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The 10 Best Horror Comedies of the 2020s, So Far

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While they seem like complete opposites, rarely have two different genres complimented and worked so well together like horror and comedy. The harsh contrast between gore, violence and scares with silly and non-serious comedy has made for a collection of highly memorable and iconic experiences over the years. Ranging from massive blockbuster hits like Zombieland and Gremlins to certified cult classics like Evil Dead and Jennifer's Body , the combination is a fan favorite among audiences.

The 2020s have been no stranger to exceptional horror comedy experiences, playing into the latest trends and conventions of horror filmmaking and modern humor. Horror comedy is arguably at the height of its popularity and capabilities, with exciting new and creative films in the genre released throughout the year to audience acclaim. Indeed, these are the best horror comedies from the 2020s so far , proving that a film can make viewers scream in fear and laughter alike.

10 'Totally Killer' (2023)

Directed by nahnatchka khan.

Combining a classic slasher with a time-travel story, Totally Killer sees the notorious "Sweet Sixteen Killer" returning to take his revenge upon a small suburban town 35 years after his first murder spree. To discover the identity of the killer, 17-year-old Jamie ( Kiernan Shipka ) accidentally travels back in time to 1987, right before the first killing spree took place. With a newfound determination, Jamie is determined to hunt down and stop the killer despite the culture shock of now being in the 80s.

Time travel stories have always been rife with comedic potential, and combining this premise with the inherent charm and energy of a classic 80s slasher makes for a match made in heaven. Totally Killer is tongue in cheek , not only in its commentary and reflection on society's evolution in the past 35 years but also in the conventions and tropes of 80s slashers as a whole. It all comes together to make an experience that does justice to the classic slashers that it's a love letter to .

Totally Killer

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9 'Willy's Wonderland' (2021)

Directed by kevin lewis.

Easily one of Nicolas Cage 's most underrated films , Willy's Wonderland sees him as a quiet and stoic man who, after having his car break down, agrees to work off the repair costs by cleaning an abandoned family fun center. However, the job is far from as simple, as he is forced to face a crew of deadly, haunted animatronics that roam the building at night with a thirst for bloodshed. As he fights and takes down the animatronics night after night, a group of teens end up breaking into the building at the same time in search of answers.

While the film takes clear inspiration from the trend of haunted, killer animatronics popularized by the Five Nights at Freddy's video games, Willy's Wonderland certainly takes a more comedic and over-the-top approach to the premise . From Cage's hilarious non-speaking performance to the chaotic and absurd designs and hilarious action sequences, it makes for a much more comedic experience than the actual Five Nights at Freddy's movie.

Willy's Wonderland

8 'renfield' (2023), directed by chris mckay.

Another hilarious horror comedy with Nicolas Cage in a primary role, Renfield brings the classic characters of Renfield ( Nicholas Hoult ) and Dracula (Cage) to the modern era. Growing tired and annoyed with his life of indentured servitude under the prince of darkness, Renfield begins to reevaluate and finds a path to redemption away from the clutches of Dracula. It doesn't take long before Dracula catches on to Renfield's schemes, however, placing him in danger and unleashing Dracula and his darkness upon the world.

While fans of the classic horror icons were initially hesitant about such a brash and comedic interpretation of the character, Renfield was a pleasant surprise with its mixture of love for the original character and overwhelming violence and gore. Its filmmaking chops give it the ability to win over its audiences in spades, making for a fun and exciting blend of action, comedy, and horror that revels in its display of carnage and bloodshed.

Renfield (2023)

7 'lisa frankenstein' (2024), directed by zelda williams.

From Director Zelda Williams and Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody , Lisa Frankenstein follows Lisa Swallows, a misunderstood and social outcast high school student, in 1989. Her escape from her chaotic family life and high school drama is an abandoned cemetery, where she fantasizes about the lives that came before her own. One such figure ends up getting a new lease on life, becoming a walking and surprisingly handsome corpse and forcing Lisa to do all she can to hide his dangerous existence.

Lisa Frankenstein features the same manic, horror-comedy energy and style of Cody's previous work, with a distinct and effective 80s rom-com flair that makes the experience unique among other horror comedies. The film simply isn't afraid to go for the wildest, non-commercial and campiest approach to a love story, creating the type of beautiful and extreme experience that seems tailor-made for its core audience . While it bombed at the box office, it will almost assuredly attain a legendary cult classic status in the years to come.

Lisa Frankenstein

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6 'Freaky' (2020)

Directed by christopher landon.

Blending a classic body-swap premise with a slasher film, Freaky sees socially awkward Millie ( Kathryn Newton ) as a victim of the deadly Blissfield Butcher ( Vince Vaughn ). Instead of dying at the hands of the butcher, his ancient dagger causes them to switch bodies, with the killer continuing his rampage as a teenage girl while Millie is stuck in the adult body of a killer. After miraculously getting in touch with her friends, they attempt to come up with a plan to stop the killer and return them to their original bodies.

The Freaky Friday inspirations are something Freaky wears on its shoulders, adding a distinct horror twist to the comedy classic instead of following it beat for beat. Combined with Christopher Landon 's ( Happy Death Day ) signature horror-comedy directing, Freaky is one of the most creative and fun horror-comedy concepts of recent memory . It's also nice to see Vaughn return to the leading role in a comedy film, with his hilarious performance and portrayal of a teenage girl being one of the biggest highlights of the film.

5 'Spree' (2020)

Directed by eugene kotlyarenko.

A hilariously dark found-footage film for the digital era, Spree follows wannabe influencer Kurt Krunkle ( Joe Keery ), who has spent his life trying and failing to achieve internet stardom. Sick of his failed efforts, he embarks on a dangerous and insane plan that will assuredly give him the stardom he desires, planning to livestream himself on a killing rampage while working as a rider for the rideshare service Spree.

While many films have attempted to recapture the manic and chaotic aspects of the internet, few films have displayed the dangers of internet culture with such dark realism and accuracy as Spree . The film acts as a character study for the endless drive for fame, balancing its dark and self-destructive main character with a great deal of comedy and recurring jokes and gags. Spree is easily one of the most underrated horror comedies of recent memory , benefitting from a genuinely unhinged performance from Joe Keery.

4 'M3GAN' (2023)

Directed by gerard johnstone.

Featuring one of the most iconic and recognizable original horror movie villains in recent memory, M3GAN follows the creation of the titular M3GAN, a life-like artificial intelligence-powered doll meant to be the perfect young girl's companion. However, the robot's goals of keeping its host safe by any means necessary prove to have some dire consequences, as it slowly begins to amass a kill count in the name of protection. It doesn't take long before M3GAN embarks on a full-on murderous rampage against humanity itself.

M3GAN mixes relevant modern commentary on the dangers of AI with a classic killer robot concept to great effect. The doll's appearance and voice of a young girl, complete with TikTok dances, instantly made her a hit among horror fans . M3GAN leans into the absurdity of its lead character and story, successfully balancing genuine emotional hardships with over-the-top violence and robot humor. Unsurprisingly, it became a smash hit and transformed M3GAN into a new horror icon capable of giving Chuckie a run for his money.

3 'Barbarian' (2022)

Directed by zach cregger.

Few films had such an immediate impact on audiences quite like Barbarian . The film combines a genuinely terrifying premise with director Zach Cregger 's comedic wit from his days in The Whitest Kids U'Know to create a powerful and hilarious one-of-a-kind horror experience. A great deal of Barbarian 's iconic and greatest moments come from its ingenious plot twists, but the central plot follows a woman making a terrifying discovery in a home she rented as an Airbnb.

Many horror comedy films lean much more into the comedy aspect as opposed to horror, yet Barbarian does a great job of being distinctly horror-comedy while never shying away from being a terrifying experience . The film has a lot of powerful and distinct messages and themes that tie into its comedy, balancing laughs, scares, and chilling themes into a dynamic triple threat that cements its place as one of the best horror comedies in modern cinema.

2 'Bodies Bodies Bodies' (2022)

Directed by halina reijn.

A wild and iconic horror comedy whodunit satire that aims at the youth of the digital era, Bodies Bodies Bodies is a hilarious display of toxic youth going at each other's throats. The film follows a group of friends who are bunkered down at a mansion during a hurricane. After one of them ends up dead, it becomes a frantic guessing game where they accuse one another of the murder. As more and more bodies begin to drop, painful lies come to the surface.

Bodies Bodies Bodies is the most recent example of the whodunit formula working well in a horror comedy. Just like the best whodunit, the highlight of the film comes from its colorful and chaotic cast of characters , who work wonders bouncing off of one another to create mountains of tension and endlessly quotable lines. Even for those who aren't as well versed in the horror aspect of horror-comedy, Bodies Bodies Bodies is a hilarious and timely experience that is perfect for the digital era .

Bodies Bodies Bodies

1 'the menu' (2022), directed by mark mylod.

Comedically charged social satires that poke fun at the disconnect of the 1% have been increasingly prevalent throughout the 2020s, with The Menu acting as the pivotal interpretation of these themes. The film follows an elite group as they travel to a luxury coastal island to eat at a highly exclusive restaurant run by the acclaimed Chef Stowik ( Ralph Fiennes ). What they don't realize is that Stowik is planning a dangerous course of death, destruction, and murder that the hungry rich will have to endure.

While it was already a critical hit among critics during its initial theatrical release, The Menu soon became a smash streaming success, with audiences falling into its mixture of comedy, horror, and eat-the-rich themes. Brought together with some exceptional leading performances from Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy , The Menu delights and surprises at every opportunity with its scathing satire of high-class restaurant culture . It certainly helps that it features what is easily one of the most satisfying and iconic horror movie endings of all time.

NEXT: The Best Horror Comedy Movies of All Time

‘Beau Is Afraid’ explained: A disturbingly in-depth analysis of Ari Aster’s guilt trip to hell

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If you’ve just watched Ari Aster’s new horror-comedy “Beau Is Afraid,” you probably have a few questions. Or maybe a lot of questions. Like, what was that?

As with his previous films, 2018’s “Hereditary” and 2019’s “Midsommar,” Aster packs a lot into his surreal, alternately funny and nightmarish three-hour head trip through the mind of a middle-aged man named Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), whose attempt to return home to visit his mother turns into a hellish odyssey of anxiety, guilt and shame. But he would rather not do the unpacking for you. “I made something for an audience and I hope that it is exciting and fun and makes people feel things,” Aster said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. “I just cannot speak to what those things are, and shouldn’t.”

Aster’s full intentions with “Beau Is Afraid” are known only to him — and maybe his mother and therapist. But we have each seen the film twice in an effort to crack its code, and we have some thoughts. (Needless to say, major spoilers ahead.)

