10 Best Horror Comedies Of The Past 15 Years

The last 15 years have truly been a golden age of horror movies with comedic aspirations, with plenty of examples of brilliant films capable of doling out scares and laughs in equal measure. Horror and comedy have always gone hand-in-hand, with the absurdist nature of terrifying thrills and laugh-out-loud jokes being a natural fit for one another. Classic horror comedies of the 80s like the Evil Dead movies have been given a run for their money by more recent takes on the subgenre.

Horror comedies can exist on a wide spectrum between either ends of the two concepts. Some exist as hilarious ensemble comedies with a few spooky elements thrown in for good measure, whereas others are more straightforward horror movies too bizarre to fully take themselves seriously. Whatever the case, the last 15 years have seen an unprecedented number of excellent horror comedies surface into relevancy.

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10

The Menu

2022

Most horror comedies aren’t overly concerned with leaving audiences with a thought-provoking message to chew on, but 2022’s The Menu is a truly brilliant film. The movie stars Nicholas Hoult and Anya Taylor-Joy as a young couple who earn the exclusive privilege of dining at a world-renowned haute cuisine chef’s private island restaurant, one of the highest-class eateries in the world. Before long, the guests realize that the elaborate multiple-course meal the chef has planned will include their own deaths.

Ralph Fiennes, having plenty of experience playing both villains and offbeat goofballs, strikes a perfect balance between humor and horror with his eccentric Chef Slowik. The wealthy patrons of his establishment unleash some bitterly funny gallows humor as the end of their meal, and lives, looms closer and closer over the course of the experience. Above all else, The Menu deserves praise for the way it’s able to examine the sharp divide between consumers and providers through the lens of the classism present at all levels of food service.

9

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

2010

The idea of a group of lost college friends being hunted down by terrifying rural hillbilly slashers is a well-worn trope of the horror genre, but Tucker & Dale vs. Evil flips it on its head. The film centers on a pair of rustic best friends on vacation who stumble across a party of preppy college kids, only to be mistaken for a pair of murderous rural serial killers. In the ensuing chaos, Tucker and Dale have to defend themselves from defamation and a very real psychotic killer bent on taking revenge for a series of hilarious misunderstandings.

The top-notch dark comedy of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil relies on elaborate, bloody misunderstandings that weaponize dramatic irony like a spiked flail. The college kids literally sprint to their own deaths in front of Tucker and Dale’s eyes out of sheer unfounded fear, only made worse by the pair’s awkward social skills. Taking slapstick humor to its natural gory conclusion, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is a clever subversion of a typical horror movie premise.

8

The Cabin In The Woods

2012

While Tucker & Dale vs. Evil might be a funny take on a specific classic horror movie trope, 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods is a brilliant celebration of the genre as a whole. The movie presents a stock-standard premise of a group of college partiers who enjoy a vacation at an isolated, creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere only to be killed off one-by-one at the hands of undead slashers. But the whole exercise is revealed to be a carefully-planned ritual perpetrated by a mysterious white-collar organization.

The Cabin in the Woods finds a brilliant way to tie every horror movie ever made together by supposing that a single company is behind the careful assassination of innocent kids, all in the name of harvesting blood for angry slumbering gods. The film’s infamous final chaotic setpiece is a love letter to all sorts of horror movie monsters, and the gore never quite outshines the humorous, upbeat tone. Funny, creative, and frightening at times, The Cabin in the Woods is a masterclass tribute to a whole genre.

7

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Freaky

2020

Sometimes a creative twist is all that’s needed to keep a stale genre fresh, and Freaky re-invigorates the horror comedy with a clever gimmick. Named after the famous body-swap movie Freaky Friday, in which a mother and daughter trade bodies, Freaky puts the same limitation on a typical slasher villain and his final girl. Through profane magic, the serial killer known as the Blissfield Butcher swaps places with the innocent teen girl Millie, leading to all sorts of bloody chaos.

Freaky is carried by the double-duty performances of its starring duo. Kathryn Newton shifts her performance on a dime, going from an awkward teen to a silent, purpose-minded killer, and Vince Vaughn is hilarious as a disheveled sadistic murderer suddenly given the personality of a squeamish high schooler. Beyond the obvious comedy to be mined from the premise, Freaky keeps up its comedic momentum with strong one-off jokes and some creative kills.

6

Happy Death Day

2017

Arguably, the groundwork for Freaky as a horror comedy that put a slasher movie bent on a classic supernatural comedy was laid with Happy Death Day. A classic time-loop movie in the vein of Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day follows the perspective of a stuck-up, popular college girl who gets trapped in a time-loop on her birthday. Each version of the day is punctuated by a killer in a baby mask taking her life, forcing her to investigate her murderer’s identity in order to break the cycle.

