THE 100 GREATEST HORROR MOVIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

WORDS JORDAN FARLEY, MATT GLASBY, JAMIE GRAHAM, KEVIN HARLEY, SIMON KINNEAR, LEILA LATIF, MATTHEW LEYLAND, JAMES MOTTRAM, RAFA SALES ROSS, KIM TAYLOR-FOSTER

THE HORROR GENRE IS KILLING IT AT THE BOX OFFICE AND PENETRATING MORE EYEBALLS THAN EVER BEFORE THANKS TO THE RISE OF STREAMING PLATFORMS. THE GENRE THAT DEALS IN DEATH IS, YOU MIGHT SAY, IN THE RUDEST HEALTH OF ITS LIFE. DON'T BELIEVE US? THEN CHECK OUT THIS LIST OF...

ts Australian writer/ director Natalie Erika James’ affecting debut, robbing a poor matriarch (Robyn Nevin) of her memories, as her daughter (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter (Bella Heathcote) try to intervene. Taking cues from The Shining, James gives the family home a malevolent character of its own, the walls creaking and choked with mould.

BEST BIT Heathcote gets trapped in a labyrinth without end.

49

THE OTHERS 2001

Before Nicole Kidman played Grace in Lars von Trier’s seminal Dogville, she played Grace in Alejandro Amenábar’s skin-tingling suspenser about a mother living with two photosensitive children on a haunted Victorian estate. Weaving themes of religion, subservience and disability, The Others is aptly described by its director as a ‘story about human ghosts… and that can be even scarier.’

BEST BIT Grace finds the Book of the Dead…

48

STARRY EYES 2014

‘Mulholland Drive meets Rosemary’s Baby, with gnarly body horror’ might have been the pitch for a film that tracks struggling actress Sarah (Alex Essoe) as she sells body and soul to land a role, then falls apart – mentally and physically. ‘I was ravenous to be a part of it,’ said Essoe, which is all rather meta. Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer landed studio horror Pet Sematary off this low-budget stunner. BEST BIT Vomiting maggots.

43

THE LIGHTHOUSE 2019

‘Nothing good happens when two men are trapped in a giant phallus,’ quipped director and co-writer Robert Eggers. His film is clear evidence to the contrary. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star as a pair of 19th-century ‘wickies’ driven insane by isolation, their full-bore commitment a perfect match for Eggers’ exquisitely ornate dialogue.

BEST BIT ‘Hark Triton, hark!’ Thomas Wake blows up over an indifferent review of his lobster.

42

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL 2009

‘I wanted it to feel like this is something that could have really happened,’ said writer/director Ti West of his babysitterin-peril flick. Against her better instincts, cash-strapped teen Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) agrees to spend the night looking after a spooky old lady called Mother, the slow-burn set-up building to a gratifyingly gonzo climax.

BEST BIT Samantha meets Mother for a drink – of blood.

41

TIMECRIMES 2007

Most time-travel films’ internal logic eventually breaks down, but writer/ director Nacho Vigalondo’s horror sci-fi is both clever and coherent. In a torturously twisted tale, Hector (Karra Elejalde) has his holiday ruined when he’s attacked by a man with a bandaged face. As time begins to spiral and Hector repeatedly quests for answers, each loop only thickens the atmosphere and sharpens the scares.

BEST BIT Scissors!

DOCTOR SLEEP 2019

47 The novel and film of The Shining are both brilliant but very different, with Stephen King famously loathing Stanley Kubrick’s take. So kudos to Mike Flanagan for lovingly adapting the author’s personal sequel novel while also ensuring it follows in the (snowy) footsteps of the director’s iconic creation. The three-hour Director’s Cut of Doctor Sleep is especially good, digging deeper into the characters as Danny, all grown up to look like Ewan McGregor, helps young Abra (Kyliegh Curran) to control her power and turn it on the cult of nomadic psychic-vampires (led by a chilling Rebecca Ferguson) who seek to devour her.

BEST BIT Heeere’s the Overlook Hotel!

SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE 2003

45 Known as Haute Tension (High Tension) in its native France, and fully living up to the billing, Alexandre Aja’s turbo-charged slasher is like a banger you can’t help dancing to, even if the words don’t make sense. Students Alex (Maïwenn) and Marie (Cécile de France) head to Alex’s parents’ house, only for a psycho (Philippe Nahon) to break in, kill the spares and kidnap Alex. A frenzied chase follows, spiked with ultra-violence and building to a reveal that infuriates even the faithful – critic Richard Roeper called it, ‘An extremely wellmade, very grisly and ultimately dishonest slasher film.’

BEST BIT Heads do more than roll during the home invasion...

GINGER SNAPS 2000

46 The bond between two sisters can be profound, but in the case of Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle), it’s also kind of all they have. The gothy siblings are outcasts in their wholesome Canadian town, and even before any werewolves make their presence known, things are looking bleak. The first words its scribe Karen Walton wrote down were, ‘Being a teenage girl is a nightmare,’ and this astute Canadian horror captures the alienation, the rage and the hormones – lycanthropes have monthly cycles, after all. That it’s also funny and gory is a bonus.

