Your 10 favorite horror and non-horror movies of the year?

[Baron Von Marlon]

Since the end of the year is approaching, I thought we could already start with listing our favorites.

Don't worry too much about the release dates. What counts is when you had access to it.

Rules:
Editing allowed until the year is over.
Deadline for posting your list is January 7.

P.S. If you have trouble recalling the movie you saw this year, you might wanna participate in next year's Track The Movies You Watch topic.
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Horror from good to not as good

Deathgasm (2015)
Evil Dead-ish heavy metal horror comedy with excellent blood & gore and little bit of nudity. I couldn't ask for more.

What We Do In The Shadows (2014)
One of the most clever movies I've seen in a long time.

Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015)
Not your average slasher movie.

The Voices (2014)
I think the pet factor is what makes this movie so interesting.
Ryan Reynolds was also excellent. His best performance so far.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)
First decent mix of western and horror I've seen. Also Kurt Russell!
It was nothing like I expected and despite a certain someone spoiling the ending it was still pretty great.

Let Us Prey (2014)
Hard to put in words why I like this one. Guess I just like the concept and the execution.

Wyrmwood (2014)
Best zombie flick I've seen in a while. The nutty professor character was excellent.

Clown (2014)
Didn't live up to its potential but I still think it was pretty decent.

Late Phases (2014)
Slow but solid werewolf movie.

Dark Was The Night (2014)
Creature flick of the year with an excellent main actor.

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Non-horror in no particular order

Vacation (2015)
Films that make me laugh out loud are a rare thing.

John Wick (2014)
Always loved a good revenge/action movie. Payback, Crank, Taken, Machete,...
This movie goes in that list.

The Guest (2014)
Wasn't that special but the main actor was great. Guy from Downton Abbey, I think.

Turbo Kid (2015)
Mad Max with bicycles, eighties synth music, gore and Michael Ironside.
My kinda weird.

The Dead Lands (2014)
Pretty kickass movie about a Maori warrior out for revenge.

These Final Hours (2013)
Cool and original apocalyptic thriller

Ted 2, Uncut Version (2015)
Always loved Seth MacFarlane's humour. Wasn't as good as the first one
but still funny.

The Ridiculous 6 (2015)
This movie was ridiculous but fun. The chemistry between the actors was great
because most of them worked together before and/or are friends in real life.
The story was simple and predictable but it worked well.
Imo that's the best formula for an Adam Sandler movie. Him and his crew playing
weird characters in R-Rated comedies with a simple story.

Penguins Of Madagascar (2014)
Of all cartoon movies I've seen this year, I like this one the most.
Animals are just more fun than people.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
Move over James Bond...
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Notes/thoughts
-I'd say overal it wasn't a bad year for (horror) movies.
There's still a huge pile of crap being released like always but it feels like they're releasing more and more little gems too.

-Besides the (shitty) remakes it seems bits of the eighties spirit are coming back. Turbo Kid, Kung Fury, Dude Bro Party Massacre III,...

-What I noticed the most is how many quality movies are coming from Australia and New-Zealand lately: What We Do In The Shadows, Wyrmwood, These Final Hours, The Deadlands. Perhaps Charlie's Farm too.
And last year we had Housebound.

[horcrux2007]

Both of my lists are in no particular order.

Horror:

Unfriended
Probably my favorite horror movie of the year. It won't appeal to everyone, but it's an often scary slasher-supernatural kind of movie with a interesting twist.

It Follows
Suspenseful, haunting and unforgettable. It not only acts as an homage to 80's horror flicks but also has its own unique style.

The Visit
Equally funny and scary and serves as a surprising return-to-form from Shyamalan.

Insidious: Chapter 3
It has a lot of jump scares, but most of them deliver well. It has a cool demon, and Lin Shaye completely stole the show.

The Gallows
A bit more of a personal preference. I liked the atmosphere and setting, and it had some good scares.

Goodnight Mommy
I was a bit underwhelmed the first time I watched it, but I have definitely warmed up to it since my first watch. Although the twist is predictable, the unabashed weirdness should provide an intriguing viewing.

