So, here we are for the best movies of the decade. It’s not been a bad decade, despite what some people might have you believe. Critics will often point toward the seemingly endless and pointless run of remakes, from 2 year old Asian movies to 20 year old American movies. However, just as the 80s had a lot more to offer than the low-grade slasher movies that some people always complain about, so this decade had given us some of the most impressive and extreme horror of all time.

There were a few trends, ranging from the bloodless PG-13 horror market that’s run from The Ring through to Twilight, to the so-called “torture porn” that gotten so many tabloids foaming at the mouth. Mostly, this decade has been about breaking barriers, from independently produced movies like Cabin Fever and Paranormal Activity that clean up at the box office to the sheer extremities of the French new wave.

So, in looking forward to what the next decade can bring us in the genre, here are my picks for the top 10 movies of the decade:

10. Requiem For A Dream (2000)

Some people might be confused by the inclusion of this movie on a horror list, but Darren Aronofsky‘s intense study of addiction certainly belongs here to my mind. The story is quite simple – following the disintegration of heroin addict Harry, his similarly drug addicted friends and his unfortunate mother. But, the film never lets up and by the end it’s hard to look away from the screen even as the characters descent into their own personal hells.

For his second movie following the ingenious low budget Pi, Aronofsky delivers an assured adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s source novel. He gets extremely strong and affecting performances from all of his cast, most especially Ellen Burstyn (who was nominated for an Oscar for this role) and Marlon Wayans in a rare dramatic performance (look at his god-awful role as Snails in Dungeons and Dragons – shot at the same time as this! – for a reminder of how bad he can be). The editing style is unique and helps drive the movie, especially in the repeated shooting up sequences and the traumatic climax. The final master-stroke is Clint Mansell’s fantastic score with the Kronos Quartet, one of the best score of the last decade if not of all time.

If many Hollywood movies can be described as a “feel-good” movie, then this is a “feel bad” movie. There’s no happy ending here, no redemption, no hope. The finale is a literal descent into hell that’s scarier than any CGI demons could be. I’ve heard it described as a must-see movie that you can only see once. That’s a good description – most people would not want to experience this twice, but I recommend the experience nonetheless

9. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) (a.k.a. El laberinto del fauno)

During the Spanish civil war, a young girl named Ofelia is taken by her mother to live with her new father, a fascist army Captain named Vidal. She hates the man, but her mother is very sick and pregnant with a new baby boy. While exploring the grounds around the house, Ofelia enters a maze and finds a faun, who tells her that she is in fact a princess from a fantasy world who needs to return there. However, she needs to first perform three difficult tasks to prove her worth.

Another movie that doesn’t fit squarely into the horror genre but certainly belongs on a list like this is Guillermo Del Toro’s 2006 fantasy . Del Toro effortlessly combines fantasy and reality into a whole, switching back and forth between the vicious and violent war driven by the ruthless Vidal, and the fantasy world that might or might not be a figment of Ofelia’s imagination.

I almost forgot to include this fantastic revision of the werewolf myth on this list as I always think of it as a late 90s movie, but it did in fact get released in 2000. Shot in Canada for a reasonably low budget, Ginger Snaps manages to find a unique slant on the genre while making some very over comparisons between Ginger’s transformation into a creature with her sexual awakening.

The transformation itself is also unique, with Ginger not simply turning into a wolf at the rise of a full moon, but gradually changing over the month – she grows more hair and a tail and takes on bestial features. Both of the main characters are very well played and believable, and the film manages to sidestep most of the teen angst and melodrama that infects movies about high school kids in mainstream movies.

There are two sequels to this movie, both of which are actually very good. Ginger Snaps Back is a direct sequel, following Brigitte’s adventures after the end of the original (good but I’m not sure about the dark ending). Ginger Snaps Unleashed is an interesting alternative look, following the same two characters in a previous incarnation in the 1800s. Pick up the trilogy if you can, but the first movie is still be best and highly recommended.

7. Final Destination 2 (2003)

While not totally unique (the 80s movie Sole Survivor has a similar premise), the first Final Destination was a breath of fresh air when it was released near the end of the increasing tired slasher revival of the early 00s. The plot was simple – a group of people cheat death by avoiding a plane crash after one of them has a psychic vision. Death, however, find a way to get them anyway, one by one.

This setup is brilliant in two ways. First of all, because Death itself is the antagonist here, there’s no people in masks with silly motives for causing all the mayhem. Death is invisible and omnipotent, and the characters have a hard time trying to get out its way. On top of that, the concept allows for some extremely imaginative death sequences that would seem utterly stupid is a human antagonist had been involved – for example, on guy gets decapitated by a piece of scrap metal dislodged by a passing train.

