Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for horror movies like Thanksgiving:
In a Violent Nature
In a Violent Nature didn’t blow me away, but it’s creative enough to have me intrigued with where Chris Nash will set his sights next. The movie is made specifically for the hardcore sickos out there that love to see how far a creative can go to make an audience feel queasy.
Scream 5
Scream 5 resurrects a franchise gone for far too long. Although not a perfect transition into the modern age, the newest Scream movie offers plenty of fun and camp that gels with the common core of this franchise’s ideas.
Heart Eyes
Heart Eyes delivers a clever and blood-soaked twist on the slasher genre, taking a cue from classics like Scream while putting a Valentine’s Day spin on the formula. Directed with a knowing wink and just enough bite, this seasonal horror-thriller finds a solid rhythm early on—thanks in large part to its lead duo—and mostly rides that momentum until the final act falters under the weight of an undercooked reveal.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2
Blood and Honey 2 capitalizes on the infrequent highlights of the first Winnie the Pooh horror movie, and improves around the edges where the original flopped. But despite an infusion of new ideas and kills, the core premise can only go so far. A schlocky, unique time at the movies doesn’t translate into an objectively good film.
MaXXXine
MaXXXine has a handful of worthwhile moments, but the movie ultimately ricochets between two different sides of Ti West’s mind: the throwback B-movie auteur with a great taste for kills and the heady screenwriter with something to say about the industry he works in. It’s unfortunate that MaXXXine doesn’t strike that balance often, and it’s easy to tell when he’s switching from one gear to the next. Mia Goth reprises her scream queen role as the titular film star.
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.
Sick
Sick is the latest action/horror picture from director John Hyams. It’s his follow-up to the 2020 film Alone and feels like a natural successor for the filmmaker. In both movies, protagonists are quickly pushed into a battle to save their own lives from relentless attackers that feel just shy from being the boogeyman reincarnated. While Alone takes place mostly in the outdoors wilderness, Sick opts for a luxurious remote cabin secluded from neighbors and the outside world.
Scream 6
Despite a nearly complete turnover of legacy characters, the Scream franchise keeps on rolling – and it may be as good as any since the original hit theaters in 1996. Scream 6 gets bolder and better, and the movie builds on the best aspects of Radio Silence’s last installment of the franchise.
Hell of a Summer
On the surface, Hell of a Summer doesn’t have many glaring flaws. It’s an obvious love letter to classic slasher films like Friday the 13th, Scream, and Sleepaway Camp. Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard make their directorial debut here, and while their enthusiasm for the genre is clear, the film struggles to carve out its own identity. Instead of reinventing familiar tropes, it largely retraces well-worn ground, and that familiarity ultimately works against it.
Opus
Opus builds its tension gradually, but it never fully commits to the weirdness that would make its well-worn premise pop. While the setup is compelling—one part industry satire, one part psychological horror—the movie hedges its bets on the bizarre, keeping the truly disturbing revelations bottled up until the final act. Despite its name, Opus never quite becomes the grand statement it wants to be.
READ MORE: Thanksgiving (2023)