BEST BIT Piercing a werewolf’s naval with a silver ring proves a massive error.

HELLBENDER 2021

44 Tangled remade by Ben Wheatley is a near fit for the Adams family’s homegrown marvel. Teenager Izzy (Zelda Adams) is kept isolated by her mother (Zelda’s mum Toby Poser), who claims the girl has an autoimmune condition. But it turns out they’re not exactly human – and once Izzy realises she’s a supernatural being who draws power from fear-laced blood, all bets are off. Co-written/ directed by Zelda, Poser and father John Adams, the result is a woodsy riot-grrrl freak-out, powered by raucous tunes from Izzy and Mum’s in-film garage band. ‘Witchy and dark and crooked and gnarly,’ as Toby puts it, Hellbender rocks.

BEST BIT ‘Now it’s my turn…’ Izzy raises hell.

A QUIET PLACE 2018

37 ‘An extraordinary piece of work,’ raved Stephen King. ‘The SILENCE [sic] makes the camera’s eye open wide in a way few movies manage.’ A Quiet Place also made audiences behave in a way few movies manage, compelling soda-slurpers and crisp-crunchers to stow their appetites lest they break the unnerving spell cast by a story where sightless ETs with super-hearing stalk humanity. Birthing a franchise (Day One is next on the cards), AQP established director/actor/co-writer John Krasinski as a triple threat and made a star of deaf actress Millicent Simmonds, central to the film’s success as a layered and deeply felt portrait of (post-apocalyptic) family life. BEST BIT Lee’s final sign-off. ‘I have always loved you…’

SAW 2004

35 Despite being culpable for the largely regrettable ‘torture-porn’ era, James Wan’s Saw is far craftier than the films that rode its blood-soaked coattails – including the nine Saw movies to follow. Jigsaw killer John Kramer has imprisoned two men in a grotty bathroom. The question ‘why’ is answered by Leigh Whannell’s sly script through a series of flashbacks-withinflashbacks, and twists-within-twists. Shot for just $700,000, Wan envisioned a classically Hitchcockian thriller, but adopted a ‘more gritty and rough around the edges’ shooting style ‘due to the lack of time and money’. Add Jigsaw’s iconic traps, and the result is the most influential horror of the early 21st century. BEST BIT ‘Game over’ for Adam.

MANDy 2018

36 ‘I did a lot [of drugs] in high school. I smoked weed and did mushrooms and acid.’ No shit. Visionary writer/director Panos Cosmatos followed his psychedelic debut Beyond the Black Rainbow with this bizarro midnight-madness feature, in which Nicolas Cage’s lumberjack embarks on a roaring rampage of revenge after being forced to view his wife’s death at the hands of a hippy cult. Set in 1983, in a ‘mythological landscape’, and shot on 16mm with colour filters to a synth score by the late Johann Johannsson, the whole thing look like the covers of a rack of 80s heavy metal albums, viewed through an opium haze. A bloody, druggy masterpiece.

BEST BIT Chainsaw fight! Or Cage sat on the loo unleashing guttural howls of anguish.

MAD GOD 2021

34 Phil Tippett is a VFX wizard who’s won two Oscars and worked on RoboCop, Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers and various instalments of the Twilight Saga. But it’s this obsessional work, 30 years in the making, that most plummets jaws, as much for its technique as the fact it’s so imaginatively, viscerally, relentlessly grim. Set in an underworld, this dialogue-free mix of puppetry, stop-motion and fleeting live-action dishes non-stop cruelty and horror, as hundreds are killed, pulped, relieved of their innards, and worse. ‘It’s like Pasolini made a Pixar movie,’ wrote Sight and Sound.

BEST BIT: The diving bell taking our ‘hero’ to hell (?) goes down and down and down. And down. And down and down and down. And down.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS 2011

32 Five pals-slash-archetypes book a weekend at the titular locale… then find themselves in what could be described as H.P. Lovecraft’s The Truman Show. After writing gigs on Buffy, Lost and Cloverfield, Drew Goddard made his directorial bow with a movie as genre-savvy, twisty and monster-y as any of the above, and then some. ‘We love horror movies, and we sort of set out to make the ultimate version,’ he revealed. Indeed, the affection is so palpable, Cabin never risks being skewered by its own knowingness – the jolts are genuine and those archetypes invite emotional investment, especially ‘Virgin’ Dana (Kristen Connolly) and scene-stealing stoner ‘Fool’ Marty (Fran Kranz).

BEST BIT Every elevator ‘ding’ yielding a new nightmare.

IT 2017

30 Horror fans thought they’d seen It all before, thanks to the well-remembered 1990 TV adap of Stephen King’s source novel. But they soon found themselves feasting on Andy Muschietti’s fresh reinterpretation, which cannily rode Stranger Things’ 80s-set wave. Muschietti’s movie is grislier and more intense than that King-influenced series, anchored in Bill Skarsgård’s viciously gleeful turn as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who aims to make the kids of Derry his Maine meal. ‘Pennywise is constantly on the level of bursting,’ Skarsgård told the New York Times. ‘At almost any moment, he could lunge at you…’

BEST BIT He may be evil incarnate, but Pennywise sure can bust a move.

