If you’ve spent the last decade popping red balloons, avoiding reading creepy children’s pop-up books, and declining invitations to quaint cabins in the woods, you must have been feasting on as many monster movies as we have.
One of the oldest forms of horror cinema, monster movies and their dreaded villains come in all shapes. Whether they're aliens, ghouls, demons, or vampires, monsters can represent a manifestation of our own fears. Or more uncomfortably, they can represent who we truly are. And honestly, we have a lot to fear these days. From the anxieties of adolescence to the real-world fear of a government’s inability to act during a disaster, these complicated fears aren’t always straightforward to encapsulate in film. That’s where monsters come in.
Since 2010, Pennywise the Clown chased us through the sewers, Mister Babadook became an icon onscreen and off, and vampires got unexpectedly polite. Here are 13 of our favourite monster movies, unranked, from the last decade. Just remember, if you find a creepy diary in a cabin basement, don't read the Latin.
1. IT
All it took for this modern horror masterpiece’s marketing team was a bunch of well-placed red balloons to strike fear into the hearts of cinemagoers. Andrés Muschietti’s formidable 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s classic horror novel was realised in two parts, with the former being one of the best monster movies of the decade — both smashing critical responses and box office numbers.
Set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, IT sees a motley group of seven kids, the so-called Losers' Club, who must confront their own personal demons to battle the terrifying Pennywise, a murderous clown who casually slithers out of the sewer system to prey on children. While the film’s not just about a scary clown, and delves deeper into fears associated with adolescence, the clown will truly haunt you. Bill Skarsgård, who’s been perfecting that fucked-up smile since he was a kid, truly spins an unforgettable Pennywise — if he’s not onscreen, you dread when he will be. While IT: Chapter Two proves an ample ending and features an undeniably top-notch performance by Bill Hader, it is the first chapter truly stands out. Or rather, floats.
2. A Quiet Place
John Krasinki’s tense directorial debut, A Quiet Place, weaponized sound to the point that audiences found themselves too scared to eat crunchy snacks during the movie. This hold-your-breath horror film follows a young family — led by Krasinski himself alongside Emily Blunt — doing their best to silently survive in a world where monsters hunt by sound.
"Sound plays another character in this film. Sound's the enemy of this family,” said Blunt. It’s this plot device that had the film constantly compared to Netflix’s Bird Box, but A Quiet Place differentiates itself in many ways, one of which is the decision to show the monsters. Reveal aside, the film will leave you with many lingering questions, some of which we can help with.
3. The Babadook
Ba-Ba-DOOOOOK. You’ll never quite see a children’s pop-up book the same way after watching Australian director Jennifer Kent’s frightening debut. Based on Kent’s 2005 short film Monster, The Babadook is an elegant, dark, poignant, and frankly terrifying analysis of grief, and one of the most impactful monster movies of the last ten years.
Lead actor Essie Davis truly puts everything into her performance as Amelia Vanek, a woman who is tormented, along with her son, by the titular monster — the croaking tall figure in a top hat you won’t easily forget. Kent used puppetry and stop-motion to create the now-iconic creature, which took on a life of its own outside the film when it somehow emerged as an unofficial mascot of LGBTQ pride.
4. Attack the Block
“It’s raining Gollums” in south London in this absolute humdinger of an alien invasion film. Featuring the film debut of Star Wars’ John Boyega and starring future Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker and Fighting With My Family’s Nick Frost, Attack the Block is one of the most creative and fun monster movies of the decade.
Directed by Ant-Man screenwriter Joe Cornish and produced by the studio behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, this British sci-fi comedy horror sees a group of teenagers led by Boyega, who must defend their council estate, Wyndham Tower, from some incredibly pissed off aliens — or rather “big alien gorilla wolf motherfuckers” — all on Guy Fawkes Night. It’s gruesome and hilarious.
5. What We Do in the Shadows
What would a group of four vampire housemates living their best, or at least, their most 'normal' lives after dark in the New Zealand city of Wellington look like? In 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi teamed up with Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement for one of the most delightful monster movies of the decade. Throw in some exceedingly polite werewolves, led by Conchords alumni Rhys Darby, trying their best to avoid being rude — “We’re werewolves, not swearwolves” — and you’ve got one hell of a fun horror mockumentary. Waititi and Clement also executive produced the TV spinoff, which was even better.
While we’re talking slice-of-life vampire films, shoutout to Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as suave-as-blazes vampires. We had to pick one, but this deserves a high five.
