The Creepiest Films of 2014

Fresh off of the success of You’re Next, director Adam Wingard invites audiences to make nice with The Guest, a genre bender that plays better the less you know. What we can tell you: Wingard borrows from genre favorites, utilizes an ‘80s Goth soundtrack, and cleverly injects modern themes to genius effect.

Considered the other Denis Villeneuve/Jake Gyllenhaal project, Enemy is a moody Kafka-esque story that follows a lonely professor who stalks his thespian doppelganger through the streets of Toronto. Yellowed to the tinge of a Soderbergh flick, the film culminates in a spectacular final image even creepier than the ending to Prisoners.

Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth) turns author Michel Faber’s fictional Isserley character into the mysterious Laura (Scarlett Johansson), a vixen who picks up hitchhikers for dinner – literally. Cannibal, vampire, alien, or a woman scorned? You decide. One thing that’s certain about this peculiar and polarizing sci-fi: Johansson kills it.

Cell phones, videotapes, ginger-haired dolls – the list of murderous housewares goes on and on. Go ahead and add really old mirror to the pack. The Lasser Glass to be exact. It’s what estranged siblings Kaylie and Tim believe killed their parents when they were kids. It’s also the reason you want to look into director Mike Flanagan’s reality-bending creeper.

Eight friends get together for what turns out to be a super-bizarre dinner party once a comet passes over Earth. The directorial debut from James Ward Byrkit (who wrote the story for Rango), Coherence arranges parallel realities into a mind-bending cinematic Rubik’s cube.

While the title for all-time best revenge flick arguably resides with Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy from 2003, this taut art-house thriller gives it a run for its money. The story: A bearded loner, who lives out of his car, finds himself unexpectedly involved in a brutal, vengeful conquest to protect his family.

Horny youngsters + a remote cabin = bad things happening. Been there; done that. But Honeymoon, is something else entirely. Game of Thrones’ Rose Leslie plays Bea, a just-married gal who sleepwalks her way into a sinister thriller that begins as a sort of Perfect Getaway but heads into close encounters with the glorious Evil Dead.

Call it a stoner’s guide to fiction or chalk it up to writer/director Kevin Smith’s most delusional work to date – however you slice it, Tusk is a wackadoo watch that bombards viewers with creepy, blubbery images they just can’t unsee.

Master character actor Jake Gyllenhaal dropped 30 pounds and took on the characteristics of an L.A. coyote to play Lou Bloom, a self-taught crime news “journalist” whose sociopathic behavior leaves you feeling slimier than the greasy coif he sports.

A global undertaking, this film has 26 directors (including Room 237’s Rodney Ascher and American Mary‘s Soska twins), who were each given a letter, told to come up with a word, then create a tale of death based on that word. Given complete artistic freedom, the filmmakers birthed a gory anthology that leaves no body part un-severed.

You know what they say: Truth is stranger than fiction. And the Olympic-size scandal surrounding the self-professed “ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist” – known to the rest of the world as John du Pont – fits the bill.

Inserting comedic relief into horror flicks is nothing new. However, it does seem to be trending (see: What We Do in the Shadows, Big Bad Wolves, Cheap Thrills). Keeping with the trend is New Zealand’s disturbia ghost story starring a very strong queen in Morgana O’Reilly.

Perhaps the best thing since sliced garlic bread, this Iranian vampire western (yes, that) mixes spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, Iranian new wave, and horror elements into an eerily beautiful love story. Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, her debut feature is tasty enough to have Tarantino salivating.

Hands down the creepiest thing to haunt 2014, the Aussie fairy tale-turned-American nightmare plays with one’s deepest, darkest fears and dangles the boogeyman out there just enough that we still check the closet and under the bed come nighttime.