Movies
Year in Review: Ryan Daley’s Best & Worst Movies of 2008!
Leading up until the New Year we’ll be unloading the best and worst lists of 2008 from all of Bloody-Disgusting’s official reviewers. Beyond the break you can check out Ryan Daley’s Best & Worst Horror Films of 2008, with lists from David Harley and myself still coming soon. Click here to keep up with the full year in review and also feel free to post your thoughts below, or at our forum’s Top 10 of 2008 forum thread.
Mr. Disgusting’s Best & Worst / Ryan Daley / BC’s Best & Worst / David Harley’s Best & Worst / Tim Anderson
Also check out this year’s Best & Worst Posters
Ryan Daley’s Best DVDs of 2008
I’m not a huge fan of horror-comedies but this goofy, direct-to-DVD effort somehow won me over. A trio of roommates moves into an apartment that squats over the mouth of hell. A whole bunch of low-budget wackiness ensues. A guilty pleasure, to say the least.
We may be through with torture-porn, but torture-porn sure ain’t through with us. This bleak but compelling French film reminds us why backwoods neo-Nazis are worth avoiding. Energetic and raw.
Starring the uber-foxy Teresa Palmer. That’s really all you need to know.
An homage to Italian exploitation films of the 1970s, this grainy, overwrought crowd-pleaser wins the award for Best Special Effect Involving a Neck Goiter.
Gary Oldman saves a little girl with deformed flipper hands from a bunch of raving hillbillies. Kind of like STRAW DOGS but with deformed flipper hands standing in for retardation.
Neil Marshall’s follow up to THE DESCENT is just craaaaazy. A smashed-together amalgam of MAD MAX, RESIDENT EVIL, and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK that manages to be constantly entertaining even when it’s making absolutely no sense.
This polarizing horror-comedy isn’t for everyone. A mismatched group of friends retreat to a forest cabin to get drunk, flirt with each other, and write a horror screenplay, even as a creepy Baghead killer watches them from the woods. The (mostly) improvised conversations are hilarious, and a few eerie scenes help bolster the horror aspects of the production. A low-budget experiment that actually works.
Available on Lionsgate’s 6 FILMS TO KEEP YOU AWAKE 3-disc set, this Spanish flick begins as a kid-friendly romp before making a staggeringly dark right turn into horror terrain. A genre gem waiting to be discovered.
The best show on television (now that THE SHIELD, THE WIRE, and DEADWOOD are finished) truly hits its stride in its sophomore season. Charismatic serial killer Dexter comes perilously close to getting nabbed by the po-po, while immature sister Deb continues to annoy the shit out of everyone with a complete lack of professionalism that makes Ally McBeal look like a progressive feminist in comparison. Yeah, Deb bugs. Still a great show, though.
A French film that shatters one of the oldest horror movie taboos into a million pieces. Not for the squeamish, INSIDE is a slick, mean-spirited shocker that goes where you don’t think it dares. Easily the best horror film I have seen this year.
Ryan Daley’s Worst DVDs of 2008
Shannyn Sossamon spends what seems like years running around wet Parisian tunnels in an attempt to escape a developmentally disabled goat-head killer. Like watching a cruddy Travel channel documentary about dark, wet tunnels.
Nobody really expected thrash metal band Lordi’s first movie to be any GOOD, but this…well, this is abysmal. A man and his daughter get trapped in a hospital elevator by a fully-costumed Lordi, who try to act scary through about 25 pounds of bulky foam and fail miserably. Ugh.
Sure there were some eerie moments but come on, that had to have been the worst ending this side of HIGH TENSION. I, for one, thought THE STRANGERS was much better. Scott Speedman notwithstanding.
Lame Pakistani horror film crippled by stilted dialogue and the worst movie soundtrack EVER. I’d rather suicide bomb an Arby’s than have to sit through this one again.
A supremely boring crime drama posing as a horror film. This DIY effort centers around a few friends who stage a laboriously paced stake-out in a parked van. If you’re into bad direction and plodding dialogue, pop a bowl of popcorn, grab some smelling salts, and check this one out. It’s best watched in five or six sittings spread out over the course of several weeks.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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