Kim Newman

Just the right recipe for a seasonal horror cocktail — gruesome kills, proper suspense, sly wit, likeable leads and a dose of just deserts for very, very bad boys and girls.

An unashamed exploitation movie with teeth, this has all the dinosaur devilry and gung-ho soldiering you could want. There’s even a sweet Tyrannosaur love story in the mix.

Affleck and Bernthal make a funny, if morally dubious, double act, as Christian’s autism lets sociopathic hit man Brax think of himself as the ‘normal’ brother. Best bit: the line-dancing scene.

Managing to go further over-the-top and pushing more offence buttons than you think possible, this is recommended only for the strong of stomach and hard of heart. 

There’s a wobble about how committed this is to being a scary movie rather than an inside Hollywood drama, but — like Exorcist III — it springs one great lunge-out-of-an-unexpected-corner-of-the-frame jump scare.

Fanning brings her A-game and there’s enough mystery about the monsters in the woods to string audiences along until the satisfyingly weird finish. As mid-list horror goes, perfectly fine.

Immaculate has the look of something as lightly spooky as the Nun films, but is prepared to go a lot further — abetted by a committed lead performance — than your average haunted convent picture.

The only film you’ll see this year with a limbless torso playing drums with animated entrails, this wickedly witty take on the seamy side of creative ambition is well worth a spin.

The Blackening is shuddery entertainment with more laughs than the entire Scary Movie franchise.

Resembling a kids’-birthday-party remake of 1973's The Legend Of Hell House, this suffers from being not that funny or spooky. Its saving grace is a cast you’re happy to spend time with.

Not a write-off, but more like a respectful homage than a 2020s update in the manner of Candyman (2021). Perhaps a little disrespect would have been truer to the Clive Barker/Pinhead spirit, which is curiously muted in this outing.

While still a lurid sequel to a ropey slasher movie, Orphan: First Kill is refreshingly clever, unpredictable and gruesome. Isabelle Fuhrman’s Esther deserves three more sequels and a ‘Versus’ movie with the Stepfather or Chucky.

Though some of the interludes are surprisingly effective – Cong Cong’s playground romance is genuinely sweet – the downtime between disasters is mostly here to let the audience breathe. The draw of the film is its huge set-pieces, which easily best recent Hollywood essays in disaster such as Deepwater Horizon.

There’s quite a bit to admire in Motherless Brooklyn, but mostly in detail work — the hats, the cars, the join-the-dots conspiracy theory — but it doesn’t really catch fire as either a private-eye mystery or a study in Tourette syndrome savantry.

While the film stumbles and meanders, however, there’s no denying that it delivers enough set-pieces for three regular horror films.

Showing more enthusiasm than aptitude, this earns ‘could do better if it tried’ on its report card — but it’s a strange enough genre mix to be vaguely worth a look.

A drama of upper-middle-class menace that can’t quite bring itself to be a full-on slasher movie, this has a few too many clichés but offers some creepiness and decent performances.

A soft-spoken yet chilling domestic horror film that tells its slightly overfamiliar tale effectively, with strong performances, quietly disturbing atmosphere, one or two friendly clichés, and good, old- fashioned scares.

This isn’t an atrocity on the level of, say, Rob Zombie’s Halloween — but it is a horror designed to test your patience rather than your nerves.

The real nun in the movie is the heroine, played by a spirited Taissa Farmiga, and the dramatic weight falls on her able shoulders.

Suspenseful and thought-provoking, The Cured is a serious, engaged horror movie. More upsetting than scary, it ratchets up the tension unsettlingly. There’s life in zombies yet.

Burke — perhaps best-known as the grown-up version of the scary baby in the last films in the Twilight saga — is outstanding as the fragile, yet determined heroine who is terrorised beyond the bounds of sanity but has to remember that she might be doing all this to herself.

An ordinary, if effective horror picture, is predictable fare with two big ticks to its benefit: a penchant for creep-out scares involving its looming spectre; and a committed, sympathetic performance from Macdonald.

If you don’t like Saw, this isn’t going to change your mind – but it’s skilful, satisfying schlock and respectful of its fanbase. And the final death is a show-stopping coup de grace.

Though it could do with being weirder and wilder, this high-concept mash-up — what if crooks robbed a haunted bank? — features fine work from a brace of rising stars.

A production line effort with an eye on cashflow rather than the demented work of art Hooper loosed on the world, this eighth entry is above average for its attenuated series. Gore levels are as high as expected and, naturally, the finale leaves things open for further instalments.

A worthy — if chilly and difficult — addition to the sadly extensive filmography of American mass murder. The soundtrack from Canadian singer-songwriter Maica Armata adds some much-needed heart.

Given that this is the first whacky comedy to come out of the Gulf War it’s a shame the whole enterprise isn’t a lot more tasteless, but the half-funny goings-on give that the script has been tailored not to offend a military machine on the point of massive war, perhaps at the expense of unpatriotic laughs. That said, it’s a pleasant enough time-waster, and doesn’t drag on too long.