10 underrated horror movies ranked “Rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes

WTF? Event Horizon has a “Rotten” rating of 35%

By Steve Newton

For over 30 years I reviewed horror movies as soon as they were released theatrically in Vancouver.

Over 350 of those write-ups have been collected on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the go-to website for people seeking advice on which films to watch.

Sometimes the scary movies on RT get unfairly evaluated, receiving “Rotten” ratings when, in my opinion, they’re “Fresh” as hell.

So here’s 10 of the horror flicks I reviewed that I think are getting short shrift on Rotten Tomatoes.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 57% (Rotten); rating by me: 4.5 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

Wes Craven’s putrid My Soul to Take notwithstanding, the horror scene is looking pretty good these days. Buried offered real-time claustrophobic chills; Devil was better than any antichrist-in-an-elevator flick should be; and The Last Exorcism wrung unholy suspense out of a possessed-teen premise. But none of those films touches Paranormal Activity 2 for sheer jolt-you-in-your-seat terror.

It’s the scariest movie in years.

PA2 is, technically, a prequel to 2007’s extremely low-budget ($11,000) documentary-style hit about a couple whose daily routine takes a horrifying turn when they start videotaping unexplained goings-on in their house. There was only one camera running in Paranormal Activity, though, whereas in the follow-up, a mysterious break-in causes concerned couple Kristi and Daniel (Sprague Grayden and Brian Boland) to install surveillance cameras throughout their spacious California home.

Even when nothing’s happening you can’t help intently scanning the screen, trying to detect some semblance of movement through the static security lens. It’s an unsettling experience, especially when you are viewing the besieged family’s nursery, where toddler Hunter lolls in his crib.

Attention new parents! Get your nightmares here!

The Door in the Floor director Tod Williams skillfully orchestrates a vibe of mundane domesticity in the first 30 minutes, but just before your tedium detector goes off he starts injecting mild doses of dread. An insidious supernatural force invades the peaceful home like ghostly termites, gnawing at universal comfort zones before Williams shocks you to the core with a cooking pot or some cupboard doors.

Things get a little too much like Blair Witch near the end, shaky camera–wise, but it’s a minor quibble. Every single performance rings true, and the plot tie-in from the first film works seamlessly. The makers of Paranormal Activity 2 rejected the opportunity to rip off and cash in on its worthy predecessor, and thanks to them I feel proud to be a horror fan again.

Wolf Creek (2005). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 54% (Rotten); rating by me: 4 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

The intro to Wolf Creek claims that 30,000 people are reported missing every year in Australia and that 90 percent of them are found within a month. Of those who are never heard from again, there’s little doubt that some are murdered; there’s been a spate of backpacker killings down under in recent years. Writer-director Greg McLean’s uncompromising take on such real-life cases shocks with the same gritty realism as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The movie opens with rugged Aussie good guy Ben (Nathan Phillips) buying a cheap used car and picking up two friends, British holidayers Liz and Kristy (Cassandra Magrath and Jennifer Aniston look-alike Kestie Morassi). The carefree trio have plans for some outback sightseeing, and after a routine run-in with rednecks at a remote gas station, they reach their destination, a meteorite crater at Wolf Creek National Park.

Everything goes fine until after their hike, when it’s time to leave, and the newly purchased clunker won’t start. As the group hunkers down for the night, a jovial hick named Mick (Oz screen veteran John Jarratt) shows up in a big truck and offers to tow them back to his place, where he’ll fix the car for free and send them on their merry way in the morning.

At first, their talkative host seems harmless enough; he’s the type of macho, eccentric loner you’d expect to find living out in the boonies. But when one of Ben’s smartass remarks draws a long, cold stare from Mick, it becomes pretty clear that the party has to end. Sure enough, after being drugged with spiked rainwater, the guests awaken to find themselves bound and at the mercy of one well-armed and extremely sick puppy.

McLean’s digital videocam doesn’t pan away from Mick’s casually administered yet shockingly gruesome tortures, and the ghastly images are hard to shake. The tension meter gets stuck on high for the last 30 minutes of the film, culminating in an action-packed highway sequence straight out of Mad Max.

Wolf Creek relies as much on the extreme environment as the twisted motivations of a sadistic killer to instill fear and compound dread. The sheer, desolate expanse of the outback makes it obvious that even if the victims manage to escape the psycho’s grimy lair, their chances of survival are slim. McLean’s cliché-free script and the believable performances by Phillips, Magrath, and Morassi keep you focused on their characters’ grim, life-or-death struggles against the unfathomable evil of man and the unforgiving power of nature.

