10 Incredible Performances In Recent Horror Movies
Rebecca Hall deserves major awards attention for The Night House.
While there's the stereotype that horror movies are the most dramatically undemanding genre for actors, that's actually far from the truth.
Sure, a garden variety slasher flick generally won't ask much of its cast of central meat puppets, but horror has also proven to be fertile ground for actors to deliver daring and totally unexpected performances.
More than a carnival of blood 'n' guts, the horror genre can serve as a canvas for filmmakers and actors to explore the darker aspects of the human condition, such as trauma, guilt, depression, and so on.
While it's a continued shame that the Academy largely still ignores incredible dramatic performances in horror films - namely Toni Collette (Hereditary), Lupita Nyong'o (Us), and Florence Pugh (Midsommar) in recent years - that takes nothing away from the impressiveness of the work itself.
These are the 10 performances from recent horror films which most beg your attention, whether ingenious beats of physical comedy or a performance as serious-minded and emotionally resonant as you'd expect to see in a more typical drama film.
Above all else, they're proof of the artistry and intelligence that goes into the very best horror films...
10. Vince Vaughn - Freaky
Though most of the performances on this list are in Serious horror movies, Vince Vaughn proved in Freaky that comedy-horror can also provide ideal conditions for a veritable acting clinic.
The recent body-swap slasher flick casts Vaughn as a brutal serial killer known as the Blissfield Butcher, who uses a mystical dagger in order to switch bodies with a 17-year-old girl (Kathryn Newton).
The remainder of the film is basically The Vince Vaughn Show, carrying it through even its more formulaic moments with his go-for-broke performance as a teenage girl inside a middle-aged man's body - ala Jack Black in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.
As much as Freaky might be a silly, frothy horror-comedy, Vaughn gives a genuinely fully committed performance that needs to operate on two levels simultaneously in order to convince the audience.
Given that Vaughn's comedic cred has been rather eroded in recent years due to the glut of stale studio comedies he's appeared in, this was a major breath of fresh air. You can tell he's having an absolute blast, and that feeling transpires through to the audience.