By Ricardo Serrano Denis and Gabriel Serrano Denis
Horror has always been a refuge for creators that want to take on society with scream-inducing tales. Women, whose story is undeniably marked by horror given the treatment they’ve been afforded as the result of a history of hatred and corrupt social attitudes, bring a unique flavor to the frights they conjure. They approach genre with a different set of sensibilities, worries, and anxieties that can either usher in new visions of terror or entirely flip the script on tried-and-true variations of it.
Deciding on ten films that bolster this argument proved to be a daunting task. Despite the resistance they met from the film industry to have a seat at the table, women directors have produced some of the most important and inventive examples of horror to have graced movie screens. Movies like The Babadook (Jennifer Kent), Raw (Julia Ducournau), American Psycho (Mary Harron), and Saint Maud (Rose Glass) have become go-to examples of this, superior expressions of horror of undeniable importance and influence.
For this list, we settled on movies that have not necessarily gotten the attention they deserve. Each one is a proponent of the storytelling capabilities of the genre, of its potential. They will get under your skin and then burrow deeper, taking permanent residence in that part of the brain that makes you want to see scary things a safe distance away from the big or the small screen. In other words, you’ll end up loving the sweet darkness of horror even more after watching these films.
Without further ado, here’s the list. Enjoy.
Ghostwatch, dir. Lesley Manning (1992)
One million. That’s the number of calls the BBC received on Halloween night, 1992, during the first and only UK broadcast of Ghostwatch, a mockumentary of sorts that was presented as a live investigative report that hoped to prove the existence of the supernatural once and for all. Directed by Lesley Manning, the program (which was hosted by Michael Parkinson) featured studio interviews supported by coverage from a news crew inside a haunted house that was heavily influenced by the real-life case of the Enfield Poltergeist that captured the public’s imagination in late-1970s England. In the TV film, a ghost known as Mr. Pipes is said to be roaming the halls of the house, lashing out at the middle-class family that lived there.
It’s hard to image the found footage craze of the 1990s and early-2000s (ushered in by The Blair Witch Project in 1999) without Ghostwatch. Manning’s direction is impeccable, succeeding in creating a very convincing broadcast setup with the same potency and sense of authenticity as Orson Welle’s 1938 War of the Worlds’ radio play. Hints of the paranormal are smartly framed as terrifyingly plausible given the handheld nature of the shots courtesy of the news crew’s cameraman. Mr. Pipes is scary, put together with minimal but precise makeup effects that don’t go overboard. The apparition is accompanied by a dark backstory that imbues the proceedings with considerable dread, adding to the authentic nature of the narrative. To top it off, Manning manages to make space for conservations on media truth and our willingness to believe in the unexplained. To have experienced Ghostwatch when it originally aired would’ve been like receiving a true blessing from the horror gods.
Ravenous, dir. Antonia Bird (1999)
1999 is remembered for many revolutionary and forward-thinking films that ushered in new creative voices and new ways to approach genre narratives. This was the year of Fight Club, The Matrix, Magnolia and The Blair Witch Project, to name a few. And somewhere in between, came about a weirdo cannibal horror film called Ravenous, directed by Antonia Bird and starring Robert Carlyle, Guy Pearce, Jeffrey Jones and David Arquette. Much more a cult film today than other 1999 films, this tale of soldiers at a remote outpost with a cannibal in their midst in 1840s California remains special precisely because of the niche it’s carved for itself – it is outlandishly original and forward-thinking horror, yet too unique to ever be replicated.
After the first two directors had been ousted, and with one week to prepare, Bird took the reins of a tough shoot with a low budget but a wholly original script which combines grotesque horror with social critiques of American colonialism and manifest destiny. That Bird was able to conjure some of the most shocking scenes of 90’s horror and gore and keep true to the script’s themes of cannibalistic American expansionism is a testament to her ability as director and her confidence in the material. Despite not being the first option to direct the film, it’s difficult to imagine this story of frail men vs. the unflinching capitalist monster devouring them made by anyone other than Antonia Bird.
Huesera: The Bone Woman, dir. Michelle Garza Cervera (2023)
Fears of being a mother are commonplace in fiction, and they’ve produced more than their fair share of stories and metaphors that address both the level of uncertainty and the sheer terror that comes with bringing new life into the world (see Rosemary’s Baby). Michelle Garza Cervera’s Huesera (a Mexican-Peruvian production) is among the most daring, but not for the reasons you might expect. It sets out to offer an alternate path to the idea of being a mother that confronts social expectations and pushes against preconceived notions of parental joy. And then there’s the dark entity that latches onto women that step into pregnancy with lingering doubts.
