Like any year, 2009 had its predictable moments.  The Friday the 13th remake was average at best.  Saw released another installment for Halloween.  A slew of remakes were announced or went into production, leaving die-hard fans mourning the reputation of the classic originals.  But the year also had its share of unexpected good news able to bring a smile to even the most disillusioned fans. Let’s go out on a high note by reflecting on some of our favorite surprises of 2009, in no particular order.

Fatherhood Didn’t Ruin Dexter
In fact, it made it better.  Dexter didn’t go soft having a family; it upped the stakes for him.  It gave him something to care about, something to be responsible for. For the first time, Dexter formed honest, emotional connections that actually made his Dark Passenger darker and angrier.  It also paved the way for a devestating "born in blood" final scene that will no doubt rewrite the rules for season 5.

Drag Me To Hell
When Sam Raimi announced that he was returning to horror, there was a mixture of excitement and anxiety.  Excitement that he was returning to the genre that he does best, but anxiety over the fact that he has spent nearly the last decade immersed in the very mainstream world of Spider-Man, a series which has gotten progressively worse despite the top-tier talent.  So when Drag Me To Hell came out, loaded with unabashed gore, violence, and the blackest of Raimi humor, it was like all was right with the world again. Unfortunately, the film's lackluster box office was more of a disappointment...

Horror Web Series
Horror has always been a popular genre for the indie filmmaker, so maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that horror web series were slashing up computer screens this year.  What is surprising is the level of talent associated with what was once considered the lowest genre of filmmaking.  There was FEARnet’s own Fear Clinic with Robert Englund; the Roger Corman-produced, Joe Dante-directed, Corey Feldman-starring Splatter; Woke Up Dead with Napoleon Dynamite himself, Jon Heder; Dead & Lonely from House of the Devil director Ti West; and the cross-platform push of Harper’s Globe, a tie-in with CBS’s Harper’s Island “mystery event” – just to name a few. And we're doing our part to keep the trend going in 2010 with our recently announced Zombie Road Kill.

SAW VI
Ripped from the headlines like few horror sequels you've ever seen, the sixth Saw story (which is easily the best chapter since the first three flicks) attacks our health care system like a hungry old dog with a fresh piece of beef. The gory traps and the twisted morality of the series are alive and well, but Saw sequel #5 earns a lot of extra credit for taking square and ironic aim on a topical issue and making it work.

The Success of Paranormal Activity
The set up was simple: a suburban couple, haunted by strange phenomena, sets up a video camera to record what happens when they go to sleep. A weeklong shoot, a $15,000 production budget, and one endorsement from Steven Spielberg later, Paranormal Activity was on its way to becoming the sleeper hit of 2009.

It’s hard to believe that a film with a micro-budget and plot so basic could be one of the most effective horror films to come along in a long time. Credit first-time director Oren Peli, who believed in the power of atmosphere and tension over gore and ultraviolence. Paranormal Activity was the rare occasion when people walking out of the theater meant the movie was a success and not a failure.

With the help of a viral marketing campaign, Paranormal Activity built its way toward an unimaginable $107.4 million box office by inspiring demand in viewers across the country. Can Paramount Pictures make lightning strike twice with a sequel? 

Zombieland Makes Horror-Comedy Work
Many tried, but few succeeded to make horror-comedy strike gold at the box office. In a year where even Sam 'Evil Dead' Raimi had trouble getting out of the gate (his Drag Me to Hell eventually grossed $86 million worldwide), it was a smart aleck zombie movie from a first-time director that captured the hearts of moviegoers in 2009.

So what was it about Zombieland that worked so well? The script by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, originally written for TV, was unusually fresh; critics praised its bounty of witty banter and self-aware dialogue, while director Ruben Fleischer filled the screen with glorious scenes of zombie carnage. But if you had to name the most buzz-worthy thing about Zombieland, it would be, in a word, its cameo.

Elsewhere in the realm of horror comedy, other filmmakers suffered worse fates. Jennifer’s Body, the sardonic sophomore effort by screenwriter Diablo Cody, failed to capitalize on Megan Fox’s star power. Marketers of Drag Me to Hell, the aforementioned return to horror for Sam Raimi, didn’t seem to know if it was a horror film or a comedy (or that a third genre, horror-comedy, was another option).

Perhaps that’s why Zombieland was able to come out of nowhere to earn $93.2 million worldwide, nearly quadrupling its budget; it knew what it was, and it embraced the ‘tude. “Nut up or shut up,” read the tagline – and so moviegoers did, in droves.

Orphan Reminds Us How Good a Bad Kid Can Be
In this age of political correctness, few filmmakers dare to tread the B-movie terrain of the creepy kid genre. Thankfully, director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax) had no qualms about it. The result? This year’s Orphan, in which a married couple (Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard) adopts a 9-year-old girl (Isabelle Furhman) who turns out to have a little killing problem and lingering daddy issues.

Think Rhoda from The Bad Seed meets Damien from The Omen and you see where little Esther’s creepy kid roots come from. She’s a throwback to a time when horror movies were unafraid to feature killer kids and child cults in cornfields.

Distasteful? Trashy? Who cares? Orphan delivered a preternaturally scary titular character and one deliciously inappropriate twist that left audiences gasping with guilty pleasure. We can’t wait for more. 

Left 4 Dead 2 a Worthy Sequel
At first the hardcore Left4Dead fans were worried that the follow-up would be a cheap and basic money-grub of a sequel, but those fears were put to rest when L4D2 hit shelves. Offering improvements in every department (from the online play to the expanded campaigns, from the colorful new characters and nifty new melee weapons), this was the rare horror game that lived up to the hype. Xbox and game producer Valve are promising slick download content in the near future, but there's more than enough in the basic package to keep zombie-hunters very happy indeed. Oh, also the maps are larger, the new monsters are adorably disgusting, and the zombie AI is surprisingly clever. Keep your eyes peeled!

Roger Corman Receives an Honorary Oscar
Legendary B movie producer Roger Corman is one of the most well-known names in the business, but we never expected to see him receive an Oscar.  In this case, you could call it quantity over quality.  With over 400 movies (most of which you’ve probably never heard of) in his 55 year (and counting) career, Corman has made a life of trashy, exploitative, and wonderfully bad shlock films.  His independently financed movies were far more influential than anyone could have realized, for without titles like Boxcar Bertha, Grand Theft Auto,  and Caged Heat, we may not have titans like Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and Jonathan Demme.