Review: ‘Beau Is Afraid’ is quite an odyssey, but not necessarily an oughta-see

Joaquin Phoenix plays a man dreading a visit to see his mother in this latest and most wildly unhinged feature from writer-director Ari Aster (“Hereditary,” “Midsommar”).

April 14, 2023

Toward a Unified Theory of ‘Beau’

Matt Brennan: As I watched “Beau Is Afraid” for the second time this week, armed with a notebook and our mission to “explain” Aster’s (guilt) trip to hell, I began to formulate something I couldn’t on the first watch, mesmerized/bored as I was with our protagonist’s meandering homeward journey: a unified theory of “Beau.” Well, two of them.

Theory 1: Mona Wasserman is behind it all (and not just faking her own death)

Beau’s mother (Patti LuPone), as chief executive and namesake of the ubiquitous MW Industries, certainly has the resources — and the marrow-deep bitterness — to pull off such a feat. MW, which appears to be a cross between Pfizer (pharmaceuticals) and Proctor & Gamble (personal care and hygiene), appears on billboards, posters, appliances, frozen food boxes and beyond. This is one powerful corporation, and one powerful woman. What Mona wants, Mona gets.

Indeed, she so convincingly fakes her own death that Beau finds published obituaries online, in addition to an “MW Digital”-watermarked news clip reporting on her fate. In just days, she has paid (or forced) a beloved employee to die on her behalf; installed a ledger stone in the wall and a memorial to the grisly chandelier accident that took her life; and arranged an opulent funeral for herself.

Two items, both from Beau’s brief survey of the MW Industries mini-museum Mona keeps in her home, would seem to support this theory. Most persuasive is the collage of MW employees that adds up to Mona’s face, which contains not only Elaine (Parker Posey) but also the tattooed bum who chases Beau into his building in the film’s first minutes and Roger (Nathan Lane), who takes Beau in after his unfortunate car accident/stabbing. (I have no doubt that, had I been able to get AMC to pause the film for me, I’d have seen others from the cast.) In other words, Mona has marshaled the manpower of MW Industries to create a sort of “Synecdoche, New York” or “Truman Show” situation for Beau, in which she casts him as the central figure in a brutal odyssey to test his loyalty.

This seems more plausible, practically speaking, when you consider that Beau, far from carving out an independent life in the city without support from his mother, lives in a recently opened MW Industries “rehabilitation neighborhood” depicted on a poster just behind Beau as he examines the collage. If she owns the set and employs the players, how hard would it be to script the drama? (Stray thought: Maybe Aster doesn’t have mommy issues, but studio exec issues.)

Theory 2: It’s all in Beau’s head

Being terminally literal, I was all in on Theory 1 until the kangaroo court that concludes the film, which up until that point hews mainly to real-world referents even as it turns their volume up to 15. I suppose it is just as plausible that Mona would have built an underground stadium in a rock outcropping in the middle of the ocean as it is that she would have directed the entire staff of a major multinational conglomerate to beat the s— out of her son. But the “proof” of Beau’s guilt presented at trial, though it assumes the visual style of surveillance footage, seems much more likely to have come out of Beau’s self-flagellation: a memory of hiding from his frantic mother, for instance, or allowing his friends to steal her underwear. These are exactly the kind of highly specific, relatively insignificant mental images from childhood that might cling to an anxious, guilt-ridden adult. Trust me, I’m Catholic.

Which is all to say that, as I cast my eye back over the film from perspective of the trial, I can just as easily see Beau imagining that his mother would have directed the entire staff of a major multinational conglomerate to beat the s— out of him, in ways both obvious and subliminal, as I can imagine her actually doing it.

Plus, there’s the penis monster. That can’t be real real, right? Right?

Did I forget to take my Zypnotycril with eight ounces of water this morning, Josh, or am I on to something? Which of my theories seems more likely to you, or do you have one of your own? And are there any particular parts of the film you want to dig into further?

Chronicle of an Ego-Death Foretold

Josh Rottenberg: Even after watching it twice, there are a few things in this movie — actually, more than a few — that I am still puzzling over. (What’s up with the guy who falls on Beau from the ceiling when he’s in the bath, for one?) But I actually think your two unified theories can be combined into a single Even-More-Unified Theory:

Theory 3: We are trapped in Beau’s head, and he in turn is trapped in his mother’s

Aster has suggested in interviews that his central aim with the film was to place the audience inside Beau’s mind and his feelings, so I don’t think we’re meant to take anything he sees and experiences too literally — and that includes the penis monster, which we can get to later.

As I see it, Beau’s journey is a psychological odyssey made up of fears, dreams, fantasies and repressed memories, none of which adhere to the usual rules of logic. Asking if Beau’s mother was really the unseen puppet master in her son’s life is sort of like asking if Gregor Samsa really turned into a giant bug in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” (Kafka is clearly a touchstone for Aster.) For Beau, the sense of being continually monitored, manipulated and controlled by his smothering mother, of having his life circumscribed by her worries, expectations and demands, carries a metaphorical and emotional truth, if not a literal one.

One thing I caught on my second viewing is that the ending of the movie is actually foreshadowed in a fleeting moment near the beginning: After Beau leaves his therapist’s office, as he’s walking through a less menacing part of the city than his own hellscape of a neighborhood, we briefly see a boy playing with a toy boat in a public fountain. As Beau passes by, the boy’s mother angrily grabs her son’s arm and tugs him away, causing the boat to capsize just like the one Beau will find himself on in the final scene. Beau’s fate is foretold in that one moment, and from that point on he has no hope of escaping it.

Brennan: I admit, after reading your much more concise theory, that I have probably taken “Beau Is Afraid” not only too literally but also too seriously. (I can only imagine what the other theater patrons thought of me scribbling furiously in my notebook during the movie on Monday night. What a freak!) And your note about the foreshadowing contained in the film’s first minutes is a useful segue into other indications we have of where Beau is headed and why we shouldn’t see his journey as a linear one.

At one point, for instance, he literally fast-forwards to the end of his story, captured on “Channel 78” in Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger’s living room. We see Beau’s emergence from the woods after Jeeves’ (Denis Ménochet) attack on the theater troupe; Beau sitting on the ledge above his mother’s coffin; even, as Grace passes by the television, the empty coliseum of the closing credits, after Beau’s own boat has capsized. Each time Beau is knocked unconscious (which is a lot), we catch further glimpses of this unconscious logic, in which Beau appears to exist in multiple places and times simultaneously. After he’s hit by Grace and Roger’s truck, there’s a flash of the black, star-pricked sky he sees when he’s out on the ocean alone. After he smacks his head on the tree limb in the forest, we see his mother closing the attic door. After he’s zapped by Roger’s “health monitor,” we return to what Beau himself describes as a recurring “dream” about resisting his mother’s attempts to get him in the bathtub — while Beau also watches the scene from the bathtub.

At this point I feel as though I am just listing facts about the film hoping they’ll add up to something more than, “Wow, this guy’s mother did a worse number on him than Norma Bates.” Then again, if there is a point to “Beau Is Afraid,” I suppose it’s that parent-child relationships, particularly mother-son relationships, are so elemental, so Oedipal, that there can be no rational understanding thereof. (I mean, nothing more tellingly foreshadows Beau’s apparent drowning, with his mother’s distant cries for accompaniment, than his emergence into the world to Mona’s terrified screams.) The line from the film that has stuck with me most, after two viewings, is the one that makes this point most explicit: When Mona, closing the attic door on adult Beau, hisses after him, “Don’t you get it, you stupid idiot? That wasn’t a dream. That was a memory.”

Now that we’re in the attic and I’ve brought up Oedipus, we might as well get it over with: Let’s talk about the penis monster. (I had to watch the scene through my fingers both times. It’s beyond disgusting.) Put on your psychologist cap, Dr. Rottenberg, and tell me what you think the monster, and the film’s other psychosexual terrors, might mean. For example, what do you make of the (possibly apocryphal) tale that Beau’s father, and entire male line before him, died at the moment of their first ejaculation? And what does it mean that Beau survives it, but kills Elaine in the process?

Testicle and Taboo

Rottenberg: I’ll admit that, even after two go-rounds with this movie, I’m still not sure quite what to make of the penis monster, who I have come to think of as Jabba the Nuts. But, like the naked guy running around Beau’s neighborhood, I’ll take a stab.

Mona tells Beau that the hideous phallic creature in the attic is his father, but we clearly can’t trust everything she says. And that’s before we even begin to contemplate how exactly a 7-foot-tall penis with insect legs would have impregnated Mona to begin with. (Let’s not go there.)

My theory is that Beau’s real dad is the mystery man who approaches him after the play in the woods and tells him that he knew his father and that he is still alive. Beau, who has just experienced a fantasy father-son reunion within the dream world of the play, certainly believes he could be, calling out “Dad, run!” just before the man is blown up by Jeeves. And the man does bear some resemblance to the blurry photo of Beau’s father we catch a quick glimpse of earlier in his apartment.

In her desire to control every aspect of her child’s life, Mona has filled Beau with deep-seated fears about his own sexuality, stunting his development. The story she has told him about his father’s death serves to keep him an infantilized, dependent man-child. (There’s a reason this man who is in his late 40s dresses like an 8-year-old circa 1983 and has the social skills to match, particularly around the opposite sex.)

As Mona tells Beau when he’s young, “Only women know women. Men are blind.” And to ensure Beau remains blind and distanced from his real father — who may have helped him chart his own independent path toward manhood — she has concocted the fictitious story of the familial curse.

So who, or what, is Jabba the Nuts — and who is the bedraggled, starving man we see chained up with him? We’re pretty clearly in the realm of Freudian symbolism here (attic = unconscious), so I think the monster represents Beau’s repressed sexuality, a raging, insatiable id that, like his own distended testicles, has grown to cartoonish proportions. The man chained up with it, who is purportedly Beau’s lost brother, represents his more courageous and self-possessed self, which his mother has also metaphorically locked away.

When Beau has sex with Elaine — in his mother’s bed, no less! — and doesn’t die, he experiences a feeling of genuine liberation and, for an all-too-brief moment, becomes his own man. But, in a cruel twist, Elaine — who it turns out worked for Mona (and, like Martha, dies for her) — keels over instead, suggesting Beau can never elude the real curse his mother has placed on him: Like the Mariah Carey song says, he will always be her baby.

As Mona tells Beau moments after Elaine’s death, “You’re in my house, and my house is your house, which it always will be.” Again, in a movie where locks, keys, chains and surveillance technology are recurring motifs, there is ultimately no escape.

By the way, a couple more Easter (or Aster) eggs I caught on a second viewing: The first time we see Beau in the film (aside from as a newborn), he is in his therapist’s office, looking at a fish tank. At the end of the film, after he chokes his mother, she falls headfirst into an empty fish tank, bringing things full circle.

