Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Christine:
Scream
Scream is an incredibly important film in horror movie history. It helped to redefine the genre and set the stage for a new wave of more violent, self-aware horror movies. The film’s impact can still be felt today, and it remains a must-watch for horror movie fans.
Halloween
John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of those films that is so baked into horror DNA that it can be hard to look at it with fresh eyes, but even almost 50 years later it still works like gangbusters. You can trace nearly every slasher you love back to what Carpenter did here. The masked, wordless killer in Michael Myers. The suburban setting that looks safe until it is not. The calmly unraveling psychiatrist in Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis. The smart, alert, deeply sympathetic final girl in Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode. All of that starts here, and very few of the imitators matched its patience, its clarity, or its eerie sense of watching something evil drift slowly toward you from across the street.
Bug
William Friedkin’s Bug is a late-period jolt from a filmmaker who could still wring panic from tight spaces. After The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, and Cruising, he returned to a stage play and made it feel claustrophobic and alive. Working from Tracy Letts’ script, Friedkin turns a shabby Oklahoma motel room into a pressure cooker where loneliness, addiction, and conspiracy feed off each other until reality splits.
Videodrome
Videodrome is a bold, grotesque, and startlingly prescient film, and while it may not be David Cronenberg’s most accessible work, it’s certainly one of his most important. A high-concept fever dream of sex, violence, and screen-induced madness, it’s no wonder this is one of the director’s most widely discussed and celebrated films.
Doctor Sleep
There is supposedly a better director’s cut of Doctor Sleep out there that fills in the gaps of a few character traits, motivations, and decisions. Honestly, I’m not sure I care. This is about as rigorous and uninteresting as any horror franchise rebooted in recent memory. It’s a glossy, airless, and ultimately unnecessary return to a world that was perfect as is.
Thanksgiving
Eli Roth, a significant figure in gnarly genre filmmaking, takes a stab at the holiday horror subgenre with Thanksgiving, a movie that successfully balances gore, satire, and a twisted sense of humor. Roth, known for his unapologetically brutal style, delivers a horror-thriller that not only embraces the conventions of the genre but also winks at them, creating an entertaining if not entirely groundbreaking Thanksgiving slasher.
Evil Dead Rise
There aren’t many horror franchises able to reinvent themselves as often as Evil Dead does while still maintaining relevancy and quality. Maybe it’s because Sam Raimi holds his creation so close to his heart that only a select few are able to take on the premise, or maybe it’s because the premise seems simple and malleable enough to make nearly anything work. It can shoot for the downright zany and ludicrous with Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness, or it can strive to be like Lee Cronin’s newest spin Evil Dead Rise – a movie so sick and twisted that you can’t help but give it its dues by the time the credits roll.
Night Swim
With a PG-13 rating, and a concept so thinly developed beyond “scary swimming pool,” Night Swim relies heavily on cheap scares and creepy underwater sight gags – where few of which actually earn their keep. Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon star in a sometimes silly, often underdeveloped horror movie.
Talk to Me
Talk to Me is the latest elevated horror movie from A24, a studio that’s completely redefined and reimagined the state of the genre, introducing new ideas and themes into it over the past decade. Talk to Me attempts to do the same, pitting trauma and coping mechanisms with demonic forces to a scary degree.
Wolf Man
Wolf Man is another uneven entry in Universal Pictures’ long-running struggle to make their classic monster IP feel vital again. Leigh Whannell may be one of the more exciting genre filmmakers working today, but this misaligned project is more whimper than howl.
READ MORE: Christine (1983)