In a rare turn of events, I actually think the sequel is better than the original. Made with a larger budget, this basically retells the story of the first movie (this time the original deaths were meant to have been caused by the most incredible car pile-up you’ve ever seen), although it does tie into the previous movie.

The great thing about this is that it plays all of the original movie’s strength as far as they will go. The best example is one of the earlier death scenes where a guy is alone in his apartment. Having seen the previous movie, we know he’s doomed, but the film keeps blind-siding us – he burns some food, has things on the floor for him to easily slip on, and even puts his arm down a garbage disposal chute at one time. We get false start after false start, and the movie seem to enjoy playing with us until the final shock point where he actually gets it.

In fact, the death sequences are so good that they overshadow the rest of the movie to some degree. Made with a near-flawless mix of practical effects and CGI, playing up to the strength of both, the scenes are unashamedly gory and over-the-top. I found the ending to this movie a little disappointing at first, but otherwise it’s a fun movie.

6. Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

As I mentioned in my Wicker Man review in my round-up of the 10 worst movies of the decade, I’m not totally opposed to the recent trend of remakes in principle. What I am opposed to is the way that most of these movies are being remade pointlessly, taking perfectly good movies and then missing the point of the original totally. For me, a remake doesn’t necessarily have to surpass the original, but it does have to have a reason for being beyond the fact that the marketing department wanted to leverage the name.

For my money, the best of the remakes this year was Dawn of The Dead. Like most, I rolled my eyes when I first heard that they were remaking Romero’s classic. It remains one of the most imaginative and outright enjoyable modern zombie movies, from the man who created the genre in the first place. It’s true classic and I thought that it should not be messed with. However, in honesty, the original is not a perfect film. It’s a little too long and tends to lurch from one set piece to another. The tone is uneven, the allegories about consumerism can be heavy-handed, and some of the comedy elements don’t really work (custard pies?). On top of that, it’s probably hard to get a mainstream modern audience to accept the pioneering gore effects and the blue face paint.

For his feature film début, Zack Snyder (along with screenwriter James Gunn), made the best decision they could. Rather than try to remake Romero’s original script, they would simply create a new movie. While there are nods to the original, the only real similarities are the fact that they’re both dealing with a zombie apocalypse where survivors hide out in a shopping mall. For a start, these are the infamous “running zombies” introduced to the modern era by 28 Days Later (I won’t get into the debate about “infected” vs “undead” here). This changes the dynamic of the movie completely. Whereas Romero’s protagonists could literally run rings around their shambling corpses as long as there weren’t too many of them, there’s no way to outrun Snyder’s versions.

Thankfully, the movie doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to explain too much, either. The opening few minutes are fantastic, where a nurse (played by Sarah Polley) wakes up one morning to find that the child from next door in her bedroom doorway. The girl immediately attacks and kills her husband, who quickly returns to life and tries to eat her as well. Escaping by inches, Polley sees a world descending into hell around her. Life isn’t much better when her and few other survivors she meets on the way get to the mall. From here, the film follows their routine as they try to both pass the time (including an amusing sequence where they play a game killing zombies who look like celebrities) and try to decide what they will do to get out of there.

The structure is a little flabby and messy, especially toward the middle where a new bus load of survivors literally gatecrash for no other story reason than to supply some new victims. Some sequences are a little silly (such as the zombie baby sequence that takes too long coming although we all know what will happen), and the whole thing is a little over-long. However, from the breathtaking opening sequence to the amazing climax (a sequence that simply would not have been possible at Romero’s time) it’s a fantastic film with a great sense of humour and which does not hold back on the gore.

5. TIE: Inside (2007) (a.k.a. À l’intérieur) & [REC]

It’s always good to get away from Hollywood horror occasionally, as other countries have a lot to offer in the genre. Cultural and censorship differences mean that these countries often make movies that would not be possible in North America. In the 70s and 80s, this came from the Italians. At the end of the 90s and beginning of this decade, it was Asian horror that provided the unique flavour (at least until Hollywood decided to remake them all). I don’t think that anyone could have predicted that the French would be not only behind some of the most unique and affecting horror this decade, but also the most extreme.

Almost any of the new wave of French horror could tie for a place on this list, however they all have flaws. Haute Tension is a great movie that’s derailed by a ludicrous and illogical twist. Calvaire is interesting but does not totally work, while Frontiere(s) is a decent piece of work that falls victim to a few tired genre conventions. Martyrs is a gruelling and incredible film that just seem to think it’s more poetic and profound than it really is, while Ils is decent movie that’s over a little too quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of these movies, but Inside just manages to beat them at almost every turn.