Also, as we see on the therapist’s prescription pad, Beau lives in the fictional city of Corrina, CR. There’s a Bob Dylan song called “Corrina, Corrina” on his 1963 album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” which includes the pleading refrain, “I been worryin’ about you, baby / Baby, please come home” — a sentiment straight out of Mona’s anxious, needy heart.

Fear and Loathing in Asterville

Brennan: Your mention of Dylan brings us to terrain I’m better equipped to handle than a case of epididymitis run amok: The film’s phantasmagoric dogpile of cinematic, cultural and political points of reference. As your reading of Beau’s relationship with Mona suggests, “Beau Is Afraid” hews rather closely to the subgenre of horror movies (see: “Psycho,” “Carrie,” “Dead Alive,” “Black Swan,” Aster’s own “Hereditary”) about domineering mothers and traumatized children, even if its tone is more satirical than chilling. Where “Beau” distinguishes itself, for me, is in the provocations of its situations and settings that have nothing to do with the Wassermanns per se.

For starters, there’s the city where Beau lives, an exaggerated cross between the seedy, teeming New York of “Taxi Driver” and the crime-infested urban cores imagined on Fox News, populated primarily by assailants, corpses and beggars. Graffiti covers every inch of the foyer of Beau’s building; vagrants shuffle along like the undead in a zombie film; trash piles up on street corners and abandoned cars along curbs.

At first, I felt uncomfortable about Beau’s paranoia. It struck me as infelicitous at best that Aster’s “hero” should be “subjected” to the very sort of inner-city crime fantasy that so often misrepresents urban life in American pop culture. The more I chew on it, though, the more I see Aster’s vision as a critique of that paranoia, and of attempts to address social inequality through policing and “private-sector solutions.” (Possibly the most darkly funny line in a film full of gallows humor is the police officer, gun cocked, shouting at an unarmed Beau not to “make” him shoot.) Indeed, beyond the corner that MW Industries has attempted to “rehabilitate,” the city seems ... almost normal? The pedestrian mall where Beau purchases that white statuette of Madonna and child is certainly thriving!

Even the dangers of Beau’s immediate vicinity come in and out of focus as his own mental state evolves. When he turns in for bed the night before his flight to Wasserton — before his anxiety gets the better of him — the ambient noise is the light murmur of any city just before midnight. When Mona chastises him for his delay, however, the street outside erupts in midafternoon gunfire, sirens and barking dogs. To believe that the city is a miserable death trap for all its inhabitants, Aster suggests, is to think like Beau (a coward with no sense of self) or, worse, his mother (a rapacious capitalist merely envisioning violent cities from her palatial enclave).

“Beau Is Afraid” flips the idea on its head, and pushes it to the extreme, during Beau’s recuperation at Grace and Roger’s house — the section of the film that grew on me most from first to second viewing. The notion of the suburbs as the American dream’s dark underbelly isn’t exactly new, but Aster’s heart-poundingly, head-trippingly, paint-drinkingly intense iteration of the trope is a thrilling one. Amy Ryan popping pills to stanch a mother’s grief? Nathan Lane talking like an outdated sitcom dad to win Beau’s trust? Their screaming, foul-mouthed daughter, Toni (Kylie Rogers)? Their deceased son’s catatonic ex-soldier-slash-illing machine friend? Douglas Sirk, eat your heart out!

I read this section of the film, in which the physical security Beau (briefly) enjoys comes with the blossoming of a much deeper existential dread, as the one where Aster comes closest to identifying societal causes for Beau’s fears, and indeed Mona’s. After all, it’s in the suburbs of “Beau Is Afraid” — a place of self-medication and post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide and surveillance, war and its aftermath — that the world of the film edges up to our own. Who wouldn’t read that list of symptoms and diagnose a society in distress?

Whether the crisis of modernity has made Beaus and Monas of us all is something you can respond to or not, Josh. This movie has worn me and my powers of analysis down to the nub. Before I raise the white flag, though, I’d be remiss if we didn’t talk a little more directly about my favorite passage in the movie: the play in the woods. It is the best of “Beau” in microcosm, bawdily funny, visually inventive, with a vein of genuine feeling running through it. Its resonances with Beau’s experiences in the rest of the film are omnipresent but rarely exact. And, perhaps most important of all, its Matryoshka doll of stories at least nod to a place, a time, an alternate universe where Beau’s fate could have been different. Where he could have been unafraid.

Rottenberg: I agree that the play in the woods is in some ways the key to understanding the whole movie and its emotional high point. As he enters the theater troupe’s camp, Beau passes a sign that reads “Know Thyself.” And in watching — or, rather, imagining — the alternate life he could have lived if only he wasn’t chained to his mother, he experiences a genuine moment of insight and catharsis. In the play’s climax, as he hugs the three sons he will never have, Beau — who came into the world as an infant to the sound of Mona screaming, “Why isn’t he crying?” — finally unburdens himself and sheds real tears.

In the gentle pregnant woman who takes him in, Beau — having been cast out as “a demon” by his surrogate mother, Grace — sees the idealized, selfless maternal figure he has been seeking all his life. Overwhelmed with gratitude for her kindness, he gives her the mother-and-child figurine he has been carrying, which he intended to give to Mona — the ultimate betrayal, for which he will be punished in the film’s final moments.

There are still a whole lot of questions we could tackle here, Matt: Why does Beau live in a run-down apartment when his mother is a wealthy titan of industry? What are the “three things” in the joint Toni makes Beau smoke? How does Jeeves survive to kill the penis monster after we see him blast himself through the chest with a machine gun? But like you, I’m feeling analytically depleted.

And if any reader feels like we went on too long or our theories missed the mark, as Beau says countless times in the movie, I’m sorry.

Brennan: I will happily stand trial over any interpretive crimes I’ve committed here. But only if I get to have Richard Kind as my lawyer.

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Matt Brennan is a Los Angeles Times’ deputy editor for entertainment and arts. Born in the Boston area, educated at USC and an adoptive New Orleanian for nearly 10 years, he returned to Los Angeles in 2019 as the newsroom’s television editor. He previously served as TV editor at Paste Magazine, and his writing has also appeared in Indiewire, Slate, Deadspin and numerous other publications.

Josh Rottenberg covers the film business for the Los Angeles Times. He was part of the team that was named a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist in breaking news for covering the tragic shooting on the set of the film “Rust.” He co-wrote the 2021 Times investigation into the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. that led NBC to pull the Golden Globe Awards off the air while the organization underwent major reforms. A graduate of Harvard University, he has also written about the entertainment industry for the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Fast Company and other publications.

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The Best Horror Movies About Evil Doctors And Surgeons

Aren't doctors supposed to help you get better? Here's our list of the best doctor horror movies about insane surgeons and crazy nurses, ranked by horror fans like you. Scary medical horror movies with evil doctors are kind of a thing of the past, but there are definitely some modern horror films with surgeons or doctors who are hell bent on wreaking havoc on their surgery victims. Jordan Peele's debut horror film Get Out featured a deranged surgeon who uses his skills for both profit and evil. Is it the scariest doctor movie ever made? We'll let you answer that question with your votes on this list.

Other classic scary surgeon or doctor movies include The Fly , Re-Animator , and The Island of Dr. Moreau . Tom Six's The Human Centipede is also a really scary doctor horror film, despite how panned it was by certain critics for its bizarre concept and disgusting subject matter.

Vote up your favorite horror movies with insane doctors or surgeons, and downvote any films that you saw but didn't enjoy. Don't forget to check out our list of the best horror movies set in insane asylums too!

The Silence of the Lambs

In this chilling thriller, Clarice Starling, portrayed by Jodie Foster, forms a dangerous bond with criminally insane psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins. Together, they seek clues to catch a psychopathic serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill, in a nail-biting race against time.

• Released : 1991
• Directed by : Jonathan Demme

Frankenstein

A classic cautionary tale of science gone awry, Mary Shelley's story comes to life as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, fueled by obsession, assembles human parts and creates a sentient but tortured monster. The ethical dilemma of tampering with nature forms the crux of this horrifying tale steeped in a gothic atmosphere.

• Released : 1931
• Directed by : James Whale

This gloomily intriguing movie follows a group of ambitious medical students who experiment with near-death experiences. Venturing into the unknown, they soon face haunting consequences for delving too far, as they trigger a series of supernatural events and psychological turmoil.

• Released : 1990
• Directed by : Joel Schumacher

In this sci-fi horror classic, Jeff Goldblum stars as eccentric scientist Seth Brundle, whose experiments with teleportation take a horrific turn when he is melded with a fly. As his bodily transformation into an insect-hybrid takes place, he grapples with the psychological implications of his grotesque metamorphosis.

• Released : 1986
• Directed by : David Cronenberg

Re-Animator

This darkly comedic adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft tale chronicles the macabre obsessions of a medical student striving to resurrect the dead. As he stumbles on a miraculous serum, the consequences of his discovery lead to disastrous results, as horrific reanimated corpses wreak havoc upon the living.

• Released : 1985
• Directed by : Stuart Gordon

Pet Sematary

Adapted from a chilling Stephen King novel, this haunting narrative revolves around Dr. Louis Creed and his family who moves to a rural area where they discover a sinister, hidden burial ground. Tragedy strikes, unleashing a force that unleashes unimaginable terrors upon the family and their once peaceful existence.

• Released : 1989
• Directed by : Mary Lambert

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25 Horror-Comedies That Are Actually Funny

People say comedy and horror are intrinsically linked because they both go for a visceral reaction. A laugh or a scream: Either way, your higher brain functions aren’t really supposed to be getting involved. But horror-comedy succeeds often not just because the genres have similar aims but because death is kinda funny. The failings of the human body are absurd, disgusting, and dumb. Many of the best horror-comedies are gross because the joke and the horror are coming from the same place: your disgusting, vulnerable body.

So it makes sense that all but the most dour of horror movies have at least a few jokes in them. That makes identifying the real genre spanners all the more difficult. Some movies, like Scream, are horror movies with jokes. Horror comedies tend to have an inherently absurd premise. Killer clowns, zombie sheep, zombie romantic-comedy. Horror movies with jokes usually involve the characters finding brief moments of levity in a more believable, less high-concept world.

Others, like the original What We Do in the Shadows film, are comedies about horror subjects. What We Do in the Shadows isn’t really trying to scare you. It’s just using horror characters to tell jokes. Nobody is imperiled — nobody who is important to the plot anyway. Not once in Young Frankenstein do you think that Gene Wilder is going to bite it, even when the townspeople are rioting.

