Welcome to part 1 of the second annual Scare Value Horror Movie Awards! Essentially…our version of a 2023 Horror Movie Awards. Today we will award some non-traditional categories for the year that was. These are the more…fun awards. Today we crown Best Kill, Best Final Girl, Best Killer, Best Twist. and Best Gore Effects. Needless to say, there will be spoilers.
We will also be inducting this year’s first inductee into the Scare Value Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is reserved for the greatest, most important or most influential horror movies in history.
Tomorrow we will be back with part 2 of the awards where we will give out some more traditional recognition. Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and, of course, Best Picture will be awarded. We will also induct this year’s second chosen film into the Hall of Fame.
Let’s get down to business.
2023 Scare Value Awards
Best Final Girl
Last year saw Hulu original Fresh take home the first ever Scare Value Award for its clever final girl, Noa. This year sees a diverse group of survivors competing for the coveted (just go with it) Scary award. The nominees for Best Final Girl are…
Madison – Influencer
Brynn – No One Will Save You
Jamie – Totally Killer
Emily – Unseen
Becky – The Wrath of Becky
Brynn commands the entirety of No One Will Save You. A wordless performance that conveys every emotion as she attempts to survive an alien invasion. In contrast, Influencer‘s Madison spends the bulk of her story off camera…finding a way to survive in secret…waiting to reclaim the movie in the end. Jamie is a time traveler who has a unique knowledge of her situation in Totally Killer. In Unseen, Emily is thrown into a familiar final girl role…but has to navigate it with compromised eyesight. Becky is just a total badass who tears her way through evil in The Wrath of Becky.
This is always going to be a hard category to crown a champion in. By definition, everyone here is already a winner. Jamie has more advantages than most final girls are equipped with…while Emily is at a tremendous disadvantage. On the other hand, Emily receives a great deal of outside help while Becky wreaks havoc on her own. Brynn has the hardest journey…the whole world stands against her. A world she struggled to communicate with before the aliens showed up. And then there’s Madison…who isn’t at the center of her own movie. Which makes her survival as interesting as it is surprising. She finds the strength to survive without something every other final girl in history has had…our attention.
The Scary Goes To…
Brynn in No One Will Save You
No One Will Save You is streaming on Hulu
Best Killer
Art the Clown is the reigning winner of the Best Killer award. He’ll look to reclaim his crown with next year’s Terrifier 3. Until then…the nominees for Best Killer are…
Ellie – Evil Dead Rise
CW – Influencer
Alex – Jagged Mind
Eddie – KillHer
Alpha – Slotherhouse
In Evil Dead Rise, Ellie adds an all-time great deadite to the Evil Dead canon. Her personal verbal attacks on her children may be worse than the physical damage she does. As seen in the Best Final Girl award…CW literally steals the spotlight for much of Influencer. A brilliant, dangerous identity thief. Alex possesses and utilizes a dangerous gift to bend the world to her will in Jagged Mind. In some ways the scariest of all the villains. Eddie has a joy for killing that would make Art the Clown proud. Her infectious insanity turns KillHer into something special. Slotherhouse‘s killer sloth Alpha is as adorable as she is deadly. Slashing her way through a sorority house in hilarious fashion.
As fun as Alpha is…she didn’t stand much of a chance against this killer competition. CW’s cunning and Alex’s evil give them a pathos that the killer sloth doesn’t have. Ellie and Eddie are more in the wildly fun category of movie murderers. You can cut those pairs down in direct competition to CW and Ellie for a final showdown. CW is somehow more in control than Alex…who literally controls everything around her. While Eddie’s utter insanity makes her a joy to watch…Ellie’s personally directed torment is instantly iconic. Iconic enough to bring this home.
The Scary Goes To…
Ellie in Evil Dead Rise
Evil Dead Rise is streaming on Max
Best Gore Effects
The Sadness took home this award in 2022. Let’s see what movie had the best blood and gore for your eyes this year. The nominees for Best Gore Effects are…
Gorehounds can’t go wrong with any of this year’s nominees. Craving unleashes a third act bloodbath that stands against any bigger budget horror film. Evil Dead Rise gives us modern effects while retaining that Evil Dead charm. Project Wolf Hunting is relentless in its depiction of carnage and violence. Saw X saves some of its sickest ideas for its tenth installment. When Evil Lurks uses its gore to shock and its makeup to turn stomachs.
