The films

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Birth/Rebirth

A morgue technician and a grieving mother reinventing Frankenstein without any of the theatrics.

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Parents

A boy in 1950s suburbia suspects the leftovers his parents keep serving are people. Bob Balaban directed.

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The Legend of Hell House

Richard Matheson adapting himself. Colder and nastier than The Haunting, and nearly as good.

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The Perfection

Swerves three times and mostly earns them. Best watched knowing nothing at all.

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The Toolbox Murders

The first fifteen minutes are notorious. The remaining seventy are a different and much duller film.

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It Lives Inside

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

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Motel Hell

A folksy farmer makes the best smoked meat in the county. The secret is people, planted in the garden up to their necks.

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Q: The Winged Serpent

An Aztec god nests atop the Chrysler Building and eats sunbathers, and Michael Moriarty is extraordinary.

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Snuff

A dull Manson knock-off with a fake murder stapled on the end and a marketing campaign of hired protesters.

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The Boogey Man

A haunted mirror and a Halloween score Ulli Lommel could not afford to license properly.

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Cam

A camgirl finds an identical copy of herself has taken over her account and locked her out.

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The Dark and the Wicked

Bryan Bertino's bleakest film. Two siblings return to the family farm as their father dies and something takes the household apart.

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The House of the Devil

Ti West made a 1983 film in 2009, on 16mm, and the first hour is a girl walking around a house alone.

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Daughters of Darkness

Elizabeth Báthory in an empty Ostend hotel out of season, and it is the most elegant vampire film ever made.

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In the Earth

A scientist and a guide walk into a forest during a pandemic and find a man, and a spirit, that do not want them to leave.

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No One Will Save You

A woman alone in a farmhouse fends off an alien home invasion, with almost no dialogue in the entire film.

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Sting

A girl raises a spider that fell from space in a New York apartment block, and it grows.

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Tales from the Crypt

Amicus adapting the EC Comics, with Joan Collins menaced by a killer Santa and Peter Cushing as a wronged dustman.

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The Uninvited

The first Hollywood ghost film to play it entirely straight. Almost nothing has aged.

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The Wretched

A teenager suspects the woman next door is a witch wearing the neighbours' skins. A word-of-mouth streaming hit.

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When Evil Lurks

Argentinian, merciless, and it establishes early that the film will not spare anybody. It means it.

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Blood Feast

The first gore film. Shot in four days for 24,500 dollars and it looks it, which is half the appeal.

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Night of the Comet

A comet turns most of Los Angeles to dust, and two Valley girls inherit the city.

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Phase IV

Saul Bass's only feature. The ants are shot like a nature documentary and it is deeply strange.

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The Innkeepers

Ti West's other 1970s-feeling film, about two clerks working the last weekend of a haunted hotel.

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The Love Witch

Shot on 35mm to look exactly like 1969, written and designed by one person, and very funny.

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The Stuff

A white dessert oozing from the ground becomes a national craze, and it is eating the people who eat it.

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You Won't Be Alone

A Macedonian witch story told as a Malick film, and it is about what it is to be a person.

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Dead & Buried

Eerie, well made, and completely undeserving of the list. Stan Winston's effects.

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The Blackcoat's Daughter

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

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The Funhouse

Hooper on a real budget with Rick Baker's monster. Nowhere near nasty enough to be on this list.

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The Sentinel

A model moves into a Brooklyn brownstone that turns out to be the gateway to Hell, guarded by a blind priest.

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Wolfen

Not really a werewolf film. Something older is hunting in the ruins of the South Bronx.

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Burnt Offerings

A family rents a summer house that heals itself by consuming them. Karen Black, Oliver Reed and Bette Davis.

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Death Trap

Hooper's follow-up to Chain Saw, shot entirely on a sound stage lit in red. A hotel, a scythe and a crocodile.

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Martin

Romero's own favourite. A vampire film in which there may be no vampire, only a disturbed boy with razor blades.