better feel it than try to understand it. Mad God, in a single word, can only be defined as a visceral, violent disturbance to cinematic meditation, a fascinating disruption of the highest order.

2. Titane

Julia Ducournau makes a louder noise with her masterfully magnetic Titane than she did with her charming horror debut Raw. To put it into perspective, I’ll quote what IndieWire film critic David Ehrlich said about the film in his review, “It’s the sweetest film about a serial killer fucking a car and the most fucked-up movie about the idea of a found family.” Starring Agathe Rouselle as the protagonist Alexia, the film takes a savagely original premise and skins it to the bones- till the point where it becomes affecting and there’s no turning back.

At this point, I’m pretty sure that no one really approaches female body horror the way Ducournau does. She takes the vivid complexities of the anatomy and tears it to the meat like a jackal. And yet, there’s not even a bit of pretentiousness to be seen and there are no stretches of sanitization. And it’s exactly that electronic energy that sustains the many horrors of Titane. 

1. Spencer

This is certainly not a mindless choice. I thought for hours before including Spencer on this list, primarily because even in my blog I must stay true to my own vision. And after a lot of brainstorming, this is my decision- I better do! Pablo Larrain’s empathetic and magnetically profound character study of Princess Diana, following her through the Windsor Palace during her last Christmastime appearance as the Princess of Wales, the film is visually stunning and with keen attention to the detail and texture of both the technicalities and the writing. From Claire Mathon’s wonderful cinematography to the compelling costume and production design, the film is absolutely wonderful. Add to this an extraordinary performance delivered by Kristen Stewart, one that might be the year’s best!

However, the film gets even more rewarding if you read it as a gothic horror of Diana’s inherent female experience. Her descent into a temporal disintegration is so uncomfortable and coherent than her visions grow unsettling by the minute. From consuming the pearls to witnessing Anne Boleyn’s ghost waving towards her, the film’s horror is so observant and delicately treated that it’s just as tough to deny its absence, as it is tough to deny its sheer presence. All in service to a deeply complex and vibrant film that goes genuinely no-holds-barred.