12 Incredible Horror Movies With No Jump Scares

Kevin Smith didn't necessarily wow critics when he took a stab at horror with Red State, and he impressed even fewer when he made Tusk. The idea, first developed as part of Smith's SModcast, is fairly straightforward. A man finds an ad posted by a former sea adventurer and falls into a trap that results in his surgical transformation into a walrus. Since it's a Kevin Smith film, this relatively bare-bones plot line is stretched to 101 minutes with a lot of unnecessary dialogue.

Don't let that turn you off entirely, however. Justin Long's performance as an offensive podcaster and eventual victim is shaky at times, but watching him lose his humanity in more ways than one can be incredibly disturbing. Excellent performances by Michael Parks and Johnny Depp add to the film as well. Parks plays the both menacing and ridiculous Howard Howe, while Depp plays Guy LaPointe, the Québécois inspector obsessed with hunting down the killer. Their one scene together is more comedic than disturbing, but worth seeing nonetheless.

There are times when Tusk feels as if it can't possibly get any more insane, only to prove itself wrong moments later. This is especially true of the third act, in which Howe engages in a crazed ritual that he hopes will force his experiment to go "full walrus." Howe's endgame is revealed suddenly, with absolutely no foreshadowing, and the reveal of his final costume comes as a shock that's disturbing yet hilarious at the same time.

If you're the kind of person who watches horror movies for a sick laugh, you'll find more than a handful of scenes in Tusk that will give you what you're looking for. If you're merely looking for gore, the unsettling human/walrus hybrid will make your skin crawl. If you're of the mind that Tusk simply doesn't offer enough merit as a horror film, then at least Depp's take on a French Canadian accent will provide some strange entertainment.