3. She Came From the Woods 4. Knock at the Cabin 5. Bunker 6. Cocaine Bear 7. 65
B Tier
8. Infinity Pool 9. Malum 10. Inside
C Tier
11. Enys Men 12. The Strays 13 Consecration 14. Trinket Box 15. Spoonful of Sugar 16. Unwelcome 17. Hunt Her, Kill Her
D Tier
18. Children of the Corn 19. Fear 20. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 21. The Outwaters
F Tier
22. Skinamarink
Changing my tier list a bit. Decided that the films lumped in the middle started to feel odd to group together, so I seperated them and decided Outwaters probably wasn't deserving in being in a bad tier all its own. I noticed a film called Trinket Box suddenly appeared as a limited release, and sure enough one random theater in our area was playing it this week. It's a movie I really want to like more than I do, but it has some major flaws that really hold it back. I don't know if anyone will watch this one or has even heard of it, but I'll still mark some spoilers:
I don't like films that open with showing you the main characters will be dead by the end. That's especially hard to do with a horror film unless it's very specific circumstances. That said, the middle of the film is really strong and has some really effective jump scares and got me several times. The production quality is also really good considering this is a low budget release, you can hardly tell it almost the entire time. But my main gripe comes with the story. So in short, the villain of the story has an origin story where she witnesses her sister with a black guy (setting is like 1900s Alabama) and that directly leads to the death of her father by was of self defense. She then goes into the basement to retrieve some sort of cursed necklace and kills the rest of her family. Then... decides that she will enact revenge on all interracial couples moving forward. I mean as a person in an interracial relationship the protagonists do a good job of being relatable, but at the same time why is the locket important? What exactly does it do? Why did the girl from the beginning not die from it like the protagonist does at the end? What exactly is the point? I mean villains typically work better when they have some sort of motive; it takes a villain a long time and tons of charisma and screentime to be able to get away with just "I'm evil". It doesn't work in most horror films, even slashers have backstories and motives most of the time. This villain lacks one though, and I feel like even though there's some pieces for a good story here they movie fails to connect points A and B, namely the evil locket and interracial relationships. It doesn't even go with the "needs to feed on the souls or blood of the victims" route. It's just some cursed object that is randomly introduced in the prologue. I dunno, I had really high hopes for this one like half way through but it fell off a lot by the end.