10 Things We Can't Wait to See in 2010

2009? Done. The new year is here, and with it comes a clean slate and a host of new movies, series and games to get excited about - from killer fish in three dimensions to warmongering angels to the long-awaited return of two horror icons to the screen (and your nightmares). In chronological order, behold our top 10 reasons why 2010 could be a great year for horror fans.

The Return of Vicious Vampire Films (January 8 & beyond)

The tail end of the ‘00s may have belonged to sparkly vampires, but in 2010, their vicious brethren are taking the genre back to its bloody roots. First up is Daybreakers. Ethan Hawke plays a vamp scientist in a world dominated by bloodthirsty vampires who feed on humanity. Later this year,Twilight’s Cam Gigandet and True Blood’s Stephen Moyer team up with Paul Bettany’s warrior monk in the summer flick Priest, loosely based on the Korean comic about a shotgun-toting, vampire-hunting clergyman. And keep an eye out for those LA bloodsucker types in 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, which picks up as Stella (Kiele Sanchez) heads to California to exact revenge for her husband’s death.

The Return of The Evil Dead to the Big Screen (Beginning January 8)
While Sam and Ivan Raimi keep developing a fourth Evil Dead flick between other engagements (i.e. a few little projects called Spider-Man 4 and Warcraft), the good news is we won’t have to wait long to see Bruce Campbell and his chin return as Ash, the hero of The Evil Dead series. That’s because the fine folks at Grindhouse Releasing will bring the movie that started it all to theaters around the country in 2010! Catch 1981’s The Evil Dead on the big screen in select cities and show the Bros. Raimi just how much you demand another sequel to their seminal horror-comedy classic.

Legion (January 22)
Before we see killer fish, Freddy Krueger, and frost-bitten coeds this coming year, we’ll get a little dose of Armaggedon, Old Testament style... A wrathful God sends the Army of Heaven (airborne division) after a pregnant waitress in a small-town diner. A band of locals – and one bad ass archangel (Paul Bettany) – must defend their lives and the future of mankind. Angels with hunky faces wielding shotguns and razor-tipped maces? Count us in.

Adam Green’s Frozen (February 5)
After making a splash in 2006 with his old-school slasher-comedy Hatchet and producing Paul Solet’s baby nightmare Grace, writer-director Adam Green takes us to the slopes in his latest film, the Sundance 2010 entry Frozen. The set-up is simple; three teenagers (Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, and Kevin Zegers) get stuck in the mountains on a ski lift with a snow storm approaching. Understandably, tensions rise as the temperature drops and – well, you’ll just have to wait and find out when it hits theaters on February 5th, 2010.

BioShock 2 (February 9)

Mark your calendars for February 9, when the gaming world will get the highly anticipated sequelBioShock 2. Picking up ten years after the events of BioShock, the multi-platform video game puts you in the suit of the very first Big Daddy, who awakens in 1970 to a very different Rapture where a new cult figure rules the city with an army of reinvented, powerful adversaries called Big Sisters. Expect more of the spectacular, immersive visuals and terrifying themes that made BioShock an instant classic, and learn the back story of the Rapture Civil War in a prequel mode that unveils new characters and weapons, circa 1959.

Shutter Island (February 19)

The last time Martin Scorsese ventured into thriller territory, he turned Robert de Niro into a tattooed Southern psychopath in Cape Fear. So we’re thrilled, pun intended, that the living legend is turning his lens on Dennis Lehane’s Gothic horror novel Shutter Island, about a U.S. Marshal (Leonardo di Caprio) trapped in a sinister mental institution where nothing is as it seems. Plot details are best left secret, so we suggest you go into this February pic cold for maximum shock effect.

Piranha 3D (April 16)

Jaws who? In 2010, a new generation of bikini-clad teens will fall prey to Pygocentrus nattereri – and, we hope, director Alexandre Aja (working from a script by Chuck Russell and Feast duo Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan) can breathe new life into the horror-comedy genre. With a cast that includes Elisabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry O’Connell, Dina Meyer, and that one chick from The CW’s 90210, guessing who’ll become fish food and who will survive should be as fun as having killer fish jump at us in 3-D.

The Reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street (April 30)

The folks at Platinum Dunes have made a decent go out of revisiting horror classics, and their 2010 offering, a remake of Wes Craven’s 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, could be their best yet. Our reasoning: with a new, less jokey Freddy Krueger in place (the terrific Jackie Earle Haley), thisNightmare will give us a deeper, more disturbing peek into the psyche of the iconic dream-dwelling killer we already know (and fear) so well.

Area 51 (TBA)

Oren Peli struck gold in 2009 with his sleeper hit Paranormal Activity, a $15,000 film that’s grossed more than $106 million and counting. In 2010, find out what he can do on more than a shoestring budget. Area 51, another “found footage” chiller, stars a trio of unknown actors and features aliens -- Extraterrestrial Activity, if you will. Filmed for $5 million and primed for another brilliant Paramount viral marketing campaign, will Area 51 make lightning strike twice for Peli?

The Walking Dead on AMC (TBA)

Zombies are nothing new in the world of horror. But zombies ambling toward us on TV from the pages of a celebrated comic book series, shepherded to the screen by none other than Frank Darabont? Color us excited. While no set air date has been announced, the 2010 project, based on writer Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead comics (with artists Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard), promises to be a faithful-in-tone saga about small town Americans who survive an undead outbreak. Prepare your DVRs for the zombie apocalypse!

But that's just us, what are YOU looking forward to in 2010?