The 10 Best Horror Films of 2008

Finally, we’ve got a year of truly awe-inspiring horror films to contemplate! You know a year is damn good when films like The Children, The Midnight Meat Train and The Ruins aren’t strong enough to slide into the top 10.

Compared to all the years we’ve covered thus far (you can scan through every year we’ve covered right here), 2008 was no doubt the most difficult list to assemble. There were a lot of tremendously enjoyable works to hit the market as 2010 edged nearer, and a good handful of them were released in our year of focus today – once more – 2008.

Let’s check our picks out!

10 Eden Lake

Nursery teacher Jenny and her boyfriend Steve, escape for a romantic weekend away. Steve, planning to propose, has found an idyllic setting: a remote lake enclosed by woodlands and seemingly deserted. The couple’s peace is shattered when a gang of obnoxious kids encircles their campsite. Reveling in provoking the adults, the gang steals the couple’s belongings and vandalizes their car leaving them completely stranded. When Steve confronts them, tempers flare and he suffers a shocking and violent attack. Fleeing for help, Jenny is subject to a brutal and relentless game of cat-and-mouse as she desperately tries to evade her young pursuers and find her way out of the woods.

09 The Cottage

In a remote part of the countryside, a bungled kidnapping turns into a living nightmare for four central characters when they cross paths with a psychopathic farmer and all hell breaks loose.

08 Lake Mungo

Sixteen-year-old ALICE PALMER drowns while swimming in the local dam. When her body is recovered and a verdict of accidental death returned, her grieving family buries her. The family then experiences a series of strange and inexplicable events centered in and around their home. Profoundly unsettled, the Palmers seek the help of psychic and parapsychologist, RAY KEMENY. Ray discovers that Alice led a secret, double life. A series of clues lead the family to Lake Mungo where Alice’s secret past emerges. Lake Mungo is a mystery, a thriller and a ghost story.

07 Cloverfield

Cloverfield follows five New Yorkers from the perspective of a hand-held video camera. The movie is exactly the length of a DV Tape and a sub-plot is established by showing bits and pieces of video previously recorded on the tape that is being recorded over. The movie starts as a monster of unknown origin destroys a building. As they go to investigate, parts of the building and the head of the Statue of Liberty come raining down. The movie follows their adventure trying to escape and save a friend, a love interest of the main character.

06 Cold Prey 2

Jannicke is found wandering, shocked, in the snow in Stehotinn by Ole who takes her to the Otta Sjukehus Hospital where his girlfriend Dr. Camilla works. Jannicke reveals the location of where the bodies of her friends Eirik, Mikail and Ingunn and the psychopath killer are to the skeptical police officers. When they investigate the location, they find the corpses and take them to the morgue of the same hospital. Dr. Herman revives the psychopath while the Chief of Police Einar investigates many missing persons in the spot.

05 Pontypool

A radio host interprets the possible outbreak of a deadly virus which infects the small Ontario town he is stationed in.

04 Martyrs

Fifteen years after a horrifying experience of abduction and prolonged torture, Lucie embarks on a bloody quest for revenge against her oppressors. Along with her childhood friend, Anna, who also suffered abuse, she quickly descends, without hope, into madness and her own delusions. Anna, left on her own begins to re-experience what Lucie did when she was only twelve years old.

03 Splinter

While camping in the woods, Polly Watt and her clumsy boyfriend Seth Belzer damage their tent. They decide to spend the night in a low-budget motel. Meanwhile the criminals, Lacey Belisle and Dennis Farell, have trouble with their runaway car while heading to Platt and they walk on the lonely road. When Polly passes by Lacey, she stops the car and the couple is rendered by Dennis. However, Polly hits something in the road and while replacing the tire, they are attacked by a weird splinter. The car overheats and they stop in a gas station, where they are trapped by zombies, victims of the splinter parasite.

02 The Strangers

After returning from a wedding reception, a couple staying in an isolated vacation house receive a knock on the door in the mid-hours of the night. What ensues is a violent invasion by three strangers, their faces hidden behind masks. The couple find themselves in a violent struggle, in which they go beyond what either of them thought capable in order to survive.

01 Let the Right One In

Oskar, a bullied 12-year old, dreams of revenge. He falls in love with Eli, a peculiar girl. She can’t stand the sun or food and to come into a room she needs to be invited. Eli gives Oskar the strength to hit back but when he realizes that Eli needs to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a choice. How much can love forgive? Set in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982.