By Riley Glover
Sometimes as a film critic noted for their coverage of the macabre, movies slip through the radar that can’t easily be described. Some unnatural cinema requires explanation, even if the space is too limited to describe such terrors the way they need. So, I let open my doors and let all the ghouls run out, leaving you to pick out the finer details. Perhaps, you might be the ones to finally put away these creatures of the night. Maybe you’ll go as mad as I have trying to nail these tricky films down.
T-Blockers – Best Up-and-Coming Freak
Alice Maio Mackay is one of those artists working today who, even if you find their works amateurish, you should know about. By 21, Alice has made an impressive 6 feature films and short films in change while gaining a reputation in blending the queer horror aesthetics of Ed Wood and John Waters, much of the indie film aesthetics of Gregg Araki and early Kevin Smith, and a modern transfeminist punk politic. “T-Blockers” feels like the best entry for beginners into her weird worlds, the raw feelings of someone going into adulthood trying to find hope within the creeping dread of fascism within western politics. Part transfeminist filmmaker manifesto, part post-modern 50s sci-fi horror film, and part modern queer slice of life, “T-Blockers” is tonally all over the place and sometimes a technical mess, but no other filmmaker has the bravado to make movies like this that speak to the now.
Channel Zero- Best Long Trek into Insanity
Assuming it to be a corny cash-in by the SyFy network to the creepypasta craze, no other experience I’ve had compares to watching the first 5 minutes of the series, only for the series to become one of my favorite shows ever made. Each season is a 6-episode mini-series taking an internet horror story and completely going mad with it, warping what can just be even a single image into these surrealist psychological horrors frequently containing several of the greatest monster designs of all time. When I say that a man made of human teeth is somehow not among the top 5 most haunting images in the series, that is a high compliment to the high quality the show kept during its tragically short run.
Fake Documentary Q- Best Digital Daemon
Not to be confused with the conspiracy theory, “Fake Documentary Q” is a fascinating horror web series on YouTube notable in its audacious patience. Setting itself as a collection of documentaries from a small paranormal investigation collective, each of the episodes explores more the uncanny nature of the unexplainable. These are the stories that can’t be reasoned away with normal logic but linger both literally and figuratively just around the corner. Not for the impatient given the longer length of many episodes and the deliberate pacing, but some of the scariest visuals of the decade hide within this series.
Cat People – Most Interesting, Older, Sadder Ghoul
Perhaps the most important horror film of the 20th century in understanding modern horror. Though emphasizing the psychological state of the lead character (and possible titular monster) Irena Dubrovna (rather than constructing the monster directly), the lower budgeted “Cat People” inadvertently created large strands of many modern horror media’s obsessions with realistic trauma, humanistic monsters, and liminal space. To this day, few films have captured the melancholy of being an outsider with such vivid darkness that it feels like looking into the existential void. It also helps that it contains two of the scariest sequences in horror still referenced as gold star examples of the form.
Good Boy- Most Oddball Little Guy
While in the oddball section, the concept for the film is one of those ideas that makes you wonder why no one else has ever thought of it; Lassie vs. Pazuzu! Yes, this film is a horror film from the perspective of the dog and I can say it works better than it should. Instead of making a film around the selling gimmick, “Good Boy” is based around the real fears a dog owner has over the bond between them and their pet stretched impressively over 70 minutes. Sight bloat aside from the scare structure, this is somehow one of the best looking and most purely scary horror films of the year purely from editing and sad puppy eyes.
28 Years Later – Best Recent Zombie Film
Very bold to make a film this stylistically avant-garde as the start of a trilogy following a horror classic. If “28 Days Later” was the cultivation of early digital cinema experiments told through an adrenalized thematic recap of the original Romaro zombie trilogy, “28 Years Later” is a breakdown brought on by the past decade of British politics daring its audience to see two more of them. Basically, a dark fantasy coming of age film for children who have seen too much for their age and are worn down by the narratives of crass dominating western nationalism controlling their lives. The only film with hardcore zombie nudity that will make you cry.
Weapons – Witchiest Woman of 2025
I had to see this film twice to understand if the hype was worth it. Given writer/director Zack Cregger’s decision to construct the quasi-surrealist story from a nonlinear AND multi-character perspective, the spectacle of structure overwhelmed all my other thoughts. It wasn’t until a second viewing with a particularly observant co-viewer that I realized “Weapons” does care quite a lot about how people are hurt by loss, coping by extreme measures and how one must live with that space tragedy brings. Still also a deeply funny crowd pleaser instantly setting Zack as a major blockbuster filmmaker.
The VelociPastor – Editor’s Pick
It’s about a pastor who is cursed to be a velociraptor. There are ninjas in it.
In seriousness, I really want Director/Writer/Co-Producer/Editor Brendan Steere to make something more sincere than a “Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter” style parody. The weirder moments bleed skill that a less self-conscious work would greatly benefit from. Segments like the three-minute love scene edited as a sentimental punk rock music video blasting images all over the screen have that zest the best of the films being made fun of had, where the filmmakers just threw weird stuff together simply because it expressed their artistic energy more than if it was “good” cinema. Too stuck in irony for me to enjoy, but the wilder moments still stick with me hinting at an energetic voice waiting to spill out.
Sinners – Best Horror Film of 2025
“Sinners” is difficult to talk about because it feels less horror than raw emotional vomit. A nearly two-and-a-half-hour epic that starts as a loving historical period piece then turns vampires into musical “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Some people will dismiss “Sinners” as the ‘white people are vampires’ film when it’s clear Ryan Coogler is saying something heavier; Vampirism in “Sinners” turns ethnic cultures though destruction, consumption, and assimilation into a mindless, ever-growing blob. It’s no coincidence the main vampire is Irish, the European country with the most complex connections to whiteness and colonialism, or how so much of the film explores pan-African musical lineage and personal identity. Though white supremacist colonial power structures, all pay allegiance to a single identity to survive or die.