The Best Horror Movies of 2019

From creature features to haunted house capers, the horror genre has been giving audiences the willies since the dawn of film. Here are our picks for the 5 best of all time.

This list kicks off with a few titles before expanding throughout the year as more great horror films arrive in theaters and on demand.

 

1) The Prodigy

Cast: Jackson Robert Scott, Taylor Schilling, Colm Feore
Director: Nicholas McCarthy (At the Devil’s Door)
Why it’s good: There’s always room for another “killer kid” flick if you ask me, and while this one borrows quite a bit from both The Omen and Child’s Play (yes, really), it also earns a lot of credit for being well-crafted, consistently creepy, and unexpectedly, well, dark. Plus that lead kid (Scott) is pretty damn great.

 

2) Thriller  

 

Cast: Jason Woods, Jessica Allain, Mykelti Williamson
Director: Dallas Jackson
Why it’s good: If you have an affection for the classic slasher flicks of years past (particularly the 1980 Canadian favorite Prom Night), here’s a low-key but enjoyable homage that’s packed with all the tragic pranks, hooded killers, red herrings, and (mostly) deserving victims you’d expect. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, plot-wise, but there are enough interesting performances and plot contortions to keep things interesting. Plus it’s set in South Central Los Angeles, which is pretty unique for a slasher flick.

 

3) Escape Room

Cast: Taylor Russell, Tyler Labine, Logan Miller
Director: Adam Robitel (Insidious: The Last Key)
Why it’s good: A bunch of strangers awaken inside of a booby-trapped maze. You know the drill by now. Take a dash of Hostel, a splash of Cube, and a good portion of Saw and you’re pretty much up to speed on what Escape Room has to offer — and yet, despite its relatively familiar set-up (and PG-13 rating), there’s still a decent amount of clever twists, chills, kills, and (of course) escapes to be found here.

 

 4) Pet Sematary

Cast: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimitz, John Lithgow
Director: Kevin Kolsch & Dennis Widmyer (Starry Eyes)
Why it’s good: There’s not much here that fans of the Stephen King novel (and Mary Lambert’s 1989 adaptation) haven’t seen before, but this one avoids the “stinky remake” curse because it does manage to throw in a few new twists we didn’t see coming, plus the cast is great and the titular “sematary” is brought to life (relatively speaking) in very creepy fashion. Fair warning that this is definitely a downbeat horror story but hey, so is the source material.

 

 5) Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse

Cast: Aleksandra Cwen, Claudia Martini, Tanja Petrovsky
Director: Lukas Fiegelfeld
Why it’s good: If you’re down with a damn good piece of slow-burn arthouse horror cinema, this German import is an accomplished debut indeed. It’s basically about a shunned woman who lives on the edge of the forest, and how she’s mistreated by the locals (just like her mother was when she was young) but something deep in the forest promises to help her break this cycle of abuse. And break it she does.