Much like certain flavors, there are movie genres that just work when you put them together. Action Thrillers, Romantic Dramas, Sci-Fi Fantasies. Horror and comedy, by themselves, are two of moviemaking's most malleable genres. Put them together and you can create something unbeatable.
If you’re looking for the best in contemporary gore-soaked gags then you’ve found all that you need. This is the list for fans who like their horror with a little less edge or their comedy with a little more. Get ready to die laughing as we count down, and rank, the ten funniest horror-comedies of the 2010s.
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)
The tropes of the ‘cabin in the woods’ format get flipped upside down when best friends Tucker and Dale get profiled as hillbilly killers by the usual group of jocks and cheerleaders. A series of slapstick comedy errors brings out the prejudice in the characters who would ordinarily be the heroes of this kind of story and the sweetness in the people who would be written off as the villains.
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is a heartfelt send-up of the genre and a pretty sweet romantic comedy about not judging books by their covers when Dale finds himself having to overcome his inferiority complex to get to the happy ending you wish more slasher movies could have.
Life After Beth (2014)
A young man’s journey into adulthood is abruptly lurched forwards when his girlfriend suddenly dies, it’s lurched forward again even further when she comes back from the grave. Literally.
It’s impossible to see anyone owning the role of a sarcastic zombie harder than Aubrey Plaza, and she really does steal the show as the titular Beth, but Life After Beth’s greatest asset is how phenomenally talented its entire cast is. Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Anna Kendrick – to name but a few of the big ones. Not to mention the slew of bizarrely brilliant cameos from the likes of American Pie director Paul Weitz and Pretty Woman director Garry Marshall.
Mom and Dad (2017)
It’s possible to be a mature enough person to not be massively entertained by Nicolas Cage losing it on camera once again whilst demolishing a pool table with a sledgehammer and singing 'The Hokey Pokey’. But do you really want to be?
Mom and Dad is the first solo project from Brian Taylor, of punk rock action movie duo Neveldine/Taylor, and he hasn’t lost any of the exuberance that made the Crank movies such cult hits. Mom and Dad is actually one of the more original zombie movies that you’ll be able to find in this day and age and it really puts in decent work towards the social satire part that most people forget about.
Housebound (2014)
Housebound follows the young and restless Kylie as she’s forced to spend her house arrest with her well-meaning but conventionally-aggravating mother in their old family home. There, Kylie’s adolescent problems begin to come back to life much like the ghost living in the walls.
The strained relationship between a mother and daughter in rural New Zealand doesn’t sound like the basis for an unforgettable comedy but throw in a ghoulish murder mystery and evidently, there's an untapped market. Bursting with that easygoing Kiwi humor that we all crave so much, Housebound is as feel-good as anything in the horror genre can be.
Attack the Block (2011)
Joe Cornish’s 80s inspired creature feature takes the alien invasion of snappy critters to a London tower block and the result is refreshing, to say the least. Brimming with the punch and pizzazz that producers Nira Park and Edgar Wright brought back to British genre movies, Attack the Block is the stuff cult movies are made of. Action, memorable characters, genuine frights, genuine laughs and previously untapped star power.
Attack the Block has a secure place in history for, at the very least, being the movie that brought the evident leading man talents of John Boyega to the big screen for the first time.
The Final Girls (2015)
The Final Girls is a very surprising movie in a lot of very surprising ways. Going into it on its premise alone – a bunch of teens getting sucked into an actual 80s slasher movie – it seems fairly unlikable. It’s exactly the kind of setup a writer would use to avoid having to write something original.
Much like the slashers it’s parodying, the characters don’t seem very well drawn or relatable at the start but that’s because the movie wants to focus its development on the audience coming to understand those characters better. There’s a surprising amount of heart from the story and the team behind it. Against usually-insurmountable odds, it becomes a movie that you root for.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
The traditions and flat-out clichés of every single horror movie subgenre under the sun are up for grabs when Buffy the Vampire Slayer alums Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon let their imaginations run wild. The setup seems simple enough but, from that small box, the pair unpack a horror movie more twisted than most of the ones that are taking themselves seriously.
The whole movie is so well-cast that the main jock is played by a just-pre-career-explosion Chris Hemsworth but it’s Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins’ overworked Tech Guys from Hell that make The Cabin in the Woods such a memorable movie.
Rubber (2010)
From writer and director Quentin Dupieux (perhaps better known in the electronic music world by his stage name of Mr. Oizo) comes Rubber, the story of a sentient tire named Robert. After rolling to life, Robert discovers powerful telekinetic abilities and proceeds to blow up all manner of stuff with them. Much to the audience's collective delight.
Simultaneously funny peculiar and funny ha-ha, Rubber is the most entertaining kind of arthouse filmmaking that you can readily find. It’s absurdism and schlock horror mixed together to form something uniquely entertaining, like the bridging of the artistic divide between Jean-Luc Godard and David Cronenberg.
Get Out (2017)
Definitely more horror than comedy, but how could it not be on the list? Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning horror-satire plays out like the longest, most well-written and well-acted comedy sketch ever produced. Dealing with vastly complex emotions and hugely contentious topics from this – or any other – time period.
With Get Out, the horror scene found a distinct new talent and America found a succinct expression of near-inexpressibly uncomfortable feelings regarding the overlooked links between racism and fetishism. What, before, had to be carefully articulated in a structured argument can now, thanks to Peele, be expressed simply with a picture of Bradley Whitford’s character. And it’s funny every time.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
The politics of the shared living arrangement come to life in the most hilariously energetic fashion in Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi's vampire mockumentary.
As a group of the undying – ranging from age 183 to 8,000-years-old – grapple with cleaning rotas, looking for love and a group of equally dorky werewolves, you come to easily see the relatability of the vampires' ridiculous rivalries and insecurities. If you know the names of the people involved, that probably comes as no surprise at all. But what may surprise you is how well the horror aspect is handled, the story often violently lurching to unsuspected outcomes.
