The Keep (1983)

IMDb plot summary: Nazis are forced to turn to a Jewish historian for help in battling the ancient demon they have inadvertently freed from its prison.

Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Scott Glenn, Alberta Watson, Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, and Ian McKellen.

The plot is just barely clinging together here -- apparently director Michael Mann dran into a LOT of shooting difficulties, and then his visual effects supervisor died two weeks into post-production, and THEN he had to cut down his 210-minute movie to two hours, which the studio then cut down to 90 minutes, and you can see the many, many holes that resulted. That being said... it's undeniably atmospheric. You can almost lean into the barebones plot as missing pieces not because it'd been brutally chopped up but because it's an unearthly tale that we'll never fully understand. The editing makes it almost impossible to tell where rooms in the keep are relative to each other, and while on one hand that's an obvious editing error, on the other it definitely builds the unease and tension, much more than the incessant smoke. Apparently the film has a small cult following, and I totally get why. It's kind of captivating in all its messiness.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Keep > After the Wedding

The Keep < Chronicle

The Keep < American Outlaws

The Keep < Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997)

The Keep < Killing Season

The Keep < Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

The Keep > Absolute Power

The Keep > Mudbound

The Keep < Hustle & Flow

The Keep > Frank

The Keep > Dark and Stormy Night

The Keep < Monsters

Final spot: #1576 out of 3238, or 51%.

Life After Beth (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A young man's recently deceased girlfriend mysteriously returns from the dead, but he slowly realizes she is not the way he remembered her.

Directed by Jeff Baena. Starring Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, and Molly Shannon.

I had so much fun with this movie. I laughed out loud a lot, especially as the story spiraled beyond the initial two. I also like how the relationship between the two was in crisis even before she died -- the reason it's not working now isn't even necessarily because she's undead now, but because their relationship NEVER worked long-term, that's just exacerbated now. There are a lot of great side characters here, from the protagonist's gun-obsessed older brother to an exceptionally awkward Anna Kendrick to Beth's mom who just keeps taking pictures to commemorate her resurrection. It's a clever and entertaining entry in a very oversaturated genre and was a lot of fun to watch. Definitely recommend!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Life After Beth > The Firemen's Ball

Life After Beth > Whip It

Life After Beth < Leap of Faith

Life After Beth > The Martian

Life After Beth > American History X

Life After Beth > Silver Linings Playbook

Life After Beth < Anatomy of a Murder

Life After Beth < High School Musical

Life After Beth > Spotlight

Life After Beth > 56 Up

Life After Beth > Breaking Away

Life After Beth > The Karate Kid

Final spot: #442 out of 3237, or 86%.

Critters (1986)

IMDb plot summary: A group of small but vicious alien creatures called Crites escape from an alien prison transport vessel and land near a small farm town on earth, pursued by two shape-shifting bounty hunters.

Directed by Stephen Herek. Starring Dee Wallace, M. Emmet Walsh, Billy Green Bush, and Scott Grimes.

This is definitely more comedy than horror, though something about those creatures rolling along after their prey like tiny tumbleweeds IS pretty creepy. I definitely laughed a lot more than I expected to -- while it's not usually laugh-out-loud funny, there was just a consistently lighthearted tone to this that worked for me pretty much throughout, and I kept finding individual moments amusing. It isn't afraid to lean into absurdity, especially when it comes to the scenes with the bounty hunters. It's obvious how low budget this is and how much they're trying to hide that -- the little we do see of the creature design is pretty disappointing. This is one of those movies that might actually benefit from a remake -- I'd love to see these creatures turned into something more ominous now that that tech is more widely available! And it wouldn't hurt them to add in some stronger character development while they're at it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Critters > The Firemen's Ball

Critters < The Black Cat

Critters < The Imposter

Critters < The Bishop's Wife

Critters > Wide Awake

Critters > Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Critters > EDtv

Critters > The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Critters < Bridge of Spies

Critters > Black Snake Moan

Critters < Pather Panchali

Final spot: #1424 out of 3236, or 56%.

Deep Red (1975)

IMDb plot summary: A jazz pianist and a wisecracking journalist are pulled into a complex web of mystery after the former witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic.

Directed by Dario Argento. Starring David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia, and Macha Méril.

I've only seen one other Argento film, Suspiria, but the hallmarks of his filmmaking are distinctive enough that they're easily recognizable here -- bold colors, over-the-top violence and gore, a dramatic score. There's a fascinating musical choice made every time we see another murder happen, where it flips from an ominous score to a much higher energy, much more exciting one. That scoring decision along with the fact that we see the murders committed from the killer's point of view, thus obscuring their identity, puts us unsettlingly in this unknown murderer's shoes and sets up these dramatically violent moments as a sort of adrenaline rush. Giallo is a horror subgenre I don't instantly connect with, but by the end of this one I'd mostly come around on it -- it helped that the story was concrete enough that the stylistic choices felt like an enhancement rather than a distraction. I don't know that I'll revisit this one any time soon, but I'm glad I got to see it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Deep Red < Downfall

Deep Red > The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Deep Red > Wild

Deep Red < Runaway Bride

Deep Red > Choke

Deep Red > In & Out

Deep Red > First Blood

Deep Red < Interstate 60

Deep Red < Frosty the Snowman

Deep Red < King Kong (2005)

Deep Red > The Love Witch

Deep Red > Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Final spot: #1842 out of 3235, or 43%.