A mother-to-be called Valeria (impressively played by Natalia Solián) sees her happiness as a pregnant woman dwindle as the pregnancy progresses. Strange visions start plaguing her. Apparitions accompanied by the sounds of broken bones manifest only for her. It wants her baby, but is her discontent to blame for the entity’s presence? Garza Cervera walks a fine line between horror and metaphor, not letting one consume the other entirely. The paranormal is allowed to revel in its ugliness just as much as it helps to pull the veil back on Valeria’s indecisiveness regarding being a mother. It doesn’t cast judgment on the character either. It offers very honest observations about the decisions we make with our lives and whether they can be taken back at any point. Huesera inserts itself into the motherhood conversation but is uninterested in going over the same things. It wants to steer talks into other directions, and Garza Cervera makes sure the movie’s voice rings loud.
Surveillance, dir. Jennifer Lynch (2008)
Jennifer Lynch, daughter of famed filmmaker David Lynch, had her start in feature filmmaking with 1993’s Boxing Helena. The avant-garde film was too out there for audiences and it was a critical and commercial failure, which kept Lynch from making films until she came back in 2008 with the horror-thriller Surveillance. And what a return it was, as Lynch went all out for a film that starts out as an unsettling police procedural and slowly becomes a disturbing and hellish nightmare. Though she employs some of the stylistic flourishes of her father, Surveillance is a nihilistic journey all her own.
Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond star as FBI agents investigating a string of murders and the disappearance of a woman in rural Nebraska. As the detectives and local police officers close in on who might be responsible for the killings and the abduction, a bloody twist reframes the entire narrative, and suddenly the chain of events start to make sense, all for the worse. A thriller in the shape of a puzzle box that holds the key to unimaginable violence inside, Surveillance takes a sharp left turn into horror territory towards the end and never looks back. This makes for a disconcerting and off-putting narrative that seems to be enveloped not in dreamlike logic a la David Lynch, but in a state of delirium, like the film itself is breaking apart at the seams.
The Invitation, dir. Karyn Kusama (2015)
A man is invited to a small gathering of friends at his ex-wife’s house some time after a serious tragedy made everyone drift apart. Will, the guy in question (played by an intense but measured Logan Marshall-Green), reluctantly accepts the invitation, but things get progressively weirder, cult-like even, as the evening progresses. And then one of the most unsettling movie experiences of the 21st century unfolds.
Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation is one of the best movies of the current era, a masterful display of tension and a clever deconstruction of social anxieties and traumas that slowly builds to one of the best final acts in horror. Kusama’s direction is akin to that of an orchestra conductor’s, deftly moving pieces around with intention so that when pivotal character moments and key reveals present themselves they hit with an angry force. The Invitation possesses a confrontational spirit that puts grief in the spotlight to question the ways we reckon with it. As things escalate, Kusama finds terror in different forms of violence that exponentially grow in viciousness and consequence. It’s a movie that scars the soul.
Honeymoon, dir. Leigh Janiak (2014)
The cinematic and literary trope of people becoming altered or complete strangers, whether it be by infection, manipulation, or complete replacement, has mostly been approached as a phenomenon that affects a group or mass. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Faculty, The Thing, all these films deal with the paranoia and social ramifications of humans being replaced or violated for an alien purpose. Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon takes similar tropes and applies it to a couple quietly celebrating their recent marriage in a secluded cabin, the wife suddenly becoming a completely different person after disappearing into the woods, walking towards a strange source of light.
A cosmic horror film grounded in emotion and character, Honeymoon was Janiak’s calling card before taking on the epic ordeal that was Netflix’s hugely successful Fear Street trilogy, and one can see why she was entrusted with such an undertaking. Janiak shows a deft hand at directing actors and making maximum use of her limited locations and budget. Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway give credible performances that are heartbreaking as the intense relationship between the newlyweds deteriorates. It’s horror of the solemn and emotional kind with just enough body horror to satiate the more visceral of viewers. Similar to the 70’s brand of horror classics like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, Honeymoon shows its true horror by building an emotional core and setting it ablaze.
Near Dark, dir. Kathryn Bigelow (1987)
Reinventing traditional monsters is a road paved with admirable attempts but glaring failures. Taking something so well known and putting it in a different environment, genre, or tradition takes a keen eye for detail. It takes the ability to know just what to change so it can soar in a new space. This is what Kathryn Bigelow achieves with Near Dark, a neo-Western/Noir/vampire movie that bathes outlaw bloodsuckers in neon lights and inky shadows that reflect the complex and compromised moralities of its cast of characters.
