The films

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Hell House LLC

A team building a Halloween haunted attraction in a real abandoned hotel, and the footage is all that is left.

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Deadstream

A disgraced livestreamer broadcasts himself alone in a haunted house for the clout, and gets exactly what he deserves.

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Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

A web-streaming crew live-broadcast from a real abandoned Korean hospital for the views.

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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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Oddity

Irish, small, and it contains one of the best-constructed scares of the decade. The wooden man.

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Terrified

Argentinian, and it front-loads three of the best scares of the decade in the first twenty minutes.

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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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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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House

Toho asked their ad director what would scare children. He asked his eleven-year-old daughter and filmed her answers.

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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 Innkeepers

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

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The House That Dripped Blood

Four stories tied to one house, written by Robert Bloch, with Christopher Lee and a very young Jon Pertwee joke.

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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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Session 9

Shot in a real abandoned asylum, and the building does most of the work.

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Relic

Dementia as a house that grows corridors. The last ten minutes are unexpectedly tender.

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The House by the Cemetery

Fulci's dream logic at its least coherent and most atmospheric. The dubbing of the child is a war crime.

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Verónica

A Madrid teenager holds a séance during a solar eclipse and brings something home. Loosely based on a real police file.

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Under the Shadow

Tehran during the War of the Cities, a djinn, and a mother the state has already stripped of options.

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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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Ju-On: The Grudge

No plot to speak of, structured as loops. Either its weakness or the reason it works.

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The Entity

A woman is repeatedly assaulted by an invisible entity, and the film sides with her against the psychiatrists.

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Dark Water

Nakata again, and the saddest of the cycle. A custody battle with a damp patch on the ceiling.

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Carnival of Souls

Made for 33,000 dollars by an industrial film-maker in Kansas, and it looks like a dream somebody had.

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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 Autopsy of Jane Doe

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

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The Innocents

The Turn of the Screw done perfectly, and it never once tells you whether the ghosts are real.

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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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The Changeling

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

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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 Haunting

Shows you nothing for two hours and is more frightening than anything that shows you everything.

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The Babadook

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

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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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Barbarian

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

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Doctor Sleep

Reconciles King's novel with Kubrick's film, which should not have been possible.

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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 Fog

Carpenter's follow-up to Halloween: a Californian coastal town, a hundredth anniversary, and something owed.