31 Days of Horror # 31 In the Mouth of Madness (dir. John Carpenter, 1994)

 **SPOILERS for this one...sorry.

‘God’s not supposed to be a hack horror writer.’

Dr Saperstein - where have we heard that name before, damn I love a horror movie Easter egg! (John Glover) - prepares for a new patient in-take at an unnamed asylum. Dragged in by two porters is insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill), screaming that he’s very definitely NOT MAD. Except Trent’s decorating his padded cell, asylum issue Pjs and face with black crayon crosses. So, he might be a bit mad. Or is he?

It seems there’s a madness spreading across the city, and on the request of Saperstein, Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) is called on to assess Trent to confirm if he’s ‘one of them’.

Trent has an incredible story to tell Dr Wrenn, that begins when he’s hired by the publisher of missing ‘bigger than Stephen King’ horror writer Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow). Cane’s gone missing with an unfinished manuscript and the head of his publishing house, Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston), wants it.

Cane’s books are so popular, fans will kill to get their hands on them, and his agent has gone on a axe-murdering spree.

Trent hasn’t even heard of Cane, which is kind of weird for an author that’s more famous than Stephen King – even people that aren’t fans have heard of him. Trent’s also dismissive of what he considers low-grade shit only morons would like, but when he reads them himself he has to grudgingly admit that they’re at least page-turners.

Trent’s investigations lead him to take a road trip with Cane’s editor Linda (Julie Carmen) to find Cane’s fictional town, Hobbs End. Strange things begin to happen - a painting changes when you turn your back, kids roam the otherwise empty streets of Hobbs End in menacing packs - which Trent dismisses as a publicity stunt created to hype the new book. Linda admits that this was supposed to be a stunt, but now Cane really is missing and they appear to be characters in the new book, which she’s only read part of.

As things get stranger, Trent desperately tries to escape Hobbs End, but Cane has other plans for him, Linda and….the whole world.

That sums up the plot very basically, but In the Mouth of Madness is a wild ride that’s covering a lot of themes in classic John Carpenter style. It’s a film that needs more than one watch to fully appreciate. It has moments that are supremely creepy (a cyclist looming out of the dark on a stretch of isolated road) and moments that are laugh out loud funny (a horrified Trent trying to prise Linda off when she attempts to seduce him ‘for the plot’).

This movie metas hard. As it progresses, you’re going to question what’s really happening. Is Trent trapped in a book within a book within a film? Is he just a character in Cane’s book, a creation of the author that only exists within the pages? Trent, of course, only exists within the confines of the film itself, a fact he becomes aware of in the final scene of the film; a hysterical Trent sitting in an empty cinema watching a film called In the Mouth of Madness starring himself.

Sam Neill is, as always, great. He does unhinged nerdy pompousness so well, and his comic timing is golden. His delivery of the line ‘never throw chips at a driver!’ is worth the streaming cost alone.

The rest of the cast are great, too, with Julie Carmen playing it straight compared to Sam Neill having the time of his life walking around banging things, rolling his eyes and declaring ‘this is REALITY!’

Content warning: I’m pleased to say this is pretty safe. There’s no dead dogs, no suicides and no sexual assault unless you count Linda lunging at Trent and trying to snog him. It’s a good starter / introduction to the genre, either for people that don’t like slashers / realistic violence or for younger audiences. There’s some jump scares, some gooey creatures, a head-on-backwards spider walk, but nothing to give you nightmares. Oh...I almost forgot that Trent punches Linda in the face, but she sort of deserves it. And it shouldn’t be funny, but it is.

Final thoughts: Do you read Sutter Cane?

31 Days of Horror # 30 Kill List (2011, dir. Ben Wheatley)

 ‘Daddy’s showing off.’

Former solider Jay (Neill Maskell) hasn’t had a job since he came back from a failed mission in Kiyv. His wife Shel (MyAnna Burning) is desperate for him to get a job; they’re broke. But Jay is also broken, and he’s angry and abusive, and prone to fits of explosive uncontrollable rage.

Shel invites his war friend Gal (Michael Smiley) and Gal’s girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer) over for dinner, which starts off bad, gets worse and then is sort of OK in the end, if you’re alright with your dinner guests fucking about with things in your house without you knowing.

Gal persuades Jay to do a hit job for The Client (Struan Rodger) who has a long kill list, but when Jay’s increasing unprofessionalism and violence threaten Shel and their son Sam things spiral. Jay’s not content with clean hits, he needs to absolutely annihilate those on the list and anyone else who happens to inadvertently get in the way. What’s weird though, is that before they die, the hits thank Jay.

What starts off as a crime film in the style of Lock Stock becomes something much darker as the story progresses, and the final few minutes are brutal. 

Content warning: Extreme violence

Final thoughts: Confirms my suspicion that people who work in HR suck.

31 days of Horror # Identity (2003, dir. James Mangold)

 ‘I saw you in an orange grove.’

A midnight hearing takes place to decide the fate of mass murderer Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince). Dr Malik (Alfred Molina) is determined to stay Malcolm’s execution on the grounds that evidence supporting an insanity defence were not introduced in his trial.

In the meantime, fate brings ten strangers to a run-down motel on a rainy night when all roads in and out are flooded, and the phone lines are down.

There’s the motel manager, sleazy Larry (John Hawkes) George and Alice York (John C McGinley and Leila Kenzle) and Alice’s son Timmy (Brett Loehr), chauffer driver Ed (John Cusack) and his employer, career-stalled actress Suzanne (Rebecca DeMornay) newly-weds Ginny (Clea DuVall) and Lou (William Lee Scott), sex-worker Paris (Amanda Peet), cop Rhodes (Ray Liotta - RIP) and the prisoner he’s transporting, Robert (Jake Busey).

When Suzanne’s decapitated head is found in one of the laundry room’s washer driers, of course suspicion falls on Robert. But then Robert is also brutally murdered, the remaining guests must work out who the killer is; the thing is, they all think it could be any of them. Paranoia takes hold, with no-one knowing who they can trust. Things are further confused when the bodies disappear as if they were never there and Larry admits he’s not actually the hotel manager.

To say any more than that would give away a twist that’s not at the end of the film (though there is a twist at the end, too). What I can talk about is the feel of the film, and say it’s a delight to watch John Cusack spend so much time being soaking wet.

The film opens with a reading of the ghostly poem Antigonish by William Hughes Mearns. If you had a poetry book as a kid, you’ll probably know it as the little man who wasn’t there poem: ‘Yesterday upon the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there / he wasn’t there again today / I wish, I wish he’d go away’. This sets us up for the theme of the film, and it’s meaning becomes clear when you get to the twist.

The motel has a very unreal feel to it, it’s like a place in a video game, and this you’ll discover, is deliberate. It seems to be in a inescapable time-loop – when Robert attempts an escape, he just finds himself back in the motel’s diner with no explanation as to why.

Identity is a perfect Halloween watch. There’s no ghosts, (despite the poem) but there is an atmosphere of wrongness, and that’s before people start dying in horrible ways. Some of the story is told in brief flashbacks, so the first minutes you’d think this was a completely different kind of film.

Get the blankets, light some candles and turn the lights off. You’re in for a real treat with this one.

Content warning: the twist. Sorry.

Final thoughts: when I came home last night at three, the man was waiting there for me.

