10 Best Horror Movies Told In Real Time
Killer clowns, home invading hoodies, haunted laptops, premature burials, and demonic angels...
Is there a niftier narrative trick than when a movie plays out in real time?
Well, yes: it's significantly impressive when a film makes sense than when it relies on a gimmick.
But if you've got a good story and characters worth caring about, real time can be an interesting and innovative way to frame a tale.
Take Psycho helmer Alfred Hitchcock's famous mystery Rope. This unbearably tense thriller is told in a few seamless, absurdly long cuts, and its (almost) real time presentation manages to turn what could have been a thin story into an incredibly tight and atmospheric genre classic.
With that in mind, this list is looking for successful examples of real time storytelling from the genre which the narrative technique is most suited to. Since horror flicks tend to typically feature compressed action which takes place over a few days at most, the genre is ripe for real time storytelling.
Of course, there are only so many movies which can pull off this audacious trick, and precious few worth recommending.
So some of these flicks feature brief prologues and other rule bending, but that's an inevitable sacrifice in dredging up the ten best horror movies told (mostly) in real time.
10. All Hallow’s Eve
Released in 2013, Frankenstein Vs The Mummy director Damian Leone’s nasty 2013 anthology horror All Hallow's Eve garnered the director enough notice in the indie horror community to spawn a spin-off, the gruesome 2016 slasher pastiche Terrifier.
Where that later, darker flick doesn't quite manage to fit its story into real time (though it does come close), All Hallow's Eve does indeed take place in real time thanks to a nifty framing device featuring an ill-fated babysitter watching each short as a tattered VHS.
When the poor teen comes across a set of battered old cassette tapes she does what any responsible guardian would and begins watching them in the company of the the children in her care despite having no idea what the tapes contain. The majority of this uneven but scrappy flick's action is taken up by the contents of these tapes, spooky snuff films which may or may not be repurposed short films from Leone's back catalogue.
With the babysitter's exploits book-ending this film's narrative action, this one takes place over the course of a tight (less than ninety) minutes, and unlike its genuinely creepy antagonist, Leone's film doesn't outstay its welcome.