7 Horror Films To Get a Friend into Horror This Holiday
So if your like me you have done next to no Christmas shopping ( unless you count all the stuff I am giving away on site ) and you are in dire need to get some done. Well I have a brother in law who loves horror movies and I am sure I am not alone so here is my list 7 Horror Movies To Get a Friend Interested in Horror This Holiday Season
It is important to note that I have deliberately picked titles that would appeal to the more mainstream and not so much us die hard horror fans. Frankly our tastes can sometimes be a bit niche. As much as you and I love films like Martyrs, Let The Right One In, and INSIDE they don’t appeal as well to the more ‘mainstream’ horror fans I find. So here are seven movies sure to give any horror fan their fix regardless of their level of indoctrination in the horror genre. Included with each film is the films rating based off of reviews submitted to our site by fans and staff! As always your reviews are always welcome!
28 days later: 28 Days Later is a fantastic film and one that came out of nowhere. Shot on a limited budget this zombie tale of eco-terrorists gone awry is one of the best new zombie films to be made in a very long time. It was also the movie that put Fox Atomic on the map for me as a genre studio capable of taking on Lionsgate. Its a great loss to us fans that Fox Atomic shut down! 28 Days Later for me was a better experience then the Dawn of the Dead remake, Zombieland and Romeros Diary of the Dead and Land of the Dead. It was very gruesome, apocalyptic and dark and I really and truly felt I was looking at Great Britiain after the undead apocalypse and its characters drew me. A great film sure to scare the crap out of your horror friends and best of all when they are done you can get them a copy of 28 Weeks Later which was almost just as much fun!
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28 Days Later Animal rights activists free a group of infected chimpanzees to horrifying results in this speculative sci-fi horror effort from Trainspotting director Danny Boyle. Waking from a coma in a deserted London hospital 28 days later, b... |
Dog Soldiers: Dog Soldiers is a classic. If you have not seen Dog Soldiers then you can not very well call yourself a horror fan in my books. The best part is its mainstream enough that even your buddies should love it. Dog Soldiers is a great Werewolf tale that proves even the most highly trained special forces when lost in the woods with werewolves are pretty much.... f*cked. Neil Marshall who directed the film has gone on to do other great action-horror films including Doomsday which was alot of fun!
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Dog Soldiers Something evil lurks in the wilds of Scotland, and this unfortunate troop of soldiers are about to stumble upon it. A routine exercise takes an unexpected turn when the troop discovers a ravaged bunch of dead soldiers out in the w... |
SAW: SAW is one of those great movies that shows when you have passion for our genre and serious talent you can deliver a film experience that shoots you into the upper echelons of truly great horror. SAW is a horror film that has twists, turns and an ending that reached up off the floor and tried to rip my balls off. Its a fantastic film that is a throw back to classic who dun it horror films with a boatload of carnage thrown in as icing on the cake. For me SAW is the perfect horror movie as it has strong characters, a great story and the gore and visual trauma is only secondary... although very well done.
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Saw (2004) When Adam is jolted back to consciousness after nearly drowning at the bottom of a decrepit bathtub, he awakes to find himself chained to a rusty pipe inside a dark torture chamber. There is someone else in the room. Dr. Lawrence ... |
John Carpenters The Thing: I saw The Thing based upon a recommendation years ago. I am not one of these bloggers who writes about horror who pretends I always knew about horror and should be worshipped for it. I like many of you got into horror about 10 years ago and have loved every moment of it. When I finally watched the Thing based off the recommendation of my good friend Rene aka ‘Macready’ I was completely blown away. John Carpenters The thing which is a remake is easily one of the greatest scifi horror movies ever made. These days we talk about alot of scifi like District 9 on this site and alot are great films but The Thing is still to this day the greatest scifi horror film ever made in my books. With special fx by Vincent Guastini that still hold up today and an intense atmosphere and great characters The Thing is a movie everyone should own.
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The Thing John Carpenter's The Thing is both a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film of the same name and a re-adaptation of the John W. Campbell Jr. story "Who Goes There?" on which it was based. Carpenter's film is more faithful to Campbell's... |
Dawn of the Dead: I had trouble with this one. I love George Romeros Dawn of the Dead and I also love Zach Snyders remake of it. I couldn’t decide which one to put on my list so we might as well just put them both on the list. Zach Snyders version is an action packed powder puff piece of the original. I say that with no slight intended. Where Romeros is a classic zombie tale of society, humanity and how we come apart in the face of adversity Zach Snyders is a straight up action piece with the emphasis on characters secondary to the insane zombie madness. I loved Zach Snyders remake for what it was an action packed zombie movie with great characters, lots of action and some really well done zombies. If your looking for something with more depth then checkout the original. Either movie you can not go wrong with.
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Dawn of the Dead George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic Night of the Living Dead is quite terrifying and gory (those zombies do like the taste of living flesh). But in its own way, it is just as comically satiric as the first film in its ta... |
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Dawn of the Dead (2004) As the United States is turned upside-down by a strange plague-like event in which millions of corpses walk the earth as blood-thirsty zombies (with the recently-deceased that the zombies kill usually returning as zombies themselv... |
The Descent: Neil Marshalls The Descent is a fantastic movie, especially if you like me are terrified of small spaces. I am severely claustrophobic and nothing makes that scarier then a mutant race that feeds off animal and human flesh. The Descent is terrifying because of its isolation, great characters and tight shooting. The Descent does for underground caves what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean. Here is hoping Descent 2 doesnt suck the big one!
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The Descent (2005) In a remote mountain range, six female friends meet for their yearly adventure, a caving trip into the arteries of the earth. Leader of the trip is Juno, tough, compelling and dangerous. Along for the ride are Swedish sisters Rebe... |
Night of the living dead: For this one I am going to commit sacrilege and say that the one you should buy your pal for the Holidays is not the original black and white but rather the Tom Savini directed and Romero produced 90’s remake. I don’t know why but for some reason I found the remake in color a more immersive and entertaining experience. The original black and white scared the crap out of me as a youngster but the remake seemed to offer a new level of intensity and polish to the classic. Tom Savini who I am not in the slightest a fan of really impressed me with his directing.
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Night of the Living Dead (1990) While visting the grave of their mother, Barbara and her brother are attacked by a rabid flesh-eating Zombie. Barbara manages to escape, and reaches the relative safety of a seemingly deserted farmhouse. She is joined shortly by... |
There you have it 7 horror films that will help get a friend into horror. I think all are worthy and great horror films that any friend can get indoctrinated into horror with. Buy em for a pal or heck go out and get that special edition version that you have been meaning to buy for years. I know I will be for Dawn of the Dead and Dog Soldiers.