2005 - the year of extreme highs and lows for horror movies

My son turned 3 in 2005, so I didn't see a ton of these movies until later. And honestly, when you look at the list of choices, I can't imagine too many being on my must-watch list at the time. I planned on keeping the list to 10, but I double-checked and found 2 that are must add.

Even so, there are going to be some skipped that may be on others' top 10. Many of the movies that came out in 2005 are sequels or remakes. Not on the list Boogeyman, The Ring 2(so terrible), Dark Water(remake of the Japanese movie - still haven't seen it), Red Eye(one of 2 Wes Craven movies from 2005), The Fog(remake), Dominion(the redo of 2005 Exorcist prequel), House of Wax(remake) Amityville Horror(remake), and Land of the Dead(George Romero's next chapter in his zombie saga). Now let's see which movies made the list ...

Neil Marshall(Dog Soldiers) does it again with The Descent. I mean this is one of my favorite horror movies period, and as I was looking at The Cave(scroll down) I started to wonder how soon after this movie might have popped up. Thank God, I double-checked. I would have been mortified to have a top 10 list of movies from 2005 without the best one. If you haven't seen this movie, head over to Peacock and get on it.

Blurb - A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.

Rob Zombie returned to the Firefly family with The Devil's Rejects. I find this film to be superior to House of 1000 corpses, and one of his best movies. He had to submit 7 different cuts to the MPAA to secure an R-rating for theaters but you can see the longer cut with the director's cut. You can stream it on tubi, and VUDUfree.

Blurb - The murderous, backwoods Firefly family take to the road to escape the vengeful Sheriff Wydell, who is not afraid of being as ruthless as his target.

Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson team up again to give us Cursed. This movie has 2 things going for it: werewolves & Joshua Jackson(did I mention my love of Dawson's Creek on here ever?). However, this movie was cursed for real as it ran into a number of issues that delayed/stalled it for over a year.

At least 8 different actors had to be recast or cut because of the extended time and there's an estimated amount of film shot to cover 4 full feature films. Wes Craven said in interviews this movie took 2.5 years of his life to get completed and it's nowhere near what it could have been.

Did I mention werewolves and Joshua Jackson yet? In the end, there are 3 cuts of this movie, but they aren't releasing 2 of them. You can see the one that got out there with HBOMax. It's getting the Collector's Edition BLU-Ray treatment in May. I can't wait.

Blurb - A werewolf loose in Los Angeles changes the lives of three young adults who, after being mauled by the beast, learn they must kill it in order to avoid becoming werewolves themselves.

While this is the inferior movie about monsters in a cave, I still really enjoy The Cave. The cast is top-notch, and while the film is straightforward, it still delivers. Check it out on Netflix.

Blurb - Blood-thirsty creatures await a pack of divers who become trapped in an underwater cave network.

Michael Keaton has admitted to phoning in some of the scenes, but I still enjoyed White Noise. The idea of EVP is very interesting, and I enjoyed this film. It's a rent/buy to stream.

Blurb - An architect's desire to speak with his wife from beyond the grave becomes an obsession with supernatural repercussions.

Jigsaw returns in Saw II. This is the highest-grossing Saw film in the franchise in the US & Canada. Stream it on Starz.

For me, this is the infamous pretzel movie. When this was released, you couldn't get a pretzel at the theater I was seeing it in. So I would buy one in the mall, and sneak it in. I made the mistake of buying a garlic pretzel. In a packed theater, my pretzel got the attention of three rows as people decided they needed to know what the source of the garlic smell was coming from. It's funny now, but at the time I had to eat the evidence quickly and way before the movie started.

Blurb - A detective and his team must rescue 8 people trapped in a factory by the twisted serial killer known as Jigsaw.

Kate Hudson does a good job in the voodoo film, The Skeleton Key. Stream it on Starz.

Blurb - A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home finds herself entangled in a mystery involving the house's dark past.

Keanu Reeves got the starring role in the comic book-horror movie Constantine. This is the Americanized version of the character, but they did highlight some of the best parts of the early stories of the Vertigo comic. Peter Stormare is incredible as Satan. Stream it on tubi.

Blurb - Supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine helps a policewoman prove her sister's death was not a suicide, but something more.

Yes, I know Doom isn't a great movie, but it has a special place in my heart. I love Karl Urban and tiny Rock is fun to watch. I mean he looks like he's never even heard of weights. Stream it on HBOmax.

Blurb - Space Marines are sent to investigate strange events at a research facility on Mars but find themselves at the mercy of genetically enhanced killing machines.

Lots of people find The Exorcism of Emily Rose scary. The filmmakers weren't trying to make a traditional horror movie, but a movie to discuss if possession is a true phenomenon. The cast is jammed with amazing actors and really delivers on the scares. Stream it on HBOMax.

Blurb - A lawyer takes on a negligent homicide case involving a priest who performed an exorcism on a young girl.

Originally written in 1997, Greg McLean knew something was missing and shelved the project, Wolf Creek. When the Ivan Millat case became known, he used the man as a prototype for the villain and rewrote the script. Check it out tubi, VUDUfree, and IMDB(Prime free).

Blurb - Three backpackers stranded in the Australian outback are plunged inside a hellish nightmare of insufferable torture by a sadistic psychopathic local.