The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  A special honorary Oscar was presented to ninety-seven-year-old art director and production designer Robert F. Boyle, whose credits include The Wolf Man, Flesh and Fantasy, It Came from Outer Space, The Birds and Explorers.

  Less than two months after the studio settled its royalty dispute with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema was sued by the estate of J. R. R. Tolkien. The heirs claimed that the filmmakers had failed to pay “a single penny” of the contractual 7.5% of gross receipts from the trilogy of films, which to date are estimated to have grossed around $6 billion. The lawsuit reportedly demanded $150 million in damages and a court order to terminate the studio’s rights to Tolkien’s works.

  In early June, a huge blaze engulfed the King Kong exhibit at Universal Studios in Hollywood, causing widespread damage to the five-acre backlot, damaging the Back to the Future courthouse square set and destroying the New York street scene. Thousands of videos and reel-to-reel music recordings were also lost in the fire, although duplicates were reportedly stored in another location.

  Later that same month Tartan Films, the UK distributors who imported many Asian horror titles, declared bankruptcy after struggling for several months.

  At the beginning of September, the US box-office recorded its lowest gross since 2003, with the top twelve movies taking a combined $50.3 million. That was a 32% drop from the same weekend a year before and 23% lower than the previous weekend.

  A group of unsympathetic New Yorkers recorded the destruction of their city by an unexplained CGI monster on a shaky handycam in J. J. Abrams’ style-over-substance Cloverfield. Despite a record-breaking opening in February, the film took a 72% drop at the box-office in its second week.

  Shot for under $4 million in Toronto, George A. Romero employed the same technique with more finesse and logic in Diary of the Dead, the fifth film in his masterful zombie series. Stephen King, Wes Craven, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro and Simon Pegg could all be heard on the soundtrack. The DVD release included five zombie shorts made by winners of a MySpace contest, including magician Penn Jillette.

  Also employing a shot-on-video narrative, Quarantine was a US remake of Jaume Balagueró’s impressive 2007 Spanish film [REC], about a TV crew trapped in an apartment building where a mysterious virus turned the inhabitants into cannibal zombies.

  Obnoxious American tourists found themselves at the mercy of a carnivorous Mayan pyramid in The Ruins, scripted by Scott Smith and based on his bestselling 2006 novel.

  Made back in 2006, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane involved a series of killings centred around Amber Heard’s eponymous high school student, while Angela Battis returned to her hometown and was menaced by the serial killer who tortured her years earlier in Scar, shown in 3-D.

  A bloodless reimagining of a not very good 1980s slasher movie, Prom Night opened in the US at #1 with a take of just $20.8 million. Brittany Snow was the unlucky high school student who was the target of a serial killer’s obsession.

  Aimed at the same teenage audience, a troubled high-schooler (Haley Bennett) couldn’t escape her past in the Halloween release The Haunting of Molly Hartley.

  Promoting its teen abstinence propaganda under the guise of Gothic romance, Twilight explored the relationship between seventeen-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) and immortal vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson). Based on the first of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling books, the movie debuted at the US box-office at #1 with a gross of $69.6 million. Despite the film’s success, it was announced that director Catherine Hardwicke would not be involved with the sequel, New Moon.

  Liv Tyler starred in the home-invasion chiller The Strangers, which grossed a surprise $21 million on its opening weekend, and Josh Randall and Brianna Brown played a city couple hiking in the Virginia woods who were attacked by a family of religious maniacs in Timber Falls.

  Despite being killed off in the previous entry, Tobin Bell returned as “Jigsaw” in Saw V, which was not screened for critics. Neither was the plane-crash mystery Passengers starring Anne Hathaway, which is always a bad sign.

  After an interesting opening, M. Night Shyamaian’s ecological disaster movie The Happening quickly fell apart as Marc Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel wandered around aimlessly while airborne plant toxins caused people to commit suicide. Wahlberg also starred as a glum cop hunting the killers of his wife and infant child in Max Payne. Based on a 2001 video game, it opened at #1 in the US in October.

