Finding out that a horror movie you remember renting on DVD is now 20 years old feels a little unfair. Surely it hasn’t been that long since you watched it with friends, argued over the ending, or insisted someone else see it just so you could talk about one particularly horrible scene. But the calendar says otherwise, and the horror movies of 2006 are officially old enough to make their original audiences feel their age.
There was plenty to argue about that year. Beloved films were getting remade, franchises were sending more people to gruesome deaths, and anyone tired of popular titles could seek out some truly disgusting creatures. Getting an audience’s attention took more than putting a recognizable name on the poster. Sometimes, all it took was one scene that made people leave the theater wondering who would even think of something like that.
Of course, remembering one great scare doesn’t mean the rest of the movie holds up. That’s what makes going back to these films so fun, especially if you haven’t seen them since 2006. You might find yourself defending one you didn’t care for the first time, or finally understanding why your friends hated a favorite. Twenty years is plenty of time to change your mind, even if you still have to look away at the same part.
10
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
The Hills Have Eyes gave the 2006 remake crowd something genuinely difficult to stomach. Alexandre Aja traps the Carters in their camper while attackers murder members of the family and steal baby Catherine. There’s barely room to move, much less fight back. Knowing what’s coming doesn’t make that sequence any easier.
Aaron Stanford gives you someone to root for through all that misery. As Catherine’s father Doug, he searches a deserted nuclear testing village and takes a terrible beating from Pluto trying to get her back. His clumsy, desperate struggle still makes this remake worth revisiting. You’re rooting for an exhausted dad who can barely survive the next room.
9
Silent Hill (2006)
Silent Hill makes searching a deserted town for a missing child look like the easy part. Once the siren sounds, the walls peel away and Rose has considerably worse things to worry about. Iconic franchise mascot Pyramid Head dragging his enormous blade through the town is still a good argument for seeing the games’ monsters on a theater screen.
Similarly, the nurse monsters are still horrible to watch. They crowd the corridor with blades in their hands, twitching toward Rose’s flashlight while she tries to work out how to get past them. You don’t need to understand Silent Hill’s history to dread her next move. Twenty years later, you might have forgotten how the curse works, but the monsters are another matter.
8
Final Destination 3 (2006)
Final Destination 3 managed to make a tanning salon scarier than a roller coaster crash, as the film kicks off with an amusement park scare that leaves our protagonists having cheated Death, resulting in their subsequent worse fates.
For example, Ashley and Ashlyn only want a tan before their friends’ funeral. Instead, they get trapped, burn alive, and director James Wong cuts from their tanning beds to their coffins. It’s an awful joke, and a very good edit.
By the third movie, audiences knew Death would catch up. Wendy’s photographs – which subtly foreshadow how – made figuring out how part of the fun. The girls’ red-lit snapshot looks obvious after the tanning salon, but the remaining clues leave plenty of room for mistakes. Even on a rewatch, it’s satisfying to follow the plot and see just how much Wong showed you before you knew where to look.
7
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
Leatherface gets the origin story, but R. Lee Ermey gets the nastiest role. His Sheriff Hoyt steals a murdered lawman’s uniform, then treats a burned draft card as permission to torture two brothers. Released in 2006, this prequel made the family from the 2003 remake even harder to stomach. Hoyt seems to enjoy every minute of it.
Even getting out of the house doesn’t mean anyone is going home. Chrissie finally gets into a car and drives away, only to find Leatherface has climbed in too. After everything Jordana Brewster’s character survives, she doesn’t even get to leave. Killing off its final girl made The Beginning even bleaker than the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and that decision still makes its ending difficult to shrug off.
6
Black Christmas (2006)
Billy baking cookies from his mother’s flesh probably wasn’t what fans of the original Black Christmas wanted from a remake. Glen Morgan’s 2006 version went ahead anyway, adding eyeball ornaments and a gruesome family history to a sorority house covered in Christmas lights. Subtlety was clearly off the table.
