10 Beautiful Horror Films Of The 2010s

Horror films have a tendency to repel viewers, more specifically those who are uninterested in sitting through hours of brutal, grisly, macabre scenes of torture and gore. In all fairness, there are films that merit that response, a few of the Saw sequels and Human Centipede for example.

However, and a big however at that, horror films on a whole receive a bad rap. There are directors and designers that embrace the artsy aspect or filmmaking and bring that to their horror features.

Beauty and gruesome blood and guts don't often come hand in hand, except for those select projects that balance the two to create a counterintuitive and almost confusing film experience. These select films have a knack for displaying the opposite of ugliness and beauty to create a form of dark beauty that is entirely unique to the genre.

For many, some of the classics of horror are regarded as beautiful cinematic feature, namely Alien, The Shining, and Suspiria. With the recent additions to the Alien franchise, or whatever they are, the upcoming remake of Suspiria, and the amazing replay of The Shining in Ready Player One, it's hard to deny the lasting effect a visually stunning horror film can have.

That's not to suggest the following films listed are all knockouts, but they certainly will not be forgotten any time soon.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn has a polarising set of films under his belt. Drive is one of the most outstanding films of the 2010s, whereas Only God Forgives, with another director-actor team up with Ryan Gosling, led much to be desired. Unfortunately, The Neon Demon lands much closer to Only God Forgives on the scale.

Critics tore the film apart for its predictability and the scripts unconvincing nature, alongside a list of objectification against the modelling agency, self-loathing and self-mutilation.

Looking past all of that however, The Neon Demon is categorically one of the most stylish horror film of recent years. The dive into such a narcissistic industry allows room for some pretention, with the intent of the film to be a satire on the hollowness and superficiality laden throughout Hollywood. This means that pretention is an actual goal of this film, something that may push many a fan away, coupled with a not so great script.

In the end, it's quite hard to describe exactly how this manages to be as beautiful yet utterly disappointing, this isn't a film class in Los Angeles, so we don't exactly have the time to go through it scene by scene. The hallucinatory imagery thrown throughout, and the modelling set-ups in high fashion environments makes for quite stunning visuals.