Random Most Underrated Horror Films Of Last 10 Years (12 items)

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  (#9) A Dark Song

  • Catherine Walker, Steve Oram, Mark Huberman, Susan Loughnane

  In most horror movies, occult magic is shockingly easy to find and perform. So much so that it's a wonder people aren't calling up spirits and placing hexes left and right - which, if the number of supernatural horror movies out there are any indication, maybe they are. Not so in Liam Gavin's A Dark Song, a film that concerns two people - a woman grieving the passing of her 7-year-old son and an ill-tempered occultist - who are performing a grueling, months-long ritual.

  Neither of them can leave the house for the duration of the rite, and its working through gradually takes a terrible (and possibly fatal) toll on the both of them. If this is the price of ritual magic, it makes much more sense that people aren't tossing it around willy-nilly.
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  (#4) Green Room

  • Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Patrick Stewart

  Jeremy Saulnier's story of a punk-rock band trapped by white supremacists unfortunately feels more topical with each passing day. It's also notable for its claustrophobic setting, intense action, and powerful performances. After all, it's not every day that you get to see Captain Picard himself, Sir Patrick Stewart, play a skinhead. 

  When the film's band, the Ain't Rights, find themselves playing a gig at an out-of-the-way venue in Pacific Northwest, they quickly realize they're in trouble when they notice the place is full of skinheads. That doesn't stop them from playing a cover of "Nazi Punks F*ck Off" by the Dead Kennedys, though. It isn't until the show is over that things take a turn for the fatal. The band is in the green room when they witness a slaying - and the leader of the skinheads decides to take them all out to keep them from talking.

  The result is a brutal, nail-biting flick that is also one of late lead actor Anton Yelchin's last film roles.
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  (#10) Resolution

  • Sarah Oliver, Zahn McClarnon, Bill Oberst Jr., Kurt David Anderson, Aaron Moorhead, Peter Cilella, Thor Wixom, Melissa E. Low, Emily Montague, Michael Felker, David Clarke Lawson Jr., Dan Martinez, Catherine Burns, Justin Benson, Bob Low, Vinny Curran, Carmel Benson, Skyler Meacham, Shiblon Wixon, Josh Higgins, Glen Roberts

  Writing/directing duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have been generating growing buzz in indie horror circles with the release of films like The Endless, but one of their best (and most under-seen) efforts remains their 2012 debut Resolution.

  The film concerns two friends, one of them (Michael) a successful graphic designer with a pregnant wife, the other (Chris) a user who has moved into a remote shack and seems to have become increasingly delusional. Michael decides to stage an intervention, but things begin to turn strange when the two men start finding seemingly impossible photographs and film footage of them. A mind-bending trip into the truly weird that is also a tale of the bonds of friendship, Resolution is a testament to what you can do with a fairly meager budget and some big ideas.
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  (#11) The Canal

  • Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Steve Oram, Rupert Evans, Hannah Hoekstra, Serena Brabazon, Tony Murphy, Conor Horgan, Carl Shaaban, Maura Foley, Calum Heath

  Sometimes it isn't the story that's being told that makes a film stand out, it's the telling. On its surface, The Canal's story of a husband (Rupert Evans) whose wife goes missing and is presumed drowned in the canal near his home is a familiar one. Is he cracking up, or is the house actually haunted by a grisly crime that occurred there a century ago?

  What sets The Canal apart from the rest of the ghostly crowd are its visuals, borrowed partly from the archival film footage that is the protagonist's day job. As the haunting ramps up - or his sanity begins to unravel - and the walls start cracking apart to reveal the horrors hiding beneath, they uncover sights that would have been right at home in a Clive Barker adaptation.
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  (#2) American Mary

  • Katharine Isabelle, Antonio Cupo, Paul Anthony, David Lovgren, Jen Soska, John Emmet Tracy, Julia Maxwell, Sean Amsing, Tristan Risk, Clay St. Thomas, Sylvia Soska, Nelson Wong, Twan Holliday, Paula Lindberg, Travis Watters

  Sister act directing duo Jen and Sylvia Soska, who have recently remade David Cronenberg's Rabid, first exploded onto the genre scene with their 2012 black comedy horror film American Mary. Though it immediately earned them a name in extreme horror circles, American Mary still remains under-seen by the wider horror world. In it, Katharine Isabelle (of the Ginger Snaps series) plays a medical student who, in desperate need of funds, finds herself drawn into the world of extreme body modification.

  Unfortunately, she is also the victim of a terrible assault from the doctors and mentors who are in charge of her residency, which leads her to a grisly revenge and into a cat-and-mouse game with the police. With a 60% at Rotten Tomatoes, the Critics Consensus says American Mary "utilizes pitch-black humor and striking visuals to deliver gory, freaky thrills for body-horror enthusiasts."
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  (#7) The Awakening

  • Rebecca Hall, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Ian Hanmore, Joseph Mawle, Cal MacAninch, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Steven Cree, John Shrapnel, Anastasia Hille, Shaun Dooley, Richard Durden, Lucy Cohu, Daniel Pirrie, Tilly Vosburgh, Andrew Havill, Charlie Callaghan, Diana Kent, Sidney Johnston, Sarah Weldon, Andy Callaghan, Katie Hart, Nicolas Amer, Alfie Field, Neil Broome, Adam Thomas Wright, Joseph M. Jenkins, Felix Soper, Ben Greaves-Neil, Spike White, Andrew Foster, Molly Lewis, James Kirkham, Nick Murphy, Terry Swoffer, Ewan Andrew Walker, Joseph Courtney, Zach Mitchell

  Not exactly a small-time production, The Awakening was made by the BBC and StudioCanal and stars actors like Rebecca Hall, who was in Iron Man 3, Dominic West, from 300 and Tomb Raider, and Imelda Staunton, from the Harry Potter franchise. Yet many people seem to have slept on this quiet but creepy haunted house chiller from 2011.

  Hall plays Florence Cathcart, an author and professional skeptic who works with the police to debunk fraudulent spiritualists in the wake of WWI. When she is invited to a private boy's school where the ghost of a child may have caused the demise of another boy, her skepticism is tested by what she discovers. The movie may be at its best during the early debunking scenes, but all the actors give good performances, and there's plenty of chilly ambiance to be found all the way to the film's twisty ending.

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