The Gift
By far the biggest surprise of the year out of any movie. It's dark, unpredictable and incredibly thrilling throughout.

Creep
Darkly funny at times but really scary all the way to the end. Mark Duplass is incredible.

Crimson Peak
Not the magnum opus people were expecting from Del Toro, but the cinematography, atmosphere and set design really make up for its flaws.

Krampus
It's fun and silly enough to warrant annual holiday viewings if you prefer Gremlins to Frosty the Snowman.
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Non-horror:

Mad Max: Fury Road
Intense from start to finish. It never gives you time to breathe.

Spy
Melissa McCarthy's best movie yet. She and Paul Feig really bring out the best in each other.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Ridiculous like any other spy movie, but also ridiculously fun. Action-packed, funny and really entertaining.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
My favorite movie of the year.

The Walk
A beautifully shot and well-told biopic of Phillipe Petit. The wire walk scene at the end is impossible to forget.

The Martian
Surprisingly funny and often thrilling. Great plot and acting from everyone.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
A fantastic, dark and emotional ending to one of my favorite franchises.

Spectre
An absurdly entertaining Bond flick that is more like the classic Bond movies updated for a modern audience. It's fun and thrilling from start to finish.

Inside Out
One of Pixar's best movies. A simple plot with surprisingly mature themes, great humor and real emotion (see what i did there).

Jurassic World
Another ridiculously fun movie. It doesn't match up to the original Jurassic Park, but it's far better than the sequels.

[Angra]

My lists so far:

Horror

It Follows
The Visit
Bone Tomahawk
Extinction
The Final Girls
Attack on Titan: Part 1
We Are Still Here
Howl


Non-Horror

Unbroken
Kingsman
American Sniper
Spy
Whiplash
Turbo Kid
Men & Chicken
The Revenant
The Hateful Eight
Star Wars 7

[Lord Voldemort]

Horror:
It Follows
Unfriended
The Gallows
Insidious 3
Wrong Turn 6
The Final Girls
The Babadook
The Visit
Green Inferno
Road Kill

Non Horror:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens(as evident by my new avatar)
Ant-Man
Ex-Machina
Mission Impossible
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2
Mad Max: Fury Road
I-Spy
Black Mass
Insurgent
Straight Outta Compton

[tfantasy]

Horror

Crimson Peak
Bone Tomahawk
The Gift
Into the Grizzly Maze
[Rec] 4
The Vatican Tapes
Goodnight Mommy
Cooties
The Diabolical

Non-Horror

Run All Night
Furious 7
True Story
Broken Horses
Mad Max: Fury Road
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Jurassic World
Straight Outta Compton
Return to Sender
Southpaw

There were a lot of movies that I have not seen yet cause the theatres are too expensive so I wait for their dvd release. I was disappointed this year in most of the horror movies that I have watched so it was difficult to compile a list for them.

[Giganticface]

Alrighty, I've finally gotten my 2015 list together, and I'm sure no one is more excited about that than me.

Overall, I think 2015's top 8 beats out 2014's best films, and the #1 It Follows will be remembered longer than last year's Babadook.

Like the previous year, 2015 was rich with enjoyable horror films, spanning all subgenres.

We had one incredible horror western, Bone Tomahawk, and I've decided we need a lot more of those. This film was also the cannibal film on par with the stomach-churning classics that Green Inferno was paying homage to.

On the monsters front, zombies seem to have plateaued, but are still easily the highest-volume monster subgenre. Vampires were represented, but not heavily like in past years. We had giant monsters and animals (Animal, Stung, Monsters: Dark Continent, Jurassic World), two natural animal films (both grizzly bears), and one or more mythological beasts (The Hallow, Digging Up the Marrow maybe?). Finally, it's high time in my opinion for the werewolf to make a comeback, and 2015 showed some hope that they're on the upswing (When Animals Dream, Wolfcop, Howl).

Interestingly, we also saw multiple holiday and anthology films this year (Krampus, which I haven't seen yet, A Christmas Horror Story, Tales of Halloween).

Is it just me, or does found footage seem to be on the decline?