Low-budget horror doesn’t get much better than this.

Event Horizon (1997). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 35% (Rotten); rating by me: 4 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

I’ve been a die-hard horror fan for most of my life, and the film that first got me hooked on the genre, when I was about eight, was a 1958 B-movie called It! The Terror From Beyond Space. It was about a spaceship that gets boarded by a vicious alien in the form of a guy in a rubber suit with a zipper down the back, but it scared the crap out of me.

As cheesy as It! was, it still became one of the prime influences for Ridley Scott’s excellent Alien—and a raft of other, not so swift, creature-in-space flicks. Because of the transcendent effect of my early sci-fi/horror viewing, I’m still a sucker for most of those films, and when I saw the teaser ads for Event Horizon, I was hooked. An endangered spaceship? Dead bodies floating around? Bring on the monster!

There is no monster in Event Horizon. But the good news is that it’s still a very scary, well-made, and engrossing film that should appeal to anyone who’s had enough of tongue-in-cheek sci-fi thrillers like Independence Day, Mars Attacks!, and Men in Black. The overall tone of Event Horizon is very dark, like a black hole.

This one’s definitely not for eight-year-olds.

Set in 2047, the film concerns a mission to salvage the Event Horizon, a prototype spacecraft that’s been missing for the past seven years. The seven-person rescue force is led by a no-nonsense captain, played by the always impressive Laurence Fishburne, and joined by the brilliant but troubled scientist who designed the craft (Sam Neill). As described by some technical mumbo-jumbo that puts the fi into sci-fi, the Event Horizon has been outfitted with a revolutionary “gravity drive” engineering process that allows it to travel faster than the speed of light.

Unfortunately for its deceased crew—seen ripping each other apart on a video log—it also wound up in another dimension, a place of “pure evil”. Now the spaceship itself is possessed, and the would-be rescuers are forced to confront their greatest fears in all manner of gruesome visions and horrendous assaults.

What saves Event Horizon from becoming some hokey Amityville Horror in space is the realistic performances of the cast—including Joely Richardson (Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter) and Apollo 13’s Kathleen Quinlan—and the strong element of psychological horror built into the script by first-time screenwriter Philip Eisner. Director Paul Anderson (Mortal Kombat) knows precisely when to insert action elements to beef up the film’s terror quotient, and its atmospheric art direction and meticulous production design—which is on a par with that of the great-looking Alien films—makes the spooks-in-space idea frighteningly believable.

Eschewing the predictable plotting and happy endings of recent big-budget sci-fi productions, Event Horizon emerges as a truly twisted, nightmarish summer shocker.

The Hill Have Eyes (2006). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 51% (Rotten); rating by me: 4 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

Wes Craven must be the most inconsistent horror director of all time. He created Freddy Krueger, who ruled the genre in the ’80s, then Craven reinvigorated the ’90s slasher scene with the whip-smart and stylish Scream. But he’s also responsible for his fair share of turkeys, Deadly Friend and Cursed being among the most widely reviled.

And why, oh, why did he bother making The Hills Have Eyes Part II in ’85? That shockingly bad follow-up to his low-budget ’77 cult fave is one of the most ill-conceived sequels ever. Cripes, even the surviving dog from the first film has a flashback!

Perhaps the guilt and embarrassment associated with his last Hills Have Eyes entry has been gnawing away at Craven for the past two decades, because he’s made up for it tenfold by producing a remake of the original that is a tour-de-force of terror and suspense. On the strength of their graphic and gripping 2003 slasher flick, High Tension, he hired the French filmmaking team of director-writer Alexandre Aja and writer Grégory Levasseur, and the result is one of the most exhilarating, intense, and engrossing Hollywood shockers ever made.

A police detective from Cleveland (Ted Levine) and his extended family of six (plus two German shepherds) are en route to California, pulling an ’88 Airsteam trailer with an old-school SUV. The realistic dialogue and genuine interaction of the cramped characters quickly seals the impression that these are actual people and not your stereotypical victims-to-be.

Once that authenticity is established, you can’t help but feel a connection to the family’s desperate plight when their vehicle gets sabotaged and they become stranded in the open desert.

