Who says there's no great or fresh horror movies any more? Despite the rise of gimmick-led scare flicks and bloated sequels destroying the legacy of classic originals, there are still innovative film-makers wowing proper genre fans and surprising mainstream successes that don't rely on dumb jumps. It's still a good time to be a horror movie fan, in other words. This was the year when horror went meta (again), when found footage horror got a surprising shot in the arm from the most unlikely of directors and humour became the dominant trope in the best releases. After Scary Movie, that's no small achievement. Inevitably of course there were still some stinkers: where lazy film-makers peddle terrible sequels, or painfully derivative "new" projects, and it is interesting, as ever, to directly contrast the high-points with the low-points. Let's hope the gap between the two stops being so massive in the near future. First off, the best horror movies of the past twelve months...
Best
10. The Visit
RT Rating: 63% Who would have thought that a found footage horror movie directed by M Night Shyamalan would end up being anything but an unmitigated disaster? Well, colour me and every one of The Visit's fans utterly surprised. Perhaps inevitably, there was some expectation that the director would defer to his twist fetish and throw an almighty narrative spanner into the works, but it's part of the film's charm that he actually didn't. The film, then, ends up being a timely reminder that in amongst his story-telling silliness, Shyamalan is still wonderfully talented at making audiences scared.