Mary Elizabeth Winsteads Horror Movies Ranked

Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Horror Movies, Ranked

Kate star Mary Elizabeth Winstead is no stranger to horror, but which of the star’s many slashers/sci-fi horrors/ghost stories is her best yet?

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Kate star Mary Elizabeth Winstead has been a scream queen for decades now, but how do the horror veteran’s starring roles in the genre rank in comparison to each other? Mary Elizabeth Winstead recently returned to screens with Kate, an action thriller that sees the actor playing the titular poisoned assassin on a bloody mission of vengeance against her former employer. Critics have not been too kind to Kate, whose poor reception criticized the movie’s familiar story but still found time to praise Winstead’s central turn.

However, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is no stranger to being singled out as a good actor in bad movies. Since the actor’s career began decades ago, she has starred in a string of genre efforts, some critically acclaimed and some reviled, and has consistently been praised for elevating the lesser horror movies she starred in and being central to the success of the better efforts. All told, the Kate actor has starred in no less than seven horror movies throughout her career.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s horror career began with a sequel to The Ring in 2005, garnering a muted reception that marked the end of Japanese horror’s brief dominance of the genre in Hollywood. After that, slasher movies were the order of the day as Winstead appeared in the 2006 remake Black Christmas, Quentin Tarantino’s darkly comic Grindhouse entry Death Proof, and the third installment in the fantasy-horror franchise Final Destination in rapid succession. After that, Winstead’s taste in horror broadened to include sci-fi horror efforts like 2011’s The Thing prequel and 2016’s twisty alien invasion mystery 10 Cloverfield Lane, as well the hard-to-classify genre-blending effort Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. So, how do the actor’s horror efforts rank in comparison to each other, and which ones are worth a watch for fans of the genre?

The Ring Two (2005)

Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s first horror outing is also her shortest role in the genre, with the actor only appearing in the unrated version of the 2005 sequel The Ring Two. Luckily for Winstead, her minor role being cut from the theatrical release may have been a blessing in disguise. The Ring Two sorely misses The Ring/Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski’s deft touch, and even original Ringu helmer Hideo Nakata’s best efforts can’t keep this sequel from feeling utterly unnecessary. Limp and scare-free, The Ring Two’s critical failure proved (alongside a few later high-profile flops) that the Japanese horror remake craze was on its last legs in Hollywood.

Black Christmas (2006)

While The Ring Two may have been a sanitized PG-13 effort, 2006’s slasher remake Black Christmas proved that an R-rating and gore alone did not make for a great horror movie. Loosely adapted from Bob Clark’s influential 1974 original, 2006’s Black Christmas strips the subtle social commentary and barbed black humor from the original in favor of plentiful eye-gouging and a deeply unpleasant, but equally un-scary, added backstory for the killer. The original Black Christmas helped inspire John Carpenter’s 1978 hit Halloween while the 2006 remake’s corny story of unlikable co-eds being picked off by a bright yellow maniac and his sister/daughter/wife inspired little more than unintentional laughter upon release. At least it’s better than the even more embarrassing 2019 re-do of the same name.

The Thing (2011)

As far as formative texts of the horror movie canon go, remaking The Thing was a lot more offensive than redoing Black Christmas for many genre movie lovers since John Carpenter’s influential body horror classic remained (alongside the original Alien, Aliens, and Predator) a high point of the sci-fi horror sub-genre. However, Carpenter’s movie was itself a remake of a corny ‘50s horror and 2011’s The Thing is technically a prequel, rather than a follow-up film, making the superfluous outing easier to get behind. Like Alien’s later prequel Alien: Covenant, 2011’s The Thing is perfectly competent if unmemorable sci-fi horror that can’t hold a candle to the original, but features some memorable moments (like the genuinely shocking helicopter attack) and is worth a watch on its own merits, despite some distractingly iffy CGI.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter stands alongside Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as a horror-comedy movie sold entirely on its title. However, the release has a bizarre and unexpected problem with its tone, as the monster movie/period piece mashup takes itself entirely too seriously for much of its runtime and fails to offer any of the campy laughs seemingly inherent in its premise. Winstead is stellar as Lincoln’s real-life wife and the movie is a passable action-horror pastiche, but why its tone is closer to Spielberg’s Lincoln than the dumb fun of The Mummy franchise is a mystery.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

For much of its runtime, 10 Cloverfield Lane is an unbearably effective mystery thriller with a killer premise. Winstead stars as one of two survivors trapped in an underground bunker with John Goodman’s unhinged Howard, who warns them that the world outside is infested by killer aliens and poison gas. Is Howard the deadliest thing in the movie, or is he telling the truth? 10 Cloverfield Lane takes its time unraveling the central twist of its plot and ratchets up the tension slowly as Winstead and her love interest plan an escape, before unveiling a masterful last-minute twist that even M. Night Shyamalan would have to applaud.

Death Proof (2007)

The two-movie double feature Grindhouse was an ambitious if over-stuffed experiment from Quentin Tarantino and frequent collaborator Robert Rodriguez that deserved better than its brutal box office failure. Of the movie’s two halves, Tarantino’s offbeat “road movie meets slasher flick” mash-up Death Proof is the more cohesive effort, even though its odd structure means viewers don’t meet the heroines (including Winstead and Rosario Dawson) until halfway through the movie. Over-indulgent and occasionally too goofy for its own good, this daylit horror/chase movie is still undeniably fun, inventive, and fast-paced.

Final Destination 3 (2006)

The strongest outing of the Final Destination franchise since the original movie, Final Destination 3 saw the series take its silly premise to new heights of gory invention. Admittedly, star of the rebooted Candyman franchise Tony Todd’s doomsaying personification of death is sorely missed, but the death scenes are on point, Winstead is the first truly likable lead in the series, and the pace moves at a clip absent from both its laggier predecessors. A gory, glorious delight, Final Destination 3 is a high point of the series, Winstead’s strongest horror so far, and an effective apology from director/writer team Glen Morgan and James Wong for the disaster that their Black Christmas remake soon became due to executive producers ruining their vision.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/mary-elizabeth-winstead-horror-movies-ranked/

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