The story is another simple affair – Sarah (Alysson Paradis) is a pregnant woman who is involved in a car accident that kills her husband. A few months later, the day before her birth is to be induced, she decides to spend her final night alone by herself in the house they shared. However a crazy woman wants to get inside the house – can take the baby.

This is probably the goriest and strongest movie of the decade in a number of ways. The basic theme is very provocative, and raises the stakes far beyond the usual teenager in peril kind of story. By the end of the movie, the house is literally covered in blood and bodies from would-be rescuers, while the end is an utterly incredible piece of work that would never get past a Hollywood producer. This is actually a real indication of how far we’ve come since the early 80s – there is absolutely no way that the BBFC would not have banned this movie if it were released back then. The usage of a pair of scissors alone would get this banned.

There are some flaws, though. While Sarah herself behaves rationally and logically (the first thing she does after her first encounter with the woman – who is never named – is to call the police), some of the minor characters behave a little wrongly. Most especially is the policeman who, aware that something has gone wrong with his partner inside the house, doesn’t bother calling for backup. There’s also a silly shock moments involving a character who we think is dead reappearing at an inopportune moment.

Overall, though, it’s an extremely strong film but as with most of the French new wave, definitely not for the squeamish or the expectant mother…

As a tie with Inside (OK, I cheated and couldn’t decide between them!) is the Spanish film [REC]. The Spanish have also been making some good horror movies in recent years, such as The Orphanage, but none have really created as genre-breaking a movie as [REC].

In the last few years, we’ve seen a resurgence of the “found footage” genre of movie first suggested by Cannibal Holocaust then catapulted into the mainstream by . The biggest of these are of course Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield, but lower grade movies like Diary of The Dead and The Zombie Diaries are all over the place at the moment.

However, most of these films have two major flaws. The first is just why the person behind the camera is filming. For example, Cloverfield has the cameraman clearly insert himself into dangerous situations or even standing still when he should be running away. This can stretch your suspension of disbelief to breaking point. The other problem is that the stories lack any kind of real narrative structure unless they’re really forced. Many of these film sag in the middle as the initial danger is over, but the characters have to get to the next set piece while still having to film each other for no real character reason.

[REC] effortlessly sidesteps both of these problems. The story follows Angela, a young woman hosting a late-night show names “While You Were Sleeping” – a fluff piece to fill early morning schedules. On this particular night, Angela and her cameraman Pablo are filming segments on the night shift at a Barcelona fire station. The monotony is broken a by a call to an apartment building, where an elderly woman is trapped behind a locked door. When the firemen break down the door, they soon find that she is infected by some disease that has turned her into a flesh eating zombie. the authorities seal off the building, and the remaining survivors struggle to find a way out before it’s too late.

The first thing that’s obvious about [REC] is that it’s a tightly constructed movie, very fast paced at only 75 minutes. This is actually the perfect length for this kind of movie, as there’s no waiting around between set pieces once the action starts other than a short interlude where we’re introduced to some secondary characters. When the action happens, the characters have an extremely good reason to keep filming – this is their big chance. Both Pablo and Angela have spent their time wishing for something more fulfilling – if they can get good footage of what’s happening here, it could make their careers. This not only explains why they could keep filming even during moments of extreme peril, but also explains why they film the conversation in between.

Overall, [REC] is one of the best movies of the decade with a real rollercoaster style feel and some impressive sequences. I haven’t seen the sequel yet, but it also promises to be a unique take on what was becoming a tired genre.

4. Saw (2004)

A photographer and a doctor wake up in a dirty, darkened room, each handcuffed by their right ankle to opposite walls and a dead body between them. They don’t know each other or how they got there, but they have tape recorders containing messages from a man calling himself Jigsaw as well as various implements such as rusty hacksaws . Meanwhile, a burned-out cop is on the trail of Jigsaw – who utilises elaborate traps to test his victims as a kind of morality game. He wants his victims to appreciate life, and only the strong-willed can survive.

OK, we all know the story by now, but do we remember how it began? Before the annual sequels, the ever more elaborate traps, the increasingly labyrinthine plots and Jigsaw’s proteges, this was a simple, if flawed, puzzle movie. I often use the term “puzzle movie” to describe a film where you’re trying to solve a puzzle alongside the characters. Where these differ from a standard mystery is that the characters are usually in a single location, and the danger often comes from traps or paranoia rather than a slasher or other external human killer – think the Cube series, Unknown, etc. When i first watched Saw, I was somewhat disappointed that this aspect only takes up about half of the movie. The rest of the movie follows Danny Glover as the obsessed cop trying to find Jigsaw in revenge for killing his partner years before.