Neither horror-with-jokes or horror-colored-comedies make it onto this list. That means no Scary Movies, no Hubie Halloween . The perfect horror comedy has the energy of a Simpsons “ Treehouse of Horror ,” a sense that anyone can die but you shouldn’t really give a shit. It’s low-stakes horror, perfect for scaredy-cats and the easily bummed out. So here are the movies you can safely put on in the background of your next Halloween party.

Evil Dead 2

The Evil Dead series escalates in comedic tone — starting with the somewhat morose The Evil Dead and culminating in Army of Darkness, which is an action comedy that more closely resembles Xena than the horror films that preceded it. Evil Dead 2 is the perfect middle, the Goldilocks zone between jokes and scares. Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his hapless girlfriend, Linda (Denise Bixler), go to a remote cabin and run afoul of a hell dimension. Linda gets possessed, Ash is forced to fight his own possessed hand, and every time he thinks it couldn’t get worse, it does. As Blank Check pointed out in their episode on the film, Evil Dead 2 is so much funnier when you remember that Sam Raimi is punishing Campbell just as much as the Deadites are fucking with Ash. Bruce Campbell was Sam Raimi’s hot friend in high school, and this movie is one excuse after another to throw things at him for being so hot and likeable. It’s gleeful sadism.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare

Sorry to all the haters that put this movie near the bottom of their Nightmare on Elm Street rankings, but this movie slaps. Freddy Kruger has become an all-out cartoon character after five increasingly ridiculous installments, and if you don’t like that, you need to talk to your therapist about why you’re hostile to joy. Freddy’s Dead was directed by Cry-Baby producer Rachel Talalay, and if you think of it as being equally indebted to John Waters as Wes Craven, you’ll have a better time.

In the near future of (checks notes) 2001, Brecken Meyer and some other wayward teens are menaced by Freddy Kruger. Freddy is trying to escape Springwood, where he has killed all the teens, by jumping into the brain of his long-lost offspring. In order to do that, he has to pull off some of the dumbest kills in the franchise. The video-game death is S-tier. The film features cameos from Alice Cooper, Roseanne, Tom Arnold, and a mid– Jump Street Johnny Depp. Plus Yaphet Kotto is here. How can you be mad at that?

Happy Death Day

Blumhouse has been keeping the comedic slasher afloat with the Happy Death Days and Freaky, and we should be thankful for that. Happy Death Day is about a Groundhog Day– style loop that always ends with Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) getting killed by a weirdo in a baby mask. The day’s repetitive beats are well observed, Tree learns valuable lessons about the true meaning of friendship, and things get even funnier in the sequel. Which is more sci-fi, but did give us an iconic TikTok sound . Happy Death Day perfectly balances the comedy and the horror and keeps its momentum thanks to Rothe’s manic performance. What works best is how the initially scary prospect of Tree’s death becomes funny with repetition. Tree doesn’t even care that she’s dying anymore! It’s a rake joke , but the rake impales you.

Shaun of the Dead

This movie kicked off Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy : Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End . Also known as the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy, the three films really live up to that name in tone. They’re childish, sweet, and gory. While the latter offerings go action and sci-fi, Shaun starts the series off in pure horror. Watch Every Frame a Painting ’s video on Wright’s use of visual language to heighten jokes if you want to learn more about how every other comedic director is phoning it in. The whole thing is funny, and even both audio commentaries have jokes I’m quoting decades later. But what Shaun does perfectly is play the creeping horror in its beginning. Wright lets the zombie apocalypse play out in the background of Shaun (Pegg)’s breakup and man-child bullshit. Having recently survived a calamitous world event, it hits even harder. We really do ignore the end of the world until it’s in our back garden.

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island

This one goes out to all the horror-comedies aimed at kids, often the training wheels that get horror freaks started down the path. Your Are You Afraid of the Darks, your Halloweentowns, your Hoci Poci. These shows and movies are fundamental texts for getting into the habit of choosing to be scared by content, with enough low-stakes silliness to take the edge off. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is a beloved entry in the franchise for being the first where the supernatural threat doesn’t turn out to be a guy in a mask. Before Mindy Kaling or James Gunn could get a crack at it, Zombie Island went the darker and edgier route by making the monsters real. Those werecats are scary! The comedy comes from how well observed each member of the Scooby Gang is and how frustrated they are with their roles in the group. Plus it has the best original song of all the Scooby-Doo movies (apologies to Hex Girls stans).

Seed of Chucky

The Child’s Play movies get dumber and gayer with every installment. Just as God intended. Seed of Chucky builds on 1998’s Bride of Chucky ’s unhinged tone and Jennifer Tilly involvement. That movie does have a doll-on-doll sex scene, but this movie has Redman .

Seed of Chucky sees killer doll Chucky go Hollywood, as he uses Jennifer Tilly to reincarnate his girlfriend. Tilly does double duty as both killer doll Tiffany and as an extremely unglamourous version of herself. Hit on by Redman, pestered by paparazzo John Waters, and kidnapped by demonic dolls, she just can’t catch a break! Seed is also notable for the introduction of Glen/Glenda ( LOTR ’s Billy Boyd) — a huge win for the British genderfluid haunted-doll community.

Rocky Horror Picture Show

Rocky Horror Picture Show is a riff on B-movie horror and sci-fi movies. It’s the template for a certain kind of knowing camp horror still found in such works as Scream Queens and Psycho Beach Party. But is it really scary? The camp musical uses horror tropes to mock heterosexuality and orthodox ’50s morality, but does it use those tropes to spook? Multiple people told me they found this movie deeply disturbing when they saw it as a kid and that was good enough for me. They all used that same word: disturbing.

Hapless herbs Brad and Janet (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) get stranded at the castle of Dr. Frank-n-Furter (horror GOAT Tim Curry), who seduces them, feeds them human flesh, and gets a couple of iconic songs off along the way. According to Bruce Campbell , Rocky Horror also kept many indie cinemas afloat through midnight screenings. That’s commendable as hell.

Oh, and those people who were disturbed by Rocky Horror as kids? They’re all gay now. The “unsettled by Rocky Horror ” to “ hello LGBTQ community ” pipeline is strong.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch

The apotheosis of Joe Dante and everything he’s about. Meta, goofy, and gross, Gremlins 2 has it all. The Key & Peele sketch is right: They left no ideas on the cutting room floor in that flick. Someone really went “What if the Gremlins were more toyetic, and had one-note personalities that differentiated them?” That person deserves a dump truck full of money. G2 is also so much sillier than its predecessor. Phoebe Cates gets a comedic monologue mocking her serious one in G1. Leonard Maltin pans the movie — in the middle of the movie — and gets eviscerated for it. This is meta comedy before it got annoying. And yet the threat of these killer little guys is still present. Even more than the first film, these Gremlins work as a team to bring people way bigger than them down. Plus Gremlins 2 gave birth to one of the great movie-sequel characters : the Sexy Lady Gremlin. A girlboss if there ever was one.

Return of the Living Dead

George Romero and John Russo parted ways after Night of the Living Dead, and brought completely different visions to their different franchises. Romero went the serious social commentary route with Dawn of the Dead. Russo…did not. Return of the Living Dead is an acid-dripping horror satire, making fun of both the military industrial complex and self-serious goths in equal measure. The film starts from the premise that Night of the Living Dead really happened, and the dead rose thanks to a chemical devised by the US Army called Trioxin. Two unwitting medical supply workers accidentally rain a cloud of Trioxin over a cemetery, and things get worse from there. Return gave us the brain-eating model of zombies that “Treehouse of Horror” solidified into canon. And is there any better joke delivered by a zombie than “ Send more paramedics ?” I think not.

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein

This is the oldest movie on our list, and one of the oldest movies, period, in which the jokes still hold up. Comedy ages like milk, but most Abbott & Costello routines have turned into some kind of rare comedy cheese. A scared-shitless Lou Costello with his eyes bugging out is impervious to age.

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein sees Dracula and the Wolfman battle over Frankenstein’s creature. And poor Chick and Budd (Abbott and Costello, respectively) are caught in the middle. Without this movie, there is no Alien vs. Predator, no Freddy vs. Jason, no Verzuz rap battles. Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein spelled the death of the Universal Monsters because who could take Dracula seriously after being bested by these jabronis? Apparently, my mother, who saw this movie when she was 8 and was so scarred by it that she hasn’t watched a horror movie since.

Jennifer’s Body

Maligned in its time, Jennifer’s Body has finally gotten the critical reappraisal it deserved. Megan Fox stars as Jennifer, the coolest girl in school who is sacrificed in order to launch a band to superstardom. The film is quip heavy, with a script by Juno ’s Diablo Cody, and performances by Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody, and Johnny Simmons. Karyn Kusama brings tenderness to the ultimately pathological relationship between Jennifer and Needy (Seyfried), one that is very recognizable to a lot of girls and women. It’s so easy to let a charismatic friend devour you. Just try not to let it be literal. (Sidebar shout-out: Ginger Snaps covers a lot of this territory with a dryer wit and less obtrusive CGI, but it falls under the “horror movie with jokes” category.)

The Cabin in the Woods 

The only entry on this list that also doubles as a work-com! The Cabin in the Woods is about why we need horror movies, and why audiences are kind of assholes. Some part of our lizard brain demands sacrifice. Not just sacrifice, but for people who aren’t us to be punished. The film follows a cohort of dumb horny college kids (including a pre- Thor Chris Hemsworth) who don’t know they’re being manipulated into a horror-movie-esque death. Meanwhile, shadowy guys at a base somewhere (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins) plot their doom. Most of the comedy comes from juxtaposing the worst (and last) day of these kids’ lives against the office, where it’s just another Tuesday. The speakerphone scene is a prime example. And then the designated final girl and dumb stoner (Kristen Connolly and Fran Kraz) find their way into the shadowy home base. That’s when things get really nuts.

One Cut of the Dead

No other movie on this list so clearly delineates the “horror” and “comedy” in this horror comedy. Without giving anything away, One Cut of the Dead is about the lengths one will go for the magic of filmmaking. It actually has a 37-minute continuous shot, the titular one cut, during which the director literally throws real zombies in the path of his actors, in order to get motivated performances. The film touches on the insane things people will do for their art, the ways capitalism gets in the way, and how the best movies have people come together like a family in order to make them. It’s touching, gross, and so, so fun.

