300TH EPISODE SPECTACULAR THE 25 BEST HORROR MOVIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY (SO FAR)

0:35 Hello everyone and welcome to the pod and the Pendulum. None. I'm Mike Snoonian and we are typically the show that covers all the horror franchises one movie and one episode at a time. Except this time we are doing something very special as we hit episode #300 we are going to have a countdown of the best 25 horror movies of the 21st century so far. Now this is not an undertaking I would ever take on by myself. So we have just a just about an all hands on deck meeting this week. We only have one Co host who unfortunately couldn't make it. So let's do some introductions up first. She is the author of Millennial Nasties, a book about all the extreme horror and trends of the first decade of the century.

1:21 So this episode is right up her alley, it's Miss Ari Hellraiser. Ari, how are we? So good. I've been so excited for this episode ever since we decided to do it. I'm so glad you're excited. I am so glad everybody was on board with this. This is fills my heart with joy. You haven't read his words on sites like Bloody Disgusting and Manor Vellum. He is the host of the upcoming podcast Holy Terrors, which focuses on themes of religion and horror. He probably has two or three books in the works as well, Mr. Brian Kuiper. Brian, how are we doing? Yeah, one of these days I'm actually gonna write them. That will be that. Yeah. That's gonna be something. Yeah, I, I know. I've I've got piles of books ready, research ready to go here. Excellent.

2:06 She is the host of The Bodies of Horror Podcasts, which just celebrated its own milestone with episode #100 Welcome our resident Franklin apologist, Miss Nicole Goebel. Nicole, how are we? We are doing great. I'm excited to be here and talk through this massive, massive list. Everybody has packed their lunch, everybody has packed a brown bag today, although I'm not sure what is in those brown bags but. Straight liquor. It's Lunchable is Lunchables and fruit roll. UPS Fava. Beans. I've never heard pronounced that way. Well, Speaking of packages, taking time from packing up all his belongings before he moves halfway across the country, it's the host of the Spectre Cinema Club as well as the Tainted Love podcast.

2:55 Devon Taylor, you're on tap. How are we this morning? Hello, hello. I'm doing fantastic in a very empty room. This is my literally my, the last thing I'm recording in LA before I head back to the Midwest. And yeah, I love lists. I'm here. We're I'm, I'm stoked. I love lists. Well we wouldn't have this list if it wasn't for our next Co host. He is the man responsible for collating all of this data with literally the best looking spreadsheet I have ever seen in my life. Like a spreadsheet so beautiful I wanted to cat call it, take it on a date, buy it dinner and then bring it home and throw some Al Green on the stereo.

3:35 Like that's how beautiful the spreadsheet. Was you treat her with respect, Mike. I would absolutely. I would ask for the. That's my baby you're talking about there. Doing Anything but. He is the host of the Disenfranchised podcast as well as well's You, a new show that covers the life and works of Mr. Orson Welles. Steven Chewy, Walrus Foxworthy, Welcome back. Always a pleasure to be here Mike. I will echo the sentiments of all of my fellow Co host. I have been so excited for this and like Ari, I have packed up a sack lunch full of alcohol, so we're going to have a great time. I am the only dry 1 here. I am the only one. Should I send my 15 year old to the paki to see if she can? Absolutely.

4:18 Let's see what could go wrong. For our UK listeners, that means packaged liquor store. Yes, it does. Does it mean something different in the UK it. Does it's very really bad? Yes, thanks, Ari. Yes, please. Let's let's inhibit those those texts that are we know are coming and tweets wait. Well, we have one more returning to the big chair for one night only. She is the person who literally kept this show afloat for a year, and it's just an all goddamn delight to work with. I do not know why that got bleeped out of my notes, but talk to this. Lindsay Travis, welcome back for this show. Hello. What a warm welcome I am. So Oh my gosh, you're giving me far too much credit. But also thank you. And it's so nice to be back.

