It may seem paradoxical to call something tacky and then go on to discuss how great it is but it's a fairly common occurrence for horror movie fans. Cheap and trashy exploitation is the backbone of the genre and it actually produces some creative results from time to time.
These movies may have been rightfully mauled by critics but that doesn't mean that they don't have value. Here are 10 tacky, unoriginal, and unrealistic horror movies that turn out far better and scarier than they have any right to.
Eye See You a.k.a. D-Tox (2002)
Horror and machismo aren't two things that are typically mixed together outside of maybe hiring a bodybuilder or wrestler to play a slasher villain because of their intimidating stature. So to see Sylvester Stallone, of all people, in what essentially amounts to a horror movie makes for a memorable experience at the very least.
Eye See You a.k.a. D-Tox is set almost entirely in a secluded retreat for psychologically battered cops where Stallone's detective finds himself after losing a game of cat and mouse against a serial killer. The bodies start to pile up when it appears that his killer has found him but the real chills come from the surprisingly striking brutalist architecture of the set.
The Collector (2009)
Long time writer of the Saw franchise Marcus Dunstan ditches most of the bells and whistles of the torture porn icon to make this stripped-down, and often quite smart, home invasion movie.
Josh Stewart's cat burglar breaks into a family home to rob it blind but discovers that he's chosen the same night to break in as a demented serial killer who's transformed the house into a booby-trapped kill box. The ensuing game of hide and seek between the pair upends the conventions of the slasher movie in quite an original way, even if it is ultimately mostly about the gore.
Dead End (2003)
This variation of the classic Lady in White ghost story follows a family as they drive long-distance to see relatives on Christmas Eve. A detour through the woods, however, spells disaster after they find an injured woman by the side of the road with their seemingly-endless night becoming only stranger and stranger from that point on.
Filmed along a relatively small stretch of road, Dead End extracts lots of atmosphere and character development out of a limited toolbox with stand out performances from Ray Wise and Lin Shaye as the bickering parents.
Death Ship (1980)
This fantastically tacky ghost ship movie sees a lifeboat full of survivors from a sunken cruise ship climb aboard a derelict tanker thinking it's their salvation, little do they know that the eerie rusted vessel was once a floating house of horrors for Nazi scientists to conduct experiments on.
Death Ship is one of those movies where its solid cast of actors and its creepy location do most of the heavy lifting with a little bit of stock footage filling in the gaps and it's a must for fans of cheap and cheesy horror.
Apollo 18 (2011)
A found-footage movie chronicling a secret Apollo mission, Apollo 18 takes The Blair Witch Project to the moon and, bizarrely enough, the set up really kind of works.
The distinct mixture of claustrophobia and isolation that comes from having only two main characters that are stuck in a tiny box surrounded by an atmosphere of cold, crushing, death can actually get to you. There are no moments where you can question why the protagonists simply don't run away or call for help. They're truly alone with a menacing force that they can't see but sense all around them.
Chernobyl Diaries (2012)
A group of the usual yuppie-ish horror movie friends decides to partake in some "Extreme Tourism" while visiting Kyiv and venture out to Pripyat, the worker's village on the outskirts of Chernobyl, only to be stalked by shadowy mutated figures and slowly picked off.
If Chernobyl Diaries sounds absolutely tasteless that's only because it is. Nothing being sacred is a staple of the tacky horror movie and few modern entries have followed that credo more brazenly. Yet there is something genuinely and uniquely haunting about its chosen environment, even if it utilizes it in the hackiest way possible, and the informal style to shooting means that it often comes off as improvisational, adding a surprising level of realism.
My Little Eye (2002)
Back when reality TV and internet streaming were still burgeoning phenomena, My Little Eye had the foresight to capitalize on the trend and it produced a cheap but effective slice of found footage fun.
The premise is simple enough, a group of slasher movie characters is cooped up in a secluded house covered with cameras with the promise of cash prize at the end of it. But, when their limited correspondence with the outside world becomes increasingly unsettling in nature, they begin to suspect foul play.
Home Movie (2008)
This is another unusual take on the found footage format that's somewhat hampered by the usual flaw of being populated with conspicuously horror movie-ish actors instead of actors who feel like real people, but it does produce some notably interesting familial drama throughout.
Home Movie also documents the events at a secluded house in the woods with sinister goings-on. This time, however, the terror comes from two creepy kids terrorizing their own parents in a series of increasingly unnerving incidents captured with the home movie camera.
Stage Fright (1987)
Michele Soavi's underrated slasher movie isn't quite Giallo but still has far more stylistic flair than most entries into the subgenre and all of the gratuitousness.
In Stage Fright, a theater group becomes locked inside their workspace with an escaped lunatic who dons the giant owl costume of their avant-garde dance piece and proceeds to dice them up with all manner of horror movie instruments in this ultimately dreamlike splatterfest.
Mulberry Street (2006)
Jim Mickle's unique take on the zombie movie is bursting at the seams with ideas and tricks to make its tiny budget produce a gigantic-feeling horror movie set in New York City.
Its ridiculous story, about infected rats turning New Yorkers into mutated rodent-like monsters, actually spends most of its time on developing both its characters and a strong undercurrent of critique against gentrification slowly but surely eradicating the working class of the city.