Saw’s strengths are obvious. James Wan has a kinetic directorial style that really propels the plot and intensifies some of the already intense sequences. The main cast is pretty good, and the plot twists and turn in unusual directions, leading to shocking and surprising final twist.

However, familiarity can breed contempt for some people. Saw has become an annual event, of curse, with a new movie every year since this original movie hit the box office. While some of the sequels are good, none have quite reached the same level as the movie, and Jigsaw’s continued influence despite having died in part 3 stretches credibility at times. Some of the casting gives the game away for the new viewer now as well, with Tobin Bell having becomes synonymous with Jigsaw and Michael Emerson now known as a bad guy due to his role as Benjamin Linus on Lost. Wan’s once unique direction style has also become greatly imitated and overused.

However, forget the baggage and return to this movie. if you can accept the script’s occasional lapses of logic and the now familiar rusty aesthetic, there’s still a lot to get out of it.

3. The Descent (2005)

Neil Marshall’s second movie following Dog Soldiers is a masterpiece of claustrophobic terror. The story follows a group of six women who have been going on adventure holidays (kayaking, climbing, etc.) since they were at university together. A year following a tragic accident, which kills the family of one of the women, they regroup in the Appalachian mountains for a caving trip to help them re-bond and recover. But, of course, something goes very wrong and there’s something waiting for them in the darkness.

It’s a real testament to Marshall’s excellent script and direction that I would probably have been as happy with the movie if no creatures had turned up in the second half of this movie. The first sections of the caving sequences here are absolutely terrifying, especially if you’re claustrophobic. Not only are the women in real peril just from the creatures but from the elements themselves. Despite being shot on specially constructed sets, the caves are utterly convincing as real underground caverns.

The characters are good and distinctive, although the actresses can become a little interchangeable in the action sequences. the crawlers are very well designed, and look very much like humanoid creatures who would have evolved in deep underground caves. Once the action starts, there’s never a moment when you don’t feel that the women are in constant peril either from the creatures or the terrain (or in one shocking moment, each other).

The Descent suffered a little on its first US release, with the ending changed from the dark ending of the original British cut to something a little happier. This new ending was the one used to start this year’s sequel, but track down a copy ith the original ending if you’re not in the UK.

2. Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

Horror comedies are notoriously hard to get right. Make the comedy too broad or too silly, and it takes away any scares from the horror parts. Make the horror too extreme, and either it becomes hilarious in and of itself, or it makes the humour seem inappropriate and out of place. Of those few horror comedies that do work, they usually work by throwing as much at the screen as possible (e.g. Braindead). The benchmark for a movie that managed to walk the thin line and make the two elements work perfectly together used to be An American Werewolf In London, but now Shaun Of The Dead has become a similar classic.

Created by the team behind the excellent TV series Spaced (director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost), Shaun Of The Dead manages to be both a loving tribute of and spoof of the zombie movies that were inspired by George Romero’s original zombie trilogy. The setup is simple – Shaun is stuck in a rut, in a dead-end job, living with old school mates and his girlfriend has just dumped him. He’s feeling so sorry for himself, in fact, that he completely fails to notice the flesh-eating zombies taking over the world. When he does finally notice, he and his friend Ed have only two things they can think of doing – getting Shaun back his old girlfriend and then hiding out at the local pub, The Winchester.

What makes the movie so good is the effortless way in which humour is woven into the situations that Shaun and Ed find themselves in. It starts a character study, setting up all the relationships before the zombie action really starts. During the first act, a lot of subtle hints appear in the background so hint that something isn’t quite right, but Shaun’s too wrapped up in his own life to notice. When the zombie action finally starts, the humour continues but the horror never takes too much of a back seat, and there’s gore and suspense where it’s needed. The music’s always great, mixing a score with references to other movies and the hilarious use of Queen‘s Don’t Stop Me Now during a fight scene.

1. Let The Right One In (2008)

Perhaps it’s the circumstances under which I saw this movie for the first time – knowing nothing about it, sandwiched between gorefests at the 2008 Frightfest – but this is one of the few horror movies of the last few years to have left a lasting impression on me.

The setting and story are as simple as they are unusual. Set during the 1980s in snowbound northern Sweden, Oskar is a lonely, bullied child often left alone by his single parent. He forms a strange friendship with a new neighbour named Eli, a girl apparently the same age but actually a vampire.