5:01 And this is a very nice, convenient catch up for me to hear what everybody's been up to. It is last. Year. So yeah, no, it's great. I'm like, I got follow up questions. Devon, where you live in? I want to hear about these books. I got a lot. I got, you know, I got a lot of water for later. Yeah. We got time, Devon. Where are you living? Address where? Do you? Yeah. Tell me your Yeah. In the chat I'll drop you my social real quick. Great. Thank you. I've been waiting. For you have a key code to your front door. If you just want to leave it, that'd be cool, you could say that. I got you covered. All of it, All of it. It'll be on the record for everybody. Great. Are there any crimes you want to admit to that you've committed? Over. Sure. Yeah, while we're here. No, I already admitted to all my crimes in earlier episodes.

5:42 Long time listeners of the pod will already know that. And thank you for being with us for so many episodes. We have we have 300 episodes worth of bits to pay off all in this episode. Speaking of which, I do want to call out, Did you know this is a special occasion because Brian changed into a new colored tracksuit for this? Yeah. So Brian, solid gold tracksuit and fly. Only the best for episode 300 that's. Right. He has a stack of materials he's going to pull out for. This is over well, super quick. I'm just going to get a wee bit of housekeeping out of the way. So for our long time listeners, thank you so much for being there with us.

6:25 If you have been listening since the start or for a long time, make sure that you've subscribed to the show. Wherever you get your podcast, smash that subscribe button so you get all of our new content, leave us a five star rating and write us a review. If you're listening to us via Apple, we just got a really nice new review this week that was much appreciated. That was very, very cool. It's also one of the really, really early episodes, so I'm kind of hoping we haven't. Does it get to like what happened around 287? You guys really fell off. That was when I first started guesting, right? Right around that time. About 100 episodes now I think. That's true. I have it at this point. Yeah, I think you're. Right so and if you're listening on Spotify, leave us five stars and remember you can comment on individual episodes. If you really want to hear more of us become a patron today by going to patreon.com/pot on the pendulum. We've got 70 plus hours and growing of bonus content like one off horror movies, so we typically wouldn't cover fan commentaries where we sort of talk about movies, shoot the shit episodes.

7:31 And also like we have coverage of all the I Spit on Your Grave movies via Ari and Brian doing all the Nosferatu films. Again, there's like something for everyone there at patreon.com/pot on the pendulum for as low as 2 bucks, and it helps keep the lights on and it keeps Brian in track. Shoot suits it really. It really does. That's very one of these days. He might have enough to buy a gold chain to go with it too. That would be incredible. That would be absolutely great. OK, I am going to try to keep. It's a long story, Lindsay. You're you're kind of you're kind of looking like, what are they talking about? That's like, that's one of our greats running gags. Yeah. We just have bits. Yeah, sorry. We have Nicole, who throws people down the Georgetown stairs near The Exorcist.

8:14 Home with impunity. Tourists Ari and Devon are trying to slowly drive me mad with some of their movie choices. Yes. Trying and succeeding. That's not even a bit, that's just true. I just like really like to watch Mike squirm. Yeah, which is easy. All right, I want to along with us, along with everybody on the show who voted for this top 25. We did reach out to a number of past guests and friends. We want to thank you. Also want to thank Jessica Scott who couldn't be with us today, but like she also voted as part of the Paden Pendulum panel. So we want to thank Sarah Stubbs from Geeks Who Eat and Final Girls Feast. We want to thank Joe Lipset from Horror Queers and the anatomy of the Scream horror podcast network, Canal of Sinister Cinema, Alex Pak DeLuca, horror writer who'll be guesting on the show soon.

9:07 Kat Hughes, who's a podcaster with shows like Movies with Mummy, All of Us Are Lost in Savage Garden. Her words have also appeared at Dred Central. Richard Newby, who's been a writer at Fangoria Vulture and is the author of We Make Monsters Here. Rocco Thompson of Room Morgue. Amber Tea who writes for Fangoria. Garrett McDowell, Devons Co host Inspector Cinema Club, Zoe Rose Smith, former editor in chief over at Ghouls Magazine, as well as Devon's Co host at Tainted Love Tony Potnenza, who is a writer for a movie. Tori Potenza Tori, not Tony. Oh, my goodness, I need to make this font bigger. Don't turn 50.