  Brendan Fraser starred in both Eric Brevig’s digital 3-D remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth, which used Jules Verne’s source novel as a guide to its dinosaur-filled underworld, and Rob Cohen’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which moved the action to Asia. The third Mummy movie also featured Jet Li as an evil emperor and Michelle Yeoh as an immortal sorceress, along with hairy yetis, an impressive dragon and a terracotta army of the undead.

  Another disappointing sequel was Chris Carter’s long-awaited The X Files: I Want to Believe. Six years after the TV series ended and ten years after the previous movie, there was absolutely no chemistry between David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully, as they investigated a secret Russian experiment in head transplants. The “extended cut” DVD added just four extra minutes.

  Former British footballer Vinnie Jones walked through his role as the subway serial killer in Ryuhei Kitamura’s unpleasant and pointless expansion of co-producer Clive Barker’s story, The Midnight Meat Train. When the film was given a delayed and limited theatrical run by distributor Lionsgate, Barker publicly blamed studio politics.

  Kiefer Sutherland’s troubled nightwatchman discovered that evil demons were reflected in Mirrors, a remake of a 2003 South Korean movie, while Jessica Alba could see dead people after a cornea transplant in a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film The Eye.

  Shutter was a remake of a 2004 Taiwanese film, as ghosts haunted the photos of a newlywed couple (Joshua Jackson and Rachael Taylor), and people received text messages predicting their deaths in One Missed Call, based on a 2003 Japanese original.

  An electronic signal sent through televisions and radios on New Year’s Eve turned people into angry psychopaths in The Signal, a low budget independent feature shot in three sections by different directors.

  Alyssa Milano turned up in Pathology, in which medical interns planned the perfect murder, and FBI cyber-crime agent Diane Lane hunted a serial killer who used the Internet to stream his victims’ deaths in Untraceable.

  A high school cheerleader (Jess Weixler) discovered she possessed a set of vagina dentata in Mitchell Lichtenstein’s darkly humorous Teeth.

  Ricky Gervais’ misanthropic dentist could see ghosts in David Koepp’s comedy Ghost Town. After debuting at #8 in the US, the film was just as dead as Greg Kinnear’s self-obsessed spirit.

  Eva Longoria Parker starred as a jealous Blithe Spirit who made life hell for her former fiancé’s new psychic girlfriend (Lake Bell) in the charmless romcom Over Her Dead Body. It might have done better if they had gone with the original title, Ghost Bitch.

  Anthony Stewart Head’s creepy mad scientist harvested body parts for Paul Sorvino’s biotech business in the horror musical, Repo! The Genetic Opera, which also featured soprano Sarah Brightman and the pointless Paris Hilton. Lloyd Kaufman’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead was another low-budget musical comedy, this one set in a fried-chicken franchise built over a Native American burial ground.

  The British horror film industry made something of a comeback in 2008. Sibling kidnappers (played by Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith) were menaced by a psychopathic farmer in Paul Andrew Williams’ comedy The Cottage, and a team of mercenaries discovered Nazi zombies survived in an abandoned World War II bunker in Steve Barker’s Outpost, shot in Scotland.

  The derivative Doomsday from the overrated Neil Marshall had its tough heroine (original “Lara Croft” model Rhona Mitra) heading north of the border to find a cure among the cannibals for a zombie plague that was infecting London.<
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  Filmed on the Isle of Man and based (uncredited) on the roleplaying game, Mutant Chronicles featured Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman, Sean Pertwee and John Malkovich attempting to survive a zombie apocalypse 700 years into the future.

  A tragedy involving the titular sex act led to escalating violence in the deeply unpleasant Donkey Punch, and a nursery teacher (Kelly Reilly) and her boyfriend (Michael Fassbender) were menaced by terrifying teenagers in Eden Lake.

  During the Christmas season a mysterious virus caused youngsters to turn on their parents in Tom Shankland’s genuinely unnerving The Children. Shankland’s other film of the year was WÄZ, in which two mis-matched detectives (Melissa George and Stellan Skarsgård) hunted a serial killer who carved an equation into his mutilated victims’ flesh.

  Directed by Nicholas Roeg and based on a book by Fay Weldon, Puffball featured a cast that included Miranda Richardson, Rita Tushingham and Donald Sutherland in a story about a pregnant architect (Kelly Reilly) beset by pagan forces.