By the time the slobbering, radiation-mutated freaks descend from the hills to rape and kill the innocent travelers, all the right emotional buttons have been cleverly lined up, and they get pushed again and again when the traumatized survivors regroup and set about to exact revenge and reclaim their stolen baby.

The U.S.-flag antenna on the victims’ weathered Suburban gets significant play in the film and instills the underlying theme of America creating its own monsters through atomic weapons-testing, then having to face them one day. You may want to ponder that notion when the flag becomes a killing tool itself and gets planted deep into someone’s skull.

The Bride of Chucky (1998). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 45% (Rotten); rating by me: 4 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

While still a student at UCLA Film School, screenwriter Don Mancini wrote the original Child’s Play script as a reaction both to child-oriented advertising and to the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of the mid-’80s.

His tale of a psycho killer’s soul transferred into the body of the hottest-selling toy of the year, a “Good Guy” doll, struck a chord with filmgoers, who were won over by the blackly comic shenanigans of its pintsize and perennially pissed-off antagonist, Chucky (perfectly voiced by freakoid character actor Brad Dourif).

Director Tom (Fright Night) Holland’s low-budget film of 1988 went on to gross more than US$40 million and garnered a place in infamy when one of its sequels was cited as the inspiration for a shocking child murder in England that was committed by two children.

But by the time the much-maligned Child’s Play 3 appeared in 1991—with Chucky causing action-movie havoc at a military boarding school—the devil-doll idea had run its course.

There’s only so much you can keep riding on one little pair of rubber shoulders.

The makers of Bride of Chucky must have clued in to that idea, because they added a second doll to the mix and—with the visual flair of Hong Kong director Ronny Yu (The Bride With White Hair, The Phantom Lover)—came up with a well-paced, colourfully shot, and keenly edited sequel to challenge the original.

It’s just a helluva lot more twisted.

The story begins with a corrupt cop stealing the bagged remains of the dismembered Chucky from a police evidence lockup with the intention of passing them on to buxom blonde bimbo Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly). Turns out she’s the ex-girlfriend of dead killer Charles Lee Ray and has been carrying a torch for him ever since he was gunned down in a toy store and reborn as the titular plaything from hell.

After slitting the cop’s throat in the first of several gruesome scenes, Tiffany, with marriage on her mind, patches Chucky up and, reading from Voodoo for Dummies, brings him back to life. The first thing the bug-eyed brat does is rip the lip ring from Tif’s goth boyfriend, Damien (Alexis Arquette, the Boy George imitator from The Wedding Singer), then slowly suffocate him with a pillow while he’s bound half naked to a bed.

This is all standard Child’s Play fare, of course, but the really good stuff starts after Chucky electrocutes Tiffany in a tub and—while Bride of Frankenstein plays on a nearby TV—transfers her soul into a two-and-a-half-foot bride doll.

Then Bride of Chucky’s pitch-black humour clicks into high gear, thanks to the state-of-the-art puppet effects of Chucky creator Kevin Yagher. Yagher and his animatronics crew imbue the dolls with hilariously humanlike expressions that range from sweet smiles to murderous rage, and the bickering interaction between the twin terrors as they embark on a homicidal rampage makes for loads of sick laughs.

During the passionate consummation of their marriage—don’t worry, it’s only shown in silhouette—Tiffany asks the thrusting Chuckster if he’s wearing a rubber, and the little guy blurts out in exasperation: “A rubber? I’m all rubber!”

With lines like that, who needs a gripping plot?

Horns (2014). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 41% (Rotten); rating by me: 4 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

Who knew that a scary movie based on the bizarre idea of a mortal man growing devil horns could prove so damn captivating? Horns is right up there with The Cabin in the Woods as among the most engrossing horror flicks ever made in and around Vancouver.

The film opens with young lovers Ig and Merrin (Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple) professing their undying love for each other while sprawled on a blanket in the woods. “I’m gonna love you for the rest of my life,” he vows. “Just love me for the rest of mine,” she replies.

Ig then wakes up hungover on his kitchen floor to the nightmare that he’s the main suspect in Merrin’s brutal rape and murder, hounded by rabid media and townsfolk alike. “When they looked at me they saw a devil,” he says in a voiceover, “and maybe I did too. And now I had to look the part.”

That’s when those crazy horns start sprouting from his forehead and—as if he were Satan himself—most everyone Ig encounters proudly blurts out their darkest secrets and most depraved desires. Much hilarity ensues—especially when Heather Graham’s fame-obsessed psycho waitress makes the scene.

