Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, described comedy and horror as "opposite sides of the same coin." Since the silent days, movies have blended the genres, and by 1948, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was doing bigger box office numbers than Universal's straight horror pictures at the time.
Comic relief is often a function of a good thriller, with a laugh used to either break tension, or to lull us into a false sense of security from the terror to come. And, of course, there are those horror movies that don't just sneak in the comedy -- they make it a selling point, blending these two extreme emotions like contrasting flavors that go unexpectedly well together.
Agatha Christie-style whodunnits are never entirely out of fashion, and certainly not this year, thanks to movies like Glass Onion and director Halina Reijn's Bodies Bodies Bodies, which finds a group of 20-somethings trapped in a mansion during a hurricane when the titular bodies his the floor. Class consciousness is often at the heart of modern murder mysteries, and that's very much the case here, as is our modern preoccupation with using our online presences to obscure our true identities and motives.
Written by Diablo Cody (Jennifer's Body) and directed by Zelda Williams, Lisa Frankenstein was met with perplexed reviews and promptly came and went from the box office, which is too bad. Soaked in cheeky '80s style, it's the story of a goth teen (Kathryn Newton) who enjoys hanging out by the ornate grave of a Victorian-era teenager. She accidentally reanimates him (as you do), but it's not quite love at first sight: he's still a fetid rotting corpse (embodied by Riverdale's Cole Sprouse), after all. What the two do bond over, however, is revenge. Blending tones and genres with neon-lit visuals, it's a fun -- and surprisingly charming -- horror-comedy.
There's a simple but reasonably good setup here: Kylie (Morgana O'Reilly) is sentenced to house arrest (with her mother, horror of horrors) after busting open an ATM in spectacularly amateur fashion. The house is appropriately ominous, and the exhausting mom (Rima Te Wiata) is also convinced that it's haunted. When weird things start to happen, Kylie believes that there's an intruder from whom she couldn't escape if she wanted to, what with the ankle monitor. Australian filmmaker Gerard Johnstone has constructed a deeply chilling haunted house story that also recognizes how absurd haunted house stories are, blending comedy with horror in just the right amounts.
There's life in the found-footage genre yet, as proven by this year's most inventive horror-comedy, which cleverly calls back to the original Evil Dead with its blend of goofy good humor and wonderfully gross practical effects. Director/star Joseph Winter plays Shawn, a once-popular YouTube personality working on a comeback (one of the movie's most clever conceits is in tricking you into liking a character who, it becomes increasingly clear, doesn't deserve your love). Beloved for his outrageous stunts, he builds an all-night livestream around locking himself in a purportedly haunted house. You can certainly see where that's going, but Winter and company deftly blend solid scares, technical wizardry, and a few laughs into a movie that's uniquely fun while still managing to get in some good digs at our toxic social media landscape.
In the world of Leslie Vernon, your favorite slasher killers are all real historical figures: Michael, Jason, Freddy, etc. Leslie (Nathan Baesel) is looking to join their ranks. He's joined on her macabre quest by journalist Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals), determined to document Vernon's story from the beginning. Scream-style, the movie dismembers slasher movie tropes: Why do people always trip and fall when escaping, and hide in the dumbest places? Like the best horror comedies, though, it's not all funny -- the deadpan humor is layered over plenty of gore, as well as questions about Taylor's complicity in Leslie's crimes (and that of her audience, which is us.)
Doing a parody of Scream, already a kind-of parody in itself, could have been a meta bridge too far -- but the Keenan Ivory Wayans-directed made it work, mostly. The comedy is very broad, and benefits from a reasonable knowledge of late '90s horror movies, but plenty of jokes land, and it's funnier than it has any right to be. Anna Paris stars, but Regina Hall steals the movie as Brenda Meeks, never failing to say exactly what we're all thinking.
