Your Holiday Guide to Bad Halloween Movies
Who doesn’t love a good horror film come Halloween time? Me, that’s who. There are so many horror movies, and it’s difficult to parse which ones will be good or bad. More often than not, they’re bad. I’ll save you the trouble of trying to find the best of the worst, so here’s my guide to some of the deepest depths horror can sink to… Your Holiday Guide to Bad Halloween Movies.
Honorable Mention: Insidious: Last Key (2018)
Insidious was the best horror film of 2010, and it only took eight years and four films for the franchise to collapse in on itself like a dying star. You know who we needed more story on? Apparently that psychic lady who showed up to rid the kid of demons.
In The Last Key, she faces off against an antagonist named, no joke, KeyFace. KeyFace’s whole thing is keys. His name is Key, his fingers are keys, his face has a keyhole, and he haunts a house in a town called… wait for it… Five Keys. The filmmakers seem to think they’ve unlocked the secret to scares – sudden, loud noises with spooky images. That’s not enough to haunt an audience in 2018, and your silly villain only makes it worse. This franchise has clearly run its course, but it’ll probably keep getting used to print money until the day it doesn’t.
Jason X (2001)
A slasher film set in both space and the future…
When Jason’s body is preserved in ice, a group of students bring him on board their spaceship. Jason insanity ensues. It’s dumb as hell, and is at its best when it matches that energy. The CGI is particularly bad, but not quite as bad as the 2001 conception of the future which hasn’t advanced much from 2001, and seems to mostly exist on a CW TV set. Will they ever make a good Jason movie again?
Recommended for you: Friday the 13th Movies Ranked
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)
Apocalypse Now seemed to give these filmmakers the idea that river journeys that make for a good film.
The characters travel into the Amazon to harvest blood orchids that they believe hold the key to immortality, but get more than they bargained for when they’re attacked by Anacondas that are nothing like Anacondas. The snakes live both in water and on land, kill people with their fangs, eat tons of humans and are kept alive in large numbers by the orchids… meaning they eat them? It’s not clear. What this film lacks in science, it makes up for in stupidity.