But the twisted humour in Horns is tempered by a whole lotta heart, much of it felt in coming-of-age flashbacks of Ig and Merrin’s star-crossed childhood. The performances from the array of teen and adult supporting actors—including James Remar, David Morse, Kathleen Quinlan, and Max Minghella—is first-rate all around, although particularly riveting is Joe (The Crazies) Anderson as Ig’s drug-addled musician brother Terry.

Director Alexandre Aja—who blew horror fans away with the grim gore epics High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes before bobbing for bent laughs with Piranha 3D—does a masterful job turning the offbeat premise into a romance-driven murder-mystery fable that keeps you guessing and giggling throughout.

And boy [shakes head in wonder], that shotgun scene is something else.

Reign of Fire (2002). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 41% (Rotten); rating by me: 4 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

Reign of Fire is one of the most intense and enjoyable monster flicks I’ve ever seen. It’s got throat-clutching suspense, pulse-pounding action, incredible-looking sets, deft direction, stunning cinematography, razor-sharp editing, rich production values, and terrifying creatures.

In other words, it ranks right up there with Alien and Aliens.

The charismatic and super-hunky Christian Bale—who’s undoubtedly destined for Tom Cruise–level stardom—portrays Quinn, a British fire chief circa 2022. His job doesn’t include saving futuristic kitties from trees, though; he’s responsible for warding off the fierce, highly intelligent, fire-breathing dragons that have laid waste to Earth over the past two decades.

It seems that 20 years earlier, Quinn’s mother, a construction engineer, inadvertently woke a huge dragon from its centuries-long slumber. As the terrified 12-year-old Quinn looked on, she paid the ultimate price, and now he’s obsessed with keeping the small community he leads from becoming a heap of smoking ash. Shades of Mel Gibson’s Mad Max character in The Road Warrior, but Quinn lacks the warrior spirit; he can’t see any possible way to defeat the dragons, so he’s content to just stay on the defensive and help his followers eke out an existence.

Not so Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), the psychotic leader of a group of well-armed American soldiers who’ve figured out a high-risk way to slay the winged monstrosities. It involves attracting them with “archangels”, fearless paratroopers who plummet from an army helicopter and try to outrace the beasts while luring them within range of Van Zan’s honkin’-big spear gun.

During these rip-roaring skydive sequences—and several other times throughout the film—director Rob (The X-Files) Bowman proves himself a first-rate action choreographer in the same league as John Woo.

There are moments when Reign of Fire verges on the silly—most of them involving the cigar-chomping, head-butting Van Zan, an over-the-top cross between Patton and Attila the Hun—but you’re so swept up in the visual magic unfolding on-screen that these lapses hardly matter. One thing’s for sure: I’ll never picture Puff the Magic Dragon in the same light again.

What Lies Beneath (2000). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 47% (Rotten); rating by me: 4 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

Director-producer Robert Zemeckis has reached the highest highs and plumbed the lowest lows during his career in Hollywood. As a director, he’s hit the mark with the critically acclaimed Contact and Oscar-winning Forrest Gump, yet his producer credits include such lowly horror fare as House on Haunted Hill and the Vancouver-shot stinker Bordello of Blood.

With What Lies Beneath, Zemeckis finally combines his fondness for fright flicks with the character-driven drama of his best work, and the result is one doozy of a ghost story. Don’t let the hokey title fool you: this movie boasts at least half a dozen moments of sheer, quake-in-your-seat terror.

And that’s five more than I noticed in The Blair Witch Project.

Because I’m wholeheartedly recommending this movie and don’t want to ruin any of its surprises for you, I’ll keep the plot description vague. Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford star as Claire and Norman Spencer, a happily married couple who move into a big house by a lake in Vermont, where all sorts of creepy things start to happen.

Suffice it to say that some of the spooky stuff is tied in with Claire’s fragile mental state (she was involved in a mysterious car crash a year before) and Norman’s all-consuming ambition (he’s an overworked research scientist).

As the story unwinds, there are various tributes to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but Zemeckis wrings the suspense so skillfully from Clark Gregg’s restrained script that his obvious nods to the greats are easily forgiven.

As far as the two leads are concerned, Pfeiffer brings just the right mix of courage and vulnerability to the tormented Claire, while Ford’s typical blandness is perfectly suited to Norman’s purposes. And it doesn’t hurt that Zemeckis brought Don Burgess and Arthur Schmidt—respectively, the cinematographer and the editor from Forrest Gump—onboard.

