The Most Underrated Horror Films Of The 2010s

Jeremy Saulnier's story of a punk-rock band trapped by white supremacists unfortunately feels more topical with each passing day. It's also notable for its claustrophobic setting, intense action, and powerful performances. After all, it's not every day that you get to see Captain Picard himself, Sir Patrick Stewart, play a skinhead. 

When the film's band, the Ain't Rights, find themselves playing a gig at an out-of-the-way venue in Pacific Northwest, they quickly realize they're in trouble when they notice the place is full of skinheads. That doesn't stop them from playing a cover of "Nazi Punks F*ck Off" by the Dead Kennedys, though. It isn't until the show is over that things take a turn for the fatal. The band is in the green room when they witness a slaying - and the leader of the skinheads decides to take them all out to keep them from talking.

The result is a brutal, nail-biting flick that is also one of late lead actor Anton Yelchin's last film roles.

Found-footage horror movies and ghost movies have both been extremely popular over the course of the last decade - but they also both get kind of a bad rap among horror connoisseurs as being samey films made to appeal to the least-common denominator. At a glance, Grave Encounters looks like it'll be exactly that - a found-footage dark ride about the crew of a ghost hunting reality show who explore an abandoned mental hospital with a dark history, where they'll encounter plenty of kohl-eyed figures.

And, certainly, it has plenty of that to offer. But Grave Encounters also does things that most of its siblings don't dare, such as messing with time and space in ways that are genuinely disconcerting and reminiscent of more typically thoughtful fare like Picnic at Hanging Rock or the book House of Leaves.

"Come on," we can almost hear you saying, "a slasher comedy? And one that's rated PG-13, no less?" But trust us when we say that there's more to The Final Girls than meets the eye. Sure, there's stoner jokes and goofy slayings and plenty of self-aware humor, but there's also a surprising amount of heart in this story about a young woman (Taissa Farmiga, American Horror Story) trying to reconnect with her deceased mother (Malin Akerman) by watching the low-rent slasher flick she starred in years ago.

Naturally, the young woman finds herself getting more than she bargained for when she and her friends are pulled into the movie itself in this story of grief and family ties that also manages to be a genuinely funny and visually striking slasher comedy - all without a lot of piled-on grue. Who would have thought?

Sister act directing duo Jen and Sylvia Soska, who have recently remade David Cronenberg's Rabid, first exploded onto the genre scene with their 2012 black comedy horror film American Mary. Though it immediately earned them a name in extreme horror circles, American Mary still remains under-seen by the wider horror world. In it, Katharine Isabelle (of the Ginger Snaps series) plays a medical student who, in desperate need of funds, finds herself drawn into the world of extreme body modification.

Unfortunately, she is also the victim of a terrible assault from the doctors and mentors who are in charge of her residency, which leads her to a grisly revenge and into a cat-and-mouse game with the police. With a 60% at Rotten Tomatoes, the Critics Consensus says American Mary "utilizes pitch-black humor and striking visuals to deliver gory, freaky thrills for body-horror enthusiasts."

Director Mike Flanagan has made quite a career for himself by directing Netflix's mini-series version of The Haunting of Hill House, not to mention Stephen King adaptations Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep. But one of his earliest horror film entries still remains under-seen, in spite of being part of what started his career in the industry.

The film follows Tricia and her sister, Callie. Tricia's husband has been missing for seven years, and she and her sister gradually begin to suspect his disappearance, along with those of many other people in the area, has something to do with a tunnel in front of her house. Just as Tricia is having her husband declared passed in absentia, he abruptly shows back up, bloody and barefoot, and surprised that anyone else can see him.

Of course, things only get freakier from there, as Flanagan showcases some of the skills that have made him a major name in the horror field in the years since.

Not exactly a small-time production, The Awakening was made by the BBC and StudioCanal and stars actors like Iron Man 3's Rebecca Hall, The Wire's Dominic West, and Imelda Staunton from the Harry Potter franchise. Yet many people seem to have slept on this quiet but creepy haunted house chiller from 2011.

Hall plays Florence Cathcart, an author and professional skeptic who works with the police to debunk fraudulent spiritualists in the wake of WWI. When she is invited to a private boy's school where the ghost of a child may have caused the demise of another boy, her skepticism is tested by what she discovers. The movie may be at its best during the early debunking scenes, but all the actors give good performances, and there's plenty of chilly ambiance to be found all the way to the film's twisty ending.