10 Criminally Underrated British Horror Films

10 underrated horror films you absolutely must see.

If the shelves in the DVD and Blu-Ray aisles are anything to go by, you€™d think that the British horror industry was in full bloom at the rate that new UK horror movies are being released each week. The problem is that very few of them are actually good and most are simply knock-offs of bigger-budgeted and more successful films. Here, though, are some exceptions. Staying away from some of the bigger box office successes of the last few years (like The Woman In Black, for example) and avoiding the straight-to-DVD sequel market, what follows is ten of the most underrated, little-seen and actually really rather great horror movies from the United Kingdom in the last ten years.

10. Severance

It pains me to give any coverage to a film featuring Danny Dyer but the fact that I'm doing so should go some way to indicating just how solid it actually is. Directed by Christopher Smith, who's going to feature heavily in this list, the film carves its own three-act structure into three distinctly different parts that shouldn't mesh well together but somehow do, although many a film critic is quick to suggest that one of Severance's flaws is that it all comes undone by its final act. Up until that point though, you're treated to a fitfully amusing dark comedy, an atmospheric and surprisingly tense conventional slasher flick and, finally, a balls-to-the-wall gory piece of absurdist nonsense involving war criminals, naked women, bear-traps and rocket-launchers.
Contributor
Contributor

I'm a part-time writer, part-time stand-up comedian, full time movie geek who strongly believes Martin Brest's MIDNIGHT RUN is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, movie ever made! (... This is the bit where you mutter "You must be some sort of friggin' comedian if you think Midnight Run is the greatest movie ever made!") I'm a massive junkie for 'revenge' and 'conspiracy' movies and I'm an even bigger fan of all things John Carpenter, Albert Brooks, Coen Brothers, Sidney Lumet, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tony Scott, Christopher Nolan, Michael Mann, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, David Fincher, Wes Anderson and Shane Meadows. I'm on Twitter at @gazzhowie if you'd like to validate my existence by following me - and my movie review archive can be found at www.gazzhowie.tumblr.com!