9:48 Mae Schultz over at Pleasers and punishes pod and Jay Krieger from the Safe Room POD. All right. I've assumed Mike's script supervisor role because he is Ron Burgundy and will read the teleprompter word for word. I missed one. That's the one mistake I missed. You did clean up a good fair bit, Devon. I use text to speech a lot and I figure you guys can read Mike's speak at this point so. I mean, we can. But defense the. Translation doesn't know what you mean. Exactly, it's not. It's not really also a useful resume skill either. Right, I am never working for any web but I'm not doing.

10:29 It even though you are a public figure now, not everyone knows who you are. Public figure you found that? I don't know how that came up. All right, so Steven, I want to again say thank you so much for all the hard work you put in. Do you want to give like before Nicole reads off? Like what films receive votes and such a little bit of like, Here's how this came together. I love collating data. It's one of my favorite things to do. It relaxes me because I am a nerd. So I quickly volunteered when the opportunity came up to put information into a spreadsheet. So all of the people whose names you've just heard sent me lists through one of the other Co hosts here. And once received, I just plugged them in, assigning a number ranking to every film.

11:13 If a film was ranked it the number one spot, it received 21 points. If it was ranked at the number 25 spot, it received one point, etcetera. And so after plugging all of those in, we totalled all of those numbers. Again, spreadsheets make that very easy. And the top 25 vote getters across all of the films, of which there were I think a total of close to 250 total films up for consideration. Amongst all of the lists received. We managed to pull the top 10%, the 25 for our list today. Excellent. Thank you so much, Nicole. Yes. So let's get cracking on some numbers and I think this is very, very interesting.

11:56 So let's let's kind of map out how the calculations came together. There were a total of 224 movies received that received votes for the top 25. And so let's talk a little bit about the top 25 by year because remember we are talking about in the last century. So 2 movies for the years 2002, 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2024. One movie for 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2020-2021, 2022-2023 and 2025 this year.

12:56 So people were were jumping at the bit to get a film in that has been recently released, which I think is exciting. There were 16 stand alone movies and I believe that is just movies that were submitted that no one else had. Oh, I mean by that is not part of a franchise. I'm sorry. Got it. And so how did we all hear factor into these numbers and especially as we get into the final rankings? So Devon, 12 films made. The People's Champ. Yes, you know, I mean, yeah, I'm typically our contrarian, but for this one, I was. I had certain movies I knew for sure would not make it, so I was like, I'm not going to waste my time putting Neon Demon on the list even though that's my favorite movie. But I was like, I'm not going to waste my time. So I maybe went a little more like mind games and like numbers wise as to like how this was all going to shake out. Excellent.

14:02 Well, now that I know it's a competition, I want to resubmit. Yeah, we have time for that. Absolutely, just just let me know ASAP and. This is something I I can win. I'm going to do it differently. There's. No winner. We're all winners on this show. All of a sudden, all of this Sir Devon's a winner. I'm just saying like, OK, keep going. All right, Ari. Good job Devon, you deserve it. Yes, you'll get a cake. Ari, you have 8 on the final list. Lindsay, you have 8 on the final list. I bring up the rear with only four, our good Co leader here with the data.

14:43 Chewie's got 7, Brian has 8 and Mike, our fearless leader, gets a respectable second place with 10. Which shocked me. I was stunned that I had that many. OK, so before we get to our top 25 movies, I figured that's not enough to talk about. Like why not make this even more complicated and longer is that everybody has at least like one movie you know that they really love and that didn't make the list. So why don't we take like exactly 1 minute? And I'm giving that note to myself and Devon to take one minute exactly, but mostly for myself to say, talk about one film that didn't make the list. That's your wild card pick.

15:33 And Devon, since I just called you out, which was really rude to me to be quite honest, but. You know, I'm the, we know I'm like the second leading yapper. That's OK. That's OK. You're up. But for me, because the way I approach this list was not only my favorites, but what I thought was like the most important horror movies of the century. And we have 1 of this directors other films on the list. But I want to shout out Mother because the conversation around that movie was just so fun. Just so many varying opinions and it really highlights why I love horror. Like, I get if people hate that movie, but like also like, I'm just so glad it happened to everybody and we had such a great time talking about it.

