The horror comedy genre is an interesting one, because it would seem as though laughter and terror are mutually exclusive. However, some directors have managed to balance the two excellently. Arguably the greatest example of this is John Landis’ 1981 masterpiece An American Werewolf in London, a movie that’s as hilarious as the best comedies and as terrifying as the best horror movies. No horror comedy since then has played with the hybrid genre quite as masterfully, but a few have come awfully close. So, here are 10 Horror Comedies To Watch If You Like An American Werewolf In London.
Zombieland
Ruben Fleischer’s undead-infested comedy Zombieland finally got a belated sequel this year, a decade after the original first hit theaters. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin star as a dysfunctional group of survivors. The movie was initially conceived by writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese as a TV series, so the structure of Zombieland is very messy, focusing more on extended vignettes and running gags set in a post-apocalyptic landscape than on an overarching narrative. The narrative is there, as the characters take a road trip to an amusement park, but it takes a backseat. Zombieland has jump scares and hysterical jokes in equal measure.
Scream
Wes Craven’s Scream was a satirical slasher movie that broke down a lot of the genre conventions that Craven himself pioneered in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was strange when the makers of Scary Movie decided to spoof Scream, because Scream itself is already a spoof. It’s a typical slasher movie, in which a group of high schoolers are targeted by a masked serial killer, but it’s set in a world where all the characters are familiar with slasher tropes. The killers turn out to have been inspired by those very movies, so there’s an extra meta commentary about the effects of screen violence on real-life violence.
The Visit
The Visit, a found footage chiller about two kids’ trip to their grandparents’ house that might be more sinister than it seems, was a return to form for M. Night Shyamalan. The creepiness, smart plotting, and subversions of tropes that he built his career on had been gone from his filmography since Unbreakable and Signs.
With The Visit, he brought them all back. As we learn more about the grandparents, more and more tension is built until the big plot twist and the third-act terror. But the movie also has a sharp sense of humor, balancing cringe comedy with escalations of fear.
Night of the Creeps
When he sat down to write Night of the Creeps, a brilliant homage to the classic sci-fi/horror B-movies of the ‘50s, Fred Dekker set out to cram in as many references to old scary movies as he could. He ended up writing the script in a week. It doesn’t feel rushed, because there’s a clear love for old genre movies in there. Dekker is obviously a huge fan of those movies, and he relished the chance to make one of his own. (He reportedly insisted on directing it himself, and wouldn’t let anyone else do it.) With zombies, alien invaders, and a terrifying serial killer, this is a grade-A B-movie tribute.
This is the End
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg had written some of the greatest comedies of the 21st century – Superbad, Pineapple Express etc. – when they decided to make their directorial debut with This is the End. It’s set in L.A., with all of the actors in its cast (basically all of Rogen’s old co-stars, including Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride) playing fictionalized versions of themselves. When the apocalypse breaks out during a crazy drug-hazed housewarming party at James Franco’s house, the actors are stuck together in disaster lockdown, trying to figure out why the world is suddenly on fire.
Evil Dead II
He might be known as a horror director, but Sam Raimi always brings his dark sense of humor to his work. It can even be seen in his Spider-Man trilogy. The Evil Dead was an indie horror delight that set the trend for filmmakers with no money to make a movie about a group of friends visiting a haunted cabin in the woods. It was a more or less straightforward horror film, with an abundance of gore. But the sequel, Evil Dead II, took things a step further. Catching up with Ash following the events of the first one, Evil Dead II ratcheted up the absurdity and became something of a comedy, incorporating Ash’s “boomstick” and culminating in time travel.
Slither
James Gunn will now forever be remembered as the writer-director behind the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but long before he brought Marvel’s plucky cosmic adventurers to the silver screen, he helmed this cult horror hit. Slither is about a virus getting passed around by mutant slugs, and as its premise would suggest, it toys around with the audience’s expectations of schlocky B-movies based on such high-concept ideas. Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks star in the movie, which was heavily influenced by the horror cinema of the ‘80s. Slither’s sick sense of humor made it a box office failure, but it’s since garnered a cult audience.
What We Do in the Shadows
A collaboration between Thor: Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi and the team behind Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows is a mockumentary about the lives of some vampires in New Zealand. They have a housekeeper to whom they’ve promised eternal life, they have a rivalry with a local group of werewolves, and they bicker about the same things that we mortals bicker about with our own roommates.
There isn’t a single gag that doesn’t land in What We Do in the Shadows, which has since spawned an equally hilarious, if slightly American-ized TV adaptation that airs on FX.
Drag Me to Hell
Sam Raimi brought a twisted sense of humor to this dark tale about a loan officer who denies an old lady an extension on her mortgage, prompting the old lady to place a hex on her. Raimi and his brother had written the script years before production began – before he worked on any of the Spider-Man movies, even – and he offered it to Edgar Wright, who turned it down, before deciding to helm the project himself. While it’s not usually billed as a horror comedy, Raimi’s particular brand of dark comedy can be seen peppered all throughout Drag Me to Hell.
Shaun of the Dead
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost kicked off their Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy that brilliantly transplanted the tropes of the American zombie genre into a British setting. Instead of holing up on a farm or in a shopping mall, the group of survivors head to the pub. The movie has a balance between genuine frights and laugh-out-loud gags that rivals An American Werewolf in London for the best entry in this curious hybrid genre. The movie also has terrific character work, with rounded arcs and emotional moments, the likes of which are only seen in the best-written scripts of all time.
