Best Ohio Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of ohio cinema — measured across 617 indexed frames from 10 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Ohio films over-index on fedora, child and shadow — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
New Nightmare (1994)
Wes CravenDP Mark IrwinIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Heather Langenkampas Heather Langenkamp / Nancy Thompson
Robert Englundas Robert Englund / Freddy Krueger
Miko Hughesas Dylan Porter
It's nearing the 10th Anniversary of the film 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and one of the stars, Heather Langenkamp is being scared by a voice on a phone, sounding very similar to the film's villain, Freddy Krueger. When Heather's husband is killed in a car accident and is discovered with slash marks on him, Heather starts to wonder something. Especially when she discovers that Wes Craven is writing another 'Nightmare' film. Soon, she realizes that Freddy has now entered the real world, and the only way to defeat him is to become Nancy Thompson once again.
- 2
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Wes CravenDP Jacques HaitkinIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter, Nancy Thompson, traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger, who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, must devise a plan to lure the monster out of the realm of nightmares and into the real world...
- 3
Rachel TalalayDP Declan QuinnIMDb 4.7TMDB 5.3See in full on FrameThrower →
In part six of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, dream monster Freddy Krueger has finally killed all the children of his hometown, and seeks to escape its confines to hunt fresh prey. To this end, he recruits the aid of his (previously unmentioned) daughter. However, she discovers the demonic origin of her father's powers and meets Dad head-on in a final showdown (originally presented in 3-D).
- 4
Gummo (1997)
Harmony KorineDP Jean-Yves EscoffierIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Constructing this film through random scenes, director Harmony Korine abruptly jettisoned any sort of narrative plot, so here we go: Solomon and Tummler are two bored teenage boys who live in Xenia, Ohio. A few years ago, a tornado swept through it, destroying more than half the town and killing the same amount, including Solomon's father. The film, from there, chronicles the anti-social adventures these two boys have. These include sniffing glue, killing cats, having sex, riding dirtbikes, listening to black metal, and meeting a cavalcade of quirky, bizarre, and scary people. These include a man who pimps his mentally ill wife to our anti-heroes, three sisters who play with their cat and practice becoming strippers, a black midget fending off the sexual advances of a troubled man (played by the director Harmony Korine), a 12-year-old gay transvestite who is also a cat killer, Solomon's mother who seems to be the only glimpse of sanity, two foul-mouthed six-year olds, and most importantly, a nymphlike skateboarder who walks around town wearing pink rabbit ears.
- 5
Take Shelter (2011)
Jeff NicholsDP Adam StoneIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Curtis, a father and husband, is starting to experience bad dreams and hallucinations. Assuming mental illness, he seeks medical help and counseling. However, fearing the worst, he starts building an elaborate and expensive storm shelter in their backyard. This storm shelter threatens to tear apart his family, threatens his sanity and his standing in the community, but he builds it to save his family's life.
- 6
Compliance (2012)
Craig ZobelDP Adam StoneIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
At a fast food restaurant, the manager, Sandra, is having a bad day. Suddenly, she gets a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer who has a complaint that one of her young female employees has stolen from a customer. At the orders of this authoritative sounding stranger, Sandra takes the apparent accused, Becky, to a back room to search her before she is picked up. Once there, the phone scammer manipulates the gullible personnel into participating in Becky's sexual humiliation that grows more twisted with every new sucker on the phone. Only when one final person has the conscience to revolt do they realize the crime they were tricked into, which the real police are hard pressed to solve.
- 7
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Emerald FennellDP Benjamin KračunIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Pushing thirty, and defined by a hideous crime involving her bosom friend, Nina, emotionally scarred medical school dropout, Cassie, knows firsthand that some wounds never heal. Leading an uneventful existence, still living with her parents, waiting tables at a cheap coffee shop to earn a living, Cassie has found the perfect way to deal with the painful past. Dressed to kill, at night, Cassie frequents the local bars and nightclubs, pretending to be dead-drunk, utterly helpless and vulnerable. And, every week, lethally beautiful Cassie is on the prowl for all sorts of nocturnal predators and other wolves in sheep's clothing, who are unaware that, sometimes, the hunter can become the prey. Then, Ryan, a kindly and caring old classmate who is the bee's knees, enters the picture, and just like that, Cassie wants out. However, everybody knows that breaking bad habits is easier said than done. Could Ryan be the one?
What ohio films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a ohio frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — fedora is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- fedora4.5×
- child2.7×
- shadow2.6×
- hair1.9×
- wall1.7×
How ohio films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate ohio from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 33%closeupvs 21% baseline
- 33%naturalvs 43% baseline
- 38%mediumvs 48% baseline
- 50%low keyvs 40% baseline
- 53%nightvs 43% baseline
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 617 frames from 10 films carrying the ohio label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/ohio
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