Horror is becoming more more and more competitive in the mainstream, evidenced by an even greater number of TV shows on both cable and network TV. We finally got the Evil Dead sequel we've been waiting for with Ash vs. Evil Dead. Big movies studios have finally woken up the fact that the best horror is done independently, and released some actually decent films. M. Night Shyamalan got back on track with low-budget, self-funded found footage film The Visit. It Follows was never supposed to see a major movie theater, but its grassroots popularity was impossible to ignore, and the indie became a mainstream sensation. And who would have ever expected to see The Green Inferno's level of gore and depravity in a mainstream theater?

If there was any clear trend, it's that horror comedy is rising in popularity. One of the best films of the year, What We Do in the Shadows, has gotten critical praise and is currently playing on HBO. (I actually left it off this list because I saw it late December of 2014.) Besides that film, a healthy percentage of really good films from 2015 were of the horror/comedy variety, ranging in style from the most memorable New Zealand splatter comedy we've seen in a while (Deathgasm), to pitch-black comedy (The Voices), to zom-com (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Cooties, Burying the Ex), and even a tougue-in-cheek werewolf B-horror comedy (Wolfcop).

Another trend is the rise in meta-horror, which has gradually risen in popularity, but is now running rampant to the point of potential oversaturation. What was once clever satire of horror tropes a la Cabin in the Woods and Behind the Mask is now so prominent it deserves its own new level of sub-classifications. We still see genre self-referencing, such as in Digging up the Marrow and Deathgasm, but we also see trends in grindhouse homages (Headless, Turbo Kid, The Editor, The Green Inferno), self-referencing franchises (The Human Centipede 3: The Final Sequence), and broader pop-cultural references (Gravy). The most common trend by far, however, is the wave of slasher throwbacks that no longer attempt to satire the lovable flaws of the genre, but rather pay a straight, non-critical homage to the subgenre that dominated the 80s (The Final Girls, The Cabining, Dude Bro Party Massacre III, Lost After Dark).

So without further adieu (because that's enough adieu)...

My Ranked List of 2015 Horror Movies

Exceptional
1. It Follows (2015) [10/10]
2. Bone Tomahawk (2015) [10/10]

Nearly Exceptional
3. Ex Machina (2015) [9/10]
4. Spring (2015) [9/10]
5. Goodnight Mommy (2014) [9/10]
6. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) [9/10]
7. Alléluia (2014) [9/10]
8. Deathgasm (2015) [9/10]

Loved It
9. Pieces of Talent (2012) [8/10]
10. The Green Inferno (2013) [8/10]
11. We Are Still Here (2015) [8/10]
12. Clown (2014) [8/10]
13. Backcountry (2014) [8/10]
14. Last Shift (2015) [8/10]
15. Cub (2014) [8/10]
16. Faults (2014) [8/10]
17. The Visit (2015) [8/10]
18. Headless (2015) [8/10]
19. The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) (2015) [8/10]
20. Shrew’s Nest (2014) [8/10]
21. Felt (2014) [8/10]
22. The Nightmare (2015) [8/10]
23. The Falling (2015) [8/10]
24. Landmine Goes Click (2015) [8/10]
25. The Gift (2015) [8/10]
26. He Never Died (2015) [8/10]
27. The Voices (2015) [8/10]
28. The Final Girls (2015) [8/10]
29. Wyrmwood (2014) [8/10]

