The Long Night (2022)
A Folk Horror film where Scout Taylor-Compton visits the South only for cultists in black robes and animal masks to surround the house
Phenomena (2023)
In the same vein as The Conjuring films, a film about a true-life Spanish team of paranormal investigators
Rebel Moon – A Child of Fire: Part One (2023)
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
A Murder at the End of the World (2023)
Brit Marling is one of the most intelligent creative faces of the 2010s/20s. Here she co-writes, co-directs and stars in a murder mystery set in the tech world
Home Sick (2007)
The first film from Adam Wingard from which it is hard to guess that this would be the future director of Godzilla vs Kong. A amateurish work, nevertheless with an undeniable enthusiasm for the genre
Jack & Diane (2012)
An LGBT romance featuring fantastic performances from two actors before they became better known, this also acts as an ambiguous monster movie
Creep 2 (2017)
Creep was a wonderfully creepy film with Mark Duplass as someone who invites a videographer to make a film but proves over-friendly to the point of highly disturbed. This is a sequel where Duplass returns for more
The Devil Conspiracy (2022)
This comes with a completely wild plot about Satanists stealing the Shroud of Turin to clone a body to incarnate The Devil and a priest possessed by the archangel Michael wading into action with a glowing sword
Thanksgiving (2023)
Eli Roth’s homage to the slasher film that comes with a dark sense of humour and a series of novelty deaths that rival the best of the 80s slasher heyday
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)
After 23 years, Aardman Animation make a sequel to their first feature film. Another chicken caper film where they try to capture some of its dotty charms and largely succeed
Leave the World Behind (2023)
A strong dramatic work about a sudden catastrophe that occurs when the world’s internet and cellular system are shut off
The Mad Monster (1942)
A poverty row mad scientist film where a magnificently sinister George Zucco turns his gardener into a werewolf. A copycat that was made not long after Universal’s The Wolf Man
The Bermuda Triangle (1978)
A film made to tap the 1970s fascination with the so-called Bermuda Triangle mystery with a name cast lost at sea on a ship as mysterious happenings start to occur
Nostradamus (2000)
A batshit crazy film involving Nostradamus who is a present-day cop, time travel, alternate timelines, the Biblical Apocalypse and The Millennium
Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 (1990)
From regular horror director Brian Yuzna, a sequel to the Christmas slasher films series. This is quite possibly not only the weirdest Christmas film ever made but the weirdest Christmas horror film ever made
Merry Little Batman (2023)
A real head-scratching oddity, a Batman animated Christmas film
Slay Belles (2018)
A trio of alt girls do urban exploring and walk into a war between a grumpy, retired Santa and Krampus
Santa’s Slay (2005)
Christmas horror film with wrestler Bill Goldberg playing a demonic version of Santa Claus
Curse of the Forty Niner (2002)
Makeup effects man John Carl Buechler directs a film about a resurrected prospector come to enact vengeance against those seeking his gold claim
Jack the Reaper (2011)
Film with a class of teenagers a class of teenagers on a field trip is pursued through a haunted carnival by a mythical boogeyman
Nothing Left to Fear (2013)
A horror film produced by Slash of Guns’n’ Roses fame about a family moving to a new town only to find they have been brought there for a sinister purpose
Dr Jekyll and the Wolfman (1972)
The fifth film where cult Spanish horror actor Paul Naschy played the werewolf Waldermar Daninsky. Here Waldemar is pitted up against Dr Jekyll with Naschy playing both roles.
Moonshot (2022)
From Arrowverse producer Greg Berlanti, a film about a nerd who stows away on a voyage to Mars
The Offering (2022)
Undeniably reminiscent of the standout The Vigil, a horror film set around an Orthodox Jewish funeral home that creates great uncanny mood
Candy Cane Lane (2023)
Eddie Murphy – one of the funniest talents of the 1980s – has been largely absent for much of the 2010s. He returns here with a Christmas comedy in which he is the recipient of a curse given to him by an evil Santa elf
A Disturbance in the Force: How The Star Wars Holiday Special Happened (2023)
The Star Wars Holiday Special has a legendary awfulness in Star Wars fandom – least of all that George Lucas has done all in his power to quash its existence. This is a documentary about what happened
The Willies (1990)
A horror anthology that ostensibly tells a series of children’s tales but heads for an admirable grotesquerie
The House of the Dead (1978)
Not to be confused with the Uwe Boll videogame adaptation, this is an obscure but not entirely uninteresting horror anthology from the 1970s that tells several tales set around a funeral parlour
Simon, King of the Witches (1971)
Entry in the spate of 1970s occult films, purportedly written by a real witch, that offers a sometimes comical portrait of the everyday life of a warlock
In a Glass Cage (1986)
The original Apt Pupil, an extraordinary study in cruelty about a bedridden Nazi war criminal and the way his past cruelties influence a teenage boy
Choose or Die (2022)
A British horror film in which people open an old 1980s videogame that is cursed and forces them to make horrible choices concerning the deaths of people around them
Resurrected (2023)
This has a fascinating premise where the Catholic Church develops a resurrection process, before one priest starts to see a darker conspiracy beneath
The Wandering Earth II (2023)
Prequel to the Chinese spectacular about the construction of an engineering project to move the Earth, this comes with some epic-sized effects sequences
Suitable Flesh (2023)
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this is a venture into bodyswap horror that proves immensely entertaining ride
FantastiCozzi (2016)