16:15 Yeah, I've never. They've seen someone take their, like, Oscar award, like cachet and like, flush it all away so quickly. They're like, let's do that. And it's love it for it. Like, that's not an insult. Nicole, how about yourself? What was your wild card? It was The Purge. It is the best franchise to come out of the. I stand by this. I have argued this repeatedly and it's amazing. I think again, I, I really like what the bomb said about, you know, films that are very consequential in a way. And I think that the Purge franchise in general does that. I think if you are following the trajectory of the films, it's very especially today, living in DC.

17:01 As we lived through it. Yeah, it's horrifying. So nothing like watching election year on little January 6th. So yeah, I've got to put that in there, yeah. I want to say excellent, but also kind of horrifying that The Purge is now a documentary. Brian, how about yourself? Listeners can go back and listen to our coverage of the whole Purge franchise. That's yes, they can, yeah. This was a really hard choice for me to pick just one, so I going to stay on brand and go with Lucky Mckees May from 2004, which is the most unique version of Frankenstein in a long time. It's it's really fantastic and I just rewatched it recently and it really holds up.

17:57 It's, I think, one of the very best performances of the century in a horror film in Angela Bettis as May and it, it's a banger. It really went well. You know, rewatching it, I was like, man, this movie's so good. Excellent, Lindsay, how about yourself? OK, I didn't want to eat into your minute, Nicole, but I was elated to see that you had picked the Purge because that might have been my pick. So I was like, OK, great, that helps me out because yeah, it's amazing. I am going to go with The Guest, which is one of my all time favorite movies of all time, which is a nice way for using that. I don't know, it's kind of more like action metal horror, comedy, but I still think it's horror. And I think why that movie is so special to me, especially for a lot of reasons.

18:43 But I feel like there's a handful of times in my life where I've gone to a movie, seen it and like immediately been like, I am going to watch this movie 100 times, never stop talking about it. I'm going to make everybody else watch it and like, it's going to be a big part of my personality forever. And I felt that right away. It was a Midnight Madness screening at TIFF. I brought my friend who's like, not into horror, but I was like, just come. I don't want to go alone. I heard this one's good. And it was like just like that instant. We were both obsessed with it immediately and I couldn't wait to tell my friends. Dan Stevens playing weirdly against type, which I don't even know if we knew that yet because we didn't really know enough about him at that point. And it's funny. It's Terminator 2 E, it's Halloweeny and I just love it.

19:26 And I could talk about it for much longer than one minute, but I will. It is a great film. It is such a great film. So that's one that could have easily made our easily made the top 25. Are you? You're in the top 25 in everybody's hearts. But what was your wild card pick? Well, listeners, my wild card pick is Terrifier too, which tells you it's not on the list. You can go back and listen to all our Terrifier coverage to hear my extended thoughts on this. But when I was making my list, I was trying to do a mix of my favorite and important. And I think that regardless of what you think of it, Terrifier 2 is really, really important modern horror movie. And it's the movie that made people sit up and take notice of the Terrifier franchise.

20:07 Think. Art the Clown is going to lead us into more fun, gory horror for the next decade or so, and so I think that is a marker of a horror trend that will be really important. Plus I love it and it's fun and I am basically constantly watching it just like picking up where I last left off. Excellent. I think it made a lot of our top 10's the year it came out, so it was a little surprise not to see it here, but it was, you know, it's an excellent pick. All right, Steven, how about yourself? I'm also going to be very on brand with this pic and choose David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. which is again another of my favorite movies of all time. I absolutely adore that movie. It is such a complete mind fuck in the best possible way. I absolutely adore every frame of that film. Do I understand it?

20:55 Hell no. But do I love it? Fucking A. And it also has the single scariest scene I think that has ever been committed to film. If you know about the lady behind the dumpster, then you already know it is. And it's all in the way that Lynch films that thing. And I think it is brilliant. I think it is genius. And I I weep daily that it is not on the top 20. Five. OK, I have. This is my confession. Can I give my confession real quick? I'm sorry, Lindsay, I just jumped out. No. OK, this was my #1 until I took it off the list entirely. Wow. Because I was like, man, I know this. I love this movie. I think it's the best movie of the century so far. But is it a horror movie?

