16 Underrated Horror Movies Of 2016

Train to Busan was without a doubt the most successful South Korean horror of 2016, meaning Na Hong-jin's The Wailing slipped under the radar for a lot of international horror fans. The 2016 folk horror mixes traditional Korean shamanism with Christian symbolism to create one terrifying take on possession, as police officer Jong-goo  (Kwak Do-won) is tasked with investigating a series of grisly murders and a spate of sickness in the small mountain village of Gokseong that seem to coincide with the arrival of a mysterious stranger.

As bleak as it is brutal, The Wailing features one of the most thrilling and disturbing exorcism scenes this side of, well, The Exorcist, and is just more proof that Korean horror should never be slept on.

Alice Lowe's Prevenge is not just your average horror movie- it's a testament to how badass pregnant women are, due to the fact that Lowe wrote, shot AND starred in her feature directorial debut all while heavily pregnant.

The pitch black comedy slasher follows Ruth (Lowe), a pregnant widow who is convinced her foetus is compelling her to embark on a killing spree as revenge for the death of her husband. As hilarious as it is disturbing, Prevenge has dry Brit wit by the bucketload, and is easily one of the most unique takes on the postpartum/pregnancy horror genre.

Dearest Sister, the sophomore feature from Laotian director Mattie Do, marked an incredible number of firsts upon release in 2016, namely becoming Laos' first ever film entry into the category of Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.

The slow-burn supernatural horror follows a village girl who travels to Laos' capital city Vientiane to care for her rich cousin who has mysteriously lost her sight and gained the ability to communicate with the dead. Following its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, Dearest Sister racked up positive reviews among critics and audiences, and is well overdue a watch if you didn't catch it a decade ago.

The most terrifying crossover in Japanese horror history, Ring‘s Sadako and Ju-On‘s Kayako finally came head to head in Sadako vs. Kayako, cult filmmaker Kōji Shiraishi's 2016 supernatural comedy-horror, which sees victims of both the Ring and Ju-On curse try to beat their respective deaths by forcing the spirits to fight to the death instead.

Sadako vs. Kayako wasn't particularly well-received upon release in 2016, so you're probably wondering why we've included it on this list. In hindsight, Sadako vs. Kayako is pretty damn hilarious, and probably should've been marketed more for its camp factor than actual scares. Plus, the film spawned some truly iconic marketing tactics.

Steven Kostanski's The Void is one of those rare titles that fits into the category of movies inspired by the 1980s that actually feel like the 1980s. The Lovecraftian cosmic horror follows a small group of people who become trapped in a hospital by a gathering of hooded cultists and grotesque creatures, brought to life by Kostanski's signature incredible practical FX skills.

Like many of the greatest modern horror movies, The Void had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest back in 2016, gathering positive reviews from Screen Daily, Empire and us at FANGORIA. If you missed The Void upon release, get ready to have your mind blown.

Natasha Lyonne! Chloë Sevigny! Meg Tilly! Trippy hallucinogenic sequences! If that wasn't enough to convince you to check out Danny Perez's Antibirth from 2016, we don't know what is. The psychedelic body horror follows a drug-addled woman in a remote Michigan town who becomes pregnant after taking a strange drug, bringing a more far-out take on pregnancy horror than we usually see.

Described by the New York Times as a “meth fever dream“, it's really a wonder that Antibirth hasn't been rediscovered by fans of The Substance and more recent aesthetically striking horror movies that have something to say about women's bodies.

If you're craving more horror like the recently released 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, give Colm McCarthy's The Girl with All the Gifts a spin. The 2016 post-apocalyptic horror features a gritty British setting and aggressive, fast “zombies”, making it a great companion for 28 Days Later and its sequels.

Based on the book by Mike Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts depicts a future where society has broken down after most of humanity is wiped out by a fungal infection, with the only hope for a cure stemming from “hybrid” children, including the titular Melanie. By the time 2016 rolled around, the zombie genre renaissance was already starting to get stale, which might explain why The Girl with All the Gifts remains somewhat underseen, but it's a horror movie that definitely deserves a reappraisal.

Olivier Assayass' Personal Shopper did well with critics upon release in 2016, but yet somehow never seems to show up on Best Of horror lists from the time. Maybe it's because the supernatural story is billed as a mystery/drama, and while it's certainly a slowburn, Personal Shopper is at times truly terrifying and deserves its horror flowers.