The only movie to do the “how to survive a horror movie” rules thing since Scream and not be annoying about it. Zombieland follows four survivors of the zombie apocalypse (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin) as they travel across America on various quests. Eisenberg wants to see if his parents made it, Harrelson is tracking down every last Twinkie, and Stone and Breslin want to go to Disneyland Pacific Playland. Turns out, the real apocalypse was the friends they made along the way. Zombieland was super-inventive for its time, with dynamic text, freeze-frame comedic asides, and Bill Murray cameos before all those things got old. Years later, Zombieland: Double Tap gave us a gorgeous comedic performance by Zoey Deutch for which we should all be grateful.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space

Killer Klowns From Outer Space is a singular, fabulous product. These puppets be looking cah-razy. The film is the brainchild of the Chiodo brothers, who wrote it, directed it, did the practical effects, and did the makeup. That’s why nothing else is like it. Killer Klowns looks so weird and is so fun that it has been the inspiration for multiple Universal Halloween Horror Nights mazes, okay? Plus it has an incredibly crotchety performance by Animal House ’s John Vernon. And killer shadow puppets! The shadow eats some guys!

Also known as Hausu, this bonkers horror-comedy is actually in the Criterion Collection and for good reason. House was created when director Nobuhiko Obayashi asked his preteen daughter what scared her. She said “a house that eats girls,” and Obayashi replied “Bet.” It’s definitely about a house that eats girls, but beyond that? Unclear. The film is borderline plotless, just one weird thing happening after another. And most of the actors were amateurs, giving the film almost the vibe of outsider art. The nonsensical story, intentionally rudimentary special effects, and colorful visuals make House a perfect movie to watch on mute at a bar.

Before it was the name of an elevated sci-fi Apple TV+ show, Severance was a lowbrow slasher comedy. Severance is the comedic counterpart to those “peril in eastern Europe” action and torture-porn films like Hostel and Taken. A team-building exercise for an arms-dealing company goes awry when the co-workers are picked off by psycho poachers. The film stars several British comedy mainstays: Blackadder ’s Tim McInnernay, Andy Nyman, and joke of a human Danny Dyer. Oh, Danny Dyer. He is a uniquely British phenomenon and should be studied.

The Quiet Family

An early leading role for Parasite ’s Song Kang-ho, The Quiet Family is a stylish black comedy that only becomes horrific once the bodies start piling up. The Kang family has moved from the big city to run a bed-and-breakfast that was supposed to sit along a new highway. However, the alleged highway has yet to appear, so they’re really struggling financially. Then every guest they get winds up dead by increasingly absurd means. The Quiet Family is stylishly shot with an interesting soundtrack and understated performances. If you want a weirdly shot version, with musical numbers and over-the-top performances (plus some claymation), check out the Takeshi Miike remake, The Happiness of the Katakuris. 

Trick ‘r Treat

Horror movie anthologies are hard to categorize, because each short has its own distinct tone and vibe. Tales From the Hood is funny in its wraparound story, but deadly serious in its final, anti-hate segment. And Creepshow is sometimes only unintentionally funny. (Stephen King may be a writer, director, and blues-rock musician , but an actor he ain’t.) Trick ‘r Treat, however, is beloved in the horror diehard community for its pulpy vibe and interconnected plots. Each story has the macabre dry wit of an EC horror comic. Death by irony, jump scares, and so much fake fall foliage it’s scary. It’s also one of the rare recent films to launch a true horror icon, short king Sam. Sam menaces Brian Cox in a home-invasion freakout that anchors the end of the film. Trick ‘r Treat also features performances from Anna Paquin, Leslie Bibb, Dylan Baker, and Tahmoh Penniket. If you’re looking for a movie that absolutely screams Halloween, this is your guy.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

A sweet rom-com meets hilljaxploitation slasher, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is a comedy of misunderstandings until people wind up dead. Tyler Labine ( Reaper) and Alan Tudyk ( Firefly) star as two rural fellas who have sunk their savings into a fishing cabin. Do they know their cabin used to be the lair of a spree killer? No, but that’s hardly their fault. Their trip to the cabin is interrupted by a group of rowdy city folk (including 30 Rock ’s Katrina Bowden) who think the men are murderous hillbillies. But Tucker and Dale are actually sweeties. Take that, coastal elites!

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer

This movie makes the cut for Paul Reubens’s death scene alone. Sure, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer is better known in televised, problematic-in-hindsight form. But there’s still meat on the bone in this precursor. The pre-TV Buffy stars Kristy Swanson as the titular vampire slayer with Donald Sutherland as her watcher. Buffy rejects the call to slayerdom only to wind up having to save her school at prom. Okay, she saves the school by burning down the gym, but still. Hillary Swank makes it out alive. The movie features plenty of familiar faces doing unfamiliar things: David Arquette floating, Luke Perry sporting a soul patch. If you want to see the ’80s get staked in its cold dead heart, watch the original Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

Black Sheep

No, not the Chris Farley vehicle. This Black Sheep is a New Zealand film about zombie sheep. It sounds so dumb, and in many ways it is. But it’s so beautifully done you can’t get too insulted by the premise. Black Sheep stars Nathan Meister as Henry, a man who grew up on a sheep farm but developed a deep phobia of them. He returns to the family farm in order to sell his shares to his brother (Peter Feeney), only to find out that the sheep farmer has been doing some wild experiments on his flock. What really sets Black Sheep apart from the zombie-movie fad of the early aughts is its use of practical effects. Done by Weta Works, Black Sheep uses puppets for most of its infected ruminants. Throw in an oddly gentle sense of humor, well-calibrated performances, and those stunning Aotearoa vistas and you’ve got a surprisingly good movie.

The movie that launched Peter Jackson’s career had to be hugely creative, as it was made for approximately zero New Zealand dollars. Jackson and his mates star in this sci-fi horror comedy, with all the kinetic motion and yuck factor he came to be known for. For people that first knew Peter Jackson for Lord of the Rings, his earlier splatter work must come as quite a shock. Aliens have harvested an entire town for their fast-food consumption. It’s up to a ragtag group of agents known as the Boys to stop the alien menace, as long as their brains don’t leak out of their skulls first. Again, cannot stress enough how gross this movie is. Do not watch while eating.

This is the movie that let Devon Sawa join Bruce Campbell in the annals of great evil-hand acting. Idle Hands is a stoner comedy about a teen who is so lazy it allows a demon to take possession of, well, his idle hands. The movie is late-’90s-core as hell, with co-starring roles for Seth Green, Jessica Alba, and Vivica A. Fox, plus the Offspring, credited as “Themselves.” That’s always fun. Sawa plays Anton, a stoner who is the latest victim of a wandering murderous spirit that possesses hands and makes people kill the ones they love. Anton offs his parents and his besties before figuring out what’s going on. And just like every good ’90s teen movie, it ends at a big school dance — this time, a Halloween costume dance. The pageantry of a ’90s teen comedy cannot be ignored.

This is one of the most stylized films on this list, a ’50s-themed zombie movie with the vibe of the Kids in the Hall sketch “ Meet Your New Male Slave .” Fido is set in a post-zombie-apocalypse world where science has innovated away the problems of an undead horde. Behavior-modifying collars have neutered the zombie threat, and zombies have become worker-pets in most suburban homes. But little Timmy Robinson (K’Sun Ray) accidentally breaks the collar on his new pet zombie (Billy Connolly) and the guy runs amok. Fido has an absurdly stacked cast of character actors: The Good Wife’s Dylan Baker, Ready or Not ’s Henry Czerny, Coen brothers’ regular Tim Blake Nelson, and motherfucking Matrix -ass Carrie-Anne Moss — who manages to bring real chemistry to her scenes with zombified Billy Connolly. Shaun of the Dead is not the only ZomRomCom.

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50 Best New Horror Movies of 2024

Welcome to the best horror movies of 2024, ranking every dark and dreary delight coming out this year by Tomatometer! We start the list with Certified Fresh films (these movies have maintained a high Tomatometer score after enough critics reviews), followed by the pulp-pounding Fresh movies (these are rated at least 60%), and then concluding with the morbidly Rotten.

September additions so far: The Well . Booger . Beetlejuice Beetlejuice . The Front Room . The Substance . Doctor Jekyll . Consumed . Speak No Evil .

August saw the return of the Alien franchise in a big way, with Romulus becoming the first Certified Fresh movie in the franchise not to be directed by Ridley Scott since James Cameron’s Aliens. Cuckoo was Neon’s first post-Longlegs offering, and Strange Darling offered some twisty takes on thriller tropes, though both struggled to translate high marks into box office interest.

June was a very strong month with multiple Certified Fresh offerings, including Handling the Undead , New Life , The Devil’s Bath , and A Quiet Place: Day One .  July followed up with more in Certified Fresh: MaXXXine (see A24 horror movies ranked), Longlegs , and  Oddity .

May  saw a few pairs, like low-performing major studio releases Tarot and The Strangers: Chapter 1 , and then two critically-acclaimed audience-splitters: I Saw the TV Glow  and In A Violent Nature .

In April , spiders got spun out with  Infested and Sting . Nic Cage, never too far away from the genre, returned with action-hybrid Arcadian . Universal took another bite out of the vampire genre (following last year’s  Last Voyage of the Demeter ) with Abigail , while another long-in-the-tooth franchise got an update with The First Omen .

March additions: Larry Fessenden’s back with his werewolf-take Blackout . Night Shift . Imaginary (see Blumhouse horror productions ranked ). Indian Hindi-language Shaitaan. Late Night with the Devil .  Sydney Sweeney’s  Immaculate . You’ll Never Find Me . Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 .

In February , terror reared its head in the stop-motion animation medium (don’t forget about Phil Tippett’s Mad God in 2021) with the literal titled  Stopmotion . 

In 2023 , horror kicked off in a big way with M3GAN . There wasn’t a breakout hit in January 2024, with the major genre releases being the COVID-shot Paleolithic thriller Out of Darkness , and the Diablo Cody-penned Lisa Frankenstein , set in the same world as her cult comedy Jennifer’s Body .

New horror movies for 2024 on the horizon include They Follow (sequel to It Follows , with Maika Monroe and writer/director David Robert Mitchell returning), Terrifier 3 (Art the Clown expands his spree into Christmas ), Nosferatu (from director Robert Eggers), Alien: Romulus (due in August), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (September), Return to Silent Hill (original director Christophe Gans returns as well), The Conjuring: Last Rites (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their Warren roles).