31 Days of Horror # 28 The Blair Witch Project (1999 dirs. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez)

‘I’m going to die out here’ 

Film students Heather (Rei Hance, then credited as Heather Donohue) Josh (Joshua Leonard) and Mike (Michael C Williams) head out into the woods in Burkittsville, Maryland, to make a documentary about local legend the Blair Witch. 

They interview locals, all who have their own creepy stories about the woods, and events over the years that have happened there. 

After their first night in the woods, they get very, very lost. Eerie noises wake them in the middle of the night, and mini cairns appear outside their tent in the morning. Strange stick figures hang from the trees and they lose the map and run out of food. 

As fear, exhaustion and hunger take hold, the three descend into paranoia and hopelessness. Then Josh disappears over night and all that’s left of him appears to be a parcel of blood, hair and teeth wrapped in a scrap of his shirt. They can hear him screaming for help in the darkness, but they can’t find him. 

They spend 8 days lost in the woods before finding an abandoned cabin that’s a callback to the townsfolk interviews that we see at the start of the film. It’s here that the film ends, in a final shocking scene that would either have you saying ‘fuck!’ if you paid attention to the dialogue at the start of the film, or, ‘what the fuck?’ if you didn’t. 

The Blair Witch is often credited as the first found footage film. It’s not – it’s preceded by Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and The Last Broadcast (1998). It can be credited for the first viral marketing campaign, though, with a website dedicated to the missing film makers and a pre-release mockumentary called The Curse of the Blair Witch that convinced early-days internet audiences that what they were watching was real, and not fiction. 

The actors, who also operated the cameras and sound equipment, had to keep out of the public eye once the film was released to keep up the idea that this was a real film made by real missing students. While the film was a critical and commercial success, the three actors suffered in the early days of the film’s release. Rei Hance in particular was never really able to shake the legacy of Heather Donohue – she retired from acting in 2008 and changed her name in 2020.

I can remember going to see Blair Witch, at the Empire Cinema in High Wycombe in the autumn of 1999. I thought, and still do think, that it’s a very scary film. Like Wolf Creek, the terror comes from isolation, and being lost in a wilderness you don’t know. I remember at the time thinking how easy it would be to lose your mind if you were in that situation. Hungry, sleep-deprived, cold and scared, how long would you survive? 

Content warning: motion sickness is a big issue in this one. Other than that, there’s not much to fear except your imagination.

Final thoughts: If you go down to the woods today, you better KEEP HOLD OF YOUR FUCKING MAP. 

31 Days of Horror # 27 Drag Me to Hell (2009, dir. Sam Raimi)

'I beg you and you shame me?'

Loan manager Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is desperate for a promotion, so when elderly Mrs Janush (Lorna Raver) comes into the bank pleading for an extension on late mortgage payments, Christine turns her down in an attempt to show her boss she’s capable of making tough decisions. 

Later that night as Christine’s leaving work, she’s attacked in her car by Mrs Janush. She manages to fight her off, but the old lady’s not done with her yet. On the way home, Christine and boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) walk past a physic shop. Something draws Christine in, and she asks the fortune teller Rham (Dileep Rao) to read her palm. He tells her that a dark spirit has attached itself to her.

Christine has three days to escape the curse, and the now-dead Mrs Ganush is going to make those final three days a living nightmare. Clay is the classic horror movie boyfriend who refuses to believe Christine and tells her all the horrible things happening to her are all in her head.

Drag Me to Hell is a wild ride. It’s very, very gross. There’s chin-gumming, flies going up noses, fire-hydrant blood spray and embalming fluid gushing out of a corpse. It is a comedy horror though, so it’s so over the top it’s not that scary. There’s even a talking goat. OK, the goat’s possessed by a human spirit, it can’t actually talk. I don’t know how that works. 

It’s also...problematic. The portrayals of the non-white characters fall into racist stereotypes. Mrs Janush is Romani, so what we have is a movie about a cute blonde white girl being subjected to a curse by a filthy gypsy with rotten teeth and dirty fingernails. The people that try and help her could fall into the Magical Person of Colour trope (this trope is usually more specific,  referring to a Black person, the ‘magical negro’, but here they are an Indian man and Hispanic woman). 

Christine never really seems to accept that she might have made the wrong choice. Over her final three days, she blames her boss and the bank but doesn’t shoulder any of responsibility herself until it’s way too late. Even then, she only does it because she thinks she’s safe. We are given some context to Christine’s drive for success; like Clarice Starling, she grew up po white trash on a farm, her dad’s dead and her mum drinks. Clay’s snobby parents don’t think that she’s good enough for him because she didn’t go to an Ivy League school. 

Christine pays the piper in the film’s few minutes and if you ask me she deserves it purely for killing her little kitten in a daft blood sacrifice. But as a YouTube review pointed out, Mrs Janus can banish people to Hell, but she can’t pay her mortgage? 

Content warning: the kitten dies, grave desecration, floppy corpse kisses. 

Final thoughts: It's a bit of a disappointment from the man that bough us The Evil Dead. 

31 Days of Horror # 26 Ginger Snaps (2000, dir. John Fawcett)

 'Wrists are for girls, I'm slitting my throat'.

Death obsessed sisters Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) don’t have any friends outside of their unhealthily close friendship. At school they’re bullied and their fellow students think they’re weird. 

Their suburban neighbourhood is is experiencing a series of violent dog mutilations and on the same day that Ginger gets her very first period she’s bitten by a werewolf. From then on, Ginger’s different. She’s no longer the awkward, shy girl who does PE in her coat, she’s a high school hallway strut queen in a tight sweater. She’s also growing thick white hair over her body, long, curved nails, a little waggy tail and she has a thirst for the blood of teenage boys and the neighour’s dog.

After popular girl bully Trina (Danielle Hampton) accidentally dies in the sister’s house Brigitte and Cillian Murphy lookalike Jason Dean coded dropout drug dealer Sam (Kris Lemche) try and work out a cure.

Content warning: a lot of dogs die.

Final thoughts: I think I'm getting my period. 

31 days of Horror # 25 Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

 ‘I have crossed oceans of time to find you.’

Watching this on a Saturday afternoon, I drifted off into a nap where I dreamed that I was driving my car while I was asleep. After I woke up, confused and groggy, I realised that I never watched this film the whole way through without falling asleep at some point. There were large sections of it that I didn’t remember, especially towards the end.

Though it's been done hundreds of time, adapting Bram Stoker’s novel can’t be easy. It’s epistolary, and told from the point of view multiple narrators. If you haven’t read it, you really should. If you haven’t watched this film...I’m not sure that you should.

The plot very basically is that Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) travels to Transylvania to help his new client Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) to close the sale on a London property after the previous solicitor Renfield (Tom Waites) is sectioned by Dr Seward (Richard E Grant). Renfield eats flies so that sort of makes sense.

Meanwhile, Jonathon’s  fiancée Mina (Winona Ryder) waits at home and hangs out with her friend Lucy (Sadie Frost) who is trying to work out which one of three horny men she’ll marry.

Dracula sees a photo of Mina and believes that she’s the reincarnation of his lost love Elisabeta. He traps Jonathon in his castle with three sexy horny sex vampires and he heads to London to find Mina. On his trail is Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins). Dracula goes for horny Lucy first of all, turning her into one of his horny sex vampires. 