Kristen Stewart plays the titular shopper, who splits her time between picking out new outfits for an internationally famous supermodel and trying to communicate with the spirit of her dead brother, all while receiving mysterious text messages from an anonymous sender. If you like your scares subtle and sinister, Personal Shopper is well worth a trip down memory lane for.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s Creepy isn't as well remembered as his other genre offerings like Cure or Pulse, but it's definitely worth revisiting if you're looking for underseen horror movies from 2016. The psychological thriller very much lives up to its name, starring Hidetoshi Nishijima as an ex-cop who has suspicions about his new, bizarre neighbor, played by Teruyuki Kagawa.

As with any Kurosawa pic, expect a skin-crawling slowburn that will have you checking the darker corners of your home.

IIranian horror Under the Shadow deserves far more hype. The chilling directorial debut from Babak Anvari (Wounds, the upcoming new Cloverfield movie) follows a mother and daughter haunted by a mysterious presence while they both try to survive living in 1980s war-torn post-revolutionary Tehran.

Generating comparisons to atmospheric slowburn horrors like The Babadook and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Under the Shadow boasts a rare 99% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, particularly praised for its social, cultural and political themes.

Irish indie horror A Dark Song served as an eerie prediction of isolation horror three years before we even knew what Covid lockdowns were. Liam Gavin's occult horror stars Steve Oram and Catherine Walker as an occultist and grieving mother respectively conducting a months-long ritual to contact the latter's deceased son. As you might imagine, it doesn't go as planned.

Chilling, atmospheric and disturbing in equal measure, A Dark Song serves as a key title in the new wave of exciting Irish horror that we've seen over the last decade plus.

Crime horror thriller Carnage Park is a loving throwback to the gritty, brutal pics of the 1970s from directors like Sam Peckinpah and Peter Watkins, standing out uniquely in 2016 when subtler, slowburn horror was en vogue.

Starring Ashley Bell, Darby Stanchfield, Pat Healy, and Alan Ruck, Carnage Park packs a ton of adrenaline into its neat 90-minute runtime, following two hardened criminals face a desperate fight for survival when they inadvertently enter a remote stretch of land owned by deranged Vietnam veteran. FFO: Quentin Tarantino.

Mexican sci-fi horror The Untamed (La región salvaje) was a hit at Venice International Film Festival in 2016, with director Amat Escalante taking home the Silver Lion prize. However, The Untamed often gets forgotten by film fans, especially in our current more prudish media landscape.

It's best to go into The Untamed knowing as little as possible, so we'll only add that if you love the, err, monstrous love scenes from 1981's Possession, you should definitely bump this one to the top of your watchlist.

Caradog W. James' Don't Knock Twice was overshadowed by other supernatural horrors in 2016 like The Conjuring 2 and The Witch, but is definitely worth checking out if you're looking for lesser known titles from that year.

Starring Katee Sackhoff, Lucy Boynton and monster maestro Javier Botet (Mama, Crimson Peak, The Last Voyage of the Demeter), Don't Knock Twice follows, as the title suggests, a mother and daughter pair who become the target of a demonic presence after breaking the rules of an urban legend. Rules are there for a reason, kids.

2016 wasn't the strongest year for found-footage, but there were some notable exceptions, such as Nick McAnulty and Brian Allan Stewart's Capture Kill Release. The bloody pic follows a couple plotting to murder a random stranger just for the thrill of it, but one of them decides not to go through with it.

Praised for its realistic gore and switch-up of traditionally held horror gender dynamics, Capture Kill Release is still a cult hit even if it's not hugely well-known, with genre giants Blumhouse even labelling it as part of “a new wave of intelligent found-footage movies” upon release.

Following her melancholic vampire tale A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night in 2014, Ana Lily Amirpour's sophomore feature The Bad Batch  was far more explosive. Described by Amirpour as “a post-apocalyptic cannibal love story set in a Texas wasteland”, The Bad Batch won Special Jury Prize at Venice upon release in 2016, and has become a cult hit in the years following.

Featuring a stacked cast of Keanu Reeves, Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Jim Carrey, Diego Luna and Giovanni Ribisi, The Bad Batch follows a young woman (Waterhouse) exiled to a desert where she is attacked by a group of cannibals led by a person called Miami Man (Momoa), before barely escaping alive to a bizarre settlement run by a charismatic leader (Reeves). Yep, it's as wild as it sounds.