1. The Dead Ones It’s not my intent to pick an undistributed film as my number one for the second year in a row, but I can only go with my gut — and this year the best new horror film I’ve seen is this low budget morality play that boldly explores an extremely sensitive subject while still delivering the horror goods. The film follows a small group of teens tasked with cleaning up their trashed high school, but the tedious chore takes a turn when four masked gunmen trap them inside and begin to hunt them through the hallways and classrooms. Ghosts, gore, and grief over lives lost take center stage beneath the specter of a school shooting that ties them all together. It’s less about an eventual reveal than it is the self-revelatory journey getting there, and while it delivers thrilling visuals, bloody beats, and horrifying imagery its power rests in its frightening look into the mindset of angry youths. The Best Horror Movies of 2019