Mina forgets she’s married to Jonathon and gets horny for Dracula, and then there’s a battle for her soul and for Dracula to be reunited with Elisabeta in the great hereafter. The end.

It’s really long, clocking in and 2 hours 16 minutes. It’s relentlessly horny. Everyone wants to fuck, all the time, particularly Lucy who spends most of her screentime with one boob hanging out. Everyone knows Keanu Reeves’ English accent is awful, but I rarely hear mentioned that Winona Ryder’s isn’t that great either. (Tom Waites does a great job though.)

The costume design is great, especially for Dracula, who gets to wear a shimmery gold cloak that looks like Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss painting, and a red silk Chinese dressing gown with a long train and wing-like sleeves. There’s one outfit where he looks like Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. Sadie Frost gets to wear a huge shimmery silvery-white dress with a vast lace ruff and Mina’s  final scene dress is beautiful.

The special affects are really impressive, and some of the scene transitions are really clever.

This is an auteur film, though, and it shows. Apparently it had a 40 million dollar budget, and terrible things happen when you give a big-driven director that much money to make a film (see Megalopolis, also directed by FGC, which was so fucking bad I turned it off half way through).

It’s actually kind of boring, which is probably why I keep falling asleep. It's too long and there's too much of Lucy's love interests who, apart from Dr. Seward, don't really add anything. Keanu Reeves is beautiful, though, and apparently he tried really, really hard with the accent. 

Content warning: boobs, boobs, some boobs, a tit, boobs, eating spiders

Final thoughts: I have crossed oceans of time watching this film

31 Days of Horror # 24 Flatliners (1990, dir. Joel Schumacher)

‘Don’t bury me on a Saturday.’

A teenage sleepover favourite, Flatliners holds a very special place in my heart. It reminds me of a very specific time in my life and has a very specific feel. That doesn’t mean it’s a good film, because it isn’t, not really. It is a nostalgic trip down late 80s and early 90s cinema lane; a mixed bag of a movie, with a really unique tone and a lot of style over substance.

Med students Nelson (Keifer Sutherland), Rachel (Julia Roberts) Joe (William ‘Billy’ Baldwin) Steckle (Oliver Platt) and Labraccio (Kevin Bacon) use school property, space and resources to play God to try and prove there’s an afterlife.

I am not sure they succeed in this, but they do prove that you’re always haunted by something, and the ways to dispel your ghosts can range from facing your demons, forgiving yourself to righting your wrongs.

Not all wrongs are equal in the afterlife, though. While Nelson has to forgive himself for the death of Billy Mahoney (Joshua Rudoy) a kid him and his friends basically murdered, and Rachel has to let go of her grief over the suicide of her veteran junkie dad, Joe and Labraccio get off lightly. Joe is ‘haunted’ by the many women he secretly films having sex with, and Labraccio must atone for picking on the still very much alive Winnie Hicks (Kesha Reed / Kimberley Scott).

Joe’s ghostly conquests (who are all as alive as Winnie Hicks is) disappear as soon as his fiancé finds out about them and dumps him. Labraccio finds Winnie and her acceptance of his apology stops her ten year old self from verbally abusing him on the subway.

The set design is very, very odd. The hospital they are doing their training in looks like the British museum. There’s vast, high-ceilinged rooms full of huge statues and Grecian columns. Nelson lives in a huge apartment that’s lit with blue florescent tubes on the floor. The streets are run down and mostly empty apart from the occasional passing car. The students go to a shop in where I think is supposed to be Chinatown and buy drinks from a bodega that looks like it’s made from wooden pallets. The entire town seems to be under some kind of construction project...everything is covered with Dexter-style plastic sheeting and there’s beacons and no entry signs all over the place.

It’s set in the autumn, on the days either side of  Halloween, and at least it looks like they filmed it at that time of year. It looks cold and the leaves are turning.

Oliver Platt gets all the good lines in a truly terrible, clunky script and delivers them wonderfully. Though his character is a bit of a pompous, pretentious prick, he’s also kind of likeable.

The other performances, for the most part, do well with the terrible writing. Nelson, while not as awful as Mark from Possession or Guy (hissssssssssss) from Rosemary’s Baby, he’s still pretty terrible and you never get to find out if ghost Billy clobbering him over the head with a crowbar makes adult him see the error of his egotistical, selfish, bullying ways. I have my doubts.

William Baldwin smoulders like the embers of a 5^th of November bonfire, Julia Roberts does that voice-cracking, hand-wringing thing that she does when her character is in emotional turmoil and Kevin Bacon….well…he does his best. His character is at least not a pompous prick, egotistical bully or creepy sex-pest. He does however sport one of the worst haircuts in movie history.

Despite it’s many flaws, I still love this film. It will always remind me of going to Blockbusters to rent it for the tenth time, and then stocking up on snacks like vice versas (remember those?), of being fourteen and trying to figure out which of us was the least likely to be asked for ID if we wanted to buy booze.

Content warning: suicide, intravenous drug use, the dog dies (another one, sorry) Kevin Bacon’s mullet.

Final thoughts: Winnie Hicks is doing just fine for herself, thank you.

31 Days of Horror # 23 Practical Magic (1998. dir. Griffin Dunne)

 ‘In this house, we eat chocolate cake for breakfast.’

Based on Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel of the same name, Practical Magic is about witchy sisters Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gilly (Nicole Kidman) who are sent to live with aunties Frances (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest) after their parents die.

Hundreds of years before, scorned woman and first witch in the Owens family, Maria (Caprice Benedetti) curses future generations of Owens women with a spell that dooms their true love to die.

As a child Sally is determined to never fall foul of the curse and casts her own spell, wishing for a man with qualities that can’t possibly exist.

As the sisters grow older, Gilly lives a carefree, nomadic lifestyle, partying and and always dating the most unsuitable of men. Sally, meanwhile, avoids all romantic entanglements until the aunts meddle in her love life and she marries Michael (Mark Fuerestein).

Sally and Michael have two daughters, Kylie (Evan Rachel Wood) and Antonia (Alexandra Artrip) and seem to be living the perfect life until the curse comes true and Mark dies.

A grief stricken Sally takes her daughters and moves back in with Frances and Jet, swearing that Kylie and Antonia will never do magic.

When Gilly needs Sally’s help escaping her abusive boyfriend Jimmy (Goran Visnjic) and they resort to using magic to get rid of him, things go horribly wrong. Life is further complicated when state investigator Gary Hallet (Aidan Quinn) arrives in town investigating Jimmy’s disappearance.

Practical Magic is probably one of my favourite ever witch films, alongside The Craft. It’s whip smart, extremely funny, and very moving. I absolutely love Nicole Kidman in this film, her performance as Gilly is tough and vulnerable and annoying and adorable. Midnight margaritas is a scene that I think about every time I drink one of those.

Content warning: domestic violence, loads of toads.

Final verdict: There are some things I know for certain: always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, plant lavender for luck, and fall in love whenever you can.

31 Days of Horror # 22 High Tension (aka 'Haute Tension' / ‘Switchblade Romance’, 2003 dir. Alexandre Aja)

 Student besties Alex (Maïwenn) and Marie (Cécile de France) go to Alex’s parent’s remote farmhouse to study. As the family sleeps and Marie rings the devil’s doorbell after seeing Alex's boobs, a stranger breaks into the house.

