Not a bias against what I wish horror was. A bias against the low ceiling of what horror, in my own personal experience, has any realistic potential of being.
Don't confuse what I'm saying. I love horror. In fact, if you told me that a movie was guaranteed to scare me to death -- I guess not literally -- I would probably stop what I'm writing mid-sentence and go watch it. I'd be so excited to feel that rare feeling of being utterly chilled by something -- possibly the rarest feeling we get at the movies -- that I wouldn't want to wait a moment longer.
(Okay, maybe until it was dark out.)
Because that so rarely happens, I never imagined horror would have any chance to finish at the top of the heap in any year, what with at least 150 other movies competing for that same spot.
In fact, any genre film has a tough row to hoe in that regard. Because you are making such a statement with a #1 movie, usually it has to tick a lot of different boxes to get there. Most of my #1s have been a mixture of a couple genres, or in a genre that is not consider a genre, in the sense of our term "genre film." For example, a drama is not a genre film. A horror movie is.
But maybe I should have expected horror to make this big leap at some point, because it's gotten close in the past. Today, in my final piece about 2023 movies (I think), as I reflect on possibly my unlikeliest #1 movie of all time, I want to consider just how close.
So I'm going to go back all the way to 1996, when this whole thing started, to see what my highest-ranked horror movie was each year, and whether it had any realistic chance of scaling the heights that Skinamarink just scaled. I'll also tell you how many horror movies I ranked each year, just to get a sense of how my relationship with horror has changed over the years.
Also: For a movie to count as horror, IMDB has to include horror as one of the maximum three genres that are listed for each movie.
1996 - The Craft (#33 out of 43, 22%) - And we're off to an inauspicious start. The Craft wasn't only the highest horror movie I ranked that year, it was the only horror movie I ranked -- and I think it was really more of a coming-of-age movie than a horror movie. But horror is indeed the third genre listed on IMDB after "drama" and "fantasy." This gives you an indication of the fact that I didn't, at first, flock to horror. It took time and I had to develop my skills. 1 horror movie seen (2% of total).
1997 - Scream 2 (#22 out of 39, 44%) - Getting slightly better, up to three horror movies for the year. The explanation why the original Scream did not appear in my 1996 rankings is that I didn't see it until after my ranking deadline, which must have meant I saw Scream 2 fairly soon after that. And then didn't see another Scream movie until two years ago when they rebooted it. 3 horror movies seen (8% of total).
1998 - None. Wow. Were horror movies that bad or was I just that unlikely to seek them out? For the record, that's 58 movies without a single horror movie. 0 horror movies seen (0% of total).
1999 - The Blair Witch Project (#8 out of 57, 86%). Was this the moment it was all unlocked for me? First top ten horror, and still one of my all-time most memorable trips to the movie theater. I suspect that if I had had more courage, I would have ranked this higher. Sleepy Hollow and The Sixth Sense also made my top 20 at 12th and 14th, respectively, though today The Sixth Sense would be top ranked out of those three. Oddly, they were the only three. 3 horror movies seen (5% of total).
2000 - American Psycho (#16 out of 58, 72%). I will have to accept IMDB's definition of this as a horror movie. It's a horror movie that crosses several genres if it's a horror movie at all, which is what I said earlier in this piece I might need for a #1. Though this was not all that close to being #1. (Interestingly, The Cell came one spot later, and today it is close to the top of all my horror rankings on Flickchart -- though again this straddles several genres.) 4 horror movies seen (7% of total).
2001 - From Hell (#35 out of 73, 48%). I was getting desperate for my first horror so I checked IMDB and yes, they think this is horror. Fine. But I think I'm going in the wrong direction here. Only three and one of them is Scary Movie 2. So much for 1999 unlocking things. 3 horror movies seen (4% of total).
2002 - Resident Evil (#59 out of 80, 26%). I'm not sure what to make of all this. 1 horror movie seen (1% of total).
Maybe I should have started this exercise more recently.
I'll keep plugging away.