  Simon Callow’s Cambridge don was possessed by the spirit of Aleister Crowley in Julian Doyle’s totally bonkers Chemical Wedding (aka Crowley), co-scripted by Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson.

  Set in Russia, Stephen Dorff’s professional thief found himself trapped by brother-and-sister maniacs in the Irish comedy Botched.

  In something of an Australian cliché, three tourists were menaced by crocodiles on a swamp river cruise in Black Water, and another giant killer croc made life hell for a group of tourists in Rogue, Greg McLean’s scary follow-up to Wolf Creek.

  Spanish director J. A. Bayona just about avoided the clichés in The Orphanage (El orfanato) about an old building haunted by the scary ghosts of abused children. Executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, Geraldine Chaplin turned up as a psychic researcher.

  In the French-made Frontiers, four criminals encountered a family of neo-Nazi cannibals.

  Scripted by John Ajvide Lindqvist and based on his novel, a twelve-year-old Swedish boy discovered that the mysterious young girl who moved in next door was actually an immortal vampire in Thomas Alfredson’s atmospheric variation on the traditional mythology, Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in).

  The four Pevensie children were called back from World War II London to the magical world they had left 1,300 years before in Andrew Adamson’s improved sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. In a surprise cameo, Tilda Swinton recreated her role as the seductive White Witch.

  Based on the young adult book franchise created by writer Holly Black and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, The Spiderwick Chronicles condensed the entire series into a stylish and scary children’s film, as Freddie Highmore (as twins) and Sarah Bolger investigated their great-great-grandfather’s spooky old dark house and discovered a dark world of faeries.

  The stories Adam Sandler’s hotel handyman told to his niece and nephew came magically true, but with unexpected results, in Disney’s children’s fantasy Bedtime Stories, while Brendan Fraser’s book collector had the ability to bring literary characters to life in Inkheart, and adaptation of Cornelia Funke’s bestselling children’s novel.

  Based on Steven Gould’s YA series, Jumper featured Hayden Christensen as a moody teen teleporting around the world, pursued by Samuel L. Jackson’s white-haired assassin, and two teens defied Bill Murray’s corrupt Mayor in an attempt to save their underground City of Ember, based on the 2001 novel by Jeanne DuPrau.

  Shot in 2006 and produced by co-star Reese Witherspoon, Penelope was a modern fairy tale that starred Christina Ricci as an heiress cursed with the nose of a pig until she met her one true love.

  Robert Downey, Jr was perfectly cast as billionaire industrialist and playboy Tony Stark, who became the titular tin-pot hero in Jon Favreau’s exhilarating Iron Man. Downey also recreated his character for an uncredited cameo in Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk. Edward Norton (who re-wrote much of the script and fell out with the studio) starred as a glum Bruce Banner battling Tim Roth’s “Abomination”.

  Although the two films boosted Marvel’s licensing profits by 60% in a single quarter, shares still slumped when the company’s improved forecasts fell short of market expectations.

  Punisher: War Zone was the third attempt to create a franchise based on another Marvel character. Ray Stevenson took over the role of the vengeful killer.

  Not to be outdone, The Dark Knight – Christopher Nolan’s sequel to Batman Begins – pitted Christian Bale’s morose Batman against the late Heath Ledger’s anarchic Joker. The film broke records for the biggest opening day ($67.2 million) and biggest weekend ($158.4 million). After three consecutive weeks at #1 in America, in August the film smashed through the $400 million (£206 million) mark for US earnings after being on release for just eighteen days – half the time it took Shrek 2, the previous record holder, to reach the same target.

  Guillermo del Toro’s overblown sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army relied too much on CGI and not enough on plot, as the horned hero (Ron Perlman) and his cohorts attempted to stop renegade faerie Prince Nuada (an impressive-looking Luke Goss) from declaring war upon mankind.

  Based on Will Eisner’s classic newspaper strip – through you wouldn’t have known it from the ads that promoted writer/director Frank Miller – Gabriel Macht starred as the masked crime-fighter in a highly stylized but ultimately disappointing The Spirit.

  Will Smith played a drunken deadbeat superhero in Hancock, which took more than $100 million in its first week.