Late Night with the Devil (2023) 97%

Oddity (2024) 96%

Infested (2023) 96%

In Flames (2023) 95%

Strange Darling (2023) 94%

New Life (2023) 94%

The Substance (2024) 90%

Stopmotion (2023) 91%

The Devil's Bath (2024) 90%

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) 86%

Speak No Evil (2024) 85%

Out of Darkness (2022) 86%

Longlegs (2024) 85%

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) 84%

Abigail (2024) 83%

The First Omen (2024) 82%

You'll Never Find Me (2023) 81%

Alien: Romulus (2024) 80%

In a Violent Nature (2024) 79%

Cuckoo (2024) 77%

Arcadian (2024) 77%

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) 77%

Blackout (2023) 75%

Handling the Undead (2024) 75%

MaXXXine (2024) 73%

T-Blockers (2023) 100%

Double Blind (2023) 100%

Summoners (2022) 100%

Booger (2023) 96%

Exhuma (2024) 93%

The Becomers (2023) 93%

Somewhere Quiet (2023) 92%

Lovely, Dark, and Deep (2023) 90%

Trim Season (2023) 89%

Here for Blood (2022) 89%

Midnight Peepshow (2022) 88%

The Well (2023) 88%

The Dead Thing (2024) 88%

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Funny Horror Movies That Deliver On the Chuckles and the Chills

Scream, laugh, scream, repeat

It's the best of both worlds: heart-pounding suspense and belly-aching laughter. It's called the horror comedy, and it's a genre hybrid that, when executed correctly, marries goosebumps and giggles to cathartic effect. Over the decades, we've been treated to gateway scares suitable for the whole family, master classes in gonzo gore, and even beautifully dark animated fables made for adults only. Here, we're rounding up our favorites for your viewing pleasure.

From the darkest corners of haunted houses to the silliest realms of the undead, the following selection of the best horror comedies of all time offers tons of scary fun from the comfort of your couch, queen-size bed, bean bag chair, wherever. And when you're done here, be sure to check out our single-genre roundups too. From the scariest horror movies of all time , to the best comedy films of all time , to totally '80s movies we all need right , you'll never stumble into a show hole again.

Beetlejuice

Fun fact: The stripe-suited star of Tim Burton's ghoulishly hilarious afterlife romp doesn't show up until about 45 minutes into the action. Crazy, right? Played by Michael Keaton, everyone's favorite lewd bio-exorcist didn't need a ton of screen time to really leave his mark. Bring on the sequel!

Bodies Bodies Bodies

For a horror film that meets the moment, queue up Bodies to the third power. A macabre watch as brazenly clever as it is thrilling, Halina Reijn's American debut wears the A24 stamp. So you can bet you're in for a stylish, genre-defying flick with a cast, narrative, and vibe as satisfying as its body count.

Extra Ordinary

Buckle up for silly encounters of the supernatural kind from Irish directing duo Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman. Behind the wheel is Rose, a small-town driving instructor whose ability to see dead people gets her tangled up in a rock star's Satanic ritual. If it sounds crazy hilarious, that's because it is.

The body-swapping comedy is nothing new. Soaking the subgenre's dynamic narrative in bloody carnage, however, is. Such is the case with Blumhouse's Freaky . It stars Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn as a high school senior and serial killer who change places, lending their arcs to hilarity, chaos, and mayhem.

If by some miracle you aren't privy to the delicious reveals in Mimi Cave's delightful debut, then keep it that way; it's fun to go into this thriller starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan blind. Only bit we'll say: These two follow up their grocery meet-cute with an overnight trip that has no expiry date.

Ghostbusters

Made up of three parapsychologists plus a skeptic who answered a job ad, this crew tackles slimers, specters, and any other spooky spirits they’re hired to battle while making audiences hee-haw along the way. It’s funny, only mildly scary, and the perfect gateway horror for little ones warming up to the genre.

You know the Mogwai rules: Don't get them wet. Don't expose them to bright lights. And don't feed them after midnight. Of course, as we all know, rules were made to be broken, and that's just what the protag of this '80s holiday classic does, unleashing a throng of demented gremmies that are out for blood.

Happy Death Day

Like all great time-loop movies, Happy Death Day unsnarls its mystery over the course of its reel without feeling redundant. Led by Jessica Rothe, the film follows her character, Tree, down a rabbit hole of never-ending kills. To break the cycle, she has to not only right her wrongs but solve her own murder.

When director Nobuhiko Obayashi yelled action, he unleashed a truly bizarre fantasy that will forever be known as the craziest haunted-house movie of all time. A deranged fever dream of disembodied heads, bleeding mirrors, and trippy ghosts, this J-horror classic about seven schoolgirls battling evil in an old manor is a master class in bonkers macabre.

Jennifer’s Body

Feminist horror from director Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody, Jennifer's Body is finally getting its flowers. Pummeled by critics who initially chalked the film up to fanboy bait, this teen scream about a bloodthirsty cheerleader is a genius take on female empowerment, sexuality, and autonomy.

Little Shop of Horrors

Creature features come in all shapes, cultures, and genres, from Japan's groundbreaking Godzilla , to Cronenberg's The Fly body horror, to Spielberg's family-friendly Gremlins . Here, we have a toe-tapping musical extravaganza about a florist and the bloodthirsty plant demanding more than sunlight and rain.

One Cut of the Dead

From Warm Bodies to Zombieland , zom-coms flourished in the 2010s. But here's one you may have missed. A shoestring-budgeter whose brilliance is nesting inside a Matryoshka-like narrative, Shin'ichirô Ueda's cult fave starts out as a single-shot zombie flick, but it's after that 37-minute take when the real surprises begin.

Ready or Not

Samara Weaving stars in this marital thriller as a bride whose wedding day evolves into a nightmare to remember. Hunted by her new in-laws for reasons we'll let you discover on your own, she fights to survive the night. A clever mix of dark humor, inventive kills, and girl power, it's one to watch on repeat.

"Liver alone." "Bam! Bitch went down." "I never thought I'd be so happy to be a virgin." The only thing better than the hilarious quips in this Craven classic that reinvented the slasher genre for a new generation is the cast (Neve Campbell, Rose McGowan, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy) delivering them.

Shaun of the Dead

One third of Edgar Wright's Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy , this zombie romp comes first. It's followed by Hot Fuzz , and then The World's End , and each entry in the anthology series is fantastic, but our fave has to be Shaun of the Dead . A play on the Romero classic, it's a witty brew of British humor and genre magic.

Juan of the Dead

Speaking of Shaun, have you met Juan? He's leading a similar motley crew battling a horde of flesh eaters. Set in Havana, this action-horror-comedy hybrid turns the parody up several notches and morphs its zombie apocalypse into a Cuban thrill ride that is entirely its own.

The Blackening

Co-writers Tracy Oliver ( Harlem ) and Dewayne Perkins ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine ), along with director Tim Story ( Queens ), deliver a hilarious gem about a group of friends whose vacay turns deadly. And though the jump scares are solid, the real genius lies in the provocative dialogue and shattering of genre tropes.

When you're not consumed by The Bear , we recommend digging into another foodie thriller, this one with a lot more bite. About an abusive celebrity chef (played by Ralph Fiennes) whose final dinner service will blow its diners away, Mark Mylod's razor-sharp comedy is five-star entertainment.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Filing this campy classic about two clean-cut teens who stumble into the fantastical world of Dr. Frank-n-Furter under "Horror Comedy Musical" doesn't do it justice. Rather, this vibrant and immersive experience is a rite of passage for some, a ritual for others, and a celebration of self-expression for all.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

The sweetest little splatter movie you ever did see, this comedy of horrors spins a yarn around two country bumpkins, Tucker and Dale, who haphazardly take out a group of vacuous co-eds one by one. The kills are gory, the satire is thick, and the charm is so infectious.

DeAnna Janes is a freelance writer and editor for a number of sites, including Harper’s BAZAAR, Tasting Table, Fast Company and Brit + Co, and is a passionate supporter of animal causes, copy savant, movie dork and reckless connoisseur of all holidays. A native Texan living in NYC since 2005, Janes has a degree in journalism from Texas A&M and  got her start in media at US Weekly before moving on to O Magazine, and eventually becoming the entertainment editor of the once-loved, now-shuttered DailyCandy. She’s based on the Upper West Side.

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness review: The loopiest, bloodiest Marvel movie yet

Turn and face the Strange, one far-out multiverse at a time.

Give Sam Raimi a multiverse, and he will take a mile. The director's Doctor Strange (in theaters May 6) feels like many disparate and often deeply confusing things — comedy, camp horror, maternal drama, sustained fireball — but it is also not like any other Marvel movie that came before it. And 28 films into the franchise, that's a wildly refreshing thing, even as the story careens off in more directions than the Kaiju-sized octo-beast who storms into an early scene, bashing its tentacles through small people and tall buildings like an envoy from some nightmare aquarium.

There are monsters everywhere in The Multiverse of Madness , the first one in a chaotic dream sequence that opens the story without preamble or explanation: All that Benedict Cumberbatch 's dapper, fussy Master of Mystic Arts knows when he wakes up is that he had to battle some glimmering incubus to save a girl, and that he died trying. The girl, it turns out, is named America Chavez ( The Baby-Sitters Club 's Xochitl Gomez), and she calmly sets him straight: It wasn't a dream, it was an alternate universe, which means there are infinite Other Stephens out there, fighting the same fight.

More ex-girlfriends too, though in this world the only one who matters, Christine Palmer ( Rachel McAdams ), is still marrying a man who isn't him. More pressingly, there's an unknown quantity of Wandas ( Elizabeth Olsen ) on the loose, and Wanda wants her children back, even if she conjured them from pure wishful thinking. Because Wanda is also the Scarlet Witch, reluctant supervillain, her whims can destroy worlds — and she's already begun by coming after America, whose universe-hopping abilities are the only thing she believes will reunite her with her two little boys, alive in every dimension but the one she's stuck in.

Whether this all sounds elementary to you or vaguely insane depends heavily, of course, on your familiarity with the MCU; there are no guard rails or lit-up walkways for the uninitiated here. Raimi, who made his name with the Evil Dead series and movies like Darkman and A Simple Plan before helming the first three Spider-Man entries in the early 2000s, freely treats it as license to let his freak flag fly, though it takes him about an hour to ramp up to full pandemonium, maybe because he has so much mythology and green screen to work in. (The number of cameos from the extended cinematic universe that drew gasps and cheers at a preview screening are numerous and worth not spoiling, though the internet is more than happy to correct that for you.)

The script, by Michael Waldron ( Loki , Rick and Morty ) skims over most of what you might traditionally call storyline, frog-hopping hectically across moods and bits of exposition to get to the next explosive set piece. But he does it nimbly too, throwing off one-liners and winks to the genre like flashbangs. Cumberbatch, his body superhero-yoked and his hair streaked with two paintbrush swipes of white at the temples, picks up those bits like little bonbons and rolls them around on his tongue, delighted. Olsen is another kind of movie, often by herself: a wrecked, furious woman from an Ibsen drama, desperate to get back to the things she's lost.

