The films

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Frozen

Three people stuck on a chairlift. Almost nothing else, and that is enough.

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Open Water

Real sharks, no cages, 130,000 dollars. The horror is arithmetic: how long does a person float?

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Overlord

Nazi zombies with a real budget and a unusually good first act. Better than the premise deserves.

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Presence

Soderbergh shoots the entire film from the ghost's point of view, handheld, in long takes. It works.

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The Bad Seed

The Production Code would not let a child murderer go free, so it ends with a spanking. See it anyway.

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The Invitation

A dinner party where you spend ninety minutes unsure whether the host is grieving or dangerous.

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The Ruins

Tourists, a Mayan pyramid and a plant with intent. Nastier than its reputation.

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The Serpent and the Rainbow

Wes Craven in Haiti, adapting a real ethnobotanist's account of the drug behind zombie folklore.

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Apostle

Gareth Evans doing folk horror with the fight choreography left in. Much nastier than expected.

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Green Room

A punk band plays the wrong venue. Jeremy Saulnier does not flinch and neither does the film.

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The Autopsy of Jane Doe

Two coroners, one body, one basement. A masterclass in escalating a single location.

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I Walked with a Zombie

Jane Eyre relocated to a Caribbean sugar plantation, and it is the most beautiful film in this category.

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Near Dark

Kathryn Bigelow's vampires are a violent family in a camper van. The word is never used.

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Pearl

Technicolor melodrama with a pitchfork. Mia Goth's final monologue is a single unbroken take.

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The Empty Man

Dumped by the studio with no marketing, runs 137 minutes, and has a 20-minute prologue people rave about.

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The Old Dark House

James Whale between the two Frankensteins, having a wonderful time, and Karloff is the least of it.

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Trick 'r Treat

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

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Bug

William Friedkin directing a two-hander in a motel room about shared delusion, and it is not what the trailer sold.

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Cat People

Val Lewton was told to make a film from a title and a poster. He made one about a woman afraid of her own desire.

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Piranha

Joe Dante's Jaws cash-in, written by John Sayles, and it is far smarter and funnier than it needed to be.

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Thanksgiving

A fake trailer from Grindhouse turned into a real slasher, and it is a very good one.

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The Devil's Rejects

Rob Zombie's second film, and it turns the killers from his first into the protagonists, which should not work.

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The Night House

Rebecca Hall carrying a film about grief with unusual use of negative space.

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The Return of the Living Dead

Makes them fast and talkative. Easily the funniest film in this category, and a bleak ending under the jokes.

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White Zombie

The first zombie film, made independently, with Lugosi controlling the dead on a Haitian sugar plantation.

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As Above, So Below

A descent into the Paris catacombs that becomes a descent into hell, shot for real under the city.

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Coherence

A dinner party the night a comet passes, and reality starts to fork. Shot in one house in five nights.

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Godzilla Minus One

Seventy years on, the series returns to what it was for: the war, the guilt, and the cost.

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Mandy

Nicolas Cage, a chainsaw duel and Jóhann Jóhannsson's last score. Not for everyone and not trying to be.

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MaXXXine

The weakest of West's trilogy and still a better-shot 1985 Los Angeles than most films manage.

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Phantasm

A tall undertaker, a flying silver sphere, and a film that runs entirely on dream logic. Don Coscarelli was 23.

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Terrifier 3

Unrated, made for very little, outgrossed studio horror, and the effects are the entire proposition.

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The First Omen

A prequel nobody wanted that turned out to be the best-directed studio horror of its year.

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The Howling

Rob Bottin was 21. Released months from American Werewolf and between them they finished the subgenre.

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Bone Tomahawk

A slow western for 90 minutes, then one scene people never forget. You will know it when it starts.

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Malignant

James Wan spending studio money on something deranged. The third act is one of the great swerves.