Kill List (2011)

IMDb plot summary: Nearly a year after a botched job, a hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darkness.

Directed by Ben Wheatley. Starring Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Harry Simpson, and Michael Smiley.

This is a film that plays on creepy atmosphere more than anything -- it reminds me a bit of Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, which I watched recently and found frustrating in its being ALMOST a straightforward narrative and then, abruptly, very much not. The creepy atmosphere here does have some effective moments. There's one brief scene involving the use of a drumbeat that completely paralyzed me fear, which was the first movie this month to do that and was kind of a delicious cathartic moment. But I think the movie is relying on more moments like that, of its ending images evoking pure terror to the point where I am affected rather than distracted by trying to figure out what's actually happening at this point in the story. Kill List made a lot of my friends' best-of-2011 lists, so I had high hopes for it going in, but aside from one very effective moment, it left me cold.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Kill List < The Firemen's Ball

Kill List > The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Kill List < Four Weddings and a Funeral

Kill List < Biloxi Blues

Kill List > Where to Invade Next

Kill List > The Day of the Triffids

Kill List < The Pajama Game

Kill List > Martian Child

Kill List > Last of the Red Hot Lovers

Kill List > Ocean's Twelve

Kill List > Scotland, PA

Kill List > Lust for Love

Final spot: #2249 out of 3234, or 30%.

Cam (2018)

IMDb plot summary: Alice, an ambitious camgirl, wakes up one day to discover she's been replaced on her show with an exact replica of herself.

Directed by Daniel Goldhaber. Starring Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Melora Walters, and Devin Druid.

Cam is a 2018 Netflix movie about Alice, a camgirl who performs under the pseudonym "Lola." One day, she discovers some other person who looks exactly like her has stolen her account and is doing shows pretending to be her, and no one believes it isn't her. It's a weird creepy story that may very well have some logical loopholes, but ultimately I didn't care because this is one of the most engaging movies I've seen in a long time. I attribute that to a combination of the writing and the acting. Screenwriter Isa Mazzei did work as a camgirl -- the scene where Alice goes to the police for help only to have them ask her with a sleazy grin, "So what's the weirdest thing you ever did on camera?" is apparently taken pretty directly from Mazzei's experience. It's a world I know very little about, but I can *feel* the authenticity in the writing. And Madeline Brewer as Alice is tremendously compelling -- a smart, independent woman who feels like her whole life is inexplicably unraveling. The ending is, again, perhaps logically confusing, but for once I didn't care because it was riveting to watch. Definitely a gem of a horror flick -- check it out!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Cam > Downfall

Cam > Queen of Katwe

Cam < Leap of Faith

Cam > The Muppets

Cam > Cloud Atlas

Cam > Walking and Talking

Cam > Grease

Cam < Castle in the Sky

Cam > Chariots of Fire

Cam < Secretary

Cam < The Legend of 1900

Cam > Network

Final spot: #421 out of 3233, or 87%.

Christine (1983)

IMDb plot summary: A nerdish boy buys a strange car with an evil mind of its own and his nature starts to change to reflect it.

Directed by John Carpenter. Starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, and Robert Prosky. 

John Carpenter directs this adaptation, and it's a pretty good fit. While on the surface "murder car" sounds like a fun silly horror movie premise, where the film really gets scare mileage is in the character development of Arnie, Christine's owner. One minute he's the mild-mannered nerd constantly getting beaten up, the next he is ALL ABOUT letting his car take lethal revenge on his enemies and cracking jokes about it afterward. His mutual friends are worried the car is the cause of this -- one even says at one point, "I don't think he's Arnie anymore" -- but we never see this change, and I find it JUST as likely that all this rage has been simmering below the surface, and as soon as he got enough power to make his revenge fantasy come true, he was happy to take it. That hits close to home in a way "murder car" never could, and this adaptation definitely helps to bring that deeper, truer fear to the front in really interesting ways.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Christine > Downfall

Christine < National Lampoon's Vacation

Christine < A Goofy Movie

Christine < The Fall (2006)

Christine < Madame Blueberry

Christine < Hustle & Flow

Christine < The Beach

Christine > Wreck-It Ralph

Christine > Spider-Man: Homecoming

Christine < High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Christine > It Comes at Night

Final spot: #1594 out of 3232, or 51%.