I was so impressed by the believable first 80 minutes of What Lies Beneath that even its unlikely, over-the-top ending couldn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 37% (Rotten); rating by me: 3.5 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

Let’s face it, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was brilliant. Not the 1974 film itself—although for its time it was quite groundbreaking—but the movie’s title. Has there ever been three words that so powerfully evoked the promise of celluloid carnage? Say it with me, slowly and with feeling: Texas…Chainsaw…Massacre.

I wonder how many times exploitation-movie mogul Roger Corman kicked himself for not coming up with that name?

The folks behind the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre knew well enough not to mess with that amazing moniker. They also knew how to craft a pretty decent remake of Tobe Hooper’s relentless, cringe-inducing cult fave. And I’m not just saying that because lead actor Jessica Biel spends the entire film in a skimpy, tied-together tank top.

Or even because half the time it’s soaking wet.

The striking Biel plays one of five young adults travelling a deserted Texas highway in a beat-up Dodge van, en route to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Dallas. It’s August 1973, “Sweet Home Alabama” is blasting on the 8-track, and everyone is smoking pot, wondering aloud if “Free Bird” will make the set list.

The steady-rolling party dies down considerably when they stop to help a dazed and bloodied young woman wandering aimlessly in the middle of nowhere. She gets in the back seat and mumbles through severely chapped lips about a very bad man who killed some people.

When she pulls a revolver from between her legs, puts it in her mouth, and pulls the trigger, you just know those Skynyrd tickets are gonna go to waste.

At this point in his debut feature, commercial and music-video director Marcus Nispel does a bang-up job of coaxing authentic performances from his actors, including The Deep End’s Jonathan Tucker and Eric Balfour from HBO’s Six Feet Under. Their freaked-out reactions to the unexpected suicide, its grisly aftereffects, and the potential repercussions—there’s a piñata full of Mexican weed in the van—result in some realistically tense moments.

By draining the film of colour and keeping the palette in the range of sepia and rust, cinematographer Daniel Pearl—who was also director of photography on the original TCM—brings an effective tone of desolation and decay to the proceedings.

But it’s R. Lee Ermey of Full Metal Jacket fame who deserves most of the credit for this remake earning its mutilated thumbs–up. His over-the-top role as a hard-ass, demented sheriff from hell who boasts about copping feels from dead women deserves a Drive-in Hall of Fame Award. The former U.S. Marine Corps drill instructor’s sadistic torment of these unlucky Texan kids puts Leatherface’s blustery chainsaw shenanigans to shame.

The Collector (2009). Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 29% (Rotten); rating by me: 3.5 stars out of 5 (Fresh).

Now here’s a twisted little gem just in time for Halloween nightmare-making. The Collector—no relation to the same-named ’60s thriller in which weirdo Terence Stamp kidnaped hottie Samantha Eggar—should make the backers of the Saw and Hostel franchises think twice, because it takes the rotting corpse of torture-porn out of the abandoned warehouse and Slovakian ruins and dumps it smack dab in the middle of your safe and comfy home.

Josh Stewart, channelling a low-key Edward Norton, shines as Arkin, a young man who’s recently been released from prison and is trying to earn a few bucks as a handyman so he can pay back his ex-wife, who has custody of their young daughter.

But when she tells him his latest payment isn’t enough to keep the loan sharks at bay, his criminal mind helps him decide to burgle his employer’s country home. The wealthy jeweller is supposed to be on vacation, and, besides, he frowned disapprovingly when he caught the kid-loving Arkin playing tea party with his little girl.

When the desperate ex-con jimmies his way into his boss’s sprawling mansion, things get real ugly real fast. A masked maniac has tied and tortured the adults (Michael Reilly Burke and Andrea Roth) and rigged the place with enough fiendish booby-traps to give Saw’s Jigsaw a woody. After falling victim to one of them, a wounded Arkin does his best to avoid detection by their deranged installer and escape the mazelike house of horrors.

Feverishly helmed by first-time director Marcus Dunstan, who cowrote three of the Saw films, The Collector’s arresting photography, razor-sharp editing, ultra-creepy score, and consistently strong performances make it perfect for fans of no-holds-barred horror.

Prepare yourself for an overdose of domestic dread.

To read more than 350 of my other reviews of horror movies released theatrically in North America between 1988 and 2018 go here.