The Killer, (Phillipe Nahon) a middle-aged French Michael Myers in a grubby browny-green boiler suit has an unstoppable, supernatural strength and can remove heads and limbs with ease. Unlike Michael’s dispassionate and robotic slayings, The Killer takes a great deal of perverted pleasure in his work. He kills the whole family (including the dog) and then slings a chained up Alex in the back of his Jeepers Creepers-esque van and drives her away from the house.

He stops along the way to fill up the van, buy some booze, have a piss and axe the poor petrol station attendant in the chest. Marie, who’s also in the back of the van takes the comfort break as her chance to escape and try and phone the police. When they get cross with her because she can’t give them the address of the petrol station, she yells at them, hangs up and then takes the dead attendant’s car to follow the Killer herself.

She follows him to what looks like a weed farm in the middle of the woods for the final, brutal and bloody showdown and to rescue Alex.

From the start, Marie is set up to be our Final Girl. It’s her shoes we’re in for most of the film. She’s extremely smart, resourceful and brave. There's no daft decisions here like running up  the stairs when you should be going down. She’s also not afraid to resort to extreme violence herself.

And the violence is extreme; fans of gore will love High Tension. There are moments that are genuinely stomach churning-hide-behind-the-cushion-what-the-fuck-am-I-watching. It’s nasty, over-the-top, brutal and blood-saturated.

It’s not only infamous for being part of the French New Extremity movement, but for its baffling twist ending that has divided audiences over the last 22 years between those that think it’s brilliant and those (like me) who think it ruins what’s otherwise an above average, genuinely scary home invasion film.

Content warning: stump fucking, the dog dies, the kid dies, everyone dies in a The Shining elevator shower of blood.

Final thoughts: never stop your car for someone soaked in blood and screaming ‘help me! 

31 Days of Horror # 21 Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski)

Upfront disclaimer: It’s hard to talk about this film without talking about the director, Roman Polanski. In 1977 he was arrested and charged with the drugging and rape of a thirteen year old girl. Polanski has never faced any kind of punishment, and has been defended many times for his actions.

This brings up the dilemma of separating the art from the artist, which is particularly difficult with a film that’s as good as Rosemary’s Baby. As paraphrased from horror movie podcast Evolution of Horror, a film is not just the work of the director, but of all the people involved in bringing it to the screen.

However, I understand if you want to skip this one, and I’ll see you on day 22.

Now on with the review.

‘This is no dream! This is really happening!’

Young bride Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) is apartment hunting with her actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes). They find the seemingly perfect place, a recently vacated flat in Manhattan’s rather gloomy and imposing Bramford Building.

But why is there a large dresser blocking a closet door? Why are their elderly neighbours Roman and Minnie Castevet (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) so keen to be involved with their lives? Why did Terry, the Castevet's young female lodger fall from the window of their seventh floor apartment? What does Rosemary’s old landlord and friend Hutch discover about the Castevets that puts his life on danger?

Rosemary’s Baby is a terrifying study in coercion, control and abuse of power and it’s here (PLOT SPOILER ALERT) I want to go off on a tangent to say just how much I fucking hate Guy. He’s a selfish, egotistical, controlling, gas-lighting rapist. He won’t let see Rosemary see the doctor she wants to – he has the job and the money and she doesn’t – he controls what she reads, who she talks to, what she eats. He calls her friends ‘stupid bitches’ and oh, yeah, he sells his wife’s body and their unborn child to a Satanic cult in a deal to to further his acting career. Guy fucking sucks.

It’s Guy that makes Rosemary’s Baby truly frightening, even though he’s even more of a pathetic, needy, whinge bag than Mark from day 1’s watch Possession, a film which explores many of the same themes.

It could be theorised that Guy is manipulated by the Castevets as much as Rosemary is, but he seems pretty willing to be an active member of the cult in order to get what he wants – even if it’s as the expense of someone he’s supposed to love. Let’s not forget he also actively participates in the machinations that result in his rival going blind, and destroying his career. Props to John Cassavetes for making me hate Guy so much.

Content warning: rape, suicide (more suicide...jeez) domestic abuse, hairy faced devil baby.

Final thoughts: Fuck you Guy, you fucking fuck.

31 days of Horror # 20 Wolf Creek (2005, dir. Greg McLean)

 ‘She was good for months, until she lost her head!’

Inspired by the real-life cases of Ivan ‘Backpacker Murderer’ Millat and the 2001 disappearance of British tourist Peter Falconio, Wolf Creek is a 2005 Australian horror film that will put you off an outback holiday forever.

Ben (Nathan Phillips) Liz (Cassandra Magrath) and Kristie (Kestie Morassi) are three tourists on a road-trip to see Wolfe Creek Crater. Setting off the morning after a party with the kind of hangover that has you saying ‘I’m never drinking again’, the friends are disappointed by the gloomy, overcast day and bored by the long drive. The trip appears worth it, though, and Ben and Liz share a sneaky kiss when Kristie pops off for a al fresco shit.

There’s no-one else around, and when Ben’s fifth-hand rusty heap-of-shit car won’t start, they are very grateful that local Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) appears and offers to tow them to his place and do the repairs needed to get them back on the road.

At first Mick appears friendly, though a tad...off. He makes ribald comments and sexist, racist and homophobic jokes. Despite their apprehension the three friends try and dismiss this as Mick being an old-school rough and ready mucker type; a little creepy but ultimately harmless. Stranded hours from anywhere, they need his help and so accept his offer.

Mick of course, is a sadistic serial killer with a taste for rape and torture, and this ain’t his first rodeo. He takes them to what is possibly just one of his kill sites, a desolate and dirty assortment of make-shift buildings littered with the cars and belongings of his previous victims.

It’s not just Mick Taylor that makes this film scary. John Jarratt is great, playing Mick as the kind of person we’ve probably all met in real life. Not a serial killer, of course, but the kind of person whose 0-60 unpredictability leaves you unsure as to exactly how to behave around them.

The deeper fear lies in the vast remoteness of the Australian outback, the seemingly endless roads snaking through miles of barren, scrubby land and the stark, leafless trees. Even if you did escape Mick, where would you go? He knows this place much better than you do, and there’s nowhere to hide. If he doesn't get you, the wilderness will.

Content warning: all bets are off after the first 30 minutes.

Final thoughts: stay at home. 

31 days of Horror # 19 Stir of Echoes (1999, dir. David Koepp)

‘Does it hurt to be dead?’

Based on Richard Matheson’s (Hell House, I Am Legend) 1958 novel, this supernatural, very chilly thriller was sadly overshadowed by The Sixth Sense which was released in the same year. Both films feature a spooky little kid with who seems to know things others don’t, but that’s where the similarities end.

After Tom (Kevin Bacon, sizzling with a wiry hotness I did not appreciate at the time this film came out...21 year old me evidentially had no taste) is hynotised by his sister-in-law Lisa (Illeana Douglas), he starts having frightening visions and develops an addiction to cold orange juice. His son Jake (Zachary David Cope) tells him not to be afraid - like Cole Sear, Jake has a connection to those that have passed on into whatever is beyond the mortal world.

As Tom tries to decipher the meaning of his increasingly frightening visions and sudden ability to ‘know things’, he becomes convinced they are connected to a local missing teenage girl, Samantha (Jennifer Morrison).

His wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) is also on her own mission to find out exactly what’s going on with her husband and why he’s started doing things like digging up their back garden.

I love this film. It's autumnal colour palette, the dynamic between Tom and Maggie, how the story unfolds.  My favourite scene comes very early on, and it’s when Lisa hypnotises Tom. As he sinks deeper into the hypnosis, his chair floats above the seats of a cinema and towards the flickering screen. It’s such a striking image. 

It’s an underrated gem; eerie, compelling, sad, funny and at times, spine-chilling. The pacing is great, the compact run-time packs a lot in but keeps the plotting neat and tidy.

Content warning: sexual assault, teeth falling out, suicide (again! These movies love a suicide attempt).

Final thoughts: Kevin Bacon almost nudges Sam Neill off the Scream King top spot in this one.

31 Days of Horror # 18 The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Robin Hardy)

 ‘That’s my costume, the salmon of knowledge!’

In this OG folk horror classic, pious and tenacious police officer Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) arrives on a remote Scottish island, Summerisle, to investigate the disappearance of teenage girl Rowan Morrison.

The locals aren’t exactly helpful though. Half of them deny all knowledge of Rowan’s existence and half of them say she’s dead. Even Rowan’s ‘mother’ isn’t talking and seems very unbothered about the whereabouts of her daughter.

Howie’s investigations lead him to Daddy of the island, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) and he begins to suspect that Rowan was sacrificed in a pagan ritual by the islanders to ensure a bountiful harvest that year.

When Howie attempts to leave the island, the true intentions of the islanders are revealed in what is possibly horror cinema’s most shocking twist ending.

Content warning: Boobs. Lots of boobs. Pub garden orgies, animal cruelty, Christopher Lee cos-playing Cher. Oh, and the ending. It’s hide-behind-the-cushion scary.

Final verdict: virgins don’t always make it to the end of a horror film.

31 days of Horror # 17 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, Phillip Kaufman)

‘You’re evolving into a new life form.’

Parasitic plant spores make their way to earth to seed and grow into sweet little pink flowers.

Elizabeth (Brooke Adams), a laboratory scientist at the San Francisco Health Department, brings one of the flowers home, and shows it to her boyfriend, Geoffrey. The next morning Geoffrey seems...different. Worried, Elizabeth confides in her health inspector colleague, Matthew (Donald Sutherland).

Elizabeth sounds a tad paranoid - she’s convinced that Geoffrey, who’s off doing weird things with weird people, has been replaced with someone that looks just like him - so Matthew suggests that she speaks to his psychiatrist friend, Dr. Kibner (Leonard Nimoy).

They meet Kibner at the launch party of his latest book, who just says that men be menning and that Geoffrey’s issue is that he’s commitment phobic.

At the same party we meeting aspiring writer and spa owner Jack (Jeff Goldblum) and later his wife Nancy (Veronica Cartwright). Elizabeth, Matthew, Jack and Nancy form our Final Girl Four (spoiler...there’s only one final girl…) who work out what’s really going on and try and stop it.

Though this is a remake of the 1956 adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1954 science-fiction novel The Body Snatchers, and there have been subsequent versions, it remains the most iconic and enduring iteration.

The ending is one of the most famous in horror cinema and you’ll certainly have seen it, even if you don’t know where it’s from.

It’s in turns dystopian, depressing, bleak and very, very icky.

Content warning: goo, plant fannies.

Final Verdict: don't stop to smell the flowers.

31 Days of Horror # 16 Paperhouse (1988, Bernard Rose)

 'Is this snogging?’

On her 11^th birthday, Anna Madden (Charlotte Burke) comes down with glandular fever (do kids get glanular fever anymore? It feels like that was quite an 80’s illness). Dr. Nichols (the always wonderful Gemma Jones, who you’ll probably know best as playing Bridget Jones’ mum), tells Anna that she must rest or she risks prolonging her illness.

In Anna’s febrile dreams, a house she drew in her waking life becomes real. She draws a sad boy, Marc, (Elliott Spiers) in one of the windows, and he becomes real, too, except she hasn’t drawn him any legs so he can’t walk. She only drew his sad face, neck and shoulders, but for some reason he has a body but legs that don’t work? The logic in the film doesn’t logic, but I guess because most of it is set in Anna’s dreams, it doesn’t matter.

It turns out that Marc is a real-life boy, who has muscular dystrophy, which explains the reason he can’t walk. Anna and Marc are both patients of Dr. Nichols. I assume Dr. Nichols breaks the old patient confidentiality thing for purposes of the plot. Marc and Anna continue to meet in the paper house and they form a friendship, though Marc tells Anna it’s not safe for her there.

Anna’s mother Kate (Glenne Headly) is a bit of a classic 80’s mother. She’s very dismissive of Anna’s worries and dries her wet hair like she’s trying to pull her head off. She’s also inconsistent, distracted and contrary.

Anna’s dad, (Ben Cross) who doesn’t even get a name, he’s just ‘Dad’ an absent recovering alcoholic features in the house as a nightmarish spectre, though real-life dad is a bit emotionally disconnected and says stupid things like, ‘don’t get sunstoke!’ when he opens the curtains.

Paperhouse is a very weird film, and it sort of sisters with films like Return to Oz and The Neverending Story. Had I watched it as a kid back in the 80s, I would probably have it listed as an all-time favourite. It’s Penny Crayon on Night Nurse. Watching it for the first time in 2025, I struggle to see why it’s such a highly rated favourite with both audiences and critics.

That said, there is some good stuff here; the dream version of the house that Anna draws looks exactly like something a child would come up with. The dream sequences really do feel like being in a dream, with the same weird it makes sense at the time logic. There are some genuinely creepy moments and frightening jump scares.

The developing romance between Anna and Marc is very sweet, and reminded me of the innocent crushes I had on boys in school.

The bad? The carelessness of Anna’s parents really irritated me, but I think they were written like that so that you are provided context for Anna’s social isolation (she does have friends, but she doesn’t seem especially bond with people until she meets Marc).

The performances are very earnest, but I could see the acting (I’m not including the kids here, as that’s not very fair).

Have you seen Paperhouse? What did you think?

Content warning: bad daddy

Final verdict: Anna, you in danger girl.

31 Days of Horror # 15 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986, dir. John McNaughton)

‘My momma was a whore.’

Released after serving his time for murdering his mother, Henry (Michael Rooker) moves into penitentiary pal Otis’ (Tom Towles) grim Chicago apartment. When Henry’s not working as a pest controller, he’s stalking random women and murdering them. Henry murders anyone he feels like murdering; women, children, TV salesmen, whole families.

Otis’ sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) who is escaping her violent ex-husband moves in with the pair and develops a crush on Henry which isn’t really reciprocated because, well, Henry’s jam isn’t normal relationships.

Very loosely based on real-life serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, Henry is relentlessly bleak, disturbing and very, very depressing. It’s super low budget, grimy aesthetic and naturalistic acting style make it feel like you’re watching a really twisted home movie.

As quoted from the reference book 1001 Movies to See Before You Die: "Henry evokes horror through gritty realism and excellent acting. The film is not fun to watch, but it is important in that it forces viewers into questioning our cultural fascination with serial killers.”

‘Fun’ fact: Michael Rooker remained in character for the duration of the shoot. His wife discovered she was pregnant and waited until filming had wrapped to tell him.