The set up sounds a little like a pre-teen version of Twilight, but little could be farther from the truth. It’s a slow-paced but extremely effective character study with very little gore, but what little there is has definite impact. It addresses a number of different social issues including gender identity and paedophilia in a very subtle way, while never overtly attacking these themes. It also addresses a number of pieces of vampire lore (such as the need to invite a vampire inside before they can enter a house) that are rarely mentioned in the modern era. The setting is also interesting the way it’s used both for the bleak snowy landscapes – you can really feel the cold – but a unique look at the 1980s through an unfamiliar culture.

The result is an extremely fascinating film that will stay with you long after the end credits have finished.

OK, so here we are at the end of 2009, and to break my unfortunate silence recently, I’ve decided to list some thoughts on what I consider to be the best and worst movies of the decade. Since it would be wrong to to leave the year on a downer, here’s my picks for the worst of the decade (after the jump). I admit I haven’t seen some of these movies since they came out, but these were probably the biggest disappointments I’ve had all decade:

10. Van Helsing (2004)

I wanted to like Van Helsing, I really did. I liked Stephen Sommer’s previous movies a lot, especially The Mummy, Deep Rising was cheesy fun, and I even liked some parts of The Mummy Returns despite the annoying kid and its tendency to repeat bits of the original. Given that, an action-adventure featuring Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein along with a young Van Helsing ready to take them all on sounded like the movie I would want to see.

Unfortunately, Sommers really lost it on this expensive folly. It’s overlong and very silly. Richard Roxburgh is a terrible Dracula, and all the leads are quite bland. However, the real problem is the overuse of CGI. Sommers litters the screen with stupidly overdone effects, to the point that in many sequences the movie might as well have been an animated movie. Despite my love the subject and the characters, I found myself incredibly bored throughout the action sequences. A real failure, unfortunately.

9. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

In the mid-90s, the Halloween franchise had been in a bad state. Part 5 had been rushed out just as the slasher genre was dying. Part 6 was heavily tampered with in post production, and introduced some utterly stupid plot twists (Michael Myers controlled by an evil Druidic cult?). The saviour for the slasher genre was Wes Craven’s Scream, which breathed life back into the genre. Sensibly, Halloween: H20 simply ignored that parts 4 – 6 had never happened and picked up the story of Laurie Strode 20 years after “that night”.

Flushed with success, what do we get as the follow up? Would you believe a low grade Busta Rhymes vehicle that attempts to copy parts of The Blair Witch Project and its imitators?

The movie starts badly with an extended sequence showing Laurie Strode finally killed off by Michael Myers (apparently the only reason Jamie Lee Curtis would agree to star in another Halloween movie would to kill off the character). It’s not bad as such, but it takes a large chunk of the movie’s running time. I don’t remember exactly, how long it is, but it must be a good 20 minutes before we get to meet the main characters. When we get there,we may as well not have bothered. The characters are annoying, the plot (involving an “internet reality show” running a contest from Myers’ old house) is silly and Michael Myers is not in the movie enough. This was bad enough to kill the franchise for another 5 years before Rob Zombie came along…

I’ve not bothered with Zombie’s films yet, despite liking House Of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects quite a lot, but I don’t see how they can be worse than this (well, maybe H2 is from what I’ve heard!).

8. Ghosts of Mars (2001)

I’m a John Carpenter fanboy, and have been some for many years despite evidence of his creative failings. Even after something like the mediocre comedy Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, I knew he’d deliver when he got back to genre cinema. I love nearly all of his movies, from the classics like Halloween and The Thing to lesser, flawed attempts such as Prince Of Darkness. Then, in the mid 90s following the sublime In The Mouth Of Madness, everything started to go to pot. After the OK remake of Village Of The Damned, he made the horrible Escape From L.A. For me, his career jumped the metaphorical shark during the sequence where Snake Plissken surfs down a Hollywood street with Peter Fonda. After that, I really just wanted Carpenter to redeem himself. Vampires was OK, but then he brought us this and I lost faith for several years.

This is another of those “should have been good” films. Carpenter had always wanted to make a Western, but had become pigeon-holed in the horror & sci-fi genres. Westerns were also considered a dead genre, with occasional exceptions like Unforgiven and Open Range proving to be the exception rather than the rule. With this, Carpenter decided to meld the Western with the sci-fi/horror movies he’s best known for. The resulting story is a mess.

I don’t have a huge amount to say about this one, if I’m honest. I remember thinking the whole thing was silly, and almost shouted at the TV at one point when a character makes an utterly stupid suicidal move. It seems that the film has gained some kind of cult following in the intervening years, but it’s embarrassing to place this next to The Thing and realise they’re from the same director.

