Director: Marcus Dunstan
While you won’t find the newest Paranormal Activity or Resident Evil on my Top 10 countdown, there is one sequel that floored me this year – The Collection. Yes, Marcus Dunstand and Patrick Melton’s putrid smelling, corpse ridden follow up to The Collector is a bit of torture porn beauty, putting to shame the numerous Saw sequels scripted by the duo. While The Collector definitely has a distinctively independent horror feel, The Collection multiplies every working part of their first film by a bazillion, amassing record body count numbers solely in the opening scene. Talk about starting with a bang?
Around every twist and turn in The Collector’s hellish house of horrors, Dunstan and Melton construct increasingly devilishness contraptions of pain, dispatching of characters in the goriest of fashion. This follows one of the golden rules for horror sequels, building a bigger and better movie instead of just repeating a tired “torture porn” formula. “Go big or go home” mentalities create grotesque death executions and heart-racing terror strong enough to distract from some wishy washy scripting, creating a captivating watch for the most extreme horror fans.
5) Sinister
Director: Scott Derrickson
A horror movie starring Ethan Hawke, directed by the man who brought us The Day The Earth Stood Still‘s remake? I’ll admit I had my reservations, but have since been rendered insult-less towards Derrickson’s creepy homage to bumps in the night. This mainstream scare-fest definitely deserves my Insidious Award (copyrighted) for outstanding original achievement in mainstream horror, although not as overtaking as Insidious itself.
Telling the story of an ancient demon named Bughuul, Scott Derrickson mixes extremely atmospheric horror around main character Ellison Oswalt’s hauntingly terrifying house with surprisingly brutal film reels from past dates depicting one grisly murder after another. I couldn’t help but think how easily a major studio could have snatched this beast up and edited it to a PG-13 rating to capitalize on sales, but I’m forever grateful Derrickson was able to find backers who gave him full creative freedoms and make the movie HE ultimately wanted to – brutal and unforgiving.
A major shout out to all the child actors in the film as well! I never want to have children because of you. Thanks.