The Strangers (2008)

Honest to goodness, home invasions scare the living daylights out of me. Its like, you're in a place where you're supposed to be safe all the time except that space is threatened. Not only threatened but violated. I don't like the idea of it and I guess its my privilege that makes that specific scenario the scariest thing to me. What I am saying is, stay out of my house.

In The Strangers, we are set in an isolated house, strange to leading lady Liv Tyler, with her would-be fiance. After he leaves, Tyler's character begins to hear strange knocks at the door and windows. Then, quickly, things placed in her house, like her phone and piano, start moving when she's not looking. She and her quickly reunited boyfriend find themselves being terrorized by three masked people.

The Strangers is an excellent movie in conveying that sense of helplessness and lack of safety. It is legitimately scary with some excellent performances by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman. The film quickly falls apart in the second act, and leaves at the end with a "just another horror movie" moment. Fun, and scary, while it lasted.

Lake Mungo (2008)

There's a certain something with ghost stories. If its taken for granted that ghosts exist, you lose a lot of the mystery. If its solid and concrete that ghosts don't exist, its just Scooby Doo. Part of the key to a good ghost story is walking the line of, "is this real or am I crazy?"
Lake Mungo walks that line exceptionally.  This fictional documentary follows an Australian family after they lose their daughter in a freak swimming accident. After images of the dead girl are found in family photos, the family takes every step they can to keep their daughter in their lives, including setting up video cameras and hiring a psychic. As the months go by, they discover the many secrets their daughter hid, including ones that may have foretold her death.
Spoiling anything else about Lake Mungo is doing a disservice to a viewer as much of the suspense of the movie hinges on a few major reveals. The film is very droll and very methodically paced for a ghost movie but this adds to the documentary atmosphere. Its effective at what it is, not so much a ghost story as a story about dealing with grief and the consequences that follow. Its well-acted, any flaws hidden by the documentary style, and composited well. Keep an eye on the white space and be sure to stay through the credits.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Gory. Political. Silly. Stupid. Violent. Crazy. Hilarious. Perverse.
Rad.

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

This was a way cool Americanized Japanese horror film based on a Clive Barker story. Violent in a cool/silly way, bizarre in its development/resolution, and just really a fun time. Vinnie Jones plays the part of silent, sadistic Mahogany in a brutal, almost haunting way and everyone else was at least competent so it has that going for it. The most important part though, was in a scene when Mahogany begins stalking a party on the titular train. He hits Ted Raimi in the back of the head with a meat tenderizer so hard his eyes pop out of his head and bounce off the camera.

Trick 'R Treat (2008)

A movie made by a comic book movie writer (Michael Dougherty of X-Men credit) has very heavy comic book influences. Shocking, I know. Intertwining plot threads and just goofy halloween fun. It is literally the closest thing we are going to get to a new Goosebumps movie, even more so than the first 20 minutes of Cirque du Freak. So goofy. Also, there is a werewolf transformation that alone is worth watching the entire 82 minutes of the film's length. I wish more goofy horror movies had the integrity that Trick 'r Treat has. I would be way less embarrassed about talking about horror films, thats for sure.

Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Okay, full disclosure: I am a sucker for campy horror movies (huge surprise), musicals, the mall goth aesthetic (which is a subset of campy horror i guess), and Anthony Stewart Head. This movie was like engineered to appeal to me. It, however, is not really a good movie. Like, if you hate this movie, i completely understand. I'd probably actually encourage you to keep hating it. But I loved it. I had some of the songs stuck in my head afterwards. I think they could have capitalized on the setting and fringe characters a lot more, seeing as those things were like a billion times more interesting than the actual plot. The music was clearly "rock opera" and not "musical" and i think that harmed its execution re: seemed forced a lot of the time.  It is kind of the epitome of "fat goth girl who really likes Rocky Horror and Dresden Dolls and wears pink/black gloves all the time." Again, though, in spite, or because, of that, I loved it. Anthony Head was miscast.