OK, there probably aren't a lot of real scares here -- unless you're afraid of Elvira popping out of one of her fabulous costumes -- but nothing says spooky season fun like the Mistress of the Dark herself. Cassandra Peterson plays the horror hostess who receives an inheritance: a mansion, a recipe book, and a poodle, all located in the fun-hating town of Falwell, Massachusetts. While there, she'll have to fight both the conservative townsfolk and the warlock determined to get his hands on that book. But, if there's one thing we know about resourceful Elvira, it's that she's more than just a great rack.
Before it was a show, Shadows was an also-great comedy starring, written, and directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. As the franchise has proven, there are plenty of laughs to be mined from the concept of traditional, old-school vampires coming across as neither sexy nor cool when faced with the modern world.
Though it sank at the box office during its COVID-era limited release, Werewolves Within is a shockingly good adaptation of a video game. The movie version plays a bit like a slightly bloodier Clue: shortly after the arrival of dorky new forest ranger Finn Wheeler (Veep's Sam Richardson, who's delightful here), a number of bizarre attacks lead the townspeople to conclude a werewolf resides among them, and a lot of finger-pointing (and worse) ensues. Director Josh Ruben, whose earlier film Scare Me was similarly delightful, strikes just the right balance between scares and laughs. The fun cast includes What We Do in the Shadows' Harvey Guillén.
A very funny slasher film that also manages plenty of heart, Happy Death Day finds shallow, cliquish sorority girl Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) getting murdered by a mysterious killer -- over and over again. With the Groundhog Day-like premise (with hints of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), she's forced to rely on her wits (and the nerdy guy that she'd never ordinarily talk to) in order to solve her own murder and break the cycle. The movie has plenty of fun putting resourceful, but snotty, Tree through her paces day after day, while also getting some very dark laughs out of the increasingly elaborate deaths she faces. The sequel, Happy Death Day 2U, is very nearly as much fun.
Christopher Landon, writer/director behind innovative comedy-horror movies like Happy Death Day and Freaky (and the next Scream movie), helms this similarly fun but more family-friendly entry. Anthony Mackie is in the lead as Frank Presley, who, with his family, buys a cheap fixer-upper, only for his son Kevin (Jahi Winston) to discover a ghost (played by David Harbour) unliving in the attic. So far, familiar territory, but Kevin wants to help their new ghost while dad only wants to make money -- and so, their ghost goes viral. It's cute, and includes an appearance from Jennifer Coolidge, who makes everything funnier.
Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within) writes, directs, and stars as Fred Banks, a would-be horror writer struggling with writer's block, who rents an isolated cabin hoping that the quiet time will inspire him. Instead, he's visited by Fanny (Aya Cash), a much more successful writer with whom he gets drunk and competitive as the two improvise scary stories that play out before us. The tales are creepy, and the increasing tension between the two mismatched writers adds to a sense of unease -- but the fun is in the ways in which the two writers break down (and sometimes trash) each other's work by way of exploding genre tropes.
James Gunn, now known for the Guardians of the Galaxy movies as well as pretty much everything coming from DC in the near future, got his feature-directing start here, having previously worked as a screenwriter for the delightfully lowbrow Troma company. This one's a fun homage to low-budget horror of the 1980s, and a bit of a cult classic in its own right given that it pretty well disappeared from the box office. Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, and Michael Rooker star in this creepy, funny, and gloopy story of a sentient alien parasite that crashes to Earth in a small South Carolina town and infests the town with crawly creatures.
James Whale, whose Frankenstein movies displayed plenty of his arch, dark sense of humor, took it a bit further with The Old Dark House, a comedy of manners with horror trappings, and an ensemble cast including Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart (who modern audiences know from Titanic), and Charles Laughton. Stranded travelers take refuge in the house of the Femm family, a group of weirdos and queerdos lead by Sir Roderick (cheekily played by a woman, Elspeth Dudgeon). It was early days for horror movies, and, as with the Frankenstein movies, here Whale creates tropes at nearly the same time he's satirizing them.
