The films

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Dead Snow

Nazi zombies in the Norwegian mountains, and it knows exactly how silly it is.

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The Devil's Backbone

Del Toro's other Spanish Civil War film, and he has called it the companion to Pan's Labyrinth.

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Dog Soldiers

A squad on exercise in the Highlands versus werewolves, and it is closer to a war film than to horror.

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Martyrs

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

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Let the Right One In

The horror is the grooming of a lonely child by something very old, and the film is clear about it.

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REC

A Barcelona apartment block, a news crew, and eighty minutes with no let-up.

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The Host

Opens with a real incident: formaldehyde poured into the Han river in 2000. Funny, which nothing else here manages.

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The Orphanage

Produced by del Toro, and it is a film about a mother rather than a house.

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The Descent

Six women, an uncharted cave, and a group dynamic already poisoned before anything goes wrong.

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The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Structured as a courtroom drama, which is a smarter frame than the subgenre usually gets.

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1408

John Cusack alone in a hotel room for most of the running time, and it is the best single-location King film.

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Irréversible

Runs backwards and uses infrasound to make you physically unwell. About 200 walked out at Cannes.

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The Mist

Frank Darabont's third King adaptation, and the ending he changed is one of the cruellest in cinema.

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Wrong Turn

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

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Battle Royale

A class of Japanese schoolchildren are dropped on an island and made to kill each other. Kinji Fukasaku's last major film.

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Cloverfield

A monster attacks New York, filmed on a camcorder from street level, and the marketing invented a genre of mystery.

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Paranormal Activity

15,000 dollars into 193 million, and a decade of imitators nobody asked for.

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The Others

A twist that survives a second viewing, which is rarer than it sounds.

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28 Days Later

Shot on DV, made them fast, and restarted the whole genre for fifteen years.

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Oldboy

A man is imprisoned in a room for fifteen years with no explanation, released, and given five days to find out why.

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Saw

Two men chained in a bathroom, made for 1.2 million dollars in eighteen days, and it is far better than its franchise.