2021 has been a fruitful year for horror movies, with such excellent examples as The Vigil, The Night House, and Werewolves Within hitting the screen and delighting the genre fans. However, despite their promising premise, direction, or cast, some other films were an utter disappointment and felt by many as an unfortunate waste of time.
With the sheer volume of horror features coming out every year, viewers are faced with a tough choice of determining which of them are worth their attention. To make this process easier, here are the 5 worst movies of 2021 that one should avoid at all costs unless looking for additions to a trash marathon.
Seance (Rotten Tomatoes: 47%)
An awkward mix of a teen slasher and supernatural horror, Seance, directed by Simon Barett, falls flat in either genre. The story follows a group of girls at the Edelvine Academy who decide to host a seance that unsurprisingly leads to continuous deaths. However, the killer is expectedly less supernatural, and the final revelation is as far-fetched as it is convenient.
Barett doesn't shy away from the obvious references to the previous movies he worked on, The Guest and You're Next, and fills Seance with underdeveloped characters reduced to the 'mean girls' trope, familiar themes, occasional predictable jump scares, and outright boring narrative. The cast's performance is wooden and takes away any lingering tension, the cinematography is erratic and only distances the audience from the movie, and the story is unoriginal and flat. All in all, Seance is an unfortunate directorial debut that lacks a unique voice and can be easily overshadowed by more worthy genre alternatives.
There's Someone Inside Your House (Rotten Tomatoes: 47%)
There's Someone Inside Your House, directed by Patrick Brice, is an adaptation of Stephanie Perkins' novel of the same name. Its story revolves around a group of senior high school students whose revealed secrets get them killed by a masked assailant. The premise is familiar, and the movie delivers little in terms of originality or tension, unlike Brice's previous Creep. The protagonist, Makani (Sydney Park), is a typical 'final girl' and is far from being relatable or even likable, and fodder side characters don't warrant much compassion.
There's Someone Inside Your House echoes the Netflix Fear Street trilogy but lacks its meta-narrative, plausible plot twists, and bloody slasher scenes. If not pushed out by the streaming giant, this mediocre horror flick would have blissfully disappeared into oblivion without ever being seen. Perhaps, it should have.
Things Heard & Seen (Rotten Tomatoes: 39%)
This Netflix horror (if it can be considered one) is based on Elizabeth Brundage's acclaimed novel All Things Cease to Appear and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. It follows the story of Catherine Clare (Amanda Seyfried), her husband George (James Norton), and her daughter Franny (Ana Sophia Heger), who move from Manhattan to a remote farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, also known as Chosen, New York. Catherine senses a seemingly sinister presence in the house and starts discovering the dark history linked to it and her husband.
The talented cast and somewhat eerie atmosphere are the film's only redeeming qualities. The story is predictable and scrambled, the dialogue is awkward and on-the-nose, and the ending is bland and disappointing. The directors tried to sprinkle some good old horror tropes like "history repeating itself" and "the real villains are next to you" but ended up creating a poor replica of Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath with pretensions about contemplating the historical mistreatment of women.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (Rotten Tomatoes: 28%)
When Paranormal Activity first premiered in 2007, it became an instant success, with its subtle yet effective horror of the found footage home video, and spawned a relatively consistent franchise. Its latest installment abandons what made the previous movies so successful — a claustrophobic feeling that comes from the realization that something sinister and supernatural has invaded your safe place — and takes action to a big farm, with an apparent Amish community that, of course, turns out to be not what it seems.
With a disappointing cast, lazy direction, cheap jump scares that quickly become repetitive and predictable, this diluted installment falls flat compared to its predecessors. Shamelessly taking elements from Blair Witch, Midsommar, and As Above So Below, Next of Kin presents a boring, muddled, and ineffective story that is clearly meant to reboot a stagnating franchise but instead loses any residual energy and the potential it might have had left in it. Perhaps, it's time to call it quits and move on.
Hypnotic (Rotten Tomatoes: 25%)
Hypnotic is another Netflix misfire that completely failed fans' expectations and left them puzzled as to how Kate Siegal, the modern horror queen, could decide to star in this predictable and unoriginal flick. Usually known for her successful collaboration with Mark Flanagan, the director of the excellent The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, Siegal plays Jenn Tompson, who experienced a miscarriage and, on her friend's advice, seeks the help of the psychotherapist, Dr. Collin Meade (Jason O'Mara), who specializes in hypnosis. Meade (apparently, not for the first time) uses this medical technique to take control of Jenn's mind, causing her to experience blackouts, during which she commits actions that serve the doctor's agenda.
Unlike Flanagan's typical suspenseful and unpredictable movies, this film, directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, fails to deliver an experience worthy of the viewers' time. There are no big twists — the main villain really is the doctor, and hypnosis really is his method of control, just as the title promised — the characters' behavior is irrational, and the valid medical technique is unjustly misrepresented, given a bad name, and turned into a magic trick. The only thing that Siegal's fans can do now is hope she gets back to her collaboration with Flanagan, pretending the embarrassing Hypnotic never happened.