Speaking of the early Universal Horror-era, this Abbott and Costello (the best of them, by far) plays as a goofy epilogue to the monster-filled franchise that had petered out by the time of this parody. There's nothing really scary here, though the movie does include set pieces that would absolutely fit in with earlier monster movies. What's more, it has the monsters: Béla Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man, Glenn Strange as the Monster, and Vincent Price as the Invisible Man. And while Bud and Lou clown around, they all play it pretty straight, which keeps the movie from sinking too far into silliness.
Noah Segan, a character actor best known for his collaborations with Rian Johnson, expands into writing and directing duties, also starring as Francis, a nice Jewish boy who also happens to be an ancient vampire. He's polite, a little dorky, and also a bloodsucking killer who's interrupted in his solitary travels by a young woman (Victoria Moroles) who turns out to be his daughter. She's half vampire, and looking to connect with her deadbeat dad following the death of her mother. What follows is an amusing roadtrip full of snappy patter, and a few stops for scares.
Ryan Kwanten stars as Wes, a guy who's just about hit rock bottom. Following a bad breakup with his girlfriend, he gets blackout drunk at a rest stop and burns pretty much everything he has on hand, including pictures of his ex, and his pants. Going to puke, he strikes up an increasingly uncomfortable conversation with the guy in the next stall, before finding himself sealed in. It turns out that john next door is occupied by Ghatanothoa, a primordial demigod voiced by J.K. Simmons. From the existential to the deeply personal, this is cosmic horror centered around a rest stop glory hole.
Bruce Campbell plays an aged Elvis Presley alongside Ossie Davis' John F. Kennedy in a nursing home plagued by an ancient Egyptian mummy. That enjoyably silly premise (not to mention Campbell's involvement) is nearly enough to guarantee the film's cult status, but writer/director Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) treats his lead characters with a surprising and elevating dignity.
There have been countless "cabin in the wood"-style horror movies, with every possible variation of the many associated tropes done to death; Sam Raimi was already parodying and subverting the genre with his Evil Dead movies way back in the 1980s. We know these movies, and we know how they're meant to work. While it initially looks like Cabin in the Woods is a laugh-filled Scream-style deconstruction of the subgenre, it soon reveals itself to be something far more ambitious. While the trailer makes it clear that something weird is going on, the movies veers between comedy and existential dread with shocking agility.
It's a Christmas movie! And also a parody of Christmas movies. It's definitely a horror movie, but, in the mid '80s, you could buy dolls, action figures, and storybooks with Gremlins on them, which, given how violent and nightmare-inducing the film is, is both impressively twisted and a deep indictment of a consumer culture in which we'll sell anything to anyone. It's truly twisted, with a sequel that goes even further over the top.
Though mostly played for laughs, director Frank Marshall's spider-attack movie, about the mayhem that unfolds after a hapless nature photographer brings an arachnid hitchhiker back from a trip to the jungle, includes more than one genuinely squirm-inducing moment for anyone who shares the title fear, even a little bit (it involves a slipper). There's some real terror here for anyone who's even remotely skeeved out by anything with so many legs.
A slightly more satirical effort in the shit-goes-down-at-a-dinner-party hour subgenre, this one comes from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, two of the guys behind the Radio Silence that started with V/H/S and went on to (and abruptly exit) the Scream series. Samara Weaving plays Grace, an unassuming young woman going to meet her fiancé's family at their swanky mansion, a visit that turns out to be a ruse; she's actually there to be hunted down as part of a satanic ritual. Luckily, Grace is more resourceful than she first appears, and the prolonged cat and mouse game that follows is filled with impressive action, plenty of blood, and sweet, sweet schadenfreude (turns out it's a lot of fun watching rich assholes get what's coming to them).
Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi returned for this sequel that's very nearly a remake of the first one, but far gloopier. Raimi clearly feels as though upping the gore to ridiculous levels makes for a funnier movie -- and he is 1000% correct. Seriously, directors: Keep pumping the blood, we'll keep laughing.