The fact that actors of this caliber — Chewitel Ejioifor , Benedict Wong , Patrick Stewart , and Michael Stuhlbarg also appear, some of them for only a handful of lines — is testament to the sheer gravitational pull of Marvel; you've never seen McAdams tell a bunch of swirling zombie goblins to go back to hell, and you probably never will again. Raimi mostly lets them in on the joke, though he also sends several of them off to spectacularly showy deaths (with many universes come many spares). He generally seems to thrill at throwing out the rule book, zipping giddily between dimensions — one is made of cubes, another bright splashes of paint — and reveling in a kind of squishy, explicit gore that the MCU's bloodless violence often studiously avoids.

In a movie that already contains multitudes, finding a throughline can feel like reaching for a rope swing in the dark; characters are grounded in urgent emotional intimacy one moment, and throwing bolts of CG lightning at demon-octopi the next. Chavez, as the girl the fate of all this relies on, is plucky and smart, but too broadly drawn to really register as her own distinct person rather than a carefully market-tested symbol. (More than once, someone says "We have to save America!" straight-faced.) In many ways, Strange is a mess, and probably 20 minutes too long at two hours (which in Marvel math, is still practically a haiku). It's rarely boring though, down to the last obligatory post-credit scene — whether or not there's method in the Madness . Grade: B

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

The modern Marvel sequel is as multi-armed as Doctor Strange casting a spell. Think about how many properties are being sequel-ed in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” It’s a sequel to “ Doctor Strange ,” although just barely in that you probably need to have seen that film less than the Strange adventures that followed. It’s a sequel to “ Avengers: Endgame ” and “ Spider-Man: No Way Home ” in that it references action in both films and extrapolates somewhat on the universe-saving decision that the title character made in the former. It’s very much a sequel to “WandaVision,” the show that expanded the Marvel Cinematic Universe into television. And, for a particular generation, it’s kind of a sequel to when Sam Raimi was one of the most badass filmmakers alive. Perhaps all of these allegiances are at the root of why “Multiverse of Madness” never develops its own identity and depth. It’s a Frankenmovie, a blockbuster sewn together from pieces of other films, comic books, and TV shows and given life with the electricity of a Marvel budget. After a dreadfully long build-up, “Doctor Strange 2” gains some momentum thanks to Raimi’s visual flair, but even that runs out. You really can’t go home again.

Spoilers will be very light. Don’t worry.

Dr. Stephen Strange is attending the wedding of his unrequited love Christine Palmer ( Rachel McAdams ) when chaos erupts in the street outside (and the fact that Michael Stuhlbarg ’s name is on the poster for his single, early-movie scene at the wedding feels like an agent’s coup). A massive octopus-like creature is chasing a girl named America Chavez ( Xochitl Gomez ) across dimensions, causing chaos along the way. Strange and Wong ( Benedict Wong ) leap into action to save the girl and learn that America is sought for her ability to traverse alternate universes, although she can’t really control when she does so. Strange suspects that witchcraft may be involved, which leads him to seek the guidance of Wanda ( Elizabeth Olsen ), who is still reeling from the loss of her children at the end of the Disney+ show and under the spell of the evil Darkhold, a book of evil spells that Raimi fans will probably note looks a lot like the Necronomicon. Wanda is willing to do whatever it takes to live in the universe where she still has her children (although Vision’s existence is barely referenced), which unleashes chaos for Strange, Wong, and America that involves Mordo ( Chiwetel Ejiofor ), a few classic characters, and, well, some new faces with familiar names.

There’s a sequence relatively early in “Multiverse of Madness” wherein Strange and America fly through alternate universes, including one that looks animated and one where their bodies are made of paint. I got excited. I thought after what felt like an interminable set-up that Raimi and company were about to blow up the Marvel formula machine and make a live-action film that felt like “ Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse .” Imagine that. A visual artist like Raimi with a modern MCU budget and complete creative freedom.

You’ll have to imagine it because this movie isn’t interested in that kind of potential. “Multiverse of Madness” is a film that constantly pushes back against its own possibilities. It’s got a plot that could have creatively surprised viewers over and over with new variations on the very concept of a world with heroes in it and a director willing to go there. But it’s very clearly a product of a content machine, fighting against its own self-interests because it’s scared to alienate any of the millions of potential viewers. The sense that these movies only feign interest in being “strange” when they’re about as normal as can be makes them all the more frustrating. Both “WandaVision” and “Loki” took more creative risks. Significantly.

Which makes it a double-edged sword when the Sam Raimi who directed “ Spider-Man 2 ” and “Evil Dead 2” comes out to play about halfway through and then really gets going in the final act. Without spoilers, “Multiverse of Madness” starts to involve the walking dead, and the Raimi who revolutionized the horror genre proves he still has some life left in him. There are some creatively staged and executed action sequences in “Multiverse of Madness” that only could have been made by the director of “ Drag Me to Hell ,” and those moments are easily the film’s highlights and almost rescue it. One just wishes it didn’t take so long to get to them and that they weren’t tethered to a movie that too often doesn’t have any idea what to do with that energy.

Instead of letting “Multiverse of Madness” take creative flight, the story keeps coming back to incredibly shallow character traits like Wanda’s grief, Strange’s unspoken love for Christine, or America’s uncertainty about her own powers. None of these resonate. The character arcs here are so remarkably weak that the performances suffer too. Cumberbatch is fine, but he’s a victim of a film that’s so plot-heavy that he’s mostly just running from one CGI sequence to the next. And I’m eager to see what the charismatic Gomez can do with a much stronger character. Listen, I know MCU movies aren’t generally places for deep character work—I’m just saying it’s even more shallow here than normal, especially considering how the typically reliable Olsen nailed this character in her previous outing. It’s sad to see her and the character take a step back instead of exploring the ideas in the show that bore her name.

By the time that “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” was pulling out the universe-bending scenes that will probably be spoiled by Friday afternoon, I started to wonder if there’s a breaking point to these CGI orgies that serve so many other properties they forget to be interesting on their own. There have been complaints about MCU properties that feel like they exist merely to get people interested in the next movie or TV show, but it’s never felt so much like a snake eating its own tail as it does here. Or at least the spell has worn off for me.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Stephen Strange / Sinister Strange / Defender Strange
• Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / The Scarlet Witch
• Chiwetel Ejiofor as Karl Mordo / Master Mordo
• Benedict Wong as Wong / Defender Wong
• Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez
• Rachel McAdams as Dr. Christine Palmer
• Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Nicodemus West
• Julian Hilliard as Billy Maximoff
• Jett Klyne as Tommy Maximoff
• Bob Murawski
• Danny Elfman

Cinematographer

• John Mathieson
• Michael Waldron

Writer (based on the Marvel comics by)

• Steve Ditko

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In 'Bad Hair,' The Mane Rebels

Aisha Harris

Elle Lorraine plays a woman whose hair has a mind of its own in Justin Simien's new horror-comedy. Tobin Yellan/Hulu hide caption

Elle Lorraine plays a woman whose hair has a mind of its own in Justin Simien's new horror-comedy.

In the Hulu horror-comedy Bad Hair , a black woman's weave is more than just a weave. It's a status symbol. It's the key to a promotion. It's ... possessed by an evil spirit intent on sowing chaos?

Likewise, Bad Hair itself is more than a social satire. It's a visual and thematic pastiche of movies like The Fly and Rosemary's Baby . It's a loving sendup of black American pop music in the 1980s. It's a workplace comedy.

It's ... a lot , though (mostly) enjoyably so . As a general rule, writer-director Justin Simien is a bold and ambitious filmmaker whose works practically scream "Go big or go home!" There is never one single perspective, cultural reference, or homage; there are many. In his 2014 feature debut Dear White People , a colorful satire about black millennial anxieties on a predominantly white college campus, he channeled Spike Lee, Wes Anderson and Robert Townsend while tackling colorism, racism, sexuality and microaggressions, for starters. The result was a film that was admirably big on ideas and a vision, but failed to connect all the various dots and stick the landing. (Given more time and space to expand on character development, his Netflix series adaptation of Dear White People fared much better on this front.)

Bad Hair similarly brims with an assortment of concepts, but Simien has graduated to even grander aspirations, and, evidently, a grander budget. The opening scene speaks a language many black women, myself included, will be familiar with: a traumatic childhood experience derived from an attempt to remove the natural kinks and curls of one's mane. I felt this visual and audible fright viscerally while watching it play out, reminded of the years I spent relaxing my own hair with chemicals as a kid and into young adulthood. Simien's treatment of this introduction, which features a young girl named Anna (Zaria Kelley), is effective, and sets the tone for the movie's more intense explorations of body horror.

'Dear White People' Is A Satire Addressed To Everyone

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Justin simien, creator of "dear white people".

Fast forward to 1989 Los Angeles, and an adult Anna (Elle Lorraine) works for Culture, a TV network targeted at "urban" (read: black) audiences, a la BET. Anna dreams of becoming the host of her own music countdown show, but the combination of a timid personality, hair that doesn't conform to white corporate sensibilities, and outright sexism has kept her sidelined in an assistant role. When a new boss, Zora (Vanessa Williams), arrives on the scene to revamp the network, Anna is advised to do something about her hair, or risk being stuck for the rest of her career.

Anna goes to the most sought-after stylist in the city to get her first weave. (The installation of the weave is chilling and expertly edited by Phillip J. Bartell and Kelly Matsumoto. Warning: This is not a film for the squeamish.) But while the new hair 'do brings her welcome attention at work, it soon becomes clear that the strands have a mind of their own.

Here is where Simien's skills as a visual stylist are again at odds with his limitations when it comes to the text. Some of the details that connote Anna's relationship to her new style are inventive and fun; in one scene, for instance, the hair flip is deployed as a tactic in the middle of a professional power grab between Anna and Zora. Cinematographer Topher Osborn mimics a grainy '70s cinema look that successfully exudes a creeping paranoia. And the details, from the spot-on nods to Control -era Janet Jackson (Kelly Rowland plays a Janet-esque pop star named Sandra) to the intricate corporate dynamics, are astutely rendered.

But layered on top of all of those smart takes is a muddled, confusing attempt at bringing in folklore that is haphazardly sprinkled in, particularly in the third act. Bad Hair gets weighted down by too many loose ends left unsatisfyingly dangling in the wind: The weave brings the terror, but what, exactly, are we supposed to take away from Simien's depiction of this fraught subject of black women's hair? It's never quite clear, and there's a missed opportunity to really unpack the psychological impact of beauty ideals within black communities and professional spaces.

Still, the movie moves briskly enough and the performances work. Lena Waithe, Laverne Cox and Blair Underwood find moments of spark in smaller roles as Anna's colleague, witchy stylist and mythology-loving uncle, respectively. And as Zora, Williams is deliciously catty and calculating, channeling mean lady vibes similar to the ones she used as Wilhelmina on Ugly Betty. She works wonders with insults and shade, striking exactly the the right notes when the movie hits its campy, B-horror movie stride.

