Dread Central’s Top 10 International Horror Movies of 2024
Welcome to Dread Central Unearthed 2024, where we’re sharing our favorite films, moments, kills, scares, and more from this year in horror. Today, Chad Collins is sharing the top 10 international horror films of 2024.
2024 has been a remarkably strong year for horror movies. There have been fantastic prequels and groundbreaking sequels, and even in December, there is still more to come. Some of the strongest releases this year, however, have been on the international front. They’ve been harder to track down than in the past, with several appearing on streaming without fanfare (or worse, hidden behind cryptic NFT purchases). As the year comes to a close, check out our list for the Top 10 International horror movies of the year. I promise it’s worth screaming about.
10. Under Paris (dir. Xavier Gens)
Shark horror has been in a pretty rough space since Jaws was released decades ago. Seriously, try to think of a shark horror movie that’s more than competent at best. There’s The Reef, The Shallows, maybe Open Water, but otherwise… there’s not much. It’s odd, since shark horror simultaneously appears to be the easiest and hardest subgenre to get right. The simplicity of a shark chowing down, rooted in a pretty quotidian fear, seems easy enough. Yet, too regularly, shark horror fails to surface beyond the legacy of Spielberg’s toothy classic. Under Paris is no Jaws, but it does end with the entirety of Paris flooded in a world, presumably, on the brink of becoming a post-apocalyptic shark paradise.
What starts as an reasonably grounded eco-fable soon gives way to sharktastic excess. Under Paris is everything and the kitchen sink. That mishmash of genre impulses will likely alienate some viewers, but for anyone down for heaps of CG gore and shark carnage, Under Paris is the most energized the subgenre has been in years.
9. Infested (dir. Sébastien Vaniček)
I hate spiders. Spiders are terrible. I’ve seen Arachnophobia a dozen times, and across those watches, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it in its entirety. Which is to say, Infested is one of the best movies I only sort of watched this year. For long durations of Sébastien Vaniček’s directorial debut, I was cowering with my hands over my eyes. Infested is social commentary mixed with Evil Dead-style gore and chaos. A lethal desert spider rapidly reproduces in a Parisian apartment complex, slowly picking off residents until the entire building is infested (hence the title). Just blow the entire building up.
Luckily, they do, but not until the end when my own arachnophobia had reached its breaking point. Infested is incredible, but if you’re even remotely afraid of spiders, it’s going to be a long, uncomfortable, squirm-inducing watch. Without a doubt, this French-language creature feature is one of the best of the year.
8. The Coffee Table (dir. Caye Casas)
Just… why? The Coffee Table is incredible, and you should absolutely watch it, but it’s not a movie I ever really want to think about again. Caye Casas’ black comedy has been making waves since its 2022 festival premiere, though it wasn’t until this year, with the film’s arrival on Video On Demand, that the world writ large could finally see what festival attendees had been raving about. The Coffee Table’s most shocking scene happens pretty quickly into the film, but no matter what you’ve heard,
I promise it’s more upsetting than you can prepare for. Even a quick Wiki search in preparation won’t save you from the sheer, swift horror of The Coffee Table’s inciting incident. What follows is, thankfully, less horrifying, though no less grim. You’ll laugh a lot, then feel bad for laughing, and then probably clutch your heart and wonder why you’d willingly put yourself through such pain. If that’s not the hallmark of a horror masterpiece, I’m not sure what is.
7. MadS (dir. David Moreau)
MadS could easily have been another throwaway slice of gimmick horror. Gimmick horror is used here as a neutral term, of course. Unfriended was undoubtedly a gimmick, but it remains one of the strongest horror releases of the century. Ostensibly one-take (though more likely hiding clever cuts throughout), MadS is a zombie movie with drive. Shifting perspectives between several key characters as audiences witness the real-time unraveling of a small French suburb, David Moreau’s MadS is a psychedelic fever dream pitched at eleven.
While it takes a moment to get going and similarly threatens to unravel by the end, Moreau’s feature, forgive the pun, resurrects a dying subgenre. If you’ve ever doubted there was anything new to do with the undead, let MadS put those fears to rest. These infected shamble like nothing you’ve ever seen before, and in MadS, they’re more ferocious and frenzied than ever. This is electric filmmaking, pure and simple.
6. The Devil’s Bath (dirs. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s The Devil’s Bath is some of the most confident, assured genre filmmaking I’ve seen this decade. The duo’s singular approach to historical fidelity and deep-rooted depressive symptoms—conceptualized here as the titular bath— amounts to the bleakest the genre has been in some time. Par for the course, naturally, given the pair’s previous work on both Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge, but The Devil’s Bath is an entirely different beast altogether. This is hopeless horror, the kind of cinema that is rotten to the core, augmented by an austere, matter-of-fact approach to historical violence, violent patriarchy, and oppressive religious structures. The opening beat is shocking, though the ostensibly random act of violence that starts the film has profound reverberations for everything that follows.
Broadly, the film is a slow burn as Agnes (Anja Plaschg, absolutely incredible) succumbs to the darkness amidst a loveless marriage and lack of agency in her own life. Depression has never been so visceral. I’m not sure there’s anything of value to glean from The Devil’s Bath beyond known truths—the world has always hated women—but I am sure you’ll feel this one deep in your bones, and it won’t be easily shaken.