The movie follows a young man in Oklahoma that meets a girl that bites him and then runs off before the sunrise. The man starts changing, but this time around, the vampire’s curse comes with an involuntary membership to a nomadic vampire gang that are as bloodthirsty and crime-hungry as the most infamous criminals of the Old West. Bigelow infuses this horror reimagining of the classic monster with a sense of boiling rage at the world. The vamps carry their tragedies on their sleeves, informing the things that make them bad with personal touches that speak to the hardships they share. These vampires are a product of a twisted and violent world, and they’re repaying the favor in kind. This is perfectly captured in a sequence that sees the killers walk into a bar, play with their prey, and then burn the place to the ground. It’s an iconic scene that showcases the talents of the late Bill Paxton as the vampire Severen, who toys with his victims as if he were a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. Bigelow found new blood in an old monster, giving cinema one of most stellar interpretations of the creature in its history. A classic that’s one of a kind.
Candyman, dir. Nia Dacosta (2021)
Jordan Peele, after the success of Get Out and Us, commendably did what an up and coming director in his position could do: pay it forward. Thus, as co-writer and producer, he enlisted up and coming director Nia Dacosta (Little Woods) to direct a reboot/sequel to the 1992 cult horror classic Candyman. It’s not an easy feat to update and re-introduce such an iconic movie villain as the Candyman, played to perfection by Tony Todd in the original film, but Dacosta and her star Yahya Abdul Mateen II, deliver sweet, bloody horror in spades and introduce a timely monster for a new generation.
Struggling artist Anthony McCoy (Abdul-Mateen), after learning about the urban legend of the vengeful spirit of a black man bearing a hook for a hand who will kill whoever says his name five times in front of a mirror, creates an art installation based on the Candyman, unwittingly setting in motion a procession of death and laying the path towards an unholy transformation. The original Candyman, directed by Bernard Rose and based on a short story by Clive Barker, did not shy away from the trauma of violence against black bodies and the history of oppression that bred a monster like Candyman. DaCosta expands on that racial trauma and oppression, creating a mythology that not only feels true to the original creation but also makes it stronger. On top of that, she gives the fans the brutal and gory delights expected from the classic monster.
Vuelven (English title: Tigers Are Not Afraid), dir. Issa López (2017)
The phrase “dark fairy tale” gets thrown around too liberally sometimes, employed to describe films that approach horror with a bit of magical realism and a healthy dose of moral lessons. Few achieve it as well as Issa López’s Vuelven, a legitimate dark fairy tale about kids in a land overtaken by narco violence. The story is set in a Mexican city ravaged by the cartel drug wars. Kids are suddenly left without their parents, or any adults really, to take care of them. Only the ghosts of the youngest remain, looking for refuge with the same sense of desperation as those kids who remain among the living.
López finds a kind of innocent magic in Vuelven, letting the kids at the center of the story combine to become something like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. Unlike those classic characters, though, the kids of Vuelven navigate an infinitely more dangerous environment, one that doesn’t allow for the type of freedom the Lost Boys enjoyed in the absence of strict parents. López makes their surroundings oppressive and constantly violent, but she does so to make each kid a light that braves the darkness. It’s here that she finds the heart of her fairy tale approach. The inclusion of the ghosts of dead children builds on this by also becoming sources of hope and justice despite the sadness they carry. It’s a brutal story of survival, but López makes sure to remind us that the dead are often the reason why we can carry on living.
Our Father, The Devil, dir. Ellie Foumbi (2023)
French horror in the 2000s, as did American filmmakers on the other side of the Atlantic, had to reckon with what was labeled as “Extreme Horror” or “Torture Porn” for a good chunk of the 21st century. There was an expectation built around what to expect from French horror cinema, and also critical derision (at times unfair) from what was seen as sameness and exploitative tactics. The 2020s have brought about much more nuanced approaches to horror, especially from female directors (Julia Ducournau’s Raw and Titane have both won great acclaim, deservedly so). In this new panorama we get Our Father, The Devil (Mon Père, le diable) from director Ellie Foumbi, a horror movie in construction but with a political drive at heart.
Babetida Sadjo plays Marie, an African refugee working as head chef at a retirement home in a small French town. One day, an African Catholic priest (Souléymane Sy Savané) visits the retirement home, and with just the sound of his voice, Marie is transported back to memories of war and torture. So much so that she does the unthinkable: she abducts the priest and tortures him until he admits what he did to her. But is he the man she thinks he is? And if he is, can she forgive him as he appears to have forgiven himself? Foumbie uses the tools of horror to tell her story, but this is an artfully and compassionately made dramatic story at heart that poses hard questions about the scars of violence and the possibilities of redemption. What could’ve been exploitative or insensitive is rendered challenging and thrilling thanks to Foumbi’s careful direction and Sadjo and Sy Savané’s committed performances.