Carpenter hasn’t directed a feature film since, at least until The Ward is released next year. Fortunately, he seems to have found his feet again to some degree with his two Masters Of Horror episodes, let’s hope he can redeem himself…

7. Valentine (2001)

It’s funny to complain about Valentine here for two main reasons. First of all, I don’t think the movie was incredibly bad as such, just very blank and boring. Secondly, in all honesty I don’t remember all that much about it at all, apart from being amused at Denise Richards’ totally gratuitous pool scene (albeit less so than the average 80s movie). I was also disappointed that Australian director Jamie Blanks had made another movie similar to the bland and silly final 90 minutes of his début Urban Legend, rather than the fantastic opening 5 minutes of that film.

So why is it here? Well, for two reasons. First of all, it’s the only movie I remember seeing at the cinema in the early part of the decade and feeling really ripped off. But, more importantly, it signposts exactly where the horror genre was heading at the start of the decade, as well as where studios would have continued pushing it if The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense had not been as successful as they were.

In short: tired genre conventions with no real bite, a cast full of existing and future TV stars in bland, interchangeable roles. Although this movie was rated R in the US, I don’t remember there being much in the way of gore, pointing the way to toothless and pointless PG-13 slasher movies like Prom Night.

6. Return of The Living Dead 4: Necropolis (2005)

To be honest, I’m not sure whether the 4th or 5th film in this series is worse, but I think this one just pips the 5th one to the post. At least that one had a ridiculous “zombie Ecstasy” plot and some sequences that were enjoyable despite their badness. This one is just bad.

The “Return…” series started with a 1985 comedy horror movie directed and written by (the sadly late) Dan O’Bannon, who also helped create Alien and Dark Star. It is, to my mind, one of the better movies of the 80s with nearly-indestructible zombies and a great sense of when to be silly and when to be scary. The second movie a few years later tried unsuccessfully to retread the same ground, while Brian Yuzna’s 1993 follow-up was enjoyable if flawed. With zombies being back in vogue again, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone resurrected the franchise.

Early signs were good. Although this was already going to be a simple direct-to-DVD set of movies (parts 4&5 were shot back-to-back in Romania with the same cast), they were being directed by Ellory Elkayem, director of the decent giant spider comedy Eight Legged Freaks. the problem is that the script sucks on numerous different levels.

The main problem is that these sequels remove the most interesting aspects of the original movie. There, the zombies were virtually indestructible. Dismembering a zombie just meant the parts would come after you, and burning them just releases more of the zombie-making toxin into the air (not good when it’s about to rain on a cemetery!). Here, a simple Romero-style shot to the head is enough to take them down. Everything else here is really generic, losing the smart mix of comedy and horror the made the original a classic, while also introducing nothing new of interest.

A waste of time, and it’s a shame to see a promising director like Elkayem (who also directed the decent DTV bug movie They Nest) sink to this level. Hopefully he’ll come back with another fun movie, but given that his newest movie is Without A Paddle 2, it might be while.

5. I Spit on Your Corpse, I Piss on Your Grave (2001)

I do find it a little unfair to pick on low grade independent productions when talking about things like the “worst movie of the decade”. If you pick up a straight to DVD, low budget movie, you never know what you’re going to get, of course. Look at the DVD cover, will it be the next Paranormal Activity or the next Slashers (both movies I like very much, by the way)? Even if not, the fact that an independent producer can get a film made and distributed is much more of an achievement than a supposed professional who has been in the industry for years. But, this movie was asking for it…

First of all, it’s a conceptual remake of the classic video nasty I Spit On Your Grave, as you can tell from the title. Thanks to this, I was intrigued and decided to pick it up via a grey market channel (it’s never had a UK release for reasons that will soon be obvious). Given that the director Eric Stanze has built up a decent underground reputation (I think I saw and liked his previous movie, Scrapbook, under a different title on Spanish TV, but I’m not sure if it’s the right movie), I thought I’d be in for something interesting. I was wrong.

It’s horribly acted and directed. It looks and sounds terrible, and nothing really happens for a long time. Once it does, we get rape, an extended and pointless masturbation scene, and then a bunch of pretty deviant sex acts. I’m not exactly a porno fan, but these scenes look like they were made for a particularly twisted fan of that market, and there’s little to it beyond that.

This film may look a little out of place in the company surrounding it, but this is truly the only movie that actively annoyed me due to its content rather than wasted potential or a director’s fall from grace.