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT 2014

33 Born in Britain to an Iranian family and raised in the US, writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour had quite the cultural mix of references growing up. They cleverly permeate her feature debut, a vampire movie set in Iran by way of Jim Jarmusch with a touch of Gus Van Sant. The result is a heavily stylised black-and-white chronicling of the illicit activities of an abaya-wearing vampire (Sheila Vand) who roams the derelict streets of fictitious Bad City to a sharply curated soundtrack that would become synonymous with Amirpour’s daring, vibrant work. ‘You’re free to extract as much subtext as possible,’ said Amirpour.

BEST BIT Our vamp on a skateboard. It’s how she rolls.

THE INVITATION 2015

32 Karyn Kusama’s fraught horror-thriller plays out like a drama for most of its runtime – it’s only in retrospect that the true awfulness becomes apparent. Grieving dad Will (Logan Marshall-Green) takes his new girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) to a party hosted by his ex-wife, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her new too-perfect partner David (Michiel Huisman), who are keeping an almighty secret. ‘What The Invitation allowed me to do was go straight into the heart of the concerns of my nightmares,’ said Kusama. ‘What does it mean to be human, and what are humans capable of?’ The results positively jitter with dread.

BEST BIT Will escapes for some fresh air – there goes the neighbourhood.

40 UNDER THE SHADOW 2016

The rise of Iranian horror (see also #33) has reminded us that the genre is never more potent than when scratching at societal itches. Tehran-born director Babak Anvari mined his roots for his 80s-set tale of a mother (Narges Rashidi) under siege three-fold: from Iraqi bombings, the clerical thoughtpolice, and her daughter’s possession by a malevolent djinn.

BEST BIT The perfectly executed smashed-window jump scare.

39 BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO 2012

Need to soundtrack a torture? Snap a radish. That’s the gig facing mildmannered Foley wizard Gilderoy (Toby Jones), in Peter Strickland’s playful, perplexing giallo homage. The masterstroke is that, while we hear everything, we never see what Gilderoy sees – adisassociation that mirrors his disintegrating sanity.

BEST BIT A voice actor records his role as an ‘aroused goblin’.

38 THE GUEST 2014

Dan Stevens turned his TV persona upside-Downton here as ex-army man David, who charms his way into a dead soldier’s family. His increasingly deadly antics reap both alarm and dark LOLs: ‘The humour comes from the situation itself,’ says director Adam Wingard. ‘The expectation that builds is funny because you’re always wondering where we’re going to take things.’

BEST BIT David owning a bar fight: beatings, broken bottles, bribery.

29 MONSTERS 2010

Gareth Edwards’ debut maps out fresh, fertile creature-feature turf. A photographer (Scoot McNairy) escorts a woman (Whitney Able) across ‘infected’ Mexican terrain to the US border; tentacular aliens occupy the territory. Awful and awesome, Edwards’ off-world octopi are low-budget wonders, looming luminously and ominously over an improv love story.

BEST BIT From beauty to time-loop terror, the climax kills.

28 THE ORPHANAGE 2007

The fear of abandonment haunts J.A. Bayona’s elegantly gothic debut, which follows a couple re-opening the children’s home she grew up in, but losing their adopted son in the process. Equal parts scary – hello, creepy sackcloth-clad child – and sad, the film retains a powerful ambiguity. Critic Roger Ebert called it, ‘A superior ghost story, if indeed there are ghosts in it.’

BEST BIT Evil Benigna is knocked down by an ambulance. GOTCHA!

27 RAW 2016

Julia Ducournau’s coming-of-age body horror sees Justine (Garance Marillier) navigate veterinary school, hazing rituals and sex – learning more about herself and her family than she can chew on. ‘I could have made a gore-fest. But no, I wanted the audience to understand that it’s actually very human to be like this,’ said Ducournau of her cannibal drama. BEST BIT Justine eats her sister’s middle finger.

26 BLISS 2019

If Gaspar Noé and Abel Ferrara combined to remake Phantom Thread as a grindhouse vampire flick with a doom metal soundtrack, it might be something like this. More-is-more director Joe Begos shoots on grainy, neon-drenched 16mm for this frenziedly intense tale of Dezzy (Dora Madison), an LA artist who binges on drugs, sex and murder to shift her creative block, and awakens from blackouts to a macabre masterpiece daubed in blood. ‘A gritty-ass fucking drug movie [with] vampire shades to it,’ is how Begos describes his hallucinogenic horrorshow. Quite.

BEST BIT Dezzy cruising seedy LA in an open-top convertible.

25 HOUNDS OF LOVE 2016

Part-drawn from truth, Ben Young’s terrifically-played kidnap thriller is no Kate Bush tribute. His 1987-set tale pulls us grimly close to murderous spouses (Stephen Curry, Emma Booth) whose sick-pup home life in suburban Perth takes all the fun out of dysfunctional. As they kidnap 17-year-old Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), her eyes become our harrowed POV. Hounds bites hard, Young generating a distressed intensity from his washed-out images and controlled leads, favouring taut, tortured restraint over gratuitous shocks. ‘It’s not about what does happen, it’s about what can happen,’ the director explained.