6. Shin Godzilla
While the rebooted big-budget popcorn blockbusters Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters smashed and crashed through cinemas in recent years, another take on the terrible lizard took the crown for us. From Evangelion mastermind Hideaki Anno, Shin Godzilla unpacks the bureaucracy behind handling the invasion of a Giant Unidentified Creature, blatantly taking cues from the government's handling of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Though there are some spectacularly destructive city-stomping scenes, the film focuses on the repercussions of a government slow to act during a disaster. You’ll sit through meeting upon meeting, weighing up pros and cons, considering expert testimony, and managing logistics, before any action is taken. Which government agency is responsible for this thing? What's the biggest priority: people or damage? While this is all happening, the evolving monster itself just looks like it has the greatest time, slithering and smashing its way to global chaos.
7. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
You’ve never seen an Iranian feminist vampire western like this. Seriously, it’s the only one. Director Ana Lily Amirpour's debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is unlike any vampire film before it, hinged around the nightly hunts of an intense young vampire (played by Sheila Vand). Set in the ominous small town of Bad City, it’s at once a love story, a crime movie, a full-blown noir western, and a monster movie, with one of the best soundtracks around.
8. Troll Hunter
If you were to tell me that a found-footage horror about trolls would actually be an effective monster movie, I’d think you were… trolling me (sorry, it was right there). But Norwegian director André Øvredal’s Trollhunter uses dry humour and creative mythology-building to ask one question: What if there are trolls hiding in the mountains, and the Norwegian government not only knows about it, but they’ve deployed specialised hunters to keep them at bay?
It’s a mockumentary that deploys the ol' student filmmaker-shot, first-person POV techniques popularised by The Blair Witch Project, and while there are some good scares, it actually makes the ride kind of… fun? The key lies in the troll hunter himself.
9. The Cabin in the Woods
A film that’s much smarter than it looks, The Cabin in the Woods is the ultimate slasher/monster movie homage, without being a schlocky parody like Scary Movie. In fact, producer Joss Whedon called it a “very loving hate letter” to modern horror movies. A group of college friends, each embodying a long-defined horror film trope, hit the road for the requisite drunken weekend away in a remote forest cabin. You get it. But if you think you know where this film’s going to go, that’s the key to this savvy horror film, with two whip-smart engineers (played by the show-stealing Bradley Whitford and super-dry Richard Jenkins) quite literally changing the game.
The Cabin in the Woods is the directorial debut of Buffy the Vampire Slayer writer Drew Goddard, and unpacks the horror genre as expertly as Randy from Scream would. There are monsters aplenty, in every shape and size, but which one you get is entirely up to our college friends. If only everyone would listen to Marty: “Do not read the Latin.”
10. Train to Busan
There are zombie films, and there are zombie films, and South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho’s 2016 thriller Train to Busan is one-of-a-kind. Almost entirely set on a train, the film follows a man (Gong Yoo) and his daughter who find themselves passengers right in the middle of a zombie outbreak.
As fast paced as its hordes of undead (yes, they run, Dawn of the Dead remake-style), the film sinks those suddenly chomping teeth in and doesn't let go until the final sequence. The sheer scale of the zombie population is realised in some impressive extra work, and there are more than a few sequences that'll have you shifting uncomfortably in your seat. Genuinely moving, very bloody, and above all, an example of who the true monsters inevitably turn out to be during a disaster: It us.
11. Crimson Peak
Guillermo del Toro dabbled in a spot of Victorian-era Gothic horror in 2015 with his big-budget ghost story Crimson Peak. It’s your classic set-up: A mysterious English baronet (Tom Hiddleston) with a crumbling mansion in northern England piques the romantic interest of a young aspiring New York author (Mia Wasikowska) and off they trot to their creepy new home. But of course, the mansion holds a secret, not to mention conveniently blood-red clay grounds, some frighteningly bloody ghosts, and a highly sinister sister figure (Jessica Chastain).
Armed with a $55 million budget and some solid jump-scares, Crimson Peak is the kind of camp, isolated-location nightmare that the likes of Edgar Allan Poe might appreciate.
12. Under the Skin
Now here's an unconventional monster movie that will stay, uh, under your skin for a long time after the credits roll. Jonathan Glazer's haunting 2013 sci-fi Under the Skin sees Scarlett Johansson as a predatory alien who drives around hunting men in Scotland. But it's not that straightforward. It's one of the strangest, most hypnotic, and relentlessly unsettling movie experiences of the decade. Plus, the sheer ambition of the production itself must be noted: Many of the scenes were filmed with hidden cameras within the film's white van, which Johansson herself drove around trawling for actual men, not actors, while Glazer and his team sat with monitors in the back.
13. Under the Shadow
Tehran in the '80s during the Iran-Iraq War is the last place you’d expect to be facing a djinn, but in Under the Shadow, that’s exactly what’s up. The directorial debut of Iranian-born, London-based filmmaker Babak Anvari, this modern version of a haunted house horror film centres around medical student Shideh, whose family’s apartment building is hit by a missile during the conflict. But that’s not the only thing to worry about, with a shadowy presence threatening Shideh and her daughter. It's a bonafide masterclass in tension building.