4. Mother Of Tears (a.k.a. La Terza Madre; The Third Mother) (2007)

In the history of movies, few directors have experienced the highs and lows of Dario Argento. Starting as a screenwriter on various Italian projects (he co-wrote Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West), Argento soon found his way into the director’s chair. His first project, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, was a stylish and assured début, that helped lead Italian cinema into one of its heydays and crystallised one of the few home-grown Italian genres, the giallo. Over the following years, he made movies of variable overall quality and was often criticised for his threadbare characters and sometimes silly plots, but he was always daring and original. This period culminated in a brace of movies – Suspiria and Inferno – that combined the giallo with the supernatural.

Unfortunately, Argento started to self-destruct sometime in the mid-80s. Although fans disagree, I consider the 1985 movie Phenomena (a.k.a. Creepers) to be the real start of this (which I’ll review at a later date). Following the effective Terror At the Opera, Argento fell into tired repeats of what he’d already tried before, gradually showing less and less of the audacious flair he showed for the first 15 years of his career. The mainstream Italian exploitation industry also drew to a close, leaving Argento and others struggling to finance projects. The effect of this showed. His version of Phantom of The Opera is almost unwatchably bad and The Card Player is bland to the point of looking like an ITV series.

So expectations were low (but hopes were high) when this, the “third part” in a conceptual trilogy following Suspiria and Inferno, was announced. Would Argento regain the heights of the prime of his career with this movie, which reunited him with ex-wife Daria Nicolodi, who wrote the first two movies. Sadly, this was truly a product of 2007′s Argento rather than 1977′s version.

The movie lacks style and is flat-looking. Asia Argento stars and gives the worst performance of her career with some horrible dialogue. The gore scenes are very silly and look like an out-take from a half-assed Lucio Fulci fan film. The use of CGI is absolutely atrocious, and the finale would look bad on a PS1 game.

Sadly, as I mentioned in my Frightfest review, Argento’s next movie (Giallo) would be just as bad. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the benefit of watching Mother Of Tears with a like-minded audience to help take away the pain…

3. The Wicker Man (2006)

Although I spend a lot of time complaining about Hollywood’s recent trend of remaking every movie from the 1970s and 80s, I’m not completely opposed to remakes. Two of my favourite movies of all time – Carpenter’s The Thing and Cronenberg’s The Fly – are remakes. Although I’m normally of the belief that remaking a classic is just asking for trouble, I did like recent remakes of Dawn Of The Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and I’m even half-optimistic about the Nightmare On Elm Street remake.

However, for every decent remake, there’s 10 that are worthless. At the bottom of the barrel, there are movies that are not only bad movies in their own right, but seem to have missed every single thing that made the original movies work. On top of that, there are movies that are so unique, so of their time and so memorable that even considering a remake is a fair dumb thing to do. The Wicker Man is a prime example of this.

It sounded promising when the director chosen was Neil LaBute, an indie director who had made interesting movies like In The Company of Men and Nurse Betty. LaBute had announced that his remake would take a totally different view of the cult-on-an-island theme, with a matriarchal society being the focus (a good move, since even Christopher Lee cites the original as his favourite role).

So what could go wrong? Well, first off the script is rubbish. The original movie had a realistic and strong plot in between its musical weirdness. Edward Woodward played a devout Catholic policeman sent to a remote Scottish island. The isolated pagan community presented was totally plausible for such a place, and Woodward’s devoutness (which would turn out to be his undoing in more ways than one) made his actions and his staying there plausible. In the remake, we have an island off the coast of the USA, and the community present is utterly ludicrous, especially when it’s revealed that they regularly go back to the mainland for education.

However, not even the poor script is a match for the glory that is Nicolas Cage. I’ve always liked Cage, and in his indie days he could really save a movie by his presence. Here, I’m not sure whether he thinks he’s in a comedy or whether there’s some footage left on the cutting room floor detailing his recent escape from a lunatic asylum. He runs around the island screaming, at one point carjacking a bicycle with a gun. In later stages, he runs around dressed as a bear, randomly assaulting the women who get in his way. It’s absolutely hilarious, and this would be one of the comedies of the decade if it weren’t for the fact that LaBute expects us to take it seriously.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at these scenes:

2. House Of The Dead (2003)

It’s hard to know which Uwe Boll atrocity to list here, but this is the one where it all began. Before this movie, Boll was merely a German director of bad action movie thrillers that went direct to DVD. However, with this movie he not only managed to get theatrical distribution but also started the trend of butchering videogame licences. He’s managed to do this for many years, butchering numerous licences (including Dungeon Siege, Alone In the Dark, Far Cry and Bloodrayne), largely thanks to a German tax loophole that allowed him to continue even when his movies failed to get distributed.