Simien seems even more assured as a filmmaker here than he did in his debut, and the promise shown in Dear White People feels closer to being fulfilled; the specificity with which he depicts workplace culture and black music are a treat to watch. If Bad Hair feels overstuffed and ultimately slight when it comes to its central conceit around hair, at the very least it's still a fun ride.

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Look, you’re just going to have to come to terms with the fact that “ Bad Milo! ” is about a man who has a monster that grows out of his ass and kills people. If you’re not willing to get onboard with that premise, this isn’t a movie that’s going to sway your initial feelings. And that’s okay: movies aren’t meant to be for everyone, as much as contemporary demographics might beg. They used to make genre films that occupied a very specific, very weird part of the video store where your mother, your teachers, and even your philistine babysitter dare not venture. “Bad Milo!” to its credit, would have been one of them.

Ken Marino stars as Ken, a mild-mannered office minion at an indistinct finance job where his building stress is just one of many that irritate his notoriously feeble bowels. It’s an hour a day on the can for this office drone, who has to put up with the snarky, subterranean abuses of a blowhard boss ( Patrick Warburton ) that would rather turn the bathroom into a new office space than give poor overworked Ken a promotion. At home, it’s his wife Sarah ( Gillian Jacobs ), who presses him on not disappearing to the loo so often, while also suggesting they should look into having a child.

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A visit to the doctor reveals something mighty peculiar about that stomach situation: Ken has something growing up there, which seems to be a polyp, but is actually a terrifying little sharp-toothed monster poking at Ken’s insides. You really only need observe some of the smaller details to get the picture, like the creature’s sharp claws, or the anguish of Ken’s face. Director Jacob Vaughan is not a director of small details and the sound effects allow you to hear the ripping of Ken’s anus as this little beast emerges, covered in feces. Ken passes out on the floor while the monster rampages through his life, brutally murdering his aggressors. At least Vaughan has the decency to refrain from showing what Ken passes out into.

Peter Stormare , in a typically kooky performance, plays a therapist who correctly deduces that the creature, dubbed Milo, is a manifestation of Ken’s pressure in life. Yes, there is a scene where someone opens up a dusty textbook, and yes, there are ancient illustrations of an ass-demon as something that once existed in polite society. Touches like these that ring as ridiculous, but also respectful of the horror genre. Milo is a juvenile idea for a character, but the filmmaking never once treats him like a joke of a beast and the damage the creature does is serious.

Which is a blessing, since, sadly, the movie isn’t very funny. Most of the jokes are so old they need dust blown off them: Kumail Nanjiani plays Ken’s age-inappropriate new step-father, flirting and fondling sitcommy Mary Kay Place , and neither performer can draw a whole lot of comedy from that hoary concept. Stephen Root can’t do anything in an underwritten role as Ken’s deadbeat stoner dad, slipping in and out of intoxication at random points, ultimately proving a supposedly-cathartic distraction meant to drag the proceedings to feature length. And even Marino and Jacobs, two wonderfully funny performers, play it straight, giving the film a semi-plausible reality, but leaving the heavy lifting to the supporting cast. Why bother having the two funniest members of your cast play the straight men?

The best and most praise-worthy element of “Bad Milo!” is the titular creature itself. This little troublemaker seems almost entirely made up of practical effects and puppet work, able to come across as both a mogwai and a gremlin. Frequently, its teeth are bared and its (he’s?) ready to do damage. But in a relaxed state, the pointy teeth vanish and the eyes blow up wide, like an innocuous “ E.T. ” You get the sense if anyone else were to make the movie, they’d settle on a cheap CGI monstrosity. But the puppet work is superb in this picture, giving this character a surprising weight and gravity that you just don’t see in artificial characters onscreen. “Bad Milo!” is ultimately a fairly pedestrian film, but in those moments where Milo takes action, if you squint, there’s just a little bit of that old-fashioned movie magic. You’ll just have to deal with the fact that it comes from a creature that crawls out of a man’s ass. [C+]

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The first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of 2022 is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , one of Marvel’s most anticipated projects, but the first reviews haven’t lived up to MCU standards and have been quite mixed. The MCU continues its expansion with its Phase 4, which is covering both movies and TV shows, with the latter connecting to the former. Phase 4 is also introducing new characters, events, and concepts, and the main one so far is the multiverse, which was explored in Spider-Man: No Way Home and will unleash chaos in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness .

Set a couple of months after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home , Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will see the title sorcerer (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) dealing with the consequences of the multiverse chaos he and Peter Parker (Tom Holland) unleashed. With the help of old friends like Wong (Benedict Wong) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) , as well as new allies like America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), Strange will travel into the multiverse to face a mysterious new adversary while also encountering variants of himself, Scarlet Witch, Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), and more.

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After a couple of delays due to the coronavirus pandemic and the usual rescheduling in the MCU, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is finally coming to theaters on May 6, 2022, and the first reactions to it have been mixed. Although at the time of writing  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness holds a 79% score on Rotten Tomatoes , and while that means it’s not a bad score, it’s a  low Rotten Tomatoes score by MCU standards and the reaction from critics so far has been mixed, though there’s a lot of praise for Sam Raimi’s direction and the performances of the main cast. Here’s what the positive reviews of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are saying:

“Multiverse of Madness is, in essence, the first official MCU horror film -- with Sam Raimi pulling out all the stops, especially in an extended second-act sequence that genuinely pushes the PG-13 rating at moments. This is the part of the film Raimi excels at, imbuing Strange and America's journey with a mix of schlock horror film techniques and psychedelic imagery straight from the comics that easily elevate this film visually to the top of the MCU.”

“Best known for horror films like The Evil Dead, as well as the first Spider-Man trilogy, Raimi loves to scare and disgust, which he does and more in almost each and every scene. In one, it might be putting the camera into the point of view of a demon. In another, it’s a picture frame moving like something out of a Harry Potter movie. A fourth wall break here, jump scare there, each little touch is fun and gives Multiverse of Madness its very own unique flair.”

“Raimi is in his element as he crafts cosmic set piece after magic set piece after multiversal set piece. This is a universe where the rules mean anything can happen and under Raimi’s watch they will. Fans have been waiting for America to arrive in the MCU and Gomez does the fan fave character justice. She’s powerful, funny, and appropriately in control of her own story. Cumberbatch expands on his guest roles in other MCU movies, crafting someone funnier, less hateable, and with a heart beating deep under that blue costume. Benedict Wong is back as the rightful Sorcerer Supreme and he once again steals every scene he’s in. When America arrives, the pair realize there’s only one person who can help: Wanda Maximoff. As expected, Elizabeth Olsen brings her WandaVision chops in another powerhouse performance.”

Bloody Disgusting :

“Raimi easily slips back into his horror filmmaking roots and manages to infuse this sequel with as much horror as the MCU allows him. The script by Loki writer Michael Waldron lets demons and zombies run amok, but Raimi takes it a step further with his physical horror and horror-comedy sensibilities. [...] Then there’s Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff, who’d retreated to a solitary life on a quiet stretch of farmland after the emotional fall-out of “WandaVision.” The powerful character makes for a formidable ally. Still, Olsen ensures that that power is matched by emotional complexity, which makes her one of the more interesting and often heartbreaking characters of the MCU. How Olsen carries over her work from the Emmy Award-winning series heightens the stakes and emotional investment.”

CheatSheet :

“Raimi brings major Evil Dead vibes to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Familiar sweeping camera shots, jump scares, and Deadite-adjacent imagery are all present that will delight both longtime horror fans and those first digging into the genre. Raimi explores death, terror, and violence in a way the world hasn’t seen from the MCU until now. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the most adrenaline-pumping and action-packed MCU movie yet. It’s campy Raimi horror to the bone. The action set-pieces are immensely creative, the scale is bombastic, and it’s a visual feast. Olsen elevates some of the film’s dramatic shortcomings, but there’s no denying how much fun it all is to watch unfold.”

The strongest assets of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness seem to be Sam Raimi’s direction and Elizabeth Olsen’s performance as the tormented and complex Scarlet Witch. Doctor Strange 2 had been teased as a horror and quite possibly being the studio’s very first horror movie, and it all points at Raimi delivering on all that without compromising his unique style that has, ultimately, earned him a spot as one of the “masters of horror” – that is, of course, while still fitting the standards of an MCU movie. Olsen is being described as the emotional anchor of the story and the most powerful performance, but unfortunately, among the weaknesses of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Scarlet Witch’s arc and those of other side characters, which ended up being rushed, underdeveloped, and getting lost among the multiverse madness and the surprises, twists, and cameos it brought. Here’s what the negative reviews of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are saying:

“The script is inventive in the way it plays around with a jumble of big sci-fi concepts, which makes sense considering screenwriter Michael Waldron is a veteran of “Rick & Morty.” But it also underwhelms when it comes to the mishmash structure and the women. Olsen still sells Wanda’s pain like the best of them, even though she’s been reduced to a stereotype of female hysteria. Christine is merely there to make Strange realize things about himself. And America, well, she never really earns our emotional investment.”

Roger Ebert :

“Instead of letting “Multiverse of Madness” take creative flight, the story keeps coming back to incredibly shallow character traits like Wanda’s grief, Strange’s unspoken love for Christine, or America’s uncertainty about her own powers. None of these resonate. The character arcs here are so remarkably weak that the performances suffer too. Cumberbatch is fine, but he’s a victim of a film that’s so plot-heavy that he’s mostly just running from one CGI sequence to the next. And I’m eager to see what the charismatic Gomez can do with a much stronger character.”

“Yet it’s in this universe where we see the flaws in Marvel’s attempts to try and embrace fan service. Without spoiling the “madness” in this multiverse, Doctor Strange blatantly attempts a crowd reaction akin to the final fight in Endgame, or the appearance of the other Peter Parkers in No Way Home, but without the narrative weight that made those other moments effective. In this desperate grasp for applause, Marvel tries to give the fans exactly what they want, paying off years of predictions, random possibilities, and unexpected cameos, and the result is a hollow plea for praise. It’s as if Multiverse of Madness carved out a segment of the film solely to give the fandom what it wants, and ends this sequence in a way that is shockingly cruel and wholly unnecessary.”

Following the steps of the Sorcerer’s first movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness promises to be a spectacular visual performance, but it looks to have taken a lot more than it could process, and its characters ended up suffering the consequences of this with underdeveloped arcs. With its current score, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness can’t be considered a “failure”, but it’s definitely below what the MCU is used to, and this percentage might increase or decrease once the movie is out, so only time will tell if Strange’s second movie was yet another hit from Marvel or one of its weakest links.

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