A documentary about Luigi Cozzi, director of Starcrash and Hercules, among others. Cozzi proves a highly enjoyable raconteur and often more entertaining than some of the films he has made
Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
Way before The Wolf of Wall Street, we had this David DeCoteau film about werewolf stockbrokers
Strange Holiday (1945)
Arch Oboler makes a film in which Claude Rains returns from a holiday to find a Nazi government has overtaken the USA
Drifting Home (2022)
Peculiar but very nicely made anime about a group of children who go on a fantastical journey in an abandoned apartment building that is washed away to sea
Bubble (2022)
Anime in which Tokyo is covered by a mysterious energy bubble of alien origin and of a group of defiant youths who live on in its midst until the appearance of a mystery girl
Last Sentinel (2023)
Film set in a Waterworld styled drowned future aboard a mid-ocean platform between two warring sides. A film that almost entirely exists in terms of finely tuned psychological tensions
The Eternal Daughter (2022)
This received acclaim on the arthouse circuit. Tilda Swinton plays both the daughter and her mother who go to stay a hotel that may be haunted. Everything hovers in a state of ambiguity
V/H/S/85 (2023)
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
Escape from Cannibal Farm (2017)
British director Charlie Steeds delivers a well tuned homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that gets it right in ways that most of the Texas Chainsaw sequels don’t
Chop (2011)
A man is abducted by a stranger who proceeds to remove his limbs in an effort to make him remember the terrible crime he committed. This suggests an incredibly grim film. Surprisingly enough, it is a comedy
Mister Frost (1990)
Fine film that deserves wider recognition with Jeff Goldblum as a man in an asylum who claims to be The Devil
Off Season (2021)
From the increasingly underrated Mickey Keating, a film about a ghostly small town where Keating creates an incredibly eerie and haunted atmosphere
The Civil Dead (2022)
A laidback slacker comedy where a man is befriended by the ghost of a school friend who proves annoyingly needy and won’t go away
The Creator (2023)
Gareth Edwards, the director of Monsters and Godzilla, makes a genre-defining work about robotics and artificial intelligence set in a stunningly detailed future world. This site’s Top Film for 2023
Sister Death (2023)
Paco Plaza, co-director of the [Rec] films, shows James Wan how to do a nun horror film properly. This is a prequel to Plaza’s earlier Veronica, telling an origin story for Sister Death
The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979)
A film from cult director Ray Dennis Steckler about psychos lurking around Hollywood Boulevard. Things get admirably twisted, while the work is a unique time capsule of the period
Mister Superinvisible (1970)
Antonio Margheriti, better known for his Gothic horror and giallo films, makes an invisible man comedy
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
Hammer Films had great success with their revivals of Dracula and Frankenstein and went on to adapt other classic horror stories. Here they take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story as a scientist unleashes his evil personality within
Eating Miss Campbell (2022)
The sight of the normally super-offensive and un-PC Troma Films trying to adjust to the post-#MeToo and Cancel Culture era is a bizarre one indeed
Deadstream (2022)
A witty film based around the concept of a livestream conducted from a haunted house – all of which proceeds to go rather hilariously wrong
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
Mike Flanagan mini-series that expands on the story to incorporate a host of other Poe stories. More like another of Mike Flanagan’s cross-generational ghost stories by way of tv’s Succession with a lot of Poe-esque margin notes
Heart of Stone (2023)
A spy action film starring Gal Gadot as a double agent. The film had its air stolen by Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning, nevertheless is filled with exhilarating action sequences and should have had a higher profile
Beyond Loch Ness (2008)
This offers the novelty of a Loch Ness monster film that takes place in Canada! This is otherwise a routine monster of the era made for the Syfy Channel
Death Spa (1988)
80s horror about a series of novelty killings at a health spa. Contains some entertainingly bizarre death and a surprise number of later to be famous faces
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones (2020)
A low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. That is if you can imagine Lovecraft’s story about fish people mating with humans relocated to a California AirBNB
The Requin (2022)
Survival horror film where Alicia Silverstone and husband are stranded in shark-infested waters when a freak storm washes their beachside cabin out to sea
Shark Bait (2022)
A survival horror film about a group of partying teens who are left clinging to a damaged jet ski in shark-infested waters
War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023)
The idea of H.G. Wells’ classic alien invasion novel rewritten with a Young Adult focus makes you cringe but the idea works in its own way
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
A Blumhouse film adaptation of the videogame that was a considerable hit at the box-office. Josh Hutcherson plays a security guard at a pizza parlour who faces killer animatronics come to life
Stryker (1983)
A vigorous copy of the Mad Max post-apocalyptic action film made by the underrated Cirio H. Santiago
Bounty Killer (2013)
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
Bridge of the Doomed (2022)
This is in essence a zombie film version of the classic historical film Zulu with a small group of soldiers tasked with protecting a bridge against a zombie horde
Resident Evil: Damnation (2012)
The second of the Resident Evil anime films. This is set before the release of the T-Virus and focuses on origin stories for some of the characters
Blank (2022)
Film about a writer who retreats to a fully automated house to complete a novel only to end up imprisoned by a malfunctioning A.I.