Central antagonist Billy was scarier when we knew less about him, and the lengthy family past still feels unnecessary. But the remake has a wonderfully sick idea of Christmas decorating. The lights stay bright and cheerful while eyeballs join the ornaments, making the house look festive and revolting at once. The Christmas details have aged better than the attempts to explain Billy.
5
When A Stranger Calls (2006)
If you were babysitting in 2006, When a Stranger Calls gave you something unpleasant to think about after the children went to bed. In the movie, a man keeps calling babysitter Jill, and asking whether she’s checked on the children in her care. The parents are out, she doesn’t know the house, and someone apparently knows exactly where she is. Camilla Belle’s acting makes Jill’s hesitation to investigate understandable.
The remake spends an entire movie on the original’s opening plot, sometimes stretching it too thin. But the glass-walled house still looks like a terrible place to be alone at night. Jill can see outside without knowing who can see her. That vulnerability survives all these years even when the twist no longer surprises anyone.
4
The Grudge 2
Allison goes into a haunted house. Her neighbors in Chicago don’t, but they suffer for it anyway. Apparently, living next door is enough. The 2006 sequel brings the curse home with her, turning an apartment building full of people into victims of something they don’t even know exists. Nobody gets a chance to make the sensible decision and stay away.
Takashi Shimizu also gives The Grudge‘s Kayako one of her creepiest entrances, emerging from a photograph as Eason develops it. The darkroom dates the film more than Kayako does. A ghost climbing out of a photograph sounds ridiculous until you’re watching it happen. It’s the sort of scene that sticks around long after you’ve forgotten how the different storylines connect.
3
The Omen (2006)
The Omen opened on June 6, 2006; of course the remake about the Antichrist wasn’t going to let 6/6/06 go to waste. The date gave it an obvious selling point, even though the film followed the 1976 original closely, right down to several of its notorious deaths.
Mia Farrow’s performance gives this otherwise faithful remake something of its own. Her Mrs. Baylock brings flowers to Katherine’s hospital room before killing her, treating murder as another responsibility of looking after the young Antichrist Damien. For anyone revisiting both versions, she has a different kind of menace from Billie Whitelaw’s stern nanny, and Farrow’s horribly believable helpfulness makes it worth another look.
2
Slither (2006)
Slither is disgusting, but James Gunn expects you to laugh. The unfortunate Brenda balloons into a barn full of alien slugs, while Michael Rooker’s Grant grows tentacles and keeps trying to salvage his marriage. Elizabeth Banks plays his wife, Starla, who has understandably lost some enthusiasm. In a grim year for horror, Gunn’s 2006 directing debut found comedy in people becoming unrecognizable.
Slither flopped in theaters, but Gunn’s later work gave it another audience (via IMDB). Fans who knew Rooker as Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy could go back and see where his partnership with Gunn began. The jokes, grotesque creatures, and affection for deeply flawed characters were already there, years before Marvel gave Gunn a much bigger budget.
1
The Host (2006)
Before Parasite, Bong Joon Ho and Song Kang-ho made a monster movie that drew over 13 million viewers in South Korea (via IMDB). The Host became the country’s biggest film in 2006, unleashing its creature on a crowded riverbank in daylight. During the panic, Gang-du grabs the wrong child’s hand and runs, leaving his daughter behind. It’s a horrible mistake, played without the reassurance that Dad will fix everything.
Revisiting it after Parasite, you can recognize Bong’s interest in families nobody takes seriously. Officials quarantine the Parks while dismissing their daughter’s call for help. Watching this bickering family struggle against both the creature and the authorities remains funny, upsetting, and much less predictable than the rescue story initially promises. Bong made government incompetence almost as frightening as the creature in the 2006 horror movie, and watching officials ignore a father whose daughter is still alive hasn’t become any less infuriating.
- Release Date
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February 10, 2006
- Runtime
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92 minutes
- Director
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James Wong