BEST BIT ‘Always danger…’ Joy Division’s Atmosphere features to fiercely cathartic effect.

24 PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2007

Like The Blair Witch Project relocated to the bedroom, Oren Peli’s foundfootage frightener is a demonic display of low-budget, high-focus dread. In San Diego, a static camera watches Micah and Katie as they sleep. Doors move, duvets are tugged… might the demon that disturbed younger Katie’s nights be here? Peli churns up psychological ambiguities to draw us in, then deploys ingenious uses of pacing (those fast-forwards…) and perspective to max our immersion until – slowly, surely – home becomes right where the horror is. ‘You can never avoid being asleep at your own home,’ said Peli. Sweet dreams.

BEST BIT ‘I think we’ll be OK now…’ Or not.

23 THE INVISIBLE MAIN 2020

How do you make H.G. Wells’ 19th-century creation scary again? ‘You’ve got to make him mysterious,’ says writer/director Leigh Whannell, whose film centres not on the title character but on his ex, whom he seemingly persecutes from beyond the grave. This is a fantastical but horribly recognisable study of abuse, driven by Elisabeth Moss’ astonishingly committed performance as a woman enduring untold (and unseen) trauma before fighting back. Universal’s scaled-back standalone emerged in the wake of its failed Dark Universe… so at least we have The Mummy (2017) to thank for something.

BEST BIT The restaurant kill leaves innocent Moss with blood on her hands.

22 THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE 2001

Transposing a classic spook story to Civil War-torn 1930s Spain, Guillermo del Toro’s masterly horror finds its monsters in men, and vice-versa. Beautifully shot, tenderly acted and, in places, properly creepy, it concerns an orphanage haunted by a childish spectre known as ‘the one who sighs’. Perhaps del Toro gained inspiration from once hearing the ghostly sighs of his deceased uncle as a youngster? But it’s a political, as well as a personal, work, with the director calling it ‘a gothic tale set against the backdrop of the greatest ghost engine of all: war’. BEST BIT Santi gets his final, watery revenge on his killer.

21 M1DSOMMAR 2019

Scandi pagan rituals get the Ari Aster treatment in his sophomore film, an ambitious folk horror that riffs on The Wicker Man while torching toxic masculinity. ‘It’s such a large film – the colour, the sound, the quality, the content,’ says Florence Pugh, who plays Dani, a traumatised American student who attends a midsummer festival with a group of friends in rural Sweden. Bad move. Or is it? What we know for sure is that Aster’s drama is a trip: sex, drugs and WTF brown bear costumes. We prefer the theatrical cut, but the Director’s Cut should also be seen.

BEST BIT The elders jumping from the cliff truly rocks.

20 IN MY SKIN 2002

‘Cinematic navel-gazing,’ huffed The Washington Post, but the protagonist played by Marina de Van, who also directs, is obsessed with all parts of her body, poking and pulling, pricking and cutting, biting and chewing. This stomach-churner explores self-harm as a form of release, of self-control, and of pleasure. It’s body horror to make Cronenberg shiver.

BEST BIT Rolling sensually in her own blood.

20 HOST 2020

‘We were being told that outside is scary and inside is safe,’ says director Rob Savage, whose seance horror upended that COVID-19-era wisdom in sensational fashion. Six friends invite a medium to their weekly Zoom call; unexpected guests join, too, yielding a succession of resourcefully mounted no-budget shocks. The cast’s authentic chemistry heightens the impact.

BEST BIT The final session-expiry countdown: 3, 2, WTF!

18 28 DAYS LATER 2002

‘I found zombies a bit daft,’ reckoned Danny Boyle, before screenwriter Alex Garland’s canny reimagining changed his mind. Mining John Wyndham’s speculative sci-fi and Brit-grit realism, Boyle’s ‘zombies’ are anything but daft. They’re angry, they’re infected and – uh-oh – they go like the clappers. Ruuuuun!

BEST BIT Cillian Murphy wanders a deserted London in scenes eerily prescient of lockdown.

17 TRAIN TO BUSAN 2016

The pitch: zombies on a train. Sometimes, it really is that easy. Yet Yeon Sang-ho’s action blockbuster transcends such apparent simplicity by sweating the details. No wonder Edgar Wright called it the ‘best zombie movie I’ve seen in forever’.

Key to its freshness is setting. Yeon’s aim was to give it ‘elements of Korean emotion and tone that aren’t felt in Hollywood films’. Like fellow Korean Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, Yeon’s train is a metaphor for class difference, the film’s plot a parable about helping others instead of being selfish. Yeon milks every source of tension from putting fast zombies in a confined space; the film’s inventive, relentless set-pieces are logically structured as a station-by-station, carriage-by-carriage survival odyssey. Yet by adding characters we care about, it’s moving in both senses of the word.