Happy Death Day is shockingly upbeat for a horror movie. Despite the relative lack of stakes due to the protagonist’s many deaths resetting her life, the film manages to prod the truly horrifying circumstances of being forced to re-live a single day over and over again. With a signature blend of coming-of-age comedy and existential crisis, it’s no wonder Happy Death Day was popular enough to spawn a sequel, Happy Death Day 2U.

5

This Is The End

2013

With an ensemble cast featuring the biggest comedic names of the 2010s, This Is the End is a totally unique and almost objectively hilarious romp through a terrifying apocalypse. The film follows a party of real-life actors playing themselves, including Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, and Jay Baruchel, which is interrupted by the literal end of times. As the Christian rapture unfolds, demons roam the Earth and the planet is ravaged by disaster, forcing the actors into a desperate bid for survival.

This Is the End has an all-star cast of famous comic celebrities that do what they do best, creating hilarious caricatures of themselves as they stumble through armageddon. Michael Cera gets a particularly standout performance in the post-apocalyptic romp through Los Angeles, invigorated by the classic chemistry of Seth Rogen and James Franco. Laden with chemistry, gags, and surprisingly horrifying imagery, This Is the End is an indulgent self-referential roast of 2010s comedy.

4

Barbarian

2022

A masterclass in misleading advertising, 2022’s Barbarian was billed as a thriller centered around a young woman who books a Detroit Airbnb only to find it already occupied by a charming, but possibly not trustworthy visitor. In reality, this simple premise is only the tip of the iceberg, as Barbarian soon descends into a monstrous tale of kidnapping gone wrong that abruptly switches gears into a new character’s perspective. For as horrifying as it is, Barbarian is undoubtedly hilarious, as well.

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Few films are able to be genuinely frightening while still maintaining a humorous edge like Barbarian does, with its playful monster booping the nose of its victims and quickly proving their faith in their surroundings wrong. The jarring moment in which the perspective suddenly swaps over to Justin Long’s character, who in and of himself adds a great deal of comedy to the macabre story, is one of the most abruptly hilarious cuts in horror history. Barbarian proves that comedy needn’t necessarily come at the expense of tension.

3

One Cut Of The Dead

2017

A landmark in 2010s Japanese cinema and a cult classic overseas, One Cut of the Dead is one of the most creative zombie movies ever conceived. The film initially seems to use found footage to tell the tale of a director attempting to make a captivating zombie movie, only to be assaulted by real zombies in the process. Soon, however, the curtain is pulled back, and the film is revealed to actually be following the making of that movie in and of itself.

This film-within-a-film-within-a-film premise offers some hilarious comedy antics that only such a creative premise could facilitate. Once Cut of the Dead‘s title refers to the final in-universe movie’s nature as a live-broadcast single take, meaning that no mistakes can be made. The story goes in-depth explaining the odd peculiarities of the final product audiences saw due to these limitations, making for a hilarious homage to horror filmmaking.

2

The Substance

2024

Image via Mubi

Breaking into history as one of the few Oscar-Nominated horror films, The Substance is one of the most captivating scary movies of the last decade. Centered on an aging starlet who yearns to recapture the beauty of her youth in order to maintain relevancy, The Substance soon devolves into a nauseating spectacle of body horror examining the expectations laid on women by modern culture. For as disgusting as the film can be, it’s also an alarmingly hilarious experience.

The Substance makes no efforts to disguise its knowingly ham-fisted message, throwing subtlety out the window in favor of raw shock factor. This allows for some comedically over-the-top beats that spit in the face of comedic convention, feeding into the larger-than-life nightmarish world crafted by director Coralie Fargeat. By facing its horrors with a bright spotlight, The Substance revels in the disgusting joys of its Cronenbergian imagery.

1

What We Do In The Shadows

2014

Custom image by Brennan Klein

A horror comedy popular enough to inspire a spin-off series years later, What We Do in the Shadows is Taika Waititi’s offbeat masterpiece. A mockumentary, the film presents itself as a documentary following the lives of four vampires, Viago, Vladislav, Petyr, and Deacon, trying to get by in the modern day New Zealand. Eventually, a mishap turns one of their would-be victims, Nick, into a vampire as well, further introducing the antiquated vampires to the modern world.

Really, the story is just at thin excuse for Waititi to level a gut-bustingly funny avalanche of vampire-themed humor at the viewer. The clashing of past ideologies and current sensibilities is a hilarious juxtaposition that keeps the jokes coming, not to mention iconic lines like “Leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet!” and “We’re werewolves, not swear-wolves“. Even if it’s far from the scariest horror movie, What We Do in the Shadows is spooky enough to qualify as one of the best horror comedies of the last 15 years.

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