Liked It or Really Liked It
30. Knock Knock (2015) [8/10]
31. Bastard (2015) [8/10]
32. Queen of Earth (2015) [8/10]
33. Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015) [8/10]
34. The Editor (2015) [8/10]
35. Let Us Prey (2014) [8/10]
36. Creep (2014) [7/10]
37. Tales of Halloween (2015) [7/10]
38. The Atticus Institute (2015) [7/10]
39. Suburban Gothic (2014) [8/10]
40. The Houses October Built (2014) [7/10]
41. Digging Up the Marrow (2015) [7/10]
42. Bait (2015) [8/10]
43. The Harvest (2013) [7/10]
44. The Hallow (2015) [7/10]
45. Howl (2015) [7/10]
46. Cooties (2014) [7/10]
47. Turbo Kid (2015) [7/10]
48. WolfCop (2014) [6/10]
49. When Animals Dream (2014) [7/10]
50. GirlHouse (2014) [7/10]
51. Hidden (2015) [7/10]
52. Summer of Blood (2014) [7/10]
53. The Badger Game (2014) [7/10]
54. Closer to God (2014) [7/10]
55. Avenged (2013) [7/10]
56. Animal (2014) [6/10]
57. Gravy (2015) [6/10]
58. I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine (2015) [7/10]
59. Horsehead (2014) [7/10]
60. [REC]⁴ Apocalypse (2014) [6/10]
61. The Drownsman (2014) [6/10]
62. The Stranger (2015) [6/10]
63. Bloodsucking Bastards (2015) [7/10]
64. The Barber (2015) [6/10]
65. The Hive (2015) [7/10]
66. Bound to Vengeance (2015) [7/10]

Enjoyable Enough
67. The Diabolical (2015) [6/10]
68. Dark Summer (2015) [6/10]
69. Curse of the Witching Tree (2015) [6/10]
70. Into the Grizzly Maze (2015) [6/10]
71. Final Girl (2015) [6/10]
72. The Cabining (2013) [6/10]
73. Contracted: Phase II (2015) [6/10]
74. Maggie (2015) [6/10]
75. Unfriended (2014) [6/10]
76. A Christmas Horror Story (2015) [6/10]
77. Some Kind Of Hate (2015) [6/10]
78. The Samurai (2014) [6/10]
79. Stung (2015) [6/10]
80. Judas Ghost (2015) [6/10]
81. Poltergeist (2015) [6/10]
82. Dark Was the Night (2014) [6/10]
83. Burying the Ex (2014) [6/10]
84. Jurassic World (2015) [7/10]
85. Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) [6/10]
86. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) [6/10]
87. Extinction (2015) [6/10]
88. Lost After Dark (2014) [6/10]

Watchable but Not Great
89. The Lazarus Effect (2015) [6/10]
90. Preservation (2014) [6/10]
91. I-Lived (2015) [6/10]
92. Charlie’s Farm (2014) [5/10]
93. Backmask (2015) [5/10]
94. Ghoul (2015) [5/10]
95. The Redwood Massacre (2014) [5/10]
96. Pod (2015) [5/10]
97. Monsters: Dark Continent (2014) [5/10]
98. Pernicious (2015) [5/10]
99. Anguish (2015) [5/10]

Not Too Good
100. Antisocial (2013) [4/10]
101. Demonic (2015) [5/10]
102. The Hoarder (2015) [5/10]
103. Sacrament (2014) [5/10]
104. White Settlers (2014) [4/10]
105. Area 51 (2015) [5/10]
106. Muck (2015) [5/10]
107. Nymph (2014) [4/10]



Here's a bit of info on how I constructed the list:

What constitutes "Horror?"

I tend to cast a wide net on horror, even though I know the common definition is more limited. I look at it more in the sense of "what would horror fans like?" or if I were selecting content for a service for horror fans, would they like these films?

* I'll include horror-themed comedies and dramas without question.

* I'll include exploitation, as long as it makes sense, usually due to gore.

* I'll include dark or violent thrillers and twisted dramas, but only if my gut says it belongs in the list.

* I tend to be a bit more lenient for directors who are known for horror.

What qualifies for "2015?"

I'll include any film that got its wider release in 2015. I tried to research each non-2015 release, and if it was only shown at festivals prior to 2015, or received a limited release in smaller countries, it qualifies.

[BioLeng]

I recently watched The Confines and I really liked this movie. Director: Eytan Rockaway.
For a long time I have not seen such interesting films in this genre. For me it is one of the best horror film of the last year. I recommend!

[Morningriser]

I havent seen enough movies to make 2 lists for 2015 so I will just make 1.

10. It Follows
09. The Gift
08. The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence
07. Mad Max: Fury Road
06. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron
05. Ex-Machina
04. Ted 2
03. Creed
02. Chappie
01. Star Wars: The Force Awakens