The films

WATCHobscure

I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses

A Canadian courtroom drama about a real murder. Its presence on the list is inexplicable.

WATCHcult

Visiting Hours

Michael Ironside stalking a hospital. A real cast, a real budget, and no business being on the list.

WATCHcult

The Void

Practical effects made on Kickstarter money, doing an unembarrassed Carpenter impression.

WATCHcult

In a Violent Nature

A slasher shot entirely from behind the killer, at walking pace, with no score. A formal experiment that works.

WATCHcult

It Lives Inside

An Indian-American teenager unleashes a demon from Hindu folklore while trying to assimilate.

WATCHcult

Pontypool

The infection is carried by the English language, and the whole film happens in a radio booth.

WATCHcult

Skinamarink

Ninety minutes of ceilings and corners at 4am. Either the scariest thing you have seen or nothing at all.

WATCHknown

The Blackcoat's Daughter

Oz Perkins' debut. Glacial, wintry, and the timeline is doing something you will only spot late.

WATCHknown

Possessor

Brandon Cronenberg working the family seam without embarrassment. The practical effects are appalling in the right way.

WATCHknown

Rabid

Cronenberg's second feature, with an experimental skin graft, a stinger in an armpit, and a plague across Montreal.

WATCHknown

The Burning

The best film on the prosecuted list. Savini's raft scene is why it was on it.

WATCHknown

Shivers

Publicly funded, debated in the Canadian parliament, and filmed with complete clinical calm.

WATCHknown

The Brood

Cronenberg's divorce, filmed. The angriest thing he ever made and he has said so.

WATCHknown

Infinity Pool

Brandon Cronenberg again. Wealthy tourists, a legal loophole and Mia Goth having a wonderful time.

WATCHknown

Trick 'r Treat

Four interlocking Halloween stories and the best anthology since Creepshow. Warner shelved it for two years.

WATCHknown

Ginger Snaps

The puberty metaphor made completely explicit, very funny, and unusually well acted.

WATCHknown

The Changeling

A widower, an empty mansion and a wheelchair coming down the stairs. Enormously effective.

WATCHknown

Candyman

The shadow-puppet sequences are the best thing in it. A sequel that is actually about the original.

WATCHknown

Scanners

Everybody remembers the head. The film underneath is about a pharmaceutical company and a custody dispute.

WATCHknown

The Babadook

A film about a widowed mother who resents her son, wearing a monster as a coat.

WATCHknown

The Monkey

Osgood Perkins doing King as a gore comedy. The deaths are elaborate and the film is laughing.

WATCHcanon

Martyrs

Two films stapled together, and it takes its argument about suffering completely seriously.

WATCHcanon

Black Christmas

Four years before Halloween and still the most frightening film in the category.

WATCHcanon

Videodrome

Predicted most of what people now say about the internet, using a Betamax slot in a man's stomach.

WATCHcanon

X

A porn crew shoot on a Texas farm in 1979. Ti West doing the texture of the era properly.

WATCHcanon

Dead Ringers

Jeremy Irons plays twin gynaecologists who share everything, and Cronenberg's coldest, saddest film.

WATCHcanon

Nope

Peele's best-looking film. About spectacle, and about what happens to the people who handle the animals.

WATCHcanon

The Lighthouse

Shot on black and white 35mm in a 1.19:1 box. Two men, a rock, and a great deal of drinking.

WATCHcanon

The Witch

Most of the dialogue comes from court records, then it commits fully to the supernatural.

WATCHcanon

Angel Heart

Mickey Rourke hunts a missing crooner for a client called Louis Cyphre, and the answer is the worst possible one.

WATCHcanon

Sinister

The super-8 reels are the film. Everything between them is a man in an office not turning the lights on.

WATCHcanon

Crimson Peak

Del Toro doing full gothic romance. The house is the best thing in it and it is sinking.

WATCHcanon

Cube

Six strangers in a lethal maze of identical rooms, shot on one set for under 400,000 Canadian dollars.

WATCHcanon

Wrong Turn

Competent, well shot, and exactly what it says. Stan Winston did the mutants.

WATCHcanon

The Fly

Under the effects it is a film about watching someone you love get a terminal illness, and Goldblum plays it that way.

WATCHcanon

Insidious

Wan's best jump scares and the film that built the modern haunting industry. The Further is silly and it works.