How good a year was for film is of course, entirely subjective and open to interpretation. Bad practices being pushed to the forefront doesn’t help paint a rosy picture of modern cinema. Still, the true beauty of it is there’s so much to appreciate beyond the hype machine and cynical money chasing, and hey, sometimes that delivers too!
My main viewing focus in any given year is horror, and you’ll notice that shows in my Top 10, but I’m far from immune to blockbuster crowdpleasers and critical darlings, even if I don’t exactly rush to see them all!
So here’s my Top 10 of 2023, along with a few honorable mentions.
Honorable Mentions: Suitable Flesh, Huesera: The Bone Woman, Birth/Rebirth, Infinity Pool, M3GAN, Polite Society, Brooklyn 45, Creed III, Dungeons & Dragons: Among Thieves, John Wick Chapter 4, Barbie.
10. Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor
I love a found footage movie, and when one comes along that taps into the reason I fell in love with the sub-genre, it’s safe to say it’s going to feature in an end-of-year list.
Hell House LLC Origins was a pleasant surprise because it felt like this franchise had already run out of steam, but here we are, looking at what might be the best entry in the entire damn series.
It goes back to the roots of the Hell House LLC saga and the found footage sub-genre in general—an unnerving, convincing document of spooky shenanigans.
9. No One Will Save You
I may have mentioned on this site previously that I adore Brian Duffield’s Spontaneous (because it’s wonderful and you should seek it out right now), so discovering the fact he was making a classic alien invasion movie with a twist was one of the most exciting developments in all of 2023 for me.
No One Will Save You still managed to surprise me anyway. It was an almost classical stretch of suspense and craft that delivered on every front I could have hoped for. Between this and the indie sci-fi horror game Incident at Grove Lake, my inner-child alien conspiracy nerd from the 90s was well nourished.
8. Beau is Afraid
After Robert Eggers’ The Northman surprisingly did nothing for me, I was fearful that Ari Aster’s third film might see a similar drop-off, especially after reading reviews that straight-up shanked Beau is Afraid for being the kind of aimless flight of fancy that condemned Richard Kelly to the stocks when Southland Tales came out.
And yet Beau is Afraid, despite some shortcomings, is a bloody beautiful slice of anxiety-soaked cinema. It’s an aggressive, unpleasant farce that has the most perfect lead in Joaquin Phoenix. Even if there is an admittable drop-off after that absolutely masterful opening act, it still has that masterful opening act that beats pretty much anything I watched all year long.
7. Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One
I’ve been a Mission: Impossible fan ever since Brian De Palma made one of the most underappreciated blockbusters of our time in 1996. Sure, the John Woo nonsense of the sequel kind of soured the whole thing for me for a bit, and personal experiences diluted the fantastic reboot job J.J. Abrams did with the third film, but I hear that theme and see Tom Cruise do some seemingly impossible shit, and I’m simply swept away.
I liked Fallout, but Dead Reckoning Part One pushed the boat out in difficult circumstances. It’s not as tight as its predecessor, but it’s still on its own damn level for blockbuster entertainment.
6. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
As a lifelong comic book reader, nothing has saddened me more than the realization that comic book movies have begun to leave me numb in the last few years. I’ve watched many of them, but the thrill I once felt with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man or the X-Men movies has somewhat dissipated.
But there are still some wonderful exceptions. James Gunn’s sendoff to his time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of them. I am fond of Gunn, as he’s a former Troma guy, but honestly, the craft behind this sequel is what stands out. It’s funny, tragic, and so damn uplifting. It’s basically an anomaly in what the MCU has become.
5. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
If GOTG Vol. 3 was a breath of fresh air in the MCU, then Across the Spider-Verse is a one-finger salute on both hands to it. The follow-up to the sublime Into the Spider-Verse is even more visually ambitious than its predecessor and does an excellent job going deeper into Miles Morales’ journey as Spider-Man.
The cliffhanger ending does leave it a little short of Into the Spider-Verse’s level at this time, but I get the feeling this could change once Beyond the Spider-Verse concludes the story.
4. Enys Men
Mark Jenkin managed to make a compelling drama on old wind-up cameras with Bait, so the thought of what he could do with folk horror in Enys Men was positively intriguing.
Even then, I didn’t expect Enys Men, a film that got a limited theatrical release, to be so experimental—an abrasive swirl of audiovisual hallucination anchored by Mary Woodvine’s largely quiet but emotive performance. To ask where the traditional idea of a story is in this abstract concoction is to miss the point of its purgatorial ambiguity.
Jenkin has an approach to filmmaking that I find I can easily connect with, even if the intention is not catering to that.
3. Past Lives
The nature of “What if?” in our lives haunts us and tortures us with a frustrating unknown. Finding acceptance and closure is the solution, but how possible is that when lives can be separated so easily?
Celine Song’s Past Lives offers a view of that and shows that, yes, a kind of closure can be found in accepting that your path went a different way from someone who was important to you, but it doesn’t make their impact on your life any less important. They still matter, and it can still hurt to miss them, even if they aren’t that person you once connected with anymore.
2. When Evil Lurks
When Evil Lurks is a superb slab of unrelenting apocalyptic horror that turns the possession movie formula on its head with a cold, mean-spirited attitude.
It evokes the doomy mood perfected by the likes of Fulci and Carpenter. Still, thanks to its grounded human story and almost rhythmic timing for moments of pure shock and awe, it is much more than its influences.
1. Godzilla: Minus One
I enjoy Godzilla in all his forms. Yes, even the Western variants, but it’s nice to know Toho will happily remind us of the kaiju’s frightening destructive power in ways that feel more grounded.
Godzilla: Minus One delivers just that with a beautiful human story counterbalanced by the horrifying impact of a radioactive walking disaster. It’s the peak idea of what blockbuster cinema can be.