2003 - 28 Days Later (#16 out of 58, 72%). Rebounding a little bit here with a sigh of relief. 4 horror movies seen (7% of total).
2004 - Shaun of the Dead (#17 out of 59, 71%). A classic that would be higher today compared with the rest of these movies. In fact, when I reranked them according to my current rankings on Flickchart in this post, it was my 7th overall from 2004. 3 horror movies seen (5% of total).
2005 - Constantine (#43 out of 73, 42%). Why did I start this exercise again? At least the total is getting decent ... -ish. 5 horror movies seen (7% of total).
2006 - Night Watch (#17 out of 77, 78%). This stylish Russian vampire movie from Timur Bekmambetov has the makings of a contender, but when I tried to watch it a few years ago without the stylized subtitles being available, I found myself stopped before the movie was even two minutes old. Most total horror so far and highest percent of total. 6 horror movies seen (8% of total).
2007 - I Am Legend (#10 out of 82, 88%). Second top ten, even if horror is only the third genre listed for this on IMDB and certainly not the first that comes to mind for me. Last place this year was also a horror (Captivity). Hey, look at that total grow! 8 horror movies seen (10% of total).
2008 - Let the Right One In (#4 out of 87, 95%). Most credible bid yet and a movie I still cherish 15 years later. Cloverfield was also in my top ten and that is also considered a horror. Plus: double digits! 10 horror movies seen (11% of total).
2009 - Zombieland (#14 out of 113, 88%). It's mostly comedy but there's some good horror. Finally over 100 movies watched (never to drop back below), nine of which were horror. 9 horror movies seen (8% of total).
2010 - The Human Centipede (#14 out of 109, 87%). Still love it. 9 horror movies seen (8% of total).
2011 - Red State (#2 out of 121, 98%). Well this is the closest any movie has gotten, I can already tell you that without doing the other 11 years. Horror may be a stretch as a genre for this, but I wouldn't have looked it up if I hadn't thought it was a possibility. Take Shelter at #3, tied for the second best bid, is also a bit of a stretch as a horror. And Tucker and Dale vs. Evil at #10 made three in my top ten. I'm sensing a real change here ... 8 horror movies seen (7% of total).
2012 - The Cabin in the Woods (#17 out of 119, 86%). It's encouraging how well some of these choices hold up, even if they were not realistic contenders for the top spot. 9 horror movies seen (8% of total).
2013 - Berberian Sound Studio (#5 out of 128, 96%). Another really credible run, especially by percentage, but I can tell you this wouldn't have had made it that year. Highest total yet by number. 11 horror movies seen (9% of total).
2014 - Enemy (#9 out of 136, 93%). To think this finished one ahead of Under the Skin, which was my #10 of the whole decade five years later. Still a pretty good movie I think. Big jump forward in numbers! 15 horror movies seen (11% of total).
2016 - The Nightmare (#18 out of 143, 87%). I can say for certain that this is my highest ranked horror documentary ever -- and possibly the only one I've ever seen. It's actually scary! 15 horror movies seen (10% of total).
2017 - The Blackcoat's Daughter (#3 out of 145, 98%). This is the title I really think of when I think of horror movies that almost made it. It got five stars and was my highest ranked horror movie of the whole decade, coming in at #8 overall. Not too shabby. Another new record in quantity and percentage. (For a moment I thought my #1, A Ghost Story, might have been classified as a horror, blowing the whole theme of this post out of the water. Fortunately, its three genres are drama, fantasy and mystery.) 18 horror movies seen (12% of total).
2018 - Climax (#5 out of 149, 97%). It's certainly horrifying, I just wasn't sure IMDB would classify it as such. Another 18 here. 18 horror movies seen (12% of total).
2019 - Vivarium (#3 out of 146, 98%). Another movie with multiple genres, Vivarium certainly has some horror images you can't get out of your head. As with The Blackcoat's Daughter, I gave this five stars -- the only two on this list that got that many, other than Skinamarink. And blowing past 20 in easily the highest by total number and by percentage. 23 horror movies seen (16% of total).