BEST BIT The passengers attempt to leave the train at Daejeon station. Bad idea.

15 THE MIST 2007

Does The Mist – Frank Darabont’s sublime Stephen King adaptation – have the best horror-movie ending of the 21st century? There’s a strong case to be made. Writer/director Darabont was so committed to his soul-crushing send-off – aKing-approved change to the original novella – that he accepted an $18 million budget to keep his ending intact, when $40 million was on the table. Great call. Set largely in a Maine supermarket, where locals seek refuge from the nightmarish eldritch abominations that have descended on their town (perhaps from a Lovecraft story) in a thick mist, the film’s true monsters are the people walking the aisles who forget their humanity at the end of the world. As Darabont puts it, ‘It’s Lord of the Flies that happens to have some cool monsters in it!’ (Note: the black-and-white version kills.)

BEST BIT The cavalry arrives… too late.

16 (REC) 2007

Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [Rec] is horror cinema at its breathlessly intense best. A Spanish found-footage gem, it follows a TV reporter and her cameraman who are quarantined inside an apartment building where an unholy infection is turning the residents into feral creatures. A zombie movie in all but name, [Rec] unfolds in real time over its pacy 78 minutes – an ethos worlds away from methodical genre grandaddy Night of the Living Dead. Taking a page out of Ridley Scott’s playbook, many of the surprises were sprung on the cast in the moment. ‘Don’t stop, react to anything that’s going to happen,’ were Plaza and Balagueró’s instructions. The result: pure terror. ‘The film corners you with the ferocity of a Spanish inquisitor with a branding iron and holds you there to the bitter end,’ noted late Observer critic Philip French.

BEST BIT What’s lurking in the attic?

14 TALK TO ME 2022

The Exorcist for the TikTok age? Vividly and cinematically playing with the theme of possession, writerdirectors Danny and Michael Philippou pair this with grief, as 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde) is offered a hand in communing with her late mother... or not. “We wanted it to feel dangerous and unpredictable,” says Danny. Mission accomplished. BEST BIT Handshakes all round for the ballsy ending.

13 KILL LIST 2011

Essentially a cursed kitchen-sink thriller, Ben Wheatley’s second feature closes around you like a trap. Two contract killers take a job, but do they know why they’re signing in blood? No, and the blackly comic horrors that ensue steadily intensify. Come the climax, there’s no escape, no catharsis: ‘You’re supposed,’ says Wheatley, ‘to be suffering.’ BEST BIT The Librarian. It’s hammer time.

12 IT FOLLOWS 2014

Powered by a spectacular synth score, this ultra-stylish chiller puts a contemporary spin on Ringu by swapping a haunted VHS for a cursed STD. Maika Monroe is the unlucky victim, pursued by a relentless, shapeshifting slow-walker that turns every background player into a potential heart attack. ‘The best horror film in years,’ screamed Vice. BEST BIT The Tall Man makes an entrance.

11 LET THE RIGHT ONE IN 2008

The vampire movie gets reborn in this Scandinavian tale as chilly as a Stockholm winter. Adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel, it tracks bullied Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) as he finds comfort in his friendship with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a new kid on the block who only appears at night, carries a strange odour and thirsts for blood. As they bond, Eli becomes Oskar’s protector. ‘I see them as the same character,’ said director Tomas Alfredson, suggesting that Eli is somehow a manifestation of Oskar’s muted anger at the world. Putting its own unique spin on vampire lore – these creatures even send cats into a frenzy – Alfredson’s minimalist masterpiece may have inspired an American movie remake and TV series, but neither boasted its sensitivity and strangeness.

BEST BIT The underwater-POV swimming pool attack, as Eli takes out Oskar’s tormentors.

09 THE BABADOOK 2014

Jennifer Kent’s outstanding debut tackles grief, loss, guilt, mental health, motherhood and the absent-father theme – by terrorising a mother and son via a supernatural monster with a taste for fine millinery.

Amelia (Essie Davis) has raised six-year-old Samuel (Noah Wiseman) alone after her husband was killed in a car accident, and must watch in horror as his behaviour spirals when a sinister pop-up book – Mister Babadook – mysteriously appears.

Made for just $2.5 million, The Babadook based its top-hatted monster on stills of Lon Chaney’s vampire in lost silent film London After Midnight, and brought it to life via stop-motion animation and practical effects. Boy, does it work. ‘I’ve never seen a more terrifying film,’ said The Exorcist’s William Friedkin.

BEST BIT When Amelia goes full big bad Babadook, uttering unimaginable things to her son.

ALAMY, GETTY

10 MARTYRS 2008

Perhaps the most bruising film of the New French Extremism movement, writer/ director Pascal Laugier’s masterwork is wreathed in pain. Beginning in the realms of J-horror, as kidnapping victim Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) is tormented by a mysterious figure from the past, it moves towards torture porn (or ‘anti-torture porn’ as Laugier put it) when she and childhood friend Anna (Morjana Alaoui) kill a seemingly innocent family, only to discover [SPOILERS AHEAD!] a subterranean chamber beneath their home…

‘Horror shouldn’t be a unifying genre,’ said Laugier, who doesn’t flinch from exploring the aftershocks of abuse, and the brutalities perpetrated in the name of religion. ‘It must divide, shock, make cracks in the certainties of the audience.’ Consider that a warning.