Content warning: rape, extreme and very realistic violence, necrophilia, the kid dies too. 

Final verdict: No man ever needs help getting something in the back of a van.

31 Days of Horror # 14 - Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, dir. Robert Aldrich)

 ‘You mean all this time, we could have been friends?’

Former child star 'Baby' Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) lives with her sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) in a dilapidated Hollywood mansion. As she grows older, ‘Baby Jane’ falls out of favour with audiences, but Blanche becomes an acclaimed movie star. However a car accident, blamed on Jane, prematurely ends Blanche’s career.

When A TV run of Blanche’s old movies revives the public’s interest and admiration, Jane is overcome with jealously. Determined to reignite her own fame, she hires on-the-make pianist Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono) to accompany the songs penned by her long-dead father that she used to perform as a child.

Jane begins a campaign of cruelty against Blanche, cutting her off from friends, trapping her in her bedroom and tormenting her in a series of increasingly vile ways. Maid Elvira’s (Maidie Norman) efforts to rescue Blanche from Jane’s clutches have tragic consequences.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is almost always overshadowed by the notorious feud between the two leads, who apparently hated each other – when Joan Crawford died, Bette Davis said, "You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good... Joan Crawford is dead. Good.’

It’s this animosity between the two that makes for such explosive on-screen chemistry. Both performances are masterpieces in conveying the complexity of a co-dependent, toxic relationship. While Davis certainly looks like she’s having the time of her life playing a spiraling, booze-soaked Jane, Crawford brings a steely, determined vulnerability to Blanche that has you rooting for her.

It’s a classic for a reason; an unwholesome gothic horror about the perils of child stardom and the ruthlessness of the Hollywood machine. It’s also really, really funny.

Content warning: some ‘of its time’ language, dead pets, domestic violence.

Final verdict: sisters are doing it for themselves.

31 days of Horror # 13 Men (2022, dir. Alex Garland)

 ‘I have decided that you are an expert in carnality.’

Harper (Jessie Buckley) takes a holiday to a fancy manor house in a quiet little village following the death of her abusive husband James (Paapa Essiedu). Owner Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear - who reminded me a bit of Fred West, if Fred West had grown up in generational wealth and went to boarding school and enjoyed fox-hunting), is there to welcome Harper and show her around.

Harper spends her first few days walking in the woods and face-timing her friend Riley, (Gayle Rankin) but a series of encounters with men who all look remarkably similar to Geoffrey  threaten to spoil her peaceful getaway. Well-intentioned or not, all of them give Harper the heebie-jeebies.

Rory Kinnear does a great job of playing all the different iterations of the same man, managing to make them both distinctly different and eerily similar very effectively; the sexually repressed vicar made my skin crawl and I felt a little sorry for posh-boy Geoffrey who at one point exclaims, ‘you have all the qualities of a failed military man. My father said that to me once. I was seven,’

Jessie Buckley is also great as conflicted Harper; who is battling with her guilt over James’ death while trying to accept that it wasn’t her fault.

Gayle Rankin provides the comedic relief even though we only see her via Harper’s phone screen and for about thirty seconds at the end (and then you’re kind of glad she’s rocked up). Paapa Essiedu gets total screentime of around ten minutes but still manages to make me absolutely hate James.

This is a beautifully shot, lush film with a dreamlike quality - things make the most perfect, logical sense even when they shouldn’t. The themes of the nature of trauma, rebirth, spring and the patterns we are doomed to repeat are fairly obvious, so there’s not much that’s new here in that regard. That said, it’s still a compelling watch, particularly if you’re a fan of fairytales and folk horror.

Content warning: suicide (there isn’t a running theme here, I promise) extreme body horror (the final fifteen-odd minutes are not for the faint of heart) domestic violence, decay, nudity.

Final verdict: She’s gone on holiday by mistake.

31 Days of Horror # 12 - 1408 (2007, Mikael Håfström)

 ‘It’s an evil fucking room.’

Based on a Stephen King short story, 1408 is about Mike Enslin (John Cusack), a writer who is determined to the spend the night in the Dolphin Hotel’s most haunted room. Manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L Jackson) does his best to talk him out of it, telling Mike that no-one has ever lasted longer than an hour in the room. Like LA’s real-life Cecil Hotel, the Dolphin has a long history of gruesome deaths and dodgy guests. Fifty-six people have died in room 1408 since the hotel was built 95 years ago.

But Mike ain’t afraid of no ghost. He doesn’t actually even believe in ghosts - his career is built on writing books debunking hauntings in hotel, motels and holiday inns across America.

In a parallel with the Event Horizon, room 1408 presents its guests with their own personal hell. Things start off innocuously enough; the toilet roll neatly refolds itself, the bed smooths its own rumpled blanket, the heating has a life of its own, the radio turns on, always playing The Carpenters song We’ve Only Just Begun, the alarm clock goes on a sixty-minute countdown. Mike thinks that Mr Olin is setting this up and is watching the action through a camera hidden in the ceiling vent. Later on, Mike starts to think that the expensive whiskey Olin attempted to bribe him with has been spiked.

But then things get really weird, and as things start to escalate, Mike is drawn into a never-ending nightmare that he can’t wake up from.

There are apparently three different endings to 1408. I watched the director’s cut, which has a much bleaker wrap-up to the theatrical cut and the third alternate ending. Think the final few minutes of The Mist, which is also based on a Stephen King short story, and you’ll get the idea.

Content warning: suicide. A lot of suicide.

Final verdict: You can check out, but you can never leave.

You can stream 1408 on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Apple TV and the Sky Store.

31 Days of Horror # 11 - The House of the Devil (2009, Ti West)

‘Are you not the babysitter?’

College student Samantha (Joceline Donahue) needs to move out of her dorm. Her roommate is driving her insane; she’s selfish, messy and lazy. Sam quickly finds the perfect place, with lovely Landlady (she doesn’t have a name, but she’s played by Scream Queen Dee Wallace) letting her skip on the deposit and just pay a month’s rent in advance. However, Sam’s still worried about how she’ll pay the rent and is desperate for a job.

As luck would have it, she finds an ad for a babysitter. When the father, Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan), fails to turn up for the interview, a disheartened Sam meets her friend Megan (Greta Gerwig) for a pizza. Megan jokes that they should steal all the remaining ads so that no-one else calls and Mr. Ulman (wait...Mr. Ulman...like, The Shining Mr. Ulman?) is forced to hire Sam.

And that’s exactly what happens. Megan steals all the ads, but Mr. Ulman has already called Sam’s dorm-room while she’s out to apologise for standing her up and to offer her the job.

Megan drives her to the Ulman’s house, but gets weirded out when Ulman explains that they don’t actually have a kid and they need Sam to look after his elderly mother. It’s only after Sam negotiates a  $400 pay that she agrees to stay. 

It’s not long before Sam gets weirded out being in the house on her own, and for good reason. Though nothing much happens until the final third of the film, when it does kick off it kicks off big style.

This isn’t just a homage to the 80s slasher, it’s a love letter. Ti West captures the style of the era perfectly. The dialogue, the wardrobe, the grainy cinematography, the performances, absolutely everything makes this feel like it was made forty years ago. Jocelin Donahue looks like the perfect 70’s / 80’s final girl. 

