If horror fans love anything, it's the unexpected. And though the genre has long been home to unprecedented experimentation, it's also home to convention, making it prime for lampoons, loving parodies, and winking dissections. And Wes Craven, who'd flirted with meta-horror before in the final chapter of his Nightmare on Elm Street series, nearly perfected that reflection on the genre with Scream, a horror film at turns terrifying, hilarious and thoroughly thrilling, that birthed a new era of scares.
Scream is still some one of the sharpest of its kind, but in honor of the film's 20th anniversary, we're revisiting the snarky subgenre, and ranking the ten best meta horror movies of all time. Get ready, that fourth wall is a-crumblin'.
10) Rubber
You’d be hard pressed to find a movie (horror or otherwise) as fiendishly weird as Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber, a film that follows a murderous car tire hell-bent on exploding the heads of anyone who gets in his rollin’ way. Stuffed with references to schlocky B-cinema of long ago, Rubber earns its “meta” stamp of approval thanks to Dupieux's strange cinematic musings (that prompt him to bring out an audience devoted to commenting on the film while it unfolds) and his theory that films stop existing as soon as the viewers stops watching, a strange ideological stance that the filmmaker exploits to hilarious results.
9) Tucker and Dale vs Evil
Though perhaps more solidly in the comedy camp than horror, Eli Craig’s Tucker and Dale vs Evil is an uncommonly hilarious treat coated in a slick of over-the-top gore. Starring Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine as Tucker and Dale, the horror-comedy is a gleeful send-up of the “cabin in the woods” premise, as a gang of college kids, sabotaged by their knowledge of the horror genre, begin to overthink their interactions with the titular pair of local hillbillies. And after an increasingly improbably series of violent events, Tucker and Dale vs Evil turns the tables on the traditional power dynamics, transforming the fraternity into the killers and the hillbillies into the innocent victims. It’s fresh and funny even when the gag begins to lose a little steam, and a more-than notable entry into the subgenre.
8) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Still a criminally underseen comedy/meta-horror, Behind the Mask is a pseudo-mockumentary that posits a world in which iconic horror villains (I’m talking Freddy, Jason, et. al), were very real serial killers. At the center of all of it is Leslie Vernon, a gushing obsessive whose dream is to create a name for himself in the horror lexicon. Behind the Mask easily reveals its love for the horror genre, but there’s a sharp undercurrent of criticism that make this micro-budget horror incisive despite its minimal scope. Often funny and always impressive in its commitment to oddball world-building, it’s a film made for horror fans by horror fans, and if that's not a ringing endorsement, I'm not sure what is.
7) Wes Craven's New Nightmare
After years of increasingly de-fanged and idea poor follow-ups to Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street (Dream Warriors being the main exception) and three years after Krueger bit the dust, Craven made the career-making move to return to the franchise and go more meta than ever in the process. Tapping Heather Langenkamp (who played Nancy in two prior Nightmares) to play a version of herself and calling on Robert Englund to return both as his actor persona and the “real” Freddy, Craven literally rewrote the expectations set by a franchise he himself created, and in the process helped create the modern blueprint for what meta horror can do at when it's truly at its best.
6) Peeping Tom
The OG of the meta horror set, Peeping Tom is a uniquely disturbing take on the life of a compulsive killer whose murderous goal is to photograph young women’s final expressions of fear before their death. Stalking and killing them with a movie camera at his side, Peeping Tom easily implicates the viewer in the perverse acts, using eerie point of view to include the audience in the killer’s voyeuristic vision. Directed by Michael Powell, the film doesn’t so much cash in on horror tropes (Peeping Tom was only released in 1960, during which the stalk-and-slash genre was still in its infancy) as it does mimic the outline of an art film while including gleeful depictions of sex and violence, actively commenting on itself even when there was no obvious narrative formula to ape.
5) Cabin in the Woods
Easily one of the best horror movies of the last five years also happens to be one of the most self-aware. Written by quip king Joss Whedon and directed by Drew Goddard, Cabin in the Woods combines a horror soaked point of view with a bravely sci-fi premise as a group of unsuspecting college students (sounding familiar?) unwittingly implicate themselves in a game controlled by unfeeling corporate overlords whose professional goal is simply to kill them in accordance with the laws of the slasher genre. Occasionally heavy-handed but always fun, Cabin in the Woods works equally as well as a meta genre critique as it does a horror film of its own ilk. And while the film’s final scene might alienate the less committed viewer, it seems to me the best example of when big cinematic dreams go very right indeed.
4) Evil Dead 2
God bless Sam Raimi. After reaching new exploitation flick heights with his first riff on the “cabin in the woods” genre, (that’d be The Evil Dead), the splatter king returned to his original source material for a sequel that’s really more like a good-humored remake of his original gooey horror. Upping the ante (and the chainsaw count) in nearly every way and bringing Bruce Campbell’s already manic performance to new heights. Rather than just functioning as a genre commentary, Evil Dead 2 gets the most meta in its latter acts, as Raimi makes it clear that the film isn’t so much about a dark spirit tormenting wayward college students but about a director tormenting his actors (and, as a result, the viewer themselves). But boy, isn't it fun?
3) Shaun of the Dead
Edgar Wright has long established his British cinematic brand with the Cornetto trilogy – a largely genius series of films that lovingly lampoon a different genre. But by far the best is Shaun of the Dead, the Simon Pegg-led sendup of the zombie film that adorns the slapstick comedy with every well-known undead trope for an elegant combination of tones and genres that has incredible narrative and comedic payoff. A veritable love letter to horror movies past but with enough wit and humor to more than stand on its own even when the references don’t land, Shaun of the Dead is meta horror fun that owes as much to its cinematic predecessors as it does Wright's immense talent.
2) Funny Games
In true masochistic Michael Haneke fashion (who would later remake the film, shot for shot with an American cast), Funny Games is decidedly the least fun genre experiment on this list. Following two young and well-mannered men who flippantly take a family hostage and force them to play a series of (decidedly un-funny) games dependent on their survival, Funny Games directly forces the viewer to be complicit in the action. On multiple occasions, the killers break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience, at one point asking “You’re on their side, aren’t you?” before again delivering fatal blows of helplessness as the young men (and the filmmaker) refuse to let the family make it out alive. It’s a grueling, unrelenting experience of despair, but it’s one of the sharpest indictments of on-screen violence (and of horror itself) the genre has ever seen.
1) Scream
With two entries on this list, it’s no question that Wes Craven is the grandfather of modern meta horror, but whether or not you’re Team New Nightmare or not, there’s absolutely no question that Scream is the most iconic of its kind, an on-the-nose and snarkily self-aware send-up of the slasher flick that's spawned a franchise with shocking longevity. Careful to balance the slapstick (Ghostface is the clumsiest and most energetic killer the genre’s ever seen) with the brutal (poor Drew Barrymore) and plenty of teenage sass, Scream is an expertly designed genre romp that’s as fun to watch as it is to dissect.