A very deliberate B-movie, Cocaine Bear nonetheless boasts all-star talent behind and in front of the camera: Elizabeth Banks directs, with Keri Russell in the lead. Based, loosely, on a true story, the title pretty much gives up the premise: American black bear snorts around 75 lb of coke and goes apeshit.
After Night of the Living Dead, George Romero and the film's co-writer, John Russo, parted ways, sending the unlikely franchise off in different directions. Romero's films play as serious social commentary, while Russo's take is deeply satirical, mocking American capitalism, as well as the punks and goth who oppose it in equal measure. It's genuinely very funny, as when the zombies wipe out some paramedics and manage to muster up enough eloquence to request that the radio dispatcher "Send more paramedics."
Starring Song Kang-ho (Snowpiercer, Parasite), The Quiet Family finds an extended family moving from Seoul into the mountains for a taste of the slow life; they've bought a big house that they're going to turn into a hiking lodge. It all sounds lovely until they have to deal with first one body, then another, then more bodies when they try to cover up the other deaths. It's all gloriously absurd.
It takes clueless stoner Anton Tobias (Devon Sawa) a week or so to notice that his parents have gone missing (where did the cat get an eyeball?), but it's not long before he realizes that his hand is possessed (relatable), and that it'll keep on killing, even when severed from his arm. I suppose that there's also a metaphor in play about handsy high schoolers, but it's probably best not to give the movie all that much thought and just have fun.
Most of the Child's Play movies play with comedy to varying degrees (it's a strength of the series that it recognizes its inherent silliness), but Bride of Chucky introduces Jennifer Tilly's Tiffany as Chucky's equally deranged counterpart, and her performance takes things to a whole new level. By the time the two dolls creatively murder a con artist couple and have sex in the aftermath, it's pretty clear what kinda weird-ass movie we're in. The sequel, Seed of Chucky, goes even further into comedy.
More killer dolls, more problems. By the time bad surrogate parent and unlikely gay icon M3GAN shows off her killer moves on the way to machete some guys to death with the blade of a paper cutter, it's clear we're witnessing the birth of a comedy-horror star.
The perfect pairing of Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk finds the two scruffy hillbillies on the wrong side of one of the oldest slasher movie tropes: Their appearance convinces a bunch of college-age campers that they're the backwoods types that are likely to murder them while they sleep. A series of mostly hilarious misunderstandings only deepen the confusion in a movie that has surprising heart for all its silliness.
The instant classic of the comedy-horror genre, Shaun of the Dead also ranks among the best zombie movies. Slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) lives with his lazy best friend, Ed (Nick Frost) on the outskirts of London. There's some genuine thrill to be had in watching the two gradually step up in the face of the zombie apocalypse, and the movie kicks off with a great core joke: In a world of mindless routine and pointless consumption, you hardly even notice that zombies have taken over.
I'm not sure that Sleepaway Camp was intended to be funny, but there are so many strange moments and weird decisions in the movie that it's hard not to watch it with modern eyes as a solid parody of the Friday the 13th genre. it's a cult classic for that reason, as well as for a bonkers twist ending that's either empowering or deeply offensive.
The micro-budget Japanese movie's opening is a 37-minute continuous take involving a zombie-movie film crew attacked by actual zombies. Which is all clever, and includes several fun gags. The movie eared its reputation, though, on the major narrative inversions that happen in its second and third acts, the types of twists that throw everything you've seen before into question. Best watched not knowing more than that, really.
Two American backpackers, David and Jack (David Naughton and Griffin Dunne) are attacked by a werewolf while traveling in England. With the help of some incredible, gut-churning practical effects, David becomes an increasingly dangerous wolf man -- while Jack becomes his increasingly smart-assed ghost corpse companion.
The platonic ideal of a horror comedy: full of gloriously deranged kills (including one of the most memorable openings in slasher cinema) and plenty of genuine scares, it's also a sharp straight send-up of horror tropes. There were plenty of imitators, but the movie also pushed the genre forward by making clear that so much of what we'd seen before (much of it in the films of its director, Wes Craven) had become a joke.