2020 - The Platform (#10 out of 149, 93%). That's a top ten movie in four straight years now. With more to come I think. 17 horror movies seen (11% of total).
2021 - Saint Maud (#8 out of 170, 95%). I've already watched this again and am thinking of it as an early contender for my top 25 of the decade. That's five in a row. And approaching 30 total horrors ranked, though not quite a record percentage. 28 horror movies seen (16% of total).
2022 - Nope (#14 out of 175, 92%). Not quite a sixth straight top ten for horror, but a very respectable showing nonetheless. All year I have been desperate to show this to my wife and she's never in the mood. 28 horror movies seen (16% of total).
2023 - Skinamarink (#1 out of 168, 100%). And we finally get there. But let's still see how many total I saw: 23 horror movies seen (14% of total).
So what does all this reader unfriendly numbers crunching tell us?
Well it shows how far I've come as a horror fan in 27 years. Back from my meager beginnings when I saw one or zero horror movies a year, and the top one could be ranked as low as 59th with as low as a 26th percentile in that year's rankings, now it's been more than a decade since I've ranked fewer than 15 horror movies, and nearly 20 years since my top-ranked horror movie was outside my top 20. I've ranked as many as 28 horror movies in a single year, representing as high as 16% of my total viewings.
Of course, part of this can be explained by my huge increase in the number of movies I've ranked over the years, with as few as 39 back in the 1990s to as high as 175 in 2022. While that has a clear impact on the total number of horror movies ranked, you can't argue with the great equalizer: the percentile of the top-ranked horror movie out of all the movies ranked that year. While only one top finisher in the 1990s exceeded the 50th percentile (though other lower movies also exceeded it that year), you have to go back to 2016 to find a top horror movie that did not break the 90th percentile of my rankings.
This also includes 12 top ten finishes for horror in those 27 years. Wait, that's only 12 years where the highest ranked horror was a top ten. There were some years where more than one movie classifiable as horror, and as many as three in at least one year, finished in my top ten. So it's actually closer to 20 top ten finishes for horror movies in those 27 years.
Maybe I was too quick to talk about the low ceiling for what horror could possibly accomplish at the beginning of this piece.
All this is to say is that although it was a long time coming, there were definite indicators that this day would eventually arrive.
What genre is next to claim its first #1? Action? (I may already have one of those.) Musical? (Don't think I have one yet.) Torture porn? (Okay now we're getting ridiculous.)
Before I leave you and I leave 2023 behind until it's time to start talking about the Oscars telecast, I did want to give you a final word about Skinamarink in particular -- which functions as a final validation of horror's first #1.
There was another reason why Skinamarink was very unlikely to claim this spot in my 2023 rankings, and it has to do with the mood I was in when I started watching it.
Just a few minutes before I started watching back on June 22nd, I made a very insensitive remark to my wife. I didn't belittle her, I didn't make fun of her, I didn't undermine her or anything like that. But I did make a comment about a sensitive topic that I should have known was timed incorrectly, if there was ever any good timing for it at all. I tried to apologize but she was furious. I knew I had to give her time to recover, and nothing I said would immediately fix it, but the exchange left me shaken.
And then I started watching Skinamarink.
I should have been totally distracted and failed to get on this movie's wavelength, especially with its slow start that arguably never gets any less slow. Instead, I just got sucked into its world and basically had chills going down my spine for 50% of the running time.
You could say that having had an "argument" -- not really an argument in the sense that I said something insensitive and she stormed out of the room -- only put me in a more perfectly vulnerable headspace for Skinamarink. What greater horror can there be than your wife leaving you? (Which would of course be the catastrophist's worry about the worst possible consequences of such an exchange.)
But I don't know if that holds water. I think what's more likely is that thinking about this exchange would prevent me from paying attention to what was happening in the movie, which in this case is not much, so there's not a lot to grab onto -- at least at the start. I'd be rewinding and rewinding and wondering if I weren't just better off giving this a proper chance on another night.
Nope. I sat there rigid with fear, and it left an indelible impression that carried Skinamarink all the way to the top.
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