Content warning: demons, brains, WHY ARE YOU RUNNING UP THE STAIRS.

Final verdict: Mischief! Mischief! Mischief! (see Inside No.9, series 1, episode 6, The Harrowing. It makes an excellent companion piece).

You can stream The House of the Devil on Tubi and Amazon Prime

31 Days of Horror # 10 - When Evil Lurks (2023, Demián Rugna)

‘I took the evil to her.’

Brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriquez) and Jimi (Demián Salomon) hear distant gunshots late at night outside their remote farmhouse. In the morning when they go to investigate, they find the mutilated corpse of a man in the nearby woods. A notebook leads them to Maria's house, a woman that has hired a 'cleaner', a professional exorcist of sorts, to kill her demon-impregnated brother (a 'rotten') Uriel. 

Uriel must be killed before he gives birth and lets the demon free to possess others. Pedro and Jimi set out to dispatch Uriel before he can disgorge his satanic off-spring, but they’re both so hopelessly inept, things go horribly, horribly wrong. There’s no final girls here, just two dumb-as-fuck men who think nothing through properly and act entirely on impulse and way-off-the-mark instinct.

This film is really, really gross. It’s actually disgusting. Uriel is a huge, bloated piss-stained grey mass covered in intestine-like growths. He leaks fluid all over the place. There’s no cutaway from the violence, even when a dog attacks a small child and drags her around like she’s a chew toy. The squelchy, drippy, oozy sound design will leave you feeling queasy.

It’s not a film that’s going to explain everything to you in a convenient exposition dump. In fact, you’re left wondering how long the town has been dealing with the ‘rotten’. Pedro’s mother sings a song which lists the rules to avoid possession, so we can assume it’s that been many years.

Character backstory is revealed slowly, but not through flashbacks or clumsy conversations.

This is not the film for you if you like the where's what's and whys to be explained, or if you like neat answers to what exactly it is that’s possessing the town and why.

Possession seems to take the form of a disease rather than a spiritual take-over, and Uriel reminded me a lot of the Slow Lows from 28 Years Later.

Fun fact: Uriel isn’t played by one actor, but 3; Two who operate the mechanical model that forms Uriel’s body, and then voiced by the third.

Content warning: eating a baby like it’s a KFC bargain bucket, axing your own face, coughing up a large clump of blood and hair….you know what? This whole thing is just 90-odd minutes of hide-behind-the-cushion, stomach-churning, gakky fuckery.

Final verdict: the dog dies.

When Evil Lurks is a Shudder exclusive. You can probably get a free trial if you fancy checking out any of the Shudder films on the list, or get a subscription for £5 a month.

31 Days of Horror # 9 The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)

 The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)

‘No, you ate yours,’

FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is sent to interview Dr Hannibal ‘the cannibal’ Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) as part of the on-going hunt for serial killer ‘Buffalo Bill’ under the guise of Lecter’s participation in a survey. Lecter quickly susses out the ploy, but gives Clarice a cryptic clue, even though he thinks she looks like a rube with her good bag and cheap shoes.

When Catherine Martin, (Brooke Smith) the daughter of a senator, is abducted by Buffalo Bill, Clarice must tell Hannibal her secrets in exchange for information on Bill’s identity.

Content warnings: spunk-slinging, DIY face-lift, childhood trauma, head-in-a-jar, bugs, ‘would you fuck me? I’d fuck me.’

Final verdict: Don’t make me hurt your dog, mister.

31 Days of Horror # 8 Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg)

 'Here comes Jaws. Jaws the shark. Mind he doesn’t bite you with his enormous jaws,' (Jeremy, Peep Show)

Billed as a thriller, in my opinion Jaws sits firmly in the on the horror shelf in my movie library, and I will fight anyone that argues that it’s not a horror.

Let’s look at the evidence; we have a small town terrorised by a relentless monster, an out-of-his depth police chief, and scantily clad teens meeting gruesome ends.

We all know the story; a beachside town at the peak of tourist season has found its waters host to a hungry shark. Chief Brody (Roy Schneider who I did, and still do have a huge crush on), marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and professional shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) set out on a flimsy boat to catch the great white that’s been making human sushi out of locals and tourists.

It’s funny, gripping, gruesome and enduring – it still has the power to scare a new generation of viewers out of swimming in the sea. The iconic theme tune is up there in the Collective consciousness as much as the one from Psycho is. You may not have seen the film, but you know where that music is from.

It’s a once a year watch for me. Stone cold classic.

Fun fact: The famous line is often misquoted - ‘we’re gonna need a bigger boat’ is actually ‘you’re gonna need a bigger boat’.

Content warnings: mechanical shark, floating heads, flares, people that are supposed to be forty but look about 75.

Final verdict: Here’s to swimmin' with bow-legged wimmin.

Jaws is currently streaming on Netflix.

31 Days of Horror # 7 The Sixth Sense (1999, M Night Shyamalan)

‘They scare me too.’

Nine-year-old Cole Sear (we ‘see’ what you did there, M! – Haley Joel Osment) is a troubled little boy who has no friends and walks around wearing his absent father’s things. His mother Lynn (Toni Collette putting in stellar performance as usual) is doing her best to keep things together, but she’s struggling to cope with Cole’s secretive and sometimes frustrating behaviour.

Cue Dr Malcolm Crowe, a child pyschologist with problems of his own. His wife Anna (Olivia Williams) seems to have stopped talking to him and is flirting with her handsome colleague.

Malcolm wants to help Cole, but maybe it’s really him that needs Cole’s help?

Twenty-six years on it’s still fun to watch this film and pick up on the visual clues that hint at the ‘didn’t see it coming’ twist ending. Why does Malcolm always wear the same clothes? Why does Lynn never speak to him? Why is Anna ignoring him? Did you spot the red church door, Anna’s red shawl, the door-handle to the basement in the Crowe’s home?

In an alternate casting universe, Michael Cera (Juno, This is the End, Superbad) would have played Cole. However, he had prepared for the audition by only reading the scene where Malcolm does the coin magic trick, assumed it was a comedy, and played Cole as happy and carefree.

Haley Joel Osment read the entire script and understood the assignment, turning up to the audition in a suit and playing Cole as an anxiety-ridden little kid with the weight of the world on his shoulders. There’s some performances where you can see the acting. This isn’t one of them. In fact all the cast (aside from M Night inserting himself in a cameo as a paediatrician) are great.

Toni Collette ‘styled’ Lynn herself, with a bright red wig, clicky nails and cheap clothes. And she’s totally believable as a frazzled working mum trying to make ends meet and look after her son.

Though often parodied and imitated, The Sixth Sense still packs an emotional gut punch. A firm Autumn favourite to see in spooky season.

Content warning: injury, infanticide, self-harm, ‘I’ll show you where my dad keeps his gun’

Final verdict: You’ve had enough roast beef, you need to leave the table.

Streaming now on Amazon Prime, Disney + and the Sky Store.

31 Days of Horror # 6 Event Horizon (1997, Paul Anderson)

‘Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes.’

It’s 2047 and the Lewis and Clark rescue vessel is dispatched to the Event Horizon, a starship that disappeared in orbit around Neptune. On board are Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and crew D.J (Jason Issacs) Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) Smith (Sean Pertwee) Starck (Jolie Richardson) Cooper (Richard T Jones) and Justin (Jack Noseworthy) Joining them on the mission is the Event Horizon’s designer, Weir (Sam Neill).