BEST BIT Skin flayed, eyes aflame, Anna finally sees the truth. Both troubling and transcendental.

08 THE DESCENT 2005

of the dark? In Neil Marshall’s hands, we all are. The power of The Descent is that (unless you’re watching the punch-pulling US cut) the title is a hideous promise. Down we go.

Jangling nerves from the opening scene, Marshall dials up the tension as a sextet of friends go spelunking in an uncharted cave system. They’re in trouble long before they realise they’re not alone.

‘There was malicious intent on my part,’ admitted Marshall. ‘I wanted to scare the shit out of people.’ In impressively cramped, soundstage-built locations, Marshall heightened realism and claustrophobia by only using appropriate light sources (flares, glowsticks) wielded by his cast. And that’s without mentioning his inspired decision to make his heroes women, offering an authentic portrait of frazzled friendship undone by grief, betrayal and troglodyte predators.

BEST BIT The night-vision reveal.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD 2004

06 A great comedy, yes, but also a great horror film. Raised on Raimi and Romero, Edgar Wright and star/co-writer Simon Pegg understand every trope of the zombie movie, and that’s why Shaun is so effective. From having to brain friends and family before they turn, to the cathartic disembowelling of the arsehole in the group, the film doesn’t stint on guts, emotional or literal.

Shaun’s genius is to bring these familiar beats across the Atlantic. ‘In American zombie movies, everyone had high-powered weapons,’ pondered Wright. ‘What would someone do without all that?’ Hence the climactic siege takes place in the local pub, a zombie bite can be dealt with simply by ‘running it under the tap’, and the reaction to a blood-stained shirt is to politely point out that ‘you’ve got red on you’.

BEST BIT The jukebox plays Don’t Stop Me Now.

KAIRO 2001

07 ‘When I’m told that Kairo predicted the future, I have to say that was not my original intention,’ says Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Well, we can only assume that his intention was to reduce terrified viewers to whimpering wrecks, because it’s the only thing this does better.

Made as the world was getting to grips with the internet, Kairo (Pulse) anticipated 21st-century disconnection. Its young protagonists set out to find why Tokyo is growing emptier by the day, and learn that malevolent spirits are entering our world through these portals. As suicides rack up and the shadow-drenched city – all stains, scratchy sound design and dissonant spaces – becomes more and more sinister, Kairo seeps wider and deeper until it feels apocalyptic. Along with Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, this is the apex of J-horror.

BEST BIT A distorted ghost walks towards us in slow motion. Terrifying.

THE WITCH 2015

05 Suffused with dark magic, Robert Eggers’ chiller was inspired by the 17th-century Salem Witch Trials, which took place near to where he grew up and haunted his childhood dreams. For his directorial debut, the former production designer strikes a rich seam of realism, using natural light, accurate sets and authentic (British) accents to anchor the more fantastical elements.

In 1630s New England, young Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her god-fearing family are banished by the other settlers following a religious disagreement, and forced to fend for themselves in the unforgiving wilderness. But when their baby is stolen by something, it’s not God who’s pulling the strings. ‘I wanted this film to be like a nightmare from the past,’ said Eggers, ‘like a Puritan’s nightmare that you could upload into the mind’s eye.’ Amen to that. BEST BIT ‘Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?’ asks a mysterious figure.

UNDER THE SKIN 2013

04 ‘The human skin in their [alien] eyes is similar to a carrier bag of shopping,’ says director Jonathan Glazer, explaining how Scarlett Johansson’s visitor perceives us. With inky style, Glazer’s otherworldly chiller makes us see humanity and horror anew, unsettling audience certainties. Johansson’s ET stalks Scotland, a predator seeking naturally occurring resources: men.

Glazer asserts his intent to derail perceptions right from his cosmic prologue, paring cinema down to the base matter of light, darkness, eyes… Johansson also takes shape before us, putting on new skin for stalking in. And when she brings home the bacon – ‘vodsel’, in source author Michel Faber’s term – Glazer’s gloopy abstract images suggest just enough of the abattoir to horrify. Surprise twists seed hints of hope for humanity, but not before Glazer has made us feel terribly small.

BEST BIT The baby on the beach haunts for years.

LAKE MUNGO 2008

03 Appearing out of nowhere like a face in the darkness, Australian writer/director Joel Anderson’s insistently spooky 2008 debut lingers long in the mind. A fake documentary exploring the mutability of grief and truth, it introduces us to the Palmers, a family living in smalltown Ararat, Victoria, whose 16-year-old daughter, Alice (Talia Zucker), drowns while swimming at the local dam. Only Alice isn’t really gone, returning to haunt them in dreams, home movies and old photographs as they try to process their loss.

