The films

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His House

A South Sudanese couple in British asylum housing. The haunting and the bureaucracy are the same thing.

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Cuckoo

A German alpine resort, Hunter Schafer, and Dan Stevens doing an accent. Deeply strange.

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Late Night with the Devil

A 1977 Halloween talk show broadcast, live, going wrong. David Dastmalchian finally gets a lead.

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Men

Alex Garland being about as subtle as a church door. The final sequence is remarkable regardless.

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I Saw the TV Glow

Barely a horror film and one of the most upsetting things on this site. About a life not lived.

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Speak No Evil

Danish. About politeness, and the ending is the bleakest thing in this decade of horror.

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Fresh

The title card arrives 33 minutes in, which tells you what kind of film it intends to be.

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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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Bring Her Back

The Philippou brothers' second, and considerably harder to sit through than the first. Sally Hawkins is the reason.

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Infinity Pool

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

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Lamb

Icelandic, extremely slow, and entirely dependent on you accepting the thing in the second act.

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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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Thanksgiving

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

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The Night House

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

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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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MaXXXine

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

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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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Malignant

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

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Abigail

A kidnapping that goes wrong in the most enjoyable way. Very wet, very fast, very funny.

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Candyman

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

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Immaculate

Nunsploitation with a real budget. The last shot is a single unbroken take and it is the reason to watch.

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The Monkey

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

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Renfield

Nicolas Cage plays Dracula as a toxic boss, and his familiar wants to leave the relationship. A horror comedy about codependency.

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Talk to Me

An embalmed hand, a ninety-second rule, and teenagers filming it. The Philippou brothers' first feature.

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Beau Is Afraid

Ari Aster's three-hour anxiety odyssey, and it is horror only in the sense that being alive is.

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Heretic

Two missionaries, one house, and Hugh Grant enjoying himself enormously as the worst man alive.

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Longlegs

Marketed better than almost any horror film this decade. The first hour earns it, the last act is arguable.

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X

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

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Barbarian

Go in knowing nothing. The structure is the point and every synopsis ruins it.

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Trap

Shyamalan's high-concept swing: a serial killer takes his daughter to a pop concert that is a police trap for him.

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Cocaine Bear

A black bear ingests a fortune in dropped cocaine and goes on a rampage. Loosely, very loosely, based on a true event.

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Companion

A weekend away with a reveal in the first act rather than the third, which is the smart choice.

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Evil Dead Rise

Moves the cabin to a Los Angeles tower block. The cheese grater is the sequence people talk about.

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M3GAN

A robotics engineer builds an AI doll to parent her orphaned niece, and the doll takes the job seriously.