Once on board on the Event Horizon, it becomes clear that something terrible happened to its crew. The Lewis and Clark team seem to be heading for the same fate, each member experiencing their own personal hell. Weir sees his dead wife, Peters the son she feels guilty for leaving behind, Miller a colleague that he left to die on a previous mission.

Is Weir as fish-out-of-water as he seems? Why is he so determined to defend the Event Horizon?

Sometimes described as ‘The Shining in space’, the film flopped at the box office. Much of the original script was edited out and following test screenings, scenes that provided context to Weir’s motivations and what exactly is haunting the Event Horizon were cut.

And...it’s not a great film. The script is awful. Here’s an example (I paraphrase)

Miller (to Starck): tell me something!

Stacrk: (begins to tell Miller her theory)

Miller: I don’t have time for this!

Starck: it’s sort of important

Miller: Go on then

Starck: (begins to explain theory again)

Miller: What are you on about? Give me FACTS!

It’s also pretty boring, and repetitive. The editing is bad, so it’s hard to tell what’s going on when. Lack of character background means that you don’t really care what happens to any of the crew. The only character I actually cared about was Cooper, because he provides the comic relief and almost dies multiple times despite being absent for most of the run-time.

Despite the lukewarm reception on release, the film garnered a cult following in the subsequent years. In 2024, Vanity Fair put Event Horizon as the 94^th best horror film of all time.

Event Horizon wouldn’t make it into my Top 10, or probably even my Top 20. But I still have a grudging affection for it. It’s ambitious, and gory, and sometimes funny (both intentionally and unintentionally). The set design of the ship is seriously impressive, from the spinning black hole, (the ‘core’ of the vessel), to the ‘meat grinder’ tunnel. Possessed Weir’s make-up is iconic. You can tell that director Paul Anderson was going for so much more than a sci-fi slasher. I believe that it’s worth a watch to decide for yourself if it’s a classic or a clunker.

Content warning: suicide, exploding eyes, topless Sam Neill (may cause intense thigh rubbing).

Final verdict: I liked the bit in space.

You can stream Event Horizon on Paramount +, Youtube, Now TV, Amazon Prime video. Google Play, Apple TV and the Sky Store. Or if I know you personally, you can rent the DVD from me for £3.00 a night. What do you mean, ‘who has a DVD player these days?’?!

31 Days of Horror # 5 The Surrender (2025, Julia Max)

‘They don’t let just anyone become a yoga instructor!’

Megan (Colby Minifie, who looks like a mix of Elisabeth Moss, Andrea Riseborough and Lauren Ambrose) returns to the family home to help her mother Barbara (Kate Burton)care for her dying father, Robert (Vaughn Armstrong) For once the house is quite nice and not a horribly depressing ice-cube of a home. (see: The Possession, Sisters).

Dad lays in bed screaming ‘Barbara!’ and he sounds a bit like when Chandler from Friends pretended to be Santa Claus.

Dad dies in the night and Megan learns that Barbara has hired a witch doctor (Neil Sandilands) to resurrect her dead husband. Megan is unwittingly part of the ritual which involves burning all of dad’s precious things and chopping fingers off. The ritual goes horribly wrong thanks to Megan hanging on to a photo of her and her dad.

While there’s some genuinely creepy moments like luminous eyes appearing in the dark and the witch doctor’s body being prised open at the spine from inside but who I assume are Robert’s hands, and there’s scenes that seem to have been stolen from other films (Vivarium, Hereditary) the script isn’t strong enough for us to root for Megan or Barbara. Megan spends a lot of time screaming, ‘Mum! Mum, nooooo!’ which gets really irritating after a while.

Final verdict: it’s basically the Monkey’s Paw. If resurrection is your thing, you might be better off reading Monstrillio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, which does it with so much more depth (and scares).

Content warning: MUUUUUMMMM!!

31 Days of Horror # 4 The Rule of Jenny Penn (2024, James Ashcroft)

 ‘All anyone remembers is the giant pink dildo!’

After suffering a stroke during a court hearing , elderly judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) recouperates in a residential care home. However fellow resident Dave Crealey (John Lithgow) seems determined to make his life a misery. From gas-lighting to physical and verbal torture, Dave’s bullying seems to go unnoticed by everyone apart from Stefan and his ex-rugby player roommate Tony (George Henare) who seems to bear the brunt of Dave’s vile bullying.

Under the rule of ‘Jenny Pen’, a little baby-doll puppet with weird yellow eyes, Dave exerts absolute control over the residents and unwitting staff.

Determined to stand his ground despite his declining condition, Stefan refuses to let Dave continue to get away with his reign of terror.

John Lithgow puts in a truly unsettling performance. He’s skin-crawlingly unpleasant, particularly in a scene where he torments a female dementia patient that’s desperately waiting for her family to visit her.

Content warning: sexual assault, human Flamin’ Moe, naked old man arse.

Final verdict: MASHED POTATOES!

The Rule of Jenny Penn is available to watch on Shudder.

31 Days of Horror # 3 Sisters (1972, Brian De Palma)

 ‘She’s not dead, she’s going to kill you!’

Danielle (Margot Kidder, doing a confusing French Canadian accent) is a model slash actress slash slasher living in Staten Island. A date with Lisle, (Phillip Woode) a man she meets on a game show ends in murder, (his, because as in the tradition of horror the Black guy dies first) but nosy neighbour investigative journalist Grace (Jennifer Salt) is on the case. When Grace’s overbearing mother isn’t mithering her about getting married, Grace is working hard to expose corruption and racism in the local police force. Grace also sports the most majestic 70’s hairstyle I’ve ever seen - a bouffant wolf-cut mullet of Marge Simpson beehive proportions. I’m a big fan of Grace.

It turns out that Danielle was a conjoined twin, joined with sister Dominique at the hip. AT THE HIP. During the operation to separate them, Dominique died. Grace is able to discover this via breaking and entering Danielle’s horrible cold flat (what is it with horrible cold flats in these films?) and a doctor that breaks some serious patient confidentiality laws.

Grace is also able to casually stroll into a mental health clinic because no-one in this film apart from her takes things seriously. However once she’s in there Danielle’s creepy doctor husband, Emil (William Finley) convinces the staff that Grace is a patient called Margaret and she’s promptly checked in with no questions asked...sharing a room with Danielle. Emil hypnotises Grace into believing she didn’t see Danielle murder poor Lisle whose only crime was being Black in the wrong place at the wrong time (according to the police officers that turn up following Grace’s phone call).

Emil ends up dead, and Grace, still under hypnosis, insists she saw nothing and cannot help the now interested police locate Lisle’s remains.

Sisters is an unexpectedly comedic film, largely to Larch, a PI hired by Grace to assist her in finding out exactly what happened in Danielle’s apartment. It’s not all fun, though. There’s a nightmarish black and white sequence that has a real uncanny valley feel to it and Emil is seriously sinister character.

It’s a short film that packs a lot in the 90-odd minute run-time

Content warning: referring to conjoined twins as ‘Siamese’, 70’s film blood that has the appearance and consistency of red paint. An appearance from the Annabelle / Poltergeist doll.

Final verdict: Lois Lane loses the plot.

Sisters is streaming on Shudder.