Inspired by Twin Peaks and the eeriness of the Australian outback, Anderson presents a psychologically convincing ghost story shot through with a deep vein of dread. ‘I like the idea of disquiet,’ he said. ‘I don’t find jumping-out-of-the-closet moments scary.’ To his credit, Lake Mungo isn’t just disquieting; it’s heartbreaking, too.

BEST BIT Alice captures something terrifying on her camera phone.

GET OUT 2017

02 Who would have thought a former puppeteer turned comedian who was best known for an Obama impersonation would make the most searing horror satire of the 21st century? Jordan Peele, with then barely-known British actor Daniel Kaluuya, brought to the screen a portrait of race in America, where Black bodies are prized while Black lives aren’t.

Talented photographer Chris (Kaluuya) somewhat reluctantly agrees to spend a weekend with his white girlfriend’s family in upstate New York. At first, all he faces are microaggressions, but soon, things get dangerous. Part of Peele’s mission was to acknowledge just how ridiculous the image of America being a post-racial utopia was.‘We’re in the Obama presidency, and race was not supposed to be discussed,’ he explained. ‘It was almost like, if you talk about race, it will appear!’

Get Out not only got audiences to take in the unspoken horrors that African Americans face but also received love letters from critics, won Peele a well-deserved Oscar, and brought the Black horror genre back from The Sunken Place.

BEST BIT ‘I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could.’

HEREDITARY 2018

01 Hail, Paimon! Ari Aster’s petrifying debut has been crowned Total Film’s #1 horror movie of the 21st century; don’t lose your head over it. Combining elements of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t Look Now into a ferociously effective new beast, Hereditary is a devastating family drama, where the everyday horrors of loss and grief are – in a way – even more distressing than a demon with a proclivity for shock decapitations. In a just world, Toni Collette’s fiercely committed performance wouldn’t only have been nominated for an Academy Award, she’d have won.

Exemplary through to its dizzyingly bleak finale, Aster’s wildly assured script is matched by his strikingly artful visuals, employing destabilising day/ night match cuts and a dollhouse motif that takes on sinister new meaning with the foreknowledge that the Graham family are little more than playthings for an incomprehensible higher power.

After receiving ecstatic notices out of Sundance 2018 (‘A modern-day horror masterpiece,’ said USA Today) the myth of Hereditary was assured when the trailer accidentally played before a screening of Peter Rabbit in Perth, sending young families fleeing. ‘It’s just wonderful filmmaking,’ said Martin Scorsese. ‘It reminds me of the best of horror films.’ You and us both, Marty.

BEST BIT Off with her head.

50 MORE OF THE GREATEST HORR OR FILMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

SEEN THE TOP 50? NOW IT'S TIME TO COMPLETE THE 100...

2009 Anyone with a love of Mario Bava and Dario Argento’s giallo movies needs to see this gorgeously lurid Belgian-French homage. Death has never been so sensual.

2016 If ghosts invade your holiday home, who you gonna call? Not this exorcist. A delightful horror-(cringe)com with likeable characters and consistent chuckles.

2009 Arthouse meets torture porn in Lars von Trier’s cabin-in-the-woods shocker. Punishment, forgiveness, ejaculating blood, a talking fox. Chaos reigns, indeed.

2022 Two strangers find they’ve double-booked an Airbnb. And that’s the least of their problems in Zach Cregger’s outrageous fright ride full of sharp left turns.

2012 Jeremy Gardner writes, directs and stars in a lowbudget, existential zombie movie with real pathos. The extended one-take climactic sequence is extraordinary.

2002 Soldiers v werewolves in Neil Marshall’s raucously funny and super-gory calling card. The action is fast, furious and admirably gutsy: ‘Sausages.’

2023 Lee Cronin relocates the gnarly action to a rundown LA tower block and gives us the best Evil Dead movie since the 80s. Now, where’s our cheese grater…

2016 Simon Rumley makes off-beam horror as imaginative as it is intense. This fractured breakdown of a clothes-obsessed woman would unnerve Nicolas Roeg.

2001 The family that slays together… Bill Paxton’s directorial debut locks onto a religious fanatic (Paxton himself) who forces his sons to join him in killing ‘demons’.

2017 Mike Flanagan cracks Stephen King’s ‘unfilmable’ novel about a woman left handcuffed to a bed after her hubby carks it during spicy lovemaking. One word: degloving.

2016 A modern-day witch uses magic to bamboozle the patriarchy. Anna Biller wrote, directed and edited. She also handmade the spellbinding sets and costumes.

021 A woman is paralysed by visions of murders. So far, so Eyes of Laura Mars. Then a bonkers final act accelerates James Wan’s movie straight on to this list.

2002 A lonely, socially awkward young woman builds herself a friend. Like if Carrie was Victor Frankenstein. The dark humour will have you in stitches.

2022 Set in 1918, during the Spanish Flu, Ti West’s prequel to X nods to the Golden Age of Hollywood and features a deliriously unhinged Mia Goth in the title role.

2008 A virus that’s passed through language? This claustrophobic Canadian zombie flick is all talk (in a good way) and boasts a top turn by Stephen McHattie.