Dark Cloud (2022)
SF film about a woman suffering amnesia who is sent to an automated house to recuperate only to be made prisoner by the sinister A.I. that runs the house
Stan Lee (2023)
The late Stan Lee needs no introduction as the most influential figure over the comic-book in the 20th Century. This is a documentary about his life
The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
In much the same way as they did with Halloween, Blumhouse and director David Gordon Green offer up a sequel to The Exorcist on the original’s fiftieth anniversary. The results are a bizarre scratch of the head
Saw X (2023)
The Saw series is back and this has been getting some of the best reviews of any entries in the series
Love (2011)
Melancholy film about a lone astronaut stranded aboard the International Space Station after contact with Earth goes dead
One Under the Sun (2017)
Strange film in which a woman astronaut returns from a Mars mission somehow ‘changed’
The Last Heist (2016)
Mike Mendez film with Henry Rollins very entertaining as a serial killer caught up during a bank heist
Blood Relatives (2022)
An appealingly eccentric indie comedy directed by and starring Noah Segan as a vampire who suddenly discovers he has fathered a kid
There’s No Such Thing as Vampires (2020)
A modestly effective indie film with two people fleeing through the desert backroads pursued by a vampire
Consecration (2023)
Christopher Smith was a highly promising director several years ago with Creep, Triangle and Black Death. Here he returns with a film about sinister happenings in a convent
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? (2022)
An amusing take on the Japanese Monster Movie that takes place in the aftermath of a monster battle as various government agencies debate what do with the carcass of a giant monster lying in the countryside
Haunted Mansion (2023)
The second attempt to spin a film off from the Disney theme park ride, this comes in a more serious tone than the prior Eddie Murphy film but still emerges as lightweight in terms of horror
Birth/Rebirth (2023)
A standout modern variant on the Frankenstein film where two women conspire to cross waaay over medical ethic lines to revive a child from the dead
Homunculus (2021)
Takashi Shimizu, the director of the Ju-on/The Grudge films, conducts an adaptation of a manga about a man who undergoes a trepanning operation and emerges able to see people’s inner traumas given symbolic expression
The Cosmic Man (1959)
A low-budget 1950s SF film with John Carradine as a mysterious, shadowy alien visitor. This borrows a good many of its ideas from The Day the Earth Stood Still
100 Bloody Acres (2012)
An Australian Backwoods Brutality comedy, which amusingly inverts the genre’s clichés, not dissimilar to Tucker and Dale vs Evil
She Will (2021)
A Folk Horror film where aging Alice Krige becomes rejuvenated and discovers the ability to enact vengeance against her abusers from the woods
A Wounded Fawn (2022)
This starts with a woman going on a date with a man she does not realise is a serial killer, before things go off at a very strange tangent
The Time Capsule (2022)
This has an interesting premise where a middle-aged man suddenly faces his teenage girlfriend returned unaged from a relativistic space voyage
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
The seventh of Mission: Impossible films with Tom Cruise still on great form at age 61. He and the team raise the bar for the series to a new high
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023)
A sequel, or more correctly, prequel to the recent remake of the Stephen King novel. This has some legitimacy in that it is adapted from a story recounted in the book
Terror (1978)
A key work of British exploitation director Norman J. Warren centred a series of supernatural novelty deaths
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971)
A giallo film with Anthony Steffen as a very kinky aristocrat who is haunted the ghost of his late wife
Dracula: The Dark Prince (2013)
A medium-budget Dracula film that draws much on its cinematic predecessors and comes filled with Underworld-like brooding Gothic poses and a blonde Dracula
Prey for the Devil (2022)
Daniel Stamm, the director who made the standout
Smoking Causes Coughing (2022)
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s hilariously gonzo comedies made up a series of deadpan surreal vignettes
Mandibles (2020)
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s bizarrely deadpan comedies in which two amiable idiots discover a fly that is about the size of a dog
Totally Killer (2023)
A Blumhouse production that ends up being a smart conceptual mash-up between Back to the Future and Halloween
The Nun II (2023)
More from James Wan’s The Conjuring Universe, this places more focus on mood and atmosphere than The Nun’s ludicrous jump effects
Freeway (1988)
Thriller where widow Darlanne Fluegel and radio talkback host Richard Belzer team up to hunt a serial killer shooting people on the L.A. freeways
BattleBots (2018)
Prolific bad movie director Mark Polonia offers his own no-budget take on the Transformers films where the Transformers are two men in bulky costume who wrestle one another
Piercing (2018)
An interestingly strange film with Mia Wasikowska as a disturbed hooker and Christopher Abbott as a man who plans to kill her