5. The Vourdalak (dir. Adrien Beau)
The Vourdalak is the latest edition to this list. It arrived on my radar pretty late into the year, and despite what everyone was telling me, I couldn’t quite figure out what Adrien Beau’s feature debut was about. Turns out, The Vourdalak is an adaptation of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s 1839 novella The Family of the Vourdalak. The titular Vourdalak is a Slavic vampire, one whose mythos dovetail some from the conventional lore. Broadly, a Vourdalak endeavors to turn its entire family, ingratiating itself back into the domestic unit before all hell breaks loose. The Vourdalak might strike you as weird, dare I say “elevated” horror at first. It’s French, a period piece, and Kacey Mottet Klein’s marquis makeup is certainly striking.
Yet, at its core, The Vourdalak is tragic, earnest, and most surprisingly, pretty scary. The marionette work for the titular beast must be seen to be believed, and it’s such a stunning, dynamic way of modernizing old legends for contemporary audiences. The Vourdalak is electric debut filmmaking, so gothic, so assured, so replete with the visual prowess of filmmakers like Roger Corman and Jean Rollin, it confidently, deservedly enters the canon of the Fantastique.
4. Sleep (dir. Jason Yu)
It’s best going into Sleep as blind as possible. Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) and Hyeon-soo (the late Lee Sun-kyun) revel in domestic bliss. They’re newlyweds, have a super cute apartment, and support each other with the kind of infectious affection designed to render the next hour-and-a-half as frightening as it is heartbreaking. Hyeon-soo is afflicted with a strange, inexplicable bout of sleepwalking. He’s scratching at himself, wandering the apartment in the wee hours of the night, and pretty much terrifying Soo-jin, the perennially patient wife. I won’t spoil what comes next, but their efforts to manage his burgeoning symptoms are complicated by the arrival of a newborn baby. Whether Sleep is supernatural in origins or not, it’s one of the finest Korean thrillers in years. Jason Yu commands expert control over the tricky tonal balance, generating laughs as frequently as he does screams. In other words, please don’t sleep on Sleep.
3. Chime (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, baby! The seminal Japanese filmmaker whose body of work includes Pulse, Cure, and (a personal favorite) Creepy, returned with a short, 45-minute horror spectacle this year. The challenge, of course, is just how complicated Kurosawa’s Chime is to track down. It’s not available to rent in the conventional sense. Instead, Chime is akin to an NFT. In order to access the film, you’ll need to access Roadstead.io, a digital video trading site, create an account, and then rent another user’s copy of the movie. That’s the long and short of it, though it’s a little more complicated. Yeah, the hoops are irritating, but behind the digital malarkey is one of the best horror movies of the year, and certainly Kurosawa’s strongest work in years.
An audio-visual spectacle, a cooking instructor is plagued by a simple chime. Simple enough, right? Chime spirals into pretty nasty territory. It’s existential, haunting, gory, and regularly a marvel. To see Kurosawa back at the top of his game is nothing short of a privilege, and Chime, despite its short length, is liable to haunt you more than most anything else you see this year.
2. Exhuma (dir. Jang Jae-hyun)
Once again, South Korean genre cinema saved the day. Overall, I’ve been pretty impressed with the domestic horror offerings this year, but when I watch something like Exhuma, I can’t help but wish stateside distributors were more willing to take risks as big as the ones South Korean horror regularly takes. Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma, a box office sensation in native South Korea, is grand and mythic. A grab-bag of quasi-supernatural businesspersons, including shamans, Feng shui masters, and morticians, are tasked with relocating graves when families fear the curse of the “Grave’s Call”, a kind of haunting emanating from improperly buried dead. One ostensibly simple case soon spirals out of control, arriving at terrors more outrageous and frightening than anyone could have imagined.
There’s a pretty strong pivot halfway through Jae-hyun’s horror opus I won’t spoil here, but it pretty considerably recontextualizes the entire movie. While audiences are liable to reject the sheer excess of the finale, I was undoubtedly hooked. So much fire. So much gore. So much good. It’s a feature worth exhuming again and again.
1. Red Rooms (dir. Pascal Plante)
Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms is one of the finest films of the year, horror or otherwise. The definitive cinematic interrogation of a true crime culture spiraling rapidly out of control, Red Rooms is absolutely, uncompromisingly terrifying. Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a fashion model in Montreal, is obsessed with the trial of murderer Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos). The opening scene, an unbroken take where the prosecution makes their opening arguments, pointedly outlining the facts of Chevalier’s case and the tragic, gruesome, horrifying details of three young girls’ murders, chills in its simplicity.
That narrative austerity endures, creating a matter-of-fact portrait of self-destructive obsession and the commodification of real violence against real women. It’s also, curiously, one of the finest depictions of dark web legends ever committed to screen. Plante never sensationalizes, and there’s nary a drop of blood. Like Alejandro Amenábar’s incredible Thesis from 1996, the real horror is left to whatever the audience can imagine. Red Rooms will have you imagining horrible things. I haven’t been able to shake it since.
What do you think? What was your favorite international horror movie of the year. Oddity should make the cut, but I saved that for my personal list. Action fans will want to check out Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, and liminal horror fans will love Fake Documentary Q on YouTube. Let me know your favorite international horror movie of the year over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
Categorized:Editorials
