Slither (2006)

A small town is taken over by an alien plague, turning residents into zombies and all forms of mutant monsters.

I cannot overstate how much I love this movie.  Between the stellar cast, led by an in-his-prime Nathan Fillion, playing a wonderful set of characters, with endlessly quotable and hilarious dialogue, and the huge number of incredibly disgusting scenes (which continuously top themselves)... like, I cannot speak enough superlatives about this movie.  It is such a great time.

It helps that I am such a big fan of everything James Gunn is involved with.  Tromeo & Juliet?  The best thing Troma ever did.  Dawn of the Dead?  Awesome.  Super?  Outrageous and fun.  Guardians of the Galaxy?  Laid the blueprint for most of the MCU movies that followed it.  The Suicide Squad sequel?  Easily the best thing to come out of the DCU.  And yet this is arguably his best movie.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

In the Falangist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.

Guillermo Del Toro shows up again.

Is this horror?  Probably borderline, again.   People like to call it "dark fantasy", whatever that means.  Sounds like a subgenre of horror to me.  But it's also a pretty gruesome war movie, which is horrifying in it's own right.  Especially one particular scene that made some waves back when this came out.

There's also a number of horrifying monsters, and scary scenes.  And the lead child actress does an amazing job.  All serving an amazingly shot movie that never gets old, regardless of how much I watch it.  I honestly think that when the Academy was handing out all of those awards for The Shape of Water, it was partially a "body of work" award to help make up for them snubbing this film so badly.

The Mist (2007)

A freak storm unleashes a species of bloodthirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.

Another winner from Stephen King.

People always go on about the ending of this movie.  That's what it's mostly kinda known for.  I'm somewhat meh on it myself.  The ending I mean.  It's mean-spirited, for sure.  I'm fine with that: that kind of thing comes with the territory when it comes to horror.  But it also doesn't really matter that much or serve the story in any way.  It's just kind of... there.  Which is fine.

No, what grabs my attention with this movie is the incredibly simple - yet incredibly compelling - base concept to the story. 

"People are trapped in a supermarket, which becomes surrounded by mist, and whatever lurks within it."

Classic.  It's your old school Western siege movie, except set within the framework of a horror movie.  And I love it for it.

Now, is the "villain" the same old Stephen King crazy zealot Christian that's showed up in like all of his stories since Carrie?  Yes.  But Marcia Gay Harden does such an amazing job making her so massively hateable, that I'm willing to forgive the laziness.