10 Horror Movies Where The Villain Is A Supposedly Inanimate Object

10. Haunted Red Dress - In Fabric (2018)

Peter Strickland's absurd 2018 horror In Fabric feels like someone put Yorgos Lanthimos and Monty Python in the big horror blender in the sky -- but you'll have to decide whether that's a good or bad thing.

Bank teller Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) makes ends meet while contesting with her obnoxious son's older girlfriend Gwen (Gwendoline Christie) and a string of decidedly Kafkan reprimands at work. Entranced by a flowing red dress in her local department store, Sheila soon finds herself menaced by nightmares, visions and, as it happens, the dress itself.

Simple, elegant and with a nasty bite, the dress drifts across rooms at will, destroys washing machines from the inside out, and manifests the deaths of its wearers without choking, strangling or any of the other methods of attack one might expect from sentient clothing.

Everything in the film is slightly unreal, from the dialogue to the oversaturated palette, bedding the horror in from beginning to end. And, unlike comparable features, the film pulls off a 1980s look and feel that settles into the era without resorting to neon, shutter shades or Roffe Demetre jackets. Matching the time period, Strickland is also dedicated to practical staging and effects, producing a classic horror style that doesn't care whether you can see the seams so long as you're thoroughly uncomfortable.