If 2022 was the hurricane of great horror, 2023 was the whole monsoon season.  And as everyone pens their favorite horror of the year lists, with the likes of Saw X, Skinamarink, Talk to Me, and When Evil Lurks topping them, I understand. I agree that they absolutely have earned the hype, and I still think Evil Dead Rise was my favorite theatrical release all year. 

Underrated Horror Movies From 2023 You Have to Watch

But I need to give some love to the more slept-on titles that might have gotten some praise but never breached the smaller audiences that gave it credit; the hidden horror gems if you will! So, as in years past, I’ve made a list of the most underrated overperformers of last year to check out as we roll into 2024. Let’s get into it with the

Honorable Mentions

Pretty Much Everything from Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2023

I’m not going to steal too much time from the other standouts in this article since most of these Brooklyn Horror Film Festival features have yet to get wide releases, but I’d be remiss not to mention these.

The festival puts on brand new smash-hit movies every year, and 2023’s selection was bangers on top of bangers; among all the independent film juggernauts, I can’t pick a favorite. I can only say I was especially fond of Monolith, Conann, and Cannibal Mukbang since each brought a one-of-a-kind viewing experience to BHFF that evoked terror, tragedy, and fun. If you haven’t seen our coverage yet, check out the reviews and interviews here. And keep your eyes peeled for them coming to a film festival near you!

DARK HARVEST

A young man tries to replicate his older brother’s success in winning a gruesome annual competition: starving young men in the town and then cutting them loose to hunt down and eat a jack-o-lantern-headed monstrosity.

It’s hard to walk through Barnes and Noble recently and not notice the cover for the novel that inspired this film popping out on the shelf. A long-awaited adaptation of Norman Partridge’s 2006 book, Dark Harvest captures the perfect Autumnal vibes for any time of the year you’re craving a nasty dose of Halloween spirit.

In an October borderline swamped with big horror releases, I felt obligated to take a gander at the SECOND greatest Halloween horror movie that was snubbed in 2023 by just being released at the wrong time (the first, of course, being Cobweb). What resulted from watching it on a lark was the discovery of a seasonal instant classic; Dark Harvest has some of the best set design, costuming, and lighting choices I’ve seen in a film all year, and the synthesis of it all is a cohesive cinematography that’s slick and violently stylish in the vein of 2019’s Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.

Pair that with a story ripped straight from The Twilight Zone, a cast of intriguing characters, top-tier effects, and a compelling story about manufacturing a monster? Just like Sawtooth Jack himself, it needs to be seen to be believed.  

ZOM 100: BUCKET LIST OF THE DEAD

Akira Tendo has finally been cut loose, no longer worked to the bone by the abusive video production company he slaves away at—at the small cost of Japan being destroyed by a zombie apocalypse.

Japan’s offering on this list rounds out a trinity: with Shaun of the Dead and Anna and the Apocalypse, you now have the perfect trilogy about lovable losers who seize the day while the world is going to hell all around them. Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is the live adaptation of the smash hit manga, but its anime counterpart took most of the wind out of its sails due to a simultaneous release. 

With very few mentions of this charming film making it to the forefront, it only seems appropriate to talk about it. Zom 100 isn’t a technical masterpiece, but its directing captures the fun energy of a slice-of-life anime at the end of the world. It retains the classic story beats of your usual undead apocalypse fare but puts them in a new light, keeping them from getting boring. It also has an absolutely bonkers ending that I couldn’t believe even as I was watching it, so at the very least, watch it for the aquarium set piece in the final act. 

It might not be as colorful visually as its animated sister series, but director Yusuke Ishida makes an endearing romp through zombie-ridden Japan come to life with a spirit of pure fun. Delivering some really visually interesting sequences, Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is definitely greater than the sum of its more trope-filled parts; its campy, high energy, and at a whopping two-hour runtime, it surprisingly didn’t stop entertaining for a single second. 

PROJECT WOLF HUNTING

South Korean criminals being extradited back to their home country take over the freighter transporting them, but in the process end up awakening a supernatural passenger that threatens everyone. 

