Horror is the pizza of movie genres. Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.

Nobody likes to watch a bad drama. Boooring. And it’s painful to sit through a bad comedy and cringe through all the moments you’re supposed to laugh.

But a bad horror movie almost always delivers a few scares, some impressive practical effects, or performances so weak they give the film a campy charm. Horror is the realm of “2 1/2 stars and a heart” on Letterboxd.

Two films this year were wildly celebrated but fell flat for me: M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Oz Perkins’ Longlegs. But even as I ranked them near the bottom of my 2024 list, I appreciate the craft and the performances of each. They’re both stupid, but I’m glad I saw them.

Totally Killer is an Amazon streamer with a clever concept — basically, Scream meets Back to the Future. A teenager travels from present day to the 80s, where she hopes to catch a serial killer who eventually kills her mom. It’s bad, but a lot of fun.

I had higher hopes for It’s What’s Inside, a Netflix film with a creepy sci-fi premise. This thing has style to burn and a clever concept I won’t spoil here that is ultimately squandered. I liked it enough to wish the filmmakers had given the script a few more passes, but it’s an admirable failure.

Apart from the first one — which is great — the Saw movies are objectively terrible. But they’re also amazing, and I’ll watch every one as long as they keep churning them out.

Then there’s the Terrifier series, which started as a straight-forward slasher and has evolved (devolved?) into a supernatural thriller. Known primarily for their gratuitously gory kill scenes, these films alternate between chilling and boring. The murderous Art the Clown is brilliantly designed and portrayed, a baddie already in the ranks of Freddie and Jason. But with bloated runtimes and nonsensical mythology, the films seem designed to test your patience as well as your tolerance for gore. And yet, somehow, I’m excited to see where the franchise goes next.