20 Incredible Modern Horror Movies That Came Out Of NOWHERE
12. The Coffee Table
2022 Spanish psychological horror/black comedy The Coffee Table went viral for a short but significant period after countless people sang its praises on social media, YouTube, and Reddit. It’s no mystery why, either, as the film quickly violates one of the biggest taboos in modern cinema: killing a baby.
It’s a nail-biting pressure cooker revolving around a father named Jesús who’s left alone to care for his newborn son while his wife goes shopping. All the while, viewers know that something bad will happen with the eponymous object, yet having Jesús drop the baby through the coffee table’s glass pane top and get decapitated probably wasn’t what they anticipated.
Panicked, Jesús subsequently cleans up the mess, puts the body in the baby’s crib, and leaves the head underneath a chair. From there, he naturally does his best to keep his wife – María – distracted and unaware of what he’s done as the couple entertain Jesús’ brother, Carlos, and his new partner, Cristina.
For much of its runtime, The Coffee Table presents an incredibly tense and harrowing escalation of events. That said, masterminds Caye Casas and Cris Borobia still inject humor into the mix via the awkward coffee table salesman, an adolescent girl who routinely hits on Jesús, and Jesús’ increasingly desperate means of hiding the truth from his family.
It’s exquisitely unbearable, and the devastating ending further cements The Coffee Table as one of the most impactful outings in recent memory.