The 2010s had some very amazing horror movies, most of which I did not get a chance to watch because life really picked up in the 2010s and I had other things to focus on. I did get to watch a handful of movies that made selecting just three that much more difficult. My favorite horror movies in the 2010s were mostly suspense like Hereditary (2018), The Visit (2015), The Witch (2015), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Get Out (2017), Us (2019), A Quiet Place (2018), and Shutter Island (2010). The 2010s also was the start of one of my favorite shows, The Walking Dead, but this article isn’t about horror television, it is about movies and I have selected The Witch, Get Out, and Us.
The Witch is a movie about a family in the 1630s that start out looking for something to blame all the bad things in their lives on. I think the reason this movie worked so well was the setting in the middle of nowhere and the limited cast. For most of the movie there were four people, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), William (Ralph Ineson), Katherine (Kate Dickie), and Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and the animals. One of the animals was a goat named Black Phillip. The sad truth of the movie is that the evil is only able to take hold because of how the family treats each other. The acting, music, and setting are all perfectly in line and invoke that feeling of fear and dread that just never lets up. Oddly enough, this movie was the tamest and more predictable of the three.
The next movie is Get Out. This movie just reinforced my natural mistrust of people and is the first of two movies being discussed by director Jordan Peele. Get Out follows an interracial couple named Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) that go to meet her family who is just a little too inviting. At first it feels like the family is trying to over compensate for their feelings on their daughter dating an African American. Everyone involved seems a little too friendly, a little too perfect, just a little off giving the audience an uneasy feeling. By the time Chris realizes what is happening, it is almost too late. Throughout the movie, the audience learns that the family is only a little too perfect because the daughter is literally kidnapping black men that she dates for her family to experiment on. Get Out was one of those movies that was less scary and more uneasy for me which is even worse.
The last movie of the 2010s is Us. Us was also directed by Jordan Peele. The main characters all play two characters, themselves and their doppelgangers. While this movie feels a bit like Get Out, it also achieves its own unsettling story. Us is the story of two vacationing families that are seeking to escape daily life when things go sideways when someone breaks into the house that the two families are staying in. This movie stars Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson and Red, Winston Duke as Gabe Wilson and Abraham, Elisabeth Moss as Kitty Tyler and Dahlia, Tim Heidecker as Josh Tyler and Tex, Shahadi Wright Joseph as Zora Wilson and Umbrae, Evan Alex as Jason Wilson and Pluto, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Russel Thomas and Weyland, Anna Diop as Rayne Thomas and Eartha, Cali Sheldon as Becca Tyler and Io, and Noelle Sheldon as Lindsey Tyler and Nix. The first character played by each actor are the protagonist and the second character played by each actor are the antagonist that are the doppelgangers that are wreaking havoc causing a high stress feeling for the audience and creating the feeling of not knowing who to trust.
I am not sure what exactly I was going through in the 2010s, but the main theme of all of these movies is be careful who you trust. If you can’t trust your friends, family, or significant other then who can you trust and to be careful who you trust. These three movies were not necessarily what I would have watched when I first started watching horror movies, but like everything else, I grew and evolved to the point that my taste in horror movies involve very little murder and much more thrill which is much more exciting.