21:38 What's my question? And I decided that it was not for me. It's a David Lynch movie. It's a David Lynch movie, and David Lynch transcends genre. So yeah, sorry, that's my. Chewy, how many points was it off by? If if it would have gotten Brian's points, would have made the list. Totally 2. I don't think it would have made it I. Still, it still wouldn't have made it, but it would have gotten a lot closer. Yeah, so. But this is a grudge. This is a betrayal, Brian. I don't know that I will forget. Well, I if it's. Any. This is like at WrestleMania when we kick off a new grudge. Sorry. Very. Good. This is my heel turn. Yeah. Yes, this.

22:19 Is Brian. Also for your pot and pendulum bingo card are your mic bring up wrestling. That's true. Any consolation I should? Have made a Naomi Watts for us. Maybe I'll do it before I can. I can't. Yes. Naomi Watts performance was just rated like the top performance of the 21st century by the Ringer staff and their. 100%. Beat out like Daniel Day, Lewis and And There Will Be Blood, Javier Bardem and old No Country. No country for old men. So like it was rated the best performance of the century so far in any company there. But not good enough for us, David Lynch. So hit the bricks. I think he already did that, Mike. Jeez.

23:01 Yikes. So it's our fault. So. Not in the year 2025. My pick that didn't make this was my number one movie. Brad Anderson session 9. I fucking love this movie so much. I just rewatch it again last night. It was our family movie night and that's what we picked. Filmed on location at the abandoned Danvers State mental hospital. They did nothing to dress it up. It was like here you go and just have a chair in the middle of the hallway. And that is and if it's own, terrifying. This movie still creeps me out two decades later. Those session tapes are incredible and so unnerving and it has the best exit line in a movie ever. Like we I live in the weak and wounded.

23:43 It still gets under my skin. So session 9 is my wild card pick. So that is it. Those are the ones you know won't be on here, but we wanted to give a shout out to those so can. I say one thing before we do it. Absolutely. OK, so listeners, I would implore you right now to pause, get a pen and paper, especially if you're driving a car. Maybe shut your eyes even to think. But now you know some of the movies that aren't going to be on the list. So what do you think is going to be on the list and how many do you get right? Tell us in the comments and write down your list and then come back and press play. Fair enough.

24:23 Ari was born to be a podcast. She's a pro, folks. I was just over here like, OK. No, I mean I have a thing, if not a shill. No, that's what makes you perfect for podcasting, Ari. Except like you'll notice at the end when we do plugs, there's something Ari always forgets to plug her own. Very true. Nicole, what's your question? Save me. OK, so my question is as we're. Who are you people? No, as we're going through this, because now we're getting into the top 25 all based on the rankings, yeah, Are we going to have available are individual lists for folks to peruse?

25:03 I think I can put that together via POD and pendulum.com, I think. We can do mine's on letterbox, yeah. We could easily do that and we can direct listeners to that through the show notes because there is like a A blog feature there. So we could easily do that or we could post like Steven did letterbox lists or we can make T-shirts and we could sell T-shirts with the rankings on there. So we could do an or sky writing, lost art balloon, hot air balloons. But there's a number of options for folks to get our our list. So, but that is a good question. Yeah, absolutely, because there are eclectic lists.

25:44 I mean you saw like none of us got more than half the titles on there. I think all of it. And I think that speaks to honestly, this shows biggest strength is all of us come at horror from different perspectives. Like Ari is our resident, like Allison's guru. And I would say like the senior horror, Devon has his like own point of view where he likes a lot of the esoteric. Brian, it's classic Steven Moore, the newbie Nicole, the lens you and I look at in terms of the work we do in the field. And I know I'm more of an indie horror guy. Like that is the strength of the show. It's not 2 white neckbeards just going why isn't there more gore? And why aren't there more like bare breasted women? Like if it doesn't have that, we don't care. So and.

26:27 Mike, you put that together. Mikey.