2022 Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Woodsboro… This ‘requel’ repackages the essentials: smarts, scary set-pieces and Neve Campbell’s Sidney.

001 Never mind a haunted house, how about a haunted psychiatric hospital? Brad Anderson turns the screws tight as things get freaky for an asbestos-cleaning crew.

2011 Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar applies his scalpel-sharp talents to an Eyes Without a Face-alike tale of surgery, sex and shifting identities.

2011 [Rec]’s Jaume Balagueró slows things down to a holdyour-breath standstill, as a doorman lets himself into a woman’s apartment and sleeps under her bed.

2022 This bleak Danish offering will put you off ever making friends on holiday. The dread grows and grows until we reach the most horrific climax since The Vanishing.

2017 As slick and postmodern as any Scream movie, this entertaining slasher-comedy focuses on two social-media obsessed teens. Should have been a mainstream hit.

2007 The most fun horror anthology since heyday Amicus – or at least since Creepshow – serves up serial killers, werewolves and more. There’s warmth to the chills.

2019 Jordan Peele proved he was no one-hit wonder with this potent doppelgänger(s) movie full of nightmarish imagery. It’s not outsiders who are terrifying, it’s…

2020 A troubled woman returns home and seeks revenge in one of the toughest films on the list. The rape-revenge sub-genre gets a morally complex, artistic overhaul.

2016 ‘Luis Buñuel spliced with Hieronymus Bosch,’ yelped TF upon the release of this hellish vision. Provocative in the extreme.

2021 An 80s film censor views a video nasty that speaks to her own buried trauma. Prano Bailey-Bond’s debut is an oppressive study of grief, guilt and gratuitous violence.

2018 Spiced sangria whips a dance troupe into a bloodthirsty orgiastic frenzy in Gaspar Noé’s danse macabre. Seems like the camera operator drank most of it.

2008 Found-footage movies normally seek intimacy and realism. Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams applied the format to a giant monster movie. There goes New York…

2013 James Wan’s super-slick suspenser thrust real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren into spine-icing action, launching a cinematic universe.

2016 Sorcery and grief. This Irish occult horror starring Steve Oram and Catherine Walker should be much better known. A seriously atmospheric chamber piece.

2016 A deaf and mute writer is terrorised by a masked man in her isolated house. Mike Flanagan has two other movies on this list, but this is his scariest offering.

2021 The cruelty of children is quietly explored as kids with dark powers begin to flex their abilities. A slow-burn Norwegian chiller that rightly became an international hit.

2007 Home alone, a heavily pregnant woman is besieged by a crazed Béatrice Dalle, who’s after her baby. Grisly AF, with the technical control of a Fincher movie.

2010 The successful horror franchise that James Wan and Patrick Wilson conjured up first. Haunted-house chills and an inspired jump-scare cameo from Darth Maul.

2019 All shadow, shimmer and synth soundscapes, Jennifer Reeder’s beguiling teen noir evokes echoes of Lynch as a young girl disappears in a Midwest town.

2009 Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza return to the quarantined building to deliver 90 dread-drenched minutes. [Rec] 3 went for something different.

2012 Deconstructing genre tropes, the DIY debut of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (see also Spring, below) is a cabin-in-the-woods horror like no other.

2017 A hunting trip goes horribly south in this taut, stylish French thriller. Writer/ director Coralie Fargeat brings a female perspective to the rape-revenge film.

2017 Bickering friends go hiking in Sweden and stumble into a superior creature feature. The reveal does that rare thing of matching the atmospheric build-up.

2019 Rose Glass’ attentiongrabbing debut sees nurse Morfydd Clark try to save the soul of a dying patient. Think Persona meets Repulsion. The climax scorches.

2014 Imagine, if you can, a walking and talking romantic drama in the Richard Linklater vein, spliced with H.P. Lovecraft or Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. WTF, basically.

2008 The poster child of modern home-invasion movies. When the victims ask their tormentors why they’re doing this, ‘Because you were home’ is the chilling reply.

2003 Two sisters, one creaking house, a creeping camera and masterful art direction make for a super-scary South Korean chiller.

2006 Many home-invasion movies are graphic and grim. This fast-moving French effort instead relies on intense suspense and is all the more terrifying for it.

2009 There are stylish, propulsive serial-killer movies, and there are grubby character studies. Tony squats firmly in the latter camp. Post-viewing shower obligatory.

2013 An elegant US remake that actually improves on the original – in this case Mexican cannibal-family film Somos lo que hay.

2001 Producer/director/actor Larry Fessenden is a god of indie horror. Wendigo shows why, blending city folks’ fear of rural locals with a folkloric monster tale. Brrr.

2014 ‘We drink virgin blood because it sounds cool.’ Ace vampire mockumentary by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. See also the TV show.

2018 Writer-director Andy Mitton makes wonderfully delicate films. This is his best, a ghost story as a father and son flip an old Vermont farmhouse.

2022 Young filmmakers shooting a porno in rural Texas get cut down to size in Ti West’s wellcrafted ode to 70s slashers. Prequel Pearl was released later the same year.