A lot’s been said about Boll, but I think the main reason he’s held in such contempt is the amount of utterly unnecessary changes he makes to his scripts compared to the (often excellent) storyline of the games themselves. With House Of The Dead, the game’s storyline was quite simple. Two government agents are sent to investigate mysterious goings on at the mansion owned by Dr. Curien, and end up fighting the undead creatures he has raised. Not a complex plot, with minimal characters and lots of action set-pieces. Ripe for a movie with fleshed-out characters and some decent effect, especially on the low but hardly meagre budget of $20 million, right?

Unfortunately, Boll thinks differently. We start with – sigh – a group of teenagers. they want to get to a rave being hosted on an island, but they’ve missed the boat to get them there. After getting a ride on a boat (whose captain is named Kirk), they arrive at the rave only to find it deserted. Soon after, they get attacked by zombies.

Notice the difference? Realistically, there’s only two similarities between the game and the movie. First of all there’s some dialogue at the end that suggests that one of the survivors is the son of Dr. Curien (who hasn’t been mentioned till this point and doesn’t appear in the film) and the two government agents also make an apperence in this scene. The second is the bonkers way in which game footage is incorporated into the movie’s action sequence.

Here we get one of Boll’s trademarks – utterly stupid directorial decisions that ruin any attempt to take a film seriously. Apparently, proper gore footage was shot for the action sequences, but Boll decided to edit in grainy, blocky videogame graphics (the game was first released in 1996) instead. Combined with the ludicrous plot, the overuse of bullet time for every character, the fact that these spoiled kids turn into expert marksmen the first time they handle a gun, etc.

The movie is ridiculous and barely watchable, even if you’re not familiar with the games. It’s an insult to anyone who enjoyed the games. Play House Of The Dead: Overkill on the Wii instead.

1. The Happening (2008)

I was never particularly wowed by M. Night Shyamalan. I enjoyed The Sixth Sense and thought Unbreakable was pretty underrated, but I didn’t understand the adoration often heaped on the guy. The cracks really appeared with Signs. I know a lot of people liked this movie, but for me the interesting central messages (everything happens for a reason, we are not always in control of our own destiny, etc.) were overpowered by an incredibly dumb and implausible ending. Even past that, all the messages are contradicted once you think about them for 5 seconds in light of the final twist. Similarly, The Village and Lady In The Water were OK, but generally mediocre.

However, I did hold up hope for The Happening. Word was that Shyamalan had been burned by his own arrogant comments surrounding Lady In The Water (a massive flop) and that he planned to break out of his “twist” and “family” pigeon-holes with an R rated movie. On top of that, very little about the movie was known in advance, other than it would be some kind of sci-fi disaster movie. All looked good… then the reviews came in.

I don’t like to be spoiled on movies, but let’s say that I went into this with very low expectations. What I found was a movie that’s not only utterly ridiculous, but is closer in quality to an Ed Wood movie than something made by modern professionals. In almost every scene, I was thinking “people got *paid* for this? people who so this for a living?”.

The film start with a sequence that shows both what it could have been and highlights many of the problems. We open on Central Park, and two girls sit down on a bench and talk to one another. One of the girls notices something strange about the wind and then the people around them, while her friend starts to talk strangely. Distracted, the friend reaches for a clip in her hair and proceeds to ram it into her throat.

It sounds effective, and could have been an extremely disturbing opening that promises a rollercoaster of a movie. However, the scene is very badly shot and edited. The acting is atrocious, so much so that I had to rewind it after I realised that one of the girls was actually meant to be deteriorating and becoming more confused – I couldn’t tell the difference!

The problems continue. Mark Wahlberg, our “hero”, is a biology teacher who is introduced rambling on about “acts of nature” and how scientists never know the truth about certain things (a blatant attempt to shoehorn in some Creationist propaganda – not a good thing in my book)! his performance is extremely wooden, especially if you compare him to his role in, say, The Departed. Zooey Deschanel shows up as his girlfriend, and is honestly one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen in a mainstream movie. She also gives an atrocious performance, acting almost comatose at points and never giving a realistic human reaction to anything. Even John Leguizamo acts subdued.

On top of all this, the plot is utterly ridiculous. Basically, all the plants in the north-eastern USA (and, yes, just that part of the country) start giving off a toxin that causes people to deteriorate mentally and then kill themselves. This does lead to some admittedly very effective kill sequences that belong in a better movie. However, in this movie, all it leads to is characters running away from the wind with no clear idea of where they’re going. The movie stops as suddenly as it started, with no explanation or reasoning other than “scientists know nothing” and ” let’s be nice to plants”.

Hopefully Shyamalan’s next film – The Last Airbender, based on someone else’s adapted script – will be better than this.