  The whole genre was sent up in Craig Mazin’s lamentable spoof Superhero Movie, in which nerdy costumed hero “Dragonfly” (Drake Bell) avenged the death of his beloved uncle (poor old Leslie Nielsen). Even worse was Disaster Movie, which spoofed everything from Cloverfield to Enchanted.

  Nineteen years after the previous episode, sixty-four-year-old Harrison Ford returned as the adventuring archaeologist in Steven Spielberg’s disappointing fourth instalment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Cate Blanchett’s Cold War spy was after the eponymous extra-terrestrial artefact, while a returning Karen Allen and the annoying Shia LaBeouf were along for the ride. In the second highest Memorial Day weekend gross ever, it took $152 million in five days at #1.

  Despite the film’s box-office success, the makers of Comedy Central’s South Park cartoon were not impressed either, and they took their anger out on Spielberg and George Lucas in an October episode of the TV show.

  Meanwhile, Spielberg was named as a defendant when his studio DreamWorks, its parent company Viacom, and Universal Pictures were accused of stealing the plot of the short story that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic Rear Window for Disturbia, also starring LeBeouf.

  A remake of the 1975 Death Race 2000, Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race pitted Jason Statham’s framed convict against Joan Allen’s scheming prison warden. An unlikely Statham also turned up in Uwe Boll’s sword & sorcery video game adaptation In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, which also included embarrassing turns from John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds.

  As the emotionless “Klaatu”, Keanu Reeves was perfectly cast as the alien messenger who arrived in Central Park with his warrior robot Gort in Scott Derrickson’s totally pointless remake of the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.

  Vin Diesel’s mercenary helped smuggle a mysterious girl (Melanie Thierry) to a dystopian New York City in Babylon A.D., based on a French novel. The studio took the final cut away from director Matthieu Kassovitz, but it still didn’t help.

  Eddie Murphy played an alien spaceship searching for salt in Brian Robbins’ comedy flop Meet Dave.

  Although it opened at #1 in the US, Roland Emmerich’s (pre-) historically inaccurate 10,000 BC was also not a mammoth hit.

  Based on the 1960s Japanese anime TV series, the Wachowski Brothers’ futuristic Speed Racer was all flash and no substance, and was quickly overtaken at the US box-office after grossing just $40 million.

  Even Steve Care
ll couldn’t save Get Smart, an updated reworking of the 1960s CBS-TV sci-spy series.

  Carell and Jim Carrey added their vocal talents to the CGI cartoon Horton Hears a Who!, based on the classic 1954 children’s book by Theodor Geisel (“Dr Seuss”).

  Featuring the voices of John Cusack, Steve Buscemi and Eddie Izzard, the Frankenstein-inspired 3-D CGI cartoon Igor debuted at #4 in the US.

  Christopher Lee voiced his character “Count Dooku” only for the animated movie version of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which was basically an extended trailer for the highly stylized TV cartoon series.

  From Pixar/Disney, Andrew Stanton’s annoying Wall.E featured the eponymous garbage-collecting robot left behind on an abandoned Earth. It took more than $60 million in its first week.

  The French-made Fear(s) of the Dark was an anthology of disturbing black and white cartoons from six different directors.

  In July it was reported that a complete if worn print of Fritz Lang’s classic three-and-a-half hour SF movie Metropolis was discovered in the archives of the Museo de Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It apparently included reels removed from release prints after the film’s 1927 debut. The discovery came less than two weeks after New York’s Kino International announced that it had completed a frame-by-frame restoration of the film.

  Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Fredric March received a welcome theatrical revival in the UK.

  Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story looked at the career of the veteran exploitation film producer and director of the 1950s and ’60s. Among those who contributed to Jeffrey Schwartz’s documentary were Leonard Maltin, Bob Burns, Stuart Gordon, Fred Olen Ray, Roger Corman, John Landis, Joe Dante and Forrest J Ackerman.

  Dreams with Sharp Teeth was a feature-length documentary by Erik Nelson about the often controversial but always entertaining Harlan Ellison. It had its New York premiere in June.

  Almost before it had time to get established, Toshiba’s HD-DVD format was withdrawn in February and Blu-ray Disc was declared the winner in the format wars.