As anyone who has seen The Sadness will attest…we love when movies cake themselves in blood from start to finish. Throw in the practical makeup monster hiding in the bowels of its doomed ship…and the way it cranks its violence up to 11 when he’s unleashed…the winner stuck out like a broken thumb.
The Scary Goes To…
Project Wolf Hunting
Project Wolf Hunting is streaming on Screambox
Best Twist
Last year’s Orphan: First Kill made this category a bit of a no-brainer. Let’s see if this year is more difficult. The nominees for Best Twist are…
The truth about the support group – Appendage
What’s in the walls – Cobweb
There’s something in the hull of the ship – Project Wolf Hunting
They aren’t summoning a demon – The Sacrifice Game
Who is the real evil? – Spoonful of Sugar
This year’s crop of twists finds some different ways to change the course of their narratives. Appendage and The Sacrifice Game reveal theirs halfway through…showing us that what we though was happening was never what was actually happening. Project Wolf Hunting‘s twist comes at the same time. It doesn’t redefine what we knew…it triples down on it. Cobweb lets us know what’s in the walls just in time for a wild third act. Spoonful of Sugar waits until the end to recontextualize what we’ve been watching.
It is harder to pick a winner this year. Unfortunately, that’s because there is no twist this year as strong as Orphan: First Kill unleashed. This is a group of effective twists…but they lack the jaw dropping aspect you want in a great one. We’ll give it to the movie that had the strongest commitment to the reveal…and the way it completely changed the film.
The Scary Goes To…
The Sacrifice Game
The Sacrifice Game is streaming on Shudder
Best Kill
The shocking opening scene of Halloween Ends took home the inaugural Best Kill award. This year we have kills of every shape and size. The nominees for Best Kill are…
Zipline into spikes – The Conference
Exorcism gone wrong – Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism
Atomic breath in the city – Godzilla Minus One
Kathleen makes an excellent dinner – Thanksgiving
The dog attack – When Evil Lurks
We’ve got some very memorable kills to debate this year. The Conference delivered the opportunity for a heroic moment as two of our characters take a zipline to hell. Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism gave us the saddest moment…a shocking and avoidable one. Godzilla comes ashore and unleashes his atomic breath…and ends up providing an iconic image that stands with anything in the series’ long history. An evil stepmother gets baked alive in Thanksgiving‘s most memorable murder. The most shocking moment in horror this year was, perhaps, the sudden dog attack in When Evil Lurks…a movie full of shocking moments.
Five excellent kills make up our nominees this year. This comes down to a matter of taste. If you like your kills extra dark…Godless is for you. If you want widespread destruction that leads to an unforgettable image…Godzilla Minus One has what you’re after. The out of nowhere animal attack in When Evil Lurks joins them as moments you aren’t going to forget any time soon. Even narrowing it down to those three doesn’t make this choice any easier. The personal nature of Godless and When Evil Lurks can take us down to a near coin flip.
The Scary Goes To…
The dog attack – When Evil Lurks
When Evil Lurks is streaming on Shudder
2023 Scare Value Hall of Fame Inductee
Each year two films will be selected to join the Scare Value Hall of Fame. These movies are the best of the bets in horror history. They can be important of influential…or just a hell of a lot of fun. This year’s second inductee will be unveiled in Part 2 of the 2023 Sare Value Awards tomorrow. This year’s inductees will be enshrined alongside John Carpenter’s Halloween and George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. For our first inductee…we head back in time to the Universal Monsters era of horror to honor its best.
Bride of Frankenstein
James Whale returned to film a sequel to his hit Frankenstein and delivered the finest of the Universal Monster movies. Despite Karloff’s reservations about giving the Monster speech…his performance is as strong as any in the history of the genre. Whale and Karloff deliver a dark comedy and a commentary on the lasting effects of one’s actions at the same time. It may not be the first masterpiece in horror (Whale’s original earns that rank itself) …but it’s almost certainly the first to be a sequel. It understands what a sequel should be more than almost any in the history of any genre.
Read our full review
Thank you for checking out part 1 of our version of our 2023 Horror movie awards. The 2023 Scare Value awards will return tomorrow to award Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay…and to induct another film into the Scare Value Hall of Fame.