You might say, “Hey, but this was a 2022 release in South Korea?”, to which I would say, “It released VOD in America this year, so it definitely counts, also don’t sass me in my own roundup article”. 

I don’t like making reductive “X meets Y” comparisons of movies very much, but if it helps an audience that needs to see this find it, so be it. Project Wolf Hunting is Riki-Oh meets Friday the 13th, filled with base, wild carnage, and fantastic fight choreography that doesn’t let up until its final scene. This film is the best action horror of the past decade, and it’s so criminal that it didn’t become an international hit when it came out. I can see this getting a fan following as big as The Raid, and hopefully, our hero behind the camera Kim Hong Sun gets to make a sequel delving into the juicy lore set up in this first entry.

The aesthetic appeal of Project Wolf Hunting is mainly because it has the splatter film sensibilities of more modern grindhouse fare like Planet Terror. The narrative appeal comes from how it makes a delightful send-up of both prison exploitation films and old-school monster movies (Korean character actor Choi Gwi-hwa puts in a crazy good performance as the gruesome creature Alpha who just steals the show in the second half with all the kills). 

For people looking for a movie where the weight in fake blood is equal to the weight of the story’s stakes, you’ll be happy to find this one. I’m not kidding when I say the SFX team had to have been spraying a firehose of red and staining everything in corn syrup to get half of these frames on the reel.

EL CONDE

Augusto Pinochet is a literal vampire. Wackiness ensues. 

The most serious entry on this list (despite the above description), El Conde is another one of those films I expected to blow a hole through Twitter for a week and cause endless discourse due to its controversial main character, but this movie surprised me in every way. 

Augusto Pinochet was, and I say this with all due disrespect, a festering rotten little worm of a person, which is why I dreaded watching El Conde. Talking about what Pinochet did to Chile and its people, verbalizing his very special brand of evil without giving him the respect of infamy is incredibly hard. But Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (of Spencer, Jackie, and Neruda fame) does just that, while still pulling off some bloody excellent filmmaking and chronicling the worst of humanity with the best kind of humor.

This is an off-the-wall pitch-black comedy helmed with excellent directing, the cinematic language of which translates exactly how pathetic Pinochet and his ilk were and makes a gorgeous mockery of them. A film that beautifully expresses disdain and constantly throws endless barbs at its subjects, El Conde rarely misses in delivering its commentary with a laugh. 

Its comedy can catch you off guard completely and nail you right in the head at times, but it’s also just a great horror film out of context thanks to its visuals and more gruesome moments. This one is due for a surge in popularity in a few months once everybody can catch up on the myriad of films that got swallowed in the release schedules of 2023. 

BROOKLYN 45

A tight-knit crew of World War 2 veterans come together at Christmas time to console a grieving friend, but end up trapping themselves in a quickly closing circle of madness.

It’s the best ghost film of the year, made by one of my all-time favorite horror directors. What more could I have asked for? 

Released on Shudder earlier in June after premiering at SXSW, Ted Geoghegan’s Brooklyn 45 quickly wormed its way into my heart as an all-time favorite. It’s on par with his previous work, We Are Still Here, which is one of my top-ten horror films of all time. It’s sincerely an emotional and quietly horrifying film about mourning, which excels at making you contemplate its message while still telling a damn good ghost story (which I discuss more in the review of it here). 

Geoghegan’s directorial spirit is impossible to miss, and the way he pulls together the look and feel of Brooklyn 45 is impeccable. By decking out a cast of acting all-stars with bespoke costumes, handing them a heartbreaker of a script, and placing them on an uncomfortably warm stage that only turns up the heat every few minutes, how could you lose? You get a dramatic horror expedition to the other side entirely captured in one room, and delivers on its emotional premise. This is the platonic ideal of horror bottle films, and I can only praise it. 

With layered, emotional characters primed for analysis and an ending that tastes truly bittersweet once the credits roll, Brooklyn 45 might be the best hidden horror gem of 2023. 

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Did I miss anything that you think should be on here? Tell us on Twitter and Instagram @HorrorPressLLC with any of your underrated horror recommendations. After all, the more the merrier right? And for more news on all horror, big and small, throughout 2024, stay tuned to Horror Press!